OK.  The other day I promised to answer the question of, "Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden?"  Well, here it is.  First let me set up the way I would ask the question if I were face to face with God... (Fortunately, I didn't actually have to ask the question to Him this way, He already provided the answer in the word.)

Lord, what were you thinking?  You knew that Adam and Eve were no better than children, yet you placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden anyway.  You then told them not to touch it.  You know the nature of children, I'm a parent, I know what my kids would have done, the same thing Adam and Eve did, oh, Daddy doesn't want me to have it so it must be good, let's eat!  You had to know that they would fall and they would fail.  You had to know that you'd be kicking them out of the garden.  You had to know, because you know the beginning from the end!  What in the world were you thinking.

Well, first, the basic answer to these questions, yes, God does know the beginning from the end, He exists outside of time.  He did know exactly what He was doing and He knew Adam and Eve would do. 

Revelation 13 states that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.  That means that before God created Adam and Eve Christ was already slain. It means that the fall of man was part of the plan.  Let me explain:

God gave man the freedom of choice, however, in the garden there was only one possible sin, it was the simplest of choices, to eat or not to eat, to eat of the Tree of Life or from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

This was simple and we failed.  However, choice was something that the Angels didn't have.  They were servants.  They were not created as children, they were slaves.  When Satan rebelled and took 1/3 of heaven with him, he rebelled against his master, not against his father.

However, when Adam and Eve fell, when they rebelled, they did it against their father.  However, when they did it the caused a great divide between them and their father.  A divide that needed to be bridged.  He provided a way to push sin forward through animal sacrifice, but this was inadiquite to bridge the divide.  He waited for the right time to send His son to be the ultimate sacrifice.  It was the sacrifice of Jesus, a man tempted by everything that we are, but did not sin, that bridged the great divide, It was that act that brought us back into communion with our Father.

It was through Jesus that the choice to have relationship with God was given back to man.  This is the story of the prodigal son.  The son rebelled, the son fell, the son repented, the son returned, the father accepted him back and restored him to his rightful place.

God is good people, God is real good.

Genesis 2:8-9 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:16-25 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

18 The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." 19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 3 1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'" 4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

9 But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" 12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

22 And the Lord God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

I know that this is a long passage to read, but reading the WORD is a good thing :). 

There are a couple of things I want to point out in the passages above.  First we have God planting a garden and placing in it the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The part of the passage I skipped describes the location, somewhere near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Then the Lord states to Adam that he could eat from any tree in the garden with the exception of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  If he did eat from that tree it would cause him to "surely die".

We then see that God finds it not good for man to be alone, and that ends with the creation of Eve.  They were both completely innocent, being naked and having no shame.

Chapter 3 sees the serpent (Satan) approach Eve.  There are several reasons that Satan approaches Eve instead of Adam.  The Bible states that women are "as the weaker vessel", but I don't think that means that woman are weaker, men are to treat them as the weaker vessel.  However, since women and men are different, women will be tempted by different things than men.  Where men are more tempted by women, women are more tempted by baubles, by pretty things, by things that look attractive.

However, I think that is only one of the reasons.  I think the bigger reason is, God told Adam directly of the results of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Eve wasn't created yet.  She wasn't around.  She had second hand knowledge of the command, not first hand knowledge, like Adam.  That would be the equivilent of me asking my oldest son to tell my younger sons to do something.  The authority is still there, but it loses something in translation.  A command from a brother doesn't hold the same water as it does coming from the father.

So Satan questions God's command and Eve retorts with the words of God (see, she knew the command).  Satan responds that God was wrong, that she would not surely die. 

As an aside.  When God said you would surely die, he was meaning a spiritual death.  Satan was partly correct when he said that Even would not die.  He was implying that the fruit would not cause a physical death (though he knew it would be a spiritual death, that's the lie.)

Eve looked at the fruit and saw it was good to eat.  She saw that it was attractive.  She saw that it wasn't poison to the body. She saw a bauble and wanted it, so she ate, and gave some to Adam who was with her.

Adam blunder came just before Eve took the fruit and ate it.  Adam was there.  He was a witness to the conversation, and he let the serpent speak.  He let the conversation lead to the fall.  He could have, and should have, exherted his dominion over the serpent and told the serpent to be quiet.  He could have done it, it was his right, no, it was his duty.

