Tag: seed

It Grieved Him at His Heart, Part 1

“And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart”.  (Genesis 6:6)

I chose the title for this because of the incredible reverse of sentiment from the Lord in only six chapters of the first book of the Bible. As the book begins we see God creating the world. It is a wonderful display of His awesome power and His purpose.  He creates man and woman made in His image.  Before long though, sin enters the picture and what was once bathed in innocence becomes shattered by the Fall.  [The Fall was the willful disobedience of Adam and Eve.]  They broke the fellowship with God and evil was unleashed causing the destruction to begin. One right after the other events began happening.  We had Adam and Eve getting expelled from the garden of Eden, next we saw their first son become a murderer, evil bred still more evil and the world He created became so vile that God spoke those words I began with.  God started out saying, “It was good”, He said it repeatedly but ended by saying, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:7)

I hope you read and study the Holy Bible.  It provides a fantastic spiritual history for you.

Before we get into the heart of things let us start with some background information about Genesis.  There are 50 chapters in the book of Genesis comprised of 1,533 verses holding 38,267 words.  The key word for the entire book is “Beginnings”.  A key verse for the topic I am addressing is Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”   The topic I am covering with this title is the first half of the book, “the four great events”.  Another key verse is Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”  Please note that Christ is that seed of woman.

Genesis was written by Moses 1450 – 1410 B.C. and Moses was born at least three centuries after the events in Genesis ended.  In actuality, the book was written by God but breathed through Moses.  We will be dealing with what is called, “The Fertile Crescent”, in chapters 1-11 which spanned more than 2,000 years and 1500 miles. We will learn why God chose Israel to be His redemptive people by the time we end chapter 11.  We will only be focusing on the first 11 of 50 chapters, therefore how God chose Israel will be covered with chapters 12 to 50. In this topic, we will be covering the four great events which are: Creation– God is the sovereign Creator of matter, energy, space and time. Man is the pinnacle of the creation. The Fall– Creation is followed by corruption. Man gets separated from God then gets separated from man. Despite the curse of the Fall, God promised hope of redemption through the seed of the woman (Chapter 3, verse 15). The Flood– As man multiplied, sin multiplied until God had enough and was compelled to destroy humanity with exception of Noah and his family. The Nations– the unity of the human race, we are all children of Adam through Noah. Because of the rebellion at the tower of Babel, God fragments the original culture and language of post flood and scatters people over the face of the earth.  In a future segment, I will cover the second half which is, “The Four Great People”.

Ok, on to the beginning. As I was reading the book of Genesis I connected with several things I hadn’t before. The presence of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, reproduction of its own kind, the unknown population and the amount of grief the Lord experienced. Each time you study a part of the Bible the Lord will allow you some more meat to digest. So He opened my eyes on these.

I won’t go verse by verse through the first seven days of creation because you can read that for yourself.  I will note however that in verse 4 of the first chapter God said the first, “it was good”.  In verse 10 when the waters were separate from the land called earth he said the second, “it was good”. I want to mention that God made the stars to light the earth at night and he separated the light from darkness because we were meant to be in the light.  Good goes to light and evil goes to darkness. See verse 16.  I would also like to point out from verse 11 that He made the grasses and the herbs and the plants and fruit, “Whose seed is in itself.” In other words, it will always be the same. You can’t see wheat growing into a corn stalk or rice becoming apples because it is whose seed is in itself.  How awesome is that. In verse 12 He said, “it is good” once again and again in verse 18 He said it.  Then in verse 21 we see that God saw that it was good.  God then made man and women in His own image. He formed Adam form the dust of the ground. No rain had occurred yet, nor had the ground been tilled.

Before we get too far into chapter 2 of Genesis I have a question for you.  Have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus was there during the creation?  That is an incredible thing to get our arms around as human beings. He was there. He always was, even at the beginning we can see the mystery of Jesus Christ. The very first verse speaks of the plurality in the Godhead.  It is indicating the Trinity.  God is the Hebrew word Elohim.  El is a singular term for God and the im ending makes it plural so we have, “In the beginning Gods…” There are other signs and types throughout Genesis which I will visit later, but for now we can already see Jesus the Christ at work in the creation. In Colossians 1:16 it claims it was by Him (Jesus) that all things were created. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 it says all things came from God, but they came through Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:2, 10-12 says that through Jesus the universe was made and Psalm 102:24-27 refers to Elohim as the One who’s hands made the universe. We must understand that Jesus was speaking the truth when He said He was one with the Father. Let us look at Genesis 1:26, Who is the us? It’s the Father, the son and the Holy Ghost.  Jesus was there and was an instrument of the creation. In Genesis 3:8 who walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden?  God the father is a spirit. (John 4:24) Only Jesus Christ takes on a form. (Hebrews 10:5) We will re-visit this later with the introduction of Melchizedek but there already is plenty of evidence Jesus Christ was there before the world was ever created and is still with us today. The same today as yesterday. Amen! When I think of this I can only say wow! And remain totally amazed and in awe.

Next time I will address the Fall in Chapter 2 and the evil overcoming mankind before the flood that brought that grieving to the Lord. For now, please read Genesis and be encouraged by it. The evil and darkness that is in the world can seem bleak but God has a plan. We have hope. You are in His plan and salvation is available.

To jump to part 2 click here.

