Christmas in Genesis (The Promise of a Son)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. There's this great scene where they travel to Narnia through this wardrobe, this wooden box.

It's how they get back and forth between our world and the world of Narnia. And there's so many biblical allusions in Narnia that, you know,

C .S. Lewis was a fan of allegory. There's the creation of the world by Aslan, who's singing it into creation.

I love that scene from the magician's nephew. You've got the fall of Narnia into slavery by the white witch, and the curse that it afflicts the world, afflicts sin and misery upon the land, which are all great biblical themes.

And of course, this was discovered by the inquisitive Lucy, who's the youngest of the child, who just happened into the wardrobe.

And as the coats were tickling her fingers, then she felt the bristle of pine needles. And then, instead of a wooden floor underneath her feet, she felt the soft blanket coldness of the fallen snow.

And there she meets Mr. Tumnus, the wolf, the goat -like man.

It's a faun in mythology. And Mr. Tumnus is the one who introduces her to the world of Narnia, and he tells her about the curse that has been inflicted upon the land by the white witch.

He tells her that it always snows here. It's always cloudy. It's always this blanket of gloom and misery, this awful curse that is upon the citizens of Narnia.

And if you remember, when she asks him who the white witch is, he gives this famous line. Why, it's she that has got all of Narnia under her thumb.

It is she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas. Think of that.

It's such a powerful line. Always winter, never Christmas. And Lucy did think about that.

She did think about what that phrase meant, and she understood that this particular place was blanketed under the snow -covered curse of the white witch.

But Louis, in his writing, was not meaning to confine any curses to Narnia.

He was writing that this is precisely the world that we inhabit today.

A world that is under the curse. A world that longs for the hope of Christmas.

A world that, instead of a white witch, is in the clenches of a fiery dragon. A world that resembles the pain and misery of Narnia, where it's always winter but never

Christmas. A world where redemption seems distant to those who are far from God. A world where fresh grass seems like it's buried under a mountain of snow.

In that world, and in our world, we hear the echoes of Eden. The perpetual winter that was cast upon the human soul and upon the creation that only a

Savior can deliver us out of. And it doesn't affect all. It affects the many.

And it affects the many now because there are still many who are far from Christ in a blizzard of sin.

But for those of us who know Jesus Christ, the winter is over, which we will come back to in a moment.

In this passage that we're going to look at today, we see the glimmer. The flickering glimmer of the gospel. Like you're standing in a room and there's a candle lit in the other room and you see the flicker of the light flashing on the wall.

In this passage, we will see the flickering of the gospel. The tundra of the curse is going to be evaporated by the

Savior. The light is going to break in. It's going to shine in through the world and it's going to do so for our deliverance, for our freedom, for our great joy.

Today, we're going to look at the story that is before the gospels. Today, we're going to look at the

Christmas passage, the first Christmas passage in the Bible. And I'm not talking about Matthew 1. I'm not talking about Luke 1.

You can debate chronology if you want. I'm talking about Genesis 3. Before the baby lying in the manger, before the shepherds looked up and the sky exploded for the glory of God, and they ran to the city to find the babe, before the star that the wise men followed, and long before the death sentence that King Herod pronounced upon the babies that were two years old and younger, before all of that is the story of Christmas.

It goes all the way back to the very first pages of Scripture revealed to us in the book of Genesis.

Now, you may be like, why would we have Christmas in Genesis? That seems like a very odd thing to do.

You just want to be novel? Do you just want to be unique? Maybe. The heart is sinful above all things. Who can know it?

I told my son today, follow your heart. Just know that your heart is wicked. That's the kind of encouragement

I give. We're doing this because Christmas is not thick like wrapping paper.

It's not thick like figgy pudding. It's thick like an iceberg. And all we see in the gospels is the floating ice cube that's on the surface of the water.

Underneath that floating ice cube is a great mountain of gospel truth that goes all the way back to the very beginning.

So today, what I want us to do is I want us to read the gospel passage that all of these truths are pointing to, but I want us to move past that gospel passage, which is in Matthew 1, and I want us to go back to Genesis 3.

And I want to see where all of these promises started bubbling and percolating all the way back to the beginning.

