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The Tree of Knowledge
Good Morning, Good Morning, Good Morning! Thought I’d say it three times to wake you up.
Ready to get another week fired up? Good! We’ve got lots to talk about over the table this week. I want to continue our discussion on dealing with the families of fear, but we need to lay some important foundations before we return to that theme.
Got a couple of pots of dark roasted Columbian made in my French Press. Pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup, and let’s get started.
I’m liable to get in trouble with today’s discussion. If I step on some toes today, just know that it isn’t personal. Hopefully, you’ll be able to get through this and understand a valuable Truth – a principle that will enable you to walk in freedom.
A few years ago, a brother by the name of Rick Joyner did a book titled,
THERE WERE TWO TREES IN THE
GARDEN. Fantastic book! If you get a chance, pick up a copy at your local bookstore.
I’m not here to rehash Rick’s book or to plagiarize his commentary, but to share with you what his book started in my own understanding.
Have you ever stopped to consider why God commanded Adam and Eve to avoid the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or what their partaking of that tree initiated in the human race?
Think about the relationship Adam and Eve had with the Lord in the Garden. Genesis 3:8 tells us that Adam and Eve
“heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day….”
From the time they were created, they were imbued with divine revelation. Knowledge wasn’t learned, it was imparted through revelation. Knowledge wasn’t something they needed, they had every possible piece of information they could ever want or need for their existence and for their walk with God.
They were created for fellowship. They were created for union. They were created in such a way as to converse on a near-peer level with the Lord. Think about it!
Genesis 1:26 records the essence of a conversation between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
“Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion…..”
Those words, image and likeness, in the Hebrew text connote: exactness, with all the attributes and characteristics.
If you think about the concept of fellowship or communion or daily intercourse, you know that this happens on a peer level. One does not fellowship with an inferior. One does not have communion with one with whom one does not have a level of common knowledge. One does not become truly intimate in their sharing with someone who does share the same basic fundamentals.
Adam and Eve were created, and then God breathed into them the breath of His life. With that breath came divine revelation and knowledge. With that breath came authority. With that breath came an understanding of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the triune Godhead, as well as the things most important to them.
If one has been given all of this revealed knowledge and wisdom, and one walks and talks with the Creator with real understanding, having fellowship with Him day after day after day after day, what need – pray tell – is there for any other kind of knowledge?
Adam’s and Eve’s experiences were certainly going to add an additional dimension to that revealed knowledge, but those experiences wouldn’t even begin to add up to that which the Lord had revealed to them in their inner beings.
Consider the breadth of authority given to them. And, by the way, Eve was not Adam’s inferior. She was his co-equal, his counterpart, his other self. She was everything Adam was not in the same way that Adam was everything she was not. He was the dominant personality, having been first created before Eve, Eve having been taken from his side in order to create a partner. She was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. She saw things as he saw them.
As the object of Adam’s love and the completion of his being, Eve was Adam’s weak spot. He was vulnerable in this area.
It isn’t necessary for us to revisit the temptation of Eve, and Adam’s subsequent partaking of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil other than to make a couple of observations.
The essence of Satan’s lie to Eve was that she had really been cheated out of
“all knowledge” by God in order to keep her – and Adam – from becoming
“as God.” Knowledge gained through our efforts and actions is a poor substitute for the revelation that comes from God. Neither Eve nor Adam had been kept from any knowledge they needed. Eating of the fruit of that tree wasn’t going to somehow make them to become
“as God.”
Adam and Eve were already “as God.” They had been created in His likeness, in His image, and had His life breathed into them. They fellowshipped with Him on a level the human race has scarcely seen.
Satan’s lie assumed that they were somehow inferior to God, that He had withheld a dimension of understanding that would make them His equals. Satan’s lie assumed that it was necessary for them to become God’s equal in order to function adequately in life.
It wasn’t. There would never be a created being equal with the Creator. It simply cannot happen.
Thus, Eve, then Adam, partook of the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The very first thing that happened to them was to experience something they had never known in all the many years they had walked with God: Fear. Notice the circumstances under which they first experienced fear: they heard the voice of God speaking.
The first thing that happens, therefore, when you begin to acquire knowledge of good and evil through your own actions and efforts instead of receiving that knowledge directly through revelation from the Lord is that you take to yourself ……..dum de dum dum….. The Fear of Evil. The knowledge of evil begets the Fear of Evil.
This is the granddaddy of all fears. Every other spirit of fear serves in some way the Fear of Evil. We won’t follow that path of logic today, but perhaps we can get to that in a later discussion.
Because this is the most basic of all fears, it affects us in our spirits. The Fear of Evil happened instantly when Adam and Eve heard the voice of God. Why? Because they had disobeyed the only command God had given them in the Garden. Their disobedience put them at odds with their friend, their Creator, the One with whom they had fellowshipped, the One whose presence they had enjoyed day after day after day after day.
What was it Jesus said? “God is a spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” (see John 4:24)
Thus Adam and Eve’s most basic relationship with God was at the very spirit core of their existence. And what was the very first thing they did after they reacted in fear to the voice of God and hid from Him?
They answered His question by trying to justify themselves and their actions in His sight. They started passing the buck. “It’s all Eve’s fault.” “No, it’s the serpent’s fault.”
It is the very personification of religion. Religion replaces relationship by justifying itself before God and trying to please God on its terms rather than His terms. Religion places blame on man’s failures and inequities, whereas relationship brings change through love. Religion seeks to justify man’s existence. Religion strives to provide answers to who and what God is, whereas relationship needs no self-justification or answers as to who and what God is.
