Christ's Coming Promised

[0:00] Good morning. The scripture reading is taken from Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 through 24.! Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

[0:18] He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

[0:33] But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

[1:09] And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

[1:20] And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

[1:31] And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?

[1:44] And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

[2:00] The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done?

[2:16] The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, curse are you above all livestock, and above all the beasts of the field.

[2:30] On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

[2:43] He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children.

[2:56] Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. And to Adam, he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.

[3:12] Curse be the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.

[3:25] And you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.

[3:35] For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

[3:46] And the Lord God made for Adam, and for his wife, garments of skins and cloth clothed them. Then the Lord said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.

[4:00] Now lest ye reach out his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

[4:16] He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

[4:30] Here ends the scripture reading. Thank you very much, Joan. Once again, it is good for us to be together on this third Sunday of Advent.

[4:46] And this morning we are beginning a three-part Advent sermon series. The word Advent comes from the Latin word adventus.

[4:58] It means arrival or coming. The word Advent also is the translation of the Greek word parousia, which also means coming, but it refers to the Lord's second coming.

[5:13] And so in the season of Advent, this four-week season leading up to Christmas, it's a time that we get to reflect.

[5:27] It's a time that we get to reflect back on the Savior's coming into the world, and we get to also anticipate his return in the clouds as the judge of all mankind.

[5:44] And when we embrace this reflective period of Advent, what it does is it really helps us to position ourselves to guard against the distractions, to guard against a lot of the mal-affections of the season, the materialism that is so pervasive all around us.

[6:07] And we are able to center on the Lord Jesus Christ, that he came and that he is coming again.

[6:18] And this first sermon for our Advent series is coming from one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible.

[6:28] Certainly one of the most important chapters in the Old Testament, but I dare say in the entire Bible.

[6:41] And I want us to consider Genesis chapter 3 this morning as we participate in Advent, reflecting on the Savior's coming and on his coming again.

[6:54] But first let me pray for us. Father, we bow our hearts this morning as people who are busy and so easily distracted.

[7:08] I pray that you would speak to our hearts from your word to help us to settle them and to prepare them to reflect on the Lord Jesus Christ.

[7:21] So we came into the world in a manger as Savior and how one day he is going to return on the clouds as judge.

[7:37] Lord, would you help us to embrace the truth of Genesis chapter 3 as we prepare our hearts during this Advent season.

[7:56] We ask that you would do this in Jesus' name. Amen. So why is Genesis chapter 3 the most important of all the chapters in the Bible?

[8:08] And why is it a helpful passage for us to reflect upon during Advent? In our remaining time, I want to share three reasons why I believe this is so.

[8:22] And the first reason is that in Genesis chapter 3, we come face to face with the world's biggest problem.

[8:33] And it's the problem of sin. That's what we see in Genesis chapter 3. We come face to face with the origin of sin.

[8:48] We began the scripture reading this morning in Genesis chapter 3. But earlier in Genesis chapter 2, we have the account of the Lord creating Adam and graciously putting him in a prepared garden and causing everything that he could ever desire to come out of the ground to come up.

[9:12] And the Lord said to him, you're free to eat of all the abundance. That comes out of the ground. But there's one tree that you're not to eat of.

[9:24] And what the Bible tells us is that in the middle of the garden, there were two trees. There was the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord said to Adam, you're not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[9:40] And the Lord warned that if you do, when you do, you will surely die. And what we see in these opening verses of Genesis chapter 3 is that Adam and Eve rebelled against God.

[9:58] In Genesis chapter 3, we're introduced to a talking snake, something that we all know is not possible in the natural sense.

[10:12] Indeed, no animal that God has created is able to talk. And so what is clear is that in Genesis chapter 3, with this talking snake, something unusual, very unusual, is happening.

[10:28] And based on later biblical revelation, we know that the serpent referred to in Genesis chapter 3 is Satan himself.