So if you will, join me. We're going to be in Matthew 1, 18 -25. Very traditional

Christmas passage. Then we're going to go to the non -traditional Christmas passage to see where it all began. So let us read the text together.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the

Holy Spirit. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, he planned to send her away secretly.

But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take

Mary as your wife. For the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Now all of this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name

Immanuel, which translated means God with us. And Joseph awoke from his sleep, and he did what the angel of the

Lord commanded him. And he took Mary as his wife, but he kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son, and he called his name

Jesus. This is the description of the Christmas miracle that happened on that original

Christmas day. The virgin is declared to be with child, which breaks every natural law that you could possibly imagine.

And she's going to have a son who's going to be the in -breaking of God coming into the world, the incarnation event, which is where all of these truths from the

Old Testament are culminating, that God with us is going to come, and he is going to rescue his people who are in the clenches, not of the white witch, but of the dragon.

Right there it is on the surface, easy for us to see. Now I want us to go under the surface and see where all of these promises began.

So listen, I'll go to Genesis 3, 1 through 15. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field, which the

Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the garden,

God has said that you shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die. The serpent said to the woman, you shall not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate.

She gave it also to her husband and he ate. And then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked.

And they sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves loin coverings. And they heard the sound of the

Lord walking through the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

And then the Lord God called to the man and said, where are you? He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden.

I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. And he said, who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And the man said, the woman that you gave to me, she gave from the tree and I ate.

And then God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.

And the Lord God said to the servant, because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, more than every beast of the field.

On your belly you will go and dust you will eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Let's pray. Lord, I pray as we see the flickering light of the gospel in the

Old Testament that points to the amazing events that happened on Christmas morning.

Lord, I pray that we would do so faithfully. Lord, I pray that we would see what flickers in the Old Testament as a supernova in the new.

Lord, I pray that that event, the in -breaking of the kingdom of God on earth through the coming of Christ.

Lord, I pray it would swallow us up in the best way. I pray it would swallow up our pride, swallow up our sin, misery, selfishness, ambition, selfish ambition.

And Lord, I pray that what would be left, what remains is what Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 12, that whatever is not shaken would be left.

That is the unshakable kingdom of God. Lord, I pray that that flickering light of the gospel would be left in our hearts, that we would be gospel people, and that the incarnation of the

Son of God would be the thing that we look to as seeing that your kingdom has come.

And that is now because you have given us this role, it is our job to see that kingdom advance. Lord, thank you for the season where we celebrate your coming.

Lord, help us to be a people who now are going. In Christ's name, amen. I guess perhaps the best place to start in this passage, there's 15 verses and you know me,

I normally preach on 1 .5 verses, so best place to start is with an overview and for us to get to know our enemy.

Sun Tzu, in his great book, The Art of War, one of the rules that he gives is that you are to know thine enemy, so we should know who this enemy is, this serpent, this crafty serpent, which in English doesn't really do it justice.

A crafty serpent. You get the picture of a snake, maybe it's a garden snake, maybe it's a black snake, maybe it's a rattlesnake in your mind, but you get some picture of a snake who happens to, instead of hiss, talk.

I don't think that has, I don't think that actually does justice to what we're seeing here in the text. Now, the first aspect

I want to share with you about who this serpent is, is I want to share the word seraphim.

Maybe you've heard of the word seraphim. Seraphim is the word for the angels who are in the presence of God singing, holy, holy, holy.

But that's the only time that that word seraphim actually applies to angels. Every other time that that word is used, it applies to serpents, fiery serpents.

Here's an example, Isaiah 14, 12 through 14. How you have fallen from heaven,

O star of the morning, sun of the dawn. You have been cut down to the earth. You have been weak, you who have weakened the nations.

But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly and the recesses of the north, and I will ascend above the heights and the clouds, and I will make myself like the most high.

And that word seraphim is used a little bit later. But here's the point. The seraphim are the angels who are in the presence of God.

They're the ones who are singing, holy, holy, holy. And here we have an angel who is going rogue, who's trying to lift up his throne above the throne of Yahweh.

So with the word seraphim meaning serpent, fiery serpent, even dragon, and you have an angel who's in the throne room of God trying to lift himself up above the presence of God, what we're looking at is this serpent in the text.

