Biblical Basis for Suffering from Genesis 3 & Romans 8 (Joe Suozzo)

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So this is the last of the messages that we will have on this podcast from the conference that we had on suffering, the

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Sanctification Through Suffering Conference. This is Pastor Joe Suazo of Emanuel Bible Church, a church here in New Jersey, a local pastor.

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He's going to deal with the topic of the biblical basis for suffering from Genesis Chapter 3 and Romans Chapter 8.

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Now if you want to hear the ladies talk that was presented by Colleen Sharp on the comfort from God's word in suffering, you're going to have to go listen to Theology Gals because that is where that will be played.

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That will not be on this feed. That will be on Theology Gals. So make sure you go and download that from there.

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And this is again Joe Suazo, I hope you enjoy this message.

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And you know really, you just heard Frank earlier speak on depression. You know

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Joe, I'm not saying anything he hasn't said from his own pulpit, you know came back stateside and struggled with the depression, which

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I'm sure any of you could think of. If you trained your whole life, you train for something, and God changes those plans.

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So he's a pastor over at Emanuel Bible Church in Howell, it's not too far from here, actually

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I think like two towns south. And he'll be teaching in here. The ladies who want to go to the breakout session with Colleen, how many folks here listen to Theology Gals podcast?

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Okay, the rest of you take out your phone. You knew that was coming, right?

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Subscribe to Theology Gals. Now this is an example that, you know, a

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Baptist and a Presbyterian can actually get along. And actually Colleen and I do a podcast together.

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We do So You Want to Be a Podcaster. Can anyone figure out who that might be directed for? Yeah, you, that's right, you're a podcaster.

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So, that's right, I wanted to mention your podcast. What in the world are we doing here? What are we even doing here?

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Basically they do a podcast together, sometimes even their daughter jumps in and takes over their podcast.

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So what are we doing here is really just the two of them open mic having a discussion about pretty much anything.

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They told me that this, if you want to hear their feedback on the conference this week, they said that's their next episode, so you may want to go subscribe to what are we doing here.

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But Colleen and I have a podcast for podcasters called So You Want to Be a Podcaster. But she's also the administrator at the

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Christian Podcast Community, which is a group on Facebook, but more specifically a group of podcasters that are like -minded and trying to promote one another that are, so that's associated with Striving Fraternity.

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And Colleen has been a great blessing to Striving Fraternity in the past year, administering the, just helping with getting everything set up.

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We actually spent almost, I'd say like nine months before we actually opened up the application, so we spent nine months in making sure things are done right and formalizing things, so when we open up the

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Christian Podcast Community we have a good foundation. And so she's been a real blessing.

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For the ladies to understand, if any of you struggle with physical ailments as a mother and a wife, she would understand that.

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I'll let her explain to ladies her struggles, and she shared some of it on some of her podcasts of just having some physical ailments when you have children is not an easy thing.

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You guys understand, you have little ones running around, right? So it's not easy.

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And so that's what we wanted her to come and do. So we're gonna break now, and because we started a little bit late, we're probably gonna go till roughly 3, 3 .05,

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and then we'll take a break. After that break, I want you guys to give in all the questions that you have on the cards.

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I only got two questions so far, it's gonna be a really short Q &A. I only got two. I said that precisely.

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Engineer by trade. What we don't do when we do the Q &A is open it up to the floor, because then we don't know where things go.

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It becomes really, really long, and it's like, is there a question at the end of this? So you need to fill out the questions for the

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Q &A, all right? So we're gonna break those ladies who wanna go in the other room.

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We're gonna head that way. I'm only heading that way to start the recording, because Virgil's here to start it here, all right?

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So if you ladies wanna head out, you guys get the coffee and tea. Guys, you guys just gotta stay awake.

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It is by choice. If you wanna stay here, you can, but the other room is only ladies.

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Joe? Father, we're grateful for the promises of Scripture and your great love towards us,

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Lord, to reveal to us a way forward in the midst of a world that suffers.

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Lord, you know each of our hearts, you know our internal struggles, and we just thank you that you've given us something very great,

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Lord. So I pray for your spirit, really, to cement in our hearts,

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Lord, the extent of this hope that when we do encounter trials or suffering, that our understanding would eclipse those things that we may have your joy along the way.

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In Christ's name, amen. Well, actually, this whole conference,

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Andrew and I started talking about, I think, a year and a half ago and just praying about it.

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And one of the things that kind of motivated us to put this together is just how deficient the

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American church is, specifically the evangelical church, is in terms of its theology of suffering.

