Eve: The Mother of All Living

Society moves ever so quickly away from biblical foundations.

I think it's so important for us to lay a groundwork of faith and belief based on the truths that we find in Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

As a matter of fact, if we took these three chapters out of the Bible, we would have no idea really how God created the world, that God did in fact create the world in the number of days in which He created it.

The order in which He created it.

We'd have no idea where mankind came from.

We would have scant information about the distinction between men and women and their roles as designed by God.

Without chapter 3, we'd have no evidence of the entrance of sin into the world and would have no information regarding how God promised the coming of a Redeemer and a Savior to save us all from our sins.

If you are a Bible-believing Christian, you ought to thank God every morning for the foundational truths that He teaches us in Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Let's stand in reverence for God's word, if we may.

The book of Genesis and chapter 2.

This book, Genesis, is Bareshit.

It means the beginning.

It gives us the beginning of everything but God.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

It is God who created.

He creates an environment and then creates the people that occupy the environment.

He creates man, he creates woman in the image of God, created he him.

Male and female created he them.

It was a week of distinction.

God said, Let there be light.

The light of his presence turned the light on on the canvas of creation.

He divides the light from the darkness.

He creates a sun to rule the day, a moon to rule the night.

He divides the day from the night.

He creates the fowl and the beast and the fish.

He creates environments for them in which they live.

He creates distinction.

On the first and second, and third and fourth and fifth and sixth day.

Then he says, Let us make man in our own image.

After our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air.

So God created man in his own image.

Male and female created he them.

And God made a distinction, male and female.

And of the female, the Bible says in Genesis chapter number two, verse 21.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof.

And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her under 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 man.

And then go with me to chapter 3 and verse 20.

God called her name woman.

But Adam called her Eve.

Chapter 3, verse 20.

And Adam called his wife's name Eve.

Because she was the mother of all living.

And I want to speak on that subject this morning for a few moments.

Eve, the mother of all living.

May we pray.

Our Father, we thank you for the truth of the Scriptures.

May it be a lamp to our feet and a light unto our path.

Guide us into a study of the scriptures today.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you for standing, and you can be seated together.

In every generation, humanity has wrestled with the same fundamental question.

Who are we?

Where did we come from?

Why are we here?

Our modern world may frame those questions differently than maybe previous generations could, but the struggle remains the same.

And today we live in a culture confused about identity, uncertain about origins, and searching desperately for meaning.

Every creature has to know in order to live a faithful life.

Origin, where did I come from?

Meaning, why am I here?

Destiny, where am I going?

We are told today by the experts in biology and psychology that there's a disconnection, that gender and creation are fluid.

And now even conversations about extraterrestrial life, it's hit the front pages of our newspapers this week, are moving from science, fiction into mainstream discussions.

Philosophers and political hearings and government disclosures abound, but the Word of God has already given us our origin story.

Scripture speaks boldly, saying to us that mankind did not emerge, accidentally, evolve, meaninglessly, or arrive here by a cosmic experimentation.

We were created intentionally by a personal God who formed us in his own image, male and female.

And at the center of that origin story is a woman.

Her name is Eve.

She's called by her husband the mother of all living.

She was not merely the beginning of biological life.

She is the starting point of the human story itself.

Through the womb of a woman came every generation of mankind.

And ultimately, through the womb of another woman, whose name was Mary, came life itself when she brought the Lord Jesus Christ into the world.

The Bible story moves from a garden to a manger, from the pain of childbirth to the hope of redemption, from the fall of Eve to the faith of Mary.

This morning, the same God who brought forth human life through womanhood also brought forth eternal life to the promised seed of the woman that we call the Lord Jesus.

So this morning, we're not merely talking about origin, we're talking about salvation, the story of salvation and the God who authored them both.

Now I just have two points today, and you'll be grateful for that because the first point will take up quite a bit of our time.

But I want to talk first of all about our origin story.

I just want to brag on my wife for a moment.

I said, What would you like for your Mother's Day dinner?

And she said, Steak and shrimp.

Can I get an amen right there?

And I thought, what a godly woman right there.

