Genesis: Why did God give them a choice?

Good morning everybody. Welcome to venture.

If you're in the room joining us online, I just

want to say a special welcome to you.

Glad that you're here. If I haven't met you. My

name is Die.

I'm part of the team here at our Mill Creek

campus and I am privileged to continue our journey through

the Book of Genesis. It's a journey, and we are

on chapter two, so we have a ways to go,

but so far, in case you missed chapter one, what

we have covered is that God created on purpose. And

we said a couple of weeks ago that whether that

was six literal days of creation or it was a

million years to do all of creation, what matters is

that God created on purpose, that he created all of

the things that we can see nature, animals, creation, but

also us created on purpose and for a purpose. And

we highlighted that the pinnacle of God's creation is the

humans you and I, and that is the pinnacle of

His creation. We are set apart with the ability to

reason and to think critically, and to feel and to

have free will emotion, and we have this beautiful thing

placed inside of us, this kind of God made desire

to know and worship our creator, and we ended last

week by hitting the first couple verses a chapter two,

where it says that God rested, And we said last

week and it's still true today. God did not rest

because he was worn out from all of his creating.

He rested from creating in order to appreciate what he

had created. And then today we're going to pick up

the narrative the story in chapter two, verse four, and

we're going to do this kind of a zoom in

on creation, specifically on the creation of the humans.

So chapter one is creation.

Chapter three next week is going to be known as

the Fall or where Sin enters the picture. But chapter

two is this in between and what is it that

we're supposed to get from this chapter this bridge between

these two really well known chapters.

And I would like.

To throw to you the question that I want to

ask all the way through the few minutes that I

will be up here today, and that question is why

did he give them a choice? Why did God give

them a choice? Why is choice a thing? Would you

join me as we just start in prayer God this morning,

I'm asking for your help to communicate what I think

is deep and life changing, that is life altering life course, altering, heart, altering, behavior, altering,

all the alterings, but only if you're in it. So

I'm asking right now that you would stir hearts and

minds to be open to respond to you in your name, Amen.

So why did God give them a choice? If you

look at chapter two in Genesis, whether you're in a

digital Bible or a paper bible, your bible probably has

a heading a subheading over chapter or verse four that

says something like the man and the woman in Eden

or the man and the woman in the garden. And

what follows is this zoomed in account of creation with

this focus on the humans. And I'm going to do

a lot of like overview, kind of you know, build

the story. We're not going to read every verse here,

but we are going to read verse seven because I

think this is kind of an important key piece of it.

The NIV version says in verse seven that the Lord

God formed the man from the dust of the ground

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and

the man became a living being.

So the Lord, the source of breath.

And life breathed are exhaled, or the Hebrew is nishmat

kayem into the humans, and.

As a result they are filled.

And formed with life. They become a human, living soul.

This is the distinctive mark for all of creation. These

humans that have the breath of God in their lungs

is what sets them apart. Then, Verses eight and nine

tell us that God placed the man in a garden,

and the garden was called Eden. It's a garden that

scripture says is full of beautiful trees.

They have delicious fruit on their branches.

And then it specifically in scripture says that there are

two special trees that are placed right in the middle

of the garden. So it says, in the middle are

two trees. One is the tree of life and one

is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now,

your Bible might say good and bad, but the original

language is much strong than the word bad. The original

language can also be translated into words like wickedness, cruelty, harm,

and grief, And on the flip side, good can be

translated into words like splendor and beauty and abundance. So

this tree is very specifically named and it is placed

in the middle of the garden.

Verse fifteen.

Then, in fact, let me read to you verse fifteen says,

the Lord God placed the man in the garden of

Eden to tend and watch over it.

That's the new living translation.

The ANIV says, to work it and to take care

of it. So God places these trees in the garden.

He places the human.

In the garden. Then he gives He gives the.

Man, the human a job, says, work or take care

of this garden. And then he gives a warning to

the man. And this is Verses sixteen and seventeen says,

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, completing the narrative of this chapter. If we

just move on quickly to get a good overview as

our foundation, then God states that it is not good

for man to be alone. It's not good for man

to be alone. It's important to recognize that God said that.

