Skip Heitzig - Falling Hard, Recovering Strong
You and I grew up with nursery rhymes, specially Mother Goose nursery rhymes. They seem innocent enough, but if you ever stop to look at the words, when you do, you discover that some of them are macabre, downright disturbing. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Now little Jack was not a king. This was not a king's crown that he broke. That's an old English word for his head. So you're singing about a kid who had a skull fracture. It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring. He went to bed with a lump on his head and didn't get up in the morning. He didn't get up. Why didn't he get up? I'm guessing he died in his sleep. Some intracranial bleeding, some hematoma, some bad thing happened to him. Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub. I don't even want to go there.
Then there's a nursery rhyme about an egg that turns into scrambled eggs for a king. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty back together again. That was a great fall, but that is a sort of a set up for something I want you to look at that is not a nursery rhyme. It is not a fairy tale. It's a real story about a real fall, and the repercussions of that we are still feeling to this very day. It's the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, and it's a real story about a real man and a real woman with a real experience. It is a biblical history.
And I want to underscore that because whenever you get to the first few chapters of Genesis, in the New Testament whenever it's spoken of or treated, whether it's Jesus or Paul or anyone else, they always refer to it not as mythological or allegorical, but always as literal, historical reality. Jesus referred using marriage as the topic, and went back to Genesis 3 and went through what happened between Adam and Eve. So if this isn't right, then Jesus isn't right. If Jesus isn't right, then you're believing somebody who didn't tell you the truth. Also, Jesus' own genealogical records go back to Adam. In Luke, Chapter 3, there is name after name after name, and it goes all the way back to Adam. His genealogical record is traced to Adam.
Then you get to the book of Jude, that single chapter book in the New Testament, where in Jude, Verse 14, it talks about the biological record of Enoch, listen to what it says, who was the seventh from Adam. So we are dealing with the back story behind why everything in the world is so bad. It's because of the fall that happened. It wasn't Humpty Dumpty who sat on this wall. It was Adam and Eve who sat on this wall. And they had a great fall. They fell hard. You might say he bombed. This was the first Adam bomb. Adam really, really bombed out. And we're bummed out because of it. Paul refers to this in the fifth chapter of Romans, when he wants to just kind of show everyone why it's so bad, he goes through one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin, so that death spread to all. The one man he was referring to was this man, Adam.
And he makes a contrast between the one man, Adam, and the one man, Jesus, who came to fix it all. So the entire world and all of humanity was affected ever since. Now we're doing a series, Crash and Burn. And the premise of it is we want to learn to fly by looking at those who fell. We want to get good lessons from bad examples. So you know those story so well. You know it so well. And typically when I teach this, and I have taught it on many occasions, I outline it. You always want to give an outline to hang your thoughts on. I typically outline it according to the people involved or the plot that unfolds. But what I want to do is jump right in and outline it based upon the principles that we find. I want this to be very practical. And there are warnings that are written about in Genesis, Chapter 3. I'm going to give you five of them. I'm going to give you five useful lessons, five warnings to keep us from falling like these two.
And here's the first. Choices will be challenged. Whatever good choice you make will be challenged. Verse 1, now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Eve is immediately challenged by Satan. Shortly after they are created in the garden, Adam and Eve, they're now enjoying this new relationship of marriage in the garden. And she is questioned.
She's alone, obviously. Adam has gone off somewhere naming animals somewhere or exploring the garden God has made. But he's not there, and he'll be back. We'll see. But Eve is questioned by Satan, by this being we looked at in part last time. And she tells the reason why she has chosen to obey God. Because God said something. This is what God said. This is what, I'm obeying because God said this. To which he counteracts it, in saying God didn't say that. So just look at this a little more carefully, because the Bible tells us in Second Corinthians that we are not ignorant of Satan's devices. I wish that were true of all of us. We are not ignorant or we are not unaware of his schemes. So let's look at some of these schemes, because this is the conception of deception. This is where it all begins. And you will notice that, first of all, Satan challenged God's love.
