So since we're little later because we took a little side trip there, which needed to be done,
I just won't develop as much on some of these points.
But we're talking about a series, a new series we're doing, of our identity in Christ.
This is the second message in.
Last Sunday we started way back with actually pre-Adam and Eve in heaven and the fall of
Lucifer and him being cast to the earth with a third of the angels and that whole thing.
We started with that and came through and answered, hopefully, the question, why did God even create
man number one?
And a bigger question is why did he put him on the earth with Satan and the fallen angels?
So we were designed to create it for a very specific reason.
That's why, from God's perspective, he loaded us up with such authority and power that he
wants us walking in now.
But that's why is because of what our purpose was, our job was, and hopefully it helped
us understand our design, helped us understand our purpose, who we were pre-sin in the
earth, who we were.
Problem is, we all know the story.
Eve, Adam made some bad choices, didn't obey God, sinned and took the whole human race
with him.
So to understand who I am today, I need to understand my design, what God created
me to be.
But I also need to understand that what I'm living in now, my human element, my flesh,
my fallen nature that I'm still living with or in, also affects who I am today.
So you can't leave out a piece because, well, I don't want to talk about that, no?
The good things and the difficult things make us who we are.
You know, sometimes we don't like to talk about the difficult things and that's okay, but
they still formed you.
They still made you who you are.
So there's a number of things that happened when Adam and Eve sinned.
I'll just list a few of them.
The human race lost its innocence, knowing only good.
Boy, wouldn't it...
To never have an evil thought, an evil desire, only good, good, good, good, good.
It's like, is that even possible?
That's what they lived in.
But boy, it didn't take long after that sin entered the picture that Genesis 6,
verse 5, God says, I got to go deal with this because man's heart, all he thinks
about and does is evil.
So it went from only good to only evil.
That's a big change, not a good one.
The immediate effects of sin took place.
Shame, there was no such thing as shame.
Fear, the naked thing, none of these existed.
Women lost the ability to have a child painlessly.
I'm sure glad there's forgiveness in heaven, or Eve would just be beat up, man.
You get this to me!
There was...childbirth is not supposed to have all the negative things that women suffer,
not only in it, but after it.
None of those were designed by God.
Those were all lost by Adam and Eve.
And the ladies lost the love and companionship of the man.
And everybody that I get ready for marriage, I put this into them.
Everything's lovey-dovey.
Oh, we want to hang out with each other.
We'll stay up till 2, 3 in the morning and get up for work at 5,
and it's just great and life is so wonderful.
Like you said, once the curse of Genesis kicks in, Genesis 3,
everything that was attracting you to him, or specifically the curse for the women,
from him to her, everything that attracted you is going to aggravate you.
Because a curse just took effect.
Okay, I hear the wheels rolling.
But I thought Jesus set us free from the curse.
He did, but it only comes by faith.
You know, all the bad things that can happen, Jesus paid for all of them to stop.
Well, why don't they stop automatically?
Because we have to grab them by faith.
We have to live them out.
And that curse is the same thing.
We do not have to, as men on Father's Day,
live under the curse of,
I used to really think the sun rise and set in her.
Now I just wish it would set.
She aggravates me.
That's the curse.
We've talked about it.
That's not a surprise to her.
That's the curse.
That's what men have to deal with.
Well, you shouldn't say it that plainly.
Why?
It happens in your home all the time.
When you get upset, slam the door.
When you say bad things, when you, it's all like, man, I just wish this would end.
Well, there was a time you wanted to spend eternity together.
And now, all of a sudden, the curse is your desire will still be for your
husband, but he will rule over you.
That's the curse.
That by faith, as godly Christian men, we have to get beyond.
The same way the curse of sickness and disease and poverty and I mean,
on and on, you can go listing.
We have the promises and the right to believe beyond it.
To overcome it.
To be victorious.
To be, you know, when we get to the next Sunday and I list out some of what
Jesus did, you know who you are.
You are victorious.
You are an overcomer.
And you are more than a conqueror.
But if we don't admit we have something to be victorious over and
overcome and conquer.
We're just going to be in denial to how we are.
Best thing to do is accept, yep, that's probably me.
But by faith, I'm going to beat it.
I'm going to get past it.
