Well, I hope you're having a good Monday so far, and certainly I hope this video finds you well. This week, we're going to be doing something a little bit different. Today, I am going to introduce the catechism question and answer for this week, and we're going to do our regular Monday reading just as we would any other day. But beginning tomorrow, I'm going to work through the four accounts of the crucifixion found in the Gospels. We're going to look at each of those individually, even though Some are very similar, you know, Matthew, Mark and Luke, certainly there are just some subtle differences between the three, but I'm going to be reading each of those over the course of the next four days, of course, ending with John's account there on Friday and just sort of unpacking and meditating on those things. And so hope you'll tune in for that. I'll try not to make those too terribly lengthy. It'll be difficult not to probably, but I'm going to do my very best to keep those down to a shorter, not just reading, but certainly as I talk about those, as we meditate on those, as here we are, of course, leading up to or going through the week as we lead up to Good Friday and then Easter. And so I do want to mention just as I do each time, or most times anyway, that if you would help us out by liking, subscribing to these videos on YouTube, subscribing to our channel, hit the notification bell so that you'll receive a notification when these videos go up. Certainly we'd appreciate that and certainly appreciate your support with the Emmanuel Discipling Network, of course, that's our channel. And then also the Deliberate Orthodoxy, which is the podcast. And so today we are going to be looking into God's word and thinking on the big question for this week, which is why is man's fallen condition so miserable? And certainly I think that's a pretty good segue as we look to the cross the rest of the week. And so the question is, why is man's fallen condition so miserable? And the answer is they lost fellowship with God and brought his anger and curse on themselves. They are also subject to all the miseries of life, death itself, and to the pains of hell. And as we think on that today, you know, thank God for the cross and what he did for us. We do begin our readings this week with looking at our memory verse. And this is from Romans chapter six and verse 23, which states, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And then our reading for today is Genesis chapter three in verse eight, and then verses 22 through 24. And so of course it's in Genesis chapter three, we see the fall recorded there. We've looked at that a good bit over the course of the last several weeks as we've talked about original sin. But Genesis chapter three verse eight says, then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze. And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And then the second part of our reading comes from 22. in Genesis 3, verses 22 through 24. And thereafter, the curse has been pronounced. In verse 22, we read, the Lord God said, since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever. So the Lord God sent him away from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out and stationed a cherubim and the flaming whirling sword east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. And so as we think about the consequences or what makes our fallen condition miserable, the man's fallen condition miserable, and we talk back through that lost fellowship with God, and certainly here in this passage, we look into Genesis chapter three, there are many things, if we read through the whole chapter, we would see many things related to the curse, the consequences of sin and the nature of the fall, But here, the focus is on this lost fellowship with God, that Adam and Eve would hide from God, the one that they've walked with, the one that they've had a relationship with, perfect, unbroken, loving relationship with up until this point in their existence. And now that sin has entered in, they're hiding from God. They're fleeing from the presence of the one who made them. and made them for fellowship with himself, because sin has broken that fellowship. And then we find here at the end of Genesis chapter three, this closing statement, that God said, since man's become like one of us, all right, he must not reach out and take from the tree of life and live forever. And so the Lord God sent him away. Now that sounds pretty rough. The Lord sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. But in verse 24, this is what really affects me when I read this. He drove the man out. And so here we see God actually driving Adam from his presence, Adam and Eve from his presence. He sent them out, but then he says he drove them out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming whirling sword east of the garden to guard the way of the tree of life. And so they're not only sent away, but they're driven out of the presence of God. And then there's an angel that's stationed there to guard the way to keep them from coming back so that they might not be able to eat from the tree, the tree of life and live forever in this fallen state. And we see that we say, oh, well, It's like the fount of youth. You know, God didn't want them to come back there and eat that and live. Well, God didn't want them to live in this state. It was both the pronouncement of the curse meant that they would die, but also God, it was God's will and God's plan from the very beginning to send a redeemer, to send one who would die for our sins, which we're going to be meditating on, thinking on the rest of this week. It was his will to send one who would die for us. It was his will to send one through through whom death would be defeated and the curse would be broken or the curse nullified through the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so if Adam and Eve were to live forever in that state, they would live in a perpetual state of disfellowship with God. But through the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, mankind is reconciled to God. sin's consequences in this miserable fallen state that we live in is remedied by the Lord Jesus Christ and his coming. Our debt's been paid. We're reconciled to God. And so here we see certainly the effects of the fall on mankind, and certainly we felt these effects, and we still, even after we're born again and we come to know the Lord Jesus Christ still in our flesh, we know that we live on in bodies that will not see heaven. these bodies must be put away or they must be transformed. And so we still continue to walk and in some ways we see that we're not quite yet as we will be and praise God for that. But thank God for Jesus Christ and what he did for us on Calvary's cross. And so we're going to be looking at that tomorrow and throughout the rest of the week. So please tune in, be here with us. Thank you for watching or listening. God bless you and you have a great day.