Episode Transcript
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Hey, man, please remain standing
as we read the sermon text today,
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so please turn in your bibles if
you have them with you to Genesis three.
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I'm gonna be reading versus fourteen through
and just to give you a heads
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up, we're gonna spend the majority
of our time looking at the implications of
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verse fifteen, the first mention of
the Gospel in the Bible. So before
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I read the text, let's come
before God in prayer. Let's pray.
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M Father, we thank you from
the bottom of our hearts for the Bible
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that You've given to us, this
precious, precious gift. We thank you
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for this word. It's able to
make us wise onto salvation through faith,
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which is in Jesus Christ, our
Lord, and grant your blessing now as
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we read and study the scriptures together, and I pray this for jesus sake.
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Men, Genesis chapter three, beginning
with first fourteen and reading through verse
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twenty four. This is God's holy
and arrant infallible word. So I encourage
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you to pay close heed to it. The Lord God said to the serpent,
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because you have done this cursed,
are you above all live stock and
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above all beasts of the field.
On your belly. You shall go and
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dust you shall eat all the days
of your life. I will put enmity
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between you and the woman, and
between your offspring and her offspring. He
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shall bruise your head, and you
shall bruise or crush his heel. I'm
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sorry. He shall crush your head
and you shall bruise his heel. To
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the woman, he said, I
will surely multiply your pain and child bearing.
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In pain, you shall bring forth
children. Your desire shall be for
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your husband, and you shall rule
over and he shall rule over you.
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And to Addam, he said,
because you have listened to the voice of
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your wife and have eaten of the
tree of which I commanded you, you
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shall not eat of it. Cursed
is the ground because of you in pain.
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You shall eat of it all the
days of your life. Thorns and
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thistles that shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of
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the field by the sweat of your
face. You shall eat bread until you
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return to the ground, for out
of it you were taken. For you
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are dust, and to dust you
shall return. The man called his wife's
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name Eve, because she was the
mother of all living and the Lord God
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made her Adam and for his wife
garments of skin skins, and clothed them.
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Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one
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of us in knowing good and evil. Now less he reached out his hand,
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and take also of the Tree of
Life, and eat and live forever.
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Therefore the Lord God sent him out
from the garden of Eden to work
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the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and
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at the east of the garden of
Eden he placed the cheruban and a flaming
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sword that turned every way to guard
the way to the Tree of life.
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This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. M hm.
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You know, there's always I think
something unexpected about about Christmas, you know,
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even when we've been anticipating it for
months uh and and it's just not
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the presence uh family visits. It's
the grace of God in sending his son
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as our savior, sending his son
to die for centers. I think that's
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unexpected, that's surprising. I don't
have to tell you. We certainly do
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not deserve grace. So whenever I
think we capture even a small part of
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what Christmas means, the message of
God's grace is somehow always there, and
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it surprises us. But you know, we really shouldn't be surprised, because
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all the biblical references to the coming
and birth of Jesus are like that.
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And this is particularly true. I
think of the first prophecy of the coming
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of Jesus, which occurs in this
passage, specifically Genesis three fift. Now,
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what's surprising here is not the birth
of Christ has announced, is announced.
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I think we should expect that.
I think what's unexpected is that the
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scene in which it occurs is one
of judgment. You know, Satan has
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tempted Eve to sin. She did
she ate from the tree of the knowledge
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of good and evil. Both she
her husband had been instructed not to do
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that. Adam had also sinned a
neating from the tree. And now God
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has come into the garden to meet
out judgment. He's told them that if
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they did that, they would die. Now I'm not sure they knew exactly
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what dying meant, but they had
done what God had told them not to
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do, and they must have been
terrified as he waited for a punishment from
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God. This would be a punishment
perfectly suited to that particular crime. Now,
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for some reason, that scene reminds
me of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical
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in which the Lord High Executioner he
sings of his desire if he recalled all
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to have each punishment punishment perfectly suit
a particular crime. And one of the
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standsas of the song concerns the perfect
punishment meted out to a billiard player who
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has cheated people out of their money
in pool games. If you know the
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song, you know the stands.
