Coming Down The Mountain

I love worship!  I am a horrible singer, I don't play an instrument but I love worship!  I haven't always been that way.  In fact for a long time I couldn't figure out what all the hub-bub was about.  I had been raised in a climate of great worship and loved dancing to the music as a kid.  But as a teen you would find me sitting in the back of the service, mouth closed and arms crossed.  Then one day about twelve years ago I was in a worship service in Lausanne, Switzerland. {This was during a year of re-dedication for me. I did a 6 month discipleship school and a 3 month biblical studies course} It was during my first couple weeks there my attitude for worship changed.  During this one particular meeting they had moved all the chairs to the back of the room so that people could dance and really let loose; you know like King David.  However I found a chair in the back and sat in it...so not ready to "let loose", you know like Michal{2 Sam 6:14-16}.

As I sat there I began to ask God why I was not able to worship like everyone else.  Everyone else was just going for it without a care about how they looked or sounded.  Total abandon.  Yet I so wanted to experience what they were experiencing.  Then God spoke very clear and very simple to me.  "I can only fill you to the capacity that you give Me.  I want all of you.  Are you ready to give all of you to get all of Me?"  I thought about that for a minute.  Thought about all the craziness I had been through in my teenage and young adult years.  I knew God was right{as usual}.  I knew I was holding back because of fear and that fear was the enemy keeping me from experiencing God they way I needed to.

So I stood up and began to worship.  First very quiet, hands at my side.  Then I closed my eyes and forgot about everyone around me.  The singing got louder, my arms stretched higher and tears began to flow.  I can't remember the song.  All I remember is that I got louder and louder and began to call out to God in total abandon and total desperation for Him to take ALL of me.  I remember my whole body feeling hot with the fire of God.  And then I dropped to the floor face down.  I couldn't move.  The Spirit of God was so heavy I couldn't even lift my head.  Oh and I was no longer speaking words that I could understand; my worship had turned to tongues.  That had never happened before!  I remember two of the leaders Darlene and Geeta coming over and beginning to pray for me.  Can't remember the actual prayers but I remember hearing "more" and "new" over and over again.

We Were Not the First To Fall (Part Two)

Click here to read the first part of this blog.

Now notice the words out of God's mouth after this event takes place. Gen 3:9 "Where are you?" He did not say "You idiot!", "Damn you to hell", or "What a mistake you were!" No. God said to His beloved created "Where are you?". Now why is an all-knowing God asking where Adam and Eve are? Because he senses the separation that the sin has put between them. God is grieved not angry. Well take that back...He is angry. Not at Adam and Eve, but at the Devil. "Because of you" He says "cursed are you" he goes on. God proceeds to let the Devil know that he will now be an enemy to man. Also that Eve's offspring will crush his head. See the moment that we sinned Jesus came into play. God immediately gave us an "out" from our sin. I will discuss this more a little further on.

So God blames the devil for what has taken place in the garden. This is further confirmation to me that the devil put the tree there and NOT God. Next the Lord addresses Eve. Now this is another verse that I have looked up in the original Hebrew. I do not see in the Hebrew that God is personally cursing Eve. He is simply stating that now she is cursed because of her choice, not by God's. In the Hebrew Gen. 3:16 sounds like this "to the woman said-greatly multiplied your pain-childbirth pain will bring children-will be for your husband your desire-he will have dominion."

To Adam He says "cursed is the ground because of you." Gen. 3:17 Not cursed are you, Adam. So I don't believe God cursed Adam or Eve. God is simply stated the consequence of the choices they made. Remember they had dominion over the entire earth. They were in a sense CEOs of this corporation called EARTH. As we know when the CEOs make bad decisions it isn't long before the whole corporations goes down. So I believe God is saying to Adam and Eve is "Darn it you guys, now that you have made this choice things are going to be really hard for you. This planet is going to suffer because of you."

