The Fall and It's Effects Part 1

All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we open up your word and study from the book of Genesis, pray that you would open our eyes to what you would have us see and understand, and that we would see the comforting assurance of what you've done for us in human history.

Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, amen.

All right, we've been working our way slowly, very slowly, through the book of Genesis, and we will continue our trek through the book of Genesis.

And what we're going to do here, we're gonna start at chapter three, and let that be the springboard as we get into the context of chapter four.

And keep this in mind, something dramatically terrible has happened to humanity as a result of Adam and Eve's sin, and that is that we are all born dead in trespasses and sins and at war with God.

And this then becomes the thing that is the backdrop for all of the drama in the book of Genesis.

So, back to chapter three, verse one. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the other wild animals the

Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?

That's Satan's big move. Do any of you know anything about playing chess?

Yeah, we know, Stephen, that you know something about it, it's just that you're not good at it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I've played him.

He actually, I've heard that he was actually defeated by a nine -year -old, so, seven -year -old, so.

And it was a seven -year -old girl, you were, anyway. That's like insult to injury. So, in chess, if those who are good players, and I'm not saying

I'm a good player, there's different opening moves, okay? You've got the Sicilian opening, you've got the king's gamut, you've got the queen's gamut, there's names for particular openings.

Well, Satan has always the same move. It's like the jujitsu move that he always goes to, he always begins with, and that is that he's, his job is to get you to doubt

God's word, and to doubt God. Did God really say? And this takes on all kinds of forms today.

Do we really need to believe that God created the world in six literal days?

Can't we just believe in evolution? And what's at stake there? What is the person doing when they're getting you to doubt what

God's word says? And like I said a few weeks ago, well, Jesus believed in a literal six -day creation, and he rose from the grave, so when you have better credentials than him,

I'll start listening to you. So after you die and rise again, we'll talk. That's kind of my snarky way of dealing with it, but I'm gonna go with Jesus on this,

I trust him. So the serpent comes along, did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden, and that's not what

God said. The woman said to the serpent, well, we may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat the fruit from the tree that's in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.

You will not surely die, the serpent said. Boy, that's a lie, isn't it? But God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it, and the eyes of both were opened, and they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

That's how sin operates. Now, we don't have literal fig leaves, but isn't it funny that when people do wrong, they want to cover their tracks, hide the evidence, right?

We still behave like this today because of our sin. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the

Lord 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, but the

Lord God called to the man, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

And that's the other thing. Because of the effects of sin, man now fears

God and shrinks back from him because we've become evil. And there's so many passages in the

Psalms and other places that talk about the Lord is not pleased with the one who shrinks back from him in fear.

And when we pray in the Lord's prayer, our Father who art in heaven, that's the exact opposite of this.

Shrinking back in fear is one thing, boldly coming to God and saying you're my Father in heaven and asking things from him, that's different.

It's the exact opposite. You see that? So he said, who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? The man said, the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.

So Adam is blaming the woman, but also blaming God, the woman that you gave. Then the

Lord said to the woman, what is this you've done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and that's what

Satan does, and I ate. So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, 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. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.

He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. There's that verse again. Genesis chapter one, verse 15 is the

Proto -Ewangelion, the first gospel, and notice who God is talking to.

He's not talking to Adam, he's not talking to Eve. Who's he addressing? The serpent.

So God's talking to the serpent and in cursing the serpent, Adam and Eve are overhearing the first gospel, the first promise that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

Now let me back up a little bit here. I'm gonna go into chapter one. I'm looking for something in particular in chapter one.

Okay, hang on a second here, let the line produce. Ah, here we go.

Chapter one, verse 27. God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, now watch the commandments. Be fruitful and increase in number.

In other words, commandment number one, have lots of babies. Good commandment. Fill the earth, subdue it.

Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. So govern, take care of the earth.

I give you every seed -bearing plant on the face of the whole earth, every tree that has fruit with seed in it, they will be yours for food.

And all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground, everything that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food.

Notice he says give, not purchase, not buy, give. And it was so. So we've got several commands going on.

Have lots of babies, take care of the earth, you know, and take care of the plants and the beasties and things like that, right?

And then also, oh, and don't eat from this tree. So when we get to chapter three with the curses, watch how the curses go along with the commands.

They actually kind of flow, you know, they're related to each other. So back to verse 15,

I'll put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers, her seed, singular, he will crush your head, this is

Jesus, you will strike his heel, to the woman, he said, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing, with pain you will give birth to the children, your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

So this is kind of interesting, kind of a twofold thing here. The reason why we have epidurals is because of Eve.

