1. Adam

The Bible begins by telling us that God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). God made the sun, the moon, and the stars. Then He made the plants, fish, birds, and animals. But God’s masterpiece was still to come.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26)

The Hebrew word translated “man” here is adam. That’s where the first man got his name. Adam was made in the image of God, and what was true of him is true of you. You are made in the image of God. An image is a reflection. God made you in such a way that you reflect something of His nature and glory. That means your life has unique dignity and worth.

God made Adam by forming a corpse from the dust of the ground. Then He breathed into it, and Adam became a living being (Genesis 2:7). From this we learn, first, that our minds and bodies are fragile, and second, that our lives are a gift from God, and that we are always dependent on Him.

God filled Adam’s life with wonderful gifts. He planted a garden and gave it to Adam as his home (Genesis 2:8). He gave Adam the fulfilling work of naming the animals and participated in Adam’s work by bringing the animals to him (Genesis 2:19). But God saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone. He created Eve and then “brought her to the man,” and she became his wife (Genesis 2:22).

Home, work, and marriage are good gifts from God. Home is where God sets you down. No home is perfect, but the best place to flourish is the place God has prepared for you.

Work is what God gives you to do. God’s work brings order out of chaos; He creates what is beautiful; He protects and provides for all that He has made. And when you do these things in your work, you reflect the work of God.

Marriage is God’s gift of union with another person. The first marriage had its share of troubles, but whatever their problems, Adam and Eve could never have doubted that they had been joined together by God.

But the greatest gift of God to Adam and Eve was the gift of His friendship. God is invisible, but He appeared in the garden in a visible form because He wanted Adam and Eve to know Him (Genesis 3:8). These appearances show the intense desire in the heart of God that we should know Him, not only as our Creator, but also as our friend.

At the heart of the Bible story, God became a man in Jesus Christ. So it should not seem strange that in the Old Testament we find God making these appearances in visible form. It is almost as if the Son of God could not wait to come.

A plunge to disaster

God gave Adam and Eve a single command:

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)

Adam and Eve already knew about good, and God wanted to protect them from evil. So this command was a wonderful expression of God’s love.

The source of all evil was an enemy who came into the garden in the form of a serpent. He questioned God’s command, dismissed God’s warning, and lured Eve with the enticing prospect of becoming her own god. Adam and Eve disobeyed the command of God. They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and in that act of disobedience, they got the knowledge of evil. We have all lived with it ever since.

This first act of disobedience, which the Bible calls sin, led to a great catastrophe.

He [God] drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:24)

Driven from the garden, Adam and Eve found themselves in a very different world in which pain, conflict, frustration, and death were woven into their experience. They were excluded from paradise, and there was no way back. But before they were sent out, God gave the first man and woman hope through a curse and a promise.

The promise of a deliverer

Before driving Adam from the garden, God cursed the serpent. “Cursed are you . . .” (Genesis 3:14). In pronouncing this curse, God was consigning evil to destruction. Evil will not stand. It will be destroyed.

Then God turned to Adam and said, “Cursed . . .” Adam must have held his breath. God had cursed the serpent, and now it seemed He was about to curse Adam too. But instead of saying to Adam, “Cursed are you,” God said, “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17). What did the ground do wrong?

The cursing of the ground tells us something very wonderful about God. He will always deal with sin and destroy it. But God can deflect His judgment away from us, creating room for us to be reconciled to Him.

After God cursed the ground, He promised that a deliverer would come. He said to the serpent: 

“I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,

and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

The rest of the Old Testament is all about this deliverer. It tells us what we need to know to discover who He is, what He has done, and how we can share in the blessing He brings.

From Adam’s story we learn who God is. God is our creator. He owns everything, and we belong to Him. God is good and all that is good in our lives and in our world is a loving gift from His hand.

We also learn who we are. We are made in the image of God, and we are made from the dust of the ground. Every human life has unique dignity and worth and every person depends on God for everything.

Adam’s story also helps us to understand why our world is so troubled. All that is sad and all that is bad in your life and in the world can be traced back to the catastrophe of Adam’s rebellion against God. Adam’s sin opened the door to evil, and led to his (and therefore our) exclusion from paradise. War, greed, hatred, and violence are all effects of evil in the world. Drought, earth- quakes, sickness, and death are all effects of the curse.

This is the beginning of the Bible story, but it is not the end. God has promised that someone born of a woman will triumph over evil.