It's a fallen seraphim who's trying to be God, trying to usurp

God, trying to put himself above God. Now, again, the

Hebrew meaning for the word is fiery serpent. I'll give you some examples. The book of Numbers says that there were snakes that God sent against the people of Israel, and those snakes bit them, and they had to look to this bronze serpent in order to be healed.

That word is seraphim. The snakes that were sent against them were seraphim. The bronze snake that Moses made that the people were supposed to look to to be healed from their curse is called seraphim in the

Hebrew text. In Isaiah chapter 30, the word seraphim is used for a dragon, which is fascinating.

I told the Sunday school class, this is very interesting because we've just been talking about demons and Satan in Sunday school class, which is sort of where some of this research has come from.

You go into the holy of holies, and you see the seraphim singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. You're not looking at men very docile in robes singing, holy, holy.

You're looking at a throne that is being surrounded by fire -breathing dragons giving glory to God.

No wonder Isaiah fell on his face and said, woe is me! Of course, he would have done that anyway because it wasn't the dragons that scared him, it was the holiness of God that was frightening.

But what an epic scene in heaven, the seraphim surrounding the throne.

So at the very least, this is not an ordinary serpent. This is not an ordinary snake. This is not your garden variety snake that you can just step on its head and be done with it.

This is a terrifying being that had imminent power and who served in the presence of God, but is now outside of the presence of God at war with God.

This is a terrifying, powerful being. Now, the second aspect of this is the actual word that's used in Genesis.

There's two words for serpent. There's seraphim and there's nahash. You got to admit, that word is fun to say.

I say that with every one of them. Nahash. Nahash is the earthly word for snake.

Seraphim is sort of given the heavenly qualities of these serpent -like dragons. Nahash is used to highlight the evil characteristics of the snake on earth.

And I will remind you that words, we're going to go into a little bit of grammar for a second. So if you don't like that, just close your eyes for a second.

I'm just kidding. Don't do that. We're going to do a little bit of grammar. In Hebrew, there are no vowels, which you can imagine would make it very difficult to read.

The Hebrew people memorized their vowels so they would supply their vowels by context and also by grammar.

So they knew that if this verb was in this place or if that word was in that place, that it would be a particular set of vowels.

We don't do that. All of our vowels are in the words and praise God for that. But they would have consonants and every word was formed by a three -letter root.

So for instance, this word is formed by three letters, noon, hate, and shin. And depending on where the vowels fall depends on what this word means.

An English example of this might be that if I gave you the letters S, T, and P and I told you, you supply the vowels, what are you going to do?

Well, if you make it into a noun, maybe you say, well, it's the word step, of course.

It's one of the steps and a set of steps as we walk up the steps.

That's clearly what it means. Someone comes along and says, no, no, no, no, no. It's an O. It's a verb. It's stop.

That's what you would tell your children to do if they're trying to play in the street. Stop. Someone else will come along and say, no, no, no, no, no.

It's an adjective. It has two E's. It's steep. The steps are steep and you're very steep as a person for telling your child to stop.

English doesn't work this way because it would be a mess of us trying to figure out what these words mean.

And if you've noticed, these three words that I just supplied vowels for don't necessarily connect to one another.

Because in English, we don't have roots. We do in some ways. English is one of those languages where the rules apply and they don't.

But we don't necessarily have roots that always mean the same thing. But in Hebrew, they do. When you have these three letters, noon, hate, shin, the words are interconnected.

They're a family of words. So no matter which vowels you supply, you're in a family of words. So there's connections that are being made between these words.

So if you were to make this word a noun, nakhash, which is what we just said a second ago, it means serpent.

It means snake. If you were to make this word into a verb, it's nakhash. Hear the difference?

Nakhash. Nakhash. Hear it? It's very subtle. This is a verb which means one who deceives.

The one who actively deceives. The adjectival form sounds just like the noun form, which makes it even more confusing.

Nakhash, which means the shining one. And it's often used of shining cities made out of brass.

So here you have three words that are describing this serpent like character who is a fallen angel that used to serve in the presence of God.

And he is not only a serpent, but he's one who deceives and he is a shining one. He is one who looks like an angel, comes as an angel of light, shines in some sort of way that makes you feel like that you can put your guard down and trust him, and yet he is utterly a deceiver.

