By Pastor Mitch Horton | April 2006 | Posted in • Archives | (1) Comments

As we celebrate Easter this month, I want to remind you of God’s original plan for His creation. God created us to fellowship with Him and to partake of His blessings. He designed that we enjoy our life on earth. In fact, His original plan was for us to enjoy life on this planet for eternity while living in these bodies He made for us. “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created.” (Revelation 4:11)

God’s will has not changed for us. His original purpose was to bless us, and to create an environment of blessing for us to enjoy. Of course, when Adam sinned, God’s plans to bless us were hindered, but they were NOT forgotten. God’s plan through Christ is to bring to pass His original purpose of blessing for us. “For God has allowed us to know the secret of His plan, and it is this: He purposed long ago in His sovereign will that all human history should be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth should find its perfection and fulfillment in Him.” (Ephesians 1:9-10 – J. B. Phillips Translation)

Adam’s sin may have hindered us from receiving all that God has for us, but it did not change God’s original will for our lives. His original will was for us to enjoy our life on earth and enjoy personal communion and fellowship with Him. His original desire to bless us has never changed.

We see God’s desire to bless in Romans 8: 31-32: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Again in Romans 5:17, we read: “For if by one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.”

God said to His Old Covenant people: “…That your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth.” (Deuteronomy 11:21) Jesus mentioned God’s will to bless in what we call the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:10: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” He wants earth to have the same blessing that heaven enjoys.

One of my favorite scriptures that I believe sums up God’s will for us is Psalm 84:11: “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.”

The obvious question that we ask is, if God so wants to bless us, why can’t He do it anyway, regardless of sin? The answer is that a thief is loose on earth, and his desire is to hinder any blessing that God wants to give us! We read in John 10:10: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

When the first man Adam sinned, two things happened. First, his sin separated him and every human being born after him from God. (Romans 5:12; Psalm 51:5; Romans 3:23) Secondly, his disobedience to God gave Satan a time-limited authority on earth. Let’s look at these two things a little more closely.

God told Adam that he would die if he ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:17) Though he didn’t die physically for hundreds of years later, Adam did die spiritually that day. Spiritual death is separation from God. Death in the Bible always means separation from something, never annihilation. Science says that death is the cessation of communication with environment.

There are at least three kinds of death spoken of in the Bible: spiritual death, physical death, and the second death. As we mentioned, spiritual death is separation from God. Physical death is the separation of the spirit and soul from the body. And the second death is eternal separation from God. Revelation 20:14: “Then death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” So we see that death was introduced to creation when Adam sinned.

The second thing that happened when Adam sinned is that Satan was given the original authority that God had given Adam when he was first created and given charge over the earth. You remember that God commanded Adam in Genesis 1: 28, “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish 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.”

Genesis chapter one mentions six times that what God created was good. In fact, the last time, it says “…and indeed it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) At the time of creation and before Adam’s fall into sin, the earth was a pristine environment for life. Death, decay, and all that harms was unknown to this planet. God would even come down from heaven during the evening hours and enjoy fellowship with Adam and Eve. (Genesis 3:8) But disobedience changed it all.

Adam not only lost his fellowship with His God, but in his disobedience he also did the unthinkable. He gave his God-given dominion away to God’s arch-enemy Satan. Notice Hebrews 2: 6-8: “…what is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you visit him? You have made him a little lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that He put all in subjection under Him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him.” This verse clearly shows the lost dominion of man over the earth.

What happened to man’s original God-given authority? It was transferred to Satan! This is clearly shown in the wilderness temptations of Jesus in Luke 4:5-6: “Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, ‘All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.’ ” The phrase “for it has been delivered to me” is translated “for it has been handed over to me” in the New American Standard Bible, “for it has been put into my hands” in the New English Bible, and “for it has been turned over to me” in the Amplified Bible.

Though Satan is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44), he did speak some truth here. He mentioned to Jesus that the authority of the kingdoms of this world was given to him. That is true; it was given to him by Adam the moment Adam sinned. What was not true is that he was willing to give it away. He was seeking to trick Jesus into submitting to him.

The sobering fact that we must live with is that a thief is loose on earth seeking to kill, steal, and to destroy every chance he gets. Though God destined us in creation for blessing, that blessing is being held back from us because sin and Satan reign.

The good news is that Jesus Christ came to give us life in abundance! But this abundant, God-blessed life is not automatic. It must be pursued by faith and obedience. The victory that overcomes the world is our faith. In our next lesson, we will discuss the importance of faith in receiving from God, and why faith is a key ingredient to receiving all that Jesus provided for you in His death, burial, and resurrection!