Day 2 - The One Year Adventure with the God of Your Story

Genesis 3:1–4:26; Matthew 2:13–3:6; Psalm 2:1-12; Proverbs 1:7-9

TODAY’S READING UNVEILS one of the saddest stories in the Bible. We know this story as “the fall of man,” and it reveals the trajectory of the rest of Scripture. This story is the beginning of the larger story: the reason for God’s willingness to come here in the person of Jesus to rescue His creation.

In the Garden of Eden, God offered Adam and Eve the tree of life and prohibited them from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It’s easy to wonder at the purpose of a prohibited fruit. But this tree gives us an incredible picture of how deeply invested God is in a first-person relationship with us. True love isn’t something that can be faked. Enslavement can shape someone’s behavior—if the consequences are dire enough—but authentic and true love can only be offered freely from the heart. Love can’t be true if there is no way out. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil appears to be exactly that.

Unfortunately, a deception was hatched, and our first mother and father dreamed of becoming like God, tragically forgetting that they already were. Adam and Eve chose to eat, contrary to God’s command, with devastating repercussions. The catastrophic depths of this choice is revealed in God’s heartbreaking question: “What have you done?” (Genesis 3:13).

“I was naked, so I hid,”^a was the response. We have been hiding ever since. We see it every day in the way we interact with each other. We curate and present our best selves while hiding who we really are. The trade was perfection and true love in exchange for knowledge, and we have attempted to use that knowledge to imitate Sovereignty—with frightening and terrible results.

Throughout history, humankind has worked to remain self-directed, but this has not brought us back to God. We will not find our way back to God. Only God can bring us back to Himself, and He is. This is the story of the Bible.

MEDITATION:

Serve the LORD with reverent fear, and rejoice with trembling.