Verse 1, has got indeed said you shall not eat of every tree? Now in that question, there is an implication. This being, Satan, is implying if God loved you, why would he keep you from enjoying yourselves? Why would he dare keep away from you something that would bring to you happiness? Sound familiar? You've heard that. If God is a God of love, why would he not allow you to have joy? Why would he keep you in this marriage? You're not happy here. Go get out of it. Whatever makes you happy. He tried the same with Jesus Christ when he took him to a high mountain and tempted him. He said, hey, since you're the Son of God, why are you hungry? How can your father be so loving that he would neglect the needs of his son? Turn these stones into bread. Man, you could make a bakery right here. You could put a Panera bread stand right here in the wilderness. Why would your father keep you from that? So he challenges God's love.
Notice in Verse 4, he challenges God's word. As soon as Eve says, listen, this is why. Because God said this. He says in Verse 4, you're not going to die. You're not going to, God said you're going to die, but you're not going to die. In other words, he's calling God a liar. This is a direct attack on God's word. Satan gets you to question God's blueprint, God's word, the Bible. This thing's outdated. This won't work in my situation. The Bible won't work in real life. You have to go to the secular world to get real help. It's good to believe on Sunday, but phht. I'll never forget a couple who came to one of the services some years back. I know about this because somebody who attends here all the time was there that day, right behind them. And he overheard her turn to her husband as I was teaching and said, oh my goodness, he actually believes this book literally.
I said, well, I'm glad she got that message, because it's true. I do. But it was such a shock. Satan challenges God's word. Third thing I want you to notice, he challenged God's truth. Verse 5, he says well, you know, God knows that in the day that you eat of it, your eyes are going to be opened and you're going to be like God, knowing good and evil. Now Satan is suggesting something here. You're going to be like God. God knows that. God doesn't like competition. Actually, he's sort of speaking autobiographical. His own experience is he said, I will be like the most high. And he is still sort of reeling from that. Saying God doesn't like anyone to be his equal. He won't tolerate that. God knows if you eat, you're going to be just like God.
Now let's just cut to the chase here. Satan is a liar. That's what Jesus said. John, Chapter 8, Satan is a liar, and the father of lies. And he lies about two things principally, God's character and God's word. Who God is and what God has said. And his strategy is to get you to think that what God said isn't the truth, but that he, Satan, will tell you the whole truth. God can't be trusted. His word can't be trusted. And if his word can't be trusted, then you might as well replace the Bible with whatever you feel is right for you at that time. Make it up as you go along. And so we'll take and we'll change terms around.
And our culture has become very good at taking old sins and giving them new names. Even the word sin that I just mentioned, try seeing if that's tolerated. Want a fun little experiment? Talk about sin tomorrow at work. Just bring that up. Just say, hey, I just want you to know that God says that's sin and you shouldn't do that. Just try, try that out. See how far that conversation will last. There are new terms for old sins. There's a book that's been put out a few years ago, I grabbed a little snippet of it, called The Officially Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook. Some of it was written tongue in cheek. Some of it was written based on just pure research. The term promiscuous or immoral is now simply sexually active. When is the last time you heard anyone being referred to as immoral or promiscuous? They're just sexually active.
Instead of dishonest, a person is ethically disoriented. Differently honest. A drug addict is a person with a pharmacological difference. Ooh, that sounds like you earned that. If you're drunk, you're just chemically inconvenienced, sobriety deprived. Stealing and looting is now nontraditional shopping. What are you doing? Shopping. A serial killer is somebody who is socially misaligned, one with difficult to meet needs. Well, that puts a whole new spin on the Ten Commandments. Instead of, thou shalt not kill, it's thou shalt not be socially misaligned. Instead of thou shalt not steal, it's do not be a nontraditional shopper. Listen, we're all going to be challenged. When you put the stake down in the ground that says who you are and what you believe, your faith is going to be challenged, your positions are going to be challenged, your love for God will be challenged, God's love for you will be a challenged. Jesus in the Bible says, don't marvel if the whole world hates you.
