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Tag: adam

  • Supernatural Before Adam – Because the days are evil – 2

    Supernatural Before Adam – Because the days are evil – 2

    Demons, evils spirits and of course Satan are all part of the unseen supernatural. They oppose the Lord and deceive many, but Jesus knew them all and exercised power over their evil.

    We introduced this series, Because the Days are Evil, with a quote from a letter written to the first century church at Ephesus. Now we’ll take a brief look at the relationship between Jesus and the spirit world and the seen and unseen we question in this day.

    The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”

    And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

    Luke 10:17-18 ESV

    Before Adam

    Genesis answers some of our questions about the supernatural and creation of the physical universe, yet seems to lack an explanation of the origin of spirits, angels, Satan and the supernatural.

    Consider an explanation of creation from Genesis 1 and Adam, Eve, original sin and the serpent all come to mind. But follow this timeline from Genesis and you may wonder about the creation of the serpent in the garden.

    Moses relates God’s covenant with the forefathers of the Hebrews and includes some explanation of the beginnings of things. We clearly see supernatural occurrences orchestrated by the Lord.

    In the garden, a perfect setting God created for man, we observe supernatural events and a supernatural explanation of the influence of evil by Satan, a talking serpent, a snake with poisonous words against God tempting man (adam) to death.

    Jesus claims the supernatural more than once, offering insight into the eternal not understood in the chronology of mankind. He says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”

    Have you ever wondered where that fit into the timeline of creation?

    Natural vs Supernatural time

    How do the created measure time of the Creator?

    The supernatural is sometimes observable, but not naturally measurable.

    Science provides reliable natural explanations of the observable, but fails in unproven theories of the supernatural. We just don’t get it – we want to understand everything as if we are above a creation not of our making.

    We want to be gods of the unseen and the immeasurable. Yet we cannot be and should not try to be God!

    Therefore a human measure of the infinite with billions and billions of stars and trillions and trillions of atoms in this visible place is just as unfathomable as time and its supernatural beginning.

    A world introduced to the risen Christ Jesus once measured time in terms of the Son of Man, King above all kings who proved, “I and the Father are One.”

    This year is A.D. 2019, that is, anno Domini (from the Julian calendar) or ‘in the year of our Lord‘ twenty-nineteen.

    Theories of time immemorial and explanations of the unobservable supernatural have come and gone. Even faithful men of God and followers of Christ have come up short in our proofs of the unprovable.

    Yet by faith all men must start with faith that One exists in the unseen realm of the supernatural who was and is and will always be – One who reigns over a vast and glorious creation.

    The heavens declare the glory of God,
    and the sky displays what his hands have made.

    man is like a breath - quote from Ps 144 and photo of sun and blue sky breaking through the clu=ouds

    One day tells a story to the next.
    One night shares knowledge with the next
    without talking,
    without words,
    without their voices being heard.
    Yet, their sound has gone out into the entire world,
    their message to the ends of the earth.

    Psalm 19: 1-4 GW

    Christ, Lord over the supernatural

    Luke 10: excerpt

    After this, the Lord appointed 70 other disciples to go ahead of him to every city and place that he intended to go. They were to travel in pairs.

    He told them, “The harvest is large, but the workers are few. So ask the Lord who gives this harvest to send workers to harvest his crops. Go! I’m sending you out like lambs among wolves…

    Jesus, Son of Man, sends followers to proclaim the Gospel to an unbelieving world.

    “But whenever you go into a city and people don’t welcome you, leave… If the miracles worked in your cities had been worked in Tyre and Sidon, they would have changed the way they thought and acted… Judgment day will be better for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to heaven? No, you will go to hell!

    So Jesus warns of hell and speaks of judgment day. Many refuse to believe it because they can’t quantify it.

    Woe to those deceived by the great deceiver Satan, the serpent of sin who enters the natural creation with slithering supernatural power over those who turn against God!

    Do you believe only your eyes?

    Jesus continues instruction to faithful followers:

    16 “The person who hears you hears me, and the person who rejects you rejects me. The person who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

    He had commissioned the eleven Disciples again after after He rose from the grave:

    “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.

    Mark 16L15b

    Some men and women will not believe you, He previously had told seventy-two disciples. Yet, ‘Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves, Jesus had commissioned them. [Luke 10:3]

    17 The 70 disciples came back very happy. They said, “Lord, even demons obey us when we use the power and authority of your name!”

    Jesus has power over demons you also do not believe exist — if you are deceived.

    18 Jesus said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

    Jesus told an unbelieving religious establishment, “Before Abraham was, I am!” Here the Lord witnesses to disciples, “I watched Satan fall from heaven…” Yet unless some see Satan or demons or unseen supernatural powers they will dismiss all as myth.

