God didn t just create the heavens, earth, creatures, and humans to step back and watch. He walked among them as stated in Genesis 3, 8Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. God wants to be involved in their lives and have a close relationship with humans. God has intimately taken care of humans but they directly disobey God, no matter how simple the LORD s single command is.
God takes great care of Adam and Eve; for example, God provides everything for them as stated in Genesis 2, 8Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground–trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. God gives Adam dominion over the garden and the animals within; he has everything he needs, even a wife. God gives them a simple command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but He told them they can eat from any other tree in the garden.
What tree do they eat from? Of course, the tree of knowledge, which directly disobeys the LORD s basic command. God gave Adam and Eve a paradise to dwell in and the opportunity to manage it and all the animals there in, but even with all this, they weren t content and violated God s request. They directly disobey God even after He has taken care of them so well. God brings about a great flood to destroy the wicked people that inhabit the earth. Noah is told by God to build an ark and to put his family and animals in it before the rains come.
The boat, family, and animals survive the flood, and the land dries up and is fruitful once again. God comes to Noah and his sons and blesses them in Genesis 9: 1Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 3Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. God told them to spread out and fill the earth. What do they end up doing? They migrate together until they find a place to build a city and a huge tower.
They directly disobey God s order after he delivered them from the great flood, and their reasoning for disobeying blatantly goes against God s words when they said, in Genesis 11: 4, “ Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth. ” God then mixes up all the peoples language and then He spreads them all over the earth. God had been so good to them by not destroying them in the great flood.
He graciously and mercifully prepares them to survive the flood and afterwards they completely go against God s simple command to spread out and populate the earth. There was another character that God really took care of, Solomon. God came to Solomon in a dream and said that he could have anything he wanted; Solomon chose the gift of wisdom and the LORD faithfully granted him that.
I Kings 4: 29God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. 0Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. 31He was wiser than any other man, and his fame spread to all the surrounding nations. Through God s blessing, Solomon became one of the richest and wisest persons to walk the face of this planet. Even with all the blessings and glory that God gives him, do you think that he can keep the LORD s basic laws that He had laid down?
Of course not, Solomon has many foreign women that are from nations which the LORD has said that You must not intermarry with, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods. Nevertheless, Solomon keeps them as his wives. From this, 1 Kings 11: 6 says, Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD. Solomon built a temple for Chemosh, the god of Moab, and for Molech the god of the Ammonites and he did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.
The result is stated in 1 Kings 11: 9The LORD became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. 10Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon doesn t keep the LORD’s command. This results in the downfall of his glorious kingdom. God set Solomon up with the greatest kingdom in history but yet he isn t faithful enough to follow the LORD s simple commands, even after the LORD had appeared to him and had spoken with him intimately.
God has repeatedly taken care of man but man returns God s blessings by directly disobeying simple and basic commandments. With all of God s knowledge, wisdom, and power, you would think that they need not to doubt his commands but trust that it is for the better, especially after witnessing His goodness and greatness first hand. The relationship between God and man is difficult. God gives great things and takes care of the humans. All the humans do is take those blessings and then disobey His instructions. In conclusion, man has obedience problems in a relationship with a pro-active God.
