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    THE FIRST

    FORGIVENESS

    Rubn Daro Snchez, Ph.D.

    ADVI INTERNATIONAL

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    2007 by ADVI INTERNATIONAL Press

    All rights reserved.

    Printed in the United States of America.

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    i

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    The First Forgiveness

    Genesis 3:8-24

    8 Then the man and his wife heard

    the sound of the LORD God as he was

    walking in the garden in the cool of

    the day, and they hid from the LORD

    God among the trees of the garden. 9But the LORD God called to the man,

    "Where are you?" 10 He answered,

    "I heard you in the garden, and I was

    afraid because I was naked; so I

    hid." 11 And he said, "Who told youthat you were naked? Have you eaten

    from the tree that I commanded you

    not to eat from?" 12 The man said,

    "The woman you put here with me

    she gave me some fruit from the tree,and I ate it." 13 Then the LORD God

    said to the woman, "What is this youhave done?" The woman said, "The

    serpent deceived me, and I ate." 14 So

    the LORD God said to the serpent,

    "Because you have done this, Cursed

    are you above all the livestock and all

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    PREFACE

    the wild animals! You will crawl on

    your belly and you will eat dust allthe days of your life. 15 And I will put

    enmity between you and the wom-

    an, and between your offspring and

    hers; he will crush your head, and

    you will strike his heel." 16 To thewoman he said, I will greatly in-

    crease your pains in childbearing;

    with pain you will give birth to chil-

    dren. Your desire will be for your

    husband, and he will rule overyou." 17 To Adam he said, "Because

    you listened to your wife and ate from

    the tree about which I commanded

    you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed

    is the ground because of you; through

    painful toil you will eat of it all the

    days of your life 18 It will produce

    thorns and thistles for you, and you

    will eat the plants of the field. 19 bythe sweat of your brow you will eat

    your food until you return to the

    ground, since from it you were taken;

    for dust you are and to dust you will

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    The First Forgiveness

    return." 20 Adam named his wife

    Eve, because she would become themother of all the living. 21 The LORD

    God made garments of skin for Adam

    and his wife and clothed them. 22 And

    the LORD God said, "The man has

    now become like one of us, knowinggood and evil. He must not be allowed

    to reach out his hand and take also

    from the tree of life and eat, and live

    forever." 23 So the LORD God ban-

    ished him from the Garden of Eden towork the ground from which he had

    been taken. 24 After he drove the man

    out, he placed on the east side of the

    Garden of Eden cherubim and a flam-

    ing sword flashing back and forth toguard the way to the tree of life.

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    1

    INTRODUCTION

    There is no question in any-

    one's mind that Adam and Eve were

    sinners, and there was no question in

    their mind that they were sinners.

    If you have any questions about

    the historicity of this particular story,

    just read Romans 5, or read Matthew19. Our Lord Jesus Christ and the

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    apostle Paul had no problem whatso-ever accepting this as literal history.

    So, we'll notice the steps that

    our Lord takes in bringing a sinner to

    Himself. In the following chapters

    well see three of them.

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    3

    GOD SEEKS US

    Then the man and his wife

    heard the sound of the LORD God as

    he was walking in the garden in thecool of the day, and they hid from the

    LORD God among the trees of the

    garden.(v.8)

    After they sinned, wed think

    that Adam and Eve would have beenrunning, looking for God. After all,

    God made them; God was their Crea-

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    The First Forgiveness

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    tor. And after all, God sustainedthem; He was their Life. And God

    provided for them so generously.

    God gave to them faculties with

    which to enjoy a beautiful Paradise

    garden. And we would think that

    Adam would turn to Eve and say,

    "You know, we've sinned and the one

    Person we need more than anything

    else is God, and let's go find God.Let's tell Him what we have done, and

    surely the Lord God will do some-

    thing to help us."

    We'd think that people who arereeling down Main St. would say, "I

    need God. Where is He?" We'd think

    that people who are living on the

    kicks of narcotics would say, "This isnot what I need. I need God. I want

    God."

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    God Seeks For Us

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    And yet, man does not go seek-ing God. Man runs and hides because

    the fleshly mind is enmity against

    God. That's why over in Romans 3,

    when Paul is drawing to a close, his

    argument proving that the world is

    guilty, he says, Thereis no one who

    understands, no one who seeks God."

    (v.11).

    When it comes to salvation,God takes the initiative. It's not man

    who takes the initiative. It is not

    Adam and Eve who said, "We will

    now seek God." Oh, no!They were hiding from God.

