The First Forgiveness
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Transcript of The First Forgiveness
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THE FIRST
FORGIVENESS
Rubn Daro Snchez, Ph.D.
ADVI INTERNATIONAL
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2007 by ADVI INTERNATIONAL Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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The First Forgiveness
Genesis 3:8-24
8 Then the man and his wife heard
the sound of the LORD God as he was
walking in the garden in the cool of
the day, and they hid from the LORD
God among the trees of the garden. 9But the LORD God called to the man,
"Where are you?" 10 He answered,
"I heard you in the garden, and I was
afraid because I was naked; so I
hid." 11 And he said, "Who told youthat you were naked? Have you eaten
from the tree that I commanded you
not to eat from?" 12 The man said,
"The woman you put here with me
she gave me some fruit from the tree,and I ate it." 13 Then the LORD God
said to the woman, "What is this youhave done?" The woman said, "The
serpent deceived me, and I ate." 14 So
the LORD God said to the serpent,
"Because you have done this, Cursed
are you above all the livestock and all
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PREFACE
the wild animals! You will crawl on
your belly and you will eat dust allthe days of your life. 15 And I will put
enmity between you and the wom-
an, and between your offspring and
hers; he will crush your head, and
you will strike his heel." 16 To thewoman he said, I will greatly in-
crease your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to chil-
dren. Your desire will be for your
husband, and he will rule overyou." 17 To Adam he said, "Because
you listened to your wife and ate from
the tree about which I commanded
you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed
is the ground because of you; through
painful toil you will eat of it all the
days of your life 18 It will produce
thorns and thistles for you, and you
will eat the plants of the field. 19 bythe sweat of your brow you will eat
your food until you return to the
ground, since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you will
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The First Forgiveness
return." 20 Adam named his wife
Eve, because she would become themother of all the living. 21 The LORD
God made garments of skin for Adam
and his wife and clothed them. 22 And
the LORD God said, "The man has
now become like one of us, knowinggood and evil. He must not be allowed
to reach out his hand and take also
from the tree of life and eat, and live
forever." 23 So the LORD God ban-
ished him from the Garden of Eden towork the ground from which he had
been taken. 24 After he drove the man
out, he placed on the east side of the
Garden of Eden cherubim and a flam-
ing sword flashing back and forth toguard the way to the tree of life.
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1
INTRODUCTION
There is no question in any-
one's mind that Adam and Eve were
sinners, and there was no question in
their mind that they were sinners.
If you have any questions about
the historicity of this particular story,
just read Romans 5, or read Matthew19. Our Lord Jesus Christ and the
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2
apostle Paul had no problem whatso-ever accepting this as literal history.
So, we'll notice the steps that
our Lord takes in bringing a sinner to
Himself. In the following chapters
well see three of them.
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3
GOD SEEKS US
Then the man and his wife
heard the sound of the LORD God as
he was walking in the garden in thecool of the day, and they hid from the
LORD God among the trees of the
garden.(v.8)
After they sinned, wed think
that Adam and Eve would have beenrunning, looking for God. After all,
God made them; God was their Crea-
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4
tor. And after all, God sustainedthem; He was their Life. And God
provided for them so generously.
God gave to them faculties with
which to enjoy a beautiful Paradise
garden. And we would think that
Adam would turn to Eve and say,
"You know, we've sinned and the one
Person we need more than anything
else is God, and let's go find God.Let's tell Him what we have done, and
surely the Lord God will do some-
thing to help us."
We'd think that people who arereeling down Main St. would say, "I
need God. Where is He?" We'd think
that people who are living on the
kicks of narcotics would say, "This isnot what I need. I need God. I want
God."
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God Seeks For Us
5
And yet, man does not go seek-ing God. Man runs and hides because
the fleshly mind is enmity against
God. That's why over in Romans 3,
when Paul is drawing to a close, his
argument proving that the world is
guilty, he says, Thereis no one who
understands, no one who seeks God."
(v.11).
When it comes to salvation,God takes the initiative. It's not man
who takes the initiative. It is not
Adam and Eve who said, "We will
now seek God." Oh, no!They were hiding from God.
