The Devotional Journey: Bible Reading 2
The man and the woman rebel against God
Read Genesis 3:1–24.
In this chapter, we see how God gave mankind genuine choice. God created mankind to have a real relationship with Him and that means the man and the woman could choose to trust Him and obey His one instruction or they could decide to rebel against Him, believing they knew better.
One interesting point to note is that in Genesis 3:1, God is called LORD God. Notice the SMALL CAPITALS in the Bible text for the word Lord. This indicates that God’s personal name, Yahweh, is being used. Just as each of us have a personal name, the Creator-God’s personal name is Yahweh. But out of respect, the original readers of the Bible when reading aloud would say Lord, instead of saying God’s personal name. And so that is why LORD appears in the text. Every time we see LORD in small capitals, know that God’s personal name, Yahweh, is actually in the text.
When a stranger in the form of the serpent came to converse with the man and woman, they chose to listen to this creature rather than to the voice of their Creator. They treated this serpent’s words as equal to Yahweh’s words. They considered what both said and then they chose to rebel against Yahweh’s command for them and eat the fruit.
In this incident, the man and the woman actually had several choices.
They could have ignored the serpent and trusted Yahweh’s instructions completely.
They could have waited for God to come that day and then ask again about the fruit.
Or they could consider themselves the ultimate authority and judge for themselves if Yahweh or the serpent was telling the truth.
Using their personal free will, mankind chose to rebel against Yahweh. Rebellion against God is the basic definition of sin. Because God is all-good and all-righteous all of the time, rebelling against Him results in evil. Here was when sin, evil, death and suffering started, as well as when nature became corrupted. Choices always come with consequences. Good choices lead to good consequences. Bad choices lead to bad consequences.
When people we love distrust us or sin against us, sometimes we feel so hurt and angry that we don’t want to be with them anymore. But notice in this event, though mankind had mistrusted Yahweh and severed their relationship with Him, God’s love is merciful and kind toward mankind because He immediately promised to rescue all mankind from sin so that people could all have a relationship with Him again.
Genesis 3:15 contains the first piece of information about Yahweh’s plan to rescue mankind and restore the relationship that mankind had destroyed—God announced that the offspring of the woman would strike the serpent’s head. This means that some time in the future, a man who would be born only of a woman (with no human father involved) would destroy the serpent and his evil influence, and restore the relationship between God and mankind. Over time, as God revealed more information about His rescue plan, people would come to understand that this special man would be the Saviour.
Can we imagine such an infinite love? Compare the way Yahweh loves mankind with how we love others. How we love often depends on how the object of our love behaves. But God is not like us. Even though mankind had rebelled, Yahweh continued to show love. God’s love is not dependent on the behaviour of the object of His love. Rather, His love depends on His all-loving character. Mankind had just rebelled against His command and yet we see Him extend mercy and love towards the man and the woman.
Let’s pray today to thank God for how much He loves each of us.
And let’s learn from God’s example of continuing to extend love even when the ones we love fail us or disappoint us.