Saturday evening session5

Welcome to “Retreat 2010”

Learning and Living the God-centered Life
www.learningandlivingtheword.com
February 6, 2009
Session #5

Within the Abrahamic Covenant were the promises that were pregnant
with the future of God's whole covenantal kingdom both its old and
new covenant stages

Genesis 3:1 starts with the serpent the woman and then the fall, the
first thing that Satan tries to do is to question the terms of the covenant

At the outset you see Satan challenging God's authority and challenges
His right to make an arbitrary prohibition

Remember now in our using the models of the ancient near eastern
treaties that these models are not based on negotiation but the right of
the suzerain king to rule with absolute power
God and Adam are not equals in this arrangement. God is the Creator
who has absolute rights to decree anything He desires and it is Adam's
duty to submit and yield to God's authority

Satan goes to the woman and tells her to evaluate the terms of the
covenant for herself

So Satan not only questions the conditions and terms of the God’s
command to Adam. But also God's motives in giving this prohibition
In other words Satan is trying to convince the woman that God is
holding back what He has and is being petty to not give to the woman
what He has and wants just for Himself

The garden of Eden was like a temple and Adam had the priestly task
of guarding it just like the Levites would end up doing in the temple
Adam should have stepped forward to confront the serpent and should
not have let his wife hold a theological discussion with the serpent at
all.

Even though Eve sinned she had not broken the covenant with God
because she was not the covenant head but rather it was the sin of
Adam that caused the fall of mankind and not that of Eve

But because of Adam's failure they both fell into sin
Their physical nakedness now becomes a symbol of their spiritual
nakedness. And they have lost the righteous covering that they
initially had in the garden.

They try and hide from God and cover themselves with fig leaves
and they desired to run away from the holiness of God

Definition of the “kingdom of God” - The kingdom of God has
come whenever God exercises His sovereign power to bestow His
holy realm on His holy people through His obedient king.
God’s people in God’s place under God’s obedient King

The covenant that God made with Adam his vassal king has now
been broken and the kingdom of God was taken away
Remember God did not enter into a covenant with all of humanity
individually but He enters into the covenant with Adam who
represents all of humanity

It was the transgression of the covenant by God's vassal king that
plunged the rest of mankind into a curse. Because the disobedience
of the vassal brought judgment on all of the people that he
represented.

Therefore the judgment is that Adam and Eve must be banished
from the garden of Eden, which is the kingdom of God

Now in order to receive the kingdom of God after the fall what do
we need?
 We need a second Adam another vassal King that will be a
covenant keeper in our place.

If we are expelled from the kingdom because of the disobedience
of a vassal king then we can only return to the kingdom through
the obedience of a vassal king

And so that is what happens in Genesis 3:15 and we see that God
provides by grace a way for His people to return to His kingdom

Adam and Eve hear the sound of God walking in the garden. This
is a theophany which is a physical representation of God's presence

Same kind of thing we see with Moses and the burning bush, or the
cloud comes to fill the tabernacle or the temple

So at the very moment you would expect the wrath of God to come
against Adam and Eve instead He pronounces judgment on the
serpent. And it is here that we see the very first sign of God's grace
at the very point we should see His wrath.

Don't you see the same thing throughout the prophets in the OT? In
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel you have the same feature. What has
happened with Israel? They have broken the covenant with God.
We can see that they are a corporate Adam who stand naked
spiritually as a nation before God.

And God sends His prophets to say now it is time for My curses to
be executed against My unfaithful people. God says that He is going
to raise up the Assyrians and the Babylonians to wipe out His own
people.

It is at the very moment of God pronouncing His judgment that we
read the prophets predict, then a virgin will bear a child and His
name will be called Immanuel. They speak of the fact that David is
like a tree and that his royal lineage is like a great oak tree that will
be chopped down by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. But though
it has been reduced to a stump a stem is going to spring up from that
stump. It will come from the stem of Jesse and there is going to be a
new Messiah figure in the last days and it is through Him that God
will restore His promises to Israel.

