Sermons - Cornerstone Christian Fellowship

From Time To Time - Part Twenty Five

Mar 17, 2024 by: John Herbert | Series: From Time to Time

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Ge 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

We will continue to look at seeds this week.

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Sunday March17th 2024
From Time to Time – Part 25

1). Ge 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

We had seen last time that an unchangeable scriptural truth has been established at the beginning of Genesis concerning the herb that yields seed according to its kind and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. Simply put, within the natural world plants and trees reproduce themselves, oak trees produce oak trees, wheat produces wheat. This is very straightforward. But we will keep in mind that what we read in Genesis 1:12 is part of the process of the restoration of the ruined material creation that God had set in motion for the purpose of a change of rulership, in the Seventh Day. A restoration that provides a template for the restoration of ruined Man and which is founded upon the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Consequently, this context will tell us that this verse reveals a spiritual truth not just a horticultural one. It is not about plants and trees but about the man of the Spirit and the man of the flesh and the fruit produced by each in relation to the Seventh Day.
	a). Then there is another dimension that we can add to this – 
Ge 1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.

Adam and the Woman were created for the purpose of ruling over the earth in the place of Satan. And we see from vv27-29 that every herb that yields seed and every tree that yields fruit whose seed is in itself, according to its kind were given to Adam and the Woman and were to be for them for food. And so, a connection is forged between God’s provision of ‘food’ and the fulfillment of His purpose for creating Adam and the Woman. What they would eat would have a direct bearing on that purpose. Then in conjunction with the herb that yields seed and the tree that yields fruit, according to its kind, Adam and the Woman were themselves instructed to be ‘fruitful and multiply’ for the purpose of filling the earth and subduing it, to be followed by having dominion, by ruling over it. 
	b). Again, within the natural, Adam and the Woman were to produce children who would populate the earth and subdue it in order to rule over it. And these children could only be according to their kind. Eve could not give birth to a crocodile. And we will note that this mandate was given to them in their unfallen state, and had it been accomplished, they could only have brought forth those according to their kind, not just other human beings but human beings exactly like themselves, in an unfallen state. And as this is the foundational mandate given for rulership, within the context we have already identified, we will understand that there is spiritual truth revealed here as well. This is not simply about genetics.
c). However, as we know, Satan intervened in the Garden preventing God’s mandate from being accomplished at that time, making Satan’s intervention very soon after Adam and the Woman were created. Despite this, God’s mandate for rulership has never been rescinded and will be accomplished in order for God’s purpose for Man to be fulfilled. And we will remember the nature of Satan’s intervention – Ge 3:1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

Satan was offering an enticement to the Woman to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and as we now know, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil could only yield fruit with the seed in itself according to its kind. Which means that as the result of eating from the fruit of that tree produced ‘death’ with respect to God’s purpose of rulership, we can conclude that in the Garden were two trees, the tree of life and the tree producing death, and both had an inseparable connection to rulership in the Seventh Day. And because the Woman was deceived and ate the fruit, giving it to her husband who knowingly ate also, what they ate not only disqualified them from the purpose for their creation but also, because of that disqualification, prevented them from being able to access the tree of life – Ge 3:24 So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

And as we have seen many times, the knowledge of good and evil does not exist in a vacuum. It will either come through the old man out of the wisdom from below, what seems right in our own eyes, or it will come through the new man and the wisdom from above brought forth out of God. The stark difference between the two being that the knowledge of good and evil coming through the old man, what seems right in our own eyes, can only come from the wisdom emanating from the god of this age, whereas the knowledge of good and evil coming out of the new man will be entirely in agreement with the Scriptures. It will be exactly as God defines it and declares it to be. The latter must result in life, as the Scriptures are Spirit and therefore life giving for the Age and is inseparable from rulership in the Seventh Day. And the end result of the former can only produce death, as it is completely apart from God and spiritual life and has its focus on self and ‘rulership’ now, in the Sixth Day under the ruler of this world – Pr 16:16 How much better to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. 17 The highway of the upright is to depart from evil; He who keeps his way preserves his soul…………….. 20 He who heeds the word wisely will find good, And whoever trusts in the LORD, happy is he. 21 The wise in heart will be called prudent, And sweetness of the lips increases learning. 22 Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it. But the correction of fools is folly. 23 The heart of the wise teaches his mouth, And adds learning to his lips. 24 Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, Sweetness to the soul and health to the bones.25 There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.

