A Chronological Daily Bible Study of the Old Testament
7-Day Sections with a Summary-Commentary, Discussion Questions, and a Practical Daily Application

Week 1

Sunday (Genesis 1:1-2)

The Creation of the World

1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

1:2 Now the earth was without shape and empty,

and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep,

but the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water.

1:3 God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light!

1:4 God saw that the light was good, so God separated the light from the darkness.

1:5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.”

There was evening, and there was morning, marking the first day.

Prayer

Lord, You created, You defined, You imparted value “it was good”, and You created time for Your creation where only timelessness had existed. May I stand in awe of You!

Scripture In Perspective

Moses was the chosen author of God. If one does not take the text to describe any part of pre-Genesis history and one takes the Creation narrative to refer in every detail to literal 24 hour days then it covers approximately 2400 years.

It has been estimated that Moses recorded the essence of the book of Genesis sometime after the time of the exodus out of Egypt in 15th Century BC. While he may have had access to oral history and artifacts, perhaps even some Egyptian documents, it was God who would have inspired and informed his writing. (This does not address when he recorded the Book of Exodus.)

Chapter One introduces the creative expression of God. He sovereignly speaks a linear-time-contained physical reality into existence and summarizes the first six days of His Creation.

There is a good deal of debate in theological circles as to the precise meaning of the words, “In the beginning,” the resolution of which has some significant impact. If one takes them as introduction to a mere allegory or parable they have an impact upon ones understanding of the entire Bible. If one takes the words to refer to the beginning of everything created external to Heaven, and as a literal record, they have a substantially different impact on what follows. This commentary leans toward the latter rather than the former understanding, though with a caveat or two.

“God created” tells us that He did so without help and ex nihilo, a Latin phrase meaning “out of nothing” or without any preexisting resource (that is, no source other than Himself).

“The heavens and the earth” may be taken to refer broadly to everything external to the Kingdom of Heaven or to very narrowly to refer only to the sky and solid ground referenced in verses 6-9. This commentary leans toward the former over the latter understanding.

The phrase, “without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface,” leads the reader to understand that the Lord God had not yet given definition and purpose to “the heavens and the earth” which He had just created.

We are told that “the Spirit of God was moving,” which both informs us of the presence of a specific member of the Trinity (the Holy Spirit) and alerts us that action is about to take place to transform the shapeless, empty, dark earth.

The third verse describes God’s method in creating and transforming by mere spoken word: He said, “Let there be light. And there was light!” The sovereign power of God to create, transform, give meaning and purpose to, and cause order are all clearly observable in this brief segment of Biblical text.

The powerful phrase, “God saw that the light was good,” shows the Lord assessing what He had created, deeming it worthy of Himself, and establishing the light as “good” in contrast to the prior state of darkness or lack of definition.

Interact with the text

Consider

Apart from sometimes-esoteric debates about ‘new earth’ versus ‘old earth,’ or 6 thousand years since Creation versus 6 billion years, there may be no question in the mind of a Biblical-Christian as to Who did the creating. The Lord God leaves no room for doubt in His Word.

Discuss

How does the belief that the Lord God literally created everything as described in Genesis impact your view of science?

Reflect

When this fallen world, of which Satan is the temporary Prince, seeks to raise doubt in us about our faith, we need only return to the book of Genesis to find restoration in the words, “In the beginning God.” It is an awesome thing to imagine the majesty and power of the One Who created.

Share

When have you contemplated what it means for the Lord to live outside of the constraints of linear time as we know it?

Faith In Action

Pray

Ask the Holy Spirit reveal to you a specific place in your life where you are stuck; stuck because you are trying to deal with a challenge in your own strength and wisdom and keep failing, or stuck because you have asked the Lord God for intervention while at the same time doubting that He has the power to meet and overcome that which challenges you.

Act

Today I will confess my lack of faith, remembering that it was He Who created everything from nothing, and repent (turn away) from my doubt. I will request and receive His forgiveness and allow Him to be my strength as He is Lord of my life.

Be Specific ________________________________________________

Monday (Genesis 1:6-25)

1:6 God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters

and let it separate water from water.

1:7 So God made the expanse

and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it.

It was so.

1:8 God called the expanse “sky.”

There was evening, and there was morning, a second day.

1:9 God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear.” It was so.

1:10 God called the dry ground “land” and the gathered waters he called “seas.”

God saw that it was good.

1:11 God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: plants yielding seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.”

It was so.

1:12 The land produced vegetation – plants yielding seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.

God saw that it was good.

1:13 There was evening, and there was morning, a third day.

1:14 God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night,

and let them be signs to indicate seasons and days and years,

1:15 and let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.”

It was so.

1:16 God made two great lights – the greater light to rule over the day and the lesser light to rule over the night.

He made the stars also.

1:17 God placed the lights in the expanse of the sky to shine on the earth,

1:18 to preside over the day and the night,

and to separate the light from the darkness.

God saw that it was good.

1:19 There was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day.

1:20 God said, “Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures

and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.”

1:21 God created the great sea creatures and every living and moving thing with which the water swarmed, according to their kinds,

and every winged bird according to its kind.

God saw that it was good.

1:22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.”

1:23 There was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day.

1:24 God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds:

cattle, creeping things, and wild animals, each according to its kind.”

It was so.

1:25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds,

the cattle according to their kinds,

and all the creatures that creep along the ground according to their kinds.

God saw that it was good.

Prayer

Lord, You first created a physical reality, then You created time-itself, then You created an atmosphere – resulting in an ‘atmospheric shell’ around the earth which then resulted in an expanse called “sky” with the water-covered earth at the center. May I respect Your power as I marvel at Your engineering. You designed Your Creation with each species unique, and that was Your perfect plan. May I be mindful that in Your economy of things everything has a unique purpose, even in a fallen-away broken condition, and that brings harmony. You created day and night as we know it, and each has its purpose. May I listen closely to Your Holy Spirit so as to discover my purpose in Your great plan. You decided that the air and sea should have life, then You created it. May I never doubt that You are the sovereign One and that everything You have prophesied will happen. Your power and vision are beyond anything known to mere man, You not only designed an entire planet and populated it with life – You did so in a way that was perfectly harmonious. May I find joy in the knowledge that our Lord Jesus is preparing a place for us that is as You originally intended.

Scripture In Perspective

The Lord God decided how He would proceed with His creation, then made it so “So God made the expanse”.

The Lord God altered the climate system by separating, with an “expanse” translated “sky,” the moisture in the outer atmosphere above the earth from the water on the earth’s surface.

With a word God created the climate system: The cycle of moisture from the surface of the earth moves in to the upper atmosphere, around the earth, and is then deposited elsewhere – keeping the balance of humidity without occurrence of flooding or drought (prior to the ‘Fall’).

After creating an atmospheric shell so that the surface (covered by water) was surrounded by sky and contained by that shell the Lord God then separated bodies of land and sea.

Each part, atmospheric shell, sky, water, and land served a different function, just as parts of the human body do, and each contributed to the whole ecosystem in a unique but critical way.

The Lord God then called the plants and trees into being, each also with a unique purpose, and each reproducing only its own kind.

“There was evening, and there was morning, a third day” (vs 13).

As Moses recorded the story of Creation he used descriptive images and phrases from a primitive era, it is important as we read to not misunderstand his limited experience-based vocabulary as mere allegory, but rather allow the Holy Spirit to enhance our understanding.

The Lord God created the sun “... the greater light”, moon “... the lesser light”, and stars. The interaction of these bodies resulted in “... seasons and days and years.” As humankind has studied the relationship between the sun, moon, stars, and other planets their location has been found to be associated with day, night, season, and years and they have also been valuable in land-based geo-location and water-bound navigation.

Until this moment in Creation, the earth was held together by the Lord-alone. He set in place the rest of the cosmos in order to make it a self-sustaining yet highly interdependent system, though at all times it exists only as He empowers and permits. In its fallen-away broken state all of Creation would collapse without His constant intervention. [Colossians 1:17]

“There was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day” (vs 19).

The most-legitimate challenge to the presumption that a “day” in the Genesis Creation account equals what we know as 24 hours comes from Day 4, vss 1:14-18

One must stretch hard to not see the repeated expression “There was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day.” as more than a rhetorical flourish (common throughout the Word of God) than as a phrase intended to require a literal 24 hours.

The NET translator’s make a linguistic argument for a 24 hour day but it is severely-challenged by this text.

However, the text of the “fourth day” does not require the prior days to be anything other than what humankind came to know as twenty-four hour days, for that matter they could have been twenty-four nanoseconds - God is never restrained by His creation; why would He take twenty-four of ‘our’ hours to form something He easily could create with a “word” or a “thought”?

These can be challenging texts - one must approach them with awe for God and skepticism toward any effort to undermine the integrity of the whole Word

The Lord God looked upon His Creation, water separated from sky and space, water and land separated, then plants and trees created upon the land; all of it deemed good – perfect in harmony.

He then decided that the sky and sea should also have living things, so the Lord created sea creatures and birds.

The Lord God did as He had with the plants and trees and equipped the creatures of the sky and sea to reproduce, multiplying from the few to the many, “each according to their kind”.

“There was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day.” (vs 23).

The Lord God followed His decision to populate the sky and water with life-forms specific to those environments with a decision to populate the land with creatures as well.

The text describes three rough categories; crawling creatures (e.g. insects and lizards), large animals – with an implication of suitability to be domesticated (e.g. buffalo, camels, cattle, goats, sheep), and a variety of other wild animals.

As before the Lord spoke them into being then, as He did the fish and fowl, empowered them to reproduce “according to their kind” without the need of His direct Creative action.

Created first on the sixth day are “living creatures according to their kinds” (vs 24).

Interact with the text

Consider

At Creation everything worked in perfect symmetry. The plants and trees were given the gift of life then set free to multiply remaining true to their unique created form. Land and sea are both source for the critical elements of water and dry surface needed for growth; each were created in perfect balance and order. What has now become imperfect, a ‘machine’ barely held together with loose and broken parts, surrounded by debris flying through space, with dark comets all-but-invisible to detection threatening to slam into planet earth and wreak terrible havoc; this was once a beautiful and perfectly balanced galactic system of God’s design. The land was self-sustaining without creatures in the air and water, it was only the creative Spirit of the Lord God Who envisioned, then perfectly-created them. Despite many unsupportable details imposed upon the text by mere men (some fanciful, some venal, and some carelessly-conjectured by the rare few actually seeking truth) the Bible is essentially silent as to details of the creatures the Lord God created and set loose upon the earth. We see only the distortions of His perfect Creation long after the Fall. We must remember that Eden was sealed – so nothing of perfection is visible to us.

Discuss

How might you help someone to recognize the literal physical massiveness of each step in Creation? How might your fellowship teach an appreciation for the difference between the original flawless Creation and the fallen-away remnant in which we live? How might you help believers to understand the confused-thinking of those who invent notions about the animals in pre-Fall Eden, and/or those who deny Eden entirely, to arrive at their scientifically-challenged belief in a Godless and essentially-random evolution-by-accident? (When challenged with mathematical, physical, and observational realities, those who challenge creationism retreat to magical thinking (aliens from space deposited life on earth) while ignoring the obvious rhetorical ‘elephant in the room’ (aliens would still require an ‘ex nihilo’ origin sometime in the past).

Reflect

Summer and winter, spring and fall, rain and snow, sunshine and darkness; each now far less perfect than the original pre-Fall creation, yet each is critical to the balance of the Created system; a miraculous work of God. Prior to day four of Creation, God had held everything in place by mere thought; then He added a multitude of interdependent solar systems, each with gravity, all in perfect harmony, and all contributing to the balanced whole. Diversity, independence, peaceful coexistence; this was the design - and then the Fall. The land animals were different in kind and purpose from the plants and trees, birds and sea creatures that came before them, yet were similar in that they were equipped and released to live and multiply. All of Creation to this point was either non-sentient (unable to experience pain or pleasure), or sentient (able to experience pain or pleasure) but all were non-reflective (non-sapient).

Share

When have you paused to consider the perfect balance of God's original climatology and praise Him? When have you experienced the inspiring teaching of someone contrasting perfection with imperfect and the promise that one day we will know the perfection for which we were created? When have you observed a creative person at work and how they envision something in their mind and then create it with their body? When have you paused to ponder what must have been the magnificence of God’s creation and then mourned the mess that we’ve (through the Fall) made of it?

Faith In Action

Pray

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to look past the broken and imperfect world around you and instead dwell upon God’s amazing Creation and to invest the time to pause and to observe a land animal, either directly or via a live Internet cam, and as you do so to celebrate the beauty and incredible detail of the creature and the way that it interacts with its environment. Also, observe the obvious differences between that creature and the higher form of a human.

Act

Today I will celebrate the beauty and incredible detail of the creature(s) I have observed and the way it/they interact(s) with its environment. I will then use an opportunity He provides to share with another, in person or electronically, the amazing evidences of the Lord God’s creative touch which I observed in His created-creature (despite the impact of our Fallen world). I will give God all of the glory.

Be Specific _____________________________________________

Tuesday (Genesis 1:26-2:4)

1:26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness,

so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.”

1:27 God created humankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them,

male and female he created them.

1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it!

Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.”

1:29 Then God said, “I now give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the entire earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

1:30 And to all the animals of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.”

It was so.

1:31 God saw all that he had made – and it was very good!

There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.

2:1 The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them. 2:2 By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing. 2:3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation.

2:4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created – when the Lord God made the earth and heavens.

Prayer

Lord, You made us in Your partial image, and You gave us stewardship of Your Creation. While we made a mess of things may I remember that Your work was flawless and Your unique and eternal flawlessness is to be praised. You completed every detail of Your perfectly-planned Creation in six days and nothing new was added after the sixth-day, so the seventh-day was unique – therefore holy – as Your Creation was complete. May I honor Your perfect work of Creation in praise and worship at least once a week and every week. Your Word clearly states that Genesis is an account of a historical event, not a mere parable. May I rely upon Your Word, pass the test and not be tempted to please those who would demean Your Word, and rather take You at Your Word.

Scripture In Perspective

The text uses the plural term “us” when the Lord God refers to Himself, it is the first of many occasions from Genesis through Revelation where the plurality of the “Godhead” or “Trinity” is expressly or indirectly testified.

The NET translator’s notes share several of the perspectives upon the plural reference to the Lord God but all but a Trinitarian view, consistent with the rest of the text – as is the case throughout the Bible - every major matter is affirmed elsewhere, thus this study will not quibble with the natural meaning of the plural.

The Lord God created humankind, unique and separate from all of the other creatures, in His own image (“... after our likeness” means a partial reflection of features of the Lord God).

Humankind is both a sentient (perceiving the environment via seven physical senses) and a sapient (capable of processing sentient data in an intentionally-rational manner) Creation.

Humankind was plural in form, male and female, linked spiritually to the Lord God in a type of Trinitarian essence. (Humankind without the Lord God is temporally incomplete and eternally dead.)

Humankind is capable of sensing pain and pleasure as well as engaging in intentionally reflective, thoughtful, and volitional relationships.

Humankind is more than merely instinctive as is the case with all other living things.

Humankind alone was given the capacity for relationship in the spiritual realm.

Humankind alone was purposed to receive the delegated authority and responsibility to rule over the rest of Creation.

Humankind was given the fruit of the seed-bearing plants and seek-bearing fruit of the trees as food. (Note that there is an implicit absence of permission to eat non seed-bearing fruit, apparent of only a single tree in the Garden, and also note that a seed-bearing fruit is incapable of reproduction (without artificial human intervention e.g. via budding or grafting – it is an inherently single-generation tree.)

"God saw all that he had made – and it was very good! There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day" (vs 31).

Chapter two of Genesis revisits the Creation narrative presented in chapter one, adding detail to descriptions of the relationship between Adam and Eve, their relationship with the Lord God, and their interaction with the rest of God’s Creation.

The Lord God had completed all of His creative work prior to the beginning of the seventh day and ceased His work. Nothing that occurred after the end of the sixth day involved a new creative work.

The Lord God then did an amazing thing: He set aside the seventh day and declared it a holy day, a ‘holyday’ holiday of sorts, during which He wanted His Creation to remember His work of the first six days in an exceptional way, by ceasing from all work (labor) as He Himself had modeled. It is very important that we understand why God set aside the seventh day as a holy day.

The Lord’s perfectly-planned Creation was unique, in timeless eternity and in the just-created linear time-bound physical universe He had just spoken into being – that event was therefore holy and worthy of pause to praise.

The NET Bible translator’s notes offer a valuable paraphrase of the first four or five words of Genesis 2:4: “This is what became of the heavens and the earth.”

When one reads the NET translator’s paraphrase the text is revealed as declaring the literal nature of the Creation record while it also introduces additional detail – to be followed by the sad story of rebellion and Fall.

Interact With The Text

Consider

This is still pre-Fall, so man is innocent and lives in perfect harmony with the Lord God and everything in His Creation. The holy day, established pre-Fall by God, set aside in celebration of His perfect Creation. What the Lord God did in His act of Creation was real, He spoke and it was.

Discuss

How might you lead others to a greater appreciation of the Lord God through a comparison of attributes in real world application?

(e.g. Humankind may maintain few truly intimate relationships and typical is limited to about 12 in a meaningful group interaction, whereas the Lord God may have an intimate relationship with 6 billion humans and communicate with each individually as well.)

Reflect

Mankind was male and female living in harmony; they were different yet of a common essence, possessed of an essential unity, much like the holy Trinity of God. The creation of every new human life is a partnership between man and God; while God delegated the capacity to reproduce, it is He-alone Who gives the spiritual life which separates man from beast.

On the Sunday ‘holyday’ for Christians we recognize our new covenant with God, and we celebrate the new creation that He has provided for us, through the life and death of Jesus the Christ.

It is a remarkable reality that, when the Lord God created the heavens and the earth, 1) He was self-sufficient, 2) He needed nothing external to Himself, and, as an act of love, 3) He chose to create so that He might share Himself with man.

Share

When you have been in a fellowship where attention was brought to the Lord’s creative work and there was celebration of His perfection then – and of that same perfection awaiting us in heaven?

Faith In Action

Pray

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you something new about His Creative genius through our scientific observations about the human body, something that will underscore my understanding that His Creation that is too-profound to have happened accidentally – even over billions of years, to lead you to take the time to celebrate on this Sunday by ceasing from the busyness of life “work” to reflect upon the beauty of the Lord God’s original perfect Creation, and to lead you to a more profound awareness that the Lord God created humankind with the free will to either love or reject Him.

Act

Today I will stand in front of a mirror and be amazed that, considering the ravages of the Fall, the Lord God’s creative hand remains so visible in my complex bio-mechanical machine (my physical self) and in the indwelling Holy Spirit (the perfect Counselor to my spiritual self). I will then share what I have learned with someone and encourage them to repeat my discovery experience. I will celebrate life. I will thank the Lord God for His gift of life to me and especially for my new life in Christ. I will encourage and pray for the one(s) whom He has identified. I will pause and reflect and celebrate and I will share with a fellow believer and, as the Holy Spirit provides, with one who is considering-Christ the truth of the new creation that the Lord has promised to those who place their faith fully in His Son Jesus.

Be Specific _________________________________________________

Wednesday (Genesis 2:5-17)

2:5 Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 2:6 Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 2:7 The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

2:8 The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed.

2:9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.)

2:10 Now a river flows from Eden to water the orchard, and from there it divides into four headstreams. 2:11 The name of the first is Pishon; it runs through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 2:12 (The gold of that land is pure; pearls and lapis lazuli are also there). 2:13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it runs through the entire land of Cush. 2:14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it runs along the east side of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

2:15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and to maintain it.

2:16 Then the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, 2:17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”

Prayer

Lord, as I once-again read the flow of Your Creation, and the purpose for which You created everything, I am in awe. May I never forget that You breathed life into the first human, as You do with each and every human, and that we rely upon You for life itself.

Scripture In Perspective

Genesis Chapter 2 is a fleshing-out of detail the story of what the Lord God Created, followed in Chapter 3 by what man did with His incredible gift of Creation and divine relationship.

God informs the reader that, whereas He had caused life to exist in the form of plants and creatures of the air, land, and sea, there were not yet cultivated plants for food —cultivation requires a cultivator and He had not yet created man. This observation is included to remind the reader that God’s intent was to delegate management of a limited portion of His Creation to man.

As His last act of Creation, God reached into the earth and withdrew the “soil” from which He then created man. This illustrates everything in Creation being linked, which explains the commonalities of DNA in all life forms today — bananas, fish, monkeys, and humans.

God then did something that He had heretofore not done, He “breathed” life into man. Previously He had merely spoken His Creation into existence and it had life, but breathing life in to man gifted him with the capacity for something very unique. [The NET translator notes list the characteristics which God breathed in to man as “spiritual understanding” (Job 32:8) and “a functioning conscience” (Proverbs 20:27). Some would label this as the “soul.”]

As the NET translator’s notes observe the reference to “East” would have been in relationship to the land of Israel as that is the location of the rivers it also referenced.

The Lord God selected from his collection of trees, which He had previously created, some suitable for an orchard and then set them in Eden, where He also placed man.

All of these selected and beautiful trees bore deliciously edible fruit, but even more unique were two, “the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” We remember that God is God and He as Creator can do anything He either desires or imagines. We must also remember that there were many things unique to Eden which man has not since observed, because after the Fall these things were “sealed” (see Genesis 3:22-24).

Verses 10-14 serve two obvious purposes: they establish the richness of God’s provision in Eden and they establish the geographical reality of the story versus an imaginary one. It is theoretically possible to read the word “now” as indicating that Moses was describing the location of Eden in his time rather than in the time of the Eden narrative, but that is a long-stretch — there simply is no apparent added value to the narrative to suddenly make reference to another time and place.

The Lord God placed humankind in the Garden of Eden to fulfill their purpose, caring for it, and He then instructed them as to His boundaries for them: “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”

There are several essentials worthy of note in this segment:

The reference to “caring for” or “maintaining” should not be understood to imply that there were any imperfections in the Garden and might be read as “observing closely” or something similar.

Humankind was offered but not guaranteed eternal life, because they were told by the Lord God that they could freely eat from every tree, including “the tree of life”, and there was nothing created pre-Fall that would have caused them to die (other than eating of the fruit of the forbidden “tree of knowledge”) – but until they reached and ate of the “tree of life” they were vulnerable.

Humankind was capable of dying instantly, both physically and in their spiritual relationship with the Lord God, but only as if He determined that such an intervention was necessary. Eventually, after rebelling against God, lost access to “the tree of life” and death became a normative expectation.

Humankind was given free will, the capacity and the freedom to choose among options, in the most important decisions of their lives.

Humankind was given everything needed, the capacity to both relate spiritually with and to be empowered by the Lord God with authority, knowledge, and strength — thus it was reasonable that they were expected to make wise choices.

Interact With The Text

Consider

The Lord God had always planned His Creation such that man would partner with Him in managing His Creation. Man was called into existence to care for and to maintain the perfect order of His Creation, as well as to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28), to better accomplish His purpose. The Lord God reminds us in this text that, in the Garden, He had provided for Adam and Eve everything they would ever need, literally everything.

Discuss

What may the magnitude of the caring and order necessary to maintain the health of Creation assigned to them to cultivate - such need requiring that human reproduction would multiply those Whom He would also call to that task? The Lord God calls all Christians to a very similar partnership: we are to care for one another, keep things in order, and partner in spiritually-multiplying the family of God. How would you help people to understand the impact of “free will” - noting that from the beginning the Lord God did not guarantee humankind unlimited certainty of eternal life, regardless of their choices?

Reflect

The way that the Lord God chose to breathe both spiritual and physical life into humankind is remarkable. Try to imagine the importance of a genuine freely-chosen relationship to the Lord God - He gave Adam and Eve everything they needed, all in the context of a perfect creation, yet He still gave them the capacity to choose to be righteous or to be rebellious. (Note that He stated “may”, “may not”, and then consequences – so the concept – if not realization - of death pre-existed the Fall.)

Share

When have you experienced that love offered is not always love accepted and love shared is not always love nurtured and sustained? (The Lord God risked rejection and rebellion when He created lesser beings with the free will to reject or rebel against Him rather than to love Him.) When have you been in a situation where all of your important needs were met yet you still made choices which disrespected your providers and placed their provision for you at risk?

Faith In Action

Pray

Ask the Spirit to reveal to you a better understanding of what the Lord God intended when He gave you the gifts of spiritual understanding and of a functioning conscience and one or more ways that He has made special provision for specific needs and where you have responded with ungrateful neglect and/or rebellion.

Act

Today I will pray, reflect, and study to apprehend what the Holy Spirit has unveiled to me and I will share what I have learned with a fellow Believer for shared edification and praise. I will confess and repent of my carelessness, disrespect, and rebellion. I will repent (turn away from), request forgiveness for, and accept His forgiveness for my sin. I will then share that experience with a fellow Believer, asking for their prayers in-agreement that I will resist a return to the sin, and I will also pray for them as they follow my example.

Be Specific ________________________________________________

Thursday (Genesis 2:18-25)

2:19 The Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

2:20 So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field.

2:18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him.”

20b … but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found. 2:21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh.

2:22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 2:23 Then the man said,

“This one at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

this one will be called ‘woman,’

for she was taken out of man.”

2:24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become a new family.

2:25 The man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed.

Prayer

Lord, You Created the creatures then allowed them to be named by Your “in Our likeness” creation (Adam), transferring authority along with responsibility. May I recognize that any authority and responsibility which I have in this world, broken and distorted as it is, is given for the purpose of Your priorities. You formed the plants and trees, birds and beasts - even humankind - from the soil that You had created. You then caused them to reproduce of their own kind. Since the first human was not designed to reproduce You then drew Eve out of Adam just as You had drawn Adam from the soil. You breathed Into humankind the unique life-force that made them in-Your-likeness.

Scripture In Perspective

The Lord God created the creatures from the soil He had already made, both animal and humankind, yet one recalls that He only “breathed life” into the human.

He then brought each creature to man so that man, not God, could name them.

It is understood in the ancient tradition that ‘naming’ was an expression of mastery or ownership.

In the same way, Jesus would later give new names to His apostles (because God rightly claims ownership of man).

Verse 18 is more naturally-understood together with verses 2:20b-24 than when presented prior to verse 19, that is why it was presented slightly out-of-sequence.

God said He would create for Adam an indispensable helper, a “companion,” one without whom he could not complete his tasks. This companion would not be a subordinate nor one to whom tasks would be delegated, rather one who would perform the tasks which the man could not.

In keeping with His former pattern and maintaining a continuity in Creation, God (Who had created Adam from the previously-created soil) took flesh and bone from Adam’s side to create his companion and partner in Eden. Adam did not continue in the process of naming what he “owns” when he said, “this one will be called woman,” he was merely describing her intimate similarity due to the flesh and bone link caused by her being “taken out of man.” Note that only after the Fall, as evidence of an element of the curse (“naming” implies ownership or superiority), did the categorical descriptive word “woman” become the name “Eve” (see Gen. 3:20).

“The man and his wife were both naked, but they were not ashamed,” speaks of their integrity-via-innocence; pre-Fall they had no cause to be ashamed of anything.

They were not ashamed because they were truly innocent, unaware of anything imperfect or of any different state of being. They were free of the knowledge of evil, which would have been the source of their embarrassment when standing naked before one another, or their Lord God.

Adam and Eve had been presented with the “test of the tree” but they had not yet been challenged to allow it to become a temptation – and absent that temptation they had not yet fallen into sin.

Interact With The Text

Consider

The Lord God created, and thus had legitimate dominion over, all of the creatures; yet He chose to delegate that to humankind. The text teaches that it was not the original intent of the Lord God that man and woman be unequal and competitive in relationship; such only became the nature of things after the Fall. When we think of Adam and Eve, “humankind” prior to the Fall, we cannot fully comprehend who they were because - other than Jesus - no other human has ever been as innocent.

Discuss

Do we see that we belong to Him and, as such, He has the right to choose our paths; we have the obligation of loyal subjects to seek His will when making choices?

How might you illustrate an aspect of Heaven, using the pre-Fall description of man and woman - created uniquely, with equal inherent value, and with equal standing - without any hint of conflict or of competition? When we think of our place in Heaven, we may rightly look at pre-Fall Adam and Eve (and Jesus) as models of the innocence we too will possess – blessedly-absent the capacity to rebel. Is the true measure of a faith-saving relationship with Christ the absolute surrender of our free will to His Lordship?

Reflect

How well do we comprehend what it means for the Lord God to have “mastery” or “ownership” over every truly-saved Believer? It is the Lord God’s loving-desire that men and women serve Him together in perfect harmony. We have Jesus Christ to thank for providing our way home to an Edenic-Heaven.

Share

When have you experienced the naming a child or a pet? When have you observed children or adults functioning in synchronicity, helping and sharing with one another, all free of apparent competition and conflict? When have you been truly transparent before the Lord God, and/or before a fellow Believer, and the Holy Spirit gave you a special sense of purity and innocence in His forgiveness and grace?

Faith In Action

Pray

Ask the Holy Spirit to amplify your understanding of the importance of separating pre-Fall from post-Fall events and why you need to avoid extrapolating modern-day expectations without regard to the original context and to grant you a sense of innocence (through Christ) before the Lord.

Act

Today I will engage a fellow Christian in discussion about the way that God has named and claimed us, and together we will give Him praise and thanks. I will pause to discuss with a fellow Believer our innate longing for our pre-Fall intimate relationship with the Lord God, with His perfect Creation, and with one another. We will give thanks for the promise of Heaven and ask for comfort and patience as we live in this Fallen-away world. Today I will join with a fellow Believer in a prayerfully-reflective celebration of God’s promise of eternity in Heaven.

Be Specific _____________________________________________

Friday (Genesis 3:1-13)

The Temptation and the Fall

3:1 Now the serpent was more shrewd than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?”

3:2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard;

3:3 but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’” 3:4 The serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die,

3:5 for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and

you will be like divine beings who know good and evil.”

3:6 When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye,

and was desirable for making one wise,

she took some of its fruit and ate it.

She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

3:7 Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew they were naked;

so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the orchard at the breezy time of the day,

and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard.

3:9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

3:10 The man replied, “I heard you moving about in the orchard, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”

3:11 And the Lord God said, “Who told you that you were naked?

Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

3:12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave me,

she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”

3:13 So the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”

Prayer

Lord, as I read this terrible moment in history, second only to the crucifixion of Christ, I am convicted that I am just as ready to allow a test to become a temptation than were Adam and Eve. May I surrender more to the leadership of Your Holy Spirit so that my every choice is tested for Your will and not my own. We are all the same as Eve, looking for what appeals to our flesh rather than the best in us – that which the Holy Spirit empowers and nurtures. May my faith be in the perfection that I see in You, and may I desire that above all. I am shocked to read the dialogue between You and Adam and Eve, because I am certain that You’ve had that same dialogue with me. May I be convicted and reminded that I am responsible to You for every choice that I make.

Scripture In Perspective

Chapters One and Two presented the Creation narrative. Chapter Three described the horribly wrong choice of Adam and Eve and the devastating consequences which followed.

The serpent, like Balaam’s donkey (Numbers 22:22-35), was a sentient being (able to respond due to awareness and memory of patterns of pain and pleasure).

The serpent was, however, non-sapient (lacking the ability to either reflect or make decisions based on acquired wisdom and also lacking the unique human capacity to interact intentionally in the spiritual realm).

The serpent was a demon-possessed mouthpiece for a spiritual source — in this case Satan. (There is the case of the swine in Mathew 8:30-32 and Mark 5:11-13 wherein demons were sent into pigs by Jesus, but in that case they were merely neutral -non-communicating – physical ‘containers’ for those demons.)

Speculation that animals in pre–Fall Eden were capable of verbal communication with humans, and one another, is based on suspect extra-Biblical sources (not part of the “canon” of the Bible, which are Books believed to be approved by the Lord God for inclusion, such as Jubilee 3:28 and Josephus Antiquities 1.1.4 – 1.41) and are thus not to be given credibility in the absence of any supporting canonical Biblical text.

There is also no value-added, and considerable distraction spawned, by such speculation. The text following (see Gen. 3:14) parallels the serpent with the other “wild animals,” adding to the assurance that in its natural state the serpent was merely a mouthpiece and was not speaking independently.

The evil tempting spirit speaking through the serpent challenged the integrity of the relationship between Eve and the Lord God. This included a challenge to the very Lordship of God by deliberately using the name “God” not preceded by the title “Lord,”. Eve made a choice to do the same – converting the ‘test’ of her faithfulness into a ‘temptation’ to overtly rebel and sin.

When Satan, through the serpent, asked, “is it really true...?” he was attacking the integrity of the Lord God and His sovereign authority. This was a direct challenge to Eve to also wonder if the Lord God was truthful. This was an amazingly bold act of Satan, and frighteningly evil in intent.

In reply to the serpent’s challenge, Eve restated the Lord God’s warning about eating from “the tree that is in the middle of the orchard” (by implication, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil); however, she altered both Satan’s words and the actual command of the Lord God. Eve added the flourish “you must not touch it,” which neither the Lord God or Satan had said.

Satan then issued the full-out challenge to the Lord God’s integrity and authority, “Surely you will not die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like divine beings who know good and evil.”

“Divine beings” refers to the Lord God, Satan, and the angels, both the faithful and the fallen.

The command from the Lord God “You must not eat from it”, qualified by “or you will surely die” was not lost on Adam and Eve. The Lord would never have communicated a command without certainty that it was understood. They would likely have understood “die” as associated with their relationship with Him – making sense as that became what they wanted to escape (in terms of accountability and Lordship) when they chose to fail the test, entertain temptation, then sin.

Humankind (Adam and Eve) were already capable of spiritual interaction, but had to-date no need to be cognizant of “evil”, other than to know that the fruit of one tree contained the power to draw them into that knowledge.

When Eve entertained Satan’s challenge to the integrity and Lordship of God, apparently without any effort to consult the Lord nor fear of negative consequences, she voluntarily crossed the threshold from ‘test’ to ‘temptation’ – because she turned her eyes-of-faith from Him to herself.

The key to understanding this text, especially as it applies to the rest of the Bible, is choice. Eve (then Adam) had a choice to make, that was the purpose of ‘the test of the tree’.

Eve (then Adam) did not have to believe the Serpent, they easily could have consulted the Lord God, and they easily could have corrected his error in deleting Lord from Lord God. They chose to not do so because they chose their flesh over their Father.

Eve failed the test when she conspired with the serpent to ignore the Lordship of God. She relied only on her fleshy senses, she observed that the fruit of the forbidden tree appealed to her eye and stomach, and she was tempted to believe that it could magically give her the God-making “wisdom” that the serpent promised. Eve acted upon that temptation and decided to reach out and eat of it.

Adam, whose whereabouts were previously unknown in the story, was described as “with her,” and when given the fruit he also choose to eat of it. The “with her” likely refers to his physical proximity, though it may also report that he was “with her” in her rebellion.

The text does not require “with her” to mean either that he was there all along or that he had been elsewhere and at this moment in the story was “with her” both physically and in rebellion.

It is uncertain if any of the alternative readings matter much to the story; though if one takes Adam to have been physically present throughout the test, temptation, and fall of Eve, one must ponder why he failed to intervene and why he was not also addressed in the story. In general, the best translation defaults to the most-simple solution, unless the text under consideration (or other Biblical texts) support a more complex result.

I Timothy 2:14 says “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was fully deceived, fell into transgression.”

Once “fallen,” they were immediately aware of their newly imperfect state (and that their fellowship with a holy and pure Lord God has been instantly broken), and they rushed to cover themselves.

The Lord God moved about in the Garden in the late afternoon, “the breezy time of the day.” Wishful thinking and inadequate attention to detail in some translations have rendered the idea that God was coming for a daily friendly stroll together with Adam and Eve in the Garden — a right-rendering of the Biblical text does not support such a conjecture.

More probable is that, after their misdeeds together with the serpent, the Lord God arrived to challenge them and was intentionally thrashing about the Garden as if seeking His missing children – of course knowing precisely where they were. He was righteously angry.

The Lord God called to Adam, “Where are you?” not because He could not find Adam, but to challenge Adam to recognize where he had caused himself to be – which was apart from Him. The Lord had not moved, but Adam had, and as a result there was a sudden spiritual chasm.

Adam replied, “I heard you moving about,” so the sound created by God in the Garden was not sensed by Adam as friendly. And his “I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid” tells the reader that something had changed — Adam had been previously unclothed and not afraid to be seen as naked (transparent, vulnerable).

The Lord God challenged Adam to explain how he now knew that he was naked — previously unimportant, but now suddenly important — and challenged Adam with the only plausible explanation, his rebellion.

Adam’s effort to play innocent and to thrust the blame on Eve (if one accepts the reading that Adam was not present during the serpent’s initial temptation of Eve and her decision to sin) may lead one to argue that Adam was engaging in a form of idol worship ― “God gave me Eve , so I trusted her, and she said it was OK.” It is an effort to defraud the Lord, of course; however, at this point, Adam loses either way.

The Lord God then turned to Eve, which appears to grant partial credibility to Adam’s blame-shifting, and challenged her to defend her actions (adding credence to the view that Adam was not present during her testing, her choice to engage in temptation, followed by her decision to sin).

Eve completed the ‘passing of the buck’ by declaring “the serpent tricked me, and I ate,” in an attempt to absolve herself of responsibility for her choice. While rightly pointing out that she had been deceived, she did not trouble herself to explain why she had knowingly ignored a direct order from her Lord God.

Interact With The Text

Consider

We have the same choice(s) as Eve, every minute of every day. Believers must never allow an implied doubt to stand as to the character and integrity and promises of the Lord God. Satan tried the same attack on Jesus that he used on Eve, and he is still using the same old lie on people today. Do we understand that when we choose temptation rather than holiness, when confronted with a test, that we enter into a conspiracy with Satan to disrespect the Lord God? How we often have we blamed others for our own choices, perhaps we’ve even blamed the Lord God?

Discuss

How would you help people to understand that if we go where the Lord God says not to go, do what God says not to do, and dwell upon the things God tells us to avoid, then we also disrespect the Lordship of God and side with Satan? How would you explain the importance of understanding that our lusts and our physical senses are the playground of Satan, and therefore highly subject to our misunderstanding and misplaced priorities? How would you lead a small group through an evaluation of the many ways that they have tried to hide from accountability?

Reflect

Every choice carries consequences, some good, some bad. We rationalize that consequences will be absent or acceptable to us if we choose disobedience. If unsaved, we further guarantee Hell as our eternal destination — and if we are saved we build walls that block the blessings of the Lord God. It is bad enough to agree to convert a test in to a temptation, and then in to overt sin; however, to then multiply our sin by drawing others who trust us into the same sin is even worse. (See the curse of the Fall in the following sections.)

Share

When was there a time that you doubted the Lord God? What were the consequences? What is a circumstance in your life where you clearly knew that what you were doing was wrong yet you rationalized that it served a momentary desire? What were the consequences? What is a circumstance when something you did caused you to have a ‘guilty conscience’ such that when an authority figure approached you felt nervous or startled?

Faith In Action

Pray

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you a lie in your life that causes you to rationalize

disobedience to God, and one place in your life where you have allowed the satisfaction of your physical senses to overwhelm your obligation to honor the Lord your God. Perhaps it is eating or drinking too much, going where I may view people in a way that is appealing to my fallen-flesh but offensive to God (e.g., driving by the beach to view partially-clothed people, surfing inappropriate sites on the Internet, watching television where people are demeaned, listening to music or watching movies that distort a holy view of man, abusing substances, avoiding activities that promote fitness of my body “the temple of the Holy Spirit,” or participating in thrill-seeking activities that “test the Lord my God”), and a place in your life where you find yourself deflecting blame to another or engaging in a pattern of avoiding accountability.

Act

Today I will make a change in my thinking, and in my actions, and rather than partner with the Enemy I will partner with the Holy Spirit as He makes this a real rather than merely an intellectual life-changing choice. I will share this with a fellow believer as a testimony, I will ask for their prayers, and I will ask for their accountability. I will move to diminish the thing that the Holy Spirit has revealed as offensive to the Lord and destructive to me. The goal is to eradicate them from my life; perhaps immediately, perhaps after some perseverance, but eventually permanently through the power of prayer and peer-accountability. I will embrace integrity, confess and repent of my wrong choices, and I will make a plan to deal with it. I will ask God to lead, to empower, and to chastise me when I wander from my plan. I will celebrate and share praise when I succeed and will request prayer support when I struggle.

Be Specific _____________________________________________

Saturday (Genesis 3:14-24)

The Judgment Oracles of God at the Fall

3:14 The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,

cursed are you above all the wild beasts

and all the living creatures of the field!

On your belly you will crawl

and dust you will eat all the days of your life.

3:15 And I will put hostility between you and the woman

and between your offspring and her offspring;

her offspring will attack your head,

and you will attack her offspring’s heel.”

3:16 To the woman he said,

“I will greatly increase your labor pains;

with pain you will give birth to children.

You will want to control your husband,

but he will dominate you.”

3:17 But to Adam he said,

“Because you obeyed your wife

and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,

‘You must not eat from it,’

cursed is the ground thanks to you;

in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

3:18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

but you will eat the grain of the field.

3:19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat food

until you return to the ground,

for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

3:20 The man named his wife Eve,

because she was the mother of all the living.

3:21 The Lord God made garments from skin for Adam and his wife,

and clothed them.

3:22 And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,

he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

3:23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken.

3:24 When he drove the man out,

he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden

angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life.

Prayer

Lord, the temporary alliance between the serpent and Eve is the same as he seeks with us, one where we displace You in favor of our flesh. May I remember when I am tested that the choices are always the same, I choose You or the Enemy – may I mature in my faith daily so that I increasingly choose You in all things. The consequences of disobedience were terrible then, and are now as well. May I be mindful that when I wander from Your Lordship I also wander from Your protection and wisdom. Even though You had to be profoundly-troubled and righteously-offended Your grace triumphed and Your loving-care was displayed. May I rest in the certainty that I am loved, beyond my foolish sin, by the One true Lord God of Creation. Humankind made a terribly-wrong choice and You graciously blocked the path (to the Tree of Eternal Life) to protect them from unrecoverable harm. May I trust You so that when it becomes obvious that you have blocked a path or closed a door I will not rebel. Purity, in Your eyes, means peace with You. May I seek after the purity that You desire for me so that I may be at peace with Your and find my peace in You.

Scripture In Perspective

According to the NET Greek/Hebrew dictionary the qualifying term “tricked” for “The serpent” indicates an authoritative, perhaps king-like, relationship to Eve in which she felt unequal. Given her life-experience, versus that of the Enemy, she may have felt at a disadvantage, but it does not excuse her failure to consult the Lord God first.

God immediately addressed the serpent ― asking no questions, hearing no lies, speaking only truth ― declaring that the serpent had indeed deceived Eve, that Eve had joined him in rebellion, and that she had then solicited Adam to join them in rebellion.

God declared the curse upon the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the wild beasts and all the living creatures of the field!” So all of the wild beasts and living creatures of the field were now cursed, but even more so the serpent, who was estranged and isolated from them and condemned “on your belly you will crawl” humiliated to wallow in the dust rather than merely walk upon it.

The animals lived in harmony with one another and man, but now cursed they (all of the animals, humankind, and the serpent alike ) would have to struggle, strive, suffer, and die. Adam’s mastery/ownership of the animals doomed them to his fate.

The alliance of the serpent with Eve was more than terminated, it became adversarial, her descendants versus his ― “her offspring will attack your head, and you will attack her offspring’s heel.” Both are potentially fatal attacks; the bite to the heel being toxic (sin), the blow to the head being destructive (righteous judgment).

Despite their devastating rebellion the Lord God still allowed Adam and Eve to experience the awe of “creation” through their bodies.

The Lord God addressed the consequences of the choices made by the woman, declaring that reproduction would become an uncomfortable process; knowing that her children and her children’s-children would come into a fallen world and that the Fall was largely her fault. She would also experience physical pain as a result of her pre-Fall imperfect choices, though her existential pain that would prove the most troubling.

As the first human agent in promoting sin, Eve enticed Adam to join her in rebellion; consequently, as part of the curse, she would continue in her efforts to control him, but the Lord God said that Adam would have the upper hand – a dominant role. The Lord defined the nature of the male-female relationship post-Fall as a constant ebb and flow of females using manipulation to gain control and males using power to dominate.

Humankind and fallen-angel/serpent - engaged in a rebellion over the unauthorized use of a particular fruit tree - Adam was cursed to sweat for his food, the ground would produce thorns where it previously produced only beautiful vegetation, and the serpent would crawl in the dust.

The Lord God addressed the hapless Adam, reminding him that because he had chosen Eve over His Lord, when he joined her in rebellion, he became the agent of the curse of the “ground.” [Note: Gen. 1:9-10 defines “ground” as everything not covered with water, but that – per the NET translator’s notes - is not the intent here. Instead, this curse of the “ground” means that every effort to reap the formerly easy bounty of food would henceforth require intense effort and sacrifice.] The Lord commanded that humankind would now suffer in the process of acquiring food to eat because it was in eating-rebelliously that humans caused the Fall.

The first man and woman pridefully accepted the temptation of Satan. They, like him, attempted to become peers with the Lord God in immortality, knowledge, and power, yet they were instead doomed to live frustrated, limited, and difficult lives.

The NET translator’s notes include the following powerful observation: “In general, the themes of the curse oracles are important in the NT teaching that Jesus became the cursed one hanging on the tree. In his suffering and death, all of the motifs are drawn together: the tree, the sweat, the thorns, and the dust of death (see Ps. 22:15). Jesus experienced it all, to have victory over it through the resurrection.”

Adam, post-Fall delegated by the Lord God to dominate the relationship, then named Eve.

Note: Previously we observed that Adam named the animals but not his God-given “helper”; rather, he gave the title “woman” to her, illustrating her status as his equal partner in caring for Creation. The Fall changed everything and the “woman” became “Eve.”

The name Eve was drawn from her role as the “life-giver,” the one who bears children, and the one from whom all future children would descend.

Despite His righteous anger the Lord God still provided for His children, giving them garments made of animal skins. By so doing God both recognized that the mere leafy coverings Adam and Eve had fashioned would not be adequate in the fallen world and that disharmony now reigned – man would draw his needs from the beasts - and the rest of Creation - at a cost to his fellow creatures in Creation.

The essence of the consequences of Adam and Eve’s failure of ‘the test of the tree’ was that humankind had ‘illegally’ acquired an unplanned and unhealthy (because they were not equipped to handle it) attribute of the Lord God - not originally given to them.

The knowledge of good and evil was a major new paradigm for which they were unprepared and which acquisition had required a major act of rebellion.

Humankind now had to be protected from the worst of the consequences - eating from the tree of life – for that would have condemned them to be forever and irredeemably trapped in an alliance with Satan and at-enmity with the Lord.

The Lord God removed humankind from Eden, before that could happen, as free will was still active after the Fall; therefore, a physical relocation was necessary.

So serious was the threat, so powerful the temptation (and perhaps now so undeserving of Eden was humankind), that the Lord God posted Heavenly sentries with whirling swords of flame to keep them and their descendants from ever returning to the Garden (and “the Tree of Eternal Life”) in their unredeemed condition.

Only Jesus the Christ could create the circumstances where humankind could regain access to the gift of eternal life – without the curse.

Interact With The Text

Consider

Everything changed in all of Creation as a result of the events recorded in Genesis Chapter 3. Not only were Adam and Eve and the serpent/Satan cursed, but all of Creation. Because the Lord God had already given Creation over to “man”, when man turned from the Lordship of God to the Lordship of Satan, so also went the way of Creation. We must not expect to be comfortable in this life; the Lord God said it would not be so. Modern research in DNA has suggested that all races of man may be traced back to a single female source, from the region known as northeast Africa — their regional locators match the geographical markers for Eden given in Genesis 2:10-14.

Discuss

Are the similarities of the Fall similar enough to the popular story of Robin Hood to be used as a lesson-illustration? (In the story when King Richard left for the Crusades his less-ethical brother John assumed power and was entrusted with the care of Nottingham and Sherwood Forest, and he turned a beautiful place to one of conflict and evil.) How might we best use every blessing of God to equip ourselves to resist the fleshy temptations to both contest with one another and to place fleshy things before the priorities of the Lord? How would you use these texts to help people to understand that the nature of this fallen world is one of conflict, difficulty, and hopelessness and that genuine hope is found only in the Lord? How would you help others to understand that when man ‘stole’ an attribute of the Lord God – one expressly forbidden to them - it was then that the trouble (estrangement and striving) began?

Reflect

The consequences of Satan dragging man into the spiritual warfare between himself and the Lord God, when he successfully recruited Adam and Even into a state of rebellion, have been terrible. Are we not combatants in that battle whether we want to be or not? (Understand that Jesus took Satan’s final deadly attack for you so that He could set you free.) Are we appropriately amazed to see the connections across the entirety of the Word of God, from Genesis through Revelation, and how the themes and truths of God reign supreme? The Lord God so loved Adam and Eve, and their descendants, that He provided for their physical needs and their pathway to salvation from the consequences of their rebellion. We sometimes rebel the same as Adam and Eve: 1) exercising pride that causes us to brush aside the counsel of the Holy Spirit, 2) functionally-worshiping ‘idols’ such as fame, money, pleasure, power, or 3) neglecting those things that the Lord God says must be the priorities of our lives as Believers.

Share

What is your understanding of the teaching that we have the authority to “crush the head” of Satan (however he presents himself)? How may we exercise caution that Satan is not successful in his attack upon our “heel,” our very vulnerable areas in day-to-day life choices? When have you hear a teaching that explained the fact that man is treated in a fundamentally different way than the rest of Creation — all Creation is subservient to man as he navigates his way through life and back towards a right relationship with the Lord God? What are some ways that you have found yourself, or those around you, striving for perfection to gain access to/recreate an “Eden” by pressing against “gates” that are guarded with flaming swords (knowing that the “new Eden” is accessible only via Jesus and only at the end of created-time?

Faith In Action

Pray

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you at least one circumstance in your life, past or present, which still impacts you – a circumstance over which I have little or no control — and to show me how I can give it to Him “at the foot of the Cross” and never allow Satan to use it to define me again, a place where the temptations of the flesh are repeatedly used by Satan to drag you down from the holy lifestyle-place that the Lord God has prepared for you — be it gluttony, lust, pride, self-loathing, toys, or anything else that gets in the way, something specific about you that will remind you of the wonderful creative hand of God, and/or a specific way that you attempt to return to Eden via an effort to artificially re-create a place of perfection and/or of extreme safety.

Act

Today I will stop and thank Jesus for standing in the gap for me. I will also acknowledge that there are some things confusing and distracting me – some, perhaps, that I have done (or that were done to me), some imperfection(s), or some difficult person — the key is my knowing (and understanding) that such things are proof that this is a fallen world. I will refuse to be abused by the Prince of Darkness and I will choose to stand with the Jesus, Prince of Light. I will confess and repent, request and accept the forgiveness of the Lord God, and then I will develop and implement an accountability plan to resist that temptation. I will ask a fellow believer to pray in-agreement and to be my accountability partner.

Be Specific _________________________________________________

All Bible text is from the NET unless otherwise indicated - http://bible.org

Note 1: These Studies often rely upon the guidance of the NET Translators from their associated notes. Careful attention has been given to cite that source where it has been quoted directly or closely paraphrased. Feedback is encouraged where credit has not been sufficiently assigned.

Note 2: When NET text is quoted in commentary and discussion all pronouns referring to God are capitalized, though they are lower-case in the original NET text.

Commentary text is from David M. Colburn, D.Min. unless otherwise noted.

Copyright © 2012 by David M. Colburn. This is a BibleSeven Study –“Genesis 3. Prepared by David M. Colburn and edited for bible.org in August of 2012. This text may be used for non-profit educational purposes only, with credit; all other usage requires prior written consent of the author.

This lesson on Matthew 3 was preached by Adam Hebener in continuation of David Anderson's expository series in the gospel of Matthew at Littleton Bible Chapel on 1/20/2013.

I. Intro and Recap:

a.       Chapters 1 and 2 are about the birth narrative. 

i.  Matthew gives two full chapters to the origin of Jesus.  His earthly origin, and his divine origin.

ii.                        But his primary point in these two chapters is this: Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophets.  He is the fulfillment of the OT.

iii.                      He is the Son of David.  He is #14 (as we saw in the Genealogy)

b.      Recap:

i.  1:1-17- teaches that Jesus is the Son of Man.

1.      His genealogy is proof that Jesus is qualified to be the promised Messiah.

2.      He is promise of Abraham and the Son of David.

ii.                        1:18-25- teaches that Jesus is the Son of God. (virgin conception)

1.      His birth is not natural, and yet He is born of a woman.

2.      Chapter one tells us that Jesus is both God and Man.  He is the God-Man and is uniquely qualified to be the Savior.

iii.                      2:1-12

1.      Now we are in chapter two, and Jesus is a toddler, not a baby anymore.

2.      And we see two responses to this Savior-King.

3.      Herod and the Wise Men.

4.      Some people love Him and some people hate Him.

5.      Some people respond to Him, and others want to kill him.

6.      But the main purpose of these 12 verses is that Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy.

iv.                      So the main point of this passage has to be v. 6, that from Bethlehem will come a ruler who will shepherd Israel.

II.                      Observations from Herod the King.

a.      A little bit about Herod:

i.  About 60 years before Jesus was born, the Roman General Pompey captured Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine.  The Romans installed local rulers in these areas, and eventually Herod became the ruler of Jews.  He was even called “King of the Jews” even though he was only half-Jewish.

ii.                        Historian Paul Maier:

1.      “You may be surprised to hear this, but believe it or not, if you are ever asked which is the one figure from the ancient world on whom we have more primary evidence from original sources than anyone else in the world, the answer is not Jesus or Saint Paul or Caesar Augustus or Julius Caesar—none of those. Alexander the Great? No, no.  It is Herod the Great, believe it or not. Why? Because Josephus gives us two whole book scrolls on the life of Herod the Great. And that is more primary material than anyone else.”

2.      Kind Herod was a paranoid tyrant who ended up killing three of his sons on suspicion of treason, putting to death his favorite wife (of his ten wives!), killing one of his mothers-in-law, drowning a high priest, and killing several uncles and a couple of cousins. They also talk about Herod’s plot to kill a stadium of Jewish leaders, and he even killed all the male babies and toddlers in certain village.

iii.                      Caesar Augustus even said he would “rather be Herod’s pig, than his son.”

b.      Herod is an illegitimate worldly king.

i.  He is the opposite of Jesus.

ii.                        Instead of using is power to serve people; He uses people to protect his power.

iii.                      Instead of serving people; he uses people.

iv.                      Herod represents worldly leadership and power.

v.                         Jesus comes lowly lying in a feeding trough…

vi.                      The ladder to greatness in God’s economy is the exact opposite of the world.  It’s down, down, and down.

vii.                    There used to be a popular TV show called “The Apprentice” and it is hosted by the famously wealthy man, Donald Trump. 

1.      It’s a show of leadership, business savvy, skill, and smarts.  The goal, if you are a contestant, is to eventually pass all of the tests to become your very own CEO of one of Trump’s companies for one year.  This show perfectly typifies the world’s understanding of leadership.  If you want to win you do everything in your power to get to the top.  You cheat if you have to, you lie if you have to, you use others at their expense if you have to.  You do anything and everything to get to the top; because that’s where you want to be.

2.      I remember as a child growing up in Minnesota in the winters we would play a game called, “King of the mountain.”  The goal was to do anything and everything to get to the top of a huge snow hill. 

viii.                  It’s a picture of the system of this world.

1.      But in the economy of God, it’s completely backwards. 

2.      Mark 10:42-45, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. ‘But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. ‘For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.’ 

3.      But it is not this way among you!  The world has its way of operating, but it is not this way among you!”

4.      Jesus is the opposite of Herod.

c.       Herod represents the world’s hostility towards God.

i.  He is terrified and wants to kill Jesus.

ii.                        The right king would have rejoiced to see the King of Kings, but King Herod wants to kill him.  He sees Jesus as his mortal enemy.

iii.                      Herod is more interested in saving his throne than saving his soul!

iv.                      Herod hears of these wise men who have come to worship a king, and he is immediately threatened.

v.                         Herod (and others) are troubled by the news of a king (2:3).

vi.                       Herod is like the new Pharaoh.

1.      I think Matthew makes the connection between Herod and Pharaoh.

2.      Herod is like the new Pharaoh just like Jesus is like new Moses.

3.      Moses only foreshadowed what Jesus would do.  Jesus is the True and Better Moses.  Jesus is the True and better Deliverer.  Jesus is the True and Better Savior.

III.                   Major Lesson Learned from Herod the King--There will be hostility towards Jesus.

a.      This world is hostile!  Evil is all around us!

i.  Jesus is born into a hostile environment!

ii.                        We will look at this more in the next section, but soon after the Wise Men leave Herod commits a mass murder on a whole village.  He kills all the baby boys under the age of 2.

iii.                      Jesus was born into a war zone.

iv.                      In the words of Doug Wilson, “Nativity sets should include a pair of Herod’s soldiers.”

v.                         All is not well in this world we live in.

vi.                      How do you explain the mass murder of children without using the word “evil?”

vii.                    Evil exits.  Period.  Sin is alive. Period.

viii.                  Our hearts should ache for those who lost their little ones, and loved ones.

ix.                      We should weep with those who weep.

x.                         Not only is evil seen in humanity, horizontally; evil is seen vertically, towards God.

b.      There exists in all of us, a hostility toward God.

i.  By nature, are opposed to God.

1.      We are not by nature indifferent to Jesus, we are antagonistic towards Him!

2.      We do not appreciate His rule in our lives, by nature!

3.      We don’t want His government!  We don’t want His opinion!  We would rather not hear His Word.

4.      We are dead to Him.  We are immune to Him.

5.      He represents the highest threat to our sinful desires.

6.      R.C. Sproul, “If God were to expose His life to our hands, He would not be safe for a second. We would not ignore Him; we would destroy Him.”

ii.                        The King James says, “Peace on earth, good will toward men”  Or, “God has now made peace available.”

1.      There was ill-will.  Hostility.

2.      This explains wars, fights, everything.

3.      Rom. 5:10, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

4.      Rom. 8:7, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.”

iii.                      Tim Keller gives an illustration that is helpful.

1.      Let’s imagine a couple that was once in love, but they have become “estranged” which basically means, we used to be in love, but we have become strangers.  And if you ever watch how that works, this is how it happens.  You were in love and what made you in love with that person was certain characteristics.  But when you decide to get angry, you take all those characteristics that you loved, and you read them through your anger and turn them in to flaws.  You read the things you used to love, the very same traits, as imperfections and weaknesses.

a.       “She used to love the fact that he was poised and unwavering, but now she sees it as emotional coldness.  And she’ll use it to justify her alienation from him”

b.      He used to love the fact (when he was in love with her) that she was a detail person.  That’s why she’s done so well in her accounting firm.  Always checking up, always checking up.  Now he see it as a lack of trust, now he sees it as a critical spirit or nagging.

2.      What Keller is saying is that, “You have enmity in your heart, so that, the sovereignty of God, where God can do whatever He wants, you see it as unaccountability.  He does whatever he wants.  You see it as reckless.

3.      You have enmity towards the grace of God… “it’s too easy, you can’t just accept that, you have to work for it.”

4.      You have enmity in your heart when you despise Him.

a.       “How can I believe in a God that could let this happen?”

b.      “I can’t believe in a God who would let such horrible things happen to people.”

5.      That’s enmity.  That’s despising God.  You don’t really trust him.

iv.                      So when the angels pronounce peace in Luke chapter 3, they are pronouncing the end of hostility.

1.      When Matthew records what Herod did, he is showing the hostility and evil that Christ came to conquer.

2.      Through Jesus, you can have peace with God, and with one another.

a.       Vertical peace, and peace on earth.

v.                         One of the school teachers in the Connecticut massacre told Diane Sawyer the heart wrenching story of huddling her kids together in her room, moving a bookcase over the door as a barricade.

1.      With tears she told the kids to be quiet, “to be absolutely quiet, because I was just so afraid that if he did come in he would just start shooting the kids.  So I just said ‘we have to be absolutely quiet.’ I said, ‘there are bad guys out there…and we just need…to wait… for the good guys…”

vi.                      Well the good guys did come.  And in our story, the Ultimate Good Guy came…

1.      Jesus was born into a war zone.

2.      The Christmas story is smack dab in the middle of a story of Monster trying to wipe out an entire village of baby boys, and I don’t think the weapon he used was the main topic of conversation.

3.      He was evil.  Satanic. 

4.      Herod represents evil and hostility.

vii.                    In a world of hostility and evil and grief and pain…the Good Guy Came…

1.      And with tears in our eyes we can say, “Merry Christmas—Behold the Lamb of God Who has come to take away the sins of the world.”

2.      Rom. 5:1-2, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

viii.                  How do we make sense of suffering and evil and sin and death?

1.      The cross of Christ.

2.      Jesus is born into this world to be a Savior.

3.      Mercy and Justice collide at the cross.

4.      Sin is exceedingly evil.  The Son of God has to die because of it.  This massacre is exceedingly evil.  And on the cross, God the Father condemns it.  He condemns sin.  He pours out his anger at evil and at sin.  He rouses His fury against sin.

5.      His solution:  Put His own Son forward to be the sacrifice.  Pour out His righteous vengeance against evil on His own son.

6.      The Result:  Evil is dealt with, legally.  And justice is upheld, legally.  And now he can legally pronounce sinners as righteous.

7.      So God is holy and just, in that He deals with sin, he doesn’t let it slide, and yet He is merciful in that He offers peace to the world through Jesus Christ.

IV.                    Observations of the Wise Men.

a.      Who are the Wise Men? (2:1)

i.  These Maji are not identified with perfect precision.

ii.                        Educated speculation says that they were likely the priestly caste of the Medes and Persians.

iii.                      Daniel refers to the “magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams”

iv.                      This is likely the same group as the Magicians, or Maji.

v.                         These Maji are called “wise men” because they were people of learning.

1.      Think of these folks as a mixture of being the elite, the intellectuals, and the religious priests of their culture.  They were like science-math-literature-priests.

2.      They were astronomers/astrologers. 

3.      Star-gazing book worms.

4.      And they were Gentiles. 

5.      There is no indication they were kings. 

6.      And there is no indication that there were only three (there were three gifts)

7.      Sorry to ruin the Christmas song, “We three kings from Orient are...”

b.      Why did the Wise Men come?

i.  Undoubtedly, word of a coming king has spread beyond the borders of Jerusalem.

ii.                        How would they have known?

1.      Remember when Daniel went to Babylon, he studied under people who studied dreams and visions and stars.

2.      Daniel skyrocketed into fame when he correctly interpreted King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.

3.      Daniel later predicted the three successive kingdoms that would follow Babylon, and then told of a coming King would swallow up every other kingdom in the world.

4.      It seems likely that these same Magi, these same Chaldeans from the East would have remembered Daniel’s words.  They would have been students of the Prophets.

5.      They would be interested in this coming Son of David.

iii.                      There was widespread expectation for the birth of a great ruler.

1.      They come to the “City of David” to look for the “Son of David.”

2.      Jewish prophecies and even Romans were expecting a coming ruler.  This is likely why Herod is so nervous.

3.      Numbers 24:17, “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth…”

4.      Micah 5:2, “But you, O Bethlehem…from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.”

c.       When did the Wise Men come?

i.  They likely came about two years after the birth of Jesus.

1.      Hence Herod ordering to kill all the kids under two.

2.      And notice (v.11), Mary and Joseph are no longer in an INN, they are in a house.

d.      How were the Wise Men led?(2:2,9)

i.  2:2, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

ii.                        Notice, the ESV simply says the star “rose,” which is a better translation than saying it “rose from the East.”

1.      If these men came from the East, and the Star rose in the East, then they went wrong direction.

iii.                      2:9, “After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was.”

iv.                      Two major possibilities of what this star was:

1.      An actual star, or comet or, supernova, or planetary conjunction.

a.       Church father Origen had this view, and also later on, the father of modern astronomy, Johannes Kepler.

i.  Kepler thought it was likely the convergence of Jupiter and Saturn.

ii.                        Making one bright light.

b.      If this is the case, then the Magi most likely saw the star of conjunction of planets, figured out that it had something to do with the Son of David, and came to Jerusalem.

c.       Apparently, unusual stars have been noted throughout history.

i.  Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar had a type of supernova at their births.

d.      The main problem with this view is that the star moves.

i.  It stops when they get to Jerusalem.  Then is shows up again and even hovers over the exact house of Joseph and Mary.

2.      An angel- or some sort of supernatural light (The Shekinah glory of God).

a.       Light was used as God’s presence with Israel in the dessert.

b.      Possibly it’s the same kind of light, and they called it a star?

i.  These people didn’t realize that stars are actually millions of light years away and twice as big as the earth…

ii.                        The word for star can mean a star, or a heavenly body, or a supernatural light. 

iii.                      It is also used metaphorically for a spiritual leader, or even of Christ, or of the messengers of the churches.

c.       Angels are all over the scene during the nativity.

i.  Angels are even called stars.

ii.                        And, angels are all over the place during the birth narrative.

d.      The main reason this makes most sense is verse 9.  It moves.

v.                         Isn’t astrology condemned in Scripture?

1.      Doesn’t it seem odd that these Gentiles find Jesus using a system that is mocked in the Old Testament?  Forbidden in the OT…

2.      Matthew neither endorses nor condemns it.

3.      It is Mathew’s way of showing how God was reaching out to the Gentiles. 

4.      He is using their broken system of discovering truth and He supernaturally guided them to THE TRUTH.

5.      The Jews, who HAVE the Scriptures, and are 6 miles away in Jerusalem and are totally uninterested, while the Gentiles, from far-away, with a broken system, are coming to see the King of the Jews.

6.      You could even say that the Ox and Ass understood more of what was going on that the priests and the scribes.

7.      Mat. 11:25, “At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children…”

e.       The Wise Men worshipped Jesus with gifts (2:10-11)

i.  The Wise Men rejoiced exceedingly with great joy (2:10)

ii.                        What is the significance of these gifts?

1.      We don’t know for sure if there is meant to be significance to these gifts.  At the least, it was a lot of money that helped finance Joseph and Mary’s trip to Egypt and back.

2.      But it’s possible, that these gifts indicate the kind of life this child will have…

iii.                      Gold- the symbol for a King.

1.      This is Matthew’s main point on this gospel.  Jesus is the King.

2.      Gold is the metal of kings.

iv.                      Frankincense- the symbol of he High Priest.

1.      Incense was used by the priests in their worship.

2.      Incense was never mixed with sins offerings like meat and wine offerings.  In other words it was pure.

3.      A white gum from a tree in Arabia

4.      It pointed to Christ as our High Priest, His entire life was pleasing to God.

v.                         Myrrh- the symbol of death.

1.      Myrrh was expensive and was used for embalming.  It was also a gum from bush.

2.      Myrrh was a valuable commodity.  In fact, the town “Smyrrhnah” was named that because it was a huge factory of Myrrh.

3.      Nicodemus used 100 pounds of myrrh for Jesus’ burial.

4.      They unknowingly gave Jesus a gift symbolizing death.

5.      Jesus would suffer and die a sinners death.

f.        More than likely these wise men had no idea of the magnitude of this king, but their gifts do foreshadow the kind of King this would be.

V.                       Lessons Learned from the Wise Men.

a.      The Wise Men teach us that Jesus is for all people, Jews and Gentiles.

i.  The worship of the Magi implies that God’s redemption goes beyond the Jews.

ii.                        The response of Herod and the indifference of the religious leaders tell us that many of the Jews will not believe in Jesus.

iii.                      Jesus is the fulfillment of the hopes and prophecies of Israel but also as one who will extend God’s blessings to Gentiles.

iv.                      Paul says of the Corinthians that “…not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”

v.                         They were wise according to worldly standards, they were powerful and influential, and they were of noble birth.”

vi.                      Jesus has come for all people!  Rich and poor.

vii.                    The grace of God is wide and reaches to all people.

viii.                  Even his genealogy proves this, as numerous Gentiles are mentioned.  The grace of God reaches far and wide…

b.      The Wise Men teach us what it means to be wise.

i.  What does it mean for us to be wise?

1.      1 Cor. 1, For it is written,  “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise...”

2.      “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”

ii.                        The wisdom of the world looks at this birth story and scoffs.

1.      He wasn’t born of a wealthy family, His parents were poor.

2.      He wasn’t born in the Temple.

3.      He wasn’t wrapped in kingly garments.

4.      He wasn’t born surrounded by dignitaries noblemen.

iii.                      The wisdom of the world mocks Christ and mocks Christmas and says,

1.      “In an age of science and technology and education, do you really believe in a virgin conception?”

2.      The New York Times thinks this is laughable.

iv.                      The wisdom of this world says that Christ is old news.

v.                         The wisdom of the world says that Christ wasn’t the promised King.

vi.                      The wisdom of this world is always dated….

1.      The wisdom of the age this year, will be ridiculed 50 years from now.

2.      Whatever the op-ed page of the NYT is this week, in 50 years will be mocked.

3.      The experts of this age will look ridiculous to the experts of your grandchildren’s age.

4.      Freud was in, then he was out.

5.      Every generation believes that our experts are different.

6.      NOT with the Truth.  The Truth is never old.

a.       Read Paul, read Luther, read Augustine, Sprurgeon, and they all teach the same thing.

b.      If you try to invent a new kind of Christianity, or redesign it, or take some of this truth and leave that truth you will come away a laughingstock.  Guaranteed.  50 years from now you will look like a caveman.  The wisdom of this world is always dated.

vii.                    The wisdom of this world is shallow.

1.      It values looks, money, relationships, power, it values pomp, it values prestige.

2.      The world want influence, the world wants power. 

3.      You don’t start your campaign in a stable, you start it in the temple.  You start it surrounded by powerful people, not shepherds.

viii.                  The wisdom of God is different.

1.      The wisdom of God is lying in a manger.

2.      The wisdom of God is lay dying on a cross.

3.      The wisdom of God foolishness to the world.

a.       The wise men go to Bethlehem.

b.      Ethnically, they were not the in people.

c.       Theologically, they were not the in people.

d.      All the right scribes and theologians and priests and dignitaries weren’t there.

VI.                    Observations of Jesus.

a.      Jesus is the promised King (2:5).

i.  Main point of 2:1-12 (Five times Matthew quotes the Old Testament).

1.      1:23;

2.      2:6,

3.      2:15,

4.      2:18,

5.      2: 23,

ii.                        This is a major motif that runs through all of Matthew.  Jesus is the fulfillment.

1.      Jesus is born in Bethlehem—a fulfillment of prophecy (2:1)

2.      He is called a Shepherd of Israel (2:5)

iii.                      Herod assembles the chief priests and scribes to talk about this.  These are not folks who all agree on every matter of doctrine, but they unanimously quote Mic. 5:2 and say that prophecy points to the Messiah being born in Bethlehem.

b.      Jesus confronts the powers of the world.

i.  Look at the ruckus Jesus makes and he is just a child!

ii.                        The entire nation is buzzing about the news!

iii.                      Jesus posed a threat to the powers of the world.

1.      “At the heart of the Christmas story is a baby who poses such a threat to the most powerful man around that he kills a whole village full of other babies. At the heart of the Christmas story is a baby who, if only the Roman emperor knew it, will be the Lord of the whole world. Whatever else you say about Jesus, from his birth onwards, people certainly found him a threat. He upset their powergames, and suffered the usual fate of people who do that.” ~N.T. Wright

iv.                      Jesus cannot be stopped by the powers of the world.

1.      The plan of God cannot be stopped. 

2.      No matter how much the world tries to stop Jesus, it can’t.

VII.                Lesson Learned from Jesus.

a.      Be prepared to be held in low regard, if you follow Christ.

i.  Rest assured, if you pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ your life will change.

ii.                        The powers of this world will rouse up with hostility towards you.

iii.                      You will be mocked.

iv.                      You will be belittled.

v.                         You will be patted on the head.

vi.                      You will be called a Exclusive.  Narrow.  Fundamentalist.  Backwoods.  Backwards.

vii.                    The powers of this world will hold you in low regard, just like they powers of this world held the Savior of the world in low regard.

viii.                  Rather than come in pomp, He comes as a Servant Savior.  Humble, riding on a donkey to His death.

1.      A Roman cross is His symbol.

2.      He was seen as weak and insignificant by the Vanity Fair of His day.

3.      But his weakness and death were actually the wisdom and power of God.

ix.                      Forbes:

1.      Forbes magazine presents their annual lists for the top 100 celebrities, or for the 400 Richest Americans, or the world's most powerful women. Other websites list the top ten most powerful people in the world, or the 50 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.

2.      But a website called 24/7 Wall Street has an unusual twist on this theme. They call it the "100 Least Powerful People in the World List." The list includes corporate executives, athletes, politicians, and celebrities who share one common characteristic—they used to be powerful. Here are some "Winners" (or "Losers") that qualified for this year's "100 Least Powerful People in the World List":

a.       Tony Hayward, the former CEO of BP, in 2011 the 4th largest company in the world (based on revenues). After a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the BP board of directors eventually fired Hayward.

b.      Jim Keyes, the former CEO of Blockbuster, once one of the nation's largest retailers.

c.       Mike Jones, the current CEO of the former #1 social network—MySpace, which once had 70 million users.

d.      Arnold Schwarzenegger, the once powerful actor and politician in California, who is attempting to make an acting comeback after driving his state's finances into the ground

e.       Hosni Mubarak, the former President of Egypt who left the country in disgrace

3.      Some of the individuals on this least powerful list were victims of circumstances; others made poor business decisions; and others lost their influence because of moral failure. But none of them chose to become powerless.

4.      In contrast, through his birth, incarnation, earthly ministry, and death on the cross, Jesus the all-powerful and sinless Son of God chose to become powerless for our sakes.

x.                         If you follow Jesus, be prepared to be seen as insignificant and weak.

b.      Jesus is worthy of our worship.

i.  Is there hostility between you and God?

1.       

ii.                        Respond to Him with worship!

1.      Bring your own gold, incense, and myrrh.

2.      These Wise men were wise!!!

a.       They were wise enough to seek Jesus.

i.  “Wise men still seek Him.”

b.      They were wise enough to seek information.

c.       They were wise enough to worship him when they found him.

i.  They didn’t respond with hostility, like Herod.

ii.                        They didn’t respond with indifference, like the scribes and priests.

iii.                      They responded with worship.

3.      So I say with the Apostle Paul, “Where and who is the one who is wise?”

a.       They are humbling themselves. 

b.      They are worshiping the King. 

c.       They are bowing down and falling at His feet.

d.      They are acknowledging His Lordship.

e.       They are believing His Word.

f.        They are preparing the way with repentance, removing everything that offends the King.

g.      They are praising His names with the host’s angels. 

h.      They are counting the riches of this world as rubbish.

i.        They are ignoring the wisdom of this world.

j.        They are valuing the things unseen.

4.      So bring your gold!

a.       Worship Him as the King of Kings and Lord of Lord’s.

b.      King who rules a spiritual Kingdom which will some day come to His people and at which point He will rule the world.

5.      So bring your incense!

a.       Worship Him as the High Priest who can sympathize with your weaknesses and welcomes you just as you are.

b.      Emanuel, He is God with us, sympathetic high priest, able to understand and to aid us. 

c.       He is the Humble King who is approachable.  He is meek and riding on a donkey.  Humble and lying in a manger.

d.      He doesn’t run away from you and the dirt in your life.  He is drawn to it.  He is born into it.

6.      So bring your myrrh!

a.       Worship Him as the Savior.

b.      He was born to die.

c.       Jesus, He saves His people from their sins.

c.       Suggestions to prepare for Christmas.

i.  Prepare for Christmas as a family by going over the Christmas story.

1.      Have hot chocolate together and read Matthew and Luke’s narrative.

2.      Read through the Christmas story in Matthew and Luke—write down some new observations and discuss it.

3.      If you are single, do this yourself or with some friends.

4.      If you are married, do this with your spouse over a cup of coffee.

5.      If you have kids, have them act the story out.

6.      Have a series of family devotions on this.

ii.                        Talk about Christmas with your family over dinner:

1.      Don Whitney “10 Questions to ask this Christmas”

a.       What’s the best thing that’s happened to you since last Christmas?

b.      What was your best Christmas ever? Why?

c.       What’s the most meaningful Christmas gift you’ve ever received?

d.      What was the most appreciated Christmas gift you’ve ever given?

e.       What was your favorite Christmas tradition as a child? 6. What is your favorite Christmas tradition now?

f.        What do you do to try to keep Christ in Christmas?

g.      Why do you think people started celebrating the birth of Jesus?

h.      Do you think the birth of Jesus deserves such a nearly worldwide celebration?

i.        Why do you think Jesus came to earth?

iii.                      Prepare for Christmas by playing good Christmas music.

1.      “Good tidings of comfort and joy” God rest ye merry gentlemen

2.      “Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled"

3.      “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel”

iv.                      Watch the Nativity Story Movie.

1.       

v.                         If you host a Christmas party, share something meaningful.

1.      Read the Christmas story in Matthew.

2.      Make a few comments.

3.      Ask some questions to get people to think.

vi.                      Start some Christmas traditions.

1.      Make a special meal.

a.       Direct the conversation towards the Incarnation.

2.      Make a calendar of Christmas where you peel off a sticker each day of December.

3.      Francis Chan:

a.       We all have various Christmas traditions. Few of us probably have a tradition quite like the Robynson family's. In his book Crazy Love, Francis Chan shares their story:

b.      This family of five, with three kids under the age of ten, chooses to celebrate the birth of Christ in a unique way. On Christmas mornings, instead of focusing on the presents under the tree, they make pancakes, brew an urn of coffee, and head downtown. Once there, they load the coffee and food into the back of a red wagon. Then, with the eager help of their three-year-old, they pull the wagon around the mostly empty streets in search of homeless folks to offer a warm and filling breakfast on Christmas morning.

c.       All three of the Robynson kids look forward to this time of giving a little bit of tangible love to people who otherwise would have been cold and probably without breakfast. Can you think of a better way to start the holiday that celebrates the God who is Love?

d.      Yes, Do all these things to help focus your attention on Jesus, But remember, Jesus came as Savior to deal with sin and evil.  And He has.  Now we wait for his final return and that great and awesome Day, when perfect justice is executed, and He saves those eagerly waiting for Him.

VIII.             The Gospel.

a.      Yes, Do all these things to help focus your attention on Jesus, But remember, Jesus came as Savior to deal with sin and evil.  And He has.  Now we wait for his final return and that great and awesome Day, when perfect justice is executed, and He saves those eagerly waiting for Him.

I. Intro to the Sermon on the Mountain. (5:1-2)

a.      Intro:

i.  As the masses came to hear Jesus he went to Mountain somewhere in Galilee and sat down and began to teach them.

ii.                        What follows is the greatest message on morality the world has ever heard.

iii.                      Even today, ethicists agree that this sermon has shaped world history.

iv.                      That’s what the world would say…

v.                         This sermon is far more than mere morality or ethics.  We can’t and we won’t minimize this to mere morality.

b.      Context:

i.  This sermon speaks of kingdom life, and what the kingdom is like.

1.      See this in its context:  Matthew just described Jesus as a teacher, preacher, and healer, and now he will display Jesus’ teaching.

2.      Jesus is teaching this to self-righteous Pharisees obsessed with externals.

3.      Natural questions on the heart of every Jew would have been, “Am I eligible to enter Messiah’s kingdom? Am I righteous enough to qualify for entrance?”

4.      The only standard of righteousness the people knew was that laid down by the current religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees.

5.      If a person followed all their 1000’s of rules, could such a person enter the kingdom?

6.      Jesus’ sermon therefore must be understood in the context of His offer of the kingdom to Israel and the need for repentance to enter that kingdom.

7.      The sermon showed how a person who is actually in a right relationship with God should conduct his life. 

a.       Not to GET eternal life, but to DISPLAY eternal life.

ii.                        The sermon lays down the foundational truths of the gospel of the kingdom.  He describes what the Kingdom will be like and how the sons and daughters of the kingdoms should live and act.  There is some debate on how to view this sermon of Jesus…

1.      Is this sermon describing the Millenium?  Yes.

2.      Is this sermon a sort of manifesto and constitution of the Millenium?  Yes.

3.      Is this sermon describing how Christians should live today?  Yes.  All of these things are repeated in the rest of the New Testament.

4.      Does this sermon amplify the Law and show us our sin?  Yes.

5.      Does this sermon show the evidence of God’s grace in a person’s life?  Yes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

II.                      Beatititude #1- “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (5:3)

a.       This first beatitude is the foundational beatitude and the most important.

i.  If you don’t get this, you can’t have the rest, and the rest don’t even make sense.

b.      “Blessed”

i.  It means happy.  Happy is the person who does this.  Homer used this word to describe the wealthy.  Plato used it to describe someone who is successful in business.

1.      The last verse of the Old Testament ends with a curse. 

a.       400 years pass, Jesus starts His ministry, and He begins with Good News of the Kingdom.  He starts His sermon with blessing, “Blessed are the…”

ii.                        Everyone wants to be happy.  I have never met a person who doesn’t want to be happy.  It’s what the world longs after.

iii.                      Jesus is saying that this is the pathway to happiness.

iv.                      Jesus’ message is a message of how to be happy, how to be blessed.

v.                         It’s a very relevant question:  How do we get happy?

vi.                      Note: He does not tell them to pursue happiness; He is describing how a person is happy.

vii.                    The Lord does not tell them to pursue happiness.

c.       “poor in spirit” defined.

i.  Being poor in spirit is a tremendous awareness of our unworthiness and our lack and poverty.

ii.                        Lit. “shrink, cower, cringe.”

iii.                      Essentially, this is an inward attitude that we have nothing to commend ourselves.  We are spiritually poor, needy, bankrupt.

iv.                      We are powerless.

v.                         We are like little children, or babies (*Georgia*)

1.      Jesus said you have to become like them to enter the kingdom.

2.      What did he mean?

3.      He meant we need to realize our utter and complete dependency on God.

d.      What this doesn’t mean:

i.  He is not describing a disposition or a natural tendency or a personality.

ii.                        Not poor quality of faith or financially poor.  But the spiritual needy.

1.      It’s possible to be the richest person in the world, but be poor in spirit.

2.      And it’s possible to be living in poverty, but have no need for God.  Wealthy in spirit.  Self-sufficient.

e.       There is a link between being “Poor in spirit” and repentance.

i.  This is the main point of the beatitudes and the main point of Jesus’ teaching!

1.      If you don’t repent. 

2.      If you don’t see yourself as spiritually impoverished.

3.      If you don’t see yourself as spiritually poor and needy.

4.      Then you can’t be a part of the kingdom.

ii.                        When you look towards God, are you confident, or do you feel bankrupt and naked?

iii.                      Do we feel you have something in yourself to commend you to God, or do we feel inadequate?

iv.                      Do you feel justified to approach God based on your life?

v.                         Do we march in to God’s presence, or do we crawl on our face?

f.        Being “Poor in spirit” internal and spiritual.

i.  It doesn’t look to externals…rather it looks to internals.

ii.                        We don’t look to any great family history or preachers or missionaries.

iii.                      We don’t look to our grandfather of father or mother who were Christians.

iv.                      We don’t look to where were born or what church we attend or any good deeds we have done.

v.                         All of that is like dung, Paul would say.

vi.                      Being poor in spirit means you approach God and say, “Woe is me!  I am a man of unclean lips”

vii.                    Jesus is concerned with the inner person, not the externals.

1.      The Jews were expecting a political kingdom and an external kingdom, which will come in due time.

2.      But Jesus teaches here that the kingdom first and foremost is an internal, spiritual kingdom.

viii.                  John the Baptist illustrates this:

1.      Jesus says of John the Baptist that he is the greatest man who had ever lived up to that time.

2.      Yet John lived a simple life, wore simple clothes, didn’t have possessions or a home, and had simple diet, and he preached a message that the world thought was a joke.

3.      Compare John with Solomon, who had a huge home, lots of wealth, lots of power, military power, political power.

4.      The Jews would have said that Solomon or David was the greatest, yet Jesus says that John the Baptist is the greatest.

5.      John the Baptist, in a sense will personify what Jesus message is all about.

ix.                      The happiest person will be the person who has been spiritually changed, not externally changed.

g.      How do we become poor in spirit?

i.  This is something God has to do, by grace.  But there are things we can do.

1.      We behold the holiness of God.

2.      We read and examine His Holy Word.

3.      Read what He expects of us.

4.      Read the sermon on the Mount.

ii.                        If you are not impoverished after hearing this, then it means you are still out of touch with reality.

iii.                      When a person truly comes in contact with Jesus and they will say with Peter, “Lord, please go away from me, for I am a sinner.”

iv.                      Lord, if you know about me, you will see that I have nothing to commend myself.”

v.                         Woe is me!

vi.                      That’s being poor in spirit…

h.      “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”

i.  Do you feel entitled?  Then you are not poor in spirit and it’s impossible for you to enter the Kingdom

ii.                        Do you feel like God owes you?  Then you are not poor in spirit and it’s impossible for you to enter the Kingdom

iii.                      Have you repented, and do you continually repent?  Then you are not poor in spirit and it’s impossible for you to enter the Kingdom.

III.                   Beatititude #2- “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (5:4)

a.       “Blessed are those who mourn”

i.  lit. “sad, grieve, lament”

ii.                        The world hears this and mocks.

1.      This the very thing the world tries to avoid!

2.      The world spends a lot of time and energy on AVOIDING mourning!

3.      But here Jesus says that the only truly happy people are those who mourn.

4.      If you laugh now, you will weep later.

5.      Mourning precedes joy.

b.      Conviction of sin and the bad news is a prerequisite of joy and the good news.

i.  These beatitudes build on each other.

1.      When you are poor in spirit, the next thing you do is mourn.

ii.                        Everyone wants joy and happiness, and Jesus is saying that you cannot have it unless you mourn.

iii.                      The masses want happiness, but they refuse to mourn.

iv.                      Jesus is saying it’s impossible to happy without mourning.

v.                         One of the greatest problems of the church today, and of individual Christians, is that many have never really been convicted of sin.

1.      The bad news of sin, condemnation, hell, and judgment, has been massaged away.

2.      The world has taken spiritual morphine, and numbed itself.

3.      Churches refuse to preach on sin and condemnation  and hell.

4.      Mourning and lament are been seen as a curse and something to avoid.

c.       Why do we mourn and lament?

i.  We mourn and lament because of our own sin.

1.      Just examine yourself against the Word.

2.      Examine yourself in light of the Scriptures and what Jesus and the apostles expect.

3.      If you are not immediately led to mourning, there is something very wrong.

4.      Sins of omission and sins of commission:

a.       What are the things I did and said today that were sinful?

b.      What are the things I didn’t do and say?

c.       The list begins to pile up and it’s depressing.

d.      There is something in me that is prone to wander.

e.       I am conflicted in myself.  There is a war inside me.

f.        This causes the Christian to mourn.

ii.                        We mourn and lament because of the sins of other people.

1.      We see other Christians in sin, and it makes us mourn.

2.      We see people ruining their lives with sin, and it hurts.

3.      We see the affects of sin and how is destroys lives and ruins relationships and makes people miserable and relationships estranged, and we lament.

iii.                      We mourn and lament because of the world’s sin and its lostness.

1.      The world is in state of darkness.

2.      Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers and people are deceived.

3.      Billions of people live in misery.  Not physically impoverished, but spiritually impoverished and dead and miserable and wicked.

4.      And sin is compounded on sin and misery is multiplied.

iv.                      If you don’t lament your sin, if you don’t grieve over your sin, you are not born again and you are not part of the kingdom.**

d.      “for they shall be comforted”

i.  Here is the promise:

ii.                        After a person mourns and is made aware and miserable because of sin, He is then drawn to Christ, and is comforted.

iii.                      Like the song, “And then I look and see Him there, who made an end to all my sin.”

iv.                      The world’s problems are unsolvable.  The world is spinning out of control.  The global economy hangs by a slender thread.  Nuclear threat is still a threat.  People are still crazy.

v.                         But the Christian is comforted that God is on the throne.

vi.                      The Christian is comforted by the promise of God, the promise of eternal life and forgiveness of sins.

e.       The Christian is a bit of a paradox:

i.  This is a bit of a paradox.

1.      We are Serious but not morose.

2.      “Sober-minded but not sullen”  MLJ

3.      Broken because of sin, but happy because of Christ.

4.      “Cheer up.  You’re a lot worse than you think you are.  Cheer up.  God is a lot greater than you think He is.” Jack Miller.

ii.                        It’s somewhat interesting that in the gospels we never see Jesus laughing.

1.      He is described as a man of sorrows.

2.      He weeps for Lazarus.  He weeps for Jerusalem.

3.      He goes around telling people to repent and mourn because of sin.

4.      And yet Matthew says the Son of Man came eating and drinking.  Jesus was the Bridegroom and there was joy.  The Pharisees criticized Him and His disciples because they didn’t fast.

iii.                      Paul is a similar paradox.

1.      He describes himself as a wretched man, as a man who groans and laments his body and his sin. 

2.      Who wants to be delivered from himself and this world.

iv.                      Yet, over and over he is rejoicing even in his suffering and pain.

f.        Application:  Do you mourn?

i.  Do you mourn over your own spiritual condition?

ii.                        Do you mourn for the world’s spiritual condition?

iii.                      Do you hate your sin?

iv.                      Does it make you sad?

v.                         Do you hate sin in the world?  The parties.  The vanity.  The entertainment and numbness.  The addictions.  The pain and suffering.

vi.                      Does is make you lament?

vii.                    And yet…the promise is that we will be comforted

viii.                  We will have comfort in the midst of lamentation.

IV.                    Beatititude #3- “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (5:5)

a.       Again we see the utter contrast with the world.

i.  The world thinks in terms of power and influence and ability and impact and aggressiveness and self-promotion and self-assertion, numbers.

ii.                        “Be assertive!  Take the bull by the horns!  Make it happen! Conquer!”

iii.                      When Atheist philosopher Neitche came to the sermon on the mount and read that the meek inherit the earth, he said it was a lie! “Assert yourself; it’s the arrogant who take over the earth.”

iv.                      “Nice guys finish last” says the world.

v.                         The utter difference between the Christian and the non-Christian.

1.      The natural person wants to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-made.

2.      The Marlborough Man.

3.      The world mocks someone who is poor in spirit, needy.

4.      The natural person likes boasting, and confidence. 

5.      He is interested in this world, because this is all there is.  So grab all the gusto out of life you can.

6.      The Christian is totally different.

b.      But Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek…”

i.  What is meant?

ii.                        Meek lit. means “humble, modest, unassuming, gentle”

iii.                      Jesus is teaching the very opposite of what the world teaches.

iv.                      Rather than trust your own abilities and powers, rather you trust in the Lord.

v.                         Psalm 37:7, Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!”

vi.                      Mat. 11:29, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

c.       Meekness doesn’t not mean weak, or spineless, or pathetic.

i.  It doesn’t mean niceness or someone who’s a pushover, or a wallflower.

ii.                        It really means power under control.  Like a tame horse.

iii.                      It means to be “Humble, gentle, not aggressive—but trusting and waiting on the Lord to act”

d.      Illustration:

i.  When you get pulled over for driving too fast, and the police officer tells you that you were driving 20 miles over the speed limit, and the ticket should be over $400, but he has decided to let you go, and your jaw drops and you feel like giving him a hug…here is the question:  How do you drive off?