She could have ordered cucumber sandwiches and rabbit food, and instead, we're going to strike up the barbecue for lunch today.

So I am the only thing standing between us and a great, great meal today.

I'll be very careful about that until I forget to remember, okay?

Our origin story.

At first glance, this statement made about Eve in chapter 3, verse number 20, seems to suggest that Eve's purpose is merely biological.

Eve, the mother of all living.

But I asked you a question this morning.

What is a woman?

Now, for all of our forebears, this seemed to be a foregone conclusion, but I of necessity answer my own question this morning.

Back in 2022, during a Senate confirmation hearing in an exchange between the senator from the great state of Tennessee, Marshall Blackburn, you're supposed to say amen right there, and Katanji Brown Jackson, a prospective Supreme Court Justice, Blackburn asked the prospective justice the following question.

Can you provide a definition for the word woman?

Jackson responded, Can I provide a definition?

No, I can't.

And Blackburn, with that good down home Tennessee logic, further asked, What is a woman?

To which the Supreme Court justice said, I cannot answer that question in this context.

I'm not a biologist.

Now, can I just go on record and say, if you can't define what a woman is, you probably are not qualified to sit upon the highest court in the land.

Furthermore, someone that would even protect women's rights without an answer to that question.

Her answer suggested the problem in modern life, distinction between sex and gender, a distinction between biology and psychology, a distinction between facts and feelings.

We live in a world today where people identify based on their feelings, even gender fluidity, where in any moment's time they identify with whatever they please to be identified with, but we find our identity not in ourselves or our feelings, we find our identity in God, our Creator.

What is a woman?

Someone said a woman is a female birthgiver.

Well, they say not all women give birth.

Well, someone said a woman is a female capable of giving birth.

Others say women are inferior.

Wonder where that diabolical idea came from.

Well, there was a famous book written probably 150 years ago by a man named Charles Darwin.

Darwin wrote the book on the origin of species by means of natural selection or the subtitle, The Preservation of Preferred Races.

Matter of fact, the term racism that's been so thrown in our faces for the last several years is not a historic term.

The term race came from the writings of Charles Darwin.

Before Darwin, we spoke of the human race.

He began to write about human races and favored races.

He wrote about inferior races or even subhuman races.

Darwin admitted that his theory of evolution implied that certain races of people were inferior to others.

And with equal candor, he concluded that women were inferior to men as well.

In his book, The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote, The chief distinction, hear this, the chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man's attaining to a higher eminence in whatever he takes up than a woman can.

Whether requiring deep thought or reason or imagination or merely the use of the senses and heads, the average of mental power in man must be that above women.

Man has ultimately become superior to woman, he wrote.

Created out of Adam's side, but created in God's image.

And the same divine image stamped upon every male soul is the same divine image that is stamped on every female soul.

We are all created in the image and likeness of God.

What then should we say about these female image bearers?

Well, first of all, notice that Eve was the fountain of all life.

Acts chapter 17, verse 26, the scripture says that God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.

Acts 17:26

In fact, this purpose given of women to bring forth life was her purpose made clear before the fall, before sin enters into chapter number three.

The declaration of fruitfulness was given to her before the fall.

I'm saying this to suggest that motherhood was not the curse upon which God placed on Eve.

It was God's gift to her to bring forth new life into this world.

Now there was pain in childbearing, but motherhood is not a curse.

Motherhood is a gift given by an Almighty God.

And it should be celebrated in our country and in our lives.

She's the fountain of all living.

But may I say, second of all, she's the fountain of each life.

The Bible says in John chapter 16, verse 21, a woman when she is in travail hath sorrow because her hour is come.

John 16:21

But as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world.

I was studying this a bit.

I've been with my wife now four times when we brought children into the world.

I remember the first time we were in the labor and delivery room, and I had watched a lot of movies about, you know, people having children, and I thought it was such a romantic moment.

And so she was there in Tampa and St.

Joseph's Hospital, I believe the name is, and uh she was uh in the throes of it, and I had seen people on movies give their wives ice cubes and rub their hair and whisper sweet nothings into their ears and tell them how brave and courageous they were and how much they loved them.

