Lesson 7

Genesis chapter 3, we left off last week where Adam and Eve had eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And then God gave the first gospel message, the promise that he would put in between the devil and the woman, between her seed and the devil's seed, and the woman's seed, which would be Christ, would bruise the head of the serpent. And I told you then that every other prophecy in the Bible comes from that one prophecy. There was a double reference, one addressing the snake, the other addressing the serpent. That used the serpent, if you would. And I used the illustration of the Russian nesting dolls, and we'll see this, we continue on. And I told you this morning that we would see how God would illustrate how the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver man from his sin. Because remember, God told Adam, maybe the day you eat thereof, you'll sure die. So that's why I look here now in Genesis chapter 3, and let's look in verse 16. Before we do, I want to look over here real quick and see who all we have watching this morning. We have the whales, the lakes, and somebody else. I'm not sure who that is, but it's good to have you all this morning. In Genesis 3, 16, we now go to the woman, because remember, he asked Adam, Adam pointed the finger to the woman, the woman pointed the finger to the serpent, the serpent. And so God dealt with the serpent, and now he's going to work his way back up to the woman. Verse 16, and unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow, and thy conception in sorrow thou shalt bring for children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Now, here's what we have to understand. It was not punishment for the woman to have children. She was always supposed to have children. It was not punishment for the man to rule over the woman. He was always to rule over the woman. He was made first, the woman was made to help him. So it was not punishment. The punishment was this. Now that we know good and evil, now, nakedness can be something to be ashamed of. And because we know good and evil now, now we have the exploitation of little children. We have human trafficking, pornography. We have men who can't shake thoughts out of their minds as they saw since they were teenagers. Pictures. Because of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, the things that God made for us to enjoy, there are sorrow that comes with those things. So, woman was always supposed to have children. She was always supposed to be under the head shift of Adam or her husband. The difference is now this would be done, at least for the near Bible, in sorrow. See what happened? In sorrow. Now having children wouldn't always be the pleasant experience it was designed to be. Now being sorrow. Now yielding to the hustle would not always be the joyful, wonderful experience it was designed to be. Now it would be done in sorrow or there would be absolute rebellion with it, which again would bring sorrow. And so this is what happens here. Verse 17, now he goes to Adam. And unto Adam he said, he calls thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife. See, he wasn't supposed to listen to me. She was supposed to listen to him and Adam was supposed to listen to God. He says, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying thou shalt not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for thy sake. Now remember, God didn't say he curses the ground for Eve's sake. Why? God gave Adam authority, therefore he gave Adam responsibility, therefore Adam takes the blame. So now the ground is cursed for Adam's sake. Do you all see a problem with the ground being cursed? What can be the ramifications of the ground being cursed? Anyone who walks on it will have problems? Well, yes. Think about it like this. What would affect the ground being cursed? Food. How about everything? Everything. What was Adam formed from? The dirt. The dirt. Now the dirt's cursed. What are we made of? Dirt. So we're all cursed. We're all cursed. Exactly right. Now the grass is cursed. Hey, guess what? We weren't meant to have sticker-birds, okay? This wasn't meant to be. Now everything that comes from the dust of the earth, which is everything that lives, is cursed. The plant life, the fowl, the sea creatures, the cattle, the creeping things, the men and the women now bear the curse of Adam's sin. That's why everything that comes up out of the ground to live ultimately goes back into the ground and dies. Or rather than reverse it, ultimately dies and goes back into the ground. Because the ground's cursed. And it doesn't take a rocket science. It's just to think a little bit and look and notice, yes, everything that comes out of the ground is cursed. It's cursed because it ultimately dies. Everything, nothing is left untouched with Adam's sin on account of this curse of the ground. Okay? So let's go ahead and look here. This affects everybody and everything. The whole creation now bears this curse. So he says, because it has worked, in verse 17, heartened of the voice of our life and has eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt lay eat of it. First is the