Again, no ordinary serpent. Now let's move on from verse one to verse two through six, and let's look at the plot of this shining deceiving serpent fallen angel being.

The first thing that he does in his attack on humans, why does he attack humans, by the way?

Because God put them as the pinnacle of his creation. The humpback whale and the mountain goat are not the pinnacle of his creation.

The top of Mount Everest is not the pinnacle of his creation. It was us placed as vice regents over this world to rule and subdue it.

Just like the sun, the moon, and the stars were called to rule over the heavens, we've been called to rule over the earth. Satan cast out of the heavens comes for the head, which was us.

The first thing he does is he challenges the word of God. And the thing that he says is, did

God really say? That is the preeminent phrase that Satan always says.

If you look and you find any error in the Bible, it is a challenge on whether, did God really say? We have this all over the place.

Does God really say that life begins in the womb? Did God really say that marriage is between a man and a woman? Did God really say that there's only two genders and not 74 or 89 or however many there are?

When you add the two spirit penguins in, did

God really say? The challenge to God's word, challenging whether God is ultimately good.

That's what the challenge is. The challenge is not, hey, here's a theological point

I want to argue with. The challenge is, this is what God said. Is God really good?

Does He really care for you? Is what He said really true? Every temptation that you will ever face stems from that point.

Did God really say? Did God really say that you're supposed to be faithful? Did God really say that you're supposed to protect your eyes?

Did God really say that you're supposed to be generous? Did God really say you can go on and on and on?

Every temptation you face is an attack on whether God really said it. So He challenged the word of God.

Second thing He does is He challenges the hierarchy in the home. We're not going to be able to cover everything, but we're going to cover some things.

He, instead of going to the man, you'll remember in Genesis 2, it was God who made the first and then

He gave the commandments to the man first before God put Adam in a deep dream -like sleep where he takes his rib out and he makes out of it a woman and Adam exclaims, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.

Before that happened, He pulled Adam aside and He said, you may eat of any tree of the garden, but you can't eat of that one.

That's the law. He's giving him the commands. And the subtle indication is that the man was supposed to pull his wife aside and teach her the commands of God.

There was a spiritual leadership that was built into the very beginning of this text where man is supposed to care enough about his wife to teach her what

God really said so that she would be equipped on the day of temptation. And you'll notice

Satan doesn't go to him. He goes to her. He goes to the woman who was made to help the man and he tries to solicit her help in undermining the man and he deceives her and he makes her feel like God was holding out on her and on her husband.

That's the next part as he challenges their theology. Is God really good? Does He really care for you?

Does He really give you good things? Satan is saying, I have a one track path, a shortcut that will get you to all the knowledge you want.

You see, they forgot that God made them to be in relationship with Him. Adam forgot that before Eve was created, he just wrote the entire taxonomy of the created species.

He gave them all names. That's Adam learning. Adam didn't know that before.

And as he's walking through and he's naming all these beings, beasts, and he says there's none suitable for him, he's learning. In relationship with God, he's growing.

Satan, what he does is he circumvents the relationship that would have gotten Adam more knowledge, more experience.

He circumvents that and gives a shortcut. And he says, this is the path to knowledge. God's holding out on you.

God doesn't want you to have all these good things. God doesn't want you to have this experience. How many times has a man or a woman who has fallen to an addiction fallen because of this?

There's pleasure in Christ. There's fullness in God. The temptation promises it instantly.

And what it does is it's a bitter fruit that as soon as you bite it, it goes down and spoils you and breaks you and twists you and mangles you.

It is a promise of a shortcut that doesn't deliver. So he challenged their theology.

He also challenges the man's cowardice, believe it or not. I hear a lot growing up that, you know, what if Eve wouldn't have done that?

I don't blame Eve. Eve wasn't called to be the leader. Eve wasn't called to be the one who who held and vouchsafed the commands of God.

Yes, she sinned, of course. Adam was called to care for her. Adam was called to protect her. Adam was called to be the one who knew the commands of God.

And when it says that in the text that she ate of it and she handed it to him, he was there. He was standing right there with her, watching her, almost like she's a guinea pig.

