Glorious Way Church

Eden Restored: The Grace of God’s New Covenant | Claire Buntrock

• Claire Buntrock

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This message traces the story of humanity’s lost and regained fellowship with God—from Eden’s fall to Christ’s finished work. Beginning in Genesis, it shows how disobedience fractured creation but covenant love began the restoration. Through Adam, Abraham, and ultimately Jesus, God binds Himself to redeem and restore what was broken. Listeners are reminded that every wound of the Fall—spiritual, physical, relational, and emotional—finds its healing in Christ’s covenant grace, inviting believers to live no longer as orphans of Eden but as sons and daughters restored to fellowship with God.

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Okay, well, I was I got excited about something this week, and when I get excited about something, I just have to get it off my chest. And I just know God has something in it for us as we study this topic. But I learned something this week, and and you know, we don't all know everything yet. But do you know that the Bible has seven different covenants, seven different ways that God deals with mankind, seven different things. And um, so as I began, I learned that, and I got interested in uh in seeing how, especially with Adam, you know, two of them have to do with Adam and Eve. And there are just some basic things. When we when we peel back all the layers of our broken society and our broken, sometimes our broken lives and our broken relationships and everything that's broken. And you can zoom out and go, homelessness and addiction, and you can zoom out, all of the problems of mankind and PTSD and mental illness. All of everything that's wrong. If you peel it all back, we can we can start addressing that right here in the book of Genesis with what happened with Adam and Eve in the garden. But I have good news today because Jesus makes a way for all of the bad to come untrue. One of my kids' Bibles, like children's Bibles, said that Jesus makes everything bad come untrue. And so we're gonna look into that tonight. So my title of my message tonight is Eden Restored, The Grace of God's New Covenant. We're gonna see how Jesus actually fulfilled uh the cut the two different arrangements that he had with Adam and Eve. And it starts with it just God, why did he create man to begin with? Why did he create you? Why did he create any of us when he knew some of us wouldn't measure up? He knew some people would hate God, some people would fight against him all the time. Uh, some people would be Judas, some people would be Lucifer. Why did he create all of it? And why did he go through all the trouble? Why didn't he just dwell in a majesty? Because he is a God of love and he wants fellowship. Everybody say fellowship. And fellowship is a really deep word that just means that he wants common union, communion with you. And when you look at your own life, sometimes we look and we go, what do I even have in common with the God of the universe? 1 Timothy 6 15 says, uh, that he who is blessed, he called God he who is blessed and the only potentate, the king of kings and lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen. That's what Paul wrote to Timothy. God is so big and amazing, and and uh, and and if we and so I I heard a good man of God recently say this that um, you know, why does God hide from us? How are we all just sitting here and there's a God of the universe, but we don't really feel him? We don't really people can talk about him, but we're not really into it. We would rather know what happened at the uh at the baseball playoffs or whatever, or we could be really into something else. It doesn't matter. How can we, how, how is it? And it's because God is so majestic. When he speaks, it sounds like the Bible often describes it as like trumpet sounding. That's the best way that it can be described. Or, or people see him, you know, Isaiah saw him and fell down at like dead. He he's so majestic, he's so inspiring, and nobody can, it's unapproachable light. So if he showed, really showed himself to you and to me like he really is, we would freak out or die, or our flesh couldn't handle it, it would be so overwhelming. And so he has to hide himself a little bit, and we have to seek him. We have to want him. And if he because if he really revealed himself, the other thing might that might happen is we would lose our free will, we would be so overwhelmed that we would just say, Yes, God, whatever you, yes. We would just melt into, and our free will would be completely just melted into him, and we wouldn't ever seek him, we wouldn't ever, it wouldn't be our real choice, and it has to be choice to be love. You wouldn't marry somebody that you could control like a robot. I love you, wife. I love you, husband. That's not love, that's not love. So he created you for fellowship with him. It has to be of your free will, and we have to seek him. He's awesome and he's good, and he's a loving, awesome God. So then he created Adam and Eve, and we know what happened. And they had, if you turn to Genesis, um, well, here, wait, I forgot to even use my very first scripture. Let's start just let me just read like a little overarching scripture. 