[SPEAKER_00]: Please stand for the reading of the word.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Laura Rellidge, and I'll be reading from the new standard revised vision.
[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis chapter three, verses one through eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord had made.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said to the woman, did God say, you should not eat from any tree in the garden and the woman said to the serpent,
[SPEAKER_00]: We may eat from, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God said, you should not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it or you shall die.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the serpent said to the woman, you will not die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened.
[SPEAKER_00]: and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was delight for the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.
[SPEAKER_00]: She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the eyes of both were open, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fiddly leaves together and made loinclothes for themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, and the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the word of the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks be to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, you guess I've seen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Laura.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have a Bible going to open it up with us to Genesis, really chapter one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, we're going to stay in chapter one for just a minute.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we'll go over to chapter three where Laura was just reading from.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you were not here last week or you haven't gotten a chance to watch the message from last week, I'd encourage you to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those messages live on our website.
[SPEAKER_01]: They live on YouTube and go watch those, not because it's like a wonderful message or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But just because, hopefully, you'll be able to get the whole context of the series that we're in.
[SPEAKER_01]: So walk through the biblical story of redemption and see from beginning to end who got is what he's been doing, what he is doing, what he's going to be doing and always has been doing from the beginning of time through the end of all things and into eternity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we started last week, of course, with the creation and just talked about that in the sovereignty of the Lord, his creative power and his goodness in creating all things, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so today we're going to turn to
[SPEAKER_01]: the fall today we're going to look at really how very quickly in this story things things go wrong and that is not to blame God that is to blame humanity you and me and our our oldest ancestors in the garden
[SPEAKER_01]: Adam and Eve, but we're going to start in Genesis 1, we're going to look at really kind of the finishing touches of creation that God does there and look at Genesis 2 and then we'll move to Genesis 3.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's let's pray together and we'll jump in Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much again for.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for showing us our origins here and reminding us as we read who we are and who you are and.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, who were not, and what, what, how God that we have fallen short, so, so many times of your glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is our inheritance from the humanity that we have been born into.
[SPEAKER_01]: And God, we just start grateful that you have spoken into that and you have done something about that as we're going to talk about through this series.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, but just right now today, help us to see really just see clearly
[SPEAKER_01]: the brokenness of it, and God help us to have a greater and deeper appreciation and affection for you in your Son Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: We pray this in His name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Genesis 1, Genesis 1 and 2,
[SPEAKER_01]: in particular, kind of like our origin story, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you guys like movies, something like movies, like stories, you know, you like a good origin story, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We like to kind of find out about the background of characters and things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you all were like, who is a Star Wars fan?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's like a big Star Wars fan?
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of you guys saw Star Wars when it came out in the late 70s and the age like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are original trios, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they made the newer ones like in the 90s or whenever that was early 2000s.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was the origin, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That was kind of allowing us to kind of look back and see like, how did Darth Vader become Darth Vader?
[SPEAKER_01]: How did he get to the dark side, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's really what Genesis 1 and 2 is for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now remember this, this is helpful in our context as we read through this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: To remember that this was written.
[SPEAKER_01]: During the period of the Exodus, okay, that's when Moses wrote this, all right, the book of Genesis written by Moses was written for the Israelites to understand their origins, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They had, they had the oral histories of Abraham, we're going to talk about him next week and Jacob and Isaac and Joseph and all those guys, they had the oral stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: It hadn't been written down for them yet, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: Moses, by God's inspiration, during the period of the Exodus, he began to write Genesis so that they would understand who this God is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we saw last week, God is the creator of all things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, they just came out of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the gods that the Egyptians worshiped were not this one sovereign creator God, where they were, they were multiple gods.
[SPEAKER_01]: The son was agonned.
[SPEAKER_01]: The river was agonned.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pharaoh himself was agonned in the eyes of the Egyptians.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Hebrews may be naturally would have started to wonder was that true.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so why does Moses write Genesis 1 and 2 the way he does?
[SPEAKER_01]: To let them know, the son is not agonned.
[SPEAKER_01]: God made the son.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The earth is not a God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Nile is not a God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The waters are not like God made all of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you and I are made in His image.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pharaoh is not a God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not special.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not different than any other human being made in the image of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We all are, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why this was written the way it was written.
[SPEAKER_01]: So look at Genesis 127.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's that famous verse here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God created man in His own image.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the image of God, he created Him, male and female.
[SPEAKER_01]: He created them in his own image, right there?
