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Well, good morning to all of you. How are you doing?

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Awesome. Welcome, welcome to Hosanna. We like to take the opportunity to say that to anybody

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that's here in our sanctuary for the first time or if you're joining us online for the first time, welcome.

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We're so glad you're here to worship with us today.

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I am Pastor Nathan and today we have come to the fall of man in the book of Genesis.

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After so much beauty and glory and hope and creation and all this wonderful stuff,

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it all collapses in this chapter.

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So we'll be looking at the fall of man actually in four parts.

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Today we're going to look at the fall itself and then after that we'll look at the confrontation between God and man.

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We'll look at judgment and the curse and then we'll look at judgment and grace.

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But this section we're looking at today actually starts in chapter two verse 25

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and we're going to go all the way to verse seven this morning,

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which bookends this first part of this account of mankind's fall.

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Both verses, verse 25 in chapter two and verse seven, both of them focus on the couple's complete nakedness

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and that's why I see them as bookends to this section.

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Because in the beginning of this section, it's Adam and Eve at the pinnacle of their innocence,

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at the pinnacle of their intimacy with God and one another.

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And they're in the perfect innocence of nakedness, just no shame, no hiding, no secrets, no nothing.

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And then by the time we get to verse seven, we see them in the depths of their guilt,

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in the depths of their shame and alienation from God and ultimately alienation from one another.

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So this section is about the perfect couple's fall from innocence to guilt.

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And as we study through this this morning, we have to understand that this is actual history.

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This is not a metaphor.

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This is not a story made up by somebody just to teach us a lesson.

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This is a recount of what actually happened in real history.

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And as history, it describes what has happened countless thousands of times ever since.

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This lesson is universal.

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And so today as we study this, I pray that we'd all be wise to listen, to learn,

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and to apply the lessons we learn from the fall of mankind,

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lest we find ourselves continually falling into the same sins.

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Let's pray.

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Father, we trust you.

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We love you.

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We thank you, God.

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You've done so much, Lord.

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And in the very beginning, God, you created this perfect earth and perfect universe.

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You created a perfect man and a perfect woman in a perfect union of support of one another, God,

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together ruling over a perfect animal kingdom.

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And yet, Lord, you gave mankind a free will, God,

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which was at the same time our greatest gift and our greatest curse.

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And Lord, unfortunately, in the beginning, when you had given man everything

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and one single prohibition to go with it, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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God, that one thing we did, thus bringing sin into creation, sin into our lives, sin into the universe,

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and God ultimately destroying our relationship with you and our relationship with one another.

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So, God, we know you came to fix all that, and we're so grateful, God,

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that you came to be the atonement for our sin.

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But today, as we study the details of what took place,

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Lord, may we be encouraged today in our walk with you and our relationship with you

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to not do what the original couple did,

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but, Lord, instead to be in a place where we trust you in your word

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and that, God, we really have the mentality that if God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.

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So, God, we want to open up by worshiping you and just praising you, God,

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because, Lord, we do today endeavor to live our lives trusting you,

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trusting your word and living according to it, God.

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And so, Lord, we want to bless you with our voices and our hearts, God.

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We love you so much and we thank you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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Let's worship church.

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All right, we are in Genesis, chapter 2, starting in verse 25,

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and we'll be going through chapter 3, verse 7 today.

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But arriving at the threshold of the third chapter here,

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Adam and Eve have been living in splendor, living in just a perfect garden,

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in this perfect earth, in this perfect universe.

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Everything was great, right?

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This place had beautiful crystal clear waters and green forests,

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and all the animals have eaten were just in perfect harmony, right?

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Because at this point, the animals aren't killing each other yet.

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They're all living together, right?

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They're all living together in unity under the rulership of Adam and Eve, and it's just awesome.

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The couple themselves, the Scripture told us that they share the same bones.

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They share the same DNA.

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They share the same flesh in just a perfect naked majesty,

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because it tells us that they were one flesh together.

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And their relationship that they were experiencing in the garden at this time

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was a reflection of the eternal intimacy of God himself.

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We understand that he was a trinity, and there's a trinity within,

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as we have God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

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all one God, but distinct personalities and people within.

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And so, this whole reflection of the intimacy, the connection, is pictured here,

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and it's also a foreshadowing of Christ and his bride,

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as we learned in Ephesians 5, that Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride,

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and that marriage relationship between man and woman is meant to be a picture of that,

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and a reflection of all that.

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So, what we've been experiencing through our study of Genesis in the garden

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was simply the picture of what all was meant to be,

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of how it was meant to be, and it will one day be again at the end of all things.

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Now, although Adam and Eve were both equal in standing and value and worth

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and importance before God the Creator, right?

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There was also a structure of authority that was established by God in the creation order.

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And so, he created Adam first, and then Eve was created out of Adam,

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and we talked about the implications of all that, but it's important to understand that that order of creation

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and therefore that order of authority existed before the fall of man, all right?

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So, that's an important point as we get through all of this study in the fall,

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but yeah, Adam was created first, Eve was taken out of Adam,

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and that's really the basis of Paul's teachings in 1 Timothy 2, 13, 1 Corinthians 11, 8, and 9,

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and so we talked about that. Eve was designated as Adam's helper,

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not something that was denigrating, but something that was actually very, very valuable,

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because her role, her function was essential, critical, necessary to God's plan for mankind.

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And so, we studied how that structure of authority, it followed after God's very, very careful design

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in creation where it was God who was authority over Adam, who was then authority over Eve, his wife,

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who together they were authority over the animals of all creation.

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Remember that structure there, because it was this structure that was tragically flipped upside down

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as we're going to study today in the Word.

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But as of chapter 2, verse 25, Adam and Eve had listened only to God,

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they had been in perfect fellowship with him, they were at the height of their innocence and openness,

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and that's what it says here in verse 25,

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both the man and his wife were naked, and yet felt no shame.

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Okay, there's a lot in that simple verse right there.

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It's referring to both the physical nakedness, that they were naked, right?

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They weren't naked as some people call it, right?

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But it was also a spiritual nakedness, right?

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And this idea of nakedness carries the idea of absolute transparency, absolute vulnerability, honesty, openness, trust, right?

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There was no doubt, no suspicion, none of that between Adam and Eve and between them and God.

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It was this wonderfully beautiful naked open relationship.

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There was no need for what we have today in our labor-intensive devotion to God, right?

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We have to struggle every day to fight against our sinful nature, to obey God and to do what he's calling us to do, right?

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We all have that struggle, but then there was none of that.

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It was beautiful.

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God came first in their love and in their thoughts.

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There was no struggle to obey him, no struggle to talk to him, no struggle to hear from him.

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I mean, living and breathing and serving and even working, all of it was just this beautiful, perfect devotion to God without struggle.

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Now, yes, physically, domestically, I believe at this point, clothing had never occurred to them, right?

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Remember, Adam just was one day and then Eve was one day and they were just created as they were.

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And so there was no shame.

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That idea of shame there, there was nothing to cover.

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There was nothing to be embarrassed about.

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There was nothing to be self-conscious about.

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You know, my grandson, James, he's about a year and a half old now,

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and I'm learning all kinds of wonderful stuff about God and creation through this little kid.

