5. Silence in Scripture: ‘Crickets’ in the Garden of Eden

5. Silence in Scripture: ‘Crickets’ in the Garden of Eden.

“The man Adam and his wife Eve both heard the voice of Yahweh God as He strolled through the Garden in the cool of dusk when there was the soft evening breeze. The man and the woman took cover among the trees in the Garden and hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God. But Yahweh God called to the man and asked, ‘Where are you?’” (Genesis 3:8-9).

A Moment of Silence. The Lord evidently was expecting another in a long line of convivial conversations with Adam and Eve while strolling together in paradise, and the first man and woman were nowhere to be found. Instead of a friendly chat, the Lord was met with silence… “Crickets!”  So, God did what we all would do in this situation, He looked around for His missing friends, and He asked aloud if they could please come out of hiding. We don’t know how long this unexpected silence lasted, or how far God had to search, but we do know Adam and Eve were cowering under cover in the midst of all those leafy trees. What’s going here? Why does God even bother looking for them in the first place? In the interests of full disclosure, here are a number of beliefs that I think are facts:

1. God created us out of His desire to have fellowship with us. That’s the most basic question of all, isn’t it? Why did God create mankind? He didn’t need to, because He is utterly and eternally complete within the intimate communion of the Trinity. So He doesn’t really need us as if we could complete Him in any way. One simple way to look at this basic question is this… God created humanity because God is love, He wanted to spread around His love. He is so full of love that He wanted to create people in His image with whom He could enjoy friendship. God created us to have deep fellowship with Him, and He gets great joy out of that fellowship with each of us. He didn’t create us because it would complete Him in some way, He created us knowing that friendship with Him would complete us! The Trinity is so full of love that they couldn’t resist sharing their love with beings made in His image.  Before the divine invention of time, before the foundation of the world, the triune God existed in a profoundly intimate community of three Persons. Because God is love, they created the world so they  could share that intimacy with the human race. They did not hoard their eternal love for each other, but instead they included humanity in their relationship. In creation, God shared His life with humanity, providing a truly life-giving relationship with Him.
2. The Theater of Creation. One might wonder why it is that we are so important to an almighty and everlasting Creator God. With-ness appears to be in God’s very nature. As Rev. Sam Wells once said, “Creation itself is the theater in which God could dwell with us! The purpose of mankind is to be God’s companions forever!”Take Emmanuel, for instance. (Emmanuel is Greek and Immanuel is Hebrew). The messianic prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, “and shall call His Son Immanuel,” is quoted and fulfilled in Matthew 1:23. The name Emmanuel literally means “with us is God” according to the order of the name’s words. The renowned biblical scholar Lancelot Andrews (1555-1626) was amazed at this name of Emmanuel, because when God put that name together, He put ‘us’ first, before Him! We are in the front of the name, and God placed Himself second to us! In His own name, God held the door open for us! “In His very name we might read that we are dearer to Him than Himself, that He so preferred us. Oh, which is greater in Him, His humility or His grace! It is hard to say which, but both are unspeakable.” 
3. With You Always. It would take pages of notes written in tiny script if one were to record all the passages in Scripture that included His promise of personal presence, that He would faithfully be “with us.” From the very creation of the world, God has had an overwhelming desire to be with us… from His walks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day in the Garden; to the presence of Yahweh all through the ups and down of His Chosen People; to the Incarnation when Father God sent the Son of God to be with the ungodly; to Jesus’ baptism when He didn’t mind identifying with the sinful in order to be with us; to the very last words Jesus said before He went home to be with the Father…  “Behold! Listen carefully to My words here! Understand this and take it in! I am with you always! Yes, to the end of the ages of ages.” ( 28:20).  God has made it abundantly clear that His eternal desire is to be with us… “Behold, the dwelling of God is with His people, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.’ (Revelation 21:3). His everlasting desire to be our bosom buddy is an astounding part of His heart for humanity, it is His mission and His destiny to be present with us. That’s not just Good News. That is Best News! What could be better than that? What else can we do but take joy in the with-ness of God?
4. Dwell Together. In the beginning, God created one vast, spacious “thin place,” in which the boundary between heaven and earth seemed non-existent. This heavenly space on earth was created to be a dwelling place for God and mankind, a place for their intimate fellowship. The Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a community of love, and God created mankind in His image, so it seemed right and good to create a place for all of us, God and mankind, to enjoy our communion together. This is the Garden of Eden, Paradise, where there was no veil between God and mankind, between heaven and earth.
5. Paradise: (Greek, paradeiso; Hebrew, Gan-Eden); the Greek word is taken from an old Persian term meaning park, garden, paradise, a pleasure-ground; the Hebrew understanding of the word came from its root ‘dn,’ which means enjoyment, and was considered to be the ‘Garden of Yahweh’). The early church Fathers believed that Paradise, the Garden of Eden, still exists far removed from the heavens and the earth, and is awaiting its renewal and recovery in the ‘new heaven and new earth.’ Christians believe this will occur at the coming of the Lord Jesus to establish the New Jerusalem. Believers now think of Paradise as a synonym of heaven, the place of rest for those who have departed in Christ, where fellowship will once again take place in perfect unity between God and mankind, just as it did in the original Garden of Eden.