And women have suffered greatly because of that curse and how men treat women.
And their men should say amen.
Because if the woman does, she's going to suffer again.
Why did you weigh men on the way home?
Can you hear?
Why did you weigh men?
I'm not like that.
All right, can't dwell too long.
Number four, Adam lost the easy life, the easy way of living.
The ground was cursed, produced thistles.
He's going to have to work in a way to produce a livelihood that
he's actually going to perspire.
Do you know perspiration?
Working hard is part of the curse.
I don't, I have all these examples come to my mind that I could give.
I was raised old European.
There is nothing more honorable than a man working to the point
his shirt is soaking wet and he's just putting his whole being into it.
That's God.
Actually, it's not not in the original design.
It's part of what we are looking forward to being released from as time goes on.
We lost our physical immorality, immortality, immorality too, but immortality.
Death got on the physical body and it's appointed on demand once now to die.
Something else that took place that wasn't, God didn't deal with it in Genesis 3,
but it showed up and then Jesus had to confront it,
was the rulership of the world was transferred to Satan.
In other words, a way to say that is everything was lost.
Everything was lost.
God lost man.
He lost the reason he created us.
He lost us being his representative on earth,
ruling and reigning in his authority.
He lost us to Satan. He lost us to sin.
And man lost the reason he was created.
Man lost the fact. I didn't word this just right so I'll reword it now.
God is his superior. God's still a person superior even if you're lost,
but he's not your immediate superior.
Man lost God as his immediate superior.
When Adam and Eve were walking through the garden that they weren't talking to Satan,
their immediate superior was God.
They lost that. They lost the ability.
We lost the ability to rule, to reign.
The garden, our daily access to God, we can have it.
But thank God by the Holy Spirit being given and put back into us.
But even now, people saved the Holy Spirit's living in us.
People baptized in the Holy Spirit where we've actually submitted and given full control to the Holy Spirit.
We still have to work at that daily interaction with God.
It isn't just, boom, it automatically happens.
You have to pursue it. Why?
Because they lost the automatic thing.
Physical immortality. We lost our identity as a human race.
But Satan became the one in charge.
So how'd that happen?
Halfway down, it's not underlined.
It was started by the word by.
By submitting to Satan's word over God's humanity came under the power of sin and death.
And Satan became the de facto influencer or ruler over the rebellious world system.
And that's what Scripture calls them.
Ruler of the world, God of the age, Prince of power of the year.
The whole world lies under the influence, the power, the evil of Satan.
So what you have in Luke chapter 4 verse 6, it's also in Matthew 4, 8, or 9.
Satan explicitly says that the authority of the glory of the kingdoms,
the authority and the glory of the kingdoms of the earth had been given to him
and he could give it to whoever he wanted to.
This is his temptation to Jesus.
Jesus did not counter that and say, it has not.
You don't have that authority. You don't have that.
Jesus did not counter him.
He just dealt with it.
Here's the Scripture in Luke 4.
And he said to him, to you I will give all this power and authority and their glory.
All the magnificent, excellence, preeminence, dignity and grace.
Now you have to really be stretching the truth to look at this world and describe it that way.
The magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity and grace of this planet.
This planet stinks, man.
There's a lot of bad things in this planet.
And to describe it like, oh, he's tempting them, trying to get them.
Come on, Jesus.
It has been turned over to me and I can give it to whomever I will.
Jesus did not counter that statement.
He just said, no, I'm not going to bother to worship you.
There's only one that gets worshiped and that's the Father.
Well, when did he get that?
Well, here is Jesus' input on the same test.
You know, that's what he was, Satan was testing Jesus on.
There is Jesus' input on that.
But the question is, well, where did he, where did he get that?
How did that authority get handed on to him?
Well, when Adam and Eve, we already read it, choose to not obey God and follow what Satan was telling him to do.
They switched gods.
That's why everything changed.
They just switched gods.
They didn't know that was going to be the outcome, but they didn't need to know.
You say, well, why didn't God explain it to them?
All they needed to know is, here's the rule, obey it.
Does that sound familiar sometimes?
Well, if God would just explain to me, it wouldn't make any difference because you'd argue with him.
I've done it.
