In The Beginning | Section 04 Episode 53

SECTION 4 Everyone is well acquainted with purpose. The majority of things we do every day all have a distinct purpose for them. Some are obviously far more important than others, but we cannot function without purpose. This is how God made us and it is how normal responsible people live. This next section is all focused on the singular purpose God has for us humans. We started these lessons with the reason we humans are here on earth and that is to inherit the kingdom. But now we are shrinking down that purpose to an infinitely small one that is to actually touch every facet of our lives. I always find it amazing how much God is able to take what appears to be a small thing and expand it into truths of gigantic magnitude. That is what we will see with this section titled The Ultimate Purpose of The Good News of the Kingdom. I hope you are able to understand the purpose God has for your life in a whole new magnificent way as we work through section 4. LESSON 53 In the beginning Bible References: Genesis 1:27, 28 (1) Genesis 1:28a (2) Good morning and welcome to another Lesson From The Tent. I had a very interesting experience a few weeks ago with something that happened about twenty feet from my tent. One day while I was sitting here at my desk with the side of the tent rolled up, I noticed my cat was sitting at the base of a tree staring up the trunk. She wouldn’t take her eyes off something that was way above her. Since I couldn’t see what it was from here, I got up and walked out to see what it might be. What was catching my cat’s attention was a good size rattlesnake, up in the tree, wrapped around a branch, hissing and rattling the tip of his tail nonstop. We are not fond of rattlesnakes. We have several children here and rattlesnakes don’t care if you are young or old. They will strike anyone who gets too close. I have seen many rattlesnakes in my life, but I have never seen one in a tree. After a couple of minutes of watching him, I figured out why he was in the tree and why he was so upset. My grandson Lukas was just weed whacking the tall grass around the tree and probably spooked the snake so much that He slithered up into the tree. We have plenty of gopher snakes that we encourage to live here but we don’t let rattlesnakes run free on our property. I contemplated for a couple of minutes how in the world was I going to get that snake out of the tree so I could kill it. I saw Lukas over by our grove and quickly hollered for him to come help me. He did and was just as startled as I was on seeing the rattlesnake up in the tree. I put my cat in the car so she would be out of harm’s way while Lukas looked for one of the many shovels, we have leaning on trees around our property just for situations like this. I found a long enough branch on the ground to reach the snake well above us and Lukas quickly returned with a shovel. The rattlesnake was still angry as could be and I took the long branch and started to prod him lose. The more irritated he got the more he released his coiled neck from around the tree. His head was dropping lower indicating he wanted to drop to the ground, so I used my stick and held his head against the tree trunk so He could not drop. Lukas then positioned himself perfectly and struck the rattlesnake with the shovel chopping off his head. The head dropped to the ground and with a little more prodding with my branch I got the snake’s body to release from the branch and also fall to the ground. Success. We bagged him and off to the trash can he went. I let my cat out of the car and went back to writing inside my tent while Lukas went back to weed whacking. Just another day on the property. I tell you this story because it is pertinent to the next section of lessons. As you have probably already figured out, it will concern a snake; only the snake I want to talk about is far worse than all rattlesnakes or any other poisonous snake that harms people and sometimes kills them all around the world. The snake I am referring to though causes several million worse results in a single day than all the poisonous snakes in the world have throughout history. The snake I am referring to is Satan and yes, He is the worst serpent in the universe. I would like to take you back to the sixth day of creation when God created the first two humans. Let me read from the Bible about this great event. Here is what it says. “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and said to them. ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (1) The first thing I want you to notice is God said He created “man,” in His image and we find out that “man” is both male and female. In this passage the word man is referring to all mankind and therefore both male and female are created in the image of God. That is a very significant concept to understand. These are the first two humans to exist on earth, and all mankind comes directly from them. God established that we humans are to rule the earth, subdue everything in it and fill this planet with people created in the image of God. All living things like fish, tigers, birds, rodents and butterflies were created to inherently do what God created them to do. They had no freewill to choose to do something different so they have always fulfilled God’s will for them. Mankind though was the only thing God created that He gave the freedom to choose to do His will or choose to do something different. Now let’s look at one of the most important words in the Bible and it is found in this passage about God creating man and woman. And it happens to be the first thing God did with His new human creation. Here it is. “God blessed them.” (2a) This word blessed defines what mankind’s relationship with God was meant to be, and it also defines how mankind was supposed to live every moment of their days on earth. Only God could use one word to define all this. The basic definition of this word is to kneel or surrender. This word does not mean to physically bow. It means they willingly kneeled or surrendered in their heart. It also means they were to respect and honor God recognizing His superiority which leads them to worship, praise, honor and respect Him. That’s the way it was meant to be right in the beginning. That would also apply to everyone born from them in the future. You can see that God wanted all humans to populate the earth, rule over it and subdue everything in it while kneeling to God’s reign over them. And they do all this while praising, worshipping, respecting and honoring Him. That is the foundation of mankind’s relationship to God and it’s how all humans were meant to function in the world. Lock on to that thought because we will be looking at this further in the next several lessons. Well, that’s it for today and once again there is just one thing – In the beginning God established how mankind was to relate to Him and how they were to live in the world, so if you are a man or a woman, you know exactly how you were meant to live, but watch out for the snake. ------- Guitar by Cole Criske 2020 All rights reserved For great coffee order Cole's coffee here: https://colescoffeeco.com/ ------- Produced by Dereck Bradley Contact us at [email protected]