Answers In Genesis - Sunday School - Week 26

Let's go ahead and pray and then we're gonna jump into our class. Lord, we thank you so much for this time just to be together to study your word and chronologically and as we continue, through the book of Genesis and consider just, where we're at as a, as a race and the condition of our hearts, we ask that you be with us this morning. thank you, Lord, for those that are teaching our children through the same material. Pray that you be with them, be with Pastor Carlos as he teaches the parenting class, and we just thank you for all that you have done for us and all that you continue to do with your spirit.

In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. Let me give a couple of announcements. before we jump into things, just a reminder that Matthew McLean is, and I now realize I'm, I've misspelled his name, there's only one C.

He's coming to Cornerstone March 20th. So what is today, the 6th? OK, so two weeks from today, I really wanna highly encourage you guys, not just to come but to invite people. Matthew McLean is a geologist.

He's an excellent scholar. He's earning his PhD at, Loma Linda. I heard him a couple of months ago speak out in San Bernardino. And just great, great, guy, excellent speaker.

his expertise is dinosaurs and so at 9 o'clock, he's gonna be talking about, dinosaur cannibalism, and I forget how he, he had a, see if I put the, I don't think I've, the exact exact title of the talk is gonna be in your bulletin, if you guys look in there. But he's, he's done some cutting edge research on dinosaurs. He's also been the co-establisher of this website called Teraterra where geologists can share their research around the world. And.

And he's been interviewed at the Huffington Post, CBS News, and things like that. So, really encourage you guys to come out. Invite friends. he'll be with us for 9 o'clock and for 10:30.

At 10:30, he's gonna be talking about, basically Christian worldview. How should we look at the Book of Genesis and creation matters from a Christian worldview and comparing that to the worldview that's out there today. So, if you have anybody, particularly, I think somebody invite would be, maybe an unbeliever who, has questions about Christianity, particularly Christianity's view of, matters of origins. also, if you have some friends that are believers, but they have a different view on origins and we're promoting here at Cornerstone, and you'd like them to be exposed to the material from not just a pastor, but an actual scientist, encourage them to come on out.

this, particular class, the course that we're going through together and also our children are going through is, called Answers Bible Curriculum. It's chronologically studying the Bible, 3 years, Genesis Revelation. And as we're doing so, we're hitting points of theology, we're hitting apologetics. We're helping you and our children learn how to answer some of the questions that we see in the Bible.

It's all part of our para-family ministry, which is to come alongside of our families. In their journey of brokenness to wholeness through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so, we're excited to continue this journey together. We're in the middle of a particular quarter called God is Creator and Redeemer.

We're almost over, almost finished with this quarter, and then we're gonna be moving on to our next quarter. And this morning, we're gonna be talking about the hearts of men. We're gonna do some reviews, study, the word, and then we're gonna apply the Word. Let's turn to Genesis chapter 4.

Actually, Yeah, that's No, no, no. This is actually a review. So review from last week, we looked at Genesis 4, we talked about Cain. And from the lesson last week, let's see what job Dan did.

why was Kane's sacrifice rejected? Anybody remember? OK, it wasn't pleasing to God. OK.

Why do we think that Cain's sacrifice was not pleasing to God. There we go. OK. So, there, there could be the supposition that maybe it's that he offered grain as opposed to an animal sacrifice and that's been postulated by a number of people over the years.

What's the problem with the grain argument? If we say it's because he offered a grain argument? he offered a grain sacrifice. Yeah, yeah, the Bible later actually requires grain offerings or it says that this is one offering that you can bring to the Lord.

And so it seemed a little strange for the Lord to say, I don't want your offering because it's grain, and then later on, he's actually commanding Israel to offer grain offerings. And so, I think our curriculum does a good job developing that. but, what, what's your name? Chris.

OK, as, as Chris was saying, there does seem to be some, some heart problems here, and so, we, we talked about that last week. God commands the offering of grain and drink offerings later, so these offerings are not inherently wrong. It's important to note that Abel's offering is described as coming from the firstborn while Kane's is not described as the first fruits. This could be a clue to the acceptance, and the attitude.

Cain brought some fruit while Abel brought the first and the best of his flock. It's a little bit of a supposition, it's a little bit, we can't say for sure, but it is interesting that first fruit is not mentioned when it comes to Cain's offering. What we do know is that God also tells Cain that he will be accepted if he does well. So, his attitude, not his offering seems to be the emphasis.

Ultimately, it's the hard attitude that God looks at, not the offering itself is what we're gonna argue. And then later on, Cain becomes an example of somebody who's just, he's not a, he's, he's actually called in First John, an example of somebody that's a child of the devil, not a child of God. And then, last week we talked about where did Cain get his wife. We look at the passage, Genesis 4, then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Cain had no relations with his wife or had relations with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. Have any of you guys ever seen the old movie Inherit the Wind? Let's get one. Anybody else?

OK. People may disagree with this, but in my opinion, it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my whole life. Because historically, it, they just take history, turn it completely upside down to present their propaganda of what happened for the the Scopes Monkey Trial. And they make William Jennings Bryant, who is one of the most brilliant minds that America's produced, made him look like a total backhills buffoon.

And Yeah, you had something, Joe, or they're just stretching there. OK. But anyway, they, this is one of the questions that comes up in the trial is where did Kane get his wife? And, and so it's, if you go on, it's real popular these days.

There's a lot of young people are into these atheist sites and you'll go to these atheist websites and stuff, and they'll have these little posts and pictures, where did King and his wife and everybody's laughing, oh. This is a very, from a biblical worldview, this is not a question that is recent. This has been thrown up for hundreds and hundreds of years, and it's really not all that difficult to explain. scripture doesn't explain Cain's wife's background.

