We’re in Genesis 3 today. And so, if you’ve got a Bible, you can find that. If you’re friends or family who’ve come out to support those who got baptized, sure good to have ya. These are some of the best moments we have as a church. It’s just good to know that God is alive and God is at work in the lives of people.

And we read that in the pages of our Bible, and sometimes it’s just encouraging and reaffirming to see that in the lives of people that we know. So, I want to thank everybody for sharing their story. And oh, this is good text, man. It’s gonna take a while though, so stretch out. I hope you brought some water, maybe some snacks, it could be a while. So, I’ll pray, and we’ll get busy in the book, and good to see all of you.

Father God, thanks for allowing us to come together to study Scripture together. God, we thank you for the work you have done in the lives of those people who shared their great stories with us tonight. Thank you that that’s just an example that you’re a Living God, a loving God, you’re a helpful, ever-present God.

And we read about you in the Bible, and we love to see your work in our midst and in our own lives. God, as we study today, we pray for wisdom – wisdom that would come from you. Wisdom that would lead to you.

We ask, Lord God, that you would forgive us our sins and that you would allow us to have open eyes to see the truth, open hearts to receive the truth, open arms to embrace you, who is Truth.

God, as we study, please assist us in our understanding. Break through our resistance that we may put up against you, so that you can get to us without us getting’ in the way. We ask that you would save us from ourselves, through the reading of your Word, in Jesus’ good name, Amen.

So, we get into it – here we go. We’re into Genesis 3. This is called “the fall.” This is where humanity falls. Before this, it’s all good. Everybody’s happy, the sun’s out, naked, little R&B in the background, a man and a woman eating fruit. Nice, very good.

Here, [Bronx Cheer] all goes downhill from here. Here is where sin and death and Satan and folly and chaos all comes. Your life’s gonna make a lot more sense after today. You’ll see where all this originated and started. It’s one of the most important chapters in the whole Bible. If you don’t get this chapter, the rest of the Bible doesn’t make any sense, human history doesn’t make any sense, our life doesn’t make any sense. We’re just left in a cloud and in a fog of speculation.

Fortunately, this chapter of revelation helps us understand how we got in the position that we’re in of sin and death, and how we can get out. And that’s why it’s such a great text. Some theologians call this the account of the original sin. It’s actually the account of the original human sin.

The story starts before actually Genesis 3, that there is one God – Father, Son, and Spirit – who has eternally existed. That he made everything that is. He made the people and the angels. He made the earth and all the other planets and everything else. And what God did is, God made two kinds of beings. He made spirit beings, called angels, and he made human beings – people on the earth in the physical world.

What happened in the spiritual world is that one-third of the angels joined in allegiance with one of the lead angels, a guy named Satan. Ezekiel and Isaiah record that he was motivated by pride. He didn’t want to be with God. He wanted to be God. This is still the same problem that we all have, following in his example. Rather than being with God – we want to be God. We want to do what we want to do and not have to obey God.

He declared war on God. There was a great conflict – a war in Heaven. The Bible says that a third of the angels aligned with Satan and were kicked out of Heaven. They ultimately lost. Those spirits, then, are now known as demons. Just as there are good and bad people on the earth, there are good and bad spirits at work on the earth.

You live in a culture that tells you that all spirituality is good. The Bible will tell you otherwise, that much of that which is spiritual is actually demonic and evil and very dark and very dangerous.

This great conflict in Heaven spills down onto the earth into human history. And we pick that up in Genesis 3, and we see the entry of this other character into human history. His name is the serpent. So, Genesis 3, we’ll go verse 1 through verse 24, and it starts off, “Now the serpent” – Revelation 12:9, Revelation 20:2 tells us that this serpent is Satan. It’s the dragon. It’s our enemy.

“He was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.” He shows up. He’s crafty. All right? He’s sneaky. He has, according to II Corinthians 2:11, certain schemes and tactics that you and I must understand, because if we don’t understand how he works, we will be defeated by him.

Satan is a very, very, very serious adversary for two reasons. One, he is smarter than we are, and two, he has more experience. He has been observing human history and human conduct since the beginning. He understands people better than people understand themselves. He understands how human interaction works. He understands how human motivation works. He’s very adept at what he does.

He doesn’t come to us oftentimes in a threatening or terrifying way. On this occasion, he comes as a serpent – an animal that would be under the jurisdiction of Adam and Eve as heads of the human race. Something innocuous, simple, something not very frightening or terrifying – at least in his original form. He’s crafty. He’s sneaky.

You need to know this. You are born into a world that is in the midst of a spiritual battle. And that there is an enemy lurking around, seeking to entice you to participate in his work and war against God. And he is very crafty. He is very slick and smooth and calculated in how he attempts to recruit you for his purposes.

First thing he does, he goes to the woman, not the man, and he asks the first question in all of human history. And it’s a Bible trivia question. He asks the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree that’s in the garden’?” Is that what God said, Mar Hills?

Response: No.

No, good, thank you. That is not what God said. What God said was, “You can eat of any tree that is in the garden” – this is back in Genesis 2 – “there is only one tree that you must not partake of, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” God is a God who gives incredible liberty and freedom, and only minor restriction. You need to know this about God.

Good parents are this way as well. They don’t make an inordinate number of rules for their children. They allow their children lots of freedom and pleasure, and the rules that they make are few and important. And they are not designed so that the children will have life and not death. That’s what I tell my kids, “Don’t drink from the toilet, don’t start anything on fire, and the cutlery belongs to your mother – don’t use it.”

You know, just a couple of rules so that they don’t die. God’s a good God. He just makes one rule, “Have a great time, just don’t kill yourself.” That’s basically God’s rule. That’s the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you do, you will die. God’s a good God.

Satan comes, and what Satan wants Adam and Eve to focus on is not all of the good that God had given them, but only on that which God has restricted. Some of you overlook all of the freedom that Christ gives you, and you’re fixated with the one or two things that he has prohibited. And Satan twists, manipulates God Word. This is how he works.

In Ephesians and in the book of Hebrews, we are told that the Scriptures are living and active, sharp as a double-edged sword. That indeed, the Scriptures are a sword. Ephesians 6 says that we are continually in a battle spiritually against this great enemy, and that the Scriptures are our weapon of war. It is our sword.

What Satan is trying to do here is he is trying to change what God had said. He is trying to change the meaning of God’s Word, so that he can, in effect, get the sword out of the hand of our first parents, and then run them through with their own sword.

That’s why it’s so important for you and I to know the Scriptures, the Word of Truth. To be people who, when God speaks to us, we remember what he has said. And when Satan comes and slightly alters the meaning of what God has said, that we’re able to discern truth from error.

God didn’t say, “You can’t eat from any tree.” God said, “You can eat from any tree you want, except for one.” He’s going after the Word of God. He’s going after the goodness of God, and the permission of God.

So, the woman, she has a conversation with him. She should not have. She should have just walked away. “The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden’” – that’s true – “‘but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden”” – that’s true – ““and you must not touch it,”” she adds. Is that true? No – no. She puts something in there. She puts something in there. We are not free to add to or subtract from God’s Word. We’re not.