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And, of course, we all know that and see it and experience it, even personally ourselves.

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And so we realize that if there is somehow joy to be discovered along the way in life, if we're going to have a great hope within us so that whatever we're facing,

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Christ may shine through us, really, that's the goal, right?

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To bring him glory. That something of God may be seen in us no matter what we are facing, then we're going to have to be sure, have a sense of confidence about various truths of scriptures.

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And I thank you for my brother, Justin and Frank, and just the wonderful job you did really bringing forth some just beautiful truths from scripture, principles, and we'll just continue on.

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So some of these things you've heard already, but I would like to just focus in on just Romans 8, 20 and 21.

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So let's look at this word. I think there it is. Reading this word just for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

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So there's a lot in those verses, a lot. And we're not even going to have the time.

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I'm just brushing up on a couple of thoughts, but just some questions. What are some questions we want to ask ourselves about these two verses?

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Let me just bring out a few questions for us. The first is, what is the context that Paul's talking from and why?

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What is going on here in the Roman church and why is

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Paul writing these verses? So we want to look at the context to help us out. What's the creation that Paul's talking about?

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It's important to know that, right? Another question would be, when was it subjected to futility?

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And what is this futility that the scripture is talking about? Fourth question is, why?

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Why was this creation subjected? Another question is, what state was it in before it was subjected?

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And yet another question is, what did this subjection to futility do to creation?

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That would be a reasonable question, right? Another question would be, how did this affect and impact mankind?

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That's an application for us. We give them the application territory when we ask that question.

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Yet another question was, what was man's response to it? When this creation was subjected to futility, how did man respond?

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And then a couple more questions. How will the effects of this subjection be reversed or changed?

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So when we look at being set free from bondage, what exactly are we talking about there?

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And then the final question is, what is the end game for the one who subjected it?

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What's the end here? Now, why it's important for us to ask all these questions and to have reasonable answers to them is because the goal here is that God wants to infuse in us a hope.

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And when we have hope, hope is able to radically transform us so that our minds are not given to darkness.

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Our minds are not given to despair. And most of us, with the except of a few tiggers out there,

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I'm a melancholic personality myself. Fighting dark thoughts is a daily venture for me.

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And it's the Word of God, it's the scriptures that renew our mind. But not just the

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Word of God in and of itself, but the Word of God with understanding. We need to understand. So when scripture talks about hope, we need to understand deeply what this hope is, if it's going to be in our hearts.

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Because when we have that hope that's deep within our hearts, then when we encounter trials, when we encounter suffering, or we are with people who are going through suffering, we have something more precious than the suffering itself to an extent.

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Without that, there's only empty or what

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I call false assurances and promises that we can give. So let's just look at first the context.

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The context of this really goes back a few verses to 18 and 19.

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Look at what Paul says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

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For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

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So whatever suffering or trials or difficulties that the Roman church was going through this time, and whatever

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Paul himself was going through this time, he's basically saying, in comparing, when

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I compare it to what awaits us future, no comparison. No comparison.

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You know, that helps us, doesn't it? We do this all the time. I mean, recently in our church, one of our elder candidates in the church, in other words, we were working with him towards eldership, had a massive stroke at the age of 55.

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It was shocking to the church. Shocking.

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I mean, he, just the previous barbecue at the church, he had caught a 1400 pound moose in Maine, slaughtered it himself, cut up the meat, brought part of it to the barbecue.

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We were all feasting on moose steaks, right Stan? And this was a man who owned a fencing company, beautiful man of God.

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And he's an invalid right now. I just visited him. The only way you can hear him speak is if he could barely say something, you know, like you have to put your ear like this close to his mouth and he can't move.

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He just moves one hand. He can raise his thumbs up. And this is after being six weeks in a coma.

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And one of the things that I find interesting in this whole thing, because I'm spending time with the family and the congregation, helping them process this whole thing, is everyone is saying the same thing that says, you know, it is really sobering to us to think about what's important in life.

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Because now they're comparing themselves, their own circumstance, maybe their financial difficulty, or some chronic illness that's not even comparable to what this man and his family is going through, or a conflict in the home, whatever it may be.

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Now they're comparing and say, you know, I don't feel so bad about myself. Of course, we don't want to really think that way.

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But I'm just using it as an example to help us understand that there's power in comparing things.

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There's power in comparing things. Now, in this case, when we start to compare our suffering with this hope, and it's so important for us to define what that hope is and to have cemented in our hearts to the degree that we pray about it.

