by Ron Sombilon Gallery

Playing Chess With the Devil. Making Sense of the Most Popular Book In the World. Genesis 2. Man’s Creation and the Covenant of Creation. Lesson

1: 26, 27 Man created in the image of God

Man was bestowed with the one quality that sets him apart from and raises him above all other brute animals. Read Psalm 8:5-8. He was created in God’s image. Thus, he does things that reflect the nature of his Creator. He can think, discriminate, reason, evaluate, be intuitive just like God. He has wisdom, shows love, is merciful, forgives, and can demonstrate righteous wrath. He even rules as a vice-regent over God’s creation, v. 26. Like God, he can also do something remarkably similar to the Creator. He can create. No other creature can begin to approximate man’s creative abilities. Birds peep a simple tweet. Man writes symphonies. An alligator pulls together some weeds for her young to lie in in the open swamp. Man constructs skyscrapers, palaces, millions of homes that are impervious to the elements and that regulate temperature and protection. An animal cannot vocalize a single word. Man can rattle off as many languages as he can master with words that can give any nuance of meaning. A man can paint a picture that is so true to an actual scene that he rivals the Creator in its duplication. Creating anything reflects the Creator and God’s glory. Painting, for example, is God-glorifying in itself alone. One does not have to paint just religious pictures like they did in the Middle Ages. The act of painting anything glorifies God because it reflects the Creator’s own nature. Man can also relate to God spiritually because the law of God is written on his heart (Romans 2:14,15). And he has a soul or spirit, which is the only creature endowed with such by God (Gen. 2:7). There is no part of man in which God’s image does not shine forth through him.

God made man and woman in His own image – male and female. In 1:26, God says “Let  us make man in our image, in our likeness…” The us/our combination – plural – implies more than one personality in the God-head. Hence, even in the opening chapter of the Bible, there is allusion to the Trinitarian God. Obviously, God is neither man nor woman. He is Spirit (John 4:24). So what does this mean? In the God-head, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit possess deity equally. But within the Trinity there is also willful submission in their relationship to one another. The Father is the head, but the Son submits to the will of the Father (I Corinthians 11:3). This headship/submission role in God’s nature described within the Trinity is what God created in the man and woman’s relationship to one another. This is what is meant when Genesis says, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” The man was made head of the woman, and the woman was made submissive to the man (Read Eph. 5:22-24). God made creatures like Himself, or “in our likeness”. His highest creatures are like Him in that there is equality and yet headship/submission in their relationship with one another.  A husband is the head, and the wife is in the submissive role because that is what God Himself is within Himself. It is not demeaning. It reflects the glory and image of the Creator.

1:28 The Creation Mandate or Cultural Mandate. This is the first job description for man. What did God want man to do?

1. Be fruitful. Adam was to populate the earth, and this command has never been abrogated. He was to develop the social world and civilization with families.

2. Subdue the earth. Absolutely everything in this world you see is from the earth. Man was to discover all the elements and secrets of the earth through the chemistry of combining the elements of earth and air to harness the amazing resources God placed in the earth for his benefit. He would learn to farm, build bridges, design computers, and make musical instruments. By being a steward of the earth, he could accomplish all the things we have seen in history and now.

3. Have dominion over everything.The first action of dominion was in naming the animals God made – 2:19, 20. Some animals can poison and others can rip a man to pieces.  But man can create antidotes and guns that master any beast or its effects. Man is the King of God’s creation. Read Psalm 8:4-8.

1:28 God blessed them. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for man to rebel against God with all the blessings that he enjoyed below. Here are a few God gave him.

Stewardship over the garden, 1:28, 2:19
Authority over God’s creation, 1:28, 2:19
Sustenance for his daily provision, 1:29
A beautiful environment in which to live, 2:9
Labor that was fruitful, 2:15
An intimate partner who was like him to help him, 2:20-23
A righteous home in which to live with the prospect of a holy family life
Family fruitfulness, 1:28
The possibility of Eternal Life, 2:9
Peace and fellowship with his creator

Chapter 2 – The creation of man in detail and the Covenant of Creation

In this chapter you will see three creation ordinances. By creation ordinances, we are speaking of inviolable laws which cannot be broken. Like the law of gravity, you do not break those laws, although by ignoring them they may break you.

The Sabbath – commands about the Sabbath were stated before creation and after sin. It seems it is an imperative for man.
Labor – Man was to subdue the earth. This was one of the purposes for his existence.
Marriage – the purpose of the woman’s creation before sin was to be a helper to the man. Paul discusses this in I Corinthians 11:7-12. Before sin, this was designed to be a blessing of companionship to Adam and to complete him as a person since “it is not good for the man to be alone (separated from himself)”, 2:18. In marriage, these two would cling to one another and become “one”. This is a mystery, says Paul (Ephesians 5:32). People who have been married for a time will begin to comprehend it, however. Marriage is an ordinance protected by the command of no divorce, or trying to separate what has become one. Those who try to separate what God has mysteriously joined together by covenant agreement in marriage will reap the curses that divorce initiates.

2: 9, 16, 17 The Creation Covenant with Adam and all mankind

This is the first mention of a covenant in the Bible, but it is a concept that dominates the Scripture and explains everything in it. If you miss this, you will miss the meaning of the Bible and what everything in it is about. It is absolutely crucial to understand what a covenant is. Everything from this point on in Genesis is about the covenants.

So what is a covenant? A covenant is a mutual agreement between two or more persons. It is a bond that binds two parties together with obligations and blessings if the covenant is kept and penalties if the covenant is broken. Man’s covenants with each other are ALL two sided. Thus the Bible refers to marriage as a covenant (Jeremiah 31:31,32). A man and a woman make marital agreements with one another.

But God’s covenants with man are not two-sided. No creature can have an agreement with the Almighty, and the Almighty does not make mutual agreements with a creature. God’s covenants with man are ONE-SIDED. God sovereignly makes covenants with man and disregards bartering and contracting. God imposes His will on man with promises of blessings for obediences or curses if man breaks the covenant. But God also makes promises that He will keep what He has covenanted with man, even if the man is not faithful to that covenant. You might say that God’s covenants are promises in which God binds Himself with life and death, His own life and death if such a thing could be. But since God is always truthful and cannot lie (Titus 1:2) and will never be unfaithful to His covenant promises, God’s covenants are promises that cannot be broken and, thus, He will never die. You might say God’s covenants are self-binding, one-sided, life and death promises in His own blood that God makes with man. No agreement is needed by man to fulfill God’s covenants.

Theologians often talk about three major covenants that give structure to understanding what the Bible is about. They are:

The Eternal Covenant – the covenant the Trinitarian members of the God-head made together in eternity past before creation. This will be introduced in the Genesis 3 notes.
The Covenant of Creation – the covenant God made with Adam after creation and before sin.
The Covenant of Redemption – the covenant the God made with man after sin to save him from eternal death. It  begins in Genesis 3. It develops and unfolds gradually and becomes more pin-pointed as history progresses. It is affirmed over and over through Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, and culminates and is fulfilled in Christ.

