The First Gospel Message — Brian Brodersen

If you remember we looked at the existence of God was our first topic or just showing that it's a completely reasonable proposition that there is a God. We looked at the nature of God. In one of the messages we looked at how God became a man and all the significance of that and then we looked at how we have been created in the image of God.

And then in our time last night we looked at, what did we look at last night? We looked at the fall and you know as we pointed out God after everything had been created he said that everything was very good but then something went drastically wrong and so we looked at how the Bible explains what's wrong in the world.

The First Gospel Promise in Genesis

And so tonight in wrapping things up I want to look back at that third chapter of Genesis but I want to concentrate on verse 15 and I've entitled this message the first gospel message because the gospel was actually preached to the first two people.

And you know we tend to of course we connect the gospel with Jesus Christ and that's accurate but when Jesus came and brought the gospel that was a fulfillment of many promises but it was a fulfillment of the very first promise that God made found in this third chapter of Genesis.

So let's pray for just a moment and then we're going to look at this 15th verse. Lord we pray as we have come once again to the scriptures we thank you that your word is living and powerful that it's sharper than any two-edged sword and it pierces and it divides between the soul and the spirit and it is a critique of the thoughts and the intents of our heart.

And so Lord tonight may you pierce our hearts with your great love and the great truth of your gospel may it ring louder and louder in our hearts and even as the song that Scott just sang Lord until the whole world hears may we Lord become ambassadors for Christ in a greater way because we really do have the greatest message of all time.

So help us to understand it to lay hold of it embrace it and proclaim it we pray in Jesus name amen. So verse 15 in verse 15 God is speaking at this point and God is actually speaking directly to Satan and in the 15th verse he says I will put enmity between you and the woman between your seed and her seed he shall crush your head but you shall bruise his heel.

Now back in the Victorian era there was a great preacher in London named C .H. Spurgeon he was known as the prince of preachers he preached on practically every single verse in the Bible but he said about this particular verse I like what he said he said this is the first gospel sermon that was ever delivered upon the surface of the earth and he said it was a memorable discourse indeed with the Lord himself for the preacher and the whole human race and the prince of darkness as an audience.

So the gospel was first preached by God himself and the gospel is contained in this verse as we're going to see in just a moment here we see God declaring to the first man and woman that one of their descendants would ultimately defeat the devil and of course that descendant would be Jesus Christ.

Christianity's Exclusive Gospel

So what we want to look at is we want to look at the gospel in this passage but just really quickly before we do that I want to say one thing that I think is important to note. The religion of Jesus Christ we call it Christianity you don't have to necessarily call it that that's something that men have sort of labeled it by but let's just say the religion that's revealed by Jesus in the scriptures is the oldest religion in the world.

As a matter of fact the promise of his coming is given to the first two people at the very beginning of time. Now why do I bring this point up? I bring this point up because liberals and skeptics tend to condescendingly look down their noses at Christianity's exclusive claims.

Christianity is very exclusive. Christianity basically says there's one God and there's one way to know that God. There's one Savior. There's not you know many options or alternatives. It's a one way situation with Christianity.

Now liberals and skeptics they attribute this exclusivity of Christianity to some sort of chronological immaturity. They say that well Christianity is such a young religion. It's one of the newer religions and so in its immaturity and you know a lot of times when a person's immature they're very zealous so in its immaturity it sort of you know made these grandiose claims of exclusivity and that's kind of how they try to dismiss it.

But the religion of Jesus Christ is the oldest religion in the world. It predates Buddhism. It predates Hinduism and every other religion. It goes back to the very first two people because God is giving a promise to them as he's addressing Satan.

He's giving them a promise that he's going to send a Savior into the world and of course we already know who that Savior is. So just something to make note of. But let's look at the gospel. Notice first of all God's intervention.

God's Intervention and Salvation

The word gospel everybody knows what that means right. The word gospel means good news. And so when we say to somebody have you heard the gospel we're really saying to them hey have you heard the good news.

And what a wonderful thing to think that there's some good news today. It's hard to find good news if you're watching on the telly or if you're picking up the newspaper and you're trying to scan the pages and find some good encouraging news.

