And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.' " Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Genesis 3:2-5
"You will be like God..." Isn't that the ultimate of temptations? Perhaps you might object and say something like, "I don't want to be like God. I just want things to go well, or to be good for me and those I love." However, for that to happen, you would have to have god-like power. You would have to be able to control time and chance, sickness and sin, peace and conflict. In fact, to guarantee a positive outcome, you and I would have to go beyond even what God is willing to do. We would have to usurp human free will. We would have to make choices, or insure that choices are made which we believe would be good, even if the person we were choosing for didn't desire the choice we would make! The danger inherent here is incalculable. In order to do all this just for ourselves, we would in fact have to be God Himself! And there is only room for One of those. Only God can handle being like god. And though we may think we are only trying to be like god for a small slice of existence, we just aren't equipped to handle it.
If nothing else proves that we have no business with such power, the history of those people who have held some kind of power bordering on god-like throughout the ages is one of nothing but unrestrained evil. With few exceptions, the tyrants of so-called absolute power have succeeded only in spreading misery and death. The few very good rulers in the world's stage have invariably been those who truly served God and the people, and in this way gave up power for mercy and grace. These kind of leaders realized that all real authority is God's alone, and they serve at His whim. That should be how each of our lives are lived as well.
Your Joyfully Loquacious Believer,
LEE
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
A Small Doubt
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?' " (Gen. 3:1)
Here is how it starts. It is rather amazing that the method of temptation used here is essentially the same method that our adversary Satan uses even to this day. It begins with doubt about what it is that God says. He plants doubt by twisting what the Word actually is. In this case, the serpent, who is Satan's mouthpiece, both questions what God said and distorts what the actual command was. The command was that the man and woman may eat of any tree except one. The serpent knew full well that he was not quoting God correctly. But he also knew that he was quoting God closely. That is how we also get set up for temptation. The enemy started out by casting doubt upon God and His Word. In point of fact, Satan was also casting doubt upon God's goodness and His care for the man and woman. We have the same kind of doubt thrown at us. Doubt that says "God isn't really there." Or we hear the whisper, "If God is there, He doesn't care about you." Or perhaps this one, "God may be there, and He may even care, but He can't do anything about your pain and hurt and sin and guilt." All of those falsehoods and lies are cast our way, but they all start with a slight doubt in the form of "Did God really say...?"
Your Joyfully Loquacious Believer,
LEE
Here is how it starts. It is rather amazing that the method of temptation used here is essentially the same method that our adversary Satan uses even to this day. It begins with doubt about what it is that God says. He plants doubt by twisting what the Word actually is. In this case, the serpent, who is Satan's mouthpiece, both questions what God said and distorts what the actual command was. The command was that the man and woman may eat of any tree except one. The serpent knew full well that he was not quoting God correctly. But he also knew that he was quoting God closely. That is how we also get set up for temptation. The enemy started out by casting doubt upon God and His Word. In point of fact, Satan was also casting doubt upon God's goodness and His care for the man and woman. We have the same kind of doubt thrown at us. Doubt that says "God isn't really there." Or we hear the whisper, "If God is there, He doesn't care about you." Or perhaps this one, "God may be there, and He may even care, but He can't do anything about your pain and hurt and sin and guilt." All of those falsehoods and lies are cast our way, but they all start with a slight doubt in the form of "Did God really say...?"
Your Joyfully Loquacious Believer,
LEE
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Being "not ashamed."
Then the man said, "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called 'woman' for she was taken out of man." That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become a new family. The man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed. Genesis 2:23-25 (NET Bible)
A marriage with no baggage and no shame! This is a singular event, one which has not been repeated since. Even in those rare occasions (rare for our time and place) when two people unite who have had no relations with any other, there is still the baggage of human sin to consider. That was not the case here. Thus it is virtually impossible for us to understand this marriage in comparison with any marriage we know of.
What we can do is hope for the future when there will be the elimination of sin and we who know the Lord Jesus as Savior will experience true sinlessness. As it was for a short while at the creation, so it will be for eternity at the re-creation (Rev. 21-22).
This passage is also unusual in that it is an instance where having no shame was a good thing. Much of the scriptures teach that being ashamed, or having shame, is a good thing because there is abundant sin for which we all should be ashamed! In fact, in the few cases where a person or group of people were not ashamed, the scriptures declare that this is a sinful thing (Jer. 3:3; 6:15; 8:12). Having shame for us is not something that should haunt us night and day. However, the effort to artificially declare us shameless, or guiltless, is a dangerous one. No matter how much we try in our culture to avoid feeling shame or guilt (on the false premise this is good for our psyche), we will always have plenty to feel shame about. It is akin to declaring that an electrified fence is not really there, and then trying to climb over it without getting shocked! The electricity in the fence is like the sin in our soul. As long as the electricity is on, touching the fence will produce shock. If we were somehow able to eliminate the sensation of being 'shocked', the electricity would still exist and would still damage us. As long as sin is present in us, indulging in it will produce negative consequences, the first of which should be shame. Should we succeed in turning off the shame, the sin will still be present and further negative consequences, including a repeat of the sin, will occur. Shame is not something we should discourage, as long as it is shame for the reason of actually offending God by sin, and not the manufactured shame of culture. It is before God alone that the full measure of our shame is shown, for it is ultimately God against whom we sin (Ps. 51). So, we should bring our own shame to God first and foremost. Let Him heal us and make us able to show others the real Truth of Christ who bore our sin and shame upon the cross.