It goes like this. The billiard shark
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whom anyone catches his doom's extremely hard. He's made to dwell in a dungeon
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cell, in a spot that's always
barred, and there he plays extravagant matches
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in fitless fingerstalls on a cloth untrue, with a twisted queue and elliptical billiard
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balls. Maybe not the best idea, but I think you get the idea.
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You know, that's a perfect punishment
for a pool shark who cheats people
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out of their money. And I
think we might well shudder as we think
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of the perfect punishment suited to the
much much, much greater crime of Adam
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and Eve in their sin against their
creator. We would expect that the perfect
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punishment here for these two would be
instant death. That's what That's what he
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promised them. So but that's not
what happened, is it. Instead of
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dying immediately, God pronounced only a
token judgment on them. We read about
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it in verses sixteen through nineteen,
paying upon the woman and childbirth, grief
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for the man and earning a living
but also wonder of wonders, a promise
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of a deliverer, a savior to
come from Eve and her offspring. Dear
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ones, this is the unexpected wonder
of the first Christmas. This is surprising.
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This is the first appearance of God's
grace in the Bible. And I
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think grace is always surprising to us. You know, at first glance,
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um Verse fifteen doesn't seem particularly wonderful
and uplifting, doesn't seem to be full
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of grace. It's actually talking about
a war, talking about a war that
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began between Satan and Eve, between
his offspring and hers, and it continues
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to the time of Christ and beyond. Now, the word used here for
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this conflict is enmity, which means
ill will on one side or on both
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hatred. It means especially antagonism.
Now it's hard to see how that could
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be good. But this enmity is
good, and I think we should be
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alerted to that by the fact that
it's God who created it. So let's
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just take a look and how this
antagonism is good and shows God's grace.
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So let's look first at this antagonism
between Eve and Satan. Now we have
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to remember that Satan had already rebelled
against God. No, Satan was the
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highest of angels, but for some
reason, he wasn't satisfied with that.
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He wanted to replace God as as
the ruler of the universe. Now he
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wasn't successful. In fact, God
tossed him out of heaven for trying that.
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But now he appears on earth to
attempt to do among this new race
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of human beings what he failed to
do earlier with God. And I think
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his temptation of Eve. And in
that temptation Satan had a couple of things
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in mine. First, he wanted
to seduce her for our first parents,
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away from the worship of God.
Second, he wanted to win their allegiance
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and worship for himself. And sadly
we know he's succeeded in that first objective.
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He did break the fellowship of Adam
and Eve with God. That happened,
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as Genesis three describes for us.
But he failed in the second thing
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because God says here that he's putting
enmity, He's putting antagonism between the woman
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and Satan. Now there's something new
here. The new element here is not
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Satan's hatred of Eve. Satan hated
Eve from the moment of her creation,
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even when he was pretending to be
her best friend in tempting her to to
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eat from the tree. Now the
new thing here is Eve's and Adams and
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all their offsprings hatred of Satan as
one aspect of God's gracious preservation of and
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provision for the human race. That's
new. And you know, if you
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think about that, what an amazing
truth and blessing that is for us.
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You know, it's certainly true that
the human races ideas of truth and falsehood
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are clearly corrupted. But you know, we nevertheless retain some ideas, some
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inkling of right and wrong. And
this is the important thing. We approve
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of the good, or we think
we should, and we oppose evil.
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We try to oppose it. Now. C. S. Lissen, his
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classic book Mere Christianity. Remember what
he called this? He called us the
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law of human nature. He says
that all mankind, regardless of the culture
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that he lives in, has as
part of his DNA, this sense of
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right and wrong. Now we know
instinctively what we should do in certain situations,
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even though we don't always do it. John Calvin calls this a divine
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sense, that all human beings have
a sense of the divine within them.
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We know intuitively right from wrong.
God put it there. John talks about
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this in the first chapter of his
Gospel, verse nine. We thank God
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rightly at Christmas for things like love, joy, happiness that the coming of
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Christ has brought us, but we
should never forget to thank Him for this
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corresponding hatred of sin, sorrow.
