Good morning, everyone.
No complaints.
No complaints, no wind to blow your hairdo
around this morning.
Lots of sun and everything's just in fine
order.
I'm getting to feel more and more at
home all the time.
I had two injunctions handed to me.
Not handed to me, delivered to me.
I'm not sure how this one's going to
be carried out.
I was to turn the mic off before
I start singing at the close.
And then another sister informed me that, made
me feel right at home, that they don't
always hear what I say.
And the problem is, I drop my voice
at the end of a sentence.
My wife says to me, before I come
away, now, don't forget, whatever you do, don't
mutter.
So you see, I'm beginning to feel right
at home.
Very well, will you go back with me,
please, if you can, as Tertullo said to
Festus, of your clemency, of your long patience.
Go back with me this morning to Genesis
again.
And I wish to pick up some details
and then move on to a further development
of the stewardship, which we call Adamic.
It was the initial stewardship of the human
family and some of the consequences of it.
I want to notice particularly some of the
results of a failed stewardship.
Now, we were reading in chapter 3 yesterday
and we did not go into the details
of the sentences that God passed upon those
three who were responsible for the fall.
You will understand, the first two, of course,
sought to get away and out from under
the responsibility by turning it over to someone
else.
So Adam says, the woman thou gavest me
and the woman says, the serpent beguiled me.
And then God turns to the serpent and
makes a statement, a sentence, that is in
verse 14 of chapter 3, regarding his responsibility
and the consequences of it.
So, none of the three escaped personal responsibility
for his or her stewardship.
I judge that Adam was part to blame
in this.
Now, I know 1 Timothy chapter 2 tells
us that Adam was not deceived.
But the woman being deceived transgressed, was in
the transgression, 1 Timothy 2 says.
So there were two reasons or two statements
made about Eve's fall.
Number one, she was deceived.
Number two, she transgressed.
And these things are given to us along
with the sentence that God passed upon her
when he came to deal with this matter
of the fall.
As far as Adam is concerned, I feel
that he failed in one aspect of his
stewardship and that was regarding his responsibility towards
his wife.
Some of you are going to ask me
about that afterwards, but if I told you
all I think about it now, then you'd
have no reason to ask me, so we'd
miss out on that conversation.
And then, later on, God turns to the
serpent and he passes upon the serpent a
sentence of judgment.
One thing that is of interest to notice
is that when God speaks to Adam and
to the serpent, he attributes a consequence to
that which is amoral.
For instance, Adam's failed stewardship yielded the result
to himself and to his posterity that the
ground was cursed.
Now, the ground is an amoral thing.
There is no morality in ground.
Nevertheless, the ground was cursed.
And it was cursed because of Adam, which
is a very important lesson to us, isn't
it?
When we fail in our stewardship, the results
are not limited to ourselves.
Oftentimes, they branch out to others or other
things, but that is one of the ramifications
of a failed stewardship.
When God speaks to the serpent or to
the spirit behind the serpent, he speaks to
the animal as well to the spirit.
So, the animal, the serpent itself, as an
animal, was cursed because of the fact that
it was used by that great spirit, the
adversary, who came into the garden and came
in with a very definite plan in his
mind.
I think we notice something of the result
of that plan in Luke chapter 4.
And we may speculate, it's not always wise
to do it, but it is sometimes a
little profitable to do it, why it was
that the serpent had the ambition of destroying
the man, for which reason he chose the
woman.
He wasn't really interested in the woman per
se, in herself, but he was directing his
subtlety to the woman by which or by
whom he would attack and destroy the man.
Now, that's very simply explained, of course, when
we remember that this original relationship of man
and woman from that time till now has
always been in the mind of God an
example in terms of earthly experience between man
and wife, the relationship that existed between God
and Israel and later Christ and the Church.
For you remember that the marriage relationship did
not begin with Christ and the Church because
God is spoken of more than once in
the Old Testament as being Israel's husband.
And she was responsible to him, that was
her stewardship in relation to the husband's wife.
So when God speaks to the serpent, he
speaks to the animal as well as to
the spirit.
