Introduction
Let me begin with a discipleship question: will we trust and obey Jesus in the real decisions of everyday life? Christ forms us through truth received, repentance practiced, and obedience lived out.
Main Points
Repentance and Renewal
good morning as you heard and you know that today is valentine's day and look what i am preaching about what happened in the garden the fall and the remedy actually the unique story of love the love of god is written in the bible from the very first beginning of this first book to the end ending with the book of revelation and god shows his love towards the humanity in certain ways that no one can imagine or grasp but this is god and how he works and because of that we need to explore the book of genesis as most of you know that on wednesday night brother tom is taking us in a journey throughout the book of genesis and last wednesday if some of you was here present you heard brother tom taking some ideas giving you some ideas from chapter three genesis chapter three so i'm going to do something hopefully it will be helping to understand some of the issues that were not covered during that time there's a sentence i quoted from one of the books and it says god and his word has given us information concerning creation that we could have received in no other way than by divine revelation for no one was there to observe it and it cannot be repeated as an experiment in a laboratory i want you to focus on the two words divine revelation those are highlighted in another in a different color so god in fact has revealed in his word which is the bible everything that he sees was necessary for the human beings to know about him so if you want to know about god a certain aspect or a certain attribute don't go to any other place come back to the bible the bible will show you everything that is necessary for you to know about god it's written in his word so don't go to fortune tellers don't go to any other places don't seek any other wise men to tell you about god because he is written everything he has written everything about himself and his word and those things that he has written were very necessary for us to know when we come to the book of genesis actually and read it we discovered that there are jewels inside this book and unfortunately the most attacked book in the world and in our new testament and old testament is the book of genesis especially the first chapters of the book of genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2. some believe actually genesis 1 and 2 speaks of two different accounts of creation i don't i don't believe that is the case and i will lead you in this moment uh to explore a little bit about that and also to go to see what happened in the garden of eden with our forefathers our first daddy and mommy adam and eve so the first verse actually in the in the book of genesis starts with a statement chapter 1 verse 1 in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth this is very broad statement and it covers a lot of things that the scientists cannot see in that and i don't want to go to that direction because i don't want to be late and i don't want to i don't want you to miss what is going to be shared this morning so i will not go there but come with me so it says that heavens and earth and everything that is within heavens and earth whatever you might be thinking uh imagining in your uh mind about what is there god has created that so he was the of everything so when we come to the new testament actually in the book of colossians chapter 1 verse 16 paul there writes something about what happened in the creation for by him this is the sun all things were created in heaven and on earth visible and invisible whether thrawns of or dominions or rulers or authorities those are divisions of the sons of god and the angels he's talking about these entities so and he's talking about the invisible things so those false under that category all things were created through him and for him so i believe i believe that god created everything within the span of six days and in day number seven he stopped working this is the meaning of he rested because some critics would say oh your god labors and he is tired and he needs to rest he is not he is not he's not like men he never he never he's never tired he stopped working on day seven and the way that the writer of the book of genesis which is moses tried to express it and some words that we can grasp and understand he said god rested in day number seven so when we come actually to this statement broad statement we see that the writer is trying to speak about that creation process and this statement and then he goes down into the details in chapter one until the end of verse three chapter two and then he goes into details of what happened in chap in the day number six with the animals and with human beings so that's the case that's why we have this drawing before you so genesis 1 1 a he created heavens and everything that is there uh one b he created earth and then he is speaking about the details what happened in between those two heavens and earth until the end of verse three chapter two then we see that he focuses on creating or preparing eden the garden of eden and bringing the man who he has created from the dust of the ground and putting him there and into the garden of eden to do two main things to do two main things to take care of the garden and to guard it to guard it and we'll see what is the meaning behind that word i believe also that god created like i said everything in six days and what i mean by uh six days is a 24 hours day so he started with day number one he created he finished and it was evening and morning day number one and then he went to day number two and he created and then it was evening and then it was morning day number two and then he continued until he finished day in day number six and in day number seven he rested we have a proof for this from the book itself uh