Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4-5 NKJV)
It must have been a hard decision for God to make. I don't mean to suggest that anything is really hard for God, but the decision had consequences that even God could not have treated lightly. The decision to put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden had consequences for all of history. By putting that tree there, God effectively created a gate out of the Garden of Eden. He gave man a choice about the kind of a world that he would live in. If Paradise became boring for man, he had an alternative.
God (1) told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree, but (2) left them free to eat it anyway.Much is contained in these two simple facts. But there was more. In order for God to achieve his objective it was necessary that man be free. But that idea has terrible consequences. If man is not free to do evil, for example, he is not free. If he is not free to hurt other people, he's not free. If man is not free to suffer, then he's not free. If the innocent are not free to suffer at the hands of evil men, then they are not free.
Liberty has consequences. Man wants freedom, and at the same time he wants to be free from the consequences of his actions. These two wants simply cannot be reconciled.
Why is evil allowed in God's good world if God is good? The answer is utterly simple: God is good, man is free. And if you're not free to do evil, you're not free at all.
It might have been possible for God to create a world where man would never harm innocent children. But that world would not have been free. In order to be free ourselves we must be free to suffer the consequences of the choices of other people. If a burglar makes a choice to break into your home, you suffer the loss of your goods or your property because of a choice that he made. He was free to make that choice. If he hadn't been free to make it, he's not free at all. And if you hadn't been free to suffer it, you wouldn't be free at all.
Every intervention of God in the affairs of men is an abridgment of the freedom he intended for man. If you pray and ask God to help you find a job, you are asking God to abridge the freedom of the person who does the hiring. Not only that, but you are asking him to deny the job to someone else who may have been better qualified. Now I believe God does that for people, but let’s not overlook what it costs.
In order to put food on the table of your hungry children, God may have to abridge your freedom to be poor. If God actually intervenes, if he has to do something to give food to your children that you otherwise could not provide, he is abridging your freedom to be poor and hungry. It's a freedom you have that comes right along with your freedom to avoid work. It comes right along with your freedom to be feckless in the use of your money. It comes right along with the freedom to overcharge your credit cards to the point that you can't afford the things that you need to buy for your children. All these freedoms are ours. We can do what we wish, and that means that our children are free to suffer the consequences of our decisions as well.
Man is conflicted about freedom. Freedom is good, but we will lay it down in a heartbeat once it becomes too heavy to bear. We are tempted to lay our freedom down if someone offers us food, shelter and clothing. People have actually accepted slavery in order to fill their empty bellies and to get a kind of security from those who would do them harm. History is full of stories like this.
And so God, in his law, made provision for the renewal of liberty after it had been laid down. Every seven years, there was a clearing of the debts. The land was to lie fallow that year, all debts were canceled and all slaves set free. At the end of 49 years, in the 50th year, a liberty was proclaimed throughout the land. 1
Liberty is a marvelous word. What it meant to the Israelites was that all the stupid things they had done that got them into trouble were swept off the table. They got a clean start. In effect, it probably was of more benefit to the children of those who had lost their liberty. If your dad had sold off the family inheritance because of profligate spending, it came back to you in the 50th year.
That year was called a jubilee. 2 They were not to sow a crop in that year, nor were they to reap that which grew of itself. It was holy. They could eat it, but they could not make a cash crop with it. They were to allow the poor to come and get what they needed to eat in that year.
In the passage describing the Jubilee, Moses explains how a piece of property could be sold. The price was reckoned according to the number of years to the Jubilee. It was, in effect a leasehold sale.
There are some interesting consequences that flow from this. For one thing, all land titles flew right out the window. Family trees were important because the title reverted to the first heir in line. You didn’t plant in that year because the land might no longer be yours. You didn’t harvest because you may not have been the one who made the initial investments. Since the owners of all crops were in transition, the crops were thrown open to everyone to eat what he liked.
When I lived in England, I learned that much of the land belonged to the crown. You could buy that land as a leasehold, but only for a specified number of years. After that, the property returned to the crown. Land not subject to this restriction could be sold freehold, that is, it could be held in perpetuity.
The land in Israel was deemed to be owned by God and a fifty year leasehold was granted to the tribes by inheritance. At the end of every fifty years, the property reverted to the heir of the man who received the lot from God.
Twice in this law, there is a warning against oppression. It was considered oppression to try to hold on to the property beyond the Jubilee year. Much of the oppression men suffer in this world is self inflicted. It comes about by the foolish things that we do. The law of Moses, for example, made provision for punishing a thief. He had to make restitution plus penalties. If he couldn’t pay what was required, he was sold as a slave. But an Israelite could not be sold as a slave in perpetuity. He could not be held for more than six years, and then he had to be released – he got a fresh start. At the Jubilee, they even got their land back.
