GENESIS 3

The will and kingdom of God is transparent, peaceful and protective.

• PRELIMINARY INFORMATION

An infamous figure appears in this third chapter: the subtle serpent. How each individual perceives this evil entity differs widely. For some, the serpent in the Garden of Eden, also known as Satan, is an actual-being. For others, the serpent, represented in several forms throughout the Bible, is a negative force or ideology. For some, Satan is representation of the forms of evil and its influence on each individual. It is not essential to decide which form of Satan you believe, (it is a personal decision to interpret which aspects of the Bible are metaphorical or literal) but it is essential to understand a few things concerning Satan:

Number one: In whatever form he/it is in, Satan's influence, the force of evil, does exist. (Moving forward, for ease and in accordance with scripture, Satan will be referred to as "he.")

And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. Job 2:2

He exists and is indeed subtle. Ezekiel 28 and Matthew 4 most prominently demonstrate Satan's cleverness. From Ezekiel 28, we learn that Satan's initial crime was an abuse of power, which he accomplished through use of his talents and influence. From Matthew 4 we learn that Satan knows scripture. And he knows it well enough to tweak it, making changes that he hopes people will not notice and subsequently align themselves with his doctrine rather than God's. 

Number two: Indeed, he exists and is in open rebellion with God's kingdom of righteousness. 

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12

Number three (and most important): Members of God's kingdom of righteous have power over Satan, and most especially when they learn from God, through scripture, about his characteristics and tactics. He is subtle and wise, therefore we must be (Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. Matthew 10:16)

And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:18-19

With that introduction to the serpent, we now know precisely who Eve is about to meet in the Garden of Eden.

• THE SUBTLE SERPENT

3:1-5 Indeed the first thing Satan does is tweak scripture. Satan reminds Eve of Genesis 2:16 in which God gave Adam and Eve permission to eat of every tree in the garden. However, Satan has changed scripture in that he excluded Genesis 2:17, which immediately followed. In Genesis 2:17, God specified that He meant every tree except one. Eve was wise enough to notice the subtle change, and informed the serpent that she was not permitted to eat of, or even touch, the tree of good and evil.

Satan tried to trick Eve with scripture but failed, so he tried his next tactic on her: outright-deception. Satan contradicted God's word, effectively and incorrectly calling God a liar; he told her that she would not die if she ate from, or touched the tree. Satan is satisfied even to cause doubt in a once-faithful child of God. 

Once Satan successfully caused Eve to doubt, he struck while she was weak. He used his final tactic: temptation. In an effort to further damage her relationship with God, Satan told Eve that God was, rather than protecting her, limiting her with His rules. He inspired her to partake of the tree by tantalizing her with the prospect of power and wisdom. This tactic is unsurprising. Satan's own excessive pride caused his own downfall. So, he targets in others a weakness he has in himself. It is his area of expertise, after all. 

Satan's influence is the same today as it was then. It is our doubt of God's word that leads to our susceptibility to temptation. When we disengage from our relationship with God, we either spiral downward into anxiety and depression or inward into arrogance and ignorance. Either way, we ruin the quality of our relationship with God and others, our lives and our character.

There's no devil on our shoulder, no literal serpent coaxing us from a tree, but he exists in the cropping-up of doubt and pride, spite and lust, impatience and anger that occasionally exists in everyone's mind. We suppress his influence, and the power of those things over us, when we are steadfast in faith and communication with God.

• THEY DID EAT

3:6-7 Eve did not consult God and was therefore beguiled by Satan, and tempted by the prospect of power and wisdom (Satan had told her that she would be like a god). Satan convinced Eve and then Eve convinced Adam, for he also ate of the forbidden tree. And then, everything changed.

Suddenly, Adam and Eve were conscious of uncomfortable circumstances God had been protecting them from. There were "like gods" not in power or prominence but in consciousness. They became aware of nakedness, vulnerability, and shame. No longer was everything provided for them, they had to provide for themselves. They sewed fig leaves into aprons to cover themselves; they had never before had a lack or a problem but suddenly they found themselves needing to solve one.

Satan wanted Eve to reject God's will and exchange it for her own autonomy. He wants humanity to rebel against God's authority, as he did. Satan wants us to feel restricted by God's authority rather than protected by it. He wants us to fall victim to every weakness he fell victim to. Whenever Satan interacts with someone, his main mission is to stop them, their heart and spirit, from trusting God and to instead start trusting in the desires of their bodies and minds. But it is not a fulfilling lifestyle.

• WHERE ARE YOU?