And both are cursed because of their participation
in the fall.
I think that's very instructive and illustrative too
regarding our relationship and our stewardship here in
life.
Another thing that I thought to notice with
you was, please, if you look back to
chapter 2 for one passage, verse 7 of
chapter 2 says the following, The Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
lives.
That's a plural word.
It is not singular as we would say
the breath of life.
That is just one life, his life.
But the Hebrew is in the plural.
So God breathed into man's or Adam's nostrils
the breath of lives.
Now that's very instructive I judge because you
remember when God formed Eve, when he formed
a woman, he did not breathe into her
nostrils the breath of life.
The life that she enjoyed, that she received
upon creation was a prolongation of the life
that God breathed into Adam because God breathed
into Adam the breath that was to be
enjoyed by lives in succession all down through
not only his immediate family but all the
families of earth to come.
So we may pause to consider the fact
that every life, every human life participates, if
in a small way, but participates in the
original in-breathing by God of Adam.
Which means we have a stewardship of life.
We'll come to that a little further on
when we consider the universal stewardship of the
human family.
So God breathed into the nostrils of Adam
the multiplicity of subsequent lives.
Now just stop and think of that for
a minute.
Does that mean then that every human being
born participates in the original life that God
imparted to Adam?
I believe it does.
Therefore, to destroy life in whatever form it
exists is a stewardship failed.
It is a responsibility that is incurred upon
every human being.
We all participate of the original in-breathing
that God made to Adam.
So, does it matter if it is a
fetus or an embryo for that matter or
a fetus or an unborn child that lives
and breathes and expresses emotion?
Is the murder of the unborn an attack
on the life of God or the life
which God has given to the human family
through this original in-breathing of Adam in
chapter 2 and verse 7?
We may have opportunity to develop that a
little later.
Now I want to notice with you this
morning as well the legacy of a failed
stewardship.
God pronounced, as I've said, individual sentences upon
these three who were responsible for the fall
as we speak of it.
The first thing that we notice is that
it was not all failure.
That is most encouraging.
Let us look at something here that we
have at the close of chapter 3.
We know that God drove the man in
verse 24, He drove him out of the
garden and He placed at the east of
the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming
sword which, without the conjunction and, a flaming
sword which turned every way to keep the
way of the tree of life.
Now that's a very significant statement and sometimes
we pass over it very lightly and don't
stop to think exactly what is said here.
The cherubim.
We know about the cherubim from later on.
We know they were considered to be part
of the atmosphere of the throne of God.
And whether you call them seraphim or cherubim
it matters very little.
Some people love to make a big issue
over the hymns, over the cherubs and the
seraphs.
But these are the, or were considered to
be the attendants upon the throne of God.
The covering cherub is gone from the immediate
presence of God.
But the cherubim are there.
And they're depicted, as you know, on the
mercy seat, the propitiatory of Israel's holy of
holy place.
The cherubim here represents something very significant, I
judge.
And notice, please, that it says the cherubim
and.
And you may refer, I believe, to whatever
version you can lay your hands on and
I think I have a Bible at home
with 24 versions in it, all between two
covers.
Now, how about that?
And I've checked and checked and rechecked and
back and forth.
And the conjunction is always there.
That is the conjunction and.
Cherubim and a flaming sword.
Now, when I went to Sunday school, which
was, you know, a few years ago, the
day before yesterday or something, we used to
see pictures in our Sunday school papers of
a cherub with a flaming sword in his
hand, guarding the way of the tree of
life.
And for years, I thought that's what it
really was until I noticed this conjunction after
the word cherubim is the conjunction and something
additional.
So it was cherubim and a flaming sword.
And as I understand this, the cherubim were
not wielding the sword.
The sword was distinct by itself and the
cherubim were distinct by themselves.
And when I noticed that, I got a
considerable comfort out of it and I got
some very good instruction out of it.
You see, when we come into chapter four,
there was a legacy that Adam left to
his sons.
And this legacy was that they should approach
unto God.
God had driven them out of the garden,
but that they should come back to God,
if I may so say.
