Woodhouse and I would say that if you get one of those mission books which is worth fourteen ninety five and you are thinking of sending a donation to the mission take the book to Ernie Woodhouse and get him to autograph page one hundred and six by his picture take the book to Charlie Ross and get him to autograph page one hundred and ten by his picture and then the book will be worth ninety nine ninety five and you'll be able to send a much larger contribution to the mission This may be your last opportunity to pick up these two little booklets that I brought along. I don't know how many of the bookstore will keep. What they don't want, I'm going to take back with me so they don't have a overstock. The Book of Daniel, both of these books are under three dollars, and the Book of Daniel is the one I wrote for Emmaus, and it's like a little short commentary, and a lot simpler than most of the longer books. So if you want to read some chapter and get a little ID, you'll find a great deal of information in it. And then What's the Difference by John Piper, Forward by Elizabeth Elliott, on the Essential Differences in Personality Between Men and Women, subtitled Manhood and Womanhood, Defined According to the Bible. I brought that along because I recommended it, and I was over to St. Augustine on Monday, and I left a few copies with Larry Price over there, and he showed one of them to Eleanor Schultz, and she must have read it, and she sent word over here, sent over twenty copies to her. because she wants to use them either in the bookstore or in distribution or something. So I think you get enthused about this little booklet if you read it. But I just got one reminder about those while they're still available to you. What a blessing it has been to me to be here. This week I have enjoyed it, I think, more than any other of my seven visits to Park of the Palms. And I'm thankful for the invitation to come and Thankful to be able to minister the Word of God here and to see some of you again. I look back over my notes of earlier visits, and many that were here the first time I came back in the seventies are no longer here, but some of you are. Some of the same ones are still here right from the first time I came, and it's so nice to see your faces and so nice to meet new acquaintances, too, and get acquainted with new people from time to time. We appreciate your prayers. We're going on to Fort Lauderdale. I have some meetings in the Fort Lauderdale Gospel Chapel there before we go back to Wheaton. Will you turn with me please to the book of Isaiah chapter fourteen. Isaiah chapter fourteen. Our series in these evening meetings has been meet the angelic BIPs. Lucifer was the last one. The first one was Gabriel and then Michael and then Lucifer who became Satan or the devil. But he started out as one of the angels of God, a creature of great beauty and great wisdom who was corrupted by his sin. I'm going to read verses twelve to seventeen, the classic passage about Lucifer. Isaiah fourteen twelve. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend unto heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation and the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most high. Yet thou shalt be brought down to Sheol, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee, narrowly they that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee saying is this the man who made the earth to tremble who did shake the kingdoms who made the world like a wilderness and destroyed its cities who opened not the house of his prisoners notice in those last verses where that idea that the fall of Satan the fall of Lucifer brought a chaotic judgment upon the earth we discussed that at some length last night. Now, this morning at breakfast, I was asked two questions that I was not able to answer. One was, how did Satan come into being? And of course, I answered, well, he was Lucifer and sinned and so forth. But the question really was asking, how can you sin when you're sinless and when there's no nature within you? to make you want to sin. Well, I can't answer that because none of us have had that experience. We were all born with sinful natures. Adam was sinless and he sinned. Lucifer was sinless and he sinned. They can only say that God created certain forms of life that had the potential for rebelling against Him. Now, animals can't do that. Animals can't rebel against their Creator. Human beings can rebel against their Creator. and the angels were able to rebel against their Creator. And God allowed that when why is the great mystery of evil in the universe that no one can really answer. You don't answer that problem by becoming an unbeliever either because the unbeliever, the atheist, can't answer the question of why is there evil in the universe. This is in the sovereignty of God that He has allowed it. The other question was when were the angels created And I can't answer that. I can say they were created. And obviously, Lucifer was created before the serpent came into the Garden of Eden. But the timing of the creation of angels is undated. I myself suspect, or guess I suppose I should say, that it was before Genesis one, one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, before that beginning, there was an eternity past. John one, one goes way back before Genesis one, one. John one says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Now that's in the endless ages of eternity past. The universe had a beginning, a definite beginning. So John's gospel starts out much earlier than