Genesis 2:15-17; Genesis 3
Please turn in your copy of the
Scriptures to the Old Testament to the book of Genesis. We’ve
been making our way through some of the early portions of the
Scripture that set up the whole story of redemption that we read
in the Bible. So our reading from Scripture
today is from Genesis chapter 2 verses 15 through 17 and then
chapter 3 verses 1 through 24. In previous weeks, we have considered
God creating the world and everything in it, the stage for his drama
of redemption. We’ve considered his making man
and woman in his own image, commanding us to be fruitful and multiply
and to fill the earth. We’ve also considered man being
made in God’s image to rule the earth, to subdue it, to make
it fruitful and profitable. And today we’ll consider how
all that came to ruin through the sin of Adam and Eve. And
so let us give our attention That’s a God’s word beginning
at chapter 2 verse 15. The Lord God took the man and
put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the
Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree
of the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you
eat of it, you shall surely die. And now chapter 3 verse 1. Now the serpent was more crafty
than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And
he said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat
of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent,
we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God
said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in
the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For
God knows that when 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 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 gave also some of
it to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes
of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And
they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden
in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees
of the garden. But the Lord God called to the
man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the
sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked
and I hid myself. He said, Who told you that you
were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of
which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman
whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree
and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the
woman, What is this that you have done? And the woman said,
The serpent deceived me and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent,
because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and
above all the beast of the field. On your belly you shall go and
dust shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity
between you and the woman and between your offspring and her
offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his
heel. Then to the woman he said, I
will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you
shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your
husband and he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, because
you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of
the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.
Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat
of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall
bring forth for you. And you shall eat of the plants
of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
till you return to the ground. For out of it you are taken,
for you are dust. And to dust you shall return.
The man called his wife’s name Eve because she was the mother
of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife
garments of skins and clothed them. Then the Lord God said,
behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and
evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the
tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the Lord
God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from
which he was taken. He drove out the man and at the
east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming
sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of
life. Amen. This is God’s word. Let’s look
to God for help and prayer. Pray with me. Our God, we thank
you this day that you have. You have spoken to us and we
pray now that in these next moments you would help us to hear your
voice clearly. And then in our daily lives,
when we hear the many voices of the world and others that
we may regard them as not your voice, but the voice of the serpent.
And may it be clear to us one. One voice hisses in our ears
to do what is evil in your sight. But the other voice, the voice
of Christ, encourages us to live life in blessing and honor for
your glorious namesake. We pray in His name. Amen. I
like to keep cartoons that I find in newspapers and magazines and
nowadays on the Internet. And there’s one particular cartoon
that I found this year. Well, it’s really not a cartoon.
But the caption of this picture is in these words, couple follows
heart. Billions dead. And there’s a
picture of Adam and Eve. And in that picture, they are
sharing a piece of this forbidden fruit that we’ve just read of
in the scriptures. And in the background is the
serpent. In the background is that sinister
snake that represents, no, that is Satan himself who had tempted
them. Couple follows heart. Billions
dead. Rather stunning, isn’t it? Rather
stark. It’s rather sad to hear such
words. But we hear that phrase over
and over in our day and age. Follow your heart. Whatever your
heart desires to do, do it. That is the thing that you must
do. That is the quest for your life.
Couple follows heart. Billions dead. You see, following
our hearts. sounds dreamy. Following our
hearts sounds like we’re on a journey to do what is best for ourselves.