It's not that easy to do. But the good news has been and still is today that God has intervened in history and God has come to remedy man's problems. He's come to take care of the problem of sin. And so we see the intervention of God where he says I will put enmity.

So God declares that he's going to actively break up this confederation. It seems like the devil was hoping to enlist man on his side in his effort to overthrow God. Now of course the devil you know has done that to a large degree and he's been relatively successful but he hasn't been totally successful because all throughout time there's always been a handful of people, a remnant in one place or another that have held their allegiance to God.

But God says I will put enmity. Now what this is telling us is that salvation is possible not because of us but because of God. You know if we were left to ourselves we would just join hands with the devil and march right off into damnation with him.

It's because of our sinful rebellious nature. So salvation if it was left up to me or to you to get saved you know what we'd never get saved. God had to intervene. God had to step in and that's what he's saying here I will put enmity.

I'm going to break this thing up. I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman between your seed and her seed. Now I mentioned this in the previous message but it's interesting here God refers to the woman's seed.

The Virgin Birth of the Messiah

Now some of you maybe were biology students or you were biology students. You don't even have to be a biology student to know this. A woman is not the bearer of the seed. The man is the one who imparts the seed.

But here there's a strange reference to the seed of the woman. And here in the very first prophecy in the very first gospel message God is alluding to what we would know later in history as the virgin birth.

The virgin birth. Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. Mary had never had a relationship with a man but God supernaturally moved upon her and imparted to her not through any sexual relationship but just supernaturally God moved upon her and implanted his seed in her womb.

That's what is actually being prophesied here but it's in its very earliest stage of proclamation. But later on in history this would become clearer and in the days of the prophet Isaiah he would actually say it like this, behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and you shall call his name Emmanuel which means God is with us.

So from the time of Isaiah the prophet the people really began to understand that there was going to be this extraordinary birth that would take place. Another one of the prophets named Micah who prophesied about the same time as Isaiah approximately 700 years before Jesus was born, he said this regarding the birthplace of the Messiah.

He said but you Bethlehem though you are little among the thousands of Judah yet out of you shall come forth him who is to be ruler in Israel and it said whose going forth is from old even from eternity.

So Micah tells us that the one born in Bethlehem would come out of eternity. Remember the other night we looked at the nature of God and we saw that God is eternal and there's only one being that never had a beginning or an ending, that's God.

So the prediction is the one born in Bethlehem is going to be God. And then Isaiah in chapter 9 verse 6, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, the government shall be upon his shoulders, his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

For unto us a child is born, a son is given, God gives his son, but he gives him through this virgin birth. Now let me just say something about the virgin birth. The virgin birth is one of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith which simply means this, if you disregard it, dismiss it, deny it, you end up undermining Christianity completely.

Now there are some people in the church, some theologians, some church leaders who would say well it doesn't really matter if Jesus was born of a virgin, that's really not the important point and you know if we find out someday that he wasn't, it doesn't really change anything, we can still be Christians.

But that is nonsensical because if Jesus wasn't born of a virgin, then it means that he had a human father. And if Jesus had a human father, he could not have then been the son of God. And if he wasn't the son of God, he couldn't have been sinless and if he wasn't sinless, he couldn't have died to take away our sins.

So you see, we cannot just play fast and loose with these ideas and you know, because of the time, just say oh, well you know, the virgin birth doesn't really matter, if it happened, great, if it didn't happen, it's okay, I'm still going to be a Christian.

If the virgin birth is not a reality, Jesus is not the Savior. But the virgin birth is a reality, Isaiah prophesied it and when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Matthew in his gospel, the first chapter, the 22nd and the 23rd verse, when he records the birth of Jesus, he said, and this took place in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah which said, behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.

So Matthew saw the birth of Jesus Christ as a fulfillment of the prophecies given by Isaiah. Now what does it go on to say here? What does God declare? He says, remember, he's speaking here actually directly to Satan but indirectly to the man and the woman.

Christ's Suffering and Victory Over Satan

So what does he say to Satan? He says, he shall crush your head but you shall bruise his heel. When God spoke of the bruising of the heel of the seed of the woman, he was of course speaking about the death of Jesus.

