Transcript
Speaker: Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. This is Joseph, aka Harmonica Player. And I'd like to tell you about an awesome service that I use to get my podcast done. Did you know that there's a service out there called Zancaster, which is a one -stop shop for all podcasts? You can do editing, production, and audio and video. It's a one -stop shop place.
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Speaker: Now, folks, I present to you Wednesday morning, August 3rd, 2022 Blind Camp Service. We now present this on...
Speaker: Gaining Dimmels and Other Interests On Joseph Weekland's Harmonica Player Podcasts
Speaker: How sweet are the tidings? 442.
Speaker: O sweet are the tidings that greet the pilgrim's ear As he wanders in exile from home Soon, soon will the Savior in glory appear And soon will the kingdom come
Speaker: He is coming, coming, coming soon I know, coming back to this earth again. And the weary pilgrims will to glory go when the Savior comes to reign.
Speaker: The mossy old graves where the pilgrims sleep shall be open as wide as before. And the millions that sleep in the mighty deep shall live on this earth once more.
Speaker: is coming, coming, coming soon I know, coming back to this earth again. And the weary pilgrims will to glory go when the Savior comes to reign.
Speaker: There will meet ne 'er to part in that happy Eden home. Sweet songs of redemption will sing. From the north, from the south, all the ransom shall come and worship our heavenly King.
Speaker: He's coming, coming, coming, soon I know, coming back to this earth again. And the weary pilgrims will to glory go when the Savior comes to reign.
Speaker: Hallelujah, amen. Hallelujah, again. Soon, if faithful, we all shall be there. Oh, be watchful, be hopeful, be joyful.
Speaker: and the crown of bright glory will wear. He's coming, coming, coming soon I know, coming back to this earth again. And the weary pilgrims
Speaker: It will to glory go, and the Savior comes to reign.
Speaker: A wonderful Savior is how it starts out. And we do have a wonderful Savior, no way.
Speaker: A wonderful Savior is Jesus, my Lord, a wonderful Savior to me. He hideth my soul in dark left of the rock, where rivers of pleasure I see.
Speaker: He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock that shadows a dry thirsty land. He hideth my life in the depth of his love and covers me there with his hand.
Speaker: and covers me there with his hand. A wonderful Savior is Jesus, my Lord. He taketh my burden away.
Speaker: He holdeth me up and I shall not be moved. He giveth me strength as my day. He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock that shadows a dry thirsty land.
Speaker: He hideth my life in the depths of His love and covers me there with His hand, and covers me there with His hand.
Speaker: With numberless blessings each moment he crowns and filled with his fullness divine. I sing in my rapture, O glory to God, for such a Redeemer as mine.
Speaker: He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock that shadows a dry thirsty land. He hideth my life in the depths of his love and covers me there with his hands.
Speaker: and covers me there with his head. When clothed in his brightness transported I rise to meet him in clouds of the sky.
Speaker: His perfect salvation, his wonderful love, I'll shout with a million zon high. He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock that shadows a dry, thirsty land.
Speaker: He hideth my life in the depths of His love, and covers me there with His hand, and covers me there with His hand.
Speaker: How about I'll fly away? I just got what I wanted to say. I've got to be careful. I wanted to be first. You want to be first? I don't think we have I fly away in the book. But we do have 512. 512? Well, let's take. We'll try it. We'll give it a try. How's that? It's still in my book. It's still in my book. Not 512. Not 512. It's 412. 412.
Speaker: Okay, let's look upon Jesus this morning. Good thing to do. Look upon Jesus, sinless as he. Father imputed his life unto me. My life of scarlet, my sin and war.
Speaker: Cover with his life, whiter than snow Cover with his life, whiter than snow Fullness of his life, then shall I know
Speaker: my life of scarlet, my sin and war, cover with his life whiter than snow. Deep are the wounds transgression has made. Red are the stains my soul is afraid.
Speaker: Oh, to be covered, Jesus with thee. Safe from the law that now judges me. Cover with his life, whiter than snow. Fullness of his life, then shall I know.
