COTR CG Leaders Week 5 Devotional

Hello Community Leaders!

“BUT GOD…”

Last week’s devotional spoke hard truth: tasting forbidden fruit brings disastrous consequences.  Adam and Eve’s shared bite plummeted humans from God’s absolute grace, perfection, and loving wholeness.

How do you “pick up the pieces” after you’ve screwed something up so badly that all you can do is moan?

Adam and Eve covered up and hid.

Turning to Genesis 3:7-8 we read:

“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

Prior to Gen. 3:7-8 Adam and Eve knew “good” by experiencing it in God’s presence and by His hand.  Now, because they trusted themselves over trusting and submitting to God, they knew evil by experience, too. In doing so they lost the intimacy of God’s presence. They lost their innocence and eternal security. Their rebellion and “self” lordship/self-determination cost them all the good they’d ever known.  Now, instead, they felt guilt, shame, anger, confusion, doubt… I wonder if they thought, “Is God DONE with us?” And following that thought is the cavernous question: “Now, what?”

Adam and Eve were alone, scared, guilty, ashamed, literally and metaphorically naked and so they hid. They took leaves and fashioned a covering to hide their nakedness from each other, themselves, and God.  Then they hid in the foliage as they heard the Lord God walking in the cool of the day to fellowship with them as had been their previous experience…

Desperate and hiding from their Creator GOD, the ONE who loved them best and most, what could they anticipate? God’s wrath? His disapproval? His righteous anger? They had knowingly turned their back and hearts away from Him and believed the lie of one of GOD’S creatures- Such treason! God had appointed THEM to watch over and steward all of his creation, and here they had sunk to believing a lie from one of the creatures.

I guess I would have hidden too. How do you come back from betraying someone so good and loving?

You don’t, because you can’t. Not on your own- So again, “NOW WHAT”?

Here is the “now what” answer: BUT GOD!!!

(Do you know that if you google the question: how many times does the phrase “But, God” occur in the bible you get a nifty answer of 44 times! Thanks, Google!)

I love that answer: “BUT GOD”!

That phrase points to the ONE GOD who opens up LIFE and HOPE where there is NONE.  “BUT, GOD!” acts like

a trajectory changer- we are headed in one direction and all of a sudden there is a powerful change enacted upon us and we are redirected into a different direction.

There’s not time enough to share the many verses of “But, God”- but 3 that highlights the truth of Adam and Eve’s difficult situation say this:

Romans 6:23-

“For the wages of sin is death, BUT the gift of GOD is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And again: Romans 5:8

“BUT GOD demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Ephesians 2:4-5

“BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved.”

The “But GOD” phrase paints a picture of the KIND of LORD GOD we love, worship and serve.  He is a redeeming, rescuing, oh, SO SOVEREIGN, but still engaged KING and SAVIOR!

HE is HOLY. HE IS LOVE. HE IS GRACE. HE IS FIERCELESS SHINING RIGHTEOUSNESS!

And so, this GOD beyond compare steps in and brings life, through death. In doing so HE paints a foreshadowing of HIS ULTIMATE GIFT and portrait of HIS GLORY: HIS SON, JESUS CHRIST!

God’s first step is TOWARD man- He seeks Adam out to ask “where are you Adam”- Now, you must know that GOD KNEW where Adam and Eve were hiding, right?? HE IS GOD! He was seeking to draw them out of their own hiddenness, their self-deceit through “covering”. 

Our God is a wooing, pursuing GOD. HE is relational to His core.  His grace was already moving towards them…

YET, in HIS HOLINESS, GOD MUST DEAL WITH SIN.  

So, GOD in verses GEN. 3: 14-19 lays out the consequences of sin….pain, toil and death.

First to the serpent, then to Eve, and finally to Adam.

It is in Gen 3:15 that we see the foreshadow of GRACE GLORIFIED and MERCY TRIUMPHANT!

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; HE shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise HIS heel.”

This is the first MESSIANIC prophecy also known as “Protoevangelium”-foretelling the coming of JESUS.

The “fall” of man introduced Satan’s  “seed” ( the seed in all of us by nature of our shared heritage as humans/descendants of Adam/Eve- MANKIND-who are called the devil’s children in John 8:44)who struggle against the woman’s “Seed” which is JESUS CHRIST, the descendant of Eve-the “mother” of all humankind.

In the middle of these curses, GOD LAYS DOWN HOPE, GRACE, MERCY and LIFE in the promise of Jesus, who is the “HE” who will BRUISE Satan’s head….one day in the future-crushing Satan and setting the captives free!

God’s 2^nd step FOR man and FOR his good was to cover Adam and Eve with skins from an animal.  An “innocent” died in order to cover the naked guilt of another.  Such gracious foreshadowing of grace in this moment as well?

And in a final, loving gracious act of mercy, as only a wise parent knows to do, God Put them OUT of the garden. Please read Gen. 3: 22-24-

These verses were an added delight and blessing to me as I read and prayed….

God had always intended full, abundant life for us in Him.  Complete, lacking nothing. The Tree of LIFE stood central to the Garden and possibly was situated up on a hill? Life flowed from it… Just so many pictures of God’s love, wisdom, glory, and honor abound in this garden! God looked at it and KNEW man needed to be thrust AWAY from THIS TREE in order to survive until the cure for “sin” could be implemented. Man was dead in sin.  If man ate of this tree, man would DIE FOREVER in his sin and cursed state.

And so, God, in verse 23, mercifully sends man out from the garden of Eden.  Verse 24 states that God placed “cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life…”

But, do you know….there is another tree….upon which our Savior died-  JESUS CHRIST broke the curse, satisfied GOD’s HOLY wrath at sin, and destroyed SATAN’S hold on man’s soul.  Calvary. A wooden cross. A broken, BUT GOD, RISEN SAVIOR!!

But God!….GOD’s “GOOD NEWS FOR BAD PEOPLE” GOSPEL is BRIMMING with “BUT GOD” moments if we care to see HOW BIG and HOLY and LOVING GOD IS and be broken of our “self” fixation…

Where do you see “BUT GOD” moments in your life?

Where is GOD pursuing you, wooing you into wholeness, life, and transparency?

Where is GOD drawing you out of yourself?  Exposing lies you’ve believed about GOD? About yourself?

Where is GOD asking you to be real and honest about sin, hidden appetites, idols and anything impure,

Unholy, unkind and not at all like HIM?

It’s ok to come out into the open.  Grace will meet you. Mercy will both expunge the sin and bind the wound.

God is pursuing you with a fierce love that knows no bounds.

Surrender to the ONE who loves you best and MOST! 

May this boundless, limitless, sheltering, holy GOD meet your heart with HIS HOLY loving peace.

NEXT week, we see man’s first steps at responding to grace.

Blessings,

Your sister in JESUS,

Mary Kaye