The Problem Is Sin - Part3

All right, well, good morning. If you do have a

Bible, turn to Genesis chapter three. It's page number three in your pew

Bible. We're gonna be reading Genesis 3, 14 through 15, and continuing our study in Genesis on basic truths.

The basic truth that we have to consider today is the truth that the problem is sin, and this is the third part in that series.

When you do have Genesis 3, 14, go ahead and stand for the reading of God's word. Genesis 3, 14, the

Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beast of the field.

On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Amen. You may be seated. Lord, we thank you for the scriptures that you've given us.

We thank you for the good news that we find in this passage today. We pray that you help us to learn many great things from your word, knowing that you've given us your word for our good and for your glory.

We thank you for all you do. In your son's name I pray, amen. As I said, as we've been going through the study of Genesis, we are encountering some truths which are very foundational for our worldview.

The scriptures in particular, and these verses in particular, are designed to inform the way that you view the world.

And to the extent to which you pay attention to what you find here, you're gonna find truths in the

Bible which are meant to help you to explain everything that you see. They're meant to explain the basic dynamics of human relationships that you'll see.

They're designed to help you to understand the world that you live in. And really, in many ways, this is one of the most central passages for your understanding of the world that you could possibly imagine, even though I'm not sure that at times, even as Christians, we look to a passage like this to help us to interpret the world as often as we should.

But as I said, I mean, this is a passage which is really central to your understanding, not simply of the world around you, but of the

Bible itself. When you read the Bible, you're supposed to take this passage and let this passage itself be the lens in which you use to interpret all of scripture.

So there's a fancy word for what we are describing here today, and that's the word metanarrative.

And in many ways, the Bible itself is a metanarrative. It's a grand story that's meant to help you interpret all of life.

But this passage, as I said, this passage is in some sense, it's a metanarrative of the metanarrative, okay?

So this is a passage that's meant to help you interpret all of the Bible. This is a passage that you're supposed to take from Genesis three onward and read into every passage that you read.

So there's a sense in which this passage itself, it's a metanarrative of the grand metanarrative, which is the

Bible, which begs the question, obviously, I've used this word too many times now, what is a metanarrative, right?

And what is a metanarrative? A metanarrative is an overarching story or framework that gives meaning, coherence, and direction to all other stories and events within a culture or a belief system.

It provides a comprehensive explanation or interpretation of history, human experience, and the world.

That's what a metanarrative is, okay? I'm gonna read it again just so that you can get some of the details in your mind.

Metanarrative is an overarching story or framework that gives meaning, coherence, and direction to all other stories and events within a culture or a belief system.

It provides a comprehensive explanation or interpretation of history, human experience, and the world.

So as I said, the Bible itself is a metanarrative. It's this overarching story or framework that's designed to give meaning to every event that happens in the world, every event that happens in your life.

You're supposed to read your life through the lens of the metanarrative that is the

Scripture. The Scripture is supposed to give you the categories necessary to understand all of human experience.

You're supposed to read your experience. Every day when you wake up, you're to put your story under the framework of the

Bible and try to understand what the Bible says about your story. So the Bible is meant to give your life meaning.

The events of, it's not just your life, though. It's the events of history. Everything that happens needs to be put in the framework that the

Bible provides, okay? But what I'm trying to say is the passage we're in today, in some sense, is the interpretive key of all the

Bible. And that may sound dramatic, but it's not dramatic. It's the truth. When you read this passage today, you're supposed to try to understand the rest of the

Bible in light of the passage that we're reading. So in some sense, the passage we're reading is the interpretive key, in some ways, for all of the

Bible. It's a metanarrative within the metanarrative. It's the overarching story or framework that gives meaning, coherence, and direction to all other stories within the

Bible. So you're supposed to understand all other stories in the Bible in light of what you find here today.

And not only that, you're supposed to understand every story that happens in your life. Like, your life is a story, and there's stories within that story.

And you're supposed to understand all those stories in light of this story, which is giving meaning to not simply your life, but the

Bible as well. So what are some features of this great metanarrative that we're gonna read about today, or this great story that we're gonna read about today?

Well, first, there's a great enemy, okay? There's a great enemy in this story. So notice how

Genesis 3 .14 starts. It starts like this. The Lord God said to the serpent.

So there's a great enemy in this story today, okay? And that enemy, later on in subsequent revelation, you see this enemy is just referred to in this passage itself as the serpent.

So the enemy is described as the serpent. But as you read subsequent revelation, you'll realize that there's progressively more information that's given about this serpent in the

Bible. So much so that as you get to the end of the Bible, you'll realize that this enemy, the great enemy of this story, is identified as Satan in Revelation 12 .9.

So he's not just identified as Satan, but there's many other descriptions that are used.