And uh, I started giving Marie some ice and rubbing her head, and and something diabolical came out of her that day.

She said, Stop touching me.

How sweet to hold a newborn baby and see the pride and joy it gives.

But greater still, this calm assurance, the this child can face uncertain days because he lives.

Scientific studies in psychology have shown that while women remember the pain of childbirth, the emotional intensity of that pain diminishes over time.

God designs through hormonal bonding and memory refaming and the release of oxytocin and endorphins during child labor.

Researchers have found that the joy of maternal attachment and the reward system associated with bonding with a newborn frequently adds healing and life to a mother.

In so much so she forgets that great travail, desiring even to bring other children into this world.

I can promise you, if it were up to men to have babies, we would stop at one and say the pain is much greater than we can bear.

From a biblical perspective, this beautifully reflects God's design.

God created women not only with the physical capacity to bear life, but also with emotional and biological mechanisms to soften the anguish of childbirth so humanity would continue to flourish and to be fruitful and to multiply.

I'm talking about our origin story.

I want to pull up a picture.

I know you're gonna think I'm crazy for going here this morning, but I think it's worth talking about for just a moment.

Have you seen a headline like this in the news this week?

This is from CBS News.

Pentagon begins releasing new UFO files, unveiling dozens of photos, videos, and documents.

Our government, our president, a lot of our high-ranking officials, including FBI director and the other cabinet members, including the vice president, have been talking about the unveiling of UFO files.

So much so that there's been a lot of information stating that with the disclosure of certain information, it is believed that if disclosure ever fully came, it would so rock the faith of Christians that it would actually totally disturb religious systems, making us question our origin story.

For decades, conversations about aliens and UFOs or what are now called UAPs were largely dismissed as you have your tinfoil hats out, as science fiction, fringe speculation or conspiracy theories.

But today the discussion has moved largely into the mainstream.

Government officials continue promising greater transparency regarding unidentified phenomena while scientists aggressively pursue evidence of life beyond Earth through astronomy and planetary research and space exploration.

Someone questioned the ability to find intelligent life on other planets and still seeking to find intelligent life here on our planet.

As these conversations grow louder and louder and louder, many Christians are beginning to wrestle with questions previous generations rarely considered.

If intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, how would that fit within the biblical account of creation?

Would the existence of non-human beings reshape our understanding of angels or spiritual entities?

And would any of it challenge the gospel itself?

His author, Timothy Alberino, who believes that Christians should approach this topic thoughtfully rather than fearfully.

He argues that Scripture already introduces the concept of non-human intelligences existing beyond mankind.

He said, quote, our place in the universe is not affected whatsoever by the disclosure of extraterrestrial beings.

The Bible already discloses extraterrestrial beings.

They're called angels and demons.

They've long existed before Earth and long existed before the creation of man himself.

For Alberino, the deeper concern is not alien life itself, but whether modern believers possess a theology that is strong enough to engage different cultural and philosophical questions without collapsing into fear and sensationalism or shallow answers.

He said, quote, right now we're doing a very poor job of representing a well-constructed theory, a biblical theological position that accommodates the realities of the phenomenon, but our faith should not be shaken, he says.

Jesus Christ became a man to redeem mankind.

He didn't become something else to redeem something else.

He became one of us.

I'm saying this to you.

My faith is firmly founded and built upon the biblical account of creation and origin and meaning and destiny.

It is to this planet that God sent his son.

It is out of this soil God created man.

It is in this dirt that God's Son was buried and rose again.

There's something special about God's design for his image bearers that live on this planet for which he will redeem some glorious day.

Grounded in some statements I want you to get in your notes.

Number one, God is the creator of all.

Do you believe that?

He's the creator of all.

Isaiah 45, verse 12, I have made the earth and created man upon it.

Isaiah 45:12

I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their hosts have I commanded.

And I just want to say all this money we're spending all around our solar system today is not conducive to the habitable way of life.

It is this planet that was created by God for us to inhabit and enjoy.

