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In today's world, standing for your faith isn't easy, but it is incredibly important. The culture is shifting fast and the pressure to stay silent is growing. In his powerful resource, Called to Take a Bold Stand, Pastor Jack Hibbs shares how believers can rise with courage in uncertain times. With biblical insight, real world examples and practical wisdom. This guide will help you speak truth with love and boldness influence culture without compromise and face fear, fear, rejection or opposition without backing down. It's time to live with bold faith, unshakeable hope and kingdom purpose. We'd love to send you a copy of Called to Take a Bold Stand as our thanks for your generous gift of any amount to Real Life. Go to jackibbs.com radio or call 877-777-2346 to request your copy today. Stand firm, be and keep your eyes on Jesus. Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast. With intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints, and impact our culture.

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When you're in trouble, if you don't confess it to God, you'll try to hide from God. How will you do that? You'll try to act like it's normal. You'll go to church on Sunday. If you're really guilty, you'll show up on Wednesday. And God sees right through your leaves. And they're hiding it. Religion does that, by the way. Religion without Christ will hide the issue.

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You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackibbs.com podcast today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying Amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

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We give God our attention because of what has been done for you, done for us. He says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. I love this. By the mercies of God. The word by means. Means on account of. It's a simple accounting term, by the way, afterward the conclusion or the charge or the application. The application of the mercies of God. Galatians, chapter 4, verse 4 tells us that when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. Why? To redeem those who were under the law. That's all mankind. That we might receive the adoption as sons. Okay. At just the right time, God moved. The reason why Christ was born 2,000 years ago is because it was foreordained by God that he would come into the world 2,000 years ago. Now I don't know about you, but that excites me to no end. When you look at creation, when you look at Adam and Eve, when you look at the account of the Old Testament era and Israel and nation nations, and you come out to this moment of time now, it's a great warning to all of us or a great encouragement to all of us that time is running out. We've never been this far down the timeline before than we are today. And I for one get excited about that. Yeah, but Jesus hasn't come back yet. Not yet, but we're one day closer. He's going to come back someday. But listen. See the word mercies. This is cool, the word mercies. To have in your possession, to feel, to experience, to have compassion for or pity upon. We will discover that this God emotion will provide the justification needed for mankind to be saved. More on that in a moment. Jesus Christ would come to take away our sins. Watch this. The God of the Bible is merciful, meaning that he alone owns, governs and provides mercy. What is mercy? Mercy is not getting what you deserve. How many of you have kids? Raise your hands. You know a little bit about mercy. Your kid hasn't grown up enough yet to know. Boy, were my parents merciful to me. But we're like that as adults. We don't realize, we don't appreciate mercy until we come to Christ. And mercy is not getting what you deserve. It's amazing and it's very expensive. Mercy is expensive. Adam and Eve, when they sinned, I want to ask you this question. Why didn't God, when he saw that Adam and Eve had sinned, just walk over to the grand cosmic toilet bowl handle and flush the entire catastrophe down the hole? Why didn't he just say, I'm going to start over. I know what we would do. Come on, let's be honest. If you and I were God, we'd walk over to the cosmic handle and just go after. Adam and Eve would have done that to us. And don't look at me so pious. You do that to people now, don't we? If somebody crosses you, if somebody attacks you, if somebody, whatever they do to you, you just think like this. Well, I'm not inviting them next year. Don't you? You start thinking, I'm not gonna walk down this street again. Are you hearing me? God's listen. All that's done to God in hyper levels And God says, I'm going to extend you mercy. And mankind threw it back at him. Remarkable. God calls you and I to extend mercy to others. I conclude that I cannot without God. I need God to give that to me, not prove it to you. Here. Genesis, chapter three. You kind of knew I was going to go here anyway before I read this here. This is Beware. There's on your Internet, on your YouTube or whatever, there'll be a thumbnail that pops up and you can sign