River That Flows To Destruction

1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution,

3 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard,

4 while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. - Hebrews 2:1-4

you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it." - Acts 7:53

28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

30 For we know him who said, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." And again, "The Lord will judge his people."

31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. - Hebrews 10:28-31

37 For, "Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; 

38 but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him." 

39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. - Hebrews 10:37-39

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. - Hebrews 11:6

The Seminary of Suffering

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

This is God’s universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less reliance on self and the world. I have never heard anyone say, “The really deep lessons of life have come through times of ease and comfort.”

But I have heard strong saints say, “Every significant advance I have ever made in grasping the depths of God’s love and growing deep with him has come through suffering.”

The pearl of greatest price is the glory of Christ.

Thus, Paul stresses that in our sufferings the glory of Christ’s all-sufficient grace is magnified. If we rely on him in our calamity, and he sustains our “rejoicing in hope,” then he is shown to be the all-satisfying God of grace and strength that he is.

If we hold fast to him, “when all around our soul gives way,” then we show that he is more to be desired than all we have lost.

Christ said to the suffering apostle, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul responded to this: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

So suffering clearly is designed by God not only as a way to wean Christians off of self and onto grace, but also as a way to spotlight that grace and make it shine. That is precisely what faith does: it magnifies Christ’s future grace.

The deep things of life in God are discovered and magnified in suffering.

John Piper 

God may use distress to expand your influence

BIBLE MEDITATION:

And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that Thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that Thine hand might be with me, and that Thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.

1 Chronicles 4:10

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

The story of Jabez is one of a man who wanted his influence to be enlarged. God can stretch you, as well.

If you ask that God enlarge your influence, be aware of this: For the Psalmist, Psalm 4:1 says that God enlarged him when he was “in distress.” You can expect that God may use distressing circumstances to do that in you. And the pain will be worth it all.

When God enlarges you, He does so to fill you with more of Himself. Don’t be satisfied with God’s filling a small place if God wants to fill a larger place.

ACTION POINT:

Are you ready to say, “God I want more. I want You to enlarge my coasts. I don’t want just a blessing. I want a blessing indeed”? We need to pray big prayers to a big God.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Danger of Drifting

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. (Hebrews 2:1)

We all know people that this has happened to. There is no urgency. No vigilance. No focused listening or considering or fixing of their eyes on Jesus. And the result has not been a standing still, but a drifting away.

That is the point here: there is no standing still. The life of this world is not a lake. It is a river. And it is flowing downward to destruction. If you do not listen earnestly to Jesus and consider him daily and fix your eyes on him hourly, then you will not stand still; you will go backward. You will float away from Christ.

Drifting is a deadly thing in the Christian life. And the remedy for it, according to Hebrews 2:1, is: Pay close attention to what you have heard. That is, consider what God is saying in his Son Jesus. Fix your eyes on what God is saying and doing in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

This is not a hard swimming stroke to learn. The only thing that keeps us from swimming against sinful culture is not the difficulty of the stroke, but our sinful desire to go with the flow.

Let’s not complain that God has given us a hard job. Listen, consider, fix the eyes — this is not what you would call a hard job description. In fact, it is not a job description. It is a solemn invitation to be satisfied in Jesus so that we do not get lured downstream by deceitful desires.

If you are drifting today, one of the signs of hope that you are born again is that you feel pricked for this, and you feel a rising desire to turn your eyes on Jesus and consider him and listen to him in the days and months and years to come.

John Piper 

Are you sitting on the lukewarm fence?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.

Philippians 1:20

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

May God help us today in the midst of our lukewarm apathy toward the things that matter most to Him! If it’s worth anything, it’s worth everything. May God forgive those who will not go the second mile.

Now, in some things moderation is good, like eating, rest, recreation, exercise, and finances. But when it comes to spiritual warfare, moderation is a sin. When it comes to believing the Bible, moderation is a sin. When it comes to loving the Lord, moderation is a sin!

