Related By Grace

Introductory Considerations

1. We are related by God. As we saw last week God established a relationship with Adam and with mankind including you and me.

2. The relationship was one in which He gave us life and in which He calls us to trust in Him and obey Him. To obey Him meant mainly thing - to not rely on ourselves but to rely on Him. It meant to eat from the tree of life which He provides rather than from relying on our own wisdom and strength. To humbly admit we need God and His grace.

3. Things have not changed - we still need to do that today to experience His blessings. To do so means life while to reject His terms and rely on self means death

4. It seemed like a fair deal. But Adam and Eve blew it. Instead of simply trusting and obeying, they listened to the lies of the serpent.

Teaching

1.Satan, as we have seen in Job in our evening worship, hates God. He rebelled against God because he wanted to be raised above God. Because of pride, he thought he did not need God and wanted to rule in God’s place. Satan failed and as a result he and a third of the angels, those who followed him, were expelled from heaven.

2. But Satan did not give up. He was determined to undermine the work of God. He did not want God to be worshiped. He wanted to destroy the relationship that God had established with mankind.

3. And so he told Eve that if they disobeyed God they would be like God - knowing good and evil. In other words they would not need God any more - they could rely upon themselves. Sounds like the same message he is telling people today.

4. And so, because of their pride, Eve and then Adam broke the bond of trust and obedience God had established with them.

5. And because of that things would never be the same again. Never again would the innocence of a sinless world exist on this earth.

6. While we can blame them for this, we also basically do the same thing. We fail to trust and obey God - without Holy Spirit we do not do this as all and even as Christians we fail to fully trust and obey.

7. Last week I said the two trees stand before us and we need to choose from which one we will eat. Do we choose life or death? - because of sin we also have chosen death.

8. If God chose to do so, he could have ended His relationship with us then and there. He could have said "That’s it, maybe I’ll create another world elsewhere.

9. But God had made us, He loved us and still wanted us to experience His blessings.

a. If He changed the terms of the covenant that He already had established, He would not have been true to His word.

b. So God came after Adam and Eve and confronts them and confronts the evil one who led them to rebel. And as He does He shows us that He does give us a second chance. That He will not just let us go our own way to follow our own devices.

c. This would be repeated over and over again in His dealings with His people in the Bible and with His dealings with us.

d. Friends, we as Adam and Eve have broken our relationship with God, but, in His grace, He comes after us and lets us know that He wants the relationship to continue.

e. As the father of the prodigal son He is waiting for us to come back to Him to enjoy the blessings of the home He first established for Him.

10. Today He sets the groundwork for the way in which we can again renew our relationship to be a relationship of life rather than of death. As we look at this covenant we again see how elements of life and death are in it and how they apply to us today.

11. The covenant or the way that God will relate to us is found in verse 14-19

12. God first talks to the serpent.

a. Some would say that verse 14-15 is a way of explaining why snakes crawl and nothing more, but in passing judgement on the snake God is really passing judgement on the one who is acting through Him - Satan himself.

b. Satan is to be cursed above all - His curse will result in Him being thrown into the Lake of Fire when he will be judged.

c. Rather than Satan having won the victory or rather than God destroying Satan right then and there, God says that He will put enmity between his seed and the woman’s seed.