Good morning, everyone. Excuse me a moment, I gotta turn that 747 we have on the roof down a bit, because I couldn't hear you say good morning when I said good morning. Good morning, everyone. There we go.
It must have been this thing that I couldn't hear you. It's good to have you here this morning. And glad you can be here. There are visitors and it's nice to see you.
And there's some new faces, good to have you here. Let's take a moment and pray. Father, thank you this morning for bringing us together. For those of us who are believers who know the Lord Jesus, we can sing with great enthusiasm.
It is well with my soul. And I pray, Father, for anybody who may be here this morning and it is not well with their soul. That they may come to trust the Savior, the Lord Jesus, the one who is the healer of souls, the one who is the Savior of souls, the one who came to give himself for us. Father, we just ask for your help as we look into your word in His name, amen.
All right, ah, this has been moved, so now it's behind the pulpit. I have to migrate a little bit, there we go. That's okay, that's good. We're continuing in our series in the book of Genesis.
We will probably be a little while going through Genesis, but it's an important and foundational book of the scriptures. In fact, the rest of the scriptures are anchored in the truths that are found in the book of Genesis, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, who is God, where do we come from? All of these things, all of the questions, the greatest questions of life are answered when we look in the book of Genesis. So we'll continue on that.
This morning, I just want to mention, here's kind of where we're going today, seven times in the first two chapters, as God created the heavens, the earth, and man, and woman, and the garden, and all the beasts, and animals, He said, it is good. Now there was only one said, it is not good, He said it's not good for a man to be alone, but He fixed that. He created man's companion, his helper, when he created Eve. And it was good.
We had wet at bliss in the Garden of Eden. Everything was perfect. He never said to her, my mom used to cook this way, and she never said, yeah, well, I could have married him. So it was just a perfect marriage.
And then problems came. We had problems, and we're going to look at that today. Why do we have so many problems in the world today? John, have you ever had anybody ask that question to you on the streets?
Yeah, probably weekly. If there's a guy, then why are there so many problems? We're going to answer that today. Is it because we have a liberal government in power, or is it because of the last conservative government?
Is it because the Democrats are in power in the US, or is it because the Republicans were in power and they made a mess? No, it's none of that. We will look, I remember there was a, I forget the name of the band. They were Canadian.
They were Christian band. And they had a song called The Problem. Down here, thank you. Old memory goes away.
We should sing that someday. It's a great song. It's a great song. It talks about all right to my prime minister.
You're right to your president and all of this stuff. And then at the end of the whole conclusion of the whole song is, yeah, the problem with the world is me. And that's really what it comes down to. The problem with the world we will find is me.
All right. Oh, sorry. Here's my outline for this morning. Four points.
I'll be getting with the letter S. The serpent, the sin, the struggle, and salvation. First of all, the serpent. If you read with me, I hope you have your Bible.
If not, some of the things will be up on the wall behind me. And I do have Genesis 1, verse 1 here. Genesis 3, verse 1, rather. It says, now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of a field which the Lord God had made.
Ah, the serpent. You see, so far the characters that we've understood on earth to be, at that point in time, Adam, Eve. And then a bunch of animals and beasts that were created. But who is the serpent?
The serpent. It's just like it's just dropped in here. And the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord had made. So who is he?
Who is it? And you will understand here, as you read the rest of this verse, and he said to the woman, and he said to the woman, indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? So not only is he a serpent, but we don't know what it is. He's talking.
And this seems like otherworldly. Oh, well, it is. So who is this? We don't know what the animal looked like that the devil used.
Many have speculated. Here's the thing. Do you remember back when you were in school, and I remember when I got into the larger grades, the older grades, especially university, that the back of your book had the answer guide. Do you remember that?
The answers were there. The problem with it was you didn't know how you got to the answer, and that's the stuff you had to do, and that's what the proff really wanted to know is how did you get to the answer. But the answer was there. So with this whole question of who's the serpent, the question is answered in the back of the book.