[10:39] It's the devil. Here's what we read in Revelation chapter 12, verses 7 to 9. Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.

[10:58] But he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who was also called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.

[11:15] He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. So in the very last book of the Bible, we have this explanation of this talking serpent in the first book of the Bible.

[11:36] And what we see in Revelation 12 is that there was a rebellion in heaven. Satan and his angels rebelled against God. We're not told exactly when it happened, but what is important is it certainly did happen.

[11:54] And although we don't have a lot of time to parse through it from Genesis this morning, what we're able to see is that it's pretty clear that at the time that God created Adam, that evil existed.

[12:10] And that's why God put in the middle of the garden a tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And what it made clear at that particular point was that there were two paths to live.

[12:23] There were two ways to take. And God placed them before Adam, but he said to him, don't partake of it. And Adam rebelled against God's word and Adam partook of it.

[12:37] And those two trees represented serving, the way of serving the Lord or the way of serving Satan himself. And Adam disobeyed God.

[12:50] Eve was the one who was deceived. And she was deceived by Satan coming to her and causing her to doubt God's word.

[13:05] And what he said to her was that, you know, God is holding out on you. God is withholding this tree from you because he knows that if you partake of this tree, it's going to make you wise.

[13:20] And she believed Satan and she disobeyed God and she ate of the tree. And the Bible says that she gave to her husband who was right there with her.

[13:31] And she was having this conversation. He allowed her to have this conversation. She gave it to him and he ate. And what resulted is what we have come to know as the fall, the fall of mankind into sin because of Adam's disobedience.

[13:51] The Lord already warned him, the penalty for disobeying me is death. He said to Adam, the day you eat of it, you will surely die. But we know that Adam and Eve lived for hundreds of years after that.

[14:08] Yet God's word was true. They did die. They died spiritually. They walked around and they were what you may call the living dead.

[14:24] They were physically alive but they were spiritually dead. Adam and Eve's fall into sin dramatically changed them. First of all, we see they became aware that they were naked.

[14:41] Look at verse 7. It says, Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

[14:54] Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness and it is really an expression of the guilt that they felt because of their sin.

[15:08] Sin made Adam and Eve aware of their nakedness which previously they were comfortable with when they were spiritually alive and in right relationship with the Lord.

[15:21] But in their sin they were ashamed of their nakedness. The guilt of that rested upon them. And here we see Adam and Eve a pitiful couple.

[15:35] Satan promised them that the best thing you could do is eat from the street. It's going to make you wise. And in the end what they saw is it made them fools.

[15:48] It promised them good results. But there they were ashamed, separated from God, hiding from God, and soon they were going to be expelled out of the garden.

[16:08] Because Satan who promised them that if they would disobey God it would be a good thing that they will become wiser.

[16:19] They actually became fools. And what did they do in their sin and their shame? They didn't run to God.

[16:30] They didn't turn to God. They turned to themselves and they had a great idea that they would make loincloths for themselves out of fig leaves sewn together. What a pitiful sight for a couple that a gracious God withheld nothing from except gave them one command that was for their good.

[16:51] And here they are now ashamed, they're naked and destitute, and they're hiding and afraid and they are standing in leaves that they've sewn together.

[17:14] It's the response of all of us. We show ourselves connected to Adam and Eve that we do the very same thing.

[17:26] We find our own man-made solutions to the difficulties and the problems that we face. And our man-made solutions are nothing but fig leaves sewn together, some great idea that we have in the moment, but it is more, it is less than what we need.

[17:42] We need something more than that. Sin changed the relationship that Adam and Eve had with the Lord. Look again at verse 8.

[17:56] It says, And when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

[18:09] We see their folly in believing that they are able to hide from the presence of an all-present God, a God who is present everywhere.

[18:23] Adam and Eve hid. They hid from the Lord. And again, we're no different. We show ourselves to be their offspring by doing the very same thing in our sin.