[SPEAKER_01]: We have intrinsic, intrinsic identity and value of all human beings, male and female.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says he created them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So unique in our maleness and our femaleness, the way that God has made us.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's the same value between male and female, same value, same spiritual identity, however, different physical qualities and things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we complement each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have complimentary identities and purposes in God's creative order and it says, this, as we keep reading verse 28, it says, God blessed them and He said to them, be fruitful and increase in number.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So right here it says, God blessed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Literally that word blessed is the word now down with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that cool, this is the creator God of all things.
[SPEAKER_01]: This awesome creator we saw last week that he's so transcendent and so otherworldly and so sovereign and so great, but here, like as we get to this part of the story as he's creating this man in this woman, it's like he kneels down, he comes in, he's eminently close with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, and he speaks with them and he blesses them, it shows us the nature and the character of God that he desires to do good to humanity, for humanity that he has created in his own image.
[SPEAKER_01]: Any commissions of them, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: He gives them purpose in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: To go and rule over the Earth, see mankind often gets this backwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: We deify creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, they just came out of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what they were doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Deifying creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what Moses is writing here in Genesis 1, what God is saying to Adam and Eve is, no, you were not made for creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Creation was made for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Creation belongs to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Votie Bockeham, a lot of you guys listen to Votie Bockely past this past week, but he has a sermon that I was listening to one time that he makes this point that, you know, creation is not less fruitful because of mankind's kind of the narrative we hear in the world a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, human beings have ruined the earth and in some ways, like, yeah, pollution is a real thing and all that kind of stuff and sin is obviously the answer to the word, however, creation is more fruitful because of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: creation is useful because of humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: We make it useful.
[SPEAKER_01]: We put it to a work and we do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is the commission God has given people us, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a beautiful, wonderful thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: God has made the earth for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the end of all of that it says that God saw verse 31 all that he had made and it was very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was evening, there was mourning the sixth day.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then, chapter two verse one, thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all the Vastarei and by the seventh day, God had finished the work he'd been doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work.
[SPEAKER_01]: God blessed the seventh day and he made it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Holy, that's the origins of the Sabbath for the people of God to rest on the seventh day because God rested from his work on the seventh day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not because God was tired.
[SPEAKER_01]: But because God was setting an order and an ordinance from all time right here for his people that this would be the example that we follow that we should rest from our work.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, again Moses is writing to people that used to be slaves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's setting the stage here as God rested from his work that he would be able to later tell them in the law that will look at in a couple weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can rest from your work too.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you can't rest from your work, what are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're slave.
[SPEAKER_01]: You rest from your work.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just a side note.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some I need to hear that today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rest from your work, at least once a week.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so Genesis 2, we have the formation of man.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what most is going to do here is he's kind of backing up.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, OK, we've seen creation sort of from a 30,000 foot perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we're going to look at particularly when God created man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what it says.
[SPEAKER_01]: And chapter 2.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the Lord God, look at this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now Lord God, I plan in a garden in the east in Eden.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there he put the man he had formed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye, and good for food.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the middle of the garden, there was a tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as we're going to see here in just a moment, when we look at the fall,
[SPEAKER_01]: God had put this man in this woman in the midst of this garden and he had given them everything to eat in the garden and there was a tree of life and there was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil to trees and he tells them from the tree of life you may eat and you receive life eternal and from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat and you may not touch it or you will
[SPEAKER_01]: surely die.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's talking to Adam and he's talking to Eve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Originally he's just talking Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's look at how he actually creates Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: So go back up a little bit, a couple verses, verse four.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens and no shrub of the field had yet appeared in the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up.
[SPEAKER_01]: For the Lord God had not sent right on the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was no man so worked the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 7, the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into His nostrils, the breath of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the man became a living being.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what is the scripture say here that man was formed out of dust, dust, dirt, dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: that God took a handful of dirt, and when you and I, if you were to take a little bit of dirt breathe into it, it just like it goes everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's scatters.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's chaos, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: When God takes the dust into His hands and notice the intimacy of the language here by the way, a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: One, Genesis 1 is he's creating all things?
[SPEAKER_01]: It just calls God and chapter 1, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Moses just refers to him as God the entire time.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, Elohim, that's the word, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here in chapter 2, he adds something in again.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's talking to the Exodus people of Israel, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They have heard the name of God already from him.