So let's go to the back of the book, Revelation 12, verses 7 and 9. Revelation 12, verse 7 and 9, it says, and there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels, Michael was an archangel of God, and his angels were waging war with the dragon. And the dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven.
And a great dragon was thrown down. The serpent of old, who was called the devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. So we see here in the book of Revelation, this dragon is called the serpent of old.
It's referring back to Genesis chapter 3. It's the same one. He is called Satan, the adversary, the serpent of old. Where did he come from?
Did God create him to be evil? Well, there are more things in the scriptures. This is kind of a Bible study for us. In Ezekiel, we read, and if you have your Bible, it might be easier to see it from your Bible.
Ezekiel chapter 28, I'm going to put a marker in my Bible so I wouldn't spend a half hour looking for it. But it's in that part where the gold is still on the edge of your Bible. Ezekiel chapter 28. And if you look with me, I'm going to, for context, before I read from verse 11, I'm going to read from verse 10.
Ezekiel, 1 to 10, rather. I'm going to read Ezekiel 28, verses 1 to 10. It says, the word of the Lord came to me again saying, son of man, say to the leader of Tyre, or the prince of Tyre, or tear, thus says the Lord God, because your heart is lifted up and you have said, I am a God. I sit in the seat of the gods in the heart of the seas, yet you are a man and not a God.
Although you make yourself make your heart like the heart of God. Behold, you are wiser than Daniel. There is no secret that is a match for you. By your wisdom and understanding, you have acquired riches for yourself, and you have acquired gold and silver for your treasuries.
By your great wisdom and by your trade, you have increased your riches, and your heart is lifted up because of your riches. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you have made your heart like the heart of God. Therefore, behold, I will bring strangers upon you, the most ruthless of nations, and they will draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your slender, and they will bring you down to the pit. And you will die the death for those who are slain in the heart of the seas.
Would you still say, I am a God in the presence of your slayer, although you are a man and not a God, and not God, in your hands, in the hands of those who wound you. Would you die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers, for I have spoken to the Lord God? Okay, so he's talking about this one who is the prince of Tyre. And he says, as he is writing this, easy kill, it says in verse two, it says, yet you are a man and not God.
So it's clearly speaking of a human ruler, a person. In fact, we know who the person is. The person is Ithabol II. Ithabol II.
So this is who is the prince of Tyre. But then it changes. If you read with me from verse 11, and it says, again, the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, thus says the Lord God, you had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.
Every precious stone was your covering. The ruby, the topaz, the diamond, the burl, the onyx and the jasper, the lapis, lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald and gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets was in you. On the day that you were created, they were prepared. You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there.
You were in the holy mountain of God. You walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. Clearly, this is a different person.
This is referring to. It says you were the anointed cherub. A cherub is an angel. It's not a man.
Speaking of an angel, an anointed cherub. Iniquity, it says that iniquity was found in this being. It is different from the first king of Tyre, or Prince of Tyre that is mentioned here. It speaks of the beauty, full of wisdom, beauty, anointed cherub who covers on the mountain.
This was one who was a cherub created by God, used in the worship of God, beautiful. All of these gemstones, all of these coverings that were his. The anointed cherub that covers, probably covered all other glory except for God's in heaven. And then it says, but unrighteousness or iniquity was found in you.
Go with me over to Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 14. In Isaiah chapter 14, we read even further. It says in verse 12, how you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, O son of the dawn, you have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations, but you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God.
I will sit in the mountain of the assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high. Nevertheless, you will be thrust down to shield to the recesses of the pit.
Those who see you will gaze at you. They will ponder over you saying, is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook the kingdoms, who made the world like a wilderness and overthrew cities, who did not allow his prisoners to go home? So here, O star, O son of the morning, is speaking of Lucifer, son of the morning. And he makes these five statements, I will.