But Revelation 12 .9 says the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, that ancient serpent is basically referencing back to what we're talking about, who is called the devil and Satan.

Notice all the different names and descriptions that we have gotten about this great enemy at this point.

So he's described as the great dragon, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.

He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. So as we see, some of the features of this great meta -narrative is that there is a great enemy, there's a great enemy called

Satan. He's a great enemy, he's a deceiver, he's a slanderer, he's a murderer, he's a liar, right?

He's a murderer from the beginning. You see many, many different descriptions in the Bible about this great enemy.

But notice in this story that God doesn't allow the serpent a chance to explain himself, does he?

So when God confronts Adam and Eve about their sin, he asks them a series of questions that are not, you know, as my kids asked me this week, why did

God ask them those questions? Considering the fact that God knows everything, did God not know the answers to those questions?

Well, no, God was giving them an opportunity to come clean about what they did. And instead of coming clean about what they did, they blame shift and they blame their problems.

Adam blames his problems on God and on the woman that he gave him. The woman blames her problems on the serpent at that point, blames her disobedience.

But notice that God doesn't allow this great enemy a chance to explain himself. And I mean, there's a mild lesson for us to learn at this point in that there are times when evil is so stubborn and persistent and you identify it for what it is.

You know what it is, you know what you're looking at. There are times when God's enemies will want to distract you.

They're trying to deceive you. You know something about their character. You know that if you give them an opportunity to speak for themselves, they're just trying to distract you.

They're just trying to deceive you. There's no truth to be found in their mouth. God doesn't give the serpent at this point the dignity of even giving him a response.

And there are times when the people of God are to follow this example too. So in Nehemiah 6, 1, you see this.

You see, when Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem, the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built a wall and there was no breach left in it, although up to that time

I had not set up doors and gates, Sanballat and Geshem sent to me saying, "'Come, let us meet together at Hecphareum "'in the plain of Ono,' "'but they intended to do me harm.'"

And I sent messengers to them saying, "'I am doing a great work, I cannot come down. "'Why should the work stop while I leave it "'and come down to you?'

So the enemies of God at this point were persuading them and mocking them and saying that they would not be able to rebuild this wall.

And Nehemiah knew that they were just sending to talk to them because they intended them harm. So scripturally speaking, every time someone seeks to give an explanation and answer for themselves, there isn't always some kind of moral obligation that we have as Christians to listen to everything that people say.

But here's the point. What are the features of this great metanarrative?

Well, there is a great enemy and this great enemy has an identification and he has a lot of titles and he's intending to deceive you and he's intending to do you harm.

So there is a great enemy. The second thing that we see is that this great enemy is a cursed enemy, okay?

So notice what God says about this enemy. He says, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

When you think about the story that we're reading today, this isn't simply a story about human beings and why human beings are afraid of snakes.

This isn't really intended to be a story that's telling you something about the etymology of serpents.

It's not intending to tell you that serpents once had legs that they walked on, they walked on upright and then

God took away their legs in the curse and now we're all strangely afraid of them for some reason. That's not really the point of any of these things that we're reading today.

The point of this story today is to tell us that there is a great enemy and this enemy is a cursed enemy.

And the description that you're gonna find here in this passage is a description of God's curse upon the serpent, the great enemy that we encounter in our lives.

Notice what form the curse takes. It says, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, above all beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. This is a description of abject humiliation.

That's the point. You're supposed to understand that this enemy is cursed. He's cursed by God. He's cursed to be humiliated.

This is the enemy who sought to lead humanity in a rebellion against God and in some sense was successful in that, in the sense that he did deceive the woman and the woman did take the fruit and give it to Adam to eat.

He was successful in inciting a mutiny against the God who made the human race.

So you have this great enemy who is a deceiver, who is a slanderer, who is intending to usurp

God's rightful authority over his creation, who knows, so there is this enemy, this great enemy who knows that in the day that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and good and evil, everything would go bad for them.

The point here is that there is evil, there is evil out there in the world and seeks to do you actively harm.

And Satan's evil was a knowledgeable evil. He knew what he was doing. He knew that the results for Adam and Eve at that point would be sin and death and condemnation and pain and suffering.

He knew those things and he thinks that he is victorious by leading this mutiny against God, but God doesn't even give him a chance to speak for himself.

And in fact, he curses this enemy with a picture of abject humiliation.

On his belly you shall go, in the dust you shall eat all the days of your life. As you read through the

Bible, one of the things you'll find is this description of eating the dust is frequently used to be a description of abject humiliation.

So Psalm 72, nine says, may the desert tribes bow down before him, right, may the desert tribes bow down before him and his enemies lick the dust.