[SPEAKER_01]: They know God's name.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is Yahweh, the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now he adds that in here in chapter 2.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as they're reading this for the first time, they're going, okay, God, Elohim, he created all things, but now as he's making man, he's the Lord God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the personal God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the intimate God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the close God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And in chapter one, the word is just created.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: God's spoken.
[SPEAKER_01]: God created here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The word is different.
[SPEAKER_01]: The word is formed.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's formed.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is worked with my hands.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is intimate creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not just like I speak into all the cosmos and create Jupiter.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is I get down with this dust and I hold it in my hands and I breathe my life into it like this is the word we would use for an artist, a potter, a carpenter.
[SPEAKER_01]: little foreshadowing there.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the word that is used when he talks about forming the man and breathing his life into the man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, a couple of things on the symbolism really have done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that this is just a symbolic thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a real moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe that God really created Adam out of dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on one hand, we see that as kind of go man, that is sort of, does that devalue us?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, to think that we came from dirt?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I would say no, because whose hands were the dirt in?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was the dirt in?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was in God's hands, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was in God's hands, and it actually adds value to our lives to understand, yes, we are feeble, and we are weak, and we came from dust, but we are put into us is what?
[SPEAKER_01]: The breath of God, and the image of God,
[SPEAKER_01]: put into this dust to create a man in his own image.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much value is there?
[SPEAKER_01]: How much wonderful grace is there and being a human being made in the image of God from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, from the dust, we are weak and we are feeble yet we are endowed with the power of the breath of God in our being.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a beautiful picture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Evolution would teach you that you are a cosmic accident.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not made with a purpose by the very hands in the breath of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Adam was from the very beginning, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we see, as a red and man to go, that God created this garden, he puts man into the garden, and look at verse 18, the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not good for him to be alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: So at this point, he's created.
[SPEAKER_01]: Adam, it's not good for him to be alone, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: All the women in here, you can say amen to that, because you know, it's not good for us to be alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will make a helper suitable for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Love that word, help her.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the word suitable.
[SPEAKER_01]: A helper suitable for him, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Forms Eve out of Adam, if you keep reading takes, a rib puts Adam's sleep takes a rib from Adam forms Eve out of her out of Adam, out of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: not to diminish Eve's value, by the way, because just as Adam was formed and endowed with the breath of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this woman is formed from him and would have the same identity and breath within her, that is from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is more about really the way Moses is writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is more about the complimentary nature, right, of men and women that we complement each other, that we need one another, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as we look at verse 24 here, for this reason,
[SPEAKER_01]: Man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh That is the first verse of marriage in the entire Bible's marriage right there That man would leave father and mother.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have father and mother other than God himself But he has put these two human beings on the earth to compliment one another and to become one flesh in Unity
[SPEAKER_01]: with him and with them, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so verse 25 says, the man in his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the last verse in the Bible, or that is true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shame does not exist in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good afternoon, chapter three with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said to the woman, did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat from the trees in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it.
[SPEAKER_01]: or you will die real quick the Hebrew language is very complicated language there's no vowels in original Hebrew so this word serpent right here and this word serpent can actually be indicative of a deceiver or one who shines
[SPEAKER_01]: right kind of the depending on the way you would put the vows in there and if it's like a verb or a noun or whatever it is a deceiver or one who shines and actually through out scripture as you read through your Bible the devil himself is described both ways as a deceiver and as a one of of brightness one who shines.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody all know who West Huff is, West Huff actually has some good stuff on this till go look him up this week, West Huff, H-U-F-F.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, check out some YouTube videos of his.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a linguist and historian like he was he's able to break the stuff down pretty good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but he actually talks about how we do see this throughout the scriptures and that Hebrew word, Sarah, again, this is after the Egyptian Exodus that this is written.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, it has an Egyptian equivalent or it's Sarah in the scriptures has an Egyptian equivalent that is the common word for snake, for serpent, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's really this picture that they would always get and there's there's ancient Hebrew drawings and paintings of this where the angelic beings around God are very serpent-like, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The serpentine beings, um, and so I, I do believe this is not a literal snake.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the devil.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the devil, and maybe a serpentine, spiritual being, as we read the rest of Scripture, we see that there were these angels who did fall from heaven, fall from grace in their pridefulness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the deceiver that devil, the serpent, who is a created being, by the way, not eternal like God, but a created being, a supernatural being, who delights into saving humanity, who is now entered into this garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, this serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he is described here as a serpent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, is he killed 28, 13 talks about the devil being in the garden of Eden.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it's the devil.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Satan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Revelation 12 and Revelation 20, both mentioned him as a serpent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, this is, this is who this is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe not a literal snake, but this is the deceiver.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the devil in a serpentine form of some kind comes up to Eve and he begins to get Eve to do what?