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But one of the things he loves to do most is when we take off his diaper and he's naked and he just says,

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I want to run around the house and enjoy and enthusiasm.

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And I'm like, what is that?

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You know, like if an adult tried to run around naked, we throw them in jail, right?

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But a baby runs around naked, it's just this beautiful innocence.

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There's no shame in it, right?

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And that's how God created us to be.

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And it's because in the garden, neither Adam or Eve were the center of their own life.

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Neither one of them was the focus, the priority of their own life.

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Sinful man, it's me, number one.

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But in the garden that didn't exist, God and their other, their spouse, was the number one,

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the center of their life, the center of their focus, the center of their priority.

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Self wasn't the master.

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God was.

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Pleasing self wasn't the first priority.

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Pleasing the other was.

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And so to God and to each other, everything just was there.

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Everything was just out in the open to be seen, to be known, to be loved.

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It was just beautiful.

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But then we come to chapter three, verse one.

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Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made.

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He said to the woman, did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

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Now there's quite a bit here that is not said, but some of it that is understood by other parts in the Bible.

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And so I want to address some of that real quick here.

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With that word serpent in the original Hebrew, it literally means snake or a sea snake.

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It's also, it could mean sea monster, right?

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The Leviathan we read about in Job is this word.

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It could also be translated dragon, right?

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And we've talked about how like all the dinosaurs, they existed in the beginning.

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God created them.

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And so some people might have referred to giant lizard as dragon.

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This word is also used in scripture to refer to an artistic representation of a snake.

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You guys remember the story when the snakes were biting Israel in the wilderness

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and Moses was instructed to make this sign that had the serpent on it, the bronze serpent.

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Same word is used there for that.

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So this word serpent used by itself, it's used both in positive and negative ways.

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So the word serpent itself is not inherently evil.

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So for those of you that hate snakes, I'm sorry, they're not a representation of evil in and of itself.

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And we also have to remember that everything the Lord God had made at this point was good, right?

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We read that already, that he made everything in creation, including snakes.

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And he said it was good.

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Now what's not directly said here is that this snake, this serpent was Satan.

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But the New Testament connects the serpent to the picture of the serpent

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and even a picture of the dragon with Satan himself.

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In Revelation 12 verse 9, it says,

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So the great dragon was thrown out, the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan.

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And then in Revelation 20 verse 2, it says,

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And so there in Revelation, as we're looking at the end of all things,

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I believe the reference to the ancient serpent is a callback to this moment in creation.

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Now, it's likely that Satan possessed this snake or was somehow using this snake.

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We have that in elsewhere in scripture where God used Balaam's donkey to talk to him.

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You guys remember that?

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So it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that.

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But it says that this serpent was the most cunning of all wild animals.

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Now that's a detail that's told to us because what that word cunning mean is clever.

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It means tricky. It means crafty.

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Now in today's language, that's mostly carrying negative connotation.

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When we call someone crafty, we're not meaning they're a good person.

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When we call somebody clever and tricky, we're usually not necessarily referring to a good thing.

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But in the ancient language, the word in the Hebrew that's translated cunning simply means skillful or ingenious or shrewd.

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The idea of someone being cunning or shrewd was that they acted very carefully as to avoid danger

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or acted very carefully in order to maximize benefit to oneself.

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So not inherently a bad thing.

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This craftiness, this cunningness, in the Bible, inexperienced people are encouraged to develop this skill.

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In Proverbs chapter one verses two and four, or two through four, the purpose of Proverbs, it says,

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for learning wisdom and discipline, for understanding insightful sayings,

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for receiving prudent instruction in righteousness, justice and integrity, for teaching shrewdness.

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Same word, to the inexperienced, knowledge and discretion to a young man.

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So it wasn't that it was a serpent. It wasn't that it was cunning.

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It was that its nature was misused because later on in that same verse it says he said.

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And the New Testament connects this idea to Satan.

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So cunning, this craftiness misused, shrewdness misused becomes deceit.

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Shrewdness misused becomes trickery.

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Shrewdness misused becomes dishonesty, which is translated to cunning.

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And that's why we usually see it as a bad thing today.

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So this is what Satan is doing through this snake.

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Now, I don't know if you ever asked yourself the question in reading this narrative,

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but I asked the question, why wasn't Eve taken aback that a snake was talking to her?

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If you guys today went somewhere and a snake pulled up to you and started talking to you,

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wouldn't that be weird?

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We'd all be like, whoa, snakes don't talk.

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I believe it's because in the very beginning, Adam and Eve,

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they didn't have the same perspective on animals that we have.

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What I mean by that is we have hundreds and thousands of years of experience,

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people experiencing different animals.

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And so we just know as a culture, animals are incapable of speech.

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We understand that.

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Adam and Eve, remember, they didn't have a childhood.

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They had no other humans to teach them.

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And given that here in the narrative, they had probably only been alive for a matter of days

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at this point, everything to them was new, right?

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Adam had seen on the animals and named them, but everything was fresh.

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Every experience was new.

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Everything was just totally new to them.

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So it's not unreasonable to conclude that maybe they were like,

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oh, that's just one of the new things we haven't experienced yet.

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But I mean, it's just so few details are given here.

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So all of that is just speculation and presumption.

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So what we know is that there was a serpent.

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The serpent was created by God.

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It was cunning, but then it speaks to her.

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He said to the woman, and this is Satan working through the serpent,

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did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

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You see, up to this point, God's word was responsible for everything Eve enjoyed.

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Everything, the sun, the moon, day, night, the blue sky, the beauty of the garden,

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all these wonderful animals, the tree of life, everything, the singing birds,

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not that it was like Snow White, but the birds singing in the air,

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and the animals adoring them.

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I just imagine that, like all the animals.

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Lions were chilling with lambs, not eating each other.

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You could just walk up to them and go, hey, what's up, Mufasa?

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And it was good.

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It was beautiful, including her atom.

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It had been just created by God, right?

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But it's that word that Satan attacks.

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This question that he asks here, it demonstrates the cunning,

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the negative side of shrewdness.

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It demonstrates the guile, the deceitful intention of Satan.

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And as I read it, I can almost hear the mock shock in its voice, right?

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Oh my goodness!

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Did God really say that?

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Really?

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Right?

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That's almost how it reads to me, and in the original language,

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it supports this idea of shock, right?

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Now, Satan was very subtle here, and this is what we're going to walk through,

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because he does the same thing to us today, all right?

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He's very subtle.

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When he started out, he did not directly deny God's Word at first.

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You notice there what he did is simply introduce an assumption,

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a possibility that still is held by mankind today.

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And that assumption, that possibility is that God's Word is subject to our determination,

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that God's Word is subject to our definition,

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that what God's Word means is subject to what we think it means.

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Right?

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That's what he introduced here.

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Did he really say?

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It was just a suggestion, but this suggestion apparently got Eve pondering,

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got Eve considering.

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And so, I think such a thought had never even occurred at this point,

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the thought that God's Word could be questioned.

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I don't think it had ever even crossed their mind, but Satan then suggested it.

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Now, additionally, Satan was subtle in how he carefully avoided God's personal covenant name.