They should approach unto God.
But how will they come unto God?
Well, we know the story well as we
read it here in chapter four.
They each brought an offering.
Why did they bring an offering?
Why do unlettered, uncultured tribes of dark forest
regions, when they approach their spirit gods, bring
offerings?
There is something built into the nature of
man that realizes an indebtedness to that superior
power or powers that he seeks to worship.
And you say, well of course, because after
sin, they must come to God with a
sin offering.
Or they must come to God with a
trespass offering.
But you see, the offering already has been
made because God in grace has clothed Adam
and Eve at the cost of life.
He has clothed them with garments other than
the ones they themselves manufactured.
For their own manufacture was very unsatisfactory.
It could not give them fitness to stand
either in the garden or before the Lord.
But it was to cost life that he
made the garments not of leaves, but of
skins.
And with these skins of a life sacrificed,
God clothed Adam and Eve.
And then he drove them out.
And clothed by the grace, by the hand
of the grace of God, they went forth
to bear the burden of the curse.
Very encouraging, isn't it?
God has not called us to labor under
the curse of our fallen nature, unprepared or
unqualified.
There is at the sacrifice of life a
covering of acceptance and righteousness which God has
given to us.
And it's in Christ, isn't it?
But then after they're outside the garden, these
two boys, Cain and Abel, they bring an
offering to the Lord.
And we stop to wonder because we have
offerings described later on, particularly in the book
of Leviticus.
We have offerings described for us.
We wonder what kind of an offering would
this be?
And the first thing that jumps to your
mind, it must be a sin offering.
Or it must be a trespass offering, so
described later on in the Levitical order.
Or it may be another kind of offering.
You remember when Abraham and Isaac went up
the mount together?
And Isaac said to his father, Father, behold
the fire and the wood.
But where's the lamb?
For an offering?
No.
For a burnt offering.
And the Sunday school teacher and the gospel
preachers, they love to use this as a
picture of the sacrificial substitutionary work of the
Lord Jesus at the cross.
Because you see, Isaac was laid on the
altar but he was not sacrificed.
So there was a ram caught in the
thicket.
That's an interesting thing, isn't it too?
Because as I understand this word, it's a
mountain two-horned ram.
You say, well, what's to do with that?
It was caught in a thicket by its
horns.
Plural.
And this dual element of the horns was
the means by which it was trapped to
be a sacrifice.
Well, then you say to me, but what
is that a picture of?
What could it be a picture of?
But our substitutionary sacrifice being the Lord Jesus.
And what are the two horns?
Well, let me suggest this to you.
They are the representation of that dual character
of the Savior.
God and man.
You know, we often say, well, the Lord
could have gone back to heaven without going
to Calvary.
Could He have really?
You remember what He said?
Father, save me from this hour.
I can't pray that.
Because, He said, for this cause I came
unto this hour.
He came to be the sacrifice.
He came to be the substitutionary sacrifice.
And the very fact that you have one
here now who is man at the same
time and who is very God.
He is trapped.
If you will allow me the word.
The concept.
He's only here for one purpose.
How could He have gone back to heaven
when that's the reason for which He came
to be the sacrificial ram?
And so, the very fact He's here, God
manifest in flesh, means that that's why He's
here.
So the ram is taken and offered in
the place of Isaac.
But here's the point.
We use that often times in the Gospel
to say, well, you see, Christ took the
sinner's place and He became the sacrifice for
sin.
But the word that is used every time
you read it, the word offering, in Genesis
chapter 22, when Abraham and Isaac were brought
from the mountain, is not a word for
the sacrifice for sin.
It is not in the word for the
sacrifice for a trespass.
It is always the word for a burnt
offering.
And that's what Isaac said to his father.
Father, here's the fire and the wood, but
where's the lamb for the burnt offering?
And all the way up, it's always used
the burnt offering.
The ascending offering.
And that's exactly what our Lord was on
our behalf.
Going back to Cain and Abel, what kind
of offering did they bring?
The first thing we ask ourselves about this
is, who taught Cain and Abel to bring
an offering to the Lord?
