Beginnings (Genesis 1-11) / Lesson 1: Reclaiming the Ancient Mindset

So Father, we come and just thank you that your word is alive. That Lord, that you started a story and you have carried that story through and Lord, it has been an epic story that we are part of. And so Lord, I pray that you would awaken in us the work of the truth of the spirit. Lord Jesus, you told us that we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free. You said the Holy Spirit dwelling in us would guide us into all the truth. So we are coming based upon you as the God who is all truth, giving to us the word of truth that we might walk from here knowing the truth in a greater measure than we ever have. So speak Lord, for your servants are listening and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, all right, well, let me just start off and kind of, how many of you, by the way, have been through the series I did on spiritual warfare? Have you been through that? Yeah, okay, so Monday this week, I went to go see a friend of mine, pastor friend of mine named Steve and we've been together for a long, long time, friends for a long, long time. And while I was there, his kids were there and his wife Donna, I've known them

since before they were married. And so a long, long time, over 45 years now. And we were together in Alabama where a lot of the stories I tell in the book happened. And so we got to asking me, talking about the book and they started, even the kids who are now adults, who a couple of them have read it, they were saying how, oh yeah, I knew this was talking about this place and that. And then Donna reminded me of a story that's not in the book, but I wanted to share it with you because these are things that just through the years, God has used to bring me kind of to try to help where we are and what I'm gonna be doing in the next 11 weeks. So what had happened was there was a couple and the wife, and I'm just gonna call her, her name Teresa, this is about 25 years ago, just to tell you how long ago it was. But Teresa had grown up in an unbelieving home and her father, her father and mother had divorced, her stepfather, whenever she was a little girl, began abusing her and began sexually abusing her. And in that, she took on an identity about who she was that was not from the Lord. And it led to her living a very promiscuous teenage and young adult life. And as a young adult, she came to know Christ. And after she gave her life to the Lord, she asked God if he would give her a godly husband, and he did.

Gave her a godly husband and they were doing good. And they were doing really good for the first couple of years. And they had made a move to another area. And while they were there, she just by chance ran into an old boyfriend. And when she did, all of this stuff came back up and scared her to death. And in it, she had told her husband some things but not everything. And in it, it so scared her that she called Donna and said, is there any way I can meet with you? She met with her. And as they met and began to talk and Donna was asking questions, Teresa began to share with her that in those times, and this is what scares her, she says, it was as though something took over in my life and just took me over. And I began doing things that I knew were wrong. And in that, Donna began to discern that, okay, there's some kind of demonic presence that's here. And so she said, well, I want you to talk with David. And so about a week later, Teresa and her husband Tony came and Donna was with them. And the four of us were sitting in my office and we began to talk. And as we began to talk, I began to ask Teresa several things and Donna began sharing her story.

Anyway, my whole thing is if you remember what I talked about in spiritual warfare, I wanted to find the doors. What are the doors? How did this happen? I asked her if she wanted to be free, all those things, if you remember whenever I was teaching on that, those kinds of things. And she did and we began to talk. And as we were talking and we came to a certain place in her past as a child, suddenly a spirit rose up, a demonic presence. And Donna was telling, reminding me of the story. But that spirit rose up and then she began to, as I've told you before, it was like it came out. Well, her husband who was just, you know, his name's Tony and he's just as Baptist as Baptist can be, good guy, loves the Lord, never sees. anything like this. And he just kind of steps against the wall as this is going on and he's just watching his wife and what's happening. And I don't remember how many two or three spirits left. And then she, as I've told you before, just went relaxed. Well, what I always do in those times is, is when this happens and she's, I know the spirits are gone. I always ask the Lord, is there anything else? And immediately in my spirit, and I would just say for us in spiritual gift stuff, probably I would call it a word of knowledge, but the Lord revealed something to me about Tony. Well, I look over, he's laying on the floor by now. He is just broken. I mean, he's just not upset. He's just overwhelmed that God's here. And I look at him and I call him out. I said, Tony, and he looks at me and I pointed and Donna tells me this part. She said,

