7 Questions - What is This You Have Done?

2. What is this you have done?

When God finished creation, He was absolutely satisfied. He created beings that were morally good. But, in a leap to improve, man tried to become equal with God. This rebellion comes with a consequence.

The serpent comes with a question, casting doubt on what God had said about the forbidden tree. Once Eve starts to doubt what God had said, the serpent sows the seed of ambition. Inviting her husband to participate, both get involved in an act of rebellion. The promise will be that man will have the knowledge of good and evil. The truth was man found out that he was naked. Man believed the lie that God's way was not best.

Which assumption do we start from? God is the author of truth. Or man is the creator of his own truth. When we start from the latter, we put ourselves in a position of judging God. We are more likely to object to something, not because it is immoral, but because it is unhealthy. Smoking has become a worse evil than six of the ten commandments. The word sinful has been more closely associated with chocolate than adultery. Once you have removed a Creator that speaks a word that is authoritative and true, you have removed any basis for legislating in relation to morality.

Man has done three things.

• He had believed a lie.
  
• He was blatantly disobedient.
  
• He sought to deny any responsibility for his actions.

The Bible doesn't just speak about Adam and Eve doing this. We can turn the searchlight of the Bible on our own hearts and find that we are just as guilty. We have inherited a nature that is in rebellion to God. We are deeply flawed and we are inherently self centered. The Bible, in this question, confronts us with our own moral choices. Once we set aside the notion of a Creator to which we are accountable, we then set about to interpret the facts that confront us to fit our denial of Him.

We are tempted to live the life of our choosing by denying God and making up a morality for ourselves. We believe the lie that there is no God. We blatantly disobey the Law written on our hearts. And we justify our actions at every turn. When our view of the world starts with a lie, we will compound that lie to secure our viewpoint. By trying to be our own master, we put ourselves under the ultimate mastery of death. This is what God told Adam in the garden. Ultimately, our sin will lead to death.

Two Choices:

• Atheistic Humanism: Broad and crowded. Assumption is that there is no God. The Bible is not a revelation from God. It is merely a collection of religious ideas. Our study of it can be colored by our own interpretations.

• Christian Theism: Narrow and sparsely populated. Assumption is God made every fact in the Universe. He alone can interpret all things and all events. We are dependent upon God for any truth.

Because of our participation in the rebellion, as sinners, we suppress this truth and we reinterpret the Universe so that we and not God define truth. The very sinfullness of man makes it impossible to recognize the truth. Because of sin, we think wrongly. We are blind to the truth. The deadness of our hearts and our hatred of God may be overcome by His goodness.

This goodness reaches its apex in the death of Jesus Christ, which absorbs all of our denial, all of our disobedience and all of our denial. We don't have the capacity to accept this forgiveness apart from God's grace.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I 0nce was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

These are my notes from a seven part podcast from Alistair Begg www.truthforlife.org