[18:36] We naturally, in our sin, hide from God, separate ourselves from God, are afraid of God. sin.

[18:49] But sin not only affected Adam and Eve's relationship with God, it affected their relationship with one another. We see in verse 11, when the Lord questioned Adam about what happened, Adam, who had earlier declared Eve to be flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, his wife, a wonderful sight to behold when God presented her to him.

[19:18] He turns and he throws his wife under the bus and he says, it's this woman. He blamed his wife when God questioned him.

[19:30] And the Lord goes on and as the Lord, in this account that we have just read, as he addresses Adam and Eve, he tells them that something is going to happen in their relationship because of their sin.

[19:43] He tells Eve that she will not submit to her husband's leadership, that she's going to want to rebel against him and usurp his position of leadership and authority.

[19:56] He tells Adam that he will no longer be a loving leader, caring for his wife, but that he would instead rule over her harshly and seek to dominate her.

[20:08] Sin changed not just their relationship with the Lord, but it also affected their relationship with one another. And again, I believe that you would agree with me that we show ourselves to be Adam and Eve's children by our many broken relationships and by how sometimes even the relationships that are dearest to us, we would throw them under the bus to save our own skin.

[20:43] The Lord told Eve that this function that he created her to fulfill, the function of bearing children, he said, because of what you've done, because of the sin that you have given into, this process of bearing children is going to be multiplied with pain.

[21:06] Certainly there was pain, but the pain would be multiplied. the pain would be in the blood and to Adam he said, this abundant ground that I have given to you that cooperated with you and yielded its fruit from your labor, this ground no longer will cooperate with you, your labor will now be toilsome and sweaty labor.

[21:31] this ground is going to be filled with thorns and thistles as you try to cultivate it to support yourself and your family.

[21:44] All because of sin. again, we shouldn't think of Adam and Eve's sin in isolation.

[21:56] It's easy to read this passage and read something as if you're reading a story, but no, we're in this story. We fell in Adam.

[22:07] This is what the Bible says in Romans 5, 12. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because of sin.

[22:23] The story of the fall is about you and me as well. The story of the fall is about our problem, why we have this desire to do good and find ourselves doing evil.

[22:42] Because we've been infected by Adam's sin. And I think we would all acknowledge that our biggest problem is really not Adam's sin.

[22:55] It's our own sin. I am more conscious of the sins I have committed than Adam's sin that he committed. And I think if you would be honest this morning, you would agree.

[23:10] Sin has affected all of us. Sin has affected us to the depths of our being. Sin has affected every single part of who we are.

[23:23] There's not one part of us that has escaped the effect of the fall. And again, we show that to be true by giving evidence that we are Adam and Eve's offspring.

[23:46] But brothers and sisters, during Advent, as we reflect on Christ's coming into the world, we should also reflect on why he came. He came because sinners like you and me had a problem.

[24:08] Sinners like you and me had a problem that affected us to the depths of our being. He came because of my sin, he came because of your sin.

[24:21] And if we have trusted Christ in the pardon of our sins this morning, then I pray that our hearts are just filled with fresh gratitude that Jesus did come.

[24:39] But if you've not yet trusted Christ in the pardon of your sins, I pray that you would do so in this Advent season. I pray that you would recognize that you have been affected by sin, that you have a problem that no man-made solution can fix.

[24:59] you have a problem that no leaves sewn together by your own effort is able to address.

[25:12] And I pray you do that today. But Genesis 3 not only makes us aware of the problem of sin, it also points us to the solution to sin, which is the promise of Christ, the one whom God sent into the world.

[25:30] And this is my second point, the promise of Christ. Look at verse 15. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

[25:48] He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. when Adam and Eve heard these words, these words brought them great hope.

[26:00] Because the first thing it did for them was it told them that though they deserved to be executed for their treason, for their rebellion against God, God wasn't going to execute them.