you pointed at him and said, you have a pornography addiction. Well, his comment back was, yes, I do. Yes, I do. I want it gone. I want it gone. And right there, he repented. He got set free. And when they walked out as a couple, they walked out set free from the bondage and tyranny of the enemy. Now I tell you that because I've been doing this a long time. And for the last 40 years, I've read through the Bible every year. I just, one of the things I do for the last 35 years, I've been walking in these kinds of things. And over time, God begins to just, he shares secrets. He shares with us things of the kingdom that are, that are real and are true. And just, you know, as I, as I just wanted to share with you, as I've, as I've taught these things, I've taught through Genesis several times, especially the first 11 chapters, because I have learned that when you can grasp what the word of God is telling, telling you in the first 11 chapters, your Bible is going to wake up. It's just going to wake up and it's going to look different than you've ever seen it before. And it's what, it's what happened to me. And so in that, I would just, I would say this, that I want you to think that, that what we're doing is we're going to ask the Holy Spirit to be a spiritual archeologist and ask him to unearth spiritual truths that are here, that are going to sound foreign to some of us, but are going to begin to make sense. After a while, Luke chapter eight, verse 10, let me just read it to you. It says, Jesus said this, it says to you, it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but to others, they are parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand. And I am convinced that the reason why many of us do not spend time in God's word is because overall, the Bible seems to be like parables. It just seems to not make sense. It, it just seems to just be stories. Even if you grew up in the church, it just, you just kind of say, well, I didn't, I don't really know what that, what that means. And so we just leave it. And, and in fact, I remember the last church I was at, I taught, was teaching them how to read through their Bible and got them all doing it like I have here. And, and I remember one Sunday evening, I guess it was, I was walking in and these two older ladies and they'd been saved for probably 60 years. I walk in there, brother David, come here. And I said, well, the first time they'd ever been reading through their Bible. And they said, I had no idea there was so much killing in the old Testament. And some of you may feel that same way. Well, hopefully after these 11 weeks, those things are going to make more sense. You're going to begin reading those things and understand that what was happening was a merciful

God was carrying out his redemptive story and his plan. So we're going to be able to look at some of those things and be able to see what God's trying to say to us in first Corinthians chapter two, listen to what Paul says. And I'm just going to give you these and then we're going to get started. He says this, he said in verse seven, he says, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. And then he says this in verse 14 of first Corinthians chapter two, he says, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God for they are folly or foolishness to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Now, those are some things we need to understand in here. So tonight I'm just asking you to join me and we're going to embark together on an Epic journey through the first 11 chapters of Genesis. So you have your outlines I hope and we're going to be looking at tonight. is going to be, I've just, in fact, I've titled tonight, Reclaiming the Ancient Mindset, as I've thought about how do you start this off? And I thought, we've got to look at this. Now, if you've read my book, Stand, or you remember when I taught on spiritual warfare, I talked about our cultural biases that we live by. And so some of that's what I'm going to be talking about tonight and going to be trying to share with you. But I sat down and said, okay, I want to write out, what am I trying to say? And how am I trying to say this? So I wrote this out. And so I'm going to, it's actually, I think I've got it in your notes. Isn't that right? Do I? I sure did. Good, Dave. It says, Genesis 1 through 11 serves as a preamble to God's redemptive story, revealing that the human predicament is rooted in three supernatural rebellions, the fallen Eden, the transgression of the watchers, that's Genesis 6, we'll look at, and the disinheritance at the Tower of Babel, which set the stage for a cosmic war over the nations, ultimately won by Jesus Christ to redeem mankind and restore a global Eden, a new heaven and a new earth. That's what we're going to be looking at. And we're going to begin to see better and understand more as we get going. Now, I'm going to make a statement. And before you start throwing anything at me, let me tell you what I'm trying to say here. And this is basically what I'm trying to say. We need to understand this. The Bible was written for you, but not to you. It was written for you. Now, let me tell you, I'm going to try to explain that. Okay. If I read a letter that I've written to my wife, Kathy, and I read it and I say, yeah, you can have it. And I'll let you have it. There are going to be