That’s why false religions and cults and false teachers will oftentimes allow you to keep the Bible and put over it or alongside of it additional books, additional teachings, additional revelation. But it’s a problem, because if God has said what God has said, we are not to add what God has said. We are not to take from what God has said. She, here, adds to it. We don’t know why. Maybe she simply erred and made a mistake. Or maybe her husband was a very bad Bible teacher.

Because remember, God made Adam first. God gave the rules to Adam. Adam was supposed to pass this information along to his lovely wife. Apparently, he didn’t do a great job. A lot of you ladies, you want to get married. Get married to a guy who knows his Bible – knows it well enough that when he teaches the family, particularly the children, he can do so accurately, so that the dragon doesn’t end up running around your home.

Somehow, this family went sideways. “You must not touch it, or you will die.” And then Satan comes out and he directly contradicts God. He says, “You will surely not die.” What he’s saying is this, “God is a liar.” Now, in John 8:44, Jesus says that Satan is a liar, the father of lies, that lying is his native language. When God speaks and Satan contradicts him, it is then up to you and I to discern that which we should believe and that which we should reject.

At this point, the man and the woman have a choice to make: Will we believe God, or will we disbelieve God? This is the choice. People get hung up on the fruit, thinking it’s all about the fruit. It’s really not about the fruit. The fruit is nothing more than an opportunity to demonstrate faith or unbelief.

The real root of the issue is, do they trust God, the goodness of God and the Word of God, or they distrust and mistrust the goodness and the Word of God? And Satan is saying this, “God lied to you.” See, some of you have a hard time with this, because God has prohibited certain things. He has said, “Do not fornicate. Do not get drunk. Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not commit adultery. Do not lust.”

And Satan will come to you and he will say, “God is a liar. Nothing will happen. You will enjoy yourself. God is restrictive and prohibitive. He is taking from you great pleasure. He’s a killjoy, disbelieve him.”

This is the great temptation that was given, “For God knows when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Satan fell because of pride. The great theologian Augustine says that all sin is birthed in pride. And what he says is this, “God is holding you back.”

Did you know that pride is a sin? Even when it’s called self-esteem?

Even when we play with the nomenclature for defining it, it’s still a sin. You are raised in a culture that is ruled by the dragon and tells you, “All of the problems in your life come from two things: You don’t love yourself, and you don’t have a high self-esteem. You need to esteem yourself. You need to love yourself. Don’t you have any pride?

“If you had more pride and you were a more proud person, then you could conquer all of your obstacles. You could achieve your greatness. You could climb Maslow’s psychology hierarchy of needs. You could not only have food and water and shelter, you could meet that apex of your destiny. You could be all you could be. You could self-actualize your potential. You could be proud. You could be free. You could be strong. You could save yourself, love yourself, heal yourself. You could be just like Satan.”

They never tell you that last part.

But that’s where it comes from.

Response: Right.

That’s why we in the West don’t even perceive humility as a virtue, but instead a vice. William Bennett’s got a great book for kids, it’s some of the greatest stories in the history of Western literature for little kids – it’s called The Book of Virtues. There is one virtue that is missing. Which one do you think that might be? Humility.

Because in the West, humility is a vice and not a virtue. Pride – pride is a virtue. Pride is a sin. Pride is the root of all sin. We think we’re better than we are. We think we’re smarter than we are. We think that we would be just as good of a God as the real God, and this is the source of all of our troubles.

We have faith in ourselves, when we should have faith in the God who made us. And the great lie is this. He says, “You will be like God.” Weren’t they already? They were made in the – what? Image and likeness of God. In the image and likeness of God. They already are the image bearers of God on the earth.

Satan is lying to them, promising to deliver something for them that God has already given, and if they believe Satan, then they will lose what God has already given them – dignity.

Here’s what Satan is saying, “If God has not provided, go get it for yourself. If God doesn’t give you a husband, go get one. If God doesn’t provide for you a wife, go get one. If God doesn’t provide for you enough money, go get some. If God doesn’t provide for you an adequate sex life, just go have some. If God doesn’t provide for you a high, then go get one.

Whatever God doesn’t provide, you be your own God and you go get it. You’re a good person . You know what you want. You know what you need. You can love yourself. You can fix yourself. You can heal yourself. You can save yourself. You’re just as good a God as that God. He’s holding you back. Don’t you want to actualize your potential?”

Response: Whoo, tell it.

Jesus Christ does not work for you. He doesn’t take orders from you, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, to execute on all of your priorities. He asks you to humbly trust him, and when he gives you freedom, he wants you to enjoy it. And when he gives you restriction, he wants you to obey him, because he loves you and he doesn’t want you to kill yourself.

Your enemy will get you to be tempted and lie. If there is any seed of pride in you, he will just bait that hook until he reels you in. You have an enemy. You are in the middle of a war, and you are your own greatest threat because in us is pride. In us is pride, arrogance, self-sufficiency, autonomy, self-righteousness, and unbelief that we truly need God, and a belief that if God simply were out of the way, we could make better decisions for our life. We could have a better future of our life apart from God.

Many of you think that God is holding you back and that you are, indeed, as good a God as he. And this is the original temptation and sin. This is what got Satan kicked out of Heaven. This is what will get Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden.

Here is how the woman responds. She’s contemplating this temptation, “Maybe God is holding me back. Maybe I am a good person. Maybe I don’t have a high enough self-esteem. Maybe I should go out there and get what I want. I want to disobey God. I want to be God. I don’t want to be with God, I want to be God.”

So, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom,” – what 1 John 2:16 calls “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life,” – “she took some and –” she what? She ate it. She did the one thing that God said not to do. In so doing, human history is marked by self-destruction. We kill ourselves.

“She also gave some to her husband, who was –” where?

Response: He was right there.

Right there. Doing what?

Response: Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing! Nothing.

Now, some of you guys think that’s a virtue, “I took a woman’s studies class. She’s her own person. She makes her decisions; I make mine. Who am I to tell her what to do? Who am I to insert myself? Who am I to speak into her? She’s an adult. She makes her own decision. She gets emotional if it’s otherwise. I just let her go; I’m a good husband. I give her what she wants.”

Do you give her what she needs? Like leadership and protection? The man stands there, idly by – says/does nothing. Says/does nothing. Men, you’re all Adam. Women, you’re all Eve. This isn’t just what happened. This is what happens. Every generation drives around this cul-de-sac. No progress whatsoever.

The man – the Puritans say that when Adam was away, Eve fell astray. That’s a Puritan taught – that’s not the way it went down. Adam wasn’t away; he was there. He watched Satan come, attack the credibility of God’s word. He saw his wife step forward to lead the family because he wasn’t.

Ladies, is it still true that if a guy doesn’t step up and lead his family, that you will? Is that still true? Let me give you the truth before you fire me.