Understand the three covenants above, and you will understand the structure and the grand story of the Bible. It is called The History of Redemption. This is the primary way to comprehend your Bible and what is going on there. It is not by making moralisms  and applications from the Bible that can help you live a better life. It is not about telling these old, ancient Bible stories of the amazing events and the people of faith or disobedience in the Bible. The Bible is often presented as a series of unconnected tales that stand around like telephone poles with no lines connecting them, sort of like Aesop’s Fable. Making sense of the Bible isn’t even just about the New Testament with almost no reference to the Old Testament. It is about literal events in the Old and New Testaments that took place in history and were revelations about the redemption that was coming through Christ. Every person, every event you read about in the Bible is related to that in some way. The Bible with both Testaments is sort of like a novel. It is telling a unified story of Jesus Christ and how God brought salvation from sin to His people and His world after it fell under the Curse. To be more specific, it is ALL about one person, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. He is on every page, everywhere. The story is presented primarily in the structure of the three major covenants above. Another way of thinking about it is to remember that the Bible is God’s revelation of His Son Jesus coming to save man and the creation from the curse of sin. This story is presented in three chapters. Those chapters are the Eternal Covenant, the Covenant of Creation, and the Covenant of Redemption. Most of the story is found in the third chapter, which has seven sub-chapters of its own: the covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the final fulfillment chapter in the New Testament when the covenant is completed with Christ.

The first covenant in history was the covenant God made with Adam, sometimes called the Covenant of Creation, in Genesis 2:16, 17. There God imposed His will on his creature. Eat any tree in the garden. But if you eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will surely die. Apparently, if he had eaten from the Tree of Life, (2:9), he would have lived forever in a righteous state with all the blessings of life and peace with God that he had enjoyed in the garden in a perfect creation. So he was offered either life for obedience or death for disobedience. Little did Adam know that as the first man, he represented all mankind as the federal head of every human being. Just as the President represents every citizen of the United States, whatever Adam did, he acted for each individual in the entire human race. This Covenant of Creation is the historical setting that causes all the rest to follow. Although it sounds like the beginning of the story, it isn’t. The story begins in eternity past with the Eternal Covenant. But that will make more sense if we begin with how it all started in history first. Adam and Eve knew nothing about the Eternal Covenant. The fullness of that information did not come out till many centuries later. That information will be presented in Genesis 3 to add blazing light to that sordid chapter. The story of Jesus is about to begin. It starts in Chapter 3.

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by Ron Sombilon Gallery

Playing Chess With the Devil. Making Sense of the Most Popular Book In the World. Genesis 3. The Fall and The Covenant of Redemption. Lesson 3

Lesson 3 – Genesis 3 – The Fall of Man and The Covenant of Redemption

Up until this chapter, man lived in a perfect world in peace and  harmony with his environment, his fellow man, and His Creator. The last verse of Chapter 2, verse 25, is a statement that summarizes that bliss – “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” But that was about to change.

Genesis 3:1-13 The Temptation and Fall

Satan, in the form of a serpent, came to the woman and tempted her to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Since Adam probably told her what God had said instead of hearing it herself, she was the weakest link and most vulnerable to his cunning. Satan reinforced his lure by boldly and directly calling God a liar when he denied that she would die if she ate it. The first lie by the Liar himself (John 8:44) denied the judgment. Instead, the Liar said, Eve would be enlightened and become like God, knowing both good and evil. The temptation was that God was withholding something very good that she would enjoy. Satan create an appetite for something she did not have. John described it as, “the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does.” (I John 2:16)

Since there did not appear to be any immediate effects of death after she had eaten from the tree, she persuaded Adam to eat too. Paul says, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” (I Timothy 2:14). However, the tidal wave of consequences swept in over both of them. The realization that they were naked came first. So, in a sense, their eyes WERE opened. The devil was right after all – you will “know both good and EVIL.” Shamefulness at their own nakedness shocked them. This was actually the immediate result of the flood of guilt that assaulted their consciences. They now saw each other and themselves entirely differently than they had before. The powerful guilt effect following innocence was probably so traumatic in their feelings, fears, and physical reactions that they must have felt completely vulnerable, exposed, and threatened in each other’s presence in ways we all know so well. They wanted to hide this shameful change from each other. Their entire relationship in this complicity had been affected, and they wanted to reach for anything that could cover them from each other’s view and from the scrutinizing gaze of the One who gave them the command not to eat. Shame in nakedness is one of the permanent, on-going effects left on the human race’s psyche as a constant reminder of that guilt and condemnation for sin that we are all born under. It is a persistent prompting, although few recognize it for what it is.

Thus began the pattern that every sinner since then has practiced innately when he has knowingly done wrong. First, they COVERED and HID themselves with fig leaves in an attempt to conceal guilt. They hid themselves from each other and from the God who had created them. They tried to make what they had done undiscoverable. We do the same thing today; we just don’t use fig leaves to do it. We deny or rationalize or intellectualize  the seriousness of the things we have done. Sometimes the guilt is so serious that people attempt to quell it by taking medication. Others eventually sink into all kinds of personality disorders like schizophrenia, split personalities, etc. These are merely fig leaves to hide behind instead of admitting to and confessing sins.

The second thing they did – as soon as the Lord asked them if they had eaten of the tree – was to place BLAME elsewhere but on themselves. When God asked Adam and Eve, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”, they should have yes. But look at the first words each of them said instead. The man said, “The woman YOU…” He blamed both God and the woman. Eve said, ” The serpent…” That is the pattern for all sin. Cover and hide and point the finger to someone else.

Genesis 3:14-19 The Announcement of the Covenant with Adam and the first installment in the Covenant of Redemption

But God simply dismissed these excuses and directly and immediately pronounced judgment on Satan, Eve, and Adam in verses 14-19. The judgment is extensive and goes beyond the death sentence threatened in 2:18. But it includes the very first announcement of Jesus Christ and hope for the man and woman who are now incased in sin, death, and condemnation. In these verses, God makes ANOTHER covenant with Adam. This is first of six covenants AFTER SIN that God made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David that make up what is called the Covenant of Redemption. This covenant dominates the rest of Scripture to the end of the Bible. God does not require Adam or Eve to do anything. There was nothing they could have done anyway. In Genes 3:15, God bound Himself and made a promise to avenge Adam and his seed, save him from eternal death, and eventually restore him from his fallen condition.

God’s judgments and THE PROMISE come in three stages: the judgment pronounced on the Satan, the woman, and the man.