things that I may have said, stories that she and I together have been through that she clearly understands what I'm talking about, but you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, unless you know our history, you know our background, or you talk to one of us. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? So in other words, I may give it to you to maybe learn something from it or something like that, but it wasn't written to you. It was written to Kathy. Does that make sense? So as you think about that, I just want you to kind of think about it like this. So here's old Dave walking down the sidewalk. The Bible was written for us. Here's what I mean. True. The truths are universal. The applications are cross-cultural. The importance is eternal. We come at it fully and we come to it and learn and grow, and we can come to salvation and all of these kinds of things. However, when we come to the Bible, we read it through modern filters, which literally are blocking us from understanding the truths that are being taught there. So let me just kind of give you this. This is the modern Western filters. And so in your outline, I think I'm going to give you three of them. I could have picked more, but three modern Western filters, and these filters turn cosmic history many times into nothing but mere metaphors. Now I can tell you, some of you may not know this, but if you've grown up in most evangelical churches, the reason why your pastors didn't talk about the supernatural wasn't because they didn't believe that maybe it was real, but because they were trained in seminaries, taught by professors who taught things like what my dad was taught, and that is that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch. It wasn't him. It was a multitude of different groups. As a matter of fact, there's four different groups that this comes out of German theology that came out of the 1800s that said, it's called the J-E-P-D group of people. There was the Yahwehist, would be the J. That was a group. So anytime you read in there and you see the name Yahweh, well, that was a group of teachers or scholars or scribes that wrote those parts. And then there was those that came after the Elohim, Elohist is what they called them, that would talk about Elohim. And then there was the P would be the priestly. So they're telling the priestly stuff. And then D was the Deuteronomist. And so just kind of a collection of all those things. And whenever you read that about crossing the Red Sea, it didn't happen. As a matter of fact, my dad, whenever he was in seminary, they taught that it wasn't really called the Red Sea, it was called the Sea of Reeds. And it was never over, but about a foot deep, which then is kind of crazy because it drowned a whole Egyptian army in a foot of water. It was probably like a greater miracle maybe than the

other. And so in it, that has been the indoctrination and the infiltration of liberal theology that has come into the churches that has kept us from the supernatural. On top of that, We live in a culture that is, I'm going to give you some of them, let me just give you some of the filters. The first one I'm going to give you is rationalism. If you have your outline, I want to put this down. This is just, I want you to know that when you come to your Bible, because if you've grown up in America, you've grown up in this culture, these are things that have been locked inside of you. I'm not saying you don't believe the Bible. I'm just saying that when you read it, these are some filters that you have to realize are there. Do you know what I mean? Rationalism is an insistence on a scientific empirical verifiability explanation for everything. That's why whenever people, even today, are trying to explain the scriptures like we're going to go through, we're going to look at creation. I'm going to talk about the seven literal days and whenever I talk about it, here's the culture you live in is, well, but science really says it was millions of years. So you're going to have to prove to me that it was seven days and I'll show you proofs. But no, that doesn't come from us being smarter. That comes from the culture that you've been brought up in. You need to know that. The reason I'm telling you this is because when God gave this to Moses to give to the children of Israel, they didn't believe what I just said. They were not following rationalism. Second filter that we have here is individualism. This is pretty big in our churches and I'm not against this part, but I want you to know how we come to scripture. Individualism focuses on a personal private spirituality over a collective covenant community. That's why people don't see it's a big deal to go to church and be part of a church family.

It's because we have turned Christianity into, now you have to give your life to Christ, but when you do, you become part of the body of Christ and it is imperative that you jump in and dive in to that group of believers together. The Hebrews that this was given to never thought about an individualistic mindset of focus on anything. It was always the collective community, the children of Israel. It was always that. We come to the third filter that we have that is here and it's materialism. Materialism assumes that the only reality is the physical observable world. Now I know that you don't believe that, but I want you to know it affects you. It has had a deep profound effect on me and on you. We need to know those filters are there, that we struggle with these. Did everybody get those? We have these modern Western filters that we take and bring to the Bible. As a result, many times we are seeing, but never perceiving. We're hearing, but never really listening. Does that make sense? As we come to this, and these are things that God had to break in me and is still breaking in me over many, many years to be able to move forward. Let me go to the second part that I want to bring along with this. As these filters are here, they have created a divisional mindset. I'm going to do it this way. Francis Schaeffer, has anybody heard of Francis Schaeffer? Francis Schaeffer wrote about some of this. It's kind of what he has said. I'm doing it a little bit different, but basically we live in modern reality. Here's the way we live. We live in basically, I'm going to say it this way, the two floors of modern reality. Now, here's what I mean. On the first floor, we have what we might call the real world.