And of course throughout the Bible God repeatedly tells Israel, “I want you to think very carefully about this because you're strangers and sojourners with me and you better be careful how you treat the people who are strangers and sojourners with you. Realizing that just as I am treating you, you need to be careful to treat those people well.”
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Now there's an interesting illustration or example of these laws in the book of Jeremiah. 4 It is not entirely clear what happened, but it seems that King Zedekiah and all the nobles and princes had cut a deal to let all their Hebrew servants go free. They were allowed to retain a non Hebrew slave. The idea was that no man should serve himself of his brother.
The deal was put into effect, and it was probably in a year of release that this happened. Hebrew servants were treated as contracted servants. The contract had an expiration date, and when the time of the contract was up, they let them go.
In Jeremiah’s account of this, we aren’t told how long it took, but before long, the princes began making these same people servants and handmaids again. So the word of God came to Jeremiah with a message:
This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I made a covenant with your forefathers when I brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I said, 'Every seventh year each of you must free any fellow Hebrew who has sold himself to you. After he has served you six years, you must let him go free.' Your fathers, however, did not listen to me or pay attention to me. Recently you repented and did what is right in my sight: Each of you proclaimed freedom to his countrymen. You even made a covenant before me in the house that bears my Name. (Jeremiah 34:13-15 NIV)
Now mind you, the people who were in slavery were there for a reason. They were often miscreants. They had done stupid things, they had been criminals, they had gone into debt, they had done things that had led to them being made slaves in the first-place. Nevertheless, they weren’t slaves for life. They had to be let go. The problem arose when those princes who had been used to free labor now had to pay for it. So they broke their covenant.
But now you have turned around and profaned my name; each of you has taken back the male and female slaves you had set free to go where they wished. You have forced them to become your slaves again. Therefore, this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom for your fellow countrymen. So I now proclaim 'freedom' for you, declares the LORD--' freedom' to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth. (vv. 16-17)
These are not slaves of a conquered country, by the way. They were supposed to be contractual servants of their own people. But the contract had been broken.
What Jeremiah is telling them is this. Since they were not willing to accept the liberty defined by the law, they would be granted complete freedom. They would be free from God’s blessings and protection, free to suffer whatever evil the world had in store for them.
And this is the reason we have so many terrible things in our lives. It is because we have made choices that have brought them our way. We have made choices that have taken us out of the road that God wanted us to walk. We have made choices that have brought bad things upon us, our own sins have opened the door for these things to come upon us.
We have exercised our freedom, and God has granted to us a liberty, a liberty to the pain, destruction and loss that sin brings with it.
Freedom is a terrible burden to be borne. It is sad to say that some people, freed from servitude, want to go back. Just as Israel, freed from the slavery of Egypt wanted to go back, some men who have been freed from jail want to return. Men have actually committed crimes in order to get back into prison where they were fed and clothed, where they knew the routine and how to live. They have become so institutionalized that they can't live well outside. And so they go out and do the same things that they did before, and back inside they go again.
There are some on the outside who are of the same mind. They want to be taken care of, they want to lay their freedom down, they want to be slaves. They want to be servants because then, someone else can take care of them.
Freedom, after all, is a terrible burden to be borne. I know it must be, because we complain about it so much. We have a litany of complaints that, at their base, are complaints about freedom. We ask, “Why does God allow war?” That's a complaint about our freedom. “Why does He allow innocent children to suffer?” That also is a complaint about our freedom. “Why did God allow the Holocaust?” Well that's a complaint against the freedom of both Nazis and Jews.
We have the freedom to do good, we have the freedom to hurt, we have the freedom to harm, and if we have it, so do others. If others have that freedom we have the freedom to suffer from what they do. Freedom is a terrible word. It's a frightening word, a dangerous word. And when you understand it, it is the freedom of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Remember that the way the Bible uses the word “knowledge” in Genesis refers to the experiencing of good and evil.
Adam and Eve made the choice of experiencing good and evil, and we have been living with that choice ever since. Man was told what to do and left free not to do it. He was told what not to do and left free to do it anyway. That's what freedom is. But we want selective freedom, we want to be free to do what we want to do, but not free enough to experience the consequences of what we have done.
The irony of it all is that as we exercise our freedom to choose, what we choose leads us back into bondage again and again and again. And this is why in His original law, God made provision for freeing people. For some people, freeing them again and again. In a lifetime, some people could have managed to be slaves and free every seven years. In the same way, some people today are in an out of prison time after time. In every generation, there are people who just can’t seem to keep their life together. It may not lead to prison, but each, in his own way, goes back into bondage again and again.
There was a day early in Jesus' ministry when he made a special visit to a synagogue. It appears to be the first sermon of his ministry, because it takes place almost immediately after his temptation by the Devil. As he began to preach, the world begins to learn what Jesus is all about.
