The Beginning of Everything

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Father in heaven, I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word again.
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And Lord, I pray as I pray every time I go to preach.
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The first and foremost, that you would keep me from error.
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For Lord, I am a fallible man.
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I am capable of preaching error.
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And Lord, I don't want to do that for the sake of your name, for the sake of your people and for the sake of my own conscience and soul.
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Father, as we look today at the book of Genesis and all those amazing things that have their beginnings in this book, I pray, Lord, that you would use this opportunity to remind us of the importance of the past, but even more so, Lord, to give us an eye toward the future.
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Lord, where are we headed? Where are we going? If we are not in Christ, we know right where we are going.
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So, Lord, let it be today that we are confronted with the call to repent and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.
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Well, if you'd like to open your Bibles with me, we're going to be in Genesis one one, but we're actually going to look at several verses this morning.
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There's not one particular passage that we're going to spend all of our time with.
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But the title of today's message is The Beginning of Everything.
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And I want to tell you, this was actually supposed to be the first sermon in Genesis.
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And it just so happened that I felt the need last week to preach on the context and the authorship and the genre and the theme of Genesis.
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And so what was supposed to be the first got moved to the second.
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So today is the really the kickoff, if you will.
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Last week was the foundational work, building the foundation upon which to build everything else.
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In 2007, 23andMe became the first company to market a saliva based DNA test to the general public for the purpose of genealogical research.
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Other companies had come before, but this was the first company to give you the opportunity to to take the test home, do the swab, send it in and learn about your heritage.
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And even though 23andMe started in 2007, it's only been in the last couple of years that it's really caught on and really spread and we've seen the popularity.
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And now it's moved on to other companies like Ancestry and MyHeritage, and we see new companies that do DNA testing popping up all the time.
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More than 26 million people have had their DNA tested, and it is conservatively estimated that in the next two years, over 100 million people will have sent their DNA in to find out about their own personal background.
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I did it.
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My wife got me the test for Christmas two years ago and I sent it in and I found out that I am almost 100 percent British, which surprised me because I was hoping it'd be something cool and no offense to any Brits.
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I was thinking of Scottish, you get a kilt, but no, no, I'm just a Brit and we'd always heard that Foskey came from Poland or Czech, Foskey, but it's not, it's a derivative of Fosgate, it's a Foxgate.
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So that's my name, my heritage.
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Learned all this through the DNA test.
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And I only say that because one of the things that people love to do is find out where they came from.
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And that's why it's gone from 2007 starting to 26 million.
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And it's on tap to be 100 million people sending in their DNA because people want to find out about their roots.
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People want to find out about their heritage.
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People want to find out about their foundations.
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And one of the fascinating realities is that when we come to Genesis, it actually contains the information that we all so long to know, where did we come from? In fact, it not only contains the information of where we came from, it contains the roots of where everything came from.
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If you want to know where everything came from, it's in this book, Genesis is the beginning of everything.
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What I want us to see today, this isn't this is a different sermon, because what I want us to see today is I want us to see how many things have their beginnings in Genesis.
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And what I did was I sat down and I just started making a list and I must say this is the most points I've ever had in a sermon.
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In fact, there's so many points in today's sermon, I'm not going to tell you how many there are, because if I did, you might leave.
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My wife was when I told her how many points it was, she said, you're going to get a minute per point.
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I said, well, we'll we'll just have to do it that way then.
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So I'm going to take you on a whirlwind tour of the book of Genesis and show you the beginnings of everything.
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And by the way, remember, that's what Genesis means, the beginning.
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And we see the beginnings of everything in this book, some of it, you know, already, and some of it's going to be like, oh, I knew that some of it you'll be my wife.
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I preach to my wife before I preach to you all.
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It's good because she helps me clarify what I'm saying and also tells me that that didn't work.
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You know, she can she can fix a few things and that's helpful.
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But last night her mouth was open as I was telling her and preaching to her this message.
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I didn't know that was in Genesis.
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So I want to encourage you again, go to one one, if you would, Genesis one one, and we'll read it.
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And this will be the kickoff for today's series or today's sermon series of very long points.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and there is our first point, the first point that we have today is that we see the beginning of the material universe is found in Genesis one one prior to Genesis one one.
