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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 53. The Meaning Pictured
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The Meaning Pictured
Now, I want to turn to the Old Book. It is very striking to find in its very opening pages a definition of death. For that is what it practically is.
It is a pictured definition. And that makes it easy for us all to get. For all the world loves and looks at a picture. And when some skilled artist who's studied it, points out the colorings, the lights and shades, and groupings and postures, it becomes fascinating.
Look at this picture. It's in a garden. Man's friendly God is walking through the garden, side by side with the man. They are fellows together in their fine friendliness of feeling. Man's Fellow is showing him about the garden, making him familiar with his new home. They stop under a tree.
And there the word is quietly and clearly spoken: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen_2:17). It's the tree of choice. It's the practical touchstone of their continued sweet companionship together. God is pleading for the man to use his power of choice right. Their fine fellowship together was the plea, a tremendous plea.. God was saying, as father to son, "Let us always keep in fullest touch."
But it was a matter for the man's decision. By using his power of choice in choosing right, constantly, he would become like God in character as well as in sovereignty of choice. That's the first time death is referred to. The actual phrase used is this, "dying, thou shalt die." There is a beginning, a process, and a finished result.
Then comes the temptation story, the yielding to temptation, and the break of fellowship. Now, note keenly, what "die" actually meant to these two early kinsfolk of oars. They ate the for-bidden fruit. At once they were conscious of some difference in themselves. There came a self-consciousness regarding their bodies which was not there before. It seems not good, for they do something to remove or correct it.
There was no actual change in them from what had been before, except mental or in spirit. The forbidden act made a change. They were separated from what they had been before. It proves to be a separation in spirit from God. Things are not between them as they had been.
Then comes a second step. They try to hide from God. Already they misunderstand Him. They think because they cannot see Him that he cannot see them. The ostrich had an early imitator. But they want to get away from God. That's the big thing.
The separation between Him and them is increasing, and it is increasing by their action. There's no difference in God. But plainly there's a longing for separation from Him. And that means there is a separation in spirit, grown wider by the longing to get away from His presence.
Then comes the third stage in the process. They are driven out of the immediate conscious presence of God. Though, as noted elsewhere, the driving out was almost certainly a moral thing, their sense of the presence of God now influencing them to leave that presence voluntarily.
Then comes the story of the awful break in the home. That inner spirit, that sought separation from God among the trees of the garden, grows strong and passionate in the home. It leads Cain to seek a forced separation from one whose presence he has come to hate.
Then comes the final stage in this pictured meaning of "die" or death. Nine hundred and some odd years later it is said of Adam "and he died." God had said, "in the day thou eatest thereof dying thou shalt die". The dying began on that day. Yet bodily death was deferred for over nine hundred years.