I will ascend. I will raise my throne above the stars. And I will sit in the mountain of the assembly in the recesses of the earth. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.
I will make myself like the most high. Now, God is not going to have much to do with that. Somebody's going to say, I am going to make myself just like God. I'm going to sit right up there with him.
So it was a very short trip for Lucifer from heaven to earth. Once you get to that point, that's the iniquity that was founded in the pride, the swelling, the thought that I can be like God. And then he was cast to the earth. How do I know that?
Because the Lord Jesus said it in Luke chapter 10 verse 18. Have you got the chapter 10 in your reading of Luke yet? Yes, I think the smile means yes. He said to them, this is Jesus speaking.
He said, I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. There's a whole message in that. First of all, if he saw it happen, Jesus is eternal. Jesus was in heaven.
Jesus was there. He saw it all happen. But he saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Lucifer, he was cast from heaven.
And then now he shows up at the Garden of Eden. Now when did this happen? We don't know. It could have happened the day after creation.
It could have happened the day of creation. It could have happened a while before that. But he was cast to earth. So it had to happen after the earth was created.
This whole thing took place. It was an agility over God being the creator and making the earth and man. I don't know. But at some point in time, because immediately when this happened, he was cast down to earth.
So earth had to have been created at that point in time. I already explained why I don't believe that there was an earth before God said God created the heavens and the earth. First one. He shows up in Eden.
Now it's interesting. And I've tried to figure out what this shining one is, this serpent who could speak. I've read Ken Ham. I've read Albin Douglas.
I've read all kinds of things. And you know what the conclusion is? Nobody knows. None of the beasts of the field, obviously, whether it could speak before Satan decided to use this creature or whether it spoke because Satan was speaking through the creature, don't know.
Nonetheless, he did. Obviously, he was a creature that God had created and Satan used that creature. So then we see now, he said that he is more crafty, more cunning, more subtle than any other beast. And he comes to Eve and he comes up to her and he says, hey, good looking, because we know who she was, because that's what Adam said.
Wow, man. Oh, woman. So he came up to her and he said, hmm, got a question for you. So here's my question for Eve though.
And here's my question that we have to ask. Now let's get to it after. So he came up to her and he says, I have some questions. And the first thing he does is he challenges the word of God.
He challenges what God had said. You see, God's word is powerful. In fact, I was going to share something this morning at the Lord's Supper, but we need it to our Lord's Supper now because we were sharing and so on and so on. But in Revelation it says about the Lord Jesus, that his name is the Word of God.
His very name is the Word of God. God's word is important. It's vital. It was how in Hebrews chapter 11 it says that by the Word of the Lord, the world's existed.
Everything that you know existed by the Word of the Lord. It's powerful. It means everything to God. In fact, he says that I exalt my Word above my very name.
And so Satan comes up as the form of the serpent and he says, Eve, question. As God said, first question in the Bible, the very first question in the Bible questions the Word of God. Often when you get into a discussion with somebody, the first question is to question the Word of God. To debate about, well, is this really true?
Do I, I mean, you really believe in that old book? I mean, that's fairy tales. I watched the thing, the guy was talking to the guy and he goes, yeah, but the Bible's just a bunch of fairy tales, right? This other person sitting across him was not even a believer said, no, no, no, it's historical accounts.
And I thought, well, he gets it. But you see, the very first thing that's often questioned is the validity of the Word of God. And that's what Satan does here. It's still his, his MO, his modus operandi.
It's still the way he operates today. Let's question the Word of God. Let's, let's, let's, let's pick the pieces we like and we'll discard the stuff we don't like and let's question whether it's true. Why don't we set up a seminary to question the Word of God?
And we'll all go there and we'll, and we'll formulate more and more questions and we'll deconstruct everybody's faith and then let you build it back up again. And guess what? You won't build up again. Faith.
You'll lose it. It'll just be gone. And that is going on. The first question in the Bible is, is alive and well today.