He was gracious enough to explain something and I'd go, yeah, but God, you know, we're called children for a reason.
You've got your four, five, six, eight, ten year old.
There's some things you just tell them this is the rule.
You don't give them the big, deep explanation because they're just going to argue with you.
Well, we don't agree. We don't under... Yeah, because you're seeing such a small slice of life.
You know, I've always had this saying and it's not to be a belittling saying, it's just kind of a fact.
Well, you're not an adult yet. You haven't raised a family yet.
You aren't out far enough to see this thing the way you'll see it in 30 years.
So feel free to disagree, but here's the rule.
That's kind of God with us. That was God with Adam and Eve.
Here's the rule. Just don't mess with that one tree.
Well, if he'd have explained everything that was going to happen, they'd have still done it.
You can explain it to your kids. Yeah, but if you do this, that'll happen, that'll happen.
Oh, no, it won't. Not for me. It happens.
So you just got to learn to obey the rule.
Sometimes God asks us to do something and he doesn't give us any explanation.
None of our business. We don't need to know.
He just said, do it or don't do it. So just do it or don't do it.
Whatever he's saying, don't do, don't do it.
But they gave the rulership away when they switched gods.
Something really, a couple of bad things came out of that.
We became slaves of sin. There was the Scripture for it.
And we became slaves of Satan or the demonic.
I'll read this one.
You were following the course and fashion of this world, which were under the sway and the tendency of this present age,
following the prince and the power of the air.
You were obedient to and under the control of the demon spirit that still constantly works in the sons of disobedience.
We lost freedom.
And the deception is, if you'll go serve Satan's kingdom, you'll first be free.
Now, it don't work that way.
You'll get in so deep that when he pulls the new shut, you'll just be over.
But it's presented as freedom.
God says no.
Having demons living in you is not freedom.
It'll turn you into a slave.
That's what God says.
So, a couple of really bad things happened.
The human race fell into sin, including all of us.
And because of that, we were subject to Satan.
So again, all was lost.
Everything that God had designed, everything he had planned,
everything of the direction it was supposed to go, without sin, was lost.
So, what does lost mean? I find this interesting.
It's not the definition like, I lost my keys.
I misplaced them. Where's my phone?
They have a new gadget, babes, I might get it for you.
That helps you find your phone.
Because she gets in a hurry and she's grabbing this and she's grabbing that
and she's standing there thinking, I think I got it all.
Okay, let's go.
Oh, where's my phone?
It's not like something we misplaced.
I lost my phone.
Sometimes I leave it in the house.
When I'm outside working in the yard and stuff, I just leave it in the house.
Because I've got it in my pocket and then I got a crawl underneath something.
I don't want to break my phone, so I'll just take it and lay it down.
And an hour later, I go, where did I lay my phone?
And I got a back track. What was I doing?
And I find it in this random, oh yeah, that's right.
I laid it there.
I misplaced it. That's not what lost means.
I lost my phone. I misplaced my phone. Doesn't mean that.
Here's what it means in both languages, all Hebrew and the Greek.
To destroy fully, to ruin or cause it to perish.
It carries a stronger connotation than the English word lost or misplaced.
It implies destruction, perishing or ruin.
It conveys halfway down.
It conveys a ruined condition with ongoing effects.
People or humanity are spiritually destroyed and separated because of sin,
yet still able to be found and restored.
However, this grammatical form adds depth.
Jesus didn't come just to save people who are temporarily misplaced,
like I lost my phone.
He came to save people who are in a permanently ruined state unless they're rescued.
Nothing will change in their life ever if Jesus doesn't come and rescue.
That's the reason Jesus said this.
We were permanently, unendingly, eternally destroyed and ruined.
From what?
What we were created to be.
Our first identity, which was to be with God, to walk with God,
for Him to teach us and guide us and lead us,
uninhibited to rule and reign beside God,
to have this easygoing life, guys, where we never would break a sweat.
We lost that whole works.
And He came to seek and save the ones who lost it.
The ones who this thing was permanently destroyed for them.
So when we lost it, what happened?
How did this...
How does the Scripture describe this ruin, this destruction that hit us?
Well, here are some scriptural descriptions.
I don't have all of them by any means, but I've got enough to paint the picture.
