Just a Little Talk with Jesus
God designed us to have a personal relationship with Him. According to Genesis 3:8, the LORD God was in the habit of walking in the garden each evening when the cool breezes began to blow. As He walked through the garden each evening, Adam and Eve heard His voice. Genesis gives us a picture of the closeness they experienced with God in the garden as they walked and talked with Him. After they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God drove them from the garden and no more communications between Him and Adam and Eve are recorded in the Bible. Instead, the Bible records that they began to talk about God.
The change shows as Eve says with the birth of Abel: "I have had a male child with the LORD's help” (Gen. 4:1, HCS). Sin shattered the intimacy they had experienced with God in the garden. After Cain killed Abel and Eve gave birth to Seth, Eve spoke again about God and said, “God has given me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him” (Gen. 4:25). Interestingly enough, one more conversation between God and man is recorded during Adam’s and Eve’s lifetime, but it is after Cain kills Abel. At the end of this discussion between God and Cain, Cain spoke of being banished from the soil and the text reads: “Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden ” (Gen. 4:16). Just as Adam’s sin caused him to be driven from the garden where he walked and talked with God, Cain’s sin forced him to be a wanderer in the land of Nod east of Eden, which was farther from the garden—farther from fellowship. After Cain was driven from the area, Seth had a son named Enosh, and at that time “man began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen. 4:26).
While the Bible says men began to call upon the name of the Lord, nothing else specific is mentioned until four generations later when Enoch was born. After Enoch’s son Methuselah was born, the Bible says that Enoch walked with God, and 300 years later “he was not there because God took him” (Gen. 5:24). That sounds suspiciously like they had close communion and fellowship. A few generations later Noah is born, who is noted for walking with God in the midst of a generation wicked enough that God decided to destroy what He had created. Noah was considered blameless by God, and the Bible once more records God speaking to man once more.
What started as a seemingly insignificant thing in the garden became the impetus for God’s destruction of all flesh. Sin entered in and severed the intimacy of the relationship between God and man, which blocked communion. In the same way, if we allow sin to grow and take root in our lives, it takes us farther from an intimate walk with God—farther from the garden and close fellowship—farther from true communion with our creator God. But God has made a way for us to fellowship with Him through Jesus’ death and resurrection—He has paid the sin debt that separates us from God. Instead of talking about Him impersonally, we can talk to Him intimately and experience a personal relationship with Him.
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