If he had just done that, God would have room then, to forgive him; but he didn't do that, he denied and blamed. Now you imagine two people walking in love and unity, and Eve's shock for the first time. Now what you've got to understand, is the shock they experienced. They are in a state where they're stunned, because the glory has gone, the presence of God is gone, fear is in them - they're feeling emotions they've never felt before, and they're in a panicked state and hiding. When God speaks with them, instead of seeing Him as a loving Father, they see Him through the corruption of their own minds: I'm scared of Him. He's going to punish me. I've got to blame someone else, so I don't get punished. With that, then God stepped in, and began to do some things. The consequences of the fall were this: notice these words here. Read down here, and I'll finish with this in a moment.
It says in Verse 24: He drove out the man, and placed cherubim at the gate of the Garden of Eden, a flaming sword which turned each way, to guard the tree of life. Why did God do that? Verse 22, the Lord said: man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. Now lest he put his hand and take the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, we've got to get him out of here. Now how many of you saw that movie Lord of the Rings? How many saw Lord of the Rings? Okay, now there was a guy in there called Gollum. You notice Gollum was a really ugly creature, an incredibly ugly creature. But if you watched the movies, in one of them, it showed what he used to be. What he used to be, was just one of the elves. He was quite a nice looking fellow, but when he reached out for the power of the ring, he became corrupted, and as he kept the ring in his possession, eventually he became totally corrupted. He changed physically, he changed his appearance, he became an ugly, vile, loathsome, divided internally kind of creature - horrendous.
This is exactly what God saw would happen to Adam and Eve, now that sin had entered their lives. They'd refused to take responsibility for sin, so this is what happened. Then He saw corruption would come, and He said: I love them too much to leave them like this, so this is what's going to happen. Firstly, you have to carry the consequences of your sin; secondly, I'm going to send a redeemer; thirdly, I'm going to cover you; but fourthly, you can't stay here in the Garden. You can't eat the tree of life, you can't live forever, because that corruption would go on and distort and disfigure you, if I didn't stop it. You've got to come to an end. I can't let you have the tree of life. Then what it says is this: God drove them out of the Garden. Now think about that word 'drove'. It meant: He divorced them. It meant literally, He pushed them out of their possession and inheritance. Now when you push someone, it's because they are reluctant to leave.
Now have you ever seen someone, who's just had a major accident, maybe a car crash? You see them straight after a car crash, they are in shock. Their emotions are in shock, their mind's in shock, their body's in shock, and they sort of stand there, and they're kind of bewildered. Often what medical people have to do, is they have to gather them and guide them, and literally make them go to where they need to go, or to sit down and do what they've got to do, because they're in shock. So we see that God drove them out - they were in shock. They were traumatised by what they experienced. They were now orphaned, out of the Garden, out of the presence of God, out of the love of God, and so that's where the orphan spirit developed.