- Chapter 1 -
God is, and has been from the beginning, love (1 John 4:16). He created man that He might have a creation, made after his own image (Genesis 1:26) that could freely choose to love Him. Like man, God experiences emotion. He feels the pain of rejection, and the anguish of men. God experiences all emotions such as joy and love, sorrow and sadness, anger and satisfaction. One of the greatest misunderstandings of God is when an individual begins to view Him as a distant, almighty dictator with no regard for man.
“Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are truth.” (Psalm 119:151)
God experiences deep passion for His creation, and He longs for the restoration of all things. He created a perfect earth and garden before He put man into it. He wanted man to dwell in heaven on earth from the beginning! No pain. No sadness. No disease.
He wanted the very best for man. God created a perfect paradise and would come down from heaven, which in the book of Revelation is pictured as a place of perpetual worship (Revelation 5:11–12) just to be with His creation. He would leave worship to simply fellowship with the object of His affection. When He saw that Adam was incomplete, He provided Eve so that both could revel in His goodness, and He loved them with His whole heart, for He had friends.
In order for Adam to be able to choose to love Him, God had to create a decision. For what is free will in the absence of an object by which to exercise one’s will? It would then become nothing more than a great illusion. Therefore God made the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thus providing Adam free will. Without it, Adam would not be choosing to love God but would be, in essence, forced to love by a situation offering no way out. Thus in God’s great wisdom and goodness He made the tree.
God loves His creation and did not want us to perish, so with the free will He provided He made sure to inform Adam and Eve about the consequences of eating from the tree. “…But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). He said eat and die; not eat and live. So we know that man fell as a result of his own decisions, not because of God. It should be noted that all of the land was given to Adam, everything but one tree! God gave man everything in a paradise created to perfectly house him with the exception of one object necessary to create the reality of choice. In spite of all of this, man fell.
After so meticulously creating earth and man and pouring out so much love and emotion, God’s friends betrayed Him. God knew that He would go through this beforehand. Upon the foundation of the world God knew what was to happen (Revelation 13:8); He knew the price He Himself would pay for His beloved. Yet His desire to release His love, His desire to know those who would choose Him was His motivation: those who choose goodness passionately and against all odds triumphing for love of Him. This was enough to go forth with His plan. Yet God has experienced every emotion from the day of man’s conception through this very hour. And that day, God’s heart broke.
In His pain, anguish, and sorrow for His creature that had just chosen doom, God went to meet him. God appeared in the garden as a physical being and when Adam was not there to meet him, God had to call out for him. God’s heart was already broken from the pain of betrayal and then He encountered the serpent inhabited by His former favorite angel Lucifer. God had before Him the three creatures that He invested more of Himself into than all else, and out of His righteousness had to judge them according to their deeds.
God could not have received the least bit of enjoyment from this and He had no delight. God was exceedingly sad; I can imagine Him crying within Himself. He had just passed judgment on the three creations that had meant the most to Him. In Ezekiel 28:13–15 we find Satan was once covered with every precious stone, given a title of anointed cherub who covers. God deeply loved this cherub and he was favored in his former position. God had not forgotten the former feelings of companionship with this cherub. As for man, we were created to judge the angels (1 Corinthians 6:3)! But there was no other way, God had to do what was necessary as He is a just God and “…righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne” (Psalm 97:2). Thus man was cast from the garden.
This was only the beginning of sorrows for God, for He had to watch from then to the days of Noah, as men fell apart. During this time God did not abandon man; there is no sign of that in the Word. Conversely, God was involved as much as men allowed Him to be, but He became rejected by all the earth. God was abandoned, cursed and despised by men.
I can only imagine the joy God experienced over His servant Enoch. Enoch was perfect in his generations, meaning his bloodline was not tainted by angelic interference. He chose, in spite of all that went on around him to walk with God. Against a whole world of corruption, Enoch stood for God with a testimony that affected all his family down to Noah. It was the covering of Enoch that allowed Noah to find grace before God. Noah’s faith was probably rooted in the writings that Enoch passed down to his family containing ancient prophesies (Jude 14). In all of Enoch’s good doing, in a world void of all things pleasing to God, He was moved by Enoch’s testimony and took him (Hebrews 11:5).
Enoch and Noah were not the only testimonies to God’s coming plan. God gave man time to repent. Enoch’s son Methuselah, who lived longer than any man who ever walked the earth, did not die until the year of the judgment. He, bearing witness to the testimony of His father and remaining perfect in his generations, was left on earth all the days up to the very year of the flood as a sign to the world. Methuselah’s son, Lamech, who was Noah’s father, lived 777 years. Biblically, seven represents perfection, three represents complete or entire. He died five years before the flood and biblically, five is the number for grace. The message hidden in the numbers here is: God who is perfect and complete in and of himself has bestowed grace upon men before judgment.
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