The need for them is because of Eve, but also the tension in your marriages is also due to the fall.

And no, it wasn't my fault. Wow. And denial is not a river in Egypt, okay, yes.

So this idea that desire will be for your husband, it's actually, desire is kind of like for your husband's place, but he will rule over you, different thing altogether.

The relationship has changed, and now there's this constant power struggle within married relationships.

This is also due to the fall. And so you'll notice then that the curses from sin relate to how they were created, the order of creation, and the jobs that they were given.

So I've told you to go and fill the earth, make lots of babies, well now you're gonna do that painfully.

The woman is the perfect counterpart of the man, well now that counterpart, there's gonna be all kinds of friction and tension in that relationship, that's part of the fall.

And then Adam, he said, because you listened to your wife 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 of the days of your life, it will produce thorns and thistles for you, you will eat the plants of the field and 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.

Yeah, so nothing in this current cursed creation comes free, nothing, we all have to work and toil through the curse.

Now keep this in mind, God doesn't save us from it, he saves us through it. So when

Christ bled and died on the cross for our sins, did the curse stop? No, it didn't, it will end someday and he's saving us through the curse.

So we look forward to this end of the world stuff that we were talking about in the sermon today, with new earth, new heavens, world without end, resurrected bodies that never die, no disease, no sickness, no mourning, no pain, well

I mean, I can't imagine this, what the world is gonna be like and it'll be, one of the things that Lutherans have prayed, in fact the church has prayed for a long time, as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever, amen, okay?

That's what we call a proleptic prayer, and you understand what proleptic is?

Let me introduce you to this concept, because I think it's kind of fun, okay? All right, now I get to doodle,

I'm so excited that I get to doodle, I've been wanting to doodle for weeks now. Okay, okay, so here's the, you want, what?

What? Pink, okay, I guess I could choose colors, but I can't give in to that color.

Okay, so here's kind of the idea. Actually, let me redo this.

I wish it would stop giving me helps. We have the beginning of time, and then we have the end of time, okay?

These are two points on a linear line. Time is linear in that sense.

Now, eternity is outside of time, which means God can kind of interject himself at any point in the timeline, but we are creatures created in this time -space continuum.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and he did this on day one, on day two, so we got time and space all at the beginning.

So here's the thing, and this is where it gets kind of interesting, is that for us

Christians, there's this now and not yet piece to it. So at the end, Christ returns.

So we say Jesus comes back, and then there's a break here, and then there's a new heavens and a new earth.

But the thing is is that at this point, that's the ultimate victory. That's the ultimate, ultimate victory every enemy is done away with at that time.

But see, here's the question. Has Christ already conquered? Yes. Are we saved?

Yes, we're saved now, and yet at the same time, quite not yet. So the way to think of it is is that when we talk about eschatology, we're talking about an event in the future where there's the future reign of Christ in consummated glory, and each and every one of us as Christians are part of that kingdom.

But we are somewhere on this timeline right here. This would be Christ's death and resurrection on the timeline.

We're somewhere in here. We don't know if we're here. We don't know if we're here or here. But the one thing we do know is that because we have been made in Christ, our sins have been washed away, we are new creations, and we've been redeemed, that we are now citizens of this future coming and yet still present kingdom.

A good way to think of it is this, is a World War II analogy. World War II, Rommel after D -Day.

So you think of D -Day during World War II. The day after D -Day occurred,

Rommel, the Nazi general, said Germany's lost the war.

Now did Germany lose the war on D -Day? Yes and no.

Yes, they truly did lose the war because the war at that point was a foregone conclusion that Germany was going to lose it.

But it was still going to be a while. There's still battles to fight before that ultimate victory would occur.

So you think of it this way. Jesus dying on the cross, rising again from the grave, that's like D -Day.

There's still battles to be fought. The conclusion is absolutely certain.

There is no way the devil's gonna win. And we now, this is where it gets interesting, we were all born children of Christ's enemy, each and every one of us.

We were all enemies of Christ. And through the hearing of the gospel or through baptism,

Christ has raised us from the grave and grafted us into his family.

And now we are, in the true sense, soldiers of the future present kingdom.

Does that make sense? So in Christianity, there's this kind of a tension between two concepts, now and not yet.

I'm saved and yet my body's still gonna die. Does that make sense?

So one of these prayers that, see if I can find occasions to graft it in to our service.

