Basic Preparation for Transformation
Week 5, Email 2, Wednesday
Week 5, Email 2, Wednesday
Strategic Battle Plan: Part Two
Rebellion in Heaven
Long before men walked the earth, God enjoyed a wonderful loving relationship with all of the angels in heaven. They gave God pure worship. This was the glory He deserved and wanted. God was on His throne, an emerald rainbow emanating from the seat of the Almighty. A circle of angels kept adoring angels from approaching the throne closer than the boundary God had established. Everything was as it should be.
Lucifer was a high-ranking angel who served close to God's throne. He might have been the angel in charge of the blessed worship. He might even be the most beautiful and intelligent creature God ever created. (Remember, Jesus was not created.)
Lucifer eventually had the audacity to decide that the honor and homage given to God was something he wanted for himself. When Lucifer decided to rob God of the glory due Him, he invented sin. He then recruited many, possibly one-third of all angels to follow him rather than serve and worship God. So these wayward beings, once having the wonderful identity of angels, now became traitorous demons, spirit personalities who worship and do the work of the evil one Lucifer, the devil, whose name God changed to Satan.
Battlefield Earth
We might have been tempted to annihilate Satan and the demons, but God had to mete out justice. He wanted to deal with Satan's pride; it called for great humiliation. God began by banishing Satan and his evil horde from heaven – for a showdown.
God created a planet -- Earth -- and exiled the evil principalities and powers to that part of the universe. God would do battle with Satan on planet Earth! God created our world to be the battleground between Himself and the forces of evil. Our Lord decided to humiliate the devil for thousands and thousands of years!
And it pleased God to do this through a new kind of rational being – mankind.
God's Strategy: Strong Inter-dependent Creatures
Mankind, a second type of rational being, was designed to populate the earth and be involved in God's confrontation with Satan. Like the angels, we were created with the same capacity for moral choice so that we could show our love for God through obedience. But there was one critical difference from angels in our design. Mankind was created to be strong together, to be inter-dependent, that is, to depend on one another for strength. Adam and Eve, and all people, were specifically designed to be inter-dependent rather than self-sufficient.
So, God purposely designed Adam to be incomplete, even though without sin. Adam would have to have a helper to be strong and capable for God's work. (Genesis 2:18) Eve was then created to be Adam's helper. She, too, was perfect -- yet incomplete -- and would need Adam's help. Alone, each would be perfect, yet incomplete and vulnerable. Only together were they perfectly complete and completely perfect. Only together would they be able to win the battle with the serpent in the Garden. Only together would they be able to turn down the tempting of the devil to eat the forbidden fruit.
Mankind was created to need each other’s help to do whatever God asked.
It is still this way. |
As He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, God's challenge to Satan might have been something like, "O.K., let's see if you can destroy the glory I receive from men." The Lord of All wanted a showdown with this upstart angel turned devil. Our God set the stage for a long conflict to humble Satan before his eternal banishment to the stinking lake of burning sulfur. Out of the humble dust of a small planet, God raised up a race which could defeat the proud boasting of a super-intelligent, extremely powerful spirit-being. But the human race could only defeat Satan if they remembered God's plan for them to help each other and work together.
The Showdown was "On"
God was not trying to show Satan that His glory could not be stolen. God has such power that He could have protected his glory merely by wishing Satan and his demons out of existence. No, God's prescription for the proud devil is to humiliate him for thousands of years through the defeats Satan meets at the hands of God's people.
So to begin this humiliation, God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and challenged them to defeat Satan by mere obedience to one very simple rule: "Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!" Obedience is really love for God expressed to honor Him. Obedience ascribes value to God and is, therefore, worship. Obedience defeats Satan.
So the devil had to try to break the humans' obedience.
God set the stage for the showdown, not Satan. Satan's embarrassing defeat would come at the hands of puny creatures who could not stand alone on their own two feet, so-to-speak, but together could move mountains and defeat evil, vicious, fallen angelic beings.
As the setting for Adam and Eve's first assignment together, one that would require this "together" kind of strength, God specifically designed a unique garden - the Garden of Eden. It was a beautiful place, teeming with plants and animals of all kinds. In the middle of the Garden God placed The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, one tree among hundreds to set the stage for His showdown with Satan.
Satan's Strategy
Satan developed his strategy. It is the same today: he divides people so they cannot be strong and then offers to them things God does not want for them.
