Genesis 3:1-16 (The Child of Eve)

The Shepherd's Church

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Today you might feel a little bit like Lowe's in October. You walk in and there's

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Christmas trees and you're like, what is going on here? Seriously, Thanksgiving's not even over with yet.

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And here we are starting a Christmas series before Thanksgiving, it's a little odd. But we wanna do this because we wanna understand who

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Christ is, we wanna understand every part of who Christ is, from the beginning of his life to the end of his life, and we wanna understand what it means that he was incarnate.

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It's the Son of God to save us. Now when we think about Christmas, we often think about it from a biblical sense, not the

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Christmas trees, the lights and all of that stuff. We think about the angelic announcement to Mary, where he comes and he tells her that she's gonna give birth to a son and his name's gonna be

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Jesus because he's gonna save his people from their sins. We think about John the Baptist leaping in his mother's womb because the proximity of Christ to John the

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Baptist, womb to womb, he leaps with joy, we think about that. We think about Anna and Simeon.

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So John the Baptist is the smallest little Israelite who's leaping, and then the oldest two little Israelites, Anna and Simeon, are leaping and rejoicing in the temple.

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We think about how they heard the gospel and how they praised God that the Redeemer was gonna be born, or was born.

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We think about the Roman census by the providence of God that Roman Caesars bow the knee to Jesus because even in their declarations, for taxes of all things, they're serving the plans of God, bringing and drawing

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Mary to the town of Bethlehem. To you, old Bethlehem, we born a savior, a son. We think about the inn that was overcrowded, the stables that were dank and not a place fit for a king to be born, but yet there, the

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Messiah graced our presence. We think about the manger, which was a feeding trough.

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We think about swaddling clothes. We think about stars. We think about the sky exploding that night and the shepherds running to figure out what had happened and then on their way back, singing praises to God for who

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Christ is. We think about the magi who bowed down and worshiped him. We think about the other king,

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Herod, who threatened by the little born king, tries to kill him.

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We think about all of these things at this time of year because they're central to us, not just central to our celebrations and our festivals and our sort of rhythms in the year.

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They're central to our identity as a Christian. The Christmas story, the incarnation of the son of God is central to the identity of a believer and that is what we wanna focus on today.

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But the question that I want us to ask is when did Christmas begin? You see,

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Christmas in the New Testament paves the way towards Easter. The wooden manger paves the way to a wooden cross. We celebrate the beginning of Jesus's life, but it didn't begin in the gospels.

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Actually, it began in the Garden of Eden, the Christmas message. You see, in the very beginning, human beings fell from God and one broken woman received the gospel message, her name was

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Eve. It was not to Mary that the Christmas promise was first given, it was to Eve. Unto you will be a child that will be born who will be savior of the world, who will crush the serpent's head.

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That gospel message was given thousands of years even before the gospels take up that message.

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So what I want us to do in this series, it's over six weeks, I want us to look at six women in the

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Old Testament. I want us to go back and return to the pages of the Old Testament and I want us to look at six women who had six remarkable and miraculous pregnancies that all point forward to the greatest pregnancy, the greatest birth in human history,

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Christ our Lord. I want us to remember that and I want us to rejoice that God uses humble, ordinary, broken means in order to accomplish his gospel and that is good news because we are ordinary, humble, and broken people.

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In the weeks ahead, we're gonna look at Sarah, that's next week, we're gonna look at Rahab, we're gonna look at Ruth, we're gonna look at Bathsheba and we're gonna look at Mary.

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I think those are final. Sometimes I change my mind week to week but I think that's a good list.

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So if you will turn with me to Genesis chapter three. We're gonna begin with Eve today. We're gonna be in verses one through 16 but we're gonna focus on verses 15.

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Genesis three begins this way. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field, which the

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Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, indeed, God has said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden.

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The woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat.

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But from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said you shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die.

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The serpent said to the woman, you surely not will die. For God knows that in the day that you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good from evil.

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When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and she ate.

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And she gave also to her husband with her and he ate. And then both the eyes of them were opened.

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And they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

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They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

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Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?

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And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid myself.

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And then he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I've commanded you not to eat?

