There are many different opinions about that, but really only one that matters. God’s opinion! That sounds obvious, but we are usually far more comfortable going along with our own opinion, or the opinion of someone else. God’s ways are different than ours; it’s not always a comfortable thing to live according to God’s ways.
Today is a history lesson! When we look back at how things were…we often get a better sense of why things are the way they are today, because things really don’t change much.
When God made humankind (man and woman, Adam and Eve) they had everything they needed except for two things. They did not have eternal life (they had to actually eat of the Tree of Life to get that). And they were not aware of evil; they only knew good. The way that God created them, He gave them choice. (You can read about that in Genesis 1-3) Humankind was created to stay in this state…but they had to CHOOSE life, and that means they had to NOT choose death. God gave them two special trees to allow them to choose. They were told they could eat of the tree of life. But they could NOT eat of the tree of death (the tree of the knowledge of good AND evil). God warned them not to eat of that tree.
You can read in Genesis 3 that another of the created beings came to them and spoke with Eve. This being never actually lied to Eve, but did get her to doubt that God really had given them everything. Even though God’s Law to them clearly stated what they were allowed to do, and what they were forbidden…with the encouragement of the creature…Eve (and Adam who was with her) did the exact thing God told them not to do…she (and he) ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good AND Evil. Instead of taking in only the pure fruit of the tree of life, they took in the mixture of the other tree. Now they knew good…and they became aware of evil. And they felt shame and they hid from God.
God, in His mercy, didn’t allow them to die immediately; they were given a chance to repent! But if you read Genesis 3 carefully, you don’t find any evidence they did this. Instead of saying and being sorry…Eve blamed the creature that convinced her to disobey God…and Adam blamed Eve! You see that the result of evil shows up pretty quickly!
As you read through the rest of the Bible, you will notice similar situations all through. Israel was given God’s Law and they promised to obey it…but it sure didn’t take long before they’d re-interpreted God’s actual words and decided to go with a different way. You can read the Law in Exodus 20, the instructions about how to live in Exodus 21-23, the promise the people gave to God and the instruction He gave for the place He would meet with them (similar to how He met with them in the Garden of Eden) in Exodus 24-31, and then by Exodus 32, you read that Moses came down from meeting with God…and the people had already turned away from their promise.
In Exodus 32 we read of Moses interceding for the people, putting himself between them and God’s right to destroy them. God had every right to destroy them, just as He had every right to destroy Adam and Eve…but God allowed Moses to step in-between Himself and the people. Moses promised to guide and teach the people, he even offered to be the one who paid for their sin (vs 32)! This is a picture of Jesus and his payment for our sin. There are pictures like that all through the Bible, we usually don’t notice them because we’re not really carefully reading and thinking about what we read. If we ask God to show us and teach us…and IF we are prepared to obey what we learn from Him (not pointing fingers at others who don’t) and be humble about it…then by His spirit and His words, He really will!
Yeshua (Jesus) called those who would trust in God to follow him…he also said he spoke the words of his Father and did them. So if we believe in Yeshua…then we should also follow him, and obey God. We should be careful not to get mixed up in mixtures of God’s words and human teachings or interpretations. We should be aware that they are everywhere!
God’s words to us are basic. Yeshua says that all of God’s Laws came down to two main things. Love God and love your neighbour.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that WE are to define what it means to love God…it doesn’t simply mean that we are to have warm feelings for God, or to accept that He exists, or that maybe He has some good things to say to us. To love God means that we TRUST Him…enough to DO what He teaches! This is what Adam and Eve did NOT do, did they? They trusted in another interpretation, in what a created being told them God said. People all through history are NO different. The biggest temptation we all face is to obey an interpretation of God’s Law…instead of learning from Him humbly and simply.
Yeshua taught this beautifully. You can read in Matthew 5 where he taught about what the commandments meant. When God said ‘do not murder’ that meant do not even THINK angrily about another, do not let those thoughts take root in your mind, reject anger…because anger that leads a person to hate another is, in God’s eyes, equivalent to the actual act of murder. Jesus went on to teach about adultery…saying that a man who even looked at a woman with thoughts in his mind towards her…was not without guilt in God’s eyes.
What our hands commit begins in our mind. The Bible usually translated this as ‘in our heart’ but in the language the Bible was originally written in (Hebrew) the word means mind, thoughts, will and desire…the person inside that nobody but God really sees. THAT is who we really are. So someone who outwardly appears very good, but inwardly is full of wrong thoughts…in God’s eyes that person is a hypocrite…and is guilty.
You see how this history teaches us about ourselves? None of us is without sin. Sin is defined in 1 John 3:4 (and many other places) as living law-less. In other words, of not living under God’s instruction. All of us are guilty of that, and all of us need to accept the mediator that God has provided in Jesus.
The good news is that God loves us and wants us to repent…to turn away from sin and return to what we were created for. We all are born from the ‘Adam’ who sinned. But through trust in God and persistent, continued, humble obedience to Him and to His commands, we can be ‘born again’ in the ‘Adam’ who obeyed. That ‘Adam’ is called the last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15:45 and Romans 5:14.
This is very profound, but it is also very simple. You see, God teaches us about the things we don’t see (the spiritual things) through the physical things around us. We can look around us at the earth, and notice the beauty and order of creation. The sun comes up regularly, the seasons come, things grow in the earth to feed us…and we can also see what does NOT belong. Death really doesn’t belong…rage, selfishness, misery, oppression…these things are mixed with what is good. And truth be told, they usually have been caused by humans. Just as humans bring evil into the world, humans can repent and follow Yeshua and be ‘born again’ into another chance. This only happens through trusting God and learning and then doing what He teaches!
As you study your Bible, remember it begins in Genesis 1! That sounds obvious, but many people think that it really begins in the New Testament…and they have little or no desire to learn what God has to say in the ‘Old Testament’.
No comments:
Post a Comment