Obedience And Power To Obey!

Obedience And Power To Obey!

Sunday March 18, 2001

Genesis 2:15-17

15 The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it.

This man had dominion, and the forces of nature responded at his beck and call.

16 But the LORD God gave him this warning: “You may freely eat any fruit in the garden

17 except fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die.”

It was not God’s original intention for man to die, but man is now put on probation.

You see, man has a free will, and privilege always creates responsibility.

This man who is given a free will must be given a test to determine whether he will obey God or not.

On the contrary, I think it was the best fruit in the garden.

“For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Remember that man is a trinity, and he would have to die in a threefold way.

Adam did not die physically until over nine hundred years after this, but God said, “In the day you eat, you shall die.”

Death means separation, and Adam was separated from God spiritually the very day he ate, you may be sure of that.

Genesis 3:1-12

1 Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the creatures the LORD God had made.

“Really?”

he asked the woman.

“Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit in the garden?”

We see here that the question arises:

Why the temptation?

If we go back to chapters 1 and 2, we find that man was created innocent, but man was not created righteous.

What is righteousness one might say?

Righteousness is innocence that has been maintained in the presence of temptation.

You see, temptation will either develop you or destroy you; it will do one of the two.

Character must be developed, and it can only be developed in the presence of temptation.

Man was created a responsible being, and he was responsible to glorify, to obey, to serve, and to be subject to divine government.

We find here that had Eve kept close to the side out of which she was made she would have been less exposed to temptation.

Let’s read again what God told Adam in, Genesis 2:15-17

15 The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it.

16 But the LORD God gave him this warning: “You may freely eat any fruit in the garden

17 except fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die.”

That tree was not the only tree in the garden to eat of.

There was an abundance of trees in the garden which bore fruit; so that man did not need to eat of this tree at all.

Therefore, we find that man appears on the scene a responsible creature.

In this first verse we are introduced to the serpent.

Immediately the question can reasonably be asked, “Where in the world did he come from?

How did he get into the Garden of Eden?”

Actually, we are not told how he came there; we are just told he was there.

The serpent was a creature that could be used of Satan, and Satan used him.

Isn’t that exactly the method that Satan uses today?

Paul wrote to the Corinthians in: 2 Corinthians 11:14

14 But I am not surprised! Even Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light.

The Book of Revelation says more about Satan than anywhere else in Scripture.

This creature was not a slithering snake as we think of it today.

That is not the picture that the Word of God gives of him at all.

This is a creature with tremendous ability.

There is no record of his origin here in Genesis at all.

Now let’s go on with our scripture,

2 “Of course we may eat it,” the woman told him.

3 “It’s only the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden that we are not allowed to eat.

God says we must not eat it or even touch it, or we will die.”

Why in the world did the serpent approach the woman?

Why didn’t he approach the man?

When God created Adam, He had told him that he could eat of every tree of the garden, but of this one he was not to eat.

Woman was created last, and she had gotten her information secondhand; she had gotten it from man.

And so the serpent approached woman first.

Frankly, I think that woman was created finer than man; that is, she has more compassion and sympathy in her makeup.