I'm glad you can all be here. It is so good to see so many folks sitting in our pews
coming together to worship our Lord and our Creator. And if you didn't know it
was happening, then you got surprised with also getting to join us in welcoming
a new family member. Love birthdays! I love birthdays, whether it's an actual
human that's actually joining us that day or remembering the anniversary of
that each year or a new Christian, a new believer in Christ, one who's come up out
of the water as that new creature. Love birthdays, love celebrating life because
we worship the God of life. And so each time we come around to these various
birthdays it reminds me of how good He is. So I love it. We're going to look at
it's it works out that it happens to be part two of this weekend's seminar on
social strife, how to live for today without fear of tomorrow, and my sermon
series from the beginning to the end. It fits perfect right where we happen to be.
I consider that the Holy Spirit's working. That was a divine movement that
lined it all up. A quick catch-up, very brief, very brief. We've been looking at
the book of Genesis beginning with Genesis 1.1. We went through all of
chapter 1 and the various things that we learn about God and what He created and
the order that He created it and what it says about the fact that God was just
simply there in the beginning. Then we went on to the creation of mankind. We
talked about how once man was created we saw two things. One, that it was very good
because up until man's creation God's earth was only declared good. Then humans
come along, those that were created in the image of God, and all of a sudden He
could add very good. But we also saw the opposite of that because first man was
created and only man was created and God said that it is not good that man
should be alone. So only the very good for humanity can happen when we have a
man and woman as God designed, as God purposed, as God intended, and that the
two of them would unite and that would be the core basic structure for human
society. Man, woman, marriage, family. It's the basic structure. We looked at the
anthropology arithmetic. We saw that in order to make humans God took inanimate
stuff and He shaped it and that was fine and well. I'm sure it was very detailed
but it wasn't until He breathed the breath of life. The one plus the one
could then we have a living being. And then we also saw that if man was alone
then it wasn't good. So in other words we are not intended to be hyper
individualistic creatures. Complete isolation is not for us. We are social by
design and so it shouldn't surprise us when we have severe negative
consequences when we radically interrupt that. And we shouldn't be surprised by
that and and even for the introverted ones of us, I'm gonna raise my hand, even
for those of us that are a little more introverted, it's still good for us to
interact with others and have even a small social circle or come to church or
whatever the case may be. Do something outside of yourself. Think outside of
yourself and interact with others. That's a good thing. And then we also saw that
it was God's intention that the man and the woman would be united and that
through that union you would have the promulgation of humanity. That the one
plus one can equal one but it can also equal three and four and five and ten and
fifteen and now we're down to however many millions and billions. I think we're
at eight billion currently on the planet, something like that. So in other words
that's that's a really good math problem. I'm a big supporter of families. I think
it's good to have kids. I love my three boys. I think that was built into it. God
wanted that. So we looked at all of that. The last time I was here we we went on
into where the chapter and the story turns though. We've had good, we've had
very good, we've had here's your instructions, here's your my design and
my will for you. But then, but then a crafty serpent asked a question that had
far-reaching implications. Did God actually say those four words are so
heavy and so important because if you start with doubt and questioning the
Word of God what are the results? And we looked at some of those results. We're
going to pick up after this now because where it fits into our weekend seminar
is something like this. Last night we looked at three primary categories of
social strife that at least I have observed and and researched and put
together for our presentation. Those were the categories of, if we remember, racism
and racial tensions, gender and sexual identity tensions right now, and then we
also talked about political strife. We tried to keep a balanced approach to
most of them, especially the third one, but we at least recognized that those
three categories have manifested in real strife in our culture. We agreed that in
years past or generations past, kind of like it was discussed in Sabbath school
this morning, yeah it was kind of there. People haven't always gotten perfectly
along with each other, but it seems like the temperature has been turned up. It
seems like the violence has been excused a little bit more. The rhetoric has gotten
quite a bit more harsh and hateful that the, if not the practice, the the interest
or the expression of tolerating each other. Across the country people are
saying, well it's not as important as it used to be to tolerate one another. We've
recognized that families have been split because of these tensions. That fear can
be a result of a lot of the strife that we've witnessed. Fear for the future, fear
for the younger generations, fear for eternity or your finances or whatever
the case may happen to be. In the United States of America, we are really
individualistic. We are as a people. It's kind of known. We bear it out. In fact, we
are so individualistic that in a Western American church, kind of like ours, the
the data points out that once you hit 80% capacity, the church needs to start
either doing another service or a plant or a bigger building because Americans
like their personal space. That's not true in traditionally Hispanic or Asian
or black churches. They are much more comfortable kind of sitting closer to
each other and sharing that personal space than the traditional American
culture. And I saw that in a previous church of my own. We got to 85% capacity
and next thing we know, week in and week out, we'd see people come in, glance
around, see that they actually had to sit next to someone and they would leave.
