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064 – The First Sin – Foundations 16
54 Plays2 years ago
What can we learn from the first sin? Can it give us insight into the way temptation works upon us? Can we see and understand how to recognize it when it comes? Listen as the Preacher Dad explains how Adam and Eve responded to temptation and what we can do about sin once it happens. […]
The post 064 – The First Sin – Foundations 16 appeared first on Preacher Dad.Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Preacher Dad's Mission
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Hello, welcome to the Preacher Dad podcast.
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My name is Jared, and I am the Preacher Dad, and I blog over at PreacherDad.com, where we want to inspire you to be engaged in the culture war.
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We want to encourage you to get out there and proclaim the truth and to
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participate in the culture, in the society in which we live, and influence people for Christ.
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We want to encourage you to do that, and so you can find some information over there at preacherdad.com.
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We encourage you to go over there and check us out.
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You can support this ministry, and yeah, we would just love for you to go over there and subscribe to our newsletter.
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and, you know, just overall be encouraged.
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And, you know, that's a major part of the battle, I find, is just to stay encouraged and to stay in the fight, and that can be a real challenge at times.
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But I'm here to help you.
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Have no fear.
Genesis and the Nature of Sin
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So today I want to go back to our foundation series on the book of Genesis, so I'm going to share a few thoughts for you here.
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We are going back to Genesis chapter 3, and this is the 16th message in this series.
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It's Genesis chapter 3, verse 6 through 8.
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So if you want to follow along in your Bible, Genesis 3, verses 6 through 8.
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And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food...
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And that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.
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And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
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And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
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And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
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Now, this is the first sin.
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It's the great human tragedy.
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It brings upon the world...
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untold suffering.
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It is impossible to calculate the suffering that comes to our world because of this one event, this one decision.
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It was actually two decisions.
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Both Adam and Eve made the choice to do wrong.
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But let's look at this and break it down a little bit so we can get a better understanding of the way temptation works upon us and how we can fight it.
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So first of all, we see a deception completed.
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a completed deception.
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Eve sees the fruit in a new light.
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She no longer sees it as something to be avoided without question at God's command.
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She now takes the serpent's suggestion and considers it with a different viewpoint.
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She's not automatically signing off saying, nope, absolutely not.
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She stops to consider what
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what he's saying.
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And the lesson for us there is that the longer we consider the temptation, the greater we are at risk.
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The longer we sit there and chew on it, the more appealing it becomes.
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And that's why Paul said to Timothy, flee youthful lusts.
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Run away.
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Try to get out of there.
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Because the longer you sit and think about it, the greater risk comes to you.
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Now, Eve sees three things about this fruit.
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She sees, first of all, that it is a practical, well, she sees a practical reality.
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She sees that this fruit is good for food.
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She saw that it was good for food.
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That's in verse 6.
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You know, she recognized that this fruit was going to meet a very real need in her life to satisfy hunger.
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They did get hungry, I believe, or at least they enjoyed food.
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We can say that much for sure.
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Temptations often come to us as a legitimate means to address a legitimate need.
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or at least it's a means to address a legitimate need.
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It might not be a legitimate means, but it is a means to an end.
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And that end is a good end to satisfy my hunger, to keep from starving to death.
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I need food to eat.
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And so Eve sees that this fruit would meet that need.
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And it makes it all the more powerful and subtle.
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Temptation often comes and tells us, hey, you have a real life, real need here.
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And this solution is the answer.
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This solution is the answer.
Justification and Consequences of Sin
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And that's where the deception comes in.
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It's much more powerful that way.
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If we're tempted to be sexually immoral, that's usually there's a need for intimacy.
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We have a need for intimacy, but it cannot be righteously fulfilled through sexual immorality.
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That's the temptation.
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There's a temptation to become bitter towards someone that's hurt us or angry at them, and then we have a need for justice.
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We want justice done, and so we feel justified becoming angry and bitter at that person because we are on a quest for vengeance, a quest for justice, that is.
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And that's a legitimate need fulfilled in a wrong way.
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If we're tempted to be greedy, we have a legitimate need for provision, but
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but then we're drawn into and seduced to be greedy and to think that we need more and more.