Suppose a wife asked her husband, “Honey, do you love me?” And he replied, “Well, moderately.” She’d fix his wagon, don’t you think? God finds lukewarmness disgusting. In your love for Him, He would rather you be cold than lukewarm (see Revelation 3:15-16).

ACTION POINT:

Friend, if the world considers you a “moderate” when it comes to your Christianity, you are riding the fence of lukewarmness.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Sin, Satan, Sickness, or Sabotage

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:8–9)

Is the suffering that comes to the Christian because of persecution the same as the suffering that comes from cancer? Do the promises given to one apply to the other? My answer is yes. All of life, if it is lived earnestly by faith in the pursuit of God’s glory and the salvation of others, will meet with some kind of obstacle and suffering. The suffering that comes to the obedient Christian is part of the price of living where you are in obedience to the call of God.

In choosing to follow Christ in the way he directs, we choose all that this path includes under his sovereign providence. Thus, all suffering that comes in the path of obedience is suffering with Christ and for Christ — whether it is cancer at home or persecution far away.

And it is “chosen” — that is, we willingly take the path of obedience where the suffering befalls us, and we do not murmur against God. We may pray — as Paul did — that the suffering be removed (2 Corinthians 12:8); but if God wills, we embrace it as part of the cost of discipleship in the path of obedience on the way to heaven.

All experiences of suffering in the path of Christian obedience, whether from persecution or sickness or accident, have this in common: They all threaten our faith in the goodness of God, and tempt us to leave the path of obedience.

Therefore, every triumph of faith, and all perseverance in obedience, are testimonies to the goodness of God and the preciousness of Christ — whether the enemy is sickness, Satan, sin, or sabotage. Therefore, all suffering, of every kind, that we endure in the path of our Christian calling is a suffering “with Christ” and “for Christ.”

With him in the sense that the suffering comes to us as we are walking with him by faith, and in the sense that it is endured in the strength he supplies through his sympathizing high-priestly ministry to us (Hebrews 4:15).

And for him in the sense that the suffering tests and proves our allegiance to his goodness and power, and in the sense that it reveals his worth as an all-sufficient compensation and prize.

John Piper 

Start each morning clean

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

Psalm 51:2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Before a priest could enter the Holy of Holies, he had to stop by the basin and wash his hands and feet. He had already been washed from head to toe, but there is no floor in the tabernacle, only dirt. This final preparation before he entered God’s presence was to symbolize the washing away of the defilement of this world.

As you and I come into contact with the world, we are going to become defiled. We don’t need a bath all over. We are already saved. But each day we must ask God to search our hearts and cleanse us once again from our sins.

ACTION POINT:

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if each of us came into the presence of God as seriously as the Old Testament priests? We should. Have you been to the cleansing basin this morning?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Radical Recompense

“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29–30)

What Jesus means here is that he himself makes up for every sacrifice.

If you give up a mother’s nearby affection and concern, you get back one hundred times the affection and concern from the ever-present Christ.

If you give up the warm comradeship of a brother, you get back one hundred times the warmth and comradeship of Christ.

If you give up the sense of at-homeness you had in your house, you get back one hundred times the comfort and security of knowing that your Lord owns every house.

To prospective missionaries, Jesus says, “I promise to work for you, and be for you, so much that you will not be able to speak of having sacrificed anything.”

What was Jesus’s attitude to Peter’s “sacrificial” spirit? Peter said, “We have left everything and followed you” (Mark 10:28). Is this the spirit of “self-denial” commended by Jesus? No, it is rebuked.

Jesus said to Peter, “No one ever sacrifices anything for me that I do not pay back a hundredfold — yes, in one sense even in this life, not to mention eternal life in the age to come.”

John Piper 

New leaves push out the old

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Our eyes delight to see those trees in autumn which turn glorious colors, then drop their leaves one by one. But there are certain trees that hold their leaves until spring. They wither and turn brown, but they don’t drop. Not until spring do these trees lose their leaves—when the new leaves push out the old leaves.

That’s exactly what happens to our old habits and our old lives when we find the Lord Jesus. The new life pushes that old life off.

