SGFC Worship Service - September 27, 2020

Worship Service Welcome and Congregational Notices

Good morning. It is good to see everyone this morning. I look forward to Sunday every week. You know I have trouble sleeping on Saturday night. I really do. I look forward to being here. I look forward to being with you all and I'm thankful that you're here.

I'm thankful that we get to worship together this morning. Just a quick reminder if you are a first-time visitor with us this morning, I don't see any but sometimes I miss folks, if you're a first-time visitor with us this morning, inside your worship folder there is a little tag that can be torn off.

We'd ask that you tear that off, fill it out, and drop in the offering plate when we have the offering later. If you're a member, we'd like for you to register your attendance with us so that we know that you were here, but the most important thing on there of course is prayer requests.

If you have things that you want us to pray for, you can fill that out and drop it in the offering plate when it is passed. There is a lot that we have to do today but the most important thing is to praise the Lord.

Let us stand together and start praising by welcoming one another into worship. Let's stand and welcome our neighbors and when you hear the music begin, let us sing together.

We have been reading through the New Testament. We'll continue to do so and I just wanted to say this, you know, when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we exhort one another to examine ourselves as we partake.

And so I wanted to say this morning, we ought to examine ourselves as we listen to the Word of God. That the reading of the Word of God is not something, it's not time out for us to go and think about all the different things that are on our minds.

We ought to give attendance to the Word of God and that's why we read it publicly. And again, I will say not only should we be very careful how we handle Jesus, you ought to be very careful how we handle God's Word.

So with that, I want to read to you 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 as Paul gives multiple exhortations to the church of Thessalonica in his, at the end of this epistle. So 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. We are not sons of light, sons of the day.

We are not of the night or of the darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night. Those who get drunk, are drunk at night. Then let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.

For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Therefore, comfort one another and edify one another, just as you are doing.

And we urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. Be at peace amongst yourselves.

Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those that are unruly. Comfort the faint-hearted. Uphold the weak. Be patient to all. See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good, both for yourselves and for all.

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything, give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophesies. Test all things. Hold fast what is good.

Abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who will also do it.

Pray, brethren, pray for us. Greet all the brethren with a holy kiss. I charge you before the Lord that this epistle be read to all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

May God bless his word.

Offering as an Act of Cheerful Sacrifice

An opportunity to give to the Lord as an act of sacrifice and an act of love,.

And to return a portion of what he has given to us. And so this is the time that we call the offering. And the scriptures in the New Testament tell us that this is something that we must decide in our heart to do.

Not reluctantly, and not because we have to, but because we want to. As the scripture says, for God loves a cheerful giver. So my encouragement to you today is that as we sing the next song, to give cheerfully, and to give what the Lord has laid on your heart.

We have two receptacles in the front. These two bowls are for offering. We have an offering plate in the back here. We have an offering plate in the back over there. Now the closest deacon who's not tied up is Adam.

So Adam, would you come and pray for our offering? And then we will we will sing a song. And while we sing, you're.

Welcome to come. Let's pray. Our great Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to come together this morning and worship you freely, Lord. God, we humble our hearts before you, and we just thank you for this opportunity that we have to give back a portion of what you bless us with.

I pray that the money that's given today will be greatly used to impact your kingdom, Father. Bless the giver from the cheerful heart, Lord, in your name I pray. Amen. Amen.

A different elder prays, and a different elder reads, and a different elder does the table. I don't know if you've noticed that or not, but that's sort of our rotating schedule. And Brother Andy lets us know the night before that it's your turn to pray, it's your turn to preach, or not preach, I preach every week, but it's your turn to pray or do the table or whatever.

Prayer for the Nation, the Bereaved, and Revival

And I don't know how many of you know this or not, I don't know how many of you keep up with world politics and things like that. Yesterday a pretty big event happened. The nomination of a new Supreme Court justice was made.

