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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

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All right, welcome back Day five, as we finish up our deep dive in God's intention for man. Again, there are three areas of our life that God gave us as men to bring him glory, a will to obey, work to enjoy, a woman to love. Well, what went wrong? I'll tell you what went wrong. Sin broke it all. That the enemy comes into the garden, he lies to Eve, he tricks Eve, and Adam is standing right there with her and, instead of crushing the head of the snake that's talking to his wife, he doesn't do anything.

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And so what do we do? What do we do as men? Well, let me tell you, a pep talk for me is not going to help. You see, the response to the world that we live in is not boys, we need to cowboy up, we need to buck up, we need to man up. No, actually, what we need to do is bend our knee and look up. You see, the only way that you'll ever be able to stand firm and act like men is first, you must bow your knee to Jesus.

Speaker 2: 1:17

And what's beautiful is, you see, this plan in the book of Genesis. You see, when Adam and Eve have sinned, what they do is now they are full of shame and instead of running to God, they run from God. You see, every single one of us has a propensity to reject God. Some people reject God through rebellion. This is what they did when they ate of the forbidden fruit. They said forget you, god, I do what I want with who I want when I want. That's rebellion. And then they run and they hide. And the Bible says that because of their shame, they made coverings for themselves out of fig leaves and the very first religion was born. You see, all of us reject God. Some people reject God through rebellion by doing what we want. Some people reject God through religion by doing what we want. Some people reject God through religion. Essentially, we say to God we don't need you to deal with our shame by the works of our own hands. We will cover it ourselves. Well, that's not going to work.

Speaker 2: 2:14

And so God comes walking through the garden calling out the man's name. Why? Because the man is the head of the family. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, it is the man's responsibility. And so he says who told you you were naked? And it's an opportunity for Adam to repent. But he doesn't. He blames the devil, he blames his wife.

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And then what happens is, in the next few verses, god curses those very things that he gave us, because when sin entered the world, it held the door open for pain and strife and chaos. And so our will to obey is broken. Right, anybody struggle with sin. Right, the work that God gave us to enjoy is now covered with thorns and thistles and we feel like we go to work to try to make a difference and it's like the devil himself is working against us, and even our relationship at home with our wife is broken. Anybody ever had a tough time getting along with your wife? It's because of sin.

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But right here in Genesis, chapter three, we see the answer. In chapter three, verse 16, as God is cursing all of creation, the devil himself, the man and the woman. He says to the woman this I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing and in pain you shall bring forth children, your desire will be for your husband and he shall rule over you. And then, a little while later, he says I'm going to put enmity between your offspring and this enemy, this devil, this evil one, and there will come a seed from you, and one day this enemy will bruise his heel and in so doing, he will get his head crushed. This is the proto-evangelion. So for all of the Old Testament now, what every one of God's followers are looking for is they're looking for this serpent crusher to show up on the scene to put to death the one that tricked humanity and tried to usurp God's kingdom here on earth.

Speaker 2: 4:11

Later, in verse 20 and following, we see a picture of the gospel from the Garden of Eden. The Bible says this the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them. And then the Lord God said behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life.

Speaker 2: 4:54

Here's what I want you to see, because God is just. All sin must be paid for. Because God is just. Adam and Eve had to get kicked out of the garden, but because God is gracious, he makes the payment on our behalf. And so Adam and Eve sin and they're aware of it. They have broken fellowship with God. They make coverings for themselves. This is their own man-made religion and God says you can put that away.

Speaker 2: 5:18

And God makes a covering for Adam and Eve. And the Bible says it's garments of skin, which means for the first time in human history, blood was shed for the covering of the shame of sin. This is a foreshadowing of what Christ is going to do at the cross. On the cross of Jesus Christ, you see perfect justice poured out by God on sin, for God made him, who was without sin, to be sin for us, that we would be made the righteousness of God. The full wrath of God was poured out on Christ because Christ not only died for us, he died instead of us. And yet at the cross we see God's ultimate love and grace offered to us for anyone who would receive that. Jesus is the lamb of God and it's by the lamb's blood that our sins are forgiven. Christ's life, death and resurrection for whoever would believe would be the garment, the perfect, spotless, righteous garment, as a gift from God that covers over and even takes away the sin of humanity. So what do we do, sinful man? We bow our knee to a perfect savior.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Amen. Thank you for listening to today's episode Before you go. If you wanna help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review. Stay sharp.