Paradise was lost in a single act of rebellion—but God's grace was already on the move. In this first episode of Partners in Pardon, we uncover the surprising hope woven throughout Genesis 3. From God's pursuit of guilty sinners to His first promise of a coming Savior, discover why the darkest chapter of humanity's story is also where the gospel first begins to shine.

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Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family Podcast.

It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.

Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.

And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.

Well, I'm going to jump right in turn to Genesis chapter three, if you would, and verse eight, Genesis chapter three and verse eight.

And if you would with me again today, if you would stand in honor of the word of God, if you're able to physically do that as we read verse eight.

And I'll read down through verse 13.

Now the title, if I had a title this morning was the whole theme this weekend has been Partners in Paradise.

And we've done Partner the Portrait of Paradise, Partners with Purpose.

We've done all these different themes, Partners in Perversion this morning, but this afternoon we're going to talk about Partners in Pardon.

So Genesis chapter three, verse eight.

And I'll go down through verse 13.

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool 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 God called unto Adam and said unto him, where art thou?

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

And he said, who told thee that thou wast naked?

Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

And the man said, the woman whom thou gavest 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 hast done?

And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me and I did eat.

Well, this morning I share with you six ways that sin perverted man.

Sin caused man to be cut off from man.

Social alienation.

Sin caused man to be cut off from God.

Spiritual alienation.

I said sin caused man to be cut off from himself.

Psychological alienation.

We talked about how sin caused gender roles to be cursed.

Familial alienation and sin caused the ground to be cursed.

Vocational alienation and sin caused man to be cut off from nature.

Creational alienation.

Genesis chapter three is a chapter, certainly a chapter about sin.

There's probably no other chapter in the Bible that tells us more about sin.

I would ask you here today, do you believe in such a thing as sin?

And many, if I were to ask that question all around the United States today and around the world, they would say they do not.

All of the problems with man, poverty, abuse, cruelty, drunkenness, divorce, gender confusion, transgender confusion, homosexuality, lying, stealing, and the problems in our nation and the problems in the world are all due.

And I try to make this point clear this morning to one thing, and that's sin.

It's all due to sin.

It's not a popular topic to talk about sin in the church even today.

Love is prosperity, theology is, but sin, not so much.

CM Joy was a British philosopher and an atheist.

He was a member of what's called the Brains Trust.

He lived in the early 20th century.

He was an atheist, but came to faith later in his life.

And at the very end of his life he wrote a book called the Recovery of Belief.

In it, he said a very fascinating thing.

He said it's because we rejected the doctrine of original sin that we on the left were always being disillusioned by the behavior of both the people and the nations and the politicians, and by the recurrent fact of war.

Before coming to faith, he believed that man's problems were due to a lack of education.

He believed that man's problems were due to the right social politics and other things that man can change in and of himself.

But he realized near the end of his life that because he didn't believe in the doctrine of original sin, that all of man's social policies and didn't and will not work.

Why?

Because he didn't have the Bible's understanding of original sin, the depravity of man.

I assume that he came to faith in Christ when he wrote this book, but he was a humanist, a non believer.

But in this book he starts out like this.

He calls for revival of the conscious sense of guilt and repentance.

To paraphrase, he says, in short, I call for revival of sin.

What would be the good of that?

You ask?

Why do we need more breast beaters?

Why not a no fault theology, no one to blame.

Just things happen.

Alas, here's why.

The assumption that there is sin implies both a possibility and an obligation for intervention.

We want to help ourselves and others.

Hence sin is the only hopeful view.

When evil appears around us and no one is responsible, no one is guilty, no moral questions are asked.

Then there is short, in short, nothing to do so we sink to despairing hopelessness.

Therefore, the consequence of my proposal for revival of the consciousness of sin would not be more depression, but much less.

But I want you to notice a statement.

It kind of jumped out to me when I was reading this.

He said, the assumption that there is sin implies both a possibility and an obligation for intervention.

And I thought, wow, possibility and obligations.

Here's what he means.

I believe if someone says, I don't believe in sin, then two important things are true.

You have no right to intervene.

That is, you have no right to stop somebody from doing what they feel is right to do, regardless of how you might feel about it.

For example, a husband is abusing his wife.

You say, stop it.

You can't do that.

That's wrong.

And you say that to them, and they say back to you, I don't care what you think.

You have no right to tell me what is right or what is wrong.

You're really saying that what they're doing is sin.

But if you don't believe in sin, then you would have no right to intervene.

Also, if you don't believe in sin, then you have no possibility of intervention.

If you say that things just happen, or this is just because of my genetic code, or this is evolutionary, then really you have no hope.

There's no hope for Maninger says very powerfully, if there is no such thing as sin, then we have neither the right to intervene nor really even the power to intervene.

If things just happen because they happen.

If there is no such thing as sin, you have neither the right nor the possibility to change anything.

Now, there's many in our country today that absolutely believe that.

And that's why we have the problems that we have.

This thinking is, folks, this is where victimhood comes from.

If there is no such thing as sin, you have neither the right nor possibility of changing anything.

If you don't believe in sin, you see Adam as a poor victim of the woman and God who gave her to him.

If you don't believe in sin, the modern version goes more like this, God, you're responsible for my situation that has left me so susceptible to sin, my upbringing, my abuse, my horrible parents and their influence on me.

And the list could go on and on.

I'm just a victim.

It's a victim mentality.

This is where many people live their lives today, believing they have no sin and are just victims.

It's no wonder there's rampant depression and rampant suicide.

There's no hope.

People have no hope.