It wasn't that Man was like, you know, I feel

not good about things right now. This is God saying, Okay,

this is not good. And it's important because so far

God has said all the things are good, in fact

very good. And this is the first thing that God says,

is not good that man is alone. So then God

brings animals to the man. And as the man is

searching for a suitable helper, scripture says, he names the animals,

he sees all the animal and verse twenty tells us

that there is still no suitable helper found who is

just right for him. You probably are familiar with this

part of the story. So God puts the man into

a deep sleep and he creates woman from man. And

when man awakens, we know later he's going to be

named Adam, but so far he's not named. So when

this man awakens to find this woman, he exclaims, at last,

and that's meant to be like, finally, I have this

piece that was missing, I have this person that was missing.

I have the suitable helper, or some translations say the helpmate.

Have you ever heard that? Have you ever heard that translation?

That God made man there was no suitable helper, so

God made woman to be his helper, his helpmate, And

that sort of comes off with this little like and

she is a helper, this little pat pat pat on

the head. But if we look at the original language,

and let's do that, there are two words that make

up that expression helpmate. The words are and their Hebrew

aser connegdo aser means literally helper. And we know that

this is a helper of equal footing or equality, not

a lesser than, because God refers to himself as aser

about a dozen times in the Old Testament alone. So

this is not this is this is a helper in

the best sense of the word. The next word there

is conneg doo. And this word has two meanings that

both matter, not two different meetings, but they go together.

Okay, these two.

Meetings are equal and opposed. So when God made woman.

He made a.

Helper helper equal opposer, which is a mouthful, which is

why translations pick different words like just helper or help me.

But equal opposition matters because in the category of equal

that flies in the face of many many traditional views

of women in their place in society or in church

or in church leadership, that they have a lesser than position.

But this equal is important. They are seen as equal

in God's eyes. In fact, in Torah, in the first

five books of the Bible, Torah and commentators Jewish rabbi

scribe stages. They will say that Tora sees man and

woman as equal.

But the opposition piece.

Is interesting because if you put a visual image with

the opposition, the picture that best represents a man and

woman's relationship is if you were to take two tent

pegs and say, how do we make these things stand?

Well?

To make them stand, we would lean them against each other.

And in order for them to stand, they must provide

equal oppositional force. If they don't, not just one falls,

but they both fall. They must have each other equally

opposing each other in order to stand. That's the picture

embedded here in scripture. When man says it's when God

says it's not good for man to be alone, and

he creates woman. She is a helper of equal oppositional force.

Her place is to provide opposition, not in the marriage chokeua,

but the good kind of opposition that challenges in order

to make better, in order for both to stand. You

with me, so far good, So the narrative concludes. Then

with the man having found the right partner, the suitable helper,

the one that's right for him, the two then unite

together as one that's the language of the scripture, and

they live in this special kind of freedom.

And that's my word. I chose the word freedom.

Because I think this is a beautiful.

Picture of the freedom.

That comes of the piece that comes of the harmony

that comes of a relationship that was God ordained and designed.

When it's working the way that it's supposed to, there

is a freedom that comes from that. And so the

humans are living in this beautiful freedom, this peace, this

harmony in three primary relationships with Creation, with each other,

and with God.

Those three relationships are important.

If we were to throw a fourth in there, it

would be like inside of your own self, like they

have peace inside of themselves too.

And the narrative concludes with and there was no shame.

Okay, everything's God ordained and designed and working as it should.

So why did God give them a choice?

Why did he give them a choice? Why didn't you

just say this is how it should be. I'm going

to make you do it the way I designed it.

Why did he give them a choice? I'm probably not

spoiling the story when I tell you that the humans

are going to break.

Everything in the next chapter, which is next Sunday.

Chapter three is affectionately call or not affectionately, the chapter

of Sin or original sin or the Fall is maybe

what you've heard it called when the humans fall. I'm

going to call it the chapter where they screw it

all up. And we are not excluded from that because

we also make lots of mistakes.

But this is where it originates.