It sends ways an increasing minute misery when
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we find our selves ensnared in sin's
tentacles. When we sin, we often
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find that we like it, but
we want to escape its consequences. We
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would like to destroy ourselves in comfort. We would we we would like to
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go to Hell happy. But thank
God, thank God is one aspect of
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his amazing grace that he doesn't allow
that to happen. He makes sin miserable.
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He sets up an antagonism between ourselves, and Satan modifies its hold on
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us, makes it possible for us
to hear God's loving voice even in our
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misery. So I think that is
the first antagonism in this verse. It's
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between the woman and Satan. But
there's a second one mentioned here. It's
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an antagonism between the woman's offspring and
Satan's offspring. Now, I don't think
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that this is speaking of the enmity
between human beings and demons. I don't
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think that's what's been said here.
For one thing, Satan doesn't really have
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offspring. He's not going around engendering
little devils. The demons were created once
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by God. I were created as
angels before their fall, and they're not
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increasing in number. You know.
I'm pretty sure that what's envision here is
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a conflict between the ungodly descendants of
the woman Eve influenced by God and the
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ungodly descendants of the woman influenced by
Satan. In other words, it's a
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conflict between two humanities, which is
developed further if you read along here in
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Genesis four and five. And so, if that's so, I think it
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is. This is a message for
the godly in every age for ours.
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Yeah, there's this divinely created animosity
between the people of God and those who
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are not His people. And it's
for our good, you know. I
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think that conflict, it sharpens our
sharpens our will to serve God. You
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know. One of Isaac Watt's great
hymns, am I a soldier of the
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cross? Ask these questions, Are
there no foes for me to face?
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Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend of grace
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to help me on to God?
And I think in the context of that
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him, the answer is clearly no. The world is no friend of grace.
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It doesn't help us on to God. Fact, it hinders us.
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And I think watches him says he
wants us to fight against the world for
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Christ's sake, which we have to
do. So. I think our hatred
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of Satan the world's hatred of us. I think those are two great Christmas
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gifts. They're the first gifts ever
given to us by God. But there's
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another antagonism here that I think is
much more beneficial even than those two.
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You see these first who give us
hope. They tell us basically that God
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has not abandoned us, that he's
established this beneficial enmity between those who desire
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God and those who desire evil.
This last antagonism assures us not only of
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hope, but dear ones. It
assures us of victory. It's the antagonism
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between Jesus as a specific and climactic
seed of the Woman and Satan himself.
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It results in the bruising of Jesus, but it also results in the crushing
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of Satan. You know, Satan
is constantly aiming at the destruction of Jesus.
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He has been since day one.
And I think if you know,
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if you look at it like that, then the entire Bible is just really
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one story. It's the story of
this antagonism, This this conflict between the
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seat of the Woman and the seat
of the serpent, between Israel and the
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nations, between the Church and the
world, between Christ and Satan. And
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even though we sometimes act, I
think of as as if it's not true.
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Christ is victorious in this conflict.
He wins in the end. But
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it's a fight, it's a battle. So I think it might be helpful
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if we just go back in time
a little bit, beginning right here in
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Genesis three, and just highlight in
scripture the wonderful providence of God in ensuring
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Christ's victory over Satan. You know, the battles joined right here in Genesis
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three, That's where it starts.
It's here that God promised Adam and Eve
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a deliverer. He promised that Jesus
would come from even her offspring. Now
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they thought it was Kane. It
wasn't. They were mistaken. But these
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words spell out the war that will
exist between Satan and the woman, between
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his offspring and her offspring, between
between himself and her great descended Jesus Christ.
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The words of the promise and the
conflict are spelled out for us here.
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And I will put in the table
between you and the woman, between
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your offspring and her offspring. He
shall bruise or crush your head, and
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you shall bruise his heel. Well, what happens very shortly? Children are
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born of Adam and Eve. You
remember who they were. Kine enabled,
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but Kane kills Abel. Then Seth
is born, and it's through him that
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the promised Messiah is to come.