ACTION POINT:

It’s not a matter of plucking off this leaf and knocking off that leaf. The Christian life is not forged in that manner. Our new life replaces our old life when we are born again.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Possible with God

“I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” (John 10:16)

God has a people in every people group in the world. He will call them through the gospel with Creator power. And they will believe! What a power is in these words for overcoming discouragement in the hard places of the frontiers!

The story of Peter Cameron Scott is a good illustration. Born in Glasgow in 1867, Scott became the founder of the Africa Inland Mission. But his beginnings in Africa were anything but auspicious.

His first trip to Africa ended in a severe attack of malaria that sent him home. He resolved to return after he recuperated. This return was especially gratifying to him because this time his brother John joined him. But before long, John was struck down by fever.

All alone, Peter buried his brother in African soil, and in the agony of those days recommitted himself to preach the gospel in Africa. Yet his health gave way again, and he had to return to England.

How would he ever pull out of the desolation and depression of those days? He had pledged himself to God. But where could he find the strength to go back to Africa? With man it was impossible!

He found strength in Westminster Abbey. David Livingstone’s tomb is still there. Scott entered quietly, found the tomb, and knelt in front of it to pray. The inscription reads:

OTHER SHEEP I HAVE WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD; THEM ALSO I MUST BRING.

He rose from his knees with a new hope. He returned to Africa. And today, over a hundred years later, the mission he founded is a vibrant, growing force for the gospel in Africa.

If your greatest joy is to experience the infilling grace of God overflowing from you for the good of others, then the best news in all the world is that God will do the impossible through you for the salvation of the unreached peoples.

John Piper 

If you keep your eyes on Jesus…

BIBLE MEDITATION:

And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

John 16:22

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

When I was a boy, living on the Florida coastline, my brother and I were always a little disappointed when a hurricane passed us by because of the exhilaration we experienced leaning into the wind and tasting the salty air! I can remember ocean waves sometimes reaching fifty feet in the air. What a sight! But did you know there has never been a storm that could move the ocean floor?

Storms will course across the surface of our lives with raging torment, but the child of God can know a deep-down unmovable joy. If you keep your eyes on Jesus, He will bring a joy no one can take from you.

ACTION POINT:

Thank God for the steadfastness of His power, love, and mercy. Is your joy full in Christ today despite the winds of adversity?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Opened Minds

Understanding the scriptures comes from God alone.

He searches the heart.

He knows Your every thought.

He gives true meaning to what you study.

He allows you to teach and share with others.

He warns you of sin.

Lord, open our hearts to Your life giving word.

Let us cherish it, teach it, obey it, and never let the world twist its meaning. Let us repent when we fail. We praise You for Jesus. He alone is able to give salvation according to Your command and by Your power. Amen

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, - Luke 24:45

They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?" - Luke 24:32

then he opens the ears of men and terrifies them with warnings,  - Job 33:16

One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. - Acts 16:14

20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols. - 1 John 5:20-21

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,

40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

41 I do not receive glory from people.

42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

43 I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.

44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope.

46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.

47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" - John 5:39-47

Medicine for the Missionary

“All things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27)

Sovereign grace is the spring of life for the Christian Hedonist. For what the Christian Hedonist loves best is the experience of the sovereign grace of God filling him, and overflowing for the good of others.

Christian Hedonist missionaries love the experience of “not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). They bask in the truth that the fruit of their missionary labor is entirely of God (1 Corinthians 3:7; Romans 11:36).

They feel only gladness when the Master says, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). They leap like lambs over the truth that God has taken the impossible weight of new creation off their shoulders and put it on his own. Without begrudging, they say, “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).

When they come home on furlough, nothing gives them more joy than to say to churches, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience” (Romans 15:18).

“All things are possible with God!” — in front the words give hope, and behind they give humility. They are the antidote to despair and the antidote to pride — the perfect missionary medicine.

John Piper 

The link between sexual immorality and mental health

BIBLE MEDITATION:

For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. 

1 Thessalonians 4:7

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A former president of the American Psychiatric Association said, “Premarital sex relationships resulting from the so-called new morality have greatly increased the number of young people in mental hospitals.”