3:14-15 The judgment on Satan

The heart of the judgment on Satan is in verse 15. This is one of the most important verses in all of Scripture because it is a verse that gives the overall story of what is going to take place from now till the end of time. It is a key summary verse for giving structure to the Bible and helps you understand what is going on in the Scriptures. Verse 15 is best understood by the diagram below. God will put enmity between the Serpent and the woman because he not only deceived her, but he brought death to her, her husband, and all her children in every generation. Not only that, but the woman’s children will all be born into the devil’s family and under his bondage. There are many references in the New Testament where men are called the children of the devil (John 8:37-44, I John 3:10). This is because all the sons of Adam are born in sin (Psalm 51:5, Romans 5:12). Hence, we are by nature under the wrath of God (Ephesians 2:1-3), enemies of and hostile to God naturally (Romans 8:7,8), and in bondage to Satan (II Timothy 2:26, Hebrews 2:14-15, John 8:34, Romans 6:16). What a shock for Eve to realize that all of her offspring would be in servitude to that loathsome creature who tempted her and brought such misery upon her and even caused her children to be called by his name! God will put enmity between Satan’s offspring and between the woman’s offspring. The woman’s offspring may appear to be many people, but it is actually a reference to just ONE person, referred to as HE. This reference to her offspring, or Seed, is the key phrase in 3:15. The woman will have a male CHILD that will avenge and redeem her. Though she brought death to her race, God promised her a revenging Seed who will crush the head of the serpent. When that Child comes, the serpent will pay dearly with his life. The last part of 3:15 infers an intense conflict portends. The serpent’s head will be violently trampled on causing his death, but the serpent will strike the Avenger’s heel and cause great pain and injury to him in the process. (See diagram at http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_3_-_Genesis_3_-_The_Fall_of_Man_and_The_Covenant_of_Redemption.pages)

We know now that the woman’s Seed was Christ. At the cross, Jesus effectively crushed the serpent’s head, and at the cross the serpent, in a sense, struck Christ’s heel. The crucifixion may have appeared as fatal. But it merely amounted to a crushed heel, as seen in the resurrection. A mashed head is a fatal blow; a heel that has been struck is not. Satan died; Jesus lived. But there was no way the woman could have known what all this meant. All Adam and Eve knew (and all their children knew for a long time) was that a Son was coming who would get even with Satan because of the curse he brought on the man and woman.

It is not stated explicitly, but there is implication that this Conqueror will do more than just crush Satan’s head. Both Adam and Eve may have read in that statement that all that was lost may somehow, someday be redeemed as well. This would include the damaged creation and even her children who would hate the very Seed that she would bring into the world. There is promise in the Bible that the Lord will end the curse (Revelation 22:3) and renew His creation when He returns with a new heavens and a new earth (II Peter 3:10-13, Romans 8:19-21) and the Tree of Life in His Kingdom (Revelation 22:2), and we know now that the Conqueror’s redemption did include many of the woman’s children who would be released from the bondage of the devil and their animus toward their mother’s Avenger. The animosity one reads about in 3:15 between the serpent’s offspring and the woman’s offspring is extended further than just between Satan’s offspring and the Conqueror. It also includes Satan’s offspring and the newly redeemed by the Conqueror. The conflict between these two sides began to rage immediately and will continue to the end of time. A bitter war of enmity within the human race boils between the Redeemer’s offspring and Satan’s. The woman’s sin placed her children under the kingdom of darkness and eventuated in a world-wide conflict between her children that lined up either behind their natural father, the devil, or the Redeemer. The peace, freedom, and unity of the first family in the garden was forever broken and splintered. Eve’s descendants would despise her each other and her Redeeming Son as well.

The diagram above is the story of the entire Old Testament. The Old Testament IS a story. But it is not the story of Abraham or Saul or Israel or David or any number of other people. It is the story of Jesus Christ and how God fulfilled His PROMISE that He would crush Satan’s head by the Seed of the woman and redeem His people from their sins. Every event you read in the Old Testament and every story and person you read about is there because it or he is somehow related to this PROMISE of God. As you read the Bible, try to figure out why every event and person is there and what part it played in the PROMISE.

Genesis 3:16, God pronounced judgment on the woman. It was two-fold.

She would have pain in childbirth (and pain in knowing she was responsible for the death of all her generations and hatred between them)
She would have a desire she never had before – to rule over her husband. She had been happy to be submissive in her role as helper to her head when she was created. But since she had taken the lead and brought sin to her husband, in judgment God now twisted her submission towards wanting control. Submission would now become very difficult for her to do. She would no longer be happy as submissive. Sin had changed, her, but it had also changed her husband. In his sinless state, Adam had loved and protected her as her head. But now “he will rule over you.” There is stiff and coarse judgment in those words. She will desire to rule, but his physical strength and sinful proclivities will be harsh and dominant. She once loved submission to the man; but now she will hate it and will resist it. But still the man will rule.

Genesis 3:17-19, God pronounces judgment on the man.

The ground which gave itself up so productively before will now become resistant and unproductive. It will be plagued with weeds, disease, and pests, which apparently did not exist before.
Work will become difficult, strenuous, dull, and irksome.
Although man was made from the ground and destined to live forever, he is now condemned to return to dust out of which he was made.

Genesis 3:21-24 Hope, Redemption, and Banishment till the Seed of the woman comes

These previous sentences must have been difficult words for the head of the race to bear. But in 3:20, Adam heard those words about his wife’s conquering Seed and the hope that his Creator gave him. He thought of his poor wife who had been deceived and how the Lord had told her that in the end she would have the last laugh over the serpent. With this hope in mind, he performed one more act as head of the garden and gave his wife her name, “Eve”. Eve means “mother of all the living”. One would think her proper name would have been “mother of all who are going to die”. But Adam heard THE PROMISE. God was going to give Eve a Seed who would redeem them, cause them to live again, and restore them to the paradise He had made for them to live in with Him as the creature who had His image and fellowshipped with Him. Out of the darkness of condemnation, Adam gave her a name of light, life, and redemption.

Even after condemnation, the Creator extended grace and mercy to Adam and Eve, suggesting again that He intended to carry out His covenant with Adam. He made garments to cover their nakedness, shame, and guilt. Those garments were from skin, suggesting that some animal had to give up its life for them to be covered. Perhaps this foreshadowed what was to come, that the guilt and shame of God’s people would indeed be covered from His sight by giving up the life and blood of His Son on the cross. But none of these events was known at this time. That would slowly be revealed.

Then God banished Adam and Eve from the garden forever lest they eat of the Tree of Life that they forfeited by disobedience. They would have to wait for the Conqueror to redeem them and end the curse before they ever returned again to paradise and the Tree of Life.

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Playing Chess With the Devil. Making Sense of the Most Popular Book In the World. Genesis 3. The Eternal Covenant. Lesson 4

Behind Genesis 3:15 and the Promise of a Conqueror to avenge Satan for the Fall he caused in the Garden of Eden is The Eternal Covenant. So far, three covenants have been mentioned.

The Eternal Covenant
The Creation Covenant
The Covenant of Redemption

The Creation Covenant is the covenant God made with Adam in the Garden after creation and before the Fall of man into sin. In that covenant, God told man that he could eat of any tree in the Garden except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If he ate from that tree, he would surely die.

After the Fall, God made another covenant with Adam called The Covenant of Redemption. In this covenant, God made a promise to Adam that one of his sons would crush the head of the serpent that had brought this misery upon them. In this promise, God intimated He would redeem man and restore him to his original state. The Covenant of Redemption is one covenant. It has four more sub-covenants to it to. Each of these sub-covenants to four different men – Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David – reiterate the same basic Promise made to Adam in the garden with each giving a little bit more information than the one previous to it. The covenant before it is reaffirmed with more detail and enlargement. With each man, more information comes about the covenant God promised in Genesis 3. It is sort of like opening a telescope. There is one telescope, but the telescope opens up and becomes longer and longer. Each section that is pulled out is larger than the previous section, is part of the previous section, and with each section one can see more and more details as he looks through it. The telescope is Genesis 3:15 and the Covenant of Redemption promise. God is going to send a Conqueror over Satan. But that same covenant promise is renewed with four other men. Each of those men is an extension of the same telescope. No one is looking through separate telescopes or getting a covenant promise that is different than the previous ones. Everyone is looking through the same lens. With each man, more and more information about God’s covenant promise in Genesis 3:15 is included. More details become visible.