It's most likely his sister and niece. Adam and Eve, we know, had many children. In fact, one Jewish tradition says 22 sons and 33 daughters. there's no genetic concerns because we're talk, we don't have what we call this genetic overload yet.

We're very early in human history and so you don't have the genetic build or overload that would be in the, the DNA at that point. We have early examples of this where Abraham's like marrying his half-sister and so on and so forth. And so, and then the passage itself, notice, it doesn't say that he married his wife in Nod, only that he had relations with his wife and Nod. And so it's very possible that he married his wife before he ever killed Abel.

it's very possible that he had been married for a while and then took his wife, went to the land of Nod, and so on and so forth. Any questions about that? Sometimes people are That's a question that gets asked out there, like, what about aliens and dinosaurs and stuff like that, so. Any, any thoughts or questions you guys have?

All right. so, hopefully, you're prepared to answer that. Just take people to the text, show them what the verse actually says, what it doesn't say, and, That what we wanna be careful of is running into this argument that some people postulate that God created some completely other race, some completely different race other than Adam and Eve. Biblically, you run into all kinds of problems because the Bible says that Eve is the mother of All living.

And the Bible is very clear that the whole human race descends from Adam and Eve. And then, even if you postulate some other race that gets created by God, after the flood, you're left with how many people? 8 people. And so, all of us come from Noah, his sons, his wife, and their wives.

So, all of us are related back to Noah. And so that's again where people start to say, well, we can't really argue for a worldwide flood. We have to do a localized flood and so on, and we'll get into that later, how that from a biblical perspective, that is a, A very difficult theory to hold to unless you're going to ascribe to modern hermeneutics, which is basically denying a straightforward approach to the text. All right, let's talk about this.

If, unless there's any other questions, we're gonna get to this morning's topic. Any questions? All righty then. To what extent can humankind trust and follow their hearts?

That's the big question that we're going to ask. This problem that Cain and Abel have, what we see on the page of scripture where Adam and Eve falling, who does that affect? When Adam Sand. Did his sin just affect him?

And that each of his children, his sons and daughters, they're basically born tabula rasa with a blank slate, and everybody can choose for themselves whether they're gonna commit their own individual sins or whether they're going to follow in the path of righteousness. Is everybody basically influenced by, or is sin come about because of nurture, your environment, or is sin arise because of nature that there's something built in to us since the fall that causes us to go astray?

This is, this brings in the whole question of original sin. When we talk about original sin, it's a term that is often misunderstood.

When I say original sin, what most people think of is they just think the sin of Adam and Eve. Original, OK, where was the first sin that it was with Adam and Eve, and so that's original sin. Actually, when we talk about original sin, we're talking about why does sin, where does sin come from within my heart. To really understand this doctrine, Look at yourself and say, why did I, why am I a sinner?

Am I a sinner because I have some connection back to Adam? If you, if your answer to that question is yes, you believe in the doctrine of original sin, that Adam's sin has affected his whole, the whole human family and, and that God has counted the human race guilty because of Adam's sin, and that Adam's sin has caused corruption. That has been passed down to every one of us. So there's two sides of the coin of original sin.

There's guilt and corruption. Everybody say guilt. Everybody say corruption. So, we are guilty because of Adam's sin, and we'll talk about the various views on, on how we understand that, and we are born corrupt because of Adam's sin.

And so universally, if you believe in the doctrine of original sin, you believe that universally everybody sins because we have a sin nature that we have inherited from Adam. That's corruption and everybody is born guilty because we're all responsible for the sin of Adam as a human race. And so from the time of conception, we're all guilty and corrupt. It's not, not a very positive view of humankind, right?

But the flip side of that, if you, if you don't believe in original sin, then you basically, there's, there's various mediating positions, but one position is, is that all of us are born basically neutral or maybe even we're born basically good. We come into this world and what makes us a sinner is not any inclination in our nature. You become a sinner when you commit your first personal sin. And you're ultimately influenced by the environment around you.

So that would be those that would argue for more that were influenced by, nurture. And so theoretically, if we could find a civil, we could find a civilization that has not been harmed by Western society, by the evils of capitalism, by, Western thought, if you could find some village on some island somewhere, you could theoretically find a peaceful people that does, knows nothing of sin and they just live in peace and harmony. This is the whole idea that's a rose up in Western literature called the idea of the noble savage.

Any literature people out there?

Anybody like study literature in college or any literature majors? No, I'm the only one. OK. Well, there's a, a, a real, there's a couple of works that are, are really foundational in Western literature and developing the idea of the noble savage.

The foundational work is a book called The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper. Have you ever heard of James Fenimore Cooper? Right, he's an excellent author, really good guy, and he writes some good books. But in his book, The Pioneers, he develops this idea of the noble savage.

The idea is, here we are. in the West, Americans, we have Christianity, we think that we're civilized and that we're gonna go out and try to civilize the savages, the savage Indians. But then you go out into the Indian cultures, the various tribes, and as James Fenimore Cooper points out in his novel is Many times, he argues in the novel that you'll walk into an Indian village that's very noble, it's very peaceful, people get along, and here we are, the Westerners who think we're civilized, we have Christianity, and we're the ones that have all the problems and we bring in our disease, we bring in our love for money, we bring in our love for stuff, and we corrupt the noble savages.

And so, in, in James Fenimore Cooper's mind, and this gets developed and like Moby Dick with Quweg and other people like that, is you have these people who have been untouched by the evils of materialism and capitalism and Western thought and if we could just get people to that place.

then everything would be OK. And so the question becomes, is that true? Are we, are we all basically corrupted by sin or do we just become sinners if we're, influenced in a bad way? You can see what people believe practically in how they deal with their children sometimes.

sometimes you guys, if those of you guys have children, you, you, you, how this works, right? You're on a baseball team or you're out there doing some events in the community. And there's always gonna be a certain type of parent whose kid is never wrong, right? There's been some scrape on the playground.