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There was nothing.
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The only thing that existed prior to Genesis one one was God himself in his triune glory.
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There was no atoms.
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There were no molecules.
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There wasn't even the space that that stuff goes into.
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In fact, there are four components that are necessary for our universe to be.
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Time, space, matter and energy must exist for our universe to exist as it currently does.
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And I want you to hear Genesis one one again with the idea that time, space, matter and energy are necessary in the beginning time.
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God created energy, the heavens, space and the earth matter.
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The four things that are necessary for all things are right in the first verse and prior to that first verse was nothing.
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God created the world ex nihilo, which is Latin for out of nothing.
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He spoke and it was when it before was not.
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So this is the beginning of the material universe.
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This is the beginning of everything that makes up you and me and all the world.
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It's found in one verse, Genesis one and verse one, it reminds me of a story of a scientist who told God, we no longer need you.
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This is obviously a fictional tale of a scientist who goes and tells God we no longer need you, God.
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We have come to the place where we know enough and we're smart enough and we've got enough information.
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We don't need God anymore.
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We don't need you, God, anymore.
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And God responds to the scientist by saying, OK, if you're so smart, why don't you build a man? I built a man, you show me that you can.
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The guy said, we can do that.
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We can make a man and we'll build him in the laboratory.
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And God said, no, you have to build him the way I did.
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You have to take from the dirt of the ground.
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And the scientist thought for a minute, he goes, we can do that.
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We'll take the dirt of the ground.
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And he reached down and he grabbed a handful of dirt.
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And God said, no, no, no.
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You get your own dirt.
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You see, even the dirt wasn't.
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And then it was there was nothing.
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And then there was everything.
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In the beginning time, God created that's the expression of energy, the heavens, the space.
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And by the way, it wasn't even space to put it in.
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Space itself is something and God created the space to put it in.
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This can't be boring.
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Look at me.
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Smile.
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This is good stuff.
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This is the heavens.
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God created the heavens and the earth.
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And that's first.
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That's the first point.
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All of them won't be that long, I promise.
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But that's it.
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Nothing before everything after.
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The second thing we see is the beginning of man.
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Go down to verse 26, the beginning of man.
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And we're going to we're going to exegete these verses later.
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So don't expect that I'm going to give all the information.
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I'm just reading them and making comments.
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There'll be there'll be sermons on these later.
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So if you have questions about the us and all that, we'll deal with that later.
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But this is what it says.
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And God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and of the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps in the earth.
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So God created man in his own image and the image of God.
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He created him male and female.
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He created them.
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That is the origin of mankind.
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You go to the Science Museum and you'll see a picture of the ascent of man that starts with what looks like a chimpanzee and then moves to a semi erect, hunched over mass of of being.
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And then there'll be a semi erect mass of being.
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And then there'll be one that sort of is crunched over a little.
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Then there'll be the last one who walks erect and he is called homo sapien or the wise man or the thinking man.
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That's the Latin homo sapien means.
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And this the science will tell you that that's how man came to be.
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He came from the the ape to the man.
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The Bible says God created man as a miraculous, immediate and individual creation of God, not a seed that grew, not an embryo that was birthed, but a man from the dust of the ground in his immediate form, not ignorant, but intelligent, not young, but fully grown and fully developed.
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Man was not created as an ape who grew bigger, but he was created as a man in the image of God right there at the beginning.
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We did not evolve.
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We were created.
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The third thing we see, the beginning of marriage.
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I want to show you this.
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Go down to chapter two, verse twenty four, verse twenty four of chapter two.
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God is giving a commentary on what just took place when he made a woman.
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And he says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.
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Verse twenty five.
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And the man and his wife were naked and unashamed.
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I want you to think about this for a second.
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In Matthew 19, Jesus is asked by the Pharisees about divorce, and Jesus uses this passage as his defense for the sanctity of marriage.
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He says, haven't you read where it says in the beginning, God created the male and female.
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And for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife.
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The two shall become one flesh.
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Right.
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You remember Jesus talking about that? He's quoting this passage and he's telling us that God established marriage right here.
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And here's the wonderful thing.
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This is before the fall.
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Sin doesn't enter in until chapter three.
