Bible Study Genesis Part 45-Knowing

Welcome to the program Study in the Chapel.

God's Word is supreme at Chapel Ministries.

We consider it absolutely essential to a proper relationship with God.

We study it, we love it, we rely on it every minute of every day.

The following program is an edited recording of the regular Bible studies we hold.

And we decided to share these with you in the hope that you too will be able to find inspiration, encouragement, and ultimately salvation through discovering Christ in Scripture.

Our intention is to travel all the way through the Bible.

It will be a challenging journey, but one that will undoubtedly bring you to a decision.

Through this study, you will be faced with either believing or rejecting what God has said to us.

It is our intention to provide you with enough knowledge to make an informed decision about God and his word.

We strongly encourage you to listen intently and diligently, because though at the moment you may not realize it, these things are truly a matter of life and death.

In fact, these are matters of eternal life and eternal death.

Never treat what God has said lightly.

There's truly nothing more important to you.

Now join us as we seek God's will through his inspired word.

We are taking our time because there are so many details that need to be dealt with.

This is one of the books that pastors and preachers and priests and ministers don't like to spend much time on because there are so many questions.

And I'm sure that you have noticed that as well mystery after another comes up, but you have also noticed that as we go through it, we're able to unwind those mysteries, maybe not always to our satisfaction, but we are able to understand at least the direction that God is going on with us, with the world, and with his son.

So let's jump right in.

We are, as I said, near the end of the third chapter of Genesis, and let's finish it out today.

Genesis 3.22.

And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil.

And now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

You know, the knock on the Bible, especially in the last couple of couple hundred years, at least since the so-called age of enlightenment, the criticism of the Bible in modern times is that it's irrelevant, that it's only for the ignorant and uninformed.

Yeah, those poor peasants way back there in the dark ages, they they could use the Bible.

They really leaned on it, but do we really need it now or too smart for it?

You know, it's it's kind of funny.

For most of its history, the church has hidden God's word from the people because they feared that they would embrace it too closely.

And you know, for a little while, that's actually what happened.

When people first started getting access to the Bible in their own language, they devoured it.

It struck a chord with them.

They wanted to know more and more.

And for a while, it made a difference.

It made a big difference.

A difference that shocked the entire church world.

Now, I argue that the Reformation would have never taken place had there not been a Bible that people could read.

By the end of the Middle Ages, scholars, God-loving scholars, were slowly gaining better and better understanding of the ancient language of the scriptures.

But in the beginning, in the beginning of all that scholarship, the only style of ancient Greek that anyone had any familiarity with was the type found in classical literature, classical Greek, the type that was written in the literature, the type that was written on official documents, or what could be found affixed to public buildings or commemorative statues or the elaborate graves of the rich and famous.

And let me say, the Greek culture is everywhere.

These Greek inscriptions and writings and documents are ubiquitous, not only because of the success of the Greek city-state expansions, but because Alexander the Great, himself a Macedonian, not a Greek, insisted on implementing the great Greek, the Greek culture wherever he went.

The point?

The Greek language is everywhere.

Now you'd think that would have helped the translation of the Greek language Bible, and it did, but only in a limited way.

In fact, in some cases, it made it much more difficult.

You see, the ancient manuscripts of the Bible seemed to be written in a Greek that was not the type of Greek that the early Bible scholars actually recognized.

It was rather mysterious until the discovery of ancient objects embossed or emblazoned or sometimes simply defaced with the language of everyday Greek citizen.

This discovery led to a much greater understanding of what the Bible was saying.

This regular folk style of Greek, termed koine by the scholars, meaning shared or common, was what the Bible was written in.

Koine Greek, that was what the Bible was written in.

Now, to make a long story short, too late, this breakthrough was one of the keys that led to a deeper and more complete understanding of the Bible, which in turn made it possible to be translated effectively into the modern languages of the people.

Now the result?

Well, the Bible came alive.

What was once a mystical, unapproachable, too holy for me book would soon be available to everyone.

In some places, the translations couldn't be produced fast enough.

Before long, there was a Bible in every home all across Christendom.

Scripture was read and discussed and taught and revered, and it became the center and focus of Christian instruction for hundreds of years.

Before long, almost everyone knew what the Bible said.

What an incredible contrast to the previous 1,000 years.

From about the 5th century on through the dark ages, right up until the middle of the 1500s, the Bible was shrouded in obscurity.

Only the clergy could understand it.

But by Luther's day, and largely through his efforts, scripture was on the tongue of everyone from the lowliest servant all the way up to the Holy Roman Emperor.

Luther himself produced a German language Bible that he published in 1534.

By the 17th century, all across Europe, if you could read, you could read the Bible.