Some people think, “Well, there’s three options: The man leads the family, the woman leads the family, or Satan leads the family.” I’ll tell you, there’s two options: The man leads the family or Satan leads the family. That’s what I get from Genesis 3.

A lot of women say, “No, no, no. He didn’t say anything, so I spoke up. He didn’t lead, so I led. He didn’t insert himself, so I inserted myself. I stepped in ‘cause he didn’t step up.” And what Satan says is, “Great, that’s part of my crafty plan – to invert the authority in the home, the structure of the home. Because the governments of church and state are built upon the government of family, and if I can crack the marital relationship, if I can get men to be silent, passive cowards, who sit idly by and watch death and destruction just mow through human history, even devouring their own household, then that would be great.

“And if the woman thinks that this is now liberation and she now is in this place whereby she’s just stepping up to fill the gap, that’s great, because I love silly people, and I love to watch them kill themselves.”

Ladies, what Eve should have done – she should have called out to God. She should have appealed to the authority over her husband. “God, my husband is not defending the truth of your Word. He is not leading our family. He is not fighting the dragon. He is not protecting our home.” She should be crying out to God. Instead, it is – the root of feminism creeps in, and she steps up to speak and to lead her family.

Now, a lot of you ladies will fight me on this. Many of you are single. You don’t have a husband. Some of you are married. Some of you were married. You think I’m wrong, go ask your husband. Call your ex-husband. See if perchance you stepping up to lead in his place did anything but allow the dragon more opportunity to destroy the family.

The wife is supposed to be alongside as a helper, but the man is to lead his family. We live in a world where men don’t lead anything. They don’t love their wife. They don’t lead their family. They don’t read their Bible. They don’t fight against the dragon. They don’t do sound doctrine. The divorce rate among Christians is higher than the divorce rate among non-Christians. Why? Because the dragon loves to attack the Christian family.

Did Adam and Eve get attacked before or after they were married? After. A lot of you think, “I’ll just get married, and then that’ll fix things.” How many of you have gotten married and realized, “I didn’t even see the dragon ‘til I got married”?

“And now, I got conflict all over my house.”

Some people wrongly think that getting married will actually put them in a place of safety. It doesn’t. It means that the enemy then will attack most, most, most passionately, because if he can destroy the family, then he can destroy the world. And Adam just sits there, [Whistling] “Well, she’s her own person, you know. She has her own theological ideas. She has her own interpretation of Scripture. She has her own perspective and views.”

Gentlemen, I’ll tell you the truth. You know what your wife wants? Courageous, strong, masculine husband. Right? The only reason that women step up is because there’s a vacuum. They would much rather they didn’t need to. They would – she would have much rather Adam stood up and said, “Wait a minute! This is my wife. You’re talking about my God. I’m getting’ in the middle. I love her, I love him. You’re lying. I don’t know who you are or where you’re from, but you don’t just come and tell lies to my wife, tell us that God is evil, and attack the credibility of God and the affection of my wife. No way. I have dominion here. You are gonna have to leave the garden right now.” She would have loved that. She would have loved that.

But because the man did nothing, she stepped up. She got into trouble. She was deceived. So many problems are that men sit idly, cowardly by. I believe one of the reasons that Adam ultimately did this – he allowed her to sin, so that he could sin after her, and we’ll see in a little bit, then he could blame it on her. Men do this all the time. They let the wife sin, and then they sin, but then they can blame it on the wife, ‘cause she went first.

This is the guy who annoys his wife ‘til she cusses him out, so he goes and gets a girlfriend and blames it on the wife cussing him out. This is what people do. Some men love it when their wives sin, because it allows them to be godless men. Men, your wives need you to be strong, courageous, biblical, dependable, able to step up when needed. They desperately long for that.

Some guys are, “Are you sure?” I’m sure.

I am sure. Right? Your wife needs a courageous, strong, biblical, masculine man. And then she can function as a biblical woman. She here enters into that place where the enemy can absolutely destroy her, and Adam stands idly by – says/does nothing. Here’s where it goes. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened” – they see what they’ve done – “they realized they’re both naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”

First thing they do, they separate themselves one from the other. This is division – separation. Before, they’re naked without shame. Now, they’re naked with shame. The man and the woman realize, “I can’t trust you. I can’t be vulnerable with you. I can’t allow you to see me. I’m in a dangerous place. You are a dangerous person. You don’t protect me. You don’t love me. You don’t defend me. You are dangerous to me. I’m covering myself.”

The rest of human history, from this point forward, is all about fig leaves.

That’s all it is. Anything we can hide behind so we don’t have to produce intimacy. That’s all that it is. Our resume, our job, our car, our style give the impression that everything’s fine, no need to take a look at me. You won’t really get to know me. Between me and you, I’m maintaining great distance.

For some people, this is a big fig leaf. I think religion is perhaps the most popular fig leaf in the history of the world. I just hide behind this. I carry a Bible. I quote some verses. I sing some songs. I go to church. And I assume that no one will ever look and see what I’m doin’, see who I am, see where I’m at. I hide behind this. It’s all fig leaves.

Don’t wanna get caught. Don’t wanna get found out. Don’t wanna be known. Don’t wanna be exposed. You know? And it didn’t take long, cause in Genesis 2, they were naked, singing songs, eatin’ fruit. By Genesis 3, they’re hiding from one another, hiding from God, covering themselves, not trusting in one another, and division and separation come.

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” How many of you parents – you hear your kids sinnin’ in the other room, so you go to check up on ‘em. [Sound of footsteps] The kids hear you comin’ – “Oh, they’re comin’ – hide, hide – get the peanut butter out of your ear and hide the matches.”

And they’re – and this is what – it’s almost like this picture – like these little kids are bein’ sinful and wicked, and here comes God the Father, and the first thing Adam does, he runs, hides behind a tree. Does this seem foolish to anyone else?

The omniscient, all-knowing, all-seeing, sovereign God of the universe – Adam’s like, “I’m behind the tree. He’ll never find me here.”

My brother, when he was little, he would sin, and you’d walk in the room, and he’d have his eyes closed, cause he thought that made him invisible.

The point is, when we sin, we get dumb. Any of you watch Cops or the news?

It’s like, “That was the dumbest thing in the world.” When we sin, we’re not in our right mind. We’re not altogether coherent and logical. What he thinks is, “Oh, I’ll hide. I’ll hold still behind the tree. God’ll never find me here.” That’s what he does – he hides from God.

What Adam should have done when he sinned – he should have ran to God in repentance. Instead, he runs from God in hiding. Now, we laugh at him. I laugh at him. Let me ask you a question. Where do you hide? What do you hide? See, we can all laugh at Adam, but like I told you before, we’re Adam.

We sin; we try to cover it up, hide it. We don’t want it to get found. Some of you think that the sin you’re committing doesn’t count because God doesn’t see. You’re just as silly as Adam. People sin all the time, and they try and cover it up. It’s all the fig leaves, “I’m gonna cover it up.” It’s all the tree, “I’m gonna hide it.” This is the guy who thinks, “Well, I’m flirting, but my wife’s not there – nobody knows.” Really? God can’t see through walls? I mean, Superman can – obviously God can.