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So marriage is part of God's good creation.
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Marriage is part of what God created before man came in and brought sin and destruction and despair.
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Marriage is a good creation of a good, good father who saw his child, Adam, and he said it is not good that he should be alone.
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So the father gives to the son a gift and a helpmate, his wife.
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And the two were one and they were naked and unashamed.
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And if I wanted to spend the next forty five minutes, I can help you understand what that means, because that's what marriage should be now.
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You should have a relationship with your wife where you can be naked, not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually naked and unashamed, where you can love her and she can love you without walls.
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I tell you again, I'm going to stop because I could really chase that.
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This is what marriage should be right here.
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And it was great and it had its beginnings in Genesis.
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All right.
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Number four, the beginning of sin.
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Turn to chapter three.
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You know this one, chapter three.
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We have the introduction of sin.
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But you know what, though? The word sin is not used here.
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In fact, the word sin is not used until chapter four.
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Here we have sin as it is explained as rebellion against God, for God gave a command and his creation disobeyed.
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Verse six, it says, So 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 to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.
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This is the first sin.
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Of man, and thus we have the introduction, and by the way, this isn't one of the points, but if you want to add here, if you are taking notes, it's the beginning of sin and death, because Paul tells us in Romans five that through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin.
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And death spread to all men because all sinned, death is the wages of sin.
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Prior to sin, man was not subject to death, but after sin, he is now the object of judgment, which is death.
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Number five, shortly following the introduction of sin, the beginning of sin, we have the beginning of shame.
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This is verse seven and eight, it says, Then their eyes were both opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and they made themselves loincloths.
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Now, prior to the fall, not only was Adam and Eve naked and unashamed with each other, but they were naked and unashamed with God.
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When sin enters, they hide themselves from one another and they hide themselves from God.
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We call that shame.
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Now, there's another word that's important, and that is the word guilt.
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People confuse guilt with shame.
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And let me just for a moment give you the definition because there is because people always say I feel guilty.
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Guilt is an objective reality.
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If you break the law, you're guilty, whether you feel like you're guilty or not, it's objective.
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Shame is the subjective response to the objective reality of your guilt.
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When Adam and Eve broke the law, they were guilty, whether they believed it or not, whether they accepted it or not, they were guilty.
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And by the way, you are guilty of breaking God's law, whether you accept it or not, whether you believe it or not.
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God's law is established in the heavens.
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And if you've ever told a lie, if you've ever stolen anything, if you've ever lusted in your heart, if you've ever hated anyone else, you have broken God's law.
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And whether you feel it or not, you are guilty before him and it should bring shame.
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And that's what it did.
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The subjective reality based on the objective reality became a reality in the heart of Adam and Eve when they realized they had sinned against God and God had to come in the garden and say, where are you? As if God didn't know he was asking them so that they could point out the fact that they were hiding from him.
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And thus we have the next, which is number seven, the beginning of judgment.
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The first judgment we see is in Genesis three, beginning in verse 14.
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There's three participants that receive judgment.
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The serpent is a recipient of judgment.
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We have the serpent.
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We have the woman is a recipient of judgment.
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And then we have the man.
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And that is from chapter three, verses 11 down to verse 19.
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I'm sorry, chapter three, 14 to 19.
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Now, I do want to make mention there is there is another judgment that's not mentioned, but is implied by the text.
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And that's the judgment of Satan before he fell.
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Because he is already in a fallen state, he's already in rebellion against God, and we don't have access to when that happened, we can go to Ezekiel and Isaiah and there seems to be some allusions to it happening.
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But we do not have that in Genesis, but we have the beginning of God's judgment of man, and it's right here in chapter three, verses 14 to 19.
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Now, not only do we have the beginning of judgment, that's the seventh point.
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We also have the beginning of grace.
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This is our eighth point, the beginning of grace.
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You say, well, where's grace in this? All I see is judgment.
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In chapter three, verse 15, God makes a promise that the seed of the woman is going to crush the head of the serpent.
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And that is a promise of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, who with his heel would crush the head of Satan himself when he went to the cross.
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We have the promise of Genesis 3, 15.
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Scholars have long called that the proto evangelium, which means the first mention of the gospel.
