Genesis 3 - Part C

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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get started with today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. I remember when my son Nate came home. He was just a little tyke, and he came home with a bad report card, a bad report card. And he hid his report card.

That was his solution. I got bad grades. I'm going to hide this record from my dad and my mom. He hid his report card, as if we're never going to think about report cards or ever ask for it, just kind of let the year go on. So I did ask for it. Nate, I know that today you got your report card.

I got a letter from the school saying today was the day, and to anticipate seeing your report card. Where is it? I don't know. He was hiding. Where did he learn that? From Adam.

That's where he got it from. It's part of our makeup now. Now, he says, I was naked. You mean all of this time you didn't know you were naked? You've been naked since chapter two. You didn't realize you were naked until now?

Actually, no. Up till this point, they weren't self-conscious. They didn't have a self-consciousness. They were selfless.

They weren't thinking about themselves. Now, after the fall, there's this deep self-conscious awareness of who they are. It's still a part of who we are. It's why we do what we do to make ourselves presentable. It's why we worry about what we're going to wear, how we look in it, or if we've gained too much weight. That self-absorption that Adam and Eve are now even ashamed to be in God's presence.

Self-consciousness. I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. And he said, Who told you you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded that you not eat? And of course, God knew the answer. And the man said, The woman!

Let's just back up a moment. We discussed this already, that man in the image of God is a trinity, body, soul, and spirit. We call that, if you're interested, the theologians give it the term, the tripartite nature of man. We're in three parts, body, soul, and spirit. Now, you should know that not everybody agrees with that, and there's this in-house debate among theological minds as to, are we bipartite, or are we tripartite? Are we just body and soul, body and inward man, those are the two parts, or are we body, soul, and spirit? I believe we're tripartite.

And don't let that throw you. The reason these three divisions are given, and by the way, they're given by Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5, forget the verse, but he said, Now I pray that you will be sanctified completely, that your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless for the coming of Jesus Christ. So that division of three parts, body, soul, and spirit, is simply to show the difference of how man is separated, along with animals, from plant life. We have a soul, so do animals, technically.

Technically, now follow me here. They don't have a spirit, they have a soul. The soul in the Bible is the word nefesh, the word creature in chapter 2, on day six when God made creatures, it's the Hebrew word nefesh, or soul.

It simply means a consciousness, a self-aware, self-conscious. Plants don't have that. So we have a body, yes, but we also have a soul, a consciousness, a self-consciousness, a self-awareness. But we are further separated from plants and animals, in that we have a spirit.

Plants and animals don't. We have the capacity for God, we have a desire to pray, we're the ones that worship. I've never seen any dog I've ever had. Pause up. I love you, Lord. It lacks the capacity. That's a bipartite being, we're tripartite, we have three parts, body, soul, and spirit. But when Adam and Eve sinned, something happened to the spirit component. It died.

It was rendered inoperative. It was subdued, it was subjugated. So rather than having the spirit on top and having the mind of the spirit, we have fallen, and now we have the mind of the flesh. The body dominates. The body consciousness dominates, not the spirit. That's why we need to be born again. When we're born again, it gets flipped, and now we have the mind of the spirit. It's awakened.

There's life. In medicine, there's a condition that some patients have known as myasthenia gravis. And what it is is that the impulses from the brain that are sent to the muscles to contract don't get to the muscles, so the muscles will atrophy over time. In a normal patient, the electrical impulses from the brain to the muscles get sent along the nervous system and conveyed to the muscle by a little apparatus that's on the muscle. It's a little motor plate, a motor end plate, they call it. The impulse hits the motor end plate, the end plate conveys that to the muscle, the muscle contracts. In a patient with myasthenia gravis, there's no end plates.

The impulse gets sent from the brain, the muscles don't receive it, so they're not used, and so they atrophy. In like manner, our spirits are to be the motor end plates of our being. Receiving impulses from God, responding and controlling by the spirit, the body and the mind, having the mind of the spirit.

Because of the fall, the end plates have been removed, so to speak, to use that as an example. And thus we need redemption, thus we need to be born again. Thus the problem here.

We don't receive the impulse. Okay, verse 12, God calls him into an account. The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate. Now actually Adam was very logical. The woman gave me the fruit, you gave me the woman. It was true. It was logical. She gave me the fruit, you gave me the woman.

It's the woman you gave me. You're the one that said it's not good that I should be alone. Look what's happened. It's logical, but it's not theological. To him it made sense, but it wasn't the truth.

It wasn't the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The truth was Adam knowingly sinned, she was deceived, he will take the blame ultimately because of it. But this is blame shifting and it's gone on, unfortunately ladies, ever since. We're not too chivalrous, are we? We still, it's the chick, you know. I've heard men say things like, well, you know, I love her, but she doesn't make the best choices. Be careful.

She said yes to your request to be married. She made that choice. Be careful what you're saying.