3:8-13 Adam and Eve heard the voice of God as He walked in the garden. They hid. They hid from the One who loved them because they had trusted in one who did not. God called Adam: where are you? And Adam explained that he was hiding because he was afraid and naked. Interestingly, in that one sentence Adam explained the whole change: The will and kingdom of God is transparent, peaceful and protective. Conversely, separation from God's will and kingdom causes obscurity, fear and vulnerability.

Rather than accuse, God provided Adam and Eve a chance to explain how he came to know about their nakedness. He gave them each the opportunity to admit what they had done, because God values truth and communication. They admitted their mistake.

It is crucial that we communicate, and communicate truthfully, with God. It is a respect He deserves and we benefit from. Our problems, self-inflicted or not, become workable when we work with God. That progress however begins with discipline, as it must if change is to be accomplished.

• DUST, ALL THE DAYS OF THY LIFE

3:14-19 God then began to distribute due discipline. First to the serpent. God cursed him and subjected him to the dust. God ensured that Satan would never achieve the prominence he desperately desired. God continued: good and evil would constantly oppose and battle each other here on earth, (as they do); and finally: the bruise on the head and the heel.

The bruise on the head represents Jesus, who would come to crush Satan's rebellion. The bruise on the heel represents Jesus, hands and feet, nailed to the cross while doing so. Even then, God had the solution planned to the finest detail. He would retrieve humanity from Satan's grip... and here we are in the midst of that plan. 

Eve received her discipline as well: tumultuous labor would serve as a reminder, from generation to generation, of the value of life. God had given life to humanity and the tremendous pain that subsequently followed would be represented at each individual's birth. Moreover, Eve's discipline became what we know of today as the patriarchal society. God's plan was not to make Eve, or women, less important or undervalued, but to create the conditions within which she/they would strive to be their best. Superficially, discipline is harsh. But discipline is actually a gift and God knew that womankind would ultimately benefit from their new position.

Adam's punishment was labor also, in a sense. Life would no longer be a garden which yielded provision. He would have to work it, and often unsuccessfully, in order to provide for himself and his family.

And finally: death. Eternal life was no longer a gift guaranteed by God. Humanity would have to live and die here in order to determine whether we would live or die there, in God's kingdom.

• SENT FORTH FROM THE GARDEN

3:20-24 Adam and Eve, humanity, were no longer permitted to remain inside the garden until they accomplished a righteous life outside of it. Note that their lives did not end after the catastrophe of distrust and disobedience of God. God sent them forth from the garden but continued to love and provide for them. He clothed them, prepared them for the outside world. He continued to guide them toward the tree of life. And He continues to do all of that for us. 

We are not presently within the protective, peaceful, transparent sphere of the kingdom of God... but when we walk with God here on earth, we walk back toward it. Eve was still named the woman of all living, because through her would come the savior: Jesus. Jesus the One who revives and restores whoever is willing to life and to the kingdom of God, Romans 10:13.

And the kingdom of God is guarded and protected more than ever before; now, there is no possibility for the serpent to enter. There is no longer a possibility for anyone who does not adhere to righteousness to enter. God has created a system of life which offers redemption and prevents repetition of the same mistake.

Like Adam and Eve, we each need to be conscious of and intentional about what we sustain ourselves with. Do we submit to the word of God or to the lust of our body? Do we express the patience and compassion of God or do we express the anger and greed of our body?

In Revelation 20, we learn that Satan has already been sentenced to death. Satan has already been declared defeated... but he will go down swinging and grabbing. Therefore we must consciously resist him and everything he represents.

GENESIS 2

God is a haven for His children

• THE SEVENTH "DAY"

2:1-4 The creation of the earth was completed; the earth was inhabited, so God rested from all His work. He had created a system in which humanity subsisted on what the earth's plants naturally yielded.

• THE LINEAGE OF CHRIST: ‘ETH-’HA ADHAM

2:5-7 God then began the next phase of His plan: to create a human who would be more involved, a human who would farm the land. From the dust of the ground God formed 'eth-ha adham. Not only would this human farm the land and interact with the earth with more complexity than ever before, he would also begin the lineage through which Jesus would be born. This man, Adam, called "the man" in the original Hebrew text, would be a human who was not only more invested in the earth... but in spirit as well. This man's family would interact with God, and steadily introduce God's presence, authority and kingdom to the earth and humankind.

The Gospel of Luke contains the scripture that links Jesus, through Mary, all the way back to this man (Luke 3:23-38). The chapter lists the family history of Mary's husband Joseph's in-laws (Mary's family), as Joseph was not the father of Jesus.

• THE GARDEN OF EDEN

2:8-14 God planted a garden with fruit-bearing trees, every tree that was pleasant to the sight, and a river flowing through it that parted into four heads (Pison, Gishon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates).  It was a resplendent reflection of God's kingdom and He placed Adam in it.