The real world that people refer to is basically the things like science. It's the things like nature. It's the facts. Just give me the facts. Now listen, I believe in the real world. I'm not saying I don't, but what has happened in our culture is we have separated to a second floor group and that would be what might be called the supernatural world. The world of things like God, angels, miracles. Those are on that floor and these two are separated. That would be totally foreign to those that the Holy Spirit wrote this to. All of that was totally foreign. together. All of it was together. They never separated the two. So as you're reading the Old Testament and they start talking about these gods they're worshiping and our mind looks and says, are the Israelites idiots? Why do they keep wanting to take and grab these idols and take them with them? Because they knew that they were worshiping a real supernatural being. And that being, maybe it was a god that was going to give them a fertility. Maybe they couldn't get pregnant. They were going to go to that one. Or maybe they needed more wealth and they needed the crops to come in and they would worship those gods of fertility and those things to bring fertility in their soil. The things to be planted and they fully, but I'm telling you this because it's going to start making sense once you understand the mindset of who the scripture was written to. Okay. So we there? All right. I'm going to share with you just a quick goofy little story. I don't, I have read this as being what they do. I'm still, I don't know, but you ever heard of a way of hunting and supposedly used in areas like Africa and other places where monkeys are called the monkey trap. I never heard of that. Let me tell you about the monkey trap. So the monkey trap, the way it works is, and I've even got just cute little pictures. So monkey trap is that the hunter takes a jar or a vase of some type and he puts some type of food or fruit inside of it with a small hole on the top where the monkey can stick his hand down in and he sets it out there and hangs it on a tree or puts it on some kind of thing, secures it on something. And so the monkey reaches in, grabs the banana

and as he goes to pull his hand out, he can't get his hand out. So now he's in a quandary because he wants the banana, but he can't get his hand out and before long the hunter comes. Now who's holding the monkey? He's trapped, but who's got him trapped? Himself. He's not trapped by the banana, he's not trapped by the jar, he's not even trapped by the hunter. He's trapped by an unwillingness to let go of the banana. So let me just say that rather than reading the Bible bound by modern filters and views of reality that are from modern man, let's go back to the first century and let's make ourselves first century Jews. Let's go back 3,000 years. Now I've actually got another picture I didn't put up there with me with a long gray beard. Maybe next week, maybe next week. But let's go back and let's say, God, I want to step in with those who wrote this too. I know it's for me, but I want to go back to those who wrote it too. And as I read it, I want to read it the way they understood it. And we can do that. We're going to do that over these next 11 weeks. And as we do that, what's going to happen is you're going to read stories that are going to make unbelievable sense. And I'm going to share some of them with you. In fact, I'll share a bunch of them with you that we'll be looking at. So as we go, let me kind of give you some other things. I know I'm giving you some studious things, but I hope it's helping in there. But I want to give this as well as we get going is we're going to, as we come to this, we're going to expand what I'm just calling the definition of context. So whenever somebody, you know, a lot of times this happens when you go to seminary or something, well, man, I want to, you need to read it within a context. And most of the time what is being talked about is the literary context. You know, in other words, if you're reading Genesis, which is considered historical, it's a narrative is the type it is, the genre is what it's called, that you're reading it and you want to read it within the context of, and that's good. There's nothing wrong with that. So ever so often people will say, well, let's also have it in the historical So, we may read how, for instance, whenever Paul is in Corinth and he writes to the Corinthians what I read earlier and how he said, when I came to you in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and when I came to you I didn't come with wise and persuasive speech and all that kind of stuff. I came with a demonstration of the Spirit's power. Well, the historical context of that is, he had just been in Athens, Acts 17, and he had been on Mars Hill that I've

