If I may take all of these occurrences in a sum total and explain why God allowed it all to take place.....
He did not set them up to fail.....he allowed them to make a choice, warning in advance what would happen if they disobeyed him. Its called free will and its part of being made in God's image and likeness.
Humans are not the only ones with free will and it needs to be stressed that the first rebel was not human.
A once perfect angel got a carried away with his own magnificence and wanted to be worshipped like his Creator.
Ezekiel 28:12-17 says of this once beautiful creature.......
"You are sealing up a pattern, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 In Eʹden, the garden of God, you proved to be. Every precious stone was your covering. . . .In the day of your being created they were made ready. 14 You are the anointed cherub that is covering, and I have set you. On the holy mountain of God you proved to be. In the midst of fiery stones you walked about. 15 You were faultless in your ways from the day of your being created until unrighteousness was found in you.
17 “Your heart became haughty because of your beauty You brought your wisdom to ruin on account of your beaming splendor."
This appointed guardian angel who was stationed in the Garden of Eden began to entertain wrong thinking and instead of dismissing these thoughts, he dwelt on them and turned them into action. (James 1:13-15)
There are millions of other magnificent angels in heaven according to the Bible, and all have free will. Whatever God's response was to this rebellion had to be such that another 'satan' could never take humanity, or his fellow angels down this track again.
"Telling" them the folly of disobedience wasn't enough....so God allowed them to 'reap what they had sown'.....to "demonstrate" in real terms what it meant to go against the will of God in order to implement their own will.......so God allowed the one they chose to obey, to rule over them. (1 John 5:19)
Romans 6:16...
"Do you not know that if you keep presenting yourselves to anyone as slaves to obey him, you are slaves of him because you obey him, either of sin with death in view or of obedience with righteousness in view?”
We choose who we will obey.
God told them how to have a wonderful life....and gave them everything they would need to live in paradise conditions forever, filling the earth with their children and extending the boundaries of their garden home until the whole earth resembled Eden......all they had to do was respect God's Sovereign right to set the reasonable limits of their freedom. When someone's free will is abused, the free will of others is compromised. God wanted to teach his children how to drive this wonderful gift, but disobedience turned it into a curse.
All these episodes involved acts of disobedience.....it wasn't like they didn't know better....or that God did not warn them about the consequences of their actions....but they chose to disobey the Creator and he demonstrated that ignoring their rightful Sovereign had consequences.
The one thing that we must not forget, is that God has the power and authority over life and death. What he takes away, he can restore, so there are no lives lost that cannot be returned in a promised resurrection. (John 5:28-29)
This is an object lesson of mammoth proportions, designed to test out every way that humans can think up, to guide their own lives without him. God knew that they would fail...but they had to find out the hard way.
We are in the throes of learning what it means to obey God and to use wisdom in exercising our free will......
King Solomon wrote...
"The conclusion of the matter, everything having been heard, is: Fear the true God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole obligation of man. 14 For the true God will judge every deed, including every hidden thing, as to whether it is good or bad."
It is not just a choice, but an obligation. God will judge between good and bad because humans can't always tell the difference. That is why he wanted to keep that determination to himself. It was never going to benefit them.
God built the house, but the devil used the humans to burn it down. They suffered painful burns in the process. God sent Jesus to repair the damage and to help rehabilitate them and get them back to what God purposed in the beginning.
The Bible explains it all very clearly. God always finishes what he starts (Isaiah 55:11).....and it always turns out right in the end.
In our case, whatever we have tried has failed. We have proven that we cannot rule ourselves successfully without God, and he sent Jesus to pay for our sins so that we will have many precedents set for all eternity to come.......meaning that we will never have to endure anything like this again.....and who would want to?
