GraceLife Thoughts – Train to Reign (Part 5)

Grace Thoughts

GraceLife Thoughts – Train to Reign (Part 5)

We ended our last study with these questions –

So, if God is going to rid the universe of evil one day why did He ever let evil exist in the first place?
Why plant a ‘tree’ in the Garden of Eden that would introduce ‘evil’ to Adam?
What was God up to in the Garden?

We will find many of the answers to our tough questions in God’s revealed Word – the Bible – but not everything. Here’s why I say that.

Except for a few instances that we know about (e.g. God’s finger writing His Law on tablets of stone, God’s finger writing a warning on the plaster of the wall’s palace in Babylon), God spoke through ‘prophets’ and ‘His Son’ (Hebrews 1:1-2). Moses, one of God’s prophets, wrote Genesis under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God (e.g. 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). However, that doesn’t mean that God revealed ‘everything’ to His prophets. Here’s what Moses wrote in the Book of Deuteronomy –

The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29:29

I will do everything I can do answer your questions, but it’s important to know that there are some ‘secret things’ God has not revealed. Fortunately for us, most of what we need to know for the purpose of this study has been revealed.

Evil and the Serpent

I’m going to jump ahead a little bit and address two of our primary questions:

Why is there evil in the world?
Why did God create the devil?

Evil could not and would not exist if God had not allowed it, so there’s a reason for it. The same is true about the devil. The devil could not and would not exist if God had not allowed it, so there’s a reason for it.

These are two of the toughest questions people ask Christians. I get it. Wouldn’t life be great if evil and the devil didn’t exist? I’m afraid that thinking is too small when considering what God has done, is doing, and will do to the heaven and earth He created.

God created humans to ‘reign’ with Him. That sounds good on the surface, but how will humans know how to reign with God? What does it mean to ‘reign’ with God. God’s ways and thoughts are so much higher than our ways and thoughts (Isaiah 55:9). So, how do we gain that kind of knowledge? How do we attain to those types of ‘ruling’ abilities? That’s what this series will address.

Subdue It

God designed a ‘training plan’ for humans to be able to ‘reign’ with Him. There are so many things humans need to learn about God and how to rule ‘in sync’ with Him. That’s where ‘evil and the devil’ come in.

Let me say at the outset that I am not going to make light of evil or the devil. Jesus said that the devil ‘does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it’ (John 8:44). Jesus also called the devil ‘the great dragon,’ ‘that old serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world’ (Revelation 12:9). I also won’t make light of ‘evil’ because it has caused untold misery in this world. However, there is a reason for both of them existing.

Look at Genesis 1:28 again – this time with a focus on what humans would need to do before they had ‘dominion’ (rule) –

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Did you notice the word ‘subdue it’ just prior to ‘have dominion over’ it? The Hebrew word for ‘subdue’ is כָּבַשׁ (kabash) and means ‘to bring under subjection, force into bondage.’ Why would God say that humans would need ‘to bring things under subjection, and force into bondage’ before He said they would ‘rule’ (have dominion) ‘over every living thing that moves on the earth?’

I believe that learning how to ‘subdue’ is part of learning how to ‘rule.’ Why, if humanity was going to exist in a perfect world where they would ‘rule and reign’ with the God who created the heavens and the earth, would they need to learn how to ‘subdue’ anything or anyone? Why would bringing things ‘under subjection’ and ‘forcing into bondage’ precede ‘having dominion’ in a ‘perfect world?’

Next Time

We’ll take a deeper dive into that question in the next part of our series – Train to Reign.

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Founder & Director of GraceLife Ministries View all posts by gracelifethoughts

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GraceLife Thoughts – Train to Reign (Part 5)