An interesting thing takes place with each extension, or enlargement of information, of the Covenant of Redemption. The information about the promise and what will be accomplished beyond crushing Satan’s head keeps getting fuller and fuller. More and more details about the fullness of the Redeemer’s work keeps coming. On the other hand, more and more information keeps coming out about the Redeemer Himself too. Whereas the information about covenant’s accomplishments become wider and wider, the information about the Conqueror becomes narrower and narrower. In other words, the details about the Redeemer become more and more pin-pointed. His identity and recognizability become more distinct. As one reads through the Scriptures, a portrait of the Redeemer begins to emerge. These two tracts of information are illustrated below. (All diagrams for this lesson may be seen at http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_4_-_Genesis_3_-_The_Eternal_Covenant.pages)

The third covenant is The Eternal Covenant. The Eternal Covenant is the covenant that members of the Godhead made with each other. Look at the diagram below. What would be the most logical answer as to when God decided to send the Conqueror and subsequently made His covenant promise? Most people would probably say shortly after Adam’s sin. (See diagram at http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_4_-_Genesis_3_-_The_Eternal_Covenant.pages)

This may seem the most logical conclusion, but the Bible speaks of an Eternal Covenant made within the Godhead BEFORE the creation of the world. This information was unknown until the Redeemer Himself came and opened the door slightly so that we could glimpse into eternity past. But He made incredible statements that clearly indicate a pre-creation covenant between Himself and His Father.

First, Christ said over and over again that as the Son, His only desire was to please the Father, to whose will He was submissive even though He was equal with the Father. These are a few examples.

John 5:30 By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

John 14:31 But the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

In addition, as One obedient to the Father’s will, Jesus said that the Father had sent him. He did not make the decision Himself to come. It was not He who took the initiative to love us and will to save us from our sins. Furthermore, He did not come with His own message or words or determine how He was even going to say all that He did. He was sent with a message from His Father who told Him exactly what to say and how to say it. Now these are amazing statements about the second person of the Trinity, but below are a few excerpts from His own words in the New Testament.

John 7:16 …my teaching is not mine, but His who sent Me.

John 8:42 …I have not come on My own; but He sent Me.

John 8:28, 29 …I do nothing on my own authority but speak as the Father taught me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do what pleases Him.

John 12:49,50 For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent Me commanded Me what to say and how to say it. I know that His command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.

John 14:24 …These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent Me.

John 6:38 For I came down from heaven , not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.

John 3:16, “God (the Father) so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…“

John 4:34 My meat is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.

Jesus’ words are very clear. He was senthere with the Father’s message, not His own message. In fact, over 200 times in John, it is said that Jesus was sent by the Father. Although He is equal to God as deity, though the world was made through Him (John 1:3), though He is the centerpiece of redemption, nevertheless, the Son said that never once did He say anything on His own or ever say anything more or less than what His Father had commanded Him to say. He did all this because His food was only to do the Father’s will and finish His work.

So WHY was the Son sent by the Father and WHAT was it He was sent specifically to do as the woman’s Redeemer? There is an allusion to His work in the Garden of Gethsemane in Luke 22:42 when Jesus prayed, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet, not my will, but yours be done.” It was the Father’s will that Jesus go to the cross. Even though the pressure was immense to do otherwise, He submitted because “I do exactly what My Father has commanded Me.” Paul says in Philippians 2:8 that Jesus “became obedient to death”, implying that Jesus had a command from the Father that He obeyed perfectly. Jesus made specific reference to this death on the cross in John 10:17, 18, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” So the work and will of the Father that the Son was commanded to do as the obedient Son who always pleased His Father was to give His life on the cross to redeem Adam and Eve and their seed.

But WHEN was this command given? Again, the Scripture alludes to a covenant within the Trinity that took place long before Adam’s sin in the garden. Paul says that “God chose us in Him (Christ) before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His (the Father’s) sight. In love He (the Father) predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His (the Father’s) pleasure and will to the praise of His (the Father’s) glorious grace…” I Peter 1:20 says the same thing, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” Somewhere in eternity past, the Father chose the Son to be the Redeemer, and the Son submitted to the Father’s will to do exactly as the Father had commanded Him. The will of the Father even then included the cross because in Revelation 13:8 John calls Jesus “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.”

In this light, the last words of Jesus on the cross before His death have a much deeper meaning. As the obedient Son who always does the Father’s will and pleases Him, as the One who was sent here by the Father from before the creation of the world to give His life for the sheep and lose none of them, as the One chosen by the Father and commanded to crush the head of the serpent and redeem man, He accomplished all this when he said, “It is finished.” (John 19:30) He did not mean, “Thank goodness, my suffering is finally over, and I am now going to die.” He meant that He had completed the plan the Father and He had agreed upon in eternity. Redemption for the man and woman was completed. So the diagram above should look like this. (http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_4_-_Genesis_3_-_The_Eternal_Covenant.pages)

It is sometime asked, “If God knows everything, why did He put the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden in the first place? And why did He allow the things in Genesis 3 to happen?” There is only one answer. It was Divinely planned. Beyond this answer, only the Lord Himself knows. “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. .” (Acts 2:23)

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Playing Chess With the Devil: Making Sense of the Most Popular Book In the World. Genesis 4,5,6. Let the Games Begin. Lesson 5

A few years ago there was an unusual painting of a chess game in a museum. In the painting, a young boy sat on one side of the board and the devil sat on the other side. The boy had a defeated look on his face. The devil had a smile on his. On the chess board, the pieces were arranged in such a way that it looked as if the devil had the boy in checkmate. One day along came a famous chess master who was intrigued by the painting. He studied the chess board. After a while, he ordered someone to bring him a chess board and to set it up just like it was in the painting. Then he said, “I think I can save that boy.”

That is where we are now in Genesis 4. The devil checkmated Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Or so it appeared. The Lord made a promise to Satan in which He said, “I will save that man and woman.” The promise had been made. A Redeemer would come from Eve to avenge her and Adam and crush Satan’s head. Satan heard those words. In fact, the promise was made to him. Right then Satan knew that his life was in danger and that he had one of two options. He either had to prevent the Seed from being born, or he had to kill it once it had been born.

The paragraph above is the basic story of the rest of the Bible. No matter what you read, beginning with Genesis 4 you are always reading something related to the story line above. One could say the main story of the Bible is God’s promise to bring His Redeemer. The sub-plot would be Satan doing all in his power to stop Him. To put it another way, human events of every kind take place in the Bible. That is the action taking place on the stage in FRONT of the curtain. But BEHIND the curtain, directing all the visible action and giving it meaning, is the paragraph above. This is the part that is usually missing in most Bible teaching and preaching. This is why one can go to church all of his life and almost have no idea what the stories in the Bible are all about or how they are tied together.

