The Village Church
Inception of Judgment - Audio
Jesus traveled and pray within for me. Let's pray. Father, guys, we come to your word this morning. I pray that your spirit will take you. I pray this every Sunday. He has to move. He has to move. He has to take what I see and apply to my heart, apply to the hearts of your people. And you would be glorified. You be honored today. I decrease you increase. You receive the glory, not I. I pray for all this in Christ's name. Amen. A few weeks ago, I heard someone say that we, in America, we have the freedom to say whatever we want to say. We have the freedom to do that. But God went on to say, but we're not free from the consequences of what we say. You can say whatever you want to say, but you're not free from the consequences that come from the things that you say. You agree? Yes. For weeks now, we've been talking about Adam and Adam's and Eve's consequences of their rebellion against the Lord God. A banquet of consequences is what we say they set down to. Consequences that they brought upon themselves. They lost their innocence. They broke up their fellowship with the Lord God. And last week we saw that they could not even admit what they did was wrong. They wouldn't admit it. They would not admit that they rebelled. They would not take responsibility for their actions. Even though the Lord God gracefully gave them every opportunity to do so. Where are you Adam? Where are you? You can come clean Adam. Have you eaten from the tree or which I commanded you not to eat? Who told you that you were naked? They didn't come clean. He questioned Eve. He questioned Adam. And what did they do? They play the victim and they shift the blame. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. And this morning we're going to see that the Lord God, he's done. He's done listening to the what had happened excuses. I don't want to hear that anymore. I don't want to hear the what had happened phrase anymore. They're guilty. He knows it. They know it. And you know this whole situation. You know Adam and Eve. I know it's quite similar to the times when I see my little girl. She does something wrong. I know that she did it. But every time I ask her to admit it, she won't admit it. She knows that she did it. But she'll look at me and say, I didn't do it. I saw you do it. Why won't you admit it? Adam and Eve, the first parents, that's where it comes from. We're not admitted. We're not come clean. And the God and creator of our first parents, he doesn't need to hear any more than ours. No more excuses. And as you will see, he begins to place the blame in the order that it is deserved. For the rest of this chapter, for the rest of Genesis 3, the Lord God is the only one speaking. He's the only one talking. Each of the guilty parties, the serpent, Adam and Eve, all they can do is listen. Can't offer a defense. Can't even offer an objection. Neither of them had a foot to stand on here. They're all a guilty for what they did. So if you have your Bibles, live with me at Genesis chapter 3, again in verse 14. The Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, above all the beasts of the field, on your belly you should go, and thus you shall eat all the days of your life. Our put hostility between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heels." And to the woman, he said, "I would greatly multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire should be for your husband, and he will 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 it, eat of it. Curse is to ground the cost of you. In pain, you should eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and tostles, it shall bring forth for you. You will eat the plants of the field, but a sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are a dust, and to dust you shall return." What do we have here? This is the inception of judgment. The inception of judgment. That's what we have in these verses. We also see these verses as the return of the repeated phrase that we see in Genesis 1 and 2. God said, "As we know in the first three chapters, God said, He spoke names in the creation. He spoke blessings and provisions to Adam and Eve. But here He's speaking judgment, judgment, punishment toward three guilty parties in the order of that transgression. And the serpent is up first." Verse 14, you say it to the serpent, "Because you have done this, curse are you above all livestock, above all the beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put hostility between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." He's seen in the beginning of Genesis 3, the serpent is described as being more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And now He's more cursed than all the other beasts the Lord God has made. And notice that the Lord, He didn't even ask the serpent a question. He didn't even question the serpent. They didn't say to the serpent, "Where are you? What have you done?" First, because He was not in covenant relationship with the serpent, and He did not give the serpent the divine command. And third, as one pastor said, "There is no remedy for the sin of the serpent." He's already condemned. He's already convicted of his rebellion. The serpent is cursed. He is going to crawl on his belly all the days of his life. What does that mean? He's going to live in humiliation, humiliation. And as we know that the true enemy here, the true nemesis here, is not just a serpent. We all know it's something that's going on with the serpent. It's the enemy. The eternal