Let's see, we're at the 15th verse of Genesis chapter 2. Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the Garden, you may eat freely. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. Or in the day that you eat from it, you shall what? Surely die. Chapter 3, verse 1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, indeed, as God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the Garden. And the woman said to the serpent, to the trees of the Garden, we may eat. But the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the Garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman, you surely shall not die. God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, then that it was the light to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate. And she gave also to her husband with her. And he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made them doubt out of the garden. And 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. Then the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And the Adam said, I heard the sound of the in the Garden and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid myself. God said, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And the man said, the woman thou gave us to be with me. She gave me from the tree and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman, this is by the way, this is very emphatic in the Bible. What is this you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. And the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed, are you more than all cattle, more than every beast of the field on your belly shall you go, thus shall you eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and childbirth. In pain you shall bring forth children yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. The Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat from it, cursed it as the ground, because of you, in toil you should have stayed till I told her that it shall grow for you. And you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you are taken, for you are dusted, and to dusted you shall return. Amen. May God bless this reading of his holy and infallible word. May we may be seated, please. Now I want to suggest this evening that for something to be lost has an element of incredible good news to it. It can be very hopeful that something is lost, right? I may wonder why I would say that, but understand that if something is lost, first of all, it means that at one point you had it. And there perhaps is the hope that you might have it again. In other words, what's better to have lost the winning lottery ticket or to never have possessed it? What's better to have lost a beautiful golf swing or to have never possessed it? If you possessed it, there's much greater chance that you might have it back again. Let me tell you the importance of this. The question we're discussing is the innocence of man. Is the innocence of man something that was lost or is it something he never had? It makes all the difference. It can be incredible good news that something was lost because it says that once you had it, right? And perhaps it could be recovered. The debate, frankly, hasn't been much of a debate in our country as to whether man is good or bad. The overriding, demanding voice as cried man at his core is what? Good. He is good. The if man acts in ways that aren't good, it's because he's been subjected to social forces, environmental forces outside of himself, which have affected him in such a way that his behavior is indeed bad. But that is core. He's not bad. It's his environment that's caused him to act bad. Therefore, of course, the way to improve our world and improve the behavior of men is to change what? Change the environment. To change the education, to change our culture, to change families, to change structures, and then that person who's at his core, good, will behave properly. That was, this has been pretty much the American ethic all along. Man at his core is good. Guess what? This view, not only, of course, among Christians, but even among secularists and among intellectuals has eroded almost to extinction. And what perhaps has caused that? The erosion of the idea that man is essentially good. What's caused that? It was called the 20th century. The time of unparalleled cruelty of one man to another. In fact, a leading intellectual or psychologist at MIT wrote recently, the prevailing wisdom among intellectuals has been that evil has nothing to do with human nature and must be attributed to social political institutions. And any who descended from the saccharine view have been picketed and smeared, but distinct patterns of violence, callousness, and cruelty have come up repeatedly in human history, cutting across all times, places, and political systems. We see what people said in looking at the recent human history, it doesn't matter whether you're from a repressive governmental system or a democratic governmental system, you're equally able to produce cruelty. In democracies, there was slavery, right? And then in repressive governments like Russia and Cuba, we saw all the horrors of man's mistreatment of men. It didn't seem to matter, actually. Either system could produce evil. It didn't seem to matter whether you're from Europe or Asia. You could have the Holocaust and Nazism, or you could have the killing fields of Paul Pot. It didn't seem to matter, in other words, location or political system, it didn't seem to matter how sophisticated your culture was like Serbia, an advanced culture, or how primitive your culture was like Rwanda, equally able as man to commit