They were hiding because they were
ashamed. They discovered that they
were naked and they tried to clothethemselves with fig leaves. They had
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rebelled against God, and now theywere ashamed.
Shame is a good thing! The
prophet Jeremiah twice in his proph-
ecy makes a statement like this, (he is
describing the sins of the people of
Judah) "Neither were they ashamed.
Neither did they blush when they had
committed these evils."
We have people today whodon't know how to blush. Or they are
those who laugh at the people who
blush. But, the ability to feel ashamed
when something is wrong is a goodthing.
Shame is to the inner man what
pain is to the outer man. And when
the outer man feels pain, we say, "I'mgoing to the doctor; there is some-
thing wrong. Pain is that red light
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God Seeks For Us
7
that flashes and says, "There is some-thing wrong." And to the inner man
is shame. When we are ashamed of
what we have done and run and we
hide and we say, "I don't even want to
see the face of God. I am so ashamed
of what I've done!" That's a good
sign.
But shame should not drive us
away from God. Ultimately, shameshould bring us to God, because He is
the only One who can lift up our
heads. They were ashamed and they
were afraid. He said so very plainly."I was afraid." But, they were afraid
of what? God had said, "In the day
that you eat thereof dying you shall
die."As yet, they hadn't died physi-
cally; they had died spiritually. And I
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8
wonder if Adam and Eve weren't say-ing, "Oh, if God comes He will bring
a sword. If God finds us, He'll slay
us!"
Man runs and hides. He didn't
dig a hole in the ground and tried to
tunnel away from God. He got be-
hind God's creation. It was a tree that
originally was the test. "Don't eat of
this tree." He did eat of the tree, andbecome a thief and a sinner. Now, he
goes and hides behind some trees to
hide from God.
In Genesis chapters 1 and 2,God's creation was a window through
which men could see God.
We just can see Adam and Eve walk-
ing around their home.Can we just see Adam and Eve
walking around their beautiful home
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God Seeks For Us
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and saying, "My, what a marvellousArchitect we have! God knows how
to make things! My! What a builder!
Look how this flower is put together!
Look how this tree is constructed!"
But, what did they do? Crea-
tion was a window through which
they saw God. But in chapter 3, crea-
tion became a mirror in which they
saw themselves. "I want that tree!" "Iwant that fruit! That fruit is pleas-
ant to the eyes! That fruit is good
for food! That fruit is going to
make me wise!It's not: I see God; Isee myself!
That's what men have been do-
ing for centuries: exploiting God's
creation for them. Now, they are us-ing God's creation to hide from God.
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First, creation is a window andthey see God; and then, it's a mirror
and they see themselves. Now, it's a
wall! And that wall hides them from
God. I'm afraid many people today are
using the things that God has created
to hide from God.
Man runs and hides and so God
seeks man. They hear God walking
in the cool of the day (v.8). WhenMoses wrote these words, inspired by
the Holy Spirit, he didn't put "in the
cool of the day" (in the Hebrew says,
"In the breeze of the day"), just to betalking about the weather.
We can contrast "in the cool of
the day" in Genesis 3:8 with Genesis
18:1, "And the Lord God came toAbraham in the heat of the day."
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God came to Abraham "in theheat of the day," because He was go-
ing to judge and destroy the cities of
Sodom and Gomorrah. And God did
not come "in the cool of the day,"
when the breeze of God is blowing,
and people are in fellowship with
each other. God came "in the heat of
the day." He came to bring fire and
brimstone and judgment.And so, verse 8 is saying to us,
that God comes seeking man in His
grace. God came "in the cool of the
day" that He might bring a blessing toman, even though man had sinned.
In the Old Testament God the
Father is out seeking man. In the four
gospels is God the Son. "The Son of
man is come to seek and to save that
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which was lost." In the book of Acts
to this present day is God the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit is out seeking
people! God is a seeking God and
God comes seeking lost sinners. God
seeks us.