What made Satan's strategy so remarkable and effective were two things. First was the high level of the devil's understanding of God's design of humankind. Second was Adam and Eve's low understanding of the very same thing. Actually, it seems that the first two humans just forgot God's strategy for His people's strength – to help one another.
The Danger of Ignoring God's Design
Therefore, when the devil showed up in the Garden of Eden as a serpent, he spoke only to Eve. Sadly, Eve forgot to bring Adam into the discussion. She acted as if she did not need a helper. Without Adam's help, Eve succumbed to the tempter's lies and ate of the forbidden fruit.
Sadder still, Adam did not take leadership and get involved, did not actively take hold of his “helper” assignment. While Satan held the infamous conversation with his wife, Adam remained silent, doing nothing to help Eve with the fatal decision.
Together, they would have been strong enough to resist the temptation. But both Adam and Eve chose to act independently, making autonomous decisions. And they chose disaster for the whole human race - sin that would be inherited from one generation to the next.
God saw and planned for this disaster. His marvelous surprise was sending His Son to earth years later, born of a virgin, to conquer Satan by dying on the cross for men's sins. Jesus defeated Satan and took away his power over death. Because of Christ’s substitutionary death, God could forgive humans and accept them into His kingdom.
The defeat has happened. But the humiliation is not over. Satan is not yet humbled enough. A very great amount of humiliation is necessary to balance the pride that ruined God’s heaven.
We get to humiliate the devil every time we implement one or more of the Togethers. By doing so we show God that we are not giving in to the devil’s ways. Instead, we show God how important He is to us that we would live his way of biblical relationships and interdependent faith.
The Showdown was "On"
God was not trying to show Satan that His glory could not be stolen. God has such power that He could have protected his glory merely by wishing Satan and his demons out of existence. No, God's prescription for the proud devil is to humiliate him for thousands of years through the defeats Satan meets at the hands of God's people.
So to begin this humiliation, God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and challenged them to defeat Satan by mere obedience to one very simple rule: "Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!" Obedience is really love for God expressed to honor Him. Obedience ascribes value to God and is, therefore, worship. Obedience defeats Satan.
So the devil had to try to break the humans' obedience.
God set the stage for the showdown, not Satan. Satan's embarrassing defeat would come at the hands of puny creatures who could not stand alone on their own two feet, so-to-speak, but together could move mountains and defeat evil, vicious, fallen angelic beings.
As the setting for Adam and Eve's first assignment together, one that would require this "together" kind of strength, God specifically designed a unique garden - the Garden of Eden. It was a beautiful place, teeming with plants and animals of all kinds. In the middle of the Garden God placed The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, one tree among hundreds to set the stage for His showdown with Satan.
Satan's Strategy
Satan developed his strategy. It is the same today: he divides people so they cannot be strong and then offers to them things God does not want for them.
What made Satan's strategy so remarkable and effective were two things. First was the high level of the devil's understanding of God's design of humankind. Second was Adam and Eve's low understanding of the very same thing. Actually, it seems that the first two humans just forgot God's strategy for His people's strength – to help one another.
The Danger of Ignoring God's Design
Therefore, when the devil showed up in the Garden of Eden as a serpent, he spoke only to Eve. Sadly, Eve forgot to bring Adam into the discussion. She acted as if she did not need a helper. Without Adam's help, Eve succumbed to the tempter's lies and ate of the forbidden fruit.
Sadder still, Adam did not take leadership and get involved, did not actively take hold of his “helper” assignment. While Satan held the infamous conversation with his wife, Adam remained silent, doing nothing to help Eve with the fatal decision.
Together, they would have been strong enough to resist the temptation. But both Adam and Eve chose to act independently, making autonomous decisions. And they chose disaster for the whole human race - sin that would be inherited from one generation to the next.
God saw and planned for this disaster. His marvelous surprise was sending His Son to earth years later, born of a virgin, to conquer Satan by dying on the cross for men's sins. Jesus defeated Satan and took away his power over death. Because of Christ’s substitutionary death, God could forgive humans and accept them into His kingdom.
The defeat has happened. But the humiliation is not over. Satan is not yet humbled enough. A very great amount of humiliation is necessary to balance the pride that ruined God’s heaven.
We get to humiliate the devil every time we implement one or more of the Togethers. By doing so we show God that we are not giving in to the devil’s ways. Instead, we show God how important He is to us that we would live his way of biblical relationships and interdependent faith.