“Mercy Even in Punishment”

Genesis 3:20-24

 

20 Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.

21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

22 Then the Lord God said,"Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"-

23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.

24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden, He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

 

Other Scripture References:

Galatians 3:13

Romans 8:28

Romans8:31

Ezekiel 10:10-14

 

Quotes:

"So when Adam named his wife Eve, mother, she not even being pregnant, it was an act of faith, by which he testified to his belief that God would keep His promise and that the deliverer would come." (Dr. Boice)

"To us life is cheap and death familiar; but Adam recognized death as the punishment of sin.  Death was to early man a sign of God's anger.  And he had to learn that sin could be covered not by a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as passed by... but only by pain and blood.  Suffering must ever follow wrong doing.  From the first sin to the last, the track of the sinner is marked with blood." (Marcus Does)

"For immortality in a state of sin is not the [life everlasting], which God designed for man, but endless misery, which the Scriptures  call 'the second death.'  The expulsion from paradise, therefore, was a punishment inflicted for man's good, intended, while exposing him to temporal death, to preserve him from eternal death." (Keil & Delitzsch)