Freedom is Good News Part 171

Sally and I have just purchased a “new to us” vehicle.  Oh yes, we now have a car that was built in the 21st century.  There are a lot of ‘bells and whistles’ that we have never seen before and so have caused some consternation for us.  Thankfully, this car came equipped with a manual that explains, in detail, how the automatic temperature control works; how the CD player works; oh yes, even how the headlight system works.  I say thankfully, because it makes things much easier!

Many things around us today are quite technologically superior to our experience and so we need to understand how they work and how to use them so that we might enjoy the product more fully – the engineers that designed our car, our microwave, our DVD player and yes, even this computer, had the forethought to supply a manual of operation with the product.

These items I have just mentioned are really quite simple, one might say infinitely more simple than the human beings that God created with Adam and Eve.  And so, yes, they (and we) need instruction on how to conduct themselves.  God put Adam in the garden and told him to work the garden and take care of it.  Work is part and parcel of living a good and productive life.  Work is necessary to sustain the life of an individual – we all need to eat!

They were also commanded, by God, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  However, in this story of Adam and Eve, we find that they bought into the lie that Satan brought to them.  The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  Satan convinced them that it was they, and not God, who should make the rules. 

Have you bought into Satan’s lie?  In many ways all of us have accepted this lie and we want to decide how to run our own lives.  But you and I have been given a manual to guide us – He has given to us the bible, the written word of God.  It is filled with wisdom.

Things were much simpler back in the days of our first parents.  God started them off with only a few instructions and so Satan only had to convince them to accept one lie.  They sinned and of course, the rest is history.  There are tens of thousands of lies out there today that our Adversary has placed in front of us; harmful lies; lies that lead to death.  But God, the creator and designer of mankind, has equipped us with an amazing manual of how we should conduct our lives so as to have an easier life, a safer life and a more Godly life.  And yet many have never read these easy, gentle and Godly words from our Father in heaven.

I have you have appreciated the many articles printed here in this web site.  My hope and prayer is that they may draw you into a closer relationship with God.  But they will never and should never take the place of the words that proceed from the mouth of God.  Good words they are!!

Freedom is Good News Part 170

In Psalm 1 we learn that if a person does not walk with the wicked, stand in the way of sinners or sit with mockers; if his delight is in the law of the LORD and meditates upon it day and night then, “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers” (Psalm 1:1-3)

I believe all of us understand what a simile is: a comparison between two things by using the words “like or as”; an individual can be like a tree which yields fruit. 

John the Baptist confronts the Pharisees and Sadducees when he says this in Matthew 3:10, “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”  Be careful Pharisees and Sadducees your fruit is not looking so good!!

Why tell you all this?  In our previous article we talked about a tree and its fruit in the Garden of Eden – actually there were many trees in Genesis 2:9.  Most of them were good for food and free to eat from, but at the center of the garden there were only two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  In our lessons as children, we may have been taught that Eve partook of an apple from this tree.  Ah, such a wonderful fruit bearing such a heavy burden!!

But really, what are we to learn here?  There are only two ways to walk in this world; the way of life or the way of death.  God’s way is, of course, the way of life!  Jesus Himself said that He was the way, the truth and the life (John14:6).  He also told Martha before they went to her Brother Lazarus’ grave that “I am the resurrection and the life”.

God gave Adam and Eve only one commandment, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”  They broke that one commandment and so were banished from the Garden of Eden.  And so the curse, the curse of death, has been placed upon all of their descendants – i.e. us!!

In believing the lie of Satan, these two original parents of ours, told God that they wanted to be able to choose for themselves what is good and what is evil.  And so we, today, desire to follow in their footsteps and decide for ourselves what is good and what is evil – what is right and what is wrong.  As I pondered the direction of our previous article I see that I made this statement, “As I take a look around me and at our society and yes, even at the entirety of the world, I have to wonder where we have gone wrong.  The things of God seem to be far from us.”

You do remember that mankind went so far astray from God’s way of life 1650 years after Adam was created, that He brought a flood upon the earth and except for God’s grace with Noah all of creation would have been wiped out. 

Yes, God is a gracious God.  Noah and family, by being in the ark, were saved through water.  And that is the good news – we’ll consider this topic again next time.