Genesis chapter four always scared me as a kid.  The brothers Cain & Able were at odds because of their sacrifices offered to God.  Here they were supposed to be focusing on their relationship with God, but instead of identifying opportunities for growth, Cain goes and offs his brother.  The sacrifices identify the recognition of man’s need for something to take away the penalty of sin (which could only be done through the Messiah), and yet this sacrifice brings about jealousy and then murder.

Jealousy is something that I have had on occasion.  Particularly when it comes to technological contraptions and devices.  I don’t get jealous about houses or cars, but if you whip out a Mac Book Air, I’m going to have some serious envy.  Not enough to kill you for, but it will make me question my commitment to being debt free.  I could almost justify getting into further debt because of my pure lust for the next cool thing.  Of course the problem with greed and jealousy is that they’re not satiated.  You can’t satisfy them because they are only temporarily stayed.  Instead, we just find the next thing to fixate on.

As a Christian I need to be beholding Christ.  II Corinthians 3:18 says

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

This passage is worthy of an entire book as we look at the amazing content it reveals, but instead of fixating on earthly things, we’re called to behold the glory of the Lord (See Also Colossians 3:1-3).  If we’re beholding the Lord we’ll not find our lusts overpowering, we’ll not find jealousy to have any substance, instead we’ll find our fulfillment in being transformed into the image of Christ from glory to glory.  That’s much better than greed, jealousy and murder any day.

Genesis three is the most intense of the chapters of Genesis except for the other 49 chapters in the book.  It is intense, it has an impact on all of humanity, and its also the earliest prophecy of a Messiah [Genesis 3:15].  This chapter brings out the problem of greed.  Greed is the downfall of slow, methodical personal finance.  It destroys a paced approach by eroding away at the planned approach of acquisition and instead offers you the easy out: I want it now.When the serpent, being used by Satan, approaches Eve he pulls the deceptive maneuver that is not directly lying, but instead a slippery slope of questioning authority.

“Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

Are you really sure you want to wait for that large screen TV, new car, new house or Apple Mac Book Air [I had to put in the Apple reference - fruit jokes fit into this chapter well]?  Its not that the question is a straight out lie, its mostly that it appeals to the emotions and disengages the brain.  Eve falls for the fruit because of the plying of the serpent.  She pulls the fruit from the tree because it looks good for food and because she is uncertain of God’s actual response.  Adam, standing with Eve, buys in, too and bites the big one.Debt based purchasing is less than ideal.  Greed based purchasing through debt is even more catastrophic.  Instead, as a steward of God’s money the believer should evaluate the cost, evaluate the consequence, and evaluate the usefulness of the purchase.   The consequences of the bad choice of Adam & Eve eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil have impacted all of humanity [That's called federal headship, and it took Christ's starting a new federal headship to break the relationship of mankind to sin].  Eve was the first woman to eat her family out of house and home, but there have been others.  Others who have gambled, spent, destroyed or otherwise damaged their financial life due to bad choices and others watched by glibly, but without the confidence to correct the problem and intervene.The consequences for Adam & Eve were multiple, but you and I work for financial stability as a direct result of his failure to lead his wife into purity!  The dominion that Adam had over creation was removed from him, the ground became difficult to work with in producing fruit (Adam did work before the fall, he tended the garden, but the labor was easy), and the cost of reproduction was significant and comes with pain now.  Of course death (which means separation from God, and not annihilation) is also a consequence of this poor choice and greedy maneuver.As we make choices with our finances the long term impact should be in our scope of evaluation.  We know that money doesn’t transfer to our heavenly life, but we need to make sure that our heavenly life (Colossians 3:1-3) is impacting our transfers and transactions here on earth.