The Bible in 16 Verses: 4. Redemption Promised

All right, so as you guys can see, we are in session four of our biblical theology class, and we're continuing to trace the storyline of the

Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And as you can see, we're up to session number four, and we're still in Genesis, right?

The reason it's called Genesis is because it's the beginning, it's the foundation for everything. We're gonna be in Genesis for another two sessions after this, but for the first three chapters of Genesis, this forms the foundation of what we really hold to as Christians.

Today, we're gonna go through redemption promised. There's gonna come a point in time, the time has come when we get to the

New Testament, and we see the fulfillment of everything that was talked about in the Old Testament. We're gonna see the cross, the resurrection, justification, and glory.

So who can tell me what the four acts of the Christian world view are? Creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, right?

Today, we're actually gonna see redemption and restoration together. So what we've covered so far is the fall, sin, and judgment.

The story so far is this. God created a very good kingdom of which he is the king.

He created human beings, his children, to represent him in that kingdom, and they were charged with the responsibility to expand it.

Through their sin, Adam and Eve rejected God's commission and rebelled against their father and creator. Yet God proved his covenant love toward them despite their unfaithfulness.

Very good did not turn into very bad, it just proved the character of who was always very good.

So that tree in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was the tree by which

God demonstrated who was good. They had knowledge of evil, their evil hearts and straying away from God and listening to the enemy and his desire to redeem them anyway.

So today's verse is, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. This is so important when it comes to biblical theology that Sinclair Ferguson said this, the rest of the

Bible is a footnote to Genesis 3 .15. Everything from that moment on will point back to this verse.

This is gonna show the separation, the division between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

So although our verse is Genesis 3 .15, I wanna read a longer, a little bit before and a little bit after so we get the right context.

So I'm gonna read Genesis 3, Genesis 3, verses eight through 19. And they,

Adam and Eve, heard the sound of the Lord God walking in 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. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said,

I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said,

God said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman you gave me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.

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

So Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, right? The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And we're gonna go through what that means.

Here's our verse. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

To the woman he says, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing and pain you shall bring forth children. And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which

I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

That's not justification for husbands to not listen to their wives by the way, just letting you know. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return.

See that term dust? Satan is gonna eat the dust and we are from the dust. There's a correlation there, okay.

So we got a lot of ground to cover this morning. First one is this, A .W.

Pink again, having become conscious of their shame, Adam and Eve at once endeavored to hide it by making for themselves aprons of fig leaves.

This action of theirs was highly significant. Instead of seeking God and openly confessing their guilt, they attempted to conceal it from both him and from themselves.

Such has ever been the way of the natural man, the very last thing mankind will do is to own its lost and undone condition before God.

Again, remember I said humanity seeks out God like a bank robber seeks out a cop.

You don't, right, you're trying to hide something, you're trying to get away from something. In fact, I like the way Paul Washer says it, the problem has never been a hiding

God, it has always been a hiding man. Man runs from God because they recognize their own condition, they recognize their guilt, and that's the condition of mankind.

A .W. Pink continued, conscious that something is wrong with him, he seeks shelter behind his own self -righteousness and trusts that his good works will more than counterbalance his evil ones.

This is the refrain we hear out on the streets over and over and over and we're witnessing to people, are you a good person?

Yes, Proverbs says, given an opportunity, a man will always proclaim his own righteousness, but a faithful man who can find.

So good works like church going, religious exercises, attention to ordinances, he's talking about baptism in the

Lord's Supper, philanthropy, giving away money, and altruism, good works towards other people, are the fig leaves which many today are weaving into aprons to cover their spiritual shame.

We try to cover it up by doing good things, well see, I am good, but like those which our first parents sewed together, they will not endure the test of eternity.

At best, they are but things of time which will speedily crumble away to dust. At the end of this passage, we can see a clear delineation between two seeds, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, and here's where the battle lines are drawn and a declaration of war begins.

There will always be two camps at war with each other, the seed of the woman, the church, and the seed of the serpent.

Here now, God's gonna pronounce a curse. This curse on the serpent will mark the state of affairs from this moment on, on through the rest of Genesis, on through to the cross, on through to today, and continuing all the way up until the final consummation of things where Jesus comes back and then separates the sheep from the goats.

This is gonna be the ongoing war between those two seeds. In these two verses, we see that God issues three curses on the serpent.