Second thing he, he questions is the love of God. And he kind of says like, really would God keep something so good from you? I mean, that tree, look at it. It's beautiful.
Look at the fruit. Yeah, it's good to eat. It's good to the eye. And, and what a good God really keeps something like that away from you.
And he turns God's generous invitation of every tree of the garden you may freely eat into a negative prohibition. He focuses in on God said, you can't eat from this one, but he doesn't bother to mention the fact that God said you can eat of every tree of the garden. So if we were to go down below here and fill the fellowship room with food and tell you you can go in. Listen, you can have everything, everything in here.
Fill your plate. Stay away from that cheese because it'll make you sick. Is that generous? I would say, generous.
Eat anything you want, but stay away from that one. You see, God was generous in his offer Adam and Eve. Have anything you want in here? All I ask is you stay away from that.
And then finally, Satan denies the word of God. He says you will die. You won't die. God's a liar.
Are you kidding me? And this is where Satan goes. He starts you off questioning. Is the Bible true?
Huh? Well, you know what? Well, you know what? A big fish swallowing a man, that seems kind of weird.
And then three days, I don't know. And then all of a sudden, you find yourself at a point saying, you know what? Yeah. I don't believe anything that God says.
In fact, I don't even believe he exists anymore. And that's the way Satan works today. That's the way he worked that day when he was at the tree. We should not be ignorant of his schemes and devices.
If you are trusting in the word of God, and I hope you are, do not be led astray by the little doubts to come along. Get back into the word of God. The word of God explains itself. The word of God answers itself.
We could go through, I'd love to sometime, maybe if we ever do a series sometime on the word of God. On what? Can I trust the Bible? I know that they've done this in Sunday school.
So we really need to look. Can I trust this? Can I trust this? And yes, you can.
There are so many things, so many bases on which you can trust this. The authorship, the preservation, the prophecy, all of these things. The Lord Jesus Christ himself, the word of God, what he has said, what he has done. Trust the word of God.
So what was this forbidden fruit? Well, most art shows it as an apple. Some people say it was grapes. That's kind of the legalistic guys that don't want you to think about wine.
Some say it's symbolic of sexual activity. Well, that's kind of bizarre because God told him to go fill the earth and multiply. I'm not sure how you can do it otherwise. Some say it was quince.
That's the case. I'm in trouble because I love making quince jelly. But we don't know. We just know it was a fruit of some kind that was pleasing to the eye and good to eat but was forbidden.
But you see, man was given in the garden. They were given freedom. They were given dominion. But it had limits.
They had to answer to God. They had accountability. They had responsibility for what they were given. They were responsible and accountable to God for their actions.
There was so much freedom but one prohibition, one tree. That was it. So then Eve says, you know what? That serpent's right.
I think I'll try it. But you know what it says? It's concerning in that. She gave it to her husband who was there with her.
The whole time this conversation is going on between the serpent and Eve. Adam was right there and silent. Didn't say a word that we know of. Didn't do a thing to stop her.
Didn't quote the Abba the Lord said. Didn't say a thing. He was just right there. Watched it all happen.
So she said, all right. I'm going to look at this. It looks good. I'm going to take it.
I'm going to eat it. And I'm going to give it to Adam. If you look back in Genesis 3, I thought I had the verse up behind me but I didn't. It said, and the woman said to the verse 6, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was of delight to the eyes and the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate.
And she gave also to her husband with her and he ate. I guess I changed that. Yes, it was there. There's the verse.
So here she takes the fruit and she shares it with him. She saw, she took, she ate, she gave. Kind of like 1 John 2, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. Four steps to disobedience.
But you know what? With Adam, it just took one step. It just took one step. He took it and he ate it.
She thought about it. She was deceived and she took it. But Adam just said, yeah, you know what? I'm going to have some too.
My question is, first of all, why would you hang out so close to temptation? Why? Of all the places in the garden? Did the serpent find them hanging out at that tree?