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GOD SPEAKS TO US
But the LORD God called to the
man, "Where are you?" He answered,
"I heard you in the garden, and I was
afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
And he said, "Who told you that you
were naked? Have you eaten from the
tree that I commanded you not to eatfrom?" The man said, "The woman
you put here with meshe gave me
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some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
Then the LORD God said to the wom-
an, "What is this you have done?" The
woman said, "The serpent deceived
me, and I ate." So the LORD God said
to the serpent, "Because you havedone this, Cursed are you above all
the livestock and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you
will eat dust all the days of your
life.And I will put enmity between youand the woman, and between your off-
spring and hers; he will crush your
head, and you will strike his heel." To
the woman he said,I will greatly in-
crease your pains inchildbearing; with pain you will give
birth to children. Your desire will be
for your husband, and he will rule
over you." To Adam he said, "Because
you listened to your wife and ate from
the tree about which I commanded
you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed
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God Speaks to Us
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is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of itall the days of your life. It will pro-
duce thorns and thistles for you, and
you will eat the plants of the field.By
the sweat of your brow you will eat
your food until you return to the
ground, since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you willreturn." (Vv9-19)
Did you ever come home from
work and say, "Hi, how things are go-
ing?"
"Silence.
"Kids O.K.?"
"Silence.
And if you have been married
very long at all, you say, "Ah, ha...
Something..." And you start backtracking. What did I do?
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That doesn't often happen inChristian homes, but sometimes it
does. Or sometimes your children
won't talk to you and then you find
out you did something: You had pea-
nut butter in the lunch twice in a row
or something like that, some great gi-
gantic thing, you see.
Did you ever do something to
someone and they wouldn't talk toyou anymore? It's a childish thing,
isn't it? But, sometimes it happens.
If I were God I wonder if I
would have spoken to man. He spoketo them already and said, "The whole
garden is yours, every bit of it! Just
stay away from that one tree!" And
the one thing He told them not to do,they did. But God speaks to us.
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First of all He calls, in verse 9.
"And the Lord God called unto Adam
and said unto him, 'Where art thou?'"
The way you read this gives
evidence of your convictions about
the Lord.I heard about a seminary pro-
fessor over in Scotland, that before he
were graduating any of his preaching
students he had them read this pas-sage and if they read it, "Adam,
Where art thou?!" as though a po-
liceman were looking for a criminal
he wouldn't pass them.These words, "Adam, where art
thou?" are spoken graciously. They
are not spoken as a judge looking for
a criminal; they aren't spoken as a po-
liceman looking for a thief; they are
spoken graciously, "Adam! Where
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are thou?" As if God were saying,"You ought to be here! I miss you; I
created you for fellowship to share
my blessing and my glory." "Adam,
where are you?" They were spoken
graciously.
I notice they were spoken per-
sonally. "Adam." He speaks a name.
If we go through our Bibles
well find a lot of people that Godcalled by name: Samuel, Samuel;
Abraham! Abraham! Martha, Martha.
Thou art Simon! Thou shall be Peter.
He spoke these words person-ally. Does God still speak to people
today? Sure, He does!
The Spirit of God takes the
Word of God and speaks to people.And God can use many, many differ-
ent ways of speaking to people.
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I have seen people come to
Christ who has been spoken to
through a blessing that came to them.
I've seen people come to Christ be-
cause of some seeming tragedy that
came to them. I've seen people cometo Christ who are just sitting reading
the Word of God! Nobody was
preaching to them, they just simply
read the Word of God and God spoketo them. But God spoke to them per-
sonally.
God doesn't seek crowds. God
seeks individuals. When our Lord Je-sus Christ looked out at the
multitudes, He didn't see statistics, He
didn't see vast numbers, He saw indi-
viduals.
And so it is with our Father.
He spoke to him personally; He spoke
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to him also sovereignty. God in Hissovereignty was taking the initiative
in winning lost souls. Whatever you
do with the plan of salvation, it begins
with God.
The Lamb was slain from be-
fore the foundation of the world. And
God's plan of salvation was not ruined
by what Adam did! Adam was not
frantically pacing up and down on thelawns of Paradise saying, "What am I
going to do next?" No. God had a
sovereign plan and He is going to
work His plan.God speaks to us. First, He
calls us and says, "Where are you?"
