The Lord God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:15 God has declared the great battle that is about to unfold.  We live in a state of spiritual warfare.  Satan, the “father of lies” (John 8:44), has, as his ultimate desire to destroy us, and to destroy our relationship with God.  We know that what God foretold is true.  Despite our “evolution” we still live in a world surrounded by sin, sickness and death, chaos, violence, and decay.  We live in a world surrounded by opposition to God and His kingdom.  We only have to get out of bed in the morning to know that our “adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).  We know that we are under attack.

But if what God has told us is true, then He is trustworthy, and what does He tell us next?  We are told that the woman’s offspring will crush satan.  We are told about what Jesus Christ will do.  We are told that Jesus will destroy Satan and will reign victorious!  Praise be to God!  God foretold to us that Jesus would come and battle Satan, that He would be “bruised”, but that He would be victorious.

Jesus Christ has triumphed over Satan when He laid down His life on the cross, 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” (Hebrews 2:14-15).  Praise be to our great King, who has made us “more than conquerers through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).  Satan still exists, but he now has no authority over us.  We belong to Jesus Christ, who will one day cast Satan into the lake of fire and sulfur (Revelation 20:10).  We belong to the Victor.

We get to live in light of these glorious promises from God.  We get to live with confidence that satan and death have no victory over us.  We get to be a people celebrating the great defeat of Satan by our great Savior Jesus Christ, who has fought for us.  We get to worship Him, whose “eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.  In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength” (Revelation 1:14-16).  This is the God we worship.  How great is our God!  “Our God will fight for us” (Nehemiah 4:20).

Lord Jesus, you are mighty, you are strong, you are our King, and you have fought for us.  All glory be to Your holy name.

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.  This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.  He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” - Colossians 2:13-15.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” - Romans 8:20;Genesis 6:5

Until September of 2009, I would say I led a fairly charmed and care-free life.  Both my parents were alive and healthy, my family was healthy, I had a good job, and was now living in Bellingham (obviously the greatest place in the world to live).  I was also part of a church that I loved.  I felt like I had a good handle on things, and I had little reason to hope in Christ’s return.  My eyes would soon be opened to the futility of my own attempts to control my circumstances.

This week I have been meditating on the relationship between the fall of man, and hope in Christ.  That word “hope” is a beautiful word to me, and it is a word that defines us who are followers of Jesus Christ.  Yes, we are a people at peace with God, who have been justified by what Christ has done for us on the cross (Romans 8:1), but we are also a people who live with hope in what Christ will do when He returns.   We are a people in waiting.  What would our relationship with God look like without the fall of man?  We would not have been subjected to futility, therefore there would have been very little reason to “hope” in the future promises of God.  “Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24-25).  Before this, Paul speaks of how we, God’s elect, “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:23- 24).  We long for the day when Jesus Christ will return and fulfill His promises.  We long for the day when He will “wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

We are subjected to futility.  We are constantly battling sin, our bodies are decaying, we toil for bread that spoils, we build houses that are always breaking down.  But what does the beginning of Romans 5 tell us?  “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:2-5).  Do you see how that series begins and ends?  It begins with suffering, and it ends with hope!  Suffering leads us to hope, and our hope is in the glory of God!  God’s design for the history of redemption is perfect.

In September of 2009, we brought our then 4 year old daughter to the emergency room complaining of abdominal pain.  I thought at worst, she might have an appendicitis and need to have surgery to have her appendix removed.  As an anesthesiologist, I have been involved in probably more than 500 appendectomies, and I felt assured that this was a simple operation and that she would be fine.  When the radiologist looked at her ultrasound he told me that she had a large tumor in her belly.  It was cancer.  It was the darkest moment of my life to date.  I was subjected to futility.  Over the days and weeks and months that followed, I needed hope, and it was in the promises of God that I found it.  Before this, I loved Jesus, and would say I worshipped Him as my Lord and Savior, but I had never really longed for His return.  That week I prayed over and over again, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).  I knew that my hope needed to be in something higher than my daughter’s recovery.  I needed hope that God would one day wipe away every tear I was shedding, and that my daughter and my son and my wife and I would worship Him in the new Jerusalem, in the dwelling place of God (Revelation 21:2-3).  I needed hope that He would one day destroy cancer, so that no father would ever again have to feel this pain, a mere echo of the pain that God felt as He let His perfect Son be crucified and die for the sins of many.