Speaker: my life of scarlet my sin and woe cover with his life whiter than snow
Speaker: Longing the joy of pardon to know Jesus holds out of robe white as snow. Lord, I accept it, leaving my own. Gladly I wear thy pure life alone.
Speaker: cover with his life whiter than snow fullness of his life then shall I know my life of scarlet my sin and woe cover with his life whiter than snow
Speaker: Reconciled by his death for my sin Justified by his life pure and clean Sanctified by obeying his word Glorified when be turneth my load
Speaker: cover with his life whiter than snow fullness of his life then shall I know my life of scarlet my sin and woe cover with his life whiter than snow
Speaker: We're not going to use the theme song today because this song is so tied with the message for this morning. So let's pray. Brace us, Lord, as we open your word, we seek your face. We recognize that our lives need to be covered with the life of Jesus. And we ask for that today. Help us to understand what this means more fully as we study today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Speaker: Well, last night we looked at the sin, and we recognized that the sin of Grandma and Grandpa Adam and Eve is our sin, too. We still sucker for the temptations. We still choose to do what we know God doesn't want us to do, and it hurts. God told Adam,
Speaker: that the wages of sin was death. If you do what I've told you not to do, you will surely die. They did not understand what death meant before sin. They had to take God's word for it. They had not even seen a leaf turn red and fall off the tree.
Speaker: Before sin, that didn't happen. We didn't have what we called deciduous treats. The consequences for sin were instantaneous. The first thing we find referenced here is they realized that I'm naked. Well, I believe that they had been covered with the righteousness of God
Speaker: And so they weren't naked before because they were covered with the goodness of God. But by sinning, by doing what God said don't do, they lost that righteous protection. And they didn't even feel comfortable looking at each other and their husband and wife.
Speaker: They went and got some fig leaves. Well, I don't know what fig leaves were like then, but fig leaves would not be my choice. But they did not feel adequately covered even with the fig leaves.
Speaker: They knew that something bad had gone wrong. I don't remember if I mentioned this last night, but I'll mention it again now anyway. You may have noticed that most animals are covered with fur. I think that gives us a hint of what we were covered with before sin entered, that that robe of Christ righteousness kind of covered. You can still tell whether it's a cow or a bull out in the field.
Speaker: The ones who really are in touch with this can look and tell, when they look in the field and see some horses, they will tell you, from a long ways away, stallion, gilding, or mare. Now, I didn't grow up with horses enough, no, to be discerning of that, but I think that there was a shrouding that was given to them there at the beginning.
Speaker: But then you see, here in the story, Genesis chapter 3, as soon as sin entered their life, they're ready to make excuses and to blame. It's absolutely crazy. I believe that Adam said, oh, Eve, you've done wrong, but I love you so much I'm going to join you when you're wrong. And as soon as he joined her in her wrong, it's her fault.
Speaker: And we've been doing that ever since. Who can we blame? How can I shove it off on somebody? And it's not just in the family. Politics is replete with this. Get into an automobile accident, and it's always the other guy's fault, even if you are on yourself.
Speaker: So, verse 8, this is Genesis 3, Adam and Eve, heard the sound of the Lord God. I believe this was Jesus walking in the garden at the pool of the day, the regular time when he would come and commune with them at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, special one -on -one time with God, time that we should treasure. But,
Speaker: Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. Always before, they had run to greet him, like your puppy dog comes to greet you, eager, happy to see him. And now, like your puppy dog, when it knows it's in trouble, slinks with its tail between his legs and runs and hides, they ran and hid from God. Can you hide from God?
Speaker: See, see how foolish we get? Sin messes with our mind and we don't even think straight. But the Lord got called and said, where are you, Adam? And Adam replied, I heard your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. I was afraid. That's another instant consequence of sin.
Speaker: Jesus asked, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Opportunity. God gives us opportunity to say, I'm sorry, I'm guilty, I did wrong. But it's so much easier for us to find an excuse. I had to laugh. My children were quite young when I learned this.
Speaker: There's usually only one of two things that you have to say when the parents say, put the toys away. Either you say, I didn't get them out or I didn't play with them last. One or the other will probably work. Not my job. I don't have to do it. So much better to say, thank you for the opportunity to help.
Speaker: Adam was given an opportunity here to say, yes, God, I really, really messed up. But he did it. It says, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me in the tree and I ate. Now, who's he blaming? Well, he's blaming his wife to some extent, but did you catch another phrase in there? The woman that you gave me. So, God, it's your fault. You gave me an imperfect wife.
Speaker: Anybody here with a perfect wife? Anybody here perfect enough to deserve a perfect wife? No, no, we just, we're all flawed. We're all flawed. And we plead with heaven to cleanse us of our flaws. And we also ask God,
Speaker: to give us some grace when we recognize the flaws in others. And we speak as spouses because we get so close but we know nearly all the flaws and we have to be gracious. So here we find Adam making an excuse. Adam blames Eve and God and so God turns to Eve.
Speaker: The Lord God said to the woman, what have you done? And the woman replied, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Now, are you like that? Adam blames her and she passes the blame off on the snake. Now she's telling the truth.
Speaker: It's true that the serpent did deceive her. He's tricky, he's sly, he's sneaky, and he'll try to deceive you too. So, the Lord God spoke to the serpent. He did not ask the serpent what's going on.
Speaker: That's an important point on this. He gave Adam an opportunity to confess. He gave Eve an opportunity to confess, but Satan had sinned away his day of grace. He was out of it. He needs to hear some lessons on this, but it was over for him. No opportunity for him to even make an excuse.
Speaker: Now God speaks judgment. We have judgment on the snake, judgment on the woman, and judgment on the man. It comes sequentially. He had spoken to the man and then the woman, and now the snake is referenced. And so now he reverses the order that we call that a chiacic structure. He reverses the order. He speaks to the snake and tells him what his judgment is, speaks to the woman and tells her what her judgment is. Then he speaks to the man and tells him what his judgment is.
Speaker: Because, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle. More than every beast of the field, on your belly you shall go. I believe that before sin, the snakes had much more capability than they do now. The fossil record indicates that they may even had wings. Phenomenal stuff.
Speaker: God's curse limited them, instantly insignificant. On your belly you shall go, you shall eat dust all the days of your life. But that's only where it started. I will put enmity between you and the woman. Might have. Yeah, might have. Might have had legs as well as wings. Beautiful.
Speaker: remarkably intelligent creatures at that time, but they lost a lot. I believe they really lost a lot. But he went on to say, not only are you cursed, but now you're going to have to crawl in along the ground, but he says, I'm going to put enmity. Now, that's kind of an old -fashioned word.
Speaker: a hatred for sin, a hostility for sin between you and the woman? Well, now, Satan, who was represented by the serpent, does not have any hatred for sin. He's loving it. He's wallowing in it. But here's the word for the woman and her children, that you're going to find a hatred for sin. This was an amazing gift of God.
Speaker: because once we had started sinning, it's our natural tendency to keep on sinning. But God says, I'm gonna give you a break. I'm gonna put something here where you can say, that's ugly, that's messy, I don't want that. Now, if you wallow in sin, you'll get to liken the sin.
Speaker: But if you choose to allow that enmity to grow in your life, you will learn to both recognize sin more quickly and shun it in your life. I'll put enmity between you and a woman. And it goes on between your seed and her seed. You'll find that in the Bible that second word seed tends to be capitalized.
Speaker: All of the henchmen of Satan, evil angels that he took out of heaven when he fell, those are his seed. But her seed not only includes all of her descendants, but it's capitalized because it's focusing particularly on Jesus. And he, Jesus, shall bruise your head. Jesus is going to do an action against Satan that will ultimately destroy him, whereas
Speaker: He goes on to say, you should bruise his heel. This is pointing to the cross. When Jesus died on the cross and uttered that cry, it is finished. He was declaring victory for all of us over sin. I can just picture Satan pushing and shoving to get Jesus hanging on the cross.
Speaker: And when he heard the cry, it is finished, he realized that he had merely wounded Jesus' heel because Jesus, by giving his life for us, he demonstrated godly love in such a powerful way that the whole universe has been transformed by the death of Jesus. And Satan had no following.