All the parents run out to find out what happened. Everybody in the group is saying, Johnny picked up a stick and whacked Sally over the head. And then Johnny's parents come over and say, my Johnny would never do that. Sally must have done something to provoke Johnny.

That's the only way possible that Johnny would have done anything like that if he did it at all. And if you've never been in the community and if you don't have kids, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but if you've had any kids, you've ever been in the community, that there are people like that. In fact, it can be a temptation for ourselves, right? My temptation is the opposite direction.

When I walk into the big group, I'm like, OK, what did my kid do? What do they do? And that's not always the best thing to do either. But if we understand what the Bible says about the human heart, My kids, as they're interacting with other little savages.

Out there in the playground. they're not just sinning because they happen to be hanging around with other kids. My kids can sin all by themselves. I can put them off on a, on an island.

I can give them the best Christian music. I can put nothing but nice, nice Christian books all around them. I can homeschool my kids. I can speech and debate my kids.

I can keep them away from all of the evils of television, radio, and everything else. I can let them not see messages in the sky that are put out there by airplanes. And my kids will still figure out a way to sin. Why is that?

Why will my kids still figure out a way to sin? Even though they're pastor's kids, they're homeschooled, they do speech and debate. And all kinds of stuff like that. And yet they sin.

There Brian, I am offended by that. You are calling my kids evil? Desperately wicked. That is so offensive to me.

That you would call my angels. Have you seen my kids? My kids are beautiful. They are beautiful children and you're calling them evil.

Man, I'm leaving. Right. Well, hey, let's turn, let's turn in to Romans 5. We're gonna look at several different passages.

in some ways we're preaching to the choir, but we need to, these are important matters. We need to understand this for ourselves. But it also, we're gonna see that it has profound impact in how we even think about our unbelieving friends. And family.

if we really understand what the Bible says about our human hearts, our unbelieving friend, let me just let the cat out of the bag right now. Our unbelieving friends and family are not rejecting Christ because they're stupid, because we're smarter than them, because all of us in this room, we're just so much more holy and righteous. We just love righteousness more than them. Ultimately, our friends and family are struggling with sin and even do evil things.

They're dealing with the same human disease that we're dealing with. And the, and the only solution is Jesus Christ. And so I think part of the doctrine of original sin should elicit, if we really understand it, great amount of humility and a great amount of compassion for people who don't know the Lord. And so, let, let's take a look at Romans 5.

We'll read through, starting in verse 12. This is what we call the crux interpretum. It is the center passage of the doctrine of original sin. We'll start in verse 12.

I'm reading from a New King James. Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world, who's that one man? Adam. So, so Paul's developing an argument here.

Sin came through one man, that is Adam. This is why we argue for Adam being the sole Homo sapien created immediately by God because sin comes through one man, not just through all these other races that God created around there. And death through sin, so death is not just part of the natural processes of evolution, it comes because of sin. Thus death spread to all men.

Thus death spread to all men because why all. Send Now, the Greek tense of the verb here sin is what we call an erri tense. It means completed action. It can be completed actions in the past, it can be completed actions in the present.

Eris tense can be completed action in the future. Here, the idea is that all of us have sinned together. What's strange about this and mysterious is that Paul seems to be blaming all of us for the one sin. Let's read it again.

Therefore, just as through one man's sin entered the world and death through death, death through sin, thus death spread to all of us. Why did death spread to all of us? Because all sinned, heiress tents completed action. Not every person will continue to sin as they are born.

The idea seems to be, and this is, this is the interpretive challenge, it seems to be that the whole human race has sinned in one completed action. It's already happened. Even before you're born, there's a sense in which the whole human race has already sinned. Let's see how he develops this.

Verse 13. For to the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. So there's sin there, but, people are not completely aware of the sin until the law comes about. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses.

Why are people dying if there is no law? People are dying because sin is there. even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who's to come. Adam is a type of him who is to come.

Who's the one to come? Jesus Christ. Verse 15, but the free gift is not like the offense. So the free gift that's coming through Christ is not like the offense that came through Adam.

For if by one man's offense, many died, OK, so who's the one man? Adam. And when we see this idea of many, this is an idiom, the many really means everybody that's underneath Adam. The many is like saying, the people or that group, all right, that group of people underneath Adam, the many died, much more the grace of God and the gift of the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ abounded to many.

This is the many or the people that are underneath Christ or within Christ. Verse 16, and the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from the one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. That is a really strange thing.

The free gift which came from many offenses. There's a free gift that came as a result of many sins resulting in justification. It's a very strange idea, but it's right here in the text, verse 17. For if by the one man's offense, who is that again?

Who's the one man there? Adam, death reigned through the one. Much more, those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of the righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. So we're going back and forth between the one, the one, the one, Adam, Jesus, Adam, Jesus, Adam, Jesus.

Then there's the many, the many, the many, all the many that are underneath Adam, and then all the many that are underneath Christ. All the many that are underneath Adam is the whole human race. All the many that are underneath Christ are the ones that receive the free gift. So the many is limited by the one above him.

Does that make sense? So the many underneath Christ is not everybody, it's the many who have received the free gift. The many that are underneath Adam is everybody that's in Adam. Verse 18, therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men, so how many get judgment because of Adam's sin?

Oh, think about that. As through one man's offense. This is not talking about football. One man's sin, right?

As to Adam's sin, judgment came to everybody, resulting in condemnation. Everybody gets condemned. Remember we talked about guilt? everybody gets guilt because of Adam's sin.

