Let me just say as we begin. Our world that we live in today.
Certainly preoccupied with the issue of origins.
In fact, we hear about it, we read about it all the time.
Almost every edition of the newspaper.
Every edition of major magazines in our nation, discuss Origins
and how things came to be and why things are the way that they
are. But to know the truth about
Origins, we have to go all the way back to the Bible.
We find that the story of Origins is told to us in the
Book of Genesis, and it's Found in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis
chapter 2 and we find the origin of the physical universe as we
know it. But then in Genesis chapter 3 we
find the origin of evil when God created everything though and
six days, he did so. And the Bible says that on the
seventh day, he rested. You remember what God said about
everything that he created in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 31,
God looked upon, all that he created And he said, and this is
very important, he said it was very good.
We have to understand this very important premise, this very
important concept. God is good, he is all good and
he is only good God is good. He is all good and he is only
good when you read Genesis chapter 3 verses one through
seven that we did in your hearing just a moment ago.
We find that something happened in Genesis chapter 3 where we
find that bad stuff is about to happen. oh, Let me get a little
philosophical though about God. Not being the author of evil
one, man. Put it this way and I'll just
read this to you. He said if God created evil,
then God would be both good and evil and if God were both good
and evil then God could not triumph over the evil that he
promises he will. If God was the source of evil,
he would have to be evil himself but God is not evil.
He is Good. He is all good.
He is only good. Another man said, one time that
the biblical account of the origins, the original goodness
of God, the original creation is protected by God's goodness and
therefore, the source of evil has to be outside of God.
I might make one more point before we go to the next phase
of our lesson. As we wrap up our introduction
here. If God used any form of
evolution in creating the world. And by the way, evolution is
impossible, it's impossible, it's not true.
We all know that if God would have used any kind of evolution
at all in creating the world that it would, it would mean
that God was evil. And the reason for that is
evolution is based upon death and decay.
So that being the case, death and Decay, that's what it's
based upon those things. Do you remember, are the result
or the consequences of sin? And if God would have used any
of that, then it means that God is evil, but he is not, he's all
good in every way. So the question is, where did
Evil come from? And you might say, well, wait a
minute, evil came from the devil.
It has to come from the devil. We just read the account when
the serpent was talking to Eve. And we read the account that bad
stuff happened and man, sinned, and all that.
It's got to be the devil's fault.
Not so fast. Hang on to that thought.
We'll get back to that a little bit later.
I think nobody would argue that the world has evil in it.
You know what? I got to tell you in the
Philippines. When I'm in America, I don't
watch the news very much maybe I should, but I don't.
And in the Philippines that's about all we watch because
there's nothing to see. There's nothing there's no
channels for the most part a lot of places we watched a lot of
CNN news. You don't we found.
We found all the stuff that's going on in the world all the
time. What are the pressing Channel?
All the bad stuff that happens in the world.
Who's at fault, who's doing this, who's doing that
bad-mouthing. Our president back and forth on
and on every day, all day. So, when we go into the hotel at
night, for example, after a long day, we would turn on the TV and
all it is, is this dark picture of the universe?
In, which we live in, we get that.
We do have problems in the world, we do understand that.
In fact, the problem of evil in the world has really occupied
even the best Minds in history. I think if we were going to talk
about a mind, we would have to talk about Albert, Einstein and
perhaps, he had the greatest brain or enjoyed the greatest
brain of all time. I don't know.
At least in modern times. But Albert Einstein for an
example here he was a great scientist, he had a great mind
the toughest intellectual barrier to the Christian faith
was not the concept of God as a Creator or creation of the world
that self. And the reason for that is he
believed in cause and effect. Now what he's saying is, what
his theory was, what his justification for his position.
Was he said this, the you Universe was the effect.
And if the universe was the effect, it had to have a cause
he looked at the University said, the design of it is
massive. Look at the design of the
universe, and if the universe is the design, then it had to have
a designer and he believed that it had to have a source.