There were so many other trees. You would have thought that the serpent would come and say, oh yeah, they're way over there eating, they're trying that sample. They're trying, you know, you're going to Costco. It's like the garden of Eden.
As soon as you walk in the door, man, there's like stuff to sample everywhere. But here they are, they're hanging out at the place of temptation. I thought, why? Why would they do that?
What about me and you? If I have a problem with drinking, I shouldn't hang out in a bar. If I have a problem with pornography, I should not take my laptop and go into a quiet room. Get it nice.
If I have a problem with gossip, I shouldn't pick up the phone and call somebody who's got a problem with gossip. Stay away from the temptation. Don't hang around the tree that's going to tempt you. This is what they were doing.
They were hanging around this tree. Now I've totally lost my place in my notes here. Oh yeah, here we go. So here's the difference between what Adam did and what Eve did.
Eve was deceived. It says that Adam, that Eve was deceived by the devil. She took the fruit and she fell into sin. Just out of note, grab the fruit, ate it.
100% willful disobedience to God. I don't believe God. So I'm going to eat it. You see, that's the essence of all sin.
The essence of all sin is disbelief. I don't believe what God says about that. I don't believe it's going to have consequences for me. I don't believe that God is going to hold me accountable for that.
And so I commit sin. It's the basis and the essence of all sin. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 4, this is why Adam is the one that's held responsible throughout the scriptures. It says in 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 14, and it was not Adam who was deceived but the woman who was being deceived and fell into transgression.
And then as you read in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 21, 22, for since by man, a man came death by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam, all die, so in Christ, all will be made alive. It doesn't say by Eve, all die. When you read further over into Romans, you will understand that it was Adam was the one that brought sin onto this earth.
Adam, as our federal head, is the one who brought sin and curse upon this earth. This is the darkest day in all of history. 9-11 was not the darkest day. Even Calvary, as dark as it was on the earth.
It was not as dark as this day because Calvary burst forth in blazing light when Jesus cried out, it is finished. On this day, it doomed humanity to death. Every single person after this has been infected by the sin virus. Every person.
And the sin virus, you know, I remember it wasn't that long ago. People going around everywhere probably still are wearing masks and hand sanitizer everywhere because we were afraid of a virus. Let me tell you, this virus is worse. A hundred percent of the people on planet earth are affected by sin.
A hundred percent. It's the darkest day in history. This is what Adam brought upon the earth. In Romans chapter 5, verse 12, I want you to follow this and read this.
Therefore just as through one man, sin entered into the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world. But sin was not imputed when there was no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who was the type of him who was to come.
Sin entered, then death entered. Death spread and then it says death reigned. Death reigned in this world. So when somebody asks you the next time, if you want to be a good apologist, why do bad things happen in this world if there's a good God?
You have this verse to go back to. This verse will answer that question. The reason we have all of these bad things happen in this world that ultimately lead to death is because of the sin of Adam as one man, sin, as through one man, sin entered into the world and death through sin. So death spread to all men because all have sinned.
His sin was imputed to you, even to the little poppy. Believe it or not. Adam acted as the representative of mankind. But what this tells us too is Jesus acts as our representative, those who have trusted in him.
So when sin was dealt with at the cross of Calvary, when Jesus died, he died for sin to put it into all sin. Not sins, individual, but sin. The problem of sin, he died to take care of that. So now because of that, his righteousness can be imputed to you if you accept his offer of forgiveness.
He died for your sin. He died for my sin. You see, the problem is that sin has marred our image. We were made in the image of God.
We read that a couple of chapters ago. And then the serious consequences that have come, you know, the consequences of sin are so serious that we don't even know what the consequences of sin are. That's part of the consequences of sin. We don't realize how serious our sin is to God.
Sometimes we think, well, it's a mistake. It's my hot Irish temper. I can pick on a couple of the guys. It's my Italian upbringing.
