Even upon being evicted from the Garden God expresses his care for His creatures. The ultimate fashion designer God made the first clothing, “garments of skin.” The first leather outfit.
It was going to be a rough row to hoe, the gulf now between Adam, Eve and God was immense. A once close fellowship, now a chasm so huge it would take His own Son to come down to earth and walk among us, and be rejected by His own, and paying the ultimate sacrifice. Torture and death on a cross was bad enough but in the end the separation from His Father was the worst. Fortunately in His resurrection three days later the greatest surprise of all creation was declared in the call to forgiveness for all who accept His gift of grace.
But back outside the Garden a whole lot of living and dying would unfold preceding this awesome event. And that didn’t take long. Humanity’s decent into depravity followed swiftly. Adam’s two sons would be the first casualties with Cain killing his younger brother Abel. And then the second expulsion occurred; Cain was forced away from his family. But God’s love and providence was never quenched. Cain was given a sign “so that no one finding him would slay him.”
Only four chapters into the book of Genesis and already we witness manic highs and lows. The glories of creation in all its perfection, including man and woman, God’s gift rejected in disobedience, eviction from the Garden, children born in pain, a brother’s murder, another expulsion, and all the while God closely attending. The rest of the long book of the Bible would be a litany of this cycle. Man’s failing, and God restoring. It is fascinating reading how God continuously reached out to His wayward creatures showing them He is always there to be enjoyed if they should desire Him. How difficult it must be for a father to watch their children walk away from them in indifference or outright hate, knowing the pain and torment that inevitably follows, until they come back into his rest.
And when those children multiply and fill the face of the earth, creating civilizations, and become proud of their own devices, glorying in their own creation to the exclusion of the Creator, the recipe for devastation boils over. How God for so long put up with is creatures is a testimony for His long suffering patience. Only a few chapters later in Genesis (chapter 7) we see that mankind could no longer be considered redeemable, and the flood came to cleanse the earth of monumental depravity and evil. Only a chosen few survived. A remnant selected to keep hope alive In the cycle of Good and Evil there would never fail to be a remnant in all the rest of the course of history. It would be a promise God would keep to the very end.