He concluded though, it had to have a designer had to come from
an orderly mind. but he rejected the idea also of Things in space
bumping around endlessly until all of a sudden Presto you've
got the universe. He rejected that rejected that
concept back, he said this the universe reveals an intelligence
of such superiority that it overshadows all human
intelligence. So Einstein was not stuck by the
fact that God was a Creator. Here, is the problem that
Einstein have and I was just tell you, this is the problem of
a lot of people in the World today.
Here it is. It's justifying or wrapping his
mind around the concept of evil and suffering.
In other words, he didn't death, if there had to be a Creator
there had to be a mind behind it.
There had to be a designer. What he had doubts of is, how
could a good God, allow evil, and suffering in the world,
haven't you heard that how many times did something bad happen
to somebody and they verbally blame God?
As if it was God's fault. This goes all the way back to
some of the greatest minds of all time.
Einstein, couldn't figure it out.
Wait a minute, can't be if God is a good God, he would not
allow evil and suffering to happen in the world.
How could he do that? And so what he did is Albert,
Einstein turned completely away from the god of the Bible.
The God that he had been raised up within Judaism to believe it.
Now, what really tripped up? Einstein was the very fact that
he was a detective. Determinist and a determinist.
Simply was this. He saw them, he saw them doing
simply man. What they were programmed to do?
In other words, they were programmed, like, windup toys by
natural irresistible forces, that's what he said.
Or he deduced, what? Man was then he said this, if
man was only doing or man only does what he is programmed to do
by natural irresistible forces, then there's no such thing as
right and wrong. There's no such thing as Sin.
There's no such thing as guilt so who's responsible?
Well God has to be responsible and Albert, Einstein concluded
that if God is responsible, he cannot be good because he would
be Responsible for evil. You know, sometimes you just
think too much. Sometimes you just think too
much. If you look at the word of God,
through the eye of Faith, it's easy.
It's difficult to explain it away and you see when Albert
Einstein with human wisdom, tried to figure out creation and
God, he was lost to the truth and therefore rejected God.
All of his life. He determined that God is not a
personal God at all. He rejected Judaism also
rejecting the god of Christianity, and he said this
that God only exists as an impersonal, Cosmic mind Simply a
rational force that gave the world a rational structure, but
he could not be personal with a personal nature.
But folks Albert Einstein was wrong.
When it comes to the origin of evil, you have other options to
these are common options. You can either take Albert
Einstein's option and that was that God is nothing but a cosmic
power, he's unknowable, he's impersonal.
He's some kind of rational power out there, Has no personality,
no relationship with an ability to kick with us.
Only a rational power that created the universe.
See how far he went. All because he was trying to
take human wisdom and figure out evil and suffering in the world.
There's more, there's another theory and I'm going to use this
term very Loosely have to use it very Loosely because I don't
think you can be an intellectual and be this guy but I'm just
going to categorize the next phase or the next kind of idea
is by the intellectual atheist. The intellectual atheist and the
intellectual atheist says this. God doesn't exist at all.
There's no Force, there's no power.
There's no rational mind. There's absolutely nothing.
In reality, made itself, and since there's no God, there's no
evil and there's no good in reality.
So a person can take Einstein's theory or the intellectual
atheist Theory, or even here's another one.
Believe it or not, evil is an illusion.
I can't understand this. I can't understand how someone
would take this Theory, but there are, there are people that
actually believe that evil is Just an Illusion.
There's no such thing as evil, you just think that it is
interesting. How could a rational mind even
consider that. And so, basically, here it is,
there's no such thing as suffering and evil and death.
They don't really exist. God is good.
Therefore, everything is good. You just think it's not good.
Good. Now, you might say, wait a
minute, who believes that Christian Science.
That's a doctrine of Christian Science.
In fact I got to say this to this is also a confliction of of
terms. You can't be a Christian here,
it is Christian Science for example Christian Science is
neither Christian nor scientific It's not Christian.
It's not scientific, you know, it's kind of like, I think
you've heard me say this one time before, but it's kind of
like the cereal Grape-Nuts. You know, there's no grapes and
there's no nuts. There's not.
And you know what? It tastes like bark.
Grape-Nuts. It's not a reflection of its
name, it does not manifest its name.
That's kind of like Christian Science.
It's not Christian and it's not science.