It's interesting to know that in Genesis
3:9 God says, "Where are you?" InGenesis 4:9 He says, "Where is your
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brother?" In Genesis 18:9 He says,
"Where is your wife?"
But before He asks about my
wife or my brother, He asks about me,
"Where are you?" Thats a good
question. Where are you today? Areyou in sin or in salvation? Are you in
Adam or in Christ? Are you in the
darkness or in the light?"
He was asking him his position.Not, what have you done?
Where are you? Because where
you are is the consequence of what
you've done.He calls. But He speaks to us
in a second way: He convicts. In
verses 10 through 13 God speaks to
convict us.
That's one of the big problems
today. We can't find many people
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who are sinners. God cannot saverighteous people.
Our Lord said, "I have not
come to call the righteous," and we
know why, because there aren't any!
If they were He called them. "I have-
n't come to call the righteous. I have
come to call sinners to repentance."
But there is hard to find people who
are sinners.He convicts. He says to Adam,
"Hast thou eaten of the tree that I told
you not to eat of?" Would you notice
both, Adam and Eve, admit what theyhad done? At the end of verse 12
Adam says, "I did eat." At the end of
verse 13 Eve says, "I did eat."
But before they admitted theirsin, they had to make some excuses.
In verse 12, Adam tries to blame his
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wife and God! He says, "The woman
you gave me."
Billy Sandy said "that an ex-
cuse is the skin of a reason stuffed for
the lie." That's true. "The woman you
gave me, she made me, and I did eat."The first excuse in the world
was not, "The devil made me do it,"
but "my wife made me do it." And
then Eve came along and said, "Thedevil made me do it: the serpent!"
There is something about us we
don't like to be questioned! Suppose
we are walking down the street, andwe are going to do our Christmas
shopping. And somebody comes up
and says, "I want to ask you a few
questions." What's the first response
we have? I know my first response:
What authority do you have to ask me
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any questions? I'm not going tellanybody anything they ask me!
And so he reaches into his
pocket and says, "My name is Jones
and I am with the FBI and here are
my credentials..." That's a different
story. He's got the authority to ask me
some questions.
Have you notice when some-
body asks us something, some of usget evasive? That's what Adam and
Eve tried to do.
But God had the authority to
question them. All He wanted themto do was to admit that they had
sinned. It took them a while to do it.
Excuses, evasions...
First they had tried to use crea-tion to hide from God, now they are
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trying to use words to hide from God.
And people still do that.
People still like to use words to
hide from God. They'll say anything
other than "I have sinned." We would
say anything other than, "I am to beblamed." We will give excuses, and
we will rationalize, and we will weave
together a beautiful fabric to cover
ourselves. And God keeps question-ing until we come to the place when
we say, "All right God, you've con-
victed me. I've sinned."
How much easier is to blameother people! How much easier is to
blame God! But, oh, in the long run
is not easier, it's the hardest thing of
all, because ultimately we are going to
face God, anyway. God comes to
convict us today, that He might save
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us. When we face Him at the judg-ment He will convict us to condemn.
And so He calls when He speaks to us
and He convicts when He speaks to
us, and then in verses 14-19 He con-
demns.
At this point you can say, "Just
a minute God had come into the gar-
den to save! Why He is going to
condemn? The sinner cannot be savedunless he knows he is condemned.
God doesn't just call the sinner, and
God doesn't just convict the sinner;
God wants the sinner to know that hissin is serious and that because of his
sin he is condemned.
"He that believeth on him is not
condemned. But that he that believethnot, is condemned because he has not
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believed in the name of the only be-
gotten Son of God."
Many people have the idea that
they have to die to be condemned,
when the Word of God makes it very
clear that every unbeliever is con-demned already.
Notice what He does. In verse
14 He speaks to the serpent. He
doesn't ask the serpent any questions.He doesn't say, "Did you do this?"
Oh, no. He is speaking here to the
devil. Eve had made the mistake of
talking to the devil. God doesn't say,"I am going to interrogate you." He
knows what he is going to get from
the devil: he is a liar! He speaks lies.
