Good morning,
Did God really say . . .
It all started with a casual question, followed by a lie, followed by a daring choice, that led to the power of guilt, fear and death. God’s enemy from before the beginning of time, Lucifer, found a willing host in a very bright snake in the garden of Eden. With his help he began his plan to destroy the beautiful Earth that the Eternal God has just created. His casual question was designed to open the minds of this new and innocent man and woman to the possibility that their garden friend and creator was hiding something from them. They were drawn to his version of what was going on and when they heard that what they had been told was a lie, they decided to make a daring choice and say yes to what their creator had told them was a forbidden food. They were so shocked by the guilt and fear of what happened next that they felt they had the right to accuse their maker of the mess they were in. What they didn’t know was that Lucifer and his fallen angles were celebrating the reality that now they had guilt, pain and death on their side of the battle.
That was thousands of years ago, and the battle is still going on. There have been some wonderful changes in how the battle is being fought, but those of us who are living today still have to deal with the same basic approach to what Adam and Eve faced back there in the garden. In my own life time I can remember how brilliant people were telling us that even though God said he had created the Earth in six days, there was no way that could happen. I can remember sincere people telling us that the man Jesus was just a great teacher or a fraud who couldn’t be trusted. I can remember them saying that you couldn’t believe what the Bible was saying because it was just a book full of clever lies. I can remember how we were told that the whole idea of sin was a religious control method and we didn’t have to worry about what happened after we died. I can remember people saying that the blood of Jesus had nothing to do with getting right with God and that being good was all that was needed for us to get by in life. Now they are telling us there is no God or if there is one, he will just love us all into heaven. In the last 50 years or so we have been told that marriage is not that important. In more recent days we have been told that men marrying men and women marrying women is just fine and if you wanted to change from one to the other that was okay as well. Now in the last couple of years it has become a written law that if you say anything else you are an enemy of the good people all around us. Dear Lord, please help us not to be taken in by the questions, the lies, and the excitement of having things our way. Please help us to believe what you have said and live and die by the truth you have given us no matter what anyone else believes.
Genesis 3:1 The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”
Roy Wisner