1 Corinthians 15, 20 says, but now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. In other words, everybody in mankind has died, but God Jesus was the one that that rose from the dead. And uh for since by man, little M, by man came death, by man, capital M, that's Jesus, also came the resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. All shall be made alive. We said that tonight. Come alive in the name of Jesus. What's dead in your life? What's dead in your body? What's dead in your uh in the call of God on your life, what has died, and it looks like it's been buried forever, but Jesus is bringing it back to life. Why? Because he wants fellowship with you. And it and to have fellowship with you, he has to have something in common with you. And so to have something in common with you, you can't have any sin. You can't have, you can't desire things that are ungodly, because then he there's no fellowship there. So, but he, oh, how how would we he made a way? He made a way because he loves you. Okay, so first of all, so he created man um in his image, male and female, he created them. And um, and then he put them in the garden. And the Lord planted, and he put them in the garden of Eden, this perfect, amazing place. In chapter 2, verse 8. The Lord God planted the garden eastward in Eden, and there he put man, whom he had formed, and out of the ground ground, the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant for the sight and good for food. Everything that could be imaginable that we would ever want or need. God made it, he put it there in the garden. And the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so then fast forward, so now here's the here's the here's Adam in the garden. He's supposed to dress and keep everything in the garden. And he was only given one little command. Dear Lord, Adam, why? And it's found in chapter 2, verse something I have to get my glasses to read. 16. Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. You can eat all the other trees. It's everything is good there. But don't eat that one, because in the day that you eat it, you shall surely die. I gotta give you a choice because otherwise you're a robot and we can't have fellowship. But uh so I'm just gonna give you this one thing. Don't eat that one fruit, don't do it. And um, and so why would there have to be, I mean, so the the that was the one condition that he could enjoy all of the things he he would ever need. And he had fruitfulness. So God's it in in the garden, um, there were three things that they enjoyed. That was this is this was in the on the condition that they would obey God, they could have dominion. And that's Genesis 1, 26 through 28. Let's read that. Um, God created man in oh remember that then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our lake. Let's let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, birds there, everything. And God created man in his own image. Everybody say, in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. So you are the image of God. We've gone through that recently. I'm not gonna reteach that message, but um, male and female together in a covenant relationship represent the two sides of God's character, male and female. And together in a covenant, we are the image of God. And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion. And have dominion. So they had dominion, they had fruitfulness, so you're supposed to fill the earth, and they had every day they have fellowship with God. Adam walked with God in the cool of the day. He had face-to-face fellowship. God didn't have to hide. God can reveal all of his glory to Adam because Adam matched him. He was made in his image, and Adam was clothed with the glory of God. And so they had true fellowship. Man and God together had true fellowship. And because that, so um, but he just had the one condition. And why did it have to have the one condition? Why couldn't you know? Um, well, number one, if you're gonna have fellowship with God, you have to be perfect, or God doesn't have anything in common. If you're gonna be fruitful and fill the earth, then you have to have that God wanted to know that the earth was gonna be filled full of people that were treated fairly and with love and with righteousness and ruled over with justice and fairness that God would that so he had to have a perfect and righteous leader to be fruitful and multiply. And so he wanted that person to just obey the one command and it's and and having dominion, same concept. The greater your area of dominion in life, the greater your success in life, the higher your level of attainment and achievement and success and everything in your life, the higher the tower of your life, the deeper your foundation in God needs to be so that it can sustain all of that. And Adam had the pinnacle of attainment, and so he God expected him to be completely obedient in that one thing. Um but then y'all know what happened. Um Eve. It's all Eve's fault. First of all, um Eve was taken out of Adam. Adam was alone, and it wasn't good for man to be alone. So God made uh God made Eve out of man. He took a side of man or a rib, but it was really literally a side of man and made made woman. And therefore, uh verse chapter 2, verse 24, a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So that one flesh together in covenant makes make is the image of God. And they were naked and not ashamed. Why? Because they were clothed with the glory of God, because they were like God. And but then the serpent comes in, the serpent comes, devil comes always to s to deceive. Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? So the devil made it made the made it unattainable. Um he twisted what God said and made it too strict. And the woman said to the serpent, She knew we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but just at that one, that we we can't, or we'll surely die. And then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. I think that same temptation exists right now. Just give in, just compromise a little bit. Um, and and you'll be you'll be more like God. You can you can choose your own gender. You can choose your own, oh, you don't like the way this happened, you don't like the rules. Oh, you feel um, you know, you want to change what marriage is. No, we've just read what marriage is between one man and one woman. But because, oh, because of your feelings, or I have this. Um, no, there we don't get to change the rules. God made us this way, and if we play by his rules, we'll have joy and fulfillment. No matter what our flesh says. Uh the answer to joy and fulfillment is getting our flesh to line up with God's word. Not getting, not twisting God's word to line up with what our flesh wants. All right, so then Eve says, uh the so the woman uh saw that the tree was good, lust of the eyes, and it was pleasant to the eyes, uh, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and then and desirable to make one wise, pride. Oh, I could be, you know, I could be so much more than what I am right now. I mean, I'm just Adam's helper. I'm just Adam's helper. That's not good enough. I want to be wiser than him. I want to be wise like God. Pride. And so she took of its fruit and ate. So lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, those three sins are what still lures us away from God today. And she gave it to her, so she ate it, and she gave it to her husband, and then he knew already, oh, she's doomed. Well, I don't want to do life without her. I guess I'll doom myself too. So he ate it. And then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that suddenly now uh they understand. Oh gosh, the glory of God has left us. Something's different. We're naked, we're ashamed. We are ashamed. And let's get some fig leaves, let's get something to cover ourselves. We are ashamed now, and and that was never the answer. There is nothing that we can do of our own selves that we can fashion and make and hide. And but that whole hiding from God thing, how many people do you know that hide from God? How many of you have been that person that ran away from God instead of running to God? You did something so shameful, embarrassing, so awful to even admit it. And so, oh my goodness, and we blame. We blame someone else at first. Uh, they they so they heard God, but they ran from his presence. And and then so the man said, Oh, it's the woman she gave me of the tree, and I ate it. I'm gonna blame the the woman. And the woman said, No, it's the serpent's fault. I burned the cookies yesterday. Y'all, I burned cookies. So, but even we have this character flaw. I was like, oh, it's the oven. The oven malfunctioned, that stupid oven. No, I left the cookies in there too long. Honestly, but I couldn't admit it. It was a character flaw. We are we're built like that. We want to find someone else to blame. It was James. Why? Um James made a special trip to the store to buy butter so I could make cookies for Ben. Anyway, but we that it's in human nature that we look for someone to blame. We look for another reason that's that's not us. And and the it because it's so painful and we're so ashamed, and we just want to hide. And but this is the covenant. This is what God did. Verse 21. Oh, of chapter 3. So then God has to deal with that. He has to first he curses uh he cur, we'll go back to the promise, but he first he curses Satan, he curses the serpent and says, Well, you're not gonna have any legs anymore. You're gonna slither. And um and then he and then he he lists the punishment that has to be on mankind. And but even in that judgment and the and the hurt that it's causing for everyone, God's mercy is here. His mercy is here. Um because he said, verse 21, 321, unto Adam also and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothe them? So I want to just have good news today that God has already clothed your sin. He has covered