And God speaks to Satan in
verses 14 and 15 and He says to the
serpent, "You are now cursed. Bite
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the dust." And we still use that phrasetoday. An enemy will say to his en-
emy, "You are going to eat the dust."
For an enemy to lick the dust was to-
tal defeat. And so, God said to the
serpent, "You are going to hit the
dust. You are defeated."
And then in verse 15, when
God speaks to the serpent, He gives
the very first promise of the comingof a Redeemer.
Isn't remarkable that God did
not give the promise of a coming of
the Redeemer to Eve or to Adam? Hegave it to the devil. When speaking to
Satan, He says, "I am going to put
enmity, between you and the woman,
and between your children Thedevil has children? Oh, didn't Jesus
say, "You are of your father, the
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devil?" when He spoke to the Phari-
sees? In Matthew 13, the parable of
the wheat and the tares, Jesus said,
'The tares are the children of the
wicked one.' Does Satan have a fam-
ily? He sure does. Between yourchildren and her seed." That seed ul-
timately means Jesus Christ. He is
going to crush your head and you are
going to bruise his heel. Now, theserpent is crawling around in the dust,
he can't get to the head. All he can do
is to snap at the heel. That's what he
did. But, when Jesus Christ died on
the cross, He completely crushed the
head of the serpent. The sentence just
has not been pronounced yet. And so,
to Satan He says, "Down, down,
down."
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The direction of Satan alwaysin the Bible is down. Isaiah 14:
"How thou art fallen from heaven,
Lucifer, thou son of the morning.
Thou had said, I will, I will, I will as-
cend, I will be like the Most High,"
and down he came.
Jesus said, "I beheld Satan as
lightning, fallen from heaven." In the
book of Revelation, Satan is taken andbound and cast into a bottomless pit.
That means that he falls for ever.
And so, the direction for Satan
is down. And when Adam and Evelooked they said, "Oh, how awful sin
is!"
And God turns to the woman. I
may be wrong in this, but I do notthink that verse 16 speaks so much of
the penalty as a prophecy. God is
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saying to the woman, "Now, because
of this, here is what will happen."
If we'll read the history of man-
kind and see the way women have
been treated through the centuries, we
will weep: they were treated likeslaves. The dignity of woman in
these last several hundred years is a
by-product of the gospel of Jesus
Christ.And so, the woman is going to
have sorrow and pain and submission
and the man is going to have to work
harder than ever before. He had workto do before sin. He had the garden to
take care. Work is a blessing. I'll tell
you: It's not a burden to work; it's a
blessing to work, to fulfil what God is
given you to do.
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But God says to Adam, It's notgoing to be in Paradise anymore. I'll
have to throw you out. It will be out
there."
Genesis begins with the Para-
dise. The Bible ends with the
Paradise, but in between we have men
walking through a wilderness. This
world, as far as God is concerned, is
just a spiritual wilderness.John the Baptist came preach-
ing in the wilderness. Jesus was
tempted in the wilderness. Peter calls
this world "a dark and squalid place."And so, man has to sweat, and
there are thorns and thistles and He
says, "Adam, as you toil away work-
ing that soil, keep looking at that soil,because that's where you are going to
end up some day. You came from
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that dust, and you are going back to
that dust. You are going to die."
And by this time, the man and
the woman have realized what a hor-
rible sin is. Sin is so terrible because
it plunges all of creation into bondageand toil and pain and sorrow, and
where the man and the woman should
have had their greatest joy, they are
going to feel their deepest pain.God speaks: He calls and He
convicts and He condemns.
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GOD SAVES US
Adam named his wife Eve, be-
cause she would become the mother
of all the living. The LORD Godmade garments of skin for Adam and
his wife and clothed them. 22 And the
LORD God said, "The man has now
become like one of us, knowing good
and evil. He must not be allowed toreach out his hand and take also from
the tree of life and eat, and live forev-
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er." 23 So the LORD God banished
him from the Garden of Eden to work
the ground from which he had been
taken. 24 after he drove the man out,
he placed on the east side of the Gar-
den of Eden cherubim and a flamingsword flashing back and forth to
guard the way to the tree of life. (Vv20-21)
First, He seeks us.And then, He speaks to us.