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You remember that?

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In chapter one, it was God, Elohim, God Almighty, the transcendent, all-powerful one.

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And then we get to chapter two, and it becomes the Lord God,

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the covenant personal relationship God, right?

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And that is the name that is used through the entire account of him creating man and creating woman, right?

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Because he cares.

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It's about him caring and being connected to us.

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But Satan, when he says God here, he doesn't use Yahweh, Elohim.

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He just uses Elohim.

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Instead of referring to God as he's trying to deceive Eve as the close, personal covenant redeemer,

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he switches to refer to God as this giant, distant, all-powerful, outside-of-the-universe person

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that you can't possibly have a relationship with.

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And Eve follows his lead.

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And in her dialogue with the serpent, she now also refers to God as just Elohim, not Yahweh, Elohim.

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So you have Satan's mockingly surprised tone in questioning God's word,

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and then you have his disuse of God's personal name here.

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That just leads to a very carefully crafted, yet almost imperceptible distortion of God's word.

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Because if we go back to chapter 2 verse 16 and revisit what God actually said, this is what he says there.

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And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree of the garden.

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You are free to eat of any tree in the garden.

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Now, God spoke this to Adam, and it appears that he then taught that or spoke that to his wife in what God's instructions were.

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But what God actually said, it demonstrated his incredible generosity, right?

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What he's emphasizing, you are free.

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You have free will and individual determination to eat of any tree, any, all of them, except that one.

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So God is saying, 99.999% is all yours in joy.

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Just this one thing, just don't do.

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And Satan says here, did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

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That's not what God said.

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But it was a very subtle, yet very radical distortion of God's word.

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What it was is instead of focusing on the generosity of what God said, you're free to eat any.

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He's focusing on a suggestion that God was stingy and withholding.

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The suggestion is, didn't God say you can't?

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Let's focus on can't instead of can.

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Let's focus on can't instead of you're free.

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Now, Eve could have set the record straight right in this moment.

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She could have said, that's not what God said.

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Get out. Shut up, snake, right?

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But she didn't do that.

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Instead, she unconsciously, and I say unconsciously because Scripture tells us that she was deceived.

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So she wasn't intentionally trying to change what God said or what not as we go forward, but she did.

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And so she unconsciously follows Satan's lead and she revises what God actually said in two and maybe three possible ways.

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The first way is she diminishes God's word.

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We're going to look at that.

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The second one is she adds to God's word.

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We're going to look at that, and the third one is she softens God's word, right?

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These are three things we are tempted to do today, so please pay attention.

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Genesis chapter 3 verse 2.

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The woman said to the serpent, first mistake, we may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden.

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But about the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, you must not eat it or touch it or you will die.

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Apparently, the serpent was speaking in a language that he understood, and so they began this conversation.

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Now, this first one, diminishing the word, it's something that I see here.

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Some scholars see this diminishing of God's word as I'm going to explain it.

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Others don't, but I wanted to walk through it anyways just so you could see what I'm seeing here.

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Now, what I mean by diminish, that she's diminishing God's word, is the amazing, abundant, generous, positive allowances

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that God provided to them, she diminishes them to characterize them as less than they actually were.

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You see, remember, chapter 2 verse 16, you are free to eat from any tree except that one.

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What does she say here in verse 2?

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We may eat the fruit from the trees.

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God's words were any, you're free, without condition.

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Like, do all this, there's no conditions, don't do that.

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But all of this, just do it, no conditions, it emphasizes God's generosity in his provision for his creation.

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But when Eve changes it to we may eat of the trees,

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it's now focusing on the fact that God is telling us what we can and can't do.

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It's not a focus on God blessed us so much, it's, well, yeah, God said we could, but he also said we couldn't.

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And then she leaves out the any, right?

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It's her diminishing God's gift to them, the generosity, and so this shift is her just minimizing God's provision.

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Now, she minimizes the abundant generosity of God by altering his word, and then she expands the prohibition.

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You see, Eve adds to God's words in the next part of her phrase.

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She goes, he said you must not eat it or touch it, lest you die or you will die.

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Now, God didn't say that.

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If you go back to chapter 2 verse 16, you will not see God saying don't touch it.

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He just said don't eat of the tree.

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Now, this was a magnification of God's strictness.

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This was Eve mischaracterizing how strict God was right after a diminishing of how much God gives in his provision.

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It was an unconscious suggestion that God is way more harsh than he is.

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It's almost like she's saying no, he said we could have all of this,

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but then he said don't eat of that one because he said don't eat it, and if we accidentally slip and oops,

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accidentally touched it, God will kill us.

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Now, this is very typical of what we still do today.

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I think it's part of our sin nature today.

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You know, a dad might say to his daughter, no, your friend Chrissy can't stay the night tonight,

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and then she runs crying to her mom, dad said I can't ever have Chrissy over.

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You ever heard that?

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I've been accused once or twice of using words like that, never and always, and never happens, but still.

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But a boss might say to their employee, hey, I've noticed you've been late to work a lot lately.

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Hey, we need to work on that.

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And then that employee will go to the other employees and go, man,

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that rigid slave driver said if I'm late one more time, I'm getting fired, right?

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It's magnifying the prohibition.

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It's something we do when we don't like a prohibition or a warning or we don't agree with a prohibition or a warning.

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We tend to enlarge its strictness.

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Now, we do that either intentionally or unintentionally,

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but enlarging the strictness is us suggesting that the one giving the prohibition is somehow unjust,

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that the one giving the prohibition is somehow unfair because, gosh, it's such a ridiculous prohibition.

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And since the prohibition is unfair, you know, when we break it, we're really absolved of responsibility for breaking it.

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It's not our fault because it was too impossible anyways.

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And so Satan suggested this in his opening question.

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Did God really say you can't eat of any truth and the free?

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He's getting Eve's focus on what God is restricting.

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He's getting her focus on what God said not to do.

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He just suggested the can't.

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And now she's going, well, yeah, we can't and this big gigantic thing is going to happen that God didn't say.

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Every Christian, every believer needs to be careful that we don't misrepresent God's word to ourselves or to others in any direction.

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Right?

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Like, we might overstate God's teaching on purity.

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And then right in the next breath say, well, his restrictions are so unrealistic, so it doesn't really matter if we fall, you know, come on, God understands.

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Or we minimize his allowances.

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God gave us all this. Yeah, no, but I want that.

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And then we focus on what he said no to.

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And then we start to think of him being bad in our minds.

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We start to think of him being unfair.

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Then we overstate his consequences.

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God said I can't have that.

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And so I can't look at it or God's going to ruin my life.

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And then you start to become legalistic and phariseic.

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And what do you do to other people?

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You can't do that either.

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You can't do that either.

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That's legalism.

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That's just like the Pharisees saying you need to follow all the rules and things we made up that God never even said.

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Don't do that.

393
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Don't do that, people.

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Just take God's word for what it says.

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Follow God's word for what it says.

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Apply it in your life for what it says.

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Follow the Holy Spirit in all that and do that with gladness.

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Do that with acceptance and belief that if God said to do it this way, that is the best way to do it.

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Or if God said don't do that, don't do it.

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It's not for us to determine.

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Is that fair?