The prayer goes, as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever, amen.

Well, what happens at the end of time is it'll be restored back to as it was in the beginning.

So that's one of the eschatological hopes that we have. So we pray, as it was in the beginning, is now.

We're praying it is now, but it's not perfectly now, is it? And will be forever, amen.

You see the kind of the tension here, there's kind of a mixing of categories. It's this now and not yet aspect to Christianity.

So as Christians, we say we're sinners. And as Christians, we say we're saints.

And these are not contradictions. This is truly true in the now and the not yet.

Right? Y 'all look at me like, I have no idea what happened to Chris today, he's gone crazy.

So that's okay, yeah. Yes? When you said, you know, we were all born dead.

Yes. Is that, you were born in sin, is that the same thing? Let's look at a passage.

Let's look at a passage. And by the way, Judy, I wanna say this, that what I'm about to show you and tell you,

I showed you in the catechism last week, but Presbyterians and Lutherans are in lockstep on this. Yeah, absolutely true.

Yeah. I know it. So. I'm sorry. Ha ha ha. This is where we have common ground.

Ephesians chapter two. Ephesians chapter two. Here's what it says.

As for you, Paul's writing to the Christians in the church at Ephesus. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

You were dead. Now, how much volition and free will do dead people have?

None. Zip. Zero. Now watch the verbs. Now, you were dead in your sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.

And like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. Notice that this describes our state before we were

Christians. We were all objects of God's wrath. So we were born children of the enemy.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ.

Now, real quick. God is the noun. What's the verb?

Made. And what did he made? He made us alive.

Who made us alive? God did. Did you make yourself alive? Do dead people make themselves alive?

No, dead people do not make themselves alive. This is all pretty good, yeah? And the verbs say so.

So who is it that made us alive? God is the one who made us alive. But because of his great mercy and love for us,

God made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved.

And watch this. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us up with him in the heavenly realms in Christ.

Who did the raising up? God did. In order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves.

So the one person we can take out of the equation when it comes to you being alive in Christ is you.

You weren't the one who made you alive. This is not from yourselves. This is the gift of God.

And this is why in the third article in the Creed it says I cannot by my own reason or strength come to Christ Jesus my

Lord or believe or trust in him. This is what the catechism says. Marlis, you have that?

All right, you betcha. Look at the third article of the

Creed in the small catechism. Third article of the

Creed. Did everyone keep their copies from last week? Yeah.

They're on our bookshelf. They're on your bookshelf. They're gonna get lost. Yeah, probably. Robert, you wanna read that for us?

Okay, third article of the Creed where it says I believe in the Holy Spirit. Read the article and then read the explanation.

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

What does this mean? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my

Lord or come to him that the Holy Ghost has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith even as he calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole

Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith in which

Christian Church he daily and richly forgives all sins to me and all believers and will at the last day raise up me and all the dead and give unto me and all believers in Christ eternal life.

This is most certainly true. Okay, now good. Now, why do you think that Luther explains that I cannot by my own reason or strength come to Christ Jesus my

Lord or trust in him? Why does he say that? Because of Ephesians, right.

So let's talk about, I'm gonna give you guys two more categories and I'm gonna doodle some more and I apologize for these doodles but you're just gonna have to suffer through them, okay?

Now, I'm gonna give you two Latin words and I'm gonna give, actually I'm gonna give you two Latin words and two

Latin phrases, right, real quick. The two Latin words, first is quia and the other is quatenus.

Quia means because, quatenus means insofar as.

Now, work with me for a second. The reason why this church confesses that the

Augsburg Confession and the small catechism are a correct explanation or summary of scripture is quia because they say the same thing as scripture.

Does that make sense? Now, those who want to wander from the Augsburg Confession or this catechism or any of the other confessions like the

Athanasian Creed, what they'll say is they'll say, well, those are just man -made creeds and they're only correct insofar as they represent what

God's word says. They will say those creeds are only correct insofar as they say what

God's word says. Now, that sounds really pious but the problem is is then it becomes up to each individual person to determine whether or not those creeds are correct.

Does that make sense? So, we here at Kongsvinger and as well as the AALC, we confess

Lutheran confessions quia because they say the same thing as scripture.

Now, that does not mean our confessions are scripture. They're not and this gets us into two more categories.

Let me erase here. Let's see here. I'm gonna erase a little bit more. There we go. Okay, and here are your other two category.

Norma, Normans and Norma Normata.

