“Why did God go through all the trouble with Adam and Eve?”

Steve Brown:
Why did God go through all the trouble with Adam and Eve? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you think laughter isn’t spiritual or that faithfulness to God means conformity to Christian stereotypes, then this program probably isn’t for you. But if you’re looking for honest Biblical answers to hard questions, then welcome to Key Life. Here’s our host, author, and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Matthew Porter:
Hey Steve. Happy Friday.

Steve Brown:
Happy Friday to you.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And we’ve said it a thousand times.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
But that hasn’t always been a happy Friday. When we were both pastors, Happy Friday was Sad Friday cause Sunday was coming. And you know Tony Campolo’s sermon, it’s Friday but Sunday’s coming is fine for lay people, but it ain’t fun for pastors. It’s Friday and Sunday’s coming and the page is blank and I’ve got to say something. So Jesus, come alongside and help, and if you don’t, we’re going to have some serious problems. At any rate, happy Friday to you who are listening. Pete, as you know, comes in and we spend Fridays answering questions. And we’ve done that for a whole lot of years. And we love your questions. You can send your questions to

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or you can e-mail us at [email protected] or pick up the phone, 24 7, follow instructions, ask your question, and sometimes you can make it on the air with your actual voice. And, by the way, and I’m required to say this and should, if you can help us and don’t, something really bad is going to happen to you. No, no, if you can help us and God tells you to help us and you don’t, you’re going to get the hives. I am not above manipulation. I’m kidding, of course. If you can help us, please do. If you can’t, we understand, do say a prayer for this ministry. And Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Good. Let’s pray. Our Holy Father, we come into your presence today on this Friday and we just are so thankful that we belong to you. Thank you for coming after us, stopping us in our tracks, bringing us to the end of ourselves and showing us that we need a Savior and that you our Lord Jesus are the only one. We honor you. We praise you for your power, your mercy, your kindness, your wisdom. We worship you for the way you have gently brought us to the end of ourselves and given us an awareness of our need for a Savior. Lord, at the end of this week, we need you. We need you every day, but Lord, we ask that you would take the challenges that we face, we give them to you. Help us to be honest with you with those challenges. Meet our needs, fulfill our deepest desires, Lord, that honor you. And we pray for our leaders this week-end, our pastors, our priests, our teachers, our worship directors. Lord, so many that work so hard to bring the pure and clear gospel of Jesus Christ to us and how that transforms our life. We pray for them. And we pray that your church would experience your blessing and renewal across our country. Holy Spirit, pour out your blessing and power on our churches. And now we give our time a Q&A to you and pray that you would be honored and lifted up and people encouraged. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s first go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
If God knows everything beforehand, then why didn’t he make Eve with Adam when he knew it wouldn’t be good for him to be alone?

Steve Brown:
Well, I understand that question, and it’s a funny question, but I have no idea what the, I mean, God does as he pleases, and he does it right well, and he doesn’t check with me very often, so you can ask him yourself when you get home. But there is a sense, you know, when you think why all the trouble with Adam and Eve and all the things that we’ve gone through, because that’s his methodology of getting to us. It is very presumptuous to say this, but what if you were God and you had and you were loving, how would you express that? How would you go about it? How would people know? You could make a puppet and pull the strings and put the arms around you to hug you, but it doesn’t mean anything. And so, there’s freedom and responsibility and sin and failure and darkness, so we can see the light. And so, I think he was being facetious and asking that. But a good answer to that kind of question is, would you rather not have known him? Because this may be the only way that knowledge of God becomes real and profound and life changing.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow, we’ve got to think that one through deeply. You know, that’s good. You know one other possibility of why he did it the way he did it is because he did set Adam up as the one to represent the human race.

Steve Brown:
Oh, yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
And if they were created simultaneously, that might send the wrong message. So, the headship of Adam was primary and he represented the human race so that now the second Adam, Jesus, can represent the whole human race, too.

Steve Brown:
And the whole infrastructure of the Christian faith is built on that doctrine.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely, absolutely. And so, and then when that, how that sort of slides down to the family level, too. Is that we men are called to lead our families. And Adam was clearly put in that role as well.

Steve Brown:
Good stuff.

Pete Alwinson:
Good question. I don’t know if we’ve ever gotten it quite that way before.