But friends, the Bible tells us that that is a lie. In fact,
this story which we have read in Genesis chapter 2 and 3 tells
us that that is not the desire of our lives, or at least it
should not be. You see, the scripture says of our hearts, which are
corrupted by sin, which are radically unable to do anything good. The
scripture says, above all else, our hearts are deceitful. You
see, if we follow our hearts, we follow in the vein of Adam
and Eve. We follow in the vein of those
who heard God’s word clearly, who fellowshiped with him richly
and deeply. Yet. When the bottom line came,
what do I want to do? Obey and serve God or serve myself. They follow their hearts. Couple
follows heart and billions are dead. Romans chapter one tells
us of. the effects of sinful mankind
in the world. You read Romans chapter 1 and
I mean get past the part about I Paul, the apostle, right? Do
you Romans? And get past the part where I Paul loved preaching
the gospel. Get past that to say chapter
1 verses 17 and on where he speaks of the radical corruption of
the utter wickedness of the world who have gone against God and
who are living for themselves. no longer worshiping the Creator,
but living for the created. Though it is plain to them that
there is a God and He exists, they can see it in the sun and
the moon and the stars, in the faces of fellow image bearers,
they deny it. They suppress that truth and
live their own ways. And it says to us that the wrath
of God is being poured out on all mankind who do not seek Him. So this Christmas, this Lord’s
Day, is there hope? Is there hope after reading such
a dark story, after reading such a sad plot where Adam and Eve,
living in the riches of paradise, lost it all simply by disobeying
God and eating the forbidden fruit? Is there hope? Is there
a fix? Is there a solution? And the
answer is yes. In fact, the answer is yes, and
it’s found in Genesis chapter 3. There is the gospel. there
is the good news that Jesus comes into the world to save centers
even when we wreck our lives in we destroy ourselves God is
able to save us there’s good news remember in the last several
weeks we have been talking up the Bible and how it is a story
a a love story and it’s a love story where centers who go their
own way and forsake God’s holy word. They are pursued, they
are chased down by the love of God, pictured most especially
to us in the love of Jesus, as He stretched out His arms on
the cross and died for our sins, that we might have life in Him
by faith. You see, the gospel is the Bible. The gospel is the love story.
The gospel is the center of the scriptures. In the front of my
Bible here, I have a quote written in. And it says these words. It says, To fall in love with
God is the greatest of all romances. To seek Him is the greatest adventure. And to find Him is the greatest
human achievement. Those were words of Saint Augustine,
the fourth century theologian who loved God with a great devotion. He was a man who was dead in
his sins and trespasses. He was a man who hated God. He
loved debauchery and wine and women and the love of all the
things of this world. And yes, they had all that in
the fourth century. But Jesus came to him and he found Christ
and became one of the greatest theologians the church has ever
seen. But you see, the Bible is a story
of the gospel, of the good news. And at the center of the story
of the Bible is the second Adam, Jesus Christ, who, as we read
of just moments ago, when tempted and tried, not in paradise, But
in the wilderness, in the desert, he passed the test. He obeyed
God perfectly. And so what first Adam failed
to do, the second Adam, Jesus did and fulfilled. And it fulfills
the scriptures. We might understand this story
simply in this way, Adam and Eve were married and they went
from a garden to a grave. But Jesus comes and saves his
church, his bride. And in our marriage, we leave
the grave and we go back to the garden. We go to heaven, the
new heavens and the new earth, where Jesus will be with us forever
and ever, and sin will no longer separate us from him. That’s
the story of the gospel. And so is there hope? Yes. But
how does this passage help us understand the gospel? You know,
it’s often said that in order to understand the good news,
the gospel, we have to understand the bad news. Well, chapter 3
of Genesis is the bad news. Let’s first consider the test.
The test. Adam and Eve, the Bible tells
us, were happy and holy. They were living in the garden
made in God’s image and it was possible for them to not sin.
It was possible for Adam and Eve to live a perfectly righteous
life before God in fellowship with Him and in worship with
Him. Oh, it was possible to sin. It was possible for them to eat
of that forbidden fruit. It was possible for them to forsake
God and say, yeah, we hear what you’re saying, God, but we want
to follow our hearts. But here’s the test. We find
it in chapter 2, verse 17. And it’s in the context of Adam
and Eve living in abundance. They’re living in the garden.
They’re living in paradise. They have everything possible they
can want. You know, you have your hopes and dreams. maybe
a house with an extra bedroom, a little more money in your grocery
budget, so you can eat more plentifully. And sometimes we say, if I just
have the right circumstances, I won’t sin. I’ll do better,
I’ll do good, I’ll do right. Well, here are Adam and Eve in
the midst of the garden, having everything perfect it was possible
then. And we read in chapter 2, verse
17, God says to Adam and Eve, you can have anything in this
garden you want to eat, except one thing. There’s thousands,
probably millions of things you can eat, but one thing do not
eat for in the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil in the day which you eat of it, you shall surely
die. Friends, they had everything
and left to the freedom of their own wills, they desired not to
obey God, but to follow their hearts. But they had all the
right conditions to trust and to obey. They had fellowship
with God eye to eye, face to face. Tells us in chapter three
that when after they sinned, they were hiding. God came looking
for them. He came walking and looking for them in the coolness
of the garden. Their fellowship was eye to eye, face to face.
