Koutz Farm Bible Study: Genesis 1.1 - 3.24

BIBLE STUDY FORMAT:

To begin this Bible Study, simply read the sections below: “Who”, “What”, “When”, “Where”, "Why", “How”, and “The Study Notes”. Use your own Bible as a reference and make sure to keep a journal handy for taking notes as the Lord guides you through your spiritual studies. When you are done, read the Prayer section (and pray along with us). Make sure to review the Action section and use our action points or make up your own actions. Make sure to check out our Questions & Answers section and if you want to dive deeper into your study invest some time in our References section, as well. This is how our Bible Study Format will be in this and all future Bible Study Posts. Let's get started...  

WHO

This bible study includes God, Adam, Eve and Satan.

WHAT

1. Creation of Day and Night.

2. Creation of the Sky.

3. Creation of the Land, Sea, Trees and Seeds.

4. Creation of the Sun, Moon and Stars.

5. Creation of Creatures of The Sea & Air.

6. Creation of Land and Humans.

7. The Holy Day – A Day Of Rest & Worship.

8. Garden of Eden

9. Sneaky Deceiver

10. The Fall of Mankind

WHEN

In the beginning – the 1st day of Earth’s creation and existence through the seventh day (and a little beyond that). This is the story of origin – the beginning.    

WHERE

Infinity, Eternity, The Garden of Eden, Earth in the very beginning

WHY

God wanted to create a beautiful world with living creatures, including us - the ones made in His image. God wanted us to live in paradise, a protected place - the Garden of Eden - where we would live without pain, grief, shame, anger, sadness, and all of these things. Where we would love each other and be nurturing to each other and the animals God blessed us to have in our world. What God didn't want was for us was to be tainted with the true knowledge of the world outside of the garden. The world where evil existed, where pain existed - a world that is so complex and infinite the human mind cannot fully comprehend all it has in it or has to offer or to hurt us with. God created us to love Him and for Him to love us. Unfortunately, temptation happened - the one thing they were told they couldn't have the serpent convinced them was the one thing they needed. Even though they had never experienced being "scammed" or lied to and had no basis for distrusting, Eve was the target because by nature she was more trusting of the others in the garden and easily persuaded. Her human nature was stronger than her internal warning system. She was convinced the one thing she was told she couldn't have was the one thing she really needed and then she persuaded Adam that he needed it, too. They ate the fruit and as the fruit entered their bodies it released its powers into their being. It didn't just digest in the stomach the way food naturally works. It was a fruit with powers that engrained itself into their blood, into their spirit, into their cells, into their every part of being. As the fruit worked its powers on them, they begin to feel strange. They noticed their nakedness and felt ashamed and embarrassed. They felt pain for the first time, anger, sadness, guilt, and in their lifetime learned of the evil that surrounded them and that could easily consume them if they weren't careful. God couldn't keep them in the protected garden any longer because they were no longer living in purity and only purity could be in the direct presence of God. They went from living in oblivious bliss without knowledge of good and evil to being banished into the world where evil reigned; because of their grave mistake and the power of the fruit that flowed through their veins, they infected their children, their grandchildren, great grandchildren, all the way to our generation and to the generations of the future - until the end, the day of God's great return to eradicate evil from this world. The power of the fruit is why Adam and Eve had to leave, why their knowledge and perception of the world around them changed, why they were no longer allowed in the protected garden, and why all the generations after them have suffered the same - because that fruit is still in us and can never be removed from us until we die. This is NOT God's fault because Adam and Eve were told to stay away from this fruit and not eat it or they would surely die. Let's continue looking at the "WHY" of the banishment and what we call a "curse" of Adam and Eve's first sin.

So with the fruit's power flowing through us and infecting our very existence, the curse inside of us that our innate human nature inflicted us with, God still wanted to love us and wanted us to love Him; but now things were different because we were covered in sin and God could not be around sin by His very nature. This is where our gift of FREE WILL comes in. That free will allows us to make our own decisions and to live a life with God or without God, the will to believe or not to believe, the will to accept Jesus' sacrifice of His life and acceptance of His love for us, or the free will to say I don't want God in my life, or I want God in my life more than anything else. FREE WILL was our gift from God to give us a way to survive in this world. He asks us to endure to the end and if you turn your back on God, enduring to the end may be very hard - honestly, I can't image a life without God, because of Him I am still alive...but if He didn't exist I'd truly wonder what the point is and want to leave this life...but GOD makes it worth living, He makes it worth hanging on and enduring to the end.