Finally, there is one area for which we should never be ashamed. Mark 8:38 puts it this way, "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels."
Paul mentioned the same thing in Romans 1:16 concerning the gospel. Those things sent from God through His Word and His Son and in the Holy Spirit are the pure things. These are the things of which we do not have to be ashamed, and in these we can alone experience the feeling of Adam and Eve standing naked before God and standing without shame!
Your Joyfully Loquacious Believer,
LEE
A marriage with no baggage and no shame! This is a singular event, one which has not been repeated since. Even in those rare occasions (rare for our time and place) when two people unite who have had no relations with any other, there is still the baggage of human sin to consider. That was not the case here. Thus it is virtually impossible for us to understand this marriage in comparison with any marriage we know of.
What we can do is hope for the future when there will be the elimination of sin and we who know the Lord Jesus as Savior will experience true sinlessness. As it was for a short while at the creation, so it will be for eternity at the re-creation (Rev. 21-22).
This passage is also unusual in that it is an instance where having no shame was a good thing. Much of the scriptures teach that being ashamed, or having shame, is a good thing because there is abundant sin for which we all should be ashamed! In fact, in the few cases where a person or group of people were not ashamed, the scriptures declare that this is a sinful thing (Jer. 3:3; 6:15; 8:12). Having shame for us is not something that should haunt us night and day. However, the effort to artificially declare us shameless, or guiltless, is a dangerous one. No matter how much we try in our culture to avoid feeling shame or guilt (on the false premise this is good for our psyche), we will always have plenty to feel shame about. It is akin to declaring that an electrified fence is not really there, and then trying to climb over it without getting shocked! The electricity in the fence is like the sin in our soul. As long as the electricity is on, touching the fence will produce shock. If we were somehow able to eliminate the sensation of being 'shocked', the electricity would still exist and would still damage us. As long as sin is present in us, indulging in it will produce negative consequences, the first of which should be shame. Should we succeed in turning off the shame, the sin will still be present and further negative consequences, including a repeat of the sin, will occur. Shame is not something we should discourage, as long as it is shame for the reason of actually offending God by sin, and not the manufactured shame of culture. It is before God alone that the full measure of our shame is shown, for it is ultimately God against whom we sin (Ps. 51). So, we should bring our own shame to God first and foremost. Let Him heal us and make us able to show others the real Truth of Christ who bore our sin and shame upon the cross.
Finally, there is one area for which we should never be ashamed. Mark 8:38 puts it this way, "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels."
Paul mentioned the same thing in Romans 1:16 concerning the gospel. Those things sent from God through His Word and His Son and in the Holy Spirit are the pure things. These are the things of which we do not have to be ashamed, and in these we can alone experience the feeling of Adam and Eve standing naked before God and standing without shame!
Your Joyfully Loquacious Believer,
LEE
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The Completion of Man
The the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him ...So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man." Genesis 2:18, 21-22
It is noteworthy to see that here we have the first time that God says "It is not good..." God says that the state of the man being alone, as a man, is not the "good" state. It will only be good when God completes the task of creating man as mankind. This is what happens when the female is created. God says, in part, that the creation is not truly finished until the woman comes to be. It is true in more ways than we know that 'woman completes man.' The very special creation of the human woman is unique to all of creation. ONLY woman is created from material that at least was living tissue. ONLY woman was not created either from 'the dust' or from nothing that existed previously. Woman was the ONLY female of any other created 'kinds' or 'species' created at a separate time from the male.
A note of explanation: I omitted verses 19 and 20 for two reasons. One was for space saving. A second was to avoid confusion between the naming of the animals and God's creation of woman. Some commentators have wrongly concluded that the purpose of bringing Adam the animals was to show him the possibilities for a "helper" from that animal world. At least one of God's purposes was to show Adam himself that he was indeed 'alone' in the world and impress upon Adam that this was indeed 'not good.' It was to show Adam that he was not yet complete. Thus God prepared Adam for what God was about to do.
Your Joyfully Loquacious Believer,
LEE
It is noteworthy to see that here we have the first time that God says "It is not good..." God says that the state of the man being alone, as a man, is not the "good" state. It will only be good when God completes the task of creating man as mankind. This is what happens when the female is created. God says, in part, that the creation is not truly finished until the woman comes to be. It is true in more ways than we know that 'woman completes man.' The very special creation of the human woman is unique to all of creation. ONLY woman is created from material that at least was living tissue. ONLY woman was not created either from 'the dust' or from nothing that existed previously. Woman was the ONLY female of any other created 'kinds' or 'species' created at a separate time from the male.
A note of explanation: I omitted verses 19 and 20 for two reasons. One was for space saving. A second was to avoid confusion between the naming of the animals and God's creation of woman. Some commentators have wrongly concluded that the purpose of bringing Adam the animals was to show him the possibilities for a "helper" from that animal world. At least one of God's purposes was to show Adam himself that he was indeed 'alone' in the world and impress upon Adam that this was indeed 'not good.' It was to show Adam that he was not yet complete. Thus God prepared Adam for what God was about to do.
Your Joyfully Loquacious Believer,
LEE
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