enemy of God Himself is at play here, and He would never have any pardon. He would not receive mercy. The enemy is using the serpent as an instrument to carry out his wicked intentions, and he's seated in those intentions. Matthew Henry says that the devil's instrument must share in the devil's punishment. Now, he does. But what the God says in verse 15 here is intentionally directed at the serpent. Talking about his, eventually, is going to be defeated by the seed of the woman. Verse 15, he says, "I will put hostility between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head. You shall bruise his heel." And the implications of it is great implications of that verse, which I'm going to save for the last sermon here. I'm going to go into that today. But today, just know that it's going to be lasting hostility between the serpent and the woman, between her seed and his seed. No harmony, no unity. It will be conflict. It will be conflict. Also, know that in the end, it will be the seed of the woman that will bruise his head, that will destroy him. Even though that seed will strike this woman's seed, he'll, her seed will get the victory in the end. He will face defeat. He will. During the summary of 1999, I spent two months in Johannesburg, South Africa, ministering to college students. I was on a team about 15 and 20 college students. And we saw the Lord brave many students to faith that summer that we were in in South Africa. And there was one particular guy that we met who was on fire. We put the Lord. He was excited. He came through all the things that we put on the Bible studies and our weekly meetings. No, he was on fire. But when we left at the end of that summer and the next team went over, something changed in that young man. He wasn't the same guy that he was when we were there. And I asked one of the team members about him. I said, "How's he doing?" He said, "He's not doing well." He said, "I said, "Why?" He said, "He told them that he didn't want to have anything to do with Christianity because God won't reconcile with Satan." It's like, I've never heard of this use before. You don't want to have anything to do with Christianity or God because God would not reconcile with his internal enemy. That's the first time I've ever heard that. And the last, I haven't heard it since. And I didn't know what to say about that. But Psalm 115 says, "Why should the nations say words that God? Our God is in heaven, and he does all that he pleases." He does all that he pleases. It's his free choice not to offer pardon to his eternal enemy, his free choice. Don't forget the enemy had a road to playing what happened in the garden. His hands are dirty. They were dirty before that even went down. You realize that, right? He was already condemned. And the Lord God is fully justified to his judgment to the serpent here. Cursed are you above all, I stop. Cursed are you above all, to be so to feel. Cursed are you, Satan. We know that in the beginning of the chapter, the serpent, the enemy, he gets the upper hand on Eve. We see that. Verse 15 shows us, "She gets the last laugh." Doesn't she? Because it's going to be her seed. They eventually destroy him. The great payback. He's going to get his in the end. And keep in mind, Adam and Eve, they're listening to these words that the Lord is speaking here. They're not often the distance. They're standing there, just as guilty. But they're listening to what he's communicating to the serpent. And when you see those words that there's hope for Adam and Eve in those words there, and they're listening to this, in his judgment to the serpent, is hope for Adam and Eve. The curse toward the serpent and Satan is mercy to our first parents. And us is their descendants. Again, I'm going to go more into that in the last sermon. But don't make no mistake, Adam and Eve, they're not out of the water. That may be good news that the seed of the woman is going to crush the serpent's head, but they're not out of the water. They're not out of the clear. They're standing there listening to what God is saying, but they're not they're laughing, picking at the serpent. Oh, you're going to be crawling on your belly all the days of your life. No, no, no, no. They're not doing that. Where are they? They're warning. Well, what is he going to say to me? Oh, just as guilty. And so after he finished his speaking to Eve to the serpent, he turns to Adam and Eve. He says to Eve, verse 16, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing, and pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire should be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." You see, the nature of the Lord's God's punishment to Adam and Eve is different than that of the serpent. He cursed the serpent itself. Cursed are you, say this Lord to the serpent, but he does not curse Adam and Eve that way. He noticed that. Have you ever noticed that? He does not say cursed are you, Eve. Cursed are you, Adam. No. He doesn't say that to them. He didn't have to, first of all, because they cursed themselves through their rebellion. They were already messed up. Sin has already taken its poison in them. Their souls and being were already damaged by sin and death. So what is the nature of his punishment to them? It is what Calvin called corrective punishments. And what are those? What are they? What is a corrective punishment? It's designed to lead us to repentance. This is what Calvin said. It's designed to lead us to repentance. You know, when you look at God's punishment to Adam and