your shame. Shame is not something that you have to live with. Jesus has already, this prefigures, so so now, but up until this point, no animal has ever died. No person has ever died. The garden was a perfect and awesome place, but now somebody messed up and an animal had to die. Maybe it was a lamb. But that perfect lamb was slain and its parts, its skins were taken, and there was skin crafted for Adam and skin crafted for Eve, and it clothed their nakedness and their shame, and it prefigured the awesome sacrifice of Jesus, and it was a covenant. When blood was shed, it was a covenant, and it covered their sins, and it allowed them to have some measure of fellowship, but they could not be in the garden anymore. Because verse 22 said, And the Lord God said, Behold, man has come as one of us to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever, so then he would he would live forever in his fallen state, and the whole error all of creation would be corrupted forever. So God said, I can't let that happen, so I've got to kick him out of the garden. And so he put an angel there. He sent them out east of Eden, and and he drove them out, and he uh and at the at the gate of the Garden of Eden, he put two uh cherubim, uh, which are uh angels that are fearsome, and they had flaming swords, and and uh in one place I heard described that they were like swinging them around in a circle, like fire, like you are not getting into this gate, like there is no way you can come back to the garden. You're banished. And so now to have fellowship with God again, they need that covenant. They needed that covering for their sin. They needed that, and that's what we needed. And that's the whole thing about this. I want to go back to this because it's a worldview problem. A lot of people today, when they do not know the word, and they do not know even the story of Adam and Eve and who they are and what in the Bible and well, who cares about that? They do not understand that man, all of us are flawed. We were all born of these people who did that thing, and their thing still in the most sweet and innocent child born, he or she has that proclivity, that bent, that iniquity in them that causes them to be a bent arrow. So that God aims them for something wonderful and awesome, and he has a plan for their life, but they'll never attain it because they're bent. And the archer can shoot all day long, but they're gonna go straight into the ground every time, every time, every time. All mankind has that sin, it's iniquity, the bend and the arrow, and we're broken. And if you're one of those people that says, Oh, well, everybody's good, we're all children of God, we're not all children of God yet. We all can be children of God. We were all made in God's image with a wonderful, high, and holy purpose, but we have a choice, and we have to choose Him and His way. And so, um, if you so that that whole, if you believe all people are basically good, then you don't discipline your children. Then you don't um you don't discipline yourself, you have no boundaries, you don't recognize when you have faults, you don't uh take responsibility for your own actions. It's easy to blame other people or the system or the man or the this or that, and we blame other people, and then society breaks down uh because we don't know we need a redeemer. We didn't know that we needed somebody to save us, and we still need the blood of the Lamb to come and cover our sin and shame, and thank God it's available for us. So um, let me talk about covenant now, covenant. So Adam and Eve have had a marriage covenant, it included God and the two of them. Um so uh Christian marriage, uh and I'm I'm going into this because it's a symbol of it, whether you're married or not is not it, that's not the point of this. It is to say that we are all in covenant with God. But I need to say that um I did not realize until recently that in Hebrew weddings of that time, there were also, so there would be a, it was literally a covenant. They would take a calf and split it in half, a bloody animal, and they would divide one half on one side and they would make an aisle. And then the other half of the calf would be on the other side. And so the two parties in the covenant, if it's a wedding covenant, if it's another type of covenant, the two parties would approach each other in the aisle between the two pieces of calf, and they would shake right hands together, and they and they would basically pledge their lives because the the implication is if I don't uphold my end of the covenant, or if you don't uphold your end of the covenant, let us be like this bloody calf on either side of us here. We our life is not our own now, it belongs to this person in covenant. And so when God, when when God makes the covenant with us, what can we possibly offer him that he doesn't already have? What love does he have for us that he wants to even enter in a covenant? And so that goes to a different covenant, the covenant of Abraham. That's when he walked through, and Abraham's asleep. He ain't