God bless you,

The Tubthumper

 

YOUR WORST ENEMY

satan-3-by-jack-chickThe judge slammed his gavel on the podium and immediately pronounced the verdict and the sentence.  Guilty was the verdict and the sentence was divine and engaged all of mankind who should ever live upon the earth. The defendant and alleged offender was one named Satan, alias Beelzebub, Lucifer, Devil and Prince of this world.  The sentence which was pronounced quickly was, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)  The judge, jury and executioner was, none other than the Great “I AM”, the creator of all and our LORD and savior.

Could this also be classified as prophecy?

This word, enmity means to create a feeling or condition of hostility; hatred; ill will; animosity or antagonism which is mutual to all parties. This enmity thing is not something that occurs naturally.  When Adam committed the transgression against the law that God had laid out he imposed upon all mankind an evil nature.  His actions placed us all in harmony with Satan when God’s intent was for us to be in opposition or difference.  Man, along with Satan became evil through an act of apostasy.   If God had not taken some severe action we would have been continuously united with Satan against God.

Satan worked over Eve with deception and then Eve became an accomplice to help move Adam into sin in a grand scheme to get full cooperation in warfare against God and His Kingdom.  When Satan heard the sentence of a declaration of enmity between himself and the woman, and between his seed and her seed, he understood that he had been had and that man would somehow he able to resist his powers.  Drat! Sassa-frassa-rassa he probably was muttering.  How could this happen?

This does not stop the evil one and only serves to slow him down.  Actually, the evil one thinks he will some-day win and steps up his efforts to try and win the next battle.  His fury is kindled like a camper throwing birch twigs on the hot coals of the smoldering fire.

God’s grace that he lovingly placed in the soul of man has given us enmity against Satan. Without the grace of God and His love and redemption mankind would be totally captive to Satan and we would all be servants to do his evil. The result is that in our souls there rages this conflict where before the fall of man once was a soul at complete peace.  For all that choose to access it we have the power of Jesus Christ that enables us to resist the efforts of the evil tyrant that lurks at every corner and is seeking us out. Through the love of Christ we can conquer the evil passions that draw us and we can abhor sin and flee from it.

When we look at how the world treated Jesus Christ we can see it as an example or picture of the type of antagonism or enmity existing between the Spirit of Christ and Satan. The Jews totally rejected Jesus.  His purity and His holiness drew out the hatred of all the ungodly around Him.  For a community of sensual and proud people the sinless life of self-denial that Jesus exhibited was too much for them to take.  Once again we saw this enmity. This time it was the Jews eliciting enmity with the Christ.  They would deny that Jesus was the messiah.  Satan found some companions with these evil men and they all joined together in apostasy to conspire against Jesus the Christ the Champion of Truth.

Please understand this very important point otherwise you will leave yourself open to destruction.  The very same enmity that was manifested toward Jesus Christ is and always will be manifested toward His followers.  Whoever is able to recognize sin for what it is and call upon the LORD for strength to resist the temptations will surely attract the attention of the evil one.  This battle between truth and evil will exist as long as sinners and sin remain part of the earth.  There will never be any harmony between Christ and anyone or anything that serves Satan.  The attack and persecution leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on the Cross has not stopped. “Yea and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (2 Timothy 3:12)

Satan continues to fight and is constantly working to build up his kingdom in the battle against the Kingdom of God. There is and will be a constant attempt to deceive any of Christ’s followers and Satan would love nothing more than to lure you in and pull you away from your allegiance to Jesus Christ. He is always working to misconstrue and pervert the Scriptures to accomplish his objective. Satan is having a hay-day right now with all the false teachers and the preachers that are watering down and adding to scripture and not preaching the truth. These weak ones are falling into his hands.  There is a constant effort to malign God’s people just as there always has been since it was all foreshadowed in Genesis 3:15.  This enmity will continue until the rapture and the end of the battle in Revelation when Satan is cast into the lake of fire.

Satan continues to throw all the weight he can at us.  He puts his entire power into combat and the battle continues to rage.  The battle rages on because we do not connect with Christ the way He wants us to.  We cannot see sin as repulsive and as abhorrent as Christ did.  We cannot see it because we are not putting forth the effort to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  We are so removed from Christ we are destitute of the Holy Spirit. Most of us do not connect with the malignity and the expansion of sin and we are blind to the power and character of the prince of the world.  Mankind does not elicit enmity against Satan and his works because mankind is ignorant regarding his power and his malice.  We don’t grasp the vastness of his warfare against the Church of Christ and against Christ Himself.  The masses of our land are deluded and unaware.  Most are caught up in all the enjoyment of life and ignorant to the destruction around them.  Most don’t realize there is a mighty general of an evil army that has a massive attack plan with calculated maneuvers to war against Christ and to stop Him from saving souls.

How many times do you hear reference to Satan from professed Christians?  Not often.  Certainly not often enough!  What about the clergy in the pulpits these days? There is an occasional mention of the battle here and there but the evidence of his activity and success is not addressed in near comparison to the gravity of the situation. Most people are neglecting the warnings about the subtlety of Satan and most seem to ignore his very existence.  Most preachers of today wouldn’t touch the subject for fear of making some people feel uncomfortable.  Well guess what?  You should all be real uncomfortable!  The enemy is after your soul people.  He is out to kill you and your family.  Wake up!

Continued… in the next post.  Click here to go to part 2.

 

Have a Godly day,

‘The Tubthumper’