Video Bible Lesson - What Happened When Adam Failed by Betsy St. Amant Haddox

1/2 Hour of God’s Power with Scott Ralls

6/22/2020

What Happened When Adam Failed (Genesis 3:12-13)

By: Betsy St. Amant HaddoxThe man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” - Genesis 3:12-13 (ESV)Genesis 3 reads like one intense game of finger-pointing. God questioned Adam while he was hiding, and Adam blamed Eve. Then God questioned Eve, so Eve blamed the serpent.Sound familiar? I don’t know about you, but I can be pretty quick to cast blame far away from myself after I sin, too. It’s like I try to toss it up in the air, hoping it sticks to anything at all when it lands and distract the attention away from myself. Guess what? That’s part of our depraved nature. I bet your kids do that too, don’t they? They don’t have to be taught to lie, exaggerate, stretch the truth, or point the finger of blame. It comes to them as a fleshly, sinful survival method.The ironic truth is the only true survival method is found in confession and repentance. Adam and Eve figured that out eventually, but not before it was too late for their freedom in the Garden.After the serpent tempted Eve and she fell into sin, it’s noted in verse six that Adam was right there. (Genesis 3:6 ESV) So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.Even as Eve took that first bite, Adam failed his husbandly role with her.That might sound familiar too, huh? A husband not being protective. A husband causing hurt instead of compassion. A husband following instead of leading. Even as far back as the Garden of Eden, man has struggled to fulfill his God-given role. Adam failed Eve. (Eve also failed Adam, but that’s a devotional for a different day!)You don’t have to look far to find a woman who has been disappointed by a man. When God questioned Adam, he immediately pointed to Eve and said (vs 3:12 ESV) “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.I can only imagine Eve’s face when Adam said, “the woman you gave me.” Ouch! Instead of blaming Adam back, Eve turned and blamed the serpent. Sure, the serpent was involved in the deception, but at the end of the day, Eve’s sin was her own choice. Adam’s sin to follow her was his own choice. And in those choices, death sprung to life.The consequences of this exchange between God, Adam and Eve we still experience today. Man was cursed with futile work. Woman was cursed with painful childbearing and with an endless power struggle against her husband. The earth was cursed. The serpent was cursed. Death entered the world.But what’s beautiful here is that Jesus, through the Gospel, stepped in and more than fulfilled the role that Adam failed.Romans 5:19 (ESV) For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.There’s no good news without bad news. Adam and Eve are the poster kids for the bad news, but in Geneses 3:15 (ESV) we have the first glimpse of hope. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”The first glimpse of Christ.Adam failed Eve in the Garden by standing there while she was being deceived by the serpent, by not speaking up for God’s Word, and by not taking charge of the situation and leading her away from temptation. But Jesus stepped in to fulfill all of our failures. Because of God’s love for us, and because of His holiness and justness, He made a way to atone for our sin and failures by becoming the perfect sacrificial lamb. By living a sinless life, dying, experiencing the wrath of God poured out, and rising again, Jesus fulfilled it all. He covered Adam’s sin. Eve’s sin. Yours. And mine.Your husband will fail you. You’ll fail him too. You’ll fail your kids and your friends and your co-workers. And they’ll all fail you. But because of Christ, we can forgive ourselves and others. As believers in Jesus, we can move forward despite our failures because they’re remembered no more at the foot of the cross. Because Jesus paid it all. 

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#Jesus, #Christian, #Bible, #Salvation, #Heaven, #God, #HolySpirit

Rehearse Your Troubles to God 

Streams in the Desert

Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all transgressions. (Prov 10:12)

Rehearse your troubles to God only. Not long ago I read in a paper a bit of personal experience from a precious child of God, and it made such an impression upon me that I record it here. She wrote:

“I found myself one midnight wholly sleepless as the surges of a cruel injustice swept over me, and the love which covers seemed to have crept out of my heart. Then I cried to God in an agony for the power to obey His injunction, ’Love covereth.’

“Immediately the Spirit began to work in me the power that brought about the forgetfulness.

“Mentally I dug a grave. Deliberately I threw up the earth until the excavation was deep.

“Sorrowfully I lowered into it the thing which wounded me. Quickly I shoveled in the clods.

“Over the mound I carefully laid the green sods. Then I covered it with white roses and forget-me-nots, and quickly walked away.

“Sweet sleep came. The wound which had been so nearly deadly was healed without a scar, and I know not today what caused my grief.”