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So we have the beginnings of grace right here.
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But also we also see I want you to look with me very quickly at verse 21, chapter three, verse 21.
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It says, And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
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That's grace.
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You say, why is that grace? Because they were naked and they were ashamed and they sewed together fig leaves, which I don't know if you know this or not.
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Fig leaves don't hold up real well, especially under stress.
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So God produces for them a garment of animal skin.
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Now, here's something we have to ask ourselves and we'll dig into this further when we get there.
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Did this animal skin, was this something God created or did this come off the back of an animal that God sacrificed? I believe God sacrificed an animal in the picture of looking forward to another text.
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Doesn't say that that's an implication.
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We know there's a skin of an animal.
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So unless God created it out of thin air, which he has the power to do, he went to an animal and he sacrificed an animal on behalf of Adam and Eve.
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And he laid upon them the skin of that animal in picture form of what would later happen through Jesus Christ, who would cover our sins in his sacrifice.
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So we have here the beginnings of grace.
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All right.
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We also have the beginning of faith.
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This is number 14, if you're I'm sorry, number nine, if you're numbering them, it's number nine, the beginning of faith.
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I want to mention something.
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The word faith is not used in in the book of Genesis at all.
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The word faith is not used in Genesis.
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It's it's first instance is in Exodus 21, verse eight.
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Genesis uses a different word, but it's similar in meaning the word believed.
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And we see that word come up in Genesis 15, six.
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Abram believed God and it was imputed unto him as righteousness or reckoned to him or counted him as righteousness.
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But does that mean just because the word faith isn't used and just because the word belief isn't used until 15 chapters that we don't see faith? No, we see the beginnings of faith and we see the beginnings of faith first demonstrated in Abel.
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Abel brought a sacrifice to the Lord that was pleasing to the Lord.
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And you know what Hebrews tells us apart from faith, it is impossible to please God.
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So we can deduce Abel had faith.
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Enoch walked with God and he was not for the Lord took him.
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Enoch was a preacher of righteousness.
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Enoch was a man of faith.
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Noah believed God.
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How do I know that? Because the Bible says Noah was righteous.
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And the Bible says in Habakkuk 2, 5, the righteous live.
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By faith, thank you, by faith, so we know faith existed and had its beginnings in our earliest ancestors, and we see it exemplified.
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Throughout later in the book of Hebrews, you see in the chapter 11 what's called the Hall of Faith.
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It's just one person after the next, after the next, after the next, demonstrating their faith.
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And many of those people are from the book of Genesis.
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All right, number 10, we're cooking with gas, long, long, but I hope that I'm making them short enough that you're able to hang with me here.
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Number 10, we have the beginning of hatred.
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Turn to chapter 4, verse 8.
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This is after God accepted the sacrifice of Abel, but rejected the sacrifice of Cain.
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What happened after God rejected Cain's sacrifice? Cain became enraged.
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So we have the beginning, his anger turned to hatred, his hatred turned to murder.
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And in chapter 4, verse 8, it says Cain spoke to his brother Abel, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
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Cain became the first murderer.
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So not only do we have the beginnings of hatred, we have the beginnings of what hatred produces.
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Jesus said, if you've ever hated someone in your heart, you've committed murder in your heart.
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And this is what God said to Cain.
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He said, the sin is sitting in your heart and it's ready to give birth.
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Don't let it give birth.
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And yet he did.
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He let that sin grow and give birth and he killed his brother.
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God said, you must rule over it.
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And yet Cain allowed that sin to rule over him.
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And he hated his brother and he killed him.
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So we have the beginning of hatred and murder.
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Now, this next one might come out of left field because this next one is the one my wife was like, wow, I never thought of that.
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We have the beginnings.
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This is our 11th point, the beginning of cities.
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Look at chapter four and go to verse 17.
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It says Cain knew his wife and we'll talk about where he got his wife and another sermon.
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That's and that's a question that often comes up.
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Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch.
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Enoch, when he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.
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Notice what it says.
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It says he built a city.
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Doesn't say he built a tent.
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Doesn't say he built a house.
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It doesn't say he built a neighborhood.
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It said he built a city.
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He said, well, pastor, why does that matter? Because this is the pre flood world.