been on, and as he was up there preaching, he used philosophy as a great sermon from an American mindset, but almost nobody was converted. And then he took and walked 43 miles from Athens to Corinth, and we find in Acts 18 he gets into Corinth, and when he gets there, the gospel just explodes and he winds up staying there for 18 months and many things happen. So, what was different between the two? Well, the Athens people were just more intellectual. Not necessarily. What happened was, when he came to Corinth on that 43 miles, he realized, hey, trying to get them to be convinced that the gospel is true doesn't work. He even used their own philosophers and quoted them. He said, the only way I'm going to preach is I'm going to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Because I know that their faith will then not rest upon man's wisdom, but upon the Spirit's power. Now, that's what he says. Right? So, that's the historical context of that. Does that make sense? Now, that's where most of us go. However, as we go into this, we're going to look at three additional or three other contexts along with it. We're going to look at historical, but I'm going to explain what I mean by that. We're going to look at a worldview context. We're going to also look at it from a historical context, but I'll explain what I mean by that. Then we're going to also look at it from what I'm calling a cosmic or a spirit world context. Okay? So, let me just give you these, alright? I'm just calling it, I think I'm calling it in the outline, expanding the definition of context of what we're going to be looking. Alright, first is I'm going to be, we're going to be looking at it from what's called the ancient worldview context, which what I mean is how the ancients, ancient Israelites primarily, but also the ancients from Babylon and Mesopotamia and some of those areas perceived reality itself. How did they perceive it? We're going to also look at it from the historical context. What do I mean by that? Well, basically what the surrounding cultures believed and how the biblical writers responded to them. Did you know that the creation story that we read in Genesis 1 is actually in many ways a story a rebuttal? It's the truth, but it's a rebuttal of the Babylonian creation story, the Mesopotamian creation story and how they were just off. And we're going to see that, we're going to see that actually Genesis 6 is actually a rebuttal against the Babylonians and the Mesopotamians and some of those other peoples that lived then, what they believed about these, quote, sons of God that came down. All of them talked about them. They all have giant stories, not

just big stories, but stories about giants that they called heroes, but God calls evil villains. So we're going to see those kind of things, but then we're going to also look at it from, I'm just calling the cosmic context, and that is how a passage fits into the grand supernatural narrative of God's conflict with rebellious divine powers. I told you you need to buckle up. Now some of you, if you remember back in 2019, I taught some of this stuff, taught it also in 2016, and we're going to just refresh, but also kind of bring it together in a different way. I'm not going to go verse by verse. I'll be covering area by area, but we're going to look at it because my goal and hope and my prayer is for these 11 weeks is, as I said, that your Bible is going to wake up. So let me go to the next part. When I talk about the preamble, today's modern scholars call it prehistory. But I like calling it the first 11 chapters, the preamble, because it's God kind of saying, okay, here's what was going on. And Genesis chapter 12, so God chose a man named Abram and we hear the redemption story laid out. So as we go into it, we're going to be looking at three different rebellions, Genesis 3, Genesis 6, and Genesis 11. We're going to see what each one of them meant, what they've done, and guess why is it important? You say, well, that's just interesting. Let me tell you why it's important. When Jesus came, the Bible says that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. Now what did he come to destroy? All the works of the enemy. As a matter of fact, whenever we get to Genesis 11 and we're going to be talking about the table of nations in Genesis 10, Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, God dispersed the people. Most of us, when we read that, we kind of come to it and say, yeah, they all confuse their languages. They all had different languages. They all had to go everywhere else. That's not all that happened.

It was not simply a human problem. It was a human rebellion, but it was also cosmic rebellion, and so we're going to be looking at all that. Let me just go with the first one. When we come to the fall, and so the rebellion number one is the fall. Most of us are very well aware of that. So what's the event going on? If you just want to write down these words, it might help us later on. You know this one probably better than any. The event was disobedience, and it was in what I'm calling here, I could call it anything, is in Eden, disobedience, but it was a sacred temple. It wasn't a temple as built like buildings, but it was a place, Eden is a place where heaven and earth meet. Eden was that place where God met with man. That was what it was, and that's where disobedience came in. We're going to talk about the adversary. We're going to talk about who he was, what his name even means, what the Hebrew word is that's used there, the nakash. We're going to look at that, and then what was the consequence? Well, if you just want to write down this one word, death, I called it here mortality and estrangement. It's whenever we were separated from God. Does that make sense? That was the first one. We all know about that one. Second one, if you've been with me before, you've heard me teach on this. This is not something that is, I'm some weirdo off in left field that nobody teaches. There are multiple commentaries and great scholars that teach this idea. It was an angelic transgression. It's when the sons of God, which I'm going to explain all this as we get going.