God is going to raise up His vassal king that will restore the people
to His kingdom

When God says I will put enmity between you and the woman this
is what we call in theological terms "regeneration."
What has happened is that Adam and Eve have broken covenant
with God and now they have a covenant with the devil. They are
enemies of God but now friends with the devil and following his
plan

But God says I will not let that relationship continue and I will
bring enmity between the serpent and the woman and between your
seed and her seed.

When we were in our unregenerate state as fallen sinners in Adam
we loved our bondage to sin, we were enslaved to our lusts because
that is exactly what we wanted.
But now God has broken in with His grace and replaced the
affections that we had with our former slave master sin and has
given us a new affection for God and His promises. He has
replaced a heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent is a collective
aspect of the seed to those who are believers and non-believers
So the seed of the woman refer to all those who are elect, they are
the ones who have been regenerated from out of the mass of fallen
humanity and have been given a new heart

Genesis 3:15 Between you and the woman, And between your seed
and her seed;
Again this is the collective seed but when you go to the next part of

Genesis 3:15 there is going to be a narrowing down He shall bruise
you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

In this respect we this to be an individual dimension
He in the Hebrew is a singular, masculine, pronoun and so we have
a shift from the collective in the text to the singular

We know that there is a play between the collective and the singular
because we see this as the apostle Paul writes in Gal. 3:16 Now the
promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say,
“And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to
your seed,” that is, Christ.

But Paul also says that not only is the seed singular and refers to
Christ but there is also a collective dimension to this seed and we
see this in Galatians 3:29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are
Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.

The way these two are related is through the federal headship of
Christ and those whom He represents.

Another way you can see this in graphic terms is through 1 Samuel
Chapter 17 between Goliath and David the shepherd boy
Now we are thousands of years into redemptive history but we see
how this is playing out. We have the two seeds in a collective
group that are against one another.

The two groups are the Philistines and the Israelites

Take 1 Samuel 17:1-9 and apply it to Genesis 3:15. Here you have
the collective armies but from both of these armies you have one
that steps forth. Goliath from the army of the Philistines and
David from the army of the Israelites.
Here we have an expansion of the promise that we see in Genesis
3:15 that is in a type form. But one day we will see the full
embodiment of this when Christ defeats Satan at the cross.

Genesis 3:15 is teaching that the seed which is to come will be a
second Adam because what was the first Adam supposed to do to
the serpent.

Adam was to have executed the serpent because it was his
responsibility to protect and guard the garden. But Adam
abdicated his kingdom authority and so we see that the second
Adam (Christ) will in fact crush the head of the serpent.

But because of sin it will be different. The first Adam would not
have needed to suffer because there was no sin but the second
Adam will have His heel bruised in the process.
Because that now sin has entered the world we need someone who
will not only obey God in our place, but who will also take the
wrath of God that we deserve.
And since the second Adam will conquer Satan He then will open
for us a way to the tree of life.

Jesus the second Adam will obey God and He will lead us back to
the tree of life so that we might eat and live forever
Genesis 3:15 then contains the whole Bible in a nutshell

It teaches us that there will be two groups of people, the regenerate
and the unregenerate. They will be hostile to one another and that
is why the non believers always persecute the believers.

It also tells us that this conflict will narrow itself down between
two foes - the one is Christ and the other is Satan
Christ is going to accomplish this in the form of a judicial
confrontation with Satan.

And that is why when you turn to the gospels in the NT, as soon as
Jesus is baptized and anointed with the Holy Spirit what do you
see? Then you see the Holy Spirit lead Christ into the wilderness
to be tempted by the devil.
And what is the ultimate temptation? Bypass the cross.

So all throughout the ministry of Jesus He is casting out demons and
they are constantly saying Jesus of Nazareth we know who you are
the holy One of God, have you come here to torment us before the
day of judgment.

We see Jesus battling Satan when he uses Peter as a temporary mouth
piece again to try and get Jesus to bypass the cross.
It is a victory that happens as a paradox as we see victory through
weakness. This was different from what the Jews were thinking
which was Jesus is now going to throw out the Romans and set up
the kingdom of God.