the grossest possible atrocities. Now, it's still with me. So utterly eroded has been the idea that man at his heart is good. Now people realize that it doesn't matter what environment he's in. He's rotten, but here's where the rubber meets the road. Where did it come from? And here's the umpst in the intellectual community. I would suggest that maybe the man on the street in America still has the idea that, well, I just kind of think everybody's good. But in the intellectual community, people are wrestling with these thoughts. There is a sense of a deep-seed depression because the conclusion is the origin of evil in man is that that's just who we are. That's always the way we've been. It's the natural evolution here. If we are products of the survival of the fittest, then the fittest and the strongest do what? They got to be the fittest and the strongest by doing what? By crushing and destroying the weak. And so it, man, suppresses, inflates, steals, tortures, rapes, he's only doing what he's biologically conditioned to do. That's just who we are. And do you really think that we're going to be able to reprogram 100 million years of evolutionary progress? To be able to produce a man who's altruistic, so you understand the angst of the intellectual community, that's who we are, that's who we are. In the midst of that, there's another voice. It's called Genesis, the Book of Genesis that says, once man was innocent, there's another explanation for where evil came from. If there was an innocence that we possessed that was lost, and perhaps it could be found again, Humpty Dumpty, set up, optimistic or pessimistic little jingle, Humpty Dumpty sat in the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and all the king's forces and all the king's men couldn't let, put Humpty together again. The horses, not the men, but the one king, couldn't put it back, but we take men in it to be. Let's study Genesis chapter 2 and chapter 3 together. The Bible says that man was, indeed, once innocent, the world was paradise, but man made a horrendous decision to rebel against the living God, and man's rebellion has led to innocence lost. So, if you're looking at your outline, what's the cause of the world in which we live, and the problems that surround us, is that our first parents chose to defy God. Now, we want to look at what caused them to make that choice. It's instructive, of course, not just because it helps us understand what they did, but it helps us understand who we are. First of all, understand that in the corruption of man was this decision, and the failure of our first parents was a decision to set themselves up as judge, to take the rightful place of God's authority and claim it unto themselves. So, if you look at verse 1 of chapter 3, we have Satan come to Adam and Eve in the garden with a mocking, sneering, arrogant tone. See the evil one come? God has given to Adam and Eve where to live. Has he been sparing in his kindness to them? What did he do for them? He made them. They didn't even exist. He made them. He gave them one another. He gave them himself. He gave them a garden. He gave them prosperity and provision of every sort, and he says to them, from any tree, you may eat what? Really? But what? Satan, what do we read in verse 1 of chapter 3 comes with this suggestion? Did God really say you can't eat from any of the trees?
You can't eat from your heart. But tell you that. Does that make sense to you? Is that a reasonable prohibition? Let me tell you something. The downfall of man begins. When he sets himself up as the judge of what is reasonable and the arbiter of what is best, see the arrogance of Satan to question the authority of God. Of course, to completely twist the scene around, but even if Satan's approach even was to say, how dare God withhold from you the fruit from that one tree? How oppressive? How oppressive? How could he? What kind of even if he died? Once man takes the posture of setting himself up as the judge of that which is true, and that which is right, and that which is good, then the seeds of our fall and our sin have been sown. I want you to notice something. If you've ever been in a college setting or a setting where maybe to people who think you want to present the claims of Christianity, have you noticed that they won't say to you? You're trying to press on them. The idea of the Bible is true and God is and he's revealed himself and Jesus is his son and they won't usually say, well, let me give you the seven reasons for my study. I've got that the truth claims of Christianity just don't hold up. Is that what you hear from them? What do you get instead? You get a sneer. Anybody who would, I have never even met anybody on this campus. I've never even met anybody in my adult life. I don't even have anybody in my family who still believes the Bible is true. To actually believe that miracles happen. I mean, I didn't think anybody who had more than an elementary education. I thought this is something that people who live in places like rural Florida would still believe that what you get it from them is a lie. A sneer, an arrogance, not an intellectual argument that tells their problems with the sense that as they debunk what you believe, they act as if their unbelief is oh, so sophisticated. I don't know as I tried to think of the best illustration for this sort of setting yourself up as the authority when you're not the authority at all, best in my life illustrated by teenagers. You can say to your danger, you have a car. And you have a school and you have a bed and you have a house and you have air conditioning and you have food and you have this