Genesis one begins, it says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness covered the face of the deep and the spirit of God hovered over the waters.
As we continue reading throughout Genesis, one we see over and over again that the earth goes from being this without form and voice space into something akin to what we experience.
Now, the sea was filled with life. The sun was placed in the sky and over and over again.
As God is creating the earth, we hear Him in those moments of creation with and it was good.
It was good over and over again.
God said, let there be light and then there was light and God saw the light and said, it’s good.
Genesis. One continues to tell us all the way through Him creating humanity, how it was good, what he created.
And then in Genesis two, he let it, he lets it be known to humanity.
This is man and woman at the time as they had not received names until later on in Genesis three.
In Genesis two though he tells them, I set this up to be good for you.
Everything in it should function the way that it is supposed to function.
The sun is not gonna fall out of the sky, the day is gonna be day, the night will be night, the fish will stay in the sea, the seed will continue to bring forth fruit season after season.
It’s all good. The only thing you have to do is not eat from the tree of life or from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
If you will obey this, everything will stay intact. Your obedience seals the deal.
God says I did my part. Everything is good.
But if it’s gonna stay good, you’re gonna have to be obedient.
Your obedience will ensure that everything in this system will continue to function in the way that I have designed it to function.
The only thing you have to do is just to be obedient.
The only thing you have to do, you may not understand how it’s gonna function.
You may wonder in one season, will the tree bring forth fruit the way that it did in the last season.
God says, you don’t have to worry about any of that, just be obedient to these rules, be obedient to what I told you to do in this season.
And your obedience is like shaking the hand of a deal. That’s you.
God’s way of saying this is what I’m gonna do for. You will you obey.
God says I’ll take care of all of the rest.
You just be obedient and they had it made baby.
They hadn’t made it. Ok. I believe Eve had all her edges.
I believe she never had to worry about a lace front, betraying her.
I believe that they had a six pack anointing.
I don’t believe that they even had to worry about the scale. What is acne?
I believe they had it made their Children was gonna act right.
I believe God set it up for everything to be good. They weren’t gonna be worried.
There wasn’t gonna be any depression, everything was gonna work out well.
But then Eve and Adam, Adam and Eve people just be bored.
We are people, we just are supposed to act, right?
But we just be bored like everything’s gotta be an adventure. Like let’s just see what happens.
And now look at us fighting for every age we got.
God didn’t want that for us. Can’t turn down Chick Fil A.
We need it to be closed on Sunday.
Now, carbs have a stronghold on me.
I was meant to eat fruits and vegetables. That’s how God set it up.
I didn’t even need the bread of life at that time. I had everything I needed.
I always wondered why is it that God did not want them to eat from the tree of life or from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
And then I recognized in studying that God in his gracious, generous wisdom and love for us did not want us to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Not because he didn’t want us to know good because Genesis one makes it plain that everything he created was good.
So I, I don’t mind you knowing what’s good.
I don’t even mind you knowing what’s God.
As a matter of fact, the only thing I want you to know is good and God, the way I set this system up, that’ll be the only thing you even have a point of reference for is good.
And God, but if you eat from this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you’re gonna have knowledge of something that I never wanted you to know.
The knowledge of good and evil.
It wasn’t necessarily just the knowledge of good, but it is the reality that when you have the knowledge of good and evil, it can be difficult to distinguish between the two talk for a minute about the knowledge of evil that God never intended for you to know.
It’s hard for us when we think about the generational disappointments and the generational struggles that are all that we have ever known to come to a place where we can separate our experience from God’s intention.
Because when we learn to separate our experience from God’s intention, then we begin to recognize that it was never God’s intention for me to know this evil that I now know this was never God’s intention.
That’s why we ask things like where was God in the middle of this?
The truth is that God is in the middle of it now because of the way that we acted out his plan.
But the truth is that in God’s original intention, you were never supposed to know betrayal in God’s original intention.
You would have never known heartbreak and God’s original intention, there would have never been mass shooting things in God’s original intention.
The headlines wouldn’t cause discouragement and God’s original intention.
There were, there was no broken family and God’s original intention, there were no abandonment issues, there were no rejection issues.
This was not God’s intention. And so I try to be careful not to place the blame on God for what humanity did for what evil did.
Because I recognize that in God’s original intention, it was never meant for me to know this.
I was never supposed to know this level of Brokenness. I was never supposed to know this level of depression.
I was never supposed to know this level of insecurity and the fact that I know it is a direct reflection of what happened in the garden where I was receiving the knowledge of good and evil.
You were never supposed to know it and it broke God’s heart now that you know it.
Oh, so well, now that it’s in your blood line now that it’s in your family.
God says I never wanted them to know that but God is so good that He says you can’t unknow what you know man.
Oh I feel like ministering in this place.
I wanna talk to somebody who wants to unknow what they know.
So you gotta know some things that you don’t wanna know to even understand what that sentence means.
But I wanna unknow that this type of betrayal can exist in someone.
I wanna unknow that this type of weakness exists within me.
There are some things that I know now that I wish I could unknow and sometimes I’m stuck because not because of what I don’t know.
I’m stuck because of what I do know. I do know that people will leave you.
I do know that you can get in a situation where your pride makes you fall.
I know some things that have kept me stuck.
And God says I can’t unknow what you know, but what I can do is cover what you know.
So in the garden, God comes down and he’s asking Adam and Eve what happened when he recognizes that they’ve eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
It says in my text that immediately when Adam ate from it, that his eyes were open and he saw that he was naked.
When God created him naked. God said it was good.
He ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And now he sees his nakedness as evil.
That’s why I said it’s difficult to distinguish between what’s good and what’s evil because now you have this knowledge and what you’re calling good.
God might be calling evil, what you’re calling evil. God might be calling good.
I think that’s why the palma says it was good for me that I was afflicted.
I don’t think he stumbled into that. I think he sat back and waited long enough to see that.
What I thought was an evil affliction was actually God making all things work together for my good.
It takes someone crazy to look what the enemy meant for evil and say actually, I think God may have meant it for good because now what I thought I needed was something that would feel good.
I thought I needed something that would make me better.
But maybe what I really needed was something that would afflict me enough that I understood who my friends were that would afflict me enough that I started praying differently, that would afflict me enough that I started worship differently.
Some people thank God for what he did and how he blessed them.
Sometimes I think God for what he didn’t do.
And there were tears streaming down my face and I was crying and I was heartbroken.
But then I waited about six months and I said, you know what God, it was good for me that I was afflicted because I, now I know you’ll never leave me nor forsake me.
Now, I know who’s really with me and who is against me.
Now, I know what’s on the inside of me.
Now, I trust the gift of God that you placed on the inside of me and I wouldn’t have gotten there unless I was afflicted pass.
I’m gonna cover you.
You weren’t supposed to know it, but I’m gonna cover you.
You weren’t supposed to see your nakedness as evil.
But now I gotta get down on your level of thinking so that I could grow you up into who I want you to become.
If you’re calling it evil, I’m gonna cover you right here.
But I’m also gonna make sure that there is a plan that takes you from the way you think now into the discovery that your ways are not my ways and your thoughts are not my thoughts.
And so you think it’s evil?
And so I’m gonna allow you to on the level that you think, oh God, help me to say this the way I feel it in my spirit.
Sometimes God gets down on your level so that he can speak the language that you’re speaking.
I know you’re mad. I know you’re angry. I know you’re upset. I know you’re lost and you’re confused.
If you think God only speaks on a high level, then you miss out on the whole reason why we’re here.
The whole reason why he got in Mary’s womb, wrapped himself in flesh is because sometimes there is a job that requires, I get down on your level.
You serve a God who knows how to get down in depression. Sometimes we pray depression away.
Sometimes we say God, if you could meet me in this depression because it feels like it’s stronger than me.
So I need you to get down on my level to break this thing off of me.
That is why God gets down on your level because sometimes you cannot fight this devil on your own.
And while you’re busy trying to get up, I was trying to get down with you so that I can help you fight on a level.
You didn’t even know was possible so that I could breathe my words of wisdom in a way that helps you to understand that if they left you, you didn’t need them.
If they walked away, let him walk.
If they kept on moving so that you could keep growing, sometimes you just gotta thank God, but you gotta allow him to get down on your level with it.
Anna serves a God who doesn’t mind getting down on his level.
Adam and Eve are in this garden having to distinguish now between what’s good, what’s evil and what’s God man.
And in the process of them trying to determine the difference between what’s good, what’s God and what’s evil?
They recognize that God has the ability to take what they are attempting to make good and teach them and train them so that it could actually become the good that he had in mind.
Isn’t this? Why he gets upset with Kane?
And he says to him, why did you kill your brother?
Did you not know that if you would have leveled up?
I know you thought you had a good sacrifice, but it wasn’t good enough, but I’m not just gonna leave you in the area of it not being good enough.
God says I’ll also get down there in there with you and teach you how to take what you thought was good and make it better.
God knows how to take good.
God knows how to take evil and turn it into good.
I had to use the word turn it.
Pastor Phil pointed out something in Genesis 50 and 20 that we always say the enemy.
You meant it for evil, but God turned it for good. But that’s not what it says.
It says you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
There were two intentions that were happening at the same time.
So when we say that God turned it, it makes it seem like it did start off evil but then God turned it around.
No, no, no. Genesis 50 and 20 actually points out that it’s not that God turned it.
It’s just all while they thought it was evil. I actually thought it was good.
I’m reminded of Jesus on the cross when he said forgive me father for, they know not what they do.
They think that they’re doing something that’s good.
But I actually know that it’s gonna be even better because when you get finished with it, they think it’s evil.
But when you get finished, they’re gonna see that it was actually good.
There is something powerful about knowing that there are two intentions moving at the same time.
And so I wanna know Potter’s house, which narrative are you gonna buy into?
Are you gonna buy into the narrative that the, that they meant it for evil?
And there’s a period on what they meant for evil and that if God’s gonna change it, he’s gonna have to turn it.
Or are you crazy enough to believe that God doesn’t even have to turn it that even oh God, I feel like I know you mean one thing but God means another thing so you can keep your intentions.
God doesn’t have to change it. You can mean it for evil.
God still means it for good.
You can talk about me all you want to, but God still means it for good.
I didn’t have to get the job.
It felt like it was evil that I didn’t get the job, but God must have meant it for good.
It felt like it was tragic that I went through the breakdown but God meant it for good.
I gotta hang on to this truth that God meant it for good.
Because my mind is trying to convince me that God meant it for evil or that God was not in it at all.
But I am reminded because of who He is that He knows how to allow the weed and the tea to grow up at the same time.
And it is not until harvest season with the threshing floor, make the difference.
The threshing floor is when we will separate what you meant for evil. My God meant for good.
You thought I was gonna stumble. But God says, I’m gonna pick you up. You thought it would kill me.
But God says, I know CPR, you’re right. It took me out, but he’s got a resurrecting power.
You meant it for evil.