Even so, through one man, one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men. We need to understand the all men here in the same sense as we understood the many up above it, all men who are in Christ. came to all men resulting in justification of life. So, the, the one righteous act is Jesus Christ, ultimately his death on the cross, right?

Adam sinned and we all get condemnation. Jesus Christ dies and all in him get justification. Now, number verse 19 is the kicker. This is like the, the summary, the coup de grace.

For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. Again, this is an idiom, the many, everybody. Many were made sinners also by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous. Verse 19 is, is, if you don't understand anything else, verse 19 gives you the summary.

Adam's sin causes everybody to be a sinner and therefore, we are justly condemned. Christ's righteousness causes everybody in Christ to be righteous, to be made righteous, counted righteous by God, not that we committed the act of righteousness ourselves, but that Christ committed the act of righteousness on our behalf. And so what we have here is we have what we call imputed condemnation and imputed justification. Adam sins, and God counts the whole human race guilty.

Adam sins, and the whole human race inherits his corruption. Jesus Christ dies and lives a righteous life, and those in Christ get imputed righteousness. And we instead of death, we get life. And so there's this comparison back and forth between, Christ and Adam.

And so what we have here in this passage. so this, this passage is, is one of the bases or the main bases for what we would call original sin or the, inheritance of a sin nature. Let's look for, let's look at just a couple of other passages in passing. let's read 6:23, then we'll go back to Genesis.

6:23, the weight of sin is what? is death. OK, so here we're talk, we're, we're definitely seeing our own connection to our own sins, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let's look back to Genesis 6.

We've read this in the past. But we'll review it In Genesis 6, before the flood, God looks at the whole human race. And if we've understood the text correctly, this is about 1650 years after creation. So you've had a lot of time for people to.

To. Adam and Eve have left the garden. You have a lot of people, a lot of time for either people to follow God or to reject God. 1650 years into human history, what is God's pronouncement?

What is he? He looks out upon humanity and says, Here's what I say about humanity. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. That's a lot of adjectives, a lot of adverbs all piled up together to say man is wicked all the time.

That's the pronouncement of mankind. Think about this. 1650 years previous, Adam and Eve were walking with God in the garden in the cool of the day. And, and God is still close enough to the human race that when Cain is, when he, when his face falls because his sacrifice is rejected.

God is still speaking audibly to human beings. Think about it. God comes up and says, Cain, what's wrong? If this had been an unusual event, Cain would have been like, whoa, who is that?

What is going on here? Cain gives no, there's no suggestion whatsoever in the text that this is unusual. God starts to speak to Cain and then Cain just, he speaks right back. In fact, he speaks to the father as if this is just a usual thing and he's a little bit snobby with his dad, right?

He's, he's, he's not overly respectful to the father. And so there's still this conversation, audible conversations happening on probably a regular basis between God and his children. 1600, 50 years go by and The only evidence of righteousness that we have on the earth is now Noah. And then he brings his family into the ark.

And God's pronouncement is that man's heart, the, the wickedness of man is great and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually. So bad is it that God has to bring the flood. So he floods the earth and then you turn to 8 8:21. What's the pronouncement upon mankind after God kills everybody except for Noah, his wife, his sons, and their wives?

Verse 21 of chapter 8, then the Lord smelled the soothing aroma. So there's a sacrifice being made by righteous Noah. Then the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake. So, OK, now I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna send another flood on the earth like this.

Because now that I've killed off all the evil, evil people, I've got this nice group of 8 people now that can repopulate the earth, right? That's what, that's what he says, right? Now, I've got Noah and I've got his wife and they homeschool their children and, and, these are wonderful kids and their wives, and now we've got a nice group of people that we can spread righteousness throughout the earth and everything's gonna go really well. No, God knows better than that.

He says, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his what? Youth or childhood, nor will I again destroy everything that I have done. So, God, he already knows where man's heart's gonna go as soon as they get off the ark. From his childhood, his heart is evil.

And he already knows where man's going to descend to. It's only a few chapters and it's actually several 100 years by the time we get to the Tower of Babel and you've already got people that have rejected Yahweh, turning to false gods. and so on. And so, so there's, not a real positive view of man's heart.

Let's turn to Psalm 515. Where David gives us his look. Into his own heart and really the heart of humankind. So 515.

Behold, he's speaking of himself, I was brought forth in iniquity. In sin, my mother conceived me. I was brought forth in iniquity, in sin, my mother conceived me. Now, to interpret this particular passage, you need to understand this is poetry and the main feature of Hebrew poetry is what?

It's not rhyming, what is it? Parallelism. And so you have, in parallelism, you get two, you get a couplet and the couplets help you interpret what's going on. If we understand what's happening in the first couple part of the couple, a lot of times we can understand what's happening in the second part.

So in the first part, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity. So the idea of being brought forth is he was born, right? He came out of his mother's womb in iniquity. As soon as he's born, he was, he was, it was an iniquity.

Then he says, in sin, my mother conceived me. Conception is a little different from birth, right? So we're talking about the actual conception point. What's true about both of these is that they're connected to sin.

Now, some people have tried to say that this is just basically saying that David's mother sinned in some way, in his conception, like she had him out of wedlock or so on and so forth. The problem is the couplet. The couplet doesn't just say that the conception was sin. The coup, this says that there was sin involved in the birth.

The Bible never says that it's sin for a woman to have a baby, but the Bible would say that it's sin for a woman or a man to have a baby out of wedlock or to have an immoral relationships, right? But even a, a woman that has immoral relationships and conceives a baby in sin, she would not be described as sinning and having that baby, correct? So therefore, the couplet tells us that that viewpoint cannot be true. What is true is that from conception and from birth, babies are sinners.

