“They shall beat their swords into plowshares” (Isa. 2:4) Peace for all mankind, that is what this verse means to many, the lack of war means peace. My question to you is this, will these that are going to do the work of turning the weapons of war into implements of peace, into tools to till the ground, do so willingly.
My wonderful wife and I were discussing not the generalities of this statement in Isaiah this morning after she read it for us, but the serious nature of sin itself, and is my disposition, I looked for the root cause of this tendency we have as humans to go against the will and Word of God. The ability to exercise the free will that God has given to each and every one of us and its very first initial beginning against Him who gave it. Of course, for this we will need to look at the garden of Eden, for although sin first began in heaven with Lucifer, it is in our own natures to sin beyond his influences that have always intrigued me.
There are many conversations that revolve around why our Lord will release Satan from his prison to deceive the nations towards the end of the millennial period, (Rev. 20:7) but we may as well ask why He created him in the first place. This letter to you is not meant to discuss the efforts and effects of Satan upon this world and his continued works against our Lord, but as to whether he was needed in the first place. Now we must realize that to a degree this is a moot question, one without any true merit within itself, but the thought is not to see in the will of the Lord a need for a variance of His infinite wisdom, for no man can judge Almighty God, nor say to Him “Why hast thou created me thus,” (Rom. 9:20) His ways are perfect and He is just and righteous in all that He says and does. The question is, did Adam need Satan to commit the sin that he committed, did his free will need a ‘push’ in the wrong direction. You must always remember that God saw Satan enter into the garden, he didn’t just sneak in there unawares.
When the Lord God caused a rain to fall upon the earth and opened the fountains of the deep, (Gen. 6, 7 + 8) when He parted the Red sea to allow the children of Israel to pass through on dry ground, (Exo. 14) even unto the Lord Jesus Christ healing all those that came to Him, miracles are the way of God. We tend to look at these as miracles, and rightly so, for they are acts of a loving God towards His creation done in love for us, yet we sometimes forget that these are simple to our Lord, they infer no serious effort on His part, all that our Lord has created is not only subject to Him, but can be modified in any way, shape or form that He desires at any time, all of creation is under the complete and absolute control of the Creator. Save one thing, and it is here that great care must be taken on the part of this humble writer, this created soul that seeks the face of God, for although we can discern the mind of God through the Scriptures, we can never, nor will we ever understand exactly how He thinks. It is our place to obey, and therein is the subject matter, the reason for the statement “save one thing.” That one thing is the free will that He has in His infinite wisdom given unto every soul that He has created, the ability to choose for yourself.
If you would please, return with me to the garden of Eden for a few minutes, Satan is done speaking and it is quite easy for him to see that the woman was easily deceived, just a few words about the beauty of the fruit, the abilities that it could offer to her, that she herself could be as the Creator if she would just but taste it, but now for the man. No words by our adversary are spoken to him that we are told of, the decision to eat or not is left entirely up to his own free will. He is not easily deceived, yet. In Genesis 3:6 the Word says that she “gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” No words from Adam, no amount of timeframe is given to us from the point of Eves first bite to the decision that caused the fall of all mankind, just “he did eat.”
As I mentioned earlier, the root cause of any subject matter allows us the possibility to understand better the reason for the consequences of that action, and the beating of swords into plowshares is related to this one moment in time in this particular way, will the decision be of the free will of those doing the transforming of these weapons, or a another commandment that is given, but with free will left intact. Did our first parents need Satan to help them to sin.
“And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.” (Isa. 2:17) I am sincerely contemplating something that I wrote in a previous letter to you about the incident In the garden, the reason for Adams decision, and I am beginning to wonder if Eve ever came into the thoughts of Adam in any way before he ate of the fruit. I believe that I need to go far beyond what my earlier perceptions were of; did Adam see that Eve did not die, so he might as well eat of the fruit also; did he think that if she is going to die, that he should eat also so that he would die with her. I think these perceptions of the reason for his thoughts are not nearly enough, I do not believe that Adam set the woman above God, that he did not make her the determining factor for his choice. Adam sinned of his own free will, the free will that the Lord God Almighty gave to him at the very moment of his creation, his decision to sin was not based on the factor that the woman had eaten and his desire to place her above God being the determining reason behind his eating of the fruit also. I do not believe that he was thinking that she was more important to him than His Creator was. He wanted the same thing that Satan wanted, something that he did not have.
My friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, if we could know the thoughts of Lucifer before pride was found in his heart, what were the contemplations of his reasonings, if we could but see the thoughts and intents of Adams mind the moments before he placed that forbidden fruit to his lips, we would know the totality of the reason behind the beginning of all sin. What were they thinking before they performed the actions that they executed?
We do not have this capability today, the capacity to think without the influence of sin, for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has already been tasted, its wonders and grief are within the very souls of all of mankind, we are unable to accomplish any thoughts or actions without the influences of not only that tree, but of the sin that came with it. Yet within everyone of us is still the incredible gift of free will, the ability to choose for ourselves the course of actions that we want for ourselves. Adam could not choose between good and evil, for he had no knowledge of the concept of what they were, he was given one commandment, not to eat, and his decision to disobey that commandment was not made by any actions of deceit, either from Satan or from his wife. That decision was made without the understanding of the difference between good and evil, the intent to do evil was no more within him than the intent to do good.
Although Satan is never to be feared by the child of God, he is always to be respected, for he is more powerful than we can imagine, but in reality, he is nothing more than a petulant child who could not get what he wanted, and is being allowed by our Lord to do what he does within the limits that God has set for him. His coercion of a third of the angels was by deceit and lies, and if this was accomplished by him, the deceiving of angelic beings who have been in the presence of God Almighty, it was nothing for him to deceive the woman Eve.
Sin is an intentional act against the will and Word of God, the fulfilment of desires that are meant to either bring glory to us or to demean the necessity of Almighty God in our lives. Pride says I will be like The Most High, but what caused the first thoughts that said, “I wonder if I could be like God.” The deceiving within our own minds, minds that have been given free will, is at the very root of all sin. As I stated before, I believe that this door will be closed to us until Christ decides to open it, for nothing but conjecture can be offered by the finite mind when seeking the infinite mind of God.
It is Gods desire that free will be inferred upon all of the souls that He has created, and it is enough for us to know that this free will within us is to be directed for and towards the glory of His Name.
Will they beat their swords into plowshares of their own free will, I don’t know, you might as well ask why two-thirds of the angels that are still in dedicated service to the Lord in heaven do not sin, or why they did not. I do understand this though, we sin of our own free will, we submit ourselves to our own desires instead of the ones placed upon us by the Holy Spirit within us, we willingly eat of the fruit of that tree every single day.
If you want to see a true and real miracle my friends, look at yourself if you are a child of God, if you are an obedient and willing servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, someone who has begun down the path of dying to self for the one who gave all of Himself for you, that is a miracle. Free will bent to the will and word of God, solely for the glory of God, the denying of self, yea, even in fact to the death of self only for the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s a miracle.