Is she going to die? What a coward. At least if you're going to plunge the entire world into sin and misery, you do it.

You eat it. I can imagine him standing there being like, I wonder what's going to happen.

And then if she dies, you can imagine him having a plan already in his head. You know, God, you are not going to believe this.

You know that woman that you gave me? Yeah, her. I mean, I really liked her, too. She ate of the tree.

And just like you said, God, she died. And, you know, it's a bummer.

I didn't want that to happen. But I was just wondering if you could put me to sleep again, take out one of my ribs and make me another one. I didn't eat it.

Coward. Coward. Satan exploited man's cowardice.

If you want to wonder why men struggle to lead their families, you look to Adam and you'll have the answer.

Men, we are cowards by nature and our sin. And we will express our cowardice in two different ways.

We will either be a blowhard, macho sort of idiot who tries to prove he's not a coward through violence, or we will be passive and we will try to find our acceptance in our job or acceptance in our community and will refuse to lead the wives that God has given us.

We're all insufficient. We're all broken. We're all cowardly. God made us after the fall to find our fulfillment only in Him.

If you're trying to find your fulfillment in your wife, in your job, in your world, it will not satisfy you.

Again, he was treating his wife like a guinea pig. And because of his cowardice and because of Eve's curiosity, the entire world was plunged into misery and chaos.

Their eyes were opened in a way that they could have never imagined. Instead of their eyes being open to all the sparkly, wonderful things in the world, their eyes were now open to sin and they craved it.

Instead of being humble and innocent, their soul was awakened in a disgusting, mangled sort of way to where they wanted everything but God.

So instead of the knowledge of God, now they only wanted the knowledge of sin. Instead of freedom and worship, now they only wanted rebellion.

And their hearts were forever captivated by this thing called sin. So they lost their ability to even love

God righteously. But it goes beyond that because not only did the curse affect their affections, but it also affected their soul.

Their soul died on that day. God said, in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. And they did die. They died spiritually, instantly on that day.

So that from that moment forward, Paul would say that there's no one righteous, not even one. There's no one who seeks God. None can come to him.

They died spiritually. They were irreparably morphed into something that could not seek

God. Now, if you want to quibble over free will, I will give you that there is free will.

Your free will is limited to your death -like state. Fish have free will to live in water.

You take them out of water, they suffocate. You and I have free will to only seek selfishness and sin.

You try to get us to seek after God, we can't do it. That's where free will ends.

It ends with the limits of our nature, and our nature is dead. The fall goes even further than that.

It goes to the mind, it goes to the affections, and it even goes to their environment. Their minds fail, so they only thought about sin.

Their hearts only crave sin, and their environment even falls. Because of human sin, thorns come out of the ground.

Thistles come out of the ground. Hurricanes start afflicting the waters. Isn't that a fascinating thing?

In Leviticus, it says that their sin polluted the earth. The earth is watching the sons of God, the daughters of God, and it responds to our sin.

The more sin we use and pollute the ground, the more misery is inflicted on creation, who it says in Romans that they're crying out and yearning and groaning for the day of redemption when they can experience the same redemption as Christians.

It goes to the animal kingdom. I imagine that in the garden, Adam played and snuggled with lions, and now they turn against him and want to maul him because they're afraid of him.

There's enmity between him and the animal kingdom. There's enmity between him and humans as well. The world was filled with murder, envy, strife, bloodshed, and everything else, so that just a few generations after the original creation,

God says that he was sorry that he made this creature who's polluted his earth as wickedly as man had.

By choosing to follow the shining serpent deceiver, they unleashed catastrophe upon the planet and upon everyone who came after them.

But that's not the end of the story. There are punishments for their sin, absolutely, and God would have been righteously just in that moment to wipe them out.

The fact that we sit here today downstream from epics and eras and millennia of sin is a testimony of God's grace.

We often hear people ask, why is there so much evil in the world? Why are you still here?

If God isn't good, you wouldn't be here. If God isn't gracious, you would be dead, and you would be deservedly so.

You'd have never been born. So, there's punishments, but let us not forget that God is gracious even in the punishments, infinitely so.

To man, the ground was cursed so that it would not produce in the same way that it had before.