So man falls and we continued to fall out of control until Jesus was murdered and resurected from the dead.  We as the human race continues to spiral out of control, but we, the individuals were given a way out.

My next post will be on the topic: Why Did God Put The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden?

It's a simple answer and it will blow you away.  If you have any thoughts on the topic, let me know.

The key leadership has been asked to research a few topics individually to help build a Bible Basics Curriculum. The first topic I was asked to research is the Fall of Man. These give me a good opportunity to write a couple posts on what I'm doing for the research.

The criteria of each topic are to have one scripture as a summary of the topic. For "The Fall of Man", it's Genesis 2:8 - 3: 22. That is the obvious passage and easy enough. The next is to have 3 supporting scriptures to back it up, for "The Fall of Man", that won't be too hard, though I haven't done the research to get them yet (one step at a time.)

The two topics that I've been give are the afore mentioned, "The Fall of Man" and "Healing and Devine Health". I'll probably be doing several posts on both of these topics as I do the studying. I've already gotten one heavy revelation from reading the Genesis passage. The next post will be an exposition of the revelation.

I hope you will enjoy this as much as I will. I also hope that as I go through the process you learn something about studying the Bible. I do wish I had my laptop at work today, I could do a much more in depth word study. That will have to wait until tonight. For what I post today, it'll have to be the non-Hebrew interpreted version of things.

While in service on Sunday, our pastor said something that I found profound.  It's not that I didn't know it, it's that I never thought about it.  The statement that he made was:"God exists outside of time."

I want to elaborate on that though.

Does God predestine who is going to be saved?  Many people will say yes, and many will say no.  This can decend into an argument that does not gain anyone anything.  The reality is both are right and both are wrong.  Since God exists outside of time, he can't "predestine" anything,  Predestination by it's nature is a statement of time.  Since He exists outside of time it literally becomes that He knows the beginning from the end.  It's not predestined, it's preknown.

Predestination, the doctrine, precludes that you have no choice to follow Christ, you either will, or you will not, the choice is not yours.  However, that would make humanity lower than the angels and the word of God says that We were created a little lower than Elohim.  We were created a little lower than GOd and a lot higher than the Angels.  We were created in the image of God, not the image of angels.  God gave us the choice to love Him.  It's only when you choose to love God that it is a true expression of love.  To be forced to love God is to be a Slave, not a Bond-Servant.

I give myself to my God everyday.  I choose to give myself to Him.  He doesn't force me.  Because I give myself to Him and He accepts me, that makes me a bond-servant.  I am bound to Him by choice, His and mine.

Because God exists outside of time and space, He can speak in the past tense of those things that haven't happened yet.  I am assailed by diabetes.  That is the current condition of my body.  However, the word of God says that By His stripes I was healed.  It also says that to those with clean hands and a pure heart, they are the healed of the Lord.  These are statements in the past tense of things that haven't happened yet.

This means that God looks at me and sees me as healed.  The only thing standing in the way of me becoming healed is getting it into my thick skull that I have been healed.  I also have to ensure that my hands are clean and my heart is pure.  That is what this journey of introspection is all about, to purify myself and sanctify my life for service.

I know this post seems to be all over the board, and it is so, but I have a lot going through me and sometimes it's hard to focus.  One of these days I'll be able to have the venue to put this stuff out a little more efficiently and not fall into scattered diatribe.  However, that day is not today.

God bless you, everyone!

Click play… This is awesome!!!

I need to slow down at times.

I need to pull back the reigns and get the horse under the right control.  Just because I want something to happen in my time, doesn't mean it's the right time.

I'll be plain with this.  I'm the Microsoft Practice Director at ConsultUSA.  The biggest part of my job is to be billable at client sites using my skill at developing applications using Microsoft Technologies.  However, I've been losing the joy of developing ever since accepting that I was being called to Sarasota.  I want to move out of my career as a developer and get moving on to the next part of my life.  However, it's not the time.  I know it's not the time, but the joy is waning.

I want to be studying to show myself approved.  I want to be working on a plan for opening the church in Sarasota.  I want to be in a place where I can pray for the area that I'm being called to, and the other areas that FFCC is expanding to.

In the meantime, I'm still doing my work and doing the other things when I can.

I'm not asking God to increase my patience, however, it is something that the next couple of years will be developing in me.