And when Brother Andy asked me if I would do the prayer today, I said, well, I think we ought to pray for Amy Coney Barrett. She is about to experience a form of investigation that is sure to be no less than very difficult.

We saw what happened the last time, and you know, I don't know much about her, I don't know much about her faith, but I know the way they treated the last guy was pretty awful. And I hate to see any human being, any image bearer of God have to be treated that way, especially somebody who's taking on a very thankless job.

And so I think we should pray for our country, I think we should pray for her as an individual. And if she doesn't know the Lord, we should pray for that too. That would be a wonderful and important thing.

I want to also pray for my brother Chris this morning. Chris Belcher, his friend died. His name is Tiger Beck, and about his age, so a very young man, and has passed away. So I want to pray for the Beck family.

I want to pray for the Belcher family as they're going through a time of grief. And I want to ask God to be merciful on them and to watch over them. I did a service yesterday for a young man, 48 years old, who did not know the Lord while I was preaching his funeral.

Somebody got up and went to the back and complained to the funeral director and said, he didn't believe in Jesus. He wouldn't want this. And afterwards, I said, there's nothing he would want more right now than this, because he knows now, unfortunately.

And I wasn't preaching for him, I was preaching for them. Funerals are for the living, and that's it. But it's a lot to think about. Eternity sure is a long time. So we've got a lot to pray for today.

You have in your worship folders a list of things to pray for. I'm so thankful that we have Walter here. Is he still here? Did he have to leave? Oh, there he is. I should have known. I'm glad you're back, Walter, and it's wonderful to have you, and it's good to have you sharing.

You've been with us now for several weeks. I'm very thankful for that. Such a blessing to see, and it's good to see you, Stephanie, too. Oh, what? So you said lost her husband. That was the pastor that you knew?

Is this the pastor that you told me about? Okay, because there was a pastor that you told me about. Well, I'm so sorry to hear that. That's a lot to deal with. No, no, we want to pray, right? Thank you for sharing.

What's the name of the family? The Morrises. All right, well, we'll pray for the Morrises. We'll pray for the Becks. Thank God for you guys who are here, and if you have things on your mind and on your heart, I'm going to give you just a few seconds to pray on your own, and take everything that you have to the Lord, and then I'll lead us in our time of prayer together.

So let's bow our heads. Father, we come to you in Jesus' name. Lord, we thank you. We thank you that we can come in Jesus' name. Lord, I was just meditating yesterday on the fact that sometimes we get caught up in the reality that you can't go to heaven without Jesus, and we forget the blessing that we can go to heaven with Jesus, and that's the only way, but that's the great thing is there is a way.

You didn't have to give us a way. You didn't have to give us anything. You were not obliged to us at all, for God, we are rebels. As we will see in our text today, Lord, we are following after our father Adam, who was a rebel in the garden, and who was the subject of your judgment, and we, Lord, we rebel in the same spirit of Adam.

Every time we sin against you, we give our yes and amen to what Adam did, and Lord, we stand apart from Christ, fully condemned in our sins, and yet you love the world so much that you sent your only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but will have eternal life, and so now we know that if we are in the beloved, if we are in the son, we are no longer subject to separation.

We are no longer subject to division, but we have been, we have been united with Christ, and therefore we have been made partakers of the blessings that he deserves. Lord, we have been adopted into your family, and we now get to cry out, Abba, Father.

Lord, where before we could not, before we came to Christ, we were rebels, and we were strangers, and we were, we were, as it were, we were outside of the commonwealth of Israel, but now we have been brought near by the blood of Christ, and Lord, now in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither male nor female, there is neither slave nor free, but we are all one in Christ Jesus, and the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

We all stand as ones who deserve your punishment, but at the foot of the cross, we receive your mercy, we receive your grace as a gift, and Lord, because of that, we can say we come to you in Jesus' name, because there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than the blessed name of Jesus Christ.

