Let's take God's Word, turn to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3 and we'll begin our reading at the verse number 1. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. The woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened. And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took off the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice 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 God amongst the trees of the garden. We'll end our reading there. Our Father bless us as we close out the meeting. Grant help in my, The preaching of the word, glorify thy son. We offer prayer in Jesus' precious name. Amen and amen. What a blessing most mothers are. What a blessing they are. Selfless individuals who shower us with unconditional love when we're infants, put up with us in our tantrums when we're toddlers, patiently endure our bad manners in those years of adolescence, forgive us our failures as young adults, and give us and impart to us their wisdom when we reach the middle years of life. What a blessing mothers are. But no greater blessing can a child have than to have a Christian mother. Abraham Lincoln The 16th President of the United States of America said, I regard no man poor who has a godly mother. A godly mother, whether that mother is the mother of physical children or whether she is a spiritual mother to other people's children, is a mother who is devoted to one who is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient. She is a woman who recognizes that there is something, something of worth, something of worth seeking that is beyond this material world. She's a woman who has a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and who lives out that faith in the home, in the church, and within the community. You're maybe a mother here tonight, and your desire and goal is to provide the best for your children. Nothing wrong with that, commendable in itself. But what good will worldly possessions be if your children die and go to hell, if they follow you as an unsaved mother into the blackness of the darkness of hell forever? As I thought of this mothering Sunday, this Mother's Day, I thought about earth's first mother, Eve. And tonight I want to preach a message, a very simple, quick message. It's really the ninth of the series of messages that we have been preaching about. These occupational messages. Because there's no better occupation than that of a mother. Than that of a mother. What an influence a mother has on children. And so really it's a gospel message for a mother. As we think about this woman Eve, there are just two things we want to think about her. I want you to think first of all about Eve's ruin. Eve's ruin. Discerning that no created animal within the animal kingdom. Discerning that none met the emotional or met the physical needs of Adam. God put Adam to sleep, and from one of his ribs he formed a woman whom Adam called Eve, the mother of all living. Adam and Eve married, God officiated at that wedding ceremony, and they set up home in the paradise of God. Before them stretched an eternity of bliss in the garden that God had planted. In the cool of every day, their creator God came down into the garden. He would walk with them and talk with them. It was really heaven on earth. And yet all that was going to change one fateful day. Because into that garden, in the guise of a serpent, came the devil. Having fallen himself from his first estate, Lucifer, fuelled by hatred for God, now wanted to strike back at God in revenge for his banishment from heaven. but unable to attack God directly, the devil now turns his attention to God's creation and made Eve the initial target of his venomous plan, a plan that he was sadly successful in fulfilling. Now we think of Eve's ruin tonight, as she falls from a state of innocence into a state of sin. And as we do so, I want you to notice a few things that the devil did to bring about that very ruin. I want you to note firstly that the devil isolated her. The devil isolated her. When you and I read the narrative here in Genesis chapter 3, we see that Adam, the first man, is not mentioned until verse 6 of the chapter. Up until that moment from verses 1 through to 5, the devil is exclusively in dialogue with Eve, suggesting that she has somehow become isolated from her husband. waiting until Eve, I believe, was alone, the wicked one now takes opportunity to speak to her in the hope that he could entice her as an individual to sin. Now you think about that just for a moment. You think of how many sins are committed when the sinner is alone. How crafty the devil is, isolating us from others, hoping that the place of solitude will become the breeding ground of sin. How many wives, how many husbands through social media have been tempted to sin as the devil has isolated them from their marriage partner. in order to begin a conversation with someone outside the marriage bond. How many a young person has fallen deeper and deeper into the snare of online pornography, away from the gaze of their father or from their mother. How many an adult in the privacy of their own home has become addicted to online gambling or become an armchair alcoholic? You see, the sinner, the devil wants to get you alone. He wants to isolate you. He wants to cut you off from those people who would influence you for good and for God in order that he might ensnare you into sin's trap. How terrible it would be for you. live a life of sin, and to end that life of sin, incarcerated under solitary confinement all alone in hell's prison house. He isolated her. Second of all, he lied to her, questioning what God had said about eating this forbidden fruit, and also the subsequent judgment that would befall them if they did. The devil said to Eve, ye shall not surely die. That was a lie, because God said in the day that thou eatest her off, thou shalt surely die. Now only such was to be expected from the one of whom Christ said was a liar from the beginning. You see, what the devil was doing, he was challenging the authorship, He was challenging the accuracy and he was challenging the acceptability of God's word. And sad was it that Eve rejected God's word and took the devil at his word. She swallowed his lie, hook, line and sinker only to find out that the devil was the liar and that God was true. Many a