It's the red blood at Scotsman that I am there. I got myself. So it's always that I had a little indiscretion. I was talking to somebody recently and they were talking about somebody who had done something, the most bonehead of thing I've ever heard in my life.
The most hideous of sins, almost. I mean, it doesn't matter. It's all hideous. And they're talking about this indiscretion.
And so I thought, why don't you call it what it is? It's a sin. It's evil. It's wicked before God.
We have no idea how we have offended our Creator, our Maker. We have no idea what an offense our sin is to Him. I can give you an idea. His son had to die.
His son had to go to a cross, spit on, wearing a crown of thorns, beaten by men, and die in your place, an innocent man. That's how hideous sin is to God. And because of that, you go free. You may have been born, D.O.A., dead on arrival.
Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 tells you that. You're dead in your trespasses and sin. But Jesus Christ can make you alive because He died to take away your sin. He died to solve the problem.
So what are the consequences of the sin? First of all, it says the eyes of both of them were open and they knew that they were naked and they sewed pig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.
First of all, their eyes were open. They lost their innocence. They realized something's wrong here. What is this?
They were naked. They were created naked. That's fine. Now they have this kind of self-conscious thing going on.
I'm naked here naked. This is really exposed before God. I don't like this. They're ashamed.
So then they hid from God. Guilt sets in. Communion with God is broken. Now, you look at it and think, you can't hide from God.
In Psalm 139 it says, where can I go from your presence? Even if I go to the depths of the sea, you are there. There's no escaping the presence of God. Yet they thought that they could go and hide themselves from God.
Jonah, as I mentioned before, he hid himself, tried to hide himself from God. For us, it's instinctive for us to try to hide our sin. And then they had this whole thing of starting to blame each other. A little part two in there.
It was her. It was him pointing to the snake, to the serpent. Actually, Adam, he said to God, he said, you know, the woman you gave me. God, she gave me of the fruit and I ate.
I said, wait a minute now. That's serpent. He's the one that deceived me into doing this. The blame game starts.
Blame shifting. Let's point, you know, like this. Everybody but me. God came in the cool of the day in the afternoon.
The wording would say it's perhaps customary that he came and had a time of fellowship every day and walked with them. Now that's broken. The communion's broken. They're trying to...
Okay, yeah, you know what? I just want to hide from God here. I don't want to be around him. Doesn't your sin do that to you?
The last person you want to see, when you've sinned, the last thing you want to do sometimes is open this and read it. The last person you want to go and sit down and have a quiet time and speak with is God. That's the instinct that we have. It's the same as Adam and Eve, right from the very beginning.
God would come in the breeze of the day in the afternoon probably by the wording and he would walk with man and then all of a sudden he has to come and say, Adam, where are you? No, God do where they were. I think the question was to make a question with a point. Do you ever do that?
Like, you ever play hide and seek with your kids or grandkids? And they're right there in plain sight and you're going, I wonder where they are. Okay, let's see. Jimmy, where are you?
Where are you? So here's Adam and Eve hiding and God's coming. Adam, where are you? You know exactly where he was, but they thought they could hide from him.
It just speaks to our condition. Sin deceives us into thinking we can run and hide from God and get away with it. We can't. We won't.
You know, then we kind of hid because we were naked. We weren't dressed up, God. I mean, we knew we were coming to meet with you. The preacher last week kind of told us we should be dressing up, so I dressed down.
So, here's, here they are. Who told you you were naked? We just kind of figured it out. You know, it speaks to the condition of man.
It speaks to the way we are. We think we can hide and get away with it, but we can't. Quick story. My childhood.
Cape Rotten. Seven, eight years old. Seven years old. I used to go to school every day and I'd arrive at 10 o'clock for eight, thirty class.
And the reason I did that, it was a great distraction. They were building a college right there on the route as I was going. And they had dump trucks and mixers and bulldozers and cranes and all of this stuff. So on my way walking to school, I would come up and I would stand there at the fence and I would watch them building this college.