To woman, the womb was cursed so that it would not produce in the same way that it had before. And then

God turns to that shining, deceiving, wicked serpent, and He pronounces the very first Christmas message that has ever been given.

This is what He says to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

There's too much to cover in one sermon here. You'll hear me say that a lot, but it's true.

This passage is deep like the Mariana Trench. You can't cover it all, but I want you to see the shining hope of Christmas in this passage.

A Redeemer is going to come, but He's not going to come through the seed of the man. Did you notice that?

He does not pull Adam and Eve aside and say, your son is going to come as a Redeemer. He pulls

Eve aside and He says, your daughter is going to have a son.

Do you understand the implications of what is being said there? That Eve is going to have a child by her seed alone, and we have to understand this biblically.

We have to get back into the ancient biblical world. I know that this can be confusing for us because we are not akin or adept to covenant theological thinking, but the

Bible is saying that Adam's seed, his seed, his sperm is the reason that the fallen nature transmits from one generation to the next.

It is not your mother that you get your sin nature from, it is your father. That's what the Bible says.

And you're like, well, how, what is the word I would say there? I don't even know.

What's the opposite of misogynistic? I don't know. Let's keep going.

Thank you, brother. How misandrinistic? And I'm not talking about physical.

This is not a genetic DNA thing where there's a line of code in a man's DNA that that's the fallen nature.

So that if some scientist somewhere could just use one of those CRISPR cells and zip it out of there, then we could get rid of the fallen nature.

Absolutely not. This is a covenant reality. It's not a physical reality.

It's not a genetic reality. It's a covenant reality. God has set Adam up as the federal head of humanity.

I was thinking about what's a good example to teach us today what federal head is. You do not show up to Congress.

You elect an official who represents you and they make decisions. And I would venture to guess that they don't always represent you well.

And I would venture to guess that they don't always represent your interest. I'm assuming who is our

Elizabeth Warren? She's the native American, right? She's the one who goes and represents us to the

Senate. Does she represent you? Doesn't feel like it, but she does.

In the same way, Adam represented all of us so that his decision in the fall trickled its way down to us.

And in that sense, you weren't there and you didn't make any decisions, but God deemed that Adam would be your representative so that his decision is yours.

And his fall is yours. So that every child that is born in the womb, every sperm, every sperm that meets an egg transmits that fall.

So before that child has even done anything good or bad, they are fallen, conceived in iniquity and broken.

Paul talks about this in Romans 5, verse 2. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sin.

We're stopping short here to prove a point. The rest of the verses after that are glorious. Death and sin and misery came in through one man,

Adam. And that sin, that misery was carried on by every father who ever had children.

So your dad, you can look at him next Father's Day and say, thank you for the curse. You're the problem.

So am I. Paul knows that Eve was not innocent. Paul knows that Eve was the one who ate.

Paul knows all of these things. And yet he is establishing a covenant doctrine that Adam represented us and he represented us poorly.

So God, when he makes a promise to reverse this curse, he doesn't make it to man.

He makes it to woman. He pulls her aside and he tells her, that a man will be born by one of her great, great, great granddaughters through a virgin birth so that she has no male

DNA that spawned that union. It was a birth by the

Holy Spirit of God. That's the promise that God is making to Eve, that one day your great, great, great, great, great granddaughter and her seed alone will come a son.

And that son, because he's different than us. We are made up of male and female.

He is made up of his mom and the Holy Spirit. He is different. So he is going to make a brand new race of humans.

I know that sounds weird, but the gospel is telling the story of a new humanity, a new humanity that is in Christ.

And every single one of us here who know Jesus Christ are a part of that. We were born in sin and misery.

We were born with our mom and dad's DNA. If any one of you here claim that you came from anything other than a mom and a dad, we will pray for you.

Share your prayer request next week during prayer time and we will add it to the list. All of us were born that way.

And yet, that's why Jesus said there's a different kind of birth. There's a new birth where you can be reborn.

Reborn, not just the flesh, but reborn of the Spirit. Because what God is doing in you is what he did with Christ in the womb.

Christ was born of his mother and the Holy Spirit. You, if you're in Christ, are born of the

Holy Spirit as downstream of what happened to Christ.

