Light of the World: Day Two
A Dark Day
Read Genesis 2:15 - 3:1-13
God didn’t stop after Day 1 with his creation of light. On Day 2 he separated the waters and made sky and ocean (1:6-8), on Day 3 he created land and plants (1:9-13), on Day 4 he created the sun, moon, and stars (1:14-19), on Day 5 he created birds and fish (1:20-23), and on Day 6 he created land animals (1:21-25). At the pinnacle of God’s creation was the last thing he created: man and woman (1:26-27; 2:4-24). Everything was as it was meant to be; God’s creation was complete, and it was perfect.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
Genesis 1:31
But God gave his creation, Adam and Eve, some instructions:
1. Be fruitful and multiply/fill the earth (1:28a)
2. Subdue the earth/have dominion over the earth (1:28b)
3. Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:17)
As the Creator, God executes full rights and authority to tell his creation what is expected of them and how they are to behave. Just as you hold the privilege of making the rules within your own home, God gets to make the rules for the entire earth because it is his; he created it and he owns it. Thus, he gave Adam and Eve the above 3 commands to live by.
But one day the enemy of God entered into a serpent and lied to Eve. He twisted God’s words, tempted Eve with promises of glory, and she believed him. To make matters worse, she handed the fruit to Adam and he ate it too. With one bite of that forbidden fruit, sin entered into God’s very good, very perfect world. His flawless creation became flawed. His unblemished creation became stained. His pure creation became adulterated. And all of this was because of man and woman’s disobedience.
For the first time, Adam and Eve experienced fear when they heard God walking in the garden that day. From there, the snowball effect of sin began to occur. What started as a bite of fruit that was off-limits, led to embarrassment (they realized they were naked), hiding, and blame-shifting.
The perfect relationship man had with God was severed on that dark day sin entered the world through Adam and Eve’s disobedience. This is the bad news: the entire human race is now stained with sin and walks in darkness.
Praise be to God, the story doesn’t end with the bad news.
Action point: Consider how gaining an understanding that our world is stained with sin (disobedience to God) helps make sense of the ugliness and brokenness we experience in this world.