For by him all things were created that are in heaven, that are in earth.

Number two, God is a personal creator.

Job 10, verse 8, thy hands have made me and fashioned me together round about.

Job 10:8

Yet thou dost destroy me.

Remember, I beseech thee that thou hast made me as the clay.

It was David that said, I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

It is Malachi who quotes Malachi 2, verse 10, have we not all one Father?

Malachi 2:10

Hath not one God created us?

Number one, we are created by God.

We created by a personal God.

Number three, humanity is made in the image of God.

That's so important.

Who would have ever thought that our world would come to a conversation about this question?

What does it mean to be human?

With artificial intelligence and so many things that are so rapidly developing around us, the fundamental question is, what does it mean to be human?

What it means to be human is to be made in the likeness of God.

God distinguishes us by means of creation.

We were out by Boca Grande last night enjoying the sunset, and there's dolphins flipping and birds flying, and that's so magical and so wonderful.

But it's not for them that Christ died.

Christ died for you.

You created in the image of God.

Though we fell, Genesis chapter 3, all men have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It is Christ who came to redeem us and wash us from our sin in his own blood.

May I say number four, all human life may trace its ancestry to common ancestors.

Did you know that science is just now catching up with the Bible?

Science is discovering that through DNA technology that all people all over the world have a common ancestry.

Well, we've known that for a long time.

We were created in the image of God, and through Adam and Eve they brought about the human race.

All human life traces its ancestry to Adam and Eve.

Our origin story begins with God, continues into a garden.

I just want to say before I give you our second point this morning that so much of science and technology has one basic presumption.

Anything but God.

If I were to go to the Grand Canyon and the harshest evolutionists were to go to the Grand Canyon, we would see the same evidence.

As a Bible believer, I would see the evidence of a catastrophe, a flood.

An evolutionist would see evidence of billions of years erosion.

Same evidence, different result.

Modern science is based on this presumption.

Anything but God.

It was Francis Crick in 1953 who co-discovered DNA.

Francis Collins called DNA the fingerprint of God.

So here's Crick, scientist.

Discovers DNA, the fingerprints of God, the code that builds the proteins from which all life is built, would surely come to a recognition of a designer as he sees such great design.

You would think so.

Here's what he said.

He said, an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state in some sense the origin of life, appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.

So what does Crick believe regarding the fingerprint of God in DNA that's the building block, the building molecule of all of life, well, anything but God?

He believes in something called directed panspermia, that intelligent beings in our galaxy intentionally ceded life on Earth.

And seeing the complexity of life and the design and image bearers of God, Crick believed that advanced ETs sent microorganisms to our planet.

How sad is it, guys, to see all the evidence of our origin story and deny the existence of the God who made us.

Our origin story is that God placed image bears in the Garden of Eden and told them to repopulate the planet, have children, and build cultures, and that's exactly what we're still doing today.

That is our origin story.

But I give it to you quickly because my time is almost up.

Our salvation story.

Now notice in your Bible, you're in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Notice one verse with me if you can.

Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Adam and Eve have just sinned.

She's eaten of the forbidden fruit, she's given to her husband, and the blame game begins.

The woman says the serpent, the man says the woman.

And God begins to speak punishments to them.

The man will work by the sweat of his own brow, the ground will bring forth thistles, the woman will have pain and childbearing.

There'll be a battle of the sexes in perpetuity.

And he pronounces judgment on the serpent.

The devil.

Chapter 3, verse 15.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.

It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his hill.

Now in Scripture, birth is a picture of redemption.

Paul says in Galatians 4.19, My little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in me.

Jesus was talking to Nicodemus of the new birth.

He said that speaking of salvation, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Birth is transformation, a bringing of a new life into the world.

And it is by means of birth that God is going to bring salvation to the whole world.

We call this verse, I've read in chapter 3, verse 15, the first promise of the gospel.

We are less than three chapters into the Bible, and God has now promised us salvation through the bearing of a child.

I will put enmity, God says, between you, the serpent, and the woman.

There'll be a perpetual animosity between the serpent and the woman, between her seed and his seed.