Who taught them that?
How did they know they should approach God
with an offering?
That must have been part, surely, of the
legacy which was left to them as a
result of the failed stewardship of their fathers
or their parents.
They must have had some instruction in the
fact that God can only be approached on
the basis of a sacrifice.
But here's the interesting feature.
The word that is used, the Hebrew word
that is used, is specifically the word for
a gift offering.
Not a burnt offering, and not a sin
offering, but a gift offering.
They come to God with an indebtedness, with
a stewardship to be recognized and to be
contained in a gift offering, not a sin
offering.
Well, you say, but wouldn't they need a
sin offering?
Well, you may say it if you wish,
but that's not in the word.
Cain and Abel brought to the Lord a
gift offering.
All right.
What does this teach us?
It teaches us the stewardship of humanity, of
the human race.
And that's going to be enlarged as we
move further into the New Testament.
The human family owes a debt to God,
and each of us owes personally a debt
to God.
We must bring our gift offering.
If you elevate this to New Testament theology,
you remember in Hebrews chapter 8, it says,
Now, the sum of things which we have
spoken is this.
We have such a high priest who has
passed through the heavens, who has sat down
at the right hand of God.
And because he is a priest, he was
ordained to be an offerer.
One who is to offer.
For every high priest ordained of men is
ordained for men to offer both gifts and
sacrifices.
Wherefore, says the writer, it is of necessity
that this priest, our Lord, the great high
priest, must have offerings to offer.
But it's not the offering of himself, for
he did that once for all at the
cross.
But now that he has risen, gone into
heaven acclaimed, this day have I begotten thee,
thou art my son, sit on my right
hand.
And he has constituted a high priest after
the order of Melchizedek.
Now then, he must have something in his
hands to offer for every high priest of
the sons of men is ordained to offer
gifts and sacrifices.
Well, our Lord is offering gifts today.
All gifts are not sacrifices.
But as these two boys brought their gifts
to the Lord, they were sacrifices.
One was the sacrifice of toil and labor,
and the other was the sacrifice of care
and shepherding and life.
But then let's add to that something else
that is said here in chapter 4.
It is said in verse 3, In the
process of time it came to pass that
Cain brought of the fruit of the ground
an offering unto the Lord.
Now, you read that and immediately you ask
yourself, they brought an offering to the Lord.
Where was the Lord?
These are two boys, or two young men,
whatever age they may have been, and they
gathered together this offering, this gift that they
want to give to the Lord.
And they bring these gifts, Cain's and Abel's,
and they bring them, it says, very specifically,
unto the Lord.
Well, where was the Lord?
And you will remember after God had remonstrated
with Cain in chapter 4, farther down, in
verse 16 it says, Cain went out from
the presence of the Lord.
Now, Cain is a physical man as we
are.
If he goes out from someplace, he was
in a specific locality, and he went out
from that locality.
And it says he went out from the
presence of the Lord.
Well, where was the presence of the Lord?
They're both outside the garden.
But Cain and Abel come to the Lord.
Now, you've got to have a geographical location
to be able to say that.
You just can't say, well, they just came
to the Lord.
Well, where do they come to?
They themselves are localized.
Their offerings are localized.
So they come to the Lord, and later
on Cain goes out from the presence of
the Lord.
Well, where was the presence of the Lord?
Well, let me suggest to you that we
have the answer to that in the passage
we've read at the close of chapter 3.
God placed the cherubim at the east of
the garden.
And in addition to the cherubim, he placed
the sword.
And as I have suggested to you already,
I don't believe the sword had anything to
do with the cherubim.
But I do believe this, that the cherubim
was a visible, at that time, a visible
representation of the presence of the Lord.
And these boys brought their sacrifices, they brought
them unto the Lord.
Where else could they take them but to
where the cherubim were?
This is their place of acceptance.
This is their place of localized presence of
Jehovah.
So that's where they brought their sacrifices to.
Now, I know what some of you are
going to ask me, so I might as
well anticipate the question before it happens.