ground for thy sake. There's those two words again. In sorrow. See what happens? In sorrow shall thou eat of it all the days of thy life. God always spent on Adam and Eve eating from the fruit of the ground. Remember, that's the first thing he said of all the trees that gardening may freely eat. So originally it was supposed to be in pleasure you're going to eat of it. But now it's going to be in sorrow you're going to eat of it. In sorrow you're going to till the ground. In sorrow you're going to have to pluck out weeds. You have to work to get food to produce. It doesn't take anything to get weeds produced. That's the sorrow that's now been added to it. And so let's look here now. In sorrow shall thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Verse 18, thorns also in thistle shall it bring form to thee. Again, we weren't meant to have stickers and thorns. Roses weren't meant to have prickly thorns. Mosquitoes weren't meant to bite us and suck our blood. Believe it or not, gnats were not intended to go in our nose and our ears. I'm sure they serve some beautiful, useful purpose without a sorrow that goes with it. They still serve purpose. Mosquitoes still pollinate some things from what I understand. But now they do it in sorrow. You know, a little blood-sucking dose. So now we do this in sorrow. Verse 19, in the square that I face thou shall eat bread. And in other words it's not going to come easy to you now. We're not all farmers. But in the sweat of our face we all eat our bread. We don't just roll out of bed and everything come easy for us, does it? No. And so we're going to do this until what? Until we return to the ground, he said. Till thou return into the ground for out of it, while thou faking, for thus thou art. And then to everyone in this room, dost you art. And unto thus shall you return, just like he told Adam. And so everybody came from Adam and Eve. These are the first two people that God made. If you look down at verse 20, and Adam called his wife's name Eve. Why? Say it with me. Because she was the mother of all living. And so a lot of people say, well, where did all the children come from? They all came from Adam and Eve. Eve was the mother of all living. Okay? So Adam and Eve had children. Those children married each other. The siblings married each other. And they had children, and so on and so on. And it was different back then because a child could be born and look totally different than its parents. Totally different. Even a different race. In fact, in Genesis, there are twins that are born and they come out two different races. Two different colors. One was Jacob, the other was Esau. One was red, the other was Morpher. One was hairy, the other was smooth. And that's the way things were in the beginning. Eventually over time, God prohibited, once the earth was populated, he prohibited the marriage of near next again. But at this time, this is what was needed and it was very different than what we have today. So let's put a look here now. Eve was the mother of all living. What does that mean? Every one of us were born from Adam and Eve. Every one of us bear the curse of sin. This is why every one of us had to die. All right? Adam and Eve earlier had made coats by clothing out of fig leaves. You remember that? They made clothing out of fig leaves and went and hid in the garden. Now let's look here in verse 21. A very significant verse. Unto Adam also, and to his wife, to the Lord God made coats of skins and clothed them. This is very important. God now clothes Adam and Eve. This is the first thing when it comes to the knowledge of good and evil. This was the first thing they imagined evil was their nakedness. This is what calls them to run in fear and hide from God because they were naked and they were now ashamed. They are wearing the fig leaf clothing. But God does not accept that clothing. They're still ashamed. Even with that clothing on, they were still ashamed. They were still hiding from God, hiding in that clothing. And so now God does something to cover their shame. He does something to clothe them so they can stand before Him unashamed. He does something so they can continue to live and have children and grandchildren and raise those children. Remember God said, the day you eat your own, you'll surely die. But we see Adam calling his wife Eve, the mother of all living. And that's very significant. Number one, how can she be the mother of all living if everything that comes from her dies? Because to the seed of the woman, the serpent's head will be crushed, death will be overcome, and all that are born from the seed of the woman shall live forever. It's a wonderful promise. But how can she have children if she dies the day she ate that fruit? Watch this. Under Adam also into his wife, the Lord God made coats of skins and clothed them. That's how. The vegetation that they clothed themselves with was not acceptable. God tells them that the seed of the woman is going to bruise the head of the serpent, overcome the head of the serpent, which means deliver us from our sins and give us life where only death now reigns because of the curse. How does this