Eve, you see that it's attached to three things that God had given Adam and Eve before the fall. Three things he had blessed them with before they fell from grace. What are they? The first one is procreation, birth. You do realize that that was a creational promise to them. He gave that to them before the fall. It was a creational decree given to God by Adam and Eve as a gift, as a blessing before the fall. Genesis 1 and 28 says, "And the Lord blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.'" What is that? That's having babies. That's how you're going to fill the earth. You have to have babies who do that. And so it was a blessing. It was a good thing. And please take note that the call to procreation was not altered by the fall. It was still in place. That was still going to take place. And some of you know, some of you have babies or have grown babies. But something was going to be different. Something was going to be different this time. The punishment is not procreation itself, but it's the pain and grief that is now attached to it. It's the hardship, the discomfort that all women now experience when they have birth. One commentator says of Eve here, "The painful childbirth signals hope, but also serves as a constant reminder of her sin and her part in it." It's going to be painful labor, hard labor, not easy. Morning sickness, contractions, not joyful stuff at times. So ladies, it ain't your husband's fault. It's Eve's fault. It's Eve's fault. Your first mother, she did it. And basically her experiences in childbirth was not going to be what it could have been before she fell. It was going to be different now. I don't know if it was going to be pain free before the fall. I mean, if it was, she really messed things up for herself. But it's going to be different. It's still a blessing, but it's going to be pain and grief attached to it now. Matthew Henry says, "The sorrow of child bearing here are multiplied." Not only the labor pains, but the morning sickness before, it's the sorrow in the conception, the nursing tolls and all that stuff. And after all, if the child's children prove to be wicked and foolish, there are more heaviness on her that bore them. If your kids turn out to be wicked and foolish, the mother feels the way that that the most. Do you agree? And then do you see it Henry is talking about here. It's not just pain and giving birth and hardship, but it's hardship and pain and raising kids. TV dad Bill Cosby said, "It takes stamina to raise kids, mental stamina, physical stamina, spiritual stamina, psychological stamina. It takes all that to raise kids." Will you agree? My kids are young and I feel it. And every mother here knows what Henry is talking about here. Because you felt that heaviness for your kids, over your kids, one kid, all your kids. And that heaviness and pain is real. And what do you do with it? What do you do with it? What do you do with the pain you have over your kids? When you done all you could do and they still don't turn out right, they still don't turn out right. You go to the parents and seminars, you read the parenting books, you listen to the sermon series on parenting, you listen to Adoptance Radio's show Focus on the Family. He gives you all his ideas and none of us is working. What do you do with it? What do you do with it? You have to take it to the Lord. And you got to realize we're not having babies and raising kids and eating. We're not. We're not ever going to have that here. We're not going to ever have perfect kids. We're not going to ever raise perfect kids. We live east of Eden and in east of Eden you have pain. You have grief. You have evil. You have to fight to raise your kids right in east of Eden. You do. It ain't just going to happen by itself. It ain't just going to happen because you go to a seminar. You got to fight to raise your kids right. And if you don't, then it's your fault. It ain't just going to happen by wishful thinking. And nor, along with that, nor will your parenting skills suppress the sinful nature. You got to know that. It ain't going to do it. I don't care if you're the best parents in the world. You cannot micromanage a kid's sin in the sinful nature. You can't do it. You can't even do it for your own sin. You can't do it for theirs. All you can do is raise them right, pray for them and trust the Lord is going to take care of them. Grief and pain in our great raising kids and having kids. This is a reminder that this life is not right. There's something wrong in this world and there is and it's the fault. You see, this grief that we have in pain raising kids and having kids, it also shows us that having kids cannot ever complete this because your kids going to disappoint me. They're never going to make you completely happy. They're not going to ever be Jesus to you because they can't. They need Jesus. It's like you do. That's a reality. As a father myself, I have to realize that that I could do all the right things. That still doesn't mean my kids will turn out the way I want them to turn out. I'll trust in the Lord that they will. But in the day, that doesn't guarantee that they will. That doesn't mean I just say, well, I'm not going to do anything. No, I love them. I parent them. I discipline them. I encourage them. And I pray for them. And I trust the Lord that that stuff is going to soak into their heart and change their lives. That's what we all have. But it's never going to be even. And it ain't never going to be even. Even it's gone. So, appropriation, it's still a blessing, but