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We wait for it. We meditate on it. We know it deep within our hearts so deeply that it eclipses anything that we can face in this life.

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And of course, some of those passages on Paul's life were just read to us about what he went through.

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I mean, come on. This is a man who suffered deeply for the gospel. Yet we see joy abound in his life.

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Of course, that great letter of Philippians is just too much, right? Here he is in a prison.

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And the word joy comes up how many times, Pastor Mills? Eight times just throughout.

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Well, what are some of the other things that we know about the context? It's a word of encouragement to the believers in Rome.

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They were suffering for their faith. Many commentators believe that Paul was writing to the church affected by the persecutions of Nero.

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Nero was ruling around this time. He was known to be notorious for his harsh treatment of both the

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Jews and the Gentiles, especially those who embrace Christ. Before Nero was the

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Emperor Claudius, who so detested the Jews that he passed an edict against them in 54

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A .D. and had the Jews exiled out of the city of Rome. Nero, when he took power years later, he would lift up that reign.

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And some people believe that when this book of Romans was written, which would be 58 A .D.,

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while Paul was in Corinth, that he was writing to a church that was struggling not only with conflict and persecution, but you had

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Jewish believers returning to Rome. And now you had Jewish believers having to work out their salvation with Gentile believers.

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And so when you read the book of Romans and you start to see that through almost every page of the letter, really just this tension going on in this misunderstanding between the

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Jew and the Gentile. But the bottom line is this, that Paul's trying to encourage them with the promises future.

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I mean, this is one of the most profound eschatological statements in Scripture, really, when you think about it, in the sense that when

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I know that I have a glory that will one day be revealed, and I begin to compare it with whatever

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I'm going through, or whatever my friend is going through, or my wife is going through, or my child is going through, or my church is going through, or the nation is going through, or whoever is going through,

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I can have a sense of hope within me that can fuel joy, fuel joy.

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Because without that, I only have this world to hold on to.

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So what's the creation that Paul's talking about? That's the next question. Well, we know the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

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Well, I think we know that the creation is from Genesis 1 .1.

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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And we see God bring forth all creation.

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And now we see in this verse that all of this creation is groaning in the same way as a woman is about to give birth.

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Now, I was at both my children's birth.

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And of course, I didn't experience it. My wife experienced it. But I can tell you one thing, it was not fun at all.

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There was nothing good about it. And no matter all the breathing techniques, all those things that you learn to soften the pain of childbirth, it's just difficult and painful.

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And so that's the imagery that's used here. Third, what happened to creation?

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What happened to creation? Well, this is where we have to go back to Genesis chapters 1 through 3 to answer this question.

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And so we ask the question, well, what state was it in before it was subjected?

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What state was it in before it was subjected? And what changed when it was subjected? Well, first, we know that when

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God created the heavens and earth in Genesis 1, and on each day of creation, right, when the heavens and earth were created, including the planets, stars, solar systems, all of life on earth, including plant life, marine life, birds, mammals, including man,

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God said on each day, it is good. Every single day.

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Now, when I think of good, that means without imperfection, right? Without any taint of moral evil.

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Good. 100 % good because God is good. And within him there is no darkness.

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We know in chapter 2 that sin and man's rebellion, death and decay and disorder have yet to enter into the picture.

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Right? So certainly part of the goodness would include man's fellowship with God, intimacy with God, absence of decay and death, and a sense of order on earth.

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And so it is in the context of Genesis 1 and 2 that God gave man the mandate to be fruitful, oversee what he had created by having dominion and care for it, and the promise really of abundance and provision.

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By the way, are those all things we want today? Are they all the things that are some of our preachers on TV are promising the people?

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And so we see these things that we long for. We long to return, in a sense, back to Eden, to those things or something in our hearts that God's place.

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We want, we long for those things. In a sense, we're groaning for those things.

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But we also know that after God declared in Genesis 1 .31 that it was all very good.

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I like that. All very good. It's like the exclamation point on all creation.

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We see in Genesis 2 .17 a command that would not, that man would not eat of the tree of good and evil.

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If he did, he would surely die. And of course, in Genesis 3, we see

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Adam and Eve partake of the fruit. And from that point forward, we see the effects of God's judgment upon sin.

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And what are some of those judgments? I call them judgments. It is a judgment, but there are implications to that judgment.

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A death and decay, for sure. Right? Which I believe is described here in Romans 8 .20

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.21 as creation being subjected to futility and bondage to decay.

