This and the following two sermons constitute one series. (These are longer and heavier messages, by the way!) The general gist of the three sermons together is this: Man was created from the very start to be God’s unique, sacred, holy dwelling place, in love and mutual knowledge, and this thread of meaning can be traced in certain fascinating, and generally overlooked, images and themes that develop and grow from Genesis to Revelation. The concluding simple picture of the round world, and what is meant by it, are taken from the poem by C.S. Lewis, “Poem for Psychoanalysts And/Or Theologians”. I discovered in a certain commentary on the Internet that this poem was originally called “The World is Round”. The commentator found Lewis’ alteration to the longer title “inexplicable”. To me, it’s anything but inexplicable. I find Lewis’ final choice to be both delightfully ironic and movingly wise. You could write a whole book about that title. Or at least, Lewis could.
(Read Genesis 3:21-24)
I want to begin by addressing a common misperception about one of the first, most important events recorded in the Bible – the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. In our imagination, thanks to picture Bibles and works of art and posters hanging on Sunday Schools walls, we see Adam and Eve trudging away from the Garden, dressed in animal skins, cowering in fear and shame, while behind them stands the angel holding the sword.
The picture is wrong.
Now, maybe the picture is alright as far as Adam and Eve go. They may have looked just like that. But the picture of the angel is all wrong. For a few reasons. Look carefully at the text. It never says that the angel was holding a sword and, in fact, it never even says there was an angel there at all! On top of that, whoever it was that God did put there to guard the garden, the Bible says there was more than one of them! So the picture we have in our minds – one angel holding sword – is just about as wrong as wrong can be. And this is the starting place of my sermon today, and the next few sermons that will be connected to it, not because I’m a stickler for details or I just like being picky. This is the starting point because God has invested a profound theological lesson, in fact a heartbreakingly glorious revelation of Himself and His purposes, in what really happened there at the Garden. If we love God, then of course we want to understand His lessons right, so we can know Him and His ways more and more deeply all the time.
Now, about the angel... who wasn’t there. The Word actually says that God put cherubim there. A better translation, as maybe some of your Bibles have, is “cherubs”, because the Hebrew word is “cherub” and the ending “-im” is like the English “-s” – it just means there was more than one of them. Now when I mention “cherubs”, the very first thing we absolutely must do is delete from our minds all thoughts and images of cute little naked winged babies, the image with which the word “cherub” has become associated in western tradition. That picture has nothing at all to do with real cherubs. I doubt you’d find anything in the least bit “cute” about real cherubs. I doubt Adam and Eve did. They were probably terrifying.
How many cherubs did God place in front of the Garden, blocking the way to the tree of life? Text doesn’t say. But usually in the Bible there are four cherubs whenever they appear – and that’s several times: in Exodus, Ezekiel, Revelation, possibly in Isaiah. And what did the cherubs look like? Again, you can refer to Ezekiel and revelation to find out, and we will be saying more about the “what” and the “why” of these cherubs in the next few sermons. But for now, just think: “the four living creatures”. If anything, they look more like animals than what we think of as angels.
Now we turn to the sword. Somebody might ask, “Well, alright, then. If there were four or more cherubs, then which one was holding the sword?” That’s easy – look at the scripture. The answer is, none of them. The text doesn’t say anyone was holding the sword, and if you read the description very carefully it looks like no one could have been holding it. It says that God placed cherubs and a sword in front of the Garden. The sword was a flaming sword, flashing back and forth. What kind of “sword” is that? I don’t know, but it’s definitely impressive! It was just there, blazing, somehow flashing, maybe slashing, back and forth, perhaps even revolving. Between this and the cherubs, the message was clear: approach this tree and die. Imagine what a heartbreaking message that is for God to send.
And why did God banish Adam and Eve forcefully from the Garden, with such a terrible sight blocking the way back? Why was it so important that they not go back? What does this tell us about the Garden, and about God, and about man? These are the questions we want to explore together.
The text gives an immediate answer as to why God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden: “And then the LORD God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” These words reveal a great mercy. Tell me, what’s worse than being a sinner? It’s being a sinner who can never die. This is something beyond our imagination. To be a sinner means to live in a ruptured relationship, alienated from God, even from your own self, not to mention other people. Imagine how horrible it would be to live eternally in that condition. God saved humanity from such a fate by expelling Man from the Garden – at least, until Man would be ready to come back to this holy place and eat from this tree.
