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 Sermon > Official Service |
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Title |
Lecture on Genesis Ver.2(81) - Lecture on Genesis Ver.2 (81) |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
Genesis 3:21-22 |
Date |
2012-02-24 |
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Scripture
Genesis 3:21-22
[21] The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
[22] Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"--
This is 81st Lecture on Genesis.
As Adam and Eve were to leave the Garden of Eden, God the Father made garments of skin and clothed them.
These garments of skin were the expression of Father God's consideration of love and it was the binding cord of His grace and salvation with Adam.
God the Father gave this 'token of love' to Adam and Eve who were about to depart and receive human cultivation.
This is what I explained to you in the last lecture.
From then on, God the Father showed His token of love also to the descendants of Adam.
Even when Israel committed sin and forsook God, God didn't forsake Israel.
As if God had an unrequited love for Israel, He kept on sending His message of love through the prophets.
I would like to speak to you about just a few of them.
Isaiah 49:15-16 says, "Can a woman forget her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me."
Jeremiah 31:3 says, "The LORD appeared to him from afar, saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.""
Jeremiah 31:20 says, ""Is Ephraim (which refers to Northern Israel) My dear son? Is he a delightful child? Indeed, as often as I have spoken against him, I certainly still remember him; Therefore My heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him," declares the LORD."
Hosea 11:1 says, "When Israel was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son."
And Hosea 11:4 says, "I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love, and I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws; And I bent down and fed them."
God didn't love only the Israelites.
He had mercy also on gentiles; He showed His love even to Assyrians who were enemies of the Israelites.
That is, in Jonah 4:11, God said, "Should I not have compassion on Nineveh (the capital city of Assyria), the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"
Our Lord Jesus also said how much God the Father loved the Israelites.
He said in Matthew 23:37, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling."
Have you receive the token of love from God the Father?
God the Father gave mankind such a great and definite token of love.
Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Jesus, who came to this earth as Savior 2,000 years ago, is the token of God's love for us.
The Holy Spirit continually confirms this great love of God for us.
That is, Romans 5:5 says, "...hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."
It means God poured out His love within our hearts through the Holy Spirit that God gave to us.
In fact, God the Father gave such undeserved love to mankind.
Especially Manmin members, you received incredible and even unimaginable grace both this year as well as last year.
All of you have been blessed to receive a token of love from God the Father and the Lord.
That love should not cool down; it should rather become hotter and hotter until the day the Lord comes back again.
May you be full of the love which you cannot get anywhere in the world, and which you cannot exchange for anything, in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, I pray!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ!
Now, 'let's proceed to Genesis 3:22.
It says, "Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever."
It begins with "the LORD God said," but then there is an expression, that is, "the man has become like one of us."
From this, you can see that there wasn't only God the Father by Himself.
He talked with God the Son and the Holy Spirit about Adam.
God the Father knew well what kind of punishment Adam should have received in justice as the price to be paid for his sin.
However, God did not drive Adam out to the earth right away.
God the Trinity together gave a heavy thought again.
Likewise, God the Trinity has humanity to understand the hearts of human beings.
Of course, they also have absolute divinity.
Moreover, God the Trinity always accomplish works together.
It is not that just one Entity of the Triune God arbitrarily proceeds with a certain work. (but always works together)
God the Trinity was divided from the Original God, but They are not three in just the outward appearances.
It is so that the power, divinity, and humanity were equally divided.
However, depending on their own role, the ratio between divinity and humanity displayed may vary among the Three.
God the Son has more of divinity than humanity when compared with the Holy Spirit.
It also implies that the Holy Spirit has more of humanity than that of God the Son.
By the way, God the Son and the Holy Spirit are the Sons of God the Father, and their positions are different from that of God the Father.
God the Father, however, considers and treats both of Them as an equal entity of God.
Let me tell you an allegory.
Say, you are the boss in a company, and you have two sons.
These two sons grew up and gained experience; they are now ready to run the company together with their father.
Then, these two sons became executive officers who run the company.
Now, an important incident takes place in the company.
You, as the boss, could call for the board of directors meeting, and ask their opinion.
Since you are the boss of the company, you will treat your two sons equally as executives on the board of directors.
If you truly want to treat them equally, even if they may have a different opinion from yours, you must be able to pay attention to them.
"You are my son, and so you just follow my will." You will not force them to unconditionally agree with you in this manner.
You must respect them and accept the fact that their ideas can be right.
Our God the Father also treated God the Son and the Holy Spirit as an equal entity with the Original God.
He doesn't discriminate against or differentiate between them.
I'm not saying God the Trinity had different opinions over a matter from time to time.
God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit always share the same opinion over every matter.
In goodness, love, and justice, God the Trinity are one in heart and in will.
That's why Jesus offered the following prayer to God the Father before He was arrested.
In John 17:11, Jesus prayed, "I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are."
Here, "they" refers to Jesus' disciples who would be left back then in a smaller sense, but in a broader sense, it refers to all who believe in Jesus Christ and become the children of God.
Just as God the Trinity are perfectly one, Jesus desperately prayed that the children of God may also become one with God.
Since God is spirit, if you accomplish the heart of the spirit, you can also become one with God.
Since God is holy, as a child of God, you should also become holy.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:48, "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
To the extent you accomplish holiness and perfection, you can become one with God and each one of you can also become one with each other.
If there is someone who is not in the truth and you feel that you must be at peace him only because you ought to be at peace with him, then you are not one with him in the truth.
Both of you should naturally become one as two of you are in the truth.
Now, many of you have passed the level of the Rock of Faith, and have now come into the spirit.
The number of those who can become one together in the truth is increasing.
Just as a rope is getting thicker and stronger, you are getting spiritually stronger as one.
No one can cut you off and no one has the strength to force you off track.
With this spiritual strength as one, you will stand against the anti Christ till the end of the world and accomplish the vision that God the Father gave to us.
I urge you in the name of the Lord that more of you may come into the spirit and into the whole spirit and add more spiritual strength.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
So far, I told you that God the Trinity gave a heavy thought to the matter regarding Adam.
God the Father said at this point, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil."
In this sentence, 'the man' refers to Adam, and it also includes Eve.
Since Adam represents Eve as well, what God said to Adam identically applied to Eve.
Adam was created as the first man, and Eve was created with a part of Adam's body.
It was Adam that received the power and authority from God the Father.
Then, what does it mean that 'Adam has become like one of God the Trinity, knowing good and evil'?
It means that, even though Adam used to know only goodness before, he now knows not only goodness but also evil.
God the Trinity is goodness itself, but yet can understand even the depths of evil.
And, the world of evil spirits cannot evade the control of God.
Therefore, just as God knows of goodness and evil, now Adam had now come to know both sides as well.
However, the level of understanding of good and evil was very different.
To help you understand better, let me explain the situation of Adam.
After Adam was created from the dust of the ground of the earth, by the breath of life that God the Father blew into Adam, he became a living being.
The living being is an incomplete spirit that doesn't possess divinity and humanity like God the Father.
The humanity that Adam, the living being' had was also different from the humanity that a fleshly man possesses.
It was because he acquired his humanity through the knowledge that God taught him without understanding anything through relativity.
Adam had the knowledge and capacity that belonged to spirit, but it was an extremely small fraction of it when compared with what was possessed by God the Trinity.
It was this Adam who ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then he became aware of a new world that he had not known.
He came to know there is evil, not only goodness, and that there is the world of untruth, not only the world of truth.
Acquiring the new understanding in itself is not sin.
It is a sin, however, for him to have stepped into the new world of evil and untruth and not remained in the world of goodness and truth.
By eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam had already stepped into the world of darkness.
It was because he committed the evident sin of disobeying the word of God.
And thus, Adam turned from a living spirit back to a fleshly man.
A man of flesh cannot live in the Garden of Eden which is a spiritual space.
The proper place for a man of flesh to live in is on this earth which is a fleshly space.
In consideration of these things, God the Trinity decided to drive Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to this earth.
That's why they said, "he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever."
This sentence also tells us about the effect of the fruit of the tree of life.
Even Adam, who committed sin, could live eternally if he ate from the tree of life.
However, there is a more important reason for God to say that in such a situation.
That is, in having said that, God came to the conclusion that for Adam, who fell to become a man flesh, there was no other choice but to be driven out of the Garden of Eden.
It means that Adam could have enjoyed an eternal life in the Garden of Eden, but it was now imperative that he follow the order of the flesh in the world of flesh.
And so, God prepared to send Adam and Eve out.
Then, was it the end for Adam? No, it was not.
God the Father foreknew that Adam would eventually repent and receive salvation even though he would live in the fleshly world.
Then Adam could live an eternal life that is in a higher level than that of the Garden of Eden.
As Adam received human cultivation, unlike when he lived in the Garden of Eden, he developed a difference in his humanity.
I said earlier that the humanity of Adam, the living being, was the humanity as knowledge.
Now, he came to possess the humanity which he could learn from the experience of relativity with his heart and body.
For example, the joy of a man who experienced sorrow is different from the joy of another man who doesn't understand the joy and sorrow.
The happiness of a man who experienced suffering is different in its depth and concentration from the happiness of another man who had never experienced either happiness or suffering.
Then, how about the humanity of God the Trinity?
Let's compare it with the humanity of a fleshly man.
The humanity of God is the spiritual humanity that belongs to divinity while the humanity of a man is fleshly humanity.
The humanity of God is the humanity that practices only goodness while discerning between good and evil perfectly.
On the other hand, the humanity that a fleshly man possesses doesn't perfectly discern good and evil, and it is carried away by his feeling and emotions.
Let's think about 'love' for example.
Since God loves souls, He willingly gave up even His one and only Son.
He showed the ultimate and utmost love that can sacrifice and give up His everything.
Unlike this spiritual love of God, man loves in a fleshly way.
They say they love someone, but they can also hate if it is not beneficial.
They cannot endure, but they become angry; they love today, but hate the next day depending on their feelings.
To satisfy their lusts, they make lives of others difficult.
This is the way a man of flesh loves.
However, God says that we can also possess the spiritual humanity that God possesses.
2 Peter 1:4 says, "For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust."
To the extent you cast of fleshly attributes and accomplish the spiritual heart, you can own the divine nature.
That is, your humanity changes into the spiritual humanity.
It is become close the humanity of God.
However, you cannot have the same humanity of God.
It is because God has the humanity along with the perfect divinity.
The perfect humanity comes out from the perfect divinity, and vice versa.
Since man cannot possess the perfect divinity, his humanity cannot become identical to that of God.
However, to the extent his heart changes into spirit, he can receive the divinity that belongs to God.
To the extent of divinity he receives, his humanity also becomes different.
If you take a close look at Jesus as recorded in the Four Gospels, you can understand the divinity and humanity of God.
He manifested amazing power, but He did not flaunt it. He was gentle, yet He did not tolerate unrighteousness.
Among the forefathers of faith, Elijah, Enoch, Abraham, and Moses were full of both divinity and humanity which belong to God.
And so, Elijah was taken up alive, and Enoch could walk with God even on this earth.
Abraham was called the friend of God, and Moses talked with God as if he were talking with a friend.
I hope that many of you will accomplish the whole spirit and fully possess the divine nature.
God the Father told me He would explain how to reach such a level in the coming District & Cell Leaders Seminar this year.
The main target of last year's Group Leaders' Seminar was those who would stand on the rock of faith, but this year, it will be those who have come into the spirit.
Therefore, may all of you surely come into the spirit in the first half of this year, in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, I pray! |
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