But the bruising of the heel in comparison to the crushing of the head, of course the crushing of the head is a mortal wound where the bruising of the heel is a minor wound. Jesus was slain, he did die, but he rose again so it was more equivalent to a bruising of the heel than what he would actually do to Satan, the crushing of the head.

But all his life long, his heel, that is his human nature, was perpetually being made to suffer. When you look at Jesus, he carried our sicknesses and sorrows, the scripture says, but the bruising came mainly when both in body and mind his whole human nature was made to agonize when his soul was exceedingly sorrowful even to death and his enemies pierced his hand and feet and he endured the shame and pain of death by crucifixion.

So, God is going to conquer Satan, that's what he's saying here. He's going to undo the effects of sin, but in order for that to happen, the seed of the woman, the Messiah, his heel is going to be bruised, he's going to suffer.

And so Jesus came and he suffered upon that cross and he died upon that cross. He died the most painful type of a death imaginable. You know, sometimes I've wondered, you know, why did Jesus have to suffer so intensely?

I mean, why couldn't he have just, you know, died a more mild type of a death? But the reason why Jesus suffered so intensely is because Jesus was actually being punished for sin. And when we look at the cross, you know, even especially today, you know, there's sort of a kind of a light attitude towards sin and we, a lot of people tend to think today that either sin isn't even an issue or if it is, it's not that big of a deal, God's a God of love and he doesn't, he's not really all that concerned with sin.

We don't understand God's attitude towards sin. If you want to know what God thinks of sin and how appalled he is by sin and how abhorrent it is to him and his hatred for it, the greatest demonstration of God's wrath and judgment against sin is the cross of Jesus Christ.

And why Jesus suffered so intensely and was so brutalized on the cross is because he was bearing the punishment that we were due as sinners. Now for some people that's like, oh, I can't handle that. That's God punishing sinners.

What is that all about? That's too heavy. We are sinners. We are rebels. We have revolted against our maker. And our God is a righteous God, a holy God. He's a just God. And as a just God, he has to maintain perfect justice.

You know, some people say, well, what's the whole big deal about sin? Why doesn't God just say, it's okay, don't worry about it? Well, he might be nice if he did that, but he wouldn't be just. You see, if evil has been committed and there is no punishment of evil, then there is no justice that takes place.

But God is just and his justice is inflexible, so he has to punish evil. So, God has a bit of a dilemma in that he has to punish evil, man is evil. But on the other hand, he loves man and he doesn't want to destroy man.

Penal Substitution and Divine Justice

What's he going to do? How is he going to satisfy his justice? How is he going to remain just but still have mercy on man? This is where Jesus comes into the picture. Jesus comes into the picture and basically, Jesus takes the punishment that was due to us.

Now, some people say, oh, that is horrible, that's unfair, that's immoral, punishing somebody in the place of somebody else, that's an immoral act. Well, I would say there might be an argument there if the person punished was punished against their will.

But Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice. Jesus, of course, being God the Son, he understood the dilemma and he offered himself, Father, I will bear their sin. I will be punished in their place. The wrath that is due to sin can be poured out upon me, so we then in turn can have mercy upon them.

And so, God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all working together to bring about this redemption, God sends his Son, Jesus dies, and through the Holy Spirit he's able to suffer the eternal wrath of God against sin.

And that's what's being talked about here when it's talking about the bruising of his heel. But then God goes on to declare to the devil, he will crush your head. And it was at the cross that Jesus crushed Satan.

He crushed Satan at the cross, and the Bible says that in many places, it says, having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross. You see, what looked like the greatest defeat was actually the greatest victory of all time.

When Jesus was dying upon the cross, he was crushing the head of the serpent. In Hebrews chapter 2, it says, inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, that's us, he himself likewise shared in the same that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

So you see, it was through death that Jesus crushed Satan. He destroyed him through what he did upon the cross. Now, we do not yet see all things put under the feet of Jesus who has obtained the victory, but what do we see?

We see Jesus who temporarily was made lower than the angels for the suffering of death. He's crowned now with glory and honor, he tasted death for every man, and one day he's going to make his victory over death universally known.