I want to revisit the relationships that the humans have,

these primary relationships because I want to understand why did

God give them a choice? And when he gives them

the choice and they don't operate the way that He

has ordered them to operate, what happens as a result.

So let's look at the.

Three primary relationships and I want to ask our question,

why did He give them a choice of each.

Of these relationships?

So relationship number one, the humans have a relationship with creation.

So if we take a second look at creation or

a third, if you were here last week, we might

notice that God made the earth.

I think we all know that part.

But in verse five it tells us that there were

neither wild plants nor grains growing on the earth because

the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water

the earth and there were no people to cultivate the soil.

There's two becauses embedded in there. There was not wild

plants and grain things that require cultivation because there was

not rain, and there was not rain because God had

not yet made the humans who would then cultivate the

plants and the soil. Instead, there was mist or springs

that came up. It was like a self watering system.

So this second look helps us understand that with no humans,

there was no need for rain. In fact, ancient commentators

say that this was the first big gift. Besides the

garden itself, The first big gift was rain. Can we

all just take that in for one moment as we

enter eight months of rain and say, rain is God's

gift to us, Thank you Lord. Also, nature itself was

a gift from God to creation to humans. Humans were

not the afterthought. It wasn't well, I made this garden,

now I should make something to go in it. Humans

are the pinnacle of God's creation, and He's given in

this gift of an incredible place to live where he

provides for them and he sustains them. He gives them

what they need to have life, and they have a

purpose in that creation. In chapter one, if you were

to look back at verse twenty eight, you'll see that

that purpose was first stated primarily stated that the humans

were to be fruitful and multiply. They were to fill

the earth. They were to govern or tend to the earth.

They were to rain over the fish and the birds

in the animal and they were to enjoy the food

that creation provides for them.

But then if we go to chapter two, we already.

Saw that they are also to tend or watch over

the garden that they're placed in.

So humans are given a purpose. If we give.

One big word to sum all that up, the word

most commentators choose is dominion.

The humans are given dominion. And maybe your relationship with

that word is kind of off.

And you think that's a bad thing, like go take

control and ruin everything. Just the opposite. Their dominion was

part of the order. They were supposed to be in

charge and take care of and.

Lead the way on.

So the humans are supposed to exercise dominion over creation,

but they are given a choice whether or not they

will do that, to which I want to ask, why

did God give them a choice? Why not just build

them so that they do what they're supposed to. But

they're given a choice. So that's relationship number one with creation.

Relationship number two humans have relationship.

With each other.

So from the text, we can see that God says

it's not good for humans to be alone. If we

look back at chapter one, verse twenty seven, we kind

of fill in the story a little bit by seeing

that it says God created human beings in his own image,

in the image of God. He created them male and female.

He created them so they're not supposed to be alone,

and they're designed in a very ordered way to be

in relationship according to their maleness or their femaleness.

And together they become one.

She becomes a suitable helper or help opposer to him,

and together that equal opposition that they provide for each

other helps each other to stand.

They make each other better.

And chapter two ends with the harmony of these two

as they work together as one and there is no

shame involved. Now, let me just say a word to

my single friends out there. This is not intended to

mean that if you are single, you are not living

in God's designed way.

What God said was it's not good for you to

be alone.

So being in relationship is the key part of this story. However,

being in relationship male and female has a God ordered

design that's incredibly important for us to understand. Man and

woman uniquely compliment each other, are supposed to equally oppose

each other in a God designed way. And while it

may not be clearly spelled out here yet, at this

point in chapter two of the Bible, we're going to

see as these chapters unfold, we've all been given a

choice how we're going to operate, how we will choose

to operate in relationship with each other, with other humans.

We have the choice. We can go it alone.

We can say, I know God said it's not good

to be alone, but except for me, I am.

The one that is better off alone. We have a choice.

We also have a choice to enter into a God

ordained and designed relationship called marriage and do all kinds

of harm to each other, blame and hurt and break

that relationship. And it goes without saying, but I'm going

to say it anyway. As you move forward in time

to our current culture today, we're also given a choice.

I don't understand why. Where we try and define the

designed relationship, and when we try and redefine God's design

of a relationship between man and woman, we end up

breaking it and causing more confusion than ever before. So

why did God give them a choice? The relationship with

God is the final primary relationship that the humans have.