Thank you Lord Jesus, for the hope you have placed in our hearts.  Thank you for the suffering and the trials that you have used to point us to this hope.  Come, Lord Jesus.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” - Hebrews 11:1

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.  Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.  Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. – Romans 1:22-25; Genesis 3:7 “The human heart is a factory of idols …Everyone of us is, from his mother’s womb, expert at inventing idols” – John Calvin. 

 As a child, I thought that idolatry was worshipping carved images, or golden calfs.  It is so much more.  I now recognize the truth of what John Calvin said above.  Everyone of us is prone to idolatry, to focusing our affections, our time, our money, our service, and our pleasure on something other than God.  Even as an adopted son of God, I still tend to slip back into this deadly mindset, and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.  I have to fight against it daily.

God’s first command to His chosen people could not have been more clear, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).  It was so important to Him that His second command was almost the same as the first!  Why is this so important to God?  We find out in the next verse, “for I the Lord your God am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5).  When I first meditated on God’s jealousy, I confess that it was hard for me to swallow.  How could a perfect God be jealous?  Isn’t this pride?  And isn’t pride what God continually warns us against?  

What I have now discovered is that it is because God ALONE is worthy of the sum of our affections, our time, our money, our service, and indeed our worship that He HAS to be jealous for His glory.  Because He is the only one worthy of glory.  In fact, God’s jealousy for His glory also means that He loves us!  How could a loving father find joy in watching his children worship worthless idols?  It is only when we get to the point in our relationship with our heavenly Father, that we see Him as infinitely worthy of glory, that we will truly see the jealousy of God as a good thing, and indeed as part of His goodness and steadfast love for us.  It is only then that we will see the true destructive nature of idolatry.  It is only then that we will seek to be freed from idolatry so that we may be free to truly worship the only One worthy of our worship.  

How can we battle the sin of idolatry?  First we need to identify what the idols are, in our hearts and in the hearts of those we love.  We get help in this from scripture, from our church family, and from the Holy Spirit.  Then we need to preach the gospel to ourselves, and allow ourselves to be reminded of the true worth of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.  At the same time we need to humble ourselves before our Creator and Savior, and to ask Him for forgiveness and for sanctification.  And we need to do all of this each and every day.  

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” – Revelation 4:11

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely 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, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. – Genesis 2:16-17; Genesis 3:4-6  

As I read these words, and consider this moment in history, when sin entered in, and was allowed to stain God’s perfect creation, I ask myself questions such as, “Why would Adam and Eve do something so terrible, when they had it so good?”, or “What would my life have been like if they had not eaten the apple?”.  Or maybe I just get angry at them for so blatantly disobeying the God who had been so kind and gracious to them.  I look at the effects of sin that surround my life, and I want to blame Adam.  I mourn this day when “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).  I hate sin and I hate death.

However, I need to keep in mind two things as I ponder these verses.  One is about God, and one is about me. 

God was not surprised by Adam and Eve’s actions.  He is sovereign, He is supreme, He is omniscient.  He has a plan for this world, and His plan is good.  God does not make mistakes, and He did not make a mistake when He created Adam and Eve.  For indeed we confess that, “This God – his way is perfect” (Psalm 18:30).  God is the height of wisdom, as the psalmist exclaims, “O Lord, how manifold are your works!  In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24). God works all things out for His glory.

The second thing I need to be reminded of as I read about Adam and Eve is that …. I would have done the same thing.  In fact, I DO the same thing every day.  God has told me not to be proud, and every day I am proud.  He has told be to not be greedy, and every day I am greedy.  God has told me to not covet false idols, and every day I drive down Iowa street on my way home from work and covet all those shiny new cars that will never be able to buy my salvation. I could go on indefinitely.  “Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).

G.C. Chesterton summarized my point much more succinctly and eloquently than I ever could in a newspaper article, which asked it’s readers “What’s wrong with the world today?”.  Chesterton replied, “The problem with the world is me.”

Thank you Lord Jesus that this is not the end of the story.