Genesis starts out. Perhaps the angels were created before there was a universe, and then the universe was created, and they were assigned responsibilities in it. Or it may have been the other way around, that the universe was created first, and then the angels were created. Now that we don't know. We can only make guesses, and even educated guesses might not be very educated. So we just have to leave some of those things to find out when we get to heaven. God tells us a little bit about the future, and a little bit about the ancient past, but not too much. And it doesn't pay for us to become experts on areas where God has not said a lot. He has chosen to leave both of these areas, the future and the past, with a certain aura of mystery. He only gives us little insights into the angelic realm, even in the present. And we accept that, and we may be curious, but we just have to be patient. And we see through a glass darkly, but one day we'll know a lot more about these things. How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? And then verse thirteen begins to explain how he fell from heaven and why we did talk about Isaiah fourteen earlier in the week. But I want to go back and look at one part of it that we did not pay any attention to. The five I wills that are found in verses thirteen and fourteen. For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. That's probably a reference to the other angels. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. That is a mysterious phraseology, but may well be his way of saying, I am going to be God. I'm going to be the king of the mountain. I'm not going to take orders from anybody. I'm going to be on the top of the pile. I'm going to be number one, not number two, as he might have been before. Verse fourteen. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high. Now, it's not easy to know just exactly what these phrases mean, but the one that fascinates me the most is the last one. I will be like the most high. Now, how could the devil be like the most high? Or rather, I should say, how could Lucifer, because he was not the devil yet? Well, he did not intend to become a murderer. Jesus said that he's a murderer. He's a murderer from the beginning. And the Lord called him a liar, the father of these things. But he certainly didn't intend to become a murderer or a liar or a wicked, vile creature. He intended to be like the most high God. Now, that is a good aspiration if you have the right thing in mind. We are exalted in the New Testament by God. He says, Be ye holy, for I am holy. Be like me, God is saying. I'm holy and I want you to be holy. And if that's what Lucifer meant, I will be holy like God is holy. That would have been perfectly proper for him to say that. And it wouldn't have gotten him into trouble. But that wasn't what he was doing. He was setting himself up as a rival to Jehovah, a competitor to Jehovah. one who at least would be equal to him and perhaps would even be superior to him. Well, he just seems more to want to be independent here than to be over God, just to be out from under God. And that's the only thing that I can think of that he had in mind, that is independence. He certainly evidently did not aspire to omnipotence. There was no way that he could become omnipotent, omnipotent. He was not all-powerful. and he can't have all power. Pharaoh's magicians turned the rods to serpents and the water to blood and brought forth frogs, but they could not continue by Satan can heal, but he can't create worlds. He does not have all power, never did, never could have all power. Only God has all power. Nor could he be omniscient, knowing everything. He does not have all wisdom. He has great wisdom and much more wisdom than we have, but he does not have all wisdom. Can Satan read your mind, your thoughts? Does he know every thought of your heart the way God does? As far as I know, he cannot. He may be able to discern a great deal, just as some of us can discern what other people are thinking at times. He may be much more efficient at discerning what other people are thinking, but as far as I know, he cannot read every thought of your mind, that you have some protection in your mind from him. He is not omniscient. He doesn't know everything. He cannot be everywhere at once. Now he has a lot of demons working for him and he can send them all over the place. When I was a little boy and I was bad, my mother would say, oh, the devil's whispering in your ear. I decided afterward that probably the devil was off in Washington or Moscow or in those days in Germany and where Hitler was or over in Japan or wherever and that he really wasn't likely to be whispering in my ear that maybe one of his demons was but not him. So I thought maybe my mother was a little off in her theology on that point. And later I learned that it probably wasn't even a demon. My trouble was my own sinful nature coming out from within me. But then my mother wasn't raised in theological circles that had a lot of credibility. So what could the devil do to be like God? He could be independent. He could have the spirit of today's America, of being his own boss, subject to nobody. You know, there's a tremendous wave of anti-authoritarianism in this land today. People don't want to be subject to authority. So much of the protest movements that go on are really anti-establishment, anti-authority, maybe even more than whatever causes they pretend to espouse because some of these people move from one cause to another, but the common element is always