lie the devil tells the sinner. Lies that you choose to believe rather than believe the truth. The lie that you're too good a person to be saved or that you're too bad. a person to be saved, that you're too young to be saved, or that you're too old to be saved, that you're too respectable to be saved, or that you're too contemptible to be saved, that you're too religious to be saved, or that you're too irreligious to be saved, that you have missed your opportunity, or that you'll have many an opportunity, and many swallow the devil's lie, hook, line, and sinker. But I would encourage you tonight to reject the devil's lies and instead believe the truth of God as it is found in the Word of God. He isolated her. He lied to her. He tempted her. With the devil's lies now running through this first mother's mind, Eve now turns from the serpent and fixes her gaze upon the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are told in the verse number six that when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to desire to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat. That simple, one might say, harmless glance. became a lust. And that lust developed into a deep desire. That deep desire would then lead to a decision. A decision that led to a choice. A choice that would end in catastrophe. Temptation was yielded to. Sin was committed. Leading to death is spiritual, physical, and eternal death. It's quite ironic that the mother of all living becomes the means whereby death is brought into the world. The mother of all living becomes the agent through which death now enters the world. Centered behind every luring temptation, there lies death. Just as the hook lies behind the brightly colored fly on the end of a fishing line, so death, spiritual death, lies hidden behind every one of sin's temptations. Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Don't be dazzled, don't be deluded by sin's temptation, but rather flee and fly to the cross of Jesus Christ. He isolated her. He lied to her. He tempted her. Lastly, he abandoned her. He abandoned her. If you read Genesis chapter 3 from the verse 6, right down to the verse number 14, we didn't have time, you'll notice that the serpent is nowhere to be seen. He steps off the stage, as it were. You see, what we find the devil doing is that he sets up Eve for a fall. She falls, and then he abandons her to suffer the consequences of that fall. And that's what the devil always does. He lures the sinner into sin's snare. And whenever the sinner is entrapped into that snare, the devil abandons them to move on to his next victim. I tell you sinner, the devil will leave you high and dry when he has wrecked your life. When He has wrecked your home, when He has wrecked your marriage, when He has wrecked your health, He doesn't care what carnage He brings into a home, into a family, into a community, into a marriage. He delights to steal and to kill and to destroy. And then He'll abandon you. He'll leave you to die in your sin. Where Christ is, you'll never be. He was happy to abandon this woman and let her suffer the consequences of now her fall and her rebellion against God. I tell you the devil will never be seen after he has wrecked and ruined your life. He'll abandon you in life and he'll abandon you in hell. He'll abandon you to its torment and to its fire and to its eternal punishment. I would say it would be wise for you to switch allegiance tonight from the devil and on to Christ. Can you not imagine how Eve must have felt when it dawned upon her for the very first time, I'm a sinner? Can you not imagine it? She woke up that morning in fellowship with God. She woke up that morning at peace with the world. She had woke up that morning as a daughter of heaven. And now she's going to go to bed, a sinner, separated from God, a child of wrath. How must she have felt? How dejected she must have felt? How helpless, how hopeless she must have felt to rise that day, an innocent individual, and now to go to bed. She was going to go to bed that night, a sinner, separated from God. That was until God intervened. Because that moves us from her ruin to ease recovery. because although she had been ruined by sin, God in grace came. God in grace came and found Eve, along with her husband, hiding among the trees in Eden's garden. By his coming, by his calling for them, Eve and her husband would learn the truth that would be spoken 4,000 years on from this sad event by the Son of God in John 3 verse 17. God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. That's what that visitation was. It was an evidence that he had not come to condemn them, but that he was coming to save them. Because whenever God stepped into the garden of Eden that night, at the very cool of the day, he did not come to condemn them. but rather he came to cure them. He did not come to damn them, he came to deliver them. He did not come to reject them, he came to receive them. He did not come to punish them, but rather he came to pardon them. It was for her recovery, not for her eternal room, that God came at the cool of the day. For God to rescue this woman, for God to bring her out of sin, to recover her from all that the fall had done, a number of things had to happen. Firstly, there had to be an abandoning of her own works, an abandoning of her own works. Eve, along with her husband, took to making a covering for their nakedness. They sewed fig leaves together, but these leaves now detached from the tree from which they came. It wasn't going to be long before those very leaves began to wither and to shrivel up and to expose them again to the holiness of God. Their efforts would soon be seen to be futile. They would soon be seen to be inadequate in providing for them a lasting and enduring covering for sin's nakedness. And therefore, Eve had to be brought to the place where she was willing to abandon her own works and come to God just as she was. If you're ever to be a Christian, there needs to be an abandoning of your own works. Your own righteousness, your own goodness, your own kindness, your own morality, all must be abandoned if ever you are to become a Christian. Not only that, but there had to be an acknowledgement of her sin. Note AE's confession of sin in the verse number 13 of the chapter. God said, what is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. It