Honey From The Rock

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Honey From The Rock
Psalm 81:16

"Sweet Stuff From God's Word"

A daily Bible study with Victor Knowles
Copyright 2007

PRECEPT AND PROMISE

This entry was posted on 01-11-2010 and is filed under STUDIES IN GENESIS.

In this series of "Studies in Genesis" I am not going through Genesis verse-by-verse or even chapter-by-chapter. I am dedicating 2010 to reading the Bible my father gave me in 1965 when I was a freshman in college (New Analytical Bible published by the John A. Dickson Co. of Chicago). What I am doing is revisiting some verses that I underlined or made notes on in the margin of that Bible. I hope you are enjoying them.

"And the LORD God took the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:16, 17 KJV). In verse 16 we see the permission of God ~ "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden" (ESV). God generously permits Adam to eat from any and every tree ~ with one exception. For in verse 17 we discover the prohibition of God ~ "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat..." (ESV). The garden was a place of liberty, but it was also a place of law.

I find it interesting how the serpent twists this commandment in Chapter 3. He slithers up to Eve and hisses, "Did God really say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?'" (Gen. 3:1 ESV). He completely dismisses the permissive will of God and tries to make God look like someone who has forbidden everything to Adam and Eve. This is not what God said. God said, "You may surely eat of every tree in the garden." The lone exception was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. There are mockers today who try to say that Christians cannot have any fun or that God does not want us to enjoy life. That simply is not true. Jesus came to give us "abundant life." Then the serpent slyly suggests, "You will not surely die." This is an outright distortion and denial of truth. God said, "You will surely die." Satan says, "You will not surely die." This is the "not" in the devil's tale as someone has said!

Do not let Satan or any agent of his deceive you by countering what God has clearly said in His Word! Perhaps the first sin in Eden was not partaking of the forbidden fruit but rather in listening to a false teacher ~ the serpent (literally, "the hisser"). The Bible gives us good advice in 1 John 3:1, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of god; because many false prophets have gone out into the world" (NKJV). The best way I know how to "test the spirits" is to compare their teaching with Scripture ~ what does the Bible plainly say?

Hymn: "Give me the Bible, Holy message shining; Thy light shall guide me in the narrow way; Precept and promise, law and love combining, till night shall vanish in eternal day" (Priscilla J. Owens).