[26:19] Because God promised offspring, God promised that Eve would have offspring. And so this would have been great comfort to them.

[26:33] This would have brought hope to them that they were not going to die. And then second, the Lord also promised that he would bring judgment against the serpent who tempted and deceived them.

[26:49] The Lord promised that the head of the serpent was going to be crushed. Now, Adam and Eve at this particular point in redemption history did not understand all that that entailed.

[27:04] They didn't understand all that the Lord said about the enmity he was going to put between the woman and the serpent and how the seed of the woman was going to crush the head of the serpent.

[27:18] They didn't understand any of that. As hopeful as it was that God was going to do something about what happened, that this serpent was going to be crushed, they didn't know all the details of that.

[27:38] And what we see is this promise that God gave, it unfolds like a flower through the rest of Scripture. Scripture. And by the time we get to the New Testament, it becomes very clear what this promise that the Lord gave in Genesis 3.15 actually meant.

[28:05] There are several places we could look to see how this unfolded in the New Testament, but I want to look in the book of Hebrews, two particular passages.

[28:16] First, beginning in Hebrews 1, verses 1-4, this is what it says. Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

[28:31] And in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

[28:53] After making purification for sins, this is a reference to the cross of Jesus Christ and the death that he died on the cross. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become much more superior to angels, as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

[29:21] These are words of a God's son, Jesus Christ, who came into the world, who died on the cross, who was raised from the dead, and who ascended on high in glory, where he now sits at the right hand of God the Father, waiting to return to the world as judge.

[29:51] The writer to the Hebrews continues, and he is referring to Jesus Christ in beyond chapter 1 and chapter 2, but he is, it's a long argument, so he doesn't refer to Jesus by name, but he refers to him by pronoun, he, because he's referring back to God's son, through whom he spoke in those opening verses, who came, who made purification for sins, who ascended back into heaven.

[30:20] This is what it says in Genesis 2, 14 and 15. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he, meaning Jesus Christ, likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

[30:55] These two passages in Hebrews make the point that Jesus is the promised seed of the woman in Genesis 3, 15, who crushed the head of the serpent, who is Satan, and he did it in his cross.

[31:16] And when we think of the cross of Jesus Christ, we think, it's easy to think of a pitiful person hanging on the cross who has been taken advantage of and who was helpless, but no, brothers and sisters, in his cross and on the cross, Jesus was crushing the head of the serpent.

[31:38] Genesis 3, 15 tells us that Satan is going to bruise his heel, he's going to crush his head, and in the sense that Jesus died but rose from the dead, his heel was bruised, but he himself was not crushed.

[31:55] Satan was crushed, but Jesus wasn't. Genesis 3, 15 has come to be known as the first proclamation of the gospel.

[32:12] This is the gospel in the opening book of the Bible about one who is going to come, born of a woman.

[32:25] And the whole idea of the seed of the woman has implications for us to teach us about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. That he would come, and he would deal with our archenemy, and he would crush him, and he would finally defeat him.

[32:47] This is the first gospel. And this sounded good in the airs of Adam and Eve, but friends, it's warning, it should sound far better in our ears, because we see a gracious God promising what he would do in the face of hopeless and helpless sinners whose best effort was to take some fig leaves and sew them together as a solution to their problem.

[33:17] And he knew that it was going to take much more than that. And so what we see after this first proclamation of the gospel is we see the unfolding of the gospel in the pages of scripture throughout the Old Testament.

[33:35] And as it mushroomed, as it grew, they began to understand, God's people in the Old Testament began to understand that the Messiah was the one who was going to come as the redeemer, as the deliverer, as the one who would crush the head of the serpent.

[33:55] And so we have all these prophecies in the Old Testament, this one who was going to come. Isaiah 53 brings it into full view where it talks about the Lord Jesus Christ and how he would be crucified.

[34:13] And what we see in that passage is it says that God was the one who was pleased to crush his son so that he might bring many sons to glory.