and you have that and you have to know that I'll call some other that and I'll die for you. But I want you home at midnight. And you're so aggressive. It's so restrictive. And the friends who are gone say, your parents want to allow you to go to an isolated movie. I mean, what kind of knee and their thoughts are they? It's a sneer of, and we would say that the teenager, the child that sets them up, self-subsist, mom, dad, I'm not defying your authority, I wouldn't dare defy your authority, you're in a rightful place as a parent, but it just doesn't make any sense to me, which is of course to utterly what? To defy their authority by putting themselves as the arbiter of what rules and prohibitions and direction makes sense. And unless you're orders and unless you're rules makes sense to me, I'm not bound by them. Now, unless we pick on teenagers, they're only outward displaying the condition of our hearts. And if you don't think so, just think of the last time you were driving and the sign said on a wide open freeway, and the miles per hour said 55, and you said, I will not submit to the authority over me because somebody doesn't know what they're talking about. Once man makes a decision with God, so I want to say to you, be careful, examine your own heart. And if you see in your own heart a cynical, skeptical, you know, the cynicism, unbelieving approach. In other words, if you're prone to unbelief, there's no life in it, there's no life in those who sneer. You know what the Bible says is that we shouldn't be cynical about authority, so much as we should be cynical about something else, which we'll hardly ever, I mean, the motto of the modern sneerer is to bind own self, be what? Be true. If there's something in this world we ought to be cynical about, it's our own thinking, it's our own blindness, it's our own corruption. And yet we pass it off as sophisticated, unbeliefs. I'll just say this, there's no life in unbelief, there's no life in something, there's only life in belief of something. I think of the told you before about the American visitor to the Polynesian island who saw one of the dark-skinned native people reading a Bible and absorbed in it and the sophisticated American could only say, you know, are you aware, I don't know if they have communication out here, but are you aware that back in the States nobody believes that anymore? I mean, it's not true, it's been debunked. And this islander looked up and said, are you aware that if this book isn't true, then I would have eaten you by now. Beware the sneer, it comes from hell. Second, the cause of man's rebellion, not only setting himself up as the one in authority, but setting him and perhaps the even more illustrative of our condition as a doubting of God's goodness. Listen to Satan's approach. Eve responds to Satan in verses two and three. She says, hey, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. There's just one tree that we can't eat it, we can't touch it she adds, because God says if we do that, we might die, I know it's what she said. We might die. And what Satan's response, oh dear, dear, deary, deary, deary. I know you, Eve, Eve, you're about to like the picture, so much life out there for you can't. And you're going to be boxed in by a God telling you what you can and can't do. You're going to die, what does it say? There's for you, won't die, God knows the minute you eat that fruit, you're going to be like him. Take the fruit, eat it, you go girl, I'll be how you can be. Satan's selling this. God is not the lover of your soul, Eve. God does not aim to do you good. He's the one who stands between you and life and being all that you could be. Let me tell you something, at the heart of our sin lies that kind of thinking, this is our fundamental struggle, God the enemy of my happiness. There are two kinds of people we could say. We could say there are conservative and there are liberal people. We could say that there are moral, religious kind of people and they are licentious and very free living kind of people. And those people don't really like each other, do they? They don't go to the same parties, they're not in the same political party for the most part, they don't vote the same way, they don't go to the same churches and yet I want you to see that they're driven by the same motives. They don't trust God to be good, merciful, rich and benevolent. People who are moral and religious are often moral and religious to attempt to put God under obligation. They don't trust that God is good and merciful, mercy has to be what, earned, merited. And one of the ways you can tell that they're not abasking in the love of God is cursed because very rarely do they reflect the love of God, but the primary way that you can tell is often when they're put under adversity, what do they say? What happens to the moral and religious when things don't go their way? You could get this with God. I served him for 40 years, how could he let this happen to me? The Bible says, raise your children in the way they should go and when they are older will not depart from it and I did that and look at what's become of my kid. I had you under obligation, God, I knew you weren't good, why do those who live looser or free and licentious live that way? Because they think God wants to do the most of the love and goodness of God either. There I think is, if I obey God, if I go to church, I get involved in all that, I'm going to miss out on all of that. But that matter, moral and religious, liberal and loose, all driven by the same thing do not believe that God is for me, that He revels in me, that He takes delight in me, that He'll