And there's a lot of relationship between God and humans

throughout the pages of the Bible, but there's also a

lot embedded here if you look, if you read carefully,

you're going to see that God cares for his humans.

He gives them creation to enjoy. He gives them food, plants,

trees with fruit, he gives them animals. He provides for

their needs. He's concerned about their loneliness, so he provides

another human for them to be in relationship with a

human companion. And God's opinion of his humans is that

they are very good, and they're made in his image,

and they have God's own breath inside of their lungs.

They are living souls. To the humans he created, he

offers partnership or relationship with himself. He doesn't just create

and say go figure it out. He stays involved in creation,

and his relationship is a piece of how we know

he cares for the humans. And he gives them only

one restriction, just one. Ilicitly stated, it's exceedingly clear. They

can eat from any tree they want except for just

the one, and that tree is right in the middle

of the Garden. Many commentators over the years have suggested

it's a test.

It's the ultimate test.

It's a test of the humans's love and obedience to God.

It's the ultimate choice that God has given to his humans.

But why.

Why does he give them a choice? I mean, doesn't

it just all seem like it's destined for failure. It's

like a movie where you know the bad part is

coming and you're just really hoping it doesn't happen this time.

It's all destined for failure. You have probably seen.

So I'm going to make an assumption here if you

haven't have fun this afternoon watching these YouTube videos, but

you've probably seen videos of a small child placed in

a room. They're with their mom, and there's maybe they're

three or four, and there's this delicious treat put on

a plate on a table and there's a hidden camera. Okay,

have you seen this kind of a video, And mommy

says to junior, Okay.

Don't touch this, don't eat it, don't eat from this.

I'm gonna leave for just a minute and when I

come back then I'll let you have it.

Don't eat it while I'm gone.

And then as mommy exits the room. The hidden camera

keeps rolling, and we all see Junior torn up over

desire for this delicious cupcake and reaching out to touch it,

and then looking to see if Mommy's coming in, and

finally we all laugh when Junior caves in to his craving.

It feels like that that YouTube video is right here

in the middle of Genesis chapter two.

Doesn't it.

Doesn't it feel like God has placed this extra beautiful

tree with this extra beautiful fruit, smack in the middle

of the garden, right in front of their faces, as

this almost like a cruel test of whether or not

they will exercise enough will to prove that they love him.

Notice though, and maybe maybe you didn't notice because we

haven't read it out loud yet, But if you read ahead,

maybe you noticed.

Notice chapter or verse nine with me. Chapter two, verse nine.

It says, and this is new living, New living translation says,

the Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up

from the ground, trees that were beautiful and that produced

delicious fruit. It's an important thing to note that this

tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not

specially tempting or extra specially beautiful or extra specially anything.

All the trees are listed as beautiful with delicious fruit.

And yet we've assumed that this was extra tempting, to

be an extra test of their obedience. That tree I

would like to propose to you still stands today, metaphorically

speaking right in front of all of us, and it

represents our choice. That tree represents your choice. That tree

is your choice. As the book unfolds, we're going to

see this clear picture of God who not only provides

and sustains and desires relationship with these humans, but he's

a God of love.

He's a God of love.

It's throughout the pages of this book that God is

a God of love. It's going to as the story unfolds,

it's going to be reinforced and reinforced over and over.

And this is where choice becomes imperative. It's a must,

it's a non negotiable. It's critical because love requires a

choice to be love at all, there has to be

choice for it to be love. I love all three

of my kids. I know you're all relieved to hear that.

My children are really.

To hear that too.

But Rachel, who's in the front row, whose birthday is

this week, is my firstborn. And if you're a parent

out there, you know that when your first baby is born,

there is a piece of your heart and your mind

that is unlocked in ways that you never dreamed possible.

And I don't mean this if you don't have children.

I don't mean this as some exclusive club. It just

it is something that you can't understand until you experience it.

And when you have this first child, because there is

so much love one, you find yourself determining or declaring

or thinking inside of yourself. I would do anything to

protect this child anything.

