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by David Odegard

The serpent convinced Eve that disobedience to God was in her best interest. The snap of Eve biting into that apple, or whatever fruit it was, resounded throughout all the ages of mankind. The serpent then used her to tempt Adam to eat the forbidden fruit, too. Adam ate with eyes wide open.

The fruit was from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Knowledge divorced from God. Knowledge for yourself, with no accountability to God. As the Luciferian creed states, “Do What Thou Will.” “Don’t let anyone stop you from your dreams.”

When the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened, as the Scripture says, everything changed. They fell. Their souls were irrevocably changed. For the first time, they experience shame and fear. Eden was transformed suddenly into a hostile place. They dreaded the presence of God because they realized their own nakedness.

“If we deliberately go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins remains, but only a fearful expectation of judgement and raging fire that will consume all adversaries” (Hebrews 10:26-27).

The human condition is dreadful. We are bent by nature. As Jeremiah said, “Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a fine point, on the tablets of their hearts” (Jeremiah 17:1). And, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked—beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (17:9).

Sigmund Freud thought he could understand why the soul is broken, but he doesn’t come even a fraction as close as Jeremiah did with his precise diagnosis of the human soul.

Jeremiah pronounced judgement because of sin. He says, “Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know” (17:4) Over and over God had placed His people on the anvil and pounded His hammer down on them. He pounded them flat with the hammer of the Philistines, the hammer of the Egyptians, the hammer of the Assyrians, and now Jeremiah was announcing the Hammer of the Babylonians. Pounding, pounding, pounding, generation after generation. Pounding hearts too hard to yield to God!

One can almost hear the voice of the apostle Paul, crying out in his despair, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24).

But God shows Jeremiah a new day that is to come.

The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel! You shall again be adorned with your tambourines, And shall go forth in the dances of those who rejoice. You shall yet plant vines on the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant and eat them as ordinary food. For there shall be a day when the watchmen will cry on Mount Ephraim, ‘Arise, and let us go up to Zion, to the Lord our God.’ (Jeremiah 31:3-6)

Now I almost can hear the bewilderment of Nicodemus when asked Jesus, “How can these things be?” (John 3:9).

God gives us the promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34. It is only by the Messiah coming and instituting this New Covenant that people will be able to be different. God will cease His endless pounding when He finishes the nails in the Messiah’s hands and feet, and the Blood of Jesus will make us clean.

Jesus, on the night before He betrayed to the cross, picked up the cup at the last supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is being poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was necessary to take away our heart of stone and open up a new agreement between God and His people. He would punish Jesus for our sin.
Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4-5)

Anna Waterman wrote this sweet refrain after realizing that the blood of Jesus is the only remedy for sin.
Come, ye sinners, lost and hopeless, Jesus’ blood can make you free; For He saved the worst among you, When He saved a wretch like me.
And I know, yes, I know Jesus’ blood can make the vilest sinner clean.

This is precisely what we testify to in baptism: that we are sinners, dead in transgressions, until Christ has “made us alive with God.” Because, “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). Now that Christ has remade us, we are dead to sin, but alive to God.

“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22).

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