1.      Do you squeal your tires?  Do you spray gravel and lay some rubber?

2.      Or do you drive away slowly?  Because you have just been shown the law, and you have violated the law, but you have been shown mercy and comforted.  How do you drive off?  You drive off in meekness…

e.       King David is a great illustration of this meekness and humility.

i.  God had made David king, but Saul was still in charge.  Saul was still in the position of leadership.

ii.                        But David was the rightful king.

iii.                      Over and over Saul tries to kill David, but David refuses to retaliate.  He leaves it to the Lord.  Over and over David could have killed Saul, but he refuses to touch the “Lord’s anointed.”

iv.                      A great example of meekness--He is an illustration of power under control.

f.        Moses was an example of this:

i.  He was called the meekest person who had ever lived up to that time.

ii.                        Humble before the Lord.

g.      Illustration:

i.  Doug Nichols is Founder and Director of Action International Ministries…

ii.                        It was a long time ago, in the summer of 1966, that Doug was working for Operation Mobilization and was stationed in London during their big annual conference. He was assigned to the clean-up crew. One night at around 12:30 AM he was sweeping the steps at the conference center when an older gentleman approached him and asked if this was where the conference was being held. Doug said that it was, but that just about everyone had already gone to bed. This man was dressed very simply and had just a small bag with him. He said that he was attending the conference. Doug replied he would try to find him a place to sleep and led him to a room where about 50 people were bunked down on the floor. The older gentleman had nothing to sleep on, so Doug laid down some padding and a blanket and offered a towel for a pillow. The man said that would be just fine and that he appreciated it very much.

iii.                      Doug asked the man if he had been able to eat dinner. It turns out that he hadn’t eaten since he had been travelling all day. Doug took him to the dining room but it was locked. He soon jimmied the lock and found some cornflakes and milk and bread and jam. As the man ate, the two began to talk. The man said that he and his wife had been working in Switzerland for several years, where he had a small ministry that served hippies and travelers. He spoke about his work and spoke about some of the people he had seen turn to Christ. When he finished eating, both men turned in for the night.

iv.                      Doug woke up the next morning only to find out that he was in big trouble. The conference leaders came to him and said, “Don’t you know who it was that you put on the floor last night? That’s Francis Schaeffer! He’s the speaker for this conference! We had a whole room set aside for him!”

v.                         Doug had no idea that he was sleeping on the floor next to a celebrity, that he had told a man to sleep on the floor who had a profoundly important ministry. He had no idea that this man had helped shape the Christian church of that day, and really, the church of our day. And Schaeffer never let on. In humility he had accepted his lot and been grateful for it.

vi.                      That’s meekness.  He’s just happy to be there.

h.      Again, there is a logical connection to these beatitudes.

i.  Poverty in spirit, mourning and lament over our sins, and now humility.

ii.                        In a sense Jesus us saying the same thing in three different way.

i.        Meekness has been said to be “power under control.”

i.  And I think that is true and helpful, but more than that it is a person who is comfortable with being a servant.

ii.                        When a person has a correct view of himself, as someone who has been shown mercy, who is impoverished.

iii.                      Such a person is happy to be a servant.

iv.                      When a person sees himself as a servant, he isn’t frustrated that people don’t recognize him, or promote him, or see his giftedness.

v.                         The meek person is a person who forgets himself.  He’s just happy to be along for the ride.

vi.                      He’s just happy to be a servant.

1.      I’m just happy to be here.

2.      I don’t need a place of position of prominence.  I’m content to be a servant.

vii.                    John Bunyan said it well, “He that is down need fear no fall.”

viii.                  Such a person isn’t easily offended, or sensitive.

1.      You can’t really offend a meek person.

2.      Anything you say against him, he agrees with.

3.      The opposite of a meek person is easily offended, very sensitive.

4.      But the meek person is just humbled that God has had mercy on them. 

5.      They don’t need recognition or accolades, they are content to be a servant of all.

ix.                      The meek person is a content person.  That might be the best way to describe it.  They are content.

j.        Illustration:

i.  President Theodore Roosevelt adopted as his foreign policy, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." By that he meant that if the U.S. had a strong military, it could work its will among the nations of the world.  In 1901, Roosevelt elaborated on his philosophy: "If a man continually blusters,…a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power."

ii.                        Meekness is not weakness. 

iii.                      Jesus isn’t telling us that we are blessed when we are push-overs. 

iv.                      Rather, we don’t need to contest. 

v.                         We don’t need to defend our honor or our name. 

vi.                      We don’t need to respond to criticism.

vii.                    Behind the non-retaliation, is a confidence, strength, and trust, that God will vindicate.  God will act on our behalf.

k.      “Inheriting the earth”

i.  This is even true in the animal world:  Lambs and sparrows are no match for Lions, Tigers, and Eagles.  But look who’s on the endangered species list.  There are lots of lambs and sparrows…

ii.                        Powerful people who are arrogant won’t inherit the earth.

iii.                      Part of the reason that a person can remain meek, and even prefer to be meek, is because he or she knows that promise of the future.

iv.                      She will inherit the earth.

v.                         There is an inheritance that awaits.

vi.                      In another age, we will reign with Christ.

vii.                    We don’t have to stockpile wealth or reputation here. 

viii.                  We don’t need to amass possessions and we don’t need to safeguard our status.

ix.                      We can truly be happy to be humble, because we have a sweet inheritance coming.

x.                         This world is going up in smoke.

V.                       Beatititude #4- “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (5:6)

a.       Happy is the person who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness.

i.  “If this verse is to you one of most blessed statements of the whole of Scripture you can be quite certain you are a Christian; if it is not, then you had better examine the foundations again.” MLJ

b.      What doesn’t it mean?

i.  We don’t hunger and thirst for happiness, we hunger and thirst for righteousness.

ii.                        There is a desire to be rid of sin. A desire to love what God loves and hate what God hates.

iii.                      This is the problem and the reason for our misery.  We don’t love what God loves and hate what God hates.

iv.                      Our problem is that we like sin. 

v.                         Even if we know it’s wrong and bad for us and makes us miserable. 

vi.                      Even if we know that, we also know we like sin.  We default to sin.

c.       It doesn’t mean that we are to seek our own righteousness as a bases for fellowship with God.

i.  He isn’t talking about a forensic righteousness:

ii.                        This is different than what Paul talks about in Romans 1.

iii.                      MLJ, “The Christian should always be a man who knows that his sins are forgiven.  He should not be seeking it, he should know he has it, that he is justified in Christ freely by the grace of God, that he stands righteous at this moment in the presence of his Father.”

iv.                      Nonetheless, some Christians may even proudly proclaim their own righteousness.

1.      “Having spent a considerable amount of time good people, I can understand why Jesus liked to be with Tax Collectors and sinners.”  Mark Twain

d.      But the person who is hungering and thirsting for righteousness is a person who has making efforts and rearranging his life to avoid sin.

i.  If he sins, he hates it to such a degree that he changes things in his life so that he doesn’t do it again.

ii.                        It is a longing to be holy!

iii.                      Darby defined it better than anyone, he said,

1.      “To hunger is not enough; I must be really starving.  When the prodigal son was hungry he went to feed upon the husks, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.”

iv.                      The happy person is a person who is starving to getting rid of his sin, and desperate for holiness.  The holy person is the happiest person.

e.       Application:

i.  Do we long to be holy?

ii.                        Do we long to be like the great saints and missionaries who have gone on before us?

iii.                      Do we long to be like Joseph, or Daniel, or Paul, or Hannah, or Mary?

f.        How do we practically starve after righteousness?

i.  We ask ourselves, “What saps our desire for righteousness?”

1.      We avoid the things that deflate my desire for holiness.

2.      There things that are obviously wrong, I am not talking about that?

3.      What are the things that make us dull?

ii.                        What the the things that take away my desire for the Word, for fellowship, for Sunday morning?

1.      What are the things that tale away too much time for the Lord?

2.      Are they games, or apps, of football, or magazines, or shopping?

iii.                      Think of it like appetite:

1.      When I eat snacks before a meal, it takes away my appetite.

2.      The same it true spiritually.

3.      What are the things that take away my appetite?

4.      This is tricky because we don’t want to lay down a lay.

5.      We don’t want to make a list for everyone.

6.      We don’t want to set up a fence of righteousness.

7.      The Christian has an enormous amount of freedom.

8.      But the principle still stands!

iv.                      “Anything that dims my vision of Christ, or takes away my taste for Bible study, or cramps my prayer life, or makes Christian work difficult, is wrong for me, and I must, as a Christian, turn away from it.” J. Wilbur Chapman

g.      The person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is willing to make lifestyle changes.

i.  This is a person who has truly repented:

ii.                        What does repentance look like, you ask?  This.

iii.                      If we had time for ourselves and our own amusements, then we also have time for the Lord.

iv.                      They read biographies and they feel ashamed of themselves, and yet they long to be like them.

VI.                    Summary:

a.       Unhappy and cursed is the person who is spiritually rich with no need for they will have no inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.

b.      Unhappy and cursed is the person who parties without Christ, because he has numbed himself of his actual need with no lasting, real party to look forward to and no comfort in the meantime.

c.       Unhappy and cursed are the proud, because they are not in touch with the reality of their sin and depravity, and will have no inheritance in the kingdom.

d.      Unhappy and cursed are those who have no appetite for holiness because they make provision for their sinful desire and their apathy is the proof they have never really repented.

e.       What is our reaction to these beatitudes?

i.  Do I find them hard?  Do I find them to be uncomfortable?  Do we long for these beatitudes?  Do we like what the King is saying?  Do we see these statements as overstatements?  Are we happy?  Do we want to be like this?  If not, in the words of MLJ, “I am afraid it just means I am not a Christian.”  “If I don’t want to be like this, then it means I am still dead in my trespasses and sins.”

ii.                        But if I feel like I am unworthy, and at the same time I want to be like that, I am unworthy, but that is my desire and my ambition, then there MUST be new life in me.  I must be regenerated..

VII.                Application:

a.      Repent and make yourself low…by God’s grace!

b.      Are these beatitudes requirements to enter the kingdom or blessings that are cultivated?

i.  If we see these statements as ethical requirements then we have turned this into Law and our effort is required to enter into the kingdom.

ii.                        If we see these statements as blessing that God has placed in us by His grace, then we can appreciate His sovereign work, and seek to cultivate these graces.

iii.                      What I mean is that only God can do this.

1.      The unsaved natural person cannot make himself poor in spirit, mourn for his sin, or be happy to be meek, and starve after righteousness.  This is a work of God.  It is an evidence of grace.  Evidence that God has worked.

2.      Repentance is a gift from God.

3.      Mourning is a gift from God.

4.      Humility and lowliness is a gift from God.

5.      Hungering after righteousness is a gift from God.

6.      These are signs of life in a person.

7.      Evidence of life.  Signs of being born again.

iv.                      We don’t work hard to get these traits to gain God’s approval, rather God’s approval and grace produces these traits.

1.      Our job is to cultivate and work our what God has worked in.

2.      In other words, when a person truly comes to God in repentance and poverty of spirit, broken over their sin.

v.                         Jesus goes after the heart.  He goes after the spirit of a person, not the externals.

c.       Ravi Zacharius was preaching at a university…

i.  “and there was a man had had a doctor friend was wan an agnostic.  She was somewhat of a famous Doctor and very skeptical of anything religious.  In fact she despised religious people.  So this man somehow convinced her to come to the University to hear Ravi give a lecture on the defense of the Christian faith.  She reluctantly attended.  Afterwards, the friend who brought her asked her what she thought and what she said was both telling and insightful. She said, “Very, very powerful, but I wonder what he is like in his private life?

ii.                        What most people are wondering these days, is not whether or not Christianity is true, but whether or not it makes any difference in your private lives?

d.      Living this message is the best means of evangelism!

i.  The world is in desperate need of seeing true Christians.

ii.                        The world does not need a new description of Christianity; the world needs a new demonstration of Christianity.

iii.                      Given the option between an evangelistic crusade, or a real Christian, give me a real Christian who lives the sermon on the Mount.

1.      “The world today is looking for, and desperately needs, true Christians.  I am never tired of saying that what the true Church needs to do is not organize evangelistic campaigns to attract outside people, but to begin herself to live the Christian life.”  MLJ

iv.                      “What my people need, more than anything else, is my own personal holiness.”  Robert Murray McCheyne.

v.                         True Christians make the deepest impression.

vi.                      Reggie Sanchez, who is doing a church plant here in our own chapel on Sunday afternoons, is a brother from Southside Church.  He has shared the gospel and has a ministry to former prostitutes in Denver.  He has taken some of them in, and they live in his home.  That’s genuine Christianity.  And it makes an impression.

vii.                    Unbelievers look at that and say, “wow, what would make a person do such a thing?”

viii.                  We need to commit ourselves to actually practice this!

ix.                      And as we do it, we will become even more poor in spirit, because we realize how from we are from it!

e.       Jesus confronts the heart:

i.  If you listen to this sermon of Jesus, and pat yourself on the back and feel comfortable, then you are just like the Pharisees and are not born again.

ii.                        One of the major purposes of this sermon is to ratchet up sin.  To ratchet up the law.

iii.                      “You have heard it said, do not commit adultery, I say to you, that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery.”

f.        One of the results from listening to Jesus, is that it leads us to be poor in spirit.  The expectations of the Law are crushing.

g.      Blessed are those who are crushed!

VIII.             The Gospel.