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Those are the things that Paul talks about. This death would also include separation from God without any hope unless God intervened.

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I mean, think about that. A hopeless state. That's a terrible place to be in, right?

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And I think that's the idea behind futility. A sense of emptiness. No purpose.

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You know, in physics, we know that the effect is described, one of the effects is described as the second law of thermodynamics, right?

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Energy cannot be replenished. It's expending. It's only moving in one direction.

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Contrary to what our evolutionist friends would want us to believe. We know physics verifies the

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Genesis account that there's this law governing the material universe that is moving towards death and decay and disorder, not order.

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I often laugh. I said, what happens to the average closet, garage, or purposeless draw in a home over time?

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I think that's a perfect example of things not getting better unless they're tended to.

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They just by nature. I see this in the church. We don't have a lot of storage space. Are you kidding me?

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Had that closet. There's like a storage. I said, it looks like a mess. Unless we go in there, straighten out, clear out and bring order to it.

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It's interesting to me that as we gain knowledge about the building block of life, the

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DNA strand, that there are more and more people who believe from a materialistic worldview.

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That somehow we can crack the code of the building block of life.

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We know that DNA sequencing that's reproducing in our bodies. And again,

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I'm not a scientist. This is just some cursory knowledge I have. But we know that it diminishes over time.

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That's called the aging process. Interestingly to me, companies that are being funded by some of the billionaires at Silicon Valley are coming alongside companies like Human, Longevity, and Coleco.

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These are companies that are spending millions and millions of dollars on research to extend life.

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Entrepreneurs like Larry Page and Elon Musk. These are avowed atheists, by the way. Chasing after this dream with the belief that somehow in our ingenuity, we can reverse aging and eliminate altogether.

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Isn't it amazing how scriptures prove right again and again? The fool says in his heart, there is no

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God. When God pronounced the wages of sin is death, how foolish man could be to think that somehow we can reverse that process in any way.

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So we see the ravages of sin and death all around us. People die. Creation's in decay and disorder. All of mankind longs for something better.

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In essence, whether we like it or not, we're in a state of suffering. How was creation and man judged?

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Well, going back to the Genesis account, we see man's response to sin.

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First thing Adam and Eve do is what? They tried to cover their shame and their guilt.

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Hide their crime. How? By sowing fig leaves to cover their nakedness and their shame.

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I call this, by the way, the very first religious act in human history.

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All religion has that one thing in common, a sense of wanting to get out from under this sense of shame and guilt and alienation from God.

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Then the next thing they did, and this is great for our psychologists in residence, they tried to hide.

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By the way, are things any different today? Believing somehow that God would overlook their sin.

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Here we see a deficiency of their understanding on the nature of God, specifically his omniscience.

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I mean, who's to think? I mean, even today in my counseling, when

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I talk to people, I said, well, do you know that God sees you completely for who you are?

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So it's just so much easier just to put it out on the table before him. Finally, we see when

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God calls them to account, Adam and Eve. Adam blames

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Eve, right? Eve blames Satan. All have truths, by the way, because they're all complicit in the crime, the sin.

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Skirting personal responsibility. In a sense, Satan was really the,

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I'd say, probably the only honest broker in this account. So God pronounces fourfold judgment, fourfold judgment.

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The first thing, God condemns the serpent or Satan himself. But isn't it beautiful when he does that, that we see the first promise of the

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Messiah of Israel. Isn't that just amazing that we see God's grace and he infuses hope right in the midst of one of the most tragic chapters in all scripture.

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We see hope that though Satan would strike the heel of the promised seed, ultimately the head of Satan would be crushed.

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And that's just such a beautiful thing for us. And that plays so important to our sense of hope that God is on his throne, he's sovereign.

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Then God pronounces judgment upon the woman in childbearing, which ironically is the same imagery in our text in Romans 8, 20 and 21.

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Groaning like a child in childbirth, creation subjected to futility and groaning.

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And then finally, God, a fourth one, God pronounces judgment upon man. Instead of earth easily providing food, man would now toil by the sweat of his brow and the earth would now be filled with thorn and thistles.

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Has that changed? Are we still going by the sweat of our brow?

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Yeah. Are there days that you don't want to wake up and face responsibility? Maybe every day.

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We feel that. We feel the pain of it. And, you know, we have all kinds of little jingles and little sayings that we try to comfort ourselves and try to normalize all this.

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This is all a result of the fall, by the way. We tell ourselves, you know, work is good for you, you know, and we go into it.