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And the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me.

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She gave from the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done?

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And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, more than every beast of the field.

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On your belly you will go and dust you will eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.

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He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. To the woman he said,

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I will greatly multiply your pain and childbirth. Somebody say amen.

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In pain you will bring forth children. Let your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

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Let's pray. Lord, probably one of the most consequential chapters in the

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Bible. When we think about our lived experience, we have never lived in a world that has not fallen.

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We have never lived in a world that is not desperately different than how you created it.

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Lord, I pray today that we would see purpose in that, that we would see how

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Christ is the redeemer of that, that we would see how that he is the chosen, promised son of Eve who will crush the serpent's head and lead his people to victory.

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Lord, we thank you that your word is so counter -cultural to our expectations.

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When this was written, it would have been shocking that you delivered the gospel first to a woman and yet Lord, I thank you for that because you show that you came to save all people.

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Lord, thank you for your gospel. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. So the setting of Genesis 3, that's what we normally call the fall, but the setting is mostly

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God -centric. We have in Genesis 1, God creating the entire cosmos out of nothing, literally speaking and universes popping into existence with no material previously with which to make it with.

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Genesis 2 is a zoomed -in version where we see God hand -crafting the human being,

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Adam, making him, fashioning him with his own hands, breathing into his nostrils with his own breath.

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We see God making this human being personally and making him in his image.

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But he didn't just make him. He also made a helpmate for Adam and her name was

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Eve. And I love how he did it. If you think about how God did it, he didn't make

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Eve out of the feet because she's not below Adam. He didn't make Eve out of the head because she's above and rules over Adam.

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He made Eve out of the rib because she's supposed to be his helper. Side by side, equal in dignity, equal in value, different in purpose.

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He made her to be flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone and to help

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Adam serve the Lord. Now, things were going fine for a few good minutes.

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I actually don't think that the fall happened very long after the creation of Adam and Eve.

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If you think about it, this is not in my notes, so this is bonus material here. If you think about it, two perfect people, perfect genetics, perfect bodies.

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He could look at her and get her pregnant. It couldn't have been long before the serpent slithered his way into the garden.

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I'm just saying. And this wasn't just a garden snake. Whatever he looked like, whatever he sounded like, whatever that creature looked like physically, there was a power underneath it that transcended a normal serpent or normal snake.

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It was the power of Satan embodying this creature, filling him full of lies and propaganda against the

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Lord. Satan had come into the garden to wage war with Adam and Eve. The way the creation story reads is that God installed

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Adam and Eve as his rulers in the garden. They were commanded to rule and subdue the earth. They were commanded to take dominion.

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They were commanded to spread the garden out. Adam and Eve were kings and queens, so Satan comes in with an insurrection. That's the way the story reads.

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He attacks masculinity by circumventing Adam and going to his wife. The one that God commanded to be courageous turns out to be a coward.

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He attacked femininity by drawing Eve out of her God -ordained role as helper, thrusting her into the role of saboteur, causing her to fall with misplaced desire to be like God and to rule over her husband.

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But the most central attack came upon the word of God. Satan came into the garden suggesting that God's word could not be trusted.

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You see, the very first voice we hear in the Bible is God's. God speaks and universes explode into being. The second voice that we see in the

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Bible is the serpent. Before Adam and Eve are quoted, before Adam and Eve speak, you hear the serpent saying, did

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God really say? That is the paradigm for all temptation ever since.

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Did God really say? A simple yet diabolical phrase, did God really say that you shall not eat of any tree of the garden?

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He's undermining the credibility of God's word and causing us to distrust him.

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And the same is true for us today. Did God really say that marriage is between a man and a woman? Did God really say that homosexuality is a sin?

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Do we believe that? Did God really say that life has value and dignity from the moment of conception?

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Did God really say that every child in the womb ought to be protected? Did God really say that church is a priority and that we are not to neglect the gathering?

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Or do we need to mow our grass? Do we need to watch a football game? Or do we need to, need to, need to, need to?

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Did God really say? Did God really expect us to be joyful in the midst of bad things?

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Was he being serious when he said, count it all joy? Was he being serious when he said, cast your anxieties upon me?