Steve Brown:
And I don’t know whether he was being facetious or really asking, but it was a good question and it brought some good answers. Is there any evidence that Jesus was married? And then the second part of this e-mail. Was Paul the apostle a married man?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, you know, Jesus was 30 when he started his ministry, and you would think that had there been any evidence of being married up to that point, it would have been obvious.

Steve Brown:
There is none.

Pete Alwinson:
There is none.

Steve Brown:
And don’t let anybody tell you, I don’t care if his name is Brown, who wrote those dumb novels. That was pure surmise.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s not your relative.

Steve Brown:
No, he’s not. He’s not even a cousin.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Okay.

Steve Brown:
And I wish he was named Smith. But anyway, that novel that he wrote is just that, it’s fiction. And it’s real fiction and don’t let anybody tell you different. There is no evidence at any place or even that movie, The Last Temptation of Christ. There just isn’t any evidence. So, you’ve got to manufacture it and that’s what Brown did. You need to understand, then enjoy the story. It was a good story, but you’ve got to buy into a lot of nonsense to get to the good story.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, people are always trying to make money off of reinventing stories or writing new ones. And that’s what that is, it’s all fiction. Now, what about Paul?

Steve Brown:
No, he said he wasn’t. In fact, he outright, you know, you’d think if he were a member of the Sanhedrin that he’d be married, but he wasn’t. He said, I would like for everybody to be like me. And then he said, it’s better to get married than to burn with lust. So no, Paul was not either.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. So, there it is. Now, marriage is the creation ordinance that God has given for most of us. And Jesus was very clear that to not be married is a gift and a calling. And so, there it is.

Steve Brown:
There it is. We’ve answered that adequately in a profound and wise way. If Lucifer was created being made by God. How could iniquity pride have been found in him?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well, you know, one easy answer to that is to say that God created the spirit realm as well as us with the capacity to fall.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, the actual entrance of sin in the world is difficult to account for, but it is, it’s there.

Steve Brown:
You know, we always go to that Scripture that says God does not create evil, and we know that.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
But he creates free people,

Pete Alwinson:
yeah

Steve Brown:
who secondarily create evil, and Lucifer, that’s on steroids.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. I know.

Steve Brown:
Now, are you, do you believe that was ordained from the beginning?

Pete Alwinson:
Well.

Steve Brown:
Are you, in other words, are you infralapsarian or supralapsarian?

Pete Alwinson:
I’m supra. You know, God is the sovereign king of heaven and earth. Nothing escapes his sovereign command, but it’s hard to piece together and that’s why we have all eternity to try to figure it out with him, but we’re not going to figure that one out here.

Steve Brown:
And I didn’t make up that word either, by the way, it really is a theological word. And Pete and I share the eternal verities. And if you don’t know what it means, look it up. I mean, you’ll be better for it.

Pete Alwinson:
Do some theology.

Steve Brown:
That’s awful. What is the qualification for serving in church leadership?

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, man, you know, that’s a really important question. I Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1 give the clear teachings on that. And, you know, it’s interesting because it’s mostly character based. It is knowledge based in, for instance, an elder, a deacon, a pastor needs to be apt to teach, able to communicate the word of truth, but for leading in a position, it’s mostly character above reproach is the overriding principle.

Steve Brown:
You know, and I agree with everything you said, I think it’s good. You’ve got to be careful though, because I’ve had people who were obviously called to be an elder or deacon in the church. But who refused it because they couldn’t live up with the standards that were taught in Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, right.

Steve Brown:
That is not perfection. It may be that the most important standard for leadership is to know that you don’t deserve it any more than you deserve salvation. And if somebody said, well, I meet all those qualifications, therefore I should be an elder. I would say, no, be a Buddhist or whatever. But you do have to be careful that you don’t make perfection the qualification for leadership.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, that is so important. And yet there’s this idea of Paul says, if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it’s a good thing he wants to do. And so, that’s where your self examination comes in.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
If it really is a good thing he wants to do to give, and not to get, not to draw attention to himself, then that’s the baseline.

Steve Brown:
And of course those standards should characterize leaders, that doesn’t mean that they’ll be perfect and won’t mess it up some.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, right.

Steve Brown:
But we ought to look to people that have walked it for a long time, who we know are solid and faithful, even if they’re jerks sometimes.

Pete Alwinson:
Not brand new Christians.

Steve Brown:
All right, We’ve got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.