Bible Studies

When God came looking for the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden
(in Genesis chapter 3) after their encounter with the serpent and before they had ever been named, He found them in hiding, ashamed of their nakedness. God asked if they had eaten of the fruit of the only tree that had been forbidden them. That, of course, is exactly what they had done, and it had resulted in a self-conscious and shameful awareness of their own nakedness. It was just as if an invisible covering had been shed from them at the instant of their disobedience. If I were to name the covering that had fallen from them I would call it glory, the glory of their continuous fellowship with God their Creator. Once that fellowship had been broken, the glory had to leave with it. In its place came guilt and shame. We can think of shame then as the garment that the serpent or the devil offered them as a pathetic substitute for the glory they had lost. Shame is the devil’s counterfeit for glory. It is his inferior version of “glory” that comes as a result of communion with him and his ways of thinking and behaving. Shame is the shoddy reward the serpent offered for following his evil leading. Part of his delight is coaxing people by trickery to accept such a cheap and pitiful substitute for the real.
Thank God that the second or last Adam, Jesus Christ, came to remove the guilt and shame and to re-clothe in the glory of God all who would believe
that God the Father had sent Him for that purpose! The last Adam came to succeed where the first Adam had failed. The last Adam came to obey perfectly where the first Adam had blatantly disobeyed. The last Adam came to regain the authority in the earth that the first Adam had forfeited through his disobedience. (1 Corinthians 15, v.45-49) Through His sinless life, death and resurrection, and then his ascension, Jesus Christ restored even more than had been lost in the Garden of Eden. (Romans 5, v19-21) At His soon return, for which His bride so fervently yearns, the garden will have grown into a great, holy heavenly city from which evil will be forever banished! There will be no more possibility of a fall. There will be no more serpent lurking there, he and his demons and those who cling to them will be consigned to the lake of fire. (Revelation 20, v10-15)
Speaking of counterfeits as we were earlier, dread is the devilish counterfeit for hope. As believers look forward with blessed hope to the return of Jesus and looking into His wondrously kind face, unbelievers and the demons that control them have a cursed dread looming oppressively over them. They know instinctively that the day of their plunge into the lake of fire is fast approaching, and the devils are working frantically to drag as many with them into those flames as possible, even as believers seek to draw others with them to experience the glories of their Father God’s presence in heaven. Both the blessed hope and the cursed dread are the driving incentives and motivations of these two respective classes of humanity. As the blessed hope and longing mounts in the hearts of God’s people crying day and night for the return of His Son Jesus, it will reach such proportions as will prove to be irresistible to the loving Groom…..and then He will come.
As for what will happen in the meantime, “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” (1 John 3, v.3)