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Before we go along any farther, there are a couple of things we need to get a
grasp on here. First of all, as most of us know, when Adam ate the forbidden
fruit, sin became a part of his nature…part of his DNA, you might say….and,
as such, it was passed on to his children…and from them to their children…
and so on, down to this very day with us and our own children.

The second thing we need to understand is this: When Adam was created,
something happened here on earth. With Adam’s first breath, the “world” came
into existence. Not the earth, which, of course was already here…but the “world”.
They are two very different and distinct things! The earth is the planet on which
the world lives and thrives. The world, of course, is the entity that lives on the
earth…the people, the systems, the cultures, etc.

For instance, with the creation of Adam, came the first social system, even though
he was entirely alone for a period of time. With Eve, that system expanded. As
time went on, the world developed educational systems, religious systems,
economic systems, medical systems and so forth, until we have the beast that
exists today.

As we know, Adam was given dominion over the earth. At that time, before the
fall, he also had dominion over his tiny world. It was his baby to raise any way
he saw fit. The entire world, and it’s future was in his hands. Adam, himself, was
responsible for the direction the world would take, just as he was responsible for
tending the garden and naming the animals. When he ate the forbidden fruit, he gave
dominion of his birthright (dominion of the earth and world) over to that crafty
ol serpent…just exactly like Esau gave his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew
(Gen. 25:33)!

Jesus, himself, calls Satan “the prince of this world” in John 12:31 (and again in
14:30, and once more in 16:11). How did that ol snake end up with it? He stole
it from Adam while he had his face buried in that forbidden fruit! Adam handed
it to him on a silver platter…and it’s belonged to the fallen Lucifer ever since.

It’s important to put a distinction between the earth and the world. As time goes
by, we’ll look at a few verses that verify this claim. There’s an awful lot of stuff
coming down the road that hinges on your understanding of this simple concept.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it…”
(Psalm 24:1)

The earth is the Lord’s. So is the world and all who live in it. God owns it all.
But he also saw fit to give dominion (not ownership, but rulership) of them to
Adam as a gift. Adam, in turn gave them over to Satan for a taste of the fruit.

Remember 2 Peter 3:6?

“By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed..”

The world, as WE know it, has never been destroyed. It came close in Noah’s
time, but the world survived through Noah and his sons. There was a world,
on earth, though, that WAS destroyed…the world that was before Adam!

We don’t know much about that world, but we really don’t need to know. It
wasn’t for us…it was for them. What we do need to know, God has given us.
He created the earth. He created Adam. Adam fell (and gave his birthright
to the devil). God gave us Jesus to redeem us from our fallen state…THAT’S
what we need to know about OUR world…

Many blessings!

Let’s move on to the fall of Adam…the infamous bite of forbidden fruit that introduced
sin into the human race…and consequently, handed dominion of the earth over to Satan.

“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’?”
(Gen. 3:1)

Let’s look at this thing a little bit. First of all, if you’ll recall, God never told Eve not to
eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He told ADAM not to eat the fruit.
It was Adam’s responsibility, as Eve’s husband, to share that commandment with her.
Apparently, he did so, because Eve responded to the serpent’s question…but that’s
getting a little ahead of ourselves!

Who did the serpent approach? Not the husband….but the wife! He didn’t attempt to
get Adam to be disobedient directly…he attempted to get Adam to disobey by using
Eve. Had Satan approached Adam directly, there may have been a better chance that
Adam could have mustered a little more resistance. But that crafty ol serpent knew
that, so he went after Eve…not because she was the “weaker sex”, as some may
suppose…but because it’s easier to get anyone by sneaking in the back way, than
it is to approach em head on…

So the serpent went to Eve…the subtle, indirect way to get to Adam. And it worked.
Let’s look at his tactics. The first thing that ol serpent did was to go to someone close
to his target (Adam). The indirect approach. The second thing he did was to plant
doubt. “Did God REALLY say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”

“The woman said to the serpent, “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.’” (Gen. 3:2,3)

Whether it was Eve that added that the tree couldn’t be touched, or whether Adam
added it as he passed God’s instructions on to his wife as they sat around the camp
fire one night, the word of the Lord was ever so slightly distorted for the first time.
In any case, as we know, Eve took a bite, then “She also gave some to her husband,
who was with her, and he ate it.” (Gen. 3:6)

It’s interesting to note verses 6 and 7 of chapter3:

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the
eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave
some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them
were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together
and made coverings for themselves.”

Eve ate the fruit and nothing obvious happened. But when Adam ate the fruit…”THEN
the eyes of both of them were opened…”. Eve, in a sense was a victim of the serpent’s
con. Adam was simply disobeyed God and his one simple command: “Don’t eat the
fruit from that tree!”

It’s worth mentioning that “Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who
was deceived and became a sinner” (1 Tim. 2:14). Eve was DECEIVED. Adam was
DISOBEDIENT. He was standing right there beside Eve when she chomped into
that fruit. At any time, he could have taken it away, slapped it out of her hand, asked
her to stop, COMMANDED her to stop…but he didn’t. He wanted to see what
would happen. He wanted to eat that fruit, too, but he wanted to see what would
happen to Eve first.

And when he saw with his natural eye, that she still appeared to look the same, he
decided to take a bite, too….”THEN the eyes of both of them were opened…”

The last thing I’d like to show you before we move along is this:

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
(Gen. 1:28 KJV)

God told Adam to replenish the earth. Adam couldn’t replenish the earth unless
there was something there before…something to replenish! He could FILL the
earth, but in order to REPLENISH the earth, there had to have been something
there to replenish…(just a little food for thought!). Now…

“When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens—and no shrub of the field
had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for
the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the
ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of
the ground—the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
(Gen. 2:4-7)

Have you ever stopped to think that when Adam was created, there was nothing
here? “No shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the
field had yet sprung up…” when “…the Lord God formed the man from the dust
of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life…”

There was just Adam…and more dust. You and I have had the luxury of having
a growing conciousness of life. Sometime before our births, or at the very latest,
AT our births, we became aware of our own existance a little at a time. As we
grew, so did the awareness of our “being”. From birth, we learned to walk and
talk and do all the things we do today.

But Adam…Adam wasn’t…and then, all of a sudden, he was. Boom! Not there
one minute, and the next minute, there’s Adam! What in the world, must it have
been like? To “not be” and then in the blink of an eye, “to be”….sitting there looking
around at….at what? More dust….

He was apparently created with intellegence, along with his own language and
motor skills because God brought the animals to him to see what he would name
them (Gen. 2:19,20). Just for the record, now you know why an elephant is an
elephant and a zebra is a zebra! 

Adam was what you might call the first of many “snapshots” of Jesus. Adam was
created a perfect man. In him, as he was created, there was no sin. In Adam was
the culmination of God’s creative work…the thing that took creation from “good” to
“very good” as God saw them. He was God’s companion, tending to God’s work
(as we shall see), and bringing God glory…just by being himself in his perfect state!
So, in a sense, he was a brief glimpse or snapshot of Jesus, as Jesus would come
to be known. Sort of a foretelling, you might say…

To get back on topic, God decided that Adam needed a suitable helper, put Adam
into a deep sleep, took out one of his ribs, and when Adam awoke…for the very first
time, he met Eve. Flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones…woman. And, according to
Gen. 2:25, they were man and wife!

“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the
man he had formed.” (Gen. 2:8)

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