walking down no aisle in this covenant. He's out cold in Genesis 15. We'd have to turn down. I'm not gonna read it. But in that covenant, God himself is that same fire. Whenever there's a presence of God, it's described as a fire. The fiery cherubim, the the fire, the fire came up and down between the two halves of that calf. And God cut the covenant with Abraham and said, I uh I in other words, you're not gonna take the punishment. If you don't uphold your end of the covenant, I'm still gonna bleed like this, like this animal. You don't have to put your life on the line, but I, God, am going to put my life on the line. So that either if if you or I break the covenant, I'm gonna be the one that dies. The Noah covenant, Noah, Noah, in um Genesis 8, I believe. He gets off the boat. Remember the bow in the sky? God put a bow in the sky. He put a bow in the sky. Well, you know, a bow. Why it God said, I'm not gonna pour out my wrath on mankind anymore. I'm gonna put a bow in the sky to prove it. Well, a bow shoots an arrow. What direction is the bow aimed at? It's pointed up. Even then, God was saying, I won't pour out my wrath on the earth anymore. I'm gonna flip my bow the other way, and I'm going to take your punishment. I, God, am going to, I am going to fulfill both sides of the covenant because I know you don't have nothing to give. That's our merciful, awesome, wonderful God. Romans 5.17 says, For if by one man's offense death reigned, how much more they which receive abundant, how much more which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ. Adam gave up his authority, he gave up his dominion. Then as soon as he was kicked out of the garden, they had kids, Cain and Abel. Remember, Cain and Abel killed, uh Cain killed Abel, so now there's murder. Now there's evil and wickedness in the earth. It went from perfect to bad, real bad. We had a, we had a, in one generation, we had a quick, awful, terrible problem in earth. But even then, there was the first telling of the gospel. It's called the Proto-Evangelium. Because God said, Here, um, he said, in my notes, Genesis 3, 15, and I will put enmity between you and the woman. He's talking to Satan, and he tells Satan, I am going to put enmity between you and this woman, and between your seed and her seed. And he will crush your head and you will strike his heel, or you will bruise his heel. So it is already prefiguring. That's why Jesus, when we hear say he's slain from the foundation of the world, God created the world knowing he would have to send his son. He created the world knowing that he would have to send it. And um, so indeed Satan uh has hated women ever since that day. He has hated women. And in cultures that do not honor God, that do not lift up the word of God, uh, women are the most trampled, the most uh oppressed people group are women. The devil hates women. But uh but God, you know, I saw this meme last Christmas and it really touched me. You know, there was like a there was a drawing of Eve, and she just had her head down in shame, and she just was like just miserable. And then Mary, Mary's looking all triumphant, and she's hugging her. She says, Don't worry, girl, I got you. Um, what Eve lost, Jesus happened to be born of Mary. Mary's not a saint or anything like that, but Mary, praise God, she obeyed God, and she brought forth the the the Savior that that would bruise the head of Satan and that would make a way for us back into the garden and back to God. So, anyway, so let's go back through the consequences of all of the fall. There are uh what I have five things and I'll I'll go through them quickly. Um, but the the first consequence of the fall of man was spiritual death and separation. Um so we lost our innocence, humanity could no longer be innocent, therefore we could not have direct fellowship with God, and then we had to hide from God, and we couldn't allow him to see us, and we had to hide from each other. But Hebrews 4:16 says, Come boldly to the throne of grace. Come boldly through. How can we come into God's presence? How can we? Because of the blood of Jesus, just like that animal was shed, and Adam and Eve got to wear the skins and it covered them. Um in Hebrews 10, 19, let's turn there. Um, I love this. It says, uh, therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he consecrated for us through the veil, that is the veil of his flesh. And we having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith. We don't have to hide anymore. We can draw near as long as our hearts are pure before God because we just want to serve him. We we really believe what Jesus did was for us, we've really applied it to our lives, boom, now we can come back into the presence of God. And he doesn't have any flaming cherubim swinging their swords of fire anymore. Because Jesus took all of that wrath and punishment on himself. And uh, and indeed, when Jesus died, that's why the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom, and it's it symbolized that we could come into the throne room of grace. Um, you know, therapy