You're going to come to me and say,
now, Brother Dave, just a minute now, tell
us if this is true as you have
been saying.
How long were the cherubim there?
Well, I could guess.
But what's the sense of me guessing for
I don't know.
It's like a lady came to me after
one time I was speaking on that revelation
chart that I already mentioned to you.
And she said, Brother Adams, would you please
tell me what the seven thunders said?
I said, I've just been speaking on that
section of the book of the revelation.
And I said, do you remember that the
angel told John when he started to write
what the voice of the thunders were, started
to write what they said, and the angel
said, don't write it.
That's sealed up.
So if the apostle was not allowed to
write the message, how can you expect me
to know?
Well, she said, I just thought that you
would know by now what they said.
Yeah, I sometimes discover that I know a
lot more than what I really know I
know.
But I have to be informed of it
from some outside source.
Well, how long was the chariot been there?
I don't know.
And some people told me, well, it was
likely until the flood.
Well, that was a long time, wasn't it?
I don't know.
I just don't know.
But I remember saying to a group of
young folks one time, I was speaking to
them, and I said, has anybody here heard
the word Shekinah?
Oh, sure, of course.
These are Christians' children to a large extent.
I said, do you know then about what
is called the Shekinah glory?
And they said, oh, yes.
Yes, of course.
Well, I said, now, can any of you
tell me where we read in the Bible
about the Shekinah glory?
And they stopped, and they thought for a
while, and they said, well, there was nothing
said really.
And I said, all right, I'll give you
a little bit of homework.
Go home between now and our next meeting.
Find out if you can just where we
read in the Bible about the Shekinah glory.
So, away they went.
Away they went to do the homework.
I like giving homework to my audience, you
know, sometimes.
And they come back the next meeting, and
I said, by the way, what we mentioned
last time, did any of you find out
where the Bible speaks about the Shekinah glory?
And I thought nobody was going to put
their hand up, but then there was a
girl, she knew she was the only one
that knew, so she said, I did, sir,
I did.
I said, great.
Tell me, where did she find it?
She said, I found it in the prophecy
of Zechariah in one of Schofield's footnotes.
She was the only one that had found
it at any rate, but she found it
in one of Schofield's footnotes.
The fact of the matter is, of course,
it's not in the text, although so many
people know about the Shekinah glory, and the
Jews, even to this day, know about the
Shekinah glory.
So, it was the place where the presence
of God was known, where it was placed.
Let me suggest something to you.
At the close of chapter 3, where we
read, so he drove out the man, and
he placed, and I discovered that the Hebrew
verb to place is Shekan, from which the
Jews get the word Shekinah.
The Shekinah glory then really is meant to
confer the idea that that was where God
dwelt.
Now, this word, he placed the cherubim, is
the word from which finally the word Shekinah
has developed.
So, the cherubim did represent God, and it
was the presence of God at that time,
at any rate.
However much, they may have been taken away,
I don't know.
And then you want to know, of course,
what happened to the flaming sword, and I
don't know that either.
Of course, you may tell me it was
drowned in the flood.
I don't know.
But the idea, of course, was it was
to guard the way of the tree of
life.
And that tree of life was so that
they would live forever.
Now, the tree of life was not guarded,
and men were not, and Adam and Eve
were not kept from it until they fell.
So, then you're going to ask me and
say, well now, Brother Dave, do you believe
that they partook of the tree of life
before they fell?
Yes.
Well, no.
How could you believe that?
Why shouldn't I believe that?
There is no life self-sustaining.
All life which comes from God, breathe into
Adam the breath of lives, must be sustained.
There is no creature, no creature, whoever he
may be, no creature that is self-sustaining.
We all are sustained by an outside source.
Everything must be fed.
All kinds of life, plant, vegetable, animal, bird,
or human, all kinds of life must be
sustained outside of itself.
And what would be wrong if they had
eaten?
Because Eve said, we can eat of all
the trees of the garden.
And she did not exclude the tree which
was in the midst of the garden that
God said in the first place was the
tree of life.