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We move away from needs and into wants.
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This is all just a few of the ways that we justify any number of things, and that's the way Satan gets at us.
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It's the justification that the way we justify our sin always makes sense
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If it's based on a real need, if you have a legitimate need and Satan is tempting you to meet that need in an unrighteous way, hey, that justification usually makes sense.
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It's like, oh, well, that does make sense, but just because it looks good doesn't mean it is good.
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Our lesson here is that just because it will fix a real problem...
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does not mean it is right.
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Eve was genuinely, had a genuine need to have food to satisfy her hunger.
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And this fruit would satisfy the hunger.
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It was good for food.
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But just because it looks good doesn't mean it is good.
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Doesn't mean it's right.
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She also sees that this fruit has a pleasing appearance.
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There in verse 6 says, "...it was pleasant to the eyes."
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It was pleasant to the eyes.
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It looked good.
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It looks nice.
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It's pretty.
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Surely if it looks good, it must be right.
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This seems to verify the promised benefit.
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If it looks good on the outside, it's probably good on the inside.
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If it looks appealing outwardly, well, then the inside probably will do what he says it will do.
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It will make me wise.
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And this is, again, the way temptation works upon us.
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It looks good on the outside, but looks can be deceiving, and they often are.
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Looks are often deceiving.
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Anyone who has gotten married to a woman simply because of how beautiful she is, if that's the only reason you got married to her, then you found the difficulties that come from that sort of decision.
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Just because a woman is beautiful doesn't make her nice or pleasant to be with.
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Just because a man is handsome doesn't mean he's a man of character.
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Doesn't mean he's a man of nobility or doesn't mean he's faithful just because he's handsome.
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Satan usually tempts us with something that appears good, but behind that attractive coat of paint is destruction and misery.
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Yeah, it looks good on the outside, but it's going to bring suffering to your life.
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But that is the way he deceives us, by making it look good.
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First, he presents a legitimate need, often does, a legitimate need that this sin will meet.
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And then he points out how beautiful the fruit looks.
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It's very pretty.
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Notice that Satan didn't make the fruit attractive.
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God did that.
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But God did not tempt them.
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Satan was just using its natural beauty for his own ends.
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He was taking what God had already naturally made to be beautiful and using it for his own selfish reasons.
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He was using it to accomplish his goals.
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We need to remember that not everything that looks good or feels good is actually good, just because it feels right.
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Oh, it just feels right.
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I need to follow my heart.
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That doesn't mean that it is right or that it is good.
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Your heart will deceive you.
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The Bible says that the heart of man is desperately wicked,
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That's why it says also to guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
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Your heart will lead you astray.
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It must be controlled and guided by the Holy Spirit.
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And if we allow our eyes to look upon that temptation, it will look appealing.
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But just because it looks nice or it feels right doesn't mean it is right.
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And then we have a promised result.
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We have that practical reality.
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We have a pleasing appearance, and we have a promised result.
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It's desired to make one wise, it said.
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The devil put that idea in her head.
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That's what he promised would happen if she ate the fruit.
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He said, you will be wise if you eat this fruit.
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And you know what?
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It did actually happen.
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the promised result was realized.
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It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and when she took a bite of that fruit, she gained a deeper knowledge of good and evil.
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When Adam took a bite of it, he gained what was promised, or at least a form of it.
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But it's not what she had expected.
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The wisdom that she gained was very costly.
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It was very costly, and he conveniently left out the cost of becoming wise, wise in that way, not the wisdom of God, but the wisdom of men.
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That wisdom was costly to her.
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It cost her the fellowship that she enjoyed with God.
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You see, the results that the devil promises us are often enjoyed at first,
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but we will always find that the wages of sin is death, Romans 6.23.
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Sin often brings what we desire, but we find leanness and emptiness in our soul.
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It never ends up working out to bring us fulfillment or satisfaction.
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When we indulge in the pleasures of sin and the joys that sin brings to us,
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We find leanness and emptiness in our soul eventually.
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So that was a deception completed.
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And then we also notice here that there is a silent accomplice, a silent accomplice.
The Role of Men in the Fall and Society
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We must notice there is an often overlooked part of this passage.
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It says that she gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat.