[SPEAKER_01]: To question God.
[SPEAKER_01]: to question this creator, that breathed life into her and Adam, to question him, like the audacity of this questioning anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean like he's but he's getting even Adam to question his goodness, isn't he?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did God really say?
[SPEAKER_01]: You must not eat from the trees in the garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, of course, he's, oh, yeah, we can eat from the trees in the garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eat this from from from this particular tree.
[SPEAKER_01]: But listen, every sin that we ever commit, y'all.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is just true of the human race.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every sin that you have ever committed comes from this essential question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did God really say, or some form of that question?
[SPEAKER_01]: Some form of accusation against God.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might question his word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did he really say?
[SPEAKER_01]: You might question his intentions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did he really mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, he said it, but did he really mean that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You might question his knowledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does God really know, or can you can you kind of do this in secret?
[SPEAKER_01]: You might question his will.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does he really care?
[SPEAKER_01]: You might question his lordship.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does it really matter if you obey him or not?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you might question his sovereignty.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can he even do anything about it if you disobey him?
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're going to question God, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to accuse God and His person, we're going to deny Him essentially in our sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every sin you have ever committed, y'all, is treason against the creator of the universe who breathes life into you the same way he did for Adam, forms you in your mother's womb, and then you and I have the goal to deny Him, to question Him, to disobey Him in our sinfulness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what we see right here from the very beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it says, as we keep reading here, when the woman versus six, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, and pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some of it and she ate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her and he ate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Couple things real quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, yeah, she's deceived, and Adams deceived like the deceiver.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, Satan, the deceiver, that word means the deceiver, the accuser.
[SPEAKER_01]: He deceived.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he tricks them a little bit here.
[SPEAKER_01]: He lies to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, are you not really gonna dial those things?
[SPEAKER_01]: But ultimately, what does it come down to for them?
[SPEAKER_01]: It comes down to their right beside the street, why are they there in the first place?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's Q number one, their right beside the street, they shouldn't be near.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two, it just says, even looked at it and she saw that it looked really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is sin almost always come down to for us?
[SPEAKER_01]: Our flesh, just craving something of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually really simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that taste good, that looks good, that will feel good to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: That will be a good experience, and it'll be fun, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will please me and my senses and my flesh.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what it comes down is who for Eve and Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: She looked at it, she saw that it was good, for pleasing to the eye, desirable for gaining wisdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that just simply means, I'm gonna be up on the stature of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm gonna have the God's kind of wisdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: She wanted to be more like, she was already like God, but she needed more for some reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: She wanted to be God, Adam wanted to be God, not just know Him, not just be like Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted that kind of power, that kind of authority.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it just came down to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just selfishness, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: instantly what happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, like the serpent, he doesn't, he doesn't, where is he now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, once they take an eat, I don't know, he probably just backed away and he's like, okay, you know, whatever, like he didn't care.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, he's just leaving them to their own guilt, their own shame, and then that what he does, you ever experienced that in your life?
[SPEAKER_01]: where it's just like the temptation, the deception come in the moment of truth and you take and you eat and you do the thing or you get angry or you give into your temptation whatever it may be and then after the fact shortly after the fact you realize you're naked and ashamed, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You just realize what in the world and they know it and they sow the fig leaves together and then here here's what happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: They hid from the Lord, the Lord God,
[SPEAKER_01]: They hid.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is always the result of our sinfulness?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's separation from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you keep reading here, separation, even from one another, what do they start doing, accusing each other when God comes to talk to them?
[SPEAKER_01]: But God does, doesn't he?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the grace of God in the story, from the very beginning here, we would expect this story to be okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome creator, God tells them very clearly, don't eat from this tree.
[SPEAKER_01]: They do it, they fall, they sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to come and just wipe them out and start over.
[SPEAKER_01]: Easy, why are they hiding?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because God's holding them, you're going to die.
[SPEAKER_01]: They think he's coming to kill him.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the only, like, what else would you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: He told us we're gonna die.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's coming to end us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he'll start over with somebody else if he wants to, but what does he do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Says the Lord God called to the man.