But when Eve's speaking to the serpent, she
says there's a tree in the midst of
the garden.
Looks to me like she put it where
it wasn't put by God.
Or she considered it to be the most
important.
I don't know which.
Because when God makes the garden and makes
the trees, he puts in the midst of
the garden, he puts the tree of life.
But when Eve's talking to the serpent, she
says no, but there's a tree in the
midst of the garden and we're forbidden to
eat of that.
So whether she, in her esteem of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
was greater than her esteem of the tree
of life, I don't know.
But there is no suggestion that the tree
of life was not accessible to them or
that it was participated by them before the
fall.
Then you say to me, but then they
would live forever.
That's not the idea of it.
The idea of God says lest the man
now puts forth his hand and partakes of
the tree of life, having fallen in a
fallen state, we will drive him out.
And you will have noticed that when God
said to Adam in the first place, the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die, he never said a thing about the
body.
And it isn't until after he falls and
comes into a sinful condition that God brings
in the statement thus thou art and to
dust shalt thou return.
He never said that before he fell.
Now, stop and think of that.
I'm stopping too long on the way.
I was supposed to get a whole lot
farther than this yesterday.
Alright.
Stop and think about that.
If Adam now were to have the life
which he presently owns or possesses perpetuated in
a sinful state, what a horrible thing that
would be.
Can you imagine what it would be like
to live forever?
God brings in physical death subsequent to spiritual
death.
What he said in the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
And that exactly was experimented by Adam and
Eve when they went and hid themselves from
the presence of the Lord.
What is death at any rate if it
isn't the severance from the source of life?
And once they are separated from God and
are hiding behind the trees of the garden,
then they have experienced death.
Spiritual death.
But they are not going to experience physical
death and it was never promised to them
until after they fell.
That was a tremendous blessing.
Because, you see, it would have been the
most devastating thing if they were to live
forever in their physical state after they have
fallen inwardly.
What can be more horrible than to imagine,
I suggested to you, I believe it was
Sunday morning, what can be more dreadful to
any of us to have happen to us
that we should be welded eternally in our
fallen state.
So what is physical death?
It's God opening the door to a better
life beyond this life without the corrupt body
that drags us down so often that Paul
calls the body of our affliction or humiliation.
You see, the prohibition was protection.
When God said to them, of all the
trees on this deep, but don't eat of
this one.
That's a prohibition.
You cannot eat of this tree.
What was that meant to be?
It was not meant to be something unjust
or unkind.
It was meant to be a protection.
It was to make Adam and Eve aware
of the fact there is evil lurking out
there.
And be prepared and beware for the test
is coming.
And that evil came into the garden as
we know.
And Eve was unaware of the fact that
what God had foreseen for them and tried
to protect them from was actually going to
happen when she was deceived and transgressed.
Now that they have fallen, what will God
do for them?
Leave them in this fallen state in a
body that's going to live forever?
Never!
So He brings in physical death.
And physical death now is the blessing.
It's the opening of a door to another
world which God has provided for man and
of course by faith in Christ.
Then what that does is, according to 2
Corinthians 5, another passage, it gives us the
prospect of being clothed upon, invested with another
body other than this one.
So it's a blessing, you see.
Now even in our late day when we
consider death, we are sometimes, as Hebrews chapter
5 tells us, or chapter 2 rather, tells
us that we are sometimes very apprehensive about
death.
And yet the word is clear in Hebrews
chapter 2.
Do we have been delivered from the bondage
of the fear of death?
That's why our Lord became man to do
that very thing.
To open wide the portals of the next
world or the other world wherein we shall
enjoy not only freedom in the spirit from
sin, but liberation from a body that is
affected constantly by sin.
The body that so humiliates us so often
in which the elements dwell that are called
by Paul in Romans chapter 7, another law
working in our members.
So, there are the cherubim.
That's where God was.
As far as they were concerned, that's where
He was.
And when Cain went out from the presence
of the Lord, he left the cherubim.
He left the precincts of the garden.
He left the place where he could have
been accepted by God and he went out.
As Judas did later on, you remember.
And it is said, it was night.