But the second paragraph above can also be reduced to just ONE word: JESUS. The whole Bible is about Jesus Christ. Every event, every story, every person is about Jesus Christ. The Bible is not about moralisms or how to live your life or be a better person. It is PRIMARILY about Jesus. Application to one’s life certainly comes from the Bible in many ways, but the Bible is about Jesus and the second paragraph above. Therefore, Jesus must always be presented as the primary subject when teaching or preaching Scripture. If He is not, then the teacher missed the real point of the Bible’s purpose and message.

To put this another way, Revelation 12:1-5 gives a summary of the entire Old Testament and the four Gospels. The rest of the verses in Revelation 12 summarize the rest of the New Testament. In verses 1-5, a glorious woman appears in the heavens. She stands on the moon with a crown of 12 stars on her head. She is decked with radiant light from the sun. Her most noticeable feature is that she is pregnant with child and is about to give birth. Standing directly in front of her is a hideous, mutated crimson dragon with seven diademed heads and ten horns.  His huge tail sweeps down through the universe. No matter where she turns, the dragon always positions himself directly in front of her because he wants to devour that child as soon as He is born.

To interpret, the woman was originally Eve and the Redeemer child she would bear. But the picture now is clearly figurative and Eve has become the church of the Old Testament. In the womb of the church in the Old Testament was “a male child, One who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.” (Revelation 12:5) That was Jesus, that Seed from Eve who was not born directly to her but was passed along from generation to generation through a chosen line in her family. The repulsive creature is Satan (Revelation 12:9). As the ages and events of Scripture passed, Satan watched and waited for the woman’s Seed to appear. Many times he moved his king or queen directly into the path of the Redeemer in the Old Testament and attempted to end the game. But Revelation 12: 5 summarizes the Gospels like this: “…but her child was caught up to God and to his home.” Satan attempted to kill Him. It appeared that Satan’s queen landed right on top of the Redeemer at the cross, but the child escaped Satan’s clutches by rising from the dead and ascending back to heaven. The rest of Revelation 12 is about the war that Satan is waging on the Child’s seed in revenge since  he had missed killing the Seed Himself.

As you read Genesis 4 and 5, you see the devil’s strategy evolve as time passes. It speaks of the nature and the intelligence of this creature God made. Such affront and audacity before the Creator by one of His creations should have been unimaginable. But these ploys are masterpieces. They were effective then, and they are still effective today. Satan uses them over and over even until now as he wars against the church. It is amazing that a creature could devise and employ such bold, courageous, and defiant moves against his Creator. But here they are. There are four of them. He pulled out every stop to insure that his head was never crushed.

First, Satan Brought Direct Frontal Attack Against the Redeemer

As both Satan and Eve heard God’s promise about the woman’s Seed in the Garden of Eden, it would have been logical for both of them to assume that the first immediate offspring of Eve would be the Redeemer. The woman and the devil both probably concluded that since God’s judgments in Chapter 3 were immediate, so would be His deliverance. So when Eve became pregnant by Adam, she must have deduced that the one-man cavalry who would avenge her was on His way. She thought that she had acquired the man promised to her. Thus she gave her first born son, Cain, his name, which means “Acquired”, or, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” The devil may have thought the same thing when he heard Cain’s name and must have assumed that Cain was the Redeemer too. However, just as everyone was concentrating on Cain, another son named Abel, meaning “breath, vapor, or vanity” (indicating that both parents were already feeling the results of the curse on them), was born. Now there were two potential avengers. This was getting confusing. It is interesting to note that both Cain and Abel worshipped the Lord. So there must have been some revelation we do not know about to indicate the proper way to worship the Creator after Eden. One of the brothers conformed to that standard of worship, and one did not. Cain offered to God labor from his ground. Abel offered a sacricial animal, indicating atonement for sin by blood. The latter was accepted; the former was not. Since Cain had not made a move against the devil and the Lord also rejected Cain’s offering, Satan realized that God was using misdirection to divert him from the Conqueror. He concluded the righteous son of Eve, Abel, was the Redeemer instead. Therefore, Satan moved swiftly in the heart of Cain with jealousy and hatred and with Cain’s hands killed the woman’s supposed Seed, Abel, just as surely as if he had employed his own hands. This method of a straightforward, personal assault to kill the Seed by directing someone else’s hands would also be used by Satan as his very last act against the Redeemer in the New Testament. To make an analogy, Satan’s most powerful tool was himself. He thought he saw the Lord’s King on the board and decided to make a straight path to him. So with his queen, he swept all the way across the board down an unblocked lane and knocked Him off the board for an instant defeat. How simple that must have seemed to the Tempter to have dispatched The Promise with such ease. He had dishonored God in the Garden, and now he had dispatched his great Champion as well. The devil was no fool. He was a Grandmaster too. He could think ahead, and he could act instantly through another with abrupt counter-moves to the Promise when opportunites like that presented themselves. But Satan soon discovered that Abel was not the Seed either. The King wasn’t even on the playing surface yet. It was only a decoy. If Satan thought he was confused now, there were going to be complications of mathematical proportions for him to decipher as time progressed.

Second, Satan Used His Own Pawns Against the Redeemer

Genesis 4 and 5 gives the history of two family lines – Adam’s line through his son Cain and Adam’s line through his son Seth. Genesis 4 is the development of Cain’s family line. Through Cain’s family can be seen man’s efforts at carrying out part of the Cultural Mandate in Genesis 1:28 of increasing in number and filling the earth, as civilization and cities (4:17) were built. The latter part of the chapter shows man’s progress in subduing the earth as from the ground he learns to make tents, study animal husbandry, raise livestock, invent music and make musical instruments, and explore mining and forge tools. All these events imply a long passage of time and the development of society on the earth. But Cain’s line also shows the evolution and maturity of sin, corruption, and violence in the human family through murder, revenge, and polygamy. Satan was at work in God’s world so that when and if another possible Conqueror should mysteriously appear again, there were going to be powerful and creative forces of resistance under his command surrounding the Redeemer on every hand, forces so full of brutality and bloodshed that killing the Seed would require little effort from a world under the devil’s control. If the devil’s queen did not take Him out, then his rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns would be at his disposal if any other bounties appeared on the devil’s head. When one reads Genesis 4 and 6, there is one word that best describes the known world before the Flood. Violence (Genesis 6:11). The seed of the serpent predicted in Genesis 3:15 thrived and increased with newly born disciples bred on violence and steeped in progressive decay to do Satan’s will. There would be many people and a world system capable of eliminating any Conqueror.

