FEELING NAKED AND AFRAID (FREE FROM FEAR Part 5 )

When Adam and Eve partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they experienced the feeling of nakedness and fear. Wow! Knowledge is powerful! John 8:32 says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” If knowledge has the power to make a person free, then knowledge also can make a person live in bondage. The reason why God told Adam and Eve not to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was that it had the power to transform them in a negative way. 

So, what was the knowledge that Adam and Eve received when they partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? It was just as it says, the knowledge or knowing of good and evil, thou shalt and thou shalt not. It was and still is the law – the law we now call the law of Moses. The law of Moses is the knowledge of the things that you should do and the things that you should not do. 

You may be thinking, how do you know that it was, in fact, a knowledge or a knowing? We know it from what God said right after Adam and Eve had partaken of it. 

Genesis 3:22 “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

God said, “Man has now become.” You cannot become something that you already were. And what does the scripture say they became? Like God. How? By the knowing or knowledge of good and evil. What? I thought that knowing the law (good and evil) would make us Christlike? Yes, indeed, we are to become Christlike, but as you can see, becoming Christlike by knowing the law was never something God wanted for us. 

Wow! Think about it. The first and only command God gave Adam and Eve was the command to not become like him in the area of knowing all the good things we should do and all the evil things we shouldn’t do. Wow! This means that at the beginning, before the fall, Adam and Eve did not and were not supposed to make moral decisions. 

Does God want us to live righteously? The answer is an emphatic, yes! But wouldn’t the law help us to live righteously?The answer is a resounding, no! God, in His wisdom and perfection, created a much higher and better way to live righteously as we will discuss and subsequent Encouraging Notes. 

Now here is a crucial point that you must not miss. What was the first thing that happened when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden knowledge of the law? Number one, they realized they were naked, and number two, they were afraid. I want you to understand that what created fear in the very beginning is precisely what creates fear today. To deal with the fear that you face, you will have to deal with this knowledge of good and evil that was passed down to you from Adam and Eve. Until tomorrow, think about this: In the beginning, the only command God gave man was the command that would protect him from… 

FEELING NAKED AND AFRAID

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