happen? It happens in God's illustrating how the seed of the woman is going to do this. God takes these animals, because if you notice here, look at the clothing. The clothing is made out of skins. It's not made out of vegetable leaves. In order for Adam and Eve to be clothed by the clothing that God made them, in order for them to be able to stand unashamed in the sight of God, something had to die. What God did, he takes Adam and Eve, who said he takes innocent animal substitutes. I know, it looks terrible. He takes innocent animal substitutes. Thank you. It's amazing. I want school for this. He takes innocent animal substitutes. I'm going to make it in 3D here. There you go. He takes innocent animal substitutes. What he does, he passes Adam and Eve's sin onto these animals. He passes Adam and Eve's sin onto these animals. He passes Adam and Eve's sin onto these innocent animal substitutes. So that day that they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and got the good deal, instead of killing Adam and Eve that day, he passes their sin on innocent animal substitutes and the animals die in their voices. The innocent animals that did nothing wrong died in the place of the guilty people. He then takes the skin of those innocent animals and as the sin was passed onto those animals, the innocent clothing of the animals are placed on them. There is an exchange that's being made. The innocent animals receive the guilt. The guilty people receive the innocence. And now God has shown Adam and Eve and thus shown all of us in Genesis 3. 21 how he would make good on the promise of Genesis 3. 15. When God put the skins of these innocent animals on these naked people, when God had clothed them and, let's see, I need somebody to talk. Everyone, would you come up here? I need someone who can be sane over this. Here. Oops, I got to just give you this side. If he's Adam and God just killed an innocent animal and God closed, covers Adam in this innocent animal. When God sees Adam, what does he see? He sees the innocence of the one that died in his place. Now God can look on the guilty and instead of seeing the guilty sin, he sees the innocence, the righteousness, the unblemished life of the one that died in his place. That make sense? All right, thank you, sir. You make it amazing Adam. When we get to the crucifixion we'll use you. I think they're working right there. They said they've got working today. Okay, well, I'm going to give you a quick example of what we had to do. So, what we want to see here now is a very, very, very big doctrine. This is covering the tape, the innocence of a substitute being covered in the guilty. I think you can see this, your own mind. The word atone means to cover. So when God took the skins of the animals and clothed them, God atoned them with the skins of those innocent animals. You put this into a noun. It's an atonement. An atonement is a covering of the guilty with the innocence that died in their place, in the guilty party's place. That's atonement. This is the first time you see an atonement being made in the Bible. And you will see it over and over and over and over again to the very end of the Bible. This is how man is saved from his guilt. When the innocent animals died, blood was shed. The life of that flesh of those animals was spilled out when those animals died. Now let's go ahead and look here if you would and see what else happens. In the Lord God said, Behold, the man is to come as one of us. Here we are again, one God speaking to the three persons of the Godhead, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So God says, Behold, the man is to come as one of us to know good and evil. Remember what the devil told Eve? Oh, well God knows the day you eat your own. You'll be as God's knowing good and evil. Now that part, remember, was true. Only God was supposed to know good and evil. God could handle that. There was a lady, a poor, 10-moon, she was quite an amazing woman. And she was telling a story one time about her and her dad on the train, if I remember it correctly. They were going down the road or down the track on the train. Cori asked her dad what a particular word was. It was an adult word. And Cori, being a child, heard this adult word that she was too young, you know, for those types of explanations to be given her. And she asked her dad, she says, what does this mean? She heard someone say it. And her dad said, Cori, do you see that luggage there that we brought into the train with us? She said, yes, Daddy. He said, did I ask you to carry that in here? She said, why not, Daddy? He said, why not? She said, because I'm too small to lift and carry that, it's too heavy for me. He said, that's right. He said, the same way, this word's too heavy for you right now. What a wise dad. And she thought, well, that's sad, it's not as bad as I need to know. That's okay. And you know, there's some things that only God can carry. God was meant to be the one to decide what's good and bad for us, not us. God was the one to say, this is what you'll do, this is what you'll not do, this is what's good, this is what's not good. Because he's God, he knows. He knows