Fear No Fear

God the Father conceived. The Word spoke. The Spirit transformed. That was how everything was made. Nothing was made without the Word and the Word made everything (John 1:1-4). One thing after another, the creation became a physical reality. When God was done, He was satisfied. “And God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, a sixth day” (Genesis 1:31). There is a LOT in here. The Word coming out of God on the FIRST day (vs 3) and becoming the light of the world (John 1:9-10) – before the sun, moon, or stars were physical (vs 14-19, the FOURTH day). The plants. The animals. The seasons. Humanity. Adam’s first job. Adam’s first and only mate, who he called Eve (God called them BOTH Adam, Genesis 3:9). Their tasks and the framework of their authority and dominion. That’s important.

The Blessing God spoke over them (Genesis 1:28) carried the creative power of the Almighty. They were empowered to increase and have abundance in every way. They were meant to fill up the Earth (with more than offspring), to perpetually renew, supply, and keep full. They were empowered to PROSPER. The Blessing released the power to bring the Blessing to pass. It released all the divine everything that was needed to make it both a spiritual reality AND a physical reality. It contained all the power and energy that humanity would ever need to make it come to pass. Adam and Eve had dominion over everything living and non on earth. Their word was enough to make things happen because their authority was backed by the authority of Heaven. However, with all authority comes restriction, so their one and only restriction was obedience to their diet – the blessing and the restriction became the FIRST Covenant between God and humanity (the Adamic Covenant). They were not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – so they only knew and focused on the GOOD things of God. They had no reason to know evil (1 Corinthians 14:20). The devil conned the snake into letting him use the snake’s natural ability of cunning. He used it to present Eve with an identity crisis. Is she or is she not the image of God? Is God holding back?

She believed enough that she disobeyed the commandment and ate the fruit. Then she gave some to Adam who was there (Genesis 3:6) and HE ate. Adam knew the truth. Maybe Eve didn’t – she wasn’t there when Adam received the commandment. But Adam FULLY knew better and ate. She was deceived. He was in full rebellion. He chose Eve over God. Together they chose themselves over God. They chose to believe the IDEA that MAYBE they were NOT made in the image of God. That maybe God was holding something back. So they rebelled, choosing an identity of their own making (beings knowing evil) instead of the one that God wanted them to inhabit (obedient images of Himself). Immediately they died spiritually – an aberration passed down in their DNA to all people. Death entered the world and the decay we all know and see began.

When God called them out of hiding (fear was their IMMEDIATE response to His Righteousness), they passed the buck. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the snake. The devil kept his peace. He said nothing. He held onto his responsibility even though it got him cursed along with everyone else, and he kept the mastery of this world that Adam and then Eve gave up. To keep humanity from choosing to eat of the Tree of Life and become eternally dead, God sent them away from the Garden. Humanity had to work for everything under their own power, were no longer absolute masters of the world, had fear as their default instead of faith, needed to adhere to a strict chain of command to keep them from passing blame, were subject to sickness and deterioration, and death of their physical bodies was inevitable. It is this condition that became the human condition that we all start with. Evil inclination was now in the world manifested in the selfish desires of the flesh and the resistance to obey God.

Even at this point God did not abandon humanity. He did not leave them. He did not forsake them. And as we will see tomorrow, He did not stop speaking to them audibly. God DID NOT CHANGE. It was humanity that began to alter their relationship with Him based on how much they chose to act in harmony with His nature. From the beginning, it is humanity that moves, changes, and alters the relationship with God. This is why God had a plan in place right from the beginning and prophesied it for all who has missed the nuance of the beginning of creation: “And I will put hostility between you and between the woman, and between your offspring and between her offspring; he will strike you on the head, and you will strike him on the heel” (Genesis 3:15). God continued to meet humanity’s needs and the devil began to look out for this promised seed – to destroy what he now saw as his last rival for mastery of earth and those living on it.

Summary

Key Players: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, Adam, Eve, the devil, the snake

Key Themes: The Goodness of Creation; The Redemption of Creation; The Restrictions that Create Authority for Dominion

Key Verse(s): Genesis 1:1; 1:26-31; 2:8-9, 15-17; 3:16, 22