“There was a scar on yonder mountain-side,
Gashed out where once the cruel storm had trod;
A barren, desolate chasm, reaching wide,
Across the soft green sod.

“But years crept by beneath the purple pines,
And veiled the scar with grass and moss once more,
And left it fairer now with flowers and vines
Than it had been before.

“There was a wound once in a gentle heart,
Whence all life’s sweetness seemed to ebb and die;
And love’s confiding changed to bitter smart,
While slow, sad years went by.

“Yet as they passed, unseen an angel stole
And laid a balm of healing on the pain,
Till love grew purer in the heart made whole,
And peace came back again.”

Responding to Disappointment.....Dr. Charles Stanley

Responding to Disappointment

Dr. Charles Stanley

Matthew 1:18-25

To find examples of wise, godly reactions to disappointment, you’re more likely to turn to Psalms than to Matthew. But thevery first chapter in the New Testament tells the story of an upright man’s reaction to painful and disheartening news.

Joseph—Jesus’ earthly father—was a righteous person. A godly man wants a wife who shares his desire to honor and obey the Lord, and Scripture indicates that Mary was exactly that sort of woman (Luke 1: 45-55). So imagine how stunned Joseph must have been when Mary returned from a long visit with her relative Elizabeth and told him that she was pregnant. Moreover, she was claiming no man had touched her.

Any way Joseph looked at the situation, it appeared grim. And yet Matthew 1:20 says that he “considered”—in other words, he sought a wise, righteous response. God entered Joseph’s life in a dramatic way to confirm Mary’s story and put a stop to his “quiet annulment” plans.

The Lord turned Joseph’s mourning into joy. Mary had told the truth—strange and startling as it was. The couple would bear the intense public censure of an early pregnancy, but Joseph stopped thinking about what others would say. God had blessed work for him: to raise the Messiah alongside a faithful woman. 

Followers of Christ should seek a godly response to disappointments they face. Since the Lord always has a plan, the wisest reaction is to anticipate the good He can do and await His timing. God certainly blessed Joseph for his willingness to “seek first His kingdom” (Matt. 6:33).

No Extra Credit Needed

No Extra Credit Needed
ARLENE PELLICANE

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8 (NIV)

My husband James was working hard with the kids in the front yard, fixing parts of the fence and driveway. They had been sweating for hours.

I didn’t even put him up to it.

Our neighbor dropped by and made a comment that caught my attention: “You must be scoring some major extra credit with your wife!”

In my neighbor’s mind, chores like sealing the driveway and fixing the fence were almost direct “commands” from a wife’s honey-do list. In his mind, I must have been the happiest wife in the neighborhood! But in my family, I don’t notice things like creaking fences or chipping driveways.

I’m pretty oblivious to those details. I can’t remember ever making a home improvement honey-do list for James — partly because of the way I’m wired, and partly because James always tackles the home improvement projects way before I perceive them.

As I thought about the assumption that my husband was scoring major extra credit points with me, it made me think of God.

There are times when I do something and think, Wow, this will really score some extra credit with God! But in reality, maybe I’m just busying myself with things God never asked me to do.

Perhaps some activities filling my calendar need to be deleted to make room for the things on God’s to-do list. Thankfully, the Bible helps us understand what’s most important to the heart of God.

Consider today’s key verse from Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Another Scripture defines true religion: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27, NIV).

When one of the religious teachers asked Jesus what the most important commandment was, Jesus replied with these truths straight from the Old Testament, “… ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31, NIV).

These things matter to God. To steer us toward them, we can ask ourselves questions like:

How can we use our time and finances to help the poor? 
How can we show justice, not just in a courtroom, but in a living room when our kids bring us a problem? 
How can we walk with God daily, making our social media feeds a fragrant offering to Him? 

Sometimes my kids miss homework deadlines. Then they must get busy doing extra credit to make up some of their lost points. That’s not how God works. He’s not a teacher waiting to “grade us” on our Christianity.

What a great reminder: We don’t have to put in extra credit to get in God’s good graces. He’s already our loving Father who simply wants to walk with us.

Heavenly Father, how amazing that You, the God of the universe, want to walk with me! Help me understand what is important to Your heart. I want to love You and love people, serve the poor, and act justly. Keep me on Your path and away from sin. Keep my heart unspoiled by the world. In Jesus’ Name, Amen. 

