Saturday.

Saturday- From the “First Time Reader’s” Perspective

I think that this is a very odd story. God? Talking serpents? Does that mean snake? Or dragon? Or Lizard? This seems like a cartoon or that movie with the talking beaver and lion named Aslan. Its hard for me to believe this is actually true because the media has turned stuff like this into a joke my whole life. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole “God” thing anyway. Didn’t they do a documentary on discovery channel trying to disprove all this?

I have a lot of questions.

It’s weird because, at first glance, I pass this off as another “neat story,” but looking deeper I realize that there’s nothing “neat” about it. It’s actually rather messy. It actually... looks a lot like my life.

At this point I start to take it more seriously.

I put myself in their shoes. I would have done the same thing probably. And I probably would’ve felt the way they did.

And then it hits me, sometimes I do things in my life that don’t necessarily break the law or hurt anyone, but, I feel like I shouldn’t be doing them. I feel guilty for doing some things. I feel...

like they did.

Maybe there’s more to this story then a perfect world and a fast talking snake trying to sell me a bad apple.

Maybe this is my story.

But if it is, what do I do about it? How do I make the shame go away? How do I fix this problem? Can I even fix this problem? Is there hope?

Maybe I should read a little further to see how the story ends..

Friday

yeah I know... I got busy and didn't finish this series 2 weeks ago when I was supposed too.

Friday- Adam and Eve’s Perspective

I trusted God completely, I had no reason not too. I knew that He would always provide for me and my wife. He created us and gave us this perfect world to live in. The only thing He told us was we were not allowed to eat fruit from one tree, I didn’t think much of it, He gave us everything else to have. I was at peace with Him and my wife. We were very happy. We didn’t even want anything else.

Then that serpent came, he told us that God was lying to us, that if we ate the fruit then we wouldn’t die, that God just didn’t want us to be like Him and see good and evil.

God wanted us to be blind.

We thought, “if God truly loved us so much then why would He withhold something like this from us?” We didn’t think it was that bad, I mean, the fruit looked so delicious, could something that looked that good really be bad? Besides, we wanted the wisdom that the serpent told us it would give us.

So we ate it.

The serpent was right, our eyes were definitely opened. We saw good and evil, mostly we saw evil. We realized that we were naked, that we were dirty.

We learned what “innocent” meant...

We learned that we were not.

We learned that satan lied, we didn’t gain wisdom, well, not the good kind. What could we do after that, our world wasn’t bliss like before, it was taken away from us in the blink of an eye, we entered this life long downward spiral. We had to do something! God would see us naked! We had to hide! He was coming, He would see us!

What could we do?

We made clothes from leaves, we hid in the bushes. We felt so shameful.

This is not what I was promised. If I could only go back, but I can’t. This is not what I wanted. I was betrayed. We were the first two people in the world to feel bad, guilty, shameful...

naked.

Thursday...

Thursday- My Understanding of What Jesus Did.

I think I kinda jumped the gun and answered this on Wednesday but what can I say, I got excited.

Jesus did what we obviously cannot and did not do! He lived sinlessly. We are confined to it, you can try as hard as you want to be perfect but you will eventually fall, you will give in at some point. He did not! He is endurance! Like I said earlier, He is the stronghold for all of mankind. Actually, God knows that we aren’t perfect. If He didn’t then He wouldn’t have given us Jesus. This doesn’t mean that we have a free ticket to do what we want but what it does mean is that, whatever we did, it’s been fixed. What Jesus asked of us was to let Him bare our burdens, to follow Him and He will take care of the rest.

What a relief it is knowing it isn’t about what we do,

but about what He did, and does.

He asks for our best, but for me, my best wasn’t good enough. Well He took my best, and then filled in the gaps, He exchanged my failures for His fulfillments. Paul calls the followers “saints” not “sinners,” well if we are all sinners then how can we be saints? We are saints because through Jesus’ sacrifice the sin is taken away.

Back to the story. When Adam and Eve chose to sin, and corrupt the perfection of God, mankind needed a scapegoat, we needed someone to take the fall for what we did. Naturally, it would be the criminal who paid the penalty, but God’s love for His children was so strong that He chose His Son to die in the place of us. Jesus paid that penalty for us.

Wednesday

If you haven't, go ahead and read the directions so you know what's going on... they're at the bottom.

Wednesday- Satan’s Perspective

Joy! Pride!

I am the epitome of awesome!

I feel great because I feel like I just battled God, and won. I could call it satisfaction. I mean, what’s He gonna do now? I just screwed up His perfect creation, His “prized possession.” They aren’t so special now are they! Ha! God created them and I convinced them to turn on Him in just a short conversation with those useless humans. Now I have them forever. I bet He never saw that coming. Probably doesn’t even have a backup plan...

Oh wait, could He have a backup plan?

What does it matter anyway, if I made such quick work of these two I’m sure I can handle whatever He throws at me. Just let Him try again with one of these stupid “humans.”

What are they compared to me.

My thoughts-

Little does he know, God does have a backup plan. Thousands of years later, a “man” named Jesus will come on the scene. He will enter through a birth, like any ordinary man (only extremely unordinary.) His birth will be recorded but we will also be told that He is much older than that. In fact, He was there when the earth was created, He transcends age! He will grow like a man. He will have all the appearances, temptations, and problems of a man. He will be fully human, and yet, fully God.

He will be called “The Son of God.”

The Messiah.

