Story 2: Mutiny in the Kingdom
Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden - stained glass
Imagine it. The first man and woman lived in a glorious Garden. They had lives of perfect rest and happiness. They never had to worry about having enough food, about bad weather or illness or growing old. It was a world of endless bliss. God, the Mighty Lord over everything that is, was always near them. He would talk with them and walk with them in the Garden in the cool of the day. They tended to the Garden in God’s perfect will, and there was no sorrow or pain.
If only the first humans had continued to live in that perfect dependence on Him. If only they had kept their allegiance to the King of Creation. But they didn't. And there was a reason for it. There was another creature in the Garden. He was a being so full of evil that he hated God Himself. He had once been a brilliant angel, beautiful to behold, but he rebelled against the Lord.How could any creature turn away from such a high and holy God? Why fight against a Kingdom of wondrous Joy and Light? This is something we don't understand. Some of the greatest minds have tried to figure it out, but couldn't. Rebelling against a good and loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God doesn't make sense, but he did it anyway.
The angel of rebellion was named Lucifer. We usually call him Satan or the Devil. He convinced a third of the angels in Heaven to fight against the Lord with him. There was a terrible war in Heaven. The rest of the angels remained loyal to the Lord and fought against Lucifer’s demonic army. God’s holy angels won the great battle, and Lucifer and all of his minions were cast out of Heaven. But their rebellion did not end. Lucifer was searching for a way to stage another attack. And what better way than by invading the kingdom of God’s glorious new creation?
The only problem for Satan was that God is so massively and immensely powerful that there was no way he could beat Him by force. He would have to move in secret, finding weak points in the Kingdom. Satan knew that God created the humans to be special. They were made in God's image, and he loved them with favor and intensity. He honored them with the high role of watching over the beautiful earth he had made. If he could get these humans to side with him, to betray their Lord by rejecting him and sowing their allegiance to Satan, it would strike at the very heart of God. So he plotted and schemed against the man and woman. They were the weak link.
When Satan came to destroy Adam and Eve, he didn’t show up looking like a demonic, fallen angel. He came in disguise. He came to the woman as a snake. He convinced her to do the one thing that God had told them not to do. He told her that God was wrong, and that nothing bad would happen if she ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God had protected them with truth, and Satan told them that the wisdom and command of God was wrong. The woman believed Satan instead of her Lord. She put her faith in the enemy of God. She took the fruit from the tree and ate it, and then she handed it to her husband. The mutiny had begun.
It is hard to know when the first sin really happened. Was it when the woman kept listening to the snake even after it said that God was lying? Was it when she gazed on the fruit that God had forbidden? Was it only after she decided to eat the fruit and raised her hand to take it? When did she cross the line from loyalty to her perfect Lord into sin and rebellion against Him? Or was it the whole string of choices?
It is hard for us to understand how great this sin was. God was a perfect King, a high and holy Master who abundantly blessed His creation. He had poured out His lavish love on them. He had bestowed on this man and woman the unimaginable dignity of being a part of His creative work. This is the God who sits on His brilliant, gleaming white throne in Heaven, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of angels who worship Him in absolute obedience and constant praise. He is utterly worthy and totally right in every aspect of everything He does and says. Everything that exists is a result of His plan. His knowledge of how things work is utterly complete and perfect. What utter folly, what total foolishness, to assume that He somehow missed the point about...anything.
How could she do it? And how could Adam join her? How could they fail to understand the unimaginable privilege of their communion with God? How could they let anything separate them from the Glorious One who loved them so?
But they did. And in doing so, they brought upon themselves a terrible curse. They were created to live in constant nearness to their Maker, but when they entrusted themselves to Satan, they severed that possibility for themselves. The result was utterly devastating. God is the only source of good in the universe. The only thing that is left is darkness and death. Evil and sin aren't even real things on their own...they are what happens when the good and righteous things of God are made twisted and corrupt by those who reject Him.The things of God are good and pure and whole. The more they move away from God, the more they become distorted, broken, dirty, and destructive.
When God gave the first man and woman authority over the earth, He meant it. When they brought sin and death into the world, it wasn’t just for themselves and their children. They brought it into the very heart of God’s Kingdom. He had put them in charge to rule and reign, and their sin brought contamination on all that He had made.
From that day forward, every living thing goes through suffering, and all of God’s creatures die. It was a catastrophe of cataclysmic size. It is impossible for us to imagine the intensity and greatness of evil that was set in motion on that day. Every war, every famine, every brutal murder, and every deadly disease can be traced back to that awful moment when humanity chose to give allegiance to the enemy of God.
Satan had won a stunning victory. When the first humans gave their loyalty to him, they gave him great power over them. He would be able to wage war against them and destroy the beloved of God for as long as the curse remained.
But God had a plan. God is omniscient. He stands outside of history. He knows everything that will ever happen across all time. He understood that all of this would happen long before He created the world, and He already had a rescue plan. He knew He was going to give humanity the great gifts of life, of nearness to Him, of stewardship fo the earth. He knew they would fail, but He also knew that He would be able to bring His people from the kingdom of Satan’s great darkness and into the Kingdom of His glorious light. And to Him, it was worth it. For some wild and holy reason, we were worth it to Him, in spite of what it would cost Him. Even as God declared the consequences of the choices of first man and woman, even as the horrors of the curse rolled down, His great mercy and love were on display. The man and woman would have to leave the Garden. From that day forward, men would have to labor against the hard ground. Woman would suffer to bring children into the world, and though they would still be made in His image, it would be a broken image. And yet...though the first woman had rebelled against Him...God took her back for Himself. He put hostility between her and the Serpent. And He promised that one day, a son of the first woman would come and crush the Serpent’s head. He would defeat the powers of the Kingdom of Darkness and bring an end to the terrible curse.
And so, in spite of the terrible rejection of God, by His grace, humanity would live on. The first man, Adam, named the first woman "Eve," which means "life-giving." In doing so, he showed his repentance and renewed faith in God, believing that He would provide descendants in spite of their rebellion.
The rest of the story of the Bible is the story of God’s epic rescue plan. It tells us how He began this salvation work in the past, how He continues it now, and how He is going to finish the work in the future. For He promised that one day, through a son of Adam and Eve, He would bring a new, everlasting Heaven and Earth that is totally free from the curse.
The unimaginably great and wildly unbelievable goodness in this plan is that this Son of Adam was going to be God Himself. Nobody else had the power to do it, so He had to come as the Hero of His own story and save the humans that had mutinied against Him.
And so the story begins, where the Prince of Heaven, the most beloved Son of God, would give up His own life to pay the price for the sinners of earth. Every person that puts their faith in Him will find themselves saved. They will live forever in a perfect Kingdom where they will be free to live in perfect dependence on God. They will have the unspeakably great dignity of being called His own adopted child, and there will be no more evil, sadness, pain, or death.
The story we are about to begin is very exciting because it is the story of when God came to earth on His great rescue mission. But there were many remarkable ways that the Lord works in human history before He sent his Son. If we understand those details, we will understand a lot more about the things Jesus said and did when He came. For the next few stories, we will explore the ways God prepared the path for the coming of His Son.