But all through the OT there were indicators that the way in which
the second Adam would accomplish His task would be through
humility.

This is the one act of righteousness that Paul is referring to in
Romans 5:18 So then as through one transgression there resulted
condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness
there resulted justification of life to all men.

The obedience of Christ begins at the moment of His incarnation, He
became obedient to the point of death as we learn from Phil. 2:8
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by
becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Since Jesus came and performed this fulfilling of the Law as the
Federal head of all mankind then He earned God's kingdom for His
people. Jesus merited eternal life by His own obedience. It was
works for Christ so that it might be grace for us.

Genesis 3:15 - definition for the kingdom of God is the exercise of
God's sovereign power, to bestow His holy realm on His holy
people, through His obedient King

We see each of these elements in Genesis 3:15, first God creates
His holy people and it is God who says I will put enmity between
your seed and the seed of the serpent. If God had not done this then
all of mankind would have been in total alliance with the devil.

And there would be no remnant had God not been gracious to make
a way for that to happen.
Remember what God said to Elijah, no I have reserved 7,000 who
have not bowed their knee to Baal
God is the one who reserves the remnant, God is the one who
creates the remnant.

In Genesis 3:15 we see that the coming of the kingdom of God is a
sovereign initiative, it is God creating this people for Himself, in
spite of sin and in spite of man's failure

Second, the kingdom involves the bestowal of God's holy realm
upon God's holy people

The seed that is to come will grant to those the tree of life which is
in the midst of the garden

Gen. 3:23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden
of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
Gen. 3:24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden
of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which
turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

Cherubim are angelic beings that are stationed around the very
throne of God

The only way back in to the garden of Eden is to pass through that
sword. And Jesus had to take that sword in our place so we could
get back to the tree of life

Christ is not bringing us back to the same position that Adam had
prior to the fall. Because if we were at the same place Adam was
then it would mean that we were still on probation.

Christ not only causes us to be back in the garden but also causes
us to eat at the tree of life. Because He is the tree of life and
partakes of that life when they believe in Him.
We are not returning back to a place where we can fall again, but
we are receiving that which Adam lost and what he failed to
obtain through obedience

What we gain in Christ is not limited to what we lost in Adam -
Gerhardos Vos

God always deals with man through a covenant head and through
whom obedience is the key

After Adam and Eve recognize they are naked and then God gives
the promise of the seed that is to come
In verse 20 it says that the man called his wife Eve, because she was
the mother of all life

Where did Adam get the idea that Eve was the mother of all of life?
Well he got this from the promise in Genesis 3:15.
Because they believed in the first promise of the gospel then they
were justified and saved. And to show that they are justified and no
longer naked sinners we see in Genesis 3:21 that God clothes them.
And this clothing is representative of the righteousness of Christ.

Here we have a type that shows that it was the covering that came
from an animal that had to be slaughtered

They had to be covered by a righteousness that only God can
provide and not one that resulted in something that did or tried to
sow together to cover themselves.

Genesis 3:15 is not just a neat prophecy about the coming of Christ
but rather is the foundation for the whole Bible

The entire Bible then becomes the out working of that promise
And the book of Genesis is going to be a fleshing out of that
promise

There are two main genealogies in Genesis, in Genesis 5 you have
Adam till Noah and his three sons, Shem, Hem and Japeth
And then in Genesis 11:10-26 we have the genealogy that takes us
from Shem to Terah and his three sons, Abram, Nahor and Teran
Notice is both of the listed generations here you have 10 key figures
and the three sons which is a symmetrical and may only be a small
representation

But the key is when God makes the promise to Eve regarding the
seed then we can see that God take this promise as very serious.
The first 11 chapters of Genesis are ancient history and it is given in
an overview fashion

But from Genesis 12 till the end of the book the video camera slows
down and now we go into the details in the life of Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob and his 12 sons

Because what is going on with Abraham is the key to the rest of the
Bible

Why does Moses trace the seed promise from Seth to Abraham?
He does so because these genealogies are the introduction to the rest
of the people that we will see in Genesis 12-50
Abraham is the patriarch of OT because he is the forefather of Israel

The genealogies are the link that we have to the promise of the seed
and Abraham
God's special relationship with Abraham is the unfolding of the
original promise that God made with Adam and Eve in the garden
after they fell

The promises that God gives to Abraham are the expansion of the
seed promise that Adam and Eve get in Genesis 3:15.