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The scripture is clear.
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Adam was with her the whole time.
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It doesn't say she went to find her husband.
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It says that she gave to her husband with her, and he did eat.
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He was standing right there.
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Adam was abdicating his responsibility to protect his wife.
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She was being deceived.
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by the enemy, and he did not step forward to protect her.
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He did not step forward to declare what is true, to stand against this deception.
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He allowed this all to take place and did nothing to stop it.
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He did nothing to stop it.
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He stood there, and when she gave him the fruit, I guess maybe he was deceived a little bit as well, or at least we're not given a whole lot of insight into what he was thinking or the motivations there, but he took of the fruit and ate it.
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And so he was led astray as well by the deception the enemy brought to his wife.
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He did not lead her to righteousness.
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He did not stop her from being deceived.
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He was standing there the whole time.
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This is the definition of passive masculinity.
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And it is absolutely epidemic in our society.
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Men stand by and watch as things happen, and they do nothing.
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They do not stand forward and lead courageously.
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They are passive.
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Men everywhere are passively watching the enemy steal their families away, or they're more interested in golf or football, their career, in movies, maybe they're in working out or leisure, even video games.
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Men, we are not paying attention and the devil is taking our world.
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He's taking our families.
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The world will go where the world goes, and the world is headed for destruction.
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There is no getting away from that.
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That is part of the consequences of sin.
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But we have families.
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We have wives and children.
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We have parents and cousins and brothers and sisters, people that...
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we work with.
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These are real life human being people with souls and spirits, and they will spend eternity somewhere, and we are allowing them to be stolen away by the devil because we don't want to miss the latest greatest movie that comes out.
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We want to make sure our hobbies are taken care of.
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We want to have enough money to make sure we can go play golf this weekend when, you know,
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the missionary that's standing up there in church begging for funds to be able to go into a deeper part of the Congo to reach people with the gospel.
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I'll give a little bit, but I got to make sure I got enough to play 18 this weekend.
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Or maybe we don't even go to church.
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Maybe instead of going to church, we decide to pursue our hobbies.
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I mean, after all, hunting is so important that you probably should just miss church for it in order to be able to get that buck.
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Boy, you got to be able to hit that buck.
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And so, you know, maybe we just need to avoid going to church on Sunday morning and worshiping God and teaching our children what's most important because, well, I want to have that 10 pointer up on my wall one day.
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Well, I hope you enjoy the 10 pointer on your wall while your son and daughter are worshiping
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wallowing in sin, suffering and destroyed because you were too passive to get engaged in their lives.
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Hope you enjoy that 10-point buck.
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Friends, I am speaking this from a position of humility because I have been doing the same thing in my own life.
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I have also been choosing the easy road and entertainment before what is more important—
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May God have mercy upon me and my family because I do not want the enemy to steal my family away.
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I do not want to be a passive man.
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I want to be a courageous man who leads, who steps forward and says, this is the way we are going.
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We're going to do this because it's more important.
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It is an absolute epidemic in our country that men are passive and we have to actively engage the enemy wherever we find his temptations.
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We cannot be an accomplice as Adam was.
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When others are doing wrong, we must stand up and do what is right instead.
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We must stand alone if we have to.
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Talk about standing alone.
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Adam would have had to stand alone against his wife without anyone else in the world.
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They were the only two people in the world, and he would have to stand alone against his wife.
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Nobody ever said it would be easy, but that doesn't mean that it's okay.
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And I'm not trying to say that all of humans' suffering is because of the women.
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It's not the women's fault.
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You know, we're not really told what would have happened, but I believe that if Adam would have stood up and said, no, this is wrong, you're not going to listen to this evil serpent, there wouldn't have been a sin.
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But that's not what happened.
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What Adam did is he displayed the propensity of our gender to be passive and to sit back and watch and see what happens.
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Well, let's see if I let her take a bite, maybe she'll die, and then I'll know not to.
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That might have been going through Adam's head.
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Let's see what happens to Eve.
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And when she took a bite and didn't immediately fall over, he thought, well, God must be wrong.
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I'll go ahead and have a bite, I guess.
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He may have been thinking that.
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Men, we cannot sit on the bench.
