Strange Encounters of the First Kind
Questioning God’s direction
Questioning the consequences of our sin.
If God loves me why doesn’t he take away things that would tempt me or harm my spiritual life?
Why was the tree restricted? They had access to eternal life prior to their disobedience.
Facts:
Ø Prior to their disobedience there was no problem with them eating from the tree of life that was also in the garden.
Ø The weak spot that Eve revealed was that she did not really know what God said.
Ø Man was created without the “knowledge of good and evil” purposely and in that state were in fellowship with God.
Ø There was the possibility to gain it even though it was potentially disastrous for man’s relationship with God.
Ø What is paradise without a chance to choose otherwise – it is prison. God wants our choices to be fully ours alone – to choose to love Him because that is what we desire to do.
Ø The serpent understood fully why God did not want them to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He made it sound like God was withholding something good from them in this restriction. Rather than keeping something from them, he was keeping them from something that would separate man from God. As children we exist in a similar state with God as Adam and Eve were prior to their sin. There is a wonderful innocence there prior to the knowledge of good and evil. It’s a playful, joyful state where we see the world in wonder. Where we believe that everyone can be trusted and there is no danger. We generally are fearless as children so much so that we are protected by the restrictions of our parents. We understand that it is wrong to play in the street because Mom and Dad say that it is so. We have no fear of the street and it is the restriction alone that keeps us in the safety of our own yard. Then one day we see, our eyes are opened and we understand that there is death in the street and we begin to fear it. From the day that we begin to fear the street we want more than ever to stray from the yard. So what God meant to protect us – not to restrict us – becomes something that we strain against. We become preoccupied with the street and the rules and we forget about Mom and Dad or God. We become too smart for our own good.
Ø It was true that God did not intend for man, while in fellowship with Him to have knowledge of good and evil. (Perhaps the temptation to be good as opposed to dependent on Him. The first thing that we want to do as “good” people is to establish our goodness and so determine that our place with him.) Did they gain the knowledge of the difference between good and evil? Did they suddenly become accountable with their knowledge? We protect our children even from punishment for certain actions when we know that they do not realize that they are doing something wrong. Once they realize however they become accountable. The knowledge of evil would just as quickly lead a man away from God and perhaps even more so. Evil has it’s allure as it appeals to our baser instincts. Then we ultimately become “inventors” of evil.
RO 1:28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. [29] They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, [30] slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; [31] they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. [32] Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
It is the knowledge of God that men forsook or traded in the garden. It is the knowledge of God that keeps men from sinning. They knew God face to face, heart to heart on a daily basis it would seem – but it was not enough.
Ø Having knowledge of good and evil was what restricted them from access to life. This was “the death” which God spoke of. “You will surely die” It was not a part of the curse placed on them for their disobedience merely a consequence of separation from God. Every child born into this world since that day has been born without access to life. The consequence of the few who often ruin it for all. Why could that be or why would that be?
Blame never affirms, it assaults.
Blame never restores, it wounds.
Blame never solves, it complicates.
Blame never unites, it separates.
Blame never smiles, it frowns.
Blame never forgives, it rejects.
Blame never forgets, it remembers.
Blame never builds, it destroys.
Let's admit it -- not until we stop blaming will we start enjoying health and happiness again! Could that be?
Human shame is a feeling of distress at our deficiencies, deformities, or absurdities--real or imagined--and especially at the uncovering of these things. It is also a feeling of distress at the uncovering of our mere privacies.
As generations of Bible readers have recognized, Genesis 3 suggests the confluence of these sources of distress with a few words of great sorrow and mystery: after they had sinned, Adam and Eve "knew that they were naked." For the first time in their lives they could not stand scrutiny. It wasn't merely that they flinched when their partner's gaze dipped southward; it was also that they had trouble looking into each other's eyes.
n Melvin D. Hugen and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Books & Culture, Vol. 2, no. 2.
Human beings generate shame; God covers it with a durable product that requires the shedding of blood. Human beings suffer a metaphysical chill; God warms them with garments they should never have needed.
n Melvin D. Hugen and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Books & Culture, Vol. 2, no. 2.
It is characteristic of our age that people want to have God but do not want to have the Devil. People are inventing gods for themselves, with what I have elsewhere called their do-it-yourself God Kits. But they are gods who do not demand much of them, and they certainly are not gods who punish, although they are allowed to reward. On the contrary, their gods absolve them from conflict and doubt, massage them, pat them on the head. ... But above all they are gods who will not trouble them with the fact of evil. The problems of evil, suffering, and death are not confronted, but evaded and dismissed.
n Henry Fairlie. Leadership, Vol. 12, no. 3.
The real danger in our situation lies in the fact that so many people see clearly what they are revolting from and so few see at all what they are revolting to.
n Harry Emerson Fosdick, Leadership, Vol. 6, no. 3.
The greatest mistake of education has been to assume that intelligent people are automatically good thinkers. High intelligence does not ensure effective thinking--it may actually make a person a poor thinker. For example, a highly intelligent person can take any view on a subject and then use his intelligence to defend that view. The more perfect the defense, the less chance the thinker has of actually exploring the subject. Other aspects of the intelligence trap include the need to be right, the need to show oneself to be more clever than others, critical rather than constructive thinking, and reactive thinking rather than projective thinking.
n Feedback. Leadership, Vol. 6, no. 3.
Ever since the Garden, we have been indiscriminate suckers for the enticement of omnipotence. We are cerebral voyeurs, unable to accept the idea that some knowledge may lie outside our legitimate purview. At its worst, this insatiable curiosity shows itself in our morbid love for trivialities--we are information junkies who cannot discern relevance from immediacy. But even in more respectable garb, we feed our prurient interests with a "godly" quest for apologetics. We have swallowed the lie that certainty requires exhaustive knowledge. We want to be able to "prove God" so that everyone can really know and quit worrying--especially us. God demands active faith; we seek irrefutable certainty.
n James Sennett in The Wittenburg Door (Aug/Sept. 1986). Christianity Today, Vol. 31, no. 7.
It was your great American wit, Mark Twain, who once said, Man is the only animal that blushes, and the only animal that needs to. We are ashamed, are we not, of things we've done in the past. Nobody is free who is unforgiven. Instead of being able to look God in the face or to look one another in the face, we want to run away and hide when our conscience troubles us.
n John R. W. Stott, "The Up-to-the-Minute Relevance of the Resurrection," Preaching Today, Tape No. 79.
Annie Dillard, in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, writes:
At the end of the island I noticed a small green frog. He was exactly half in and half out of the water. He was a very small frog with wide, dull eyes. And just as I looked at him, he slowly crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. His skin emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent. ...
An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog: then the shadow glided away. The frog skin bag started to sink.
I had read about the water bug, but never seen one. "Giant water bug" is really the name of the creature, which is an enormous, heavy-bodied brown beetle. It eats insects, tadpoles, fish, and frogs. Its grasping forelegs are mighty and hooked inward. It seizes a victim with these legs, hugs it tight, and paralyzes it with enzymes injected during a vicious bite. Through the puncture shoots the poison that dissolves the victim's muscles and bones and organs--all but the skin--and through it the giant water bug sucks out the victim's body, reduced to juice.
Hidden sins can suck the life out of us.
n Dave Goetz in Fresh Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching (Baker), from the editors of Leadership.