This is the woman who says, “Well, I nag, nag, nag about my husband. I gossip about him. I’m on the phone all the time. But you know what? He’s not there, so it doesn’t count.” Well, God has a phone, too. He’s listenin’ in. He tapped your line. He knows.

This is the teenage kid hiding their sin from their parents. I got a boyfriend on the side, or a girlfriend on the side, or a boyfriend and girlfriend on the side. I instant message when mom and dad aren’t looking. They can’t – nobody sees, cause God doesn’t have a computer. He would never know. And the porno’s under the mattress, and God can’t see through cotton. He can’t see, so he doesn’t know.

See, we do these silly things. We hide our sin, hide our sin, hide our sin, thinking, “As long as nobody finds out, it doesn’t count. I didn’t get caught. God doesn’t – ” God knows. God knows everything. God knows your heart. He knows your mind. He knows your imagination – if that doesn’t scare ya. He knows what you’re thinking. God knows everything.

Adam and Eve distrust God, run from God, hide from God. But here’s the good news, verse 9, “But the Lord God called” – to whom? – “the man.” Now, why does he go for the man? Some of the chauvinists would say, “‘Cause the man’s most important.” No. Some of the feminists would say, “‘Cause God’s a chauvinist.” No. Because God’s biblical.

God holds the man responsible for the condition of his family. Who sinned first, the man or the woman? The woman. Who did God call out for first? The man. Why? He’s the head of his home. He’s responsible. Paul’s gonna build this whole doctrine of headship for men in the New Testament on this.

And here’s what it means to be a head: You are responsible, men, for the condition of your home before God. Some of you say, “But it’s not my fault.” I didn’t say it was your fault, I said it’s your responsibility. In the home, there may be many things that are not a man’s fault. Many things are a man’s fault, and the wife will let you know what those are.

But even if it’s not your fault, it’s still your responsibility. Your kids’ on drugs. “Well, it’s not my fault.” It’s your responsibility. “My wife isn’t happy. That’s not my fault.” But it’s your responsibility. “No one in my family reads the Bible, prays, or walks with the Lord. But that’s not my fault.” Well, maybe it is. And nonetheless, it’s still your responsibility.

We live in a day where men take responsibility for nothing, let alone themselves. They’re hoping to marry a nice woman, who makes enough money to take care of them. We live in a world where men don’t take responsibility. When’s the last time you ever saw a politician or a thief get on the news and say, “I just want to tell ya, I’m wicked, and it’s my fault.”

No way. Nobody takes responsibility for anything. God comes looking for the man, “Adam, where are you?” Obviously, this is a rhetorical question, right?

He knows, but he’s asking Adam, “Where are you at? You’re running from me, hiding from me. You’ve separated yourself from me. What are you thinking? What are you doing?” This becomes the beginning of a series of questions that God asks, like a defense attorney interrogating a witness. He’s got a lot of questions for the man and the woman.

The Lord asked the man, “Where are you?” The good news is this. The man sins, runs from God. Does God let him go? No. God let’s the serpent go, but he doesn’t let the man and the woman go. What we see here is that people sin and they run from God. And that God is the one who pursues us.

I hear about spirituality and religion all the time saying, “Well, I’m just seeking the Lord.” No, you’re not. The Lord is seeking you. Jesus says that he is on a mission to seek and save those who are lost. We’re lost – not God. We ran away. He didn’t. We don’t know where we’re going. He knows exactly what he’s up to.

And here is the beginning of our understanding of the ministry of the Lord Jesus, just as God came calling out for Adam, so God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ comes into history lookin’ for us. God loves us very much. So much so that even when we should just be allowed to run into Satan’s sin and death, God pursues us.

Some of you are frustrated by this, ‘cause God doesn’t stop chasing you. You have tried to run, and he’s fast. And he’s always right on your heels, calling out, “What are you doin’? Where are you goin’? What are you thinkin’?” And you can’t shake him. It’s ‘cause he loves you. He knows you’re running toward death, and he’s trying to save you from yourself.

So here are Adam’s answers – gotta love this – brilliant guy. Here’s his answers, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid” – first time that fear occurs in the Bible. The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear. He has fear ‘cause he’s in sin, unrepentantly – “because I was naked; so I hid.” Okay? God comes, asks the question, “What are you doin’?” “I’m hiding ‘cause I was scared ‘cause I was naked.” It sounds very good.

“And he said” – God has more questions. You notice that God has a lot of questions? – “Who told you you were naked?” Oh, yeah. Every time I read this verse, I hear Homer Simpson say, “Doh!” That’s what I hear.

That’s what I hear. I see Homer in a fig leaf, and God askin’ him questions.

Homer sayin’, “I was naked and scared, so I hid.” And God says, “Who told you you were naked?” “Doh!” That’s what I hear. Just so you know. Here’s his other question, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” You notice that God doesn’t give suggestions, recommendations, perspectives written in pencil with an eraser on the end? God gives commands. “Did you do what I told you not to do?”

Adam should repent. “God, I’m sorry. I sinned. It’s my fault.” He doesn’t. What he does do is he blames, justifies, and excuses his transgression. Human beings are great at this. We call it perspective. In politics we call it spin. In Genesis we call it demonic.

The man said, ‘The woman started off good, she was naked, and cookin’ food, just like I ordered.”

“Next thing I know, she’s cookin’ up forbidden fruit, and puttin clothes on. Not what I ordered.”

“I am a victim.”

“I think I need therapy, and maybe some government assistance.”

“Because a great injustice has been done to me.”

[Applause]

Don’t you love this guy?

“The woman” – oh, what a great guy, what a great guy. Satan comes, says, “I’m gonna get Eve.” “Okay.” God comes, says, “What happened?” Adam’s like, “Have at ‘er.” What a great guy.

What a great guy. “The woman – oh, she’s a defective – I think I married the wrong woman.”

“I think I married the wrong woman. I was such a great guy. You remember? I was a great guy ‘til I got that woman. She brings out the worst in me.”

“I hope that’s a beta version. You know, we need to go 2.0 – that woman’s got some defects. She’s not put together all right. Yeah, the woman, God, she’s a – I think I married –” Guys do this all the time, “I think I married the wrong woman.” Get rid of that one, get this other woman. “Oh, I think I married the wrong woman again.” Maybe you’re the wrong guy. It’s something to think about.

“The woman you put” – now, this is B.C. – this is before cups – and it’s amazing – it’s amazing to me that he would say this to the Lord. “The woman that you made” – this is not so subtle.

“She’s a mess. She’s created problems. And you made her.”

“I think I will be over here, and you can deal with her. You have made a big mistake, God.” How many guys have said this to God about their wife? “God, I think you made her wrong. You messed up. You gave me the wrong woman. You made her wrong. It says she’s supposed to be a helper, suitable. She doesn’t fit. This isn’t workin’. This is the wrong woman. God, you’ve done a terrible thing. Look what you’ve given me.”