from the pentateuch the five books that moses wrote in exodus chapter 20 verse 8 he says remember the sabbath day the meaning of sabbath is rest so remember the day of rest okay remember the sabbath day to keep it holy six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is the sabbath is the day of rest of the lord your god in it you shall do no work you nor your son nor your daughter nor your male servant nor your female servant nor your carol nor your stranger who is within your gates don't do anything in that day number seven it's for you to rest god is drawing the pattern that human beings needs to follow so you go work six days day number seven is for your rest he says it's the day of the lord but actually it's for you to have some rest and during that day you give thanks to the lord you come and worship god you bring your uh your curbs you bring your money to celebrate and the place that god has appointed for you to celebrate this is in the old testament but now we are gathering in these buildings and we know that the church is not the building though the building is necessary for us to gather together the church is you and myself this is the church okay so when we see this fact then wherever we can go to meet as a group we are the church but for us we come here because this is the place we used to come and gather together and we come to listen to the word of god we sing songs to god listen to me we sing songs to god we are not singing to each other read psalm number 100 so we come to celebrate our god okay so we sing to him he desire to listen to our singing and as we lift our praises and thanksgivings to god he is listening there so whether you have a beautiful sound or you don't have a vocal sound god is listening this is the most important thing god is listening this is because today i'm speaking for the first time here i got a text message from pastor noah who is the worship leader and i went through the details that he has written there for the team for those who are working on the sound system the monitors and everything else there are a lot of things going in the background they deserve to give them they lead us they lead us actually in a very beautiful atmosphere to give thanksgivings to our creator to our god so god deserves our attention and god deserves our thanksgiving so give thanksgiving to god he deserve it so when we come to verse number 11 actually he says for in six days the lord made the heavens and the earth the sea and all that is in them and rested in seventh and the seventh day therefore the lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it so for those who claim that and those some of those are evangelicals for those who claim that creation was uh done in a span of millions of years or who claims that there is a gap theory i want them to answer this question if god created in six days and he is asking moses to tell the people that they are to work only six literal days and in day number seven they have to rest so how can they interpret the millions of years or the gap theory they can't okay because we have a proof here from the bible that says it was a literal six days 24 hours for each day and those were day after day after day number one day number two three four five six and day number seven he stopped the process of creation so what happened in the garden of eden i'll read the first seven verses from chapter three now the serpent was more cunning that any beast of the field which the lord god had made and he said to the woman has god indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden and the woman said to the serpent we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden god told adam you are free to eat from all the trees this is the meaning of eat you will eat that's how the hebrew expression comes according so we see here the serpent is trying to mislead the first lady in the world so we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden god had said you shall not eat nor shall you touch it lest you die for sure you will die don't eat from it don't eat from it for sure you will die he didn't say don't touch it verse number four then the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die so god said to adam you will for sure die mote tamut for sure you are going to die now the serpent is trying to deny that he is trying to reverse it and he's telling the woman you will not die you will not die there's something wrong with this expression there's no death for god knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like god knowing good and evil so when the woman saw that the tree was good for you for food that it was pleasant to the eyes and at three desirable to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate she also gave to her husband with her and he ate verse 7 then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sued thick leaves together and made themselves coverings now whatever i will share with you this morning should not change the fact that god was not surprised with the fall of man okay you cannot surprise god you cannot teach god you cannot be wiser than god that he is above all of his creation he is above all the bible tells us about some of the phrases that he is the god of all other gods he's a ball above all other gods when they will teach about that but here we know that god was not surprised why because the bible tells us again the bible has answers for these questions and first epistle of peter chapter 1 verses 18 through 20 uh he says knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your father forefathers not with perishable things such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of christ like that of alam without a blemish or spot he was for known since when before the foundation of the world but was made manifest and the last times for the sake of you for the sake of us so we know here that before the creation of everything god has a plan for human beings how to save them because he