up for a course on Genesis. Don't do it. First of all, it's not taught by a theologian. It's taught by somebody who is an English teacher. But I guess a million or so people have taken it. And the class teaches Genesis as literature and poetic. It's not factual. And in the commercial, the professor mocks the ridiculous statement made in the Bible that the serpent would have to crawl on its belly. From this time forward, when the person says, how ridiculous is that? When serpents, that's all they can do is crawl on their belly. See, if you don't read the Bible and believe the Bible, you're going to think that's how it is. You're going to see in a moment that the serpent in Genesis didn't crawl on its belly. It was judged, and then it had to crawl on its belly. But this course mocks God, and then it mocks the fact that Eve talked to a serpent. You say, well, that's kind of weird. It is weird in our world. But you have no idea what it was like in the Garden of Eden. We know it was perfect. That's all we know now. The serpent was more cunning, remarkable. Something very great in God's creation. Something very wise, very probably beautiful, probably stood upright in. In some capacity. That'll kind of freak you out for a moment, isn't it? I don't like snakes, period. If they're standing up or laying down, I just hate them. I hate worms because they remind me of snakes. Now, the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. And he, the serpent said to the woman, okay, there you go. That's weird. So if this is weird to her, Eve, don't you think she'd say, this is weird, this is weird. We think it's weird. She didn't think it was weird. Which did animals talk back then? Let me rephrase that. Do you talk to animals? You know what I'm talking about. We all do. Hello, kitty. Hi, kitty. And we turn into, like, we look like idiots. Oh, look at my little Boo Boo Boo. You know, our dogs. Aren't you a pretty boy? I wonder what the dog's thinking. It's like, man, have some dignity, will ya? You gotta wonder. Look, for Eve, it's like, what? You know, it's normal here. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said, you shall need that you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? Excuse me. What does the Bible say? Do not add to the word of God. There's no doubt Satan has possessed this animal. He's speaking through it. Anytime someone says, has God said, look, I don't mean to upset anybody. In fact, maybe to save someone's life. Has God said, there's only two genders? Oh, you laugh, but this is costing people their lives. Who's taking their lives? Jesus said, I've come to give you life. Satan has come to take your life. When somebody says, oh, you can be whatever you want. You can be a furry. You can tell your mom and dad to get you a potty. A cat. What do you call that thing? A cat box. No, I'm serious. I'm not joking. Whose logic is that? It's not human. It's Satan. Yes. God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of. Of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. Okay, now God's a liar. You see, Eve, he's holding out on you. You shall not surely die. For God knows that the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened. Oh, now he's a philosopher. And you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Any religion, any snake that talks to you and says, you can become a God, follow us. It worked in the garden. It works still today. You can be good enough to get into the kingdom of God. Yes, Jesus died for your sins, but we carry it now forward. Watch out, everybody. That's deception. And so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food. Mmm, Tempting. It's good for this. Tastes great. Oh, it tastes so good. You should have some. Tastes so good. Mm. That it was pleasant to the eyes. Look at that. I'm convinced by the way commercials and catalogs are built off of this watch. Seriously. Tastes great. So beautiful. And look, it's desirable to make you wise. Wow. What does that mean? It means God made Me deficient. It means he didn't give me everything that I should have had coming to me. This serpent's telling me some pretty enlightening things. Even though there's a lift every time he says something. So Eve, and this, you know, and this gets really sad real fast. Then she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband, by the way, that it appears that either no one knows the answer to this. It's assumed that Adam was nowhere around. It's probably the case, or else he would have stepped in. We don't know if she took the fruit to him or he showed up. But this one thing we know, the moment they partook or the moment she partook of the fruit, you'll see her light went out. When it says that they were naked and not ashamed. I love what the ancient rabbis teach, that they were not naked. Like we know nakedness. They were naked of clothing, but covered in light. Adam and Eve. Why? Because God is light and he walks in the light, and they walked with him in the garden. But whatever it is, without clothing, without fabric, she eats and he eats and they know they're naked instantly. What happened? Their light went out. Their light