what is good and evil. He knows what is best and what's not best. And for man to say, I'm going to set your wisdom aside, God, and I, and my finite being, with no experience that I have, just being a pot of clay made by the maker, I'm now going to make the decisions if I was the maker. That's foolish. But that's what Adam chose. So yes, he became as God to know good and evil, but he did not have the capacity to make those choices as God does. And so now he knows good and evil, but boy, it didn't turn out well for him at all. Now he's afraid and he's ashamed, and you'll see later in the book of Genesis, the incredible destruction. I don't have to show you in Genesis, look around now. Look at what man can imagine to do to other people. It's terrible. It's horrible. That's because of us being able to imagine good and evil. And if you give a man complete power, God has complete power, and he still chooses to do good, because he is good. You give a man complete power, it's brutal. Absolutely brutal. All right? So let's go to look here now. He says, the man has become as one of us, no good and evil now, lest he put forth his hand and take also the tree of black and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground for once he was taken. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword was turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. All right. So God was not going to let Adam and Eve now go eat from the tree of life and live forever. That's not going to work. And so now he drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and he takes cherubim. And remember cherubim were one of the types of angels. Remember, they were seraphim and cherubim. He takes cherubim and he places them at the entrance of that garden. And man's not allowed back anymore. It's done. Paradise is lost. And now we're waiting on paradise to be returned through the promise God made of the woman's sinner. That's really what we're waiting on from this point forward. And as we keep going through the Bible, you will see that unfold, and more information unfold showing us how God is going to return this paradise that was lost to us because of sin. Now, while with God, let's just use our little noggins here and think this through with what we've learned so far. I'm going to erase all this, hopefully it's stuck in your mind. If Adam and Eve are going to die eventually, like God said, why not just let them say, God, I'm sorry, and then go to the Tree of Life and eat it and then live forever? Why not? They're already cursed. Huh? They're already cursed. The ground's cursed, called sin. They're cursed. What if you were in this position right here? What if you were Adam and Eve? Would it be best for you to eat the Tree of Life and live forever? Why? Because you're cursed and you don't want to live that life. That's exactly right. You're now stuck, as you all are thinking, you're now stuck forever living in a cursed world where the cursed ground was a lost paradise. This would be horrible. It would be horrible. I mean, literally, a horrible act of immortality, just all the time, going through everything. It would. It would be horrible. See, Brother Eddie's over there. You got your oxygen tube in, right? This morning? And you almost went on a ventilator, walked back. And with that oxygen tube in, and as we get older, our health continues to decline. But for a believer, we live with the reality that our body is aging and going to break. But we live with the hope that we're going to overcome that again in your body one day. Now you can live as long as there's hope. You can make it as long as there's light at the end of the tunnel. God was merciful to Adam and Eve. Here's the thing. Had they eaten from the tree of life, then this sin would have never been dealt with. They would have been forever locked in to an eternal life of curse and sin and evil imagination. There would have never been the hope, there would have been the hope of perpetuation, but there would have been no hope of reclamation. Does that make sense? No hope of renewal. So God said, don't let them eat of it. Keep them from it. Because that's not the way that I'm going to deal with overcoming sin and death. I'll do it by crushing that serpent's head. I'll do it by an innocent party dying in the guilty party's place. That's not it. Let's go ahead and look down in chapter 4. And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain, and said, I have John and the man from the Lord. So Adam did not have their first child. His name is Cain. Put this up here. Let's go on. And she bare again his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was tilled to the ground. And Abel was able. All right? First two boys. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought with the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel he also brought with the first things of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel into his offering. But unto Cain into his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, that means angry like wrath, wroth. And his countenance fell. So what happens here? You've got Cain, you've got Abel. Cain's the first one. Abel's the second one. And in the process of time, in other words as they grew up, they both brought an offering to the Lord. The offerings were brought upon an altar back then. God gave them instructions on how to do it. We learned that later on as we say that these are the laws that God had Israel carry on. But that's not saved and right here at this point. But they both brought an altar to the Lord. Cain, he brought the fruit of the ground, an offering to the Lord. So he brought vegetables. They don't know what kind, but they brought vegetables. Abel he also brought with the first things of his flock, and the fat thereof. Which is exactly what God told them to offer in the law. To sacrifice an animal, to burn its fat on the altar, and to set it on fire to be a burnt offering. To hear, do you notice anything different from Cain's offering and Abel's offering? What's the difference? No, all are blood. One's a living innocent creature and the other one's just a. . . No. Absolutely right. Do you notice the similarity between Cain's and Adam and Eve's first quotes? No, yes. They're both vegetation. Do you notice the similarity between what Abel is offering God and what God provided Adam and Eve? Exactly. One takes work. Was it because one takes more effort to do? No. Remember Adam and Eve clothed themselves with vengeance. God rejected it. God clothed Adam and Eve with the skins of an innocent animal that died in their place. God accepted it. Alright. Now, Cain is still falling back. He's just bringing what he wants to bring. Abel is bringing what God offered his parents. You see that? Now, this is an offering. Notice here if you would. . . You gotta hurry. Notice here if you would in chapter four verse three. In the process of time of Cain the past that Cain brought of the fruit of ground in all for a ring unto the Lord. He might want to score offering. And Abel, he also brought the first things of his flock and the fat of the ground up. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. They both brought an offering. Let's do this. What is the root word of offering? Offer. Now, if you would think of it this way, when you see these altars here. By the way, there's no such thing as an altar in the New Testament church. No such thing. Anytime someone says here's an altar down here, it's false. It's unbiblical. It's completely wrong. You'll never see it in the Bible. The only altars in the Bible were these things here in the Old Testament. They went away in the New Testament. But anyway, the altars here are where they laid their offering. Now, if you'll think of it this way, we use this for an accurate today. Same principle applies today. How many of y'all have ever made an offer on a house? That's almost everybody in here. And you make that offer, and then you wait to hear back to see if the homeowner is going to accept or reject your offer, right? And if Gabriel and Tanya were to make an offer on a house, and I would ask them, hey, y'all ever find a house? And I'd say, well, we film when we like, and we have an offer on the table right now. All right? The analogy there is this. Even though they haven't met the person selling the house, even though they haven't seen the person selling the house, and even though they haven't even seen the table, the analogy is the seller is on one side of the table. I don't know if y'all can see this online. We've got a podium right here. The seller is on one side of the table. The purchaser is on the other side of the table, and they take an offer, and they slide it on the table to the other person to see if they will accept it or reject it. The other person either says, I accept it, or they push it back and say, I reject it. The table becomes a point of contact between the offer-erver and the offer-e. The table becomes a place where the offer is placed, and the table is the point of contact between the two. This is how it was with an altar. If you could think of the altar being the table, the point of contact between the creature and the creator, between man and God, and Cain would say, God, I'm going to make you an offer. Well, you accept me on the basis of these vegetables. God says, I don't accept the vegetables, I don't accept you. Notice it says to Cain and to this offering, to Abel and to this offering. They're connected together. I don't accept the offer, I don't accept you. Abel says, God, as you clothed my parents with an innocent animal that died in their place, so this animal has died in my place, well, you accept me on the basis of this offer. God accepts the offer, therefore God accepts Abel. You see how that works? An offer is put on the table, God rejects one, he accepts the other. What's the difference between Abel's offering and Cain's offering? Not the effort they made. All the effort in the world can't cover the guilty party. The difference between Abel's offering and Cain's offering is Abel made his offering by faith. He believed the promise God gave his parents and the illustration God used when he covered them. Cain did not accept the promise God gave his parents. He tried to come on his own merit, look what I raised in my