402
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:36,000
Is that right?

403
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:37,000
Is that wrong?

404
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:39,000
No.

405
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God's word is God's word.

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Are you God?

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No.

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If you just answered yes to that question, we'll talk after.

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None of us are God.

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We are his creation.

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So we saw Eve diminish the word, diminish the blessing.

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We saw her enlarge the strictness of God.

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And then she softens God's word.

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And this is really ironic because in her telling of the consequence, she says, or you will die.

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That's what God said.

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Now if you go back to 2.16 again, what did God say?

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He said you will certainly die.

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It's a very, very subtle thing.

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But God was not unclear about the absolute certainty of divine judgment.

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There was no question.

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There was no wiggle room, but she leaves out the certainty of death as a result of disobedience to God's word.

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And thus she softened the consequence for breaking the law.

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It was a suggestion in her own mind.

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I don't think she was doing it intentionally, but Satan suggested focus on what can't.

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And then she started to minimize what we could do.

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And then enlarged the penalty of that, and then at the same time, that made the penalty not as bad as it really is.

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She left out that certainty.

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In one sentence, she diminished attitude and softened it.

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And this type of approach to God's holy word is very dangerous.

430
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It is very dangerous for all of us because although Eve was deceived, and we'll get to that in a future study,

431
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it still put her in great danger.

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And that's what we see in the next verse, verse four.

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No, the serpent says, you will not or you will certainly not die.

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The order is very important.

435
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You will certainly not die, the serpent said to the woman.

436
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In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

437
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So this is where Satan shifts from suggesting God's word could be questioned to directly contradicting God's word

438
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and denigrating his goodness, all in the same sentence here.

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00:32:54,000 --> 00:33:03,000
So he directly asserts, God said, don't eat of the tree or you will certainly die.

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Satan suggests, did he really say you can't?

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And she goes, no, we can.

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But of this one, she misstates it, misstates the penalty, misstates that, and then she minimizes the actual consequence.

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And so that he comes in and misquotes God again, you will certainly not die.

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Satan started with a subtle perversion of God's word, and now he's asserting that God is certainly wrong, certainly wrong.

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He's given Eve all kinds of reason to question what God said, and Eve took the bait.

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She begins to question it herself as evidenced by her kind of altering the word as she restates it to the serpent.

447
00:33:54,000 --> 00:34:02,000
And like Eve, when we diminish the blessing of God's word, we think, oh, it's not really as magnificent as it really is.

448
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:09,000
When we add to the prohibitions that God says for things, we build them up bigger than God ever intended,

449
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:20,000
and then we soften the consequences of disobeying God's word, we put ourselves in a place to be further deceived by the enemy.

450
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:26,000
We put ourselves in a place to believe in outright contradictions to God's word.

451
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:29,000
It's a very dangerous place to be.

452
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:38,000
Now, you'll notice here that the very first doctrine to ever be denied in all of creation is the doctrine of divine judgment for sin,

453
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:44,000
that divine judgment will happen, that God will judge sin and disobedience, that God will do it.

454
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:47,000
It's absolutely certain. It's the first doctrine to be denied.

455
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:52,000
Satan attacks it here in the garden in the very beginning, and he still does so today.

456
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:56,000
He attacks it all the time. It sounds like this.

457
00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:00,000
God loves you. He won't actually send anybody to hell.

458
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:07,000
I mean, God is a loving God. You know, even if you haven't confessed Christ, I mean, if you're a good person, right?

459
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:15,000
Isn't God a God of love? Well, yeah. But he's going to judge sin. Ah, no.

460
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:21,000
Or you say, yeah, you can call yourself a Christian and that you went forward at the altar, call your good,

461
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:25,000
and still live in habitual sin without thinking it's wrong.

462
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:27,000
To look at things that God says and go, nope.

463
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,000
To look at what God says about sexuality and go, nope.

464
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:33,000
Looked at what God says about marriage and go, well, I want to change all of it.

465
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:38,000
But I could still call myself a Christian.

466
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:42,000
The whole world is denying that God even exists.

467
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:51,000
Or if he does exist, that his judgment on sin and sinners without Christ, that's not what his word says.

468
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:58,000
That's not what his word teaches. And so they continue on in great sin, denying the reality of judgment.

469
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:01,000
And that all started here in the garden.

470
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:06,000
Now, Eve should have run off in horror at this point.

471
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:10,000
God is certainly wrong.

472
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:13,000
Eve should have been like, I'm done.

473
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:15,000
We're not having this conversation anymore.

474
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:19,000
She should have ran back to Adam and said, hey, the serpent said this.

475
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:20,000
I'm starting to think some things.

476
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:27,000
And he should have stepped up with the true and good word of God and said, no, this is what God said.

477
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:32,000
He should have said that to her. He should have said that to the serpent.

478
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:35,000
But instead, she stayed.

479
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:37,000
And she contemplated.

480
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:40,000
She thought about what he said.

481
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:43,000
She was buying what the serpent was selling.

482
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:47,000
She was starting to, hmm.

483
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:51,000
Now, emboldened by Eve's own revisions of God's word in the beginning, right?

484
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:56,000
I think Satan just here, he's going after God himself and he's going after his goodness.

485
00:36:56,000 --> 00:37:06,000
He's just attacking him outright because then he says, in fact, in fact, and then he spouts this outright lie.

486
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:08,000
Directly denigrating God's goodness.

487
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:12,000
He isn't good.

488
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:18,000
He's saying God is actually a repressive, dishonest God.

489
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:31,000
He's obviously jealous that you will become like him in the face of the thousands, thousands of good things of creation.

490
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:33,000
The gift of each other.

491
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,000
The rulership of Earth.

492
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:38,000
All that God had given to them.

493
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:43,000
This blatant attack on God's character was beginning to be believed by Eve.

494
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:49,000
This lie that he spouts to her, it possessed the draw of Godhood for Eve, right?

495
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,000
Oh, you will be like God.

496
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:55,000
Oh, gosh, who doesn't want to be God?

497
00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:00,000
Right? I mean, he created all this. He's so powerful.

498
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:04,000
Man, that would be fun to have, right?

499
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:07,000
Just snap your fingers. Not even that. Just think a thought. Poof.

500
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,000
Got all the money in the world. Poof.

501
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:13,000
Every car you could ever want. Poof.

502
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:15,000
That guy, that girl. Poof.

503
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:18,000
Whatever it may be.

504
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:23,000
This lie that you will be like God, this is where the Mormon cult came from.

505
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:31,000
This is a foundation of Mormonism that you will become a God of your own planet if you do the right stuff.

506
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:39,000
All she had to do was reach out, stretch out her hand, take the fruit, and everything God was, she would be as well.

507
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:44,000
The lie that Satan gave her possessed the draw of moral autonomy.

508
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:50,000
Individualism outside of and apart from God, without him.

509
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:54,000
You will have the knowledge of good and evil.

510
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:59,000
You will be like God, knowing these things.

511
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:05,000
The implication of what he's saying here is you won't need God anymore.

512
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:12,000
You won't need him. You won't need his laws. You won't need his rules. You won't need his restrictions.

513
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:15,000
No. You'll be wise, just like him.

