The Fall Of Man

What is the one thing that separates man from God?  Many of you would say sin.  Yes, but what kind of sin?  That sin is pride.  It has been doing it's dark deceitful work in man since the beginning of man itself.  Lucifer forged it and got booted out of Heaven, then he presented it to us.  When he did, we embraced it wholeheartedly.  This is why we live in the sinful world we live in.  Pride is responsible for the fall of man.

Lets go back to where pride was presented to man in the first verse of Genesis 3. 

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.  He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

This was the seed of pride planted in poor Eve.  Eve had never questioned God before or even pondered why anyone wouldn't trust God.  She tells the serpent what God told her.

"We may eat fruit from the trees  in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

I can see her wondering why the serpent doesn't already know this.  Why this creature is questioning his own Creator.  Then Satan throws out the bait.

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.  "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

She had just been told that her Celestial Father lied to her, and that she could gain something from eating the forbidden fruit.  For the first time in her life, she is thinking of herself more than her Creator.  She took the bait.  The next verse says that now she desired the fruit for "gaining wisdom".  Now she is entirely looking out for herself and God is out of mind entirely.  She shares the fruit with her husband and their eyes were opened.  They were both bare naked.  They had always been that way but something changed.  Now they were self conscious of it. 

Now that pride was in them both, they both felt inferior to God and each other.  They had both sinned and now their eyes had been opened to good and evil.  Their eyes had been opened to the cold hard fact that the first evil was the first sin, and they committed the first sin.  Now they had something to be ashamed of.  Now they wanted to look extra good in Gods eyes, and in each others eyes.

They sewed together clothes for themselves.  The only thing they are thinking of now is how they want to look in the eyes of others.  Not long after that God swoops through the garden and Adam and Eve are scrambling up trees trying to escape the sight of their Creator. 

God already knew what was going on.  Just like my dad playing hide and seek with me when I was five.  I would lay on the sofa under the covers trying not to giggle while my dad would walk around the living room eying the breathing mass of blankets on the sofa, all the while asking himself in a singsong voice, "Caaaaleb . . . Wheeeere aaare yoooouuu?"  He was doing it for my satisfaction.  He was stooping down to the naive mindset I had as a five-year-old.

In a similar way, God stoops to the naive mindset of us for our satisfaction.  He does it to check our pride.  So God called to them, "Where are you?"

Adam answered God:

"I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

Here Adam admits that he feels inferior.  This is not a sign of humbleness.  Adam had a lot of pride, he didn't want to look bad or feel stupid in the eyes of anyone, especially God.  Now God asks the obvious:

"Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

Now Adam knows that God is on to him.  He knows that there is no use hiding it but he still doesn't want to look stupid in front of God, so he pins it on Eve.

The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Let me point out that Adam was standing beside Eve the whole time the serpent was talking to her, so he had just as much a chance to say "no" to the fruit as Eve did.  So don't go heaping all the blame on Eve.  Now God questions Eve:

"What is this you have done?"

Now Eve pins it on Satan and God chews them all out and lays out the consequences.  This is how pride was planted in the hearts of us all.  This was the fall of man.