It's obviously a reference to what we see here. Micah 7, 16 through seven, it says, the nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might.

So you have a picture of nations proud with their might. They shall lay their hands on their mouths, their ears shall be deaf.

They shall lick the dust like a serpent, like the crawling things of the earth. They shall come trembling out of their strongholds.

They shall turn dread to the Lord our God and they shall be in fear of you. Even, you know, in the pictures of the new heaven and the new earth,

Isaiah 65, 25, the wolf and the lamb shall graze together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox.

And notice the picture of victory is so comprehensive that even in the new heaven and the new earth and dust shall be the serpent's food.

They shall not hurt or destroy in all of my holy mountains, says the

Lord. The serpent is cursed. So notice the serpent in this passage, he is cursed.

His curse is a curse of abject humiliation. Now notice the men and women. The man and the woman are not directly cursed.

Serpent is cursed. The ground is cursed on behalf of the man. The man and the woman are not directly cursed.

Their roles are certainly made more difficult. They will experience trials now.

They're fallen, they're fallen. They're a member of a fallen human race. They're not necessarily cursed. So man is our representative in that sense and we are not a cursed human race in the same sense.

But there are actions that we can take as human beings that can inflict upon us a variety of curses.

Think about a curse. What is a curse? A curse, in the normal sense of the word, a curse, when you think about what that actually is, it's when a human being is inflicted with a series of unfortunate events.

Now unfortunate is not a word that's appropriate for Christian theology, but if you look up the word curse in the dictionary, then you're gonna find a series of unfortunate events.

We naturally think about curses in the area of witchcraft where people are hexed.

And if you hex someone or you curse someone, then what you'll find is they'll be going through life and everything will seem to go bad for them.

It'll go poorly for them. Because of the nature of what you've done. Now we shouldn't understand that in the language of misfortune because there is no such thing as fortune.

God is sovereign over all of human history. And God does pronounce judgments on people at times.

And those judgments that he pronounced on people at time could be understood as curses. So Deuteronomy 28, 15, if the

Israelites were not to obey God's rules, they were to violate his covenant, there was a series of curses that would be pronounced specifically on them.

So Deuteronomy 28, 15, if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and statutes that I command you to say, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.

Curse shall you be in the city. Curse shall you be in the field. Curse shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

Curse shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of the ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock.

Curse shall you be when you come in and curse shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send his curses upon you, confusion and frustration and all that you undertake to do until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken me.

The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of.

The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, with drought and with blight and with mildew, they shall pursue you until you perish.

The heavens over your head shall be as bronze and the earth shall be iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder.

From heaven dust shall come upon you until you are destroyed. The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies.

You shall go one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth and your dead body shall be food for all the birds of the air and for the beast of the earth.

There shall be no one to frighten them away. So notice that God, as members of the human race, we aren't cursed in this manner, that everything we do will come to naught and that God is standing against us in opposition so much so that all the basic areas of life, we're gonna be constantly defeated.

We're gonna have wasting sickness stick to us. We're not cursed in that manner, but God certainly does visit these kind of judgments upon us on occasion, but this isn't characteristic of the human race in that way.

At the same time, we are members of fallen creatures and we are objects of God's judgments and we need

Jesus to come and to do for us what we can't do. But with our great enemy, notice our great enemy is a cursed enemy.

He's cursed with abject humiliation. He thinks that he's accomplished a victory in this passage, but really his end will come.

He is a foe that is not yet defeated then, but as good as defeated, because God has a plan to defeat him from the foundation of the world.

His plan, though he might think of it as a form of success, it wasn't a success in the way that he thought about it.

Notice that our great enemy, he is a cursed enemy and I don't know if you've thought about this before, but there hasn't arisen a redeemer for fallen angels like Satan.

There's no hope of redemption for this great enemy. There's been no plan of salvation that God has planned before the foundation of the world to redeem him.

Not only does he not give, not only is he not given that chance to speak for himself and to give an answer for his actions, there is no redeemer to be found for him.

And that should help us, like when you think about the fact that God has, before the foundation of the world, had a plan to redeem fallen humanity, a plan that he does not owe us.

I don't know if you think about that. God did not owe us a plan of salvation. He didn't give Satan a plan of salvation.

He didn't give Satan an opportunity, as it were, to repent of his sins and believe the good news and be forgiven and saved.

God doesn't owe human beings that. The fact that he has come to die on the cross, experience the humiliation, the shame that we deserve, so that if we repent of our sins and believe the good news, we'd be saved, is an act of free grace and mercy not owed and not extended to this great enemy.

So there is a great enemy, and this great enemy is a cursed enemy. That's the point. Not only that, this great enemy is the enemy behind all enemies.