Some theologians have said this garden was the first temple.
It was the first place where God gathered with His people.
And they adored and worshipped Him. And He walked and fellowshiped
with them. And He spoke to them directly, face to face, eye to
eye, His holy word. And yet they had this. But this
was the test. This was the test. They were in the garden. And
their task was to work it, and to keep it, and to rule it, and
to be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth. All these
things we’ve talked of in recent weeks. Every need met. physically and spiritually by
God himself. But all could be lost with a
drop of a hat, with a momentary decision, with the desire to
to follow their own heart, some impulsive decision to let what
delights the eyes take over their senses and their sensibilities.
All could be lost. You see, this was what we called
the divine probation. Adam and Eve don’t eat. Adam
and Eve, trust God. Adam and Eve, obey God. Adam and Eve, for the sake of
all humanity to follow after you, take God at His holy word
and look nowhere else. You see, that’s still the challenge
for us today when we become Christians. Do we want to listen to the world?
Do we want to follow Satan and his courses? Do we even want
to follow the remaining sin, the flesh that Paul speaks of?
Do we want to follow that or do we want to wholeheartedly
submit ourselves to King Jesus and say, whatever you say, I
will do wherever you send. I will go whatever you call upon
or ask me to do. That thing will make my heart
beat. You know how it is when we’re
children, though, when mom and dad say, don’t what immediately
comes to mind for a child? That is the thing that I must
do. You know, sometimes we’re out in public and our wife or
somebody says, don’t look over there. But and what do we want
to do? We want to look and you see human nature. Adam and Eve
were told, don’t. And Satan capitalized on that. Their eyes were open. They were
desirous to do the very thing that they were told not to do.
But this was a test. This was probation. This was
God saying your life depends on it. Not only your life, but
the lives of everyone who will follow after you. Ours also. Our catechism says it so well.
It says that Adam not only sinned, but he sinned for all those who
would come after him. That’s why it’s important for
us to understand here, especially at Christmas, the reason that
Jesus was born by the power of the Holy Ghost. We say it in
our creed every week or most every week. He was conceived
by the power of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, yet
without sin. You see, the fatherage of Jesus
is not from a man, not from a sinful man. It’s from God, the father
himself. And so Jesus was born without
this original sin we were born with. But Adam and Eve were put
to the test. And not only did their lives
depend on it, all the rest of our lives would as well. Couple
follows their heart. Billions dead. Well, there’s
the test. Let’s look secondly at the temptation.
Chapter three of Genesis is about temptation. I don’t know about
you all, but I hate snakes. I dislike them. There’s a story
my family loves to tell about me. They told it to my wife when
she first started coming around. Now they tell it to my children
because they think it’s funny. I guess it is, but there was
this time. maybe eight years old mowing the yard and this
was before lawnmowers had that little handle you know that when
you release it the motor turns off. So I was mowing the yard,
cutting the grass in the back and a snake came slithering by
and went up under the lawnmower and I was just sure that that
thing was gonna get cut up by the blades and shot out at me
and the pieces of the snake were gonna touch me. I was terrified.
And so the story goes, and it’s true, I left the lawnmower running
and came screaming like a little girl into the house. And my mom
had to go out and turn the mower off and prove there was no snake
around. But I was like Adam, I was chicken, I ran, there was
a snake. Oh, but there’s another story, a great story, and it’s
the story in which I’m the hero. Copperhead on the woodpile. I
still screamed, like a girl, it was embarrassing. But I went
in the house and found my trusty 12-gauge. Two of the 10 shots hit the snake. But that’s, my friends, what
Adam should have done. He should have faced that snake
and judged it. He should have put that snake
to death. I don’t like snakes, and perhaps some of you don’t,
but we have good reason. Satan came to Adam and Eve in
the garden when he tempted them in the form of a snake. They’re
slithery. They crawl on their bellies.