First, he will crawl on his belly and eat dust. Second, there will be enmity between him and the woman, between his seed and her seed, and third, his head will be bruised.

Every time you see the enemy being taken down by Israel or like David, where do they get hit?

Where did Goliath get hit? In the head, right? You're gonna see this. He cut off the head of his enemy.

It's always the head, and that's pointing to the seed of the serpent, okay? All those, the pictures of David, Abraham, all the people who are types and shadows of Jesus always hit the enemy in the head, right?

Jesus is ultimately gonna be crucified on the mountain called Golgotha.

Why is it called Golgotha? Well, that mountain was named after Goliath of Gath.

It was the place of the skull. Jesus was crucified on the mountain called the place of the skull.

He crushes the head of the serpent at the cross. So Satan went from being crafty in verse one to being cursed in verse 14.

And notice, when he curses Satan, you realize that there's no plan of salvation for the angels.

When they fell, there's no opportunity for redemption or reconciliation with the angels. There is with mankind, not with the angels.

Most theologians call verse 15 the proto -evangel, the first mention of the gospel in all of Scripture.

It's the first veiled reference to a particular seed who will crush the head of the serpent at some time in the future.

Please keep in mind when the Scripture says the seed of the serpent, Satan cannot reproduce.

He cannot make new followers. He cannot procreate more seed.

It is only due to the fallen sinful condition of the human heart that allows him any offspring at all.

They are his offspring by default, not by desire, a fact that he is acutely aware of.

Okay, so humanity, born after the fall, is born in a state of sinfulness.

It's what we call depravity, original sin. We talked about that last week. Out of the womb, we are haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, right?

We came from our mother's womb spewing forth lies. The condition of our heart is sinful from the beginning.

It's up to God to change us. In fact, the curse God pronounces on him states that he will eat dust all the days of his life.

Think about this. The very thing that God breathed into, the dust, and used to make humanity, is the very thing he'll be eating without the power to breathe into it, without the power to create, because creation is the rightful act of God alone.

He cannot be like God, he cannot do what God does, and he knows it. The best he'll make of the dust is mud.

God is the one with the power to create, to breathe into the dust, and bring forth something beautiful from it.

In fact, I like the way this goes. Where God takes dirt, breathes into it, and makes something beautiful,

Satan will now take what is beautiful, breathe on it, and attempt to make it dirty. He cannot create, so he will try to destroy.

He will try to steal, kill, and destroy. That's what the enemy's all about. So God takes dirt, breathes into it, makes something beautiful, the highest, the pinnacle of creation, man and woman.

God now takes, Satan now takes man and woman, breathes on it, and tries to make them dirty, and continue to do things that are unbecoming of what an image -bearer of God should do.

The phrase, thus you shall eat all the days of your life, is a reference to the devil's demise. His end is ordained.

He will die, as will his seed. He is an outmatched and defeated foe already.

That's where we get the term, he bit the dust. He died, Satan's ultimate end is death.

He will not bring life, nor will he ever gain eternal life. It's God who determines the length of his days, and proclaims our victory over death.

He will crush your head. The serpent has no resurrection life -giving ability in himself.

So again, the he in that verse, in Genesis 3 .15, is reference to Jesus.

Now there are some religious traditions that say that the word he is she. She will crush your head.

And they believe that Mary is the one who crushes the head of the serpent. We know from the

Tota Scriptura, not just Sola Scriptura, Tota Scriptura, from beginning to end, it is Jesus who is going to crush the head of the serpent.

The serpent's craftiness will eventually unravel, and be reversed by God, but not before a war marked by enmity.

Now we need to know what that word means. In the first half of verse 15, it's interesting that God sets enmity between the seed of the woman and Satan.

Is God actually bringing enmity between people? Right, don't we read the

Beatitudes? Blessed are the peacemakers. Why is God now shoving enmity between parties?

I thought, like Paul says, we were to put away all malice and hatred. Who wants to guess at a definition of enmity?

What does enmity mean? Say again? Yeah, holy hatred, right?

Mad on steroids, like really animus. The term enmity means hostility, lingering hatred between mortal enemies, a holy hatred, if you will.

Enmity is a strong, forceful word. And I used this example way back when, this is part of one of the first sermons

I preached at Hope, and I knew pastor would be listening. I said, if your favorite baseball player was traded to your team's arch rival, that really wouldn't capture the intensity of enmity.