They believe that evil is Just an Illusion.
In fact, Hindus also believe that the entire universe is an
illusion amazing. And so you can take some kind of
esoteric mystical approach to the reality of evil and agree
with those people or you can look at the fourth possibility
and that is God is transcendent. What's that mean?
God is transcendent, meaning he is beyond good & Beyond evil.
In other words, God cannot be defined by a Any human concept
that gets very close to Einstein's perspective that God
doesn't dabble in the stuff down here.
He's Way Beyond that. He's unmoved, he's Untouched by
any of it. Here's another one, though.
Believe it or not. And this is actually something
that has gone through the Evangelical world and is getting
and gaining popularity here it is, God has limited power.
You know what they call that they call that process theology.
Now, I gotta say, I hate David sake.
I hate to even say the words. But the here they are, the
doctrine of processed theology, is the idea that God hate to
even say it. He wants to be something he
wants to be on, knowing he wants to be all-powerful.
He wants to be all that he wants to be all good.
He craves that he wants to be, that he's working towards that,
but he's not there yet. I'm going to tell you that is a
theory that has taken over like wildfire the Evangelical world
today. Kind of like me and you and you
and I are struggling. We're struggling, we're growing.
We're trying to get to the kind of person we need to be.
We're trying to get to be christ-like.
We're trying to be better in the future that we've been in days
gone. By that's us.
We're struggling. We are not infallible.
We make a ton of mistakes but not God.
Not God. So when people try to wrap their
mind around, why is there evil in the world?
That God is a good God? Then what this theory is is,
well, he's in process, he's working on it.
He's just not there yet. In other words, he's trying.
And when bad things happen, hate to even say this when bad things
happen, it happens because God cannot stop it.
It's called process, theology. It exists today.
You know, the struggling God concept was nothing new.
In fact you might have remember Rabbi Kushner, a Jew, who wrote
the book? I love the title, never read the
book, but it's also the title of this book is a question that
people ask, you know, it's called when bad things happen to
good people. We all ask that I can't tell you
how many times people have asked me, why do bad things happen to
good people? Why do bad things happen to good
people? Well, this is a very famous
book. His idea was that God hadn't
arrived yet becoming what he really needed to be in.
That is a fully good. God, a fully Sovereign God and
have absolute control over everything.
He just wasn't quite there yet. He's in process.
So you either believe that God isn't God just a cosmic mind.
Albert Einstein or you believe that God doesn't exist at all.
Intellectual atheist or you believe that suffering and sin
don't really exist. It's Just an Illusion that is
Christian Science. You can believe also that God
transcends or is transcendent. Meaning he is beyond good and
evil and we have no contact with him.
Or. We take the view that God is in
process. And I'll tell you something,
when you talk about creation and you talk about God not existing
at all, I understand that concept because really what
you're saying, if God doesn't exist at all, is nobody times.
Nothing equals everything. That's what it is.
How can you be an intellectual and be an atheist at the same
time? Well, there's one other View,
and I'm going to throw this in the mix, and this was the reason
that I wrote the sermon, and that is God made evil.
But the man's point was this. God made the evil.
He made the sin, he made the bad stuff, but it was for a good
purpose. In fact, it was created that he
might overtake it. One day, let me simply put it to
you simply now. This way, God is not responsible
for evil. His creatures are.
God is not responsible for evil in any way.
And I'm going to say this to, when a bad things happen, bad
thing happens in life, it is not God's fault.
And I just might say this to, I've heard we've all heard this,
somebody would say where was God, when my son died, I love
the response. The same place he was when his
son died. Same place.
God doesn't bring evil to the world.
His creation does more on that in a man.
Let's talk about God for just a minute.
I'm going to quote these very quickly.
Habakkuk 1:13. God is of purer eyes than to
approve evil or behold evil. He cannot look on wickedness.
First Corinthians 14:33. God is not the author of
confusion. First John 1 and verse 5.
God is light and in him is no Darkness, at all.
James 1:13. God cannot be tempted with evil.
Neither, tempteth. He any man?