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Or did he actually mean for us to sit in sanctified pity parties at home and say, where's God?

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You see, the root of all of our temptations, and we can go on and on and on through all of them. The root of our temptations is the enemy questioning the authority and the truthfulness of God's word.

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Advanced with a simple question, did God really say? And his goal for each and every single one of us, you wanna know

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Satan's goal for your life? Is to have you confused, to have you not trusting God, and to have you depressed and broken for a lifetime.

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Ignoring who God is, ignoring what God has said. That was the attack that he made on Adam and Eve.

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That's the attack that caused the fall, and he's not creative. It's the same attack he's using on each and every one of us today.

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Now, we've talked a lot in the past about Adam. I have strong opinions about Adam.

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Why did he do that? But today, we're gonna focus on Eve. And it's tremendous, it's glorious, what

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God says to her. You have a woman who, in the middle of the garden, she had one rule to follow.

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Not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was it. We look at the rest of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and all the way to the end of the

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Bible, there's a lot of rules. She had one rule, he had one rule to follow. Don't eat of the tree. But I just have to imagine, maybe she got out her recipe book, and it had that and Greek, no,

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I'm just playing. For whatever reason, Satan was able to come in and tempt her and speak into the center part of her soul, and she fell for the lie.

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With one temptation, she not only ate, but she shared it with her husband. And in that moment, both of them fell.

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Now, when we talk about the fall, that's a theological term, we're talking about the fact that human beings were put on a lofty position.

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We were made with dignity and value. We were made to image the creator God. We were made with high status, high station.

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We were made in the image of God. And the fall saw us like Darius or like Icarus, going too close to the sun and crashing down in death.

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What does it mean when we say the image of God? What does it mean that the image of God has fallen? Well, in the

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Hebrew, the word image actually means idle, believe it or not.

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God fashioned us to be his little idol. That's what the word means. He shaped us, he made us into a little statue, he breathed into us and we became a walking, talking image, a walking, talking little idol, a little statue, a little replica.

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And the point of that is that we're supposed to look like him and act like him and think like him and walk like him and talk like him.

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Now, as I'm sure as you're hearing that, you're saying, yeah, but idols are bad. Why would

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God make us as his little idol? Well, there's a massive difference between us making an idol in our image and then worshiping it and God making a little idol in his image and calling us to worship him.

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There's a difference. He made us in his image and his likeness and our purpose in this lifetime is to worship

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God. What is the chief end of man? The Westminster Confession says, to glorify

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God and enjoy him forever. That is our purpose. We were made to be like God.

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Now, another qualification here that we must say, we were not made to be like God in everything. God is all knowing and we're not, we were never made to be that way.

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That's what's called an incommunicable attribute of God. You can't catch it, like you can't catch a cold that's an incommunicable cold.

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He was made or he's always been all present in time and in all space. We were not made to be that way.

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So we can't imitate God in that way. We're not all powerful. We are subject to change. We cannot sustain our own existence.

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That's called aseity. That's who God is. That's not who we are. We were not made to imitate God in that way.

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We were made to imitate God in other ways. For instance, with our creativity. God is a creator and we were made to be creative because we are made to be like God.

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We were made to build things, mold things, craft things, shape things, and even brew things.

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For my friends who love craft beer, you're not supposed to say that.

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I'm not a Baptist anymore. You think about a chef with 20 different ingredients on the table.

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All those ingredients don't mean anything until they cut and chop and slice and shred and saute and flambeau and all the different cooking terms that you can imagine.

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They take those ingredients and they make them into something meaningful, into a dish. See, we're made to do those kinds of things.

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We're made to go to our work every single week and we're made to take the things that God has given us, the raw material that he's given us, and turn it into something meaningful.

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That's what we're supposed to do in our homes. That's what we're supposed to do in our yards and in every facet of our life.

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We're to be like God because he made us in his image. We're purpose seekers as human beings.

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We're made different than all the animals in the fact that we always are looking for meaning and purpose.

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For instance, if you look at a beautiful piece of art and you ask yourself, what is the meaning of this?