I'll give you the outline. I'll show you where we're going from this, but it's whenever they, following Lucifer's lead wanted to be worshiped. We're not going, and we're going to see this about how God made you and I. They were adamantly opposed to what God's plan is for mankind. The consequence was depravity. It was depravity. There's things that happened up to Genesis six. The Bible talks about them. We're going to look at some of those things. And then we get to the third rebellion. I just call it the tower, but it's Tower of Babel, Genesis 11. We're going to meet a guy that we've talked about before. He's found in Genesis 10, named Nimrod. We're going to find out, we're going to learn about him. We're going to talk about the desire for a one world government. That's not a new thing, by the way. What's going on in the world economic forum, that's not new. That's not new. That is just Satan's attempt. The thing Hitler was doing is not new. We're going to see how they chose not to follow God's way, and what was the consequence? It was a disinheritance. God said, okay, you want to follow them, I'm going to give you over to them. And he did. And then we come to Genesis 12 and said, I'll start my own group. So as we're walking through this, why we need to see Jesus not simply as a suffering servant, but as a cosmic victor. He defeated the demonic forces that raged war against the things of God. What went on in the heavenlies, he came to destroy the works of the devil.

And as we come to that, you see these kinds of things happening in the scriptures. And we're going to talk about in that third rebellion, we're going to talk about how God gave them over to, to follow those sons of God that they chose to follow. And how the, and the Bible tells us this, and we're going to, we're going to see that all these quote, gods they were worshiping were demons. Bible talks in first Corinthians chapter 10, he talks, Paul calls them that tells us what they are. And we're going to see that we're going to understand how the children of Israel knew what was being said there. They knew that, that what, whenever they were reading this and they were being taught this and Moses was sharing these things, they understood what was at stake that God had given the whole world over. And then he comes, he picks a man and a woman who can't have children because they're both too old. He says, I'm going to bring about a supernatural birth and I'm going to start my family. He starts his own family through laughter and Isaac, then to Jacob. We're going to see how that as they became the people of God, they saw themselves as following Yahweh, the one true living God. And yet they still saw the reality of these other gods and how the world was following them and they seem to be progressing in some ways that maybe they weren't. And they wanted to, some of those things, and we're going to see how even things like this is going to start making sense. You remember the story, whenever the God had brought the children of Israel out, they were in the wilderness, they rebelled one time after another. We read it and go, Oh my goodness, you know, when are they going to get this straight? But then something happens that is amazing that most of us miss, but I want you to see it within the cosmic reality of God giving the nations over to follow these angels. Because he said, I will wipe them all out. And he already had in Genesis 6, except for one family, and we'll look at all that. But then he gets there and he tells Moses, he says, Moses, I can't go with them.

I'll kill them all. I'm not going to go. I'm going to send you to the land I told you, but I'm not going to go. I'm going to send an angel. And what does Moses say? If you don't go, we ain't going. We're not going to be like the other nations. We're not going to follow some angel. We're your people. We're going to follow you. When he told the people, God said that they broke down and wept. Why? Because they understood a spirit world that most of us have no clue. So things like that in your Bible, you're going to go, Oh my goodness, there it is. I was reading this morning and the one you're reading and, and as I was reading, I was in the 10 commandments today is what they were. And what's the very first commandment. What is it again? Say to you, you shall have no other gods before me. You know what the word God's is there, Elohim. It's who we, one of the names we call God. And I'm going to tell you what that is. I'm going to talk about what that is. He's not teaching polytheism. It's a reference to a spirit world of, of angelic beings that are a high ranking angelic group of beings that are called sons of God, sons of Elohim. They're called, even at times called Elohim. You shall have, have no other Elohim and see because of our modern rationalistic mindset where we say, well, wait a second. Are you saying there's more God?