That's what David's arguing here. From the very beginning, and this, this accords with what Genesis 8:21 says. This accords with what other passages of scripture. Indicate from the very beginning.

Jeremiah 17:9 was quoted by Chris, that the heart is deceitful above all things. And desperately what? Wicked Deceitful above all things, that we, we deceive our, we have a propensity to deceive ourselves. So how can we summarize the teaching of the origin and extent of sin according to what we have read?

Basically sin. I was committed by Adam. His sin leads to death. And that death and sin has spread to the whole human race.

And that we are conceived and born in sin. It's not just nurture, it's nature. As soon as we are conceived, there is a corrupt nature. And we are all counted guilty because of the sin of Adam.

But the hope is that there's a second Adam. Notice it's a 2nd Adam. It's not a second hominid from some other, some other village. It's a 2nd Adam.

That will come, speaking from the Old Testament perspective. And deliver the human race. All this, is, this is the basis for inherited sin nature that we refer to as original sin. Now, some people misunderstand the term, we've talked about that, refer to Adam's first sin, but the term actually means that every person is born with a sin nature that causes us to rebel against God, even from birth.

So here's how you could state original sin. Every individual is born with a sinful nature through Adam's sin. sinful nature through Adam's sin. That's really only half of original sin.

We have, we have a sin nature, that's the corruption. The two sides of the coin, what's the first side of the coin? Guilt and corruption. It's guilt and corruption.

We're born guilty and we're born corrupt as a result of Adam's sin. Let me ask you guys a question. Is this fair? Is it fair that I should be counted guilty?

For Adamson. Why is that fair? OK, so if it was Mike in the Garden of Eden, the same result would have occurred. I don't think I would have done what Adam did.

If I would have been in that place. I would have said, devil. You get out of here. Get behind me, Satan.

I, I just don't like the idea that I'm being blamed for Adam's. Adam's mess. God because Yeah, it's a very good point. Yeah, Dan, speaking of how God said to Adam, And Eve, on the day that you eat of that tree, you shall surely die.

So by the law, they should have surely died and something did die that day and it was what? An animal, and then they were dressed in the righteousness of Christ. They got to go and continue living. Yes, death began, the process of death broke.

what are those little glow sticks, you break the glow stick and then the process begins. So, so the death stick is broke, they begin to die, but they do not die immediately. They get grace. There was, back in the day, Michelle knows the story, we were living in Bakersfield.

And we're all home with my stepdad at the time and he found some hamburger meat in The plants in the apartment. And he came to each, he came to us and said, I think he came to me first. Who put the hamburger meat in the plants? And I was like, I didn't do it.

He's like, you're lying. Go to your room. And so I'm back there in the back bedroom and I go to Michelle and I said, Michelle, go tell him you did it. So that we can all get off.

And so she goes out there and says, I'm sorry, I, I did it. And he's like, no, you're lying. Go to your room. And so then we talked to Melissa.

We said, Melissa, OK, you go in, you gotta confess that you put the hamburger meat so we can all get out of here. And so she goes out there, I, I'm really sorry, Dad. I did it. And he says, no, you're all lying.

Go to your bed. And so we're all sitting there in our room and then finally mom gets home and she's like, why are all the kids in their bedrooms? Because they put, somebody put a hamburger in the plants and and they're all lying. She says, well, I did that.

And so we're all, hey, we get out, right? and he's all, no, you guys all lied, go to your room. You guys go to bed. It's like, what's going on here?

Why are we getting in trouble for something my mom did, right? She's the one that watched some show that somehow convinced her to put hamburger meat in the soil. I don't know how that works. And it's like, I don't know if it was a Bakersfield thing or what.

And But so now we all have to go to bed without dinner and, and go to bed early because I guess we lied. I guess that's the reason. I have no idea. And maybe because he was drinking a little too much that day.

Anyway, a little like consistencies there when you're like growing up with an alcohol alcoholic stepfather. that's an inside joke. For real. no, but that just seems a little unfair.

But let me ask you guys this question. if you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, are you going to heaven on the basis of your own righteousness? No, why, why are you going to heaven? Is that fair that that he does righteous things and you get to go to heaven because of what he did?

Is that fair? If we all got what was fair, like Dan was saying, we would all be in hell. if we understand the righteousness of a holy God, the sin, the sinfulness of humanity, every one of us would lose. Adam and Eve would have been decimated right there in the garden.

Every one of us would just be completely wiped out. But God gives us the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And so, we have to be, there, there, there's something we have to be careful of. Every time we come to the Bible, God is a rational being and the Bible is rational, but, God does not conform.

To all systems of human logic. I wanna be careful to say that God's illogical or that we, that we can just go to the Bible and willy-nilly ignore logic. But it's clear as you continue to bump up against the Creator, we begin to realize that his thought processes, his systems are not always the same as The systems of human beings. We're creatures.

He's the creator. There's certain things he can do because of his prerogative as creator and because he hasn't all knowledge that if we try to do ourselves, we would be like, hitmen or mafia bosses. But because God is the creator, he can control all this and he can do it in a way that is best for all of the universe, for his own glory and for humanity. And so in his system, Adam, Whichever view you take, Adam is either what we call the federal head, where he represented all of humanity and he knew it, and as that representative, he fell and brought all of humanity with him.

Or the other view is what we call realistic or seminal head where in some mysterious sense, we're all there with Adam and we all take corporate responsibility for the sin of Adam. Either way you go, God holds the whole human race responsible for the sin of Adam, and we all incur guilt and corruption. And then when Jesus Christ comes along, Jesus Christ, the one man, the second Adam, comes and lives a perfect life on behalf of all who are in him. And then he dies and he's resurrected, and God in his system of justice, grants to me, grants to you the very righteousness of Christ, to where when I go to heaven, it's not because I was such a good guy, I'm such a smart guy, such a good looking guy.

