But then, one day, something terrible happened. Adam sinned, and he was separated from God because he sinned—he disobeyed God. God…cannot…stand…disobedience in His presence! And so, God drove him out of the garden. They no longer walked together and talked with each other in the garden. That beautiful relationship was broken.

Somebody says, “Well, did God know that Adam would—?” Yes, God must have known that Adam was going to do that. Surely He did. God knows all things. He has always known all things. He will always know all things. He doesn’t know any more now than He did before the creation period. He will not know any more 100 years from now, if time moves on, than He knows today. He’s an all-knowing God. Yes, God knew that Adam would sin.

Well then, the question comes, “Why would He create man with the ability to sin?” Well, in the eighth Psalm we are told that God created man and gave him dominion over all of the things that He had made here upon the earth. Man has the power over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and all the animals that walk and crawl and creep upon the earth. Man has dominion, rule, over all of that. [Psalm 8:6-8: “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea.”] Man would have to be an intelligent being, and he’d have to be capable of choosing the courses that he would take in life. That would mean that he would sometimes have to choose, have the ability, the capacity to make WRONG choices, as well as right choices. And God knew that Adam would make the wrong choice. He knew that you and I would make the wrong choice…sometime.

But, in His plan He had a remedy for all of that. As we said last night, He provided a way of salvation in the gift of His Son [October 18, 2003, “The Gospel of Christ”]. In the third chapter of Genesis, verse 15, God refers to the coming of the Son of Man—the conflict between good and evil. He said to the serpent, who had brought the temptation to Adam and Eve, that there should be “…enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed….” And then, we know, of course, that the ONLY person Who is the seed of the woman in all of the Scriptures is the Christ. God knew, also, and He foretold, that Satan would strike a painful blow, as it were, to the heel of the seed of the woman. But, the seed of the woman, Christ Jesus, would win the victory and strike the death blow to Satan [Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel.”] Then, what you read about in the Bible all the way over to the coming of Christ points to that, and prepares for that day.

We wonder why God made such a provision when man conducts himself as he does. When man rebels against Him and does not do His Will, why is it that God would give His Son on the Cross for us as “the sin offering”? [See Hebrews 10.] Then, we are puzzled a bit more when we read over in the book of second Peter, chapter 2, that the angels that sinned were cast into Tartarus, and there they await the Day of Judgment without hope of redemption. [2 Peter 2:4: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment….”] God created the angels, too, and they sinned! And the angels that sinned were cast into a place and reserved permanently for the judgment day without any salvation—without an opportunity to be redeemed, or reconciled!

Well, why would God provide a SAVIOR for man and not for the angles? Is it that the angels, maybe, could work out their own salvation? No…no. We can’t come to that conclusion. Is it because the sin of the angles is less grievous in the sight of God than the sin of man? That isn’t it, either. What would it be? There’s only one word for it, and that’s GRACE—unearned charity on God’s part—a gift that we have from God in Christ Jesus.

That’s what Paul is talking about in Ephesians, chapter 2 [Ephesians 2:4-9: “But God, Who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, ⁵Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) ⁶And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: ⁷That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves:it is the gift of God: ⁹Not of works, lest any man should boast.”].

That’s what he’s talking about in first Timothy, chapter 1, beginning at verse twelve [1 Timothy 1:12-17: “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, Who hath enabled me, for that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; ¹³Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. ¹⁴And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. ¹⁶Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting. ¹⁷Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”].