Doesn’t repent. In fact, he accuses God and the woman of sin. People do this all the time. People do this all the time. They blame those that they were sent to love, and they blame God, who sent them to be loved.

“The woman you put me with” – he sounds stuck, doesn’t he? “The woman you stuck me with – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. I’m a victim. She did it first, gave it to me. Take it up with her.”

God moves on. Gonna have questions now for the lovely lady. “Then the Lord God said to the woman” – more questions – “‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” She’s a Charismatic woman. She says (and I’m Charismatic), but she says, “The devil made me do it. See, I went to that women’s prayer meeting, and I learned about Satan. It’s his fault.”

Ladies, Satan doesn’t make you do anything. He will give you what you want, but he doesn’t make you do anything. She wanted to sin. He tempted her pride. She went for the trick. You can’t blame the devil, and you can’t blame your spouse, and you can’t blame the Lord. Whose fault is it? It’s our fault. We are the problem. But in pride, we can’t accept that fact. So, we will excuse ourselves, justify ourselves, and blame anyone. People do this all the time.

Somebody talks to one person, that person blows, and that person says, “Well, you made me blow up.” Really? That’s interesting. I didn’t know there was a string on people that I could pull, and then they just spew venom. That’s interesting.

It seems like that one’s on you.

This is what we do – we blame, justify, excuse. So, here’s how it goes. “So the Lord God said to the serpent” – here’s all the consequences. The man and the woman won’t be cursed. The serpent will be cursed. The ground will be cursed – “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, “Cursed” – this is a curse. There’s no opportunity for redemption for Satan and demons. They’re just cursed.

“Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly, you will eat dust all the days of your life.” This is where we get that phrase, “Bite the dust.” Bite the dust. That Queen song from Freddie Mercury that’s so terrible – it comes from Genesis 3:14, Satan bites the dust.

So Satan is gonna get crushed. And then what we get in verse 15 is this – we get what the theologians call the protoevangelion, the first Gospel. This is the promise of redemption for the man and the woman. It’s not given to Satan, it’s only given to the man and the woman. Who preaches the first Gospel? God does. God is a good God.

The last Gospel to be preached, according to Revelation 14:6 will be done so by an angel. God preaches the first Gospel, an angel preaches the last Gospel. And in the middle, you and I are supposed to tell the Gospel, the Good News about God, Jesus. Here’s what he says, “And I will put enmity” – division, separation, hostility, conflict, war. You and I are born into the middle of a great war. There will be separation, division, conflict – “between you and the woman, between your offspring” – or seed – “and hers.”

There will be two lines in human history – Jesus and those who love him, and Satan and those who love him. And there will be conflict between these two lines. This includes physical and spiritual beings. This includes people and angels and demons. That angels, and people who love God, and God are on one side. That Satan, and demons, and evil doers are on the other, and there will be conflict throughout the course of human history.

These two threads run as the compositional narrative that threads the rest of the book of Genesis, and actually the rest of the Bible together – this conflict between these two sides. Satan trying to elicit people to participate with him in rebellion, and God seeking to save us from Satan’s sin and death, and bring us into the family of God.

There will be this great conflict that is promised. But here is the hope. Here is where the Good News is first spoken. “He” – this is a male son. I want you to note that, a male son – “will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” That the Lord Jesus – and this is out of Galatians 3:16-19 and Galatians 4:4 says that this seed, this offspring of the woman is the Lord Jesus Christ. That Jesus will come, and that he will [Bang] crush the head of the serpent, the dragon, though the serpent will do him mortal bodily harm. That Satan will bite him, will kill him.

That though the Lord Jesus will be greatly injured, he ultimately will come through victorious, and he will crush Satan underfoot. So, Paul says in Romans 16:20, “May the Lord Jesus soon crush Satan under your feet,” he says to the Church. Everything’s a mess – chaos, sin, death, mayhem, division, separation, lies, darkness, insanity kicks in.

And God speaks right into the middle of it and says, “I will save you both. I will fix the mess you’ve made. I will come as the Lord Jesus Christ, and I will take back all that you have lost.”

Response: Amen.

He goes on, “To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to your children.” Is that true, ladies? Havin’ a kid looks painful. Bill Cosby says, “The only way a man can relate is to take his top lip and pull it over his head.”

Birth for the woman was pain, and now it’s great pain. Work for the man was work, and now it will become great toil. Here’s the point. What he’s saying is this: For women, that point of emotional, physical grief will be tied inextricably to husband and children. That a woman will want to get married. That a woman will get married and want to be happily married. That the woman will want to trust her husband and be intimate and connected to him, and find her longings perennially unsatisfied. That the wife will be frustrated and want to kill her husband.

That all of her frustration will come out of that and motherhood. She will want to get married and conceive, but she will struggle with making enough money as a family for her to stay home and to raise her children. She will struggle with infertility and the inability to bear children.

Once she has children, she will struggle with miscarriage. She will struggle with carrying her children full term. She will struggle in the birth of her child. She will struggle in the raising of her child as her child harms him or herself; as the child commits sin; as the child, perhaps, strays from God.

All of these things cause great pain to a woman. She wants a loving relationship with her husband. She wants a loving relationship with her children, but she finds herself experiencing great pain as she pursues those deepest desires of her female heart. Is that true?

Response: Yes.

It’s true, isn’t it, ladies? It’s totally true. If you go to any magazine rack, pull any women’s magazine, it’s all about getting, loving, keeping a husband – and having, holding, and raising children. It’s the two themes that dominate every women’s talk show, and most women’s conversations.

God said, “Because you’ve sinned, life is going to get harder for you. The things that you desire most, loving marriage and good children, that is going to be your source of greatest grief.” And he makes a promise that all women from her forward – I told you, all men are Adam, all women are Eve. He makes a promise that she will be a feminist, which isn’t a good thing.

It’s right here, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” This is the same language used in the next chapter of Genesis, Chapter 4, verse 7. There are two sons that are born to Eve, Cain and Abel. Cain ultimately kills – murders Abel. Before he did, God spoke, and God said, “Cain, sin has a desire to rule over you.” In the same way that sin wanted to rule over Cain, the woman would sinfully want to rule over her husband. God calls it. He predicts it.

What he’s saying is this, “Ladies, you will want to get married. You will want to have a husband. But because he’s a sinner, because he’s imperfect, because he oftentimes is not courageous and bold but he’s cowardly and silent and passive, your desire will be to rule over that man, and to run your own family. To continually step up as Eve stepped up, repeating her continual cycle of feminist folly, thinking that in so doing, you are helping. Meanwhile, you’re doing nothing less than participating with the schemes of your enemy and falling right into his trap.”

Last week I went after the men – hammered the men, particularly the single men. You ladies loved that. A lot of ladies were like, “Let ‘em have it! Let ‘em have it! Boy, that was such a good Word. Thank you Pastor Mark. Let ‘em have it!”