Real enmity would be like if there was three of your best players, like David Cohn, Darryl Strawberry, and Dwight Gooden, if they were traded to the

Yankees, and then the Yankees won the World Series. That's a better picture of the enmity that you would have towards that team, like a lingering hatred.

He listened to it a long time ago. He forgot it, but we can point him back to it. So even the hatred that pastor has for the

Yankees is not the enmity, the holy hatred that the seed of the woman has for the serpent and that the serpent has for the woman.

When Adam and Eve listened to the devil's advice and bit the fruit, they were trusting Satan like a friend.

They entered into a peace treaty with the wrong party. They listened to him. Yeah, let me hear what you have to say.

And in that moment, they became friends with Satan and enemies of God. Doesn't John tell us to be friends with the world is to be at enmity with God?

But God, in an act of free grace and restoration, promises to place enmity between us, his seed and the enemy.

He turns us around and instead of walking with Satan, we now turn towards him and face him in opposition.

He changes our hearts so that we have hostility towards the serpent and so that we never seek peace with the wrong party again.

The enmity is a curse to him, but it's a gift to us. They always say, have you ever come face to face with Satan?

Be careful, because if you haven't, you might be walking in the same direction. Prior to our regeneration, our being born of God's spirit, we were walking in line, in step with him, hating

God, hating a darkened understanding, loving the things of the world. God has to place that enmity in our heart, that holy hatred to recognize that the things of the world are gonna kill us.

Those are a recipe for death. And he turns us around, so now we start to love what

God loves and hate what God hates. So that enmity actually becomes a gift to us.

Now we see with clear eyes the things that the seed of the serpent is doing, redefining

God's creation, redefining marriage, saying you could be any gender you want, redefining what God's defined already.

And now we hate that. The enmity will endure between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent until the end of time.

Again, you'll see this throughout Genesis, beginning with Cain and Abel, and then with Isaac and Ishmael, Joseph and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, and on and on.

There will always be a war, enmity, between the two seeds. We see this playing out over and over and over and over again.

You can see right now, the enmity between the church and the state, yes.

Yeah, sure, absolutely. Right, had

God not chosen to place that enmity there, we would go off on our own. He had every right to do it.

I'm glad that you brought that up, because I was thinking about this. After Adam and Eve sinned, was he forced to offer them forgiveness, to restore them, reconcile them?

No, he's not obligated, nor forced to do it. Out of the love of his own heart, he decided to save and rescue humanity.

Humanity was running away, wasn't even seeking forgiveness. God was the one who pursued them.

That is integral to the story, especially as Reformed Christians. Man does his part, he runs away.

God does his part, he catches them. Right, there's none who seek after God. Jesus came to seek and save the lost.

I say, when Jesus came to seek and save the lost, was there a possibility that he failed?

No, everyone Jesus who seeks to save, he saves. In the

Ten Commandments, the first four deal with our relationship to God, the last deal, the last six deal with our relationship to humanity.

Jesus basically boils it down to two. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Anything that gets in the way of those two things is an intruder, right?

That's designed to get you to go the other way. Cultivate a hostile heart to whatever or whoever would get between you and God, or you and people, and stop you from loving them.

That would be the devil. Our battle is with him, not them. Our battle is with the serpent, not the seed.

We wage war, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We wage war against the spiritual principalities and powers of darkness.

Our battle is not against flesh and blood. The flesh and blood is following that, so our job is to take every thought captive to Christ, tear down strongholds, and everything that sets it up sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

Strongholds, ideas, things that you think in your mind, we have to attack those things, change the ideas, and the ideas,

I put an R, ideas, ideas and the people's minds will follow. Because of the first sin in Genesis 3, death entered the world with all the untold pain and anguish that that brings.

But even worse, God's anger is now on his creation, including Adam and Eve. This is seen in a series of curses leading to them being removed from the home of God that he built for them.

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the

Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the

Tree of Life. God wanted to make sure that there was no way that they would creep back into the garden, eat from the fruit of the

Tree of Life, and remain in that condition forever. Because Adam and Eve broke covenant with God in sin,

God issues a consequence for their actions. Their sin separated them from God's goodness, but not his wrath.

Every sin must be punished because God is holy and he is a covenant -keeping God. He entered into a covenant with Adam, and he said, if you eat from the fruit of that tree, you will die.

Satan's lie? Did God really say? You're not really gonna die. God is a

God who keeps his word. So the holiness of the God of Scripture differentiates him from all other gods.

There are no other gods, and nor are they holy, pure. Pastor's message last week, he talked about the word holy as a synonym for the word pure.

Our God is the only God who's holy. He's other, he's different than every other so -called

God. God will keep his word. He cannot deny himself, right?

So when God said that they were gonna die, they died spiritually. They would die physically at a point in time, but that's an act of mercy on God's part to allow them to live so that he would clothe them and bring forth the one who would ultimately crush the head of the serpent and remove evil from the earth forever.

So who receives the consequence? Adam, Eve, and the serpent.

Each one of them received consequences. The grand paradox or supreme irony of the

Christian faith is that we are saved both by God and from God. God is the one who pronounces the curse.

He's the one who's going to institute the consequence for our sin. He's also gonna be the one who institutes the redemption from that sin and the pardon that he's gonna offer in Jesus Christ to his people.

So we're saved by God, from God, for God, Sproul says. Now instead of walking in the garden with God, Adam and Eve hid themselves from the presence of the

Lord. Their fellowship with God was broken. Now there will be pain and childbirth for Eve and Adam's toil and sweat bring forth thorns and thistles.

Work will be difficult. After the fall, not only is the life of God in them absent, the innocent state of their soul is now ruined.

It's a shattered image. Their intellect is darkened and their wills are dead to God.

They have a free will, it's not a good will. There's a big difference, right?

They can choose whatever they want. The problem is what they want is broken, okay?

So I like to differentiate the difference between free will and free choice. You have free choice according to your will.

You don't have free will. We have several instances of this exact phrase in Jeremiah.

I think it's Jeremiah 17. Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard change his spots?

Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. Ethiopian is a black man, can he choose to be a white man?

I mean, in today's day and age he can. The question is can he actually be a white man?

No. Can a leopard decide, hmm, you know, I don't like these spots,

I wanna be a zebra. No, then neither can you who are accustomed to doing evil do good.

It's our nature. The illustration I always use is of a lion, right? A lion is born, he's a carnivore.

So if I put a plate of raw meat in front of him or a nice Caesar salad, he's gonna take the raw meat all the time.

The choice between Caesar or a Caesar salad, he's eating Caesar. All right.

It's a dad joke, I get it. Okay. With God's curse on them, what hope do they have?

If God be against you, who could be for you, right? God's curse is on them. What hope could they possibly have but for God?

The blueprint for hope is also introduced in Genesis 3 .15. Just after what seems to be the worst possible turn of events, a curse on the serpent, a curse on Eve, a curse on Adam, God says,

I will. Here's the I wills of God again. I will put enmity between you and the woman.

I will put that between your seat and her seat. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.

The consequence brings with it curses, but it also brings the blessing of enmity and the one who's going to come and deal the crushing blow to Satan.

Good news. Redemption is promised. He shall bruise you on the head.

And all Satan can do is nip at his heels. Another redeemer is promised who will crush the head of the serpent.

Here's where hope for Adam and Eve come in. Even as he concluded his condemning words to the serpent,

God gave a hint of what he had planned to do for the human race. He would not leave them without hope.

And in these words of hope, we find a pattern for the conflict that will continue until the new creation comes.

Now I wanna direct you back to the other slide. In fact, let me just do that real quick. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.

This is the proto -evangelical, the first mention of the gospel in all of scripture. I want to tell you that this is not part of the

Adamic covenant. God didn't say, okay, Adam, now as part of the covenant, I'm gonna crush the head.

This is pointing to a future covenant, not like the covenant that he was in with Adam.

The covenant with Adam is a covenant of works. Scripture clearly portrays there's two types of people, those who are born in Adam and those who are born again in Jesus Christ, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

So this is not one covenant that you get into Adam and now, well, if you could keep the commands to Adam, yeah, you'd save yourself.

But again, we're stained in the heart, we're depraved. This is pointing to a separate covenant that will come in the future that obviously we all know is gonna be fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

Okay, while Adam and Eve were listening, God told the serpent that there would be enmity or hatred between the seed of the offspring and the seed of the woman.

But this enmity is not as simple as a rivalry between two sports teams that we talked about before. The enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman would not fade out in a generation or two.

It would continue on for many generations. Adam and Eve thought it might end in the second generation.

In fact, with their first son Cain, Eve said, I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. So she's thinking, oh,

God promised one who was gonna crush the head of the serpent. I now gave birth to Cain, he's the one. And this phrase literally reads,

I have gotten a man, Yahweh. It's understood to mean I have gotten a man from Yahweh. She thinks that this is the promise happening already with the seed, with the sense being that Eve thought she was the promise, that he,

Cain, was the promised seed who would crush the seed of the serpent. But the son of Eve actually proved himself to be more in the line of the serpent than in the line of the woman.

Cain did not crush the head of the serpent. Instead, he crushed the head of his own brother. It is almost as if the serpent was trying to turn the words of Genesis 3 .15

back on their head by having one son of the woman crush the head of the other. Think about it.

Murder in the garden, well, outside of the garden, but from the very beginning, this is the first murder that the

Bible talks about. And later on, we'll hear, are you, am I my brother, well, God questions

Cain, am I my brother's keeper? Are we? Yes, we are our brother's keeper.

In trying to do that, the serpent was simply fulfilling the words of Genesis 3 .15 for the first of many times.

God told the serpent that as part of the enmity between his line and the line of the woman, he would bruise the heel of the seed of the woman.

It's an understated irony, the raging attempts of the serpents to crush the woman's offspring are ultimately just bruises on the heel, right?

What does Paul say? To live is Christ, to die is gain. If you kill me, you're just gonna advance the kingdom of God.

For a brief moment, the serpent may have thought he had wiped out the line of the woman, but God's promised line would not die so easily.

Soon, Adam and Eve had another son, a new seed, Seth, and the line of the promise continued through him.

But would Seth be the one who would crush the serpent's head? No, if we keep reading in Genesis, it soon becomes obvious that Seth was not the one, and in fact, we quickly find another serious threat from the seed of the serpent.

The theme of seed, which is also often, also translated descendants, offspring.

So when I'm talking about the seed of the serpent, I'm talking about the offspring, the descendants of Adam and the descendants of the serpent, so to speak.

It's repeated throughout the rest of the story. For a descendant of the woman will enter the story and bring about the healing of this original wound, defeating the devil and reversing the curse brought about by sin.

A new Adam, this is future, this is what this is pointing to. A new Adam, a long -awaited savior, will enter the garden, sweat blood, taking on himself the curse and sin of the first Adam, and his suffering and death on the wood of a tree will transform that wood into a new tree, a new tree of life, where we were told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We are told to eat of the tree, Jesus Christ, right? It's prefigured in communion.

Eat my flesh, drink my blood, not literally, right? There's a spiritual presence there, but it means that we are to give our lives over to him.

We eat from the new tree, from the cross. Nothing to the cross I bring, simply to the cross

I cling. As the prophecy of Genesis 3 .15

unfolds in the early chapters of the Bible, we can see at least two crucial themes for the rest of redemptive history in action.

First, the enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman is very real. There is a battle going on today that we see.

From the murder of Abel to the increasing wickedness of the human race, it is clear that the serpent is serious about contesting

God's plan for the offspring of the woman at every turn, right? Paul would tell us that the devil prowls around like a lion, seeking someone to devour.

Because of this, we can see a second important theme. The serpent and his seed are committed to doing everything possible to turn

God's prophecy around and crush the head of the woman's seed, which is exactly what Satan thought he was doing at the cross, but the results of these attempts are only a confirmation of the prophecy itself.

Try as they might, the serpent and his seed can only bruise the heel of the woman's seed.

Contained in the promise of Genesis 3 .15 is this. God will redeem a people for his own possession.

He will reconcile us back to God the Father. He will reclaim this world from the sway of the devil.

He will regenerate us by the Holy Spirit. He will grant us rebirth into the kingdom of God.

He will refresh our souls. He will renew our minds through his word, and he will restore our right relationship with him.

I got that out of a book by Jacob Way, Hope to Win the War. In fact, I'm doing an interview with him this coming

Friday, so once that goes out, I'll let you guys know. But he encapsulated this, this was in his book, and I read it,

I'm like, wow, that's really pertinent. This is a God who completely redoes all the damage that Satan brought into the garden.

God truly is a redeemer. We can see

God's sovereign hand in all of this at two places in the early chapters of Genesis. First, when the wickedness of humanity reached a boiling point,

God chose to wipe out the entire line of the serpent with a flood. The only true seed of the woman left were

Noah and his family. Why? The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

The scripture says, and the Lord regretted that he had made man on earth. And that's an anthropomorphism, okay, a word that's descriptive of how we feel.

God didn't actually repent or regret. God doesn't change. It grieved him to his heart.

So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I created from the face of the land, man and animals, creeping things, and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Every ancient religion has some flood story, okay, which would confirm, point us back to the truth that yes, there was a worldwide flood.

The seed of the serpent were decimated, and God's righteous judgment was displayed, showing that he is serious about judging sin.

We must not forget that God's judgment is coming on those who continue to defy his Lordship and his authority over them.

When I say from the pulpit that Jesus is Lord and Long Island is Christ's Island, that's good news for us who have submitted to the

Lordship of Christ. That's bad news to those who haven't. He will come back with a rod of iron.

It's not felt, it's not a pipe cleaner, it's a rod of iron.

He's going to rule, and you will pay for every sin that you've committed. You have two options. You can defy the

Lordship of Jesus and pay for your sins, every one of them, or you can come under the Lordship of Christ and ask that he pay for your sins.

What was Noah, God flooded the entire world in judgment, gone.

This is decreation language, and then God's going to recreate again. And this happens over and over throughout the scriptures.

This was not the final decisive victory of the seed of the woman, because Noah's own son quickly defected to the serpent's line.

By Genesis 11, the serpent's seed were thriving again. Those of his line were looking to make a name for themselves by building a tower.

This is the seed of the serpent goes in one direction, the seed of the woman goes in another, over and over and over.

Once again, however, we see God's sovereign power on display. He brought confusion and chaos as judgment, and so put a halt to their plans for greatness at the

Tower of Babel. So God continually thwarts the plans of the peoples, until we get to the point where all of this is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the time that we're looking forward to, the time that's coming.

You see, all of Genesis chapters four through 11, and indeed all of the rest of the Bible is really just the outworking of Genesis 3 .15.

While the enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent is a real and lasting battle, the promise found in this first proclamation of the good news, the gospel, was never really in doubt.

In the gospel, Satan went from crafty to cursed, so that we could go from hopeless to hopeful.

If God didn't come in and intervene and give a promise of one who would crush the head of the serpent, we would,

I don't know if we'd still be around, but if we were, we'd still be the seed of the serpent.

Awaiting God's judgment. From there's no hope for us, to there's no hope for him.

The devil, the serpent will be crushed. He will be defeated. He cannot get victory. Praise God for that.

We have hope. So recap real quick. Adam and Eve must leave paradise. Exile is the bitter fruit of sin.

God sets two cherubim with flaming swords to guard the access to the tree of life. This last scene of the

Garden of Eden reminds us just how tragic the fall of Adam and Eve is. So when

I told you about, we spent the whole chapter, whole session on Adam and Eve, humanity being the pinnacle of God's creation, and we didn't mention the fall.

I wanted to highlight just how special we were as God's creation, God's vice regents, his children given dominion over the world.

For Adam and Eve to listen to the lie of the serpent and doubt

God and question him, it's a huge fall. It's not to be taken lightly.

Again, if you minimize the gap, you minimize the solution. If you maximize the gap, you maximize the solution, which is

Jesus Christ. While in the garden, they had access to the tree of life, of which they never ate.

Now access to that tree is closed and the story's conflict will not reach its resolution until the fruit of the tree of life is once again made available.

And the promise redemption arrives. He's talking about the cross. Adam and Eve and humanity now have the hope of a redeemer who will crush the head of the serpent, but it will be a long and bloody battle to the end.

The rest of the Bible is a footnote to Genesis 3 .15. Everything from that moment on will point back to that verse.

What we're going through today in society, the seed of the serpent is trying to redefine everything that God has defined.

And us are the people of God are trying to get it back to what it was originally defining.

They can't even tell you when life begins. They can't tell you what a man or a woman is.

Am I a biologist? Really? Four -year -old, five -year -old kids can tell you that.

So what were the key theological terms that we went over today? Redemption and the seed of the woman.

God is going to redeem His seed, His descendants, and He's going to curse the seed of the serpent.

