19. God protected freedom by limiting the amount of Satan's access.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. {Genesis 3:1}
But God doesn’t just honor freedom, He also protects it. For God may have honored freedom by allowing Satan to have access to the garden, but Adam and Eve would only be confronted by the enemy if they chose. You see, God didn’t just allow Satan to have unfettered access to the newly-created human race; he wasn’t allowed to follow them around the garden wherever he wanted. He wasn’t allowed to overwhelm them with temptation and deceit.
From the evidence presented in Scripture, it seems reasonable to me to conclude that God restricted Satan’s garden access to a single tree—the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—and then warned Adam and Eve to keep away from that tree! He made a point of singling it out from all the others. They were free to eat whenever they wanted and however much they wanted from all the other trees, but He gave them a stern warning about the dire consequences of eating from one tree. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s the tree where Eve met the serpent.
If you want to dig deeper—
Genesis 2:15-17
Genesis 3:11
Job 1:9-12
Revelation 7:1-3