there's going to be pain and grief along with it, hardship along with it. And this pain and grief is also seen in another blessing that the Lord God gave to Adam and Eve. And it's their relationship, their own marriage, was also going to be affected by the fall. Verse 16 and B says, "Your desire should be for your husband, and he will shall rule over you." Now marriage, just like appropriation, it was given before the fall. It was a creation of the Cree by God, given as a blessing to Adam and Eve. And it still continues today. Like some of us here are married, but some of you will be married. And we see the blessed marriage of our first parents in Genesis 2. It was the Lord of God who said it was not good for the man to be alone. Adam did not come to that conclusion himself. He wasn't sitting on the alpha tree saying, "Man, I'm lonely today." No, it was the Lord God who saw that. Man is lonely. It is not good for the man to be alone. So the Lord God made a decision to make a helpful fit for Adam. He provided for Adam. He blessed Adam. The verse says to the Lord calls a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept to one of his ribs and closed it up, closed up his place but fledged. And with the ribbed, the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Henry, he has a wonderful comment on this verse. And I'm going to read this to you. He says, take note guys. You can probably quote this to you wise if you want to. The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam, not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be his equal, under his arm to be protected and near his heart to be his beloved. Oh, I love that. That's good stuff there. That's portrait. You see, in Adam, he understood that in the beginning. His words to Eve, you know what he said to Eve? It communicated the same thing that Matthew Henry says here. He says to Eve, "At this at last is a bone for my bones, flesh for my flesh. You shall be called woman because you were taken out of man." Beautiful man. Very first pick up mind. They became one flesh, one flesh. They both were naked and felt no shame. Think of all the couples you know who have good marriages. Man, they don't even compare to what Adam and Eve had before the fall. Don't even compare to it. You talk about perfect communication, perfect understanding, perfect intimacy, perfect friendships, perfect perfection in serving one another, perfection in fulfilling that God given roles within the marriage, and they were perfectly content in those roles. I mean, if Adam had a toilet seat, he would never leave it up. It would always be down. That's how good it was in the garden before the fall. The marriage was wonderful. It was every day was honeymoon. Every day there were newlyweds. That's how good it was. That's how good they had it. I've been in a few weddings, you know, my friend Trey, you know, y'all remember Trey when he came. I was in his wedding and a couple friends. I was in their wedding. In my father-in-law, every time he finds out I was in one of those weddings, he would ask me the same question. He said, "So, Alex, how was the funeral?" And every time he asked me that question, it cracks me up. But his question highlights the true reality for all of us. It's a reality that our life and marriage, East of Eden, is going to be very different than it was in Eden. Sometimes for those who have bad marriages, it does feel like a funeral, that you can never get out of them. It does feel like that. Especially if you're in a bad marriage. And for Adam and Eve, when they fell, the honeymoon-like marriage was over. The newlywedness of the marriage was gone. I mean, we saw it last week when he threw it on the bus last week. The woman you gave me gave me that fruit night. It was gone. It was gone. No more Eden. In marriage. You see, our first parents were brilliant. They brought brokenness into their relationship. And God's words in Genesis 3.16 communicate that. To Eve, he says, "Your desire should be for your husband. He shall rule over you." You know, like procreation, the punishment here is not marriage. Marriage is not a punishment. Marriage is not a punishment. Marriage is not you've been tied to the whipping post. It's not. But it's the pain, the hardships, and frustrations that would accompany your labors and responsibilities in your marriage relationship. I mean, it's going to take hard work to have a good marriage. It ain't going to just happen. When God says to Eve, your desire should be for your husband. He's not talking about warm romantic feelings. You know, she's saying to herself, "How much I love me, some of him?" No. He's not, no, he's not talking about that. This is not that type of desire. It's similar to what God said to Cain about sin and sin's desire to for him. But that same type of word is used there. Sin's desire to come, overcome Cain and hear the woman's desire is referred to her attempt to control her husband. And hear the wife's desire is for the man's leadership role in the marriage. Man's leadership in the role in the marriage. And the man's problem is that he's not going to or he'll eventually give it to him. And that's the temptation that every wife has to fight, has to fight it. Your desire should be for your husband's role, his leadership role, his headshot role in the marriage. But remember, the headshot was in place before the fall. And now because of the fall, marriage is going to feel like a battleground sometimes. They ain't going to be easy. They're going to be arguments. They're going to