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And I'm not saying there isn't a good thing to purpose and productivity and all that.

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But there is a suffering attached to it, if we're honest with ourselves.

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And then finally, the last part of the judgment is God sentences man to be outside the

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Garden of Eden, where the tree of life was guarded or kept away by a powerful angel. In the midst of all this.

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Right. In the midst of all this, we see hope. Because one of the things that really strikes out at me in Genesis 3.

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Is not only does God pronounce judgment on Satan where his head would be crushed.

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But Adam and Eve are sent out of the garden with the skins of animals. This is before any blood was shed.

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So I see that as a promise of the future Messiah who would shed his blood so that we would not be ashamed.

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And so they're sent out instead of naked with these flimsy fig fig leaves that did absolutely nothing to cover their shame.

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God himself clothes them with the skins of animals and alluding,

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I believe, to the cross. Well, how did this judgment change man?

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How did this changes? Well. I have five ways, five categories.

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And we'll talk about these. And. As I bring these up,

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I want to just say kind of a disclaimer in a sense on this.

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Generally speaking, and I say generally speaking as a principle, these things that I'm going to talk about decrease or increase.

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Often based on four things. Wisdom or foolishness. Wisdom or foolishness.

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Sinful habits versus walking in the spirit. The impact of sinful man.

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Or the kindness of saints. And then finally, the attack of Satan or intervention of God or his angels.

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And so let's just look at these for. A moment. Physical death and disease.

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Andrew mentioned that I had come from the mission field because of health issues.

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I'm 160 -ish pounds. I went down to 120 pounds. That was my 10th year.

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In my 10th year, my daughter, youngest daughter, contracted typhoid fever and went from 50 pounds to 25 pounds.

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That was about five months before I left India. And it was like the gates of hell was just coming against us as a family.

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And that's all I can say. And I could not reason in my mind why all these things were happening to us.

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I didn't have this knowledge that I'm giving you today solidify my heart. I was questioning

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God's goodness. I here I am. I gave all my time for education and time on the mission field.

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Why, Lord, are you taking it away? But I love that scripture.

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It says he's close to the broken hearted and those who are crushed in spirit.

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That's one of my favorite verses, because in the midst of these deepest, darkest times, isn't

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God good to reveal himself more of himself to us? But physical disease and death.

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We face it, right? Does none of us, in a sense, want to die?

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Scripture calls it a sting, the sting of death. None of us want to face that.

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And when we lose a loved one, we don't like that. It's a it's a terrible thing.

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Or when somebody is terribly sick, we don't like that or some kind of disease.

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Yet. This is the world we live in, and without the

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Genesis three account, we wouldn't understand the why. That this is a result of the judgment of God on sin.

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And we are bearing with it, the struggle of it day in and day out.

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A second area is alienation from God. Remember what

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God did? He put them outside the garden. Now, think about this for a moment. I think every one of us have confessed

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Christ in this room. I've talked to most of you. And isn't it so sweet when we've spent a time in prayer that we sense

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God's presence and his peace in our lives? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful?

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There's nothing like it, right? Can you imagine being in the presence of God completely?

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I mean, Adam and Eve were in the presence of God in the garden. There was no distance between them and God.

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It was a a beautiful, sweet fellowship. And when sin came about, they were put out of the garden.

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And Scripture says there was a powerful angel, a sheriffman, that was put between them and the tree of life.

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And now, instead of a sense of intimacy with God, there is alienation with God.

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And we feel the pain of that. I mean, I just went on a three -day prayer retreat just to be with God.

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Just to be with God. To be away from this world, which has got so many difficulties in it.

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Just to be with God and to sense his sweet presence so that I don't get swallowed up by ministry.

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Because, as our brother shared with you before, it's so easy in the ministry to get swallowed up by the ministry.

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And forget who we're doing it for. But that sweet presence of God.

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And now that's gone and we still are facing it to this day.

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Struggle with provision. Is there a day that goes by that any of us don't worry about money?

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Maybe a couple days we can let go by, right? But generally speaking, we all struggle with that on some level.

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No matter how great your faith is and your assurance that God provides, there's just that little bit of anxiety that sits in our heart.

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I'm not going to have enough for retirement. What's going to happen in the future? And we all struggle with that.

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And then there's a percentage, a small percentage of the wealthy, and they've got a whole other set of problems of managing what they have.

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And I've talked to them as well. Another one is spiritual warfare.