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Why does it look like this? It's especially true if you look at an art by Hunter Biden and you're wondering, what is the meaning and the purpose of this?

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And your mind is confused. You're made to think with purpose. It just looks like paint sloshed on a piece of canvas.

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Just an example. You think about tragedy. We've all gone through tragedy.

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And the first question we ask ourselves is why did this happen? Because we want to find purpose. We want to find meaning.

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We want to know that our suffering is not arbitrary. We want to know how to prevent it from happening in the future. We are purpose -seeking people because we're made in the image of God.

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Because God is the one who ascribes purpose to all things. He's a purpose -ascribing

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God and he's made us to be purpose -seeking people. He gave us rationality and reason.

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We're made to think about things and question things and find solutions to things. He made us with language.

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Animals are made with language. Dolphins have a language of sorts, but they can't sit down and talk about their feelings.

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They can't sit down and talk about their opinions on a subject. They don't sit down and share their joys and their sorrows.

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These are uniquely human things because they're uniquely God's things to be able to speak and to communicate.

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We've been made to think like him. We've been made with emotions like him to act out our actions in a way that glorifies him because he acts out his actions across all of eternity in ways that glorify him.

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We're made to love things and have affection for things because that's who God is. We're made to rule and have dominion because that's who

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God is. It's like a child. The other day, I was upstairs in the bedroom and downstairs

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I heard Alexa go off on like volume 50. It only has 10 settings. I mean, it was rocking the house.

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And I hear Shannon, Alexa! And then right after that,

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I heard Addison, Alexa! We want to imitate our parents.

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It's just who we are. How much more so like God? We want to imitate him because he's our father.

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Whether we admit it or not, we end up spending our lives trying to imitate him in these ways.

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But when Satan came into the garden, undermining the word of God, it caused humanity to betray its maker and the consequences of that action was dire.

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It would be like someone going into the Louvre in Paris and throwing ink on the Mona Lisa.

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It's permanently damaged. It'd be like crashing a car, the insurance totaling it.

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It's still a car, but it's lost its purpose. It can't do what it normally was able to do.

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Theologians call this doctrine total depravity, meaning that we're infected in the totality of our nature.

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Now, when we hear the word total depravity, we're not saying utter depravity. I'm not saying that everyone in this room is as bad as you possibly could be.

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You could get worse. I could get worse. None of us are running around like Mao or Hitler or Stalin.

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Hopefully, none of us are taking over nations and causing human destruction, but we are totally affected by sin across every facet of our being.

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Our minds, our hearts, our emotions have all been infected with this thing called sin, and we are totally depraved.

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We were made with minds that were to think like God, and yet now, our minds dwell upon evil all the time.

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Even our best motivations, even our best thoughts are still tainted with sin.

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Genesis 6 -5 says, "'Then the Lord God saw the wickedness of man "'was great on the earth, "'and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart "'was only evil continually.'"

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Paul says the same thing in Romans 1, 28 -30. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge

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God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, envy, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, their gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.

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When we look at that list, it's easy for us to think, well, that's not me, but how many of us have had an unrighteous thought? Just one.

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How many of us have pondered about, I wish I had more money? That's greed. How many of us have wished that we had more than so -and -so, or wished we had what they had, wished that we had that, you know, whatever?

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That's envy. Looked at someone else with unpure desires, that's lust. And just in case you've missed all of those, how many of us have disobeyed our parents?

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We've all fallen short of the glory of God. We've all been broken in our minds where we no longer have the ability to obey

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God. There's a spiritual depravity as well, not just mental. It doesn't just exist in our head.

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It's our entire soul's been affected by sin. We were made spiritually to live with God in the garden, both physically and spiritually.

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We were made to live in his presence. Adam and Eve, the ordinary means of grace that they had were walking with God, talking with God, interacting with God.

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But yet when they fell, they were cast out of the garden. Now there's a separation between them and God.

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Where there used to be intimacy, now there's distance. And the same is true for us today. There is nothing inside of your humanity that can call your way back to God.

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Without something outside of yourself, namely Jesus, you were born separated from God.

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You were born incapable of relating to God. You were born spiritually dead. You were born blind so that you can't see the things of God.