It’s part of the curse that God put upon them. We have reason
to dislike snakes. But Genesis chapter 3 is a dark
story. It’s one of those stories, maybe
like some of our childhood stories, that would start out in this
way. It was a dark and stormy night. on Smith Street. And we know from those words
that when a story begins that way, something bad is going to
happen, something dark and sinister is going to take place. The music,
if it were a movie, would be much like the music of Jaws and
get our heart rates going. But Genesis 3 is exactly that.
It’s a dark and stormy night in the garden. It’s a dark and
sinister moment in paradise. And it begins with these words,
now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast that God
had made. And for some reason, maybe in
the same way, for sure in the same way like the story of Job
where Satan sifted Job, God’s servant, or in the story of Joseph
where he was sold into slavery and put into prison and went
through all kinds of hardships, God permitted evil in order that
good and glory might shine. We have to understand that. But
in this dark story, Satan, who is evil and wicked, Satan, who
is the fallen angel who served the Lord at one time, came to
them in a subtle way. He came to them in a way and
seduced them with lies. Maybe you’ve read Narnia and
of the White Witch. And maybe you’ve seen The Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe, some of these Narnia films put on
the screen. You’ve seen that White Witch and she is… On
the one hand, beautiful, yet on the other hand, scary. And
what does she offer young Edmund? She offers him all the Turkish
delight that he can eat. If only he’ll come and live in
her castle. If only he’ll come and live in her place on her
terms. And what is implied there? You
leave God, you leave his word, you leave what is safe, you leave
what is good and right and true, and you come and live for me
and with me. Oh, and your eyes will be delighted
with this candy, this sugar. Oh, how subtle Satan is. He tells
us there’s an all you can eat buffet with no calories. You
won’t even have to exercise the next day. That’s the that’s the
lies and the seduction that he brings to us. It’s not good and
we know it, but our eyes light up. We say, this is the thing
I can’t live without. And so there’s temptation, there’s
bliss, there’s impulse, there’s selfish desires. And yet the
word of God tells us that we should pray, lead us not into
temptation, deliver us from evil. But you know, like St. Augustine,
the quote I just read earlier about the Bible being a great
love story, you know what St. Augustine said when Jesus was
calling him to himself? He was living with another person
at the time, living in adultery. And as he felt God, the Holy
Spirit, calling him unto salvation, you know what St. Augustine prayed?
He didn’t say, Lord, deliver me from temptation and help me
to give up every vice and every evil that I have because I want
to serve you wholeheartedly. He did eventually say that. But
you know what St. Augustine prayed and we pray
this often, Lord save me, but not yet. We love sin. We are delighted by it. It is
wonderful to our eyes and we think it will bring us love and
joy and happiness. But friends, it destroys. Couple
follows heart. Billions dead. And so there’s this temptation
in paradise. And yet we should pray, lead
us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil. You know, Adam
and Eve will eat this fruit. And we might say, oh, the worst
there could be is a little tummy ache, too much apple. No, it’s
worse. For what have they done? They
have said, here is God’s word and here’s the word of Satan.
We choose Satan. They have the divine command
of God, the divine, divine rule of King Jesus. And they say,
we think we’ll rule ourselves. They have God on the throne. They have Yahweh, the one who
has just created the world and everything in it, saying, I sit
on the throne, let me rule you and you’ll be blessed. And he’s
proven that blessing that will be theirs forever if they pass
the probation and the test. And he says, I’ll give you this
land, this Eden, this paradise forever if you’ll just simply
obey me. But what do they say? We want to rule. We want to rule
on our own throne. And friends, before you think
that you’re above all that, think for a moment about how the world
edges in on you and how you once used to think straight. You used
to say God’s word is supreme. God’s word is authoritative.
God’s word is everything to me. But you wake up someday like
that frog in the pot of water that was simmering and now boiling.
And you realize something has changed in my heart and mind.