TRUTH FOR TODAY:
Deuteronomy 10:12, “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” (NIV)

1 Samuel 15:22, “But Samuel replied: ‘Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.’” (NIV)

Inoculated with Faith/Hope/Love

Inoculated with Faith/Hope/Love
by Shawn McEvoy

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13).

I remember the morning following the 2012 presidential election, I found myself musing peacefully about what's important in life. I was finding out, through realizing how little the outcome affected me, how little stock I'd had in the result personally. I was neither dancing in the streets nor cursing the fates like several friends and acquaintances. How was that? Apathy? Ignorance? Internal focus? Eternal security? Just a really easy morning sending the kids off to school? 

Then it hit me. It was the theological virtues. I began to compose what became a Facebook status: 

"...I do find Faith and Hope such interesting concepts. They're so powerful. They allow so many to get on with their lives. They inform our decisions and give us empathy for others. They point us towards purpose, toward wrongs to be righted and away from what would harm us. They seem to be in short supply sometimes, even among those who proclaim them while venting frustrations and fears they'd not utter to your face, but they shine brightest in tough times if you let them. And they're most famously tied to Love. They are still here this day, even if it doesn't sound like it, for they are the virtues that 'abide.'

"So I ask regardless of political persuasion: Do you have Faith to loan to the one today who has lost his, or placed it in something temporal and disappointing? Can you spare Hope for one who doesn't understand that Despair is the only place hope functions?

"These virtues are superior inoculations against whatever goes on around us, the very infusions that make possible a mission of bringing joy, mercy and laughter into the world every day, that elevate 'I can endure all things' above a mere platitude. They task one with a job that'll get you up in the morning, any morning. They bring to our eyes opportunity: chances for justice and charity, and the exercise of freedom. And, good news for me, Faith-Hope-Love is beautifying, for I can think of none who ever saw the application of these virtues - call it Grace - in action and said, 'Ugly.'"

It wasn't long before I was tasked with the charge I had just set before others. A forlorn friend messaged me.

"I honestly need prayer. I am sincerely requesting it. I do not feel love, I do not feel any desire to "get past it and heal and show love more now than ever." ...I am disheartened to the point of despair.  ...I don't want to feel this way but I do. And it's been getting worse all day. Please pray for me. ...Considering your FB post earlier, I came to you with my request because I thought that at the least you'd understand."

After a moment of prayer I responded:

"I have already been praying for you ever since waking early and noting that you were 'heart sick.' It can start to feel like a lonely place but you are not alone. I won't try to talk you off the ledge politically because the timing's not right and there's no point in anyone else's opinion when what's killing you and eating at you so bad is how 'uninformed and wrong' all the opinions out there seem to you. I only hope you can get to the bottom of why it gets to you so bad.

"In microcosm, it reminds me of a HORRIBLE flight to Newark I shared with two of my co-workers back in April. I was convinced that nasty flight was going down. I even posted ugly things about it publicly. I was SO MAD that while I was holding on for dear life while the plane bounced (yes, bounced!) around the sky, none of the other passengers seemed to mind. At least not much. I wanted to scream, 'Come on, people! This isn't right! Why did they put us on this plane in these conditions, and why are you taking this jostling?'

"On the other hand, my friend [and Christianity.com editor] Alex really couldn't understand why I would fret at all. After all, what is the worst that can happen to the believer? Death has no victory, so it's not that. And fear? What is fear except that from which we've already been delivered (death, sin, destruction, loss)? And sovereignty - what does my angry fretting reveal about what I believe about the nature of God?

"Hey, I think it's quite possible, biblically speaking, and regardless of the results of this particular vote, that things will happen in this country that are 'undesirable.' But I also know that through them and despite them I will cherish every moment with my family, try not to hold too tightly to anything eaten by moth or rust, and look for opportunities to help, and to live out my faith, purpose, and morality individually.

"I have no doubt you will be out of this slump at some point. But it may take a while. I daresay you may even want to talk to a counselor about it (I say this as someone who's done it). 

"In the meantime, the simplest (yes, I know that can mean 'most naive') thing is to consider experience a good teacher. Nothing yet political, economic or electorial has befallen you or this country that killed either of you. In your 40 years, you have amassed great blessings; do not forget them, or Job 3:25. If you could erase everything in your mind and wake up today to discover the life you have, would your sky be nearly so dark right now?

"Rejoice! Get out of town. Go for a drive in the country with the top down. Go ahead, tell God he'd better know what he's doing allowing for the kings and counselors of the earth which he has ordained. And then leave it alone for a while. Go the indirect route. Study/read/pray about something else. Help someone else, even by just sending a note or letter to someone you know.

