David Pawson - Genesis 4

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THOUGHTFUL THOUGHTS 21.8.26  BY JOHN DUNNING. 

GENESIS PART 4, PARADISE LOST…

INTRODUCTION - “You gotta serve somebody”.
In the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song are the words; “You’ve gotta serve somebody”. It was his way of expressing the choices we are discussing this time. Let me explain…
Satan convinced Adam and Eve that they could take control of their own lives, outside of God, by making their own decisions, quite independently of God. When Eve and Adam made a disobedient choice to get what they wanted, it resulted in God distancing Himself from their disobedient spirit, to do what they wanted. Disobedience to God has consequences and the consequence of their disobedience was separation from God. Satan was the voice that Adam and Eve listened to, in order to give in to temptation. To get what they wanted, they were prepared to be disobedient.

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A Chinese Christian said to me, if Adam had been Chinese, there would have been no problem as he would have just eaten the snake! That joke makes the point about how we should treat temptation.

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Well, I know Genesis only refers to fruit and not apples, but the joke makes the point about learning lessons. The first time around, Adam was standing beside his wife when Satan was speaking and he said nothing. He just went along with his wife.
After Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, (Ch.3), their biological body clock started ticking, until they would die a physical death, to go with their spiritual death. Ch. 4 tells us that the next sin was not very far behind when one son then murdered his brother out of jealousy, just because his brother gave more generously to God. Only one of the two was trying to live to please God. The brothers already saw that sacrifices were needed to say ‘sorry’ to God. Here we learn from Adam and Eve that it’s all about who we listen to. For God, obedience is not “mix and match”, by us thinking we can choose what we choose to obey, which takes me onto the next point…

Now all of us are in a pickle.

John Milton wrote a series of poems called “Paradise Lost”, about how disobeying God ruined God’s perfect creation, which brings us onto Adam and Eve being cast out of Eden.

God chose to keep man at a distance after his disloyalty. Man could no longer be counted on, which is a point for us to consider, as God knows who are in His real family and the unrighteous are out.
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Examples.
a). A warning

When Moses climbed up Sinai, God told him to warn the people, saying, “Warn the people, lest they break through to gaze at the LORD, and many of them perish”. God’s warning for them to stay away, saved their lives, otherwise they would have dropped dead on the spot. Their unrighteousness would have caused them to die instantly for trying to come into the presence of a Holy God without first getting cleaned up. God introduced a sacrificial system in the “Old” Covenant, which was a “stop gap” measure until the Messiah came with Plan A.

b). Familiarity

Another example is when the Ark of the Covenant was being transported on a cart by oxen. When it started tipping over, a man grabbed it to steady it, and he dropped dead instantly. This shows what would have happened at Sinai if Moses had not kept the people away. Anyway, David became so afraid after a man dropped dead, that he put the Ark into the home of a local Jew, as he didn’t know what else to do with it.

c). Holiness

My final example to make the point is, that before entering the Holy of Holies once a year, a rope was tied around the priest’s ankles, in order to pull him out of the “Holy of Holies”, if they dropped dead for failing to cleanse themselves through sacrifice, first. (The rope was because no-one else was allowed into the Holy of Holies, except the High Priest once a year.)

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EPILOGUE

David Pawson tells a joke about learning, like this…
A married couple were the only survivors of a nuclear third world war. 

The man says to his wife “Now what are we going to do?”
The wife produced an apple saying “I saved this!”
The man replied, ‘Let’s not go through that again”!

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We can’t change the past with Adam’s legacy of separation from God, but God has made it possible for us to change our future. Joshua said, “Choose you this day who you will serve…” How? Jeremiah 33:3 says “Call to me, and I will answer you”. God is just a prayer away – and mercy is His speciality!

To change our destiny, Acts 2:38 tells us that first of all we must accept God’s provision to get cleaned up through repentance, forgiveness, immersion in water, (which is what the Greek word ‘baptizo literally means), and then accepting God’s Holy Spirit, who enables us to live righteousness.
Bob Dylan was a Jew who became a Messianic Jew, so it was with feeling that he sang, “You gotta serve somebody”.

Do share this study with your friends…

This is John Dunning signing off from “Thoughtful Thoughts” for another week.

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PS. To help pray for the ‘suffering church’ see;- https://barnabasfund.org/nz/pray/daily-prayer/#previous-dates

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If you would like to know how to find peace with God, listen to the podcasts at this link…

https://www.inspirational.org.nz/pages/johns-devotionals-podcast

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For a message on Hearing God, called “The Cost of Discipleship”, 

visit this podcast link https://share.transistor.fm/s/1263bbab

Click the link below to Subscribe to John’s Bible Study.

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