Overview of
God's Dealings with Man
By James B. Hartline
© 1998, 2009
I believe that God had a perfect plan, from the beginning, to bring man into proper fellowship with Himself. Because God is infinitely complete, honest, perfect, absolute, in every way, I believe that He knew from the outset exactly what was necessary to bring about a perfect people to follow Him. To set such a plan in motion, it was necessary to cover every possibility of deception, dishonesty, and evil that might exist in God's greatest creation called "man."
To have a people who would love and follow God just because of who He is required many events to playout in the history of mankind. This would prove that God is perfect and therefore desires a perfectly submitted people to be His.
The setting in the Garden of Eden, which God gave to Adam and Eve was not without its pitfalls, as we know, there was only one wrong choice, yet they found it and disobeyed and fell. Much like ourselves, they probably didn't think the consequences would be all that severe.
Be aware of this. For a person to choose, there must first exist the choices. Therefore, it was necessary for God to place a wrong choice there so that man could choose between the two, obeying God, or disobeying. He only gave them ONE wrong choice, and plenty of right ones. And they did well for some time, then made the wrong choice.
It is not like God did not know that they would make that choice. If they did not, they would never have needed a savior. But the plan from the beginning was for man to need a savior. This would display the total benevolence of God in the plan of redemption. God did not need this, man did. He who is forgiven much, loves much.
The display of man's tendency toward making bad choices was shown early on in the garden, but that was only the beginning. It was now time to let men live without the constant presence of God to see that, that also would be futile. So, many years were allowed for man to run his course and get more and more evil. During this period the Bible tells us of one man who walked upright before God, Enoch, (seventh generation from Adam) who '. . .walked with God; and he was not, for God took Him."
When evil had come to its fullness, God destroyed the corrupt men from the face of the earth by a flood. But even through the flood, God kept a remnant, a man named Noah (tenth generation from Adam) and his family, eight people in all.
1. Noah was found righteous, and is the ancestor of all mankind.
2. After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah that he would: never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.”
"While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And Day and night Shall not cease." Genesis 8:21-22.
After the flood, man was again left to his own devices, being a law unto himself. Again, he did not deal right with his fellow man. He also forgot God. Then, after ten more generations, there came a man named Abram who was found to be an upright man, God visited him and established an everlasting covenant between Abram and God. He also changed his name to Abraham, promising to make him the father of many nations.
The covenant which God made with Abraham was not as covenants usually are, i.e., both parties would have something significant to contribute. This one was very one-sided.
The way a covenant was normally established was that an animal was cut in half and the halves were laid opposite each other with a space to walk between. Both parties of the covenant would then walk through that space and the covenant was established.
When God made His Covenant with Abraham, after Abraham had cut the animals in half and place them opposite each other according to God’s instructions, God caused Abraham to fall asleep and ONLY God passed through the space between them in the form of a smoking oven and a flaming torch. This was a great show of God's benevolence. God knew that man, in his carnal nature could never achieve perfection; he needed a savior. He needed someone to place his faith in so much that he would trust Him with his very life (and in the case of Isaac, his son's life as well).
God made it possible for man to be redeemed. He accepted Abraham's faith as if it were righteousness. This was salvation by grace through faith, which would be perfectly (fulfilled) in Jesus. This benevolent act set the stage for the Messiah who was to come and redeem mankind. We will revisit this later.
God made it possible for Abraham and his wife Sarah to have a son, Isaac, when they were too old to bear children. He gave him much land and blessed them greatly. He also promised to bless Abraham's descendants after him.
After Abraham, there was still no written law, and man continued in his own way. Abraham's son, Isaac, had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Although Esau was born first, Jacob, through a chain of events, received the birthright. God gave Jacob a new name, "Israel" and continued His covenant with him.
Jacob had twelve sons. Because Jacob favored his next to the youngest son above the others, his ten older sons sold his son Joseph (23rd generation from Adam) into slavery into Egypt, God eventually raised him up to be a ruler there and because of a famine in the land, Joseph's brothers came to Egypt to buy grain. After testing his brothers to find that they had changed, their relationship was mended and Joseph asked his father and brothers to dwell in Egypt.
In a dream, God foretold to Abram that his descendants would be in slavery for_400 years.
After Joseph died, there came a Pharoah who did not know Joseph. He saw that the Israelites had grown to great numbers and because he feared they would out number the Egyptians, he made them slaves.
They were in slavery for 400 years until Moses, an Israelite raised by Pharoah's daughter, led them out of Egypt. In the desert, God , fed them supernaturally, gave them the ten commandment law and did many miracles, even parted the sea for them, but they would not consistently follow Him. They did not want to deal with God, they were afraid of Him. God tried to get them to enter the promised land but they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years because they did not trust God to deliver the promised land into their hands. God let that entire generation die off in the wilderness before He allowed Joshua to lead their children into the land He had promised them. This occurred in about 1451 B.C.
When the Israelites were finally able to enter the promised land and served God, He fought their wars against their enemies for them.
After Joshua died at age 110, and his generation pass away, the next generation of Israelites drifted away from the Lord. They worshipped Idols and displeased God, but in Judges 2:16 the Bible says that nevertheless God raised up judges who brought them out of the hands of those that spoiled them. This came about in 1352 B. C., according to history.
There followed a long period of time that Israel was under judges.
In 1 Samuel 8:5, the elders of Israel told Samuel (the prophet) that they wanted a king to judge them, like all the nations. Samuel was displeased but he prayed about it and God told him to give them a king, saying they have rejected Me, they have not rejected you.
In 1 Samuel Chapter 10, Samuel the prophet anointed Saul who had been chosen by God to be Israel's first king. This was in about 1095 B.C.
There were only three kings who reigned over all of Israel, Saul, David and Solomon. After that time the kingdom was divided and there were kings of Israel and kings of Judah.
About 721 B.C., the ten northern tribes of Israel were carried into captivity. This was the end of the kingdom of Israel. Judah still remained until about 586 B.C., when Judah's last king, Zedekiah was captured and taken to Babylon, where he died. This was the End of the kingdom of Judah.
Again, the chosen people of God could not succeed in living by the law, or serving God. Everything had disintegrated into chaos. They were in bondage under Roman rule. The time had finally come for the Messiah, their only hope of salvation.
According to common reckoning, Jesus, the Christ was born about 3 B.C. The Savior of the world had come, but He was not what the Jews expected, so they rejected Him and eventually killed Him.
Surprisingly, this was God's plan from the beginning. It was the only way that He could open the way for man to come into full fellowship with God. It allowed any person who was willing to accept and follow God's Messiah to establish an eternal relationship with our creator. It had been displayed through all those years that man could not save himself. He couldn't possibly keep the law all the days of his life. There was never a righteous man who was perfect in all his ways, except Jesus. It was necessary for Him to fulfill the law, then to die in our place. He had to take our sin upon Himself, we could not do the job ourselves.
We had been subjected to the ruler of this world, the devil ever since Adam sinned. Now that Jesus has made the atonement, we need only to trust and obey Him as our Lord and Savior to have eternal life. He paid the price for all mankind. Unfortunately, all mankind will not be saved, because there are those who will never surrender and accept Jesus Christ as their Messiah. This is sad, but it is true.
Jesus took our sin, gave us His Holy Spirit, provided us with power over death and freed us from the fear of death that affects all mankind until he is converted to Christ.
We know when we die, we do not have to fear eternal darkness, but we walk in His eternal light. Our blessed assurance is that we shall forever be with the Lord.