So the "WHY" summary is because God wanted to love us and wanted us to love Him. We messed up by eating a powerful fruit that contained what could be considered a curse inside of it and the curse passed down to the children for all generations (that means us, too,). God had no choice in evicting us because we were covered in sin and filled with the power of this fruit, that now became part of who we are, so it forced His hand and He took us out of our protective Garden Of Eden. Adam and Eve were banished and put into a world where the devil has full power, but where God can and does intervene when it fits into His plan for us and when we choose Him to be in our lives. When Adam & Eve entered this new world of feelings never felt before, surrounded by the beauty of the world God created (but where the devil reigned), and they started experiencing the ease of evil's dissent into their hearts and the strength of the grip evil has once the fingers of darkness start infecting a person, they were faced with situations where their choice in following God or turning away from God became the most important decisions they could make because it affected their eternal soul's destination. We'll learn more about this as we read more of Adam and Eve's story, but our FREE WILL is truly the "WHY" of this entire situation. Eve made a choice. Adam made a choice. It was the wrong choice. They got scammed and paid the ultimate price for all of us. We got infected by a powerful fruit that has carried through to all of us since that very time - the curse of the original sin. Now we rely on our FREE WILL to guide us each and every day to the righteous path - the place where God is there for us and we can develop an intimate relationship with Him. If you decide against God, to deny Him or to hate Him, just know that is your choice and that is your FREE WILL at work. Just don't expect God to be there with you through everything because you told Him you don't want Him by denying Him. If you decide to walk with God and work on an intimate relationship with Him, remember that God would rather have you be cold and deny Him than to be lukewarm in your pursuit of Him. He wants you to be on fire for a relationship with Him and for His love. So work to pursue this intimacy with Him (you won't regret it) and know that FREE WILL and a fruit full of power caused this mess we all live in...God didn't cause it, but allowed it. He has a plan to redeem it - but it's all in His timing.

HOW

God is God. His powers surpass our understanding. God used His powers to create the universe, the earth and all that is in this universe and all that is on our earth.

STUDY NOTES

It is so hard to find the time or make the time to read the Bible. We are all so busy and life gets in the way every day. Did you know that is satan? Satan doesn’t want you reading the Word of God so he is going to put as many distractions in your way as possible. He will tempt you with things you desire, he will hurt you in the worst ways, he will put obstacle after obstacle in your way. As Christians, God calls on us to read His Word and to spend time with Him each and every day. Satan is going to do everything he can to keep you away from doing what God wants you to do. So, it is important for all of us to be diligent in our commitment to our Christian faith. Oh Lord, help us because that is so much easier to say than it is to actually do.  

I have wanted to immerse myself in God’s Word for so long now. I start and get into Genesis and then stumble and barely make it through to Leviticus before I’m overwhelmed with life, too sick to think, exhausted from working so hard and so on. I need accountability and an outlet for my notes. What better place to do this?  Accountability to continue reading, accountability to my blog and a great place to share my thoughts and questions – and to learn from all of you too. So let’s get started – open your Bibles and read Genesis 1:1 – Genesis 3:24.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” ~ Genesis 1:1

• God speaks and His words create on His commandment.

• On day 1, God created the day and the night; the morning and the evening.

• On day 2, God created the sky.

• On day 3, God created the land, the sea, the trees, vegetation, fruit and seeds.

• On day 4, God created the Sun, the Moon and the stars.

• On day 5, God created the creatures of the sea and of the air.

• On day 6, God created the creatures of the land and this is the day that God created the very first human too.  Maybe this is why we like Fridays so much 🙂

• On day 7, God designated the Sabbath day. A day of rest and worship.

“So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” ~ Genesis 1:27

• God gave Adam (and all humans) dominion over the earth and all of the creatures that move upon the earth.

• God is literally the breath of life. He used His breath to turn us into living beings.

• God doesn’t want you to be alone. Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for Him.”

•  God created the first woman – Eve – from Adam’s rib. Genesis 2:23 quotes Adam, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man.”

• The Lord God says this is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh – because Eve was created from a rib bone taken out of Adam in the very first ‘surgery’ on a man.

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.” ~ Genesis 3:1

• Genesis 3:8 and 3:9 tell us the story of the Garden of Eden, “Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” 

• “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”” ~ Genesis 3:15 – 3:17

• God tells Adam not to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden – the tree of good and evil – and this message is relayed to Eve as well; this command offered an opportunity to satan, a challenge to sway the first humans into sin. This is the moment when Eve persuaded Adam to eat from the tree of good and evil.

• The flesh has always been weak and easy to fall into temptation. It was in the beginning and still is today. From that first moment when the serpent persuaded Eve to eat from the forbidden tree to present time, where special diets tell us that an extra large pizza and a cold Dr. Pepper are forbidden in the fibromyalgia world but the flesh gets that watering mouth and the devil seizes the opportunity to tempt you to do something you know you shouldn’t do but you do it anyway.