And then I thought, oh yeah, school. And I'd walk up the little bit over the hill. I'd get the school to be 10 o'clock. So I ended up in the principal's office and he was a scary guy.
And he said, why are you late? I slept in. You slept in. Yeah.
I mean, this is so much like the garden of Eden, like what went on with me. Like I made up a lie right away. Okay. I slept in.
Does your mother not have an alarm clock? It doesn't work. Lie number two. Okay.
Well, all right. Thank you. Back to your class. I thought, oof.
I'm in grade two. Okay, grade one. So then the teacher said, here's an envelope. Could you take this home to your mom?
Sure. I thought this has to do with that. So I go home and I hide it in the back of my closet behind the boxes. A few days later, the principal, Mr.
McDonald's, excuse me, on the hallway. David, can I see you for a second? Sure. Did your mother get my letter?
Yeah, I think she lost it. All the blame going to my mother. My parents go to parent teacher night the next night. And the principal said, did you get the letter that I said home with David?
My mother said, no. Are you aware that he comes to school every day and rides at 10 o'clock? No. Are you aware that I spoke to him and he told me that your alarm clock is broken and that's why he doesn't get up and he doesn't get to school?
Now my mother's ready to cry. Not because I'm so late but because I'm such a little liar. And the whole time that letter is hiding in the back of my closet and my dad, who's not as gentle as my mother, come home and he goes, I want to see that letter and I want to see that letter now. And you know the letter I'm talking about.
Well, I scrambled into the closet and here's the letter and he took it and he read it to me and it wasn't that bad. But you know, but isn't that the way we are with our sin? We make up one line to cover the other one and we go to the next one and we mount it up until we have this huge mountain of death of sin that is just buried us. So what do we do?
What is our remedy? Well, we'll talk about that in a second. I'm almost done. So the next thing that happens is the struggle.
The serpent is blamed. The man is blamed. The woman is blamed. And now so here God says, okay, you know what?
Enough. This is brought a curse on mankind. This is brought a curse. First of all, I'm going to start with the serpent.
Serpent, you will crawl on your belly and eat dust for the rest of your days. Like I said, I don't know what the serpent looked like when he came to tempt Eve. I know what the serpent looks like now. I saw one by my shed and I wanted to chop his head off.
I hate them. There's stick your hand up if you like a snake. No, see, nobody would. It's now going to be the mortal enemy of the woman.
How many women like snakes? See? None. Okay.
It's just going to be the mortal enemy and then it's going to get even worse because her seed is going to come. Her seed, capital S seed, you'll find in the scripture and he is going to deliver a crushing blow to Satan. He will deliver a crushing blow. He says he will crush his head.
You might say bruise in some versions but it says crush. I like what it uses the word crush because Satan was crushed at the cross. It says that the serpent will bruise the heel of the seed of the woman. Now I have bruised my heel before.
It's not nice but you get over it. If you were to say, I'm taking you down there and I'm going to crush your head in the foyer. I'm dead. I'm done.
And at the cross, it's like Satan had his way to bruise the heel of the Lord Jesus, of the seed of the woman. He put him on a cross. He delivered him up. He was dead.
But the victory came when the crushing of the head of Satan. When Jesus Christ burst forth from that grave on that morning, Satan was crushed forever. In fact, it happened before that. It happened when Jesus was hanging on the cross.
Our brother, he may have spoken about this. I think last year, 10 last night. It is finished. The work is complete.
Satan is finished. His work is finished. Sin is crushed. Satan is crushed.
That is the seed of the woman. It's promised in Genesis 3, 15. I like how it reads in the NLT. From now on, this is what God says to the serpent.
From now on, you and the woman will be enemies. Your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. And he will crush your head and you will strike a seal. And then the war starts.
The invisible war. Satan trying to prevent his own destruction. Cain kills Abel. A flood comes.