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And we have in our mind, even in our Christian minds, that man in his infancy was intellectually deficient and societally inept.
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He lived in caves and he marked on walls and he beat his friends with a pole or a club and he carried his wife by her hair.
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Right.
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We've all seen the picture.
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We have this idea that men were cavemen.
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Let me tell you something.
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Most of what you know about cavemen is an absolute lie.
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Man was created intelligent from his first day.
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And he was building cities before God even brought the flood.
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You say, well, there were cavemen.
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There's still cavemen today.
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People live in caves today, y'all.
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I'm not saying everybody was equally sophisticated.
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I wasn't saying everybody was living in a city.
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But my point is this.
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We people say I don't believe in evolution, but I believe that man sort of evolved.
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No, man was a man from the beginning.
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He was intelligent and sophisticated from the beginning.
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Adam had the ability to name the animals from the beginning.
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This is hugely important because this tells us something about how we were created.
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You didn't grow up from cavemen.
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Adam was a man, not a Neanderthal.
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And Adam's children were men.
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Intelligent, sophisticated.
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You look at some of what archaeologists unearth.
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Some of the amazing things our forefathers could do before they discovered electricity, before they discovered a lot of what we now take for granted technologically.
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They were amazing.
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So I simply say that creation of the city is a huge point about the nature of man.
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All right, moving on.
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We see, and this is the twelfth point.
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I'm going to keep going here.
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The twelfth point, the beginning of government.
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Turn to chapter nine.
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Now we're moving along a little faster now.
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Go to chapter nine, verse six.
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This is after the flood.
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Prior to the flood, man was essentially self-governing.
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And because of that, the Bible says men were evil continually.
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That he was corrupt and that he was violent.
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Chapter six, verse eleven says he was corrupt and violent.
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But now, Noah comes off the ark and God establishes a covenant with him.
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And part of that covenant is this.
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I'm going to read it to you.
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Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.
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For God made man in his own image.
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You say, what's that, pastor? That's the introduction to government.
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Because what that says is men will have the right to establish law and order over other men who do evil.
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That's the very foundation of what government is.
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You say, well, government's all bad.
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No, bad government is bad.
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But also is no government.
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Genesis 13 says that God establishes the rulers as a deacon.
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You say, what are you saying, pastor? The word minister is the word for deacon.
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And the man who is the ruler is put there as a steward of God.
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If he's evil, he will answer for it.
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And if he's good, he will answer for it.
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But God establishes rule of law for a reason, and it's established right here.
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And by the way, the very first rule is very simple.
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You kill somebody, we're going to kill you back.
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That was it.
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I mean, it's simple, but it was the law of retribution.
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If you take the life of someone, that person is made in the image of God.
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You have forfeited your life because you've taken the life of another.
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I still think that law should be in place today.
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We pretty much abandoned the death penalty, except for some extreme cases.
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But the death penalty is right here.
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And it's fairly simple.
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So we have the beginning of government.
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Number 13, the beginning of languages.
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Now, most of you are familiar with this, so we won't take too long with it.
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In chapter 11, verse 7, we have the introduction of languages as a judgment.
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The reason why you can't pick up the phone and call somebody in Beijing and just start having a conversation is the judgment of God.
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No, I'm serious.
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The reason why you have people that come from other lands and they can't communicate with you, or you visit another land and you can't communicate with them is because of the judgment of God.
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At one time, all men spoke the same language.
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We don't know what language it was.
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Some people argue it was Hebrew or, you know, Muslims believe it was Arabic.
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You know, it was the original language.
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We don't know what it was.
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We do know this, though.
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At one point, God decided, and we're going to talk about this later, God decided to divide the languages, thus to divide men.
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And we see that here in chapter 11.
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I'll read verse 6.
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And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people and they have all one language.
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And this is only the beginning of what they will do.
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And nothing that they purpose to do will now be impossible for them.
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And come, let us go down and therefore confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech.
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Again, I'll explain more about that passage later, but the point is this.
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This is where language comes from.
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My wife teaches classes.
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Some of you know this, some of you don't.
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My wife teaches a couple of days a week, Chinese children how to speak English.
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My wife doesn't speak Chinese, but she speaks English.
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And so she's able to teach Chinese children through a process online.