• With eyes “open”, Adam and Eve realize their mistake but it is to late. The first sin caused the fall of all God’s earthly creations – the fall to the dark place of suffering, violence, embarrassment and most importantly, death.

• Genesis 3:19, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

“Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.” ~ Genesis 2:3

• American Christians have established Sunday as the holy 7th day. Sunday is designated as the day for going to church and worshipping God; HOWEVER, our family believes Saturday is truly the intended Sabbath because it is the 7th day of the week. I personally think that the specific day isn't the most important part of the commandment. To keep the Sabbath Day Holy - to me, means that we have one day a week where we rest our bodies and our minds, where we worship, praise, and spend time in prayer - focusing on God and building a true intimate relationship with Him. The day should be spent with no work, only enjoyment, relaxation,and spending time with family, friends, and/or your community sharing the love of God. Not spending money that day, no shopping, no selling - a complete shutdown for the sake of focusing on God's Holy Day. Honing in on what it truly means to be saved through the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is about rest and worship, focus, and love. Spending time in the scriptures and becoming intimate with God Himself. The day for God was the 7th day of the week and that is the intended Holy Day, but I believe the actions are more important than the day. May God forgive us if we have been misled to honor the Sabbath day on Sunday instead of Saturday and may He grant us mercy and His grace when we fail to honor the Sabbath Day correctly. Try your best and spend time in prayer about the Sabbath Day and how YOU should honor it with God at the helm.

• We will study this more in later words from God. I will link it here when we get to it.

PRAYER

Lord God, 

Although I do not understand your ultimate plan, I thank you for creating me and for giving me the right of choice and the ability to love. It is hard for me to understand the kindness behind a cursed human race – the fall of all human-kind over a single mistake of the very first two humans – it feels like a harsh punishment for a sin that I didn’t have anything to do with. But through my studies of your Word, father God, I am taught that all humans will sin and no human – except Jesus Christ – is clean of the stains that sin puts upon our souls. I understand now that you created us, not as robots or as mindless minions, but as humans with free will, with a heart to know your love and to love you back, with the ability to choose – to choose to follow you.

Yes, Lord, it is hard for me to understand but it is not for me to understand. It is only up to me to make a choice – a choice to believe in you, to praise you, to read your Word, a choice to submit myself to you, to love you, to develop an intimate relationship with you, and to accept you as my one and only true God.

Today, I announce that I accept you Lord God as my Creator and as the one true God. Today, I commit my heart and soul to loving you and to having faith in you. I thank you oh Lord God for your blessings and kindnesses that you have bestowed upon my family and myself. I thank you for helping to open my eyes so that I can see what you see, for opening my heart so I can feel what you feel. I thank you for making me in the image of you, oh Father God. You have given me the blessing of choice today and today, I choose YOU.

Amen.

ACTION

Today’s action is to write your commitment to read the Bible on a regular basis. Something like this:

I, Your Name Here, commit to myself and to God that I will spend Number Of Hours Here hours a week reading my Bible. Signed, Your Name Here on xx/xx/xxxx (date you made the commitment). 

Hang your commitment on your bathroom mirror or by your car keys – somewhere that you will see it every single day – read it and make it an affirmation for yourself. 

Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day or two – but don’t quit reading just because you had to take a night off. Keep picking up that Bible and learn to make reading it a priority and try to make it fun (like a coloring Bible or an interesting study Bible). Soon you will start feeling better and seeing your life change in improvements that could only be done by God. Then you will want to read it all the time 🙂

QUESTION & ANSWERS

When we go through the Word of God, we often have questions and sometimes even thoughts that might not make us feel good as Christians. I know that our family often runs into this and we do our best to talk through them and find answers to help us better understand. This section contains some of the questions we often ask ourselves. You are welcome to comment with your thoughts or with additional questions too. We are not perfect by any means and we definitely are not Bible scholars, theologists, pastors or any profession even close. We are just a family trying to learn the Word of God by reading it and praying about it.

QUESTION:

WHY DID GOD CREATE SATAN? GOD CREATED & KNOWS ALL - SO WHY INTRODUCE EVIL?

ANSWER:

Hubby's thoughts - God knew that Lucifer was going to be evil and this was part of the greater plan. God wants humans to make the choice to follow Him. Without introducing evil, we would have been robots just doing whatever we were programmed to do. With evil - we are CHOOSING to be faithful and follow God. God wants us to love Him and wants to love us back, but we must CHOOSE GOD for Him to feel good about us accepting Him. If we were robots just doing what we were told, that isn't true love. It isn't real love - it is force of power and that isn't what God wants from us. God wants real love from us, a choice to love Him, to choose Him. Evil had to be introduced in order for us to learn what it is to love God versus what it is to be without His love.