Notice what verse 15 says. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

There's a great enemy that is the enemy behind all enemies. Now, if you've ever watched The Lord of the Rings or read the books

The Lord of the Rings, I say watch The Lord of the Rings now, but I was alive during a time when there weren't movies.

Maybe there's the animated cartoon movie or something like that. But it was more natural for me in the early parts of my life to speak about Lord of the

Rings as books and not as movies, but that time has passed. In The Lord of the

Rings, there is a great enemy behind all enemies. And the reason why there's a great enemy behind all enemies is because The Lord of the

Rings was written by J .R .R. Tolkien, who was a Catholic and product of a Christian worldview in many ways.

So there's a great enemy behind all enemies. If you've read the books, watched the movies, you know the enemy is

Sauron. If you read The Cimmerillion, you'll realize that Sauron was kind of a lieutenant to the greater evil behind him even, who was

Melkor, Morgoth. But in the stories,

Sauron is the great evil behind all the other evils that exist in the world. In the similar way, because that movie is based on a biblical worldview in a variety of ways,

Satan is the great enemy that's behind all other enemies. And you see this as you read through the Bible.

You read through the Bible, what you'll realize is that in a variety of ways, all the

New Testament writers, particularly Jesus, John the Baptist, they seem to identify the opposition that they're facing in the moment, not simply as random opposition, okay?

They're not identifying the enemies that they're facing as just random, disconnected opposition.

They understand that there is an enemy behind all of their enemies. Jesus says this in John 8, 44.

You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not, how was he a murderer from the beginning?

Notice he was, he knows the penalty for Adam and Eve eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is death.

He's intending to kill them, that's his point. He's at work in the first murder of Cain and Abel.

You are of your father, the devil. His will is to do his father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning. He does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and he is the father of all lies.

Brothers and sisters, what you're supposed to do when you read the Bible is you're supposed to think about this verse in every passage you're in, okay?

I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. You're supposed to read every passage of Scripture in light of that line.

You're supposed to ask this question when you encounter every character in the

Bible. You're supposed to ask the question, whose seed are they? Are they the seed of the woman or are they the seed of the serpent?

That's the question you're supposed to ask every time. And that's not simply the question you're supposed to ask with every character in the

Bible. You're supposed to ask that question with every character in your life and every character in the world around you.

Every person you see, you're supposed to ask, is this the seed of the woman or is this the seed of the serpent?

There's no neutrality. There's no neutral people. You're living in a world that's trying to scream at you and tell you that all religions are equal.

They all have some kind of truth. They're all basically saying the same kind of things. If you listen to the programming which people are trying to brainwash you into thinking, you go around your life thinking that there's neutrality.

There's not neutrality. There is either the seed of the woman or the seed of the serpent.

There's no in between. Just because you can go around the world, you can keep your head down, try to be a nice person and everyone around you isn't mad at you instantaneously, that does not mean that there's not two humanities.

There's either the seed of the woman, there's the seed of the serpent. That's the basic plot. That's the basic plot of the

Bible. That's the basic plot of your life. There's two humanities. There's a seed of the woman, there's a seed of the serpent.

Now, what are some implications for this? Some implications of this are that Christians actually have enemies.

Now, I say that. I say that as if it's something that's shocking but I've heard pastor after pastor after pastor take passages for Christians which tell

Christians to love our enemies as evidence that we should not have enemies.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard pastors that preach this very thing. That because there are many passages which tell us to love our enemies, that we should, from a psychological perspective, shouldn't view anyone as an enemy but brothers and sisters.

If someone decides to be your enemy, no amount of pretending they're not your enemy will make them your friend somehow.

If someone determines to oppose you and to do you harm, simply pretending they're not your enemy does no good and in a lot of ways, prevents you from treating them the way the

Bible tells you to treat them. There's a lot of factors that have led us into this. This kind of thinking, to think that we don't have enemies.

You're obviously living in a world that its primary message is tolerance and acceptance. We need to coexist with each other.

You can imagine the coexist bumper stickers that used to be much more common in the world but are still there today.

The idea of tolerance is that there's some supposed virtue that Christians should have and basically overlooking every form of iniquity imaginable and pretending that it isn't there and just doing whatever it takes to get along.

So you're living in a world that's telling you that in order to be a good Christian, in order to be a good person, to be a good moral person, the path to do that is just to overlook everything.

Now obviously, now obviously we know that this is impossible. You know that those who are the loudest preachers of tolerance are some of the most intolerant people in the world.

If you don't bow down to their judgments, if you don't tolerate the things they demand that you tolerate, they will quickly show you a complete and total lack of tolerance.