And then following the fall, with Adam and the Woman both then having a sin nature, Adam, with his seed within himself, now inseparably connected to the seed of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree that produced death, could only reproduce according to his fallen kind - Ge 5:3 And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.

In an entirely physical sense, following the fall, Adam and Eve were fruitful and did multiply and the earth has been filled with their descendants following the flood of Noah, but it could not follow that the earth would be subdued resulting in rulership because Adam and therefore Noah and his sons, could only produce fruit according to their corrupted kind, that which had come from the fruit of the tree that produces death, just as we see in Genesis 5:3 with Seth being born in Adam’s ‘own likeness, after his image’. And this has been true for every human being procreated ever since, as all have been born – Eph 2:1………………..dead in trespasses and sins…………………

Through the act of procreation, the sin nature, the seed of the fruit from the tree, is passed from the father whose seed is in himself, according to his kind, to his children.
	f). And this at once will give us further clarity as to why the Christ has to be the Seed of the Woman. An expression that not only points to Jesus coming from His mother, the nation of Israel, wife to Jehovah but also to Him being born of a virgin, Mary – Lk 1:34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” 35 And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.

From Mary, would come the Man Jesus, His physical form, and from the overshadowing of the power of the Highest, from the Seed of the Word of God producing according to His kind, came the Word made flesh, the Christ, the fulness of the Godhead, bodily – Ro 8:3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh….[a body apart from glory]

Php 2:8 And being found in appearance as a man………

Col 2:9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily…..

Jesus is the Son that God has chosen to rule in Satan’s stead, coming as the Son of Man, to live as a man and then to die as a man. And as the second Man, the last Adam, He died to take upon Himself the righteous judgment of sin, and as God He could pay redemption’s price for that sin on behalf of those completely incapable of redeeming themselves, taking away the sting of death through the power of His resurrection – 1 Pe 2:24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.

Ro 6:8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

2). The consequence of God in the person of Son paying redemption’s price we know – Eph 2:1 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)……

Ge 1:3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

Jn 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

As we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ so the Holy Spirit breathed life into us, spiritual life that we did not possess before. And this spiritual life gave birth, so to speak, to a new man, a man of the Spirit, completely separate from the man of the flesh, the old man, who came through our physical birth. And this new man, as we had seen last time, can only be according to the kind of Him who produced him - Col 3:9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him……….

And this process of renewing the new man in ‘epignosis’ knowledge will take us back to God’s provision of food for Adam and the Woman in the Garden with a view to the Seventh Day, and forward, from that provision, to the food given to the Children of Israel to sustain them on their journey to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with a view to rulership within the Theocracy – Ex 16:35 And the children of Israel ate manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land; they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.

So then, not only is the new man, the man of the Spirit, created according to the image of Him who created him, according to His kind, completely in line with the Spiritual Truth established in Genesis 1:12, but God has also provided the spiritual food necessary for the growth and maturation of the new man - 1 Pe 2:1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby [with respect to salvation], 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

And the growth and maturation of the new man is for a singular purpose – Ga 4:19 My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you……

1 Jn 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

As we had seen last time, the Word of the Truth of the gospel, being spirit and life, can only produce after its own kind. That which is God’s breath CANNOT produce a work of the flesh, just as that which is the wisdom from below CANNOT produce the fruit of the Spirit. Each can only produce according to its kind. Just as we had said last time, the old man can only reproduce the old man and the seed that is within him that produces after its own kind, is the seed of death – Ga 6:7 Stop leading yourselves astray. God is not being outwitted and evaded. 8 For whatever a man is in the habit of sowing, this also will he reap; because the one who sows with a view to his own evil nature, from his evil nature as a source shall reap corruption [death for the age]. But the one who sows with a view to the Spirit, from the Spirit as a source shall reap life for the age. [Wuest]

9 And let us not grow weary while doing good, [sowing with a view to the Spirit] for in due season [when the time of sowing is replaced by the time for reaping what has been sown – at the Judgment Seat] we shall reap [life for the age] if we do not lose heart. [NKJV]

Now, with respect to the work of the Spirit through the Seed of the Word of God in the life of the Christian, we should consider what we find in – Heb 6:7 For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; 8 but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.