be discord. It's going to be fighting, which we have because of the fall. And some marriages don't last. Some of them end in divorce. He says to her, "The man, the husband shall rule over you." What does that mean? It means Adam was, and I'm husband is going to be tempted to abuse his role as leader, or he would abandon his role as leader. And to put it simply, again, it's going to be hard to have a good marriage. No more perfection. No more perfect marriages. If you think of someone who has a perfect marriage, then it ain't perfect. You got to know that. You're not the only one that has issues in your marriage. We all do. But marriage itself is good. And that does not take its hard work to keep it healthy. It doesn't happen by accident. Let me ask you, which is the easiest to mess up your marriage or to keep your marriage healthy? Keep it healthy. It's easy. No. It's easy to mess it up. Because we live east of Eden, and the norm in east of Eden is brokenness, fallenness, hurts, and pain. That's the norm. It's easy to mess it up, and it takes hard work to keep it healthy. You got to fight, man, and have a good marriage. I mean, out of all the marriages in the history of the creation, there was only one, and only one in which neither spouse brought baggage into the marriage, and that was Adam and Eve. It ain't ever going to be another one like that. All of us, when we get married, we bring junk, man, into our marriage, and you bring baggage. Each spouse does. Now Adam and Eve, they brought their baggage later when they fell. But before that, they didn't have no baggage, no issues. And so you got to know that when you get married, you are bringing stuff into the relationship from your past, family relationship, things that you've done, and the same for your spouse. You're bringing stuff in there. A lot of baggage, and that stuff causes tension, conflict at times. And so you got to learn how am I going to love my spouse with all her baggage, with all his baggage? Some of you, you got a minivan side of baggage. Some of you got an 18-wheeler side of the baggage. You just got to know what kind of baggage you got. And your spouse is going to have to accept that about you, and learn to live with some of those things. Because you can't change your spouse's heart. If your plan is to get married, and then change them, I got to tell you, you set yourself up for failure. If I were a pre-married accountant or someone, they'd tell me that. You need to go back and rethink that. You can't change another person's heart. You can't change it. You can't change it. And so, and if you're not married yet, when you get married, you bring your baggage into the marriage. Just know that. And all this baggage, it can be family issues. If you come from a broken home, if you, you know, if you never had a relationship with your dad, those things impact you, and they impact you in your marriage. All your junk, all your issues, all your sin, all your selfishness, all your relational brokenness, you bring into your marriage. And again, no marriage is free from issues. Every marriage has issues. Whose marriage has issues? That's right. Don't forget it. It does. So, we talked about recreation and marriage, and the pain and grief that comes with them all because of the fall. The last one we're going to talk about is labor, work. Like in verse 17. And God said to the man, God said to Adam, "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, curse is the ground that calls with you, in pain you should eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles you should bring forth for you. You should eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face you should eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Now, just like the last two, labor was given to man before the fall. It was given to them, and it was a blessing. You know, again, in Genesis 1 and 28, the Lord God tells them to so do the earth, help the manion over the earth. It takes work and labor to so do and help the manion. It's not just going to happen by just sitting around. And also, in Genesis 2, we see that the Lord God, he took Adam and put him in the garden. For what purpose? To work it and to keep it. Adam's first responsibility for the Lord God was to watch and protect the garden, to watch and protect the garden. And he received that responsibility before the command. Before God gave him the divine command, he gave him the responsibility to watch and protect the garden, and know that there was no disappointment in his labors before the fall, no pain, no hardship, no grief. Can you imagine having the work and you don't have no grief? Can you imagine that? To have a job where you don't feel like, "Man, I don't make this job." I mean, Adam messed it up all of us, man. He messed it up for all of us. I would have failed to if I was in this place. He never had those. I hate my job moments. It was always joy to work, found enjoyment in it. And he got a good return from his labors that land produced for him, that land produced for him, no thorns, no system. Where everything was good, the Lord provided. But then he fell in the fall destroyed. He didn't destroy labor. Labor was still in place. See, it's not abnormal to work. It's not. It's a good thing to have a job. It's abnormal not to work, because work is a good thing. And labor continues. It's a blessing. But the punishment is that there's going to be pain in your labor, hardships in your labor, grief in your labors, frustration in your labors. That's the punishment. He told Adam