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The whole reason why that job exists is because of this.
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The whole reason why.
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And you know what? I believe one day it's going to go away.
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I don't believe we're going to have several languages in the new heavens and new earth.
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Just like on the day of Pentecost, when the veil was lifted and every person heard it and understood it.
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I think when we're in heaven, I'm not going to have to learn Hebrew to talk to Moses.
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So this is the beginning of languages.
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Number 14.
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We're cooking with gas, guys.
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We're getting there.
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Number 14.
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We have the beginning of covenant and covenant signs.
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Look with me at chapter 9.
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We're still in chapter 9.
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I'm sorry.
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Go back to chapter 9.
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We were in chapter 11.
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Go back to chapter 9 and look at verse 13.
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Actually, look at verse 9.
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It says, Behold, God is speaking to Noah.
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Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock and everything or every beast of the earth with you.
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As many as come out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth.
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I establish my covenant with you and never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood.
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And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.
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And God said, this is the sign of the covenant I made between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations.
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I have set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.
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This is the first time the word covenant comes into Scripture.
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The word covenant means it's a promise.
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When God makes a promise and he's covenanting with Noah, this promise about not destroying the earth with a flood again, not taking all life with a flood again, that doesn't mean there won't be local floods.
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There are local floods.
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We just saw one.
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But he's talking about removing all life from the earth with a flood.
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He says, I'm not going to do that again because next time he removes all earth, the next time he destroys earth, he's going to do it with fire, not with water.
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But this is the beginning of the covenant and the sign.
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Notice the covenant is accompanied by a sign.
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God says every time you see the rainbow, what do you see? Well, we know what we see today because of the absolutely deplorable way that the rainbow has been misused.
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But beyond that, what do you see when you see the rainbow in the sky? You see the covenant or the promise of God.
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Later in Genesis, we won't read it right now, but later in Genesis, we see another covenant, the covenant God made with Abram.
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And that covenant had a sign as well, the removing of the foreskin of the male.
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That's called circumcision, and that was a sign that was given to a promise.
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God gives us promises and he gives us signs to remember his promise.
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I think in very much the same way we have the Lord's table.
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Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me.
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He said, this is the cup of the new covenant.
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And you do this in remembrance of me, the idea of covenant begins in Genesis.
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All right, we have the beginning of the gospel.
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Go to chapter 12, the beginning of the gospel.
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I can't wait to get to this part and study it with you.
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But this is what we what's called the Abrahamic covenant.
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And he says, now the Lord says to Abram, go from your country and from your kindred and from your father's house to the land that I will show you.
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And I will make of you a great nation.
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I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
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I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you.
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I will curse.
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And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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You say, pastor, that's not the gospel.
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Yes, it is.
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How do you know, pastor? Because I can go to Galatians chapter three and I can see in Galatians chapter three, verse eight, where the apostle Paul says this was God preaching the gospel to Abraham.
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When he said all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you, that is the gospel in seed form.
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That would later grow and be birthed in Jesus Christ.
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So we have the beginning of the gospel right here in Genesis chapter 12.
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Just a couple more.
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We have the beginning of election.
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Oh, now we're talking.
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So what is election? Election is God's sovereign choice to choose whom he will.
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And God has the ability to choose whom he will.
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And he does choose whom he will.
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To be in covenant with you say, well, where do we see that? Have you read the book, Abram, an idolater living in Mesopotamia, called out of his idolatry for no other reason than God's good pleasure to become the friend of God, not because he was a better man, but because he was God's chosen man.
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God chooses Isaac, not the firstborn of Abram, but the son of the promise, and he chooses him because of God's good pleasure.
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We see him choose Jacob, not Esau, not the firstborn, but Jacob, not the more noble.
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Jacob was actually the more sinister.
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He was the one who stole his brother's birthright.
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Now, you could say, well, his brother sold it to him because he was impetuous.
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Yes, he was.
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But he was the one who who stuck the hair to his arms and snuck into his father's tent and pretended to be somebody he wasn't.
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He was not a good man, but he was God's man.
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That's important because God does not choose the way we would choose.
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God's choice is his and in his purpose, he chose Jacob and later he would say, Jacob, I love.
