It Was All Ours

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In Genesis 1:26 God said, "let them have dominion". Man was to be over all things because God gave him that status. In verse 27 God created male and female in His image and in verse 28 we see the earth and all on it was handed to mankind.

As we look around us today we see man fighting, killing, warring against each other for possession of the very things God blessed us with!

The core of why everything went wrong was pride. You see, God alone is self-existing. He stands alone in that. All things were created for Him, through Him and are dependent on Him. His being flows through all things to sustain, therefore everything is a part of Him and He them. We cannot accomplish or succeed in anything eternal apart from Him, but yet all on this planet was to belong to us through Him. Somehow this divine arrangement has not been good enough for man. Unsatisfied with being a part of God's harmonious plan for their existence, man wanted to be like God, able to live independent and yes even above all the rest of creation.

God's sovereignty was challenged by the first pair of humans, because they sided with an angelic being that had allowed pride to place him outside of all that was one with God. This being, spoken of in the Bible as Satan, the Devil, that old serpent, Lucifer etc. was outside of God's will and lived in total opposition to the rest of creation. He was out of his created place, out of character. Adam and Eve sided with his way of thinking. They chose his knowledge over that of God, the Tree of Life, the family tree of all creation. Like Satan, they too were now out of character, out of the created order of things, out of God's image and in the likeness of Satan.

By choosing his knowledge their minds would work like his and through their descendants the family tree of God's adversary would grow taller and taller, the Tree of Good and Evil. It was not as though our Creator, our Father, didn't warn us.

We know from Genesis 3:3 Adam shared this commandment with His wife Eve as she told the Devil she was not to eat of the Tree of Good and Evil lest she die. But the enemy told her not to worry, she would not die. She would instead be able to stand on her own thinking, be wise like God. In other words she wouldn't need Him, she would be self existing! She would be like God.

The serpent's thinking was food for thought, he cleverly said what she wanted to hear. He was beautiful to look at, how could anything so handsome be evil? He appeared to be an angel of ligh, so she ate the fruit of his lips. He fed her his lie that she could be self-sustaining and she swallowed it. No longer would man walk in the love, power, knowledge or will of God, nor be a part of the harmonious order of God. In fact, through their disobedience many matured into children of wrath that caused all of creation to become corrupt, and their existence futile. Their descendants for the most part became members of the household or family tree of Satan, had his nature and all they had influence over developed the same nature. Man's involvement with this angelic being and his followers resulted in God eventually saying in Genesis 6:6-7,

God relented and allowed Noah and his family along with a remnant of the rest of creation to be spared. Otherwise, man and all created for him would have been extinct.

All the families of the earth today trace to that little remnant of humanity, eight people. It did not take long for them to resume sinning as they were still descendants of Adam. Lust and Pride dominated their nature and as long as man has a need to be important, noticed and in control, the Tree of Good and Evil continues to flourish. For things to be restored to God's original plan our nature must change.

Satan's knowledge teaches us to be confident in our own skills, hiding or downplaying the truth that for those that are born again the Spirit of God is in them, igniting their gifting, to accomplish all things successfully and in perfection. Satan not only only teaches us to be self confident, but self-exalting, blowing our own trumpet so to speak, wanting the world to acknowledge our supremacy. You see, the man that sees himself as superior to others is apart from the order and purpose of God and has to fight for his own place in the sun.

We see this prideful nature in the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28. God, through the prophet, addresses him in the physical as a prideful man He will bring low, but at the same time God is speaking to the evil spirit within him that is no other than Satan himself. Let us read a few verses as there is great insight in them to help us understand that nature.

Isaiah, speaking of him as Lucifer, describes his pride in detail. At the same time if we will look in the mirror, he is showing us what could be our end if we allow ourselves to be swayed by him into making us important.

Count the I's. How often do we say "I did this or I did that" wanting to impress others? Please beware!!! People with this I, I, I, me, me, me mentality become leaves on the Devil's family tree and weaken the nations as we saw in verse 12. They are the opposite of the Tree of Life whose leaves heal the nations. Their end will be like their father in verse 15.

You can see why God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the base things for His servants. God will not use the prideful for anything of any importance as they are in harmony with Satan's thinking not His. He especially will not allow them to function in ministry, even if called, as they would only reproduce themselves in others.

We can be a confident people however. We can be confident of who we are in God and confident in the fact He will always be there to help those that depend on and trust in Him. We can be confident that we can accomplish all things through Him.

In other words, our confidence is in Him not us so there should be no room for pride to slip in. You see even if we seemingly are successful on our own something will cause it to be temporal, short lived. Our personal success is not lasting or eternal, to claim it as our own guarantees failure or at best short lived recognition.

God will not allow us to succeed if it will cost us our salvation. Jesus endured much on the cross to give us another chance. He loves us and does not want the enemy to mislead us. This is particularly true of financial success as Jesus spoke of in Matthew 19:24.

In closing, we were by creation a part of the glorious Kingdom of God, but through sin we were removed. To regain our place in God's Kingdom mankind must be born again to escape the knowledge, nature, and lawlessness passed down through the ages from Adam and Eve. To be a part of God's perfect plan for existence in His Kingdom we must seek His knowledge. We let it change our nature, so we can learn to love, be obedient to His commandments and renewed to His image. Only then will we understand the peace and harmony of being in the Lord's perfect will. Only then will we accept His sovereignty and regain all we were to have in the first place. It was all ours!