Okay, Norma Normans and Norma Normata. Real simply, Norma Normans is a norming norm and Norma Normata is a normed norm.

Okay, okay, let me, now, I know. Okay, let's, okay. It's really not that hard.

Just let me explain, okay. Okay, when we talk, okay, when you are on your computer and your computer logs, you'll notice the time on your computer stays perfect, right?

There's a reason for that because there's a standard and the standard is the atomic clock. So what happens is is that when you look at your clock on your computer, your computer's clock has been normed according to the norming norm.

I know that, just work with me for a second here. I can say that the clock on my computer is accurate because it complies with, it has been normed by the standard which is the atomic clock, right?

The atomic clock is the standard. It doesn't change and your clock is accurate really if it's saying the same thing as the norming norm.

So you got the norming norm and a normed norm. Does that make sense? So let me work with, work with me for a second, work with the analogy, draw more pictures.

Okay, we'll draw more pictures. Let's see if we can draw this out, okay. Okay, and by the way, you're gonna find out not only do

I have bad handwriting but you're gonna find out I can't draw. While we're doing this now, what will this connect to?

This can, hang on a second here. How do they do those symbols?

Hang on a second here, I think I know how to do this. That's a clock. Yeah, hang on a second. You know how it's the atomic clock?

Okay, okay, so we have an atomic clock and then I've got my laptop, okay.

Yeah, and don't ask me to draw a phone, that wouldn't work. So there's my laptop and then what happens is is that it connects to the internet and the internet is now symbolized by a cloud and it goes this way.

But here's the deal, on my laptop, there's a clock also, right? And so the question is, is the time on my laptop accurate?

Yes, it's accurate because my clock has been normed according to the norm, which is the atomic clock.

Does that make sense? Now, using the metaphor then, the Augsburg Confession and the small catechism, these are like the clock on your laptop.

The reason why they're accurate is because they have been normed by the atomic clock, which is

God's word. Does that make sense? So here you've got the norma normans, here you've got norma normata.

This is, the norma normans is the norming norm, everything has to line up with that and the

Augsburg Confession and small catechism, they are normed norms and the reason why they're accurate is because they say the same thing as scripture.

Does that make sense? They've been normed. Norma normans is the standard.

Yes. And norma norm set by. Exactly. And this is an important distinction to keep in mind because listen, the

Book of Concord, the small catechism, the Augsburg Confession, they're not scripture. Scripture is scripture.

The reason why they're accurate is because they say the same thing as scripture. If your confession doesn't say the same thing as scripture, it's not an accurate confession.

So we confess that these things are true because they say the same thing as God's word. So when we get to Article Three, why does

Article Three say what it says? It says what it says because it's saying the same thing as Ephesians two. Got it?

Okay. And he stuck the landing. Okay. The way it's literally worked out is said in the

Bible is to find where the Bible. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you'll notice something here.

I try to make a very, I try to do this as habit. I don't try to teach the small catechism by teaching the catechism.

I try to teach the scriptures and what they say. And then when I open up the catechism, you'll say, oh, well, that's what pastor was saying.

So my job actually here at the church is to teach the norming norm. And the

Augsburg Confession and the small catechism and the creeds, they take a secondary place. Those then become, in a sense, kind of rule of thumb.

Summaries of what it is we believe, teach, and confess. But my job isn't to teach the catechism in the truest sense.

My job's to teach the word. Does that make sense? Now, that doesn't mean

I won't use the catechism in the Augsburg Confession and other things to help. I think they're extremely helpful. And they're also very comforting.

But each thing has its place. Back to our text. Oh, Stephen had a question.

You didn't answer the first thing that you posed, which is, what does that word mean when it's like,

Proleptic, yes. What does that word actually mean? Proleptic, it's kind of tough to explain what it means, but I explained what it means by giving you the example.

It's the now, not yet. It's the present, future thing. Yeah, now, not yet.

That's a good way to just kind of rule of thumb to understand what proleptic means. Okay, good. Now I understand. But it's more truthful than that insofar as, which is just a qualifier, or it's a way to cover what you don't know.

Yeah. See, there's a difference between that and a qualifier. Yeah, see, it's as pious as somebody sounds when they say, well, listen,

I'll believe something is true insofar as it correctly represents what God's word says.

That sounds pious, because it sounds like you're putting scripture in a primary place, but in reality, you're putting yourself in the primary spot.

And does that make sense? Because now I then become the judge of, well, what fits and what doesn't. That's a very dangerous place to be.