In the Garden of Eden were also two significant trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

2:15-17 God placed Adam in the garden to dress it and to keep it. God gave Adam free-rein in the Garden, to eat of every tree, except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As long as Adam subsisted on the fruit-trees and the Tree of Life, he would remain within the protection and provision of God. The Tree of Life connected Adam to the eternal-life source: God.

But if Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God assured Adam that he would die. For to disengage from the Tree of Life, that is: God's eternal-life source, is to disengage from God's eternal plan. 

Adam did not need to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because God's knowledge already provided for him. God provided everything for Adam in the garden, but did not force Adam to remain there, or even to follow His rule. Though under God's authority in the garden, Adam was given enough free-will to choose to be there...or to choose not to be there. The presence of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil represented his option to leave... to leave the garden, and to leave off subjection to God's will. But if Adam left God's will, he would have to rely on his own, and life would no longer be the resplendent garden that it was for him. 

• A HELP MATE

2:18-20 Adam remained in the garden and God had an idea to give Adam companions: livestock. God formed the animals and brought them to Adam to name. These animals would help Adam to become the tiller of the ground, the farmer, God had in mind. But although the animals provided companionship for Adam, it was not profound enough. 

• WOMAN

2:21-24 And so God put Adam in a deep sleep. While Adam slept, God created a human companion for him, a female. From Adam's rib, probably representative of Adam's DNA, God made a woman. God brought the woman to Adam and Adam said: this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh...". He recognized her as a true companion, his family.

By creating the woman for Adam, God established the family system: in which two marry and become one-flesh in the procreation of children.

2:25 The man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed. They had no reason to be ashamed because they lived in a haven created by God. There was no embarrassment or disrespect, because those things are not the types of fruit the Tree of Life produces.

GENESIS 1

Nothing which yields itself to His hands will ever be formless

• CHAOS TO ORDER; DARKNESS TO LIGHT 

1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is a simple, introductory statement that is almost impossible to comprehend. The truth is that the concept of God must, for each individual, be reconciled within the bounds of the tangible laws of nature as we understand them. Scripture subtly asks, yet does not initially require, us to accept that there is an entity that exceeds the limitations of our senses and the earth around us. Scripture can be read as a history, indeed, and/or as a collection of stories packed with themes and metaphors which eventuate in the complete blueprint of a fulfilling life. Either way, it has so much to offer the individual reader, whether that individual perceives the earth as evidence of a higher power or not.

1:2 However, we will proceed as the former: believers as unable to deny the existence of God as we are to explain it. The proof that is proof aplenty in our heart is the Earth itself, which is introduced to us in this first chapter...as void. The earth has now been formed, and with too much attention to detail as to give credit to mere happenstance.

If we contrast the earth now with the earth as it was without form, we learn a lot about God. For the earth to be as it is now, its creator must be purposeful, powerful, skilled and compassionate. For a once-formless mass to become the biosphere that it is today, its creator must be not just intelligent but wise, patient, disciplined and principled. To undertake the project of life, and the protection and proliferation of life, our creator must have a well of love for His created.

1:3-5 A lot of intricate detail has been put into place to sustain us, but it all starts, and started with light. This is the first instance of the division between light and darkness. Light versus darkness is a continuous metaphor in scripture, a symbol of righteousness versus unrighteousness. It is in the light that truth is seen, and in darkness that deception is done. It is in the light that paths are found, and in the darkness that paths are lost. And just as the formless world had no light, so dark is the life which has not yielded itself to the authority of God.

Nothing which yields itself to His hands will ever be formless; the presence and power of God establishes order in you and your life just as thoroughly, as intricately, as He has done with the earth. God brings chaos into order, formlessness into functioning-form. God let there be light in the earth as the preliminary step to become the light in your life (1 John 1:5) and thus establish order in even the very minute spaces of creation.

1:6-10 The creation story is told as a seven-day event, but one day with God is as a thousand years... and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter 3:8). And even that statement is less a precise measurement than it is a way for us to understand that God's concept of time is infinitely longer than our own. Seven major events in the process of creation, represented by seven days, is representative of billions of years of creation. The discipline of Science does not contradict God, it endeavors to understand Him. The book of Genesis generously shortens the length of time and detail it took to create the earth, it is not an account of a literal seven days.

That said, after a long process of time, the earth developed not just light but water, but atmosphere, and land masses below it. It's possible that we are reading about a very-condensed "Pangaea," that one super-continent land mass that separated into the seven continents we have today (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America) as well as established our major oceans.