Father, thank you. Thank you for that wonderful gift. Thank you for that wonderful promise. Thank you that we can come into your presence, though we don't deserve it. And Father, as we today think about all of the prayer requests that are on our heart, Lord, first we want to say that we confess to you that we could never extinguish all of our needs on a prayer request list, or even by talking to one another, because, Lord, our needs run so deep and so wide, but yet your word tells us you are able to meet all of our needs in Christ.

And so, Lord, as we come to you today and we lay up before you the Beck family and we say, God, be merciful to this family that has lost a very young man, we ask that you be merciful to them. God, that you would show yourself real to them.

That you would show yourself the only one in whom there is respite in the time of a severe emotional storm. Your word tells us that you are near to the brokenhearted. So, Lord, we pray that you would be near to them.

I pray for my brother Chris. Lord, I see in his face the brokenness of someone who has lost a loved one, a friend, and I know his heart hurts today, and I pray for him. And I ask that you be merciful to him and to his family.

At the same time, Lord, I think about that family from yesterday, and I think about their terrible loss, and Lord, how many lost people there were. I pray, Lord, that the gospel that was preached yesterday would go out into their hearts and that they would understand that Jesus is the only one who can save them from their sins.

Father, I thank you for those among us, our church members, who are able to come back to church today. Lord, what a blessing it is to look out and see so many faces and know, Lord, that many of us were separated from each other for a time, but now we are here.

I thank you for that. Father, as I think about our church, my mind also goes to our nation. For, Lord, we live in a state where we are very thankful for men like our governor who seems to be right-thinking in regard to many things, and we are grateful for him.

But, Lord, we know beyond our state, there are many places in our nation where there is not right-thinking. There is a lot of wrong-thinking. And, Lord, when it comes to the decision that was handed down yesterday in regard to the choosing of a new justice for the Supreme Court, Lord, we know that in regard to that, there is going to be great turmoil, almost undoubtedly, unless your hand stays it, Lord.

So we do pray that the almighty hand of God would stay the turmoil, that you would, Lord, keep us from death and destruction, which undoubtedly will be the desire of many based upon this decision. Father, we do pray that this woman who has been nominated, Lord, we know that if her nomination goes through, she will sit in the highest court of the land.

But there is a court much higher than that one, the court of almighty God. And every judge who sits on any court in any land in any place will one day stand before the greatest judge of all and have to give an account for how they ruled.

So I pray, O God, that by your mercy, that you would save those people on our court, not just Amy Barrett, but all of them. Lord, what a massive change could occur if those that are in leadership positions and powerful positions would turn their heart to the Lord.

But, Father, we know only you can turn a heart. I'm reminded of one of the great reformers who said that often when you choose to judge a nation, you give wicked rulers, O God. I can't help but see throughout our nation that we do have wicked leaders in many places.

But we pray for our land. We pray there would be repentance. We pray there would be a turning and a revival. There has been revival before. It can happen again, O God. We come to you in prayer and we say grant us revival.

And, Father, when we think about the reality of what it takes to have revival, we know that it begins in the pulpits. So I pray that even today, men who have been called to preach would preach the gospel, that they would preach the truth of Scripture, that we would stop being so weak and effeminate, but that we would stand up as men and preach the gospel as men, preach as dying men to dying people.

O God, give us the strength and let it begin with us. Father, I'm reminded of a hymn that says, hear our prayer, O Lord, incline thine ear to us and grant us thy peace. So, Lord, this is our prayer in Jesus' name.

Amen. Please take your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 3 and hold your place at verse 8. While you're turning there, I want to make a few preliminary comments. In 2015, an article was put out by the Wall Street Journal that stated that hundreds of churches in Europe have closed because attendance in those churches had plunged to near nothing.

And this has caused many folks to ask, well, what do we do with these giant buildings that once housed worship services for God? Well, many of those buildings are being turned into, well, all kinds of things.

They're being converted into nightclubs. Some of them are being converted into warehouses. Some are even being converted into mosques. And one in the Netherlands was converted into a skateboard park. It's now an indoor skateboard park.