Oh, there's only one Yahweh, only one God, only one. He's in a class all his own, but there are beings that guess what? Whatever we read in the Greek, you know. teachings and the Babylonian teaching and they talk about the gods, that's what they were. And Paul tells us what they are. They're not worshipping gods, they're worshipping demons. He's telling us what they are. But your Bible is gonna start opening up and you're gonna start seeing an active spirit world. See for most of us in the modern Western Church, our spirit world pretty well consists of God, Jesus up there on the throne, Holy Spirit's wandering around up there. And then there every once in a while there are these angels that are kind of like, they bring telegrams to us. They're kind of like mailmen. And they show up every once in a while. And yet Hebrews says to us, show hospitality. For some in doing that have entertained angels and not even aware of it. You see, back here when we move over to the right, thinking that way, all of a sudden the spirit world is active, functioning, moving in ways that are unparalleled. As I've had many times in my ministry. So you're saying you believe there's demons behind every bush? No, I don't. But I do believe they're behind a lot more bushes than most of us believe they're behind. And all I'm saying is, is you don't get obsessed about it. We're gonna learn how that the scriptures are gonna open up to us in divine, amazing ways. Now as we get going, let me just kind of tell you our journey ahead. And I've got it on the back. I thought I'm gonna put the whole outline back there on the back. And we're just gonna wander down through this. So I've divided it into five sections. The first three lessons are about the biblical worldview of creation and the supernatural world. And so tonight it's been a lot about the supernatural world. Next week I'm gonna talk about the importance of a literal six-day creation. I'm gonna talk about that. I'm gonna share what that is. And I had a guy was talking about this and this is, do you believe that there's people in our church that don't believe that? I say, there's a few that don't. That's okay. I get that. But we're gonna talk about why. Not just scientifically, even though I'm gonna show you some of that. Many of

you've, if you've read different guys, you know, answers in Genesis, creation.com, some of these great places that teach phenomenal stuff on this, can help us in that. We're gonna look at that. But I'm gonna show you also biblically why it's imperative that we understand the Bible that way, or don't believe the Bible. I mean, it's kind of there. Then we're gonna go the next week, we're gonna talk about the scientific evidence for a young universe. I'm gonna talk about that. That'll get us through this first section. Then the next section we're gonna go to is, I'm gonna start and go down through the three rebellions. We're gonna go to the first rebellion. It's found in Genesis 3, you all know that one. And we're gonna look at how God made us as imagers of God. We've been made in the, as the Latin says, the imago Dei, the image of God. And we're gonna look at that and we're gonna see what that means. And then we're gonna go down to that first rebellion and look at what Satan is called. And we're gonna see those things. And then from there we're gonna go to the second rebellion and the judgment by flood. And we're gonna look at what's, and I say the sins of the watchers, I could call them the sins of the sons of God. The reason I call them watchers is because Daniel calls them that. And we're gonna send some other places that are called that. We're gonna look at that. And then we're gonna look at what was going on in the judgment by water. And we're gonna see how the Hebrew, the way it's written, is God is basically performing a, what I call here, a strategic de-creation. He undoes what he did in Genesis chapter 1 verse 2 with everything except a little group that he put in an ark. We're gonna see how he starts basically over and why he did it and why it was actually an act of mercy. And we're gonna see why it was that. And then section 4, we're gonna look at the third rebellion and the division of the nations. And we're gonna see in chapter 10 about the table of nations, about how we see the 70 nations that are mentioned there, where they are, why that's important, as well as what I was saying earlier about the first empire. And then we're gonna go then from there and look at the third rebellion. It's found in Genesis 11. And what happened there and what the judgment was. But I want to end up, Lord willing,