He's going to do that one day. But in the meantime, what he's doing, until he does it on the universal level, he's doing it on the individual level where we, as we put our faith and trust in Christ, we now have the promise that we'll never die, we will live forever, and the death that's spoken of there is primarily spiritual, but there's coming a time when he will do away completely with physical death as well.

Resurrection and the Reversal of Death

Remember, we talked about sin came into the world, and death came by sin, and we talked about how through Christ, God is reversing this whole thing. How many of you ever read the Chronicles of Narnia?

Any of you ever read those? The book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C .S. Lewis, of course, was such a master at storytelling. And in the Chronicles of Narnia, you know, those of you that have read them, you know that he's got the gospel woven through these stories.

And I love what he says in the Chronicles of Narnia, right at the very end of the story there almost, when Aslan has given himself to the White Witch and he's actually been slain, and then he comes back to life, and nobody expected that.

And when it finally happens, I think it was Lucy who, you know, she says to Aslan, you know, how did you come back, or what happened? They saw him sheared, and they saw him slain, and yet he's alive, and he's more powerful than ever.

And I love what Lewis put there in the mouth of Aslan. He said, the witch knew the deep magic, but if she could have looked a little further back, she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in the traitor's stead, the table would crack, and death itself would start working backward.

That is such a beautiful picture of what happened. That's what Jesus did. A willing victim who had committed no treachery, he was killed in the place of the traitors. We're the traitors. God is speaking to Satan.

Here's Adam and Eve standing alongside of him. These are the first two people. And what Adam did, he acted as the federal head of humanity, which means simply this. What he did, we inherited. He acted on our behalf as the head of the human family, and so as he was a traitor, we became traitors as well along with him, but there was one who committed no treachery, and that was the one who was born of the Virgin, the Son of God, and he was able to give his life in the traitor's stead, and what's happened now, death itself would start to work backward, and we will come to the point when the resurrected Jesus will come back to the earth.

He will take his people out of the earth. They will not experience death, and he will establish an eternal kingdom where death is no longer a part of that kingdom. The gospel is this, that Christ died so we could live, so we could come into, all week long, we've been talking about this whole thing of a relationship with God, and God made us for a relationship, but sin is the barrier that keeps us from the relationship, but God has dealt with the sin through Christ, the seed of the woman, having his heel bruised, crushing the head of the serpent, and now as we come and we humble ourselves before him and we confess that we're sinners, we acknowledge that we have sinned, and we ask him to forgive our sins, he then comes into our lives, he gives us eternal life, he brings us into a relationship with himself, he sets us on the road of purpose and meaning in regard to what he created us for, and he's leading us ultimately to be with him in heaven eternally.

The Gospel Call to Receive Christ

Now I'm gonna finish right now, and the band's gonna come up, and they're gonna do some music, and then Phil's gonna come up a couple more times tonight, and he's gonna give an opportunity, because there might be some of you here tonight that have never really turned your life over to Christ, and that's what we want more than anything else, we want to see you come to know Jesus, to have your sins forgiven, because listen, this is serious stuff, if your sins are not forgiven, then you have to pay for them yourself.

Jesus paid for them, and if you embrace him, that payment will be applied, and you don't have to pay, but if you refuse that payment for your sin, as sure as you're gonna die one day, you will have to pay for those sins, and the price is eternal, you can't pay for it, so forever you'll be separated from God, and you don't want that, and God doesn't want that, that's why he sent Christ, and so think about that, and when Phil comes up tonight, and he gives you that opportunity to open your heart, to receive Christ, we pray that you will do that.

Let me just close in prayer, Lord, thank you for the gospel, the best and greatest news to ever hit the planet, that our sins could be forgiven, that we can know you, and have assurance of eternal life, and I pray there wouldn't be one single person that leaves this campsite, this facility, tonight, without knowing their sins are forgiven, and knowing they're saved.

So bless, Lord, the rest of the night, bless the guys as they come up to share in music, bless Phil as he shares, and just pour out your spirit upon us tonight, we pray, in Jesus name we thank you, amen, amen.

Alright guys, God bless.