And this is also happening in the United States. According to NPR, a centuries-old Methodist church was purchased recently so it could be repurposed as a bed and breakfast. It's called adaptive reuse.

They take an old church building, they gut the inside and turn it into something else, but it still looks like a church on the outside. So, in both Europe and in the United States, where once beautiful houses of worship stood, now stand, as I said, nightclubs, warehouses, beds and breakfasts, and mosques.

And what this is, is this is a visible reminder of a very important truth. Sin has the power to take something beautiful and make it ugly. Sin has the power to take something that is intended to glorify God and use it for another purpose.

And I think that that's what we actually see in the garden. What we're going to see today is what once was a beautiful place of communion between God and man is now going to become a courtroom. Sin is going to take that beautiful place, that beautiful sanctuary, and turn it into a court of law.

So, with our attention on the text, let us stand and read, and we're going to read verse 8 all the way to the end to see this take place. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman who you gave me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, curse it are you, above all livestock and above all beasts of the field, and on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.

Curse it is the ground because of you, and in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.

For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin, and clothed them.

Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, and knowing good and evil, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed a cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Father in heaven may you grant me mercy as I preach, keep me from error, give me boldness, keep me from cowardice, and bless your people.

And Lord if there are those here who do not know the Lord, may this be a day of reckoning for them in Christ's name. Amen. Please be seated. Now you know as well as I do, I don't normally read that much text because I don't normally preach that much text.

But you also know if you've been here, we've been going through Genesis verse by verse, and I have already preached verses 8 to 13. However, I felt the desire to remind you that what we see beginning in verse 14 is based on what happened in verses 8 to 13, and I felt like just jumping into verse 14 would be somewhat of a little premature.

Remember this, what we have seen so far in Genesis is three primary scenes. We have seen the scene of creation, and that is God creating the world. That's chapter 1. Then we've seen the scene which we might call the domestic scene.

God creates the family. He creates man, He creates woman, He marries the couple, and that's what we see in chapter 2. He gives them a place to live, He gives them a job to do, and He gives them one another to live together in the estate of matrimony.

So we see creation in chapter 1. We see, if you will, domestication in chapter 2. But then in chapter 3, we see failure. In chapter 3, there's the introduction of failure, corruption because of sin. Now I want you to think of this, and I want you to keep this in your mind today, because this is important, not only for the theme of the sermon, but this is actually an important truth regarding the whole of Scripture.

Sin is a legal matter. People often think of sin as a moral thing, and it is, but sin is a legal matter. God has given a command, and He has given a punishment that goes along with that command. Therefore, God has created a form of a judicial system.

If you do this, you will receive this. This is the punishment that will accompany this act of transgression, and the act has occurred. And so we see, as I said in my introduction, we see the garden turn into a courtroom, and the judge walks onto the scene, and everything now changes.

I have a four-part outline today, if you'll throw that up for me, Ms. Pam. What we see in verses 8 to 24 is we see the realization of guilt. We see the interrogation of the guilty. We see the condemnation of the guilty, but then we see the provision for the guilty, and that's the part I hope to get to, because as I was preaching this sermon to myself, I said, wow, I don't think I'm going to be able to get there, but I don't want to not get to the provision part.

So what I'm going to do, because I spent the last several weeks looking at the first two, I'm going to speed through those so that I can get to the third one. So you guys ready? You buckled in? Because, really, we've already looked at the realization of guilt.

That's verses 7 and 8. In verses 7 and 8, we see the realization. They realized they were guilty, and they felt shame. They realized they had done wrong, and they felt that they had done wrong, and they have this shame, and so they decide to cover themselves.

They retreat from the presence of God, first by trying to cover their nakedness, and then when they realize that covering won't do, they run into the trees, hoping that somehow the trees will block them from the gaze of Almighty God, and they run into the trees, and they try to find themselves somehow hidden, and they heard the voice of the Lord, or they heard, rather, the sound of the Lord coming in the cool of the day, as we talked about last week.

