Chronological Life Application Study Bible Sampler - Book - Page 12
BEGINNINGS
undated–2100 BC
GOD’S CHOSEN FAMILY
2100–1800 BC
BIRTH OF ISRAEL
1800–1406 BC
GENESIS 2:4b-25 (cont.)
the east, and there he placed the man he had made.
9The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from
the ground—trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he
placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil.
10A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering
the garden and then dividing into four branches.
11The first branch, called the Pishon, flowed around
the entire land of Havilah, where gold is found. 12The
gold of that land is exceptionally pure; aromatic resin
and onyx stone are also found there. 13The second
branch, called the Gihon, flowed around the entire
land of Cush. 14The third branch, called the Tigris,
flowed east of the land of Asshur. The fourth branch
is called the Euphrates.
15The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of
Eden to tend and watch over it. 16But the Lord God
warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree
Gn 2:19 Or Adam, and so throughout the chapter.
POSSESSING THE LAND
1406–1050 BC
UNITED MONARCHY
1050–930 BC
in the garden—17except the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”
18Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man
to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for
him.” 19So the Lord God formed from the ground all
the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought
them to the man* to see what he would call them, and
the man chose a name for each one. 20He gave names to
all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild
animals. But still there was no helper just right for him.
21So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a
deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took
out one of the man’s ribs* and closed up the opening.
22Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and
he brought her to the man.
23“At last!” the man exclaimed.
“This one is bone from my bone,
and flesh from my flesh!
She will be called ‘woman,’
because she was taken from ‘man.’ ”
Gn 2:21 Or took a part of the man’s side.
Gen 2:15-17 God gave Adam responsibility
for the garden and told him not to eat from
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Rather than physically preventing him from
eating, God gave Adam a choice and, thus,
the possibility of choosing wrongly. God still
gives us choices, and we, too, often choose
wrongly. These wrong choices may cause us
pain, but they can help us learn and grow and
make better choices in the future. Living with
the consequences of our choices teaches us
to think and choose more carefully.
Gen 2:16-17 Why would God place a tree
in the garden and then forbid Adam to eat
from it? God wanted Adam to obey, but God
gave Adam the freedom to choose. Without
choice, Adam would have been like a prisoner,
and his obedience would have been hollow.
The two trees provided an exercise in choice
with rewards for choosing to obey and sad
consequences for choosing to disobey. When
you are faced with a choice, always choose
to obey God.
Gen 2:18-24 God’s creative work was not
complete until he made woman. He could
have made her from the dust of the ground, as
he had made man. But God chose to make her
from the man’s flesh and bone. In so doing,
he illustrated for us that in marriage man and
woman symbolically are united into one. This
is a mystical union of the couple’s hearts and
lives. Throughout the Bible, God treats this
special partnership seriously. If you are married or planning to be married, are you willing
to keep the commitment that makes the two of
you one? The goal in marriage should be more
than friendship; it should be oneness.
Gen 2:21-23 God forms and equips men
and women for various tasks, but all these
tasks lead to the same goal—honoring God.
There is no room for thinking that one gender
is superior to the other.
WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT MARRIAGE
Gen 2:18-24
Gen 24:58-60
Prov 5:18
Song 4:9-10
Mal 2:14-15
Matt 5:32
Matt 19:6
Rom 7:2-3
Eph 5:21-33
Eph 5:23-32
Heb 13:4
Marriage is God’s idea
Commitment is essential to a successful marriage
Marriage holds times of great joy
Romance is important
Marriage creates the best environment for raising children
Unfaithfulness breaks the bond of trust, the foundation
of all relationships
Marriage is permanent
Only death should dissolve marriage
Marriage is based on the principled practice of love,
not on feelings
Marriage is a living symbol of Christ and the church
Marriage is good and honorable
Gen 2:24 God gave marriage as a gift to
Adam and Eve. They were created perfect
for each other. Marriage was not just for
convenience, nor was it brought about by any
particular culture. It was instituted by God and
has three basic aspects: (1) The man leaves
his parents and, in a public act, promises
himself to his wife; ( 2) the man and woman
are joined together by taking responsibility for
each other’s welfare and by loving each other
above all others; ( 3) the two are united into
one in the intimacy and commitment of sexual
union that is reserved for marriage. Strong
marriages include all three of these aspects.
Gen 2:25 Have you ever noticed how a little
child can run naked through a room full of
strangers without embarrassment? He is not
aware of his nakedness, just as Adam and
Eve were not embarrassed in their innocence.
But after Adam and Eve sinned, shame and
awkwardness followed, creating barriers
between themselves and God. We often experience these same barriers in marriage. Ideally
a husband and wife have no barriers, feeling
no embarrassment in exposing themselves to
each other or to God. But like Adam and Eve
we put on fig leaves ( barriers) because we
have areas we don’t want our spouse, or God,
to know about ( Gen 3:7). Then we hide, just
as Adam and Eve hid from God. In marriage,
lack of spiritual, emotional, and intellectual
intimacy usually precedes a breakdown of
physical intimacy. In the same way, when we
fail to expose our secret thoughts to God, we
break our lines of communication with him.
Gen 3:1 Disguised as a shrewd serpent,
Satan came to tempt Eve. At one time, Satan
had been a glorious angel. But in pride, he
rebelled against God and was cast out of
heaven. As a created being, Satan has definite limitations. Although he is trying to tempt
everyone away from God, he will not be the
SPLINTERED NATION
930–586 BC
EXILE
586–538 BC
RETURN & DIASPORA
538–6 BC
JESUS CHRIST
6 BC–AD 30
THE CHURCH
AD 30–present
24This explains why a man leaves his father and
2“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the
mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united garden,” the woman replied. 3“It’s only the fruit from
the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not
into one.