We're really individualistic. We are. We are also becoming more and more
narcissistic. We are so consumed with thinking about me and I and not even us,
not even we, not even any real kind of collective because if you disagree with
the me or the I, then well, we can forget the collective and I'll go over here and
find someone else who supports me. We've started to compartmentalize ourselves
into many, many, many different categories. The term for it is identity
politics. The list grows. If you are of European descent and you are male and
you are Christian and you are able-bodied, you can walk and use all of
your limbs, you drive a Honda and you live in Georgia, you're one type of person.
If you're all of that but you don't live in Georgia, you live in Tennessee, you're
a different, you have different, you can't, you're supposed to not be able to relate
to one another where they diverge, the different identities diverge. And so
what we have seen in our culture is that many of these identities have been pit
against each other. We suggested that some of the strife is fabricated or
encouraged or egged on. I happen to agree with that idea. We see this idea of if
all of what's on your list doesn't stack up with all of what's on somebody else's
list, then we need to decide who's the better person. If you are this or that,
you can either be the victim, the oppressor, the better off, the less than.
We don't need to even hear your voice in some conversations even though
ostensibly we're a nation of free speech. Just be quiet. You can't relate to what
we're going through because you're not exactly like me. We're very narcissistic.
We think far too much of ourselves as if we were the only ones to consider. I
would propose to you that not only does that miss the mark of our condition, it
flips it on its head. It's a hundred and eighty degrees opposed to the actual
human condition because the human condition, though we have our different
experiences and it's wise to understand where the limits are in those
experiences, we do have a very serious, severe, and common crisis that we all
suffer through that's greater than any of those other differences. The common
crisis is more important than the other differences. That common crisis we find
in Genesis and chapter 3 as we've read a little bit of it, let's review if you
have your Bibles already or not, open up if you like the pages. If not, swipe and
thumb through until we're at Genesis chapter 3.
The devil speaking through the serpent, being crafty and expressing doubt, came
to the woman who had found herself by the tree that they weren't supposed to
give a great deal of attention to. The servant asked that question in verse 1
at the end, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
Rather than seeing this as a challenge to God's love and authority, she decided
to debate the beast. We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden but God
said don't eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, don't touch
it lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, here we have our first lie, you
shall not surely die. You're not gonna die. For God knows that when you eat of
it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God and knowing good and evil.
The insinuation is God is unfair, unjust, unloving, he's the narcissistic, selfish,
hyper individualistic one, he's holding you back for something great or
something better or something good. When God said it is very good at the end of day
six he was lying to you is what the serpents suggested. Because even though
you may have all of the plants and all the fruit and all of the animals and all
of the beauty and all of those things, oh poor people, poor, poor people, that cruel
God kept something from you. So what did she do? The woman saw that the tree was
good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be
desired to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate, she also gave some to her
husband who was with her and he ate, then the eyes of both were open they knew
that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves
loincloths. We find our first indication of a common crisis. The common crisis
that all humanity has is that through our greatest grandparents Adam and Eve,
through their disobedience to the Word of God, their questioning of him and by
doing that elevating themselves to above him, they are now naked. They are naked.
They are exposed to the elements, they are exposed now more so to the
temptations of the devil, they are exposed to one another in ways that they
had never thought of before. My goodness, she has faults and he smells. They're
naked to each other. They see perhaps a limp or a mar on the body or an attitude
or what they thought would happen when the serpent lied to them and after they
ate the fruit that veneer was pulled back. They were naked. My friends that
hasn't changed since then. On our own we don't have anything that clothes us with
what God gave our original parents. We're naked to one another. We see each other's
faults. We know our own faults. We are deceiving ourselves to think otherwise.
We can't go through life keeping everything hidden. Many people try but
it seems like it always finds you out. More than that, we are naked to God. He
can't look at you and have anything hidden from his piercing gaze. You're
naked before God. He sees you for who you are. He sees what goes on in your mind
and in your heart. You can do the right things but he knows your intent. You're
open to him.