First, John, 2:16. All that's in the world and when
I say that I'm talking about all evil categorically, All that's
in the world. The lust of the flesh, the lust
of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father, two
more, Psalm 5 and verse 4. You are not of God, who has
pleasure in wickedness, neither will evil dwell in you.
And one final passage. I love this.
Passage in Isaiah chapter 6, you remember those seraphim's with
their, I get there, any there there proclaims about God, know
what they said. And a phono claims, what is God?
He is. Holy Holy, Holy That's what God
is. He's not evil at all.
He doesn't make bad stuff happen.
He never temps anybody. He's not tempted either and he's
not responsible for any evil at all.
That means this if that's the case that means that the source
of evil and sin have to be outside of God when God created
angels and humans. He gave angels and humans three
things. He gave them intelligence, he
gave them reason and he gave them a choice and I put that in
that order for a reason. God created angels are created
beings, man are created beings and God gave Angels.
The same thing he gave man, what are they intelligence reason and
choice in that sequence and here's the reason the three
things intelligence reason, and choice another words, God gave
men and angels the ability to understand and then he gave
angels and man the ability to process that knowledge and
understanding. Me.
And guess what we get to do? We now have the freedom to
determine our Behavior. That's why Angels were similar
in creation with man. All they were given was
Intelligence reason and choice. Now, bottom line.
What they knew with the ability to process the information
brought to a choice whether Angels or men, they would have
the choice to obey God or not obey God.
Now here's the answer, here's the answer to disobey God was to
initially initiate evil and the reason for that is evil is not
the presence of something. Evil, is the absence of
righteousness. Somebody might say, well, you
know, there's a big dark force out there.
Bad Force. No, there isn't That's not the
source of evil. And get it out of your mind.
Get this out of your mind but the devil made me do it.
No, he didn't. You know why?
Because you've been given this, you've been given intelligence,
you've been given reason and you've been given the freedom of
choice. So evil isn't something that was
created it just lives out there. Evil is the absence of
righteousness. Now we go back to the beginning.
Those that were in, in heaven, the Fallen Angels, they were
given intelligence reason and choice.
What did they do? They chose disobedience.
They were the source of evil. Did you see that they chose evil
evil is the lack of righteousness?
Therefore, they chose that and that's what thank God, they were
cast out of Heaven. More on that in a minute.
What about? Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve were
in the same way. Adam, and Eve were created.
They were given intelligence reason and choice and they chose
wrong. Remember this, remember this
when God created, man and Created the universe.
There was no evil. None at all.
God had nothing to do with it. When Adam and Eve were in the
garden and they sinned, what did they do?
They had intelligence reason and choice.
They chose to disobey then therefore they became the source
of evil their fault. Oh that's not.
By the way, is not very popular. Don't ever say somebody's fault?
We don't ever want somebody think it's their fault.
Yeah, you're a wonderful person even though you do what you do.
No you're not. You are sure you don't like the
reality change reality. But we are what we are based on
what we do in the decisions that we make and don't ever take
Choice off the table. Adam and Eve couldn't blame
anybody. All they tried.
Remember, Adam, all the woman you gave me. the woman says, oh,
the serpent, More on that in a minute.
So here's a question. Then here's a question.
The question is, if God did not create it.
Stay with me on this. Why did God allow it?
Well, first of all, I have come to know these facts.
There is a God and I'm not him. So I can't get into the mind of
God and tell you why, God allowed sin.
All I can do is I can look to what sin actually brought about.
I can look at the outcome of sin, and that's really all that
we can do, but to ask ourselves, Why did God do that?
There's no answer. So, let's not ask why.
But let's talk about what sin did bring about it.
Brought about three things, three things.
Number one, it brought about the salvation of sinners.
In other words, when a man would sin, then God would demonstrate
his grace, his mercy, and his forgiveness in Salvation.
That's what sin brought about without sin.
There would be no Grace. There would be no mercy.
There would be no forgiveness. What else?
Evil God allowed, evil to display his wrath against it.
You know, God shows his Mercy to the save, but his wrath and
judgment to those that are lost. What else?
Remember this? Remember, this evil is the
absence of righteousness. What else?
We know this to God allows sin so he can destroy it forever.