[SPEAKER_01]: He came walking to them in the cool of the day and he called to the man, where are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I hid the shame, y'all, it's guilt.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fall of man, I mean, that is the essential kind of nature of it, isn't it, is that we now live with shame, we live with guilt, we live with this desire and this need in ourselves to hide, hiding, like, that's our inheritance from Adam and Eve, hiding, shame, guilt, every human being does this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we know something's wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know something's broken here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know it's not what it's supposed to be anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sin always does this to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they hide.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to jump ahead a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go to chapter 4, Genesis 4.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to breeze through a few stories real quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: So chapter three, we see the fall of man, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Adam and Eve choose to disobey God, dishonor God, who created them, they eat of the tree, of the knowledge of good kneel, that they're not supposed to, by the way, we don't know that it was an apple probably, not some kind of fruit who knows, but they ate of that tree, they fall, the relationship is broken.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chapters 4 through 11 is really Moses attempt again by the inspiration of God in the power of the Holy Spirit leading him to write what he writes of the history of God's people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chapters 4 through 11 are really about the fallen miss of man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so chapter 3 is the fall of man chapter 4 through 11 is the fallen miss of man.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just really highlighting what does the world look like apart from.
[SPEAKER_01]: a relationship with God and the law of God in their lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: What would the world be?
[SPEAKER_01]: What would the world look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: So chapter 4, we have Cain and Abel.
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys know that story, Cain and Abel, the two brothers from Adam and Eve after they eat the fruit in the garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have Cain, they have Abel Cain murders his brother, Abel out of simple, by the way, simple jealousy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Abel's offering was good to the Lord, Cain's was not because it was weak offering.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't really give God the best and so he gets jealous of Abel and he murders his brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: One generation after a simple eating of the fruit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we got murder.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can say the most egregious of all human sins that we can commit against one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: Murder of brother against brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then chapter six, chapter five is kind of some lineage.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get to chapter six, we see the flood.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to read you the first five verses of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And daughters were born to them, some really interesting language you'll listen to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they married any of them that they choose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, there's some debate about what that means.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sons of God, marrying the daughters of men.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people believe that the sons of God are those fall and angels.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those serpentine angels along with the devil, Satan himself, marrying and having children with the daughters of men, like human women.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and that's where actually the race of giants, or what they would call maybe Neffelim, nobody really knows who the Neffelim are.
[SPEAKER_01]: It mentions him here in verse 4 that Neffelim were on the earth in those days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody really knows who they were, but maybe that's the race of giants that actually came from these fallen beings and the race of women.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one interpretation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if that one's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some actually interpret this as the sons of God, being in the line of cane, that cane line,
[SPEAKER_01]: Seth who is the other son of Adam and Eve, and they are righteous for the most part, and so they're marrying each other, and then still we have this kind of corrupted humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole point, though, whether you see one way or the other, the whole point is humanity is corrupted at this point, very badly because of this, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Humanity has been corrupted in our sinfulness.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fall in this of man has spread through every human being that's been born since Adam and Eve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, chapter five, we're really about 1,000 years into creation at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter five is about 1,000 years, we get a chapter six.
[SPEAKER_01]: Humanity is wicked, verse five.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, goodness gracious.
[SPEAKER_01]: One verse to say, there is no righteousness on the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like man is just so wicked, verse 6, the Lord was grieved that he made the earth and his heart was filled with pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the Lord said, I will wipe mankind, whom I have created from the face of the earth, men and animals, creatures that move along the ground, the birds of the air, from grieved that I've made them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord doesn't say Noah's perfect doesn't say Noah didn't sin doesn't say anything like that It just says Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord He's probably a pretty decent guy, but in whatever way this is about God's mercy isn't it like mutton Noah just found favor in God's eyes God had to choose somebody if he's gonna preserve humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he picked Noah
[SPEAKER_01]: And he picked his family and you guys know the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: He calls Noah to build an arc, to build a boat.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, interesting thought, tree of life, tree of knowledge of good naval, God casts them out of the garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, you cannot, any longer, have access to the tree of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: But pay attention throughout the scriptures, how often God uses wooden things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Made from trees to save his people, i.e.