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The fall has affected the entire image of who you are. And without Christ, we have no hope.

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There's also relational depravity where we no longer care about each other like we were originally designed to care for one another.

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You think about male relational depravity. Men have become spiritually weak.

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They've lost their ability to lead their families. Become liars, manipulators, womanizers, stonewallers, overworkers, irresponsible, selfish.

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That's a big one for men. Untamable, immature, weak, and emotionally distant from their families.

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That's on a good day. There's also female relational depravity.

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Women also fell, turned away from being her husband's helper becoming his greatest critic.

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How many marriages has that infected? Judgmental, condescending, controlling, and fearful.

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She traded in her calling to build up her home, to build up her accomplishments and college debt and career advancements.

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And then if she gets around to it, then she'll think about building a family. We've experienced sexual depravity.

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We were made to be intimate and faithful with only one person in covenantal marriage. And now there's so much sexual dysfunction.

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Pornography, adultery, fornication, lust, rape, shame, guilt, fear, you name it. The good gifts that God has given us have been tainted by sin.

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Reproductive depravity. We rarely think about that, but human beings, like I said, were made with good bodies that were supposed to work and now there's infertility.

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Now there's birth defects. Now there's stillborns. And for those healthy children who could have lived, there's millions of abortions every single year.

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Wantonly disregarding and throwing away life because sin has made careers, finances, and life station more important than life.

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Sin has unleashed a vile sickness upon humanity. And it begins right here in Genesis three.

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Now, it also is true that the need for Christmas begins right here in Genesis three. The need for the incarnation, the need for someone other than ourselves to fix it, to save us.

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God was not reacting thousands of years late when he came to Mary and said, I'm gonna have my son be born to you.

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He wasn't saying, oh, maybe now I can step in. No, it was his plan the entire time throughout all the pages of the

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Old Testament to send his only son. And it begins right here in verse 15. Verse 14 says, the

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Lord God said to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.

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He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. This is what scholars call the proto -eugongelion, which means the first gospel.

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This is out of all the instances of the Bible where the gospel is mentioned, this is the first right here at the very beginning.

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As soon as Adam and Eve sinned, God is promising that he's going to make a redemption. He's gonna bring a savior.

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He's gonna save them from their sins, which tells us a lot about God's intention.

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God did not intend for us to die in our sins. God did not intend for us to go down into the grave in our sins.

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God did not intend us to continue wandering aimlessly in our sins. God had a plan that he was going to work out through his son to save us from our sins.

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And only God is capable to do that. If you think about what this message says, it says that to your seed, that's

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Eve only. It doesn't say to Adam, because all people, the Bible says, who were born in Adam are born in sin.

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So if you are born with a husband and a wife, you were born in sin. The promise is to the woman only.

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The promise is a virgin birth. The promise is that she will have a son and he will save his people from their sins.

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The promise was first directed at the serpent. God says that literally giving him the death nail, that this future son is gonna come and crush him on the head.

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That's covenantal language to say that Satan is going to be finished. The death blow to Satan is gonna happen through the son, the future son of Eve.

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Now it's gonna look like in history that the serpent wins. That's our experience.

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There's gonna be many throughout history who descend into all kinds of evil. There's gonna be nations that rise up to do awful things and do his evil bidding.

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But even so, the Bible is letter by letter, chapter by chapter, working out the story of God sending the serpent -crushing son who is going to overthrow

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Satan's kingdom and who's going to bring a kingdom that will never end. Again, God does not promise a natural -born son.

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He promises, even here, the son born of a virgin. And the reason for that is this idea called federal headship.

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You see, a federal head is someone who stands for another group of people, someone who represents a group of people.

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Adam represents lost humanity. Adam sinned, so therefore we in Adam also sinned.

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From the moment we were conceived, we are in Adam. The Bible's story is about how does that headship get replaced with Christ's headship so that all those who are born in Adam will actually be reborn into Christ.

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That's the message of redemption. That's the message that is going to bless the elect of God who are reborn into Jesus's kingdom, adopted out of Adam's family and put into the family of God.

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And when that promise is given in Genesis 3, the countdown begins. Satan's time is limited.