anti-establishment, anti-authority. That's the spirit of our age. The New Testament calls it lawlessness, the man of lawlessness. I think in the King James it's the man of sin, but literally in the Greek the man of lawlessness, not being under law to God, not being subject to the law of God, being independent of God. Everybody likes to be number one. We don't like to have to report to somebody and say, that's my boss, and he doesn't want to say to the next guy, that's his boss and so forth. When I was editor of a magazine, I used to say that the board of directors were my boss. I was subject to them, and I did what they told me to do. Sometimes I would take things to them and say, I'm thinking of putting this in the magazine, and if they said, no, that's not a good idea, then I didn't put it in. I remember once I had an article that I had written on a certain controversial subject, and I decided I better consult with the board of directors about that article before I published it. I didn't have to now. As editor, Don Cole before me, had established the freedom of the editor to put what he wanted in the magazine and then face the board of directors afterwards, which is normal in a publication. That's the way publications usually run. The editor prints what he wants to print, and then he takes the heat afterward from his board. But on occasion, I would go to the board and say, I'm thinking about printing this. And so I told them I had an article on this subject. It involved a controversial person. and they talked it all over and they never saw the article and not one of them ever read it and i didn't tell them what i had said or what conclusion i'd taken or what side i was on but every one of them said no i don't think you ought to print that some were afraid i was going to lean to this side and some were afraid i was going to lean to that side and they had different reasons and i knew there was no agreement in their reasons and after all they hadn't read the article so i went back home that night and i was sort of discouraged because i'd spent so many hours writing that article and i said to myself jim You could have printed it without asking them. If you asked them, then you better take their advice. Otherwise, what's the use of going to them? You shouldn't ask them if you didn't want to do what they said. And I remember the Bible verse in the multitude of counselors there is safety. But even more than that, they had authority. They were the boss. They were over me. And I was brought in to be editor, but I was to be subject to that board of directors. We were to be subject in our assemblies to elders and so forth. And the elders have to be in subjection to each other. And I believe in the work of God, nobody is entirely independent of human authority over them. God doesn't want a bunch of freelancers running around. And we have authority as I am under authority to my commending assembly as a commended worker and so forth. And to my home assembly as to my behavior and my morality and the like. That is the assembly I'm attending. So I'm under authority to the elders of the assembly I go to. I'm under authority to the elders of the assembly that commended me. And when I stand here in this pulpit, I recognize the authority of the conveners of this conference, and I'm subject to that authority. At the same time as a preacher of the word, I have the answerability of God to proclaim the word, but I recognize that God has put us under authority. And there is in the human nature a desire to get out from under that, and to be number one, and not to answer to anybody. And I think this is the great sin of Lucifer. I will be like the most high. I'll be independent. I'll be on my own. I'll do my own thing. I'll do what I want to do." And that meant rebellion against God. And when you rebel against God, there is a principle in God's universe that rebellion can only lead to disaster. He didn't intend to become a murderer. He probably intended to be very good and to operate a very good universe. but disaster came when he rebelled and trouble came. I believe that the devil is not trying to make people bad. He would like to make people good, but good without Jesus Christ, good without the blood of Christ, good without having to come in repentance to the Savior. And the devil's triumph, triumphs in this world, are not the prostitutes and the drunkards, the drug addicts and the muggers on the streets, the bad people. The devil's triumphs are the good people who teach religion without the salvation by the shedding of blood. And if you remember, the proof of this is who were the enemies of the Lord Jesus? Who were the people that sent him to the cross? They were not the wicked, bad, corrupt, immoral people. They appreciated him. It was the religious leaders, the upright, so-called righteous people that opposed the gospel when the Lord preached it, and they're the ones that tend to oppose it today. So that was Satan. I'll be like the Most High, and He became a wicked, corrupt being. Now, if you will, please, we'll go back to the book of Genesis, chapter one. Having that background, and having studied earlier in the week the parent teaching of Scripture that God had given him authority over this planet, and now in Genesis chapter one, the creation, toward the end of the chapter, we come to the creation of mankind. Here on this particular planet, which seems to me to be Satan's dominion, in contrast to the other parts of the universe, Lucifer's dominion, God put a human being, a pair of human beings. There must be