“Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4)

References to Satan, or the devil, are considered rather medieval. Surely nobody believes Satan really exists. Surely we have advanced beyond the superstitious thinking of the “dark ages.” How embarrassing!!! And yet, Jesus speaks of his existence. When castigating the religious leaders of His day, He likens them to the devil whom, He calls a “murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44). The pervasive and diverse forms of the occult today, not only testify to the reality of this being, but to his power. It is worth noting that the Bible gives far more attention to his character and actions than to his existence.

Genesis 3:4 reveals a being who challenges what God has said. The LORD warned Adam with the words, “you will surely die” (Gen 2:17) and Satan opposes with “You will not surely die.” Both cannot be true! One is a liar.

The battle continues to this day. Satan continues to question, challenge and deny what it written in the Bible. There is no Satan, no judgment to come, no salvation, no God.

The question is ..... who do you believe? One is a murderer the other, a forgiving God.

"In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” (Genesis 2:16,17)

“And the Lord God commanded the man [Adam], saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; ^but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil  you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” (Genesis 2:16,17)

The death penalty for eating fruit from a tree seems extremely harsh!! We would judge any society inflicting such a severe penalty as brutal and barbaric. Yet, God’s judgment is clear and emphatic. “You will surely die.” We could paraphrase it, “Be absolutely clear, you will most certainly die.” If the Bible shows us who God really is, then does this reveal a barbaric God?

The LORD’s command to Adam was a simple test of obedience. It did not require great intelligence, might or will power. The test revealed whether or not Adam would acknowledge God as sovereign. To eat of the tree was to send a message that God had no right to tell him what he could or, could not do. This is the essence of what the Bible calls “sin.” It is man refusing God the right to be God. The LORD’s answer to such rebellion is, “you shall surely die.”

We can never appreciate the necessity of  Christ’s crucifixion until we see the true nature of God. Jesus did not die on the cross as a martyr. He died because of the demands of a holy God.

 

“Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31)

“Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31)
 
Everything in our world testifies to the marvel and glory of our wonderful Creator. His hand is evident in all around us, from the smallest creature to the vastness of the universe. All point to a Creator whose genius and creativity are immeasurable. Who but God could create a world of such complexity, diversity and beauty? Who but God could equip us with the capacity to feel deep emotions, think great thoughts or make ambitious plans? Who but God could place us in families and relationships to experience love, kindness and protection?

All that we enjoy comes from the hand of a loving and giving God. He has made all things good because He is good! This goodness extends to mankind in a special way for we have been created in His image (Gen 1:26, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” ). We can imagine, plan, communicate ideas, feel emotions because we have been specially created to be like Him. We have so many blessings to thank Him for! So much to praise Him for!

Read Genesis and look for things that teach you about this wonderful God. He wants you to know Him, and acknowledge and honour Him.

All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16)

 All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16)

The Bible claims that God is its Author. Such a claim has profound implications if true!! If true, then when I read it I am reading something that comes directly from the Creator. I hold in my hands a treasure of immeasurable worth. If true, I should expect to find answers to basic questions such as: Why did God create me? Why is there so much suffering in the world? What does He want from me? Does God care about me? Where do I go when I die?

But, how can one be sure that God is in fact the Author? There are of course many who challenge this claim but, only the Bible has fulfilled prophecy (Isa 53 is one of many examples) and a risen Saviour. But more than this, if the Bible is truly from God then surely He will confirm this as you read it. That He is the Author will be self-evident. In other words, if you come to the Bible with a heart that wants to know the truth, He will make sure you find it. God has no desire to keep in the dark those who seek His light. The most important revelation in the Bible concerns God Himself. He makes Himself known in its pages. He has a passion to be honoured for who He really is.

Read a few chapters of the Gospel of John. Look for God’s Promises.

The Believers Rule of Life

The following is an excerpt from What is The Believer's Rule of Life [George Zeller, Middletown Bible Church, 349 East Street, Mittletown, CT 06457]

What is the believer’s rule of life? By what rule should I live? How is the Christian life to be lived? What rule should I follow and what should be my focus? How should I walk as a believer? What is the key to living the Christian life? What must I do to live a life that is pleasing to God? How can I live a holy life? How can I walk down God’s chosen path for me, the path of holiness and sanctification? "For this is the will of God, even your sanctification" (1 Thess. 4:3).

These are important questions and they have been answered in at least two different ways. Some insist that the believer’s rule of life is the LAW. When they say "LAW" they are thinking especially of God’s moral law as set forth in the Ten Commandments. How am I to live? Their answer would be this: "I am to live by God’s law. I am to live by the Ten Commandments. This is my rule of life. The key to living the Christian life and the key to walking in holiness is to strive to obey God’s holy law, especially the Ten Commandments, which the Lord Jesus summed up in two great commandments: to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself." Compare Matthew 22:36-40.

This all sounds good, but the problem is simply this: The more we try to keep God’s holy law, the more we fail. Even as regenerate believers we cannot, of ourselves, measure up to God’s perfect standard of righteousness. The problem is not with the law because "the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good" (Romans 7:12). The problem is with the believer: "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not" (Romans 7:18).

This is similar to the problem the Israelites had when they first were given God’s holy law. Their response to the commandments was as follows: "All that the LORD hath spoken we will do." They were sincere in their desire to obey but as we know they failed miserably to keep God’s commandments. They did not understand their own weakness:

This oral response of the people is commended by the LORD in Deut. 5:27-28: "They have well said all that they have spoken." Their subsequent history, however, shows that they had failed to realize their own spiritual and moral weakness and the infinite perfection of the divine law which they so easily were engaging themselves to obey. See God’s lament in Deut. 5:29: "O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always."  