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Now, you think about Eve. You think about who would be worthy to receive such an incredible promise.

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And you think, Eve, Eve's the one who was deceived first. She was the one who

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Satan came to first. She was the one who rebelled against God first. She's the one who fell first. And look at the grace of God.

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This is not about Eve. This is about God who's gracious. God used the line of the weaker vessel to destroy our greatest enemy.

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That is just like something God would do. The first person to hear the gospel

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Christmas message was a woman. And I find that absolutely beautiful.

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Unto you, unto one of your daughters is gonna be born a savior. Who's gonna save the world and crush the serpent's head.

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Now you can imagine that Eve probably did not understand that promise.

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We know she didn't fully understand it because she's looking for one of her children to be the serpent crusher.

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And imagine her surprise when her firstborn son, Cain, not only ends up not to be the one to whom

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God is promising, but instead of crushing the serpent's head, he crushes his brother's head. And he follows the serpent into sin and ruin.

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So he's not the one. We know that she thinks Seth, the third son, because now

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Abel is dead. We know that she thinks that he's the son because look at what she says in Genesis 4, 25 through 26.

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Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and she called his name Seth. For he said,

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God, or for she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel for Cain killed him.

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She's saying that God by his purposes has appointed me a son. Maybe he's the one. Maybe he's the one who's gonna crush the serpent's head.

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And yet the Bible moves on from Seth really quickly. It says in verse 26, Seth also bore a son.

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That's all you need to know. It's not him. It's not one of Eve's sons. It's not Cain. It's not

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Abel. It's not Seth. It's not one of the unlisted sons. None of her children fulfill the promise of Genesis 3, 15.

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So we go down the line. We look at all the rest of the men. We look at Noah. He couldn't do it. Abraham couldn't do it.

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Isaac couldn't do it. Jacob couldn't do it. Judah couldn't do it. Joseph, not Moses, not Joshua, not Samson, not

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David, not Solomon, not Hezekiah, not Asa or Josiah, not Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel or Daniel, not

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Malachi and John the Baptist and everyone in between. Every single man born to man shows himself to be diseased by sin in some way because they're all born of man.

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The very best that mankind has to offer is fatally flawed. Noah became a drunk.

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Abraham acted like a coward and sold his wife out to a foreign power. Isaac showed favoritism over his oldest son and looked down upon his younger son.

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Jacob was a manipulator. Judah was a womanizer. Joseph was cocky and full of pride and got himself sold into slavery.

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We can blame his brothers, but he was cocky and prideful. Read about it. Moses had an anger problem to say the least.

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Joshua let his troops fall into sin. Samson was immature and foolish. David was a murderer and an adulterer.

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Solomon was an idolater. Hezekiah was a flatterer. Jeremiah was chronically depressed and probably needed some medicine.

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On and on we could go. On and on we could go. All of them were disqualified. From Cain all the way to John the

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Baptist, it said of all the men born of woman, there's none greater than John the Baptist, but I tell you the truth, the one who's born in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

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Because none of them met the qualifications. That's why we needed a virgin birth.

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Genesis 3 .15 alludes to the virgin birth. Isaiah 7 .14 makes it abundantly and astoundingly clear.

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It says, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and will bear a son.

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She will call his name Emmanuel. Emmanuel means God with us.

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And the reason that he could be called God with us instead of Adam's sinfulness is because he wasn't born of man.

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He was only born of woman and by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. You see, we needed to break,

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God needed to break the federal line of Adam by severing it completely and having Jesus born of a virgin, born as a human being who could live like us and talk like us and walk like us, but who could not be born in sinful nature and could obey the law of God.

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So every moment of his life, he obeyed from the moment he was born to the moment that he died. And he did what we could not do.

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He stood in our place as a man. He was fully obedient as a sinless man. And yet because he's

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God, he has the power to save everyone in this room and everyone who calls upon his name, both now in the past and forever.

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It's an amazing story that God is telling and it begins with Eve. Utterly astounding.

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The woman who brought the curse upon the womb, her daughter, Mary, would be the one who brought blessing to the world through simple, ordinary woman.