No matter what you do, you can't hide yourself from him. Many people have
convinced themselves that they can through good works or through saying the
right things or supporting what they believe to be the right causes. That that
can. That maybe God will only see that. Maybe they will only see what
I'm doing to serve his church and and how I've prophesied in his name or how
I've shown up early for every work being in Sabbath school. That's what God will
look at and consider. Maybe you've been used by the Holy Spirit to cast down
demons or had some other miracle happen in your life. Maybe you can claim a
credit to something that can't be explained by any other human means. And
when you stand before the bar of God and you try to list out all of that, what
does Jesus say is the response? I never knew you. In other words, what he's saying
is I can see you for who you are. You can't cover it up.
Don't raise your hand, but in your own thoughts, how many of us know who we are?
Deep down, when no one's looking and the shades are drawn, when you think you've
gone to the right city just far enough, when you've used, I don't know,
burner phones, I don't know if any one of us do that,
you know who you are. God does. And then what do you try to do about it? And that,
my friends, is a common crisis for all humanity. As mankind's representatives,
what happened to them got passed on through the generations and it's down to
us. Let's continue. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in
the cool of the day or in the evening and the man and his wife hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Now that their
conscience, their guilt has gotten to them, they know they've done wrong.
Remember, they're naked now. They know who they are. Maybe they deluded
themselves in thinking God would overlook just this little bit of fruit.
He'll just overlook this. But when God came, they knew who they were. And now in
their states, no longer did they welcome their Creator. What did they do? They hid.
The common crisis for mankind, it's shared, as our first instinct is to hide from a
holy and perfect God. We don't want to be looked at. We don't want to be exposed.
We don't want to be found out and we certainly don't want perfection peering
into imperfection and dirty and awful. My dog, I love my dog. I love my dog
especially after a bath. Because before the bath, as much as I love my dog, oh I
really don't want to be around her. She smells and she sheds too much hair and
it gets on my clothes and then I carry that with me everywhere I go. I have
little reminders. She's dirty and that dirty, that smell, that hair, that that
goes with her. I don't want any kind of contact with it.
Sin has inversed that in that we don't want any contact with holiness and
perfect perfectness, perfection. When sin stains you and sin makes you stink and
and the violation of the Word of God corrupts you to the core, rather than my
stinky smelly dog wanting to come to the human who's gonna clean her and love on
her and hug on her. When we stink with sin, we run from the only one who can
clean us. We hide from him. That's our natural instinct.
You will find though in the next verse one of the most powerful three words
that you'll read repeatedly in the Bible. In our Bible it's
translated as four, it's three in the Hebrew. But the Lord God. You come across
so many but God statements. It's awesome. What does God do here? But the Lord God
called the man and said to him, where are you? God knew where they were. God knew
their condition. But God sought them out.
God sought them out and what was the response? Adam said, I heard the sound of
you in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. God said, who
told you that you were naked? You shouldn't have known this about yourself.
A change has occurred. And then he gets right to it. Have you eaten of that tree
which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman who you gave to be with
me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. The Lord God said to the woman, what
is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.
Our next common crisis that we find is under the control of sin. The spirit of
self-justification rules. All humans are guilty of this. A fine quote from one of
my favorite books, quote, the spirit of self-justification originated in the
father of lies. It was indulged by our first parents as soon as they yielded to
the influence of Satan and has been exhibited by all the sons and daughters
of Adam. Instead of humbly confessing their sins, they try to shield
themselves by casting the blame upon others, upon circumstances or God forbid
upon God himself, making even his blessings an occasion for murmuring
against him. Tell me that's not true today. When we do something wrong, when
we know we're guilty of something, when we find ourselves in tough
straits, do we more or less find a way out rather than assume the
responsibility and humbly confess? How many of us on our first, first impulse
would much rather blame circumstance, upbringing, genetics, emotions, someone
wronged me? We start to point fingers. My wife took the blankets all last night. I
woke up cold. I've got a cramp in my neck. I'm tired. I'm hangry. And we think all
of this list of things allows us to be mean and obstinate and rude and
dismissive and the list goes on. In sin, self-justification reigns because it's
the opposite of what God would have us do. And that's a common crisis in
humanity. Much of what has led to the strife that we talked about last night
and we're referring to this morning, much of what has led to the strife is exactly
this. I didn't get it my way. They're the enemy. They're the ones that have messed
up. They've kept me down for so long. Sometimes it's a mysterious they. We
don't really know who. Just they. Sometimes there's names attached to it.