Where does a person need to go to find God’s rule for living the Christian life? Those of a legal persuasion would point the person to Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received the law from God. They would say, "Mount Sinai is where you need to go. Mount Sinai is where you will find the key to living the Christian life."

Consider the following quotations given by pioneer dispensationalists: 

I learn in the law that God abhorred stealing, but it is not because I am under the law that I do not steal. All the Word of God is mine, and written for my instruction; yet for all that I am not under law, but a Christian who has died with Christ on the Cross, and am not in the flesh, to which the law applied. I have died to the law by the body of Christ (Romans 7:4). – JOHN DARBY 

Some good men who in grievous error would impose the law as a rule of life for the Christian mean very well by it but the whole principle is false because the law, instead of being a rule of life, is necessarily a rule of death to one who has sin in his nature. Far from a delivering power, it can only condemn such; far from being a means of holiness, it is, in fact, the strength of sin (1 Cor. 15:56). – WILLIAM KELLY

Most of us have been reared and now live under the influence of Galatianism. Protestant theology is for the most part thoroughly Galatianized, in that neither the law or grace is given its distinct and separate place as in the counsels of God, but they are mingled together in one incoherent system. The law is no longer, as in the divine intent, a ministration of death (2 Cor. 3:7), of cursing (Gal. 3:10), or conviction (Rom. 3:19), because we are taught that we must try to keep it, and that by divine help we may. Nor does grace, on the other hand, bring us blessed deliverance from the dominion of sin, for we are kept under the law as a rule of life despite the plain declaration of Romans 6:14. – C.I. SCOFIELD 

When the sinner is justified by faith, does he need the law to please God? Can obedience to the law produce in him the fruit of holiness unto God? What is the relation of the justified believer to the law? Is he still under the dominion of the law or is he also delivered from the law and its bondage? These questions are answered in this chapter [Romans 7]. "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter" (Romans 7:4,6). – ARNO C. GAEBELEIN   

Believers today are not under law, either as a means of justification or as a rule of law, but are justified by grace and are called upon to walk in grace. Primarily here [in Romans 7:14-25] we have a believing Jew struggling to obtain holiness by using the law as a rule of life and resolutely attempting to compel his old nature to be subject to it. In Christendom now the average Gentile believer goes through the same experience; for legality is commonly taught almost everywhere. Therefore when one is converted it is but natural to reason that now [that] one has been born of God it is only a matter of determination and persistent endeavor to subject oneself to the law, and one will achieve a life of holiness. And God Himself permits the test to be made in order that His people may learn experimentally that the flesh in the believer is no better than the flesh in an unbeliever. When he ceases from self-effort he finds deliverance through the Spirit by occupation with the risen Christ. – H.A. IRONSIDE   

 

The Word of God condemns unsparingly all attempts to put the Christian believer ‘under the law.’ The Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul gave to the church the book of Galatians for the very purpose of dealing with this heresy. Read this Epistle over and over, noting carefully the precise error with which the writer deals. It is not a total rejection of the gospel of God’s grace and a turning back to total legalism. It is rather the error of saying that the Christian life, having begun by simple faith in Christ, must thereafter continue under the law or some part of it (Gal. 3:2-3). – ALVA McCLAIN 

Why did God take the Egyptian Chariot wheels off?

When the LORD delivered Israel out of Egypt, He took them through the Red Sea. The Egyptians followed, ignoring the obvious peirl. Who did they think held the waters back? Revenge and passion appears to have blinded their senses.

The outcome is well known. The Egyptian army was destroyed. They fell under the judgment of God. No one survived. 

Yet something happened that is perhaps puzzling. The LORD took the wheels off the chariots. Why? 

“And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the LORD looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, And took off their chariot wheels, that they drove them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel; for the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians” (Exodus 14:24,25)

There is no indication from the passage that the Egyptians were within striking distance.  Israel had reached the safety of the other shore when Moses stretched out his hand to bring the waters back upon the Egyptians.

So where does this leave us? Is the LORD a vindictive God who desires to bring sheer terror upon those whom He is judging?

God does indeed judge and this action did result in terror but His motive is elsewhere. In fact, the incident highlights something of supreme importance to God.

“And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honor upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten me honor upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen” (Exodus 14:17,18)

When the LORD took off the chariot wheels; the Egyptians came to their senses. The blindness was removed and in that moment, they saw the reality of their situation. It was not that the Red Sea might destroy them but that the LORD fought against them.

God’s ultimate goal was not simply judgment. It was that Egypt acknowledge The LORD through the judgment.  

It is His purpose that all intelligence will ultimately acknowledge Him for who he is.

Prayer

"Many Christians backslide...They are unable to stand against the temptations of the world, or of their old nature. They strive to do their best to fight against sin, and to serve God, but they have no strength. They have never really grasped the secret: The Lord Jesus will every day from heaven continue His work in me. But on one condition—the soul must give Him time each day to impart His love and his grace. Time alone with the Lord Jesus each day is the indispensable condition of growth and power."  Andrew Murray (Emphasis added).

"There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer."  A.T. Pierson

 

"The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity. If we want to see mighty wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God's standing challenge, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not!'" (J. Hudson Taylor)

"I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything but it came at some time; no matter at how distant a day, somehow, in some shape, probably the least I would have devised, it came."  Adoniram Judson

 "Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness."  Martin Luther.

"Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work."  

Oswald Chambers.