Teaching by Examples

Many believers are taught to take particular verses from the Bible to ‘prove’ their stand on particular spiritual issues.  They sometimes tend to pick the verses that uphold their view and ignore the ones that don’t!  However, that’s not the way God teaches.  He teaches by giving us examples.  The Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible…Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) contain God’s laws for humankind.  God’s law is given to show us what sin is, as all sin is disobedience of God’s Law.  This is consistent all through the Bible. All through the other books in the Tanak (Old Testament) we see example after example of people who either obeyed God or didn’t.  And we see the effect of obedience or disobedience.  We’re supposed to learn from the teaching these examples present.

Romans 15:4 says that everything that was written in the Scriptures (and that word as used in the ‘New Testament’ always meant what we today refer to as the ‘Old Testament’) was written for our instruction, that through endurance in obedience, and its encouragement we might have hope.   1 Corinthians 10:6 tells us that God gave us many examples in the Scriptures, that we might learn how to live, and not to do the things that led those others into sin.

So God teaches by giving us examples.  He’s given us His laws, and expects us to obey them.  We know that sometimes life is hard.  It’s harder when we also fight against God by disobeying His good ways.  We know we have hope, even when life is hard, when we are careful to walk in the good way of obedience to God. 

A Sad Thing

I think Genesis 3 is the saddest chapter in the Bible.  In it we see how (and how easily) mankind turns away from God.  What caused the first Adam to disobey?  We can read Genesis 3:1-6 and see that the test God allowed came in the form of a different ‘word’ brought to them not by the Creator, but by a created being.  This is often how we turn away too, if we receive an ‘interpretation’ of what God says, rather than receiving (reading and studying) what God actually said.  This is what religion is all about...man's attempt to interpret God's words in ways that seem right to him.  Rather than searching out what God says for themselves, people are more comfortable (or too busy, or don’t think they’re smart enough) to let someone else tell them what God really said. 

This is how the being in Genesis 3:1 introduced deception.  He slightly twisted what God said.  Note that Eve’s response was not to repeat God’s actual words, but to modify them slightly herself (she added ‘we must not even touch it’ verse 3).  The Deceiver then denied what she said; because of course God hadn’t said that.  The Deceiver also knew God was merciful…and he twisted God’s words again (verse 4).  ‘You won’t die’, he said, ‘You will actually gain more than what you have…and it will make you like God’.

Think about it…what more good could they possibly have?  If God had withheld something from them (and He did…the knowledge of evil) then surely in the context of ‘very good’, that would have been to their benefit. 

So here we see another teaching.  Our human nature is not content with what we have, we instinctively want more.  At the root of that desire is the fact that our human nature struggles to trust God.  God made us capable of resisting that temptation. He certainly made us capable of choosing good.  But to choose the good involves trusting God and in that trust, obeying HIS commands!  But this is work, probably the hardest work we do in life.  The enemy within us…our own desire to be ‘god’ in our life and obey our own ‘law’, and not to trust the God who made us, and obey His…this enemy is often the greatest challenge we face.  And we face it on a daily basis.