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Tag: sin

  • Disaster From Disobedience, A Savior From Before Eden – 6

    Instruction in Good and Evil

    This is My command: Love one another as I have loved you. – John 15:12

    The Lord loved the work of His creation, especially man, made in his own image. Adam and Eve were more special and blessed than any of God’s created ones. The Lord had been like a father instructing them and walking beside the man and the woman in Eden.

    In our last look at Adam’s temptation and original sin we established the radical change required now that man knew good and evil. At first Adam had only one rule to obey. The Lord commanded. DO NOT desire the knowledge of good and evil. That’s it; don’t eat that fruit! Everything else? Fine.

    Now man will require some instruction as to what is good and what is evil. Not so easy. The Lord will instruct them.

    Adam and Eve have children (after all, not only was it pleasurable and fulfilling, but the Lord had commanded it). These first parents had a relationship with God and could ask the Lord for help with their children.  (We do that, right? … or at least we should.)

    God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.” – Genesis 1:28

    God had instructed them like a loving father; now these original parents will instruct their children in that same love. Children who know nothing of evil and have never seen paradise will learn of good and evil, with God’s help.

    Godly Instruction in Good and Evil

    You will recognize sin leading to a later Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not murder;’ but note other sins present here as well.  Our familiarity with two of Adam’s sons, Cain and Abel, could obscure some of the Lord’s instruction. 

    Your full consideration of Scripture linked here is always welcome, however let’s read just an excerpt.

    Genesis 4:

    6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why do you look despondent?

    For our instruction in good and evil, note the Lord’s two descriptive emotions: furious and despondent. Think of your own emotions related to jealousy or envy of another, as was the case with Cain of Abel.

    “Why art thou wroth,” reads the King James, for translation from Hebrew of Charah  חָרָה  speaks of a burning anger.

    Do you suppose that Adam, also now knowing good and evil instructed his sons in righteousness? What parent doesn’t? And for that matter what parent does not also need the help of the Lord?

    (God help me with this child! What parent has not made this plea?)

    The other emotion mentioned also causes us much anguish, perhaps as consequence of our powerless ability to please others. Again, the King James translates, “and why is thy countenance fallen?”

    Despondent is apt image of the fallen face of one so disappointed. If we have eyes to see the face of another we can always see it, just as a face may also reflect radiant joy.

    Our sin and guilt will cause a fallen countenance, translated from the Hebrew: פָּנִים paniym or face נָפַל naphal or fall. After man’s fall, a fallen face due to our inability to please the Lord.

    What instruction could the Lord have for the son of Adam about his fallen condition?

    A Caution to choose Good and not Evil

    Genesis 4:7 If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? 

    We do not automatically receive God’s blessing. The Lord instructs us to consider our choices. 

    In this case, Abel had received blessing, but Cain’s offering to the Lord was not accepted. It begs a weighty question for us when we fall short of the Lord’s expectation (and we all do at times).

    What should I do to be accepted by God?

    The Lord’s answer seems so simple, ‘do what is right,’ yet it comes with a caution as well.

    But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door.

    Again, a helpful picture, ‘sin crouching at the door.’ This is actually the Bible’s first reference to sin, חַטָּאָת chatta’ath, from the root word חָטָא, meaning ‘to miss the mark.’ I can easily picture the Lord’s caution to not trip over the obstacle of sin before the doorstep of heaven.

    Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

    Do you also find it interesting that the Lord personifies sin here as having desire for you?

    Desire is certainly a human trait; but as we learned from Satan’s fall, also an angelic trait. 

    Sin! crouching at our door: its desire is for you and for me.

    But we must rule over it, says the Lord. We must defeat sin in the great and ongoing battle between good and evil.

    Cain failed and sinned. Yet do not condemn Cain like the son of another, but rather have pity for him like you would your own son. And have compassion on other sinners. With God’s help some who fall short will do good and gain the Lord’s acceptance. And in Christ even a sinner like you and me has hope.

    Now That We Have the Knowledge of Good and Evil

    Perhaps on occasion your face falls at the thought of our past and inevitable sin. For the task of our earthly knowledge of good and evil weighs heavily upon us. ‘There is no one righteous, not even one.’

