Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not 1eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Gen. 2:15-17
We’re looking at the truths that support and secure our faith. Last time we began a closer look at our glorious God’s most glorious design: man. Human beings. We saw how God made people different than all the rest of His creation, in that He made us IN HIS IMAGE, in His likeness, designed for intimate relationship - with Him AND with each other, and w the capacity to rule over/take care of God’s creation. God gave man a unique sacred crown, crowned us with glory and honor above all the other creatures. And He gave us a unique sacred calling. God put man in charge, to cultivate and take care of His stuff. And it/this is ALL God’s stuff.
Today we see that God also gave man a unique sacred command. 16-17 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” This in fact happens to be the very FIRST command God gave to man, chronologically.
Now the language of all commands takes two forms. One is the imperative - do this, don’t do that. It’s technically an appeal to the will - yet it doesn’t force the will. The other form we see when sometimes God communicates what He wants in the form of the “future indicative”. It is the language of certainty. You will do this. You will not do that. It's perhaps a stronger tone [every kid here learns this tone]. A bigger no-no. That’s what we get here. It’s a BIG no-no - within an even bigger green light.
Now with every other living creature, as far as what God wants, the imperative is how it plays out. Animals do exactly what God designed/tells them to do. God says Be fruitful and multiply, and that’s what happens. Creatures of instinct: they just do what God wired them to do. Their instincts carry the day. But man, made in God’s likeness, has the capacity for both higher reasoning AND for moral choices. God gave man the ability to say no to our instincts, to our feelings (even to God’s commands). People have the God-given ability to do what we know is right. Or not. And only man gets this unique command. Here’s a tree, just one tree out of an entire garden full of them. Have at it! Enjoy every last one of them to your heart’s content - except for this one. From this one tree, you will not eat - that would not be good for you. But so that means you’re going to need to make a choice, make a distinction between all these other trees, which are perfectly delicious, and this one tree. Now eating of course is all well and good, NOT evil - it’s necessary, but you are going to have to make a wise, reasoned choice - even if circumstances or your feelings seem to be dictating otherwise. And only man is presented with this moral choice. God not only endowed man with this capacity for higher reasoning, He gave us what we call free will. We were able to freely choose if we would follow and trust the Lord. If we would fulfill our calling to cultivate and guard His creation. Or not. And right here, we had the freedom to choose whether or not we would listen to the Lord and enjoy all the fruit on all the trees in the garden except for this one. Or not. [i.e. we were "able to sin"]
IMPORTANT: The overarching implication of the command - along with the crown and the calling - is that our loving Creator in effect is saying, I am for you! I am SO for you! I AM good, I know what’s good (for you!). Better than anyone else. Better than you. Open your eyes, look at all this, taste, be amazed at how good in fact it is. And I am the Source of all this (not to mention the End), the Architect, the Engineer of all this. I even happen to know the one thing in all of this which is NOT good (more on this later). But I’m asking you to trust Me. Trust My plan. Trust how I’ve designed it. Trust Me. I'm giving you a choice...
Trusting the One Who gives the command looks precisely like doing that which He has commanded. So, what did man do with this command? [Gen 3.6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.] [Man thumbed his nose at God - and still does - what has man been doing with the command ever since? Proverbs 14.21 And there is a way which seems (feels) right to a man, but its end is the way of death.] By this point God had even given man a unique sacred companion, to help him carry the crown and the calling and the command (we’ll look at her next week). But when push came to shove, Eve looked at that fruit on that one tree, the ONLY fruit that God had forbidden, the ONE thing that they were not designed to do - but it looked so good, it felt good - how could it not be good? It tasted so good. It can’t be wrong cuz it feels so good, right? Good feelings = Right, right? This feels so right. Wrong. That is NOT how God designed it, and we thumb our noses at God’s exceedingly good design to our very great peril.
BTW the design is still exceedingly good. Nothing wrong w the design. Still today, there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. "But, this feels right. This feels like the way to go. Why should I be expected to go against what I feel?" Because THAT'S not how God designed it. And only He truly knows what is best for us. He is God, and I am not.
The LIE says, I determine what’s right. I know what’s best. It’s the lie of [adolescence - who so often are convinced they know everything, including what's best]. And just like with teens and parents, there’s this tension, two factions warring against each other. One is my feelings, fueled by surging hormones and this youthful impatience and arrogance. The other is the authority of God and His Word. Established truth. What did God say? How has He designed it? It's no coincidence that THIS is precisely where that crafty serpent goes [Gen 3.1]. Did God really say? We question God’s Word. We question His design. We question Him, we doubt Him. We disrespect and relegate Him. We disrespect the Authority - I can do that! Even better! You will be like God, the serpent suggests… Never mind that we’re already like Him. But we see what we don’t have, and we want that. We want to be in charge. We put ourselves in God’s place. OR we put other things in His place. It’s a trap…
Doubting. Questions are good, it’s how we learn. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions. The desire to learn, and to understand - that’s a divine impulse. No other creature does this. Animals just do. They eat and sleep and make messes and babies. But people - we build [libraries], full of books that are full of words. Storehouses of knowledge. We built the internet! [Could you even imagine a puppy on the internet?][Not that all of the internet is good or even useful]. But questions. They’re how we learn. Gather knowledge. Ask all the questions you want - and go find the answer. Most questions have answers. Yes, there are things that we won’t fully understand or explain in this life [Deut. 29:29 “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.”] But everything you and I NEED to know, God has revealed to us. There’s nothing wrong with the question - it’s what we DO with it. Did God really say this? Is this really true? And the real question there is, do we trust the One Who knows the answer? Are we genuinely open to the answer - or is our mind already made up? When we let the question lead us to doubt God and His Word and His goodness, then we’ve fallen into the trap of the serpent. Did God really say?
Sadly what we see as the narrative unfolds is man rejects God’s command. He rejects God. Ultimately man chooses something OTHER than God and what He wants. [Romans 1:28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.]. His choices put him into an adversarial position with both God AND creation, such that God now has to [guard] His creation from man. Man is expelled from the Garden of God, [which now has to be guarded by angels], and subsequently must toil and sweat and fight the ground from which he sprang simply to find food and survive. AND he has to fight off the beasts, many of whom now carry this fear of man. He’s lost this life of peace and safety. Separated from the life of God, now waging a lifelong losing battle with brokenness and death. AND his choosing mechanism is fatally compromised [we were able to sin —> but now we're unable to not sin].
ALL the brokenness of the world entered in right here. It’s called the Fall - we can see big falls on YouTube, but THIS was the biggest. 'Cuz we fell from Paradise, from glory. Adam - and all his descendants - reject the crown and the calling and the command, ultimately rejecting a relationship with God, that for which we were ultimately designed, in His image. The design is still exceedingly good. We still bear His image - but now we’re broken. Helpless. In desperate need of rescue. Spiritual intervention. Which of course the Lord has graciously arranged through the gift of His Son. [Colossians 1:21-22 And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.] He’s the Way for each of us to be restored a right relationship with our Creator, to be able to experience the exceedingly good goodness of God and His design. We trust in the One God has sent to make things right. Jesus.
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