And if we respond to His Word, we
are at the place of conviction, and
condemnation and we know we needa Saviour.
Many people ask: Was Adam
ever saved? Of course, the answer is:
"Yes!" It's here in verses 20 and 21.
How were Adam and Eve
saved?
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Number 1: by grace. What didGod do? God went and got some
garments for them.
By the way, sometimes you
ought to study what the Bible says
about clothing. It's very interesting.
The Bible has a great deal to say
about clothing. The fact that we wear
clothing is evidence that we are sin-
ners. And Adam and Eve originallytried to clothe themselves.
People are still doing this: good
works, religious deeds, all sort of
things, and God said, "You cannotstand in my presence with that kind of
shoddy stuff on. If you are going to
stand in my presence, you got to be
cloth my way.And so, some blood got to be
shed. God took some animals, and
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God shed some blood, and God tookthose skins and He clothed Adam and
Eve.
That's how we are saved, by
God's grace.
Only God didn't go find an
animal, God sent His Lamb: the Lord
Jesus Christ. And He shed His blood.
And when we came and trust Him, He
gives us the garment of salvation, Hedress us up in the robe of righteous-
ness by grace.
In verse 20 Adam does a beau-
tiful thing. Adam and Eve have beenstanding there, and God had been
speaking, and now, they are speech-
less. You don't hear them answering
back. Their mouths have been shut.That's Romans chapter 3, "That every
mouth may be shut and the entire
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world may stand guilty before God,"and they stand there guilty. They say,
We are going to die, we are going to
die!"
God says, "No. No." A substi-
tute is going to die for you, if you
have faith.
What happens in verse 20?
Adam looks at his wife, he'd already
given her one name: Woman, but nowhe gives her a new name: Eve. And
the Hebrew word for Eve means: life
giver. Isn't that beautiful?
Adam believed what God saidin verse 15. God said to the serpent,
and Adam was listening, "I will put
enmity between you and the woman,
between your seed and her seed."Adam says, "Her seed? That means
she isn't going to die!" "You shall
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bruise his heel; he shall bruise yourhead." She is going to have a child
that will defeat the serpent! She is
going to live!
And Adam believed God's
promise. He said, "I am going to call
you 'life giver.'"
How are we saved? By believ-
ing God's promise. Adam simply
believed what God said. And whenhe did that, God was listening!
They could have never been
clothed had they not admitted they
were naked. They could have neverclothed, had they not admitted they
were condemned.
Have you come to the place in
your life where you know you're lostand your mouth is stopped! That's
when God can save you.
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In verse 24 He had to drivethem out of the garden. I think if I
were living in Paradise, He had to
drive me out too!
Who wants to leave? But God
drove them out. He said, "Look, out
there is the best place for you. I'm go-
ing to fix it so you are secure in your
salvation."
Our Lord Jesus Christ went to atree and die on that tree. They took
His body and buried it in a tomb, in a
garden. I have reminded you that
when Jesus was on the cross, Heturned to a thief and said, "You will
be with me in Paradise."
Back in Genesis, the first Adam
was a thief and was cast out of Para-dise. In the New Testament, the last
Adam turned to a thief and said, "We
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are going into Paradise." In otherwords, Jesus Christ felt that sword of
the righteousness of God. In order to
open up the way to the tree of life,
that new and living way, He went
through that sword. The sword came
to the Shepherd and He felt it.
Oh, how marvellous are the
ways of God! And because He died,
that new and living way is now open,and we can come through.
The tree of life today is Jesus
Christ. He said, "I am the way, the
truth and the life. No man comes tothe Father but by Me." Have you
come to Him? God seeks you today
and He calls you by name. He knows
your name.God speaks to you today to
convict you and to condemn you, be-
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cause He wants you to know howmuch you need Him.
God wants to save you, if you'll
just trust and believe in Jesus Christ.
If you don't, I want to warn
you: When you die, it will mean eter-
nal death.
God is gracious and loving but
sometimes man says, "I will not have
this way." Don't be like that! Cometoday and trust Jesus Christ and let
Him save you.
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