In Genesis 4:25, God finally makes His first move against Satan. Whereas the devil thought the King had been eliminated, God put His King into play. He gave Adam another son, Seth. This is the second family line highlighted in these chapters. God is not hasty. He had a plan. Unknown to all concerned, there were centuries and millennia to go for Him to carry out His plan. God was going to take His time and set it all up just like He wanted so He would get the devil to do just what He wanted him to do. In the end, the diabolical Grandmaster would be a mere pawn in God’s own hand, and the Lord would play him like a symphony. So Eve is given another son, Seth, which means “Appointed”. She said that God had appointed another son in the place of her murdered son Abel. By faith, she indicated in this name she gave him that God’s Promise had not been killed after all. The effect of this move was that the godly line rejoiced and expressed sure hope in the Lord through Seth by not only Seth’s birth but his son’s birth, Enosh, too. They began to give praise to God and call upon Him when they realized Seth’s line was secure and continued on. If Seth was not the Promised Seed, then he was the father of Him. God was making good on His promise in Genesis 3. All of this commotion and the name given to Seth aroused the devil’s interest afresh. So he swerved directly in front of the pregnant woman of Revelation 12 and focused keenly on this man.

Genesis 5 is almost like a shell game. In a shell game, a pea is hidden beneath one of three walnut shells. The Operator quickly shuffles the shells around while the mark tries to keep his eye on the one with the pea. Satan watched Seth and his children in Genesis 5 while God’s hands flew like lightning on the board. Satan’s eyes dazzled. It was very difficult for Satan to keep track of who was who and where everyone was. For example, Adam lived another 800 years after Seth’s birth and “had other sons and daughters.” (Genesis 5:4) Was Seth another example of God’s slight of hand? Was Seth just another fake King? Was the real King in those other children of Adam’s? In addition to this, Seth and his wife were very fruitful. Seth lived another 807 years after the birth of Enosh and “had other sons and daughters.” (Genesis 5:7) Thus God’s promise shrouded itself somewhere in the midst of Seth’s line. But where? Though the devil lurked closely, the Promise dived beneath the visible surface like a German U-boat sliding beneath the dark depths of the Atlantic and hid Himself from the sight of the dragon as he slipped along silently from person to person over thousands of years without making a peep or move. “Which one is the Avenger?” the devil must have asked. Of the thousands, maybe millions, of children born up until the Flood, which one was the Promise? Quietly through the bedrooms of the ancient world and the boredom of normal family life, the Promise passed along through a few chosen men and women who unknowingly carried with them the Creator of the universe who would someday be man.

The New Testament lists two genealogies of Jesus Christ. One is in Matthew 1. It traces Jesus from Joseph back to Abraham through David to establish His kingly descent. The other traces Him from Mary to David to Abraham to Adam in Luke 3 to establish his kingly descent and humanity as a qualified man who was the Seed of the woman and the son of Adam and the son of Seth. The Jews kept strict records of the family line of the Redeemer in their genealogies for thousands of years that most people find boring to read. But these genealogies possess the proof needed for Jesus to one day make the claim that He was the Messiah and King over Israel. An imposter and fraud could be rooted out by the Redeemer’s family tree contained in the sacred scrolls. All the names mentioned in Genesis 5 are listed in Luke 3:36, 37 because they are the men who carried the Promise in their loins back to Seth and to Adam and Eve.

As the Seed progressed through Seth’s family, sin washed over the human race and strengthened its grip on every man. One notices that the long years of life men possessed at the beginning of Genesis 5 slowly diminish as he reads what happens after Genesis 6. All of Adam’s children met the end that God promised in Genesis 2:17. The curse fell upon everyone. There is a sad refrain at the end of nearly every paragraph in Chapter 5, “and he died…and he died…and he died.” Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”

Third, Satan Flipped the Enemy’s Pieces To His Side

The Promise finally passed to the last man mentioned in Genesis 5 – Noah and one of those three sons, Shem, Ham, or Japheth. We don’t know how long the events of Genesis 4 and 5 took before the Flood. But we do know that it was at least thousands of years because of the long lives of the pre-flood people. The pre-flood world was a developed civilization. But it became a notoriously wicked world. While the Promise sailed under the radar of the dragon in Genesis 4 and 5, the Prince of Darkness worked in God’s human creation through those chapters. What he did and what happened is all explained in Genesis 6:1-13. The earth had become full of vile and exceedingly sinful humans. His next ploy fused together the godly seed of the woman in Genesis 5 with the immoral and violent seeds of the serpent in Genesis 4. They melded together in intermarriage, “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.” (Genesis 6:2) They had not stayed separate as they apparently should have, no more than they do today. Their blending had been so thorough that the rotten ingredients of Genesis 4 completely tainted and disintegrated the whole line in Genesis 5 so that Genesis 6:11,12 says, “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence…all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.” In Genesis 6:5 the state of the human race is described as “…EVERY inclination of the thoughts of man’s heart was ONLY evil ALL THE TIME.” Most likely even the godly line was infected to the core and became like everyone else. If the Lord’s King was to have any moral sense and purpose at all, that moral sense would surely be dissolved and weakened by the parentage that brought Him forth. The termites of spoiled human nature in the godly line would eat His resolve and goal. The devil had moved powerfully against the Promise by establishing his own kingdom as dominant on the earth and was ready to crush the Seed.

Fourth, Satan Put God In the Position To Checkmate Himself

From every appearance, Satan controlled the board, and checkmate was his next move. But Satan wasn’t going to make the checkmate move. God was. Genesis 6:3,13 says that God’s wrath boiled against the people He had created. He so rued the day He had made them that He vowed that in 120 years His fury was going to wipe the floor of the earth with them and their wicked ways. It looked as if the devil had been so effective that God was going to turn His own queen against the line that carried His own King. Satan could not believe his fortune. Neither he nor his seed would have to eliminate the Promise. God was going to do it Himself. With His coming wrath against the world, God was going to hammer His entire creation to oblivion, including the person who secretly hid the Redeemer in his loins. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are sordid chapters on the history of man before the Flood and after God’s Covenant of Redemption with Adam. Satan had turned the tables and forced God to back down and destroy His creation and their Redeemer.

However long chapters 4 and 5 took, there was still only one small piece of God’s revelation known about his covenant Redeemer. He would come from Eve and her line, crush Satan’s head, and the Redeemer’s victory would, by implication, be even more extensive. Nothing else. There was only a seed about a Seed. There was no name given, when He would come, how He would come, and not even any wide-spread knowledge about his ancestors. There was (or had been) a godly line that believed in Him, anticipated Him, and carried Him. But everything now looked bleak and in jeopardy. All hope appeared to be lost.

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by Ron Sombilon Gallery

Playing Chess With the Devil: Making Sense of the Most Popular Book In the World. Genesis 6-11. The Covenant With Noah and Babel. Lesson 6

The situation by Genesis 6:7 looked dour. God’s wrath was coming against the pre-Flood world like a locomotive in 120 years with the awful result being the destruction of every living thing in the creation, including the one who carried the Redeemer in his loins.

But God had made a covenant promise to Eve and to Satan in Genesis 3:15 with these words, “I will…” Thus, God bound Himself and made a unilateral covenant bond in blood, intimating that His own life and death was at stake if He failed to make good on His word. As the sole covenant-maker, He did not require that any conditions be met by Adam or anyone else. The Bible says that God doesn’t lie (Titus 1:2), and the Bible refers to God’s covenants as “the covenants of promise.” So there isn’t any possible way to circumvent or nullify any of those covenants.