culture, let's talk about that for a minute. Spiritual death and separation feels bad. It feels like when you're walking through life carrying that spiritual separation from God, you are depressed, you are miserable, you don't make good decisions, you can't sleep well. I mean, it's a burden of sin and it's and it's you know, can I say uncomfortable? Is that an understatement? How many of you remember what it was like to carry that burden of sin? The constant guilt. And so people will do anything to get out from under that guilt. They will do anything. Um, and in in our society so much, I hate this, we act like we can just call that a mental illness and just give you an SSRI. Do I say that right? Yes, serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Yes, that. We can just give you an antidepressant drug, we can give you a this or a that. We can we can sit with the therapist and we can talk about our feelings a lot. And if we talk about them enough, we'll just work through them and our guilt, you know. We can just that how many of you how many, how is that working for us? We have the most depressed society, we have the most, our kids are the most depressed and but it's so sad, but not here in this church, amen, because they have the word of God. But um, we can't call evil a Mental illness. If somebody goes and murders someone else, they're not mentally ill. They're evil. And it's because they've they have death and spiritual separation from the fall, and now they have opened their mind to the control of demonic forces that have given them uh successive worse and worse and worse and worse ideas in their mind. So the first idea was, you know, uh maybe mildly bad, and then it just descends into the complete pit of hell to where they're completely tormented, and they're and there's no there's no boundary or control. And now, and our society has a breakdown, and that's not what God wants. He wants us to come boldly to him, not to our drugs, not to our therapist, not to whatever. There are times we have to work out some things. Go to the Word. The Word has the best advice. If it's uncomfortable to live this, if it's uncomfortable to not have sex before marriage, because God wants us to have a covenant. You know what? That's uncomfortable for my flesh, but man, it feels good to have fellowship with God. Man, that is fulfilling to walk with God in the cool of the day. That is so fulfilling in my soul. And you know what? Then God works together all things for good. If I love and I'm called according to his purpose and I do things his way, then my life works together. And he gave me a good husband. When we've got three kids and they're and they're happy and they're doing well, they're on a good path in their life, and they love and respect us and they don't spit in our face. I'm not saying we've done everything right and perfect. We haven't. But we this is a guide. Okay, so spiritual death and separation. That was a consequence of number one, physical death. Genesis 3, 19, for dust you are and to dust you shall return. Everybody now has mortality. Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Eve. We're all going to die. Our body is going to die. But we can have everlasting life through Jesus. We can have everlasting life. That's that's the redemption because if we accept what Jesus did for us, well, if we say yes to him, then we don't, we just, our body dies, but our spirit lives on forever in heaven. And so we have eternal life. If we don't accept what Jesus did for us, then our body dies and our spirit descends into the depths of hell forever. Because we rejected what he did, or because God help us, we didn't know. That's why we have to preach the gospel to everything that moves. That's why we need to get rid of our sh our embarrassment, our oh, that might hurt someone's feelings, or they might not think that. They might their truth and my truth, and they believe this, and I believe that. No, no. It's this this truth is the truth. And it's the best, uh it is the it is the truth, and it's the only truth that'll set them free. Um, both in this life and the one to go to go. So in in 1 Corinthians 15, 51, behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in the moment of the twinkling of an eye. So this is talking about when Jesus returns to the earth. Some of us are gonna still be alive, we haven't died yet in our bodies, but we're gonna get a glorified body. We're and the people who were dead will be raised incorruptible. That means they can't rot. Their body is gonna be completely changed. For the corruptible, this body that we have right here, must put on incorruption, and the mortal must put on immortality. And when all that has happened, death is gonna be swallowed up in victory. And then we're gonna say, oh, death, where is your sting? Oh grave, where's your victory? And thanks be to God, which give us us gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. He gives us victory over death himself. How can he give us that victory? Because he did it already, he rose from the dead, and