garden. Check this out. And he was rejected. And so, if you could think of it this way, when I was seeking truth as a twenty-some year old, I told God one night, I said, I don't care what religion is true, I just want to know the truth. And to me it seemed like I was searching for a needle in the haystack, and I mean, man, there's so many religions out there. And if you don't like what we have, we just make one up, and people do that. Well, making it up doesn't make it true. And so, I felt like I was looking for a needle in the haystack, and so I started checking every religion out there. You know what I found? Every one of them was just like Cain's. Every one of them gave me a set of rules to keep. If you do these rules, if you obey the ten pillars in Islam, and you obey them good enough, maybe you'll be accepted. If you obey the ten commandments in Judaism and you obey them good enough, maybe you'll be accepted. If you live good enough, according to the revelation of what you think is right within you, trying to be at peace with the world, with the environment, with creation, and you don't kill a cow or whatever, then maybe you'll come back as a cow instead of a fly, and you'll reincarnate. But basically, all down to that, I have a set of rules to keep. I'm going to do my best to keep that set of rules, and I still don't have any confidence that I'm going to be okay because I'm not sure I'm keeping them good enough. That's what every single religion gave me, every single one. And I finally realized once I understood the Gospel, and I was raised in the Baptist Church, but still the Gospel was hidden from me. And then when someone finally pointed me away from the rules I could keep, the commandments I could keep, the prayers I could pray, to Denise salvation was walking down to an altar, repeating a prayer after a Sunday school worker, and now getting baptized, and I get to go to heaven because I prayed that prayer down at this altar. It's nothing but a work. It's not the Gospel. It has nothing to do with the promise God made. It's a false religion. And so all of these things that I did, and sometimes I kept thinking, man, I'm not sure I'm going to heaven, I'll repeat my prayer again. Have you all ever prayed a prayer to be saved and then repeated your prayer later? That's almost everyone in here. You know what you're doing? You keep going back to this prayer hoping it'll stick, hoping it'll take. Maybe God will accept this one if I get more sincere, if I have more faith when I pray it. It's all the religion of Cain that has nothing to do with the atonement God made. Nothing. And I finally realized when someone pointed me away from the prayers I could pray, away from the works I could do, and they pointed me away from myself to what Jesus came to do for me, to be my atonement. When someone pointed out, I finally realized there's no needle in the haystack. There's simply only two religions in this world. The way of Cain and the way of Abel. The way that man invents in the way that God promised. That's the only two religions there are. Everyone falls in this category except the promise God made. And the book of Genesis fulfilled in the Gospels and yet will still completely fulfill in the book of Revelation, which we're still waiting for. And suddenly religion became quite simple for me. Truth was known. As Jesus said, you'll know the truth and truth will make you free. I was finally free from this. And I finally made God an offer he couldn't refuse. And that was the offer God made me. What amazing. Abel made God an offer that God had offered his parents. Beautiful. And so when Abel made this offering, he says, God will you accept me on the basis of this an innocent substitute that dies in my place? I said, I'll accept you on the basis of this. If you want to know if you're accepted by God, my question to you is what is on your table? What is the offer that you've placed on your table? I had all kinds of things on my table. Every religious thing I could think of, I had a little bit of the sacrifice on my table and one of the vegetables on my table. It's kind of like Abel putting a substitute on the table and saying, hey, I'm guilty but the substitute's not. We accept you on the basis of the substitute. When you mix yourself in with it, it's kind of throwing your leg up there on the table and saying, well, here's my substitute and here's a little bit of me too. Well, the substitute's fine, but you are not fine, so I can't accept any of it. You just hold it. It's like putting a little drop of poison in water. So it's one or the other. It's either what you did or what the Savior, the Promised Savior, the seed of the woman, would do for you. And today, it's either what we did or what the Savior did for us. Depends on which side of the cross you're on. That makes sense? And so God willing, next week we'll continue on with our study. This will continue to make more and more sense. And just like going to the eye doctor, when you start off with a little word of vision, as you continue to go, it'll get crisp and crisp and crisp and crisp. And it's just an amazing thing when you speak to the Bible. That was.