That's why Meninger says we Began to look around and say, these things are sin.

This is sin.

Suddenly we get less depressed.

Suddenly, as the sign says over here that you need to post, all around the city, there's hope.

You have the possibility of change if you believe what you're doing is sin.

And you also have the right to intervene into other people's lives and help them change if what they're doing is sin.

But as much as Genesis chapter three is a chapter that tells us a lot about sin, that paradise was lost and that depravity and death became the lot of humanity, it also is a chapter that is laced with the grace of God.

And I want to show you that this afternoon, as we kind of close up this weekend, we see partners, really in this chapter, Partners with hope, partners with pardon.

So as we close out, I want to share with you the many ways we see God's grace woven through this chapter that gives every one of us hope.

And, folks, as we said, hope changes everything.

So first we see number one.

God's grace shone in his presence.

God's grace shone in his presence.

In verse eight, it says, and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool 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 God called unto Adam and said unto him, where art thou?

I just want to say, folks, what marvelous grace God displays when after man disobeys him and sins, he returns into the wreckage of man's sin.

To have a conversation with man, that is marvelous grace.

Listen, folks, this is not how we would normally respond to someone who sinned against us, to someone who did us wrong.

We.

We might say, okay, that's fine, go your way.

But forget you.

I don't ever want to see you again.

I don't ever want to talk to you again, more or less have a conversation with you.

But a perfect and holy God would have every right to do that, to forsake us.

But instead, he comes into the sinful mess and he offers grace.

So let me emphasize that no matter what today, what sin you have committed, you can come here.

Whatever sin you've committed, that God through his spirit.

Folks, I just want to say God, through his spirit, is here to have a conversation with you.

Just like he came in the garden, he's come today.

Wherever you're sitting in your seat, whatever you're going through today, God through his spirit is ready to have a conversation with you.

That blows me away, I think, wow, what grace If I stop right there, that would be enough.

That God just desires to have a conversation with sinful man.

But not only was God's grace shown through his presence after man's sin, but also God's grace was shown in the curse on the serpent and Satan.

Look at verse 14 and 15.

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all the cattle and above every beast of the field.

Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat.

All the days thy life.

And I'll put enmity between thee and.

And between thy seed and her seed.

It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Now we see from these verses that the curse has two objects.

We look at verse 14 and 15 that I read.

There's a curse upon the serpent, and there's also a curse upon Satan, who controls the serpent.

So look at the serpent's curse for a second.

This verse is not saying, this is when the serpent lost its legs and start crawling on its belly.

This verse is really.

If you want to go back and you think about it, it's very.

It's very similar to where God talks about the rainbow.

In Genesis 9, chapter 9, and verse 13, he said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of covenant between me and the earth.

This verse is not saying, this is when we started having rainbows.

But from this point on, the rainbow will be a sign of God's grace.

It'll be a symbol.

The same is true of the curse against the serpent.

It doesn't mean from now on you'll crawl on your belly, but from now on you will crawl on your belly and you'll eat dust.

Eating dust is a sign of judgment.

Even today we say, eat my dust.

You know, somebody could be running in a race.

And he's looking at the finish line.

He's 50 yards to the finish line, and it's somebody 50 yards behind him.

And he turns around and says, eat my dust.

You know, that's a common saying.

Here's what this means.

What he's saying is, when you see the serpent crawling on the ground, it's a sign of defeat and frustration.

He says, there will be seed of the serpent in verse 15. Who are the seed of the serpent?

The seed of the serpent?

Are all the people like the serpent, like Satan, who try to put themselves in the place of God.

One commentator aptly says this.

He says, from now on, I want you to see.

Whenever you see a serpent, that's a sign of my curse and my judgment on anybody who tries to put themselves in the place of God, put themselves on the throne of God.

You will eat dust all your life.

You'll be frustrated all your life.

You will be empty all your life.

And that is the curse upon the serpent.

But we see the curse also upon Satan in verse 15.

And I'll put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed.

And it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise this heel.

Now, I mentioned this morning that when I mentioned this verse that we have.

This verse is called the Proto Gospel.

Since this is such an astounding gospel prophecy where God's curse becomes a word of grace, let me just share a little bit more about it this afternoon for just a moment.

The woman's offspring, called her seed, refers to Christ, of course, who will crush Satan's head.

This has always been the church's position until recently or modern biblical criticism, which says it has nothing to do with that.

But it's a statement more that there would be perpetual conflict between humanity and the snake population in which man would ultimately be victorious.

But Hebrew scholar Jack Collins examined every use of the word seed when it means offspring, and found that when the word is in sync, singular, as it is in this verse, it always denotes a specific descendant.

And when it is an individual, the pronoun will always be masculine.

This understanding of seed confirmed by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3:16.

When he says, now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made, he saith not, and to seeds as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed.

And here it is, which is Christ.

So Here in Genesis 3:15, we have the prophecy of the cross, when Satan would strike the heel of Christ, that is his suffering on the cross, but Christ would strike the head of Satan through his death and glorious resurrection.

It's an amazing thing that we see the paradise lost by man sinning.

But God's grace is shown to us by the curse upon Satan that the second Adam, Jesus Christ, will crush Satan by his great work, the cross.

And Jesus understood this, of course.

In John 3:14 and 15, he said, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

The command to look upon the uplifted serpent in Numbers 21 and Verse 9 was a foreshadowing of the looking up to the crucified Christ for our salvation.

But there's more grace to see.

As I said, this whole chapter is laced with the grace of God.

You have listened to the first part of a two part message by Evangelist Sam Wood.

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