he's gonna cause you to rise from the dead. So even physical death, even aging. I mean, Adam and Eve before the fall, they didn't age. A mist, you know, came up to water the garden, and they probably had they didn't have any wrinkles, or they, you know, I don't know. I I I don't see that working in my life right now. But a girl can uh conclaim the scriptures, amen. Um, amen. But we are supposed to walk in health, divine health, and healing. Amen. So um so physical death is is redeemed. Um, okay. Uh pain in childbearing is one of if you read in Genesis 3.16, in in uh in pain, you're gonna bear children, and and your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you. So uh relational strife and pain and share and childbearing is both both of those are listed as curses and reactions of the fall, and that's in Genesis 3.16. Um, so uh all the pains of women. The devil, remember the devil hates women? And so we have pains throughout our lives just because we gave, you know, we had the capability even. He may many of us maybe we didn't even give birth, but we just had the capability. So we suffered, you know. We had the suffering of the woman. We have uh my mom in Jesus' name, she's healed of osteoporosis. I'm pretty sure that my brother and I leached out all of her calcium when we carried us, but she is redeemed from that in Jesus' name. Jesus bought her out of that. And I remember in 1 Timothy 2 15, uh, let's turn there. She shall be saved in childbearing. And this is a new covenant now. So Jesus has already bought this and paid for this. That she, if she continues in love and in charity and those other things, she shall be saved in childbearing. I tell you one thing, um, I claimed that scripture on all three of my labor and deliveries with mixed success. It's not my it's not the word's fault, it's my fault. I didn't, you know, but uh by the third one, I got it down. Um but I just but we you shall be saved because women have a beautiful way of expressing the grace of God as we raise our children, as we bear our children, as we raise our children, as we nurture new believers in the Lord. If you take this, you know, blow it out and take it metaphorically. We don't all have to be mothers physically, but we have a nurturing spirit on us, and we have we carry that uh, you know, where Eve brought death, now she but she gave life to all humanity, and we have a redemption of that. All right, so we're saved in in that way. We we we get to um show that God is real and that his redemption is true. Okay, cursed ground, Genesis 3, 17 and 18. Um let's read that. This is bad. We don't want this. We want to be free from the cursed ground. 317. This is what God had to tell him. Uh, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree, cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. And in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. And and and so we know about so there, so toil. Toil to make a living, the daily grind of your job, no matter if it's and here it was agricultural. This is where, okay, I don't believe that we had pests or weeds or thorns or thistles. We did not have those. The out the garden just produced. But now, how does your yard look if you don't look, you know, if you don't pay attention to it for a minute? If you were trying to grow your own food and it were your job to grow all your own food and that's all your family ate, a lot of us would be real skinny. So toil and sweat, but you know, you can blow that out. Why do we, if somebody tells us to do something, we uh in our nature we don't want to do it. Now all of a sudden we would rather sit on the couch. We would rather, and but you know what? In all labor there is profit, Proverbs says. It's good to work, it is good to eat of the fruit of our labors. That is a blessing from the Lord. So God wants to turn all of that around. And beyond that, uh, think about this for the tither, God said, I'll open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing. So, in in certain times in the Old Testament, the Hebrew children had to work and toil and in the fields, and they didn't even have irrigation. And when they were in Egypt, there were slaves in Egypt, they didn't have um, they didn't have a lot of rain there, so they had to use foot-powered irrigation. They had some little contraptions that they had that would get water and pump it out of the Nile all the way back up to the hill to water the crops and to feed the Egyptians, and they got a little skim off just to barely survive. And it was such a hard and miserable life, and they were enslaved by the Egyptians and toil, toil, toil, toil. And God said, When you get to the promised land, I'm gonna open the windows of heaven and I'm just gonna rain on you. I'm gonna rain on you, and you don't have to toil, toil, toil. So the windows of heaven is the fulfillment of Jesus having taken your toil and misery and woe, and you can find joy in your career every day. You can find joy in the calling that God has for you. You can walk in a calling and not just a job.

unknown:

That's good.