You can't blame shift. This is where it comes from. It's her, but it's actually you because you provided her. The Lord said to the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent.

So you see how it goes? It's the woman, it's the serpent. The serpent's going, there's no one else. The serpent deceived me and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all the cattle, more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life, humiliated because of it. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. In other words, the enmity will continue generation after generation.

He, okay, what's he? The seed is now personalized with a masculine pronoun. The woman and the serpent will have continued enmity, but her offspring, the seed, will be a male and he will bruise your head, he says to Satan, or crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and conception. In pain you will bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. Okay, verse 15 is what I see as the first messianic prophecy in the Bible. Right after the fall, God's plan is stated that the woman will have a seed, offspring, and one of those people, one of those males from her offspring, as this enmity continues between the woman and Satan, her seed and him. Eventually, Satan will be crushed by a male component of the seed. He will bruise your head.

I'm going to recommend a book to you, if it's still in print, it might not be, but if you can find it, it probably still is, by Donald Gray Barnhouse. He's dead now, he's in heaven. But he wrote a terrific book called The Invisible War. He does a terrific job showing us the war that happens because of this verse. Now God announces to Satan his doom.

His head's going to get crushed and it's going to be by a he from the seed of the woman. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we get back to Skip's teaching, understanding Genesis is critical to understanding the rest of Scripture. And in his book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, Skip Heitzig helps you discover the meaning and message of this foundational book. Embark on an epic journey to where it all began, so you can understand the amazing story of God's love and our redemption in Christ. You Can Understand the Book of Genesis is our thanks for your gift of at least $50 today to help share biblical teaching with more people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig. Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copies when you give at least $50 today to reach people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig.

Let's continue with today's teaching with Pastor Skip. OK, if I told you that I was going to crush your head. If I came to you before this service and I took you in the foyer and I go, just wait after this service, I'm going to hunt you down, I'm going to crush your skull. I'd be a pretty wicked guy, wouldn't I, if I said that.

But if I did, if you were smart, if you thought I was capable and I meant what I said, you would now enter into countermeasures either to get away from my threat or to counteract my threat with some way to attack me so that that couldn't happen. That's the invisible war. Now we start seeing the Bible unfold through this lens. The first attempt of Satan to destroy God's seed, the seed of the woman, is the very next chapter, when Cain kills Abel, the righteous son. So God raises up Seth, yet another son, to carry on his plan through him.

We read a couple more chapters. Satan makes the evil so bad on planet Earth, it's so wicked that God says, I've got to judge the entire Earth by a flood and he wipes everyone out except one family. And the seed is carried on through that family. We keep reading in this book and we find that Esau tries to kill Jacob, the son of the promise for Isaac, but he's unsuccessful. We keep reading into Exodus, we discover a guy by the name of Pharaoh who gives this crazy order saying every male Hebrew child kill, drown in the Nile River. What was that about? It was Satan's attempt to exterminate the seed or the very vehicle through which his doom would be manifest.

You follow me? We follow that all the way through the Bible. King Saul trying to kill David because it was revealed that David would be the promised one where the seed would come, the Messiah would come through David, kill David, you have no Messiah. We follow that through to Haman who worked for King Ahasuerus in the kingdom of Persia and Haman had the bright idea, let's kill all the Jews, exterminate them in one day. Again, it was a satanic plot. We follow that into the New Testament. Herod decides let's kill all the babies in Bethlehem, a couple years old and younger.

What is going on? This mass attempt to exterminate the seed because of this promise. And even Jesus, once he's alive, once he's on the scene in his ministry, comes to the synagogue at Nazareth. They take him out of the synagogue and they want to throw him over the brow of the hill.

If Satan could have only been successful to exterminate Christ. And on and on and on it goes through history. Now, this puts a whole different spin on a sin that is still in our world today, anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is not just another form of prejudice, it's a very particular satanic form of prejudice. Revelation 12, don't have time for it, we'll get to it in a hundred years, gives us the answer to it. The woman, Israel, is persecuted because of the seed, the male child that would destroy or crush Satan's head.

That's the invisible war throughout history. To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and your conception pain and bringing forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he will rule over you. Now we have a problem, the curse goes to Adam and Eve. Okay, this is what's going on. The team is now broken up. If you recall back in chapter one, God said to them, not just to Adam, to them, Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply, both of you subdue the earth, both of you multiply, both of you have dominion over my creation. It was a team, they were to do it together, ruling together, subduing together, multiplying together.

Now the team is broken up. And it says, your desire shall be for your husband and he will rule over you. There's been a lot of argument as to what that means.

I'll make it simple. When it says, he shall rule over you, your desire shall be for your husband, he shall rule over you, the term is used only one other time in the entire Pentateuch, five books of Moses, only one other time. And that's in chapter four, verse seven.

We'll get the answer. Notice after Cain killed Abel, verse six, the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your countenance fallen?