“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” -1 Corinthians 15:22

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”  So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him.  And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.  And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.  And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. – Genesis 1:26-27;31; Genesis 2:22;25  

The first thing that hit me as I walked into the operating room was the smell.  I can only liken it to the smell of a rotting corpse.  The same smell I had experienced in Haiti after the earthquake.  She was perhaps 40 years old, from a poor rural village in Kenya, and had finally made it to Tenwek hospital to seek treatment for what had started as a tooth infection.  Left untreated, the infection had spread, and now had eroded through her cheek.  She had pus running down her neck.  I watched the surgeon, unfazed by all this, put on a glove, and stick his finger into the gaping hole in her cheek, to express the pus hidden beneath the surface.  Many thoughts went through my mind as I stood there watching this, but one thought that I confess did not run through my mind was that this woman was created by God, in His likeness, and she is an image bearer of Him.  If this had been what I was thinking, how much more would my heart have broken for her, how much more deeply I would have loved her, and how I would have seen the beautiful creature that was before me.  

We were all created in God’s image, and yes that image has been distorted by sin, but at our core, we still bear His image.  I think what causes me more than anything to forget this as I look upon other people, is my own sin-stained lens through which I look at His image bearers.  It is like driving forward with a windshield that has been caked with mud.  If I could see more clearly, I would recognize the reflection of His holiness and glory and beauty that is before me in everyone, and would truly love people, as God has loved me.  I would recognize their true worth.  I would seek justice for them. I would not be able to help but to share the gospel with them, telling them how special they are because they bear the very image of God Himself.

I would remember that this poor suffering woman in Kenya was created by Him, in His own image.  I would remember that the homeless man asking me for money to buy alcohol, was created by Him, in His own image.  I would remember that the 13 year old girl who has been sold into prostitution was created by Him, in His own image.  I would remember that the 13 week old girl that was just aborted, was created by Him, in His own image.  

Lord Jesus, please give me Your eyes, that I may see clearly Your image in each and every person you place before me.  Let me no longer look through this sin-stained lens, but let me look with clarity of vision upon the image bearers of Yourself that You have created and given breath and life to.  Teach me Oh Lord, to love my brothers and sisters, as You have loved us, with a love that is beyond description.  And place in me the hope that you will one day transform our lowly bodies, to be like Your glorious body, by the power that enables You even to subject all things to Yourself – Philippians 3:21.

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” – 2 Corinthians 3:18

“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good.  And God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.”  – Genesis 1:3-4  

How blessed are we to worship a God who speaks?  God simply speaks, and light and day and earth and seas and plants and creatures all come into being.  This is astounding.  This is the most powerful, holy and sovereign voice that has ever spoken.  Did He speak with a mighty thunder, or did He whisper?  What language did He speak this in?  I think when I get to heaven, if permitted, I should like to ask God to repeat some of His “Greatest Hits”:  “For I so loved the world, that I gave My only son”, “Behold, I am coming soon”, and of course, “Let there be light”.  These verses which have been so dear to me, spoken by God Himself.  Most of us would jump at an opportunity to sit in a room and listen to the president speak.  What would you give to hear the voice of the King of Kings?

How blessed are we to worship a God who still speaks to us today?  He has given us His clear, inerrant, sufficient word, written down in the Bible.  When Christ first claimed me, I merely enjoyed God’s Word.  Today, I thirst for it, I delight in it, it is sweeter than any honey, and I cannot live without it.  I sometimes marvel that the very words I read every morning, were spoken by God Himself, that same voice that spoke time and space into existence is speaking to me here and now.  When I meditate on this, it truly causes me to tremble beneath His Word (Isaiah 66:2).  

One of the greatest joys I have ever known was that which came out of giving someone a Bible, God’s mighty and sovereign word for them.  It was like handing someone the key to life.  It was like handing them the voice of God.  I could not give a greater physical gift.

God’s Word is not simply the voice of history, it is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).  As I read His Word I am truly pierced to the division of soul and of spirit.  As I read the Bible, I am convicted, I am moved, I am directed, I am sanctified, I am given hope, and my heart cries out to God.  His word changes me.  This same word which called light into being, shines light into my heart and my mind, and illuminates the cause for which I was created, to bring glory to Him.  

The same God who spoke light into creation, spoke light into this world again, in His great act of redemption for a people who He loved.  God sent His light to a people living in darkness, when He gave to us the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” – 2 Corinthians 4:6.

Abba, let me never neglect Your Word.  Let me never again wander in darkness, and let me always be thankful for the light you have shone upon us who believe, through the gospel of Your Son, Jesus Christ.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed  in the thing for which I sent it.” – Isaiah 55:10-11 ….. THE WORD OF GOD!