All families on the earth are destroyed. But one. Esau tries to kill Jacob. He's the Hebrew children.
Saul tries to kill David. Heyman. Plots in the book of Esther to kill all of the Jews. Satan just made it his work to try to eliminate the seed of the woman that is going to crush his head.
Herod kills the babies of Bethlehem. Satan tries to exterminate Christ. And then finally, you will see a persecution. The persecution of Israel is lined out in Revelation 12.
The woman is Israel persecuted because of the seed. The male child who would destroy or crush the head of Satan. That's the invisible war that has gone on through all of history in the background. For Eve, it was going to be pain and childbirth.
Her desire would be to rule over her husband. But now we have a problem. He's going to rule over her. It says that in Genesis 3 verse 16.
Meryl conflict. Desire for your husband. But he will rule over you. You know that there's only one other place that you read of that word in the Pentatech?
It's when Cain is warned. Hey, sin is crouching at the door. If you do well. Fine.
But if you don't, it will master you. It will rule over you. It's the very same Hebrew word. She's going to desire the place of her husband.
But he will rule over her. Maybe Adam, the ground is cursed because of you. Much labor to produce food. Where food was just provided by God.
Now it's going to be a hard, hard slog to try to produce food. Thorns, thistles, grinding labor and toil. And then finally it says physical death. You're going to return to dust.
So my last slide. Second last slide. Man and women. The man and woman made fig leaves for themselves to cover themselves up because they were naked.
And you look at that, you think fig leaves. What were they thinking? Fig leaves remind me of what goes on in this world today. The fig leaves, first of all, are temporary and very ineffective.
The moisture is going to come out of the fig leaves. They're going to dry and shrivel up. And then guess what? You're naked again.
And the cycle goes on. And the cycle goes on. It's like good works. It's like religion.
If I keep doing this, maybe I can get myself clean. If I keep doing this, maybe I can get closer to God. If I keep doing this, maybe I can be right with God. You got to stop the doing.
It's fig leaves. It's a temporary covering. It won't work. It won't last.
You see, God came and he made his provision in Genesis chapter 3 verse 21. It said that he provided skins for them and covered them. Permanent coverings for them. I don't know if they last at 900 years, but they had permanent covering.
And in order to do that, an animal had to die. I believe it was probably a lamb. I have no proof. But it would be very effective.
And here they are with these skins covering them. You know, I believe this is the beginning of the story of the lamb through the scriptures. I did a series a while ago on the theme of the lamb through the whole scriptures, the central theme of the Bible. Here's one lamb given for an individual.
Adam had a lamb slain for him. Eve had a lamb slain for her so their nakedness could be covered. We'll relater in the scriptures of a lamb for the family, in Exodus, a lamb for the nation, on the day of atonement, and then John the Baptist, the greatest words. Behold the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
You see, the scripture says that in order to cover sin, in order to take away sin, blood must be shed. And here, to cover the sin of Adam and Eve, the blood of a lamb was taken and never covered. In order for your sin to be dealt with, a lamb has already been slain. The blood has been shed.
You need to apply it in your life. You see, religion is just human achievement, my own works, trying to get to God. But God's way is work, one work, the work of Calvary. He has already accomplished it for you.
You can work all day long, trying to get salvation, but it's already been done. It's already been paid for. Wouldn't it be foolish if I had a debt that was paid at the bank and I kept going in and paying on the bill and said, well, it's already paid for it. I don't care.
Here's another 50 bucks, put that towards the bill. It's paid for. Do you want more? I'll give you 100.
It's paid. If you trust the Lord Jesus Christ in that work, there's only two religions in the world. There really is only two religions in the world. You can take every religion and you can boil them down into two categories.
One is the religion of human achievement and accomplishment. The other religion is divine accomplishment. The second one is the gospel of the New Testament. The second one tells me that human achievement is basically every other approach to God is wrong.