    They were hiding because they were

    ashamed. They discovered that they

    were naked and they tried to clothethemselves with fig leaves. They had

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    rebelled against God, and now theywere ashamed.

    Shame is a good thing! The

    prophet Jeremiah twice in his proph-

    ecy makes a statement like this, (he is

    describing the sins of the people of

    Judah) "Neither were they ashamed.

    Neither did they blush when they had

    committed these evils."

    We have people today whodon't know how to blush. Or they are

    those who laugh at the people who

    blush. But, the ability to feel ashamed

    when something is wrong is a goodthing.

    Shame is to the inner man what

    pain is to the outer man. And when

    the outer man feels pain, we say, "I'mgoing to the doctor; there is some-

    thing wrong. Pain is that red light

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    God Seeks For Us

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    that flashes and says, "There is some-thing wrong." And to the inner man

    is shame. When we are ashamed of

    what we have done and run and we

    hide and we say, "I don't even want to

    see the face of God. I am so ashamed

    of what I've done!" That's a good

    sign.

    But shame should not drive us

    away from God. Ultimately, shameshould bring us to God, because He is

    the only One who can lift up our

    heads. They were ashamed and they

    were afraid. He said so very plainly."I was afraid." But, they were afraid

    of what? God had said, "In the day

    that you eat thereof dying you shall

    die."As yet, they hadn't died physi-

    cally; they had died spiritually. And I

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    wonder if Adam and Eve weren't say-ing, "Oh, if God comes He will bring

    a sword. If God finds us, He'll slay

    us!"

    Man runs and hides. He didn't

    dig a hole in the ground and tried to

    tunnel away from God. He got be-

    hind God's creation. It was a tree that

    originally was the test. "Don't eat of

    this tree." He did eat of the tree, andbecome a thief and a sinner. Now, he

    goes and hides behind some trees to

    hide from God.

    In Genesis chapters 1 and 2,God's creation was a window through

    which men could see God.

    We just can see Adam and Eve walk-

    ing around their home.Can we just see Adam and Eve

    walking around their beautiful home

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    and saying, "My, what a marvellousArchitect we have! God knows how

    to make things! My! What a builder!

    Look how this flower is put together!

    Look how this tree is constructed!"

    But, what did they do? Crea-

    tion was a window through which

    they saw God. But in chapter 3, crea-

    tion became a mirror in which they

    saw themselves. "I want that tree!" "Iwant that fruit! That fruit is pleas-

    ant to the eyes! That fruit is good

    for food! That fruit is going to

    make me wise!It's not: I see God; Isee myself!

    That's what men have been do-

    ing for centuries: exploiting God's

    creation for them. Now, they are us-ing God's creation to hide from God.

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    First, creation is a window andthey see God; and then, it's a mirror

    and they see themselves. Now, it's a

    wall! And that wall hides them from

    God. I'm afraid many people today are

    using the things that God has created

    to hide from God.

    Man runs and hides and so God

    seeks man. They hear God walking

    in the cool of the day (v.8). WhenMoses wrote these words, inspired by

    the Holy Spirit, he didn't put "in the

    cool of the day" (in the Hebrew says,

    "In the breeze of the day"), just to betalking about the weather.

    We can contrast "in the cool of

    the day" in Genesis 3:8 with Genesis

    18:1, "And the Lord God came toAbraham in the heat of the day."

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    God came to Abraham "in theheat of the day," because He was go-

    ing to judge and destroy the cities of

    Sodom and Gomorrah. And God did

    not come "in the cool of the day,"

    when the breeze of God is blowing,

    and people are in fellowship with

    each other. God came "in the heat of

    the day." He came to bring fire and

    brimstone and judgment.And so, verse 8 is saying to us,

    that God comes seeking man in His

    grace. God came "in the cool of the

    day" that He might bring a blessing toman, even though man had sinned.

    In the Old Testament God the

    Father is out seeking man. In the four

    gospels is God the Son. "The Son of

    man is come to seek and to save that

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    which was lost." In the book of Acts

    to this present day is God the Holy

    Spirit. The Holy Spirit is out seeking

    people! God is a seeking God and

    God comes seeking lost sinners. God

    seeks us.

