Page 9 - Overcoming Addiction

woman. He placed them in a garden that He had planted, and instructed them to
tend it. At this point there was no death in the creation, no decay, no sickness.
Man would never know death if he continued in this state.
Yahweh told the man and his wife that there was one thing they were not to
do. It was forbidden for them to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil. Nothing else was off limits. There was only this one thing they
were not to do. Yahweh warned Adam and Eve that in the day they ate from this
tree they would most assuredly die. Death would enter into their beings. Decay
and sickness would begin to take hold of them until their bodies finally
succumbed and life was no more.
Death is the fruit of sin. It was due to sin that death entered the creation.
Sin is departing from the will of God. It was not Yahweh’s will that man should
eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. To do so would be a departure
from God’s will, and this is sin. If man ever embraced a path of sin, he would not
be able to depart from it apart from God’s help. If man were to choose
disobedience to God’s will, he would become a slave to disobedience. It was
therefore critical that he never start down this path.

Romans 6:16
Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves
for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin
resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

God, through His Holy Spirit, has inspired men to record for us the history
of our first ancestors. We are told that there was present with them in the Garden
of Eden the serpent. This serpent was none other than Satan, the adversary of
God and mankind.

Revelation 12:9
And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called
the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world...

The serpent first approached the woman in the Garden. Through craftiness
and deception he enticed her to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Genesis 3:1-6
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh
God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, "You
shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent,
"From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of
the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, "You shall not
eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'" The serpent said to the woman,
"You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it
your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a
delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she