• FLORA

1:11-13 The earth formed as it was by the Hand of God, became a viable host for life: vegetation, grasses and plants. He created herbs that yielded seeds, and trees that yielded fruit. The third "day" creation, flora, should not be overlooked or undervalued. How significant that God created something, many things, that could proliferate life! He did not just create things, He created things that could continuously create. Tiny seeds, packed with God's wisdom became meadows and groves across the earth.

• TWO GREAT LIGHTS

1:14-19 The sun, moon, and stars were created to help humanity discern between days and seasons and directions. Until the creation of the greater light and the lesser light, sun and moon, and stars, God was the light. We think of the earth as dependent on the sun, the moon and even the stars. And it is... now. For multitudes of reasons including temperature, gravity, and raw material, we are dependent on the sun, moon and stars, respectively. God has made it so. But we, our earth, and all light can also be harnessed to Him as the source of all that we need to be. 

In fact, that harnessing is what the Bible is about and eventuates toward. The Bible leads us, step by step, to the ultimate "day" when we become, once again, harnessed to God. It explains why this process is necessary, and why we and the world exist as we do today, equal parts flesh and spirit, dependent on the sun and on God.

• (WATER) FAUNA

1:20-23 And then God created an even more complex form of life: fauna. They too could proliferate, multiply. The earth's oceans and bodies of water became full of sea-creatures. The skies became populated by birds. He saw that it was good, and God blessed them; He blesses the souls He creates because He loves the souls He creates, whether they have fins, wings, fur, limbs or anything else.

• (LAND) FAUNA

1:24-25 God then filled the land with the beasts of the earth, the "creeping" things. The earth became a dynamic host of a variety of life, beautiful in itself and in function as a biosphere for increasingly-complex organisms. 

• HUMANKIND IN GOD'S IMAGE

1:26-27 The earth was deemed fit by God to host the ultimate organism: the human. He decided to make the human in the image of Himself... but that does not necessarily mean that our outward appearance is emulation of God. It could solely mean that our spirit, our soul, was made in His image. It could mean that the inward consciousness within us that we cannot see or explain or describe or deny is the part of us that is like God.

For Exodus 33:20 explains that humans cannot comprehend (and concurrently retain their life) the appearance of God. In our form now, souls pinned to bodies of the earth, we have to perceive Him in a less-direct way. If He looks exactly like us, we would certainly be able to look at him.

Note that God added, "let us make man in our image, in our likeness...". Both "the word of God" and "wisdom" are proclaimed in scripture to have been with God in the beginning, (Proverbs 8, 22:30; John 1:1). They may have been the companions to which He alluded. Or He may have been referring to what we often think of as angels. Perhaps our image reflects beings that exist in a wider realm of His creation. 

Either way, what is important to glean from this text is that we are, in nature, like God: We have a seemingly-endless steam of life and thought and emotion. We are thus able to connect with Him, and He with us more intricately than the creatures created before us.

1:28-30 For that reason, God granted us dominion over the other creatures. As male and female to proliferate like them, but more complex forms of life. As a choice, and more merely an innate inclination. And humankind was given the same command: to be fruitful and multiply, but with intention and dominion. And we have, we do, not always wisely or righteously, but the proliferation God set in the motion in the beginning is thriving even now, eons after He set it all into motion.

Another almost-slight, but actually-massive difference, is that God directed humanity to "replenish" the earth. The use of the word replenish suggests that the earth had been filled before. If the earth had been filled before, it had been inhabited before. There is actually more evidence of that, in this chapter and throughout scripture.

In the second verse of this chapter, the word "was" in its original text is actually the word: "became." We know that God creates things with form not without, so it makes further sense that the earth became void rather than started that way. Explaining why the earth became void and needed to be replenished is another purpose of the Bible. Although God is the ultimate force in the universe (and beyond) there is another force that opposes Him, weaker and declared failed already but it does exist. It is the continuation of the theme mentioned earlier: light versus darkness. Darkness gathered in the first earth-age to cause mutiny (Revelation 12, Ezekiel 28); God subdued it and its leader. 

God then cleverly re-formed, and re-purposed the earth to serve as a base on which all souls would somewhat unwittingly-decide, through their lifelong behavior, whether they were members of the army of God or participants of the rebellion led by the serpent we will meet in the third chapter of Genesis. 

Genesis presents the major arc of the Bible: the history and future of 'light' versus 'darkness' but within this chapter and the rest of the chapters of the Bible there is even much more to glean.

1:31 God created humankind and declared that it was very good. That means that despite the chaos that took place before and caused there to be a need to reform the earth, God still valued the souls He created enough to create an opportunity for each one to find its way back to Him.