What are your thoughts on this question?

QUESTION:

WHY DID GOD PUNISH ALL OF MANKIND INSTEAD OF JUST THE TWO THAT DID WRONG?

ANSWER:

The general answer goes something like this...Adam and Eve were the original "parents" of the world. They made a deadly choice when they chose to eat the forbidden fruit. God cursed Adam and Eve and we inherited that curse but God gave each human the right to choose Him and that was His plan from the beginning - for us to choose Him over sin and have eternal life. My theory on this is that God didn't punish all mankind, but instead we were innately born with the effects of the fruit eaten by the original "parents" of the world. It became a permanent curse upon Adam and Eve, inside of them and unremovable. Once eaten, it was part of their bodily and spiritual makeup - like a superpower (or supercurse) that is obtained and can never be lost once it is given to us. The fruit's powers then passed down to all of us through our parents and their parents before them. It was why God told them not to eat the fruit in the first place - it was a dangerous fruit that opened us up to the truth of the world around us. It took away our blinders and pulled us from living in an oblivious state of mind. It gave us knowledge of good and evil; it made us shameful and embarrassed; it gave us anger, hate, grief, sadness, anxiety, and depression; it also gave us joy, happiness, excitement, wonder, curiosity, and much more. The most important thing is the free will that we were given, this fruit made good and evil obvious - giving us more choices than when we didn't know evil at all. The will to choose evil over good or good over evil became a choice that we didn't have before the fruit's powers flowed through our essential-being. So God didn't punish us. We were born with it from the sins of Adam and Eve.

What do you think?

QUESTION:

WHY DIDN'T GOD GIVE EVE A HEADS UP? SOMETHING LIKE, "HEY, EVE, YOU MIGHT WANT TO WATCH OUT FOR THE SNAKE. YOU CAN'T TRUST EVERYONE HERE. HE IS GOING TO TURN INTO A SMOOTH TALKER, A LIAR, AND A DECEIVER, SO DON'T FALL FOR HIS ANTICS, OKAY?"

ANSWER:

He didn't give Eve a heads up because He already told them not to eat the forbidden fruit. I mean it was one simple rule. Adam and Eve had everything they would ever need BUT the one thing they couldn't have was the one thing they decided they needed. God gave Eve the choice to listen to Him. That was her heads up. She didn't listen and my husband (and many others) would say women inherited that "not listening" trait from Eve, too. Ladies, work on your listening skills 🙉, LOL. My opinion is that humans were born with something deep inside them that if you tell them they can't have something it turns into an obsession and they are like, "watch me" or the "hold my beer" mentatility. So, even with a heads-up, since they had never experienced anything like this sneaky snake before and they didn't know what distrust or being lied to looked like since they had no reference to it, they really were fighting a losing battle from the moment they were told not to touch it. So, my follow-up question to this is why did God make us with this in our nature - the desire to have what we are told we can't? Some can fight it, others can't. Did He give us this so it forces us to lean on Him to avoid that temptation? Adam and Eve had no reference to beings like the snake, but all of us have had more than enough experiences with snakey-people to know what to watch for. We get those red flags that I imagine Adam and Eve didn't have since they didn't have any context like we do today. So, I can forgive them for that - their nature and their lack of context wasn't all their fault and God wanted them to come to Him and lean on Him in these situations, but they had never experienced any thing like this before and it didn't feel bad to them because they didn't know good and bad at the time. That is what the fruit did - it gave them the knowledge of good and evil and prior to that they didn't know anything but good so they didn't even know they were doing bad until it was too late. Yes, they were told not to by God, but they had no context to any form of punishment or anything bad...how could they have known? We can often be mad at them, but put yourself in their shoes and imagine their world with no knowledge of anything bad, ever. Find it in your heart to forgive them, because I imagine if it were us instead of them we probably would have done the same thing and everyone for all eternity would be hating us instead. So to my follow-up question, God desires us to come to Him in all things. When we obsess over something or want something we aren't supposed to have, we go to Him and ask "Why" and ask for help to not go down a path of destruction chasing something we aren't supposed to have. Sometimes though, people will tell you that you can't have something to keep you from trying and if you are meant to chase after it and you have an intimate relationship with God, you'll be told to go chase after it anyway and amazing things can happen. So it is all a matter of God's perspective and your ability to know what that small still whisper inside of you is telling you to do. That intimate relationship with Him is crucial.

BIBLE STUDY TIPS

We suggest getting a study bible such as The Inspirational Study Bible New King James Version: Life Lessons from the Inspired Word of God, by Max Lucado.” or a coloring and/or journaling Bible such as “NIV Beautiful Word Coloring Bible” by Zondervan Bibles.

REFERENCES

Our favorite Study Bibles:

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