Genesis 3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil
Who is God? That is a fundamental question of all time and all creation. In Genesis 1, I mentioned that there is a first question, “Who am I? Why am I here? How did I get here?” That may sound like three questions, but the answer to all three questions is one answer. The answer is God. Then the question is, “Who is God?” If you go to Europe and see some of the magnificent cathedrals which have existed for centuries, like Notre Dame, they have huge, vaulted ceilings and incredible pinnacles and steeples all which point upward toward God. I’m not saying the theology of the people who use Notre Dame is correct. I am simply saying there was an acknowledgement of God, His place in the world, and Who He is.
In contrast, many of the buildings that we see today as churches are kind of low-slung, spread out, and the spotlight is on the stage, which is not to say the platform. I think it is possible to make too much of what a building is communicating, but I think our culture, our art, our music, our buildings, etc. are an indication to some extent of who we believe God to be. Many people would like to say, “Well, God is just a loving God, a God of mercy.” Oftentimes that is used to back people off who claim any sort of standard of decency and morality. On the other hand, other people say, “God is a God of judgment. God will get you,” and they seem to forget that God is a God of mercy. The upshot is that God is not who I wish Him to be or who the culture says that He is. God is who He is and who He has revealed Himself to be in His own Word.
In Genesis 3, the devil in the form of a serpent came to Eve and tempted her in the Garden of Eden, a place of perfection untainted by sin as of yet. In verse 5 he makes this accusation about God, “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” God had said, “Do not touch. Do not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and the devil was tempting her to do just that saying, “You shall be as gods.”
Let me tell you something, the god you serve determines the world in which you live. So much of the world as you see it, depends on God as you know Him to be. The devil did what the devil often does. He asks a question and offers a lie. He did not begin by going head-to-head with God. He instead posed a question, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” He questioned God and then only later does he accuse God, “God knows. He is holding out on you. You will be as gods.”
So, if we don’t know who God is, we really have a hard time knowing who we should be. The god you serve determines the world in which you live. Think about shame or the lack thereof. In Genesis 2:25 it says that Adam and Eve “were not ashamed.” That very quickly changed because of sin. The Bible speaks in the New Testament of those “whose glory is in their shame.” They are boastful of that which is shameful and they are ashamed of that which is right. So, what you are ashamed of and what you are proud of depends on Whom you believe God to be.
Your relationships with other people largely depend on your relationship to God and who you believe God to be. When Adam and Eve sinned, they hid, but they could not hide. God found them, and Adam, when God asked him what had happened, said, “Well, the woman you gave to me offered me of the tree and I ate it.” He is accusing both Eve and God in one fell swoop.
In the next chapter the first murderer ever born was the first human ever born. Adam and Eve were fresh from the hand of God. Cain was the first person ever born and he promptly murders his brother. It does not take us long to mess things up. We mess things up between ourselves because things are messed up between us and God, and we can’t know how to be right with God if we can’t even acknowledge who God is.
Think about the Garden as opposed to the wasteland that the world became. God says, “Because of your sin, Adam, cursed is the ground for your sake.” Now, some Bible teachers believe that the Garden of Eden, roughly speaking, was found in the area that is now Iraq. Whatever Iraq is now, it is not a Garden of Eden, green, verdant, happy, and peaceful. That is just a stark example of what the world is. It is a world without peace. The difference between the Garden and the wasteland is who God is and how you respond to Him.
Think about work and toil. We find work before the fall of man. We find work after sin. We find work in the very last chapter of the Bible. Revelation 22:3 says that the Lord’s servants will serve Him. The difference between work and toil is that work is God’s gift but toil is sin’s curse. So, are you serving? Are you happy and using your energies for that which matters, or are you just in a rat race? It would be a burden to be God if you are not God, to have the weight of decision and the burden of ability or lack thereof, to have all the responsibilities that God would have but not to be God. That is where we live so much of the time. We live with anxiety, anger, and frustration because we are trying to be God, make things happen, and choose our own way when we are not God. It is like trying to live the Christian life without Christ. The only one who has ever lived the Christian life is Christ. So, it is not me doing something for God that matters, it is Christ living His life through me and God having His way in my life.
So, what is your life today, shame or pride? Your relationships with others and the world in which you live, are they a garden or a wasteland? Your life’s effort, are they work or toil? So much of this boils down to the god whom you serve. I am only as able as the God I serve. If my god is money, then I am good as long as the money lasts. If my god is health, I am good as long as my health lasts. If my god is my ability, at some point I am going to outlive my ability. But, if my God is the Creator, I am as capable as the God I serve as He lives His life through me because the God you serve determines the world you live in.