So you just got to know that going in and you have to be prepared for how you're going to deal and manage that kind of challenge, how you're going to meet it. Like the old saying, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So when you are challenged, what are you going to do to meet it? The Bible says in Proverbs 22, it's the prudent man that sees danger and takes refuge. So what you do going in is you take on the full armor of God, it says. You cling to the truth. Jesus said, you will know the truth, the truth will set you free. Satan will say, oh no, God wants to puts you in bondage. I'll make you free. Just know that he'll do that going in. And when you get up in the morning, put on the full armor of God before you go out the door. So choices will be challenged.
Here's a second warning, comes from our text. Allurement does not mean entitlement. In other words, just because something looks good doesn't mean you should have it. Verse 6, so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, what's wrong with any of that, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. This forbidden fruit, whatever it was, and we don't know what it was, Well, I thought it was an apple. That's just an old kind of a legend that comes from a few Latin words. And so people think it's an apple. And there's even a legend that says that Adam choked on his apple, that's why men today have an Adam's apple. I mean, I kid you not. This is, it gets nuts. So we don't know what kind of fruit it was.
But whatever it was, I wouldn't be tempted by an apple. A mango, yeah. Well, whatever it was, to Eve, it was attractive in every conceivable way. It was attractive physically, nutritionally, educationally. It's good for food, pleasant to the eyes, desirous to make one wise. That is what I want. It looks good. I want it. Now listen to this and see how closely these verses parallel. In the New Testament, John writes, in First John, Chapter 2, love not the world. Neither the things that are in this world. If anyone loves the world, the love of a father is not in him. For all that is of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, is not of the father but is of the world. And the world is passing away and the lust thereof. But whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Now look how closely those parallel. She saw it was good for food, lust of the flesh. She saw that it was pleasant to the eyes, lust of the eyes. She saw that it was desirous to make one wise, the pride of life. I mean, it was just kind of like, check, check, check. Firing on all cylinders for Eve. It just looked good, and she felt, it looks good. I ought to have it. It's like the woman I had told you about, I think, in previous times about, this gal, she was married to a cheapskate. Her husband said, whatever you do when you go out, you are not allowed to buy anything for yourself unless you ask my permission first. Some men still sort of do that today. But this guy was just a miser, right? So she went out and she said, I'm going shopping. And her husband reeled around, said you're going what?
I'm going shopping. It's not nontraditional shopping, don't worry. I'm not going to steal anything. Just going shopping. He says, you're going window shopping. You will look but you will not buy. You got it? She goes, I got it. I know, honey. So she comes back a couple hours later with a bag and a brand new dress. Husband said, I thought I said you're not to buy anything. She goes, honey, I know. But I tried this dress on and it looks so good on me and I was tempted. He said, you were tempted? You should have said, get thee behind me, Satan. She goes, I said that, but when he got behind me, he said, you know, from the back, it really looks good, too. I'm just saying. Eve's cravings blurred Eve's convictions. What she saw, and she looked at it, and she kept looking at it, and she gazed upon it. And in so doing, she ignored God's warnings about it. So Eve's look offset God's law. She thought, I have to have it.
Proverbs 23 says, do not look on the wine while it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it swirls around smoothly. At the last, it bites like a serpent and stings like a viper. In other words, there's lots of pretty things in this world that will hurt you. They look good. They seem good. They feel good, but they're not necessarily good. And before you think, well, I'm entitled to it. I deserve it. Let me tell you something, we are entitled to whatever God gives us. Whatever God, God knows what you need. He knows your needs. He also knows your greeds. And he's promised to meet your needs, not your greeds. He knows what you need. And you are entitled to whatever God, in his grace, decides you ought to have, nothing more, nothing less. Paul the Apostle might have thought, I'm entitled to a healing. After all, I'm the great Apostle Paul. I do more to spread the gospel around this world than anybody else. I'm right in the chunk of the New Testament.