You must be opposed at all costs. You're probably Hitler or white supremacist, one of these crazy

Christians who just need to be stopped. You look around the world today, you see that if there's anything that's not tolerated, it's

Christianity and the Christian religion and all of its forms. We can basically tolerate every other religion possible but the thing that we can't tolerate is

Christianity. But the world has preached a message of tolerance and I don't know at times that Christians have really been immune to its effect, its effects.

We think that the chief virtue of Christians is to be nice, to be polite, to be unoffensive, to be open to welcoming acceptance, accepting.

I don't know to what extent to which we many times are playing right along with this agenda and we've

Christianized it in certain ways and we've adopted a view of Jesus that Jesus was infinitely tolerant, he was nice, never stirred the pot.

You have seeker -sensitive services in the church today. If you don't know what a seeker -sensitive service is, it's a service that's designed primarily for unbelievers.

So in megachurch culture where this arose, seeker -sensitive services, essentially you pull the audience, you try to figure out what they want and try to give them what they want.

So you might ask a series of questions. I remember when Willow Creek was doing this kind of thing, they basically realized that what are our people listening to?

Well, they're listening to top 40 music, so let's give them what they want, right? And so then you're tailoring your worship service in such a way that it appears very entertainment -driven, appealing to their baser urges, appealing to their baser desires.

And then in the service itself, you kind of have a lowest common denominator approach. So when you preach, you're not preaching to Christians at that point, you're trying to preach to unbelievers.

And so the whole idea is just to say that you don't want to preach anything that's remarkably offensive or specific.

A lot of the ethical teaching of the Bible is gone. In your seeker -sensitive services, if you have this even more at all,

I mean, you basically have 52 salvation messages a year that only confront sin in a very generic way, if at all.

So they only confront sin in a very generic way. Often, what's happening is not even that.

What you get is something more along the lines of 10 tips to having a happy marriage.

But more often what you're getting is moralistic, therapeutic deism. But in that way,

I mean, if you think about the nature, if you think about yourself in this kind of framework, and even in more conservative

Bible churches at this point, you can have services that are designed primarily for unbelievers. When they confront sin, they're only doing so in very generic ways, in ways that are non -offensive, because the priority becomes getting people into your service, trying to treat them well, as good as you possibly can, getting them to stay indefinitely.

And then what you end up doing is watering down the truth, toning down the ethical demands, toning down the language at that point.

And at the end of the day, you basically can create situations that never produce the kind of reaction that you might expect of enemies, if that makes sense.

Calvin argued that, especially in preaching, where God's people are gathered to worship, the law should be principally used as a gracious guide to the converted.

But many of our services today, we are not using the law as a gracious guide to the converted.

We're only using the law as a mirror to expose their sin and call them to repentance in that way.

So you have the phenomenon of a seeker -sensitive services. You have the idea of friendship evangelism. So today, we've been rigorously trained in the idea of friendship evangelism.

You think that in order to evangelize someone, I mean, there's been so much teaching on this point, our basic impulse is at times, with friendship evangelism is you really just need to be someone's buddy for long periods of time and hint at truth to them.

So you just, like the goal is to form the friendship first so that one day you might have an opportunity, you might earn the opportunity to share with them harder things.

And so evangelism becomes long periods of time that are devoted to friendship in order to try to take these enemies that you're supposed to have, turn them into friends first.

Friends first, right? They're not enemies first, they're friends first. Then what you try to do is maybe hint at them that they have a fundamental problem at some point.

But really, what friendship evangelism is is almost all friendship and very little evangelism.

And then people will use that, they'll justify that with languages describing Jesus being a friend of sinners.

But they forget that Jesus, he didn't adopt friendship evangelism in the way that we think.

Jesus, in almost every single encounter that you can imagine, spoke quickly and directly to the spiritual condition of those who he was talking to.

Luke 13, one, there was some present at that time who told him about the Galileans whose blood

Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other

Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

What did Jesus do to the rich, young ruler? He sees the rich, young ruler, and Jesus looking at them, he loved him.

What does it mean to love your enemies? He sees his enemy, he loves his enemy. How did he love his enemy? He said to him, he didn't just hang out with him for three months, try to be his buddy.

That isn't what loving him meant. Jesus says, you lack one thing. Go sell all you have, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and follow me.

What did Jesus say to Nicodemus? Unless you're born again, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. Every encounter that Jesus had, he didn't withhold the message of repentance from them for long periods of time in order to try to be their buddy.

He told them what they were lacking. He told them what they would need. Look, as Christians, as Christian, you will have enemies.

They're happy, they'll be happy to coexist with you, provided you keep your head down, you keep your mouth shut, give them everything that they want.

So if you keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, give your enemies everything they want.

Don't resist them in any way. Yeah, as Christians, we have a great capacity to excuse all these things, to make it reasonable and understandable through some of the mechanisms that I've talked about.

