We
also explored some of the reasons why God did not simply and immediately create
the heavens and the earth in perfection, as the new ones will be. There was an
education that needed to take place before the perfect could come—an education not
for God about how to make all things, but an education for those of us whom he
endowed with a free will about how to live in a perfect creation.
Satan’s Alternative Reality Exposed by Light
Satan
has filled the present world with lies of alternatives to the authority of God
and has managed to convince even a very great number of people in this present
age to believe these lies. These lies have brought a murky darkness of understanding
about the ways of God to people of the world.[1]
They do not see the works of God that he is still doing, and they refuse to
accept the fact that God is sovereign over all creation.
But
there are many of us who have chosen to follow God. We have not done so because
we are of greater intelligence than the people of the world, or because we are
better in any way. It is simply because we have, out of our own free wills,
chosen to accept the words of Jesus Christ when he helped us to understand the
total and completed plan of God.[2] The
Apostle John called Jesus the “true Light who gives light to every man.”
But
John continues to say that when Jesus came into the world, and even though the
Jesus had actually made the world,
the world did not recognize him. He came even to his own whom he had created,
and they did not receive Him, “but to
all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right
to become children of God” (John 1:12).
The Promise of
Jesus
When
Jesus was about to leave the earth and again ascend to his eternal abode in
heaven, he said the following words for the benefit of those of us who have
believed in His name:
Do
not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God—believe in Me as well. In
My Father’s house are many places to live. If this were not so, would I have
told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that
you also may be where I am. (John 14:1-3)
The
coming to earth of Jesus was in the plan of God from the very beginning. This incarnation
of Jesus was necessary in order to bring the light of understanding about the
ways of God to us. In the same gospel as I quoted above, John not only calls
Jesus the “Light,” but he also calls him the “Word,” because just as he brought
to us the light of understanding, he also brought a more complete revealing of
the Word of God.
John
begins his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1-2 BSB).
John
also writes of his experience with Jesus in one of his letters: “That which was
from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes,
which we have beheld and touched with our own hands—this is the Word of life.”
(1John 1:1).
The Way of
Salvation
As
important as the work of Jesus was in bringing the Light of understanding and
the Word of life, his most important mission in coming to earth was to bring
Salvation.
Jesus
stated in the same conversation that he had with his disciples about going to
prepare a place for them this statement: “I am the way and the truth and the
life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6 BSB).
After
Jesus ascended back into heaven, the Apostle Peter stated to the ruling council
of the Jews (the “Sanhedrin”), that “Salvation exists in no one else, for there
is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts
4:12 BSB).
Peter
also said in one of his letters that it was the very sacrifice of Jesus that
provided the salvation from entrapment of sin that had come to those of the
world. Peter writes, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that
we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His stripes you are healed”
(1 Peter 2:24 BSB).
The 4000 Year
Delay
Since
our salvation is dependent upon Jesus giving himself as the perfect sacrifice,
and seeing that the need for salvation began with even the first man and woman,
it might seem puzzling why God waited so long before he provided for us the
means of complete redemption. As we have seen, that redemption requires the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Why, we might wonder, did not God provide for the coming of Jesus
Christ very soon after Satan’s deception in the Garden of Eden, and not
thousands of years afterwards?
The
age of the earth is one of those issues that is sometimes hotly contested,
estimates ranging from a mere 6000 years, as believed by some creationists, to
billions of years old as taught by some evolutionists. However, even among
those who accept the world begin created by God, there are many who believe it
is at least more than a few thousand years old.
My
own feeling is that as important as this question is, it is perhaps not as
important as we make it out to be, and that spending too much time and effort
into this question perhaps can divert us away from that which is truly
important. I myself tend to believe that the earth is not millions of years
old. I feel that it is perhaps older than the 6000 years that some say, but the
earth’s age would be numbered in the thousands or tens of thousands, not
hundreds of thousands or millions.
Nevertheless,
even if it is as little as 6000 years old, it still leaves us with the reality
that after sin entered into God’s creation, he waited a good long time before
he provided the perfect sacrifice for this rebellion. Jesus was born about 2000
years ago, meaning that God waited a minimum
of 4000 years until Jesus was given as a sacrifice for our sins.
The Education
Begins
There
is perhaps more than one reason that God waited these thousands of years, but I
would like to focus on what I believe to be the principle reason. I mentioned
at the beginning of this sermon that it requires of us an education to learn
how to live with a free will in the perfect world.
