Where Did It All Go Wrong?

[HKHaugan]

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

After reading the first two chapters of Genesis it's obvious God made everything good. But there is a very important principle to keep in mind from these two chapters. Spirituality predates physicality. God is not physical but spiritual and it is out of the spiritual reality of God that everything physical comes into being. “What is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).” The entire physical realm seemed to be in perfect working condition and mankind was Adam and Eve thriving in perfect harmony. The spiritual, the personal and the interpersonal were functioning in perfect unity. The two dimensions, physical and spiritual, were operating as one. There were however, three built in warnings God established in His Word. They existed to maintain balance in the spiritual dimension in order to sustain balance in the physical. First, there was evil and death somewhere in the background (Gen.2:17). Second, aloneness is not good (Gen.2:18). Third, shame (guilt) results from disobedience (Gen.2:17, 2:25).

Chapter 3 is where what happened in the spiritual dimension erupted in the physical and Adam and Eve, were separated from God, each other and their physical environment. The separation was caused by a separator, the devil (serpent vs.1). Now catch what God says here about the devil. He is more crafty than any of the wild animals He has made. Craftiness is part of the spiritual evil existing before man is made. Even the wildness of the wildest animals cannot measure up to the devil's cunning.

Now a word about the devil. Jesus saw him fall from Heaven like lightning (Lk.10:18). He is the perpetrator of evil and death. He was God's adversary using Job to prove man's destiny belongs to him (Job 1) but lost, beaten by Job's faith. He is the roaring lion seeking souls to devour (1Pet.5:8). Is.14 is the most prolific statement about the devil's nature; self-centeredness, control, living for the moment, status, position, power, manipulation, temptation and hostility mark his nature in this chapter. His presumptuous attack on Jesus in the wilderness hit the core of sin in us but repelled by the Holy Spirit in Jesus causing the devil's retreat (Mt.4). The devil is the first sinner, the power behind everything evil and the instigator of all the self-centered separatism isolating and alienating us from God and one another. He is subtle, always lurking in the spiritual background looking for weakness and vulnerable points he can attack. Sin is his spirit and evil his accomplishment. He is impetuous, living only for the moment.

The devil has a goal and a plan to get it done. His goal is individual separation. His plan is vividly described in Gen.3:1-7. It comes in four steps. Doubt God's Word (vs.1), Doubt God's character and intention (vs.4-5), think and act apart from God (vs.6) and get someone else involved (vs.6). These four steps are at the root of every conflict since Adam and Eve. From international war to relational division, from external conflict to internal unrest, from fear of not being in control to choosing any means for survival, physical or social. They are the precise reasons Jesus faced the devil in the wilderness. From Gen.3 to Gen.6 the sin in man's heart grew until every inclination of his heart was only evil all the time (Gen.6:5). The rest of the Old Testament deals with both man's condition and its solution, the coming of Jesus the Messiah as mind, heart and spirit healer.

Specifically aimed at individual hearts we see the devil's plan detailed in Adam and Eve. When they chose to be disobedient it started with their immediate needs for food, pleasant appearance of the fruit and the possibility that they would always be wise enough to make all their decisions without God. But just the opposite happened. Their first realization was nakedness. But not their physical condition. That pointed to their inner self, their heart condition, they felt alone. They lost the one thing that bound them together with God and one another, God's Spirit. This was their real nakedness, aloneness, aloneness from God and one another. They were isolated within, lost within, alone within. Their immediate reaction was to physically cover themselves with fig leaves. Without the Spirit they were motivated by temporary things which we have been doing ever since. Our clothes, our cars, neighborhoods, jobs, language, our social choices in general, all fig leaves covering our lost aloneness.

Why the things they could see?

Because now, all their motivations were not Spirit directed but self directed and what was in the self after choosing to disobey God? God was 'outside', outside their mind heart and spirit. What took the Spirit's place was the devil's sin which produced hiding, fear, blame, excuse, self-justification, general self-centeredness. It was survival time. Whatever it too to survive that's what they did. Thus, what we see is alienation from each other, isolation within and looking at their environment as hostile.

The results were even more horrendous. Pain was not only external but internal. Women have pain in childbirth. Parents have pain with children the rest of their lives. A woman's internal desire is relational and a man's internal desire is ego building. The ground was cursed and work no longer a pleasure but a grind. The most egregious result of it all---the devil's sting, physical death (Gen.3). They did this to themselves and found themselves in the land of Nod east of Eden. (Nod---wilderness, aimless wandering). This is where we are and the condition we inherited from Adam and Eve.

Three positive things happen in the midst of all this. First, God does not desert His creation. Second, out of the woman's offspring an anti-devil person will arise. Third, God replaces their haphazard clothing with His garments (Gen.3).

This also is why the Apostle John wrote, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world---the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does---comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever (1Jn.2:15-17).”

From here the Bible gives us a history of God choosing Abraham to be the progenitor of His Hebrew people. Then Moses comes as a leader to pave the way for the freedom of God's people from slavery to a dictator and then is given the Law, beginning with the Ten Commandments, to enable them to be moral witnesses to offer mankind a new course of life and witness for Him. But they need more. They cannot overcome internal sin. Out of these people a Messiah is born, God's Son, Jesus, in the flesh of man. He delivers man from the devil's plan through a relationship with Him. It takes His death and Resurrection to show mankind He is the deliverer for every alone person in the world. Moses was led by God to lead God's people out of physical slavery and its dictator, Pharaoh. Jesus came to lead the people out internal slavery to sin and its dictator, the devil. Through Moses God laid the visible groundwork for the real problem, the invisible reality of sin and the finality of death which Jesus overcame in His Resurrection.

This is where the Sermon on the Mount comes in to be the spiritual fulfillment of the Law. It begins the spiritual restoration of men's hearts and fits them for the task of reconciliation of the land of Nod, the world east of Eden, in which each of us lives. This is our real work, the labor for which we were created. Our work is the restoration by faith and through faith in a personal relationship with God the Son, Jesus the Christ. It is the restoration of being right with God, with self and with one another. This is the new land, the land of the heart, the land of the Kingdom of God with the Lord Jesus leading the way.