514
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:21,000
You'll actually be like God. You will get to decide what's right and wrong. Not him.

515
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,000
You will get to come up with it for yourself.

516
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:27,000
You will get to re-establish genders and come up with an infinite amount.

517
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:35,000
Not God. You will get to redefine marriage. Not God.

518
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:39,000
How exciting, right?

519
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:43,000
Well, Satan attacked God's word, then Satan attacked God's goodness,

520
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:49,000
and Eve stood right there for all of it, standing right on the edge of the abyss.

521
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:55,000
In verse 6, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at,

522
00:39:55,000 --> 00:40:00,000
and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it.

523
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:05,000
And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

524
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:12,000
So remember, Moses is writing this account, most likely while they're wandering in the wilderness.

525
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:18,000
But just like the writers of the New Testament, Moses was inspired by the Holy Spirit as he's writing down all of this.

526
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:24,000
And so it's interesting, this verse, he's able to give us a glimpse inside of his mind, right?

527
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:32,000
He gives us a glimpse to what she is thinking. We get to see her thought process and her fall as it happens.

528
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:37,000
Her reasoning for justifying doing what God said not to do.

529
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:45,000
Her contemplating and starting to believe the lies suggested by Satan.

530
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:51,000
Maybe she was thinking about what she had said herself in response to him and was going,

531
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:57,000
yeah, yeah, it's not that great. And oh my gosh, you know, maybe he is.

532
00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:04,000
Yeah, maybe God was being stingy. Because, I mean, he said any tree. Why not that one?

533
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:16,000
Maybe God's blessing to us, it really isn't that great because that one thing's got to be better than all of this if he said no to that.

534
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:22,000
Maybe he was really trying to just control us and limit us and restrict us. Right?

535
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:28,000
She saw that this tree was good for food. Well, it can't be physically harmful.

536
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:34,000
We get to eat from all these other stuff and this looks good too. It looks nourishing. It looks like it would be good for me.

537
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:41,000
Physical need, physical pleasure, physical wants. It's delightful to look at.

538
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:49,000
It can't be something bad because it's pretty. How many humans has that gotten trouble over the years?

539
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:55,000
It's so pretty. It's so beautiful. It's so pleasing in form. It's aesthetically pleasing, right? The emotional.

540
00:41:55,000 --> 00:42:01,000
This will be physically good for me. This will be emotionally good. It'll make me feel good.

541
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:09,000
And desirable for attaining wisdom. Wisdom apart from God's word. We won't have to listen to him anymore.

542
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:18,000
This offer of God-like moral autonomy, it drew her in. And then so it tells us she took some of the fruit and she ate it.

543
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:26,000
Now, it says fruit. We don't know exactly what kind of fruit it was. It could be an apple, right?

544
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:33,000
The stories always say it's an apple. Maybe it's not an apple. But for those of you who like apple products, look at the logo.

545
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:42,000
That's how you know iPads are the devil. No, just kidding. I'm an Android user. So, okay.

546
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:54,000
But she took some of the fruit and ate it. Moses records this universe-shattering, eternal, cosmic cataclysm so plainly.

547
00:42:54,000 --> 00:43:08,000
So plainly. It was the eternal element of them that was cataclysmically destroyed. But on the physical realm, nothing happened.

548
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:16,000
The narrative picks up its pace here as everything just starts tumbling into the black hole of sin led by Eve.

549
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:21,000
She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. Excuse me.

550
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:26,000
Do you notice the very important detail in that part? Man in particular, please pay attention.

551
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:36,000
He was with her. He was there. Some people go, no, the snake was gone at this point. He wasn't with her.

552
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:47,000
But if you go back to verses one through five and you read where Satan kept saying, you and you and you, the word in the Hebrew is plural.

553
00:43:47,000 --> 00:44:02,000
Use. So Adam was there with her. And he said nothing. He passively just watched, listened, didn't do a thing.

554
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:12,000
The Bible tells us very clearly that as Eve was deceived, Adam was not. He wasn't tricked. He wasn't manipulated by the servant.

555
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:19,000
He very clearly understood that what the Satan was saying was not true. No way. That's not even possible.

556
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:28,000
Maybe he understood when Eve was going, no, he said this. Adam's like, you left out something, but he didn't say anything.

557
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:38,000
Now, you've got to remember that back when Adam named all the animals, right, we talked about that, how it wasn't just like as they flew by, duck, elephant, rhinoceros.

558
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:48,000
The language there implies that he studied them and he, you know, exercised intense intellectual evaluation.

559
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:58,000
So this skill had been honed as he was naming all the animals. So he knew he wasn't, you know, some naive, he was very perceptive.

560
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:05,000
But Eve, she was deceived. And that affected so much for women ever since.

561
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:08,000
And we'll get to that when we get into the judgments and talk about what that means.

562
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:16,000
But in Paul's instruction to Timothy about church structure and elders, where he says, I don't permit a woman to teach or have authority over men,

563
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:26,000
that's adult men in 1 Timothy 2.13, his reason why? In verse 13, he says, for Adam was formed first beneath.

564
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:35,000
And then he says right after that, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.

565
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:44,000
But Adam, he heard the serpent. He watched his wife take the fruit and bite into it when he should have smacked out of her hand or something.

566
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:55,000
Instead, he made no objection when she ate. And then she handed it to him. And as the text recounts here, without hesitation, he ate himself.

567
00:45:55,000 --> 00:46:02,000
I think Adam did something here that a lot of guys, especially in today's culture, do. He used her as a guinea pig.

568
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:10,000
He was hiding behind her as a human shield. So a lot of men do today that should be stepping up as leaders and providers and protectors.

569
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:17,000
Men who should be stepping up, doing what God has called them to do instead, they hide behind their wives.

570
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:23,000
They cower behind women in their lives and, oh, no, no, no, you do it. You do it. You do it.

571
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:31,000
And women, I'm not saying you don't do a good job doing things, but the guys, this is what Ron was talking about last week at Father's Day.

572
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:39,000
We have a call. We see here Adam just hiding behind her. He watches her take the fruit. He watches her eat it.

573
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:45,000
And he's like, man, nothing happened. Oh.

574
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:53,000
You know what I see in that? He was willing to let her die.

575
00:46:53,000 --> 00:47:05,000
You eat the fruit. Right? You go in first. And he just watched.

576
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:13,000
In that moment, the full knowledge of eating that fruit for Adam, he knew it was disobedience.

577
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:20,000
He absolutely knew it was wrong. Eve, she was deceived. She was contemplating. She was going, well, that kind of makes sense.

578
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:25,000
Adam straight up was like, nope, everything you said was wrong. Everything that serpent said was wrong.

579
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:33,000
But let's see what happens. And then he sinned willfully, intentionally.

580
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:39,000
I think because she didn't drop dead immediately that he thought, oh, well, I'll have no consequences either.

581
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:44,000
You know, I used to have a business mentor who talked about this thing called the slight edge. Right?

582
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:50,000
If you just do a little bit more than someone else, that seems insignificant over time.

583
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:56,000
You'll be farther ahead than them. You know, like reading books, doing cold calls, that kind of stuff. Right?