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Think about this. Before man was put outside the garden, man would have had 100 % protection from God because he's in the presence of God and was walking 100 % victoriously with God.

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But after the fall, after man succumbed to the temptation of the evil one and was put outside the garden, we see the evils of Satan and his minions unleashed upon man.

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We see it in chapter four, right? We see it, especially, we see the ravages of death in chapter five with a whole litany.

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And I often laugh at chapter five because I always, besides I don't get into all the meanings of the

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Hebrew names. I know it's interesting and all that. But what's really more interesting to me is when

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Adam was dying, the first man was dying, all of these people, by that time there were certainly millions in the millions by the time he died.

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They all gathered around and it's really true. The wages of sin is death.

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I mean, you know, here they are and he's dying. He was the first man to die a natural death, according to scripture.

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And then chapter six, we see that spiritual warfare, right? The thoughts, every thought and inclination of man's heart, his imagination is completely devoted to evil.

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And we know, regardless of your interpretation on the Nephilim, right? Which I'm not going to get into.

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That's a rabbit trail of all rabbit trails. Hebrew word only used once in the scripture. I'm not going to hang my hat on it.

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But I will say this. We know it was deep darkness going on to the point where God went to destroy man completely with a flood.

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And so we see this incredible spirit. We see it today. I mean, this killing that went on in New Zealand, who would ever, who could argue that there's not a spiritual dimension to this thing?

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Or some of the terrible things that we're seeing in our culture today, the moral depravity. There is a force of evil behind the evil.

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Right? And then the last one is conflict among men. Conflict among men.

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We see it all around us. So I want to talk at this point about what are some of the solutions.

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And this is like a very... Wow, what time we have here? How much time do

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I have left? Oh, good.

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All right. Well, that should hold me. I want to talk about what are some of the solutions that the world offers in these arenas?

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So let's look at physical death. I mean, we know scripture to be true.

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It's appointed for once for a man to die and then the judgment. I just, I don't know about you, but when

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I see these scientific articles on people who believe that there's going to be immortality one day, or that some science is going to overcome the ravages of this thing called disease and death,

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I'm amused. I mean, it's sad on one hand, but it's amusing on the other hand. It has an amusement factor.

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Larry Ellison, right? Founder of Oracle. He has invested millions of dollars into life extension therapy.

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And you know what he has done regularly? He has younger men's blood. He buys younger men's blood to be put in him so that he would be younger and overcome the effects of aging.

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Listen to what he had to say. Death is a terrible thing, but we hope that science will overcome.

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Terrible, terrible thing. And then there's Bill Marris, CEO of Google Ventures, invested millions in Calico.

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He says, though I fear the end that awaits us all, right? He's slightly optimistic because of where it's at.

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These men are deluded. They are bankrupt of God's revelation.

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And so in the absence of revelation of God's truth, there are things being suggested to them that's giving them a hope, even though it's an empty hope.

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It's a hope without really hope. Elon Musk and all of his fantasies of colonizing

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Mars. Why do people think that colonizing Mars is going to give man hope?

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I mean, let's go pitch a tent in the middle of the Sahara Desert without any water and think that our life is going to improve one iota.

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It's because they see the writing on the wall. Man ultimately will destroy himself in a materialistic universe where there is no

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God. And you look at this nature of things and you believe in Darwinism where it's survival of the fittest, dog eat dog.

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Of course, we're going to ultimately self -destruct. We better colonize Mars because I need to be transported out of here.

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And, you know, we see just so many things.

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I was reading an article recently in Psychology Today. They quote one aging man.

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Listen to what he said. I think Jung, the globetrotting artist, this is, they call him a globetrotting artist in his early 80s.

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A globetrotting artist. I don't know what that kind of person looks like, but this is what he said.

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I don't allow myself to feel old or act old until they cart me out in the box. You know, how different that is than Moses' prayer.

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He says, you know, you've given man 70 or 80 years if you've given him strength. And then he says this at the end of the

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Psalm, 90. Lord, teach me to count my days aright, that I might gain a heart of wisdom.

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How different it is. And people, you know, another thing that really, really irks me is that movie

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The Bucket List. That somehow if I make this list of experiences in life and check them off one by one, that my life would somehow be full.

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And then, you know, at the end of my life, you know, send me to the crematorium, carry me up to the middle of the

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Himalayas, lay my body down there, and then somehow that was a life lived well.

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I remember talking to this one man who was losing his wife to cancer.

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And he says, you know, I don't want just life. I want eternal life.