take good care of me. So I act, how about you, and let's tell the truth, is it the heart of the struggle of everyone of our lives. It's why the gospel warms our heart so. The notion that God would actually take delight in a people like us. At the root of sin then is what, we take authority, the rightful place of authority, we set ourselves as judge, we don't believe in the goodness of God, Eve didn't believe that God was good. And the third thing is this, we buy the lie that the way to life is, you know, life can be found apart from God and only make sense if God's the enemy of the good and take matters in your own hands. You've got to provide life for yourself. It's him, Keller, help me see something I've never seen before. If you haven't been on the law, the rules. If you'd have been setting up a test for our first parents, do you think you would have made that the test? I mean, if there's this one thing you can't do, what would it be? And when we just set up a rule in our house for our kids and we said, there's one thing you can't do in this house, what it would have been, you may not eat fruit. I mean, in my house it's almost exactly the opposite. The one thing you can always do is eat fruit. Why the law would God, I mean, if you're going to set up one rule, what would obviously be the rule, the prohibition? You may not hit. You may not hurt. You may not murder. You may not steal. You may not lie. You may not deceive all bad things, right? God would say, don't do any of these bad things. If you look at this passage and ask yourself, why did God say you can't eat fruit? You can't eat the fruit from that one tree. Why did God say it's a good thing? What you can't do, but I don't want you to do it. Perhaps this is why. It's because the definition of sin is not doing bad things. The definition of sin is doing good things instead of pursuing life in Christ or life in God. The essence of sin is looking to good things to do for us what only God can do. They're trying to find life apart from God. You understand that? Let me say it again. The essence of sin is not doing bad things, good things to find life apart from running to God. In other words, we take good things like marriage and we try to find life in them. We take good things like food and physical pleasure and work and material things. We take these good things like going to church and religion. We try to find life in them instead of running to Christ. The purpose of the gospel is not to get the irreligious people to be religious. It's not to get the immoral people to be moral. It's not to get the bad people to be good. It's to get the self- savers to run to Jesus. I hope that's sinking in. Another way to put it is walking around in this world, who is the great trophy of Satan? Our Satan's big trophies in this world, the murderer and the prostitute and the drug addict. His big trophies in this world is the self-sufficient church member who has an orderly life with everything in order and everything covered in everything taken care of so that he doesn't need what. He doesn't need a savior. That's Satan's trophy. That's when he's accomplished his aim. At the heart of sin then is this. Is we think, just like Eve, boy, if I could have that, then I'd have life. What are we doing in the face of this? We take authority instead of God. We don't trust the goodness of God. We seek life apart from God. What does a Bible say when you see your corruption? What does God want you to do? Safe. Repent. Be sorrowed by it. Tell the truth about yourself and lay it down. That's the hardest thing for us to do in it. This story this week about one of these honey-baked ham stores and she, the county lady at the counter was watching on a security monitor. She took the ham and she put it under her dress. She carried it between her knees and she had to waddle out of the store and as she was waddling down this handicap, metal handicap ramp, the ham gave way and bam, hit the ramp and roll down the ramp. Of course there she was standing right in front of the manager of the store as this ham falls out of her dress. But she didn't miss a beat. She turned to the manager and said, hey, who threw that ham at me and ran out of the store? The thing to keep from saying, what, it's me. I did it. We'll do almost anything to avoid saying, you know, we were talking some of our staff this week about the great thing when parents come and they say, my kids, they're so selfish. They're so arrogant and they're so unruly and I'm so mad at them and they sit down and say, what do we do? And with biblical permission, we look across the desk and we say, why does it surprise you that they're acting like that? They're your kids. You're the big sinner. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child, the Bible says, and a lot of discipline will drive it far from them. But the only parent who can rightly discipline the child is the parent who knows that the child is more specific than the parents are. We're the big sinner. There's no correction we ever give our child that we don't need what? More. It's a whole different way of looking at life. Say, God, I am so broken, but it's hopeful because of the answer to this world's problems that are not outside of us, they are inside of us. Then what was lost can be found and it won't be changed by electing the right people. And it won't be changed by setting up the right kind of school system, our world won't. And by getting enough mental health care and all the other things we ought to do can only be changed. Our soul's condition can only be addressed by a savior.