Just after the announcement of coming judgment in Genesis 6, it may have appeared very similar to the plot of a serial movie in which at the close of each episode there is always a cliffhanger, as the hero would find himself in a perilous situation from which there was no escape. It may appear often as one continues through the Old and New Testaments that Satan checkmated God, but there is ALWAYS an escape because God is always faithful to His covenant promises, all of them. There is no way for the Almighty God to fail.

The righteous man Noah is the last man named in the godly line in Genesis 5. He was one of those in the pre-Flood days who anticipated the Redeemer and was not tainted by the world’s influence about him. Noah also carried the seed of the Redeemer in him. Therefore, Noah would be spared from the coming judgment of a worldwide Flood. So in Genesis 6:8, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” God also spared Noah’s wife and their three sons with their wives because one of Noah’s three sons was the last one in line and the only living human who carried the Redeemer’s seed.

God instructed Noah to build a mammoth ship that would hold all the animals necessary to repopulate the earth after the Flood. They carried with them enough food for themselves and for the creatures on board. When the time had arrived, God initiated a cataclysmic flood that covered the entire earth by water that came from both above the earth and below the earth out of deep springs (Genesis 7:11, 8:2). The flood drowned every living thing on the earth. The nature of the earth’s surface was probably a lot different before the flood than it is today due to worldwide earthquakes and upheaval that brought in so much water. Noah, his sons, and the promise of the future Redeemer were secured and kept by God according to the last six words in Genesis 7:16 when they entered the ark before the flood began, “Then the Lord shut him in.”

The GrandMaster of the Universe then made one of the most dramatic moves ever found in the history of redemption. Satan’s mighty, pervasively evil kingdom that had millions of eyes and ears on the watch for the Avenger was literally wiped from the earth with one sweep of God’s hand as everything and everyone died. However, the seed of the Redeemer came straight up out of the water like a Triton submarine and floated right in front of Satan in the form of one of Noah’s three sons. There was the Promise, bobbing on the waters of death and destruction on top of Satan’s empire, dining on a cruise ship, and being protected in the ark while Satan’s minions lay in their watery graves below. God simply cleared the board and started again, but this time His King was the only figure standing on the playing surface. As the Lord said, ” I will…“

When the Flood ended, Noah and his family emerged from the great ship. They burnt offerings to God to thank Him for His mercy and grace and preservation. It was then that God made another covenant promise, or the Covenant with Noah. Staring the devil straight in the eyes with a smile, God said, “I now establish my covenant with you (Noah) and your descendants after you.” (Genesis 9:9) This is the second covenant promise in the Covenant of Redemption.

It is important to note here that this is NOT a new covenant. None of the major covenants in the Covenant of Redemption are new. Each of the covenants contains new information, but none of them REPLACE any other covenants before them. The covenants build on one another. They are not like adding beads to a string. The are like extensions of a telescope. There is ONE, unified covenant of redemption that is revealed in parts over time. It looks like the diagram below. (See diagram at http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_6_-_Genesis_6-11_-_The_Covenant_With_Noah_and_Babel.pages)

You will be able to see that the one Covenant of Redemption, like a single telescope, can be pushed in and pulled out of the last extension, Christ. The entire telescope, you could say is about Christ and can be folded into Christ, which, as has been said, is the whole story of the Bible in one word. This is the Covenant of Redemption that God made with Adam and fulfilled in Christ.

The covenant with Noah was essentially a reiteration of the covenant with Adam. The very same mandates given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28, 29 are repeated to Noah (Genesis 9:1-3).

Then God added a new feature to this covenant – a death penalty clause. This was to check the unlimited violence of man against man and against His Promise in the previous world. Man’s life was protected because he was made in the image of God.

The best part about this covenant is that God pasted a banner – a rainbow – across the heavens that would occasionally go up from then to the end of time whenever it rained. That sign was a promise somewhere on the earth everyday that the world would never again be destroyed by water, even though every inclination of man’s heart is evil from childhood (Genesis 9:11-15; 8:21). It was a back door vow, an oath, that the Redeemer would indeed stamp on the serpent’s head unimpeded by any further world judgments like the last one by water. Nothing in the future would ever stop God again from directly fulfilling His guarantee to crush Satan’s head. The promise was marching inexorably toward fulfillment. Regardless of man’s wicked nature henceforth, there weren’t going to be any more detours. The present world order would not be interrupted again. Remember that along with this sign written across the sky reminding and nagging Satan that the clock was running and his doom was sure, the Lord had fastened a nice set of handcuffs on him to add a bit of restraint to his murderous frenzy.

On the other hand, the devil could have taken comfort in the fact that even though his previous game was automatically forfeited, nevertheless, he now had a handle on the situation. He stood face to face with the Promise in one of those three sons. The millions of pre-flood options and their hiding places were now gone. So what if the game was tied at zero again? What difference did it make if the devil had a couple of fouls to start the second half? Things weren’t so bad. He had done well.

The devil focused his attention on the three sons of Noah. Regardless of the fact that it was a new game, nothing had really changed in the nature of man since the Fall in the garden. The corruption resident in the sons of Adam from the Fall always gave birth to vileness when the fertilizer of fleshly temptation was spread upon it. So when the righteous man Noah in a weak moment lost his self-control through intoxication and lay naked in his tent, the sinful nature inherent in his family took its predictable course. We don’t know the exact nature of what happened in Genesis 9:22 when his son, Ham, entered his father’s tent, but something abominable took place as is stated in 9:24. The result was that Noah cursed the son of Ham, Canaan, and his endless generations after him with slavery, 9:25. Their necks would be forever under the boot of bondage. Effectively, no Conqueror from Ham would or could place his heel on the Dragon’s precious heads. That now left two of Noah’s sons to worry about, Japheth and Shem. Which one wore the heavy boots that would come down on his royal diadems?

It didn’t take long for the Tempter to answer that question because Noah continued to speak, moving from cursing Ham’s son to blessing his other two sons (9:26, 27). He clearly stated that Shem would be preeminent and over all. But it was probably the line “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem” that tipped him off. It wasn’t that Noah said “the God of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” He said “the God of Shem.” That was a spedific Messianic note sounded through Shem. The Japhethites would be prosperous and have political dominion. But, Noah said, even the Japhethites would live in the light of and be blessed by the presence of Shem who was promised sustenance and special protection by God while the cursed son of Ham would serve Shem. Little did the Devil know then that Shem’s descendants would grow to be the nation the Devil would direct all his rage against in what became the Semites (or Shemites), the Jewish race of the Bible. The Devil would become the Adolf Hitler of Eternal Darkness and the personification of anti-Semitism as he hunted among them from house to house looking for the Promise he hated.