584
00:47:56,000 --> 00:48:05,000
And the example he always uses, we all know Big Macs are bad for us. We all know that.

585
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:12,000
If you saw someone eat a Big Mac and drop down dead, you'd be like, whoa, no Big Macs for me.

586
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:19,000
But because it takes 10 years for the Big Macs to kill you, we all still eat Big Macs. Right?

587
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:27,000
Now, again, if you're a fan of McDonald's, put any other restaurant name there you want. OK?

588
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:30,000
I still eat Big Macs from time to time, so I'm in the same boat. All right.

589
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:35,000
So, yeah, the whole thing was upside down. Right?

590
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:41,000
Instead of God the creator and his word having authority over Adam, who is the head of his family,

591
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:46,000
his authority was over Eve, and then together their authority was over the entire animal kingdom.

592
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:50,000
That was how God set it up. Instead of that, it's upside down.

593
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:57,000
We have the created snake speaking through the power of Satan words.

594
00:48:57,000 --> 00:49:02,000
That Eve then starts to believe and contemplate.

595
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:07,000
And then she leads her husband by handing him the fruit.

596
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:14,000
And nobody was listening to God. It was upside down.

597
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:18,000
And the result created a reality that only God could fix.

598
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:24,000
The intended order of everything flipped upside down, and the result of all that was very bad.

599
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:30,000
And that is the reason for all the bad in our world today, all the evil, all the wickedness, all the sin.

600
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:38,000
Every broken relationship, every harmed person, every lie, it's all because of this sin.

601
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:44,000
Because that knowledge of the tree of good and evil brought in the knowledge of sin.

602
00:49:44,000 --> 00:49:49,000
What could be done and all the bad.

603
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:57,000
So Adam and Eve had now fallen from innocence and intimacy to guilt and separation.

604
00:49:57,000 --> 00:50:01,000
Verse 7, then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked.

605
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:05,000
So they sewed fig leaves together and made the coverings for themselves.

606
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:12,000
That phrase, the eyes were opened, it's another way to say their understanding was opened, right?

607
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,000
They understood good and evil.

608
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:19,000
They understood everything that man could do in his free will.

609
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:22,000
They understood the pleasures that could be sought.

610
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:31,000
They understood the full extent of obeying God, but now they had the whole picture in front of themselves.

611
00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:35,000
Good and evil, right, wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, it was all accessible to them now.

612
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:39,000
And the first thing they noticed, we're naked.

613
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:43,000
The first thing they noticed, we're naked.

614
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,000
Suddenly, self-consciousness was priority.

615
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:50,000
Suddenly, I don't feel comfortable was priority.

616
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:54,000
Suddenly, I need to close myself off from you because of me, I feel bad.

617
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:58,000
I don't like it, I'm embarrassed, whatever it was.

618
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:04,000
Suddenly, that openness, that honesty, that transparency was gone.

619
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:11,000
What was once innocent and acceptable and normal was now embarrassingly inappropriate.

620
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:17,000
Now it's interesting, what Satan had told them was kind of half true.

621
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:20,000
They didn't certainly die that day.

622
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:23,000
And I'm sure that went through their minds.

623
00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:30,000
Adam physically went on to live another 930 years, but he did one day die.

624
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:34,000
Their constant communion and fellowship with God died.

625
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:37,000
Their innocence died.

626
00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:40,000
Their peace, their joy, their contentment died.

627
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:45,000
That open, honest transparency between one another and God, it died.

628
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:50,000
And all of it was replaced with guilt and fear and justification

629
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:54,000
and selfishness and everything we see today.

630
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:59,000
And now from this point forward, they're living out their devotion to God.

631
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:07,000
That acting in just service to him out of love, it was no longer effortless.

632
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,000
It was no longer as natural as breathing.

633
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:12,000
It was no longer just, yeah, that's what you do.

634
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:14,000
Now it has become a struggle.

635
00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:19,000
It would be a laborious struggle because their nature was now wicked.

636
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:27,000
Their nature was fallen, and they would have to fight and struggle and try to do the right thing.

637
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:35,000
And then just that love expressed toward their creator, well, that would be a labor as well.

638
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:38,000
So the New Testament tells us in 2 Corinthians 2.11,

639
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:44,000
it says don't be ignorant of Satan's schemes.

640
00:52:44,000 --> 00:52:52,000
This true historical story of the fall, it teaches us that sin takes hold of us

641
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:58,000
when we begin to question God's word, when we let the suggestion that maybe you know better

642
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:05,000
than what God said, maybe he was wrong, maybe this terribly negative thing about God is,

643
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:10,000
it might be something to believe, the moment that enters into your mind,

644
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:16,000
you say, hmm, his word, maybe his goodness isn't what his word says it is.

645
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:19,000
That leads us to revising God's word.

646
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:22,000
That leads us to changing God's word.

647
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:27,000
That has led people to come up with false supposed translations, right?

648
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:32,000
The Jehovah's Witnesses, they have this translation called the New World Translation.

649
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:40,000
It should be the new wrong translation because it was purposely changed, not translated,

650
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:50,000
changed to say what their doctrine is, that Jesus isn't God, and on and on and on.

651
00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:52,000
Or another one is the Passion Translation.

652
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:54,000
Have you heard of that one today?

653
00:53:54,000 --> 00:53:57,000
Mike Winger has done a bunch of work on this,

654
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:04,000
but it's a favorite among modern progressive Christians, and it's garbage.

655
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:10,000
But we question, and then in our own mind we start to revise it,

656
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:14,000
and then we minimize his great promises, we minimize the wonderful blessings,

657
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:23,000
all that God has given to us, and instead we start to focus on what it takes to be a part of those blessings.

658
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:28,000
We start to make the study of God's word this unexciting chore

659
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:32,000
instead of the wonderful communication with our God that it is.

660
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:37,000
And because we've said, this is a chore, this is too hard, we start to ignore it

661
00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:42,000
because his word isn't living and powerful and alive to us anymore.

662
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:46,000
We inflate his prohibitions.

663
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:50,000
We make what God said not to do bigger than what he said.

664
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:59,000
We inflate his consequences by adding to it and exaggerating and misrepresenting it in our own minds and to other people.

665
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:07,000
We turn his commands into ridiculous parodies of what he said that nobody could ever follow.

666
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:14,000
And we misrepresent them to ourselves and others, which then leads to very poor spiritual conclusions.

667
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:19,000
Then our minimizing and our exaggerating could lead to us subtracting from the word.

668
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:22,000
And that's when we start to say things like, well, that doesn't apply to us today.

669
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:25,000
Disregard that part of the Bible.

670
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:30,000
We start to change things in the sense of like, no, we could take that out.

671
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:35,000
No, we don't have to listen to that. No, that's not important for us.

672
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:43,000
We say, he didn't really mean that. That was just a figure of speech. He must have meant this.

673
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:47,000
And then after all of that, we doubt his goodness.

674
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:50,000
We question the intention behind his words.

675
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:55,000
And that is the beginning of a descent into the pit, the pit of sin.

676
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:59,000
You know, Moses called the Israelites to put God's word at the very center of their existence.

677
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:02,000
He said this in Deuteronomy 32 47.