millions and millions of planets in outer space in the billions and billions and billions of stars out there. There surely must be scores of planets like Earth that could support life. God chose to put the human race on this planet, this planet that was Satan's theater of operation. And why did he do it? He's challenging Satan, no doubt. There must be something of that in this story. He didn't go away to another place, but he came and put Adam and he right here where the devil roamed free. Creation of humanity in Genesis one, verse twenty six is a brief but magnificent statement. it emphasizes a creative act of God man the God said let us make man in our image verse twenty seven so God created man a creative act of God in contrast to a chance evolution evolutionary dominated chemical process that the scientists tell us is the source of the human race the accidental mixing and stirring and changing of chemicals over billions of years from some ancient green-covered sea has produced humanity. Don't you believe it? The human being is made by God as a choice of God's will. He chose to do it, and then he acted on it. God said, let us do this, and then God did it. That gives dignity to the human race. People today are trying to find themselves. People are trying to figure out who they are and what they are. You hear that all the time. If they'd believe this, instead of believing evolution, they'd be a long way on the road to finding themselves. Creatures created in the image of God, not set of animals, putting man in stark contrast to the animals. Modern science may call man an animal. The Bible calls him man, and it relates him not to the animal kingdom, but to the Trinity. God said, let us make man in our image. These plurals here, the first foreshadowings that there was some plurality in the one God. Not developed, of course, until the New Testament, where you have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And that in combination with the great truth, there is only one God. But in that one God, there is a Father, there is a Son, and there is a Holy Spirit. And so God said, let us make man in our image. And that puts man in relation to the triune God and not in relation to the monkeys and the chimpanzees and the green slime. Now, which would you rather be related to? And which one of those possibilities would give dignity to your life? And then in verse twenty seven, male and female created he them. There's a male and female differentiation in God's creation. Now this was also true of the animals, the fish, and the birds, but it was not said of them in Genesis one. According to its kind, each one reproduced according to its kind, it was said of the animals. But it doesn't say that about human beings. It doesn't say God created man and man reproduced according to his kind. It says male and female created he them. So the change wording punctuates the thought of human dignity. And then here in verse twenty-seven, male, female equality as persons is strongly stated by repeating the expression in the image of God that comes from verse twenty-six. It's again in verse twenty-seven. So God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him, male and female, he created them. And you have a very clear statement that this image of God business applies to both the man and the woman. And the Bible clearly teaches that as persons we are equal in the sight of God. Now role distinction comes along in chapter two. It's not something that showed up after the fall of man. The role distinction between male and female is very clearly taught in the creation story before the fall. And you see this, starting down, skipping down into chapter two now. Chapter two zooms in on the creation of man and woman. It's like a zoom lens that picks out one or two verses of chapter one and then tells us a whole lot more about it. Genesis two, verse seven, the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. All right. I believe this verse can be taken literally. Just exactly as it reads, it's simple form. God took dust, molded into a human body, adult body, breathed into the nostrils of that body he had formed, the breath of life, and man became a living being. Breath of God created far different than the creation of the animals. But you note that the man was created first before the woman. And in the Hebrew thinking, in the Hebrew mind, this gives the man a leadership role. It's comparable to the role of the firstborn son in the family. Firstborn son had the leadership role in the family. He was the head of the family. And the same principle applies here that Adam being first created would have the leadership role in this family that was to be formed merely on the basis of birth order. God has given him a position of head of the family. And then when you get down to verse fifteen, you notice that man was given his assignment and responsibility and accountability by God before his wife was created. Verse fifteen, thus the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 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, for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. He was going to have to pass on those instructions, do we? They were spoken to him by God. God gave him in verse fifteen a responsibility to tend the Garden of Eden, a physical responsibility, if you will. And God also gave him a spiritual responsibility. Don't disobey me. Don't eat the fruit of a certain tree. And the lesson of this is, I believe, that there is a role distinction that God has put into his original creation, that