And if you couldn't read, you found someone who could.

Seems hard to believe that people devoured it like that.

Seems so foreign to us now.

I'm not going to do a poll, but if I were to ask you where your Bible is, you may not even know.

And wherever it is, it's probably gathering some dust.

Because familiarity breeds contempt.

I mean, this seems to be a big problem for us humans, doesn't it?

Now, I won't further bore you with any more historical details, but once people knew that it was possible to read and study the Bible in their own language, most couldn't wait for their copies.

They complained and fought and struggled just to have a Bible in their grasp, a copy of the Word of God that they could read and become, well, familiar with.

They would say, you know, if I just had a Bible, I'd be able to find out what God really wants from me, and I'll be able to do it.

Knowing will save me.

Well, as far as I can tell, things haven't quite worked out that way.

Now, please don't get me wrong.

Being able to read every word of the Bible is an immeasurable blessing.

But listen to me, just knowing what God says doesn't get the job done.

Knowing the Bible intellectually will only take you so far.

But that's not a common human viewpoint, is it?

We have been told that knowing is powerful.

As the 20th century was dawning, the good and the great decided to do a little introspection.

The previous century, indeed the previous few centuries, were particularly violent and bloody.

The US had its brutal civil war to this day, still America's most costly conflict in terms of lives, estimates are as high as 650,000.

In that same century, the Napoleonic Wars raged across Europe, claiming more than three and a half million.

Some say it's closer to five, including at least one million civilians.

As the bright and beautiful mused and studied and pondered over these tragedies, they ultimately decided that ignorance was to blame.

They thought, oh, well, the problem is that the people aren't educated.

We must give them more knowledge.

And these sorts of things will just fade away.

We'll make sure people have enough information on which to base their decisions because they haven't had that before.

And that surely will mean that we will be better as a people, as a species.

We'll treat each other with more dignity and care and love once we know more stuff.

You know, this was when we were being told that humans only use 10% of their brain.

You've heard that, haven't you?

Scientists in their all too familiar, condescending ways patted us, poor ignoramuses on the head.

The eggheads in their oak-paneled libraries looked down on us, poor peasants, and declared that if we only used just a scoche more than that paltry, we'd have a peaceful utopian society.

Tap into that other ninety percent and all our problems will be solved.

Education, knowledge will save us and hasten us to our evolutionary peak.

Well, what was the result of this solution?

Well, people did become smarter.

The world's economy spent lavishly on educating the masses with great success.

Compulsory education was embraced, and math and science and literature were enshrined in every home.

Ignorance decreased and literacy increased.

Books were more popular than ever.

As the 20th century unfolded, it seemed as if man had a brain bursting with knowing.

And then we had two world wars.

We started using our brains all right.

We got really good at figuring out how to efficiently slaughter each other.

The first half of that brainy century saw death and destruction on a scale not known ever.

In fact, they made those previous ignorance-based conflicts look like slap fights.

Not only did blood still flow freely and deeply on battlefields all over the world, but unspeakable cruelty was waged on helpless, unarmed shopkeepers and bakers, and machine shop workers, and farmers, and shepherds, people who never picked up a gun nor had a political argument with anyone ever.

They were hauled away and systematically murdered with such barbarism that would make actual barbarians look away in horror.

That's the problem with us humans.

It's always been our problem.

Since the very beginning, mankind thinks that all he needs is to know more.

And if I know more, I'll be able to be better.

I'll be able to achieve more, rise above his current state.

Well, where does this come from?

Where does this notion that if we just knew more, we'd be more?

Where'd that come from?

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.

For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be open and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Knowing will make you gods.

And so because Eve thought she should be a god, and believing that knowing was going to give her that, she ate the fruit.

She wasn't hungry, she wanted to know more, and indeed she did.

She became more informed.

She and her husband both knew more.

They added to their knowledge the knowledge of good and evil.

But they also added another little bit of learning, and this part, well, it surprised them.

Listen to me.

They learned that knowing didn't make anything better.

Now let me pause and say again, I'm not an advocate for ignorance.

I'm just saying let's be clear about what comes with knowledge.

In fact, I agree we have an ignorance problem.

I agree the world needs knowledge, but the problem is the world doesn't know what it needs to know.

And it's not really complicated, if you ask me.

In fact, there are really only two questions that need to be answered.

The first one is, why is the world in the mess it's in?

And the second one is, what do we do about it?

Question one, what's the cause?

Question two, what's the solution?

And the funny thing is, is that if you boil down all human effort, it's focused entirely on the second question.

And the world stays in the shape it's in because it it ignores the first question.

Now, one of the reasons we're taking our time going through Genesis is because the answer to both of these questions is contained herein, and I want you to know that.

