Emotions pt 1 | What were our emotions originally designed to be
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Emotions. We all have them. We were designed with them.
God gave them to us in the very beginning. But what did he plan for our emotions to be? Let's explore that today. Recently, I began to think about emotions.
I think about them often because we are all feeling some kind of emotion every single day, whether it's good or bad, or a mixture of both. And I began to wonder, what exactly did the very first evidence of emotions come to be in the Bible? Also, I think it warrants, once we look at those first emotions, that those emotions should be the emotions that we aspire to have. And once Adam and Eve were removed from the garden, what emotions did they have then? And how do we get back to having the emotions from the garden? So first of all, they only had good emotions.
We know that. But let's read, um, let's start in Genesis 1. Now, let me encourage you, as always, to read everything in its full context. I am skipping around for time's sake, although I may be reading a little more than normal today, because I want you to get a fuller picture here.
And I know sometimes when I begin to read a scripture, you think, now where, what does this have to do with it? But it always goes somewhere, and it ties together. So right now, I am reading from the Amplified Bible, Genesis 1, and I am on 20, verse 26.
God said, let us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, make mankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame beasts, and over all the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth.
Verse 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image and likeness of God. He created him male and female.
He created them. Now, then we skip over here to Genesis 2, 1. Then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath or spirit of life. The man became a living being, and the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, which means delight.
And there he put the man whom he had formed, framed, and constituted. Let me stop for just a moment there. Often when we visualize Genesis and the creation, we get a picture in our head of the Garden of Eden, and that God created Adam and Eve within the garden.
But he created all of creation. He created it lush and green. He created it beautiful.
He created it perfect, all of it, the entire thing. Then he planted a special garden just for Adam and Eve, after he had created Adam. So let's read that again, thinking about that.
Then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils. And the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden. And there he put the man whom he had formed.
I think that's really special. I know this isn't necessarily on the path of emotions, but if we are truly created in the likeness and image of God, which we just read, that compassion, that love that he had for mankind, first of all, the pattern he used was himself. The very best pattern that he had to give.
So he created Adam and Eve off of the pattern of himself. Everything about him, of man, was patterned after God. So his emotions, here we go, we're talking about emotions finally, his emotions were in Adam and Eve.
His love for Adam is displayed when here he's created the entire world, beautiful, wonderful, lush. And now he's taken and he's created a very special garden just for Adam and Eve. I think that is one of the most overlooked things.
When we talk about God, we say, oh yes, God loves us in the famous John 3, 16 verse, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Yes, that is absolutely outstanding. But from the very beginning, God never had ulterior motives.
God created man because he wanted man. He loved man from the very beginning. So as soon as he created him, he said, this gorgeous creation that I've made isn't good enough.
We have to have something really special. It would be like, you know, having a house with a beautiful yard, and then all of a sudden you come along and say, okay, right here in this back corner, I'm going to make something really spectacular. And so that's what he did.
And he put Adam and Eve there. And that kind of love is all-encompassing. Stumbling over my words there, sorry.
But that kind of love is a love that we can relate to maybe more than giving away our son. I can't hardly wrap my head around that one. That one's too far outside of my wheelhouse.
I have two sons, and I have many grandsons and great-grandsons. So to try to wrap my head around that is difficult. I know it's big.
I know it's huge. I know it's far beyond anything I could do. But I can wrap my head around loving one of my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
I can wrap my head around wanting to create something super special just for them. A place just for them to live in. It was their home, and it was the best of the best.
Okay, so there was one of our first emotions. It wasn't from Adam and Eve, but it was from God. After he had surveyed everything and said, it's good, it's good.
So let's hop down. So verse 15 of Genesis 2 says, And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend, guard, and keep it. Not as a slave.
Not as a, okay, I've given you this. Now you got to take care of it kind of deal. But let's face it, we all need something to do.
And so he made this fantastic garden. And then he put him in it, and he said, okay, now you can tend it and care for it. And let's face it, at this point there were no weeds.
At this point things didn't die the way they do now. So it was almost like saying, oink, oink, I'm going to give you this garden to tend to. And how easy that would have been.
And Adam would have been in this lavish garden, and he would have flourished tending to these plants and these animals. So now let's hop over to Genesis 3 and go to verse 6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good, this is the tree of good and evil that God said don't eat of that tree. Now that's a whole other discussion to wonder why did he even put it in there in the first place? But we're not going to go there today.
That's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down today. When woman saw that the tree was good, pleasant for food, and that it was delightful to look at, and a tree to be desired in order to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she gave some also to her husband, and he ate. Up until this point we only had love, we had there was points of respect, there was delight, because this is before she ate of that tree.
So anything that is good and positive, also they were naked as babies, and they didn't have a clue. There was zero shame, absolutely zero shame. So if you can think of any good emotion, that's what they were feeling and experiencing and living in.
They were in the midst of feeling God emotions. Anything that God feels that is positive and rich and nourishing, that's what Adam and Eve were experiencing until then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed thick leaves together and made themselves apron-like girdles. Immediately, immediately shame came.
Isn't that just like the enemy? The very first emotion he piles on when anything goes awry is shame. God never ever ever brings shame, and I want to get this distinction out there very clearly. If you're feeling shame about something you've done or something...