I deserve for God to heal me. Because he had a physical affliction. And he said, I asked God to heal me three times. And God told him this, my grace is enough. My grace is sufficient for you. And my strength will be manifest in your weakness, not in the absence of your weakness. So you and I are entitled to whatever God gives us. Allurement doesn't mean entitlement.
Here's a third warning. Disobedience is worse than deception. Now I'm stating it this way because Eve, we will find out, was deceived. Adam knew what he was doing. In Verse 6, it says the woman saw the tree was good for food. She's checking it out. It was pleasant to the eye. She's scoping it out. A tree desirable to make one wise. She's thinking about it more. She took its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Now that's all it says about Adam. He ate it. That's all we're told here. Eve is a little different. She's listening to the devil. She's having a conversation with him. She's reasoning this thing out. When it comes to Adam, he's just like a guy, grabbed it and ate it. Done. It's over. When you get to the New Testament, you know who to blame for this whole fall falls on? Not Eve, Adam. He's the guy responsible.
And here's why. Paul the Apostle, 1 Timothy, Chapter 2, verse 14 tells us, Adam was not deceived. But the woman being deceived fell into transgression. All of that to say, Eve was tricked, Adam knew what he was doing. He rebelled. So deception is one thing, disobedience is another. Both of them are bad. What they both did was wrong. But one is worse than another. Disobedience, flat out, I'm going to do what I want when I want it, is much worse than being tricked into something. This is why the prophet Samuel said to Saul, to obey is better than sacrifice, to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry.
Now we got to ask this question, why did Adam eat it if he knew it was wrong? She didn't. Yeah, maybe you're right. No, OK. But Adam comes along, knowing it's wrong, says, I'm going to do it. Why did he do that? If he knew it was wrong, why did he eat of it? Well, we don't know for sure, but perhaps, some suggest, it's because he loved Eve so much that he wanted to share in her punishment, didn't want her to be alone. We're in this together. Now that might sound noble and chivalrous, but I got to tell you, it's dumb. In fact, it's idolatry. Whenever you place your wife or your husband or your child or anyone else above God, that's idolatry. So that was not a smart move. Now I don't know what he was thinking. He could have thought, but we love each other so much and our love will get us through this hard time. Disobedience is worse than deception.
There's a fourth lesson I want you to notice, and that is a hard heart will bring a hard life. Or put another way, life gets harder when you decide not to do what's right. I'm sure Adam and Eve had no clue how bad things were going to get after this. Do you? You think they knew all the repercussions? Uh-uh. But what are some of them? Verse 16, to the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrows and your conception. In pain, you will bring forth children. So every time you go through labor pains, women, when you have those wonderful babies and it hurts so much, just say, thank you, Eve. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. Then to Adam he said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree which I commanded you saying, you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake.
In toil, you shall eat of it, all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you shall return. And Adam called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living.
Now let's just say that Adam made the decision to join his wife, knowing it's wrong. But he said, you know what? I don't know what's going to happen but whatever happens, our love will be able to take it. We can sustain it. We love each other so much. I bring this up because, you know, I've met so many couples over the years who are in a marriage, things aren't going right. And then they see somebody else and they start swearing, that's my soulmate. And we're together and boy, we have a love and we have a spark when we enter the room together. And I know that if I have this affair and maybe leave my wife or husband and have this person that it's going to disrupt things and my friends and my kids. But our love is so strong, it's going to carry us through whatever storm we face. I've heard that. What I want you to know is this, whatever price you think you'll pay is not the price you will pay.
The price that Adam and Eve actually paid is not what they thought, otherwise they wouldn't have done it had they known how bad it's going to get. Now just think for a moment how good life was for Adam and Eve in the garden. They had it made in the garden. They didn't pay any rent. They didn't have to pay any bills. Every need was met, every meal was provided, life was good.