I want to make sure that you understand the answer to the what and the why, the why and the what are right here in Genesis.

Actually, the entire Bible is structured around the answers to these questions.

And you'd think because of that, the world would want to pay better attention to it, give it more respect, bring it up in more conversations, even.

But it doesn't.

Because, well, it doesn't like the answers the Bible proffers.

It especially doesn't like what it has to say about the first question.

The question as to why the world is in the state it's in is not a very pleasant one.

You see, the Bible says there's no one to blame but ourselves.

A very unpleasant answer.

That's what this book says.

And that explains why the world doesn't want you to take Genesis too seriously.

The world says, Don't pay attention to that old book of fables.

The world wants you to see it as primitive and racist and well, not very polite.

You see, the book of Genesis says that mankind is in the state it's in because of our selfish propensity for sin.

Now, that's exactly what I mean.

That's what I'm talking about.

That's not very nice.

Why does it have to say stuff like that?

The book of Genesis says that mankind is in the state it's in because we have chosen to ignore what God says.

Adam and Eve chose to ignore what God said.

It's not that they chose to ignore everything someone said because they didn't ignore the serpent.

We have chosen to listen to the world, which is our representation of the serpent, and we ignore what God has to say.

And that's what the book of Genesis tells us.

And you know the answer the world gives you when you say that we're in the state we're in because we ignore what God says.

You know what the world how the world responds to that?

It says ignore that.

It says ignore the fact that our problem is that we ignore facts.

Focus elsewhere.

Squirrel.

Let's just put all our efforts into fixing the problem of the world.

Who cares about the why?

What would you think of your doctor if you went to see her because you're having constant chest pains and all she does is write you a prescription?

Of course, you'd say, Well, you know, thank you, doctor, for the medicine, but what's wrong with me?

Ah, don't worry about that.

Just keep taking these pills and you won't have any more chest pains.

Wouldn't you want to know why you're having chest pains?

That's a rhetorical question because I know your answer.

Of course, you want to know what's wrong with you, not just how you can make the pain go away.

So then why do we let our world leaders, including our church leaders, to keep telling us how to make our problems go away and not fill us in on why we're in trouble in the first place?

Well, I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why we keep letting that happen.

Because you don't like the answer and they know it.

Your doctor may know that you're overweight, and that's what's contributing to your chest pain.

If you want to fix your chest pains, you may have to change your diet, but you don't want to do that.

And your doctor probably knows it.

You don't want to face the fact that we're self-serving sinners, and that's what's caused the world to sink into complete chaos.

So let's not talk about it.

It'll only upset you.

And so we continue to find ourselves in a confused, disorderly world with empty promises of relief just around.

The corner.

We are truly banished from the garden.

Do you remember that we spent some time going over the fact that God went to the trouble to communicate to us that He placed us in a garden?

He spent a lot of time letting us know that.

A garden is a protected place.

It's a place set aside.

It's a place of peace and order.

When Sammy graduated from high school, we took her to France.

It was a great trip.

We stayed for two years.

And we got to see some beautiful things.

Have you ever seen those beautiful French gardens?

They're very symmetrical and properly cared for and obviously laid out with a plan.

There's purpose to it.

Great effort is given to allow the life planted in it to flourish.

The gardener makes sure that the right conditions exist for all the best qualities of the life contained therein to shine forth brilliantly.

Take those plants outside the garden, and they don't look so pretty.

Things start to grow up around it.

Weeds and bushes and brush.

And it hides the beauty and stifles the growth of that which belongs in a garden.

God put us in the garden because we were meant for the garden.

We were never designed to thrive anywhere else.

Being outside the garden means being outside of God's plans for us.

Being outside of God's plans leaves us to the mercy of our own inherent shortcomings.

And that is why we all suffer.

We're outside the garden.

We were never meant to be outside the garden.

And we were sent here because we insisted we could be something we're not.

We're garden dwellers and nothing more.

And we don't like to hear such things.

You see, garden dwellers have to be looked after.

Garden dwellers are not kings and queens.

Mankind was made to tend to that garden.

And when faced with that reality, Adam and Eve scoffed.

And we've been scoffing ever since.

We want to be the master of the garden, not the caretaker.

And the devil is quite aware of our distaste for being told we have such modest destinies.

That's why he was so successful with our first parents.

That's why he's so successful with us.

He easily gets us to believe that God isn't being all that truthful with us.

The devil, the serpent, convinced Adam and Eve that there just had to be more to the story.

And we still believe that.

And so he lays it on thick.

That slimy serpent got those garden dwellers to believe that they were never meant for such an unglamorous future.

God's holding out on you.

He told them, and they bought it.

And he's been doing that to us ever since.