[SPEAKER_01]: in ark, right, that he would put people inside of this ark, this tree of life, right, to save them, preserve them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Later in the New Testament, the New Testament writers would say that ark was like Jesus, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're put inside of Jesus, right, to save us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about Moses' staff, would, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, think about the cross of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just think that's cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, God sends a flood on the earth, destroys all the people, all the other animals that didn't make it onto the ark.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ever get a chance to go to the ark encounter in Kentucky, I'd recommend it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You kind of learn a lot about that stuff, cool geological things, stuff about dinosaurs where they on the ark, I think so.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of different interesting things that you'll learn about that, and then every animal, really, every type of animal could fit on that boat, and God did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He spared them, He saved them, He saved this family, and the begins to afterwards, through Noah, build humanity on the earth again and send them out, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we see, God tells them, Genesis 9, God, Genesis 9, verse 1.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then God bless Noah and his son, saying to them, be fruitful and increase the number.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's that sound like?
[SPEAKER_01]: Genesis 1, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just starting over with Noah and just going, all right, we tried this once.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm going to try it with you guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be fruitful, increase the number, spread out, fill the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we have in Genesis 10 and 11 is the nations, the nations like how again, Moses is explaining to the people of God during the Exodus, how did we get all over the earth?
[SPEAKER_01]: How did people get all over the earth?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we got Genesis 10.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see this table of nations kind of the lineage after Noah and all these people that are created.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then chapter 11 is the tower of Babel.
[SPEAKER_01]: God told them to spread over the earth and what do they do?
[SPEAKER_01]: They go to one place, one plain because these people cannot get it through their heads.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is the one who made you.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gets to tell you what to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, no, they go to one place, they begin to build this tower, probably some kind of ziggurat, pyramid, type structure, trying to reach up to God, trying to get up to heaven, says God comes down, he thwarts their efforts, he confuses their languages, and now they can't talk to each other and build anymore, and so they have to spread out by those clans, by those languages, and they end up going all over the face of the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you know that God created the nations, in that moment, Genesis led it, he created the nations to humble each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why the nations exist.
[SPEAKER_01]: to humble one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for all of human history, hasn't that been happening?
[SPEAKER_01]: Nation has humbled nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: If anyone nation ever gets too big and too prideful and too powerful, what happens?
[SPEAKER_01]: Another nation is going to come in.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: God made it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to see in the end and throughout the gospel that then God is going to bring the nation's back to get there in the gospel, and under one name, Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, back to Genesis 3 real quick,
[SPEAKER_01]: back to Genesis 3.
[SPEAKER_01]: So says their eyes are open, they realize that they're naked, they feel their shame, and they hide, and then God's mercy right, he comes to them, he calls to them where are you, he speaks to them, he seeks them out.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, you'll see the beginnings of the gospel story here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The God's seeking out sinful people, coming to them, walking to them, calling to them, speaking with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: We talked last week, Jesus being the Word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of God, God always speaks.
[SPEAKER_01]: God's a communicator, y'all.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves to speak.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this whole word, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he comes and he speaks to Adam and Eve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, he gives them consequences for their sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: He does.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gives the snake, the serpent consequences, the falliness and he gives the woman consequences, childbirth, subjugation.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says subjugation to her husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: That really just is about this unity between men and women.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's about, I think, like, this unity, there will always be conflict right between husbands and wives and men and women in general all over the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a result of the fall of man.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's brokenness in us as a human race, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, he tells Adam, you're gonna toil, you're gonna suffer, and ultimately you will die and return to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the consequence of disobedience.
[SPEAKER_01]: Death.
[SPEAKER_01]: Death is ultimately our inheritance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go over to the Book of Romans with me real quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I want you to see really the gospel connection.
[SPEAKER_01]: Flip out of New Testament, the Book of Romans, Matthew Martin, John, Acts, Romans, and the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_01]: Romans chapter 5.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at verse 12.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all men because all sinned, all sinned.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Apostle Paul, as he's writing Romans, is helping us understand Genesis 3 and what it means for humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's saying that this moment and humanity, right here, this moment and history, didn't just affect Adam and Eve and we later on because of our own individual sin we earned death.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's actually saying, you earned a death here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Death became yours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thousands of years before you were ever born death became your inheritance through Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the words imputation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was imputed to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Death is what you have because of the fall, because of sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not even just the sins you've committed.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sin that exists in humanity now through the line of Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone ever born after the line of Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: All of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are dead.
[SPEAKER_01]: dead.
[SPEAKER_01]: You do not have life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care how good you think you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are dead in Adam because of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's Paul's whole point here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what he's trying to let us know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so death is not at the deepest level.