In fact, when you look at the pages of the Old Testament, the Bible is very clear. When, when God's talking to Israel, and he's telling them, here's why I've chosen you, he says, it's not because you were so many, it's not because you were so righteous, it's not because you're the best people on the earth. In fact, he, he almost does like the opposite of what psychologists tell you to tell your children, right? You would never go to your children and say, you're not very good looking.

You're small, you're not very smart. But You're my son. I've chosen you. You would never tell anybody to do that, but that's exactly what God tells Israel.

As he, he, he reminds them that I have called you for my own glory, that I can keep my promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that, and that my name would be lifted up in all the earth. I've chosen you the least of all peoples to magnify myself. And so God's ultimately, God's system of justice is very different what we would expect. let's, let's finish up a couple of things here.

Let's see, this concept of original sin is very contrary to what we, the world teaches. Popular psychology and the media try to teach us that they're based, that, that we're basically good, that if you just follow your heart, all your dreams will come true. And, you guys have seen all the movies, right? Yeah.

Yeah, it's a good question. So the question is, what are we really talking about? We talk about heart, are we talking about it the way the Bible talks about it? Yeah, the, the, the Bible uses the word heart very similar to the way it uses the word mind and intellect and even like the will, it all gets mixed up.

And so, like when you go to the Old Testament, the Old Testament tends to use the word heart more than mind. And then when you get to the New Testament, the New Testament, the New Testament will use mind more than heart, but they're very, very close. To one another, it's hard to really tell the difference sometimes. So, we talk about the heart, we're talking about the center of our thoughts, our emotions, and our will.

That's basically what we're talking about. So, it's like, it's the thinking process and the volition and then what results in, in volition or choices. And so, when the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things, It's talking about our thought processes, our choices, the whole nine yards. We'll talk, I think we have this verse here a little bit later, but we're, remember where Jesus, they were talking about wash hands and people were saying, why don't you wash your hands before you eat?

That has nothing to do with like sanitation. kids go wash your hands. No, no, Jesus says we don't have to wash our hands. That's all we're talking about, talking about ceremonial cleanness, right?

And so Jesus says it's not what goes into the body, it's what comes out of the heart that causes adulteries, fornications, evils, jealousies that all comes from within the heart is what Jesus says. And so that's, that's the thing, yeah. Yeah, I think when people like in Hollywood and stuff, they say, follow your heart, and you'll never go wrong. They're kinda, I think a lot of times it seems like what they're, it's, it's a little, they don't define it and get off of it, but it's kinda like follow the inclinations like your emotions or like you feel like you should do that, you feel like you should do this, but it's still involving choices, right?

Whether you really think very deeply about it or not. I can't remember the old, is it Sandlot where Babe Ruth appears to the kid. Is that the right movie? And he says, follow your heart, kid, and you'll never go wrong.

And I turned to my kids and I say, boo, don't do that. that's, it's one of the big messages of Disney, just follow your heart and you'll never go wrong. Yeah, Jiminy Cricket, yeah, yeah, that's right, Jiminy Cricket should read the real Pinocchio. Anybody ever read the real Pinocchio?

Oh, it's so much better. I, I wish, what's that one guy that made Night Nightmare Before Christmas? Tim Burton needs to make the real Pinocchio. It is great.

Jiminy Cricket is a total, Pinocchio is a total punk. When you read the real Pinocchio, he is a punk of a kid. And, but it's, it's spooky, hilarious, and fun. You guys should all read it.

So, all right, so, let's see what happened. OK. So we wanna, that, that's the message that we're getting in our movies, just follow your heart, so on and so forth. We wanna make sure that we give We, we wanna make sure our kids get a good balance of what the Bible tells us about who we are as human beings.

You can, you really, you can go to extremes. We can focus on our depravity and the sin of our hearts to the exclusion of other doctrines and actually create some imbalance, I believe, because the Bible also indicates that all of us are made the image of God. And even, even if you're not born again yet, you're still made in the image of God. This is where I think some Western Christian thought went wrong is we thought that as our missionaries moved out into the savage villages that we're gonna find just total chaos and people killing each other and just in total misery.

And then sometimes you'd walk into these newer cultures and new villages and you'd find a lot of peace and order and, and some really amazing things. And if, if, if people only thought about total depravity and original sin, they had a, a tough place, a tough idea on how to categorize that. Well, it gets categorized underneath the doctrine of image of God. We're all made in the image of God and even though the image has been damaged, it hasn't been completely lost.

And so in every culture, one of the things that, a good missionary friend of mine will remind us, is he'll say in every culture, you're gonna find the image of God and you're gonna find depravity. It doesn't matter where you go. You're gonna find amazing things where people create. There's love, there's amazing things because God has created all human beings and he has showered his common grace on people.

But once you start to really dig into the culture, you're gonna find depravity and the fact that people at the heart, at the core of their hearts. They're, they're suppressing the truth and righteousness. And so that's why they need the gospel. People don't need the gospel because every quote unquote savage village is running around killing everybody.

they need the gospel because in their heart of hearts, they're suppressed in truth and righteousness, and they need to be able to repent before Almighty God. So what hope is there for our hearts that are so sinful? Well, John 3:16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believed in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. Why should we perish if we're all pretty good people?

We, we should perish because sin is worthy of punishment. The wages of sin is death. And then the Bible talks about the great and awful day of the Lord. One of the big themes throughout the whole Bible is judgment, that God judges sin, that sin is terrible, that sin deserves the judgment of God.