So we were the ones that choose death. We were the ones that choose a life of hardship and pain. We were the ones that "subjected creation to decay" Rom 8:21. We were the ones that choose to separate from God. God never intended any of that for us! And it grieved His heart that it ended up being anything other than perfect relationship with Him.

As we move on in Genesis God's love for Adam and Eve abounds. The fact that they choose something other than Him breaks His heart, but God still seeks relationship. He did NOT kick them out of the garden on their naked butts. Gen 3:21 says "The Lord God made garments for Adam and his wife and clothed them." See the Hebrew word for garden is "gan" from the root word "ganan" meaning to cover, protect, defend. God put a covering of protection over them before they left the garden. That doesn't sound like a pissed off God to me. That sounds like a loving, good God. It goes on to say in Gen. 3:23 "God sent him forth from the garden..." That is the King James Version. NIV uses the word "banish" which I believe is inaccurate given what the original Hebrew word means. The Hebrew word "shalach" means to let loose, let go or set free.

So why did Adam and Eve have to leave the the garden? Well we know that one of the reasons they have to leave is because they choose to leave. Choosing sin is choosing not to be with God. Remember the Devil? Sin is what caused the separation from God. Same with Adam and Eve. But at the end of chapter 3 its says that God needed to protect the tree of life. Remember the tree of life is "healing for all nations" Rev. 22:2. So this tree is more important now than ever given the events that just took place. The tree of life is eternal life. As it stands now Adam and Eve are in a progressive state of separation from God. The end result is death. Sin=death. So if God allows Adam and Eve the choice of staying in the garden...the tree of life is at risk. Gen 3:23 says "He (Adam) must not be able to...take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." It sounds like God wants them to die. But it is quite the opposite. God wants them to live. See if they eat of the tree of life now, in their sinful state, they would eternally be separated from God just as the Devil is. God does not want that for Adam and Eve.

Keep in mind that even though God is all-powerful and sovereign, He still chooses out of love to operate within the confines of our freewill. So yes God could destroy the Devil right now. Yes God could have started over after Adam and Eve sinned. But that would be control. Out of LOVE he is letting our freewill choices ride.

So God had to guard the tree of life. As I said before the instant that we sinned Jesus came into play. The seed that would strike the Devil's head. The tree of life is part to that redemption. The tree of life is eternal life without the separation of sin. This is what God had planned for us in the first place. That is why I believe death in the physically sense is so traumatizing. When some one you know dies, it is extremely hard to get over. I think that is because we were not created by God to experience death. But we choose against God's warning that we would die. We choose the punishment of death by sinning. The sin is the punishment. Death is not the punishment of God. Adam had dominion therefore his choice was for all humanity.

The final thing that I would like to point out in in Gen 3:16. God is speaking to Eve after she has sinned. "[Her] desire will be for her husband, and he will rule over you." I do not believe that God is making a sexist remark here. In the grand scheme of things we know that man has no more God given dominion in this earth than woman do. So God is not saying woman must now be controlled by man. What I believe God is saying is that humanity will now desire wisdom and intimacy from themselves. That in a state of sin they will no longer desire wisdom and intimacy from God. This is soooo true. The entire rest of the old testament is God trying to restore intimacy with His creation. This is why Jesus is sent! To take away the barrier of sin and restore intimacy. Moreover this is still the case today. God wants nothing more than to have relationship with you, but sin is the barrier. How do I know this? Because when Adam and Eve left the garden...God left the garden too. He came out of the garden just to be close to His beloved creation. He wanted to be close to you.

I am going to continue to explore the relationship of sin and punishment in the old testament. I want to show that God was never punishing people. People were punishing themselves. Yes God does convict us. Conviction being God saying "Careful I don't think this is a good idea!" But the punishment part is simply us pushing past God's advice to make our own sinful choice. The punishment is the sin. So stay posted...

So...What's With All the Rules? PART ONE

The rules or law in the bible were given to help us better understand what sin was and what it did to our relationship with God. As we know sin is a stepping out of the will of God and stepping into the will of the enemy, Satan. The biggest consequence of this is loss of intimacy with God. Remember in the garden when God asks "Where are you?" after Adam and Eve had sinned. The relationship with God had become compromised.

