He Drove The Man Out...

“Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’— therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis 3:22-24

Divorce has become a common affair in our fractured age. Its crippling effects - financially, emotionally, and socially - are well documented in various studies. In a real sense, sin has effected a divorce between man and God. When the original couple, Adam and Eve, sinned in the Garden, God evicted man from His presence. “So He drove the man out...” (Gen. 3:24). The Hebrew word for drove is also used in the Old Testament on five occasions for divorce.

God and man, united at creation in intimacy, fellowship, and purpose, were separated by sin. The holiness of God and the sin of man are incompatible. The Creator and the creation, man, can no longer live together in harmony apart from faith in Christ. Sin drives unbelieving man out of God’s presence and into chaos and evil.

The great divorce, as author C.S. Lewis put it, has fixed a gulf, a chasm, between God and man. Born into sin, man suffers from the emotional and spiritual wreckage of life apart from God, driven by wayward desires and instincts, walking in the darkness of his own counsel. The truth about sin is ugly. But we must know the truth, the good and the bad, before we can be set free.

“...through one man sin entered into the world...” Romans 5:12