Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents
Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 19 –The Story of the Kingdom Revisited
The Choice
[Bible references: Genesis 1:12, 22, 28; 2:9, 17; 3:1-24; Jude 1:6; 2 Peter 2:4; Revelations 12:7-9]
For God to create creatures in His image, He had to take a risk. To make creatures who could freely choose to love, they also had to be able to choose to not love. However, choosing to not love the one who is the very source of goodness is incredibly disastrous; it means putting a barrier between oneself and the source of goodness itself, indeed, it is to take on evil itself.
So that love could be freely chosen, when God created His image-bearers, He placed them where they could make the choice to love and obey. The two image-bearers that we are told about, Adam and Eve, were placed in a garden which had a tree, the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruit they were told not to eat of on the penalty of death. These were good people in a world where everything that was created was good, but there was a possibility that they could make a choice to not love, and to risk death by making something more important than their relationship with the Creator. God’s creation was good, very good, and was destined to mature and grow fuller, giving more and more glory to God.
There were also other beings, angels, that also had the option to obey or disobey God. At some undefined point in time, in the realm of heaven, there was a rebellion among the angels, the chief one being Satan, and they were removed from the presence of God. For reasons known only to God, Satan was allowed to tempt the image-bearers to also rebel. The temptation was accomplished through a serpent[1] who convinced the woman to question God’s intentions and God’s consequences of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Then the woman, who was deceived, and the man, who was with her and who was not deceived, chose to rebel and eat from that Tree.
The Consequences
[Bible references: Genesis 3:15, 21-24; 5:24; 2 Corinthians 5]
The consequences were immediate and drastic. The signs of deaths affected everything. There was death of relationships:
- The serpent was cursed, and hostility was declared between the serpent and humans.
- The relationship between the people and God was broken – this was spiritual death.
- The relationship between the people themselves was broken.
- The ground itself became cursed, breaking the relationship between the people and the earth.
Everything was corrupted by the evil that had now entered the world. Fortunately, God had a plan in place to restore all those relationships and to fix the corruption created by the rebellion. But in the meantime, the people were banished from the Garden and from the Tree of Life contained therein.
Not only was there to be spiritual death, separation between the people and God, but the image-bearers would also be separated from the Tree of Life and therefore suffer physical death. However, it would be through those very same curses that God would eventually break the curse caused by the rebellion.
God disciplined the man and woman with the punishment of pain and sweat, but at the same time, He provided a sign of the solution to their rebellion. First, there was a hint of the ultimate solution by a future offspring of the woman, and then, He performed the first sacrifice to provide clothing for the man and woman, a hint of the future sacrifice that would be made on their behalf to provide the ultimate covering they would receive. God was not deterred by these events; He already had plans in place to restore relationships, restore creation, and to bring to completion what He had started.
One of life’s lessons is that processes take time. There’re no shortcuts to building relationships, growing to maturity, or pursuing justice. Adam and Eve couldn’t wait for their time to gain knowledge and they paid the price. God’s solution to the problem of sin was also a process that was going to take time. We don’t know the reasons for God’s timetable for healing the corruption caused by sin, but God has clear processes planned out. In the meantime, God did not reveal a pathway for his image-bearers to reconcile themselves with him, except to walk with him in obedience. Except for Enoch, that seemed to not be possible.
Growth of Sin
[Bible references: Genesis 4:8; 6; 7; 11:5]
As time went on, the curse caused by the rebellion, by that sin, infected all the image-bearers who came after Adam and Eve. Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve showed that they understood that sin required the penalty of death to reconcile themselves to sacrifices for God as they made sacrifices to God. However, Cain would not offer a proper sacrifice and his sinful attitude gave way to more sin, and then to jealousy of his brother, Abel, and then to killing him. Later on, we see that the effect of sin, separation from God, the source of goodness, continued eventually got so bad that God saw it necessary to start over and kill most of the people on earth through a great flood. But even in the midst of their immense sin, we see signs of the innate potential that the image-bearers possessed as they created cities, musical instruments and tools[2].
Even after the flood, the image-bearers could not turn from their self-centeredness and they refused to disburse throughout the earth, instead they planned to make a name for themselves by building a tower. To fulfill his purpose for mankind, God to confuse their languages which caused them to split up, eventually creating dozens of different nations. From those different nations, God would eventually separate out one individual from which he would form a nation through which He would fulfill the promise given to Adam and Eve and through which He would create a pathway to restore His relationship with His image-bearers.
[1] Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology. Part II, Chapter VII: The Fall 1871-1873 Eerdmans Publishing Company, (Chapter I: On Method) 1940
[2] Sproul, R.C. “The First City” Ligonier Ministries www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/first-city accessed 2/16/2019
Dancing In The Kingdom 