[34:27] In Galatians 4, verses 4 to 5, this is what we read. But when the fullness of time had come, when the fullness of time had come, when the time that God had ordained that Christ should come into the world, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

[34:54] The promise of Christ was the solution to sin. The birth of Christ was the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise in Genesis 3, 15.

[35:12] And so during Advent, we should reflect on the gospel. We should reflect on the good news of the gospel and how God spoke it in the darkness of sin and his aftermath.

[35:28] How a good, gracious, and kind God came to two human beings who were hiding from him and afraid, and he spoke good news to them.

[35:46] But Christ has already died on the cross. And in his death, he crushed Satan. And he has now made it possible for us to be reconciled to God.

[36:01] The gospel is no longer a promise. The gospel is now a reality. That sinners like you and me can come.

[36:13] We can come to God. We can come to We can come to God. And we can be reconciled to him because his son came as a true solution to our sin problem, that we might be forgiven and that we might be reconciled to God.

[36:34] Advent is an opportunity for us to reflect on these things. Advent is an opportunity even for sinners to know that this one who has been born into the world, because of his death on the cross, can now be born in their heart so they can be born again, so they can be transformed.

[36:58] They can be the people that God has called them to be. Well, not only is Genesis 3 important because it teaches us about the problem of sin and the promise of Christ, Genesis 3 is important because it foreshadows the provision of God's grace.

[37:22] And this is my third and final point, the provision of grace. As we've already seen, Adam and Eve died spiritually on the day that they disobeyed.

[37:37] But again, they deserve to die physically. They deserve to be executed for their rebellion against a perfect, holy, and gracious God, a generous God, who gave them all that they had, and yet they rebelled against him.

[38:01] And to their surprise, rather than executing them, God gave them grace.

[38:14] I think most of us could probably recall growing up, I certainly can, times when I knew I was spared a bigger punishment than I deserved.

[38:30] I was spared many, many times and just the relief of not getting a beating. Imagine the relief of not being executed.

[38:44] That was the grace of God to them by not snuffing out their lives physically. glory. But we also see Adam and Eve receiving grace from the Lord when they were afraid, when they were hiding, and God was the one who went looking for them, God was the one who went calling to them, and that was an act of grace.

[39:14] grace. Have you ever been in a difficult relationship? You wronged someone.

[39:26] You didn't know how to approach them. No matter how much you thought about it, you just couldn't find the angle, and you were just there helpless, and you didn't know how to break the ice to begin to address that conversation.

[39:41] And that person was bigger than you thought, and they came to you. They didn't wait for you to come. They picked up the phone. They stopped by, and they made that conversation much easier.

[39:59] God did that and more for Adam and Eve on that day. When they were hiding, he called to them. He sought them out. That's an act of grace.

[40:11] That is an act of grace. All sinners naturally run from God. None of us comes to God. The Bible says there is none that seeks God.

[40:21] Nobody seeks God. None of us can seek God. None of us, therefore, will seek God. God seeks the lost. And those of us who know Jesus Christ this morning, that is our testimony.

[40:36] The only reason we know Christ this morning is he one day sought us. And it doesn't matter how you felt that you were seeking or you felt that you were just tired of your life and wanted to lead it.

[40:48] No, God was in all of that. God was at work in all of that. He was the one seeking you out. He was the one calling you. And it's because if he hadn't done so, none of us would ever come to him.

[41:05] None of us would be saved. And that is grace. That is the grace of God. that he would come to undeserving sinners. And he would offer them grace.

[41:23] But we also see God's grace to Adam and Eve more explicitly in verse 21. Look at what verse 21 says. It says that the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothes them.

[41:41] God showed grace and mercy to Adam and Eve as they stood before him in their pitiful loincloths of fig leaves sewn together.

[41:53] and he made for them, not loincloths, garments, something that covered their bodies.