As Christians, our failings in these areas are to be so nice to the point where you don't have any enemies.

You never make anyone mad because you don't call them to repentance in any ways. So as a Christian, there is these two fundamental humanities.

You will have enemies. They'll be happy to coexist if you keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, give them everything they demand.

They'll be happy to coexist with you as long as you don't call them to repentance. But think about the examples of people in the

Bible. You have the Sodomites knocking on the door to Lot. What does

Lot say to them? He says, I beg you, brothers, do not act so wickedly.

I beg you, brothers, do not act so wickedly. He speaks about their actions in moral categories.

How do they respond? How do they respond to him? They said, stand back. And they said, this fellow came to sojourn and he's become the judge.

Does not that read just like everything that you're going to encounter today? How dare you judge me, right?

How dare you judge me? This fellow came to sojourn, he's become the judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them.

Then they pressed hard against the man Lot and drew near to break down the door. You know,

John the Baptist could have kept his head if he didn't tell Herod that it was unlawful for him to have his brother's wife.

Point here is just to say that there are these two humanities. There's the seed of the woman, there's the seed of the serpent.

God says he's going to put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. You know, the easiest way to expose that enmity, the easiest way to expose that enmity is to call the seed of the serpent to repentance.

And if you don't do that, don't be surprised if there's no enmity, right?

The easiest way to expose that enmity is to call the seed of the serpent to repentance.

And you will find that that enmity is real. There have been many situations in my life where I've seen people that I thought, that I cared about, right?

I cared about, I thought they cared about me, absolutely, utterly turn on me because I dared to hint, often in the most mild ways possible, there's something in their life that needs to change.

Those are the times when you see the seed of the serpent enraged at you, in surprising ways.

There's no other explanation for it. There's no other explanation for why that would happen. There really isn't.

I mean, you take a person who is your family member, who's loved you your whole life, you dare to suggest there's something they're doing that's wrong, and they utterly repudiate you with the whole entirety of their being, making it their ambition to oppose you and to resist you and to slander you and to turn on you.

There's no explanation for how their eyes in that moment change. I don't know how to describe the phenomenon, but just to point you to it, it's real.

It's real. You will have enemies. The Bible says, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, servants not above his master.

If they persecuted me, they'll persecute you. Man's in, don't think I've come to bring peace on the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Man's enemies will be those of his own household. They will deliver you over to be flogged, to be persecuted, and they will think that they have done

God a favor in doing that. Point here is just to say, as Christianity, we've adopted, in Christian state, we've adopted a form of Christianity that's trying to minimize that call to repentance at almost every single level.

We turn evangelism into just making friends. We turn our sermons into these encouraging, positive, uplifting, non -objectionable gatherings that are designed to encourage unbelievers.

We do all this because we think that the chief virtue is to be nice. We think that Jesus was just unendingly nice.

The end result is we think, oh, Christians shouldn't have enemies. The problem is that that's not the world that God's made.

That's not the world that we live in. All those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

You have many Christians today who think it's a virtue to not be persecuted, and in fact, the moment persecution comes, your fellow

Christian brothers and sisters and pastors will throw you under the bus and say it's all your fault. It's all your fault.

They won't have your back because they don't see the basic story that's supposed to be behind every other story.

The story is this. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

That is the lens you're supposed to use to read the rest of the Bible and your life and everything that happens in it.

There are two humanities. There's the seed of the woman. There's the seed of the serpent. Which one of those humanities are you in?

That's the most important question that you should ask. As you read through the rest of the

Genesis, you'll realize very quickly there's two genealogies in the opening chapters of the

Bible that represent these two humanities. There's the genealogy of the seed of the woman.

Then there's the genealogy of Cain, and what you're gonna find when you read through the genealogy of Cain is all the bad stuff that's happening.

There's some things that are neutral in there, but a lot of the bad stuff are happening. You have vengeance, you have polygamy.

All the bad stuff is happening through this seeded line of the serpent. So you have two genealogies that are telling you there's the line of the seed of the serpent.

You see the line of Adam and Eve, and you see that a few generations in, people began to call upon the name of the

Lord. There's two humanities, that's the story, and that's gonna be the story throughout the rest of the Bible. So here's the point.

There's a great enemy. A great enemy is a cursed enemy. A great enemy is the enemy behind all enemies, and the great enemy will inflict suffering.

So notice what it says. It says, he shall bruise your head. Let me read that again.

I've skipped a part here. I'll put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Let's deal with the he shall bruise his heel part here.

As I said, as you read through the storyline of the Bible, you'll realize that there are these two humanities.

Satan, he's a cursed foe. Ultimately, he will be defeated. There's a defeat that we're looking forward to.