But it seems that the minority are willing to stand up and go, you know what?
Life is rough for all and much of my circumstances are a result of my choices,
my decisions, my follow-through. Not many folk are willing to do that. Certainly
not in the first impulse. Usually has to come a little bit and there's often pain
associated with that. You got to swallow self-justification and pride in one
one giant pill that chokes you. You got to swallow it hard at times to get over
that common crisis. The results of all of this, we're going to move on. The results
of all of this, two more common crises. This one specifically to the man and
then to the woman. First to the woman. We're jumping down to verse 16. To the
woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing and pain you
shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband but he
shall rule over you. We can have a side discussion about that but this is an
indication that men and women weren't going to be in the same harmony as
first intended. As first designed by God. There was going to be tension between
the sexes as a result of this sin. For all generations moving forward. There
would also be for all women moving forward pain in childbearing. Ladies who
have had kids, is there some discomfort and pain? That hasn't stopped, has it? It
hasn't. For the men it's only when they like really grip our hands and yell at
us how much our fault it is. But the ladies go through that.
That's for them and here God is saying this is a direct result of.
But the man wasn't going to be left out of it. In verse 17 to Adam he said,
because you listen to the voice of your wife, which means you didn't listen to my
voice, and you ate of the tree of which I commanded you don't eat, cursed is the
ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Thorn and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of
the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the
ground. For out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall
return. Three main things. One, success in life or simply living life was no
longer going to be comfortable and come easy. You had to work hard. You had to
sweat. You had to get blisters and calluses and blood and all of that is
how you're going to get through life now because life is going to be hard. We do
not have a right or a claim to an easy life. We don't. The people who desire it
and think that they are owed it are wrong and that's a common crisis for all
humanity. We should all expect difficulty and praise God if there's a glimpse of
something that's not difficult because the hard life is the expectation. That's
a common crisis. Also because of man the ground was cursed because of him. The
rest of God's creation was going to be cursed by sin because of what the man
and the woman did. The common crisis is that it's not only inside of humanity
but we easily and obviously see it in nature. Plants die, things get diseased,
animals kill each other. There are other atrocities that happen in the
weather and in nature. That's a result of us my friends. And then finally that
other common crisis is you'll return to the ground for out of it you were taken.
You are dust and to dust you shall return.
With very few exceptions every human that has ever lived has died. It's a
reality. We don't have to be reminded of it. We all know. We've had loved ones.
Perhaps we faced it ourselves. Friends. We read the news headlines of plane
crashes and earthquakes and sometimes it's one or two sometimes it's dozens
sometimes it's thousands. We all know that's a reality. That's a common crisis.
No matter what advances we make in the medical field or in I guess as they're
trying in the AI technology field we are not immortal. We won't stay around
forever. We have but these years that we walk this mortal plane. That's our window
and we all share that same window. But what's the common cure because remember
we have a common crisis that's sin and its results. Let me just ask one more
question. What does the Bible say for how many have sinned? All. What does all mean?
Everybody. It means all. It's the most inclusive condition we can find. You want
to talk about inclusivity? All have sinned. That's inclusivity. All have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God. Can't get away from it. It's you. It's me.
It's our loved ones. It's everyone. All have sinned. But that also means that God
is going to have a plan that's just as inclusive. Because what does he say even
before he talks to the man and the woman? He talks to the serpent. And in that
serpent we find our common cure. The Lord God said to the serpent and we know
that that that includes the devil. Because you have done this, this is verse
14 of Genesis 3. Cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of
the field. On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your
life. So the animal itself as an agent of Satan was cursed. But then more
pointedly to the enemy of souls. Verse 15. I will put enmity between you and the
woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and
you shall bruise his heel. So one, the common cure is that from the beginning
God said I will put a limit on what you can do controlling mankind. There's going
to be a measure of grace that enmity given to all of mankind so they can
still respond to me. Everybody gets it. He is already granted you what you need to
get started on your Christian journey. The faith of Jesus leads to a faith in
Jesus. That's a common cure my friends. Without that we would be so depraved by
sin, so run-down, so distorted and perverted we couldn't respond to a holy
God. Ever. None of us would be sitting here. We would not have had a baptism.
None of our children have any chance of learning of a Jesus who loves them. And
that would have been true out the gate if not for the common cure of enmity
between us and the devil. God said I'm gonna put a limit to you. We need that.