Religion places a set of requirements on pleasing God. Religion creates circumstances under which one strives through one’s actions or efforts to
“enter into Heaven,” or “have eternal life,” whereas relationship guarantees Heaven and eternal life as a natural matter of course. Religion makes Heaven an objective. Relationship makes the Lord Jesus Christ the objective.
See what the Fear of Evil does to a person.
Religion is performance-based. Relationship with Jesus Christ is love-based. If I suffer from the Fear of Evil, I’m going to be working my behind off to please God. I’m going to engage in every conceivable kind of “good work,” so that I’m “good enough” to make it to Heaven. If I’m really serious about pleasing God, and I suffer from the Fear of Evil, I’m going to wear myself out trying to do everything I think will please Him. I’m going to tithe, go to church, preach on street corners, visit the sick in the hospital, give generously to charities, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Got the picture?
What’s really sad is that these are all the kinds of things you do as a matter of normal course when you have a relationship with the Lord. The difference is that you aren’t driven to do them in an effort to please God.
Religion is the counterfeit. Relationship is the real. The reason why Religion is counterfeit is that it looks just like the real thing. All of the outward actions may appear the same. What’s missing is the personal, intimate relationship with the Lord. What’s missing in Religion is the motivating love. Fear is the motivating force in religion. It drives one to perform, to do what we think is better as opposed to simple obedience to the Lord and to His voice.
Religion supplants worship. Worship takes place in the spirit – not in the bending of one’s knee, the singing of certain songs or the repetition of certain words and phrases. Religion drives folks to keep and perform certain rituals, to pray certain prayers “the right way,” to sing “the right songs.”
The Fear of Evil works strictly in our spirits. It is that fear that works up the sound and fury in a lot of preachers as they attempt to scare folks into Heaven.
There are lots of things that go with the Fear of Evil -- lots of family members – but we’ll get to them in a later discussion.
Let’s get back to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
We’ve already noted that eating of the knowledge of evil produces the Fear of Evil. Eating of the knowledge of good, however, produces pride and arrogance – two family members of the Fear of Evil.
The knowledge of good, however, produces more than simple pride – as in, for example, the pride of one’s accomplishments. It produces the pride that comes in religion. It drives the arrogance that says, “My religion is better than his religion.” It’s the religious pride that makes one feel superior because they have pleased God by doing so many good works or giving so much to help the poor.
What a farce! It’s all Religion. It’s all counterfeit! It’s part of the garbage that has created so many churches and denominations – all the religious walls that divide God’s people with silly doctrines and traditions of men. It’s what divides Jew from Christian, Christian from Muslim, Muslim from Hindu…..you get the picture.
The knowledge of good has another, far more insidious side to it, however. The knowledge of good is what man seeks after in his unending quest for more education. The more he learns and thinks he knows, the more knowledge he seeks after.
The knowledge of good leads to the knowledge of science. It leads to the discovery of laws and principles that were in existence before Adam and Eve were created. The more science men learn, the prouder they become, and the more they believe the lie that they are in control of themselves.
Scientific knowledge divorced from a relationship with the Lord always produces idiots who proclaim their latest discoveries in their quest to find the answers to life outside of the realm of the spirit. Science, left to stand on its own, always produces folks who are dumber and dumber and dumber when it comes to spiritual reality.
Scientific knowledge tweaks the intellect. It staggers the unregenerate mind. It increases the unquenchable thirst to learn more and more and more. The more one learns, the more one is dissatisfied.
This principle is true of all academia. Eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil causes men and women to seek after degrees, to be “certified,” to become “authorities” in certain areas of knowledge. Now, don’t get me started on this discussion again. We don’t need to go there.
For those of you who may be inclined to take offense at these remarks, I’m not criticizing or condemning the need for understanding and basic knowledge that we need to make our way in an increasingly technological world. What I’m saying is that mankind has replaced revealed knowledge with acquired knowledge. It’s a lousy substitute.
Acquired knowledge never has an end. It is destitute of the Truth. Knowledge gained through education is inherently unsatisfying. It always leaves one looking for more.
It is the perfect picture of what the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy,
“…Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth.”
See what “acquired knowledge” does to men and women?
Let’s see if we can sum up today’s discussion.
The Garden contained the first opportunity for choice: The Tree of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge. This would be the most important choice mankind could make, since to choose the Tree of Life would be to choose the desire of the Lord over the temptation of the flesh. To choose the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would set in motion events which, if left unchecked, could bring an end to the entire plan of Creation.
To choose the Tree of Knowledge would initiate the deadliest virus anyone could possibly imagine within the human frame: the "Knowledge Virus." This virus would bring death to virtually every member of the human race. It would also create and set in motion a series of events which would force those who desired relationship with the Lord to overcome spiritual forces pitted against them -- evil spirits and wicked principalities who would take up dominion over the whole earth, whose entire existence revolved around defeating the heart's desire of the Lord Jesus Christ. These would be spiritual forces which could only be overcome in the place of union with the Lord. It would also force mankind to overcome mountainous obstacles which were designed to entice, subvert, and attract the desires of human flesh and human will.
And you know what? I’m not going to get to some of the most cogent points of this discussion today. We’ve run out time, and out of room in the space allotted.
Hmmm….. Got so busy talking there, I let my coffee get cold. Have to reheat it, I guess. You all have a wonderful day. Cogitate on what I’ve shared with you, and let’s return to this discussion on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil tomorrow.
Blessings on you. Be blessed in your labors today, blessed in the city, blessed in the country – blessed everywhere you go!
Regner
A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
700 South 6th Street
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 837-4657
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