Previous Posts in this Series:
A Gospel Presentation: Part 1 (Two-Age Worldview)
"Remember what happened long ago, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me. I declare the end from the beginning, and ancient times from what is still to come. I say, "My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish." (Isaiah 46: 9-10)
I used to read a verse like this, or hear someone preach about some similar statement and wonder, "does this mean God foresaw sin? What does it mean that He knows the End from the Beginning?" We all know the story - God creates the Heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1) and every living creature, he spends six days creating everything, including Mankind, and they are placed in the perfect Garden of Eden, given dominion over the Earth and given two commandments: 1) "Fill the Earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28) and 2) "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it, dying you will die" (most translations read: "for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die") - Genesis 2:17. He creates Eve after that, as a suitable helper for Adam, Eve is deceived by the Serpent and Adam eats of the tree as well. This is a story believers know well - one we have likely heard since childhood.
What follows this is what is interesting to me. In Genesis 3:8 we read, "Now they [Adam and Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." The thing that sticks out to me here is that God is not outside of His creation. I think too many of us have a view of God as being removed, or somehow outside of what He has made. Scripture does not support this! Very clearly in this passage, God is not only involved with what He has created, but He is in it. A verse we have all heard 100 times, "In the beginning God created the Heavens AND the Earth." (Genesis 1:1) He created not only a place for Man, but also for himself and it stands to reason that at Creation, the two were connected in some way because God saw fit to walk around on the Earth. The way I read it - God wanted a family - he had a Son and that relationship was meaningful to Him and so creating Mankind was a way of expanding that family. Why would a God, who desires to have a big family, create that and then remove Himself from it?
