God's Two Gardens and His Two Special Trees

In the beginning, God had two very significant trees. The First Man and the First Woman, Adam and Eve, were living in lush beauty and the paradise called the Garden of Eden. One special tree was named the Tree of Life. A second tree was a dangerous tree called The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

God was walking daily with them in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were told by God that they were permitted to eat from the Tree of Life but forbidden to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, they did not eat from the Tree of Life. They ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In doing so, they broke a face-to-face, direct command of God. I believe the Scriptures bear evidence of God being genuinely sad and hurt when we, as being one in the flesh with our first parents, choose Satan.

Here is the biblical account from the Christian Standard Bible, Genesis 3:17-19:

17 And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’:

The ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it. For you are dust, and you will return to dust.”

God must have been not only angry but terribly hurt. I'm not sure that we ever think of God as having feelings or emotions. I mean, He's God. He's like an emotionless being who rules without feeling. Right? Yet somehow, I think God has emotion. In fact, the Bible attests to God's emotions. For instance, in Exodus 4:14 we read:

"Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses, and he said, “Isn’t Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And also, he is on his way now to meet you. He will rejoice when he sees you."

God was very patient with Moses, yet there were times when Moses pushed it.

It is interesting that in the Book of Exodus, when Moses was on the Mountain of God, which was located in that bare desert land with a treeless mountain of rugged terrain because of that curse of sin upon the world, Moses asked to see God. God didn't meet with him face to face as He did Adam and Eve. God only let him see His backside. Why? Because we are banished from direct fellowship with God. Things are not what they were meant to be.

It is not coincidental, that when Jesus was on His way to Golgotha, He spent time praying in another Garden, the Garden of Gethsemane:

"Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he told the disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.”

Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. He said to them, “I am deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake with me.” Matthew 26: 36-38, (CSB).

God had a garden on His mind when His Son was going to the place to redeem Adam and Eve and all their children. God remembers the Garden of Eden. God has emotions. What our Primal Parents did to Him in a garden broke His heart. He remembered the incident with great pain. He hurt so badly that when the Lamb of God, "who takes away the Sin of the World," prayed His last prayer for assurance, He sweated drops of blood, and not little drops. God saw His Son, Jesus Christ, not only as Jesus but as Adam and Eve.

Next, after the mock trial and inhuman beatings, He was taken outside the gates of Jerusalem just off the main road to a hill. There, stripped naked and beaten, He bore the punishment of Adam and Eve's Sin. Adam and Eve were unclothed when they sinned. God's wrath and God's hurt were taken out on His only begotten son.

Isn't it interesting that the death of the Last Adam took place on a tree? Not a living tree, but a dead, splintery tree. How many ways are there to execute a man? God chose a tree. It was not a healthy tree in a beautiful Garden, but in an ugly, smelly, public roadside, a roadside where all kinds of Spiritually dead humanity trampled on the highway.

What's the connection to the hurt in God's heart from the episode in the Garden of Eden to the crucifixion of His son on a tree? It was death on a bare tree. The beautiful, tasty fruit of the Tree of Life that Adam and Eve refused to eat, which would have given them eternal life, was now a dead tree of blood on which a substitute to the fruit of life hung.

To regain Eden and Eternal Life, we must eat of this tree, the one on which Christ Jesus died.

Take a bite and live. It's easy. Believe, ask Jesus to come into your heart and soul and lead you back to Eden.