Locked in darkness

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden…and they hid (Genesis 3:8).

Robert Louis Stevenson said that one of the most powerful lessons of his life was learned when as a child, he locked himself in a closet to hide from his father. It was terribly dark in that closet, and he soon became panicky and began to cry for help. It was a long time before his father finally came, and then a locksmith had to come and open the door. It was a very grateful and chastened little boy who was finally let out of the closet!

Although he did not realize it, Robert Louis Stevenson had done the same thing that our first parents Adam and Eve did. When they disobeyed God, they realized that He would be angry with them, so they tried to hide from Him. Of course, when you are trying to hide outside, you have to look for the place of deepest shadow. As Adam and Eve crouched in the darkest place that they could find, they had become captives—captives of fear, captives of the darkness that fear drives us into. And they could not undo the bad thing that they had done; their lives had entered a dark place from which there was no escape.

But God did not let Adam and Eve remain trapped in their foolish choice of darkness; He brought them out, confronted them with what they had done, and then He did two wonderful things. One of these things sounded worse than it actually was; God told the terrified couple that because of sin, they, and all of their descendants, would eventually die. This probably sounded like a curse to the young couple, but it was actually a blessing; had they been allowed to live forever, they would have faced an eternity of living as sinners. Never would there be rest from fighting temptations; never would there be relief from the pain inflicted by the thoughtless words and deeds of other sinners. Eternal life with sin would be a curse; but how could dying to escape sin be a blessing, when all sinners who die go to hell?

Death became a blessing in disguise because of God’s other wonderful act. There in the Garden of Eden, God promised that He was going to send a rescuer, a representative from heaven who would crush the power of sin, death and the devil. Everyone who put their trust in this Savior, no matter when or where they lived, would be rescued from the danger of hell when they left this world; instead, death would be the means by which believers could escape their sins (Romans 6:7) and find eternal happiness in heaven. That Savior was to be Jesus; He is the locksmith that frees us from being locked away in darkness.