Dr. Billy Graham said he talked to the head psychiatrist at one of our great universities. At that time he said, “Over fifty percent of the students at that university are suffering psychological problems because of immoral relationships.”

ACTION POINT:

Friend, why does God tell us to live a pure and holy life? It’s not only so that we can have fellowship with Him, but also it is for our own mental health! He knows holiness brings life to our bones, healing to our hearts, and joy to our steps!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Great Missionary Hope

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:5)

The great missionary hope is that when the gospel is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, God himself does what man cannot do: he creates the faith that saves. The call of God does what the call of man can’t. It raises the dead. It creates spiritual life. It is like the call of Jesus to Lazarus in the tomb, “Come out!” And the dead man obeyed and came out. The call created the obedience by creating life (John 11:43). That is how anyone is saved.

We can waken someone from sleep with our call, but God’s call can summon into being things that are not (Romans 4:17). God’s call is irresistible in the sense that it can overcome all resistance. It is infallibly effective according to God’s purpose — so much so that Paul can say, “Those whom [God] called he also justified” (Romans 8:30), even though we are only justified by our faith.

In other words, God’s call is so effectual that it infallibly creates the faith through which a person is justified. All the called are justified according to Romans 8:30. But none is justified without faith (Romans 5:1). So the call of God cannot fail in its intended effect. It irresistibly brings into being the faith that justifies.

This is what man cannot do. It is impossible. Only God can take out the heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26). Only God can draw people to the Son (John 6:44, 65). Only God can open the spiritually dead heart so that it gives heed to the gospel (Acts 16:14). Only the Good Shepherd knows his sheep, and calls them by name with such compelling power that they all follow — and never perish (John 10:3–4, 14).

The sovereign grace of God, doing the humanly impossible, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, is the great missionary hope.

John Piper 

What it will cost you to compromise with Satan

BIBLE MEDITATION:

In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and His children shall have a place of refuge.

Proverbs 14:26

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

The devil hates families who worship together. He will allow parents to be religious, but he does not want them to take their children to heaven with them. As a result, we’re losing an entire generation. Our children are being left behind to die and go to hell because we are compromising with Satan.

Catherine Booth, wife of the founder of the Salvation Army, prayed, “Oh God, I will not stand before Thee without all my children.”

ACTION POINT:

There are many fathers and mothers today who need to say that. Stand firm, Mom. Stand firm, Dad. Gather those children close to you and love them to Jesus.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Christ Is Like Sunlight

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. (Hebrews 1:3)

Jesus relates to God the way radiance relates to glory, or the way the rays of sunlight relate to the sun.

Keep in mind that every analogy between God and natural things is imperfect and will distort if you press it. Nevertheless, consider for example,

There is no time that the sun exists without the beams of radiance. They cannot be separated. The radiance is co-eternal with the glory. Christ is co-eternal with God the Father.

The radiance is the glory radiating out. It is not essentially different from the glory. Christ is God standing forth as separate but not essentially different from the Father.

Thus the radiance is eternally begotten, as it were, by the glory — not created or made. If you put a solar-activated calculator in the sunlight, numbers appear on the face of the calculator. These, you could say, are created or made by the sun, but they are not what the sun is. But the rays of the sun are an extension of the sun. So Christ is eternally begotten of the Father, but not made or created.

We see the sun by means of seeing the rays of the sun. So we see God the Father by seeing Jesus. The rays of the sun arrive here about eight minutes after they leave the sun, and the round ball of fire that we see in the sky is the image — the exact representation — of the sun; not because it is a painting of the sun, but because it is the sun streaming forth in its radiance.

So I commend this great Person to you that you might trust in him and love him and worship him. He is alive and sitting at the right hand of God with all power and authority and will one day come in great glory. He has that exalted place because he is himself God the Son, “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”

John Piper 

Just give me Jesus

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

Psalm 29:2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A man lived a long life as a believer and a follower of Christ, and now he was dying. His loved ones came and asked him to sign his name to a necessary legal document. They explained, “Daddy, if you would sign this, it would help us with a lot of legal difficulties. We hate to mention it, but it needs to be done.”