What else do we notice in God’s words? We notice that He speaks in the plural: the man has become like one of us. There are only two places in the story of creation where God speaks this way. The first is when God says, “Let us make man in our image.” So the first time that God speaks in the plural, it is uniquely, significantly in connection with the creation of Man. God didn’t talk that way when He created light or water or stars or animals. Only when He created Man. Could that mean something? I think it does! I think it reflects the fact that, unlike all other created things, only Man reflects the triune being of God. God is in His very self, a Being of relationship. Even without anyone else existing, God is Himself a perfect relationship of love. And Man, uniquely in God’s creation, is a creature of relationship – relationship within himself, relationship between people and, ultimately, relationship with God. I believe that this is why God speaks in the plural here, because this part of creation, Man, especially connects to the “Us-ness” of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When God created Man in His image, God created Man in the image of relationship, in the image of love.
And now, only the second time in the whole story of creation, God speaks in the plural, saying, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Here the revelation about who God is that started in the words “Let us make man...” grows even deeper . Once again, God’s speaking in the plural is directly tied to His dealing with Man. Only with Man. This time, God is comparing the creature Man to Himself – Man is now “like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Now, someone might ask, “What’s wrong with that? Didn’t God say He wanted man to be in His image? Wasn’t Man supposed to be like God?” Well, that’s easy: the answer is a clear yes-and-no. Yes, “like God”, with personality and a free will to freely love Him. But no, not like God in the sense of being God, or overriding God’s decisions. Here, Man grabbed for himself something God said wasn’t for Man – or at least, not yet. But Man grabbed it, and now Man knew what good and evil were.
Again, someone might object: what’s so bad about knowing good and evil? God knows good and evil and that doesn’t make God a sinner. Exactly. Because He’s God. We’re not. God can do no evil. He cannot be tempted with evil. But He knows evil, because He knows all things. God must know what evil is, and He can know it without being it. But here’s the big difference between God and Man. Man cannot know evil without being evil. At least, that was true at the time of Adam and Eve, in the infancy of humanity.
Think about what that tree was called: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I have said that God is a God of relationship. “Relationship” means knowing. When we know a person we have a relationship with him. When God made Man, He made Man to know Him. What Man needed to know was God, not evil. That’s about as plain and simple as I can put the whole idea: what Man needed to know was God, not evil. God was all that Man needed to know; there could be nothing better. There was nothing that tree of knowledge could offer to outshine the discoveries waiting in the daily walk with God through the Garden. The relationship between Man and God was – again, to put it simply – just fine; it wasn’t broken, there was no need to fix it. More than that, it was holy, sacred, inviolable. The Garden was their sacred place, a place of fruitfulness, growth, and not only in the material sense. It was the holy meeting place, and nothing could improve on the growing love and understanding there between God and His children. But instead of knowing God, Man chose to know good and evil. Unfortunately, Man cannot know “good and evil” without knowing evil – it’s a package deal. But to be in the process of knowing evil is to not be in the process of knowing God, who is holy. I cannot be experiencing evil and experiencing God simultaneously. To the extent I choose to know evil, I choose not to know God. That’s the choice Adam and Eve made.
Oh, yes, Man does gain a certain kind of knowledge from the experience of evil – that’s why God called the tree a tree of knowldege (and God doesn’t lie) – but it is not the sort of knowledge Man needs. When they grabbed the fruit of that tree, Adam and Eve gained a knowledge which didn’t enrich them; rather, it deprived and impoverished them. They learned precisely what they had no need to know – that was a first in all creation, that Man, the creature made in God’s image, expended time and energy and free will and personal initiative on something that was totally useless and destructive. Imagine! And having learned what they didn’t need to know, they lost what they did need to know. They lost their personal knowledge of God. Gaining knowledge, they lost knowledge. The knowledge of God was knowledge of a different kind. It was primordial, of the first order, before even the knowledge of good and evil. With that ultimate knowledge, Adam and Eve, in fact, didn’t even need the knowledge of good! They only needed to know God and fellowship with Him in His special place, in their special place, the Garden. There was no temple, no Holy of Holies, no Jerusalem, just Man and the Garden. And the knowledge of God – more magnificent and than any knowledge of good and evil. (You know, I don’t think it’s any accident that Jesus told his disciples, “You will be holy”, not “You will be good.”)
As I said, there was no temple, no sanctuary, no city where God had placed His name. If there was an holy place for God’s dwelling, it was the earth itself, and especially the Garden, and most especially of all, Man Himself. Man was God’s special holy place – special, pure, beyond price, exclusively God’s. And the inconceivable holiness of that relationship made everything it touched holy, too. The holiness of that love-relationship between God and Man was appointed to radiate out and raise the entire creation to the status of holy place and a total offering of love to God. I don’t believe it was simply “Man’s job”, as they say, to “take care” of the earth, like you ask a friend to take care of your dog when you go away on a trip. I believe rather that this was supposed to be man's participation with God in His holy purposes, to creatively, joyfully make the whole world in a fitting “temple” for God’s glory. In that sense, the first missionary was Adam. God gave him a mission to go out and subdue the earth, to make it all a perfect “house” for God’s love-relationship with Man. That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the earth the way God first made it, that Man had to go out there and fix things. No. What it means is, God filled the whole earth with a potential that only Man could materialize. This was a task that demanded the very best talents and wisdom God gave man, but it would be a work that brought the deepest satisfaction and pure delight, not frustration and disappointment.