[SPEAKER_01]: The result of you doing bad things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Death is the result of you being in Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what death is for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have received his disease, a sinful nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the disease of humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Death is the curse, the disease is the sinful nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: You and I have a verclivity towards sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you never sin, death would still be it because you're an atom, but because we have that disease, we do sin, we turn away from God, we fall short of Him, and we have received that curse of death.
[SPEAKER_01]: Adam and Eve are removed from Eden, and are removed from access to the Tree of Life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so are all people, again, who are descended from Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in Genesis 3, 14 and 15, you'll have to turn back there.
[SPEAKER_01]: God gives the serpent a consequence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what it is?
[SPEAKER_01]: He tells him, there will be enmity between you and the woman in her offspring.
[SPEAKER_01]: You will strike his heel, but he will crush your head.
[SPEAKER_01]: The serpent and the offspring of who?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not Adam, Eve, the offspring of a woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is born to who?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a man, a woman and a woman alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, Exodus 315 is called the Proto-Uangelion, the first gospel, the first gospel ever preached, as Genesis 315.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the gospel of Jesus, that He would come and crush the head of the serpent, and He would be the seed of a woman, not of this man, Adam.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'll want you to finally just look back at Romans 5 because here's how Paul concludes this,
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Romans 5 or 17.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says, for if by the trespass of one man, Adam, death reign through that one man, how much more will those who have received God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men.
[SPEAKER_01]: So also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul's whole point there, again, he's just helping us understand what happened here.
[SPEAKER_01]: God created all things.
[SPEAKER_01]: He created man and woman in his own image and those people fell short of his glory in their own sin and this story that seemed like
[SPEAKER_01]: It was going good, and then it would get here, and this just feels like when you read this, it just feels like the story's done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing left.
[SPEAKER_01]: We messed it all up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Paul is saying, trying to help us understand and see this whole picture that even though this happened and we in Adam have received his death, that God has now done something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, this is Paul writing on the other side of the cross, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That God has now done something at the cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: to bring life where there was only death.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just as Adam's death is imputed to us through sin, Jesus' life is imputed to us through his righteousness, his act of righteousness, not yours, not your righteousness, not your goodness, Jesus' righteousness, given to us just the way Adam's death was given to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: His life is given to us if we believe in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: And where do we look to him?
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to get to the tree of life one day and it's going to come back, we're going to get there in the end, it's going to be a tree of life and eternity, you want to get to the tree of life, it comes through the tree of death, it comes through the cross of Christ Jesus, yeah, this is one story, you see it right, this is all one story and it's beautiful, it's wonderful, it starts here and it has to go through this, it has to go through this, yes, we have fallen
[SPEAKER_01]: we are broken in our sinfulness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the simple application this morning is this.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are not a believer of Jesus, you have not put your faith in the one who died on that tree of death to give you access to the tree of life again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And today's the day, put your faith in Christ Jesus, put your faith in Jesus today for your salvation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you will receive eternal life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you are a Christian, listen, I would just say this to you, understand that this story, oh, this is all of our story.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is who you are, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was your identity, this fallen, this broken, this, this sinfulness, was who you were, but you have come to know Jesus and so you have received life in His name.
[SPEAKER_01]: But pray that God would give you a heart that breaks for a world around you that is still under the curse of sin and death.
[SPEAKER_01]: The world around us is still under that curse.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still dead and sin, still lost and shame still hiding from Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: But God would come to them, this is the same way He came to us and say, where are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: You come to me now, you come through Jesus Christ and we would commit our life to sharing that good news with anybody who will listen, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the gospel and He had begins here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It begins here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to go through this to get to the good news.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're gonna end up this morning, just we're gonna sing to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna sing to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to do this, actually, if y'all will just stand with me, let's stand together.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to be down here down front if you're on the prayer team and you want to walk down We just want to be available to you for a minute for prayer while we sing to if you need to come down for prayer Please come down for prayer Maybe this morning you want to receive the Lord as your Savior and you want to come and confess that with somebody Please do that today But if you just want to stay standing and just sing and rejoice if you need to
[SPEAKER_01]: kneel down before the Lord and repent of sin of your fallenness and brokenness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let the Lord lead in this moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just come to Him and worship Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stop hiding.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been coming to broken sinful people since the beginning of all things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And He's going to come to you as well if you would just
[SPEAKER_01]: Repent and believe and trust in the goodness and the grace of God and Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Lord, thank you for today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lead us now just to rejoice in you to repent and to trust you again today.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.