Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden meant exile from knowing how God lives in holiness and unapproachable light. Separation from God,
from the Tree of Life, is certain death. To know God is life. The Tabernacle became a mini garden of God’s dwelling, giving us access to the Tree of Life again. The Book of Deuteronomy presents God’s Law (His will) as His view of good and evil, which was lost in the Garden of Eden.¹ “I set before you life and blessing and death and destruction. I command you to love YHWH your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commands, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply” (Deu. 30:15-16). “What the man and woman lost in the Garden is now restored in the Torah” (Sailhamer, 1992, p. 424).

Skillfully writing the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses presented the first four scrolls of the Pentateuch, not as a focus but as the prologue to the future.² The past introduces the new. The fifth scroll’s audience is any reader who has read the earlier portions of the Pentateuch.³ Moses focused on the new generation and the new work God is doing.⁴ As Adam and Eve were to depend on God’s knowledge of “good and evil,” so also a covenant people were to look to God’s Torah as the pathway to good and the means of regaining the life lost in the fall (Gen. 3:22-24).⁵ Just as Enoch, Noah, and Abraham walked with God, Moses saw new covenant believers “walking in His ways” of blessing and increase in the land (Deu. 30:16), fulfilling the Genesis 1:28 command to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the land.”

Moses first recounted the appointment of leaders to carry on his work, judges to teach the Torah to the people in small groups and explain it. To shema (to hear and do) the Tree of Life is to eat the Word of God. “Listen (shema) to the statutes and the judgments that you may live! You shall not add to the word, nor take from it” (Deu. 4:1-2). We cannot re-create Eden or enter God’s Presence on our terms (examples of Cain, Nadab and Abihu, and Uzzah). Yeshua quoted, “Do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of YHWH” (Deu. 8:3; Mat. 4:4). Created in the image of God, humans must learn to act like their Father in specific detail, trusting in His wisdom of life, “So you may know YHWH your God.”

Humans searching for their identity is a hallmark of today’s society. Everyone is trying to “find themselves,” forming their own distinctiveness. But who we are is determined by our paternity. Since we are God’s children, we must find out who He is to find out who we are. To Abraham, God was YHWH-jireh, the covenant God who sees and provides. To Moses, God identified Himself as “the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” and “I will be who I will be” (Exo. 3:14), becoming YHWH of the Exodus, even our exodus out of bondage to sin and death through Yeshua. To Israel in the wilderness, He became YHWH-rophe who heals and YHWH-nissi who fights battles en route to His holy mountain where He dwelt with them. YHWH gave Israel His Law so they would know His name, His wisdom and character, and by keeping it, it would make them distinct. Why do we keep the Feasts? And Sabbaths? And commandments? We do these things because our identity is in Him, in His glory. It is in what He has done and is doing in our lives to save us. Blog 14 listed YHWH’s names and how they related to His Festivals, which we will explore in more detail as we discuss each feast of YHWH. At the moment when YHWH reveals Himself to us individually, we begin to know who we are.

God did not create humans to be alone but to have a relationship with YHWH. He is the One who walks alongside us. When we know who He is and who we are, we are given a commission before God to go into the world as a light. Each of us is to “go in the strength God has given you,” filled with His Spirit, trusting in the Tree of Life, in the name of YHWH (Jdg. 6:14), believing Yeshua Mashiach.

Takeaway: 
Who we are is determined by our genetic parents. As children of God, we reflect Him by internalizing His Word and walking with YHWH in belief and trust. The New Testament’s most quoted book, Deuteronomy, prepares us to live eternally in God’s Presence in the spirit in the Kingdom of God by eating the Tree of Life, the Torah. Because God is who He is, we will be what He created us to be, bearers of His image.

Fun Factors: 
Adam generated two genealogy lines, one through Cain and the other through Seth.
By the seventh generation, Cain’s line displays autonomy’s ultimate fruit in the great oppressor Lamech.
The line of Seth, by the seventh generation, engendered Enoch, who walked with God and did not die.
We are either children of the serpent or children of Elohim through Yeshua Mashiach.