Let me just say this. Secondly, that's the cause. What's the effect? The whole creation disintegrates. And this is the world in which we live in. One sin has this broad and sweeping effect and it wreaks havoc on every part of God's world. And we'll cover this quickly. Look at what we see right there in Genesis 3. One man had been in intimate fellowship, as a matter of fact it says, that God would come and do what? Verse 8. And they heard the sound of the word God what? It's the most intimate picture the Bible has. God comes. Just like God comes and walks with him, face to face, fellowship. Let me bring me before that day, right? I want to see Jesus. Lord, I want to see you. I want to touch you. I want to know you. I want to know you like. I know other people. I want to have that kind of closeness. I don't want this distance that we have, well, they had it, but it's gone. Alienation from God is the result of sin. That fellowship is gone and so Adam and Eve are hiding and so the personal relationship with God is replaced with shame and fear, not a respectful fear. I think of the Bible even says now those who are saints. When God comes around, their response is what? What is Isaiah say? And Isaiah 6, I am what? In the presence of God, I am undone. I mean, the picture is my bowels, you know, my spoken in, my, to the innermost parts of my being. I am coming unglued in the presence. And you might be sitting here saying, you know, it's funny to say that, but I don't feel that kind of alienation from God. I want to give you the figment of your imagination. He's not the God of the Bible, as a result of sin, there's separation between us and God. As a result of sin, there's separation between us and ourselves. When we lost God, we lost ourselves. The Bible says that Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed in the end of chapter 2, but now it says they are filled with shame. They are hiding. And think of the pathetic attempt to so covering in so man's depression, and anxiety, and self-loathing, and all the psychological unraveling that we experience thirdly, we're not only alienated from God and from ourselves, we're alienated from each other, right? We see it immediately. God comes and says to Adam, where are you? What do you like to hear that? I can still remember my dad's footsteps coming through the house every time it was report card day. He just read my report card when he got home from work on top of his dresser where my mother would leave it. Raymond, where are you? I'm almost to meet out to, you know, justice, Raymond, Adam, where are you? And what does Adam say? God, can we talk? You understand women, you know, come on, I mean, not only are you women, but you gave her. So there's alienations from each other. We see Adam blaming Eve. We see the Bible says that the family pain, she'll experience pain in childbirth, she'll try to use surfer husband's position, men will suppress and oppress their wives, all this relational disaster, all the experience of crime and racism and genocide that our culture experiences that we open up the paper and read everyday grows right out of this, our alienation from each other. And last of all, to the physical alienation from all of creation, I mean, when Adam and Eve woke up every morning, there was a buffet at their feet, right? What does the Bible say now? You want Thurdy? You'll have to wrestle this earth for it. And guess who is going to win in the end? You will take the ground of this earth and you will try to ring life out of it, but it will fight you every step of the way, matter fact, the word here used for Adam's toil was the same word used for Eve's childbirth. You will have to go out into the world every day and go through labor pains to produce food, to eat, to stay alive. In the end, guess who will win? You are the soil. The soil will win from dust you came and to dust you shall return. See the brokenness of our world. That's what we experience. In a global way, everybody sought this week, little Catholic schoolchildren walking to school in Northern Ireland, right, and adults screaming in their face in some even throwing explosives. Or perhaps we sought this week in the Middle East and a man walked into a place of Jewish prayer with a bomb on his back and exploded the bomb, his head flying over the wall, landing in a courtyard of schoolchildren. I have to tell you those kind of stories because we know it in our own lives and our own families and our own hearts and our own relationships. The only answer they have in Northern Ireland is bill the wall. The only answer they have in Israel is bill the wall. Whoever come and tear the wall down, the world is sinned sick and the only answer is for the creator to come back and set it right. And guess what we see in Genesis chapter 3. When Adam and Eve sinned, what happens? God does what? He comes. God comes. And do you know what, Genesis chapter 3 verse 8, God came walking into the garden saying, where are you, is a sure sign of the salvation of many already without the one step without knowing where that journey will ultimately take him? The fact that God moves back towards a man rather than destroying him on the spot. The fact that God goes looking for Adam and Eve doesn't he? Is a precursor that tells us that the story of the whole Bible is going to be what? Jesus Christ came to us to find us, to seek us, and to save us. God comes to find his hiding children. What a God. And he tells us in Genesis chapter 3, 15, that he's going to do something that right now Adam and Eve have paired up with who? Satan. But that he is going to drive a wedge between, you know, he's going to have two lines of people. And there will be the people of