678
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:09,000
Speaking of God's words, he says, for they are not meaningless words to you, but they are your life.

679
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:11,000
They are your life.

680
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:16,000
This standard was present. They didn't live it well, but it was present.

681
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:19,000
And then you get to the New Testament.

682
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:24,000
And God the Son comes on the scene, Jesus Christ, the second Adam, as he is called.

683
00:56:24,000 --> 00:56:28,000
And he then followed God's word perfectly.

684
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:32,000
It was his life. God's direction, God's everything.

685
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:36,000
He did it perfectly, something we could never do.

686
00:56:36,000 --> 00:56:41,000
You guys read that when he was tempted in the wilderness, unlike Adam and Eve here,

687
00:56:41,000 --> 00:56:45,000
Jesus defended himself by clinging to God's word.

688
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:48,000
Satan's like, oh, well, he said this. No, he didn't.

689
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:50,000
Well, didn't you say this?

690
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:54,000
You're twisting it. You're distorting it, Satan.

691
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:57,000
And this is what I find really interesting.

692
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:00,000
The eternal word of God, Jesus Christ, is the word.

693
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:07,000
The eternal word of God resisted temptation by turning to the written word of God.

694
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:12,000
If that's what he did, do you think it might be good for us to do that?

695
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:14,000
Absolutely.

696
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:20,000
So Moses, who's considered the earthly savior of Israel, the one who delivered them from slavery in Egypt,

697
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,000
he said the word of God is life.

698
00:57:23,000 --> 00:57:27,000
And then we have Jesus, the eternal savior, the word of God.

699
00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:30,000
He said the word of God must be our food, right?

700
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:36,000
He called it bread of life, the very means of sustenance, the very means of life.

701
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:42,000
And his example that we read in the Gospels to us is one of living and leaning on God's word.

702
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:48,000
He demonstrated to us is this is how you resist the temptation of the flesh.

703
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:52,000
This is how you don't do the bad thing when the serpent is whispering into your ear saying,

704
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:55,000
hey, did God really say?

705
00:57:55,000 --> 00:58:01,000
If you don't study God's word, how on earth are you going to know when he's twisting it?

706
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:06,000
Did God really say, well, I don't know. I don't read it ever. No.

707
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:14,000
That's why we always encourage study of God's word and reading and devotion every day by taking his word as it is

708
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:21,000
for what it says and living according to it, knowing and believing that it's the very best means of living.

709
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:30,000
When we do all that, we find life and we rest as God intended in peace.

710
00:58:30,000 --> 00:58:37,000
When we rest everything on God's word, we find ourselves truly resting on the good God of the word.

711
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:46,000
And that's what God wants for us now. And then one day through Jesus Christ, we'll be back in that place where there is no temptation.

712
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:51,000
There is no Satan whispering into our ears. There is no sin nature trying to drag us down.

713
00:58:51,000 --> 00:58:55,000
But instead, it will be just like it was intended to be before the fall.

714
00:58:55,000 --> 00:59:01,000
We wrestle with sin today because our original parents made the wrong choice.

715
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:09,000
We are saved today not by anything we do, but what God did for you, dying on the cross to pay the price for your sins.

716
00:59:09,000 --> 00:59:16,000
And we live today through studying God's word and knowing God's word and asking the Holy Spirit who dwells within us,

717
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:24,000
help me obey the word of God. Do we stumble? Yeah. Do we trip up and fall? Yeah.

718
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:30,000
But that's why Jesus died instead of us. Because we can always go back and plead that blood.

719
00:59:30,000 --> 00:59:35,000
God, that blood forgave me of all sin. And God says, yep, let's keep going.

720
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:43,000
It's a grace. It's a mercy that God has given to us. We have to cling to it to live the way he is calling us to do.

721
00:59:43,000 --> 00:59:49,000
But if you don't know him, if you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have no access to that.

722
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:54,000
You are living within the fall, within the sinful nature.

723
00:59:54,000 --> 01:00:02,000
You don't even have the spirit within you to give you the knowledge that what Satan is suggesting to you is wrong.

724
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:09,000
Instead, you just go along with the flow like everybody does on this planet.

725
01:00:09,000 --> 01:00:18,000
So I want to give you the opportunity now, today, this moment, if you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior,

726
01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:25,000
you need to know him today. Because although the world wants to deny the doctrine of the judgment of sin,

727
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:33,000
I'm telling you the world is wrong. God's word is right. Judgment will come on those who have broken God's law.

728
01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:40,000
And then God said, you can't do enough works to pay for it. You can't put the fruit back on the tree.

729
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:48,000
And so he paid the price. He suffered the death penalty for you.

730
01:00:48,000 --> 01:00:54,000
So that you could have life now in the hope of eternal life with him when you pass from this earth.

731
01:00:54,000 --> 01:01:00,000
Let's pray. Father, we love you so much.

732
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:07,000
I know, God, we don't always show it. We don't always live it.

733
01:01:07,000 --> 01:01:13,000
And Lord, your word tells us it's because we're weak. We're weak.

734
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:25,000
That after Adam and Eve sinned, after they upended the order of creation and the order of who is supposed to listen to who in that sense, Lord.

735
01:01:25,000 --> 01:01:33,000
After they misinterpreted, misrepresented your word.

736
01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:42,000
After Eve was deceived. After Adam ate, knowing full well what he was doing.

737
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:49,000
After all of that, God, you still came to this earth and died for us.

738
01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:52,000
You came to set us free from the control of sin.

739
01:01:52,000 --> 01:02:01,000
Lord, your word tells us that while we're here on this earth, unfortunately, because of what Adam and Eve did, we still dwell with our sinful nature.

740
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:05,000
But Lord, you told us in Romans, it's whichever one you feed, just like two dogs, right?

741
01:02:05,000 --> 01:02:07,000
Whichever one you feed is going to be stronger.

742
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:18,000
And so, Lord, you've not only forgiven us through your blood, you've enabled us to obey through your Holy Spirit.

743
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:29,000
But God, you've changed our very nature from one of being enslaved to sin to really being able to master sin and tell it, no, that's not who I am.

744
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:32,000
That's not who I want to be.

745
01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:41,000
But God, in that process of living here on this earth through all of that, Lord, we stumble, we fall, and yet you keep forgiving and we're so thankful.

746
01:02:41,000 --> 01:02:46,000
While we're praying, heads bowed and eyes closed, I want to give opportunity to anybody in this room.

747
01:02:46,000 --> 01:02:55,000
If God has spoken to you this morning about your need for Him, that you want to be forgiven of your sin, that you want to be set free from the control of sin,

748
01:02:55,000 --> 01:03:00,000
tired of sin, leading you to hurt yourself and others.

749
01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:12,000
Instead, you want freedom to do the good that God created you to do, to be the good that God created you to do, the good you can be only through Jesus Christ.

750
01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:17,000
You want to be free from the drugs, you want to be free from the alcohol, you want to be free from the abuse.

751
01:03:17,000 --> 01:03:21,000
God can change your heart if you accept Him.

752
01:03:21,000 --> 01:03:29,000
And so while we're praying, if you want to receive Jesus Christ today, just raise your hand where you're seated and let me pray with you today.