You have the flood, you have Sodom and Gomorrah, you have the judgment at Tower of Babel. you have all the various 10 plague judgments in Egypt. You have judgments that happen in Israel, you have judgments that happen outside of Israel. And then throughout the Bible, you, you're, everything's pointed to this thing called the great and awful day of the Lord or the time of Jacob's trouble or the great tribulation.

There's coming this huge day when God is going to pour out his wrath on the whole earth. It's gonna be worse than anything that's ever been, ever had in human history, worse than any horror movie you've ever seen. And God's gonna pour it out on the earth. and, but we can be saved from that great and awful terrible day through our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, who rescues us from the wrath to come.

That's ultimately what Jesus does is Jesus gives us righteousness of his own, makes us righteous in God's sight, so that we can escape the wrath to come, come into this relationship with God. let's see here. Let's talk about some applications then we're done. So what evidence could you offer to someone who doubts that all people are sinful from conception?

When I'm talking to people, I'll just point to my own heart. A lot of times I'll say, I've been a pastor since 1998. I've been born again since I was 14 years old. And yet, here I am 47 years old.

There's times when I look at my own heart and I, and I feel like I'm more wicked than I've ever been in my life. And, and why is that? I've done Bible studies, I've preached sermons, I've been underneath the teaching of Pastor Milton. And, and yet, I'm still, I still find inclinations in my heart where I need accountability.

I need to be checked. I need people praying for me. You can look, point to your own children. I never had to teach any of my children to sin.

I remember my little nephew, Josiah. I can say this when he was real little. He was probably I think he was about one year old, maybe less than one. He couldn't quite talk yet.

And his older brother, Matthew had a bag of chips and I went and grabbed the bag of chips away from him. And I took the chips away from Josiah, gave them back to Matthew. I said, Matthew, hold on. I said, if you want a chip, Josiah.

You need to ask. And he got red in the face, and he looked up at me and he couldn't even talk yet, but he pointed his little finger and he went. And if he knew any language, I knew what he was saying to me. He just didn't know the words yet.

And nobody taught him, nobody taught him to do that, right? It was just in his heart already. And I was like, I was a little freaked out by it, but It's like, hey, that's in my heart too. if you believe in the doctrine of original sin is unfair, would it be consistent to look for salvation from your sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ the cross?

We've talked about that. if sin is passed to all of Adam's descendants, why is it important to affirm that Adam and Eve were the original parents of all people? Because if every, if people didn't all come from Adam and Eve, then you've got all kinds of other people that perhaps didn't really descend from the sin of Adam. You could theoretically have races, let's say there was another complete other group, a group of hominids that were not connected to Adam and Eve, that grew up pretty good people that never partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And this, so you might have, maybe there's a whole group of people in Micronesia somewhere that don't have a sin nature. Because they're not connected to Adam and Eve, or maybe the flood wasn't really global and so we don't have all these people connected to Noah. And, and his clan. Yeah.

let's see. All right. So next week, let's just, no, 2 weeks from today, remember our geologist Matthew McLean. Matthew, March 20th, 9 o'clock, 10:30, invite people.

It's gonna be a lot of fun. the kids we're really gonna enjoy it. We're gonna bring in the junior highs and the high schoolers. if, if you wanna, if your kids love dinosaurs and you wanna bring them in here, that's totally fine.

we might have some other, other groups come in. Any final questions, comments, criticisms, or concerns? Yeah. Yeah, we'll go, Joe, and then, what's your name in the back there?

Donald Junior, OK, so let's go to Joe then Donald. Did original sin affect the genes? Mhm. Yeah Yeah, it's a challenging question.

I would say the answer probably is yes and no. That when we're talking about the doctrine of original sin, we're talking about something that's metaphysical, so we're talking about something that is related to the soul stuff. we're a whole person, but it's like, how do you quantify the soul, On the other hand, you don't have genetic load. You don't have, the Bible later indicates that the whole universe falls underneath the curse and the whole creation groans.

And so disease and death and all that gets kick-started as a result of Adam and Eve's sin. And so in that sense, you would say that yes, there is a genetic connection. because before Adam and Eve, there would have been none of that genetic load, none of those problems, and we can look into the eternal state and, and talk about the very physical nature of the eternal state and say there are gonna be, there's gonna be no death, no disease, no sorrow, no suffering. And so, you'll have a Perfected I guess genetic code at that point, not really a gene pool cause we're not gonna be propagating, doesn't seem like.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, if anything, from a biblical worldview, the genetic load has gotten worse and worse and worse as time has gone on. Although because of the, discoveries and innovations and stuff, we've been able to deal with the various diseases. That ever risen.

Yeah, Donald. Yeah Yeah, That's good. So yeah, the question is, can I follow my heart as a Christian? And I think to the extent that our heart is connected or, we're, we've been given the mind of Christ and our mind is being renewed day by day.

So hopefully, by sanctification as we're studying the word of God, as we're participating in all the means of grace, prayer, the, the church, past, our pastors, that our minds are being renewed and so, I don't know if I would say that I can trust my heart or mind. I would say that to the extent that my mind is conformed to the mind of Christ, I can trust Christ. And I can trust his word. even as a Christian, there are so many commands on the page of the New Testament that says, let him who thinks he stands be, take heed lest he fall.

A lot of the, a lot of the warnings about deception in the New Testament are given to Christians, that we can deceive ourselves, we can deceive our own hearts. Proverbs says there's a way that seems right to a man, but that way leads to death. And, and that seems to be a categorical statement and Proverbs is written from a father to a son in a religious context. So it doesn't seem like it's just talking about pagans there.

And so, in my, in my thinking, there's, there's, the Christians have the greatest reason for hope in our ability to look at reality and follow truth because we have the Holy Spirit, we have the Word of God. But Christians are still part of Adam. We're still part of, we're still, we still have, there's still a fallenness in us that remains. We call it the doctrine of remaining sin or indwelling sin.

