Finding Our Nemesis in Genesis     

   Friends, if you have issues with the world and your relationship to it, consider the enmity that has continued from the beginning...to our day. 
    

Enmity: ill will, opposition, mutual hatred

   Here, we remember God's creative work, and what went wrong. 

Tomorrow, his solution. 

   In the beginning, God created... 

          light 

          sky 

          ground/land 

          seas

          vegetation

             - plants

             - trees

          lights in the sky 

             - sun

             - moon

             - stars

           creatures

              - birds

              - fish 

              - livestock

              - wild animals/beasts 

              - those that move along the ground

              - man (in God's likeness) to rule, given the breath of life 

   God placed a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He commanded Adam and his wife not to eat the fruit of this tree, but they were easily deceived by the devil, who spoke through a serpent. 

   All these millenniums later, we escape the hateful deceiver's power only by accepting the terms of our loving God...there is no other. It's a continuous life and death struggle. 

   God told the serpent: I will put enmity between you and the woman (Eve), and between your offspring (Satan) and hers (Christ); he (risen from the dead) will crush your head and you will strike his heal (the crucifixion).  Genesis 3:15

   After years of allowing man's lust and violence, the Lord said, My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal.  Genesis 6:3

   The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.  Genesis 6:5

Tomorrow: Overcoming our nemesis