So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. [Genesis 1: 27 (NLT)]
But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” [Genesis 2:16-17 (NLT)]
When my grandchildren were little, our guest bedroom was their playroom. Whenever they played house or school, the dolls and stuffed animals were the “children” in their imaginary world. For the most part, the dolls were well-behaved and helped in the play kitchen, sat attentively in their chairs, and were nice to the other children. But, sometimes, those pretend children misbehaved and needed to be put in “time-out.” In their world of make-believe, why did my grands choose to have children who sometimes disobeyed? I suspect they enjoyed the opportunity to do the disciplining instead of always being the one getting disciplined! Then again, without benefit of theological discussion, perhaps they simply understood the concept of free will and gave their dolls the ability to choose.
The grands gave their dolls free will just as God did with mankind. If He hadn’t given us free will, God wouldn’t have needed to tell Adam not to eat from the tree and we’d still be in Eden. Knowing Adam and Eve would disobey, why did He put that tree in the garden in the first place? How could a loving God design a world in which man could and would make bad choices? While Genesis tells us what God did, it never really tells us why.
Genesis, however, tells us that, of all of God’s creatures, mankind is the one made in His image. God has the ability to make choices and, being made in His image, so do we. He gave us the ability to reason and make decisions. Without free will, we’d be more like mindless puppets than distinctive individuals. What kind of god would create intelligent beings who had no willpower—who had no choice but to serve him without question? Certainly not our God of love. He wanted a relationship with mankind, not some version of animatronic “Stepford” people or robots. If we could do nothing but love and obey, it wouldn’t be real love or obedience; the love would be obligatory and the obedience meaningless. God wanted man to choose to love and trust Him not because he has to, but because he wants to. So, why the tree? A choice can’t be made without having at least two options—something had to be prohibited. The problem was not in God’s faulty design of the garden; it was in man’s failure to make the right choice. Mankind abused the gift of free will.
Our good God designed a good world. In fact, He saw everything in the garden and said it was good, including that tree. The tree itself was not wicked; it was the knowledge of good and evil that was bad. By partaking of the tree, mankind knew what evil was. It wasn’t the tree that introduced death – it was our disobedience.
If we could only make right turns, we’d go in a circle, but God gave us the ability to take our own individual journey and turn both left and right. Loving and obeying Him was not the only choice in that garden and it’s not the only option now. It is, however, the only option that will give us joy and an abundant life, both now and forever.
If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. [C.S. Lewis]
As the Israelites journeyed toward Canaan, they turned south to the plains of Moab. Fearful of so many Israelites in Moab and Midian, King Balak of Moab sent the elders of Moab and Midian to hire Balaam, a sorcerer and prophet, to curse the Israelites. Although Balaam tried to do just that, the Lord intervened by speaking through the mouth of a donkey, opening the prophet’s eyes to see an angel of the Lord, and being told he could speak only the message the Lord put in his mouth. Rather than cursing the Israelites, Balaam ended up blessing them and cursing Moab! Needless to say, the prophet did not receive the rich reward promised him. Although God prevented Balaam from cursing Israel, the unscrupulous prophet found another way to get his reward from Balak—he got Israel to bring a curse upon themselves!
Earlier this week, I wrote of the Levites’ failure to protect Judah from idolatry but one Levite stands out in his loyalty to God and commitment to the temple: Jehoiada the priest. When Judah’s King Ahaziah died, his mother, Queen Athaliah seized Judah’s throne. The daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, she was as evil as her parents and tried to kill all of her son’s heirs. Unknown to her, Ahaziah’s infant son Joash was hidden by his aunt and survived. Raised by the high priest Jehoiada, the boy’s existence was kept secret while the priest plotted to put him on the throne. When the boy was seven, Jehoiada made a pact with five army commanders who covertly travelled throughout Judah to summon the Levites and leaders to a meeting at the Temple.
The Levites (descendants of Jacob’s son Levi) were set aside for religious service. While all priests were Levites, not all Levites were priests. The most sacred tasks, like offering the sacrifices and conducting ceremonies, were reserved for the priests (kohanim) who were descendants of Aaron; the rest of the Levites supported the priests in their duties.
When writing about nitroglycerin recently, I realized there’s something else in our lives much like this strange chemical that is both helpful and harmful. Like nitroglycerin, man’s capabilities are a dichotomy between good and evil, constructive and destructive, and beneficial or detrimental. The same mind capable of creating a vaccine that saves thousands of lives is capable of creating a nuclear bomb that can take those lives. James speaks of this incongruity when writing about the way we use our words, “We use our tongues to praise our Lord and Father, but then we curse people, whom God made like himself. Praises and curses come from the same mouth! My brothers and sisters, this should not happen.” [3:9-10]
Aaron’s four sons were priests and, in Leviticus 10, his oldest sons Nadab and Abihu offer incense to God in the Tabernacle. The incense symbolized the people’s prayers rising up to God and the coals used for burning it were to be taken from the altar of burnt offerings outside the sanctuary. Although priests were required to fulfill their duties precisely, Scripture tells us the two offered “strange” or “unauthorized” fire and were immediately consumed by fire from God!
Devotions of the Heart 