And Satan now begins to do all in
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his power to destroy Seth. Remember
he tells Seth's sons that they must marry
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the daughters of Kane. He tries
to destroy Seth's generations in order to annihilate
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the promise concerning the Messiah. Well
does he succeed? Looks like it?
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Genesis six twelve says, and God
saw the earth, and behold it was
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corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted
their way on the earth. At Satan
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one looks like it, But no, he hadn't won. What happened among
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the families that descended from Seth,
there's one who feared the Lord. You
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know who it was. It was
the family of Noah. God saved that
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one family, eight people, and
destroys all the rest of the world with
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the flood. And it's in this
one family that the promise is carried forward.
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It's continued. The promise concerning the
Messiah is now given to Abraham and
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Sarah his wife. We hear the
story in Genesis eighteen. It's later summarized
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for us and Hebrews eleven. Humanly
speaking, this promise was never going to
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be fulfilled. You know why.
Because Abraham was nine years old, Sarah
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was a ninety, well past the
age of child bearing. Her biological clock
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could run out she'd been bearing all
her life. Surely this is the end
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of the line. Mhm. Satan
has won. But then the miracle happens.
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You know what the miracle was.
Isaac is born. The promise is
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now given to Isaac. But the
Lord tells Abraham to offer Isaac as a
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sacrifice, and on Mount Mariah,
Abraham raised a knife to kill his son
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Giso. What now will become of
God's promise? Surely Satan wins, but
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we know that didn't happen. I
believe the Christ himself appeared in the form
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of an angel and safeguarded his own
birth according to the flesh. Well,
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time goes on. The seed that
was going to crush the serpent's head would
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be born from the generations of Isaac
and Rebecca. But there was another problem,
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same problem. Rebecca was also barren. Again, Jehovah, the God
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of promise, performs a miracle and
Rebecca conceives, so that the promise has
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continued in the line of Jacob.
Now Jake Satan attacks Jacob's descendants, the
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Jews. This time it surely seems
that he will be successful, for though
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the Lord and his mercy had remember
he'd let his people out of Egypt.
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They rejected him, and what did
they do? They started dancing around that
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golden calf. Jehovah was not amused, and he said that Moses let me
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alone, that I may consume them. Is this the end? Has Elvis
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left the building? Is Satan going
to war, going to going to win?
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Well, unless he will, Unless
there's an intercessor, and there was.
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Moses intercedes and the promises saved.
Again. We could go on like
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that in the Old Testament. Let's
just move to the New Testament where the
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final act of this drama occurs.
The scene is Bethlehem. It's Christmas,
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so to speak. They're in a
manger lies to Christ child. But although
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he's now actually born, Satan still
tries to destroy him. You know.
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In fact, Revelation twelve refers directly
and specifically to the events that took place
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in connection with Christ's birth. Verse
four of Revelation twelve. And the dragon
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Satan stood before the woman who was
about to give birth, so that when
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she bore the child, he might
he might devour it. Well, here
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comes the wise man from the East
to meet with King Herod. Be sure,
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Herod says, m to report to
me as soon as you have found
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the child. Why because I want
to come and worship him. That isn't
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what he wanted to do. You
know what he wanted to do. He
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wanted to kill the child. But
the men, who were wise warned by
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God, they returned to their country
another way after they had found and worshiped
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the Christ. Still Satan refused to
admit defeat. All the infants of Bethlehem
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and the surrounding area two years old
and under are killed. Herod failed and
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so did the dragon Satan. Why
because the Christ child was safe in Egypt.
