Audio recording Sermon manuscript: The bible presents us with a tremendous either/or. Either we are a child of God or we are a child of the devil. Either we are on God’s side or we are on the devil’s side. Either we are obedient to God or we are obedient to the devil. Either we are receiving the Holy Spirit or we are possessed by one or more evil spirits. We’ve never liked this either/or very much. In our modern times we seem to have been given a powerful argument against it. There is a widespread belief that somebody somewhere discovered that there are no such things as evil spirits, nor is there a devil. These are just relics from a previous time in human development when people were too stupid to know any better. There is a variation of the same argument that is used with God’s existence. Supposedly somebody somewhere discovered that God doesn’t exist. It is believed that ancient people had to make up the existence of God because they were too stupid to explain the world in any other way. This mindset obviously fosters a feeling of superiority over our ancestors. That is where the greatest strength lies in that line of reasoning. We are able to do things that they couldn’t. We can move mountains. We can make the deaf hear and the blind see. These signs and wonders are taken to be incontrovertible proofs that God can’t exist. The logic runs like this: Ancient people didn’t have modern technology. With modern technology we are able to do seemingly god-like things. Therefore, if ancient people would have had modern technology, they never would have had to believe in gods. But there has never been a need to resort to logic for anyone to be convinced. We have run away from this either/or from the start, that is, from immediately after the fall into sin. Before the fall into sin Adam and Eve knew with all their heart, soul, and mind that God existed. Immediately after the fall they could no longer bear this thought. After all, if they brought that thought to mind, then those words would immediately float to the surface: “In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” Just to keep their sanity they needed to put some distance between themselves and God. They got busy making clothes and storing up some food. They started to make a living for themselves. They had to put their mind on other things besides the thought of whom they belonged to. This busyness allowed them to think they were independent, not subject to the either/or. That was as refreshing to them as air is to a drowning man. Plus it was even plausible. The devil had wisely went away. They weren’t obedient to him were they? Sure, they obeyed him that one time, but now they could make up their own minds. With God, they knew that they hadn’t been obedient to him. But that didn’t seem to matter. After all, the punishment that was threatened didn’t come. Plus isn’t that the very thing that the serpent had said, “You won’t surely die…” So, they thought, there must not be any either/or. Let’s just get busy making the most of our lives. They did not need modern technology to teach them that there is no such thing as gods or devils. They wanted to believe that. They wanted to be deceived. And, if you believe in yourself, and never give up, you can usually get what you want. You might think that God coming to Adam and Eve in the cool of the day and preaching to them would have put a stop to this delusion. Adam and Eve became aware of the consequences of their obedience to the devil, but they also learned from God that one would come who would crush the serpent’s head. But sin sank deeply into Adam’s loins. While Adam and Eve believed, probably with as much difficulty as anybody else, all his descendants are predisposed to reject the thought that either we are obedient to God or obedient to the devil. I think you can easily see that this is true in our day. You can already see the same thing with Cain and his children and grandchildren. Genesis chapter 4 shows how unb