Satan. But he is going to drive an wedge between Adam and Eve and Satan. He is going to put enmity and hatred between his people and the line of Satan. Right now they're allied with Satan, but he says what, I'm going to rip you away from fidelity to Satan so that you will hate his life and you will love me. And he says what, in verse 15, he says something else, this seed will do this and this seed will do that. And then he says what? And he shall bruise as he speaks to the serpent and cursing. He shall bruise you on the, who's he? Where do we get this heat? And the seed, the line, they, suddenly he, out of the seed of Eve, out of a woman will come somebody who will crush Satan's head. Where unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, a virgin will conceive. The Bible always tells us about progeny. It always tells us about offspring and lines by stating the father's name. So-and-so came from the father, so-and-so came from the father, never the woman, never in this culture. But there's only one person who ever lived on this earth who didn't come from an earthly father. He only came from a woman who we have in the open cradle to a Bible announcement that he is coming, who will crush the devil, he will crush his head, he will crush racism, he will crush rape and abuse pedophiles, pornography, he will crush divorce and brokenness and cancer and death, destroy it, destroy it, he'll destroy it. But what will it cost him? He will crush the head of Satan but he is what? When you crush the head of a snake, you get bit, it will cost him dearly because the Bible tells us that when this heat would come, he would come as the second Adam. God said to the first Adam, obey me about the tree and you'll have life. But Adam thought, I'll choose life for myself and for all his posterity he chose death by his disobedience. When the second Adam came, he went to a garden too, didn't he? And kneeling in the garden, God said to his son, obey me about the tree. When the second Adam, Jesus said yes to the father, and for himself he chose death so that we might have life, life for his posterity, Adam turns, Jesus turns the cross into the tree of life and says to his people, come and eat, come and eat from the tree of life that my death is made possible for you. Now do I just wrap it up now and stick it in the meat from that absolutely you do, it's the way of life. But I want to tell you, it really is the antidote for sin. We are corrupt in our nature but once we were innocent and what was lost is going to be restored by the victor, King Jesus. This summer friend of mine, Mike Campbell, Mike's an African-American preacher in South Miami. I heard him speak in Dallas. He talked about his childhood, tearfully and painfully, growing up in Virginia. He talked about the racism he experienced, very often at the hands of the white church. He talked about dating a girl in high school whose father took that girl out of the school and put her in a mental institution because she was dating him. He talked about going off to college and dating a young Hispanic girl and he said before we even go out another time, I want you to ask your parents whether it's all right for you to be going out with me. I'm not going through this again. She communicated with the parents, he communicated with the parents, everything's fine. When she went home for Christmas, he found that she wasn't allowed by them to even come back. They forbade her to date a black man. He entered the phase of anger at venturing out in his studies to look back at all the gift offered by his race and took the posture of the victim in this world. He talked about how Jesus had come and changed his life. Mike's a PCA pastor in Miami as a wonderful multicultural church. He told the story of, as he finished his whole sermon, he told the story just a week before it had been his birthday and he gathered with all his staff in Miami at a restaurant. He said everywhere else, every table, just Cubans, just white people, just black people, everybody segregated in their parties. But he said here their church staff was black and white and Hispanic and their children and everyone all mixed together. He said nobody in their party even notices that because it's a way of life in their church. He said that he wouldn't have even noticed it. He said a matter of fact, it brought him ice cream because it was his birthday, the restaurant did. But he doesn't eat ice cream and so his daughter said can I have it and then one of the daughters of one of the white staff people and his daughter sat and ate the ice cream together. Black face, little white face, smashed up against each other, eating that ice cream with the same spoon. Mike said he wouldn't even have noticed that kind of thing happens all the time in their church except at the end of the table he noticed his father. From his father's generation who had experienced the horror of racism like he could only imagine. And he saw the tears that to run down his father's face. He saw his father wrestle a cam away from someone else to take a picture of this little white, little black children and his father snapped a picture with the biggest smile on his face and he said to his son, I'm bringing this back to Virginia with me. It's not a picture of a white child and a black child. It's a picture of the kingdom of God. I want you to know that Jesus Christ is rolling back the curse now. And we taste it in this place and you should begin to taste it in your own heart and family and life. This is calm to me. It's a terrible thing to be lost. I came to find you, to back home. Have you been found? Jesus, but you come to him. Amen.