But when Man chose to know evil instead of God, he stopped being a “holy place” for God. He became unholy, unfit, inappropriate for God’s fellowship. He became like the square peg in a round hole, a misfit, a stranger, unfit to carry out the Maker’s wondrous plans for creation. All we need to do today is look around us, at the violence, the corruption, the degradation of the natural world, to see what a misfit Man turned into in this world. No wonder the Scriptures say that the creation is groaning for the appearing of the true children of God. Because the whole world, as well, lost its meaning when Man lost the Garden. Like when you see a puppy on the street and it’s obviously been abandoned and it breaks your heart. That’s the condition the whole creation is in, wondering where its master has gone and why it’s been left all alone. The terribly irony is: we’re right here, but it doesn’t know us.
So the terrible historical irony is this: having grabbed the fruit of knowledge, Adam and Eve become incompetent and unfit. Incompetent to realize their true appointment and meaning; unfit to remain in the holy place where they enjoyed face-to-face relations with God. Sin is a terrible college. It gives you knowledge that makes you incompetent and unfit.
Therefore, they were banished. They were no longer fit to inhabit the holy place; they had become foreigners, alien to God and He to them. The glory that before had been their delight was now a stabbing pain to their eyes; the holiness which had been the very air they breathed, was now a burning fire they couldn’t stand. Adam and Eve were banished because they had to be banished. They could no longer endure the vision of God. So he expelled them from the Garden and set a guard, the cherubs and the sword. Every time we meet the cherubs in Scripture, they are serving as guards of the holiness of God. We will talk about them more in the next sermons. I just want to emphasize one idea now: usually, when we think of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, especially with our familiar but incorrect image of the sword-wielding angel, somehow the focus, the center of attention is Man: look how sad they are, and look at how that angel with the sword is there just to keep them from coming back. It all seems to be about Adam and Eve. Today I want to suggest that the central meaning in this event is God, far more than man. The cherubs are there to guard and glorify God's holiness; the sword serves as a symbol of the infinite, unknowable reaches of God’s holy being, from which Adam and Eve had cut themselves off. The whole picture speaks of what Adam and Eve gave up and lost, which is nothing less than God Himself. Really, from the moment they ate the fruit of the tree, their exile and wandering had already begun.
But so had the redemption! Behind the wall represented by the cherubs and sword, inside the holy place that became off limits, the Tree of Life still stood, and waited. God created it so that its fruit would be eaten, eventually. God would see to it that its purpose would be fulfilled, no matter what it cost. For not only Adam and Eve had suffered shattering loss. God did, too. We often think of the grief and pain of Adam and Eve when we look at pictures of them leaving the Garden. How often do we think of the pain and grief they left behind them, behind that veil of impenetrable holiness? About the devastated love of God for His lost, wandering children? Adam and Eve weren’t the only ones who found themselves behind a wall and shattered. Man could never make himself fit for the Garden again, or worthy to eat from the tree of life. Without God’s help, Man would be a wanderer and a stranger in a hostile world forever, finally good for nothing. Was that what God wanted when He said, “Let us make Man in our image”? It couldn’t be. And how could God Himself possibly stay there, like a prisoner, behind the bars of His own untouchable holiness, exiled and alienated from His very own image, the creatures He made His children? It couldn’t be.
From the moment that Adam’s exile began, the redemption began, too. Because it had to. As soon as Adam failed in his “missionary work”, God had to become the missionary – reaching out, reaching ahead, forward, to the . From the moment Adam started suffering, God started paying the price. Yes, and even before that, for Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Slain, because that’s the only way back to the Tree of Life. Right through that sword that blazes and flashes with God’s unutterable holiness, the sword that will kill you if you dare to come close. But there’s no other way to reach the Tree. And Man had to get back. That is the whole meaning of history. With each step that Adam took, wandering in this big world, farther and farther from the Garden with its memories of the face of God, with every step Adam was taking a step closer, too, because God was at work, bringing him closer and closer, back to the Garden, back to the Tree, closer and closer to reunion.
It was a big, dark and unfriendly world Adam and Eve were thrown out into. Yes, the world is big. But it is also round. God made it that way. And He chose in His blazing love to make the end of the road a beginning. And His holy purpose will not be defeated.
