God Knows Best

The Sunday night message in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on March 3, 2024.  The Bible verses used are Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7.

            The comedienne Lily Tomlin once said that humans developed language to satisfy our deep inner need to complain.

            There may be truth in that, because it’s undeniable that human beings love to complain.  It does seem to be part of our nature.  No matter what’s going on, we’re never satisfied.  Things are never quite right.  They’re never quite good enough.  We always want more.  We always want better.  It’s just the way we are.

            Now, it could be argued that there’s an upside to that.  After all, much of what we call progress has come out of a desire to want more, or to want better.  Many of our greatest inventions have come because we wanted a better, easier way to do things.

            But there’s a downside to it, too.  This feeling that things are never right, that they’re never good enough, can keep us from appreciating what we have.  We cannot just be happy to be what we are and to have what we have.  We always feel like we’re missing something, like there has to be something better out there, and that we cannot be happy until we get whatever that something is.

            That’s one of the lessons we can take from our reading from Genesis tonight.  God had put human beings in paradise.  Literally, paradise.  Adam and Eve had everything they could ever need.  They had peace.  They had joy.  They had happiness.  They had each other.  What else could anyone want?

            Well, what they wanted was the one thing God had told them they were not supposed to have.  And is that not just like human beings?  If we’re told we cannot have one thing, that one thing is the only thing we want.  It’s the only thing we can think about.  It’s sort of like if you told me I cannot have pork chops.  I don’t eat pork chops very often, but if you told me I could never have them again, all of a sudden they’d be all I could think about.  I’d want them all the time.

            And that’s how Adam and Eve were with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Now, maybe you say, hey, wait a minute.  They did not get tempted to eat from the fruit of that tree until the serpent started telling them about it.  And there’s truth in that.  But at the same time, if they had not been thinking about that tree, if they had not been thinking about how cool it would be to eat some of that fruit, what the serpent said would’ve had no effect on them, right?  I mean, no matter how great you told me life would be if I started eating Brussels sprouts regularly, I would not be tempted to do it, because I don’t like Brussels sprouts.  You can only tempt someone to do something if they’re already thinking it’d be cool to do it.

            That’s how the serpent was with Adam and Eve.  And that’s how evil attacks us, too.  It hits us at our weak points.  It hits us on things that, on some level, we’d really like to do anyway.  And it tells us, oh, go ahead.  It won’t hurt anybody.  Nobody’s going to know.  And if they did, nobody’s going to care.  It’s not really bad.  Just go ahead and do it.  Whatever “it” happens to be.

            That’s what the serpent said to Adam and Eve.  Go ahead.  Eat the fruit.  It won’t hurt anybody.  Nobody will know.  It’s not really bad.  Just go ahead and do it.  

Adam and Eve had everything they needed.  But they were not satisfied with it.  They wanted more.  And by wanting more, they ended up losing what they had.

            But think about this:  why did Adam and Eve want more?  Why were they not satisfied with what they had?  Why did they desire the one thing that God had told them they could not have, rather than being grateful for the hundreds and thousands of things that God had given them?

            It comes down to a matter of trust, really.  Adam and Eve did not understand why God would tell them they could not have this one thing.  And when the serpent gave them a reason, they accepted that reason.

            Think about what that reason was.  The serpent basically told Adam and Eve that the reason God would not let them have that one thing was because God was trying to keep something from them.  God was trying to keep them down.  God was preventing them from being what they could be.  If they just stopped listening to God, and did whatever they wanted to do, they’d be so much better off.

            And they believed it.  That’s sad, isn’t it?  God had given them so much.  Again, God had given them everything they would ever need.  But despite that, they could not trust God.  They could not believe that God must have a good reason for not wanting them to eat the fruit of that one tree.  When the serpent told them God’s reasons were not good at all, they believed him.

            And that’s just like human beings, too, isn’t it?  God gives us so much.  God gives us everything we could ever need.  And yet, if God tells us we’re not supposed to have something, we have a hard time trusting God.  We have a hard time believing that God must have a good reason for telling us we’re not supposed to have things.  And when someone tells us, or when we tell ourselves, that God’s reasons are not good at all, we believe it.

            You know, contrary to popular belief, there are not a whole lot of things in the Bible that God has told us not to do.  And when God does tell us not to do certain things, there are reasons.  It’s not because God is trying to keep something from us.  It’s not because God is trying to keep us down or keep us from being what we could be.  It’s because God understands life better than we do.  And God knows we’ll be happier if we live our lives God’s way rather than living them our own way.

            I said that it comes down to trust, and it does, but it comes down to something else, too.  Why do we have trouble trusting God?  Because of our arrogance.  We don’t want to accept that God knows better than we do.  We don’t want to accept that anyone knows better than we do.  After all, nobody has a right to tell ME what to do.  I’ll do whatever I want.  And we do.

            I suspect you’ve done that at times.  I know I have.  When you did, how’d it work out for you?  It sure has never worked out for me.  It may have seemed like it did, for a little while.  When Adam and Eve first ate the fruit, they probably thought it was going to work out for them, too.  Hey, we know all this stuff we did not know before!  It was only later, when they had to accept the consequences for what they’d done, that they found out that doing things their own way was not going to work out for them at all.

            You know, arrogance is one of those sins we don’t talk about a whole lot.  And yet it’s all over the Bible.  It may be the sin that the Bible talks about the most.  The desire to do things our own way.  The belief that--whether we’d ever put it this way or not--that we know more than God.  The feeling that God’s rules are old-fashioned, that they’re a relic of the past.  Those rules were written thousands of years ago--they don’t apply today.  They certainly don’t apply to ME.  I’m a free human being.  I can do whatever I want.  Who is God to tell me what to do?  Who is anybody to tell me what to do?

            And the thing is, God will let us do that.  God will let us act out of our arrogance.  God will allow us to ignore God and do things our own way.  

            But think how God must feel when we do.  I don’t have any children, of course, but I often think that one of the hardest things about being a parent is when you see your child making decisions, going down a road, and you just know that it’s not going to work out well for them.  You know that the decisions they’re making, the road they’re going down, is only going to lead to sadness.  And yet, there’s nothing you can do about it.  All you can do is let them know you still love them, and be there to pick up the pieces when it falls apart as you know that it’s going to.

            I suspect that’s how God feels about us, many, many times.  God sees the decisions we make.  God sees the road we’re going down.  And God knows that what we’re doing is not going to work out well for us.  But God does not stop us.  What God does, though, is continue to love us.  And God will be there to pick up the pieces when things fall apart.

            But how much easier, how much better our lives would be if we just listened to God in the first place?  How much easier, how much better our lives would be if we put aside our arrogance?  How much easier, how much better our lives would be if we stopped insisting on doing things our way and instead started doing things God’s way?

            Yes, God has given us rules for living.  But not because God is trying to keep us down or keep anything from us.  God gave us rules for living because God loves us.  So let’s put aside our arrogance and start living our lives God’s way.  Let’s trust God, because God always knows best.