If you do well, will you not be accepted? Now watch this, if you do not do well, sin lies at the door and its desire is for you. Same exact Hebrew word as desire over in chapter three. It means the desire to rule, the desire to rule, the desire to control. Eve, you're going to have a desire to control and rule your husband and he shall rule over you.

Now the battle of the sexes between feminism and chauvinism, both equally bad, begins here, begins here. That tug of war, they were once meant to be together, reign together, subjugate together. But Eve was deceived, she usurped the authority of her husband in taking the apple, given it to him to eat, he willingly went along with it, but because of that, this problem is part of the curse. And he said to Adam, because you have indeed heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree, which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake, in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Now please look at that. The Bible never says that work is a curse or a part of the curse. It's the grinding, toilsome labor that is the result of the earth being cursed that is part of the curse of man. Thorns and thistles it will bring forth for you, you shall eat of the herb of the field, in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return. Adam called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living. So also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. And the Lord God said, behold the man has become like one of us to know good and evil. And now lest he put out his hand and also take of the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So God becomes a tailor.

He was a matchmaker, now he's a tailor. They, Adam and Eve, sewed fig leaves together. That's an inadequate covering.

Fig leaves that are green and supple and moist at first will eventually cut off from the vine, lose their moisture, dry out, fall off and you'll be naked again. So that's not a good solution. The solution God comes up with here, animal skins. Now to get animal skins you've got to kill an animal. Blood has to be shed. And remember, God said in the day that you eat you'll surely die. God comes into the garden, they hide. They're thinking, no we're going to die. They don't die. They don't die. Instead, an animal dies, one for Adam and another animal, one for Eve.

Now I can't prove it. I tend to think that these were lambs that were slain, just because of what I know of the rest of scripture, and that they were wearing this nice, just fly looking sheepskin, like nice. What God was showing is that an animal can be substituted for the life of a person. Hebrews 9, for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

Fig leaves won't do it. It's inadequate. Blood has to be shed. Our fig leaves, our coverings are also inadequate. Now most people try to cover up their sin problem by a couple of things. Either their own good works, well I try to do this and I really work at this and I'm better than that. It's good works. It might be good for covering yourself up among yourselves, because other people just compare their good works, or they try to use religion. It's inadequate.

It's inadequate. You know what it's like? It's like going to the bank with monopoly money. What if you were to go to Wells Fargo and you said, I'd like to open an account. Here's $500,000. Their eyes would light up. And they open the envelope and they find $500,000 in monopoly money. You can't do that in a bank.

It only works at home with a game. You can try to cover up with fig leaves, your own good works, your own religion among men, but before God, it doesn't work. Sacrifice must be made. Now here, and I'll make this quick, one lamb for one individual, right? One for Adam, one for Eve. Later on, God showed that one lamb could be substituted for a whole family when they were coming out of Egypt. One lamb, the blood was put on the lintels and doorposts. That one lamb covered the whole family. Later on in the law, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, one lamb was shed, sprinkled upon the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

The priest did that. And that was one lamb for the nation. And later on, the peak was when John the Baptist saw Jesus and said, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. So it was a lamb for an individual, then a family, then a nation, and eventually one that would do it for the whole world. And that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

All of that is indicative of Him. Verse 24, and we're done. He drove out the man, placed the cherubim at the east end of the garden, and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. That was an act of mercy, by the way. God didn't want them to eat of the tree of life and live forever in that condition. Keeping them away from that was the path to eternal life, through redemption that would come.

Be miserable if they were to live forever in that fallen, deplored, decaying condition. I know, you might be thinking, boy, did we get a bum deal. Adam blew it, and I still suffer for it. He ate the wrong tree. He should have gone for the tree of life to begin with.

Now you apply that to yourself. There's a tree of life offered to you. It's called the cross of Jesus Christ. Will you cling to the cross of Jesus Christ that will give you life? Will you turn your life over to Jesus Christ?

Or will you cling to something else and cover up with fig leaves? I want you to understand something. There's only two religions in this world. Only two.

Only two. You could take every religion, and they go in one of two categories. One is the religion of human achievement. The other is the religion of divine accomplishment. The second one, divine accomplishment, is the gospel of the New Testament. Human achievement is basically every other approach to God. I do this, and I do that, and if I keep this, and if I keep that. It's either a gift or it's works.

It's either works you do or it's the work he's done. The only one God will accept is the second. The issue is never, am I good enough to be saved? The real problem is we don't realize how bad off we are, that we all need salvation. That's what keeps us from the tree of life.

So the choice is still yours. Can't blame Adam when God, through Jesus Christ, offers you life. Thanks for listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We hope you've been strengthened in your walk with Jesus by today's program. Before we let you go, we want to remind you about this month's resources that will take you back to where it all began so you can understand all of God's word more clearly.

Pastor Skip's book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, is our thanks for your support of Connect with Skip Heitzig today. Request your copies when you give $50 or more. Call 800-922-1888.

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