Yeah, that's improper communication. Yeah, yeah. And this then gets into what we call the ministerial versus magisterial use of reason.

Kind of another knockdown on this. I know this was a little bit complicated, but here's the idea, is that God has given us our reason, and our reason is never to govern

God's word. Our reason is always to be governed by God's word. You never approach God's word and say, that doesn't make any sense.

That's unreasonable, therefore it must not be true. If something seems unreasonable, well, it's probably that you're misusing reason.

We use, we'd never let our reason govern scripture. Our reason has always gotta be governed by scripture.

A good example of somebody who's trying to make their reason govern scripture is the one who says, oh, miracles aren't possible.

The philosopher David Hume. We know that miracles aren't possible because, well, that would be a breaking of the rules and the laws of nature.

And since the rules and laws of nature are never broken, that means that miracles aren't possible. Yeah, perfect circular logic there.

That's an example of somebody who's basically trying to govern scripture with their mind. This is what

Thomas Jefferson did with his Bible. You familiar with the Jefferson Bible? Jefferson was truly a man of the

Enlightenment, and he did not believe that miracles were possible. So, he came up with a clever idea.

He liked the morals of Jesus, but he didn't believe that the miracles of Jesus really occurred.

In the age of reason, in the age of the Enlightenment, that's just too ridiculous. So, what he did is he literally took out the equivalent of an exacto knife and just started cutting out of his

Bible all of the places where there were miracles in the New Testament. Now, all you're left is with the moral

Jesus, but no miracle -working Jesus. And in that Bible, it's in the Smithsonian. It looks like Swiss cheese.

It's the redacted version. Yeah. Okay. So, coming back.

Let's go back now to Genesis. Yes, you may. So, if the

Bible is the norm into which we all try to pattern our lives on knowing each other, and these other writings, they're not so far as.

Yeah. Right. They say the same thing. What about the day they were written?

Mm -hmm. Is that what anybody thought? What you'll find. Because I wouldn't believe there were others that thought they weren't.

Mm -hmm. What you'll find is that every confession that has come into existence was brought into existence in the middle of controversy.

I think the only exception would really be the Apostles' Creed. And I mean that in the truest sense.

The Apostles' Creed is kind of more of a baptismal creed when you look at its history. In the Western church,

Western part of the Mediterranean, so the Latin -speaking regions, that was used as a baptismal creed and a catechetical creed, whereas the

Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed were literally forged in the middle of controversy. And when you look at the history of the

Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, the majority of people in the Christian churches at that time did not believe what was written in those creeds, but they were written specifically to combat error.

That was literally their purpose. And so you look at the Council of Nicaea in the early part of the fourth century, and the role that Athanasius played against the

Arian heresy. At that time, the majority of churches were buying into the Arian heresy. And at the

Council of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed was finally hammered out, and the verbiage was written in such a way that an

Arian could not confess it. And even after it was written, it took the better part of a century and a half before Arianism finally died.

And there was a time when the Christian church was on the brink, literally.

I mean, there was no reason numerically why the Trinity should have won, except for by the grace of God, because that's what scripture says.

And so then you look at the confessional documents, the Augsburg Confession.

The Augsburg Confession was written in the midst of the controversy pertaining to the rediscovery of the gospel at the time of the

Reformation from Martin Luther. And so the Augsburg Confession comes a little bit of time down the road from the writing of the 95

Theses. But again, it's forged in controversy, and those who confess it confessed it, some of them at the price of their own life, and no, the majority of people did not, who called themselves

Christians, did not subscribe to the Augsburg Confession. And that's still to this day. You have to understand that the

Protestant Reformation, the protest, in a sense, was basically saying that we cannot continue to remain united with Rome while Rome continues to teach that salvation is by works, and that these are man -made works and man -made mythologies that the

Pope and the Roman Catholic Church was foisting on the people and binding their consciences, saying that you had to buy indulgences in order to spring your dead parents out of purgatory, prayers to the saints, and going and viewing relics in order to get time off of purgatory, really crazy stuff like that.

And so at the time, there was a split that was created, but remember this, that Luther really wanted to stay within the

Roman Catholic Church and reform it from within, but the Pope excommunicated him. And so it literally, if you were to kind of think of it, it created a

Christian church in a sense that's in exile. And so we as Lutherans, we're in exile from the

Catholic Church, and we're waiting for them to un -anathematize the gospel.

If there's to be true unity in the body of Christ, there has to be unity in confession of doctrine, unity regarding the gospel.