6. Creator God is Everywhere. There was obviously no point to Adam and Eve climbing a big tree and attempting to hide from the Lord in the midst of their shame and guilt. As the psalmist David exclaimed centuries later, “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in the place of the dead, You are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me and Your right hand shall hold me.” (Psalm 139:7-10).
7. Jesus In the Garden of Eden. We believe that Jesus was a Co-Creator of the world, and so He certainly was evident in the original creation. Jesus made an appearance even if it wasn’t evident to anyone else. “By Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth… All things were created through Him and for Him.” (Colossians 1:16). “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” (John 1:3).  But after the initial creation, He demonstrated another act of love. He descended into His creation and sought to have fellowship with Adam and Eve. This would be like a master painter, after having finished his work of art, jumping into the painting and interacting with the characters in the painting. Out of love, God created mankind. Then out of love, God became involved with mankind. God extended Himself into a personal relationship with Adam and Eve in the Garden.
8. Christ was the Stroller. God is pictured strolling in the Garden in the cool of the day, the evening breeze making everything comfortable for His regular interactions with Adam and Eve. They heard the sound of His walking in the Garden, and they hid themselves among the trees. God seemed to miss their expected meeting and looked for them. Adam and Eve finally revealed to God that they heard His voice and fearfully hid from Him. They were naked and ashamed of themselves for the entrance of sin into the universe. So who was Adam and Eve talking with in the Garden? God, in the form of a man? They certainly weren’t walking and talking with a formless spirit, or a pillar of cloud. They weren’t interacting with the fiery flame of a consuming fire. They were instead having personal fellowship in the flesh, with a man, friend to friend. There were audible sounds of God walking and talking. Adam, Eve and God enjoyed some sort of human interaction with actual words, a primordial language of some sort. Adam and Eve had a friend in the Garden, and that friend was Jesus Christ. This is the first time Jesus made an appearance in the Hebrew Bible. God in the form of a man, having fellowship with Adam and Eve.
9. Jesus in the Old Testament. When people in the Old Testament state that they have seen God, what have they literally seen? Early Church theologians, and numerous Biblical scholars since, have believed that when God is in visible form, the truth is that Christ has made an appearance. Every physical appearance of God in the Hebrew Bible is a revelation of Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate form. In fact, there is a particular Character who flits in and out of the Hebrew Bible, the Angel of Yahweh also known as the Angel of God, the Angel of the Lord, the Messenger of Yahweh, or the Angel of His Presence. It is widely accepted in Biblical scholarship that this mysterious Angel is none other than the bodily appearance of Jesus Christ. The Deity of Jesus is clearly portrayed in His role of Angelic Messenger, God’s special representative that speaks God’s mind and performs His will. “The Angel of the Lord is the visible Lord God of the O.T., as Jesus Christ was of the N.T.” (Amplified notes).
10. Creator God has the Spiritual ‘Hots’ for Us. Let’s consider the spiritual aspect of marital relations. Stretching way back to the beginning of the universe, it looks like Creator God designed a secret plan to have intimate fellowship with all those humans of His, all made in His image. God has desired fellowship with us since the beginning. He instituted marriage with that in mind, in which a man and a woman join into a union of 2-becoming-1 flesh. Hebrew scholars have noted that “flesh” in this Genesis context actually suggests something close to a blood relative. That’s how intimate this marriage was to be. God designed marriage to be pleasurable, fruitful, fulfilling, satisfying. And God wanted the marriage to be a foretaste of the desired union with each of us. God, believe it or not, yearns to be intimate with each of us, and what better illustrates that union than a joyful experience of a marital union at the human level? Marriage is a sign that points to the spiritual unity planned for us inside God. So the intimate, pleasurable and fruitful marriage is actually meant to be a sacramental sign, pointing us to our destiny as believers, a spiritual union with Christ! The physical union signifying the spiritual union, the physical reality of marital relations giving us a vivid picture of the spiritual reality of living within Christ. The sexual act, as wonderful as that is, is not intended to be the end of the story. It is meant to suggest the spiritual relations we could enjoy with God. Marriage reveals the type of relationship God wants with each of us. Physical sex, which pretty much involves every aspect of our being, is a profound part of what it means to be human. Sexual activity in a marriage enables each spouse to give pleasure to the other out of love and devotion. Dare we say that our intimate fellowship with Christ, which also demands our all, is a spiritual version of marital sex? “Haven’t you read the Scriptures about creation? The Creator made us male and female from the very beginning, and for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, sticking to her like glue. He will be literally joined with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Husband and wife will be two persons united into one.” (Mathew 19:4-6).