We’re equal opportunity offenders, I’ll go after the ladies tonight.

You ladies are wicked sinners.

The end.

Now, how many of you ladies know that women try/want to dominate/rule men? The one woman who responded in the affirmative is right.

The rest are in denial. Now, let me push this a little further. Now, let me tell you ladies how you dominate your men, husbands, fathers – you practice on your dad when you’re little. Then you move up to a junior high boyfriend, play him like a fiddle. It’s all an internship for hell.

Here’s how women dominate men – many, many ways. As Satan has schemes, so do his ladies. One of the tricks is this, “I nag.” You ever seen two men nag each other?

I always say, “No, ‘cause one would die.”

Women will nag a man. “I’m just helping him.” You’re nagging him, thinking, “He’s leading, ‘cause I’m pushing.” Now, other ladies, they use emotions. [Chuckle] And it’s not so bad to be emotional, but some women will yell. “Come on, you’re la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!” Yell. And then, if that doesn’t work, ladies, what do you do next? Cry. Right.

I’m just – I’m just tellin’ you how it is.

Ladies will scream and yell and threaten. Didn’t work? Cry. “La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la! Whaaa. You hurt my –

Response: Feelings.

Feelings, yes.

Which is demon speak for, “I won. The end.”

And what women will do, they’ll vacillate between this screaming, threatening, intimidating demon seed over to the crushed, emotional, weeping basket case, and they’re just – they’re going back and forth. The guy feels like he’s in the middle of a tennis match, to the point where they just wear him down. He’s like, “Whatever you want, okay, fine.”

That’s sometimes how they control. Some women do it in a very clever way. They marry a guy who’s dumb.

A lot of guys are like, “Uh, is that me?”

Probably, yeah.

[Applause]

“I’m really glad I married a smart one.” She’s like, “He’ so cute. He does whatever I tell him. I put a gold star on his chart and give him Jell-O. He’s happy.”

Right? Some women, before marriage – here’s a single woman trick – they’ll cross physical/sexual lines with a man, so he feels guilty, so he can’t exercise his leadership in the relationship, ‘cause he feels convicted that he’s a disqualify. [Gasp] “Don’t tell him that.” Too late.

‘Cause see, if a guy’s supposed to lead spiritually, then that means he can’t be in sin with the woman, ‘cause he feel guilty. He can’t say, “You know, we should pray more after we make out.” You know? You can’t do that. It doesn’t work so good. So a lot of women will sin physically, so that the man will compromise his integrity, so that the man can’t lead and the woman controls through the sexual desire.

It happens when they get married, too. A woman cuts off her husband physically so that she can maintain power and control and authority in the relationship. She knows the guy’ll do anything to get off the couch. Women dominate their men.

That’s where a lot of women, “We’re having major marital difficulty. It’s just a terrible time. We need to go to a counselor who agrees with me.”

“I’ll make the call. Honey, I found somebody who agrees with me, and will tell you that you’re the problem and you should do what I say. And it only costs a hundred dollars an hour of your money. Isn’t that a great plan?”

The guy’s thinking, “I don’t know. The signal’s bad, I can barely hear you.”

Now, some women just come right out to dominate their husband with what I call the wrist to the hips move, and that is this.

When the wrists go to the hip, it’s over, man. It’s all downhill. That’s lock and load, man. You’re just like, “Aw, I see my mother. I’m waitin’ for the wooden spoon. You know, this is – I’m gonna get scolded here.” “Na-na-na-na-na,” and as soon as you see the finger, gentlemen, you’re done. You’re done. ‘Cause if you tell her to stop, she’ll cry. She’s tricky.

Like this other guy who showed up at the beginning of the story. She’s tricky. Ladies, do I lie? Yes or no, am I telling the truth?

Response: Yes.

[Applause]

Women loved it. But ladies, if you dominate your man, do you still find yourself attracted to him?

Response: No.

See, what a woman will do, she will nag, manipulate, control, rule over, dominate her husband, thinking that it’s a great thing ‘cause she’s maintained power and control in the relationship.

What happens then, when she really needs him to be tough and strong and courageous, he folds – everything falls apart, the enemy wins. And she’s not even attracted to him in any way.

Gentlemen, you know what your wife is attracted to? Courage, strength, masculinity, dignity, biblical knowledge. Not an arrogant jerk, but a guy who every once in a while, just, you know –

Ladies, am I telling the truth?

Response: Yes.

Yes, yes I am. I didn’t say it, ‘cause it’ll go on the Internet, and then they’ll all send me e-mails.

But that’s what your wife – strong. She wants to know if Satan shows up, my husband knows the Bible, and he’ll step in. If sin shows up at our house, he’ll push it out. If I need somebody to lead, to take responsibility, to fix a mess that the kids have made, he will do that, because God made men to be about redemption.

And good, godly men, they take responsibility for that which is not their fault, and they don’t sit idly by and allow their wife to manipulate them, because if she gets her way, she will be the most miserable. And he loves her enough to say, “Honey, now we’re gonna read the book and walk with the Lord, and we’re gonna do what God says. And I love you, let’s do this together.”

We’ll keep going, feeling good. “To Adam he said” – oh, how many of you guys have a bad job? You all do, that’s why they pay you.

I love to eat ice cream – don’t get paid for it. I love to nap – don’t get paid for it. They pay you for your job ‘cause they know that it’s terrible, and you wouldn’t do it for free.

That’s the logic behind the paycheck. And here’s why, “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife’” – hmm, wonder what that means?

It doesn’t mean a guy doesn’t ever listen to his wife. Proverbs says a prudent wife is from the Lord. With one ear you listen to the Lord, with one ear you take your wife’s counsel. At some points, when your wife contradicts the Lord, you shut that ear, and you listen to the Lord.

He didn’t – “‘and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat of it,” ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’

Here’s what he says. The ground is supposed to be under the dominion of the man. This is where the man makes his living. This is where the man feeds his family. This is where the man provides for those that he loves. How many of you men have found that it is hard to make enough money to get married, buy a house, have kids? Once you are married, to have a house, to have kids, to feed those kids, to provide for that family?

How many of you men have found that getting a livable wage is very hard work? And it doesn’t matter what you do, it keeps messing up. You decide to go to work – your alarm breaks. So, you’re there late. You go to start your car – your car doesn’t start. You go to drive there, and finally you get there, and you log on, and the server’s down. So you decide to go do some work on the copy machine that explodes. You go get a cup of coffee, and it leaks. You go to answer the phone, and all it is, is people calling in sick and drunk and stupid, and so nothing will get done that whole day.

And you realize, you’re gonna be there all day, doing everybody else’s work, ‘cause nobody else is getting their job done, and all the technology and all the tools and all the things that are supposed to be under your jurisdiction and dominion just don’t work.

So, you say, “That’s it, I’m going home, and I’m just going to mow the lawn.”

And it’s all weeds.