But when they crossed the line from obedience to disobedience, from compliance to noncompliance, everything in life, everything in life changed and became much harder. Now they're no longer pure. Soon they will no longer be kept in that garden. They will be cast out of the garden. Now, no longer can they get low lying fruit already hanging there, already provided for them. All they have to do is walk by and take it and eat it. Now they have to work the ground. Now they have to sweat and earn and work the ground themselves.
So I think it's summed up nicely when Paul, in Galatians 6, says, do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. And if he sows to the flesh, he will of the flesh reap corruption. If he sows to the spirit, he will of the spirit reap everlasting life. Adam and Eve had no clue. But here is the truth, a hard heart brings a hard life. Life now gets much harder for this couple.
Now not only for them, but this marks the darkest day for the human race. What happens to the human race after this, in fact, this is where all the trouble begins. Up until this point, innocence was flowing through the blood veins of Adam and Eve. But now a fatal contaminant has entered, the contaminant that was first seen last time when we were together and we studied the fall of Lucifer in heaven. And he said something in his heart. He thought something in his mind. I will, I will, I will, I will.
That contaminant is now on earth in Adam and Eve. That sin contaminant will flow through every human being throughout history, from that time till our time. You see, when Adam sinned, he generated what theologians call a constitutional change of character. He acted as the federal head of the human race, so that he did something that affected all of us.
It's like a kid standing in front of a lake in the mountains, early in the morning. A pristine reflection can be seen of the mountains in the distance on that lake. Everybody's enjoying the reflection. It's a perfect moment until one kid decides to take a rock and throw it in the lake. And the image is marred. Adam was the kid who threw the rock in the lake. And the image is marred. The image of God that we're created in, the image of God, the image is marred and has been ever since.
In fact, not only does it affect Adam and Eve, not only will it affect their children and their children's children and children's children's children and our kids, all of creation is affected. Did you know that? All of creation, Romans, Chapter 8, the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. That can be seen geologically in earthquakes and mudslides, landslides, volcanoes, avalanches.
It could be seen meteorologically in floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, cyclones, droughts. It can be seen morally in the breakdown of marriage and family, in rampant sexual practices, and it can be seen culturally in the tyranny of government, in economic injustice and in business practices. It can be seen with the deprivation and decadence seen in art and music, year by year. And it can be seen individually in physical disease, mental disease, separation from God. That's how bad it got. That's how bad it got.
Don't believe the hype, folks. Satan pulls something out and dangles it in front of you and you go, ooh, that looks good. Look a little closer and notice underneath that little thing is a hook. That's just the bait. Don't believe the hype. He'll tell you the pleasure of drinking. He won't tell you the result of alcoholism. He'll tell you about the pleasure of illicit sex, not the result of a sexually transmitted disease. He'll tell you the pleasure of drug use, but not the result of an addiction. In other words, he'll dangle before you the immediate. He'll keep from you the ultimate.
Ooh, that looks so good. I'm going to eat that fruit. Life gets harder when you don't do what's right. I want to close with a fifth lesson, a fifth warning, a fifth principle that comes out of this chapter. And that is a covering is always better than a cover up. Immediately, they try to cover up what they did. Verse 7, then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. That's just a funny little sentence to me. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And then the Lord called to Adam and said to him, where are you? So he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you that you should not eat?
Then the man said, the woman, we always do that, men. We want to pass the buck, it's the chick, it's the gal. It's called passing the buck. But he's not just passing the buck to her, he's actually saying, God, it's your fault. Notice what it says, the woman you gave to be with me. This is your idea. I went to sleep single, I woke up married. This is the wife you gave me.
She gave me of the tree and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? She sort of does the same thing. It's the serpent. He deceived me. And I ate. Hiding is the instinctive reaction to guilt. When we have guilt, we hide. Where is that person that used to come to church all the time with you? Why don't they anymore? They want to hide from you. Why? They're uncomfortable being around you. They don't know what you're going to say to them or now what they're going to say to you. So they hide.
I remember when my son was a little kid. He got one report card that was particularly bad and I was looking for the report card. He had hid it. And he goes, that report card, where is that? I don't know what I did with that. We finally found it. And I understood why he wanted to hide it. But when I looked at it, I smiled, because I remember I also would hide some of my report cards from my parents, that weren't so good.
Now where do we learn that behavior from? Adam. Adam. He did it first. They're not even comfortable being around God anymore. God used to hang out with them and walk with them in the cool of the day. They're not even comfortable in God's presence. And notice, they become very self-conscious. There's a new awareness. Hey, we're naked. I laugh at that because you mean, you guys just now figured that out? You don't think like a week ago or a day ago that the cool air on your skin sort of was a dead giveaway that you have no clothes on?
The point is, they never thought about it before. Now they become self-conscious. Now they're very self-aware. Guilt does that. It makes a person very self-oriented. When they're around people, they think about themselves. What do they think of me? And that's what happens. So look at Verse 21, also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. And the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us to know good and evil. And now he has put out his hand.
Unless he put out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever, God didn't want him to live in that fallen state, that's why he kept him out of the garden. Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man, and he placed cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden and a flaming sword, which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
So this whole fig leaf ensemble they were wearing was just not working. First of all, have you ever felt fig leaves? They're very rough. I can't imagine putting them on the tenderest parts of your body. But they put figure leaves on. Now something happens whenever you pick a fig leaf or any leaf and you try to wear it. You know what happens to it eventually. It dries, or it dies, it falls off. And then you're naked again.
So it's a very temporary fix. It won't last very long. So God clothes them with animal skins. This is the first instance of innocent blood shed to cover human sin. They want to make a cover up. God wants to give them a covering. And so an animal dies. In order to be clothed with animal skins, animals have to die. Blood has to be shed. That's what sin does. Sin kills.
Now when this happened, I can only imagine Adam and Eve going, what? What just happened? You know why? Because God made a promise back in Chapter 2. In the day that you eat of that fruit, you will surely die. So I got to tell you, when God came to the garden that day and said, Adam, where are you? Adam going around, oh, goodie, it's God. He was turning to Eve going, we're dead. We're going to die.
God said we're going to die. This is God coming after us. Only to discover that they didn't die, that something died in their place, for them, to cover them. It's anticipating the gospel of Jesus Christ, the covering through the gospel. God is showing that it's possible for a substitute to die for a sinner. You may want to cover up. You need a covering.
You always have two choices in dealing with sin. Here they are, ready? Whenever there is sin, you can do one of two things, run from God, run to God. Run from God, that's instinctive. That's guilt. That's hiding. That's separation. Run to God, that's redemption. God, cover my sin. Well, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty back together again. Humpty needs a better king.
The King of Kings can do what Humpty's king cannot do. The King of Kings, our King, is in the business of taking broken lives and putting them back together. And he does so by a covering, by sending his son to die on a cross. As predicted also in this chapter, in Verse 15, the proto evangelium of the Old Testament. Don't have time to get into it, but it speaks about someone who will be born to crush the head of Satan, eventually. Beautiful promise. Adam and Eve are experiencing that covering in this moment.
Father, we thank you for incredible truths of people who fell, and this fall, this bomb affected us all. This isn't like other sins that we read about, or other people's activities we hear about. This is something that affects us all. Lord, I just pray that we would walk away remembering that it never pays for us to make our own get up, our own covering. Because it's our own works, and they're inadequate. They bring temporary, at best, relief, but not eternal. But what you offer in sense of a covering for sin, like John the Baptist, he said, look, there's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. One man by one man's sin entered the world, but by a second Adam, another man, the Lord Jesus Christ, the God man, we can know life, forgiveness, and covering. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the gospel, even in the fall. In Jesus' name, Amen.