October 15, 2010 Creation Moving Ahead 5

The woman said to the serpent, "we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"

Good Morning, my dear brothers and sisters, it is Friday and a beautiful morning here at the Southern Location of the North Pole. Friday is the day we pray for all those who work in the fields of harvest for our Lord Jesus. ARE YOU ON THAT PRAYER LIST? Folks, one of those "other commandments" from our Lord Jesus is to go into the world and tell the good news. (That is in my words but you can read it in Mark 16:15.) Other prayers today for Kathleen, Diana, Ronald, and others with cancer. Blanch and others who have kidney failure. Also, folks, please even as we pray for healing take advantage of those flu shots and get those shots that are needed to protect your kids from those childhood things. God loaned talent to those who invented these things for a reason. We who love God know this, we can help God, by helping ourselves also. Example, two people are praying for work, one of the two sits at home and does not fill out any applications and the other pounds the streets daily putting in applications. Who do you think will get a job? Thinking of that, please pray for Mark who is seeking a job, and is praying and is pounding the streets looking. It is tough out there, but God is faithful... Keep praying and keep looking, Mark.

Creation Moving Ahead 5: Genesis 3:1 - Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden?'" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'" (NIV)

Brothers and sisters, you really should read Genesis Chapter 3. I am not going to type the complete Chapter for you. If you do not have a Bible, please by all means email me and give me your address and we will have a Bible on the way to you. It might not be new, it might be used, but it will be good and be full of God's Word. So, see, there is no excuse for not having a Bible or reading it. So you need to "Dust it off" and read this chapter.

Ok, let's look at a few things in the scripture I wrote and then I am going to use a few more scriptures from this Chapter... First of all, I notice that the serpent talked, "Did God really say" and the serpent went on... Do you believe that the serpent talked? Let me tell you right up front that I DO BELIEVE IT, AND here is why. It is in my Bible and once again I tell you that I believe everything in my Bible, everything. If you do not believe that the serpent could talk back then, then why would you believe that Jesus died on the cross to save you from your sins? More about your Bible, take it to church, take notes from your sermons and the scriptures they use. Be sure what is being preached comes from the scriptures. There are pastors out there not preaching the complete truth. I tell my flock often, check on me... and I tell you the same, check on me. I write what I feel God gives me, but I want it right. Moving on.

This is the part of the scripture that I like to call the blame game. You know in life how a lot of people do not want to own up to their own faults but blame it on someone else. So in this scripture we find that the serpent talks the woman into picking the fruit, please note, the kind of fruit is not noted, most people say the apple, but it is fruit. So the woman Eve picked the fruit and ate some of it, then gave it to the man, Adam, who also ate it. Then something happened, their eyes were opened and they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Now this week when I preach on this I am going to take in four leaves, I do not have fig leaves, but the example will be fun. I am going to put three on one sheet of paper and one on the other. Why, to show folks the very first wardrobe of man and woman. (Yes, folks, you know I love to have fun and there is nothing wrong with good clean fun.)

Genesis 3: 8 - Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the Garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" (NIV)

Let me stop and let's look at this up to now. Serpent lies to woman who picks fruit and eats some and shares it with man. Then we look at these scriptures I just wrote and what jumps out at you? Here is what jumps out at me... We see that the woman was referred as the "wife" not the first time, but I want to point it out. They, when put in the garden, were married right away. I also want to point out about our Lord God walking in the garden. While not the first time God was on the earth, because the Bible tells us that He put Adam into a deep sleep and took a rib, we do find that God did walk this earth in person. How wonderful it must have been to have God walking in person with you in that beautiful garden. But folks, if you go to your garden or another nice quiet place and you talk to God you will find that He will spend time with you one on one. Maybe not appearing in person, although some say that they have seen the face of God and I believe that! I believe it because the Bible tells me He has done it already. Anyway, here God is walking in the garden and Adam and his wife are hiding from God. "Where are you?" God called to Adam. Folks, you just cannot hide from God, not then and not now...

Then what happened, and again, I am not writing the scriptures but the blame game started... Adam tells God I was hiding because I was naked. God said to Adam, "Who told you you were naked?" "Have you eaten from the tree that I COMMANDED you not to eat from?" Then this happened.

Adam said, "the woman you put here with me, she gave me some of the fruit from the tree and I ate it." Then the Woman said, "The serpent deceived me and I ate" Then the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this Cursed are you." So the serpent was put on his belly for life and told he will eat dust. God also said that the serpent will strike man's heel and that man will crush the head of the serpent. And so it goes, something goes wrong, man blames wife, wife blames the serpent. Today, we have some things like this... Teacher to Johnny, do you have your homework, did you do it? Miss Smith, I did my homework and had it all done, but my dog ate it. Now that is one old, old excuse from the blame game. But I must tell you that when I was a kid, I opened a letter at Christmas and there was a five dollar bill in it and my dog ate that five spot. So I gave the dog some caster oil and put him in the basement. What a mess I had, but you know the dog never did pass that five dollar bill... no sir, he could not pass it, it was counterfeit! (Ok, I made that one up years and years ago.) Who else do you know who has been in the blame game? Have you ever been involved? You want to see blame games, read accident reports. I was driving down the road when a utility pole came out in front of me and hit me. Once in a while I would go out on the parking lot at school and fix buses so I could tell if someone did their pre-trip check which is required by law for school bus drivers and also by all commercial drivers... I would put a small piece of tape across the hood so I could tell if a driver checked the oil as required. The blame game... Me to the driver... did you check the oil today? Yes, oh, let's go out to the bus, and I showed them the tape that was not broken. Oh, well I knew the mechanics were to change the oil yesterday so I figured they would have checked it. So they blamed the mechanic. Who, folks, could have forgotten to put oil back in the bus? And so it goes. Now in fairness most of my drivers were right up front with me. (Or they were not driving for Central Dauphin very long.)

Ok, I dwelled on that Blame game long enough. Remember this as I close up today, God knows all of what all of us do. If we mess up, confess up, come to God and get cleaned up and go on with life. Stop blaming others and do not lie about things, for the lies get bigger and bigger to cover the other lies. If you do that, we will send you to Washington. And remember this, once you have given things to God, let them go. If you broke the law, you are going to need to pay man back, might even need to go to the lockup. But once you have given things to God, you are free of it, do not let others cast your past up to you. Tell them this... All folks have stuff in the closet, all folks, but I had God clean mine...

As we close this segment of creation we find this. Man's garden will now have weeds in it, Woman will have great pains with childbirth, and Man was banished from the garden of Eden. And snakes will be ready to jump at you if you get near them. Next week we look at those first kids... Cain and Abel. Folks, sin has started and it gets worse...

Dear Father in Heaven, forgive us of our sins and help us to not blame others when it is our fault, help us to take the blame as need be. Lord, help us to remember that we who have not messed up should not be casting stones at others. Please forgive us when we do. Lord, thanks for being the number one closet cleaner ever and thanks for cleaning my closet. Please, Lord, heal those on our prayer list and protect your servants working the fields of harvest for you. Lord, please help me when I write with my spelling and grammar. In the name of Jesus, I pray... Amen.

Now go forth and share your blessings and have a very blessed weekend. Will see you on Monday, and remember if you need a Bible, email me and let me know. Or call us... Love ya, Pastor Dan.