We as a people are hopelessly drifting because we don't want to accept our true nature.

We can't be grounded if we resent the ground on which we are to stand.

Adam and Eve rebelled.

We have rebelled, and now we're on the outside of the garden trying to pretend that we aren't.

We're in a hostile environment that we keep telling ourselves that we can handle.

The human race is in the trouble it's in because it believes it's something that it isn't.

And what's worse is it bristles at the suggestion that we are less than gods who can't take care of ourselves.

And so we go on and on looking for a solution to a problem whose root cause we continue to ignore.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

Adam and Eve made fig leaf aprons because they thought it would solve their problems.

This is precisely what we've been doing ever since.

They didn't understand the reason they felt different.

If they would have remembered what God said, they would have.

So instead, they showed their ignorance by trying to do something that had no effect.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons, and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

Why did they hide?

Gods don't hide.

I mean, they went to all that trouble of becoming knowledge-filled gods who brilliantly decided that leaves would cover up their nakedness, but they still hid.

Listen, down deep, we all know we're in trouble.

I mean, if we're looking for things we know about, we sure know about that.

Remember a couple of years back, we thought we had gotten to the point of such perfect self-awareness that we didn't need any sort of law enforcement anymore.

Remember that?

The whole defund the police movement?

No, I'm not being political.

I'm just stating a fact.

It was the social science, and it doesn't matter, I could be political if I want to.

This is my ministry.

The government doesn't control us.

If I wanted to be political, I could.

That's why you, when you're in church and they bring stuff up like this, they go, oh, we're not being political.

They can't be political and still receive that special IRS status, anyways.

We don't have that status.

We can say what we want to, but I'm not saying that here.

It doesn't belong here.

I'm not talking about politics.

It doesn't belong in Bible study.

Anyhow, the social scientists were telling us that all we needed to do was increase our knowledge of stuff and we'd all sort of calm down and start helping each other.

We were just ignorant.

That's why we're mean.

Once the racists of our society simply realized their biases and the oppressed realized that they could do better, once we all got a lot smarter, then well, who needs cops with all that knowledge?

I don't know about you, but I live near a few big cities.

And well, it looks like we got some more learning to do.

And listen, I know that most of the problems of society come down to the fact that we're absolute jerks to each other, but being a jerk is not exclusive to one or two people groups.

We're all born jerks and we'll always be jerks.

And until we face that, until we face the fact that by nature we're jerks and we'll need someone with a different nature to fix us, then well, the same old jerks will keep coming up with the same old weak solutions.

We can't sew our own fig leaf aprons.

If we could, we wouldn't need to hide in the woods and tell lies.

If we need a plan B, then our plan A is imperfect.

God doesn't have a plan B.

What's your point?

The third chapter of Genesis tells us one thing.

We got it all wrong.

We cannot improve ourselves.

We are broken.

And we know it.

And no matter what anyone tells you, once something is broken, it cannot be better than it was before it was broken.

Now wait a second.

Hang on.

I've always been told that a broken bone meant stronger than before the injury.

That's a myth.

No science to back that up.

In fact, a broken bone will always show signs of that break.

Why are you telling us this?

Why are you being so mean to us?

I'm not being mean.

I'm trying to get you to realize, and I'm trying to get you to get your family and your loved ones to realize we only have one hope, and it isn't us.

Back to the broken bones.

You know, you can dig up some long-dead warrior and find out if during his lifetime he had ever received a limb-shattering injury.

Now that warrior may recover, but he'll never be a better warrior than he was before.

The race of humans received a mortal injury there in the garden, and its effects will always be as will always be felt as long as we continue to be who we are.

There's no fixing what happened.

We can't be fixed.

We have to be remade.

And that's the gospel.

Our Lord says so clearly, John 3 3, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

We aren't born again by our efforts.

We weren't born the first time by our efforts.

We aren't born again by our efforts.

We can't behave our way to new life.

We can't tithe our way to that new life.

We can't feed the poor, clothe the naked, give a cup of water our way to that newborn life.

Those things are nothing more than fig leaf aprons in the wrong context.

Yes, do those things as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that's in you.

Yes, but it's not going to fix you.

We can't cover our sins because they're too big.

You may not think so, but God says, fig leaves aren't enough.

Only shed blood will do the job.

And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us to know good and evil.

And now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden to fill the ground from to till the ground from whence he was taken.

So he drove out the man and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.

We're no longer in a protected garden.

We're no longer who we were meant to be.

And that is why the world is in the mess it's in.

And it's this fact alone that explains why we even have the Bible.

The Bible informs us of our condition, and more importantly, it informs us of what God is doing to change it.

It is our prayer that this will be so for all of our listeners.

Please join us again soon.

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