These are familiar verses for us, and they have been the subject of a previous study. What we will remind ourselves of from them is that the metaphor used in these verses pictures the same earth, which drinks in the same rain that often comes upon it. The earth provides the metaphor for the Christian, and contextually this would be a Christian who receives the rain, who hears the Word of the Kingdom, not just hearing God’s Word in some amorphous sense.
	a). And as the Christian continues to receive the Word of the Kingdom, one of two outcomes is identified. There will either be ‘herbs’ that will be useful if the earth, along with the rain, is cultivated, ultimately receiving blessing from God. A judgment Seat promise. Remembering that the ‘herb’ yields seed according to its kind. Or, instead of ‘herbs’ there will be thorns and briers, that will yield seed according to their kind, resulting in the rejection of the Christian at the Judgment Seat. With that Christian close to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. And this distinction between these two types of Christians who hear the Word of the Kingdom can also be seen in Hebrews in relation to those who turn back to perdition and those who have faith to the saving of the soul. Those who ignore the warnings set out in the Book of Hebrews and those who take heed of those warnings. A distinction we can see again in the first Chapter of the Book of Romans – Ro 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

Ro 1:22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

And the Christians we see in these verses from Hebrews Chapter 6 and Romans Chapter 1 form a parallel with those we have previously seen in Matthew Chapter 13 – Mt 13:18 “Therefore hear the parable of the sower: 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside. 20 But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. 22 Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. 23 But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

The work of the Spirit in bringing forth fruit according to His kind does not automatically take place just by hearing the Word of the Kingdom. This we can clearly see from the Matthew 13 verses. And according to these verses, the Spirit is able to produce fruit only within the Christian who hears and understands the Word of the Kingdom. And hearing and understanding take us beyond listening and basic comprehension. Hearing the Word of the Kingdom must be in line with what we know from - Ro 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Out of hearing must come faith, believing that which God says through the word of the Kingdom, - Heb 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

And having faith to the saving of the soul through hearing the Word of the Kingdom is inextricably connected to the renewing of our mind through the ‘epignosis’ knowledge this Word contains, whereby the purpose and direction of our life will be aligned with God’s purpose and direction for it. Being doers of the Word and not hearers only – 
1 Pe 1:13 Wherefore, having put out of the way once for all everything that would impede the free action of your mind, be calm and collected in spirit, and set your hope perfectly, wholly, and unchangeably, without doubt and despondency, upon the grace that is being brought to you upon the occasion of the revelation of Jesus Christ; [at the Judgment Seat] 14 as obedient children, not assuming an outward expression [the ‘metaschema’] which does not come from your inner being [as a child of God] [the new man] and is not representative of it, an expression patterned after that expression which you formerly had in the ignorance of your passionate desires, [the old man] 15 but after the pattern of the One who called you, the Holy One, you yourselves also become holy persons in every kind of behavior, 16 because it has been written and is on record, You be holy individuals, because, as for myself, I am holy.  [Wuest]

And here once again we can find the distinction among Christians who hear the Word of the Kingdom that we had seen earlier. There are those who set your hope perfectly, wholly, and unchangeably, without doubt and despondency, upon the grace that is being brought to you upon the occasion of the revelation of Jesus Christ; [at the Judgment Seat] 14 as obedient children. Those who equate with the earth that bears herbs that are useful and receive a blessing from God from Hebrews Chapter 6. And those who are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, who live by faith from Romans Chapter 1.
	b). And then there are those who adopt an expression patterned after that expression which you formerly had in the ignorance of your passionate desires, [the old man]. Those who equate with the earth that bears thorns and briers, whose end is to be burned, from Hebrews Chapter 6. And those who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. From Romans Chapter 1.
	c). And as we consider these verses from Hebrews Chapter 6 and Romans Chapter 1, we would have to see them with respect to the fourth group identified in the Parable of the Sower, those who hear and understand the Word of the Kingdom. The bearing of thorns and briers instead of herbs and exchanging the truth of God for the lie must then find a connection with the activities detailed for us in the Parable of the Wheat and Tares. The work of the god of this world to stop those who are producing fruit from continuing to do so, once again offering the enticement to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We will continue with this next time though, if we remain and the Lord is willing, and we have prayed.

From Time To Time - Part Twenty Five

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From Time To Time - Part Twenty Five

Mar 17, 2024

Speaker: John Herbert

Series: From Time to Time

Category: Sunday Morning

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A Recap from the Sermon