But they anathematized the gospel. The Council of Trent basically said that anyone who believes that you're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ's work alone, that you're anathema, you're damned.

So the majority of people do not confess the Augsburg Confession. The small catechism was not written in that type of polemic.

It was written specifically to help the churches teach the faith, and so it has a different function.

It's truly catechetical, to be used by heads of household and by pastors to instruct people in the basics of the

Christian faith. But the reason why, in a Lutheran church, we confess the Augsburg Confessions is because we believe it says the same thing as Scripture.

That the gospel it proclaims is the same gospel that Scripture proclaims. The doctrines that it teaches regarding original sin, the doctrine of the

Trinity, justification by grace through faith, the efficacy of baptism in the Lord's Supper, and all of the different things that are in the articles in the

Augsburg Confession, we believe that those are true because they're saying the same thing as Scripture. That's our confession.

And by the way, the word confessed, does anyone know what that means? It's time for another doodle. Okay. Okay, and I'll do it in pink.

Just because. Okay. Well, I'll be jiggered.

Hang on a second. While you're doing that.

Yeah. My limited knowledge on the Nice, I can't remember what you call it, but the meeting where they wrote.

Council of Nicea. Right. That also was, for lack of better terms for me, multi -denominational.

Well, it was Catholic. It was Catholic in the truest sense. And this was before there was a schism within the visible body of Christ.

The one thing that's fascinating about that is that the Aryan heresy almost tore Christianity into two.

And the Council of Nicea helped to keep everything united at the same time while pushing the

Aryans out. In future battles, it didn't end that way. And the first real schism in Christianity came when two, when the

Bishop of Rome and another major bishop, both of them called popes, by the way, papa, which is what pope means, papa, fathers, had a political fight and they anathematized each other and cast each other out.

Church politics is worse than even US politics. Okay.

Coming back to the thing. We get the word confess. It appears in scripture.

The Greek word is hama -legeo. Hama -legeo. We all know what hama means, right?

When we say someone's a homosexual, what does that mean? Same. Same sex.

So here's the Greek word hama. H -O -L -E -G -E -O is the

Greek verb to say or to speak. To say the same thing. So a confession is to say the same thing.

So when we say we are going to confess our faith, we're going to say the same thing as our faith.

And when somebody's confession deviates from scripture, they're no longer truly saying the same thing.

So when we say we are going to confess our sins, what we're doing is we're saying the same thing that God's word says and I'm confessing, saying the same thing, that I'm a sinner.

Does that make sense? So this is where these concepts come from. I know it's important to kind of know these words, understand how they work in Christian doctrine.

Hama -legeo, to say the same thing. That's what it means to confess. All right, back to our text.

Genesis chapter three, verse 20.

Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all of the living.

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

So we see a sacrifice, God clothes them. This is a type and shadow that points us to the fact how

God clothes us in his righteousness. So he covers their nakedness.

God is the one who gives them clothing. And the Lord God said, the man has now become like one of us.

Notice again here God's saying, he's become like one of us. Who's he talking to? This is the Trinity talking.

Knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.

I've pointed this out, I'll point it out again. In the Hebrew here, this is actually an incomplete thought. The sentence is incomplete.

It's as if God all of a sudden, he's talking and he kind of tails off. He's thinking about the impossible.

It's like this would be the worst outcome ever. Could you imagine what would happen if humanity now in a sinful state ate from the tree of life and lived forever in that sinful state?

That'd be terrible. Absolutely beyond terrible.

Yeah, we're all vampires or zombies. Be like the perpetual zombie apocalypse.

Okay. Okay. New. Okay.

So we continue. Yes, ma 'am. I never thought of this before, but verse 20, named his wife

Eve. So Eve didn't have a name. She was all, and I'm looking at the

Bible and it always just says woman. Yeah. Woman, woman, woman. Yeah. So she, so God named

Adam, but Adam named Eve. Yes, ma 'am. Because Adam named all the creatures.

Right, but I thought that God named Eve. Adam named his wife.

Does that mean we're supposed to name our wives? No. No. No.

No. Yeah, no, that's true. Right, and this is also kind of an important part of this.

Okay, when we talk about fourth commandment, honor your father and mother. Fourth commandment is actually kind of in play here, is that God, it's his will that this earth be governed, that we take care of it, and that includes not only nature, but also society and how society is ordered.

And so God has put into our discretion the ability to make decisions, either for good or for evil, when it comes to caring for these things.