God didn't create it, but God will destroy it forever.
I see absence of righteousness. So, three things.
God demonstrates his grace and salvation because of sin.
God, also demonstrates his power over it as authority over his
judgment and wrath over it. And what else?
God allows sin also, and he will destroy it forever.
Remember, it's the absence of perfection now.
Now, the one who chooses it is the source of it.
Now, in case of Lucifer, Lucifer was a name of the devil now,
Satan made a bad choice and Satan seduced a third of the
rest of the hosts of Heaven. And the reason I bring this up,
as I want to make a point you ever talk to somebody that
really is - about how bad things are and how its way worse than
it is good. And there's way more bad stuff
than there. Is good stuff.
You know, I heard a guy say not long ago, rather cynical older
fella, and he said, you know, there's, there's really you
can't make a difference. Things are bad, and that's the
way it is. I hope I never get that old.
That's the truth. I'm going to tell you there's
more good in the world than there is bad.
That's a fact. I know a lot of good people in
this world. I do a lot of good people in the
world that are not Christians. They're still good.
People are just not saved, but they're good people.
So let's go back to the beginning.
When Lucifer and a third of the hosts of Heaven were cast out.
Did you know that, when that happened, two-thirds of the
hosts of Heaven were good? That means there was twice as
many good angels, as there were bad Angels.
You know, the Bible says about the Angels, there are 10,000
times I'm ten thousand and thousands and thousands and if
you multiply it all out you probably wouldn't even get there
yet. Twice, as many.
But they made a choice and they fell, the source of evil is
outside of God. The source of evil is the one
who chooses evil because evil is the absence of righteousness.
Now in chapter three, all we're going to do is notice three
words, three words for the rest of our sermon three works.
And that's now the serpent. Let's talk about the serpent for
just a few minutes. What is the serpent, and who is
it? So, In the garden and everything
is good. You got all kinds of creepy
creatures there and they're all made of God.
And here, you meet a serpent, and the word serpent is the
word, net cash. And that means reptile.
Now that's a Hebrew word, and there's another word also, and
that's we're going to get to that in a minute, but we don't
know what this reptile looked like, but have you ever seen the
depiction of Hollywood? Have you seen the cartoon?
The cartoon of they're supposed to be Eve standing there?
An apple tree. I don't know why.
It was making an apple tree. It's the treat.
The fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil.
That's what we know but everybody was making an apple
tree. So here's this eve standing
there at the apple tree and then the surface there you know he
looks like it's gigantic. Snake its wound around the tree
everybody wants to make it like that.
We have no idea what he looked like.
We have no idea. If you look like a snake, we
just know that by Hebrew word. He means serpent or some kind of
reptile. We don't know for sure.
Later on in chapter 3 and verse 14, we find that there's a part
of the curse of the serpent was the fact that that, that after
he was cursed, he now God said was going to have to Slither on
its belly and he dust forever. Right.
So in other words, he wasn't a slithering whatever on the
ground until he was cursed. So before that we don't know.
He look like Now, the word net cash for reptile is a word
that's used to describe what a reptile does.
And that is to hiss there's another word in the Old
Testament, and it's used for reptiles also, and that's the
word tannin. And sometimes these are used
interchangeably. In fact, there's a second
section of Exodus. Chapter 7 verses 9 to 15.
You remember when Moses is interacting with The Magicians
in Pharaoh's Court member that they throw down their sticks and
they become a serpent. And that word is Tannen, but
Moses. He puts a stick down and his
becomes net cash. Sometimes they're used
interchangeably to describe different aspects of it.
So, what is tannin mean? Interesting Cannon means dragon
Or sea monster. Now I'm not standing here
telling you that I can describe to you.
What this thing looked like all I'm saying is chances are it
wasn't a snake that we know today there's nothing that shows
to us that it was a snake when it tempted Eve in the garden.