Now from the time of Adam to the time the actual law was given was about 2000 years. Prior to that God just had covenants with individual people. God and Adam, God and Noah, God and Abraham etc. So if we fast forward to the exodus out of Egypt a tribe of 70 people had "greatly multiplied" to several hundred thousand, maybe even millions of people. We don't know the exact number...but we do know it was WAY more than 70. This tribe was now a nation.

This new nation had no land, no government, no health care, no justice system, no religious system etc. So in order for this nation to survive and thrive there had to be some rules and regulations laid out. Now you must keep in mind a few things. God's desire for intimacy and relationship with us. Therefore the need to deter us from sin which damages intimacy. Also the battle going on in the spirit realm. The battle to disrupt the seed of Jesus coming to past. So you have to trust that any rule or regulation that our loving God laid before us was either to protect our relationship with Him and /or to protect the seed of Jesus so that all nations could be reconciled by His sacrifice. Finally to protect us physically and spiritually.

They are no arbitrary rules in the bible. They are for our protection one way or another. Now the whole book of Deuteronomy is rules. Seems like a ton! But they can all be broken down into 8 categories. Government, economics, science, arts, education, religion, and communication. Sounds the groundwork for a nation huh. A nation that would protect the seed and the line of Jesus and a nation that was to be an example and a witness for other nations.

So all the rules are a written understanding of how God wanted the people to interact in the 8 different aspects of life. Remember by this time there were several other nations doing things their way. Usually meaning in enmity with God. So God had to be sure that this baby nation knew where He stood on all things. He didn't want them following the other poor examples. Remember to first and foremost protect us , not control us.

The rules and regulations regarding the tabernacle and offerings were about relationship. As were the celebration of different holidays like Passover. God teaching His people how to relate to Him and each other. Rules about justice and how to treat each other fairly. Rules about economics and principles of finance. Rules about personal heath and hygiene. Rules about marriage, family and sexual conduct. See everything had to be laid out because up until this point nothing had been. Most of the cultures that this group of people had been exposed to were rooted in pagan and immoral practices. Remember what sin gets us....DEATH either spiritually or physically. That is why so many of the rules seem so exclusive and selective. God had to separate for Himself a nation that was righteous among all of the other garbage that was out there. Remember spiritual warfare in on full force at this point. God had to form a righteous people to protect the seed of Jesus so that ALL nations, even the pagan ones, could have the opportunity to be reconciled.

OK so you can handle that. You sorta understand why some of the rules had to be there. But what about all the crazy cruel punishments? And what about the weird almost vulgar rules? Well again lets get into the mind set that a loving God would not make arbitrary rules. So if there is a rule that says not to have sex with animals, it is not that God is trying to be gross. It is because some idiot went out and had sex with an animal. The rule is simply God saying " You know what that is NOT a good idea!" As far as the hefty punishments go I believe they were meant more as a deterrent than anything else. God's way of say "This is really, really, really not a good idea!" I wonder how many times these harsh punishments were actually carried out. How many times would you do something that you knew you would get stoned to death for doing? Most likely never! ( In part two we will discuss the legalism of the Pharisees in the new testament and how they looked for every chance to carry out these punishments much to Jesus' chagrin.)

So I think that some rules were made in accordance with things that the people were already having trouble with. I don't think God was plunking down a great big rule book and saying "Do this or DIE!" God wasn't even trying to control us. He WAS addressing the hurtful and damaging things we were already doing to ourselves and others. Remember this is all in hopes that we will have closer intimacy with God resulting in purpose and life. Towards the end of Deuteronomy God puts it like this. "See I set before you today life and prosperity; death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase and the Lord your God will bless you..." Deut 30:15-16

Now if we fast forward to the New Testament....continued in click PART TWO...

Calling For YOU!