    For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. – Romans 3:23

    Do you recall that Adam and Eve had more sons? For we are sons of Seth, Son of Adam. Therefore our instruction in good and evil must progress.

    The Lord will not only give us the Law through Moses, but also redeem us from our sin by the Son of Man.

    To be continued…

     

  • Disaster From Disobedience, A Savior From Before Eden – 5

    Temptation: “Did God really say…?”

    Genesis 3:

    The Temptation and the Fall
    3 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?”

    Here it begins, original sin.

    I might have easily named this series, ‘Temptation Before Disobedience,’ yet we shall not fall into this pit. Rather than taking the more traveled path of placing blame on the already-fallen Satan, we shall examine the progression of our own disobedience to God.

    Genesis 2:17 .. but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

    One point of my previous post, knowledge of good and evil comes to man with overwhelming responsibility, as well as consequence for sin. Returning to Genesis 3 and Satan’s temptation for man’s disobedient fall:

    “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” – Genesis 3:5 

    So yes, we know of good and evil independently of obedience to God. Yet are we like God?

    In so many ways this frail, fallen flesh created in God’s imagine no longer reflects the Lord’s righteousness. Each reflection of our sin clouds the clarity of the Lord’s gleaming glory.

    And the Lord said of creation, “It is good;” yet in so many ways since man’s temptation to judge good and evil, it is not so good.

    Before we proceed past original sin, let’s briefly consider the relationship between Adam and Eve with the Lord prior to their temptation.

    God in the Garden Paradise

    No one has ever seen God. – John 1:18

    Image yourself as Adam if you are a man, or as Eve if you are a woman, walking in paradise with the Living God. (You have not yet sinned.) 

    Can you describe your personal relationship with the One who has created you and walks with you in Eden? What is the Lord like? 

    He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. – John 1:2-3

    In this paradise of Eden, the Person of the Lord seems to nurture a newborn existence in a vast and wonderful place. 

    Colossians 1:

    15 He is the image of the invisible God,
    the firstborn over all creation.
    16 For everything was created by Him,
    in heaven and on earth,
    the visible and the invisible…

    17 He is before all things,
    and by Him all things hold together.

    John 1:1

    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

    How would Adam or Eve described God before the fall?

    The Creator walks with us! He IS the image of the invisible God in whose image we are also created. The Lord is not an angel (though some later descriptions call Him ‘The Angel of the Lord’). God is a loving Person, a Father if you will, to both of us.

    But then… we both sinned…

    7 “Then the eyes of both of them were opened,” Moses records. It’s not that they were literally blind, but by their new-found knowledge they now saw, heard and realized things they never needed to know.

    Eyes Opened to our Sin

    We heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and we hid  from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. We were naked. Although we had always been naked, something told us that no one else should see us that way, so we clothed ourselves with leaves.

    We heard the familiar voice of the Lord:

    “Where are you?”

    We had never hidden from Him. Adam called out from behind the trees for both of us:

    10 And he said, “I heard You in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”

    “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

    Of course… we had.

    And somehow we knew that it was wrong. Never before had we ever considered that anything we had done had been either right or wrong. We just did it and lived with great joy in paradise.

    Well, you know the rest. Excuses, punishment for our disobedience… 

    We then began our schooling in the differences between blessing and curse. But now it was too late, for we could not go back to the Paradise where we had lived in overflowing joy with the Lord God.

    When the Lord had blessed us He had commanded, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.” Now beyond Eden these words to fill the earth, and subdue it seem burdensome rather than a blessing. And the Lord has said that we now have only a lifetime to begin that which once seemed timeless.

    The Lord says that we now have eyes to see and ears to hear what is good and what is evil. Be careful to do all that is good and shun what is evil He has said. 

    How long, O Lord, until you will return us to your glory? More than a lifetime? 

    And what must it be like to first return to the dust…

    To be continued…

     

     

     

  • Disaster From Disobedience, A Savior From Before Eden – 4

    He was in the world,
    and the world was created through Him,
    yet the world did not recognize Him.