man has a primary responsibility in spiritual things, an accountability, if you will, that God will go to him first when disobedience appears. And he will say, why do you do this or why do you allow this? God will hold him accountable. He is answerable to God and has been answerable to God since the days when he was alone. in God's universe. Thus the leadership role of a man is to be spiritual as well as physical. He is not only to get out there and make those crops grow and decide when to plant and when to harvest, to tend the garden in other words, but he's also to be the one who is primarily accountable for what it means to walk with God. The Christian man today, and I think there's truth in this for both single and married men, The Christian man today should be a source of spiritual leadership and strength. Not only the Christian man, this is a responsibility on all men to be a source of spiritual leadership. A man ought to be able to read Genesis two and say, it's my responsibility to know what God wants and to do what God wants. Because I am a man made in the image of God. How modern man has fallen from his role abdicating spiritual leadership time and time again to the women of our species. Consider two typical scenarios. Men are standing around cursing, talking dirty talk. A woman walks by and one of the men is cursing. All of a sudden he sees, oh, excuse me, he says, excuse me. And so the men stop cursing when a woman is present. Now, it's a nice thing that they stop cursing, but why were they cursing in the first place? If I am a spiritual man accountable to God and cursing is wrong, it's wrong because God says it's wrong, not just because there's a woman present. And my tongue and the way I speak and the way I ought to be governed by my relationship to God, not just by the presence of a woman. Why isn't the man holy? Why doesn't he take a spiritual leadership? Why does he abdicate to the woman to be the sanctifying influence on the society? Another man drops off his wife and children for Sunday school and church. He yields up the spiritual leadership of the home to the woman. And that seems to be so typical of the human male. To abdicate to the leadership to the woman, and especially to abdicate that leadership when a woman pushes for that leadership. That's even more characteristic of the human being. We'll see that in a moment, but let me first of all make a comment now on the creation of Eve, and then we'll go on to the next chapter. God brought before Adam in verse eighteen... Well, verse eighteen, God says, the Lord said, it is not good that a man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. The NIV says, suitable for him. The King James says, a help meet for him. Two words. And the word meet means, it's an old word, M-E-E-T, which means suitable, fitting. And today we don't use that word very much. And it's been combined into one word, a help meet, which is a single word, but not in the Bible. A help meet for him. A helper suitable for him. A companion comparable to him. Studied the various translations on this. And then God brought to Adam all the birds and all the animals, and Adam named every one of them. But there wasn't a single one that could fill the bill that God wanted for him. So in verse twenty one the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. And I believe this should be taken literally too. Eve was made from the rib of Adam. I got a son in law that likes to tease and say that's why man has more ribs on one side than he does on the other. And you go to count your ribs and try to figure out where the missing one is and there isn't any missing one of course. But it was just Adam that lost the rib. But this is the way God made the woman. And he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of the man. I believe the most beautiful commentary on this passage that I've ever seen are the very brief words of Matthew Henry in his commentary on the whole Bible. He says that the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam. Not made out of his head to top him, or just to rule over him. Not made out of his feet to be trampled upon by him. But out of his side, to be equal with him, under his arm, to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. And a beautiful application of that passage. So here they are, this couple in the Garden of Eden. And now comes this serpent into the Garden of Eden in chapter three. And there's not one place in this chapter that says this is the devil. Not named, not mentioned at all. It isn't until you get, I think, to the New Testament, maybe somewhere in the old, that the serpent is identified as the devil. But that's what he is, disguised in an animal form. A very attractive animal form, a reptile, maybe like a small dinosaur. reptile because it's later on in the chapter that the reptile loses his legs under the judgment and goes down in his belly and becomes the snake so here's a very beautiful creature of God and he comes to the woman and he says has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden now tell me why did the serpent go to the woman if God put Adam here to counteract the rebellion of Satan why didn't Satan attack Adam Why did he try to flank Adam and go to the woman? I think because he was trying to upset the family relationship and not only attack Adam and Eve in respect to the word of God and the commands of God, but also to try to disrupt the family of God. The woman says to the serpent, We may eat of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. The serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. God's not telling you the truth. It challenges God's word. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open. You'll be like God knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, there was pleasant of the eyes, a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Now I ask you, why didn't Eve talk this over with Adam? Why did she go ahead on her own? Why did she make the spiritual decision that belonged to the head of the house? Why did she make the basic spiritual decision that affected all human beings ever since and make that decision on her own and then try to talk Adam into doing the same thing because she was out of order? And I ask you the next question. Why did Adam accept her decision unquestioning? Why didn't he resist? Why didn't he say, Eve, get down on your knees and confess to God. You've done a terrible thing. You've disobeyed God. Why did he just yield to her and do what she asked him to do? Same reason. He was out of order. He was abdicating his spiritual headship. He was abdicating his accountability to God. You think that I'm wrong about that? They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Verse eight. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Verse nine, and the Lord God called Adam and said, where are you? Why didn't God call out to Eve? Didn't he know who had done it first? Why didn't he call her? Why did he call Adam? Isn't this the same truth that Harry Truman expressed to us so bluntly but so accurately? The buck stops here. The buck stops in the president's desk. And in the spiritual matters, the buck stopped on Adam's desk, and God said, Why? Where are you, Adam? What are you doing? What's gone wrong here? Oh, Adam said, I heard your voice, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded that you should not eat? And the man said, Oh, the woman that you gave me, she gave it to me. Why does he pass the buck? Why doesn't he? act like Harry Truman acted. Why did he say, God, I did it and I shouldn't have done it and I'm responsible? No, passes it right off. It's not my fault, God. It was the woman that you, your fault too, you gave her to me, but she gave me the tree and I ate it. That's all there is to it. Then the Lord turns to the woman and she says, well, it's the serpent's fault. And then God turns to the serpent and he passes judgment on Satan. And then in verse sixteen, he comes back to the woman and says, I will multiply your sorrow and your conception and pain. You shall bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband. He shall rule over you. And then he turns to Adam. And he says, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten the fruit of the tree, which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat, then curse it as the ground. And you'll labor to bring forth fruit from it. But he indicted him on two counts. He indicted him not only because he had disobeyed the command of God and eaten the tree, but also because he'd abdicated his role of spiritual leadership in the home. So Satan was quite successful in upsetting things. And you know, I don't want to comment much on the trend of our day. My time is coming to an end quickly now. Anyway, except to say this, there's an awful lot in the pressures in society on today's women that remind me of the attractiveness of the tree in the Garden of Eden and the appeal of Satan, that you'll be so much better off if you partake of that tree and knowing that Eve, far from being better off, was much worse off after she had done it. I've spoken a bit more directly to the men when I've talked about what I see as a man, as a man's accountability to God when I read this second chapter of Genesis, but I want to say that to the women too. Be careful. that the temptations of Satan haven't changed very much over the centuries. He makes the same type of appeal. But let's go back now to verse five and talk about his appeal in another sense. Verse five, he says, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. The King James Version says, like gods, The New King James says, like God. And you can take your pick because the Hebrew word is Elohim, which is a plural word. The name for God, the common name for God, is a plural. In the beginning, Elohim created the heaven and the earth. Elohim, the name of God. It's translated singular. And so when it comes to a passage like this, does it mean like God's or does it mean like the God? So you can translate it either singular or plural. Probably the singular is more accurate because that's the word that's been used early in the chapter. Has God, as Elohim said, you shall not eat, so forth, and God knows and so forth. So he says to him, you'll be like God, knowing good or evil. You'll be like God. And you remember Lucifer now, we're coming back to the starting point. I will exalt my throne. I will be like God. And now he says to Eve, Don't you aspire to the same thing I aspire to? Wouldn't you be like God? Now, he's not saying to Eve, you can rule the universe. He's saying to her, you will eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then you won't be innocent anymore. You'll have knowledge, and you will be able to know what's right and what's wrong. And he's implying, surely you will do the right thing. He's not suggesting to Eve that she will be immoral. He's suggesting to her that she will be able to make her own decisions. Now, you know, the tree is not adultery. Adam and Eve could not commit adultery. They were married people, and there were