Covering

Covering

11/27/15

The cover has many definitions ranging from blankets to hiding and when dealing with human activity every definition can come into play each day of our lives.  Covering is a unique word that is repeatedly used throughout the Bible and when one studies this word it brings to life an extraordinary setting.  The word cover is mentioned in the book of Genesis and provides us with an important clue as to what had transpired between God and mankind before the fall.  It also provides us with another specific detail about how mankind believes that they can redeem themselves after knowingly commit sins, with God showing us how it needs to be done in the end.

A few years back my genetic makeup took over again and it was revealed that I had converted to become a diabetic.  I thank God that for the most part it is under control and I can treat it simply with diet and exercise.  I am so grateful that it has not progressed to the point where my activities are limited because of its potentially devastating effects on the body.  However, there is one portion of my life that it has changed and I am still contemplating if I like it or not.  For the people who know me directly understand that I am an odd duck and one of my oddities is that I absolutely love the cold weather.  My body functions better when it is cold outside and I physically function better in this type of weather as well.

It was raining and snowing here the other day and someone looked at me and said to me: “this is your perfect kind of weather, huh”.  I immediately told them the following response: “only if there is a 15 mph wind with this, then yes”.  The person looked at me, shook their head and began to laugh as they walked passed me.  For the majority of humans, we like to be warm and cozy, and that is the preferred status; lying on a hot beach and sipping cold drinks to keep us hydrated.  But not this weirdo, give me the cold was my motto for a very long time.  In fact, for a number of years I had a waterbed and I refused to turn on the heater for that bed, I loved being that cold.

But for the past few years I have kept a secret and that secret is that the cold weather is beginning to bother me a bit.  I know that as I continue to get older the weather will affect me more, but there are some interior changes within my body that I have noticed popping up due to the changed weather.  I have no real definition as to why but the only thing that I can come up with, and what my doctor says, is that as my body ages, along with my diabetes, I will become a bit more sensitive to weather changes; once again I have to admit he is correct.  I also have found myself longing to be warm, which is very unusual for me.

Being warm also includes at night when I am in bed and it has become evident to my wife that I love this warmth enough to steal the covers from her side of the bed even though I now sleep with an electric blanket turned on.  There is no fighting yet, but I can only imagine that some type of confrontation will occur as the temperatures continue to drop at night and winter comes to term.  I have never slept with an electric blanket on before, only when I have had the flu or a severe cold has this occurred.  It puzzles me as to why I have to take the covers from her, especially when I already have the proper covering already there.  I am not worried about this bodily change; however, I am concerned about what my wife may do to me if I continue to steal her covers.

While I still love the cold weather I guess I can now say that my body does not like the cold weather.  I continue to thrive in this type of setting, but even my crossings to the main building across the street in the cold make my treks kind of interesting.  With this new information of mine concerning the cold weather, it is my responsibility to make sure I am wrapped up well enough to ensure that my body does not send out hate messages which could lead to an illness or to further decline.  It is strictly my choice to heed these warnings and to do what is correct instead of trying to wing it and then flirt with a potential disaster.

The biblical example concerning covers and the concept of covering up is an intriguing one and one that I have missed for many decades of my life.  To be honest, I also have to admit that I have never heard of this type of teaching being stated in church either.  But it is a huge offering of information that God wants us to understand about ourselves and the position that we occupy within the spiritual realm of our existence.  It also deals with the mannerisms in which we as humans try to work out our fallacies (sin) and how God is the original provider of the proper covering for our lives.  When we do thing His way, our lives are so much better off and when we choose to do things our own way, it becomes rapidly clear that we shall fall short every time.

The passage in detail for this article is Genesis 3:7.  As I stated above, I have read this passage many times during my life but it has not been too far back that God showed me some intricate details about the relationship between humans and Himself through this verse.  First off we must keep in our minds that all God has ever wanted is to have a personal and intimate relationship with His beloved creation.  And it is His desire to restore this relationship with us and to thoroughly maintain this relationship on a second by second basis so that we may one day be able to live in eternal peace through Him.

