Genesis 3:11-12

And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

From Background Notes [BN] for September 7^th & 8^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

The human judgment that nakedness equaled shame is what God asks Adam to explain. It is a question about meaning, and where Adam obtained it. God is working backward from human hiddenness to human nakedness, and then He asks Adam to explain how he came upon the significance of his present sense of shame.

Not waiting for Adam's answer, he probes into Adam's violation of the covenant commandment about eating the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." It is at this point in the story that the social dimension of Adam's sin assumes an enormous role: "The woman you gave me…" is Adam's leading statement through which he reveals his degree of separation from the woman. Notice how Adam distances himself from this partner whom he once declared to be "bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." Rather than see her as part of himself, he treats her as someone alien to his true nature, someone foisted on him by God. Someone has slyly remarked that in Adam's statement we have a case of "passing the buck in the Garden of Eden." Adam does not say "I did this," but, in effect charges that, "she made me do this." Shades of Flip Wilson!

It is out of such alienation and blame-laying that marriages suffer damage and, in some cases, divorce. But God is unwilling to allow such separation to become the final state of the relationship.  [BN,9]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm