February 9, 2025, Brian

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Christ in the Bible From Beginning to End

Well, it is wonderful to be here this morning. I especially appreciate, always appreciate being with the Lord's people, being with Christ's people. And it is especially wonderful just to see so many just kind and then just warm-hearted welcomes.

That's definitely my impression. I think that this church is filled with people who have been impacted by the love of Christ. And amen, and it's so wonderful that in this world, filled with so many uncertainties, so many things that can go wrong, so many things that have gone wrong in the world, our solid rock is Christ.

And that is a biblical truth that is throughout the entire Bible, especially and also in the Old Testament. One of my joys in preaching is preaching Christ, preaching Christ in the Bible and just studying Christ in the Bible.

That's really the theme of this morning's message is hoping in the promise of the Messiah in the Bible, beginning the end, beginning to end. And before we get into the message and before I pray and to ask the Lord to bless the message, I do just wanna quickly introduce myself and my wife, Elizabeth.

So we have been studying and moving and preparing to look for a church one day to serve in. That's been us the last few years. I went to a Bible college called the Master's University, went to Master's Seminary.

I believe Pastor Matty went through Master's Seminary or has a connection there. He has connections there. That's where I met him was at a conference in Baltimore with a bunch of just people from all over the map, different colleges, seminaries.

There was some people from the Master's Seminary there, and we were at a table with Matty and his wife, and we were just talking about some common things that we have an interest. Matty serves in the army.

I served as a medic in the army for a little bit. So we had a great time getting to know Matty. We've had some phone calls, and he invited me to preach this morning, and I'm just thrilled, just thrilled to preach Christ in his word.

So with that, that's a little bit of who we are, so we're not too much of strangers. So the title of the message, again, is Hoping in the Promise of the Messiah in the Bible from beginning to end. And what I'm hoping to do this morning, I have a couple of goals I just wanna throw out there as I preach Christ in the Bible.

I want to help us find a way to think through looking at Christ in the Bible. That's one of the goals. And one way to do that in a message on a Sunday morning, I wanna take us to a verse that has the Messiah in it, and also a verse that has a huge impact on the whole Bible.

And that verse is Genesis 3 .15. And some of you may have heard of the verse Genesis 3 .15. Sometimes it's called the Proto-Evangelion. It's pronounced different ways. Proto-Evangelion, basically it means the first mention of the gospel.

Evangelion sounds like the word evangelical, evangelical, basically. It just means gospel, proto, first, first gospel. So we're gonna be looking at Genesis 3 .15. I want us to understand why do we call Genesis 3 .15 the Proto-Evangelion?

What's in there? Do we have the name Jesus in there? We don't have the name Jesus in Genesis 3 .15. We have that in the New Testament. But there is a way when we study Genesis 3 .15, we do see that this is the first promise of the hope of the Messiah in Genesis 3 .15.

And then we're gonna look at a couple other passages throughout the Bible. And at the end, I'm hoping that we can be, on the one hand, like, wow, Jesus the Messiah really is throughout the whole Bible.

And most importantly, I want us to see that wherever the promise of the Messiah is in the Bible, the purpose of him showing up is to give hope to God's people in hard circumstances. So with that being said, when we're on the topic of hope, I think the idea of hope is something that's been on our minds lately.

It has been on mine. So for example, before the elections this past November, I was really hoping that a certain person would win. And when he was elected, I was very thankful. And I was, my hope shifted to hoping that he would make a lot of changes.

Then the president started to make a lot of good changes. And I found myself recently shifting a lot of my hope to what happens in the next four years, hoping that the president will be successful in his endeavors, but what happens after four years?

Now, I'm using all of this as an introduction and example, because there's lots of things that we could put our hope in. And I think that what we're seeing in the country right now is that God is using a lot of people to do things, and God is being very gracious and kind.

And I'm using that as an introduction because I don't know about you, but my temptation is to put my hope in temporary things, even good temporary things. So I'm using that as a springboard, not as a political statement, but as a springboard to have our hearts, to ask our hearts this question, what is our ultimate hope in?

And as we think about the reality of experiencing these kind things that God is doing in our country at this moment in history, we should realize this is not the first time in history where there's been bad things happening in a country, and then God's gonna show some kindness for a short amount of period of time.

For example, in the book of Judges. In the book of Judges is known as the darkest days in history, terrible things have happened. And at the end of the book, the author says four times, in those days, there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So bringing all of this together to prepare us, prepare our minds, we're looking at Christ in the Bible, is this truth, and there is this truth that penetrates the Bible from beginning to end, is that until Christ sits on the throne of David in Jerusalem, until that day, this world will not function the way God intends it to.

And that's really just the preface. And when we think about that, about that truth, that exposes a critical need for us as the church. This is the need to always have in our minds a proper view of the future and to set our hopes on Christ's future reign.

To meet this need, we'll be learning about what the Bible has to say about Christ's future reign from Israel over the nations so that we can have our hearts set on the one leader that will not fail, Jesus Christ.

So the main idea of this morning's message is that the future worldwide reign of Christ, it's kind of a thesis for the message, the worldwide future reign of Christ is found throughout the Bible from beginning to end.

And his purpose is to bring hope to God's people who hear it. And it's also a message for people who don't know Christ to realise and recognise that Christ is God, He is the King, and we must submit to Him if we have not already done that.

So here's the outline for this morning's message. We don't have time to go over every single verse in the Bible that talks about the Messiah. I wish we did, we could go two to three hours long, but I'm getting the feeling maybe I would enjoy that more than everyone else would.

So we'll keep it at hour and a half, just kidding. So I want to hit specific verses. Some of them I think we'll be familiar with. Some of them I think that maybe we haven't came across that verse frequently.

But we're gonna start off in Genesis 3 .15. Then we're gonna go to Genesis 22, verses 17 and 18. That's right after Abraham was going to sacrifice his son and the angel of the Lord stopped him. And then we're gonna go to Genesis 49, eight through 12.

That's the prophecy about where the Messiah will come from Judah. It's that phrase, the scepter will not depart from Judah. And then we're also gonna look at Numbers 24 with Balaam. He has this prophecy about this future reign and victory of the Messiah.

So before we look at Genesis 3 .15, I'm gonna talk briefly about a few important notes on methodology. A methodology is simply the convictions we have about how something works. So what I'm saying, we're gonna look at Christ in the Old Testament.

I want you guys to know what I'm not doing with my methodology. I'm not looking for something and to try to put Jesus and the Messiah into that verse. Now, there are some wonderful believers who have that methodology where they write whole commentaries on, I'm gonna put Jesus inside every single verse in the Old Testament.

I think that comes from a heart that loves Jesus, that is just so excited about Jesus and wants to see Jesus everywhere in the Old Testament. That's not the methodology I'm gonna use this morning. I have good friends who use that, but I have a different approach.

The approach that I was really trained in and have just a lot of appreciation for is something called literal grammatical hermeneutics. And basically it's like this, is basically looking for the author's intent in every passage.

So there are some passages in the Bible where the intent of the author is not to talk about Jesus. Now, the whole Bible as a whole together glorifies and exalts Christ. So with this methodology, when we go through the Old Testament, here's something cool that we really find, that Christ is in the Old Testament.

And throughout the Old Testament, the hope of people from beginning to end is this promise of Christ. We live right now in the reality where that promise of Christ began to be fulfilled. Jesus came with his first coming.

He was born from the Virgin Mary. The eternal Son of God became man. He lived a life fully, truly God, fully, truly man. And we are now waiting for his second return when he comes back. So the Old Testament didn't have that perspective.

They had all these prophecies. There's gonna be this Messiah. He's gonna reign and rule. He's gonna die on the cross. He's gonna die. We find out it's the cross, but he's gonna die in the Old Testament.

We have Isaiah 53. He's gonna do all these wonderful things. So the Old Testament didn't have the order of things. But where we live in history, we know the order a lot better. So with this conviction in mind, we're gonna start at the beginning, and that's Genesis 3 .15.

So if you'd open up your Bibles, if you're not already there, to Genesis 3 .15, I will read the passage, Genesis 3 .15. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.

He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. What Genesis 3 .15 does, this one verse, it establishes the foundation of the promise of the Messiah by prophesying of a future seed who will accomplish salvation for his people and defeat Satan.

Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at the context of this one verse, because this one verse happens in a certain context. And the context that we see this verse occur in is in the first few chapters of the Bible.

In Genesis chapter one, we have creation. God created the world, everything in it. In six days, he rested on the seventh day. On the sixth day, when he created Adam and Eve, he gave a mandate to Adam.

In Genesis 1 .26, he gave a mandate, an instruction to Adam to rule, to rule and reign. And the use of that word there, rule and reign, is specifically for how a king rules and reigns over a certain area.

And as we look at Genesis two, and we see the area that God placed Adam, the Garden of Eden, we see that the location that Adam was placed in Eden was meant to have an impact on the world. So if you turn to Genesis chapter two, one page before, starting in verse 10, we're gonna read about the description of Eden.

Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon. It is the one that went around the whole land of Havilah where there is gold.

Now the gold of that land is good. The Bedellium and the Onyx Stone are there and the name of the second river is Gihon. It is the one that went around the whole land of Cush and the name of the third river is Tigris.

It is the one that went east of Ashur and the fourth river is the Euphrates. As we're reading this description, on one hand, we're reading about a location that was drastically changed by the flood. When the flood happened, if you know what water does, water transforms and destroys what's in its path.

So when God miraculously had the ark and Noah and his family in it, God was protecting the ark and the people in it as he was destroying the world. And what emerged from after the flood was a world totally different from what came before.

So here's what we're reading about what was before. Eden was a location where rivers came out of it and those rivers provided sustenance for the entire world at that time. If you notice how rivers work, rivers, water flows down, right?

So for this river to be like this, it would have been on top of like a mountain. And it's interesting as Bible teachers point out, there is this theme from beginning to end in the Bible where there is a mountain at the beginning where God's kingdom is established and Adam is set there to rule and have this huge impact on the world.

And we see after Adam fell, after he sinned, after he sinned, we see passages in the Bible talking about a future mountain, Mount Zion, Jerusalem, where the second Adam, Christ, will rule and reign. I say all of this because I think we're used to seeing the second descriptions in the Bible.

Well, that pattern comes from Genesis one and two. God created mankind to rule, to reign. And we know that God's plans and purposes are perfect and they don't fail. So what we see with Adam and Adam's failure is to make way and make room for the greater Adam, for the true, for the Adam who will not fail, Christ.

And what I want us to see this morning is that that foundation is laid for us here in Genesis one and two. And so now we're gonna look at Genesis three because we have creation. We have man's purpose to rule.

We have the failure in Genesis three, where Adam and Eve sinned. And all of this is important for the context of Genesis chapter three, 315, the promise. I want to draw our attention to verse 15. I want to draw our attention to the last two statements.

He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. In this statement, God is talking to Satan. God is telling to Satan, he is gonna crush your head, but you will bruise his heel. So we have some questions.

We have some questions to ask of these statements. One is, can we find a hope of the Messiah in this passage? And how can we? I think it would be helpful to briefly introduce us to some of the hard work that's been done by faithful Bible teachers on this verse to answer that question.

So there's three general answers. There's a lot more, but I'm gonna look at three general answers to that question. There are some people, some faithful Bible teachers, they would say, Christ is God. He is central in God's plan, but they would say, we don't have the promise of the Messiah in Genesis 315.

And their argument would be, when we're looking at this word here, if you're looking in your Bible, I believe the Pew Bible is the LSB, Legacy Standard Bible, right? Their translation is amazing because it says, between your seed and her seed.

This idea of seed is being used as a metaphor here. The idea of plants is that you have a seed, you plant this seed and out comes the plant that is appropriate to the kind of seed you planted, right? I don't know a lot about plant stuff, but I know if you plant apple seed, you don't get oranges.

So this is a perfect metaphor here. This is a perfect metaphor because the idea of a seed, it could have two different ideas. You could have one seed and that seed could produce many other plants, which produces more seed.

But also the word seed, you could be thinking about, I got a handful of seed in my hand. So this is what's called a collective noun. A collective noun, you're saying this thing, I could be referring to something singular or something plural.

So faithful Bible teachers, they look at this and they say, this is a collective noun. This is not referring to a single person, but this is referring to a group of people. And that is a valid argument.

And that would be their reasons for saying like, well, we don't know if this is the Messiah yet. And they're not saying that because they don't like Jesus, they're saying it because they wanna stick to the literal grammatical hermeneutic and I love that commitment.

Okay, that's the reason number, that's view number one. View number two is that the verse is talking about the Messiah and that the seed is referring to the Messiah. And so their reasons for that would be, if you're looking at the verse, it says he, he is not plural, he is singular.

So they would say, aha, we do have an individual here. And you know how Bible teachers and scholars, they spend a lot of time studying and they talk to each other. And so the first view, right, the collective view, here would be their response.

They would say, it says he, but it should be translated it. And at this point, I wanna stop that conversation because they just get into the weeds, right? But here's what's important for us to see, is that there are faithful people who wanna understand, interpret the Bible.

And they're doing a really good job with all these different grammatical arguments. So that second view, they would say that this is an individual offspring. So the question is for us is how do we reconcile this?

Because both sides are making true observations. It could be a group, it could be individual. Now there's a third view that's been really helpful. And it actually explains why we have both views. There's a third view.

The individual is the representative of the group. Now with that, let's look again at verse 15. Do you see where it says, and between your seed and her seed? So those are groups of people. We have one group of people, the seed of Satan.

Those would be, again, this is a metaphor. It's not saying someone who physically came, who was physically born from Satan. It's a metaphor. People who resemble Satan. And how people resemble Satan is they're opposed to God.

They're rebels. And we were all born that way, born in sin, opposing God. Rebels to the Lord. And then the other group, the woman's seed, are a group of people that are against Satan and belong to God.

And then you see next, he shall bruise you on the head. The he there refers to an individual who is the representative of the group, of the woman's collective group of those who belong to God. And the advantage of this view is that it explains all the grammatical observations.

It explains all the grammatical observations of like, yes, this is a collective noun. Yes, it does refer to a singular individual. And it also explains the relationship. The relationship between this singular seed to the woman's collective seed is that he is their savior.

And if you read the next line, read this line, this singular seed will defeat Satan. So on one hand, in this verse, we don't have the name Jesus. We don't have some of the other language used throughout the whole Bible to identify Jesus.

But we have this foundation that an individual male come, is going to come from Eve and is going to accomplish salvation for his people and will defeat Satan. And here's what's really wonderful about that.

Stepping aside from all the scholarly conversations, this was a real message of hope to people who are the first sinners, to people who heard from God and walked with God and had disobeyed him, had rebelled against him.

And there was great pain. There was great consequences. And even her life, when she had her son grow up and one murdered the other son, those are part of the consequences of sin. With our sin, there is real pain.

There is a real regret. There is a real consequences. But for Adam and Eve, there was also hope. And we see that Eve understood this hope. For example, if you look at Genesis chapter four, verse one, it says, now the man knew his wife, Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.

And she said, I have gotten a man, I have gotten a man with the help of Yahweh. When she says with the help with Yahweh, she's acknowledging that God will provide a saviour one day, that God will provide a saviour.

It is God's help. It's been said before that in every false religion is the idea that we can earn our salvation, is that we don't need God. What Eve is doing here, Eve's acknowledging she can't do this without God.

You can't earn your way back to Him. You can't be good enough. You can't work a job that's in a high enough position to earn favour with God. So we have this promise of Genesis 3 .15. We see immediately that it becomes the hope for Adam and Eve.

And here's what we also see after Genesis 3 .15. The fulfilment of this promise becomes the trajectory of the Bible. Everything in the Bible, everything in history moves toward the fulfilment of what God said would happen, will happen.

And we even see this throughout Genesis. That brings us to our next verse we're gonna look at, Genesis chapter 22. So as we are turning there, verses 17 to 18, this is at the end of a story where God told Abraham to take his son of promise.

God had promised Abraham a land that would eventually become the land of Israel. God promised Abraham seed that would be as many as the stars of the sky and sand of the seashore. God promised that his family, his descendants would be instrumental in bringing blessing to the world.

And God told Abraham all of this would happen through Isaac. And in Genesis chapter 22, God tells Abraham, I want you to take Isaac. I want you to slaughter him and sacrifice him. And as you read Genesis 22, you see Abraham obeying God in every detail to the point where he has the knife risen.

He's up, the language of the text is he is bringing it down with the purpose to strike his son and kill him in obedience to God. And the angel of the Lord stops him. And because of Abraham's obedience, God reassures, reaffirms his promises to Abraham.

In that promise, we learn that it is through Abraham's descendants the Messiah will come. So let's look at verse 17. Indeed, I will greatly bless you and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore.

And your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have listened to my voice. As we're reading this verse, I think we can see some similarities to Genesis 3 .15.

So first of all, we have the word seed. And also we're brought back to that context of future blessing. When it comes to the word blessing, I think in our culture nowadays, where we hear the word blessed frequently, like after someone sneezes, like someone sneezes, you say, oh, bless you, right?

The biblical concept of blessing is nothing short than the return to a right relationship with God. And that such a relationship with God amongst people in the world, where Christ comes back to live with his people, that is the biblical trajectory.

That is what we see with this idea of blessing. And in the New Testament, in Ephesians chapter one, three, where it says, blessed be God, because we have all of the heavenly blessings in Christ Jesus is bringing us back to the garden of Eden of a right relationship with God.

So when we see this word blessing here, God's promise, God's plan is to make everything right again. So we have the word seed. We have this idea of blessing. And here's what we also see. We have the idea of nations here.

God's plan was never only for the people of Israel. God's plan was never just for them. They were a part of God's plan, and they are part of God's plan in the future, but they served a role. That one role is to bring the Messiah and their role, their purpose, their intention.

They were supposed to serve the nations by being a kingdom of priests. So we have here in Genesis chapter 22, this word seed. And you'll note that in verse 17, we have this word he, singular. And you might be surprised of how much attention we're putting on one word.

And it really comes from this idea and this conviction to every word in the Bible is important. And we say that, and sometimes we can just say it. And sometimes I can just say it. And here's a blessing of God's word is that we can get so much out of even one little pronoun, the pronoun he.

Because what that does is that with this promise for Abraham, where Abraham obeyed the Lord and God is revealing to Abraham his plans for the future, is dependent on his physical descendants, is dependent on Israel, but even more so, is dependent on the one right man to get the job done.

And this is something that was instrumental for them. If you read later in Genesis with the different patriarchs and their wives, some of their wives are repeating this very promise of a singular son that will come from them who will possess the gate of his enemies.

So we think about the idea of possessing the gate of his enemies, that is defeating one's enemy in war. It is a victory. And so we see here again, another glimpse of that promise that was in Genesis 3 .15, and it's developing.

We're getting more information. And again, in the context of Abraham and how this brought hope to them. When God called Abraham, his wife was barren. They lived in a land that worshipped false gods. God called them out of that land.

God revealed himself to Abraham. And part of God revealing himself to Abraham, part of Abraham getting to know this one true God is that his plan involves a future singular seed who will get the job done, who will save his people.

Now, this brings us to another passage, Genesis 49. And before we look at Genesis 49, I want to bring out one of the strategies that Moses has in revealing the promise of the Messiah. And the strategy that Moses uses as he's writing Genesis are genealogies.

Here's something we see at the beginning of Genesis. We see the creation, we see the fulfillment. We see the fall, we see the rise,.

We're seeing the rise, the fall, the promise.

And then genealogies. And I don't know about you, but I was younger, I was like, why are these genealogies here? So one reason is that it really demonstrates and showcases the Bible is a historical, reliable book.

It is making claims about real history. And then two, here's how Moses uses those genealogies. He's tracing the promise of the Messiah from Adam and Eve to the tribe of Judah. So we see that because the promise of the seed goes from Adam and Eve, it goes through Seth, it goes through Noah, through Noah, his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, it goes through Shem.

And we see this idea of the promise being passed to certain sons. And then from Shem, we eventually get to Terah. From Terah comes Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And then Jacob has 12 sons. So the question we should be asking as we turn here to Genesis 49, if Moses is using these genealogies to trace this promise of the Messiah throughout Genesis, Jacob has 12 children, the question that we should be thinking is, okay, which child will the promise of the Messiah go through?

We know that all of Jacob's children, all 12 of them, have important roles in Israel in the future. The 12 tribes of Israel are named after Jacob's 12 sons. But one thing we see in Genesis is that there's a special role passed on to certain sons.

So we even see this with Jacob and Esau, right? They were fighting for the birthright. That birthright involved who would have top status among the other brother. Well, there's that same dynamic of Jacob's 12 sons.

Who's gonna have top status? So when we get to Joseph, and Joseph's given a special coat, right? The coat of many colors. Very interesting and fascinating. People try to think, okay, what is so special about this coat?

Well, it's not that it had colors that made it special, it's what those colors were meant to signify. And those colors were meant to signify royalty. The word used for that coat is used only one other time, and it was used with King Solomon, one of his royal coats.

So if we were to ask Jacob, which son do you want to get top status? I think his brothers figured it out. They wanted Joseph to have it. And so this, again, made his brothers jealous. It's the wrong kind of jealousy.

In one degree, it's not wrong for them to want to have that top status for God's promises to pass through your family in a special way. But we see that God was refining his brothers. And throughout this story, God was also refining Joseph.

We read in Genesis that God used the evil intended against Joseph for good. And God was also refining another man, a man named Judah. In Genesis chapter 38, Judah made some terrible decisions. Judah sinned, he sinned against the Lord.

Not only that, as you're reading Genesis 38, you see he has a disregard for the importance of his sons to get married and to pass on the lineage. He has a disregard for the promise of the seed. And even as you read Genesis 38, the word seed keeps popping up.

Because as Moses is writing this story, as these events are happening, as God's ordaining these events to happen, we're supposed to have our mind on the promise of the seed. And here's the catch of the story.

So was Judah, and Judah didn't. So at the end of the story, as you read in Genesis chapter 38, where God reveals Judah's sin to him in the most uncomfortable, unpleasant way, Judah recognizes his heart was not on the promises of God.

He even names one of his sons, Zerah, which is the Hebrew word seed. So Judah got it. And as you continue to read Genesis, you see that Judah starts off at the bottom. Not a good guy. You're reading Joseph, and you're like, wow, that's someone I would want to have as king.

And God promotes him the second in Egypt, second to Pharaoh only. And God is also transforming Judah to the point where Joseph, when his brothers come, Joseph tells his brothers, puts them in a trap basically, doesn't reveal to them who he is.

And he takes one of the brothers captive in jail, and Judah finally gets it. And Judah offers himself in place of his brother, because Judah got it, that God's promises for his people are most important.

God's promises for his people. Judah wasn't doing that to save his own skin. He was willing to sacrifice his own skin to save one of his brothers. And that brings us to Genesis chapter 49. God did not choose for the promise of the Messiah to come from Joseph.

God chose the promise of the Messiah to come from Judah. So I'm just gonna pick out a few highlights from Genesis 49. That way I don't hit the three hour mark this morning. But Genesis chapter 49, verse eight, is Jacob talking to Judah.

And before we look at verse eight, really quick, look at verse one. Then Jacob summoned his sons and said, gather together that I may tell you what will befall you, what will happen to you in the last days.

So this particular phrase, in the last days, is not just saying, oh, in a future time from now, because future time is vague. It could be a week, it could be a month, it could be 2 ,000 years. Last days is a phrase that's referring to the end of time.

God's plan for the future. This is what God will be doing through Judah and through his descendants. Verse eight, Judah, as for you, your brothers shall praise you, your hands shall be on the neck of your enemies, your father's son shall bow down to you.

From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches, he lies down as a lion, and as a lioness, who dares rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah. Queen his feet. Are you guys able to hear me right now?

Is the mic going in and out? If I turn the mic off, would you guys be able to hear me still?

Okay.

If it's not, then it won't be recorded, though.

It won't be recorded, okay.

Sorry.

No worries. He ties his foal to the vine and his donkey's colt to the choice vine. He washes his garments in wine and his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are dark from wine and his teeth white from milk.