And the story so far goes like this. God created a very good kingdom of which He's the King. He created human beings,

His children, to represent Him in that kingdom, and they were responsible to expand it. Through their sin,

Adam and Eve rejected God's commission and rebelled against their Father and Creator. Yet God proved

His covenant love towards them despite their unfaithfulness. Very good did not turn into very bad.

It just proved the character of who was always very good. There will be ongoing enmity between the offspring from now on.

But God promised a Redeemer who will crush the head of the enemy and secure God's victory.

With this promise, very bad turned into very hopeful. We're going to continue building on that.

So by the end of this, we'll have a good summation of Genesis to Revelation. Questions?

Yes, Ted? All right. And do we know what that word favor means? Anybody want to guess what favor means?

It's the word for grace in Hebrew. It's favor, right? So God actually was bringing forth a new tribe called the

Fabarites. I'm trying to redeem myself from the last bad joke

I told. Obviously, I haven't quite done that yet. Any other questions? Do you see how this biblical theology is different than the systematic theology?

The systematic theology, we compiled all the verses about a particular topic, lined them up, showed you what

God says and thinks about certain things. Okay, now this is tracing the storyline of the

Bible from Genesis to Revelation to show you the unfolding plan of God as it happens over time, right?

So now where we are, we're living after the fulfillment of all of these prophecies of the one who would come to crush the head of the serpent.

We know that that was Jesus, and he did that at the cross. However, that war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman rages on, and that will continue to rage on until, like Psalm 110 says, until he reigns, until he puts his enemies under his feet.

Yes. No, he didn't know the redeemer. That's why he tried to kill every firstborn. Just kill them all.

Well, early on, as soon as Jesus began his ministry, he was baptized. This is my son whom I love.

It's a pronouncement. This is my son whom I love. With him, I'm well pleased. What happens right after that? Jesus goes right into the wilderness, and Satan tries to tempt him the way he tried to tempt

Eve, the way he did tempt Eve and Adam, right? Jesus refutes him with the word of God.

It is written, it is written, it is written. Satan had a good idea. Yeah, I don't know if he definitely is the

Messiah. Looks like it. I'm gonna kill him anyway. I'm gonna kill anyone I can in the event any one of these people turn out to be the

Messiah. I think at that point, he had very good inclination to see that this was the one.

Out of Bethlehem, born of a virgin, tried to, fulfilled the prophecy, out of Egypt I've called my son.

Satan knows scripture better than we do, right? He's very intelligent, but he's a defeated foe.

Now, from God's point of view, not a problem. From our point of view, we have to recognize that there's a lion ready to pounce on us, right?

Who wants to tempt us and pull us away from the things of God. And we cannot be like these word of faith guys that say,

Satan, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. What you need to do, James says, resist the devil, praise

God, and he will flee, right? You draw near to God, resist the devil, and he must flee.

Your job isn't to rebuke the devil. Even Michael the archangel didn't rebuke the devil, right?

Your job is to resist, draw near to God. You go back to your father, which is what

Adam should have done in the beginning. I don't know. Eve's telling him, oh, you know, why don't you do it?

Wait a second, serpent here. Let me go to my father. What do I do?

God would have told him what to do and this never would have happened. But again, it was a test. Again, I'm reading through Deuteronomy.

God tested their hearts in the wilderness. There's always gonna be this test. If you're royalty, right?

If you're one of God's people, you're a royal nation, right? Royalty breeds loyalty. You have to continually go back and be loyal to Jesus.

He's the king, he's Lord. So if you remain loyal to him, that's drawing near to God and resisting the enemy.

Memorize some scriptures. Keep a Bible near you, on you. Whatever it is, immerse yourself in the word of God.

Have somebody that you can call when you're feeling temptation. You're an accountability partner, friend, brother or sister in Christ.

You want to resist the enemy. Your salvation is secure in Jesus, right?

You can fall on board, you can't fall overboard, right? But that doesn't bring honor to God.

Part of your sanctification is you growing to the point where you can resist the temptation.

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for after he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life to those whom the

Lord God promised to love him, right? So we're going to be tested. We have to withstand the test with God's help, not in our flesh, not on our own.

In fact, when you're in the midst of the temptation, you admit your weakness. Lord, I'm weak,

I need your help. I'm flesh and blood, help me. And have some scriptures to memorize, have somebody to call, call and ask for prayer.

This helping? Yes. Okay, that's one. Excellent. Let's pray before I'm stoned.