Adam
and Eve first lived in that perfect world, but they did not properly know how
to live in it, while at the same time exercising their free wills. Those who
have been born again by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ will also eventually live
in a perfect world. We must live there as those who have learned the lessons
that God has taught us.
The
principle reason God waited 4000 years was because it was during that interval
that he was educating us as a human race. He was bringing us to realize and
accept our own frailty and inability to live up to the standards that we
ourselves think that we ought to keep.
It Begins with
the Temptation
To
begin to understand this, let’s read again the account of the original
disobedience to the word of God, which I call the original rebellion:
Now
the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the LORD God had
made. And he said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any
tree in the garden?’ ”
The
woman answered the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden,
but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You
must not eat of it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”
“You
will not surely die,” the serpent told her. “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.”
When
the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and
that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it. She
also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis 3:1-6
BSB)
There
are several aspects of this story that are unusual and even beyond what we can
know. I am certain that there are many elements to the story that have not been
recorded for us, but you will notice that it all began with Satan, who came to
the Garden of Eden in the form of a serpent. The serpent’s first step was to
plant a doubt in the mind of Eve, which caused her to question the instructions
of God. This act alone was something which she probably never before
considered. Up to that point, she simply accepted what God told her—and rightly
so. He had created her!
But
Satan began by causing Eve to have what was perhaps the first doubt that she
had ever experienced: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in
the garden?’ ”
Eve
affirmed to the serpent what God had told her, also adding the instructions of
not to eat of the tree, not even to touch it. I do not think that the addition
of this prohibition stated by Eve is significant, but what is significant is
that she knew that the results of disobeying would mean death.
What is Death?
We
have to wonder if Eve understood the concept of death as we do today. When God
told her and Adam that they would surely die, what did she envision? Today,
when we hear the word death, we naturally envision someone lying on hospital
bed who has just passed, or perhaps we think of a funeral or a casket.
But
what did Eve envision? I seriously do not think that physical death had been
part of her experience up to this point. She and Adam were vegetarians, given
for food “every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth, and every tree
whose fruit contains seed.” It is not even likely that they had experienced the
death of any animals.
I
do not believe that physical death was how Eve understood God’s words when he
said that they shall surely die. I believe that she understood the concept of
death even better than we do today, because at the very heart of the
understanding of death is separation from God.
The
physical death that we experience on this earth is when our spirits are
separated from our bodies, leaving our bodies lifeless. But true death is
separation even from the source of life—that is God Himself. That is why, when
the Bible speaks of “eternal death,” it is referring to eternal separation from
God, the source of all life.
God
told Adam and Eve, “On the day that you eat of this tree you shall surely die.”
When God gave the first man and woman this warning, they probably understood it
to mean it would in some way mean a separation from Him.
What is Evil?
If
Eve understood concept of death as I suggested, the serpent’s denial of these
words of God not only caused her to question God in negative terms, but it also
placed within her a form of evil ambition—that she could be equal to God. It of
course was the same original evil ambition that Satan had when he first began
to seek to replace God’s authority with his own.
Like
death, evil is another of the concepts that I do not think that Eve understood
as we do. Before Satan planted the seed of evil within her, she had never
before experienced the notion. Perhaps God, on his walks with Adam and Eve in
the garden, had told them about this; but to them, it was nothing more than an
abstract concept.
What
the serpent said seemed to make sense to Eve, and what could be wrong in
wanting to be like God? Besides that, the fruit of the tree actually did look
tasty. Perhaps she should just try a bit. She also gave to her husband Adam,
and he ate as well.
The
results of this first act of rebellion seemed to be immediate: “The eyes of
both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed
together fig leaves and made coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:7 BSB).
Innocence Turns
to Death
Some
theologians call the period of time up until Adam and Eve first sinned as “The
Age of Innocence.” This is because they did not know good and evil. Like a
small and innocent child who runs around in his or her bare butt, they felt no
shame or even anything unusual about having no clothing.
But
with Adam and Eve’s first experience with evil, they immediately felt shame in
their nudity. This is not because there is something inherently evil about the
human body—far from it. We have been made by God and indeed are the crown of
his creation.
This
is one of the passages of the Bible that I take not only literally—that is, the
temptation of Satan, the eating of the fruit, and Adam and Eve’s reaction in
their first taste of rebellion against God—all of this I take as literally
accurate, but there is also a fair amount of allegorical truth to it. When Adam
and Eve ate the fruit, it was true that their eyes were opened to evil, as
Satan had told them, but the results of the opening of their eyes were not what
they expected. They did not feel enlightened. They instead felt ashamed.