If we can get there about how all of this fits into understanding the redemption plan that comes through Jesus. We're going to see that those three areas here of death, depravity, and disinheritance, how Jesus reverses all of them. How we have been brought from death to life. How he's put his spirit inside of us so we no longer have to be slaves to sin. How we have been adopted into his family. We have been inherited and adopted by him. He undid all of them. And guess what? When you start seeing that, guess what's going to start making sense to you? Things like this. Things like Jesus saying to his disciples in Matthew 28, go into all the world and make disciples of all, and he says it, nations, ethne. What's he talking about? Is he talking about you and I becoming skilled marketers? No, he's saying I gave them over to foreign gods. I defeated them on the cross and in the resurrection. Now you are going as my ambassadors, as my kingdom warriors, carrying the light of the kingdom, the gospel of God in you to take that light to those nations and to awaken the souls of the nations that I disinherited and I'm calling them back. That's what it was. That's what he's saying. That's why in Acts chapter two, and I've taught this before, whenever we come to Acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost and the Bible says the spirit of God came down and tongues of fire came on them and they begin to speak in other languages. And guess what we're going to see? And it says, really, you can really see it. Surprisingly, Luke actually believed what I'm sharing with you. And as he was writing the book of Acts and came to Acts chapter two, he points out the

people had come from all the nations of the world and he names the nations and guess what nations he names? The nations of Genesis chapter 10. The Holy Spirit came to bring them back home. Does that make sense? We're going to see that. That's why over the years as I began to learn these things and begin to see and the spirit of God began to show me things, all of a sudden, whenever I have someone like a Teresa come and she has an issue going on, I'm not saying that everybody that has sin going on in their life has a demon. I've talked about that and made that clear. We still have a sinful nature, but some do. And with her, when that demon began to manifest, I wasn't nervous or worried or afraid. Why? Because Jesus has already defeated them and they know that. And I know that they know that. And so they just, well, phooey, you know, and they leave. And it's just, it's the way the kingdom works. That's who we are. Now in the midst of it, I'm going to, I don't want you to get this idea that I'm talking about some kind of everything ought to go roses in your life. Paul made it very clear that everyone who desires to live a godly life will be persecuted. That literally, and this is a hard part for Christianity, especially in America, whenever we like our comfort and we like everything to be convenient. This is hard for us, but guess what? You know, you know why? If you've heard me teach, I've taught this before, but do you know why Christians began to be called Christians? It wasn't the Christians that decided to call themselves Christians. They call themselves things, other things like followers of the way, followers of Jesus,

things like that. It was a derogatory term given to them by the Gentiles around them because they said, you guys are acting like little Christs. You're just Christians. You think that you're a little Christ here on earth. When they were persecuted, the church was being persecuted. They said things like Paul did, I bear in my body the marks of Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, but most of us want to stop there, but he didn't stop there. He didn't even put a period there. He said, he says that. Christ the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings and so somehow becoming like him in his death. That is where we are. That's who we are. So in the midst of this, God gives us the privilege of being his children and we get to share in the fellowship with Christ becoming like him whether it's through the victories or whether it's through the struggles. And in it, God is preparing us to rule with him because there is coming a day when this is over. When Jesus comes back and says, it's time. And when he does, you know what he says we'll be doing? Paul makes it clear in first Corinthians chapter 6. He says, why are you guys taking each other to court? Don't you know that you're going to be judging people? And then verse 3 of first Corinthians 6, he even takes it a step farther. Don't you know you're going to be judging angels? And judging doesn't mean that we're going to have a gavel in our hand and pound in a table. Judging means we're going to be ruling. So that's the first century. That's 2000. That's the church and the mindset. So as we come to our Bibles, we're going to attempt over the next few weeks to say, God, for just a minute, open me up to read the Bible. And then I'm just going to ask you to let me read it like those that you wrote it to. And here's what I found that's neat. The Holy Spirit says, since I wrote it, I can do that. And he'll guide us. Amen. All right, let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for your word. And Lord, I thank you for this joy and privilege that we all have to just be guided by you. And Jesus, you told us that that's what the spirit would do. So Holy Spirit, I pray you would guide

us into all the truth. Lead us, Father. I'm asking, Father, for all that are listening, all that are here, all that will be listening later. Lord, that I pray that you would wake up our Bibles. Holy Spirit, I pray you'd protect us from the evil one. Pray you would gift us with just divine wisdom that comes from you. Share with us the secrets of the kingdom, as we humble ourselves before you and speak to us, Lord. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.