Good Friday

Telling the story of what happened from the Garden of Eden to the garden where Jesus was buried.

Wholeness

Genesis 2:15–25 CSB

The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.” Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him.” The Lord God formed out of the ground every wild animal and every bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, and to every wild animal; but for the man no helper was found corresponding to him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept. God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. Then the Lord God made the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. And the man said: This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called “woman,” for she was taken from man. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh. Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame.

We cannot say exactly what life in the Garden of Eden was like. We are not given an abundance of details. What we can do is look at the Bible and gain some ideas of what Adam and Eve had though.

They had:

Identity

Freedom

Authority

Power

Safety

Dignity

Provision

Uninterrupted connection to God

Identity

What is identity? We can talk about technical terms. We can give an analysis of what identity is but in essence it is about knowing you are in relation you to yourself and your environment.

Adam and Eve had no identity questions. They did not wonder who they were. They did not wonder about their environment. They were secure. They had purpose and meaning.

Freedom

They had freedom. We often think of freedom as the ability to do whatever we desire but that is not freedom, that is chaos and anarchy. Freedom is really about the ability to chose. And they were free to chose. They had two options before them, obedience and death. Obedience would have led to exploration, wonder, enjoyment. They would have had it all. They were free from pain, sickness, death, and fear. They were truly free.

Authority

Adam and Eve had complete authority over all. They were God’s ambassadors on the earth. Just like angels are God’s ministering spirits in the heavens and supernatural humanity was meant to be God’s ministers on earth. The authority was theres.

Power

They had power. Power that we cannot imagine. I am not talking about flying or anything weird but due to perfection and authority they had power to execute God’s will. They had influence and control in a perfect way.

Safety

They had complete safety. They could move freely and have no no worries. Adam was charged with naming every animal. Lions, tigers, and bears oh my. But also animals that we have never encountered. The Leviathan and other things that no longer exist. There was no worry about anything they had complete Shalom.

Dignity

They had dignity that is unknown today. They had no shame. No worry. No uncertainty. Can you imagine what it felt like to have no shame, no regret, no sadness?

Provision

Everything they needed was available. There was no lack, no hunger, no wanting. Whatever they needed was available. They had contentment on the grandest scale.

Uninterrupted Connection to God

More than all this they had complete union and connection to God. God would visit with them. He would talk with them. He was with them. They had no fear of silence from God. They had no wondering if God was listening. They knew their maker and He knew them.

There was no issue. No sickness. No worry. No stress. We knew who we were and we knew who God was.

Jesse acoustic playing and singing in the garden

We had identity and purpose. We had freedom do whatever we liked except for eating from one tree. We had authority over the earth. God called humanity to rule the earth and be His ambassadors. We had power and safety. There was no worry of anything or anyone overtaking Adam and Even. They had dignity knowing that they had God and God had them.

Paradise Lost

While we had everything we needed it was not enough. In foolishness and defiance Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and ate from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil.

Genesis 3:6–7 CSB

The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit 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 knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

We had:

Identity

Freedom

Authority

Power

Safety

Dignity

Provision

Uninterrupted connection to God

And in an instant that was lost and now we had

A confused sense of self or a loss of identity

Captivity and bondage to sin and death

A loss of authority

Limits where we had power

Fear where we had safety

Shame where we had dignity

Sweat where we had provision

A broken connection to God

A confused sense of self or a loss of identity

Where there was identity they now had a loss of identity. There is now questions. Who am I? Does God love me? People since the fall have wrestled with their identity. We constantly struggle with out identity. With fitting in. With being accepted. We often live in a constant state if not knowing who we are or what is expected of us.

Captivity and bondage to sin and death

We had freedom and now we live under bondage. We are no longer free. We feel the constant leash of sin and death. We carry it with us everywhere we go. We think of sin as action and it is that but it is so much more.

Sin is captivity. It is the loss of freedom. It is the loss of the ability to move as truly want and to be held back. It is the inability to chose,. Sure we might have moments of victory here and there in the natural world but sin and its enforcer death ultimately hold the leash.

A loss of authority

We had authority. We were meant to command. We were meant to rule and there is a part of us that knows this. We have within our DNA a reminder of what authority we had. This is why we are drawn to magic and manifesting. We know we were meant for more but the ability is gone.

Limits where we had power

We had power and we feel it. There is within every person a sense of missing. As if a limb was missing. We don’t understand we had something. We know it must have been there. We can feel it like phantom pain. Something was there but it is now gone.

Fear where we had safety

We had safety and security. In so many parts of the world and even here in America in some situations people are ripped from their homes. Everything they know, everything they understand is taken and they are left with an unknowing.

That is all of us. We have no sure thing. We are all always on the verge of loosing everything. Safety is a dream in this world. I believe this is why people have an ability to make every place like home because we need and crave safety.

Shame where we had dignity

We all have things we regret. Shame or a loss of face causes u to shriek back and withdrawal. We regret. We hold on to pain. We think people know. We had dignity and could stand tall and now we hunch. We become like the snake that tempted Eve. We feel such a loss of value as people.

Sweat where we had provision

Now we toil. The work of our hands may produce good things or it may now. We just don’t know. We have to work twice, three times, four times as hard to produce. The ground itself feels like it mocks us. We put our hands, our efforts, our energies to things and it is work.

A broken connection to God

We knew we were loved by our Creator. We knew He cared for us. Now we just don’t know. We knew every evening He would come and walk with us and now we fear Him. Now we hid. We want Him, we want the union we once had but we are scared so we keep Him away, we push and rebel. In our shame we hide and reject Him all the while desperate for Him.

This is the result of our first parents actions in the Garden. This is what we get.

In His goodness God did not allow them to stay in the Garden. If they had remained they would have eaten from the tree of life and stayed in their sins for eternity. In His mercy He expelled them from the Garden and placed and angel there to protect them from reentering.

Not only this but God made them a promise. A promise that would take thousands of years to come to fruit.

Genesis 3:15 CSB

I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.

There would be one who would save them.

Singing son of suffering

Read Isaiah 53

Isaiah 53 Song

Another Garden

In the first garden we lost everything. It was meant to be life and it became death. It was meant to be paradise and it was lost. It knew nothing but greatness and glory and it became a place of longing.

But there was another Garden. A place that was known for death. A place that was known for mourning. A place that held the lifeless bodies of those who felt the sting of death and it was known for sadness. It was known for lacking, but it would become so much more.

John 19:38–42

“After this, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus—but secretly because of his fear of the Jews—asked Pilate that he might remove Jesus’s body. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and took his body away. Nicodemus (who had previously come to him at night) also came, bringing a mixture of about seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes. They took Jesus’s body and wrapped it in linen cloths with the fragrant spices, according to the burial custom of the Jews. There was a garden in the place where he was crucified. A new tomb was in the garden; no one had yet been placed in it. They placed Jesus there because of the Jewish day of preparation and since the tomb was nearby.”

Jesse singing in the old rugged cross