Spiritual Warfare #3 - The Serpent in Eden

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

1. 0:00:09

   Okay, good morning, everyone. I'm gonna welcome everyone to Fire and Grace School of Ministry this morning, second semester. Our students out there, anybody who might watch this later on, we welcome you to our second semester. This is the spiritual warfare block. This is class number three. And this one's gonna be entitled The Serpent in Eden. So we're dealing with spiritual warfare. Of course, the first week, we kind of had an overview of the importance of knowing our enemy. Week two, we went kind of back to origins, the fall of Lucifer, Satan, Halal, when he was a fallen angel, and before he was a fallen angel, and back to the pre-edamic angelic kingdoms on the earth. And so we're gonna kind of pick up there. But again, this is The Serpent in Eden class three. We're gonna be looking at Genesis chapter three this morning and all that it entails. Because go ahead, you can go ahead and write this down this morning that Genesis is pretty much the foundation of everything. I've heard it said Genesis one through 11 are pretty much the foundation of the rest of the Bible and history. But I was thinking about that on the way to class this morning. And I just thought, well, not really, because once you get into chapter 12, then you're introduced to Abraham, who's the father of our faith. And then it just goes on to Joseph and why the children of Israel ended up in Egypt. And I mean, so on down the lines, Isaac and Rebecca. And so it's really the kind of the foundation of everything. And so Genesis is very important. I'll never forget. And I've shared this many times, but I just felt the need to share it again this morning because one of the most important aspects of teaching is repetition. So if you hear a thing a few times, you tend to get it. But I remember when I was attending Church on the Rock in Rockwall, Texas back in 1989. And plus, I considered Dr. Larry Lee my pastor for a season there. And so I attended the church there in 1989 for not quite a year. But of course, even when I wasn't there, I was watching on television and listening to his tapes and reading his books. And so I consider him one of my pastors. I had several over the years, but he was a great teacher. But he went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, one of the main Baptist seminaries in the country. I think there's three. I think there's one in New Orleans. I can't remember the name of it. Then there's Fuller Theological Seminary out in California.

2. 0:03:10

   And then there's Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. And he went there to get his doctorate degree in theology. And he said that while he was in his graduate studies, there probably, I'm thinking he was either there, probably in the early 70s is what I remember, but don't quote me on that. Somewhere in that time period. He said that his teachers now in a Bible, Baptist Bible Seminary in the 70s were saying that the first 11 chapters of Genesis was a true myth. They said that, well, the theological implications are true, but there probably wasn't ever a man named Adam, probably wasn't ever a man named Noah. And of course, Larry Lee said he raised his hand and said, well, Jesus thought they were real and Paul thought they were real. And the professor said, well, they just don't, they just didn't have the information that we have today. So if you wanna know what's wrong with the American church, pretty much when you talk about your Baptist church, you're talking about one of the largest denominations, if not the largest evangelical denomination in America. I'm not sure which one's the largest, probably is the Baptist though. But when you think about that's what their ministers to be in training were being taught in the 70s. You can see number one, the level of infiltration, the level really of the falling away of the apostasy from truth. But I'm just gonna tell you that the first 11 chapters of Genesis, all the chapters, all 50 chapters of Genesis is the inspired, infallible word of God and is to be taken literally. And that it really happened. There was a real man, first man named Adam. There was a real woman named Eve. There was a real man named Enoch and Noah. These people were real, okay? So I just wanted to get that out of the way. I mean, shouldn't have to be said, but we live in crazy times, right? I mean, we've got, and I'm gonna go over this in a minute, we've got some crazy interpretations of what we're about to read here in Genesis three, from people like Zen Garcia teaching this thing called the Serpent Seed Doctrine. He teaches that the serpent came in the garden and had sexual relations with Eve and out of that came Cain and he's the seed. And so there's the serpent seed in the earth, the descendants of Cain versus the descendants of Adam and Eve. And that's just simply not true. That teaching comes from ancient Gnosticism. It comes from also, you can find it in ancient Masonic myths. I mean, it's demonic, it's a demonic word.

3. 0:06:10

   You don't get that from the scripture at all. But anyway, we're gonna go on and we're gonna read this. So Genesis chapter three is where we're starting this morning and we're going to really kind of linger in these passages this morning because again, this is foundational. We find out how Satan tries to deceive and corrupt the mind of human beings and as we'll see too, there's nothing new under the sun, even though the devil does know how to repackage it. All right, so let's read this. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, yay, hath God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said unto the woman, you shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as God's knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat. And the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together to and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord, God walking in the garden in the coop of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord called unto Adam and said unto him, where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told thee that thou was naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree? Where have I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, the woman whom thou gave us to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this that thou has done? And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou has done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field that upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed and it shall bruise thy head and that shall bruise his heel. So from this point on, this is the war of humanity here. Now let's, I'm gonna back up and we're gonna go through this again in a little more detail here. But first of all, there was one thing that really stood out to me this morning. And that was, we think about this tree,

4. 0:09:11

   first of all, we're gonna think about this tree of the knowledge of good and evil that there were two trees in the garden. It was the tree of life and there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And of course, many people will ask the question, okay, why was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden? Now, there's been many people try to answer this question over the years, of course, and some of them I agree with and some of them I don't. But one of them, I guess you would say primary reasons I believe that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had to be there is because there is no true love and relationship if there's not choice, okay? You think about it, if you have no choice to choose, you know, for instance, if I put up here, I say, okay, you know, there's a $1 bill, you can have it or not have it, right? Well, you know, you want the $1 bill, you want some money, you'll take the $1 bill. But if I put up here a $1 bill and a $20 bill and I say, you choose, all right, now you have a real choice, right? You can decide, huh, what do I want? All right, that's the point. God gave, I believe that it was put there so mankind could choose, choose to obey or not obey. Of course, the Lord, he knew the end from the beginning so he knew that man would choose to not obey and so that's why it talks about before the foundation of the world that it was planned that the Lamb of God, the Word of God would come, take on a human body and pay the price for mankind to show mankind that I love you in spite of the fact that I knew you were gonna blow it, all right? So God knows the end from the beginning but also this is what kind of struck me this morning as I was getting ready for this class was when you understand what we covered last week, what went on before Adam and Eve, what went on with Satan before he fell and that he had a throne here and he had kingdoms and cities and there was an angelic kingdom here and then there was a great rebellion and that's where we have the fall of Satan and like I said last week, it had to happen before the Garden of Eden, right? And really, when you think of it, I believe in six literal days of re-creation here and what's interesting is you'd have to have the fall of Satan in some days right before day six and when did it, was it day one, was it day two? It just doesn't make sense that within that was when was this big rebellion of Satan and a third of the angels and there was war in heaven. So that's what we covered last week and I was just thinking about how that knowledge of that war and of that rebellion and of that sin of Satan and the angels who followed him,

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