Genesis 3:7 states:  “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”  Let us take the first portion of this verse to start with: “And the eyes of them both were opened”.  It is well known that Adam was created first and that Eve was created from Adam, this establishes the oneness of a couple and it defines the relationship between a man and a woman with no other possible directives on creation or intimate relationships being mentioned.  This passage mentions that both of their eyes were opened and this is a direct consequence of the choices they took just a few verses above.  Have you ever asked yourself s to why they would wish to bring this added responsibility and covenant procedure onto their lives, instead of allowing God to be their divine protector to begin with?

This single verse in Genesis 3 states the terms in which Adam and Eve should have understood what God had been saying to them and teaching them right up until the moment they both sinned.  The verse continues and says that they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves covering.  When one looks at the Hebrew meaning of this word and sequential phrase it cannot be missed or understood that what occurs here is a physical act of these people.  They actually sewed leaves together and formed coverings for their naked bodies.  In other words, created beings decided that they would cover themselves with a product that they had dominion over to begin with.  Stop and think about this for a moment.

This process probably does not come as much of a surprise to us today because we clothe ourselves on a regular basis, but to Adam and Eve, it must have been a huge shock to their eyes when this truth became known to them.  Their perfect state was no longer and it was an instantaneous process that occurred which took them totally by surprise.  One can take it for a life-changing status, one that could never be reversed, so they had to do the next best thing; cover themselves. 

Many people around the world hunt animals for food, this is a given process.  When the animal is killed there is a specific process that needs to be done in order for the meat to be preserved even before it arrives at the processing center.  The hunter must bleed the animal and then gut the animal quickly after the animal has been killed or the meat will go bad.  This is a process of the kill and should be accomplished as soon as possible.  Further processing of the animal can then be completed.  As one can imagine this is a bloody process and can become a grotesque process if one’s stomach is weak.  But it is the process of the shedding of the blood and draining it that is important here because it directly lines up with God’s protective covering and the difference of man’s attempt of covering and God’s divine covering.

Why do I mention this bloody process when the subject is covering?  Because it begins the process of what God intended in the first place and what He had to do in order to keep His promise of eternal life to His people.  When Adam and Eve sinned, the Bible states that they covered themselves by sewing fig leaves together.  First of all, it must be contended that both Adam and Eve had the understanding of how to sew, in whatever primitive form that sewing process must have been.  Their minds had the capability and their extremities the ability to complete such a task.

Secondly, it can be known that while their physical state did not change their reckoning of such nakedness status did which means that God had provided the divine covering of such state up until that moment when sin entered into their lives, strictly by choice, not command.  This sewing process also states that they now realized their physical status instead of just the spiritual, which nominates them to the human life that all of us know today.  What fascinates me the most about this situation is that their reaction to this realization is so typical of a human in that when they found out that their ways and choices were wrong, they tried their best to cover themselves with their own version of the truth instead of obeying God and keeping God first in their lives. 

When one thinks about this setting in the Garden and the reaction that Adam and Eve had after they had sinned it becomes obvious that they and God had discussed His covering over them and what it meant to their lives.  It also states that God did not force His laws upon them and that it was simply their choice to obey or to disobey what God had established as law.  For if a human does not understand that they did wrong they would not rush to make things correct in like manner of which they had just violated.  It would not be logical to think otherwise about this situation.

Now let us take the second verse that comes into play with this setting and how God demonstrated again how He was the one who initiated their covering in the first place.  Genesis 3:21 states: “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”  We need to keep in mind about something God has recently shared with us about His holy order and how once that holy order is established God cannot break it no matter what the circumstances might be.  And it is through this holy order that He acts as the words of this verse play out.

After all, is said and done, God continues His covering process and begins His teaching of restoration.  This verse states that God provides skins of Adam and Eve for their covering.  Skins represent an animal of some sort which God had to kill in order for Him to provide the skins for their covering.  This means that God sets the new standard for covering and that is of blood.  This is the first known example that God uses that indicates that the shedding of blood must be used for the new state of mankind.  This verse proclaims that for the time being and after all of the disobedience we have chosen to embark upon, God is willing to give us the opportunity to recognize this process and to live under this covering that He has offered.