753
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:34,000
If you're watching online and God is speaking to you, just let us know in the chat.

754
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:38,000
Just say, I want to receive Christ today, and then we will connect with you.

755
01:03:38,000 --> 01:03:42,000
Anybody here in this room, Jesus is speaking to your heart.

756
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:45,000
The Bible says that today is the day of salvation.

757
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:48,000
No one is guaranteed tomorrow.

758
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:55,000
If something should happen to you today and you pass without Christ, your opportunity is gone.

759
01:03:55,000 --> 01:03:57,000
And I don't say that to threaten you or to scare you.

760
01:03:57,000 --> 01:04:01,000
I'm simply talking about the reality of the world we live in.

761
01:04:01,000 --> 01:04:07,000
So please, if you know you need Jesus today, the Spirit is speaking to you right now.

762
01:04:07,000 --> 01:04:09,000
Just raise your hand. Let me pray with you.

763
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:11,000
I see you in the back. God bless you.

764
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:14,000
I see you in the back as well. I see you in the back on the side as well.

765
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:21,000
Anybody else, God is speaking to your heart today. God bless you.

766
01:04:21,000 --> 01:04:29,000
All right, let's pray. Father, I pray for those who have, Lord, raised their hand to reach out,

767
01:04:29,000 --> 01:04:36,000
to say, I need salvation, to say, I need freedom from sin.

768
01:04:36,000 --> 01:04:41,000
Lord, that they've recognized they can't do it on their own because maybe they've been trying to do it on their own,

769
01:04:41,000 --> 01:04:43,000
and it's not working.

770
01:04:43,000 --> 01:04:51,000
Lord, they believe you. They believe your word. They believe in your salvation.

771
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:54,000
They believe in the hope and the joy that you could bring.

772
01:04:54,000 --> 01:04:58,000
We thank you for them. And for those of you that raised your hand,

773
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:02,000
those of you that are watching online that want to receive Christ today,

774
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:04,000
I just want you to pray this prayer with me.

775
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:08,000
And I want you to understand that it's not the words you say and the order you say them.

776
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:10,000
It's the meaning it from your heart.

777
01:05:10,000 --> 01:05:15,000
It's the true desire and say, God, I mean this. So pray with me.

778
01:05:15,000 --> 01:05:25,000
Say, Jesus, I know I've sinned. I've sinned my whole life.

779
01:05:25,000 --> 01:05:37,000
Sin has hurt me. Sin has hurt others in my life. And I can't stop it.

780
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:45,000
God, I repent. God, I say sorry for my sin. I'm sorry.

781
01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:55,000
I ask you, Lord, to forgive me of all my sin, all the sin I've ever done and all the sin I ever will do.

782
01:05:55,000 --> 01:06:04,000
God, even if I don't understand exactly what parts of your word mean,

783
01:06:04,000 --> 01:06:10,000
Lord, I believe them today because you are God.

784
01:06:10,000 --> 01:06:19,000
Save my soul. Change my heart. Give me a new life.

785
01:06:19,000 --> 01:06:26,000
I know, Lord, that that doesn't mean it's going to be easy.

786
01:06:26,000 --> 01:06:32,000
But, Lord, I believe you that I will be able to get through it

787
01:06:32,000 --> 01:06:39,000
and to choose to obey you, no longer being a slave to sin,

788
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:43,000
because I put faith in the blood of Jesus Christ.

789
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:52,000
I put faith in his death on the cross, and I put faith that he rose three days later, defeating death.

790
01:06:52,000 --> 01:06:59,000
God, thank you for loving me so much. Thank you for coming into my life.

791
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:03,000
Teach me, God, how to live for you.

792
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:07,000
Teach me, God, how to tell others about you.

793
01:07:07,000 --> 01:07:11,000
Thank you for setting me free. I love you so much.

794
01:07:11,000 --> 01:07:15,000
It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

795
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:22,000
Yeah. If you prayed that prayer today, congratulations.

796
01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:28,000
You've become part of the family of God, and that's huge.

797
01:07:28,000 --> 01:07:35,000
Not only has your eternity changed forever, but your life has changed now.

798
01:07:35,000 --> 01:07:39,000
But because we still have that sin nature now that we live with,

799
01:07:39,000 --> 01:07:43,000
you've got to study the word of God and read the word of God and believe the word of God

800
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:46,000
and let God, who dwells within you now through the Holy Spirit,

801
01:07:46,000 --> 01:07:54,000
change your behavior, change your thoughts, because he has changed you forever.

802
01:07:54,000 --> 01:07:58,000
So to help you guys on that journey, if you raised your hand or if you're watching this online,

803
01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:01,000
we have a packet that's up here in the front or out in the foyer as you leave.

804
01:08:01,000 --> 01:08:03,000
We call it our New Believers Packet.

805
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:08,000
I just want to encourage you to pick one up. It has a bunch of resources in there to help you,

806
01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:12,000
to help you start to develop this relationship with God,

807
01:08:12,000 --> 01:08:15,000
to start to learn and to understand what he has for you,

808
01:08:15,000 --> 01:08:19,000
to be able to saturate yourself in worship and just praising him for who he is.

809
01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:21,000
They're free. Please pick one up.

810
01:08:21,000 --> 01:08:26,000
And if you're watching online and you're not local to us here in Bellflower, California,

811
01:08:26,000 --> 01:08:29,000
please let us know in the chat. Don't put your address in the chat,

812
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:33,000
but let us know and our moderators will make sure to connect with you so we can mail one out to you,

813
01:08:33,000 --> 01:08:36,000
again, free of charge. We just want to help you on this journey.

814
01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:41,000
For the rest of us, yeah, I'm sure you would agree with me that we struggle with all this stuff

815
01:08:41,000 --> 01:08:43,000
and have struggled with it.

816
01:08:43,000 --> 01:08:45,000
And like me, I'm sure you've been in a place where you're like,

817
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:50,000
God, please take it away. I'm tired of struggling with sin.

818
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:53,000
We'll get there. We'll get there.

819
01:08:53,000 --> 01:09:00,000
But here and now in this earth, it is a laborious struggle because sin entered into the heart of man.

820
01:09:00,000 --> 01:09:05,000
We have the opportunity through the word of God to struggle against it.

821
01:09:05,000 --> 01:09:08,000
Be in his word. Listen to his word.

822
01:09:08,000 --> 01:09:11,000
Believe his word. Don't question his word.

823
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:16,000
But yeah, learn what it means and apply it to your life.

824
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:22,000
I guarantee you the more Jesus you have in your life, the more peace you will have in your life,

825
01:09:22,000 --> 01:09:30,000
the more Jesus you have in your life, the easier it'll be to just simply be and do what God wants you to do.

826
01:09:30,000 --> 01:09:34,000
But it all starts with this word.

827
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:40,000
I pray God blesses you guys. I pray he sets all of us free from those doubts, those questions.

828
01:09:40,000 --> 01:09:43,000
I pray God brings answers that you would understand his word.

829
01:09:43,000 --> 01:09:50,000
And I pray that you would stand and walk firm and walk strong on the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

830
01:09:50,000 --> 01:10:17,000
Amen. God bless you guys.