1. What's the problem?

The story starts at the very beginning of human history, when God created the first man and the first woman, whom we know by the names Adam and Eve. (You can read this for yourself in the first book of the Bible: Genesis chapters 1 to 4.) God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to tend it and keep it, and gave them total liberty to do whatever they wanted to do, with one exception. There were two trees planted right in the middle of the garden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God’s one prohibition is found in chapter 2 verses 16 and 17:

¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”Genesis 2:16-17

When they were created by God, Adam and Eve were in a state of INNOCENCE. They had never experienced anything hurtful and never done anything that was in any way wrong. Guilt, shame, fear, disappointment, and all of the negative emotions that you and I have to deal with as we travel through life, were entirely unknown to them. They also knew nothing about pain, disease, or death.

Another thing that Adam and Eve had no experience of was deceit. They naively assumed that anything that anyone might say must be true.

The Genesis account, in chapter 3, introduces us to the serpent, whose purpose is to deceive Adam and Eve into believing that eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, far from causing them to die, will actually enable them to be like God, knowing good and evil, having wisdom, insight, and understanding which God has been withholding from them because He wants them to remain ignorant and dependent, and not to become free and self-sufficient.

We will look more closely at the serpent in another article. For the moment it should be sufficient to quote the apostle John who, in Revelation 12:9, refers to “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world”.

The name 'devil' comes from a Greek word meaning 'slanderer', and the name 'Satan' comes from a Hebrew word meaning 'accuser'. This spiritual being, this fallen angel, is one who was created good, as was everything else that God created, but at some point, and for some reason, took his eyes off the perfectness of God and turned them onto himself, where he saw someone who, in his own eyes, was just as good, just as powerful, and just as worthy of worship as God Himself was. This was the beginning of his rebellion, making himself the enemy of God, and this was the beginning of evil.

By making himself the ENEMY of God, he made himself the OPPOSITE of God, so if God is totally good, Satan is totally evil; if God is totally love, Satan is totally hate; if God is totally truth, Satan is totally falsehood.

God gave Adam and Eve a choice: you can either take from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever, or you can take from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and suffer for the rest of your life and eventually die.

The same choice that was presented to Adam and Eve at the beginning is still being presented to you and me, and everyone else in the world, today. It is the choice between God and Satan, good and evil, life and death, truth and lies, love and hate, light and darkness.

The remainder of the Old Testament tells us how God raised up a chosen people, the nation of Israel, and endeavoured to work with them in such a way that they would become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:4-6), demonstrating to the rest of mankind what a blessing it is to walk with God and live according to His will. Time and again, however, the Israelites turned their backs to God and pursued their own agendas, to the point where, as the apostle Paul expresses it, “the name of God is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you!” (Romans 2:24).

God was ready, on a number of occasions, to abandon Israel entirely, but never did so, because He had entered into a covenant with them – a solemn commitment that He would be their God, and they would be His people (Exodus 29:45).

By the way, that covenant still stands today. Israel is still God’s chosen people, and will remain so until the end of time (Jeremiah 31:35-37).

In case you might be thinking that the Israelis must be a particularly wicked lot, the truth is that God was simply demonstrating to the world that human nature is such that even a nation that He Himself had founded and nurtured would turn rotten. What must the outcome be, then, for all of the other nations, who never had the advantage of divine input and influence? I think history answers that question for us quite eloquently!

In his letter to the first-century church in Rome, the apostle Paul gives us a depressing, but accurate, analysis of the state of affairs in the world as the result of generations of men and women living for themselves with no reference to God:

²⁸And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. ²⁹They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, ³⁰slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, ³¹foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³²Though they know God's decree that those who practise such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practise them.Romans 1:28-32 (ESVuk)

We all know about Noah's Ark and how "the animals went in two by two", but how many people know about the background to that event?

This is what we read about it in Genesis chapter six:

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, ²the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. ³Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” ⁴The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

⁵The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ⁶And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. ⁷So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

⁸But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord.
Genesis 6:1-8 (ESVuk)

Before we go on, let's take a moment to think about these individuals referred to as 'the Nephilim', or 'the Giants'. We are told that they are the children of 'the sons of God' and the daughters of men, but how are we to understand this, as scholars have been scratching their heads over it for generations?

It seems to me that the best way to understand this is to compare what we read in Greek mythology, where there was a group of beings known as 'demi-gods' or half-gods - i.e. half god and half man. The most famous of these, probably, is Hercules, who was the son of the god Zeus and a woman called Alcmene. The story goes that Zeus visited Alcmene one night in the guise of her husband, and the fruit of that evening's union was Hercules.

Now, I am not equating the Biblical record to the myths of Greek paganism, but simply making the point that the phenomenon of super-human beings coming about through the interaction of unholy spiritual beings and fallen human beings is not unique to Scripture. In Greek mythology, they are the children of gods, who seem to be very human in their attitudes and actions, whereas in the Bible their fathers are 'the sons of God', whom we would generally understand to refer, in this case, to fallen angels - i.e. the angels who, along with Satan, rebelled against God and attempted to take control of the earth.

Whatever our understanding of the details of this phenomenon might be, the bottom line is that we see both angels and humans veering widely from the purposes of God and bringing further corruption into an already corrupted world.

The question we are attempting to answer in this article is, "What's the problem?" In the passage of scripture just quoted, we find the answer. Here it is:

⁵The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.Genesis 6:5 (ESVuk)

Compare this to the following two verses from the same chapter:

¹¹Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. ¹²And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.Genesis 6:11-12 (ESVuk)

Wickedness; corruption; violence; evil. These are the issues that God found Himself having to deal with in the affairs of man. What He had created beautiful and good had been transformed into something ugly and foul. Mankind had chosen evil over good, corruption over righteousness, profanity over holiness.

And nothing has changed!

We see the same phenomena today as were evident in Noah's time, and we can expect it to continue this way until the end of the present age, as Jesus told us:

²⁶Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.Luke 17:26 (ESVuk)

But also as in the days of Noah, when God found a righteous man who won His favour and through whom He brought salvation, there is salvation still today for those who want it.

God gave Noah and his family the sign of the rainbow as the memorial of God's mercy and favour. That seven-arched rainbow still stands today, as does the promise of which it reminds us.

A greater sign and a greater promise were brought into the mix two thousand years ago through the Lord Jesus Christ. That sign is the sign of the cross, which also still stands, and will do so forever.

The problem was not solved in Noah's day, and the problem persists until this hour.

In short, the problem is a single, three-letter word - SIN.

In Summary

• God created all things good, spiritual and physical, heavenly and earthly.
• One of God's heavenly beings, or angels, rebelled against God and tried to set up his own kingdom in opposition to God.
• This being, whom we know as Satan or the devil, by rejecting God made himself the opposite of God - evil instead of good.
• God made mankind after His own image to be in charge of the earth.
• God gave Adam and Eve a choice: to be obedient to God and eat of the Tree of Life, or to follow Satan and eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
• Our first parents chose to listen to the voice of Satan, and in so doing introduced evil on to the earth.
• Since that day, pain, sorrow, frustration, abuse, rebellion, and death have been the norm in human life.

That's the problem!