And so, as Christians, we also have, still have a reason to stay humble and to be careful. About our hearts. Yeah, and we have to be careful about how we say that, yeah. We still have a sin nature.

There's a, there, we have to be careful about how we say that because there's one sense in which the way Paul speaks at times, it's almost like we have a new nature and that we, that the old nature has been set aside. And so some theologians would prefer to say that there's a sin principle or the flesh because the way Paul speaks is almost like we are a new man. And so, and part of our sanctification process is to recognize who we are in Christ, that we are completely new. And Paul even starts off many of his letters to people that are struggling with all kinds of sin.

He'll call them saints like the First Corinthians, he says, to the saints, these holy ones. Yeah, we're saints because of what Christ did for us, and then our, and then our minds are being renewed day by day. It, it is a, it is a little bit of a tricky balance, we have to be careful about not saying that I'm still my, as a Christian, my primary identity is not who I was, my primary identity is who I am in Christ. But if you don't understand the sin principle and the idea of indwelling sin, you're gonna get very, very depressed very quickly.

because there is this principle of indwelling sin, and, in the theology class on Wednesdays, we're actually talking about this next week. there's a really good article by Andrew Bonna. He's an old Christian pastor. He does a sermon on the doctrine of dwelling sin and why it's important and actually why the doctrine of indwelling sin gives us a lot of hope for ourselves and for our Christian brothers and sisters in Christ.

That's a long answer to your question. Yeah. Yeah, and it's not easy, honestly. in my, in my opinion, one of the books that does the best job to me is, outside of the Bible is the, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.

I don't know if you ever read it, but John Bunyan's work, it's so real. It's like, the burden falls off and, and he's free and now he's walking on this path. But you really get the sense that throughout the whole book, it's all of God's grace and before it, he's often in doubting castle and with the giant of despair, and he even gets to the end of his life. He's about, he's crossing over the river and even then he starts to doubt and God has to, his buddy has to pull him out of the river.

And, and there's a, I, I think there's a real healthy balance in a book like that. cause on the one side, we see it's all of grace, it's all of his righteousness, but our life is fraught with difficulties until we die. And, the, so I, I like the realism of the book. And the hope that it gives and cause the opposite can get, we, we'll do this, we'll deal with this in counseling sometimes, there's, there's times where, let's say if, if I had no category for the doctrine of indwelling sin, and, I get married to this beautiful Christian gal and she looks at me and well, here's this guy that wants to be a pastor and he's gonna go take the world for Christ.

And then we get married and then we're 2345 months into our marriage, and then she's looking at me and she's like, Man, I thought you were a Christian. And I'm looking at her some days. I get home from work and she's maybe not as excited to see me and maybe she's a little bit been out of shape and I, if I have no category for dwelling sin, I, I might look at her and be like, what happened to you? Are you born again?

And then now we're like questioning each other's salvation because we're treating each other in ways that don't seem becoming of a Christian. But if we understand that, wait a second, my debt against Christ the Lord is so incredibly huge, and yet, and yet he's forgiven me, and he forgives me every single day. And so this little irritation that I have against my wife today is like this big. And by the way, she's being attacked by the world of flesh and the devil.

And the Bible even says that there's a sense in which she's a weaker vessel, so there may be some sins that she's even struggles or might be prone towards. And so I can offer her grace, which is like just to little tiny sins compared to my big huge sins that the Lord has forgive me of, of. And so I have this category for my wife just becoming more and more like Christ throughout her lifetime and then looking to her glory self when she's in heaven. And then I can, I can grant her that grace and we can just grow together throughout our lives.

And, and, and we're like two, at this point, we've been married for over 20 years. We're like two magicians trying to fool each other with tricks that we know, we know all the tricks, right? She knows all my magic tricks and I know all her magic tricks. And so, if you have no gospel category for how to relate to somebody after 20 years, your marriage gets in trouble, right?

But, but now she knows every, all the worst stuff about me and I know all the worst stuff about her, and we can love each other through it and say, what, we're, we're going in Christ. And you, you haven't arrived yet and some days it looks like I'm worse than I was, a few years ago. But we're gonna arrive and, and, and that's, that's, we're gonna arrive there together. So, yeah, one more and then we got.

And he brought up too that, after all this time we look at ourselves and we see more sin and, all the time and That's a great, I think about that and He, he's he's Sanctifying us, we are becoming what we are going to be and so like in the beginning, we we're and then We learn more about truth and he's, he's, he's changing our heart for His glory we're becoming so those steps, he's And so we do that because we understand the gospel, we understand his word, we. True he's pointing all these things out.

Spirit is enlightening our eyes and he's like, he. if we I Yeah.

So Grace. He's saying, I'm gonna show you these things so I can sanctify you, so you can continue to. Yeah, that's good. Martin Luther, no, go ahead.

In this life Yeah Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, so Lord will, as we're following here, if our, our heart, our hearts aligned, then we can follow the desires of our heart.

It says, I forget what psalm. Martin Luther had this great line where he says, dealing with sin is like a man that has to shave every single day. It's like you shave today and then you get up in the morning, like, man, I thought I just did this yesterday. I gotta shave again.

And, every single day, you're still shaving away at that sin by God's grace. All right, let's go ahead and pray. Good, good discussion, Lord, we thank you so much for your time, or for our time together. Thank you for your word.

Help us, Lord, to grow in grace and, understand, both, the nature, of humanity and then the new nature we've given, given in Christ, help us to walk in humility with our friends and family who don't yet know you. And help us to just grow in our understanding of your word and be more and more conformed to your image. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.