And so the idea is that people often over -mysticalize God when they have these weird ideas that they'll say things like, well,

I'm looking for that perfect person that God has planned for me to marry. That actually is misunderstanding.

God has actually given you the authority to choose whomever you want to marry, so make a good decision, okay?

But it's not like God has that perfect soulmate person that you've got to find, otherwise you'll never fulfill your purpose or anything like that.

God has given us kind of general ideas here. Don't marry a pagan. Don't be equally yoked with an unbeliever.

Use your brain. You don't want to be married to somebody who is a rebel, although rebels are cool, things like that.

So you look for things. Yeah, he's got a good job, he's morally upstanding, goes to church, things like that.

But it's not like God says, okay, I've got the woman for you, and she's a blonde, and she's five foot 10, and all this kind of stuff, and she lives in outer

Sloverbia, go and find her. No, God's given you the authority to make these decisions.

So what came first, the sin or her name? The sin came first.

The sin came first? Yes. Okay. In chapter two,

I have all of the women. In chapter two? In chapter five, either. Yeah, yeah, the woman.

Yeah, the woman. She's just referred to the woman until she's named Eve. But I mean, even there, the man is a woman. Yeah, that's right.

And then from this, you can draw the conclusion that God also is in the order of language.

Yes, in fact, this is kind of a fascinating thing, and we might touch on this when we get to the

Flood. Another great argument in favor of not only the

Flood, but creation, and that's this. How do we explain that there are so many different languages on the

Earth? How do we explain that? Because if evolution were true, wouldn't there be one universal language for all of humanity?

But didn't God take and separate and split people? God created all of these different languages.

Yeah. Tower of Babel. Yeah, if evolution were actually true, then what we should expect to see is that every human being speaks the same language.

We all have a same common ancestry and descent through, you know, whoever grandma and grandpa who went from ape to human is, and then work that out.

But no, we have all of these different languages. Genesis 3, chapter 20. This is the first incident of actual death because it talks about the skin.

Yes. What's your opinion on that, or was there animal kingdom death before that? We don't know, okay, we don't know exactly on the timeline where this is.

We don't know if this is like tail end of the sixth day, a week later, a month later. We don't have a timeframe from the original six days.

This is the first mention of death, and also the fact that death is associated with sin.

The day you eat of it, you will surely die. I think the biblical case is that death is a result of the fall, not something that was a part of nature.

Yeah. So they weren't going to eat of the animal? No, in fact, what we'll see when we get to the story, when we get, yeah, they're vegan, is a better way to put it.

When we get to the end of the story of Noah and the flood, it's not until after the flood that God permits mankind to eat from the animals.

Yep. Yeah. In the end, the lion will die down at the land.

Exactly. Vegan again. Yeah, we're going back to vegan again, and lions won't eat animals.

They'll be vegetarian. I was listening to Palo Alto this week. They still won't let you eat the animals. Yeah. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

He was in Palo Alto, and they don't let you eat animals there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The land of fruits and nuts. I used to live in California. All right, let's finish chapter three, and then next week we'll definitely get to Cain and Abel.

So the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them, 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 to take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. 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, these would be angels, and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way back to the tree of life.

And we talked about this a couple weeks ago, typologically now. We can't go back to Eden, we can't go back to Eden.

And God takes up so many of the different pieces of this Genesis story, and they get wrapped up then in what

Christ did for us on the cross. So you think about Jesus, he is that promised seed.

The cross, even though it is a tree of death, becomes the tree of life for us, because that's really what it is.

The fruit of that tree is Christ's body and blood, which we have in communion for the forgiveness of our sins.

Christ, when he was crucified, he had the crown of thorns on his head. He was born of the Virgin, Eve was a virgin at the time when the fall took place.

I mean, you start looking at all of the parallels. This is the kind of thing that you say, this cannot possibly be a coincidence.

Or as Einstein used to say, God does not play with dice. God does not play with dice.

So all of these things, when you start to see the connection with what Christ has accomplished, and he's the one truly promised here, and the funny part is that he's promised,

Adam and Eve get to overhear it. So there's God cursing the serpent, and then they overhear in the midst of that curse that promise, and then that becomes kind of the backdrop for chapter four.

It says in chapter four, Adam lay with his wife and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, with the help of the

Lord I have brought forth a man. In the Hebrew here, it actually, I would say more than points to, she actually believes maybe this is that promised seed.

Yeah, that's really what she was hoping. But unfortunately, all of her hopes are dashed because Cain doesn't have faith.