Because the world has crept in, Satan has encroached upon our
fidelity to God and His Word. And even our own desires, our
deceitful hearts have led us astray. And we wake up someday
and we say, why is it my allegiance is to Turkish delight and not
the gold and the precious silver that God offers over and over
in his word. You see, we love to look with
our eyes. And God says it’s about our hearts
being changed for Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells Timothy
very well, he says, in the last days, in the last days entered
when Jesus came to this earth. But in the last days, people
will desire preachers to preach to their itching ears. They’ll
gather to themselves those who will not proclaim God’s word,
but like Satan, they’ll hiss in the ears of the people things
that delight their eyes. Things that will dazzle them
temporarily, but not give them eternal life. And so, friends,
we need to be careful what we’re hearing, where we’re hearing
it from. And we need to go to the scriptures ourselves and
see if the things that we are hearing are so. You see, the
gospel and scriptures have been forsaken. You know, one of the
greatest problems in the modern American church is not the style
of music. It’s not whether the pews are
comfortable or if the sound system is working. Praise the Lord,
it is today. It’s whether we believe God and
take him at his word, what did Satan say in this temptation?
Did God really say he was undermining the word of God? And so we see
how the church can be destroyed. The gospel can be watered down
and even eradicated by. good intentions by following
our hearts. But friends, following heart
leads billions to be dead. What should Adam have done? We
read in this story about a husband. We read a story about a husband
who apparently was standing there and saw what his wife was doing.
And. You know, we believe this headship
thing, we believe the husband leads, the wife follows Christ,
love the church, we believe sacrifice, all these things from Ephesians,
all these things that we teach from the New Testament. And you
put that back in, what should Adam have done? Instead of saying,
OK, honey, let me have a bite. he should have taken that fruit
and tossed it to the side. And whatever weapon he had fashioned
for his work, he should have slain that snake that day. And
guess what, friends? That caption on that picture
I have in my office would not say, couple follows heart, billions
dead. It would have said, man stood
up for what is right, billions saved. You see how the story,
even our own story can be different when we simply hear God’s word
and believe what he says and we obey it. We have this set
of children’s songs in our house. Songs from the catechism and
all this, and there’s this one refrain in this one particular
song about Adam and Eve, and it says, Oh, Adam. Oh, Adam,
why did you disobey? You see, it brought so much heartache,
so much hardship upon us. And that’s the third thing we
want to consider in today’s passage, not just the test, not just the
temptation, but also the tragedy. What is the tragedy of all? Oh,
Adam, why did you disobey with one decision, one impulse? They
lost everything. And not only did they lose everything,
we lost everything. The book of Ephesians says that
we’re dead in our sins and trespasses. It says that we follow the prince
of the power of this air. We’re in line with this present
evil age. We do what everybody else does
that is wicked and evil and leads to death. You know, what’s interesting
here is Adam and Eve were warned and they still proceeded. Friends,
that is the madness of sin. Satan is deceitful, but friends,
sin is as well. It’s like that Turkish delight
the White Witch offers to Edmund and Narnia. It looks good on
the surface, but it is deadly and it will kill you and it will
lead you away from God and death. Sin is maddening. And we say,
what is wrong with the world? I think I’ve told you the story
before that in Britain, in the newspaper, a letter to the editor
was write in and tell us what you believe is wrong with the
world. And G.K. Chesterton, the author. Wrote in simply this,
I am. I am what’s wrong with the world,
because we he knew that we have sinful and deceitful hearts. And in this tragedy, there are
three sets of curses issued. There are curses to Satan, there
are curses to Eve, there are curses to Adam, there are curses
to even creation that’s subjected to futility. It’s why Paul says
in Romans chapter 8 that all creation is groaning and awaiting
eagerly the adoption of the sons of men because creation is under
the duress of the curse. It’s why we sing, joy to the
world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her king. He comes to make his blessings
known as far as the curse is found. Adam and Eve were cursed,
yes, in many ways, but they were also banished. They were exiled
from the garden. And we read that as a theme throughout
the Scriptures. What does God do when His people disobey Him?
They’re exiled. They’re banished. And think of
the Bible story as a people who are exiled from the presence
of God, but through Jesus are being prepared for that return.