25Now the man and his wife were both naked, but
allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even
touch it; if you do, you will die.’”
they felt no shame.
4“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman.
5“God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon
The Man and Woman Sin
GENESIS 3:1-19
as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both
The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals good and evil.”
6The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree
the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman,
“Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she
of the trees in the garden?”
wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took
final victor. In Genesis 3:14-15, God promises that Satan will be crushed by one of the
woman’s offspring, the Messiah.
Gen 3:1-6 Why does Satan tempt us? Temptation is Satan’s invitation to give in to his kind
of life and give up on God’s kind of life. Satan
tempted Eve and succeeded in getting her
to sin. Ever since then, he’s been busy trying
to get people to sin. He even tempted Jesus
(Matt 4:1-11), but Jesus did not sin!
How could Eve have resisted temptation?
By following the same guidelines we can follow. First, we must realize that being tempted
is not a sin. We have not sinned until we give
in to the temptation. Second, to resist temptation, we must pray for strength to resist, run
from it (sometimes literally), and say no when
confronted with what we know is wrong.
James 1:12 tells of the blessings and rewards
for those who don’t give in when tempted.
Gen 3:1-6 The serpent, Satan, tempted Eve
by getting her to doubt God’s goodness. He
implied that God was strict, stingy, and selfish
for not wanting Eve to share his knowledge
of good and evil. Satan made Eve forget all
that God had given her and, instead, focus on
what God had forbidden. We fall into trouble,
too, when we dwell on what God forbids
rather than on the countless blessings and
promises God has given us. The next time you
are feeling sorry for yourself because of what
you don’t have, consider all that you do have
and thank God. Then your doubts won’t lead
you into sin.
Gen 3:5 Adam and Eve got what they wanted:
an intimate knowledge of both good and evil.
But they got it by disobeying God, and the
results were disastrous. Sometimes we have
the illusion that freedom is doing anything we
want. But God says that true freedom comes
from obedience and knowing what not to do.
The restrictions he gives us are for our good,
helping us avoid evil. We have the freedom to
walk in front of a speeding car, but we don’t
need to be hit to realize it would be foolish to
do so. Don’t listen to Satan’s temptations. You
don’t have to do evil to gain more experience
and learn more about life.
Gen 3:5 Satan used a sincere motive to
tempt Eve: “You will be like God.” It wasn’t
wrong of Eve to want to be like God. To
become more like God is humanity’s highest
goal. It is what we are supposed to do. But
Satan misled Eve concerning the right way
Creation Stories
Several ancient civilizations wrote down their own
accounts of how the world was created. The best
known of these extra-biblical creation myths is a
Babylonian adaptation of the Sumerian story called
Enuma Elish. The gods Tiamat and Apsu existed from
the beginning, but after other gods were born Apsu tried
to do away with them. One of the gods, Ea, killed Apsu;
then Tiamat was herself killed by Ea’s son Marduk, the
god of Babylon in whose honor the poem was composed.
Marduk used the two halves of Tiamat’s body to create
the foundation for both heaven and earth. He then set in
order the stars, sun, and moon. Lastly, to free the gods
from menial tasks, with Ea’s help he created mankind
from clay mingled with the blood of Kingu, the rebel
god who had led Tiamat’s forces. Other creation stories
are found in Babylonian records. The Epic of Atrahasis
describes the creation of man as a solution to relieve
the gods of the work of cultivating the land.
In contrast to these stories from the surrounding
cultures, Israel’s creation story shows that God is completely in control. He is not one of many gods, and his
creation of humanity was not a matter of convenience
but an act of love. God created humans to rule his creation and have relationship with him, not simply to do
the hard work that he didn’t want to do.
to accomplish this goal. He told her that she
could become more like God by defying God’s
authority, by taking God’s place and deciding
for herself what was best for her life. In effect,
he told her to become her own god.
To become like God is not the same as
trying to become God. Rather, it is to reflect
his characteristics and to recognize his
authority over our lives. Like Eve, we often
have a worthy goal but try to achieve it the
wrong way. We act like a political candidate
who pays off an election judge to be “voted”
into office; serving the people is no longer his
highest goal.
Self-exaltation leads to rebellion against
God. As soon as we begin to leave God out of
our plans, we are placing ourselves above him.
This is exactly what Satan wants us to do.
Gen 3:6 Satan tried to make Eve think that
sin is good, pleasant, and desirable. A knowledge of both good and evil seemed harmless
to her. People usually choose wrong things
because they have become convinced that
those things are good, at least for themselves.
Our sins do not always appear ugly to us, and
the pleasant sins are the hardest to avoid. So
prepare yourself for the attractive temptations
that may come your way. We cannot always
prevent temptation, but there is always a way
of escape (1 Cor 10:13). Use God’s Word and
God’s people to help you stand against it.
Gen 3:6-7 Notice what Eve did: She looked,
she took, she ate, and she gave. The battle
is often lost at the first look. Temptation often
begins by simply seeing something you want.
Are you struggling with temptation because
you have not learned that looking is the first
step toward sin? You would win over temptation more often if you followed Paul’s advice
to run from those things that produce evil
thoughts (2 Tim 2:22).
Gen 3:6-7 One of the realities of sin is that
its effects spread. After Eve sinned, she
involved Adam in her wrongdoing. When we
do something wrong, often we try to relieve
our guilt by involving someone else. Like toxic
waste spilled into a river, sin swiftly spreads.
Recognize and confess your sin to God before
you are tempted to pollute those around you.
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