I do anything.

I do anything to protect my baby girl's innocence.

I'll do anything.

I'll do anything to protect her from harm from other people.

In fact, most of you, as parents, have probably struggled

at some point wishing that you could protect your child

from harming themself, and.

You would give anything for it.

In fact, most parents at some point wish that they

could just make all the decisions for their children because

we would make them so much better. And yet living

their life for them and making all their decisions for

them isn't love.

That's being a puppet master. It's puppeteering.

And if I take my precious baby girl Rachel when

she's born, and I think I out of a desire

to love and protect her, I'm going to take her

to a mountain away from civilization, where there's no human contact,

where I will raise her for the entire rest of

her life to never be around people that could hurt her,

or she could make bad decisions and hurt herself. I'm

just going to keep her away from all of that.

And somewhere along the way as she grows up, would

it be possible that she could love me? Yes, yes

she could love me, But that love is limited because

there's no other choice. I mean, yes, she could hate

me or love me, that's her choice. But if she

hates me, she's utterly alone. So because of limited to

no options, she could choose to love me.

And that's all. And I'm going to propose that it's

not real love.

It's not real love until Rachel grows up, or your

child grows up and they have the option to choose

you or someone else, or they have the option to

choose your home or another place to live, or they

have the option to choose your way and your wishes

or their own, or some kind of a mixture of

the two. See Why did God.

Give them a choice? Because if he didn't, it's slavery.

If God forces the humans that he creates to do

things the way he wants them to do, them to

be in relationship with him because they have no other option,

that's not love. It's slavery. So why did God give

them a choice? Because it can only be love if

there's a choice. Let me kind of just tie this up.

Genesis two outlines these incredibly complex and soon to be

very broken relationships between humans and creation, humans and humans

and humans God, and in right relationship with each of those.

Things just work.

And if you add the fourth relationship, which is like

a human with themself, everything works. These humans the way

that they're designed, with God's breath in their lungs and

his image on their life.

They go out.

Into the creation that God has given them to govern

and take care of and subdue, and they're in the

right relationship with that creation, and so that creation provides

for them, and there's harmony in it, and in right

relationship with each other, where they they equally oppose each

other and they help each other to stand and together

they become one and nobody's alone, which it's not good.

That they're alone and in right relationship with God, who

wants relationship with them, where they get to choose whether

or not they will follow him or not, and they

experience love that is the God designed ordained way for

creation to function.

But when given a choice, when the.

Humans don't exercise their dominion, which is coming next week,

even a serpent that talks, is their demise.

When they don't.

Exercise the rightful place over that creature, he.

Causes all the things to fall, and.

Instead of working together in equal opposition, they hurt and

blame each other. And that happens next week. And because

their relationship with God is broken because they have done

something eaten from the one tree that He told them

not to eat from, but he gave them a choice

to do it, they hide from God. Their relationship with

him is fractured, and they experience shame for.

The first time ever.

And that's not even to mention what happens inside of

a human when they're not in right relationship. The world

we live in with body ish use and self image

issues and the things that wreck us on the inside

and no peace and all kinds of loneliness and shame

and mental.

Health disorders even like.

All the things that are not in a right place

in our life. And it's all because we're given a choice,

and instead of partnership with God, the God that we

have his breath in our lungs, we run and hide

and choose to not face him. What a mess, What

a mess the humans are gonna make of all of this?

All this is is the setup. It's the setup of

Look what I've given you, Look how good it is.

Look at how I've designed it, says the Lord.

And we're gonna walk right into They're gonna exercise their choice,

because it can't be love if they don't have choice.

And all the things break, and we live that.

Today and hear you have this God of forgiveness and

love and restoration, And the pages are gonna unfold, and

Jesus is gonna come on the scene and he's going

to be the one who repairs the relationship for all

of time for us.

If we choose it.

And you're here today, and I mean, I'm sure there

are a good amount of you online and in this

room who would say I'm in right relationship in these

categories of my life and right relationship with God.

I'm in right relationship with others.

I know it's not perfect, but I feel like I'm

operating how God has designed me to operate.

For the most part.