    Seventy men came back to Jesus, the Gospel records, and witnessed:

    “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.” [KJV]

    Yet many do not believe because they cannot see these supernatural beings of spirit.

    a Supernatural Serpent

    Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, —

    Genesis 3:1a KJV

    STOP! Two things here in Moses’ narrative of creation.

    1. A serpent (who we later learn is Satan) is talking. Not only is that crafty, but seems to an unbelieving world an impossibility.
    2. The supernatural serpent asks an evil question of the woman, “Did God actually say … (you know the questions object about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). Satan is asking Eve to question the word of God!

    Then the serpent tells the woman a lie.

    3:4 וַיֹּאמֶר הַנָּחָשׁ אֶל־הָֽאִשָּׁה לֹֽא־מֹות תְּמֻתֽוּן׃

    The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!

    Genesis 3:4 Hebrew & NASB

    Go ask her then, “Eve, do you believe the evil one who told you, ‘You will not die?”

    Of course not even followers of Moses could do that, because Moses also records that both Adam and Eve died. After their original sin of disobeying the Lord God, their flesh and bones returned to the dust.

    Therefore, consider the supernatural influence of spirits, demons, fallen angels, men possessed by evil and especially Satan could have on your life and death, your merciless judgment or eternal life by grace.

    Jesus IS the Lord, One with God the Father of all creation and the Holy Spirit. God loves you and asks for your eternal love of good.

    Yet Satan would sway the uncertain toward the gravity of Hell and battle of evil against good.

    Choose this day who you will follow. Christ Jesus our loving Savior? Or Satan the angel of darkness asking you to prove, “Did God really say…?”

    To be continued...

  • Disaster From Disobedience, A Savior From Before Eden – 5

    Temptation: “Did God really say…?”

    Genesis 3:

    The Temptation and the Fall
    3 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?”

    Here it begins, original sin.

    I might have easily named this series, ‘Temptation Before Disobedience,’ yet we shall not fall into this pit. Rather than taking the more traveled path of placing blame on the already-fallen Satan, we shall examine the progression of our own disobedience to God.

    Genesis 2:17 .. but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

    One point of my previous post, knowledge of good and evil comes to man with overwhelming responsibility, as well as consequence for sin. Returning to Genesis 3 and Satan’s temptation for man’s disobedient fall:

    “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” – Genesis 3:5 

    So yes, we know of good and evil independently of obedience to God. Yet are we like God?

    In so many ways this frail, fallen flesh created in God’s imagine no longer reflects the Lord’s righteousness. Each reflection of our sin clouds the clarity of the Lord’s gleaming glory.

    And the Lord said of creation, “It is good;” yet in so many ways since man’s temptation to judge good and evil, it is not so good.

    Before we proceed past original sin, let’s briefly consider the relationship between Adam and Eve with the Lord prior to their temptation.

    God in the Garden Paradise

    No one has ever seen God. – John 1:18

    Image yourself as Adam if you are a man, or as Eve if you are a woman, walking in paradise with the Living God. (You have not yet sinned.) 

    Can you describe your personal relationship with the One who has created you and walks with you in Eden? What is the Lord like? 

    He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. – John 1:2-3

    In this paradise of Eden, the Person of the Lord seems to nurture a newborn existence in a vast and wonderful place. 

    Colossians 1:

    15 He is the image of the invisible God,
    the firstborn over all creation.
    16 For everything was created by Him,
    in heaven and on earth,
    the visible and the invisible…

    17 He is before all things,
    and by Him all things hold together.

    John 1:1

    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

    How would Adam or Eve described God before the fall?

    The Creator walks with us! He IS the image of the invisible God in whose image we are also created. The Lord is not an angel (though some later descriptions call Him ‘The Angel of the Lord’). God is a loving Person, a Father if you will, to both of us.

    But then… we both sinned…

    7 “Then the eyes of both of them were opened,” Moses records. It’s not that they were literally blind, but by their new-found knowledge they now saw, heard and realized things they never needed to know.

    Eyes Opened to our Sin

    We heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and we hid  from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. We were naked. Although we had always been naked, something told us that no one else should see us that way, so we clothed ourselves with leaves.

    We heard the familiar voice of the Lord:

    “Where are you?”

    We had never hidden from Him. Adam called out from behind the trees for both of us:

    10 And he said, “I heard You in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”

    “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

    Of course… we had.

    And somehow we knew that it was wrong. Never before had we ever considered that anything we had done had been either right or wrong. We just did it and lived with great joy in paradise.