The seed promise in Genesis 3:15 is sometimes known as the mother
promise. Because it is the promise to beget all the other promises in
the Bible

The first aspect of the mother promise that gets expanded in the
patriarchal promise is the promise concerning the seed
The first time this word appears in a theological sense within the
context is Genesis 3:15

And then from Genesis 12 till the end of Genesis the word for seed
appears 37 times, because this section of Genesis is preoccupied with
the meaning of the seed
Remember that Abraham and Sarah do not have children and so they
ask LORD when are you going to give us the seed that You
promised?
We are shown through the genealogy from Seth to Abraham that this
is the seed that was promised to Adam and Eve

But we are talking about the seed promise here in the collective sense
And there is the individual aspect of the seed that will come to crush
the serpents head

Isaac was the singular seed raised up as the child of Abraham and
Sarah and in this way becomes a type of Christ

Just as Abraham is about the sacrifice is only begotten son, so God
the Father does sacrifice His only begotten Son

The second aspect to the promise is the land
The garden of Eden was a sanctuary and a holy realm, where God
dwelled with His holy people

And the cherubim protected this garden because this was still
God's holy place
The mother promise shows to us a seed which will come to allow
God's people to come back into the garden and eat at the tree of
life forever.

So in Genesis 12 we are told that Abraham's seed will receive the
land of Canaan
Here we should see the connection between the garden of Eden
and the land of Canaan.
In Genesis 13:10, the context is where Abraham and Lot are
fighting over their herds

Gen. 13:10 Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the
Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere—this was before the
LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah—like the garden of the
LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar.

This happened 400 years later when Israel came up out of Egypt
and they entered the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua
It seems that the land of Canaan gives us a picture of God's holy
realm and the return one day for all who are in Christ to return to
the garden
A land flowing with milk and honey that brings to mind this image
of a paradise

When God is building the tabernacle and the temple, within the
architect design we see God using images to reflect paradise such
as palm trees, pomegranates and also also the lamp stands and the
cherubim.

Why is this so important?

Because we tend to read the seed promise and just another
interesting prediction of a coming Messiah

But what we miss are the foundational promises of the seed promise
given to us in the Abrahamic promise
The OT is all about Israel and the land. And how God is dwelling in
midst of His people in the tabernacle and the temple as long as they
remain holy.

This is happening because of what God promised in Genesis 3:15
and the expansion of that promise with Abraham
The OT is showing us how God is fulfilling the promise that He
gave to Abraham
God is fulfilling His word and He is doing what He said that He
would do

The nation of Israel are God's holy people in God's holy realm and
leading Israel throughout her history are all the vassal kings, one
after the other whether it be Joseph, Joshua or King David.

When Joshua leads the nation of Israel into the promised land you
see the seed of the woman crushing the head of the seed of the
serpent.

The Canaanites are being judged and God is driving them out of His
land because of their unrighteousness
God is bestowing His holy people back into His holy land through
His obedient King

We know what happens in that Israel fails to be obedient and the
vassal kings fail to follow God like they should

Genesis 1-2 "The kingdom offered"
Genesis 3-50 "the kingdom promised"
Exodus - Malachi "the kingdom prefigured"
Matthew-Jude "the kingdom inaugurated"
Revelation "the kingdom consumated"

Stage 1 is fulfilled in Israel but stage 2 is fulfilled in Christ

The first stage of fulfillment is not the real thing and it but a type
The second stage is the reality as is permanent and lasting. It does
not end in failure like the first stage did

Saturday evening session5

Saturday evening session5

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Saturday evening session5