Sunday, December 6, 2015

The Sentence and the Hope

So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
God didn’t tempt Adam and Eve to sin – the serpent did – and God first addresses the tempter.  He condemns him and sentences him forever.
And then…we see the first hope of redemption in the split second after the sin.  Matthew Henry says, “no sooner was the wound given, than the remedy was provided and revealed.
Isn’t that awesome?  God had a plan of salvation already in place. 
But until then, there is this conflict between good and evil.
Isn’t it interesting that in the Lord’s Prayer we are given in the New Testament, Jesus said to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?”
When we pray, we are to be reminded that the tempter who persuaded Eve to bite was not her Creator; in fact, our God has no evil in him.  He is actually the deliverer from the evil one!

We must remember that truth when we pray, because that truth will enable us to stand when temptation is strong…

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