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    GOD SPEAKS TO US

    But the LORD God called to the

    man, "Where are you?" He answered,

    "I heard you in the garden, and I was

    afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

    And he said, "Who told you that you

    were naked? Have you eaten from the

    tree that I commanded you not to eatfrom?" The man said, "The woman

    you put here with meshe gave me

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    some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

    Then the LORD God said to the wom-

    an, "What is this you have done?" The

    woman said, "The serpent deceived

    me, and I ate." So the LORD God said

    to the serpent, "Because you havedone this, Cursed are you above all

    the livestock and all the wild animals!

    You will crawl on your belly and you

    will eat dust all the days of your

    life.And I will put enmity between youand the woman, and between your off-

    spring and hers; he will crush your

    head, and you will strike his heel." To

    the woman he said,I will greatly in-

    crease your pains inchildbearing; with pain you will give

    birth to children. Your desire will be

    for your husband, and he will rule

    over you." To Adam he said, "Because

    you listened to your wife and ate from

    the tree about which I commanded

    you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed

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    God Speaks to Us

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    is the ground because of you;

    through painful toil you will eat of itall the days of your life. It will pro-

    duce thorns and thistles for you, and

    you will eat the plants of the field.By

    the sweat of your brow you will eat

    your food until you return to the

    ground, since from it you were taken;

    for dust you are and to dust you willreturn." (Vv9-19)

    Did you ever come home from

    work and say, "Hi, how things are go-

    ing?"

    "Silence.

    "Kids O.K.?"

    "Silence.

    And if you have been married

    very long at all, you say, "Ah, ha...

    Something..." And you start backtracking. What did I do?

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    That doesn't often happen inChristian homes, but sometimes it

    does. Or sometimes your children

    won't talk to you and then you find

    out you did something: You had pea-

    nut butter in the lunch twice in a row

    or something like that, some great gi-

    gantic thing, you see.

    Did you ever do something to

    someone and they wouldn't talk toyou anymore? It's a childish thing,

    isn't it? But, sometimes it happens.

    If I were God I wonder if I

    would have spoken to man. He spoketo them already and said, "The whole

    garden is yours, every bit of it! Just

    stay away from that one tree!" And

    the one thing He told them not to do,they did. But God speaks to us.

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    God Speaks to Us

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    First of all He calls, in verse 9.

    "And the Lord God called unto Adam

    and said unto him, 'Where art thou?'"

    The way you read this gives

    evidence of your convictions about

    the Lord.I heard about a seminary pro-

    fessor over in Scotland, that before he

    were graduating any of his preaching

    students he had them read this pas-sage and if they read it, "Adam,

    Where art thou?!" as though a po-

    liceman were looking for a criminal

    he wouldn't pass them.These words, "Adam, where art

    thou?" are spoken graciously. They

    are not spoken as a judge looking for

    a criminal; they aren't spoken as a po-

    liceman looking for a thief; they are

    spoken graciously, "Adam! Where

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    are thou?" As if God were saying,"You ought to be here! I miss you; I

    created you for fellowship to share

    my blessing and my glory." "Adam,

    where are you?" They were spoken

    graciously.

    I notice they were spoken per-

    sonally. "Adam." He speaks a name.

    If we go through our Bibles

    well find a lot of people that Godcalled by name: Samuel, Samuel;

    Abraham! Abraham! Martha, Martha.

    Thou art Simon! Thou shall be Peter.

    He spoke these words person-ally. Does God still speak to people

    today? Sure, He does!

    The Spirit of God takes the

    Word of God and speaks to people.And God can use many, many differ-

    ent ways of speaking to people.

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    God Speaks to Us

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    I have seen people come to

    Christ who has been spoken to

    through a blessing that came to them.

    I've seen people come to Christ be-

    cause of some seeming tragedy that

    came to them. I've seen people cometo Christ who are just sitting reading

    the Word of God! Nobody was

    preaching to them, they just simply

    read the Word of God and God spoketo them. But God spoke to them per-

    sonally.

    God doesn't seek crowds. God

    seeks individuals. When our Lord Je-sus Christ looked out at the

    multitudes, He didn't see statistics, He

    didn't see vast numbers, He saw indi-

    viduals.

    And so it is with our Father.

    He spoke to him personally; He spoke

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    to him also sovereignty. God in Hissovereignty was taking the initiative

    in winning lost souls. Whatever you

    do with the plan of salvation, it begins

    with God.

    The Lamb was slain from be-

    fore the foundation of the world. And

    God's plan of salvation was not ruined

    by what Adam did! Adam was not

    frantically pacing up and down on thelawns of Paradise saying, "What am I

    going to do next?" No. God had a

    sovereign plan and He is going to

    work His plan.God speaks to us. First, He

    calls us and says, "Where are you?"

    It's interesting to know that in Genesis

    3:9 God says, "Where are you?" InGenesis 4:9 He says, "Where is your

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    brother?" In Genesis 18:9 He says,

    "Where is your wife?"

    But before He asks about my

    wife or my brother, He asks about me,

    "Where are you?" Thats a good

    question. Where are you today? Areyou in sin or in salvation? Are you in

    Adam or in Christ? Are you in the

    darkness or in the light?"

    He was asking him his position.Not, what have you done?

    Where are you? Because where

    you are is the consequence of what

    you've done.He calls. But He speaks to us

    in a second way: He convicts. In

    verses 10 through 13 God speaks to

    convict us.

    That's one of the big problems

    today. We can't find many people

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    who are sinners. God cannot saverighteous people.

    Our Lord said, "I have not

    come to call the righteous," and we

    know why, because there aren't any!

    If they were He called them. "I have-

    n't come to call the righteous. I have

    come to call sinners to repentance."

    But there is hard to find people who

    are sinners.He convicts. He says to Adam,

    "Hast thou eaten of the tree that I told

    you not to eat of?" Would you notice

    both, Adam and Eve, admit what theyhad done? At the end of verse 12

    Adam says, "I did eat." At the end of

    verse 13 Eve says, "I did eat."

    But before they admitted theirsin, they had to make some excuses.

    In verse 12, Adam tries to blame his

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    wife and God! He says, "The woman

    you gave me."

    Billy Sandy said "that an ex-

    cuse is the skin of a reason stuffed for

    the lie." That's true. "The woman you

    gave me, she made me, and I did eat."The first excuse in the world

    was not, "The devil made me do it,"

    but "my wife made me do it." And

    then Eve came along and said, "Thedevil made me do it: the serpent!"

    There is something about us we

    don't like to be questioned! Suppose

    we are walking down the street, andwe are going to do our Christmas

    shopping. And somebody comes up

    and says, "I want to ask you a few

    questions." What's the first response

    we have? I know my first response:

    What authority do you have to ask me

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    any questions? I'm not going tellanybody anything they ask me!

    And so he reaches into his

    pocket and says, "My name is Jones

    and I am with the FBI and here are

    my credentials..." That's a different

    story. He's got the authority to ask me

    some questions.

    Have you notice when some-

    body asks us something, some of usget evasive? That's what Adam and

    Eve tried to do.

    But God had the authority to

    question them. All He wanted themto do was to admit that they had

    sinned. It took them a while to do it.

    Excuses, evasions...

    First they had tried to use crea-tion to hide from God, now they are

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    trying to use words to hide from God.

    And people still do that.

    People still like to use words to

    hide from God. They'll say anything

    other than "I have sinned." We would

    say anything other than, "I am to beblamed." We will give excuses, and

    we will rationalize, and we will weave

    together a beautiful fabric to cover

    ourselves. And God keeps question-ing until we come to the place when

    we say, "All right God, you've con-

    victed me. I've sinned."

    How much easier is to blameother people! How much easier is to

    blame God! But, oh, in the long run

    is not easier, it's the hardest thing of

    all, because ultimately we are going to

    face God, anyway. God comes to

    convict us today, that He might save

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    us. When we face Him at the judg-ment He will convict us to condemn.

    And so He calls when He speaks to us

    and He convicts when He speaks to

    us, and then in verses 14-19 He con-

    demns.

    At this point you can say, "Just

    a minute God had come into the gar-

    den to save! Why He is going to

    condemn? The sinner cannot be savedunless he knows he is condemned.

    God doesn't just call the sinner, and

    God doesn't just convict the sinner;

    God wants the sinner to know that hissin is serious and that because of his

    sin he is condemned.

    "He that believeth on him is not

    condemned. But that he that believethnot, is condemned because he has not

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    believed in the name of the only be-

    gotten Son of God."

    Many people have the idea that

    they have to die to be condemned,

    when the Word of God makes it very

    clear that every unbeliever is con-demned already.

    Notice what He does. In verse

    14 He speaks to the serpent. He

    doesn't ask the serpent any questions.He doesn't say, "Did you do this?"

    Oh, no. He is speaking here to the

    devil. Eve had made the mistake of

    talking to the devil. God doesn't say,"I am going to interrogate you." He

    knows what he is going to get from

    the devil: he is a liar! He speaks lies.

    And God speaks to Satan in

    verses 14 and 15 and He says to the

    serpent, "You are now cursed. Bite

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    the dust." And we still use that phrasetoday. An enemy will say to his en-

    emy, "You are going to eat the dust."

    For an enemy to lick the dust was to-

    tal defeat. And so, God said to the

    serpent, "You are going to hit the

    dust. You are defeated."

    And then in verse 15, when

    God speaks to the serpent, He gives

    the very first promise of the comingof a Redeemer.

    Isn't remarkable that God did

    not give the promise of a coming of

    the Redeemer to Eve or to Adam? Hegave it to the devil. When speaking to

    Satan, He says, "I am going to put

    enmity, between you and the woman,

    and between your children Thedevil has children? Oh, didn't Jesus

    say, "You are of your father, the

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    devil?" when He spoke to the Phari-

    sees? In Matthew 13, the parable of

    the wheat and the tares, Jesus said,

    'The tares are the children of the

    wicked one.' Does Satan have a fam-

    ily? He sure does. Between yourchildren and her seed." That seed ul-

    timately means Jesus Christ. He is

    going to crush your head and you are

    going to bruise his heel. Now, theserpent is crawling around in the dust,

    he can't get to the head. All he can do

    is to snap at the heel. That's what he

    did. But, when Jesus Christ died on

    the cross, He completely crushed the

    head of the serpent. The sentence just

    has not been pronounced yet. And so,

    to Satan He says, "Down, down,

    down."

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    The direction of Satan alwaysin the Bible is down. Isaiah 14:

    "How thou art fallen from heaven,

    Lucifer, thou son of the morning.

    Thou had said, I will, I will, I will as-

    cend, I will be like the Most High,"

    and down he came.

    Jesus said, "I beheld Satan as

    lightning, fallen from heaven." In the

    book of Revelation, Satan is taken andbound and cast into a bottomless pit.

    That means that he falls for ever.

    And so, the direction for Satan

    is down. And when Adam and Evelooked they said, "Oh, how awful sin

    is!"

    And God turns to the woman. I

    may be wrong in this, but I do notthink that verse 16 speaks so much of

    the penalty as a prophecy. God is

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    saying to the woman, "Now, because

    of this, here is what will happen."

    If we'll read the history of man-

    kind and see the way women have

    been treated through the centuries, we

    will weep: they were treated likeslaves. The dignity of woman in

    these last several hundred years is a

    by-product of the gospel of Jesus

    Christ.And so, the woman is going to

    have sorrow and pain and submission

    and the man is going to have to work

    harder than ever before. He had workto do before sin. He had the garden to

    take care. Work is a blessing. I'll tell

    you: It's not a burden to work; it's a

    blessing to work, to fulfil what God is

    given you to do.

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    But God says to Adam, It's notgoing to be in Paradise anymore. I'll

    have to throw you out. It will be out

    there."

    Genesis begins with the Para-

    dise. The Bible ends with the

    Paradise, but in between we have men

    walking through a wilderness. This

    world, as far as God is concerned, is

    just a spiritual wilderness.John the Baptist came preach-

    ing in the wilderness. Jesus was

    tempted in the wilderness. Peter calls

    this world "a dark and squalid place."And so, man has to sweat, and

    there are thorns and thistles and He

    says, "Adam, as you toil away work-

    ing that soil, keep looking at that soil,because that's where you are going to

    end up some day. You came from

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    that dust, and you are going back to

    that dust. You are going to die."

    And by this time, the man and

    the woman have realized what a hor-

    rible sin is. Sin is so terrible because

    it plunges all of creation into bondageand toil and pain and sorrow, and

    where the man and the woman should

    have had their greatest joy, they are

    going to feel their deepest pain.God speaks: He calls and He

    convicts and He condemns.

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    GOD SAVES US

    Adam named his wife Eve, be-

    cause she would become the mother

    of all the living. The LORD Godmade garments of skin for Adam and

    his wife and clothed them. 22 And the

    LORD God said, "The man has now

    become like one of us, knowing good

    and evil. He must not be allowed toreach out his hand and take also from

    the tree of life and eat, and live forev-

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    er." 23 So the LORD God banished

    him from the Garden of Eden to work

    the ground from which he had been

    taken. 24 after he drove the man out,

    he placed on the east side of the Gar-

    den of Eden cherubim and a flamingsword flashing back and forth to

    guard the way to the tree of life. (Vv20-21)

    First, He seeks us.And then, He speaks to us.

    And if we respond to His Word, we

    are at the place of conviction, and

    condemnation and we know we needa Saviour.

    Many people ask: Was Adam

    ever saved? Of course, the answer is:

    "Yes!" It's here in verses 20 and 21.

    How were Adam and Eve

    saved?

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    Number 1: by grace. What didGod do? God went and got some

    garments for them.

    By the way, sometimes you

    ought to study what the Bible says

    about clothing. It's very interesting.

    The Bible has a great deal to say

    about clothing. The fact that we wear

    clothing is evidence that we are sin-

    ners. And Adam and Eve originallytried to clothe themselves.

    People are still doing this: good

    works, religious deeds, all sort of

    things, and God said, "You cannotstand in my presence with that kind of

    shoddy stuff on. If you are going to

    stand in my presence, you got to be

    cloth my way.And so, some blood got to be

    shed. God took some animals, and

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    God shed some blood, and God tookthose skins and He clothed Adam and

    Eve.

    That's how we are saved, by

    God's grace.

    Only God didn't go find an

    animal, God sent His Lamb: the Lord

    Jesus Christ. And He shed His blood.

    And when we came and trust Him, He

    gives us the garment of salvation, Hedress us up in the robe of righteous-

    ness by grace.

    In verse 20 Adam does a beau-

    tiful thing. Adam and Eve have beenstanding there, and God had been

    speaking, and now, they are speech-

    less. You don't hear them answering

    back. Their mouths have been shut.That's Romans chapter 3, "That every

    mouth may be shut and the entire

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    world may stand guilty before God,"and they stand there guilty. They say,

    We are going to die, we are going to

    die!"

    God says, "No. No." A substi-

    tute is going to die for you, if you

    have faith.

    What happens in verse 20?

    Adam looks at his wife, he'd already

    given her one name: Woman, but nowhe gives her a new name: Eve. And

    the Hebrew word for Eve means: life

    giver. Isn't that beautiful?

    Adam believed what God saidin verse 15. God said to the serpent,

    and Adam was listening, "I will put

    enmity between you and the woman,

    between your seed and her seed."Adam says, "Her seed? That means

    she isn't going to die!" "You shall

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    bruise his heel; he shall bruise yourhead." She is going to have a child

    that will defeat the serpent! She is

    going to live!

    And Adam believed God's

    promise. He said, "I am going to call

    you 'life giver.'"

    How are we saved? By believ-

    ing God's promise. Adam simply

    believed what God said. And whenhe did that, God was listening!

    They could have never been

    clothed had they not admitted they

    were naked. They could have neverclothed, had they not admitted they

    were condemned.

    Have you come to the place in

    your life where you know you're lostand your mouth is stopped! That's

    when God can save you.

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    In verse 24 He had to drivethem out of the garden. I think if I

    were living in Paradise, He had to

    drive me out too!

    Who wants to leave? But God

    drove them out. He said, "Look, out

    there is the best place for you. I'm go-

    ing to fix it so you are secure in your

    salvation."

    Our Lord Jesus Christ went to atree and die on that tree. They took

    His body and buried it in a tomb, in a

    garden. I have reminded you that

    when Jesus was on the cross, Heturned to a thief and said, "You will

    be with me in Paradise."

    Back in Genesis, the first Adam

    was a thief and was cast out of Para-dise. In the New Testament, the last

    Adam turned to a thief and said, "We

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    are going into Paradise." In otherwords, Jesus Christ felt that sword of

    the righteousness of God. In order to

    open up the way to the tree of life,

    that new and living way, He went

    through that sword. The sword came

    to the Shepherd and He felt it.

    Oh, how marvellous are the

    ways of God! And because He died,

    that new and living way is now open,and we can come through.

    The tree of life today is Jesus

    Christ. He said, "I am the way, the

    truth and the life. No man comes tothe Father but by Me." Have you

    come to Him? God seeks you today

    and He calls you by name. He knows

    your name.God speaks to you today to

    convict you and to condemn you, be-

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    cause He wants you to know howmuch you need Him.

    God wants to save you, if you'll

    just trust and believe in Jesus Christ.

    If you don't, I want to warn

    you: When you die, it will mean eter-

    nal death.

    God is gracious and loving but

    sometimes man says, "I will not have

    this way." Don't be like that! Cometoday and trust Jesus Christ and let

    Him save you.

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