Satan
had told them that they would be “like God,” but what actually happened is what
the Lord God told them would happen: In that moment they died.
In
saying that they died, I do not mean that their bodies literally dropped
lifeless to the ground, but they died in the sense that for the first time in
their lives, they felt estrangement from God. They had been separated from God.
The
Responsibility that Comes with Having a Free Will
The
shame that they felt in the nakedness of their bodies was because they were now
for the first time experiencing the inner conflict of good and evil, a conflict
with which we are all familiar. There are, of course, many differences between
good and evil, but a fundamental distinction is that what is good seeks the
light and seeks to be obvious to all, and that which is evil seeks the darkness
and seeks to be covered up.
I
mentioned that Jesus is called “the Light” in Scripture, and Jesus said, “The
Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the Light
because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does
not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever
practices the truth comes into the Light, so that it may be seen clearly that
what he has done has been accomplished in God” (John 3:19-21 BSB).
Paul
writes, “For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But
everything exposed by the light becomes visible” (Ephesians 5:12-13 BSB).
This
is the fear that Adam and Eve felt for the first time in their lives. They felt
that they needed to cover the nakedness not only of their bodies, but even now
hide themselves from God. They felt a separation from him. They had died.
In
these days we speak so positively of having a free will and having “our rights
to choose for ourselves,” but here for the first time in history, we see that
there is also a negative side to having a free will: A wrong choice might lead
us to death.
Hiding from the
Light
Adam
and Eve now suddenly felt exposed. They felt like they needed to cover
themselves. Their solution was to sew together some fig leaves to make for
themselves a sort of apron. This may have done something to cover their
physical nakedness, but it did nothing to cover their exposure to God.
That
is why when they later heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they
went and hid themselves from his presence. I have the sense that the walks that
God had with the first man and woman was a regular practice, since it has
always been God’s intention to have fellowship with us, but this time, Adam and
Eve did not come out to meet him as they had done previously.
The
Lord God called out to the man, “Where are you?”
“I
heard Your voice in the garden,” Adam replied, “and I was afraid because I was
naked; so I hid myself.”
A Temporary
Remedy
The
fellowship had died. Adam and Eve were now hiding themselves from God. From
this point on, the need arose to begin the education to restore the fellowship
between man and God. After God told them of the grievous consequences of their
disobedience, he made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
As
I before mentioned, it is likely that up to this point in their lives, Adam and
Eve had not yet experienced a physical death of any creature. That now had
changed. They have seen that not only did their sin bring a death of separation
between them and God, but it also required the physical death of an animal to
make a covering for them.
It
was lesson #1 in the sacrificial system—the shedding of blood was necessary to
cover the guilt of sin. It was a lesson that was to continue for at least 4000
years. In those years, God would expand on the teachings, which would be
culminated when Christ was sacrificed for us.
You
will notice that with even this covering that God made for Adam and Eve, it
required the shedding of sacrificial blood of the animal whose hide was used
for their clothing. Nevertheless, all of creation was not yet restored to its
former and perfect state, neither was perfection yet accomplished for Adam and
Eve. To arrive at a perfect state of existence, it would take a perfect
sacrifice. That perfect sacrifice would come only after thousands of years of
the education, an education that lasted all throughout the time period of the
Old Testament.
Next
week I will talk about that lesson, it is a lesson that took not only 4000
years to complete, but now has been with us for an additional 2000 years. In
the 4000 years that preceded Christ, the lessons looked ahead in time through
the prophets. In the 2000 years since the sacrifice of Christ, we look back to
the teachings.
Have
you benefited from the education that God has provided, or have you, like so
many people who persist in loving the deeds of darkness, continued to doubt and
rebel against the teachings of God?
The
answer to this question is not as obvious to all as you might assume. As we
will see in a couple of weeks, it is sometimes the most “religious” appearing people who
are the furthest from having learned the lesson that God was attempting to
teach us.
It
is only you who can determine what is in your thoughts and in your life, and it
is only those who have learned the lesson well who will one day live in the
eternal kingdom where perfection is combined with inhabitants who have learned
to live in it. They are the ones who have learned the proper use of their free
wills.
[1] (2
Corinthians 4:4) The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so
they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the
image of God.
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