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We need to be in the game.
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We cannot sit back and let things happen.
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We need to be in the game.
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And that's one of the things that I am more and more passionate about is inspiring people to get up and get in the fight.
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We can no longer sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else battle it out down after down after down.
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We need to get in that game and go to battle.
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We need to engage in the culture war.
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We need to fight for our families.
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We need to fight for the truth, on the side of the truth.
Restoration Through Jesus
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Not only was the deception complete, not only was there a secret accomplice, but there was severed fellowship.
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It appears that the Lord would walk with them and fellowship with them each and every day, if you read the text fully.
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He would come and they would hear his voice and they would come and they would fellowship with him.
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They would walk with him in the garden.
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But what we see here in this passage, their eyes were opened, they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.
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And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
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And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.
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They hid.
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When he came to fellowship, they were ashamed.
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They were afraid, and they hid themselves.
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These are the results of sin.
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Shame.
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Fear.
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No longer did they seek the fellowship with the Lord they once enjoyed.
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Now they ran from his presence.
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When he called to them, they ran the other way.
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How many of us have done that when the Lord has come to us and called to us?
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Have we run the other direction?
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Sin always brings shame.
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Even the most brash sinner, the most arrogant sinner in the world, hides a secret shame, almost a self-loathing.
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They loathe themselves because of what they have done.
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They probably won't admit that to you, but it's there.
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They might not even see it.
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They don't even maybe know it about themselves, but it's there.
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Sin brings shame.
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And when someone sins and does wrong, they are ashamed, and it causes them to do so many things that are damaging and destructive and hurtful.
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Sin causes a severed fellowship with our Father in heaven.
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It doesn't immediately cause an ending of the relationship, but our fellowship, our closeness, our intimacy with the Father is immediately damaged when we sin.
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The greatest damage sin brings is a breaking of fellowship with God.
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Sin brings any number of untold destructions upon us, upon our lives and our relationships, even upon our whole world.
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But the greatest damage that it does is it damages our fellowship with our Father in heaven.
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It breaks that fellowship down.
00:22:43
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You know, when I was in school,
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When I was in college, there was a teacher that came to talk to us.
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His name was Malcolm Smith, and he was a really great teacher and a really fine, godly man who loved the Lord.
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And he talked about kitchen table conversation.
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He would say that the Lord desires to have kitchen table conversation with you and me.
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that he wants to sit down at that kitchen table and he wants to, you know, that's the place where you talk about the real life stuff.
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You sit down with a cup of tea or some coffee or a snack maybe.
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You sit at that kitchen table and it's just you and the other person and you just share.
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You just share your hearts.
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You know, it's not formal.
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It's relaxed.
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It's comfortable.
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It's
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And that is the type of fellowship and intimacy that the Lord is seeking with us, something that is very familiar and yet very intimate, very relaxed and yet very personal.
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And that's what He means when He says a kitchen table conversation.
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A lot of us can understand what He means by that.
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But what happens when we sin is like if we're sitting there having a kitchen table conversation and the floor suddenly starts being covered in water.
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Maybe the pipe bursts under the sink or maybe the pipes under the floor popped and there's water all over.
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Maybe somebody forgot the water running in the bathroom and now it's overflowed the sink and worked its way into the kitchen floor.
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Well, that's going to immediately stop your conversation because you're going to have to get up and deal with the problem.
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You're going to have a very difficult time having fellowship if there's two inches of water all over the floor.
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You don't sit there and keep talking in that circumstance.
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It inhibits your fellowship.
00:24:43
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Or if somebody breaks a window, well, I mean, you can continue to have fellowship in the kitchen if the window is broken, but if it's cold outside, it's going to be distracting.
00:24:57
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If you're OCD a little bit, I'm a little bit OCD, I think, but if you're OCD, you won't even be able, whether it's hot or cold or pleasant outside, you won't be able to focus or concentrate because the window's broken.
00:25:11
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Or maybe if you lock the door, that would certainly hinder fellowship at the kitchen table.
00:25:18
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If you lock the door to keep someone out.
00:25:22
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See, that's the effect that sin has on our relationship with the Lord.