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But the battle doesn't stop, you
know, it continues, and we
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see Jesus grow into manhood. As
Jesus began his public ministry, Satan struck
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again. He confronted Jesus in the
wilderness. He tried to turn him away
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from the path God had laid out
for him. But Jesus defeated Satan,
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how by applying scripture to everything Satan
said to him. On one occasion,
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Satan tried to destroy Jesus in a
storm, but Jesus rebuked the wind the
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waves became calm. On another occasion, Satan moved the citizens of Nazareth to
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try to murder Jesus by throwing him
off a clift didn't happen well. The
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conflict continued to unfold. Even in
jesus final days on Earth. Satan enters
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the heart of Jesus of Judas moved
him to betray his master. Jesus has
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arrested. There's this hastily arranged trial
before a pilot in the san Hedren,
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the flogging, the sentence of death, the walk to gall Gatha, and
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finally the crucifixion. I don't know
what Satan was thinking, is that last
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nail was pounded in the christ fleshed
by these Roman soldiers. But he must
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have been euphoric. Finally the battle
was over. He had one. He
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couldn't believe that God had been so
full, he says, to come within
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his grasp, and he had finally
accomplished what he had wanted all along,
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the murder of God. But you
see, at the moment of apparent victory,
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Satan had forgotten the prophecy the way
back in Genesis three, spoken by
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God in the Garden of Eden.
The prophecy was said that the coming one
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would be bruised. But what at
the same time crushed Satan? You know,
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in a sense. I guess you
know, Satan had wounded God,
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but it was only a scratch.
It wasn't a defeat, because on the
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third day what happened, Jesus rose
victoriously from the grave. And what about
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Satan. Satan didn't win. Satan
laws big time. He was destroyed eternally,
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even though he didn't see it at
the time. Satan is the ultimate
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slow learner. Listen to how Dr. John Gershner describes Satan's hollow victory.
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Gershner says, Satan was apparently majestically
triumphant in this battle. He had nailed
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Jesus to the cross, the prime
object of all his striving through all the
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ages was achieved. But he had
failed for the prophecy, which had said
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that he would indeed bruise the seat
of the woman, had also said that
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his head would be crushed. H
Thus, while Satan was celebrating his triumph
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in the battle over the Son of
God, the full weight of the atonement
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accomplished by the crucifixion which the devil
had affected came down on him, and
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he realized that all this time,
so far from successfully battling against the Almighty,
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he had actually been carrying out the
purposes of an all wise God,
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dear ones, God's purpose can never
be frustrated. Never. Christ's birth in
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Bethlehem is God's victory over Satan,
and our Savior's death on the cross,
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his his resurrection, his ascension to
his his his further and final victory.
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Christ triumphs the dragon, Satan loses, and the angels along with the Church
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saying glory be to God in the
highest. That's probably a good place to
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close. But I got something else
that I want to talk with you about.
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One more point and I'm done.
You know, I think it's clear
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from this text that Satan didn't understand
what was to happen by jesus atonement.
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No one really understood it fully until
jesus death, you know. Yet the
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godly who lived before the coming of
Christ, they had at least some inkling
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of it, and they believed on
the one who was promised here in Genesis
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three. In other words, I
believe that Adam and Eve had some rudimentary
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understanding of all this way back in
the garden, and they put that and
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put their trust in Jesus who was
to come. Let me just tell you
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quickly why I think that. You
know, the reason I say that Adam
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believed in Jesus is because of Genesis. M You know, some people think
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that it was God who named the
woman Eve. This is he had named
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the man Adam earlier. But no, she was named Eve by not by
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Adam. But she was named I'm
sorry. Some people think it was God
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who named the woman Eve, but
it uh, she was named Eve by
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Adam, not God. And I
think the question is why did Adam give
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Eve that name? Well, the
answer is in the meaning of the name,
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Eve means life or life giver,
and Adam named her that because of
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the promise. And I think we
see here in this text. You know,
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Adam obviously had listened closely to God's
speech to his wife. He understood
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that one of her offspring with crush
the head of the serpent. He knew
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that his wife's pine and childbearing mean
meant that she was going to have other
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kids, that the people would would
follow all this. So I think Adam's
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declaration here naming his wife was an
act of faith on his part, faith
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in the promise that victory over the
Satan would come through the offspring of this
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woman. And it wasn't only Adam, who believed the promise God gave him
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the garden on that first Christmas.
