Angels: Finding Hope in God Who Reigns Over Heaven and Earthਨਮੂਨਾ

In the Garden

As we embark on this journey from Genesis to Revelation, we begin in the first few pages of the Bible. Genesis 1 reveals that everything God made was good, until something awful happened. Sin polluted God’s perfect garden.

In this study we won’t overly focus on Satan or demons—angels that rebelled against God—but I do think it’s important to understand what God has revealed about them and why. What we will find is that while these fallen angels are real, their power is limited. We have nothing to fear—greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4)!

Temptation

In Genesis 3:1, The Serpent asks Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden?’”

Here we discover the first mention of a fallen angel—Satan—who shows up in the form of the serpent. Genesis 3 doesn’t give us any details about where Satan came from or why he deceived Adam and Eve. It’s helpful to remember that when Moses recorded the first five books of the Bible, these accounts had been orally passed down through many generations. The original audience would have been familiar with the concept of God’s enemy who misrepresented God’s commands and character.

Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20:2 make the connection for us between the serpent and Satan, and 12:9 clarifies that Satan is a fallen angel. In Genesis 3:1, the serpent—“the one deceiving the whole world” (Rev. 12:9)—used his deception to question God’s word and His goodness. About this text Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,

The serpent’s question was a thoroughly religious one. But with the first religious question in the world evil has come upon the scene. . . . This is the question that appears innocuous, but through it evil wins power in us, through it we become disobedient to God.1

Today, Satan’s tactics remain the same. He still targets both the commands and character of God in our lives. He wants to skew our understanding of God and deceive us into questioning whether we can trust the Lord with certain aspects of our lives.

Perhaps, like Eve, you see something you want and wonder if God is holding you back. Others of you might have thought of things like children, finances, health, job, singleness, or something totally different. The first of God’s supernatural beings we encounter in Scripture is an enemy, and God wants us to be aware of his schemes. Rather than pretend he doesn’t exist, we can find hope by identifying his lies and recognizing God’s Word as truth.

Consequences

Adam and Eve’s disobedience had consequences—for them, for all future generations of people, and for the devil.

Genesis 3:15 is often referred to as the protoevangelium, meaning “the first gospel.” Here at the very beginning of the Bible we are given the gospel plan to send Jesus, the offspring of a woman who would one day crush the serpent. The relationship between God and His creation was broken by sin, and Genesis 3:15 hints at the plan of redemption. As we understand the enemy’s role in temptation, we can also bask in God’s grace. He didn’t leave us alienated forever from Him. When sin entered the picture, God had a plan to send His Son to save us from the penalty, power, and ultimately the very presence of sin.

God sent Jesus to redeem us from sin—all that sin in your past, the sin you are struggling with today, and the sin lurking in your future. We don’t have to listen to the voice of the enemy. We can believe in God’s goodness even in the midst of today’s temptations and struggles.

Guardians

While we do have an enemy who wants to weaken our trust in God’s goodness, we know that not all angels rebelled against the Lord. He has a host of angels who carry out His commands in a variety of ways.

In Genesis 3:24, it says that God stations the cherubim “east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.”

Many translations say “guard” or “keep the way” in regard to the angels and the flaming sword. Adam and Eve could no longer eat from the tree of life, and God’s guardian angels blocked their access to it, essentially protecting them from the temptation to sin in that way again and putting them on the path to redemption. We will see angels guarding God’s boundaries as a repeated role they play throughout Scripture.

When the serpent questioned God’s instructions, he was lying. God’s words are true. We can believe everything He has said in Scripture and find hope in Christ, the Savior He promised!

Read Genesis 3. Spend some time thanking God for sending Jesus to save us from this sin ridden world and for giving us a hope and a future. Ask for help in trusting the Lord with every aspect of your life today.

1.Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, and Temptation: Two Biblical Studies, trans. John C. Fletcher (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 73