Now, so we know that God has set physical laws. Now God has also set spiritual laws in place. This is where the contention comes. God has set spiritual laws in place. Now you cannot change the law of gravity; you either understand it and work with it, or you violate it and it costs you something. It's as simple as that. So God has also set in place spirit laws. He's set in place principles - He doesn't continually intervene. You know, they see something happening over - and there's a big flood and they say oh, it's an act of God. It isn't an act of God at all. It's actually the consequence of certain laws being in place. It's the consequence of neglect of the environment many times, and ultimately, as we'll see, it's the consequence of sin.
When we look and say well, there's this big thing happened and there was this earthquake and tsunami and all that kind of thing, and that was a big act of God - it wasn't an act of God. It's actually the earth croaking, groaning and creaking because it's under the bondage of sin. Sin has affected the whole environment, and we often don't understand that the problems that we see in the world, are a direct consequence of sin. If we don't understand this, we won't get the remedy for it, nor even see why the remedy is needed. So firstly I've got to just establish a little bit around this area here.
So God has also set laws. I want you to have a look with me in Genesis 2, Verse 15, and I want to look at one law that God has set in place. Now whether you agree with this law is irrelevant. It's just like the law of gravity, it's there and you either agree with it and learn how to work with what God says, or you violate it and have consequences. So number one, God, the one who does the creating, established the rules. That's the first thing we've seen. The second thing is, God has established certain consequences of sin. In Genesis, Chapter 2 and Verse 15 through to Verse 17; Now the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend it and keep it. So God created man, gave him an assignment. He created all of us with an assignment, which only God can give to us. It's only discovered as we spend connection with Him, and it involves guarding something and also cultivating it - and the Lord God commanded the man, the first man, of every tree of the fruit of the garden you may freely eat, tree of the knowledge of good and evil you should not eat, for in that day you eat it, you shall die. Here's the law; violate God's law, and you die. It's as simple as that. Violate the law and you die - so God gave man freedom, God gave man responsibility, God gave him ability to make free choices. However, God describes the consequences. So for example with the law of gravity, now there's a law of gravity. It's very clear there's an attractive force pulls any object down, it's proportional to so and so and masses and so on - and so here it is, the law of gravity. If I go over this edge here - I'll just take it off here, I don't want to fall too far - take it from here. If I step out into this space you all know exactly what's going to happen. You know if I just take a step out here, just off here, that just in a moment there's nothing - I'm going to go straight down. You know that. You're convinced of it.
Now I can't do anything to change that. I wish it could be different. I could say well I don't believe in it. I don't agree with it. I think this is a religious concept gravity and you see, I step off and it doesn't make any difference. Now imagine that was a very tall building. Suppose now it's a skyscraper and I tried the same thing now off a skyscraper. Now I'm in deep trouble because here's the thing - I have power to make the choice, step or not step, but definitely no power over the consequence. So in other words God sets consequences in motion. You get to make the choices. You have total free will on all the choices of your life. God loves you enough, loves me enough, loves all of us enough to say you get to run your life the way you choose. How about that? Isn't that great? Because I love you, and I'm never going to impose my will on you. I'm never going to force anything on you. I am never going to make you do anything. I'm going to attract you with love, and if you want to walk in a loving relationship with me, here's the deal; if you do life my way, connected to me, you'll live - but if you cut off from me, and you do life your own way, you'll die. You get to choose. Live or die. Simple as that.