wasn't really forthcoming. God, as it were, had to drag it out of Eve, but nonetheless, she does acknowledge her wrong. What was her wrong? I did eat. I ate it. It was me. I took the fruit, I partook of it. Adam did not force it down my throat. The serpent did not take the fruit and force me to eat it. But she says, I ate it. She said, I ate thereof. I did it. And in that, though it be small, there was at least an admission of the sin that she had committed. God wants you to confess your sin. He wants you to own up to your sin. There needs to be an acknowledgment of your sin to Him. The wonderful promise is that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, an abandoning of her works and an acknowledgment of her own sin, an apprehension of the Savior. Genesis 3 verse 15. promise, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman. Between thy seed and her seed it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his head." From that word of promise given to God to Eve, there came an apprehension of a Savior, a Savior who was going to come and destroy the devil and all of his works. By His coming into the world, the Son of God was going to reverse the curse and destroy the works of the devil. This promise makes her look away to the coming Messiah, the seed of the woman, the one who is able to save her from her sin. She becomes aware, she becomes conscious that there's one who's coming who can deliver me from all that has occurred in the fall. becomes aware that there's a Redeemer, a Redeemer in whom I can trust. a Redeemer who will save me from my sin, one who is able to save me and that to the uttermost. And I ask you this evening, have you come to the knowledge of that? Have you come to a knowledge of Christ, that Christ alone can deliver you from your sin? Have you understood that through his death and by his resurrection, he is able to deliver you? As Eve looked forward, to the coming Christ for her salvation. You must look back. Look back to Christ for your salvation. There was an abandoning of her own works. There was an acknowledgement of her own sin. There was an apprehension of the Savior in the final place. There was an appropriation of God's provision. Aware that their own coverings were inadequate, God provides a covering for them, for Eve and for Adam, a covering to cover their nakedness. Genesis 321, unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them, freely provided for her out of God's grace. These coverings were provided, but those coverings would do no good for Eve unless she appropriated them to herself, unless she took what God provided and made them personally hers. No, she had to, by faith, receive the covering for her nakedness. She had to appropriate to herself the divinely provided covering that she knew was going to benefit her. I tell you, sinner, God has provided for you coverings in the gospel. He's provided the covering of his blood to cover your sin. He's provided the covering of his righteousness to cover your spiritual nakedness. But if you are to benefit from them, then you're going to have to appropriate them. By an act of faith, You're going to have to receive from him the covering that he offers to you in the gospel. Without doing so, sin's stain will remain, and it will leave you spiritually naked and exposed to the wrath of God. There had to be an appropriation of what God provided. God has provided a savior for you in the gospel. you need to appropriate him. He needs to become not only our Savior, but he needs to become my Savior, your Savior. How does that happen? It happens when you leave your sin, when you say goodbye to sin, and you receive Christ as Savior and Lord. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This woman, the mother of low living, became the agent by which death would come into the world through her influence of Adam. And yet through the seed of a woman, there would be one who would come to reverse all that the fall did and bring this woman into fellowship again with God. Would you not want to die in fellowship with God? Would you not want to die having been recovered from sin's ruin? Tonight you can, by coming to Christ, by turning from sin, or that this night you'll come and be saved and come to know come to know Christ as your Savior and as your Lord. Oh, may God bring you to Christ for his sake. Amen. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Mother, in this meeting house tonight, Would it not be a glorious thing that you made Mother's Day the day of your salvation? Would that not be a glorious thing? Will you come to Christ? Will you be saved? Father, would you not come to the Savior? There those children are around your feet. You have the possibility, the opportunity to influence them for God and for truth and for righteousness. Dad, would you not come to the Savior? Young person, would you not come to Christ? Would you not thrill your mother's heart? Would you not thrill your father's heart to know that you're ready for heaven? Let me say, if I can help you in any way, speak at the door. Don't be embarrassed, don't be too proud. Say, Preacher, I'm not a Christian. I need to be saved. I'm in sin's ruin. I need recovered out of it. Christ alone can recover you. Oh, may you come to Christ, please, please. Don't go out without the Savior. Respond to the gospel call. Come unto me. All ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. We're praying for you. Mother, we're praying for you. Father, we're praying for you. Boys and girls, young people, we're praying for you. Come to Christ, please, and be saved. O God, our loving Father, we cry, O God, that that which has been of thee, now adduce it to the glory and praise of God our King. Answer prayer. Lord, work in hearts, we ask. We pray that men and women would see that they have been ruined by the fall. We've been singing about it. Ruined by the fall, salvation full. At highest cost, he offers free to all. Oh God, bring sinners to Christ. Draw them to thee. May they look to Christ who alone can recover them. from the ruin of sin that they're in tonight. O God of mercy, we pray. O God, glorify thy Son. Take us to our homes and safely, and be glorified in all. O God of the outcome of this meeting, for we pray these are petitions and prayers in and through our Savior's precious and holy name. Amen and amen.