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Not a queen, not a dignitary, not a wealthy woman who plays bridge, a poor young girl in a little town called

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Nazareth. Just the example that came in my mind, Derek, I don't know. A woman in Nazareth who would give birth to the son of God.

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This is what it says in Matthew one. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When his mother

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Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they had came together, she was found to be with child by the

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Holy Spirit. And Joseph, her husband being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.

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But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take

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Mary as your wife for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name

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Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Now all of this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the

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Lord through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son.

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They shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. The daughter of Eve, Mary, was seeing the promise come true in her own body.

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She's the one who saw the angelic messenger who came to her and said, you're gonna have a son. She's the one who saw the sky open up and awaken with the glory of God so that the shepherds could find the little stall where her and Jesus was at.

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She's the one who saw Anna and Simeon dance. She's the one who saw Elizabeth and Zechariah sing praises for who

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God is. She's the one who saw the wise men come and give gold and frankincense and myrrh. She's the one who saw her husband, who was a level -headed guy who wants to do the right thing, have visions in the middle of the night, telling them to get out of town and move to Egypt.

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She's the one who saw Jesus get older, who in the temple of the Pharisees were astonished by his wisdom.

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And she tucked those things away in her heart, the text says. She's the one who saw him go into ministry. She witnessed his very first miracle in Cana where he turned water into wine.

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She saw him become from a no -name preacher coming out of Galilee to the most famous person in Israel where some people loved him and more people hated him.

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She's the one who saw mounting oppression by the Pharisees. She's the one who saw the brutality of the serpent acted out on her son.

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Genesis 3 .15 says, he will crush the serpent's head, but the serpent will bruise him. The serpent will crush him.

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The serpent will kill him. And she saw all of it. She saw the whipping, the beating, the lying, and the teasing of the

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Roman guards. She saw the stripping and the stealing away of his clothes. She saw the gambling that they did so that they could argue over his possessions.

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She saw them spitting in his face and cutting him with whips made of bone and glass. She saw them shoving the thorns down into his head.

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She saw them nailing his wrist and his feet to the beams. She saw the cross jolting down in the hole in the ground, ripping his flesh as it did.

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She saw them laughing as he winced in agony. She saw them mocking him as he thirsted and asked for something to drink.

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They saw him jeering. She saw the Romans jeering him for being bound and not being able to come down off the cross.

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The Jews were joining in as well. She saw him bruised. Genesis 3 .15

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was coming true right before her very eyes. She saw him bruised. She saw him killed, but what she didn't see, what she was having trouble believing, which all of us would have had trouble believing as well, is where does

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Jesus crush the serpent's head? She's seeing a whole lot of bruising. She's seeing a whole lot of beating and suffering, but she's not seeing that part of the promise where Jesus crushes the serpent's head.

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When does that part happen? We could probably empathize with Mary.

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She saw them hand Jesus the sour vinegar on a stick And she probably is thinking,

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Lord, it's about time. When are you gonna show up, God? She heard him scream out his final cry.

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My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And you gotta know the mother's heart was saying, now,

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Lord, now. She saw him give up his spirit.

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She saw the breath leave his lungs. She saw his body hunched down on the cross.

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She saw his face sunken in. She saw his chest cavity no longer moving. She saw her son die.

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And she probably wondered, how could this promise, millennia old at this point in time, how could it be accomplished now?

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You gotta imagine that she was thinking, did I miss something? Is this really how it's supposed to end?

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The disciples had scattered, and she's left there with John and a couple others by herself.

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The Pharisees were celebrating and feasting. The Romans were ridiculing and laughing. Those who beat him were washing the blood off their hands at this point.

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Herod was partying. Pilate had moved on to another governmental matter. The ground trembled. The sky was shaking.

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What was the point is what Mary was asking. As she walked down the hill that night, have to imagine that she was wondering, what is

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God gonna do now? As she came back to embalm him,

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I wonder if she saw the significance. Jesus was born wrapped in swaddling clothes.

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Now his body was laying dead, wrapped in linen rags. I wonder if she saw that irony.