He became whatever that was slithering in the dirt after it
was cursed after the sin. So we're talking about by
definition, some kind of a serpent, some kind of a reptile,
some kind of a dragon, whatever that was some kind of a serpent
there. And when you come in the New
Testament, very interestingly Satan in Revelation chapter 12
and verse 20. Satan is called The Serpent and
the dragon both. In the Hebrew, he would have
been called net cash and tannin. So sometimes it's dragging
sometimes, it's serpent but the serpent is compared to other
animals, too. And in verse number one, it says
something about this serpent, it says it was more crafty or
cunning than any beast of the field.
Now this is an actual animal. We have to remember that this is
a real animal, but it wouldn't be an animal that we would know,
because it was a precursor reptile to time, whatever that
animal was eating dirt and all that.
But all of a sudden we find it is different than all other
animals. Do you know why?
Because this guy can talk, Now, I read a commentator.
And the commentator said all the animals in the garden talked.
No, they didn't. That's some kind of a Doctor,
Doolittle concept. No, they didn't it commentator
used well. What about balaam's donkey?
He talked. Yeah.
Once One time as God, spoke through him on one occasion,
only now, interesting here. What's interesting to me is Eve
doesn't appear to be overly shocked when the reptile walks
up and starts a conversation. There's something different
about this particular serpent because he said to the woman, he
said, indeed has God said, You shall not eat from every tree of
the garden. Now what is the serpent know?
The serpent knows about God, the serpent has a personality and
the serpent speaks with intelligence.
He's devious he's hostile, he's evil.
Here's another theory though that about what happened in the
garden and it's not true. I don't believe it to be true at
all. And that was the things in the
events that happened in the garden.
They didn't really happen. There's a theory that all that
is is just some kind of a parable.
Incidentally Parables were always true.
So the very fact that it was true when it eliminate that
argument anyway, but the argument is that it was just a
parable and it had nothing to do with a real event.
And one commentator said, it's a parable with a moral, you know,
when you tell a story and then after you say and the moral of
the story is, well, my question is this, if that is a parable
with a moral, what's the moral to be learned?
A Jewish rabbi said this. He said the serpent wasn't
really talking to Eve, but the writer Moses uses the serpent as
a symbol of evil, impulses, rising and Eve's heart.
So this is just a sort of symbolic way to refer to stuff
that was going on in Eve's mine. okay, then why curse the reptile
These things really happened. When you take the Bible for what
it says, you know what I think, I think that's exactly what
happened. The serpent ask Eve a question
and she answered it. Now the creature wasn't just any
other creature because back in chapter and in our chapter and
verse 1, it says the serpent was more cunning and crafty than any
other beast of the field, which the Lord God has made.
Some people think that means he was sneaky.
That is not what the word means. It's not what the word mean.
I heard somebody say well you know snakes are sneaky, how do
you do that? How do you know that a snake is
any sneakier than any other predator?
Cunning and crafty does not mean sneaky as some commentators
would say that. It means, in fact, that word
actually means subtle cunning intelligent and wives.
So, in other words, this serpent was different than every other
animal. This one had superhuman ability
to speak. It was subtle.
It was cunning. It was crafty, it was
intelligent and it was wise. Superhuman intelligence could
speak. Listen carefully this
personality inside the animal knew the effect of choice Adam
and Eve were only going to make the wrong choice when they made
the wrong choice, they didn't know exactly what would happen.
Other than the fact that God said in the day that you eat,
you will surely die. When Lucifer became first made
the choice, he became. He said, I want to be like God
and folks, you don't do that. you don't put yourself in a
place of, or a position of something that only God should
have. Now Pride was the problem with
Lucifer and when Lucifer was in heaven and a third of the hosts
of Heaven were seduced to follow his ways when they were cast
down, it was because of their sinful Pride.
He wanted to elevate himself and be more like, God, I want God's
job. And he was cast out.
God is Holy. He was wretched.
He says to Eve. See, the reason that God doesn't
want you to eat of that tree is because God knows.
When you do it, you're going to be like God Now. that's why when
the devil tempts us today, The devil wants as many people to go
where he's going as possible. Did you ever stop to consider,
you know, the word? Gehenna, the, which it was a
literal place in the days of the Bible days, was actually a
little literal place where fires, burned constantly, and
all that city waste dump cake, gehenna, when you talk about
hell of the Lake of Fire gehenna, it was not created for
man. It's a creative place that was
made for Satan and his angels. So Satan and his angels know
there is no hope they're going to hell.