that the ground that Adam is going to work is not going to bring forth for him the fruitfulness that it did in the garden. It's going to bring forth for him thorns and dilsos, and the ground that he's going to work and keep. It ain't going to produce for you, Adam, what it used to produce. You're still going to have to work it. You're still going to have to cultivate it. But your return is not going to be what it used to be. Cursed is the ground, because of you. One commentator said, Adam since spoiled his environment, spoiled his environment. He did not have to live with the consequences of that. And we do too. And notice also that the Lord tells, he's telling Adam that his experiences here of hardship and pain, he's going to experience that all the days of his life, all the days of your life, you in pain, you should eat all the days of your life. By the sweat of your face, you should eat bread. That's some hard stuff, man. You know, I'm sweating now. By the sweat of your face, you should eat bread. You're not going to ever be free from sin on this side of heaven. You're not going to ever have that perfect job. You're not going to have that perfect family, that perfect child. Everything is going to be plagued by sin and hardships and burdens. The only time we're going to get relief is at death. And the fact that God waited to the end of this punishment to talk about death communicates a blessing, mercy to Adam. He waited to the very end to talk about death, physical death. He even delayed it. You didn't realize he could have given death to Adam and Eve at that moment, right? But he could have just let him die at that moment. Why didn't he? Mercy. Mercy in the midst of judgment. Because realize Adam didn't die. It's a long time. He had a bunch of kids before he died. And so even there, even though God is punching sin, he still had mercy on Adam and Eve. He still took care of him, which we're going to talk about in the last sermon. And so through procreation and marriage and labor, what is the need for them? Restoration from all our hardships that we're experiencing in this life. We need someone that's going to give us rest in those things, give us power to live and to continue to do things we need to do despite life in the falling world. We need Jesus. Does your marriage make you long for Jesus more? Does Jesus help you in your marriage? Do you reach out to Jesus in raising your kids? Do you? You see Christmas is three weeks away. Are you ready? Am I ready? Each of these sermons in Genesis 3. Each of them, every one of them, the inception to question, the inception of rebellion, the inception of consequences. And today the inception of judgment should have created you a deep longing for Christmas. And I'm talking about the lights, the trees, the gifts. I'm talking about the one gift that was going to make everything right that the fall messed up. Each one of these sermons were created for that purpose to get you thinking about man, I began with Christmas getting here because Alice getting on my nerves with all these bad sermons about inception, inception, man give me some Jesus. He's coming. You won't ever, I told one girl this, the gospel is only as sweet as the bitterness of your sin. If you don't hate your sin, then Christmas means very little to you. It means very little to you. And so I'm talking about this because I want you to feel it. I want you to feel the heaviness of it. And then when I say Jesus is here, then you, it feels bad. It feels good. Jesus has entered the room. All is right. Just like when a child who is crying, then when they see their dad, their tears stop, they smile. That's what I want you to have. Jesus enters the room. Everything's right. My Savior's here. My Savior's here. What they messed up, God is going to fix up because God is always greater than our sin, always greater than our sin. We're going to see the inception of the gospel right here in Genesis 3. Right here in Genesis 3, we're going to see the promise of the good news. We're going to see the promise of Christmas. And you know what that means? He's coming. He's coming. And oh yes, you don't need to watch out. You don't need to cry. You don't need to pout. I'm telling you why. Jesus Christ is coming to town. He don't need a list to check it twice. He's coming to make you right with God because you are naughty and not nice. He's coming. Jesus Christ is coming to town because you're not, you're naughty and you're not nice. He's coming to make you right with God for all of us who have sinned. Let us pray. Father God, I do thank you that He's coming. He has came. I know there's just some fancy way to do a sermon series, but He has come. The incarnation did happen. He was born here in this place, our Jesus. He was born to die. And so I pray, Lord, He's next few weeks, that as we go through all our travel, how they travel, that we will know and tell our kids and think about the true meaning of what Christmas is really all about. Because if Christmas didn't come and we're still lost in our sin, He came to make right everything that we lost in the garden. He came to restore it, restore us to you, cover us in His righteousness, give us rest, Lord, to free us from the dominion of sin and death. That's what He came to do. Everything the fall did. Jesus came to undo it. And I pray that as the Christmas approaches, Lord, we would keep that in mind. He came to undo the consequences of the fall in our life. That is the greatest gift of all. Jesus. I thank you, Lord, for Him in Christ's name. Amen.