One, like there was a decisive defeat on the cross that we're gonna talk about, but then there will be a later full comprehensive defeat.

But notice that he's not gonna go out passive. He's gonna go out swinging. The devil knows his time is short, and so he's raging, and so he's gonna take as many people with him.

His desire is to not only to take as many, he knows he's damned.

He's gonna try to take as many people to hell with him. That's his plan, but not only that, he has a war going on with the seed of the woman, and he's going to strike at them, right?

So he's going to strike at them. He's gonna bruise their heel. You see a picture of this in Genesis 4, 8.

Cain spoke to his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother

Abel, and he killed him. Now, notice Jesus' interpretation of this.

Think about everything that we've said so far. Think about everything we've said so far. Jesus is going to comment on Cain killing

Abel. So why did Cain kill Abel? Because Abel's sacrifice was accepted. God didn't accept his sacrifice, okay?

Think about Jesus' comment on this in Matthew 23, 33. He says to the

Pharisees, you serpents, you brood of vipers. What is he saying? He's saying you're the seed of the serpent.

He's saying you're part of one of these two humanities. He's doing what I'm telling you that we're supposed to do.

He's identifying them as the brood of the serpent, right? He says, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Therefore, I send you prophets and wives, men, and scribes, some of whom you kill and crucify, some of whom you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of righteous

Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

Jesus is identifying those two humanities. The seed of the serpent is going to try to bruise the heel of the seed of the woman.

Who are the Pharisees? The Pharisees in the story, they're the seed of the serpent. They're raging against the seed of the woman.

As you read through Revelation, one of the things you'll find is there's two marks in the book of Revelation. There's the mark you're most familiar with, which is the mark 666.

That's the devil's mark, okay? So notice what God says about the devil's mark.

He causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or on the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast, or the number of its name.

This calls for wisdom. Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it's the number of a man, and this number is 666.

So notice there's two marks. If you're on the devil's team, if you're the seed of the serpent, you get the devil's mark.

That means you're protected from the devil's wrath, okay? Devil knows how to protect his own, doesn't he?

Hey, you signed the diversity, equity, inclusion pledge, and thank God that he's raised up Trump to, among other things, kill diversity and equity and inclusion.

But look, for many years now, if you sign that pledge, you get protected from the devil's wrath, right?

You just sign up, sign on the dotted line, commit yourself to the devil's agenda, you're fine. There's no neutrality in the world.

Why are they demanding pledges of allegiance? What are those pledges of allegiance designed to do? To identify the members of their team, right?

You take the devil's mark, you get protection from the devil. You take the devil's mark, you get protection from the devil's wrath.

Problem is, God also has a mark. So Revelation 7 .3 says, do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the servants of our

God on our forehead. There's two marks, isn't there? God has a mark. You sign up for God's team, what do you get?

You get protected from God's wrath. But then, you're exposed to the devil's wrath.

You sign up for the devil's team, sign on the dotted line, what do you get?

You get protected from the devil's wrath. You get exposed to God's wrath. So the fundamental question is, whose wrath do you want?

There's no way to escape wrath. Do you want God's wrath or do you want the devil's wrath? Well, if you want the devil's wrath, if you don't want

God's wrath, you're gonna have to take God's mark, but that's gonna expose you to the devil's wrath. Problem is, all that we can see is, at times, because we're not guided by the eyes of faith, is the here and now.

So you see the devil's wrath and you think, that seems pretty scary. Seems pretty scary, the devil's wrath.

I don't wanna lose my job, right? I don't wanna lose my job, because then I'll have to be faced with uncertainty and then there'll be plenty of unknowns.

And I gotta provide for my family, right? And so there's all sorts of ways that we could justify taking the devil's mark. It's the point, you take the devil's mark, yeah, you won't get the devil's wrath.

But the problem is that God's wrath is a lot more scary than all that. Think about the story that you're in.

This is a cursed enemy. He's gonna bruise your heel, sure. He's in opposition towards you, sure.

But the damage that he can inflict pales in comparison to the damage that God can inflict, do you understand? Don't fear him who's able to kill the body, but fear him who's able to kill the body and soul in hell.

This is a defeated foe. Certainly he's thrashing around. Certainly he's gonna try to take as many people with him as he can.

Certainly there'll be collateral damage. Certainly there are consequences to not signing up for the devil's team.

You don't sign up for the devil's team, he's gonna bruise your heel, for sure.

You're not gonna escape. Again, all those who desire to live righteously in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

You will suffer persecution. Tribulation is a part of life. There are two humanities.

The more faithful you are to God, the more of the devil's wrath you're gonna get.

That's the way it works. And so many Christians have been persuaded that in order to be righteous, you try to minimize the devil's wrath that you receive.