They're going to the place that was created for them but when
sin came into the world and death by sin spiritually,
speaking, those that are not saved those that are lost, will
go to the place that was created for the devil and his angels.
Why do you think the devil works so hard to get people to go to
hell? He knows.
And he says, you shall not surely die. you just, Are going
to be like God and God doesn't want that.
So who's the creature, who was this creature?
We're talking about. Nothing is said, by the way, in
Genesis 3, about Satan, Satan is never mentioned in Genesis
chapter 3. So we go to the end of the Bible
and we find in Revelation, chapter 12, and verse 9.
We find that it is Satan. In fact, we find also and two
terms sort of borrowing from the Hebrew in the Old Testament.
He is called NACA. She is called tannin, which is
Serpent and reptile. Now in verse 9.
Of Revelation chapter 12 it says, and the Great Dragon was
thrown down the serpent which is called Satan the devil and
Satan. What else?
It's the dragon is the deceives the whole world devil and Satan.
What about in the New Testament? In the New Testament.
There's a commentary really on. Genesis 3 and 2 places first.
The same Corinthians 11 continues to help us to
understand who the serpent is. Second Corinthians, 11 and 3.
Paul said, but I fear lest somehow as the serpent deceived
Eve by his craftiness. So your minds may be corrupted
from the Simplicity that is in Christ.
So that Oh, the serpent deceived Eve.
It is also true in 1st, Timothy Chapter 2 and verse 14.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell
into transgression. I gotta tell you, I gotta tell
you in the same program. Of that preacher.
Talking about why evils in the world?
You only said he said you see it's easy to trick a woman.
It's easy to deceive a woman. It's easier to deceive a woman
than it is to deceive. A man that is ignorance gone to
see. That's not what the Bible says.
He didn't say that the woman you could pull the wool over her
eyes better than you. Can't imagine that mean that at
all. It just States a fact of what
happened. She was deceived period period.
She was deceived. Now something else that we have
to remember, we understand that Satan is deceptive he's
deceiving. He is lying.
And Satan tempts us with all the things in life that are appealed
to the flesh. He tempts Us in those ways to
try to get us to fall but as powerful and as wicked as he is,
as evil as he is, listen to this.
He is the subject is still subject to The Sovereign control
of God. Nothing will happen, unless God
allows it period. Number job.
Joe was still in the care of God and God controlled with the
devil was able to do to him. So what am I saying?
What I'm saying is when you sin is still your choice devil,
can't make you do anything, the devil cannot make you do
anything. We're drawn away by the Bible
says, When sin comes were drawn away by our own lust and enticed
and we have to make a choice. When lust has conceived, it
brings forth, sin, and sin. When it is finished, bringeth
forth, death to can't, the devil can't make you do anything.
So notice this. So we're finished in conclusion.
What about the source of evil? Remember these things evil.
Is it a dark cloud or Force? Making the world bad?
It's not evil exists. When there's a lack of
righteousness. Evil is a falling short of God's
moral standard, and God has absolutely nothing to do with
our fallen short, nothing at all.
What else? God gives us the following
intelligence reason. And choice.
We have the ability to understand what the word of God
says. As and to know what is, right?
We have the reasoning power to process that information and
every one of us has a choice to make Don't you see?
The one who chooses evil is the source of it.
You know what that means? That means when I choose evil
because I don't do what's right? I'm the source.
It's my fault. There's nobody to blame.
Nobody to blame at all. And you know what?
You know how I know we can't say.
What's the devil's fault? That will maybe do it because
because Eve tried and it did no good.
They're still cast out, you know, why freedom of choice.
I know that there are some things in the world that are - I
know that there's some sometimes.
There's some bad things that happen.
But understand this all we know is all we know is evil is
outside of God, we have God is our refuge and understand this
to God is not throwing things in our way as obstacles.
And then punish us for falling, not doing that either.
He's The Refuge. Satan comes with the temptation,
but all of us have a choice. Source of evil.
The one who chooses I'm finished.
We never know the hearts and minds of those that are present.