Alright, I just have a few minutes left
this morning to extend the legacy of a
failed stewardship.
There were some good things, evidently, that Adam
and Eve passed on to their boys.
There was the tragic thing that sin now,
the viper that was implanted in their hearts
was so soon to express itself in murder.
You know, murder didn't make Cain a sinner.
John tells us that when he was born,
Eve said, she called him Cain because she
says, I've gotten a man from the Lord.
How wrong she was.
And she wasn't the last mother to be
mistaken when she looked upon what do they
call them?
Little angels, don't they?
When they're born, isn't it?
In Spanish, we've got los inocentes.
El pobre inocente.
This child comes into the home and the
parents look at him or her and they
say, what an angelic little thing he, she,
is.
Straight out of the cradle of the glory,
they came.
Only to discover later on, as Eve did,
that they weren't little angels and they weren't
little innocents and they weren't directly out of
heaven.
Because when you come to John's epistle, John
says that Cain was of that wicked one
because of which he slew his brother.
He didn't become a wicked person or he
didn't become a satanic expression because he slew
his brother.
He slew his brother because he was of
that wicked one.
We get things reversed sometimes, don't we?
Change the order.
That's not what John says.
John says because he slew Abel then he
was of the wicked one.
No.
John says he slew Abel because he was
of the wicked one.
And that's exactly we have the full-blown
expression of sin in its first child to
be born in the world.
That was part of the legacy of a
failed stewardship.
And you and I have come into that
legacy.
Adam's or the Adamic stewardship which was a
failure has left for us the legacy of
a fallen nature, the legacy of all the
seeds of all the evils that have ever
been perpetrated in human history.
We carry them with us.
But we also have come into another stewardship.
I don't know if I should start it
unless I'm not.
Because I only have four and a half
minutes there, I think.
Oh, no.
I'd rather have this clock than that one.
This one says ten twenty-one and a
half and that one says ten twenty-five.
I shan't look up.
I'll just look down and look at this
one.
Turn with me quickly, if you will, please,
to Acts chapter 17.
Acts chapter 17.
The legacy of a failed stewardship.
Now, this has to be brief.
It's like the man that got up at
the end of a dinner somewhere and he
was known for being long-winded and he
got up at the end of the dinner
and he was to make one of these
famous speeches that they make and he said,
now, he started off for a little bit
and then he said, now, to cut things
short and somebody in the back said, too
late.
All right.
To cut this short, look at Acts chapter
17, Paul at Mars Hill, verse 22.
I'm sure you all know this story and
he is walking through the marketplace at Athens
and he sees all these altars and he
finds one altar with this inscription in verse
23 to the unknown God, Agnosto Theou, Agnosto
Theou, the unknown God.
Then he goes on to say, whom therefore
ye ignorantly worship.
Now, notice this, please.
He's there worshiping Agnosto Theou, the unknown God.
He was not forgotten by them.
He was not despised by them.
He was not neglected by them.
They had an altar to him and they
were offering their offerings, their sacrifices to him
unknown.
We sometimes thought that these were wild savages
who had no interest whatsoever in God.
That's not true.
They worshiped him.
They reverenced him.
And they built this altar to him.
And then Paul says, whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you.
God that made the world and all things
therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven
and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with
hands, neither is worship with men's hands as
though he needed anything, seeing he gives to
all life and breath and all things.
Here is a bestowal.
Here is a legacy.
Here is something that God has conferred upon
mankind in general.
What is it?
Life, breath, and all things.
Notice the development.
Life comes from God.
Well, we just said that, didn't we?
In the lives, the breath of lives that
God breathed into Adam.
And this is what Paul said here.
He said, each of you who is here
has received from God life.
And not only have you received life, but
you received breath for the continuity of that
life.
And not only have you received breath to
continue this life, you have received all things
that goes with life and breath.
He is the source.
We get back again to the fact that
we have nothing that is truly our own.
The life that we have, says Paul, you
have received it from God.
The breath that you have to continue life,
these 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, anybody here
95?