[42:07] And it wasn't made out of fig leaves. It was made out of skins. Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, God killed one or more animals, innocent animals, to close them with skins.

[42:32] Something more permanent, something more enduring than the fig leaves that they were soon going to have to discard and get new ones had the Lord not intervened.

[42:44] And this is a beautiful picture that points to the grace that comes through Jesus Christ.

[42:55] In the same way that animal or those animals were killed to clothe Adam and Eve in proper garments, the Lord Jesus Christ, God killed him.

[43:08] So that pitiful sinners like you and me, afraid, under the weight of our sins, that we might be forgiven and we might be closed in the righteousness that comes from Jesus Christ through his blood shed on the cross.

[43:30] And that we might be in right standing before a holy God whose standard is perfection.

[43:40] redemption. Again, brothers and sisters, Advent is a season that calls us to reflect on the grace of God that has come to us through Jesus Christ, through his death on the cross for sinners like you and me.

[44:05] it's not just about Jesus being born in a manger. We don't idolize him in the manger because we know he was born to die.

[44:19] The angel said to Joseph, you shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. There was only one way to do that.

[44:32] He had to die. In the gospel of John chapter 1 verses 16 and 17 here's what we read and from his fullness talking about the Lord Jesus Christ from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace not just grace abundant grace amazing grace grace upon grace has come to us from the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ for the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ the apostle John reminds us again we didn't just get grace we got grace on grace grace on grace immeasurable grace amazing grace abundant grace that is what

[45:41] Jesus did in his cross and so Advent is not just reflecting upon the saviors coming into the world Advent is also about his return to this world Jesus came into the world as savior he will one day return as judge he's not returning as savior he's one day returning as judge and I ask those of you who this morning don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior you know that within the depths of your hearts you know where you stand with the Lord I want to ask you are you prepared to meet this judge who has come who has given his life for sinners and who will one day return as judge are you prepared to meet this judge judge who doesn't grade on a curve this judge who doesn't weigh your good and your bad and say well you know you've done more good so you're okay and this judge who requires perfection and this judge who knows that he is the solution he has been the solution he has offered the solution for sin are you prepared to meet this judge the sad reality about reflecting about the return of

[47:31] Jesus Christ is that only those who belong to Christ will spend eternity with him those who do not will spend an eternity in hell and they will suffer eternal damnation just as those who know Jesus Christ and belong to him will enjoy eternal life in his presence and it brings me no joy to say this morning that those who do not know Jesus Christ have a future of eternal separation and punishment from his presence and so this morning I urge you turn to turn to Jesus Christ this morning I urge you to turn from sin and turn to Jesus and here's what scripture says he says he will not turn away anyone who comes to him he will never turn them away and so this morning

[48:41] I urge you if you don't know Christ turn to Jesus and here's what you will find you will find that whoever you are and whatever you've done you'll find a savior who is merciful you'll find a savior who shows you the same mercy that he showed to Adam and Eve you know there's some people who wonder and they question will Adam and Eve be in heaven and I don't see how you can read Genesis 3 and conclude otherwise the grace of God came to Adam and Eve and the grace of God still comes to Adam and Eve's offspring and so friend if you hear this morning and you don't know Jesus Christ turn to the merciful savior he is quick to pardon all of your sins all of them he knows them he's quick to pardon them all and so in this

[49:52] Advent season I pray that you will turn to Jesus let's pray heavenly father we are so grateful that even though we in Adam fell and sin and we have in our own right sinned in ways that deserve no mercy you have still given mercy by sending your son to die on the cross for us lord may our hearts be filled with gratitude may our hearts be filled with amazement if we put our trust in

[50:56] Christ but lord those who have not would you convict them this morning lord would you give them no rest! in their soul until they have settled their account with you and found their place at the foot of your cross and they know the peace that comes from having sins forgiven and their conscience cleansed lord work in all of our hearts this morning during this Advent season we pray in Jesus name amen