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And so we see the world just parading all kinds of foolishness around us. Doctors, people putting their faith in doctors.

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Look, going back to the principle, we do take care of our bodies, right, as the temple of the

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Holy Spirit. We do care for ourselves. And there are implications to poor styles of living.

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There are other implications. So we can help ourselves along. But on the other hand, ultimately we cannot put our hope in this body.

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What did Paul say? He says, we don't lose heart, though outwardly we're wasting away. Why? Because inwardly we're being renewed day by day.

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And then he said, I don't even consider these trials or these difficulties worth comparing with the eternal weight of glory that awaits us.

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So we see that. Now, alienation from God and religion.

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You know, again, as I was stating before, I think this was the very first religious act because they're trying to cover their shame.

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You know, I lived 10 years in India. And in my late teens, early 20s,

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I actually spent three, before I came to know Christ, I spent three years traveling and I wound up spending six months on a

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Buddhist monastery where I spent almost a month in silence in these strict meditative exercises and was exposed to all this religiosity.

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The 10 years I was in India, I saw people bury themselves up to their neck in sand and be fed, you know, daily in their mouth.

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For weeks they would stay there in the hot sun. A man I saw in a cage, another man was, you know, buck naked for years, just laying on a pallet in the middle of the street and people would bring him food.

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Just one thing, in India, you see the most extreme expressions of religion. And what are they really trying to do?

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They believe through self -mortification that somehow their understanding of who God is or the divine, that somehow whatever they're feeling, this sense of alienation could be put to death through self -mortification and that somehow that they could have union with God.

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That's really the end game for the Eastern mystic. So Hinduism teaches that we can overcome suffering through dharma or a good life, paying off the karmic debt.

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Buddhism believes that suffering is the prime reality as a result of desire, our desires.

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And so what we need to do is to overcome desire or put to death desire to achieve salvation.

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A new age pantheism, deviant expressions of Christianity, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, prosperity gospel, so many of these, the focus is man at the center, right?

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Man at the center, trying to clothe this sense of shame and nakedness with his own good deeds and all come short of the glory of God.

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And Paul said this in 2 Corinthians 4, if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing.

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In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbeliever.

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Struggle of provision. Curse is the ground, right?

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But isn't it interesting though, if you were to turn on the TV and just watch

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TV for a couple days, which I don't anymore, I don't really watch TV at all, how many times the wealthy and the healthy are paraded before people as a symbol of hope.

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Again, as they parade these healthy and healthy before us, the idea really, the false philosophy behind it is that somehow we could be self -sufficient in and of ourselves.

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That this struggle that we're having with provision and this struggle we have with work, that somehow we can overcome it and instead of man crying out to God, give us this day our daily bread, there's just one get rich scheme after another, stories of people who've, through their great entrepreneurial skills, have earned millions and people have won the lottery.

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Just so many things are just paraded before us with the idea that there is hope there in and of itself.

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And of course, every single time it comes up empty and you're not going to get around the thorns and the thistles.

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Reality of spiritual warfare, again, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and authorities in the heavenly realms.

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You know, when I was in India, the city we lived in, city of three million, when we first got there, one of the things you do as a church planner is you do a survey to find out who are the believers in the city?

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Who are the believers? Three million, we did six months of survey,

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I could find 60 nominal believers. Maybe a few who were born again, 60, now you do the math, that's three million.

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I don't know what the percentage on that is, but that's almost like negligible in terms of witness.

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In that city of five miles by seven miles, 3 ,000 temples, 3 ,000 temples, a idol on every corner, literally, chanting all around, this is where I lived for 10 years.

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And you see, when your eyes are open, the deception of man's heart in the midst of this, and you see literally bodies being carried.

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It was on the Ganges River, which they believe that if you die in that city, that your hope of salvation is guaranteed.

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And so a lot of people come to that city and die. And literally on the streets, you see two, three, four bodies go by every day, people chanting, going down the river.

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Who would deny, by the way, as believers, we know this, right? But behind the systems of Hinduism or these false religious systems,

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Marxism and Nazism, that there's some great unseen force, even unbelievers recognize that there's something demonic.

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When you look at the Stalins of Russia, Mao of China, Hitler of Germany, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Idi Amin of Uganda, all leading to great suffering, right?

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And millions of people's lives lost. Look at Venezuela today. And it's all based on this false system of socialism under this

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Maduro and before him Chavez, I guess his name was, and the amount of suffering it brought in.