They ran for cover because they knew their coverings were inadequate. I want to just mention one thing about guilt. Guilt and shame are not the same. Guilt is forensic, meaning it is legal. You're either guilty or you're not.

Somebody would say, I feel guilty. No, you feel shame. Shame is the experience. Guilt is actual. It's legal. It's forensic. When you sin, you are guilty, whether you feel guilty or not. See, God gives us shame to accompany our guilt so that we will recognize that we are guilty and hopefully turn to Him.

You see, shame is not a bad thing. We always tell people, you need to release your shame, get rid of your shame. In one sense, shame can be bad. If we are forgiven and we continue to live in shame, that's not good, but shame is a check on our conscience.

When we are guilty and we feel shame, that's a good thing. If you're guilty and you don't feel shame, there's something wrong. So Adam and Eve are guilty and they feel the shame of their guilt and so they try to hide from God.

And that's what we see, the realization of guilt. In Jim Boyce's commentary, James Montgomery Boyce, he said this is like the arraignment. What's the purpose of the arraignment in a courtroom? To identify what's happened.

To declare the charges. Well, the charges have been declared. They have a command that they have broken. So God has come. The judge now comes onto the scene. What's next? The interrogation. The first question, what does God ask?

Where are you? Now you would think if Adam were trying to hide from God, he would have not answered. You ever think about that? God says, where are you? And Adam says, I hid because I was naked. You think if he was really trying to hide, he wouldn't have answered.

But he did answer. You understand one thing, and this is important. When God calls us to his judgment bar, we will not be able to stay hidden. When God calls us to judgment, we will not be able to stay in the trees.

Here I am. I hid because I'm naked. And the second question of interrogation, how do you know that you're naked? Did you eat of the tree of which I told you not to eat? God gives Adam an opportunity for confession.

Adam instead uses it as a moment of self-justification. This was last week's sermon. Adam said, the woman whom thou hast given me, she gave me the fruit to eat, and I ate of it. Remember who he's really pointing the finger at?

He's pointing the finger at God. You gave me this woman. She was supposed to be a helper. She was supposed to be my help meet. She was supposed to meet my every need. Instead, she gave me the fruit of the tree.

It was her fault, but it was really your fault, God. And that doesn't work with God. God looks at the woman. She says, oh, the devil made me do it. So at this moment, God turns his attention to the guilty trio.

And God lays down three statements of judgment on these three guilty parties. And I have to think this, if you notice, I talked about the pattern of judgment last week. First, he talked to Adam. Then he talked to Eve.

Then he judged the serpent. Then he judged Eve. Then he judged Adam. And there's that sort of pattern there. I think that when God judged the serpent, I think Adam and Eve were going, like, like, you know, OK, we passed the puck, right?

Because Adam points to Eve. Eve points to the serpent. And God says to the serpent, here's your judgment. And this is Eve's. OK. And then he turns it to the woman. And at that moment, I imagine Adam is still kind of going, OK, all right, I'm still not.

I'm still. Oh, and to the man, he says. He didn't get out of it. It started with questioning him and it ends with judging him. And what we're going to look at today is we're going to look at the three judgments that are given.

And this is really the heart of the sermon. This is where I spent most of my time in preparation. And I want to say this is probably the most difficult portion of this chapter, maybe even the most difficult portion of Genesis that we've come to so far, because there are some there is some language here and there are some things that happen here that are difficult to really understand exactly what is saying.

So I'm going to I'm going to help to try to give you the understanding that I've come to. But there are times when I'm going to say I'm not necessarily dogmatic, because I do think that this does provide a few difficult statements.

But overall, we can't miss the main part of the narrative, and that is that God, the judge, is standing before these three guilty parties and no one gets away from their responsibilities. They all bear the punishment for their guilt.

Don't miss that part. Don't miss the forest for the trees. This is God, the judge. See, how many people do you know that will tell you God is too good to judge? It's the very fact that God is good that he does judge.