And the prophecy, if you look at it again, says that her seed would bruise the head of his seed, and his seed would bruise the hill of her seed.

Promise of the gospel.

Eve and Mary.

Mary fulfilled this promise given to Eve.

That the mother of all living awaited the mother of the Savior.

It's an early church writer who said the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosened by the obedience of Mary.

For what the virgin Eve had found, had bound fast through unbelief, did the Virgin Mary set free through faith?

It is through the fall that false belief came.

It is through the birth of Christ that true belief came.

Eve believed the serpent.

Mary believed the report of the angel.

It is because we have an Adam and Eve that we also have a Joseph and Mary.

Both couples are incomplete without the other.

It is Adam and Eve that brought sin into the world.

It is Joseph and Mary that bring forth salvation into this world as Mary receives the seed of God.

And what makes the prophecy remarkable is the phrase, her seed.

Throughout Scripture, lineage is traced through a man.

But here the coming Redeemer is connected to a woman.

Centuries later, in a little town called Nazareth, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and declares, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee.

Jesus Christ was conceived not through ordinary human generation, but by divine intervention.

We call that the virgin birth of Christ.

We know from science that the blood of the baby never intermingles with the blood of the mother.

The blood to the baby comes through the father.

Hear this.

There is not human blood coursing through the veins of Jesus.

There's the blood of his father coursing through his veins.

Not the blood of the fallen, the blood of the great God of heaven, not sinful blood, sinless blood, not spotted blood, spotless blood, not impure blood, but precious blood coursing through the veins of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

At the cross, when Jesus is suspended between heaven and earth, as he suffers, as he is wounded as Christ dies.

Through his death and resurrection, Christ crushes the head of the serpent.

He defeats sin and death and Satan himself.

The Bible's salvation story is beautifully united this way.

A promise in Eden was carried to a virgin in Nazareth, was placed on a cross in Jerusalem, and an empty tomb declared victory outside of Jerusalem.

From Genesis to the gospel, Scripture tells one unfolding story that God would send the seed of the woman to redeem fallen humanity, to restore what was lost in the garden.

Mary takes Eve's hand.

I want you to pull up a picture.

Someone drew this amazing picture of Eve and Mary.

You'll notice that Eve is touching Mary's womb.

And Mary is comforting Eve.

There's a snake that's coiled around Eve's feet.

And of course, Mary, a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, crushing the serpent's head.

Mary took Eve's hand, which once had felt the tender flesh of the forbidden fruit, plucked fresh, defying God's command in favor of the snakes.

You'd be like God's, the snake had lied, and so she'd eaten, fallen, died, watched all creation break, and yet within that curse had burned a seed sown like a spark, that sang of freedom from the dark, and veiled in pregnant verse.

Eve laid her sin-stained hand on Mary and her hidden kin, and felt the promise kick within.

There God made man.

The snake had left her dead, the child whose very name meant life, but here she touched amid her strife the one who'd crushed its head.

I'm saying this morning, it was through Eve that sin, deception is brought into this world.

But it is through Eve and the miraculous virgin birth of Christ that salvation comes into this world through the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

No wonder Adam, watch, names her after the fall.

Someone jokingly said, Eve ate us out of house and home.

All was lost.

Paradise found.

After the fall.

She's the mother of all living.

Through her will come salvation to the world.

But we don't worship Mary.

And we don't worship Eve.

We worship the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the miraculously conceived Son of God, who tasted death for every man.

And it is through Christ that we have salvation and healing and hope and eternal life through the womb of a virgin.

And all God's people said amen.

Let's pray together, may we?

Father, as we've come today to talk about our origin story, our salvation story.

There's so much confusion in this world today, Father.

Help us to anchor into the truth of the Word of God.

To be informed, not by culture, not by prevailing opinions, not by feelings, but to be anchored in the truth of the Word of God.

Help us is my prayer today.

Thank you, Lord, that you have come into this world, have tasted our death, has died our death, and has risen again, and we have life in you.

Help us today is my prayer in Jesus' name.

Let's all stand together, may we?

In just a moment.