Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am in Portugal. I had a wonderful weekend with ministry in Lisbon and in Samora. Thank you to all the hungry CCVA members who came to hear God’s word and experience His presence together. I am here for a couple of weeks. I will be recording more courses in Portuguese this week and next.
God’s creation of our world was from His vantage point. He saw the world from His heart and declared a finished work from His heart to the place that appeared to be formless, void, and dark. God declares the end of all things from the beginning because He can turn all things for good to bring about life in all things. The second chapter of Genesis reveals how man was to rule in the earth out of a relationship with God. Through an intimate relationship with God, man would be able to fulfill the commission to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion in the earth.
Genesis 2:4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; 6 but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. 8 The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. 9 And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The garden was not merely a place of blessing for mankind. It was a place of getting to know God, dwelling with Him, and fulfilling the mandate from a place of personal connection with Him. There were more possibilities in the garden than there were limitations. Only one tree was forbidden, while all the other trees were pleasing to the eye and good to eat from. God commanded man to eat of all the trees, except one. Eden was not a place of restriction, but one of abundance. It was a place of knowing God who is life and experiencing that life in the environment of man’s world. Only one tree would produce death and that was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – a tree that made man wise. It was a tree that could make man independent. To eat of that tree would disconnect man from God and a dependency upon a relationship of love that would come from God. When man ate of that tree, mankind became bound to a destiny of information with a self-condemning consequence of judgment and shame.
In Genesis chapter three we have a testimony of man eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eating of that tree brought about the consequence of futility in man’s commission in the earth. God spoke words over the earth that subjected it to futility in the hope of one day returning man to an intimate relationship with Him in all things. That could only happen through a restored relationship with God through a last and eternal Adam. That Adam would be the firstfruit of a new creation of humanity – a humanity of Christ.
After God’s perspective of creation, man’s experience of creation, and man’s fall to disconnection, we have the other books of the Bible. Sometimes we think that God created the world, He made man to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion, man fell, and God said, Shoot! I thought it would work. So, the rest is about how God is going to destroy it and take us to heaven. That kind of thinking is really quite foolish when you think of God and who He is. The missing piece has been intimacy of men with God, but God so loved the world He sent the solution.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved
God had to become a man of flesh. The word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood. He lived as a man with an intimate relationship with God His Father to restore our connection to God as our Father so that we could become a testimony of God’s word in our flesh. Jesus lived as a man of flesh. He died as a man of flesh. He was buried as a man of flesh. He rose from the dead as a man of flesh. He ascended into heaven as a man of flesh. He is pouring out His Spirit upon all flesh so that we can all live our lives empowered by God’s Spirit to fulfill the mandate given to us by God in our world. We can be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion in our world for the glory of God in all things.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
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