He does not have faith, and he actually becomes the first murderer. Yes, family tensions were even bad all the way back then.

Yes, sir. Is there a correlation for placing the sword on the east side of the gate or something else? I would have to look to see if,

I haven't seen what I would consider a good explanation on the east side. It could do with the topography of the land.

I don't know, you know. I don't know if it was a return or coming of Christ the second time or whatever.

As the east is from the west? Hmm, I don't know. Let me do a little research on that.

Yeah, see if there's actually anything significant, the fact that it's on the east side. Why did they have to guard it?

No one was gonna go in it. Oh, they had to guard it to make sure Adam and Eve didn't go back. Do you really think Adam and Eve would go back?

Does God trust sinners? Yeah, you know.

Okay, when you tell a child, don't touch that, what's that child wanna do? Exactly.

Yeah. So God knows that they have, something has changed within their nature.

They now have a sinful nature, and God is not about to say, okay, well, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.

Let's trust them. No way. I wouldn't trust any sinner as far as I can throw him, and I don't trust myself for that reason.

I will tell you this. When you read the writings of the church fathers and some theologians, there's a group of them that for whatever reason, they will argue, and this is pure speculation, you have to keep this into this category, because you can kind of overcook these things, is they speculate that Mount Moriah, where Jesus is crucified, is where the

Garden of Eden was and where the Tree of Life was. They, that's their argument. They basically, their argument is that if you kind of think how

God works, their argument is that that mountain, where Jesus is crucified, where the

Temple Mount is, that is ground zero for everything in humanity when it comes to God.

That's like the place, and so it's a pious speculation, and I would not, you can believe it is or not believe it is that you're not damned if you do or damned if you don't, but I think it's a fascinating way of thinking that that is actually the physical location, and that would be an interesting way for God to work.

Where the Tree of Life was is where Christ was crucified makes sense to me, but can you prove it?

No, there's no way to do it. That's when you start getting into, like I call it, pious speculation. As it was in the beginning.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, amen. It's consistent with proleptic theology, though, so.

Yes, ma 'am. I think the, for me, the visual of the angels with swords that are pointing, it's kind of like God is making it so incredibly clear you are not wanted any longer.

The angels, you know, with swords. I mean, he's got like lots of chains and, you know, keys or locks on those gates when he doesn't have to, like Robin just said.

He could just watch him if he wanted to, but I think it's a statement,

I think it's that statement. Yeah, and. It's how much that alienation is. I wouldn't say it's alienation from God because look at the fact that Adam and Eve, they were clothed by God and he still continues to stay in their life, okay?

He's an active part of their life. The message is clear, though. The way to life is not through that tree that way.

There's a different route you've gotta go. Yeah, and it's that route is gone. Yeah, yeah, the original intent for us to eat from the tree of life, that's cut off.

We, and when you read the book of Revelation, though, the tree of life makes an appearance in the book of Revelation, and it says that we will eat of the tree of life on a monthly basis.

We will eat of its fruit every month. It has a harvest on a monthly cycle.

So keep that in mind, it comes back. You know, we're gonna see it again. You know, and by the way, it's not an apple tree, okay?

Yeah? Could those warnings, could that have been something that the first people look to as a remembrance that this is where they came from, that they are a sinner?

Like, we don't know much, we don't know anything about really their religion, but we know certain things were set up, and maybe the,

I mean, maybe the garden even, Eden was there until the flood happened and then it went through.

Yeah, we don't know if it was there until the flood. I mean, you start to get into speculation at this point.

In fact, we know very little, very little of what the earth was like prior to the flood.

And there's some confusion about it, too, and we'll talk about that when the time comes. And part of that confusion is based upon the book of Enoch.

You guys heard about the book of Enoch? Okay, have you heard that, you've probably heard the interpretation where it says that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were pleasing to the eye and they married them, and they brought forth the

Nephilim? Well, the book of Enoch is an ancient book that interprets that as angels married humans.

There's a big problem with that interpretation, and that is that angels don't have physical bodies. And so that also kind of ignores some other things in scripture.

But that's where that originally comes from, and people throughout the history of the church have actually believed the book of Enoch's interpretation.

The book of Enoch also tells us that it was the angels who told women how to use makeup.

Just a little odd. Yeah, that's what the book of Enoch says. Cosmetics came, that's what the book of Enoch says about cosmetics.

Yeah. I'll ask Mary Kate. But we can talk about this all next week.