The other common cure is where he changes from mankind writ large to a
singular he.
He's going to bruise your head and you're going to bruise his heel. Which is
the more minor injury? The heel. You can have a twisted ankle, you can have a bug
bite, you can poison ivy, you can stub your toe, you can do whatever to your foot
to your heel. It might not feel good, it might hurt, but it's minor. Most people
recover from that. So devil you're going to cause some pain to the important he
that is coming. But what is he going to do to the serpent? He'll crush the head.
If a head is crushed is that a minor or a mortal injury? That's a fatal wound. That
is a common cure because just like sin is all-inclusive, so is the fix. Just like
the devil tempted our parents and got all of humanity into it, one man led to
all of this sin. So one man, our second Adam, came, lived the life we should have,
said the words we should have, lifted up our his heavenly father like we should
have, died though that death not just physical but understand on the cross
Christ went through the eternal separation from the Father. He could not
see past the grave. He experienced the death that a lost person would
experience. So he died the death that you and all, you and I should have, so that
in placement of us, we get to live the life that only he deserves. It's a common
cure. Do not think for a moment that what Jesus did that this first prophecy of a
Messiah was only for some elect or for some special class or for those who
rejected him. It doesn't make sense but maybe if you tithe 15 percent, tithe as a
tenth you can't, but if you tithe 15 percent, that doesn't mean that you get a
greater claim to what Jesus did. Jesus died wholly and completely, sufficiently
for all, including those who will reject him, either knowingly or passively. Those
who will reject him, he died for them as well. It's a common cure, a completely
inclusive solution to the sin problem. And we saw some fruits of that played
out right here today. We saw the demonstration of that, if you will, played
out today because the New Testament tells us that it is in baptism that we
enter into the death of Christ and when we come up out of the water we are
in the creation of Christ and the new creature, the new creation, the new life
in him. That played out right here. We got to see the profession of our common
crisis and the solution, our common cure, today. If there's anything that we take
away from this weekend,
it's that God loved the world so much
that he gave his only begotten son from me.
And whosoever, common cure, who so ever believes in him can have eternal life.
I'm going to invite David to come back up. We're going to finish this off
because we have one more thing to do and then we will have our closing prayer. I
want to have the prayer with him while he's up here.
Hope you don't mind, you were a perfect illustration for today. I used you a lot,
did you hear? Although I am going to say you called me a liar basically right out
the gate, but I still forgive you, I love you. Because I said the water was perfect,
he said it was cold. It is a joy to have gone through what we went through today.
I'm glad I could do it with you. We have one more item of business. He has
expressed to me a desire and you heard him say it into the microphone, to not
just say he's a part of the church, but to actually be a part of the church. Here
in this church, anyone I baptize knows up front that baptism includes joining the
body of believers, represented by the institution of the church. That's here
at the Ringgold Seventh-day Adventist Church for David. He has repeatedly shared
that desire with me. He wants to be a member here. Being baptized here, you heard
him. That hasn't changed. Okay, I was about to ask you, has that changed now
from there to here? Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to
all look this way. I want to entertain a motion to accept David Colwick into the
membership of the Ringgold Seventh-day Adventist Church. We have it. Several. How
about seconds? All right, all in favor? Now, for my non-members, do we welcome
David into the family of Jesus Christ? Anybody and everybody. Amen. I actually
have something for you real quick.
Inside the envelope is your baptism certificate, and then I like to give a
personalized Bible just as a gift. I hope I got your name right. It's on
there. All right, so now you can use that Bible if you want, or you can
keep the one that you've been marking up and using extensively. But if you don't
mind, can you stand up here with me while we have our closing
prayer? All right, all right, let's bow our heads. Heavenly Father, we want to
thank you for your love and your grace. We want to thank you for your mercy
shown towards us, and we want to thank you for all of the people here that have
professed a faith in you. And in a special way, we want to lift up David as
he has joined now through baptism into your people, into your church,
into your family. Lord, we pray that you would continue to
guide and direct him the remaining years of his life as he looks
forward to your soon return. We know that this isn't the end for him. He's
acknowledged that it's a part of his discipling journey, and we pray that he
would be found a faithful disciple. Lord, we also would ask that you help us as we
have studied and looked at your Word. May we always remember that we are not
islands, that we're in a sinful mess together, but we also have a Savior that
will save all of us, whomever may turn to him. Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit
would bless each one of us, direct our minds heavenward, we pray in Christ's name.
Amen.