Facing eternity, with a quivering hand the old man willingly signed the paper. Before long, he went to be with the Lord.

When his family saw the document, to their amazement he had signed, “Jesus.” More than likely, it was the only name that meant anything to him in those moments.

ACTION POINT:

What name means the most to you right now? There will come a time when the only name that will mean anything to you is—Jesus.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

God’s Final, Decisive Word

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

The last days begin with the coming of the Son into the world. “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” We have been living in the last days since the days of Christ — that is, the last days of history as we know it before the final and full establishment of the kingdom of God.

The point for the writer of Hebrews is this: The Word that God spoke by his Son is the decisive Word. By the Son’s own design, that word has been captured for the ages in the writings of the New Testament. He explicitly made provision for this, lest every generation be left to itself to dream up the decisive word of God. This word will not be followed in this age by any greater word or replacement word. This is the Word of God — the person of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus, and the work of Jesus, captured by inspiration in the apostolic writings we call the New Testament.

When I complain that I don’t hear the Word of God, when I feel a desire to hear the voice of God, and get frustrated that he does not speak in ways that I may crave, what am I really saying? Am I really saying that I have exhausted this final, decisive Word revealed to me so fully and infallibly in the New Testament? Have I really exhausted this Word? Has it become so much a part of me that it has shaped my very being and given me life and guidance?

Or have I treated it lightly — skimmed it like a newspaper, clicked through like a quick series of internet postings, dipped in like a taste-tester — and then decided I wanted something different, something more? This is what I fear I am guilty of more than I wish to admit.

God is calling us to hear his final, decisive, inexhaustible Word — to meditate on it and study it and memorize it and linger over it and soak in it until it saturates us to the center of our being.

John Piper 

Are you helping the cause of Christ?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?

Romans 10:14

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

You are either a helper or a hurter when it comes to reaching the world for Christ. Why? Because, like “Big Brother,” the world is watching your Sunday-go-to-church behavior and how it compares to your behavior the rest of the week.

Do they see you giving your time and resources to help them when they’re hurting? Do they witness how you treat your family? Or how you entertain your friends? Or do you even know their names?

ACTION POINT:

The greatest argument for Christ and the greatest argument against Christ is the life of a Christian. Hymn writer Philip P. Bliss penned, “Let the lower lights be burning! Send a gleam across the wave! Some poor fainting struggling seaman You may rescue, you may save.”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Divine Blueprint: God's Design For Your Marriage

Marriage is God's plan.

He ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman.

Definition of biblical submission 

The willingness to yield to the biblical role God has designed for your life.

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?"

4 He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,

5 and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? - Matthew 19:3-5

1. Wives submit to your husbands.

God's plan

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. - Ephesians 5:22-24

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,

17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." - Genesis 2:15-17

Satan's plan for not submitting. 

He twist the truth into the a lie!

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" 

2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,

3 but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die.

5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 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.

7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?"

10 And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself."

11 He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?"

12 The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate."

13 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 3:1-13

We are all in the same in Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28

We are on the team of Christ 

We have different jobs.

14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

15 If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body.

16 And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body.

17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?

18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. - 1 Corinthians 12:14-18

How do wives submit to their husbands?

1. Reverence for Christ.

21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. - Ephesians 5:21-22

How do you submit to your husband?

2. Respect for husband.

He desires your esteem.

However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. - Ephesians 5:33

Husbands love your wives.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, - Ephesians 5:25

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. - Ephesians 5:28

However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. - Ephesians 5:33

How do men love their wives?

1. Continuously 

It's feeling plus commitment.

2. Sacrificially 

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, - Ephesians 5:25

How Christ loves us

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8

Love cost and it's demanding.

3. Love passionately 

28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, - Ephesians 5:28-29

Men have egos.

Men are prideful.

You must walk in satisfaction in Christ.

There is no happily ever after except in the will of Christ.

For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.  - Psalm 107:9

"We sin because we are looking to something else to give us what only Jesus can give us".

Tim Keller

Thank you Pastor Kevin!!