went out and so then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. Church. Remember all the little cartoons? Eve's got little fig leaves here, she's got a fig leaf there. And then Adam has fig leaf here. That's not how it was. I think, you know, just by reading it, they were covered in leaves. They covered themselves in leaves. Like the Jolly Green Giant had leaves on the can. And maybe if there was anything they had, their eyes were open to see something. And maybe they had leaves on their eyelashes, I don't know, but they were covered. Why we're hiding? Can you imagine? What are you doing? We're hiding. From who? God, who sees everything and he knows everything. Why are you hiding naked? Well, you don't look naked to me. You're covered in leaves. Our light went out and they heard the sound. Verse 8. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. Isn't that sad? Among the trees of the garden. By the way, when we sin against God, do we not hide when we sin against God? Listen, when your kids. When you know. Listen, when you're home and you've got kids and the house goes quiet, that's parents go, wait, something's wrong. Why? It's so quiet. What does that mean? That means they're doing stuff they ought not to be doing. Why? They're hiding. And then you come down the hallway and they cover themselves because here comes mom and dad. This is evidence of our fallen Adamic nature. When you're in trouble, if you don't confess it to God, you'll try to hide from God. How will you do that? You'll try to act like it's normal. You'll go to church on Sunday. If you're really guilty, you'll show up on Wednesday. I'm not. You know what I mean. If you go on Sundays and Wednesdays, that's what you do. But when you start all of a sudden going after the event you're trying to cover, you're trying to, hey, God, look. See, I'm here. It's all good. And God sees right through your leaves. And they're hiding it. Religion does that, by the way. Religion without Christ will hide the issue. And so he said. So God says, where are you? So he said, watch, everybody. I heard your voice, Adam, speaking in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. Number one, everybody, church participate. Did God? Did God have to ask, where are you? Did he know where they were? He knew where they were at. Watch. Hope you're sitting down. This will blow your mind. The reason why God said, where are you? Is because he was trying to invoke a confession. Do you know we know this 100% from biblical doctrine of the Bible, which never changes. If Adam and Eve would have said, timeout, we blew it. We sinned against you. God, please forgive us. You know what he would have done? He either would have forgiven them on the spot or he would have shed the innocent blood of an animal and applied it to them on the spot. Everything would have been fine. We wouldn't have the traffic that we have today. So watch what happens. He was trying to get them to confess things that we won't do if we're proud. And so I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid. I was naked. Verse 11. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Did God not know this confession he sees dialing down. Adam, gonna give you another chance. Just say you're sorry. Verse 12. Then the man said, the woman whom you gave to me to be with me, she gave me of the tree and ate. It's Your fault, God. You gave me that faulty woman. And the Lord said. And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? And the woman said, thou serpent deceived me and I ate. See, it's everybody's fault. Look, Adam didn't have a leg to stand on. Eve didn't have a leg to stand on. And then when God got done with the snake, he didn't have a leg to stand on either. Notice God's the one. Are you hearing this? God's the one that's in trouble. You did it all wrong. Do you not hear people saying that today nothing's changed? Unless we are born again and made brand new by the spirit of God, the Parakletos, we will think and act and live just like this. These are our parents apart from Christ. And we have their DNA. S I N positive. We have it, we gravitate to it and then listen. This is in the new New living translation, verse 21. That's great. And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife. Okay, they're not going to repent. They're not going to repent. So what does God do? He covers their nakedness. An innocent animal that had nothing to do with this entire event had to die. The first death in the Bible is an animal being sacrificed to cover the sins of Adam and Eve. I find that incredibly significant because, listen, in a way, in a way, the last animal offered was for the forgiveness of all mankind. But of course, I mean that with affection. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus. But notice it is God who commits the first offering, not man. It's God. He loves you so much that he's telling you this announcement that I beseech you. Therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, God's merciful to anyone who will say, lord, I've sinned against you. Forgive me. And he'll wash you. He'll cleanse you and put you right where you need to be.