He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up, and as His custom was He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and He stood up for to read. And there was delivered to Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book He found the place where it was written, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4: 16-18)
There is no mistaking what he is talking about. It is a reference to the Jubilee year described here. Jesus sat down and closed the book. Everybody was looking at Him, and he said. “this day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
What makes this saying so important is the ease with which man lays down the burden of freedom, the ease with which he enslaves himself again and again. And the terrible price that has to be paid to purchase his freedom again. This is where Jesus begins to reveal that he is the redeemer, the savior, the one bridges the chasm that Adam crossed so very long ago. Jesus is the bridge back to the Tree of Life which Adam lost.
But Jesus was not citing Leviticus in his sermon on that day. Rather he was citing a passage from Isaiah. The remainder of the passage Jesus cited on that day would have been familiar to his audience. The words after “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” are “and the day of the vengeance of our God.”
What Jesus was doing was preparing the way and making possible what the remainder of that passage said about the work that Jesus would finally do.
To comfort all who mourn, to appoint to them who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. All the weight of the world that sits on our shoulders he has come to take away. And they shall rebuild the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, they shall repair the waste cities. The desolations of many generations, strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, the sons of the aliens shall be your vine men, your plow men, but you shall be named the priests of the Lord. (See Isaiah 61:1 ff.)
It is too easy to forget that salvation, in the sense Christians use the term, is a rescue operation. It is a rescue of people who have lost their freedom because of choices they made. And it is all too easy to forget that salvation is not without cost. Jesus was made, for a time, lower than the angels for the suffering of death.
For it became him, by whom are all things and for whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. For both he that sanctified and he that sanctifies them are all of one, for which sake he is not ashamed to call them brethren. . . For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that has the power of death, that is the devil. (Hebrews 2: 9 ff.)
We are so vulnerable in the world. A man can stand out in a wooded area with a rifle and kill a perfect stranger in a parking lot. Two boys can enter a school with weapons and kill their fellow students. They are free to do it, and their fellow students are free to die. What we must understand about this is that it was necessary for Jesus to make himself vulnerable to the same kind of choices that cause us so much suffering.
Jesus came to deliver those, who through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. He did not take on himself the nature of angels, but the nature of men. He walked on earth with us. He was one of us, and he had the freedom to make any choice that we choose to make. But because He was free He was also subject to the choices that other men made every day.
He escaped out of their hands a few times, but then one night there came a time when He had to submit Himself to the decisions that other people were going to make about Him. They would take away his dignity, his comfort, his freedom from pain, and even his life. To be truly free, he had to submit Himself to the choice that Judas made to sell him out. He had to submit himself to men who were going to mock him and humiliate Him and make fun of Him.
He had to submit himself to the choices of men who placed a crown of thorns on His head. He had to submit Himself to men who would slap Him on his face and pull His beard off His face. He had to submit himself to men who made the choice to drag him out to Golgotha having scourged him, to crucify Him and leave Him hanging in the sun to die. These decisions were all made by human beings who made choices to kill the son of God. And because of our freedom, He accepted the freedom to suffer.
When you think of it this way, a passage in Isaiah takes on new importance:
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53:2 ff.)
Jesus is a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He was tempted in every way as we are. He had all the choices before him that we have to make.
5 Jesus did this voluntarily. It had to be voluntary for it to mean anything. If the Father had required it of him, it would not have been a choice freely made.
Having fought the battle with this choice in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was able to tell Pilate, “I can say the word and have a legion of angels take me out of here. You have no power against me except it were given to you by God.” Jesus had a choice right up to the last.
Freedom, is highly problematical for us. We must never forget that if we are truly to be free, then other people are going to have to suffer because of the choices that we make. Our freedom to choose means somebody somewhere can get hurt by the things that we do. If I'm not free to inflict pain on you, I'm not free. I have the choice to do it or not. If you're not free to experience that pain, then you're not free.
And what Jesus faced in that long night of His betrayal was the voluntary subjection of himself to the evil choices of other men. And it's small wonder that, knowing what was coming, he sweat blood that night asking if there was some other way to do this thing.
What does all of that mean to us?
It is summed up in what James called, “The Law of Liberty.” 6 For James, this was the Ten Commandments, but it is perfectly exemplified in the lesson of Adam and Eve. God told them what not to do, and then left them free to do it. When you think about it, the Law of God can never be a “yoke of bondage,” because man is always free to do or not do. Even Paul sees it as a law of liberty: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."(Galatians 5:1) It is man’s laws (Judaism, in Paul’s case) that take away our liberty.
We are always free to obey or disobey and to experience the consequences of that liberty. Freedom carries with it an enormous responsibility.
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