Theft #17C - Stealin' Back Death - The Entrance of Sin and Death

We're ready now to get into the heart of the "play" I mentioned in the "Early Warning" post. I characterized it as a play because it has a plot, characters, and at least three identifiable divisions. (These divisions may be considered "acts" or "scenes" in the language of the stage, and I don't want to fuss about that too much. For the sake of simplicity I will call them "scenes," since the presentation has real continuity, and only a small amount of time passes from one episode to the next).

At this point, I have tentatively labeled these three scenes as 1) Temptation and Sin, 2) Discovery and Punishment, and 3) Death and Redemption. Those titles represent the ideas that the Bible presents in Genesis Three, and while those ideas will not change, the titles I choose may "evolve" as I work through this passage as a "drama." 

I have already laid out God's warning to Adam about the consequence of disobeying God and eating from the tree from which God specifically warned Adam not to eat, and I will not repeat that Scripture nor the explanation in this 3-part "play." We will be looking at the fact that 1) Eve and Adam are tempted to disobey God, and--in fact--do so, 2) God discovers their disobedience, confronts them, and pronounces their punishment, and 3) Adam and Eve are thrust outside the garden into a radically changed earth that bears the scars of their disobedience.

All three of these scenes clearly have the purpose (at least) of showing how death came into a world that YHWH Elohim had originally created without death. Again, I will resist my own temptation to bring New Testament commentary into the presentation of these scenes, but rather I will have a secondary goal of showing how a careful reading of Old Testament narrative "teaches" us so much more than we think is there if we skim through it like we do so much of our other reading, especially our online reading. In Genesis, God uses dramatic narrative to make His points with stunning effect, if we are willing to let the "scenes" have their full impact on our minds and emotions.

So, with that brief introduction to the next three posts, I will close here, and start once again to ponder this amazing drama for myself. Lord willing, the next blog will be all about the first scene on Temptation and Sin as the first step toward the entrance of Death. See you soon.

Grace and peace in Christ,

The Thief.