And one day we will return to the presence of God, to the city
of God in the new heavens and the new earth. But until then,
we are strangers. We are sojourners. That’s what
the book of Hebrews has been teaching us. But God was merciful
in his banishment. I used to think as a kid how
mean it was to send Adam and Eve out of the garden. But you
read in chapter three why he did it. Now they are like God. They know good and evil. The
reason I’m gonna keep them out of the garden is because the
tree of life is there and I do not want these people to eat
from the tree of life and live forever in sin. You see, he left
a door open for mercy and for redemption and for Christ to
come into this world to save us. Not only were there curses
on Adam and even Satan and there was banishment from the garden,
but there’s the thorns and the thistles of this life. There’s
the labor pains of raising children. There’s authority issues because
we struggle to be ruled just as Adam and Eve did. Our work
is unfruitful because the ground does not produce like it would
without sin. And we have relational struggles.
But big picture. There’s a battle. And that battle
is between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.
It’s Jesus versus Satan. And we see that battle all through
the scriptures of Jesus versus Satan, Jesus versus Satan. But
guess what the book of Revelation tells us? It says Jesus wins. And so we know the outcome of
the battle, but we’re still in the midst of war. And there’s Abraham who comes
just a little after Adam and Eve. And God promises, I’ll raise
up a godly offspring for you. And so we read in the Bible that
from the offspring of Abraham comes Jesus, the great one who
will battle against Satan and ultimately will destroy him.
There’s another difficulty of this curse. It’s that we’re born
in sin. We’re born in Adam’s original
sin. We’re born with guilt and corruption. We’re born as sin
factories from our original sin comes our actual sins. And we
do daily as our catechism says, we do daily break God’s law and
thought word indeed. And so you’re saying this is
a sad story with all its twists and turns. When is the turning
point? When is it going to get good? When is the happily ever
after going to come? Well, it comes in the gospel
of Jesus, which says to us we’re dead in our sins and trespasses.
We’re part of this present evil age. We are part of a crooked
and depraved generation. And there’s hope in Eve’s offspring. There’s hope in the coming of
Jesus Christ. We read it in chapter 3, verse
15. It’s the first mention of the
gospel. The Messiah will come. And by his righteous nature and
through his faithful obedience and work on the cross, he will
save those who have faith in him. And if we have faith in
him, our sin will be pardoned. If we have faith in him, our
sin will be subdued. If we have faith in him, he’ll
give us the strength to hate what is evil and to hold fast
to that which is good. And we will be transformed into
a glory like the glory of Jesus Christ when we are raised up
at the second day. And we have the hope of the new
heavens and the new earth. We have hope of a return to the
garden where we will be present with God himself forever. So is there a happily ever after?
There is for those who have faith in Jesus. You know, sometimes
we watch these old television shows on these channels where
they show the classics and we watch a TV show and we say, you
know, I don’t remember the show being this bad. It’s cheesy. Now, I liked it back when it
was first aired, but now, you know, it’s not so good. Friends,
that’s not so with the gospel. God willing, we can hear the
gospel over and over and say, what a wonderful story, what
a great story it is that we have in Jesus. You know, God promised to Eve.
That he would provide for her a seed, and that seed was Jesus. And through that seed, Jesus.
God is able to make his promise to Abraham that he will give
him offspring that outnumber the stars of the heavens. Let us pray together, our God,
we thank you this Christmas season that we can think again on the
story of the gospel. Oh, what tragedy there is in
sin, what. A mess there is when we follow
ourselves, when we follow our hearts, when we do that, which
we want to do. But what grace and wonder there is in Jesus
Christ when we by faith rest in him alone for our salvation.
Help us to love and remember the gospel and to tell it to
others this Christmas season. And we ask and pray this in the
name of Jesus, the great redeemer, the second Adam who obeyed you
perfectly. Amen. Let’s stand now and sing of God’s
love for us with how great our joy. Number one. Forty four. Look up now and receive God’s
blessing, his benediction on you as you go into the world.
God knows the world you live in, and yet he blesses you so
that you’ll be safe. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
And the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace in
this chaotic world and also in the life which is to come through
Jesus our Lord. And all God’s people said, Amen.