And this is why the serpent is at war with the seed of the woman. This is why.

It is not because he has to be at war with man. You look at Satan fighting against the human race all throughout the

Old Testament. It's not because of man. Man is enslaved. Man is broken. Man is cursed. Why is Satan, why is the serpent at war with the seed of the woman?

Because in every single egg, the 200 million that she is born with, in every single one of them is the possibility that that particular one would be the serpent crusher who would crush the serpent's head.

In every one. So you go down through the annals of time and Satan's war ratchets itself up, ratcheting itself up to the point when you get to the

New Testament, everybody seems like they're possessed by a demon. Jesus can't go anywhere without somebody being possessed.

Have you noticed that? That's not a coincidence. Satan is ratcheting up the war.

Why do you think Herod wants to kill him as a baby? Why do you think he has to escape and flee to Egypt?

Because Satan is at war with the seed of the woman. Look at what it says in Revelation 12, 1 through 3.

A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun and moon and under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 stars.

And she was with child. And she cried out being in labor and in pain to give birth.

And then another sign appeared in the heaven. Behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns.

And on his heads were the seven diadems. And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that she gave birth that he might devour her child.

And she gave birth to a son, a male child. Not just any male child. Look at what it says. Who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron.

Don't feather Jesus's hair. He's going to rule the world with iron. And her child, the male child was caught up to heaven.

That only happened to one man, Jesus Christ, when he rose from the dead and he ascended into heaven. This passage in apocalyptic literature is talking about the war that Satan has.

Man, I had a war with me. The war that Satan has with the seed of the woman.

And you'll see in this passage, the victory that that seed of the woman had when he ascended to heaven.

When it says that he will rule the nations, please don't miss the point here.

He has usurped Satan in his ascension. Satan was the one who ruled the nations.

When Adam sinned, he forfeited the world. That's why when

Jesus in his early ministry and Satan is at war with Jesus, he takes him out into the wilderness and says,

I'll give you all the nations of the earth if they didn't belong to him. Satan's not crazy.

He gave him what was his to give. He owned the nations. He offered them to Christ. If you would bow down and worship me, which is exactly the same sin that Adam fell into, and yet Jesus did not fall in.

Jesus triumphed over the serpent. Jesus was victorious over the devil so that in his death, burial, and resurrection, he took control of the world back from Satan.

That's why when Jesus rose from the dead, the very first words that he says is all authority in heaven and on earth now belong to me.

He's the one who disarmed the strong man. He's the one who took away the weapons of the demonic hordes.

He is the one who is now in charge of the world. And he is the one who rules with an iron scepter.

Brothers and sisters, when we look at Christmas, and we look at the virgin birth, and we look at the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, all of this goes back to Eden where the promise was given.

But the promise was not given for a cuddly, sweet little fat Jewish baby who looked cute and stayed that way.

The promise was given that he would grow up, that he would march the hill of Calvary, that he would be crucified for our sins, that he would be buried for our redemption, that he would rise so that we would be resurrected, so that he would ascend to rule over the throne of God, and so that you and I through the giving of the

Holy Spirit can be brought into his kingdom. The promise of Christmas is that the war is now back on, and Christ has infiltrated enemy camp.

It is not a way in a manger where no crying he makes.

I love that song. I sing it every year, but he was a baby and he cried. It's the war is on.

Christ will reclaim the world. That's the message of Christmas, and that message goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 3.

So brothers and sisters, this year as you try to think about what it means, put on your kevlar, put on your helmet, get ready to go to war because Christ will overtake this world, and you, if you're in his kingdom, are a part of that.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much that in some ways the war is over.

The war between us and God, the war between us and the serpent is finished, and now we have peace with God, and yet in other ways the war has just begun.

The infiltration has just begun. The campaign to take back the world that Satan has stolen, not through the old

Adam, but through the new Adam, the true Adam. He will have the victory. Lord, we thank you for Revelation 12 teaching us this.

We thank you for Genesis 3 foreshadowing this. Lord, we thank you that we get to consider in this series called

Christmas in Genesis where all these truths came from. They didn't pop into existence out of nowhere.

They have ancient roots. Lord, we thank you, and we thank you that you have made us a part of your kingdom, not as losers, but as victors.