knew they were going to fall he knew and he knows everything he knows what you are thinking right now he knows some of us are sitting but maybe they are thinking what they are going to cook for tonight or where they are going to spend valentine in which restaurant god knows these things these things are important for us but he also knows our plans and he knows every single detailed ideas that is working here he knows everything about us he created us that's why when we come and try to negotiate with god we have to humble ourselves he is holy he is holy he is holy don't ever don't ever approach him with the pride don't do that be careful be careful chapter 2 ends with harmony and the life of innocence with no shame both adam and eve were naked were naked and they didn't see any problem with that imagine someone will enter the church and he's naked before our eyes so what will happen chapter 3 starts with introducing one character from the animal kingdom and that is the serpent and this serpent is described as cunning is that so is that the meaning cunning in fact the word that is used for naked is in hebrew is arum and it has this number 6174 and the word that is used for cunning is aram and the difference between the two numbers is only one digit so six one seven four six one seven five so those are very close in their meaning so if you if you have a dictionary that deals with the hebrew words you will see the system that has been followed in these dictionaries and you'll see the word aromim and then after that the word arom so those are very close in their meanings so the writer is trying to say something to us and remember when the writer all the writers actually when they wrote their product the book of genesis exodus the book of revelation uh not the new the new also the new testament when they start doing that there were no chapters no verses okay so when he is writing verse the last verse of chapter 2 and then he is writing the first verse of chapter 3 in the original text there were no numbers there were no chapters so he's trying to convey an idea and he's playing on the words so he's saying both of them were arum naked and they there was no shame there's no it's not a big deal for them but he's saying about this animal the serpent that the serpent was arom the serpent was and the meaning is crafty prudent clever we see this in matthew chapter 10 verse 16 when the lord sends out his disciples to god to preach to evangelize to call people to repentance why because the kingdom of god is imminent is coming it's near so he tells them he says behold i am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves so be wise as serpents so this is the meaning of this word and when we come to the greek word that is used there it is fronimos means someone who is clever who is wise so clever wise cunning it's not that much telling us exactly what the writer wanted us to know about the character of this animal the serpent so when we use the uh the greek translation of the old testament the old testament was written in hebrew most of the old testament except some parts of daniel erdra and one verse in the book of genesis and also two compound words in the book of genesis were written in aramaic but the rest was written in hebrew so some people took on themselves the task of translating the hebrew bible into the greek language and this took place in the third century bc 250 and it was produced to the people who were living the jewish people who were living in egypt the egypt now and alexandria so the situation when we when we use the saturn to read verse 1 of chapter 3 we found we find out that the word for cunning it has something different a little bit more cunning this is used in the greek language phroneme tatus this is it tells us about something that is much more than what is for the rest for instance i have someone who is for instance 6.2 tall and i have other one who is taller than this person but i have the person number three he's the tallest so this word comes here in this category he is the wisest among all the animals so when we when we know about the serpent that he is the wise wisest person or personality character among the animals so we know now what he is trying to do i'm i try when i study the bible and when i come to such passages i try to imagine what is going uh in the background okay so i have this in my mind when i read here because the animals were created before human beings so the enemy comes to this prudent clever the more clever than all the rest of the animals and he tells him listen guy he said yeah what do you want to say he said i know you are very wise oh i am and i want to tell you something you see adam and his wife ish and isha do you see them yes i can see them adam is giving you orders right yes but listen you were created before adam and you are very wise what do you think if i will tell you a way that you can start giving orders not receiving orders from him so the serpent looks into this equation and he says oh good idea so what do you want me to do so he tells him listen adam i think he is difficult but you go to his wife and talk to her and try to test her knowledge about what is lawful and what is forbidden and what is right and wrong he says okay what then try to convince her to eat from the fruit the forbidden fruit and then what will happen that's it i just want you to do that and the rest is very easy so he thinks the serpent because he's very wise he thinks and he starts thinking adam is telling me don't go there come here don't eat this don't do that i would love to do that i want to do the same thing i want to give him orders so that idea starts building up in his mind and he decides to come so in genesis remember that adam gave names to all the animals because it's written in chapter 2 verse 19 out of the ground the lord god formed every animal of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them and whatever the man called a living creature that was its