    John 1:10

    What did God intend for man in paradise (Eden) in the beginning?

    Creation of Adam

    Genesis 2:

    7 Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

    This then, is really the beginning as far as man is concerned; but we must ask more. Man, we ask: what did Moses mean to say about the first man of flesh created by God?

    Genesis 1:26-27 KJV excerpt

    And God said,

    Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…

    1:27 וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָֽאָדָם בְּצַלְמֹו בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתֹו זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה בָּרָא אֹתָֽם׃

    So God [‘elohiym] created man [adam] in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

    • References to God are plural, not singular. Yet the One God is not consulting with other gods (a concept we shall not explore here).
    • We are like God, not like the animals of God’s creation.
    • Creation references to man, translated from ‘adam’ include male and female.

    God creates a perfect world, giving men and angels the freedom to obey and serve. But we don’t obey and therefore no longer live in a perfect paradise.

    What is paradise?

    Paradise would be a place where all men and women, all creatures of earth and all angelic beings live together in harmony with God. We take our cultural meaning of paradise from the Greek word παράδεισος, but in the definition of Eden differs. 

    Adam in Eden

    Continuing in Genesis 2:8

    The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He placed the man He had formed. 9 The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food…

    Do you know what it means, ‘Eden,’ that is?

    Pleasure. And man’s role was to care for the garden of our pleasure.

    Garden of Eden Jacopo Bassano, 1570-73 Oil on canvas; Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome

    15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.

    Yes such a pleasurable work, tending the perfect place where the Lord walked with man. Follow the Lord’s command and have eternal life (although in Adam’s bliss he knew of no alternative.)

    16 And the Lord God commanded the man,

    “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

    A Helper

    Moses then continues with the separate account of the creation of woman from man; that is, Eve. Much is made of her, ‘the female of the species made in God’s image.’ For as Moses testifies:

    18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper as his complement.”

    v.22 KJV And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

    Think of it dear brother, the Lord filled our emptiness of existence without a ‘helper’ at our side with one like us and for us. Therefore she is created as our ‘better half,’ as we become one.

    23 And the man said:

    This one, at last, is bone of my bone
    and flesh of my flesh;
    this one will be called “woman,”
    for she was taken from man.

    24 This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame.

    The Knowledge of Good and Evil

    Paradise, an illustration of Eden: man, woman, plants and animals, food and meaningful work. The created heavens above and bountiful beautiful earth in every direction. The Lord walked and talked with them! 

    Genesis 1:28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.

    Paradise but for one generation due to just one bad decision.

    One command from God to man and everything else filled with the freedom of eternal joy in Eden on earth. Paradise.

    Again, recalling from Genesis 2:17 “..but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…”

    Why not, you ask? Ah, but we are already sinners questioning God every day.

    For Adam did not have to ask what to do, just obey the Lord’s one command. Think about it, the definition that he did not need was that of good and evil.

    God’s simple command to Adam could easily be defined:

    “Good is to obey God, evil is to disobey God.”

    Why would anyone disobey the all-powerful, all-knowing, compassionate and gracious Lord, who created us to be a human image of Him?

    But of course, we all do… and it is sin, by definition, evil.

    The moment Adam and Eve made their decision to disobey God, the moment Adam and Eve knew that that had chosen evil over obedience; our lives and existence began to overflow with needless questions and numerous wrong answers. 

    Do not blame the serpent or others, demons or even your parents and our first parents, Adam and Eve.

    We were created for obedience to God who defines good. Yet we all choose to go against God of our own free will, just as Satan and various angels had disobeyed.

    God IS God! And we are not.

    Original and Continuing Sin

    In Disaster From Disobedience – 3 we examined the fall of the Tempter and will not dwell on his role in Eden. We now carry the burden of the knowledge of good and evil, we carry the burden of our own sin.

    Next we will examine the progression from Adam’s one command from God to the man’s disobedience through the generations. Evil and sin will lead us to the requirements of the Law and convictions of our disobedience.

    To be continued…