Speaker: Those that he had already claimed, those are the ones he had. But the watching universe was able to say, God is love, and I don't want love. Now, this has still taken another 2 ,000 years to settle out, but we're getting close to that climax scene. And God is doing a work to completely destroy sin.
Speaker: It's pretty phenomenal. But having spoken judgment on the snake, Satan, Jesus then turns to Eve, our mama, and tells her that because of her choice to not honor God's instruction, trouble was coming into her life.
Speaker: To the woman he said, verse 16, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be to your husband. He shall rule over you. I don't know exactly what this means, but I think that the periodic bleed that women have, it was different before that that's part of this curse.
Speaker: Having children is good news, but here it says it's gonna hurt. And you've been around somebody when they're having a child, or maybe some of you have had children, you know, there's labor pains. It's real. And I believe that if we hadn't sinned, giving birth would not have been pain.
Speaker: These are consequences that come from that sin. Jesus told them there. And then, Sharon and I were talking about this too, but more in the context of Ephesians 5, but here it says, and even if you want to rule over your husband, he's going to rule over you, and that has been misused in so many ways in so many families.
Speaker: God has placed a headship responsibility upon the man and a willing submission on the part of the Christian woman that can bring peace and happiness to the home. And we've been fighting it both sides ever since. And it's caused a lot of pain. Some of you know experientially what I'm talking about. Both for the wives and for the husbands.
Speaker: Has not all been good, but God warned us. He said, it's coming. But then he moved on to Adam. He had a longer chat with Adam. Verse 17, then to Adam he said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you saying you shall not eat of it, the ground is cursed for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Speaker: He said, the ground is no longer going to easily yield for you its abundance. You're going to have to work to provide food for yourself and your family. Any of you that's a farmer knows, it's work. It's hard work. And Frouvers makes it clear, it's nice to have a horse or an ox to help you with it. And of course, now we have the big tractors. Some of those tractors are amazingly huge.
Speaker: that are helping us with it. But it's still hard work. And truth be told, the economy in this world is set. Farmers are not paid enough for the food that they provide, for the food that they're giving us. We need the food. And of course, we fuss about the prices of the food. But somewhere along, it's not fair. Oh, the fair's in August. We already talked about that. Cursed ground.
Speaker: Verse 18, both thorns and thistles that shall bring forth to you. We're talking about weeds. I've been in the garden already this summer chopping out weeds, and it does not take them long to grow. Why is it that the weeds grow faster than the garden sass? That's the curse. You're going to have to fight the thorns and the thistles.
Speaker: Now, of course, some of the brambles provide nice fruit, and you still have to work through the thorns to pick the blackberries. And I like the blackberries and the raspberries, even though I have to fight the thorns. He goes on to say, you shall eat the herb of the field.
Speaker: As I analyze what God gave us in the diet in the beginning, I find that here he's adding vegetables. And he's saying that, well, before we ate the fruits, the grains, the nuts, now we're also eating vegetables. And we need the vegetables. The scientists are recognizing that God has tucked into these vegetables nutrition that is essential for our body.
Speaker: And I like the suggestion, try every day to eat the colors of the rainbow. Get the fruits, get the vegetables in lots of different varieties. So he added that. And then he goes on to say, in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. It's going to be hard work until you return to the ground. Out of the ground you were taken and dust you are and to dust you shall return.
Speaker: I've, the last couple years, I've gotten a new, a new perspective on this to dust you shall return.
Speaker: because my brother's a sexton for Sherman Township in Osceola County. And of course, he's grabbed me and made me his assistant. So when he's not around, we like it best and we can work together. Digging a grave for two people, it's not really such a bad job. We can get it done in four or five hours. But when you're doing it by yourself, it's not a surprise if it takes eight hours.
Speaker: It's just tough, tough, hard, tough. And it depends on how many routes you have to fight through, how many rocks you have, how hard you play. And we don't charge enough for winter burials. And so people were willing to pay the extra 500 bucks.
Speaker: very in the winter and we had to break our way through the ice, the frozen ground. We had four winter burials this last winter. I'm learning something more about tucking people into the ground and I know the dimensions of that grave. I'm going to memorize pretty quick.