It is this type of pattern that God uses in order to keep us from completely destroying our lives and it is through this holy order of His that provides us with every opportunity to be restored.  This process follows what God had already established between Him and His creations in that it was His responsibility to direct the teaching in such a manner that they would understand exactly what was at stake.  This move from God concerning the covering that He provided Adam and Eve after their fall gives us a close look at exactly how serious this act of God was and how much of an important symbol it should be in our lives today.

There can be no question that God had explained the importance of how His covering meant to Adam and Eve’s lives for if He did not then He would not have been able to adequately and justly hand down the punishment that He did.  God shall never allow His righteous judgment come upon anything unless they do not first understand what is ongoing or what they violated.  If He did such an act then He would not be the all knowing and all understanding being that His Word claims He is.  This means that Adam and Eve had discussions with God about what His protection meant to their lives and what would occur if they did not obey His one command; this is stated in the beginnings of the book of Genesis as well. 

Therefore, when Adam and Eve had received their “reward” for their choices and actions it was taken by God to still provide a covering for them adequate enough and along with His line of commitment to humanity.  Yes, the perfect state of their existence was gone and they had even been told to flee the beautiful dominion that God had given them, but God still gave them a perfect example of what it took for mankind to be restored.

In Genesis 3:21 it states that God gave them skins to cover themselves and this meant that they should take off the inadequate coverings that they deemed good enough for them and put on the provided whole coverings that God had provided for them; group this setting with the armor of God in the New Testament and it brings an entirely new light upon the subject, huh.  It was not a coincidence that God picked out skins for their covering for we must remember that God is a complete God and that everything that He does must fit into His perfect holy order at all times. 

The animal that was killed had to shed its blood in order for it to have been skinned.  Adam and Eve had no excuses to know this and the symbol that it represented to them.  Even with all that they had lost they could take comfort that they were not totally blown off from God and that there was still a way possible to restore their lives unto His standards.  Yes, they understood that their way of life had changed and that their lives were going to be hard and they had to work for their survival now, but they still had hope in God as long as they kept His Words in their heart. 

Now, we know that animals have lives and that they have their own environments that they dwell in, and as far as we know they wish to live just like we do.  I am not in any way demeaning the life of an animal nor is God but we are created different from the animals and thus are viewed separately from them when it comes to our eternal existence.  I have no idea if there are animals in our eternal state, I would like to believe so, but I guess I shall have to wait for that surprise.  God’s point is this, the animal and every life that has been created is very important to God but in order for us to grasp the concept of what is in play concerning our lives God provides us with this example of the covering of Adam and Eve’s bodies with an animal skin.  Our covering, the one that we actually need is that important and we should take every measure to make sure we stay under this holy and pure covering.

The importance of God’s words cannot be greater exampled than the words coming from Genesis 3:21.  For this single verse defines that truth that all ways of mankind shall fail and that only God can provide the perfect process of restoration under the blood.  See, there is no blood on the outer layers of the animals skin, only the interior of the skin has contact with the blood of that animal, which means that when Adam and Eve’s skin touched the interior side of the skin provided by God, they were automatically under the blood provided.

This scripture fulfills many future events that were predicted throughout the Old Testament including the conception, birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ.  These two scriptures combined give us a complete picture of what to do and what not to do when it comes to trusting God for providing His covering and protection for our lives.  These scriptures also give us a complete and detailed example of what will occur when we do not obey God’s laws and try to interpret His commands according to our wants and wishes.  

There is so much more that God has shared with me concerning the words of within these verses, but I am stopping here so that you may study what God has shared with us so far concerning the matter of covering.  This portion of God’s Word that we have a tendency to overlook, bypass or just flat ignore does have direct meaning to our lives and it is this portion of God’s Word He deems important enough for us to understand so that we may lean upon it when times become tough.  God shall never leave us for want or questioning, He has provided the answers we need in His Word and the capability to look for those answers through the workings of our heart.  What a beautiful Thanksgiving example He has provided for us during this time of the year.

DLB