Satan will try much harder to thwart God’s plan in Jesus but he will be greatly unsuccessful. Jesus will be the stronghold of all of mankind. He will be the strength when mankind is oh so weak. He will defy the world in that He won’t give in to it, not even for a second.

All the mass media and big macs in the world can’t stop Him!

He will conquer Satan because Satan won’t be able to stand against Him. In the story in Genesis it does look like Satan won the battle, but he didn’t win the war. He did destroy God’s perfect creation in us, but Jesus brought it back from the grave, and it will be stronger than ever!

And He did it with style.

Satan probably felt great when he turned Adam and Eve against God. Thats what he does. But, like sin, the feeling of accomplishment soon wears off and leaves you much emptier than ever. I wonder how he felt the next day? Or the next year? I wonder what he was thinking a few thousand years later when Jesus came into view?

What about when Jesus sacrificed His own life for us?

Tuesday! (read directions if you haven't)

Tuesday- Most Important Verse

Wow, I don’t even know where to begin here. Most of the verses seem important to me in some way or another. If I had to choose, I would say that verse six seems like the most likely candidate.

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” (NIV)

This is the murder in the movie. This is the point where everyone’s going “no! don’t do it! there’s another way!”

This is me.

This is my story.

I eat the fruit quite often.

Why do I do it? The same reason they did it, the same reason most people do it. Because I think that my way is better. Because I don’t trust God that He knows what’s best for me. The same reason I bought a motorcycle when my dad told me not too. The same reason I have 30 music credits in college and I’m not a music major. Because I think I know more about my situations then my father or Father does. I come from a long line of screw ups, maybe you do too? Mine dates back all the way to this story in the Bible. I know what it takes to follow God, what He want’s from me, yet, much of the time, I’m looking at my circumstances thinking, “how can we both get what we want? how can I twist this scenario just enough to get the pleasure without the pain? How close to the line can I get without crossing it?” I look at it from the eyes of the actor in the movie, not from the director’s point of view.

Have you been there?

Do you know what I’m talking about? Chances are, you do. Does this verse speak to you like it does to me? I fall just as hard as they did. I bet it hurts just as much too. And who’s left picking up the pieces? I feel like I am because I’m in debt. Because my friends are mad at me. Because I have to apologize to people. Because I have the scar, or the kid, or the prison cell, or whatever.

In reality,

Jesus is the one who picked up the pieces for us. He fixed our problems so we wouldn’t have too. Because there’s no way in Hell we could. Because God loves us more than any of His other creations. Thank God (literally) that He had and has our backs. So what do we do with that?

Tomorrow,

the sun will rise, we will wake up, God will give us another chance.

Because He loves us

unconditionally.

Monday! (read directions first)

Monday- God’s Perspective

God- Please forgive me if my finite mind misinterprets these verses. Trying to think with the infinite mind of You is quite difficult and largely impossible. Give me a little wisdom and a lot of grace-

I am angry because Satan always tries to pervert my perfect gifts to my children. He knows how much I love them and what I’m willing to do for them, he hates that.

He’s a jealous creature.

I am deeply saddened because I have created my children to love me and for Me to love them. I have created a perfect place for them to live, a place for us to live together in harmony and union but, it isn’t enough for them, they want more. They think that knowing everything is a good thing, but I know it isn’t. Sometimes, finite minds don’t need to know what goes on behind the curtains. I created them to be stress free, to be worry free, to be innocent, to be pure. If there is no lust, jealousy, envy, guilt, or any sin, then what does naked mean? This word was not designed for any vocabulary. How easily my children are mislead. If they would trust me that I would take care of them perfectly then they would never stumble. I brought them from nothing, wouldn’t they realize that I will give them every good thing that they could ever want?

Are they not my prized possession?

My perfect jewel?

I am God, I am not surprised by this event. I could easily have stopped Satan from trying to deceive them but, I can’t stop him, not if my children are going to truly love me. True love isn’t deceptive. If I made them love me or if I changed their story so that they would only know me, then, that wouldn’t be true love. True love is knowing the whole picture, everything, knowing good and evil and still choosing Me. True love is making a sacrifice to be with someone. If they had no choice then who’s to say they weren’t just being blinded. I know what’s best for them, but they need to know, no matter how painful it is for us all. I love Adam and Eve, and all of the others to come. I will give them another chance because my love is unconditional. I will teach them sacrifice with my own Son.

I will teach them that sacrifice is giving up something of importance, for something of greater importance. Not all of them will choose to be with me, but for the ones that do,

IT WILL BE MUCH GREATER!

Directions

Here's a project I had to do for one of my classes. What we had to do was read Genesis 3.1-7 6 days in a row. Here's what we did for each day. You should try it too! It was very enlightening.

Monday- Read the passage from the perspective of God witnessing the sin of His children from heaven.

Tuesday- Read the account with the goal in mind of finding the most important verse in the paragraph.

Wednesday- Read it from Satan's perspective as he tempts God's children

Thursday- Read with the goal in mind of determining how this passage affects your understanding of what Jesus did on the cross.

Friday- Read from the perspective of Adam and Eve as they are sinning. What was going through their minds?

Saturday- Read from the perspective of someone who knows nothing of the Bible or "religious" things and who is reading this passage for the first time.

Genesis 3.1-7

¹ The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

² “Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. ³ “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’”

⁴ “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. ⁵ “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

⁶ The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. ⁷ At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.