"These are the things that help me when I'm down, when I start hating my own people.

"Speaking of which, I sent friend requests to both ______ and ______ today. I figure it's time I stopped damming what would flow from my own heart. So please let me encourage you not to start. Much love!"

Intersecting Faith and Life: These words helped my friend, a little. This letter gave me a chance to be the hope to one person I'd challenged others to be. This day of lost faith for some became an opportunity for so many others to talk about theirs. And you know what? Today is no different. The same needs and chances are there. Apply the theological virtues with Grace in a specific way (a mere note, gift, hand-on-shoulder can suffice) before you go to bed.

Further Reading

Philippians 1:21-25
Philippians 4:13

How to Grow in Your Salvation

How to Grow in Your Salvation
by Lynette Kittle

“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your Salvation”—1 Peter 2:2

Many think, once we accept Jesus as our Savior, we’ll just know what is true. However, if we aren’t studying God’s Word and feeding spiritually on His truth, we’re vulnerable to living more by what we feel than what is true, which over time is sure to lead us astray.

Too often we don’t realize if we don’t know the Word of God, even when we are believers, we can be led astray. Knowing what Scripture says helps us to discern if what we are hearing and reading is based on God’s truth or on the enemy’s lies.

Like 1 Peter 2:2 encourages, when it comes to the Word of God, we want to be like newborn babies who crave pure spiritual milk, so that we may grow up in our Salvation.

So what is this pure spiritual milk? Hebrews 5:12 explains how the elementary truths of God’s Word is the milk needed in our live to grow spiritually and mature, so that we can progress to eating solid foods, which are the deeper truths.

If we don’t feed on Scripture, 1 Corinthians 3:1 describes what stage of spiritual growth we’ll remain in. “Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ.”

So why is it so important to grow spiritually as a Christian? Isn’t it enough to be saved?

1 Timothy 4:1, points out the dangers of not growing in our faith. “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.”

If we don’t grow in our knowledge of God’s Word, we become vulnerable to being deceived and led astray by the evil one. 2 Timothy 4:3, warns of what can happen if we haven’t matured in our faith. “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desire, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

So what can we do to make sure we’re progressing in our spiritual growth? 2 Timothy 2:15 urges us to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”

So many Christians become discouraged, feeling like they can’t even read God’s Word on their own, thinking they don’t have the education or capability to understand it. However, Jesus tells us in John 14:26, we can rely on the Holy Spirit to teach us all things.

As well, if we are diligent to read it, we will gain understanding and grow in our Salvation knowing, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrew 4:12).

A Prayer to Help You Long for Heaven

A Prayer to Help You Long for HeavenBy Dr. John Barnett

"In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." - John 14:2

Before we long for heaven, we have to understand what heaven is:

Heaven is a place from which God looks down to the earth: "The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God" (Psalm 14:2, NIV).

So what is heaven? Not only the dwelling place of God, but it has an incredible vertical imagery. It is the place, first of all, from which God looks down upon us.

Heaven is the place from which Christ came down: " ‘For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world' " (John 6:33). The Bible describes heaven not only as the place from which God looks down upon the earth but also the place from which Christ came down to the earth.

More than anything else-heaven is a city. In Revelation 20-22, we see that this city is replete with walls, gates, and streets. This testifies to us as believers being united in one place in the worship of God. We are all going to be delivered securely to a city in heaven that is perfect and eternal. But though a city, it is unlike any city we know here on earth, for this city also possesses the features of an earthly paradise. We will have the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God (Revelation 2:7). There is also the crystal-clear river of life that flows from the throne of God. On each side of the river is the tree of life, that bears twelve crops of fruit every year, and its leaves are for healing the nations (Revelation 22:1-2).

Do you long for heaven? If not, that’s okay—it can be hard to long for something that seems so far away from us. But the more you meditate on the Word and pray, the more you will long to be close to Jesus in heaven. Here’s a prayer you can begin to pray today to draw close to God and long for heaven:

Lord, I confess I don’t often long for heaven. I’m a creature of this world and crave worldly things, not heavenly ones. I ask you would grow a desire in me for heaven. Help me not be satisfied with the things of this world, but long for closeness with you and the perfection of eternity in your presence. Lord, thank you for the hope of heaven and the joy we will have when we get there! In Jesus’ Name, Amen.