no others, just the two of them. So this fiction that goes around that they ate the apple, and the apple was adultery, it's strictly fiction. It wasn't an apple anyway. It was a fruit tree, unidentified, except that it was a one-of-a-kind tree that had a symbolic meaning, the meaning of conscience, call the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, probably a very definite physical tree, but having that meaning of conscience. And when you did eat of that tree, you came to have a conscience. You would have a sense of right and wrong. And so he says to Eve, you will know right from wrong. Of course you'll do the right. But you'll do it because you want to do it and not because you have to do it. You won't be like a little child anymore having to do what God tells you. You'll be an adult. You'll be making your own decision. You'll be like God that way. You'll be independent. You'll be number one. You'll be on top of the pile. And here again we have that truth. That the great work of Satan is not to make people wicked, but to make them wicked in the immoral world. prostitute, down and outer, corrupt, cursing, swearing, stealing, lying. Not to make people wicked in that sense, but to make people declare independence of God in rebellion from Him. That's what Satan wants to accomplish. And the kind of people that our rescue mission superintendents deal with, they are not Satan's triumphs. They are Satan's failures. They are the people that rebelled against God and ended up on Skid Row. because the principle of God in the universe is that if you walk the way of independence and rebellion against God, you're very likely to end up on Skid Row. Not because the devil wants it, but because the devil can't stop it. He'd far rather you be the founder of a religion of morality and purity that says you don't need to be washed in the blood of Christ. He was only an ordinary human being, and he didn't really die and rise again anyway, that type of thing. He'd far rather have you in that place because his great enemy is the Lord Jesus. He wants to be a rival to God and produce a world that's good without the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe as I study this passage that that's the intent of Satan's great motivation and it's our own sinful nature that drag us down into immorality when we walk an independent path. The only way you can stay out of sin is to walk in dependence on the living God and live for Him. Now when the devil tempted the Lord Jesus He varied his temptation. He said, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world if you'll fall down and worship me. But he didn't say that to Eve. He did not suggest to Eve that she should worship him. He just suggested to her rebellion against God. You become independent. And when Adam and Eve bought this line... and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They did indeed establish an independence of God. The Bible says that teaches us that man is born with an enmity against God. There's a hostility between man and God that exists today in the natural human being. And we come to God by surrendering, by believing, by coming to the place of acknowledging the fact that we're sinners and repenting of sin and stopping rebellion against him and crying out for God to save us and deliver us. God has to try to get into our lives, and we call that the conviction of the Holy Spirit because there's a natural separation. But you know that the independence is complete. There is also a natural separation of the human being from the devil. And the devil doesn't have an automatic entrance into people's lives. Sometimes I've heard preachers saying that if you're not a child of God, you're a child of the devil. And I don't believe that. I don't believe the Bible teaches that. That wasn't the temptation of Satan. I'm sure he would like to have gotten Eve, but he was content at this point to get her only the first step. Declare independence of God. Do your own thing. And so Satan has to work his way into a life too. He does this through the occult, through people surrendering to him, opening doors to him, various ways he tries to get into people's lives. But we have a natural resistance against the devil, just like we have a natural resistance against God. We have declared independence and we have to come to the place where we submit to God or submit to the Satan. Far better to open our hearts to the Lord Jesus and let him come in and let him be Lord and God in our lives. Thomas, that one day, remember, I don't believe he rose from the dead. I won't believe unless I can see the holes in his hand and put my hand in the wound in his side. And then he saw the Lord Jesus and he fell before him and he said, my Lord and my God. And John the writer says, these things are written, many other things happen, but these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through his name. So the great way to undo the temptation of Satan is to bow the knee to the Lord Jesus, confess him as Lord and Savior, become his disciple, and follow him. And with that note, I leave you. May the Lord bless. Father, thank you for the privilege of saying to the Lord Jesus, King of my life, I crown thee now. Thine shall the glory be. We acknowledge you, Lord. We are of a race that is rebelled against you, Father, and we come back in repentance and say, Lord, we're sorry. We want to be under your authority. We want to be in submission to you. We don't want to be number one. We want to be obedient, bond slaves of Jesus Christ. And in His name we pray.