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And he saw, hey, that's tough, but it's right there in the text, black and white.
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So we see the doctrine of election is established not in Romans nine, but in Genesis.
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And that's the thing about people, I don't believe in election.
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And I said, did God choose Israel above all other nations? Yes.
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Was it because Israel was better than other nations? No.
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Was it were they greater in size than other nations? No, Amos tells us that you were smaller than the other nations.
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And yet I chose you.
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You I've known above all other nations.
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God's elective purpose is known by him alone.
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The only reason why you are saved, if you are saved today, is because God reached down into the muck and mire of your deadness.
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He reached out and he gave life to your dead soul.
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And he, by his grace, saved you.
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Not because you were better, not because you were worth it, but because you weren't worth it.
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And God was better than you.
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And he was good enough to save you when you weren't good enough to be saved.
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We see election in Genesis.
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We see election throughout the Bible.
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I don't see election in the Bible.
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Number one, the words there.
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But not only that, it's all through.
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I better stop.
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OK, number 17, the beginning of justification.
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What is justification? Justification is how we are saved.
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We are saved because we're justified of sin.
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Genesis 15, 6, God justified Abram through faith and not works.
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Genesis 15, 6, Abram believed God and God counted it to him as righteousness.
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Last one, number 18.
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And then I'll draw to a close.
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Number 18, we have the beginning of the priesthood.
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You say, wait a minute, pastor.
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Pastor, the priesthood began with the Levites.
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Moses had the law and he created the law and he gave the law.
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And in the law was this family line of the 12 tribes, the Levitical line.
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And we have all in the book of Leviticus, all the rules that they had to follow and all the things they had to do as priests.
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But let me remind you of something.
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Jesus does not qualify as a priest under Levitical law because Jesus is not a Levite.
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Jesus is from the tribe of Judah, not from the tribe of Levi.
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And therefore, he does not qualify as a priest unless there's another priesthood.
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And Genesis tells us about a man named Melchizedek, who was priest of the most high God.
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Chapter four, verse I'm sorry, chapter 14, verse 18 talks about Melchizedek, priest of the most high God.
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And when we go to Hebrews, it says Jesus abideth a priest forever, not according to the tribe of Levi.
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But according to the order of Melchizedek, the priesthood of which Jesus is a part is not the Levitical priesthood, but the Melchizedekian priesthood established by God in Melchizedek, fulfilled by God in Christ.
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Some people believe Melchizedek is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus.
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That's a question for another time.
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But the point still remains, there is a priesthood for which Christ qualifies, and it is the priesthood of Melchizedek.
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Beloved, I've given you 18 beginnings in Genesis, and I haven't really gotten to all of them.
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I encourage you with your family this week, during your times of devotion, look for other things that have their beginnings in Genesis.
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As we said earlier in the sermon, people want to know where they came from.
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And Genesis is amazing because it not only tells us where we came from, but it tells us where everything came from.
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But might I challenge you today as I draw to a close, that while it's important to know where we came from, it's more important to know where we're headed.
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Genesis not only tells us our history, but it lays the foundation for our future.
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As we've seen, it lays the foundation for Jesus Christ.
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And today, if you have believed in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and you have come to Him by faith and repentance, then your future is secured in Him.
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But if you have not, by faith and repentance, come to the Lord Jesus Christ, there is only one sure future for you.
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And that is the future of death and hell.
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Genesis tells us about our collective past, but our relationship with Christ tells us about our future.
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What is your future? Are you prepared through faith and repentance in the Lord Jesus Christ? It's my prayer that you would be.
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Let us pray together.
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Father, I am forever grateful to have the opportunity to preach your word.
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And I am thankful that you have given us so much to learn in this book.
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And we've only just scratched the surface this morning, Lord, and yet we've seen so much.
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I pray, Lord, as we consider the wonders of what this book tells us about our past, that we would not for a second forget about the importance of our future.
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Father, I pray for everyone in this room, from the young person to the oldest person, for man and for woman.
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Lord, that they would know Christ.
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And through him, know salvation, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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And at the name of the Lord Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father.
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So, Lord, I pray that we would all bow the knee to him and that we would do so before it is too late.
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And I pray this, Lord, in Jesus name.
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Amen.