And there are some of you that are like everything's

a mess, everything's wrecked, all the things are broken, and

I feel so far away from God. And God's love

is your choice.

Here's how I want you to receive the end of

this message.

You and I get to choose a relationship with a

God of love whose very love is defined by the

fact that you get to choose whether or not you

want to have that love. We gotta choose, We gotta

choose if we want to receive it. We get to

choose if we want to be filled with his love.

And I'm telling you, if you're filled with his love,

if you're in his presence, it wrecks and alters and

changes everything. All the relationships around us are affected by

the love of God in us. But I brought this

bowl as an example. I'm gonna ask you to stand

to your feet with me. Maybe you're wondering if I

was ever gonna get to this bowl of water on

the table. This is woefully insufficient, woefully but just as

just a simple little example, if this is God's love

for you and for me, and we spend all of

our time, including right now today Sunday morning, around it,

it doesn't it's it's not changing us. We're not choosing it.

We're just near it, and we have the choice. We

can do that. You can choose right now, eh, that

love thing, that love God thing. Hey, it's all right, glad.

I went to church. I kind of heard other people

singing about it. Maybe I sing about it too. And

sometimes we're like, well, maybe I could get some of

that love and it'll just make a difference. And we

kind of do this like I'm just gonna I'm just

gonna get some of that love. The problem is, that's

not how we were designed to have God's love. We

are designed to get in it, like fully, in his love.

We come back here week after week after week, partly

to learn God's word, of course, but also to get

in his presence, because it's in his presence and in

his love that we're reminded who we are and how

we're supposed to operate, how we're design how the world

is supposed to work around us. And then we carry

all that love that we receive out into the world,

and that's what makes the difference.

It's God's love. So I'm gonna ask you to bow

your heads.

I'm gonna pray in just a moment, but all across

this room, I am one hundred percent confident are many

people who need to encounter God's love.

His love for you. It's for you.

He's given you a choice, and I'm I'm not saying

this to manipulate or try and twist you, or try

and talk you into it, because you can leave here.

You have a choice.

You can leave here and not encounter God's love, whether

you need to just be reminded of his love, whether

you feel far away and you need to re experience

his love, if you feel ashamed, broken, lost, unseen, and

you just need to know God's love is for you.

I'm gonna ask you to move out of your seats

and walk toward the front.

Not because there's.

Anything go ahead and move now, Not because there's anything

magical about the front, Because it's you saying I'm going

to take a step towards that love. I'm going to

go get inside of that love. I'm gonna move toward

God's presence.

It's your choice.

If you need love and peace and harmony in the

God ordained and designed relationships in your life.

That's with creation with.

Other humans, with God and within yourself. I'm going to

ask you to step out and come forward. And I

know this is not all, so I'm going to just

hang on here and I'm gonna say a prayer. God,

right now, all across this room, draw people to yourself.

I pray you would call them, that you would stir them,

that you would tap on their heart and say.

You have a choice, but I have so much more

for you. God.

We want to respond to that love. It's not about

what other people think of us when we move. If anything,

we want to applaud the people that take a step

towards you right now. So God, I pray sture inside

of this room a holy response to your love, that

as people step out, they would encounter that love, even

if it's the first time they've ever been here. One

more call if you need to know the love of

God in your life, in your relationships, if you need

the God ordained peace that can come in your relationships

with each other, in your marriage, in your friendships, in

your relationships with your family, or you just need to

know that God loves and sees you and has a

future and a purpose for you.

Would you come and join us. I'm gonna pray, and

then David's just gonna fill this room with worship.

We're just gonna conclude by taking maybe two minutes, three

minutes just to say, God, would you just fill us

with your love? Would you fill this room with your love?

We will.

We'll give you a formal dismissal after that. God.

Right now, I'm asking that you would first forgive us

for choosing against you, for choosing to go our own way. God, God,

would you bring us back into right relationship with you?

Would you pour.

Your love out on this room and even online. God,

I pray the hearts that have been hard and cold,

that people that have felt lost and not seen win

encounter the life altering, wrecking love of God. Thank you God,

that your love for us is so great you would

let us choose to turn away