00:25:26
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Our fellowship with him is damaged when we do what is wrong, and that's the greatest tragedy of all.
00:25:36
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It is right for us to fear this consequence of sin.
00:25:42
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It's godly for us to be afraid that this consequence would come upon us.
00:25:49
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That is a righteous, godly fear, to fear the destruction of our intimate communication with the Lord.
00:26:00
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But thank the Lord that fellowship can be regained.
00:26:05
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That intimacy can be regained through Christ.
00:26:08
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You see, Jesus didn't come
00:26:12
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He didn't want us to remain in that state of damaged, broken fellowship.
00:26:17
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He came to restore the fellowship that Adam destroyed.
00:26:25
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Jesus came to restore it because Adam destroyed it.
00:26:30
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That's in part why Jesus is called the second Adam.
00:26:33
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He came to put back together what Adam tore apart.
00:26:40
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Jesus wants us to have a restored and renewed fellowship with Him, and we can have that through His blood.
00:26:48
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Through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are made righteous again and are allowed to come back into the secret place with our Father in heaven.
00:27:00
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Sin might be cleverly deceiving.
00:27:03
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It might be able to meet physical needs or look pleasant and appealing.
00:27:10
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It might even fulfill the promises that sin makes to us.
00:27:15
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Those promises may even come true, but we will find them to be empty and lacking and disappointing.
00:27:23
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We'll find leanness to our soul when we indulge in that sin.
00:27:31
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And we will find that the fellowship that we once enjoyed with the Lord Jesus or the opportunity that we have for fellowship with Christ is damaged and even destroyed.
00:27:42
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But it can be rebuilt.
00:27:44
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It can be renewed because Jesus Christ is the great renewer.
00:27:49
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Jesus Christ is the great bridge builder.
00:27:52
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He is the great restorer of relationship.
00:28:02
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That is Jesus Christ, and that is the way forward.
00:28:08
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There's no way we can ever see the consequences of our sin.
00:28:12
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But what we should never give up hope on is that the Lord Jesus can restore us to faith, restore us to our relationship with Him, that fellowship that we once enjoyed, or maybe we never enjoyed it, but we can still have it.
00:28:30
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So it's important that we learn these lessons about how the tempter drew Eve and then Adam also away.
00:28:39
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He deceived them, and we need to recognize temptation for what it is.
00:28:43
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It's a great lie.
00:28:46
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Sin is a great lie and brings great destruction to us, but we are not without hope.
00:28:51
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Jesus restores and rebuilds the things the devil tears down.
00:28:55
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The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but the Lord Jesus comes to rebuild, to renew, to...
00:29:03
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That is Jesus Christ.
00:29:04
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That is our Lord.
00:29:05
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And that is the person that stands at the door and knocks.
00:29:26
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waiting for you.
00:29:27
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He's waiting for you to open the door.
00:29:31
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Jesus won't kick down the door.
00:29:33
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He won't kick it down.
00:29:34
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He's a gentleman.
00:29:35
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He will wait for you to open the door, that he might come in and sit with you, that you might, it says, sup with him or eat a meal with him there at that kitchen table.
00:29:52
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That's the picture I have in my mind, and I think that's what the Lord would want to remind us of today from this message.
00:30:00
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So friend, don't give up hope.
00:30:03
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No matter what destruction the enemy has brought to your life, don't give up hope.
00:30:07
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Jesus can restore you.
00:30:08
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There's a way forward, and he has accomplished it on Calvary and through his bodily resurrection the third day.
00:30:17
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Praise the Lord for that.
00:30:19
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So don't let sin deceive you, no matter how attractive it might be, no matter how appealing it may look.
00:30:26
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Don't go down that road.
00:30:28
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Stay away.
00:30:28
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Run.
00:30:29
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Run the other direction.
00:30:32
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Friends, I hope that you have enjoyed this message today.
00:30:35
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I hope that it has encouraged your heart, and I hope that you will have a fantastic and wonderful day in the Lord, that the Lord will make himself known to you, will build up your heart and your spirit, and draw you unto him.
00:30:48
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Thanks for listening.
00:30:49
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Hope to see you again next time.
00:30:51
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Have a great day.
00:30:52
Speaker
Bye-bye.