SPEAKER_00:

Reach out and receive that right now. You can have a calling and not just a job. All right, now I'm gonna get back to relational strife. Your desire will be for your husband. The wife said, you know, uh, he said to the wife, your desire will be for your husband, and he's gonna rule over you. You're gonna have bicker, bicker, bicker. You're gonna want more, but then he's gonna, uh. And there's reject there's bit uh uh relational strife in your marriage. God said, There, no, there's an answer to that. And in Ephesians 5, uh, the answer to that is biblical submission. Biblical submission. This is not an enslavement, this is not an oppression, this is not, listen to what biblical submission sounds like because in Ephesians 5 21, first of all, it's talking to all believers, and it says that we were to submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. So all believers get to do that. We get to submit, we get to prefer one another in love. What is good for you, Catherine? What is good for you, Gwen? I want to do that thing that is good for you, and I'm gonna care about that more than because you know what? I'm gonna think about what God did for me and how I didn't deserve anything that he did for me, and how I didn't have anything to give for him, like, and he yet he gave his entire life and shed his blood for me in that covenant. So that makes me, I mean, I if if he did that for me and I'm in covenant with him, I have the ability to do that for other people. I can his love is shed abroad in my heart. I can give. And I don't even, I don't even need, and you know what? If if I let's say I'm in covenant, let's say some people are in a broken marriage covenant and they are it's dysfunctional. But if God is in the covenant that's a threefold cord, then you still have a way to get your needs met. Maybe that one person is not meeting the needs, they're not meeting their end of the covenant, but God is still in the covenant. Does he have any capability? Can he pour out? Can he fulfill? Yes, yes, he can. Um, okay, but we're so submit one to another in the fear of God. Then it says, wives submit yourselves to every man on the face of the earth in subservience. No, no, it does not say women are subject to all men. It says women are a helpmate to your husband. You submit to one wonderful man that has committed himself to you to give his life for you like Christ loves the church. You can submit to that because he's gonna nourish and cherish you. All right. So we submit, uh, not you know, if you have Islam, Islam says all women must be subservient to all men. That's Islam. But wives submit to your own husbands in the Lord, or just to God, if He's your maker as your husband, your Maker is your husband, you can just submit to God, then you're complete in Him who's called you to glory and virtue. So then that's that's Christianity right now. Now women are empowered. We are Christianity says women are blessed, women are empowered. Um, Islam says women are subservient. And in other false religions of the earth, women are subservient. Wives submit to yourself to their own husbands of the Lord. Verse 22, verse 23, for the husband, head of the wife, even as Christ head of the church, and he is a savior of the body. Uh, therefore, as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands. Husbands, love your wives, love, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. It should be a holy, it should be holy and without blemish. So men ought to love their wives as their own bodies, for he that loveth his wife loveth himself. No man yet hated his own flesh. There's a lot of words about men. There's a little bit about women. Women we just submit. And men have to do all the but he nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord does the church, for we are members of his body. Everybody say his body. His body. And his flesh and of his bones. So this is the the so what the what Paul is saying, the Apostle Paul is saying here is that the marriage covenant is actually a picture of what our entire relationship with Jesus looks like, whether we're married or not. A healthy Christian marriage is a symbol of what our our our relationship with Jesus is, where Jesus is continually laying down his life for his bride, the church. And then the bride, the church, submits to the Lordship of Jesus. Hallelujah. And says, yes, his way is good. Um so uh, and all in covenant, in covenant, remember? And God's there to help us. Covenant is not the same as a contract. Contract says, I do my part, you do your part. If it doesn't, if somebody breaks it, we just walk away. And we might sue somebody. But covenant isn't covenant is not half and half, covenant is all in all. And whatever part I don't get back, then I just gotta get it from God. Thank God He's well able. Can you get it from God? Amen. We can. So um, so overall, so we we got back. We got back from spiritual death and separation. Now we have fellowship with God. It's restored. That's the whole reason he created us, so we can have that with him. It's fulfilling, it's awesome. Um, we have uh we don't have physical death because it's it's swallowed up in victory. We have a temporary separation, but the in light of eternity, what is that? Uh we don't have to toil. We have the windows of heaven to be blessed, to bless our ground over us. We have uh we're saved in childbearing. We have biblical submission, not relational strife. We have everything Adam and Eve lost, but we have to choose it every day. We have to choose it. And we can't, we still, the devil is still here trying to talk us. Did God say, Well, look at this over here. That looks better than what you have. Look, it looks good to eat. It looks good, oh, squeeze the fruit, it looks good. No, no, we choose this, we choose it. And let God the the good news is that as we keep choosing it, then we have a great, then God has to hide a little bit less and a little bit less and a little bit less, and we have more and more fulfillment in our walk with God, and we look more and more like Him, and then we have more and more fellowship, and it's more and more fulfilling. How many of y'all have been saved uh a long time and you can say it's more and more fulfilling? Well, we ain't there yet, but we're getting there. We're all the way back to Eden, but it's but Jesus made a way to restore it.