It is the goodness of God that should cause us to truly be to truly shudder before him, because it is the goodness of God that reminds us that he will judge right. He will not simply wink at sin, but he will judge sin as it deserves.

I don't know how anybody can read the Bible and say God won't judge sin. It's right here in the very third chapter. The first time sin is introduced, God doesn't say, oh, you guys get a mulligan. You know, you get a you get you get a you get a that was your one.

That was your one mistake. You know, it was OK. We'll start again. No, there's no there's no do over. There's no second chance. God brings judgment. And we begin with the judgment on the serpent. Look at verse 14.

The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go and thus you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. What we see here in the judgment of the serpent is we see a physical judgment on the physical serpent.

But we also have to be reminded that there is a spiritual being who is behind this, Satan himself. We know this from Genesis 12, Genesis 21. It tells us that Satan was actually the one who possessed the serpent.

And so there is a physical judgment and then there is a spiritual judgment. And this is where I say it starts to get a little bit complicated, because I do think that there is some there is some of it that that we can at least see is there sort of a not a mixing over, but sort of a blending of the judgment.

I'll explain what I mean. Notice first that the serpent is now going to take on a different characteristic, a different physical characteristic. It says that because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go.

You know, the snake is the only animal that that slithers. It doesn't have legs and it doesn't stand up because it doesn't have any legs upon which to stand. And so when we see a snake, don't you, do snakes creep y 'all out?

Isn't one of the reasons, and I know some of you guys like snakes and God bless you, I'm just going to pray for you because that's just. But the snake has the oddest method of mobility. It doesn't reach out, it doesn't step out, it it it's coils and expands and it coils and expands and that's how it moves.

It's got this very odd mode of of moving from place to place and we look at that and we say how strange an animal this is. But this text seems to indicate that that's not the way it was created. The text seems to indicate that there was some kind of mode of transportation that the snake had prior to the fall.

Now some people try to argue that the snake maybe had legs and I've even seen some scientists, Christian scientists that try to argue that there's actually places among the snake's vertebrae where legs could have existed at one point.

Some people of course use that as an evolutionary argument. Some people use that as a creationary argument. My answer is I don't know. Brother Mike and I have talked about this text at length and I love brother Mike because we spend so much time on the phone.

I'm glad we don't have to pay for minutes anymore. You know cell phones we used to have to pay for minutes because we would both be way out of money. But we talk about this text and and he mentioned like a skink has sort of a slithering way but it still has legs and perhaps the snake had legs and part of the judgment was the removing of that.

Now you're just going to slither like on your belly. That's possible. I've also heard some who say well perhaps the perhaps the serpent never had legs but what it had was the ability to be upright like a cobra.

You've seen a cobra when it goes to strike it comes up onto its tail and it pushes off and some people say maybe it wasn't that it had legs and God removed legs. Maybe it was a maybe it had a stronger rear and a stronger tail and it was able to move with a certain still serpentine but yet upright form.

What's the answer? I don't know. I don't know. I know this when the judgment came it was prostrate face down on your belly. You're going to be now on your belly and that's how you're going to move. That's part of the judgment and we say okay that makes sense but what about this whole eating dust thing?

It says dust you shall eat. If there's one thing I know pastor I've been to the zoo and I have snakes eat mice and snakes eat other snakes but snakes don't eat dirt. Snakes don't eat dust. This is a scientific inaccuracy in the bible.

Well this is where I think we have to interpret the bible according to what's known as the phenomenological language or the language of appearance and the language of appearance is like when we say the sun comes up.

Well the sun doesn't actually come up. The earth rotates and that's why the sun looks like it comes up and I think that what we have here is the judgment on the serpent is you're going to have your face in the dirt all the time.

Not that you're literally digesting dust all the time but you're literally going to have your face in it all the time and this term to eat dust is actually found throughout the scripture as a statement of defeat.