I think Eve believed it too. When
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her first child was born, we
read about it over in Genesis for she
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named him Kine, which means gotten
winner. I think better here he is
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now. She was mistaken in thinking
that this child was the promised deliverer.
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She wasn't holding the savior. In
fact, she was holding the world's first
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murderer. But you see, I
think she had the right idea. She
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was looking ahead to the one who
would be born, who would save his
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people, and she was staking her
life on the reliability and truth of God's
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promise I think stated here in Genesis
three. And so have all people who
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have rightly understood what Christmas is all
about, I think, and so must
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will if we're to be a true
part of it. You know, those
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who don't have this same faith,
you don't know God through Christ, you
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don't have this understanding of Christmas.
They're never going to achieve their deepest longings.
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They're never gonna fulfill their dreams,
They're never gonna escape their moral and
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spiritual and physical bondage. Why because
God won't let them. You know,
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The history of mankind is the history
of men trying to storm back into the
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garden to find the tree of life
eat its fruits. But God has closed
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that entrance, He set guards before
it, and mere human beings will never
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make a way through. I think
what's clear from this text is that we're
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to see the garden of Eden and
sort of a type of sanctuary, a
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place for God's presence dwells in all
its life giving power. Man's banishment from
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the garden, therefore, was banishment
from that divine presence, all the blessings
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of life that went with that presence. And you see, that's man's ultimate
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problem, his estrangement from God.
And as we're reminded here in Genesis and
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throughout the rest of the Bible,
that estrangement was was God's entirely just punishment
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for a man's sin and disobedience.
You know, this might be controversial,
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but I happen to believe that Adam
and Eve did return to the garden in
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their own lifetimes because of what the
offspring of the woman would someday accomplish on
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their behalf. Could be wrong,
but you know, the first human beings
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disobeyed, they ruined life for all
their descendants. But I believe they were
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also recovered by the grace of God
to prove to their offspring that there was
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in fact a way back to the
garden for any and every human being.
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But it's God blocked the way back. It's only God who can open the
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way again. And he did that
through Jesus Christ, who crushed Satan's head
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by his victory on the cross.
You know, every man, religious or
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otherwise, unless God's grace should change
him, he's just like John Bunyan's Mr.
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Loath to stoop who through you know
Bunyan's second grade allegory of salvation,
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the Holy War, Mr Loath Stupid. He's He's engaged in an effort to
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beat down God's on alterable terms of
salvation, to have his way back into
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the garden on his own terms,
his own, reduced and easier terms that
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require no real stooping on his part, no acknowledgement of his terrible guilt and
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need no repentance for his sin riddled
life, no surrender of sovereignty to the
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Lord Jesus. But because he's blocking
the way back in judgment of our sins,
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only God can open the way and
that's what He's done through Jesus Christ,
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his son. So Christmas hid in
about trees. It's not about tinsel
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and gifts, angels, shepherds and
stars and wise men. Certainly those things
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enter into the New Testament story.
Christmas is about a savior, a deliverer
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from sin, promised to our first
parents by God thousands of years ago in
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the garden of Eden. They had
sinned, and they would have perished in
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those sins. But God said he
was going to send his own son,
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the Lord Jesus Christ, to save
them from it. And that's exactly what
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he did. You know, the
Bible says Galatians. For but when the
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fullness of time had come, God
sent forth his son, born of woman,
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born under the law, to redeem
those who were under the law,
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so that we might receive adoption as
sons. That's the true meaning of Christmas.
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I encourage you to grab hold of
it, don't let go of it.
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And Carole and I fervently pray that
as you think on Genesis three fift
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this week and following, you would
indeed have a very very merry Christmas.
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God bless you. Please pray with
me our Father blessed these words to our
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heart. Let us see clearly the
blessing of God's incredible, amazing grace to
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us portrayed in this text. Bother, we see the Gospel so clearly proclaimed
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for us here the promise of a
deliverer, a savior who would come and
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die to rescue us from our sins. Let us lay hold of that wonderful
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Christmas gift and believe it, and
then go forth and proclaim it to a
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dying world, a disintegrating world,
for Jesus sake, Oh man an Amen