And you pull all the weeds. You go in to get a glass of water. You come back out, and the lawn is mocking you, and weeds are exploding out of all corners of the lawn. And the man’s frustrated, ‘cause what he’s saying is, “The lawn, the job, the company, the people – they’re all supposed to be under my dominion. They don’t do what I say. They don’t obey me. They don’t work. This is terrible!” And God says, “Now, you know how I feel.”

“Ah, you mean, you’re trying to teach me a lesson?” “Yes. You,” God says, “are my job. You never obey me. You never work. You’re always making a mess. My job is toil with you. So, everything that’s under you, I told it to treat you like you treat me. Ha!”

So, the man gets so frustrated. “God, what have you done?” God says, “Uh, that’s what you did.” He gets the man to the place of humility, the place of repentance. See, the man didn’t repent, and so God is going to cause the man to know how frustrating it is when things are wildly disobedient, so that the man will come to a repentance, and appreciation of the God who straightens out the mess he’s made.

And he says, “You came from dust. You’re going to dust.” Now, it’s so funny. Satan said, “You will be God.” No, you’ll be fertilizer, mulch.

You’re gonna spend your whole life picking weeds. You’re gonna die, go in the ground, fertilize the weeds.

Weeds are gonna grow up on your garden and just dance and mock you in your wickedness.

The dirt wins. The man came from the dirt. The man’s going into the dirt. The dirt wins in the end. This is the bitter irony. “You will be God.” No, you won’t. You’ll be fertilizer – not quite the goal he was aspiring to when he sinned against the Lord. I think that’s hilarious.

So, here’s what he does. He names his wife. Right? He still is the head of his home, he’s exercising authority here. “He named his wife Eve” – this means life giver, giver of life – “because she would become the mother of all living.” There’s hope here. There’s hope that this Son is gonna come at some point through the birth of this woman and her daughters.

“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and he clothed them.” God clothed their nakedness. We’re not supposed to be naked. I don’t know if you’ve been looking at porno, or going to the strip club, you’ve seen the nudist bicycling team at the Fremont Solstice Parade, you might not understand this. We’re not supposed to be naked, except for when we’re home and married. But we’re not supposed to be naked.

And on this, too, I’ll tell you a little secret. You keep it just between you and me.

The nudist bicycling team at the Fremont Solstice Parade down the street is breaking a city ordinance – you’re not allowed to be naked in public. Which makes sense. But – and they can only enforce it if someone complains. Don’t tell ‘em I sent ya.

People aren’t supposed to be naked. God made clothes. Here’s the first fashion designer, God makes some clothes. And some people think because it’s from the skin of animals, that maybe this is the first sacrifice, and God’s the one who offers it in the middle of their sin. “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and also take from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever.’”

Here’s the point, what God says is, “Now they know about evil.” See, we take this as a good thing. “Oh, you don’t know until you try. Don’t knock it ‘til you tried it. How do you know? You should at least try it and see if you like it.” That’s just foolishness talking. You can have an awareness of sin without an experiential awareness of sin. You can see somebody who’s recovering from a drug addiction, and know, observationally, not experientially, that that’s not something you want to do.

You can find someone who has stolen and now is dealing with the consequence of their sin, and you don’t need to sin to have knowledge of what the consequences of sin are. God intends for us to have knowledge of sin through faith. That he would tell us it’s bad, and we would just take him at his Word, and never go out and field test that concept.

But once we sin, we all have experiential knowledge of evil. And what God says is this, “They’re evil. They’re sinners. They’re gonna keep sinning. If they partake of the Tree of Life forever, they will live forever in sin.” What God says is, “I don’t want sinners to live forever.” Not because he hates us, but because he loves us.

What God says is, “I don’t want you to sin forever. I would rather have you die, and then I can resurrect you and start all over. I would rather go that route than allow you to live forever in sin, separated from me.” So, we’re cast out of the garden, away from the Tree of Life. It goes up into Heaven. It doesn’t come back down until the end, in the book of Revelation.

Because of that, we now die. Paul says in Romans, “The wage for sin is death.” “Death,” 1 Corinthians 15 says, “is our enemy.” That death exists only because we have sinned.

And he concludes, “So, the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life.

Let me summarize all of this for you in conclusion. God made our first parents, Adam and Eve. We are all descendants of our first parents. Like a disease that is spread through a carrier to infect a multitude, we all are infected with sin. The Bible often uses the metaphor of disease for sin, and I think its fitting in this context. That we are infected with sin. By nature and choice, we are rebellious and sinful.

Men are Adam. Women are Eve. We are born/conceived wicked. The psalmist says that we’re wicked from our mother’s womb. That we’re little sinners, waiting for opportunities. That’s why we don’t need to train kids to be selfish and mean. It’s something that they naturally possess in their fallen nature. There’s something greatly wrong with the human condition.

And the enemy would tell us that all we need is more government. And more counseling. And more medication. And more time. And more effort. And more self-love, more self-esteem, more self-actualization and we can fix ourselves. The great lie just keeps rolling along, getting bigger and better funded. Better academics to support its constituency, and the lie rolls along at breakneck speed.

We all need to be saved from sin. That is the human problem. Everything else is an effect. The cause is our own sin. And we can’t blame it on our environment. Adam and Eve couldn’t blame it on their environment. They were in a sinless and perfect creation, and they rebelled against God, by virtue of their own volition.

You and I can’t blame anyone or anything else. The sad truth is, most of the problems in our life are self-caused, as we as foolish people chose death over life. We chose Satan over God. We chose folly over wisdom. We believed the serpent and not the Son of God.

And so what happened was this, that God in his great love came for us, just as he did for Adam in the garden. That over time, the Genesis 3:15 promise was fulfilled, in that a daughter of Eve, a woman named Mary, gave birth to a promised Son from Genesis 3:15. His name was Jesus Christ. He was God, who came down from Heaven to save us from Satan, sin, and death himself.

And what the Lord Jesus Christ is called in 1 Corinthians 15:45 is the second Adam. The second Adam. That the first Adam failed, and that the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ succeeded. What happens is that the Lord Jesus, through his life, begins his public ministry through his baptism at the hands of his cousin, John.

The Bible says in Matthew 4 and Luke 4, that immediately thereafter, he was led by the Spirit of God into what place? The wilderness, the desert. He is picking up the story exactly where it left off with the first Adam.

The first Adam sinned and was cast out into the desert wilderness. Many, many, many years later, the second Adam is born, and he is taken out into the desert wilderness, to pick up where the first Adam left off. He is there for 40 days and nights, fasting and praying.

Who comes to the second Adam?

Response: The serpent.

The serpent. He tempts the Lord Jesus as he did Adam with food. At first it was fruit, and now it is bread. He tempts the Lord Jesus with pride. He takes him and he shows him all the kingdoms of the earth, and he says, “You can rule and reign over all. You don’t need to go to the cross and suffer. All you need to do is bow down and worship me.”

The first Adam allowed the serpent to speak. Jesus steps in and speaks. The first Adam allowed the Word of God to be misquoted. Satan again, in his temptation of Jesus as Adam, misquotes the Scripture, changes its meaning.