That breath is also something that God has
bestowed upon us.
And then all the things with which we
are surrounded, adding to this initial life and
the continuity of breath, he says that's all
come from God as well.
Now, look farther down.
There's something else he adds to that here.
He says, in him, verse 28, in him
we live.
Now, remember, please, he's talking about pagan philosophers
who are idolaters.
He's not talking to believers.
He's not talking to Christians as we know
them.
He is talking to pagan philosophers and idolaters.
In him we live.
And he says, consequently, in verse 29, well,
at the close of verse 28, we are
also his offspring.
Who's he talking to?
Grecian philosophers.
Who's he talking to?
Athenian idolaters.
And what does he tell them?
We are his offspring.
There's the stewardship.
And then he goes on to say in
verse 28, in him we live.
And in him we move.
We have our mobility.
And then the last thing he says is,
have our being.
We are who we are by divine bestowal.
You say, well, nothing new about that.
Did it ever pass your mind or cross,
like a flying bird, or maybe one of
these airplanes that go up seven and a
half to eight miles, did it ever cross
your mind sometimes, what if you hadn't been
who you are, what you might have been?
Now, I'm not talking about reincarnation, you know.
It's some of the mysterious beliefs of some
other nations or other lands, other cultures, other
religions.
You know, you go away as a woman
and you come back as a, better not
say, might get into trouble.
You come back in a reincarnated state.
All I know is that my wife says
if there's anything such as reincarnation, the next
time she's not going to be married to
a preacher.
Well, probably a real blessing if she weren't.
But we don't believe in reincarnation of that
order.
But we have our being, that is our
identity, who we are, because God has bestowed
upon us our identity.
We will never be anything different from what
we are.
Oh, of course, you won't be mean and
critical and caustic and sadistic and unkind and
so on and so forth.
That's not the idea of it.
The idea of it is identity.
We have our being.
We are who we are by God's decree.
And we will always be what we are.
And we will always be who we are.
There's no change of identity in the next
world, in the next state.
You're not going there to be angelic.
Oh, your husband may think you are now.
That should be a real blessing.
I mean, to him and to you if
he thinks it.
But we'll always be human beings.
Always.
There is no identity change in the next
state, in the heavens.
We're not going to become what we are
not now.
Speaking generically, we are always going to be
humans.
We're always going to be of the family
of Adam in that world to come.
You're not going to be somebody else.
You will always be who you are.
And the body that you will be given
there will be in perfect accord with your
personality.
I don't know if that scares you or
not.
You're not going to suddenly change to be
somebody else.
I mentioned this one time in a meeting
and one of the sisters came to me
afterwards at the close of the door.
One of those beautiful ladies that come to
me at the close of the door.
And she said to me, Brother Gabe, you've
spoiled my whole concept of heaven.
I said, why?
Well, because she said I was hoping that
at least when I got there, I would
have lost 125 pounds.
And now you tell me I'm going to
be there as I am here.
I'm not talking about average boy, you see.
I'm not talking about physical dimensions.
I'm talking about the nature of the body
and the nature of our being.
We'll always be as we are.
Members of this family of God and I
never got to that part the other day
and I hope to do that that we
are going to displace that great being of
whom we've been looking at some minor details
already.
Who inhabits the heavens and who under his
agents rules the nations.
Now, we are going to displace him.
And the church, I am convinced with some
reading of the scripture that these heavenly beings
now who are in a frantic furious exercise
of movement and activity know in anticipation that
they're going to be deposed.
And the church is going to take the
place of world administrators in the age to
come.
That's something to look forward to, isn't it?
But you will be you and I will
be I, you see.
We're not going to be somebody else.
It was Moses and Elijah that appeared on
the mount, wasn't it?
Uh-huh.
Were they different?
Were they the same persons?
The same persons, exactly.
We will always be who we are.
Thank God, apart from the evil that lies
within us.
Well, the time...
Oh, yes it is.
It's 30 seconds gone on this one and
three minutes gone on that one.
So let's pray before we sing a verse
or two of the hymn.
Gracious Father, we thank Thee