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Jesus was brought gifts of frankincense and myrrh. That's burial spices. Every one of us has that family member who brings weird

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Christmas presents. Why'd you bring frankincense and myrrh to an infant birth?

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Now she got it. Now she got it. He was being prepared. He was born to die.

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That was the point. But that couldn't be all of it. He wasn't born to stay dead, was he?

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And it was her and five other women, six in total, who were gonna go to the tomb that day, the day that the tomb was empty.

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Now what I find absolutely fascinating about that is that one woman was told the

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Christmas message, six of them saw the Easter empty tomb. One woman for every day of the old creation week who just got to see the new creation event.

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Isn't that fascinating? But it was women who saw the empty tomb, not men. If you were gonna write an epic tale of God coming down to earth to save the world from their sins, you wouldn't include women.

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And that's not a slam on women. That's a slam actually on the time period. Women were not considered credible witnesses in court in the first century.

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Women could offer testimony in family court only, but not in criminal court. They could not offer testimony at all, not even if there was a group of them.

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Six women didn't matter as much as 600 women didn't matter. They couldn't provide testimony that was legal, and yet God chose these women to share his gospel.

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Josephus even says that because of the levity and boldness of their sex, that's why that women in the first century could not be witnesses in court, meaning that men in that time felt that women were not serious enough to handle the rigors of court.

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One of the Christian opponents who died in his sin, he hated Christianity for a couple reasons.

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One of them, the chief reason, was because Mary Magdalene was one of the ones that found the empty tomb. He said, how can

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God send his son and have him be found by such a wicked woman, by a prostitute?

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And he mocked Christianity all of his days, and he said, how could a hysterical female deluded by sorcery find the

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Christ? But God used ordinary women. That's how we started this. We said that the message of Christmas is that God reaches down and uses ordinary, broken, and humble means in order to accomplish his plan.

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Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary was called Magdalene, formerly a prostitute. Mary, the wife of Clopas, we don't know much about her, she was there.

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Joanna, the wife of Chusa, and Psalmy, the widow. All six of those women were there to receive

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Christ when he rose from the dead. And that ought to teach us something. You might be asking yourself, what's the point in all of this?

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God began his gospel message with a woman. He ended his gospel message where Christ rose from the dead with six women finding him in the tomb.

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The point is that God uses humble and ordinary means to accomplish his grand and outstanding plan.

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He came as a king born in a stable. That was not accidental. Because he wants us to think that salvation's not for the high and mighty.

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Salvation goes down to the depths, even as low as you can go. How much lower can it be to be born in a stable?

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In the first century, how much lower could you tell your story by having six women find the empty tomb? But God doesn't care about our categories.

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God says, I'm gonna save you from the bottom all the way to the top. My people will have a savior who can empathize and sympathize with their struggles.

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God came to fix what is broken, and he came to fix you and me.

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Not the high and mighty version of us where we put on Instagram and pretend like we're special.

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Not the proud, overconfident versions of ourselves. Not the arrogant, boastful, and cynical versions of ourselves.

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He came for you. You and your brokenness. You and your sin. You and your pain.

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You and your struggles. You and your suffering. You as you are, he came for you and reached down and saved you.

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Will you humbly receive this awesome savior who tells his story in such an awesome way?

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That's the hope of Christmas, and that's what I hope that you will receive as well. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much that your gospel was for all people.

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You gave it to the lowest. You gave it to the humblest. You gave it to the meekest. You gave it to the ones who could have never imagined to see what they saw.

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It says that you didn't give your gospel to the wise. You gave it to the foolish and despised things of this world.

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From Eve, who fell on her sins, to Mary, who saw the author of life, born, crucified, and rose from the dead, and to us.

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Lord, let us savor the beauty of your gospel today. And let us understand that the gospel is about self -forgetfulness and self -denial, turning away from ourself and turning away to the savior, the only one who can fix what is broken.

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Lord, I pray that if there's anyone here today who doesn't know Christ, that they would turn from their sin before it's too late.

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And Lord, if there's the rest of us here listening online who know Christ, Lord, I pray that that message would not become stagnant.

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That we would see it with new eyes every day. That we'd make our entire life about turning away from ourself and turning to you.