How does the Lord Jesus respond? Three quotes from the book of Deuteronomy, in context, rightly appointed. I believe the Lord Jesus, and this is hypothesis, spent the 40 days preparing for his public ministry by praying and meditating through the book of Deuteronomy.

When Satan comes, he takes out his sword, and three times through he runs him through with Deuteronomy, and the enemy leaves him. What Hebrews 4:15 says, though, is that through the course of Jesus’ life and ministry, the serpent kept coming. It says that he was tempted in every way as we are. He was tempted to commit sexual adultery. He was tempted to overindulge in alcohol. He was tempted to lie and steal and cheat. He was tempted to use people. He was tempted to use his success as an opportunity to glorify himself, instead of his Father, and to be filled with pride, taking credit for that which God did for him.

But Hebrews 4:15 says that every moment that the serpent came to tempt him, he was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. At every moment that the serpent came to the Lord Jesus, he emerged sinless, triumphant, and victorious.

And so the serpent devised one final plan. As he had caused the first Adam to kill himself, he knew that he could not get the Lord Jesus, the second Adam, to kill himself, so he decided that he would simply kill him.

In Luke 22:3, we are told that Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ own 12 disciples. That is, he possessed Judas Iscariot. Judas went forth and fulfilled the promise in Zachariah that Jesus would be betrayed by a friend through a kiss for 30 pieces of silver.

Jesus was betrayed. Jesus was handed over. And Jesus was ultimately murdered unjustly. And Colossians 2:13-15 says that though this appears as a victory for Satan and demons, it was the greatest victory in the history of the world for the Lord. It says that upon the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ did something extraordinary. He took sin upon himself.

He paid the penalty for sin as a substitute. He died for me. He died for all of God’s children. He took upon himself all of the wickedness that you and I have committed or will ever commit.

And it says that in that moment, he triumphed over Satan and demons, making an open, public spectacle of them, exposing them to shame and disgrace, crushing them, triumphing over them by the cross!

Response: Amen.

And you were saved and loved on that great day.

[Applause]

And it looked like Satan finally won, killing the second Adam. And instead, he redeemed and saved and loved. And just as Satan had set up the first Adam to use him for his purposes, so the Lord Jesus set up Satan and used him for his purposes, and turned what was meant for evil for good – and a great victory and the saving of many.

Response: Yeah. That’s right.

What it tells us, then, is that the Lord Jesus Christ, from the cross, he cries out – not in bitter defeat, but in triumphant victory, “It is finished!” And he wins.

[Applause]

And he says, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” and all who are in Christ are reconciled to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, in that moment. He then rose three days later in triumph over Satan’s sin and death, proving that he was sinless, and that the grave could not contain him, because he had committed no sin.

He ascended back into Heaven. And, dear friends, the Bible tells us that in the end, he’s coming back, maybe some day soon. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming again, just as God went looking for Adam and Jesus came looking for us, he’s coming again to take us home.

And the promise is made in the book of Revelation that all those who were against him ultimately will be trampled underfoot. That he will crush them, destroy them. That they have declared war on him, and if they do not bend their knee, then he will break their neck.

And the promise is made at the end of the book of Revelation that ultimately, Satan will rise up to declare one final war against the Lord Jesus. And that the Lord Jesus will come as a rider on a white horse, who’s name is Faithful and True, and coming out of his mouth will be the Word of God, with which to slay the nations and those who do evil.

That Jesus is coming into human history, and what he says is simply this, that his heel will drop, and that it will find the head of the serpent, and it will find the head of everyone who is participating in sin with the serpent.

And I have a question for you today, it’s the reason that the Lord asked me to come and preach to you. It’s the same question that he asked in Genesis and he asks you today, “Where are you?” That is the question of our evening. “Where are you?”

The Lord Jesus says, “You are either with me or against me.” Where are you? That is the question of the hour, dear friends. That God invited Adam to repentance. He invites you to repentance as well. God invited Eve to repentance. He invites you ladies to repentance as well.

That the Lord Jesus Christ has conquered Satan. And there are only two options: You worship God, or you worship Satan. You go to Heaven, or you go to hell. You live in forgiveness and joy, or you live in unforgiveness and misery. You believe truth or lies. You live in light or darkness. You are a friend of God or an enemy of God.

And he cries out, because he loves you all, and he says, “Where are you?” Are you with the Lord Jesus? Do you belong to the Lord Jesus? Do you love the Lord Jesus? Are you running to or from the Lord Jesus? Are you hiding or exposing who you truly are to the Lord Jesus?

Friends, there are only two choices. You will participate with the enemy and you will kill yourself, and then Jesus Christ will crush you justly, or you will participate with the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will save you from Satan, sin, and death, and self.

And it promises that in the end, when he comes back, and all sin and sinners are no more, that the Tree of Life will come down from Heaven, and you and I will partake together forever – as God initially intended. Love, life, peace, joy in the Kingdom. I invite you to that place, and I ask you today, “Where are you?” Where are you? And I leave that for you to answer between you and the Lord Jesus.

You can give him your sin today, receive his forgiveness. You can come forward and take communion as a new Christian today, remembering his body and blood. We’ll give of our tithes and offerings. We’re gonna sing. We’re gonna celebrate. We’re gonna leave here with joy.

Because as Romans 5 says, “We’re either in the first Adam – dead, or in the second Adam – alive. Who’s alive? Anyone here belong to the second Adam?

[Applause, Cheering]

That’s our great God, and that’s why we love him. So, we’ll sing in his honor.

Lord Jesus, we love you. I think you for these people being patient with our long evening. I thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have spoken to us in the Scriptures, that we have your Word – the Word of Truth – the Word of God.

God, I pray that today when we hear your voice, we would not harden our hearts. That we wouldn’t be rebellious, stubborn people, who run from you, who hide from you, who try to cover up our sin, try to blame other people, try to justify it, try to excuse it, try to go after those things that you have not put in our life because they’re not good for us.

God, please enable us to see ourselves in the pages of Genesis 3. Please allow the men to see that cowardice and passivity and folly and weakness is not a virtue, but indeed a vice. Please cause the women to see that by dishonoring their husbands and their fathers, by not encouraging the men to be men, that in fact, as much or more harm is done than they were seeking to remedy in the first place.

God, please save us from ourselves. The enemy only gives us what we want. It’s the sickness that’s in us that is the root of the temptation that leads us into death. God, please give us new hearts and new minds and new desires. Please keep us from Satan and sin and death. Please keep us close to you.

Please, Lord God, I pray against the enemy and his servants and their works and effects. I pray against their attacks on people in this church. I pray against his seeking to manipulate the Scriptures and lead people astray. God, I pray that we would find ourselves in you, Lord Jesus, the great and triumphant second Adam. That we would participate in your great victory. That we would walk humbly in your wake, and that we would not take credit for that which you have done in our lives, but instead, we would worship you because you are a good God, who has saved us from ourselves.

And we come tonight in that spirit, to worship you, Lord Jesus, Amen.