We fell short of the glory of God.
We lost the glory.
Remember last Sunday we talked about how God was clothed to the glory
and God made us to look just like Him.
So they were clothed. Adam and Eve were clothed the glory.
That's why when the glory disappeared, they're standing there going...
besides the infusion of shame, they're going...
See, now stop and think about it.
If there were ever two human beings that had the perfect body,
it was Adam and Eve.
And once sin hit them, they had to cover it up because they were ashamed.
What do you got to be ashamed of?
You were still perfect in your body.
But sin will make us ashamed of stuff that there's nothing wrong with.
I mean, it still can be perfect.
And if shame starts grinding around in you, that's not from God.
It'll drive us down to where we feel so bad about ourselves
and someone else looks in and goes, what are you feeling bad about?
You should see what I'm dealing with.
You apply that wherever you want to apply that.
But you can't talk them out of it because they're in shame.
We fell short of the glory.
Sin separated us from God.
No more evening walks with God.
We lost God as our source of life.
Our friendship, our intimacy, our fellowship with God was gone.
Our innocence was gone. We became guilty.
Now we saw things.
Put it this way.
The human race eyes open to things that are too big for us to carry.
It's like a little guy, you're flying together and you get to the airport
and you gather your bags and you got this big 40-pound bag
and you give it to your 5-year-old and say, you take that to the car, I got this.
That's too big for him.
He shouldn't be exposed to that yet.
That's what happened to us.
Once we could see good and evil, that was too big for us.
It's too big for the human race now.
Outside of Jesus, it's too big because it just sucks him in
and it almost returns back to what it was like in the days of Noah.
Just everybody's thinking evil.
I mean, you listen to the radio, you watch TV, you look at magazines.
It always has some kind of evil slant.
And many times it's a sexual slant.
It's just like, really?
Now we're in eternal death.
We're dead in trespasses and sins.
We're living according to a whole different world system, not a godly one.
It's always a fight. You're trying to overcome what the system's throwing at you.
You're trying to be victorious with what's coming down the pike at you.
You're always in overcoming fight mode.
We can live. We did when we were lost.
But as human beings, and I want to differentiate here, as Christian people, we don't have to.
But unsaved, we're living under demonic, devilish control. Period.
Anybody who's unsaved, there's demons running their life.
It's part of what happens. That's Ephesians chapter one, verse couple verses.
We live by the dictates of the fallen mind and the flesh.
That's why once we're saved, God calls us out of that, which we'll talk about that here in the future.
Our very nature caused God to be so angry with us, he wanted to just destroy us.
I mean, that's...
By very nature, we were objects of God's wrath.
Again, that's in Ephesians one.
Separated from Christ, Romans chapter three, nobody's righteous, nobody understands.
Nobody is seeking God. Everybody's turned away.
Man has become unprofitable.
Well, from God's perspective, everything was lost.
Everything that he designed and created is for its gone.
So we're not... we're useless to him.
In fact, at this point, we're nothing but pain to him.
He just gets... he just wanted to destroy us.
Objects of his wrath.
It's like, yuck, I want nothing to do with this bunch.
No one does good.
Out of the mouth and the throat, they become like an open tomb.
Tongues practice lying in deceit.
Poison of asps is under our lips.
In other words, things are said that really hurt and infect people.
And our mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
That's kind of a pretty good explanation of what life's like today.
Not for Christians, but for non-Christians.
You go out into the world and stir the pot a little bit.
Boy, all three of those pop right up.
Our feet are swift to shed blood.
Destruction and misery just follows the wake of our boat.
Nobody knows, understands how to live in peace.
The fear of the Lord has gone.
The whole world is guilty before God.
This is what was lost.
Because none of that was ever supposed to show up.
This is the lost condition.
We become slaves to sin.
That slavery causes us to become lawless.
The end result being death.
We're working for it. We're earning it.
Romans 5.
We had our minds set. We had.
But without God, minds are set on the desires of the flesh.
It produces death.
It puts us in enemy status with God.
Can't please God.
God said you're just foolish, disobedient, deceived,
serving your fleshly lusts, living in malice and envy.
Malice is where we get the word malignant from.
They come from the same word.
And if you hold something un...
How would you say?
You don't deal with something in your life.
It could be anger, could be unforgiveness,
could be bitterness, could be hatred, could be...
I mean, there's a whole pot of things there we could put together.
You hold them long enough and don't deal with them.
You develop what's called malice, which is a really...
It's like a seething form, a slow burn form of anger.
And if you don't deal with that, it'll turn malignant on you.
Not necessarily in the physical,
but it'll just turn us to be very putrid people.
Malignant stuff is always ugly.
It's nasty, it's...
You can describe it in many different ways.
It smells, it's out of control.
It does goofy, stupid things.
Like, for instance, a malignant tumor.
Sometimes when they pull malignant tumors out of...
Could be in the leg, could be in the belly, could be any place.
They pull malignant tumor out.
It's got teeth, it's got hair, it's got...
It's just nasty.
It's like, well, what the...
Why is it growing teeth?
Why is it...
Because it's malignant.
It's just nasty.
Malice will lead us into that.
Hateful, hating each other.
So all was lost.
We were lost. Everything that got intended was lost.
Folks, that's the majority of the population on the world right now.
I know sometimes we don't like to admit that.
That's why God calls us to go reach the lost.
Because we have had our identity restored in Christ.
They have not.
Our job now is to live in what He offered us while we're living in a fallen body.
And that becomes the war.
They have not had identity restored to them yet.
Not everybody is a child of God.
I've heard it on TV from...
Or YouTube, from famous preachers.
Well, we know we're all children of God on earth.
What?
Where in God's green earth did you come up with that one?
Part of our new identity, Adam and Eve didn't have this.
Part of our new identity is we've been brought into a new family that God created of the human race.
If you're not born again, you're not in that family.
You don't have that identity.
That identity comes with giving your life back to the right God
and quit serving this one and start serving that one.
Now we have a new identity.
Now everybody on earth is God's creation.
But we're not all God's children.
That's an identity statement.
You know, if one of your children is asked,
Well, who are you? What's your name?
Well, the first name is kind of you mark them.
Because you got to separate them.
You don't want to call them all even though it was a George foreman.
Everybody in the family, they named George.
It's like... that's almost like a bad joke there.
We mark them with the first name.
Okay, we got this one, this one, this one, this one, this one.
And we're calling what God wants over them by their name.
Their last name is their identity.
Well, I'm an Isaacson.
I'm a pelts.
You can feel it coming, can't you?
Yeah.
Well, since you're in front of me, I'll just leave it alone.
Anyway, the last name is the identity.
It's who we are.
They used to say I'm like Robert the Bruce,
or Robert of the Bruce clan.
Well, now it's Vernon the pelts.
You know, that's my first name marks me.
My second name is my identity.
We are Christians.
That's our identity.
That's our new identity.
It's our name.
The greatest bulk of the world can't claim that.
They're still dead in trespasses and sins.
Jesus said, brought us the gate.
Wide is the way that leads to destruction.
Narrow is the one that goes to life.
The bulk of the human race is not going the right direction.
They're lost.
They've lost the reason they're created.
But this is where we pick up next Sunday.
In the middle of that whole description of verses one through three,
Paul starts with verse four with,
but God.
There's the factor that changes everything.
But God.
We are lost.
We are ruined.
We are destroyed.
We will never recover.
We are doomed for eternal torment with the God we chose
to serve.
All is lost.
But God.
But God stepped in.
Some things that we will get into next Sunday and the Sunday's following.
Some things kind of come as a group package.
And then some things we have to fight for and individually overcome
and be victorious and conquer.
And I believe it's one of the reasons God just,
well, he explained in the Old Testament,
when they went into the Promised Land,
you read in the book of Joshua,
when they went into the Promised Land,
they had some miraculous removal of enemies like Jericho
and just some miraculous stuff.
And then God says, hey, by the way,
don't get thinking I'm going to do that for you all the way through.
I'm going to leave some enemies.
It's what he says.
I'm going to leave some enemies I'm not going to deal with.
Because you have to learn how to war.
You have to learn how to overcome.
And there's some things that when you get saved,
it's just like a group package and the whole thing is gone
and we've got a new identity.
And then there's just some things that's like, really?
How long is it going to take me to be victorious?
And conquer this thing and overcome it?
Well, he's teaching you.
He's teaching me.
He's strengthening us.
And he's just not going to do it all for us.
Because any time you have a child that had everything done for them,
when they become adult,
you don't want to marry them.
Because they still think the universe revolves around them
and that everybody should do everything for them.
They've never learned that, you know, at some point
you're going to pick up your own socks.
Better not go any further down there.
We're running out of time.
So whether it comes as a package or we have to work our way through it,
either way, we're a new creation in Christ.
Old things, what are the old things?
Everything that was lost.
Old things will pass away.
They're gone from God's perspective.
He's calling them gone by faith.
We work through it with the Holy Spirit.
Everything that was involved in we were lost.
I don't know if there's anybody here who has never made Jesus their Savior.
Asked God to forgive your sins and submitted your life to Him.
But if you've not done that,
I'm going to give you an opportunity to do it this morning
because you're still living in a position.
Everything's lost.
You say, why is my life so bad in so many areas?
Because you're lost.
Everything that God intended for you is being ruined.
It's being destroyed.
It's being dismantled right in front of you.
And it seems like no matter how hard you try to fix it,
you just kind of wait for the shoe to drop again.
And just only a matter of time, bam, it's going to smack me again.
Why?
Because you're still lost.
You're still living in that position of your ruined.
Whether here or anybody watching online.
There's nothing you're going to be able to do to be able to get out of that.
You are ruined forever.
But God...
You let God into that situation.
He will take that identity and turn it in to a new one,
which resembles the one before Adam and Eve sinned.
It's even better than what they had.
Did you know that God, according to what we know,
of course we don't have a lot of information before they sinned.
But he told them to rule and reign and replenish the earth.
There's no indication that God was ever going to move the human race to heaven.
And then we lost it all.
And just like God.
He says, well, I tell you what.
You know, we're going to do it better the next time around.
I never intended for human beings to live in heaven with me.
I never really intended to build them each an individual mansion.
I never intended this.
But you know what? When we re-establish who they are,
that's who we're going to make them be.
And we've got identity that was never promised to Adam and Eve before the fall.
It's awesome.
But if we haven't made the switch,
we're still lost. We're still in that ruined condition.
And it'll never change.
You know, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but it'll never change.
The only one who can change it is God.
Is there anybody here who says, I've never done that.
I've never made Jesus my Savior.
Asked him to forgive my sins.
Submitted myself to him.
Now is a good time to switch that.
Anybody here like that?
I just like to pray with you. I don't want to embarrass you.
I just want to pray with you. Just raise your hand.
I want to see if there's anybody here who says, yep,
seems like everything in my life is kind of cursed.
Everything I touch eventually falls apart.
I need a new identity. I need a new start.
Anybody?
All right.
Anybody online or watching this recording in the future?
It's simple.
You want to switch?
You just say, dear Jesus, forgive me for my sins.
I submit my life to you.
I want what you want for me.
Rather than me doing my own thing, I want what you want.
And I submit myself to that.
I trust you to forgive my sins,
come into my life, change me.
It's that simple.
Just do it.
Just do it and switch identity.
Switch the direction everything's going.
So Lord, we who have experienced and tasted
of this fall inside
and also now the but God stepped into our life side,
we just want to say thank you.
I mean, it's such an inadequate word.
It just is...
It doesn't fully encompass much of anything,
but it's so hard to find a word to say God,
if not for you,
if not for you.
Not only this life we'd be ruined,
but we'd be ruined in destruction for eternity
because there'd be no way to switch away from the wrong God.
But you came
because you loved us.
You came and made the way possible,
and we will be eternally grateful.
Eternally grateful.
We can't express it.
There's not words to wrap around it.
So we just choose to give you our heart and our whole life
and just be faithful and committed to you
in everything and every way.
We are your people, the sheep of your pasture.
We are your servants.
We are your family.
We are your warriors.
We are yours and we offer it.
We offer it freely
because of our gratefulness in what you did for us.
Thank you, Father. Thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for being willing to come
and live and work with us in this putrid place.
And in some of our worst decisions,
you're still there saying,
come on, let's go this way.
Let's go this way. Thank you.
We give you all the praise and the glory
and the honor and Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen.