Well, I invite you to turn with me in the word of God to Genesis chapter three. Genesis chapter three is we are working our way through the articles of the Belgic Confession of Faith. We have come this evening to article 17, which is really about God's recovery, God's salvation of man after man had fallen in the garden. And so Genesis three, I'm sure, is a very familiar passage to most, if not all of us. I'll begin reading at verse eight, down through verse 15. Genesis chapter three and starting in verse eight. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go. and thus you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. This ends the reading of God's holy word. May he bless it to us. Let's go to him this evening and ask for his help. Father in heaven, we come before you praising you for the fact that we know that in Adam that we are all fallen, that we are all, if left to our own devices, hopeless and helpless. We know that even as we've read this evening that you have come to us and you have made the promise of the gospel. We ask, Lord, that as we go tonight, that your spirit would illumine us to understand your words not only here but throughout your scriptures, that we would see more of the glories of Christ our Savior, that we would be enabled to respond to you in gratitude for the things that we see that you have done for us. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen. I invite you also to turn in the Forms and Prayers book to Article 17 of the Belgic Confession of Faith. That's on page 170 in that thin Forms and Prayers book. If you are also using the Trinity Psalter hymnal, you can find that on page 861 in the back. We have come now to Article 17 of the Belgic Confession of Faith, page 170. We believe that our good God, by his marvelous wisdom and goodness, seeing that man had plunged himself in this manner into both physical and spiritual death and made himself completely miserable, set out to find him, though man, trembling all over, was fleeing from him. And he comforted him, promising to give him his son, born of a woman, to crush the head of the serpent and to make him blessed. Faithful summary of what we believe the Bible teaches about this, about where the recovery of man, about where our salvation truly comes from. And as we come to Belgic Confession Article 17, it really is telling us who solves this problem. Because of course, by the time we've come to this section of the Belgic Confession, we've seen a lot. We've understood a lot of what it is that the scriptures teach us about who we are and who God is. And we started out by seeing who God is and his nature and his attributes, the fact of his glory and the might that he has and all these things that are far above our ability to comprehend and what we should praise him for. We've seen that this God who is incomprehensible has truly stooped down and made himself known to us in two ways in his two books, in the book of nature or creation and in the book of scripture. We've seen what these scriptures are, that they are sufficient for our faith and life. We've seen that our God is A triune God, that's how he reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That this triune God has made all things by the word of his power, that he upholds all things in his providence by his strong right hand. We saw that he created the first man and the first woman. He created mankind out of the dust of the earth and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. And then we saw that mankind fell. And we have an understanding that mankind has plunged ourselves into quite a mess, to put it mildly. Adam has taken all these good gifts that God had given to him in favor and in love and turned them on their heads and lost all these things that God had given to him. And mankind, as we begin here in Article 17, was in a state of just a terrible situation, in misery and condemnation and dread. But then we saw last time, Article 16, the eternal election of God. that God, from before the foundation of the earth, before the foundation of all creation, had chosen a people for his great name to save out of this mess of humanity that could have been just damned as a whole lump. In Article 17, we begin to see how he's going to do this. How did this happen? This election that happened from before the foundation of the world, from before there was time, it is now being carried out in time. How did God go about saving a people for his great name. Well, we see in Article 17 who it is that solves this problem, namely God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Articles 18 through 21 really begin to tell us more how he came, and so we see the logic there of the confession. But we are in Article 17 just really focusing on the fact that God is gracious. If we were to nail down just one sentence, one phrase that could help us nail, or help us to see what it is that Article 17 is telling us, that scripture says, is that God truly is gracious. Now I realize that seems sort of like a truism, something that's just true as you hear it and you can just move on and move on to bigger and better things. I've been tempted to think that way in my own Christian life. I would submit to you that there are no bigger and better things than that. The fact that God is gracious to sinners is a wonderful and a great thing, and it's sad how often that those who have experienced God's grace have to be reminded that he is truly gracious. Because we often forget it, don't we? Or if we don't actively forget it, we at least live as if that was not true. As if God were not gracious to us, as if he were not loving and merciful to us, even as sinners. Article 17 reminds us that he is, as scripture says he is, he is a God of grace and mercy. That what Christ came and did, his person and work were not plan B, but Christ and his gospel were plan A for God. This was how things were always going to go. So we begin to understand what the gospel is. And so article 17 wisely and pastorally takes us to the very beginning, to Genesis chapter three. And we'll see three things, three points, three headings as we consider this idea of God's grace and salvation coming to us. And we see the first thing is the first gospel preacher, the first gospel preacher. Now as we started reading there in Genesis chapter three in verse eight, we're sort of picking up in the middle of the story. And I trust you know quite a bit about it, of the record of God creating all things, speaking them into existence, creating man in his image and bringing man and woman together and all these different sorts of things, giving them certain commands, telling them to do certain things and not to do certain other things, especially not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And of course we know the serpent comes and he tempts Eve and she eats and she gives some to her husband who was with her and he eats and mankind falls. The first recorded sin we find in all the scripture there in Genesis chapter three and suddenly we come immediately to a day of judgment. That's really what was happening at that tree in the garden. It was a day and a time of judgment. Adam and Eve had done this to themselves. They had no one else to blame even though they tried to as God came to them and asked them what had happened. They tried to each one pass the blame onto the next. Have you ever noticed that as you read it? God comes to Adam and Eve as they're trembling there in their fig leaves, probably trying not to look as much as they can, knowing that they are no longer holy and righteous, and he asks, what is this that you have done? Well, this woman you gave to me, that you gave to me, she's really the responsible one, and you're the one who gave her to me in the first place, so this is really your fault. Eve says, well, the serpent that you made It's really his fault and ultimately it's your fault because you made him. The blame is being shifted and yet there's no one to blame but Adam and Eve. No one to blame but our first parents. No one to blame but humanity for the mess that humanity found themselves in suddenly there right at the beginning. Adam and Eve were told that if you eat from this fruit of this tree that you shall surely die. The Hebrew is very striking at that point. It's basically dying you shall die. It's hard to get around that. Dying you shall die, you shall surely die is a good translation. There is no question that this will lead to death. The command was clear, the threat was clear, and the transgression of Adam and Eve and eating of this was equally clear. And now God comes. What a terror that must have been. Suddenly this one with whom you had perfect communion and fellowship in the garden, the one who made you and provided all these things for you, is coming and probably for the first time they're really beginning to understand what fear actually is. They're beginning to understand the terror of a sinner in the presence of a holy God. We see that their eyes had already been opened by this point and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together in order to somehow or another cover themselves and their guilts and the fact that they could be seen. And in verse eight we read, in the cool of the day the Lord comes. That could just as equally well, perhaps even better, be translated in the spirit of the day. And so we come here, and that language, even though it's early on in the Bible, is picked up again and again and again throughout the rest of the Old Testament for a day of judgment, a day of the Lord, we could say. What we have here in Genesis 3 is the very first day of the Lord in recorded human history. God comes in judgment to those who had sinned against him. Adam and Eve are hiding from God in terror. And so this is the day of judgment. The scene has been set. The only expectation is the hammer's about to drop. And this is the end. God's gonna wipe the slate clean. No king certainly can let his lower subjects rebel against him in such a clear and obvious way. God's going to come in judgment. God's going to come and execute wrath upon these people and all forms of death that we know about, physical death and spiritual death and eternal death, they're all gonna be there, lot right there and then. And yet what we find here is a God who is truly gracious. The scene has been set, but right from the beginning, even as he does often throughout the rest of scripture, God does the opposite in many cases of what people are expecting him to do. And God comes in judgment. on the day of the Lord and the spirits of the day. And things begin to get a little bit strange to our ears. Now we must confess that maybe they're not terribly strange to our ears because we've heard this story so many times that we just know this is how it goes, as if this is how it was always meant to go. As if there could have been no other way that this could have gone. But imagine Adam and Eve. As they're hiding there, shaking in their fig leaves, hearing the sound of the Lord God coming in the first day of the Lord, the first day of judgment, there is no expectation of, oh, we know how this ends. Well, actually, there probably is. It was not a positive thing. It was an expectation of judgment and condemnation of the end coming right after the beginning, as it were. And yet we see something different as we begin to pay attention to the words that God is using, that he comes and he proclaims salvation and redemption and deliverance and victory to his rebellious creatures. Boys and girls, you've probably grown up, all of you here, in the context of a church setting where you come on Sundays and your parents get you ready, perhaps sometimes kicking and screaming. I remember those days. And you gather together and God calls you into his presence and a fallible man, a very fallible man in this case, stands up and proclaims the gospel to you. We can call him the preacher of the gospel, the preacher of the good news. What scripture tells us, what the Belgic Confession recognizes in Article 17 is that it was no man who was the first preacher of the gospel. That God was the first preacher of the gospel. The offended party, the creator and maker of all things, the one who had sustained Adam and Eve from the time they took their very first breath and against whom they had sinned, he came and preached the gospel for the very first time. The first time that good news is uttered to sinners, it comes from the mouth of God himself. We didn't read this far, but later we see at the end of this, God coming and pronouncing judgments upon his creation. What does he do? He takes essentially their inadequate clothing of leaves, of fig leaves, and he clothes them with skins. God himself clothed them with skins. We can spend time on that. We're not going to tonight. We're gonna get into that in the weeks and the months to come as we look at other articles of the Belgic Confession, but that is a prefiguring of the righteousness of Christ in which his people are truly covered. We are left there under the gaze of God, needing a covering. All we can do is sew together fig leaves for ourselves, and that's not going to cut it. You probably don't have to use your imagination much If you go out and find leaves, which I realize is a tougher task in Arizona than other places, but you go out and find a bunch of leaves and sew them together, you're not gonna think, okay, I'm good. I have a covering. I am completely covered and nothing could possibly improve on this. God comes and clothes them with skins. He clothes them with what they need for that time. He comes and brings salvation to them even as he promises the gospel, and that is our second heading, our second point, the first gospel promise proclaimed by the first gospel preacher. And so we see that the serpent is cursed here in chapter three, starting in verse 14 and in verse 15. And we often call this section of scripture the curse, and we refer to the curse as God coming and things changing and the ground changing and all these different sorts of things that come upon mankind, that suddenly work is going to be a very hard and difficult thing, that suddenly pain is increased in childbearing for women, all these different sorts of things. Have you ever noticed that Adam and Eve are never directly cursed here? Now that word is used twice. Two things are cursed, directly and explicitly, the serpents and the ground. But the two image bearers are not. Now there are elements of the curse, and we're right to speak of it as the curse. But it's interesting here that really the only one of the three actors here who are under judgment, who is actively, finally cursed, is the serpent. And this is a day of judgment for him. It's over, it's done. He is cursed.