When God made Eve for Adam, He wasn’t just making another soul-inhabited body. He wasn’t just solving Adam’s desire for a help-mate. We’re not even sure if Adam knew what He was missing. I can’t help but get tickled at that thought, though. What in the world did Adam do when God unveiled Eve? I mean, come on….
God took the time to parade creation in front of Adam and gave him the honor of naming every last bit of it and then, one day, God makes Eve (from out of Adam, no less!) Can you imagine it? Adam had just finished naming the birds of the air, maybe next he named the foxes and God says, with a grin, “speaking of foxes…” And the eyes of Adam drink in, for the first time, the beauty that is Eve. Whew, I’m a 47 year old Worship Pastor and I think I just blushed at that thought. Eve was unflawed beauty. What in the world did the unflawed beauty of Eve look like?
Daughter of Eve, made from the flesh of man, do you know who you are?
That is the question that has grabbed my imagination on the Forge this morning. Our minds run wild at the tender notion of the first man seeing the beauty of the first woman, but there’s so much more to Eve than the very first pretty face!
I’m sitting in a small cafe in Jerusalem, on the edge of old city. It’s raining which is rare here, from what I’m told. I don’t know why but I’m crazy overcome with the thought of Eve this morning. It’s my first time to the Holy Land, so to say that I’m inspired is a bit of an understatement. It’s kind of bizarre. You’d have thought the topic of the day would have been the Temple Mount or Gethsemani or even Oscar Shindler’s grave site. I’m not too far from all three of those things. But nope, God has set before me, on this brisk November morning, the first daughter, Eve.
What scripture reveals concerning Eve is so grand that I’ve found myself a bit overwhelmed. Honestly, I don’t know if I can capture it adequately. I’m hoping that God will let my pen write it with enough anointing to do it justice so that it will fill all the beautiful corners of a woman’s heart, and that you, if you are a daughter of Eve, may be able to comprehend, as the Apostle Paul said, “with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; of Christ’s mighty love for you.”
I’ll ask again. Daughter of Eve, do you know who you are?
You see, Eve is the physical (human) embodiment and the spiritual foreshadowing of God’s very own love pursuit (the church). She is uniquely both. And let me tell you, when God loves, it’s epic! His pursuit of His bride (which is us) spans the full measure of recorded history. And this, my friends, is where it starts getting really fun!
When God Almighty made Eve, He was showing us the making of the church! When God made Eve He was showing us marriage! They are bound together. They are the pattern of divine love as we will see in God’s word.
“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”—EPHESIANS 5:31-32
Don’t miss this, y’all. Paul’s is saying, that this mysterious union between a man and a woman has God sized implications! He’s telling us that marriage, between a man and a woman, is actually the divine framework to something far, far grander! Adam and Eve’s marriage was actually the living, breathing foreshadowing of God’s marriage to His bride, the church!
I know this is probably starting to sound like a journal post on marriage instead of Eve, but that is the point! God made Eve with such impactful significance that you can’t have one without the other. Think of it like this. When God made Adam and Eve, He was writing out His marital vows. Not on paper, or computer, but in the honest to goodness flesh and blood of the first man and first woman! No small wonder that Paul called it a great mystery.
Daughter of Eve, made from the flesh of man, do you see what a wonder you are?
You hold the fiery affections of Adam, while representing the spiritual, eternal affections of God for His bride, the church. You were chosen from the beginning to be the only one of the two made in the image of God, to bare what love was meant to physically produce… children! Just as Jesus’ own bride, the church, bares children in His name, you also conceive. You are a lover and mother without equal in all of creation. Nothing ‘mothers’ like a daughter of Eve. If you ask me, this is God showing off and it just gets better from here. According to our text, Eve not only represents God’s bride, the church, which conceives spiritual children, but Eve’s physical children are the spiritual church! She bares both! Without her, there would be no continuation of Adams or Eves in this world, physically or spiritually! You see the mystery? Eve is the foreshadowing and her daughters are the fulfillment! Eve is the daughter of God, who became the lover of man, who became the mother of “the church” who’s children became the bride of Jesus, God’s own Son!
And there’s more! Y’all, the full circle intimacy of God, romancing His bride has to be one of craziest things I’ve ever seen in scripture. Think about it. Just as God made Eve out of Adam, now all the sons of Adam come from the Daughter’s of Eve by the gift of your womb! I think this is where I’ve been headed the whole time on the Forge today.
I’m sitting here in this Jerusalem cafe enjoying a mocha and there is a table of young girls not too far from me enjoying coffee, talking and giggling as young girls do. As they talk my thoughts drift to another time and another young girl, a daughter of Eve named Mary. She had to be around the same age these girls are. I’m a dad, you know? So maybe that’s why this thought is so tender to me. Scripture says that Mary pondered these things and now so am I. I’ve seen it for myself. I watched, as my wife brought new life and love into the world; new eyes, new arms and legs with a round little belly for poking and brand new cheeks for smooching. Life grew inside of April and life was born as my daughter! Do you understand the gift of your womb? Do you understand what He has made you for? When God formed the womb inside you, He was making a living, walking, breathing cradle that would one day hold the life of His very own Son. O daughter of Eve, you are the one! It was you that shared physical space, nursed, kept warm and safe, inside of your own body, the Body of the Creator. Of all creatures, dreamed up in the imagination of God, both small and great, earthly and heavenly, you alone were created to carry the Savior of us all!
I hope this finds an undiscovered wonder in your heart on this Mother’s Day; something to hold when you don’t feel special; something to ponder just like Mary.
For now, time is the canvas. We cycle through it by the generations, with every single one of our races, providing God’s brush with vibrant, beautiful, living colors. And boy, can He paint! Everyone has a place in His masterpiece, everyone has a part in the divine story.
But the first stroke of Love’s unflawed beauty will always belong to only one.
Daughter of Eve, highly favored of God, do you know who you are?
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