You try to do everything possible to avoid being persecuted. In fact, if you get persecuted, it probably is because you're doing something wrong and you're unloving and not merciful and kind as you should be.

You see how we live in denial of this great truth? We live in opposition to this great antithesis that we see in this passage, the great story.

But the story is true. I mean, this is the interpretive framework for your life. And I'm not suggesting that it's not possible to get persecution because you're a jerk.

I'm not suggesting that some of that might not be self -inflicted. I'm just suggesting that all those who desire to live righteously in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

And there's a great enemy of your souls who, it's not only that he's in opposition to you, it's that all of his offspring are in opposition towards you too.

And if you never get any opposition from anyone around you, it's questionable that you're being even remotely faithful because these are not suggestions about what is possible.

These are guarantees about what is certain. So notice the great enemy of our souls, he'll bruise our heel, but the seed of the woman ultimately will crush the serpent's head.

Now, fundamental to understanding what's even happening here is to understand that the word for seed in this passage, zera, or offspring, it's a collective singular.

That means it can refer to many or it can refer to one. And as you read the Bible, one of the things you realize is that it does refer to many, but it does specifically refer to one, okay?

This is what many scholars have understood to be the proto -evangelion here, the pre -gospel.

Who are the seed of the woman? Well, ultimately, the seed of the woman are all those who have faith in Christ Jesus. But ultimately, the seed of the woman in the most specific sense is

Jesus, that's what it is. Jesus ultimately has a plan before the foundation of the world to triumph over Satan.

And not only is he going to, not only did he develop that plan and will he execute that plan, and did he execute that plan, but he's included us in that plan too.

So as I said, there's two great humanities. You're either the offspring of the woman or you're the offspring of a serpent.

These are obviously not physical lineage kind of categories as if the offspring is determined biologically by virtue of genetics or DNA.

Point here is to say this is a collective singular. What did Jesus do in the cross?

Colossians 2 .13, and you who were dead in your trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh,

God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all of our trespasses by canceling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demand.

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and the authorities, and he put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

The cross was the ultimate act of the seed of the woman, specifically Jesus crushing the head of the serpent.

In this respect, World War II analogy obtains, what was the decisive moment in World War II that set the course of the eventual end of the war?

D -Day, right? At D -Day, the war was as good as done. Final victory didn't happen until Victory in Europe Day, which came a little bit later.

But at D -Day, that was the decisive blow. The battle was functionally over. From that point on, it was just a mop -up operation.

Cross was D -Day, as it were. It was the decisive blow. Victory is basically over, as good as done.

But then we're awaiting Victory in Europe Day, aren't we? Revelation 19, 11, then

I saw heaven opened. Behold, a white horse, the one sitting on it called

Faithful and True. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire.

On his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. His clothed in a robe dipped in blood, a name by which he has caused the word of God.

The armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, following him, white horses.

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.

He will dress their wine -breasts with the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.

On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of Kings, Lord of Lords. I saw an angel standing in the sun with a loud voice, and he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead.

Come, gather for the great supper of God to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.

And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army.

And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who were in the presence had done signs by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worship his image.

These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur, and the rest were slain by the sword which came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse.

And all the birds were gorged with their flesh. There'll be a final confrontation.

There will be a final battle. Romans 16, 20 says, "'The

God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.'" The church and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

God has promised to bless and build his church. As Christians are part, by faith, we are included in the seed of the woman.

One day there'll be final victory, final conquering. It's as good as done. Jesus has done, paid it all on the cross.

His battle is functionally over. We're in the mop -up operation as it were at this point.

But notice how we will all be there with Jesus when the final confrontation happens. There are two humanities, brothers and sisters.

The seed of the serpent, the seed of the woman. There's no way that you're going to be included in the seed of the woman by your own righteousness, by your own works.

There's no way that you are going to overcome the law and its legal demands that are set in hostility to you.

The law brings a curse, but Jesus has died on the cross to become a curse for us or that we might live to him.

There's only one hope to be found in this story. It is the story behind all stories, and that is the hope that Jesus did what he said he would do, that he crushed the head of the serpent.

He did so decisively on the cross. And one day that fight will be over.

There's no way to understand your life except to understand it along lines of these categories, these are the categories that are given to us to understand the world that we see.

God has done a great work for us, doing what we could never do. Let's praise him for that, amen?

Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for the opportunity we have to think about these great truths that we see in scriptures,

Lord. We know that you have a plan for the world. Your plan is good. You've divided the world up into two humanities.

I pray that you help us hear who are Christians to be thankful, to be included as members of the seat of the woman,

Lord. Help us to love our enemies and call them to repentance. Help us to love them enough to not deprive them of the words of life which you've designed to help them.