name so in this emeric uh culture when someone names someone else or something else it includes authority and dominion over that thing or that person so keeping that in our mind it means that adam knew who this creature is it is his name that he gave to this creature was means the shining one defining one so he was beautiful and he was clever both those two but the problem it is adam who gave the name to him to this character to this creature so he knows very well that this creature needs to obey his orders but the problem adam didn't perform his double force task mandated to him by god in verse 15 chapter 2 the lord god took the man and put him in the garden of eden to work it and to keep it and the word the hebrew word used there is schumer chamber means to guard something or to guard yourself from something that is wrong or to guard the sheep for instance or to guard the commandment of the lord here in this context it means guarding the garden of eden to guard your partner and to take care of the animals from anything that can penetrate this garden that sounds odd be careful of that you have to be careful of that thing the same word is used in chapter 3 also verse 24 of the carobim now this is after the explosion of adam and eve from the garden of eden so he god drove the man out and at the east of the garden of eden he stationed the caribbean and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard to shemore the way to the tree of life so we see here that part of the very important task or one aspect of the very important task of adam was to guard whether to guard the garden or to guard his better half that he was very happy when he saw this woman and he said this is a woman because she was taken from a man this is isha because she was taken from ish man and woman so he rejoiced at that moment but we see now that he is not doing what was required from him in a perfect way so we come to the fall when the serpent saw that adam didn't move when he saw the serpent approaching eve he didn't say anything he didn't tell hey what are you talking about he didn't say why are you talking to my wife to my asia why are you talking to her why are you not coming and talking to me he didn't say anything so he approached eve and he start falsifying the words of god now we know from the argument between eve and the serpent we find out another lack of responsibility and that falls on adam's shoulders period why because we see first of all it was adam by himself when god commanded him when he gave him his the commandment telling him do not eat from this tree because the day you will eat from it for sure you will surely die when we read the conversation between eve and the serpent we discovered that there is some lack of information and there are some misleading facts i can't name this as facts but she was misled by whom by mr adam unfortunately so adam who was supposed to take care of his wife who was supposed to take care of the garden who was supposed to take care of the animals he didn't do his job we are used to blame eve and we forget that we men were in charge of the situation today is valentine i want you men after we finish you go to your spouses and tell her i'm sorry would you do that would you do that who's going to do that it's really whenever we go whenever wherever we are even when we joke with each other we tell this we blame eve the new testament also tells us this fact but listen carefully paul when he says eve was deceived first it was adam who was confronted first and who was judged first so we see there is there is lack of responsibility that falls directly on adam he wasn't faithful in handing the commandment down to eve he fell short and this is what we do we cannot blame adam and lift ourselves and we say oh if i was there i will not do it really so we come to the confrontation verses 8 to 24. so we know that it was eve who was the first one to eat from it imagine what happened between the serpent and between the women adam like we like i said adam didn't do his job well and because of that because of that eve was deceived so what did eve do when the enemy when the serpent was successful in convincing eve to look at the tree in a different way and start to think about the benefits that she will gain from that tree what did she do she ate and what else she did so she ate and she gave her husband okay and he ate with her and the moment he ate from that fruit their eyes were opened and they discovered their nakedness where were you adam and eve before you ate from the tree you were naked and you didn't see any problem with that what's happened now and that's what god start doing when he starts confronting adam and eve so he first goes to adam he didn't question eve first he start with adam so why because he was the boss this is very real he was in charge it was to him the commandment was given and then he was supposed to hand it down faithfully to his spouse to his wife but he didn't do that he didn't do that so both adam and eve denied responsibility by discerning it on someone else adam why did you do that it's your fault first of all and then because of eve the one that you have made her to be with me woman why did you do that it wasn't me it was the serpent he didn't question the serpent he immediately pronounced the curse so he goes to the serpent and the serpent because it was wiser than the rest of the animals now it is cursed more than all of them because of the sin of adam because of the sin of adam the serpent didn't respect the order established by god like i said i imagined that conversation taking place between the serpent and between uh the enemy you wanna name it satan go ahead no problem i have another idea about it but let's name it satan okay we are in the first book of the bible so we have to be careful how to give names to different characters okay so let's agree that this is the enemy so when he came to the serpent and th
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.