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And by the way, when people were voting these people in power, if you know anything about history, people were pretty enthusiastic about Hitler at one time.

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In 1936 at the Olympics, if you see some of those films, or you look at some of the things that were going on under Lenin and Stalin, people were excited about their leaders at one time.

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But they didn't see the demonic forces behind it. And then just the final thing here, conflict among men and nations.

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Interestingly, you know, when you look at Romans chapter one, Paul begins talking about the righteousness of Christ, right?

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But then he goes into talking about the suppression of truth, which would be the contrast to it.

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The fruit of that suppression would include homosexuality, idolatry.

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But then what's interesting to me at the very end of the chapter, he has this laundry list of 21 qualities of sin.

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I call it the dirty laundry list, 21 qualities. And many of these qualities are the center of conflict between men.

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Qualities like malice, gossip, slander, haughty, disobedience to parents, heartless, ruthless.

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All these things contribute to the conflict that goes on between people. And so how does

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Paul end that chapter? He says, although they knew God's righteous decree, that somehow people know what's right and wrong.

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If you talk to somebody who's a gossip, they know. My wife had to confront someone.

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She walks in a room and this person is blatantly gossiping. And my wife is a mouse of a person in terms of like she's a people pleaser.

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She doesn't want to confront anyone. She pulled her aside. This woman left the church over it. She could not handle the shame of it, but she knew deep down in her heart that gossip is wrong.

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So it's in the heart of man. And yet, though they know that these are the reasons that man deserves to be judged and die, they continue to do these very things.

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And what else? They approve of those who do them. Well, let's just finish up on a happy note.

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Happy note. What's the end of the story? Well, let's go back to 818.

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The glory that will be revealed in us, the glory. So we look at the mess of this world that we're in.

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The suffering as a result of judgment, as a result of sin. And yet God has put in the midst of that, we see it in the

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Genesis 3 account, a great hope that through the person of Jesus Christ, his son, right?

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That through faith in him, not only would we be cleansed from sin, cleansed from the shame that we have, but given this promise of eternal life, this glory and a future glory, right?

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A resurrected saint. What does Philippians teach us? It says that, that our citizenship is in heaven.

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And from it, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ will transform our lowly bodies to be like his heavenly body by the power that enables him to survive.

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He will subject all things to himself. I mean, that's the end of the story. That's the hope that Paul is talking about.

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And we know when Christ comes that it's going to be glorious, right?

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That when he comes to rule earth with a rod of iron, and we are with him forever and ever, that it's going to be good.

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And so Paul looked at that and had hope, had a sense of joy, despite what was being experienced.

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Jesus, by the way, same thing for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising a chain.

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He knew that his, the cross would result in redemption of man. And this is the last thought

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I'll leave you with. And this is what makes it all so amazing to me. All this suffering that we'll face, all of it as believers, whether it's persecution, disease, dying, war,

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God inserts himself through his people to reveal his glory.

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I've seen it. Do you know that there are believing doctors right now on the border of Syria?

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That's just one of many, many examples I can give you as a missiologist. That's really my forte sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with these

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Muslims who've been exiled, lost their homes, living in tents now, and God has been glorified in the midst of that suffering.

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We worked amongst untouchables for 10 years. When we left India, there were six fledging house churches.

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I remember pulling off with my 120 -pound body out of the train station with the elders

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I appointed, weeping and asking God as I pulled out, is this going to survive?

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Went back three years later, the six churches grew to 23 churches. Went back eight years later, had grown to 37 churches.

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Today it's over 50 churches with thousands who've come to Christ. These people who are just pushed down without hope as considered untouchables, meaning that they were non -caste, meaning that they would have to be born into another life to even see hope, now are running businesses.

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Some of them are sending their kids to medical school. Within 25 years, the whole community is transformed, and now they see themselves as agents of transformation to the world around them.

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That's what God does through his saints. In the midst of it all, in the midst of it all, even though they're suffering,

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God is being glorified. That's the story at the end of the age. He's going to receive that glory.

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When we stand before him, we're only going to do one thing is to worship and praise him. I think

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I timed it well. That's about it, right, Andrew? Yeah, he nods yes. Let's close in prayer.

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Father, thank you for the promises of Scripture, and in the midst of a world that suffers, we have a hope and a joy for what awaits us one day in Christ.

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Thank you, Lord, that we can live purposely here and now to share this message, that people may know you as Savior, and taste and see, really,

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Lord, that you're good. In Jesus' name, amen. This podcast is part of the

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Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org