    Well, you know the rest. Excuses, punishment for our disobedience… 

    We then began our schooling in the differences between blessing and curse. But now it was too late, for we could not go back to the Paradise where we had lived in overflowing joy with the Lord God.

    When the Lord had blessed us He had commanded, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.” Now beyond Eden these words to fill the earth, and subdue it seem burdensome rather than a blessing. And the Lord has said that we now have only a lifetime to begin that which once seemed timeless.

    The Lord says that we now have eyes to see and ears to hear what is good and what is evil. Be careful to do all that is good and shun what is evil He has said. 

    How long, O Lord, until you will return us to your glory? More than a lifetime? 

    And what must it be like to first return to the dust…

    To be continued…

     

     

     

  • No Foolin’! Satan seeks christians

    No Foolin’! Satan seeks christians

    April Fools! (Don’t get caught, child of God.)

    Proverbs 10:23 KJV It is as sport to a fool to do mischief: but a man of understanding hath wisdom.

    And note from the definitions that in addition to stupidity, the attitude of a fool could include arrogance. Let us not as Christians believe that only unbelievers are prone to actions of foolishness.

    Easter and Christmas are always a time for rebellious sinners to make light of Christ: with bunnies and Santas, Mardi Gras revelries and crowded mall party madness. Yet even the marginal christian who adds Christ to their resume may show up at church for these two celebrations of the faith.

    Pray for these. I love so many who Satan also seeks.

    What do you suppose happened to the great crowds who shouted HOSANNA as Christ Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday? (After all, they were good Jews for their faithfulness to just show up for this annual religious festival.)

    And how many of us who worship the Lord every week believe ONLY an unbeliever (or possibly a marginal believer) can be a fool?

    If we do, would we not do well to ask how easily WE might become one of those wayward christians who all-too-often deny Christ in the crowds and ignore God in our daily life?

    You may think such questions for an ‘April Fools’ day not entirely liturgical and appropriate for the middle of Holy Week (in which it falls this year); yet consider the foolishness of ignoring any scripture of God and deceiving attacks of Satan against you and me when we draw nearer to Jesus.

    Consider that the Passover, to which Christ Jesus and thousands of the faithful of God made their annual pilgrimage, is foremost worship of God. And consider from the Gospels the significance and nature of the sacrifices for their sins.

    Genesis 4:

    3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

    Even in the beginning, two brothers brought their sacrifices of worship to the Lord God.

    And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?”

    [Now note this, Easter worshiper, as you run back into the world on Monday…]

    7 “If you do well, will you not be accepted? 

    And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

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    The serpent deceived adam and all sons of adam except Jesus. It was more than foolishness for Cain to envy the worship of Abel; it was sin.

    And lest we imagine that our worship might not also turn, as did the HOSANNA’s of Palm Sunday turn into the sinful shouts, CRUCIFY HIM! on Good Friday; let’s look a little closer at some cautions of Christ Jesus.

    Matthew 7:26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a man who built his house on the sand.

    Where have all the foolish ones run the day after Easter?

    Will you be one of these who run to build your week on the sand?

    Even prior to His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus had taught tens of thousands of the faithful religious followers of God. He had done miraculous deeds in witness to the crowds.

    Yet when He proclaims His own death and requirement of true obedience to God, how many remain?

    John 6

    15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

    “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

    35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst… 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

    53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

    You have heard it before: You must be born again.

    63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) …

     66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.67 So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”

    68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

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    Now my caution against foolishness for Holy Week:

    Luke 22

    The Plot to Kill Jesus

    Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover. 2 And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people.

    Judas to Betray Jesus

    3 Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve…

    19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

    20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

    21 But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. 22 For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!”

    Jesus Foretells Peter’s Denial

    31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat,

    32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

    33 Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” 34 Jesus said,“I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.”

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    Perhaps you are not so foolish as Judas this day – Judas, who when he repented too late did hang himself and is by his betrayal is sentenced to Hell!

    Perhaps you are not even so foolishly arrogant as Peter – Peter, who would deny knowing Christ Jesus, whom he had called, “Lord,” and asked knowingly, “to whom else shall we go?”

    Yet humbly I ask you – I ask each one of us to set aside our own foolishness.

    Let us humble ourselves as our Lord Christ Jesus did for each and every sinner by His Holy Sacrifice on the Cross.

    For as our Lord prayed for Peter to not be sifted by Satan, the enemy of Christ’s righteousness and Sacrifice, the deceiver who roams the earth and stands in the vestibule of our churches; let us also pray for those we love.

    Let us pray that the Lord would win those hearts and join those beloved weak spirits with our hope in the resurrection and eternal love of Christ Jesus, God our Father and the Holy Spirit.

    Lord may they join us in our worship and Your love, for ever.

    Amen.