Speaker: God said, you're going to get tucked into the ground. And the strange thing about this, that toiling for food
Speaker: is a blessing to us. It's given in this context of the curse, but if you look at anything that God says, you recognize there's a blessing in it. Our characters are developed as we learn to work in the garden. And as we fight to keep the weeds out of the garden, we recognize that there's a fight in keeping sin out of the life. God wants us
Speaker: to be just as diligent and responsible as we choose the good and shun the bad. But it keeps going. Says Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. So here we have her name Eve. And this word Eve means mother. It means life. That's kind of special. But look at this next verse.
Speaker: For Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. Where did the tunics of skin come from? The story is not amplified here in this chapter, but you read the rest here and you discover a lamb had to die. Adam and Eve's hearts were broken. They have stepped out of the garden and they're at that gate of the garden on the
Speaker: on the west edge of the garden. And God shows him how to build an altar. They call a lamb over. And he explains to Adam how to slit that animal's throat and let the blood flow out, put the animal on the altar. Oh, they skin it first. Put the animal on the altar. I believe fire came from heaven to consume that sacrifice.
Speaker: God explained to Adam and Eve there at the gate of the garden the substitutionary debt that Jesus was going to pay for us. And he gave them such a alive and now dead example of what that meant. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth on him might not perish but have everlasting life.
Speaker: What a choice, what an invitation, what a help. Adam and Eve understood that, but that first death, it just about killed them. To watch that lamb die, it tore them up because they knew this lamb died because of my sin. And they understood, at least to some extent, we can look back at the cross and understand I believe in some ways more than they did.
Speaker: That lamb represented Jesus. Jesus was dying. The son of God was giving his life so that you and I could live. What a God. What a gracious, loving, caring God. Tears running down their cheeks. Then God made his tunings of skin out of them. Now, there's a lot I don't know about the clothing that they wore.
Speaker: But I can read enough of scripture and know that it was modest. It covered them well enough. I wonder about how that lamb made enough skins to cover both of them, but the implication is clear that it did. Now, God's God in his sewing machine is much more complex than yours. When he needs a little bit more material, he just stretches it out.
Speaker: So he had plenty of material to cover them modestly. Oh, and when you think about getting dressed in the morning, this is pointing to the cross.
Speaker: The clothing that we wear, we go back to the beginning of clothing in human family, and it's talking about Jesus. So the clothing we wear is a statement about our trust in Jesus, his righteousness, to cover, to cleanse us from sin. That's what clothing is all about, and it matters. There's reasons to be careful with your clothing to represent Jesus, all right.
Speaker: I can just see Adam and Eve walking together outside the garden, crying. They're seeing flowers start to fade, because before sin, the flowers never faded. But after sin, I love day lilies, but you know they only bloom for one day. In the morning they come out, and that night they wither down, and the next day, praise the Lord, you'll often have another flower.
Speaker: but they recognized that Lily died because of my sin. We don't understand the significance of sin anywhere near as broadly as we need to. And then when they saw the leaves falling off the trees in the fall, they realized
Speaker: That's because of my sin. I think crying for this, it affected that. It impacted their life to see that my sin impacts lives of others. Truth be told, anytime you sin, you're hurting not just yourself, but others. Start with your mother. She doesn't like it when you sin, but it's broader than that.
Speaker: None of us live in a vacuum. We all impact others' lives, and our choices for righteousness are for God's glory. I believe we are too careless with death and dying aspects today. We need to sharpen our game on this and think more seriously about how we can be agents to preserve life, to enhance life, to strengthen life,
Speaker: rather than just being, oh, well, we stepped on that toad, and then we just move on. No, we need to be careful and thoughtful. Sin and death are linked. God advises to hate both the sin and the death. Trust in Him. Praise Him. Praise His Lord. As we contemplate the story of our first parents' sin and your response to it,
Speaker: We thank you that you have made it so clear that you love, you save, you cleanse from sin, you lead us into your righteousness for your glory in Jesus name. Thank you very much pastor. Is this on? Okay.
Speaker: Mike on this completes another episode of my golf gaining demos and other interests on Joseph weaklands harmonica player podcast Mike on till next time. Thanks for listening my golf