As an aside, from those three sons of Noah, all the nations of the world came forth and spread upon the earth. The Japhethites went northward generally.(10:1-4). The Hamites moved eastward and south and became centralized in the eastern Mediterranean (10:6-20). The Shemites remained centralized generally in the eastern Mediterranean although many of these places in the whole chapter are unknown today (10:21-31)

Then something sinister began to evolve in Ham’s wider family. As the peoples of the earth after the flood rooted themselves in their regions, the Hamites established solidarity with countless generations of those who were hostile against the Seed of the woman. For example, in 10:6, Mizraim is named as a descendant of Ham along with Canaan. Mizraim’s descendants later became the Egyptians who were and always have been in antithesis to the Promise. Another grandson of Ham, Nimrod (10:8), juxtapositioned himself against the Promise and its people for centuries by posting himself and his kingdom up in Babylon and Assyria and taking on the character of “a mighty warrior on the earth…and a mighty hunter before the Lord” (10:8, 9). Driven by Satan in his rage against God, these nations absorbed the character of their great ancestor Nimrod whose prowess as a hunter is pejoratively mentioned here. All of the later history of these peoples from this region of the world points to Nimrod’s moral character as a hunter of men, not animals. He established an autocratic, imperialistic, despotic system of tyranny that was used often against the Seed of the woman in attempts to eradicate the Promise from Israel’s soil. Nimrod’s rapacious attitude and character became the unifying principle for the men of that region and the events of Genesis 11. The wicked momentum that was gaining in the line of Ham through Nimrod soon consolidated men in those lands politically and in a sense religiously. It started to spread and soon the whole world was drawn to godless rebellion and violence once again against the Creator and His authority (11:1-4). Ultimately, it would be directed against the Promised Seed of the woman if allowed to progress unstopped.

At the time, the whole world’s communication was based on one language spoken by all. That one simple language allowed Nimrodic schemes to coagulate rapidly and coalesce into a unified stand against God in the building of a political and religious center of operations in Babel (Babylon), the seat of Nimrod’s tyranny. From here, his command center, Satan could hunt the Seed with the whole world pursuing Him in swift, clear, common communication with one another. Their hunt for the Seed would be precise and decisive. Since God had promised Noah that never again would He destroy the world by water and that there would forever be “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night” (Genesis 8:22), wiping out the world again was not an option to stop the gathering clouds of darkness. So the Sovereign Lord came down among them in Babylon and sabotaged theirs and all international, unifying language forever by confounding the one tongue spoken by all and breaking it into thousands of tongues and dialects (11:5-9). Understanding each other’s words, meanings, nuances, and intents became a nightmare and confusion, which is what resulted at Babel. From that day, diplomacy between nations would forever be a curse for men, but it would be the same also for Satan in his quest for the Promise. Whatever conspiring was done – evil or good – was forever fraught with misunderstanding, thus retarding the progress of wrongdoing and conspiracy wherever it appeared. Such barriers of speech would distance men from one another, make them suspect of each other, and seclude and isolate them in their territories and countries from that day forward. There would never be international union and cooperation again till the end of time. Nations would tear at one another and be at each other’s throats without reprieve. A few would consort together from time to time but with difficulty. Most would be at odds with each other most of the time. The Tempter was now to face division and wrangle on every hand when he attempted to bond nations together against God’s Seed. These events probably took place well before 4000 B.C. Though Satan appeared to be equal to God at times, the Sovereign Lord ruled with almighty hand over all the affairs of His covenant with Adam and Noah, and none could stay His hand.

Meanwhile, the Promise proceeded along family lines in the sons of Shem, moving silently as it always had from him to Arphaxad to Shelah to Eber (who became father of the Hebrews) to Peleg (10:22-25). Peleg probably knew little about the Promise he held or why the world suddenly became such a bizarre place to live in on one day in his life. On that day the whole world had need of speech pathology because men’s tongues tangled themselves. Worldwide confusion, fear, anger, and separation between peoples took immediate effect. It would have been incomprehensible to him that the reason everyone talked one way on one day and then talked differently the next day was indirectly because of him (10:25). He had witnessed a cataclysmic, miraculous event of Biblical proportion in his lifetime, but how could he have known that it was because of the future King within him?

Genesis 11:18-26 continues to trace the footprint of the Redeemer till it comes up to the one man whose presence dominates the rest of Genesis and, for that matter, much of the rest of the Bible – Abraham. God’s covenant promise to Adam and Noah had stealthily moved through antediluvian and postdiluvian times with two eras of major revelation over a numbered period of years that are unknown to us. But special revelation began its third period of pronouncement when God chose and called his servant Abraham from out of the center of the symbol of Imperialism.

Up to this time, the only knowledge about God’s Promise was that a single Being would come, whose lineage was traced through Shem to Noah and eventually back to Adam and Eve. That individual would do mortal damage to the one who had deceived Eve and brought death and ruin to God’s creation. Nothing more was known about Him than that. It was only an ancient Promise, passed on from generation to generation. But nothing had happened. Nothing had changed except that corruption had advanced exceedingly, and man, the masterpiece of God’s creation, was drowning in an endless cycle of death (Genesis 5, “…and then he died…and then he died”) and was in desperate need of redemption. Only a naked Promise of “I will” from God stood. But there had been nothing more for a long time. A very long time. God had remained silent, and the world waited.

“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness.” (II Peter 3:8,9) But the desert of silence was about to bloom. Two hundred and fifteen amazing years of redemptive revelation was about to come down. That revelation was going to give a wealth of more details, more data, and more definition about the Promise. With Abraham, God took the artist’s brush in His hand, and He sketched a broad outline of the portrait of His Promise. From Genesis 12-50, He dabbled meaningless paint on the fabric. He sketched a few rich but incoherent details about His Promise’s nature, His family, His work, and His destiny. At the end of Genesis, the Seed of 3:15, however, would still be unrecognizable, but all those marks on that canvas would eventually be splotches of paint that were needed for the whole picture to be complete. One day you would see an altogether lovely picture of His Promise. It would be so clear that it looked like a color digital photograph of His face and His life, so clear that you would wonder how anyone could not see Him in all His glory. Each touch of paint would tell you something about Him, but none of them by themselves meant much.

In spite of all the devil’s display of power and attempts at eradication of the Promise, this man, Abraham, who would be at the center of all of redemptive history throughout the Bible, came – unbelievably – straight up out of the middle of the devil’s lair and Nimrod’s empire where Satan had made his last stand to find the Promised Seed of the woman at Babylon. Yes, Babylon! Abraham’s family emerged directly out of Babylon from the Ur of the Chaldees (11:31) The Promise sat right there, invisibly, directly in front of and right under the devil’s nose. What irony! The Lord played with his foe like a cat with a helpless mouse.

“Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Romans 11:33,34)

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Playing Chess With the Devil: Making Sense of the Most Popular Book In the World. Genesis 12-22. The Covenant With Abraham. Lesson 7

The Importance of Abraham

You are now approaching one of the most important sections of Scripture there is as far as interpretation of the Bible is concerned. Genesis 12-22 is absolutely key for understanding much of the rest of the Bible. Romans, Galatians, and parts of Hebrews are directly linked to these chapters. Without some kind of knowledge of Genesis – and Abraham in particular – much of the Bible is not going to make any sense. Furthermore, Genesis 12-22 presents the first major fork in the road for Biblical interpretation that will determine many things for a believer from this point on. It will sway one on which group of Christians he is likely to associate with, what churches he is likely to attend, what denominations he will likely join, and all kinds of emphases that will attract his attention, such as prophecy and his view on the nation of Israel, for example. In addition, one of the most dramatic periods of revelation in the history of redemption was about to begin. In the next 200 years, the Lord gave a ton of information about Eve’s Avenger and His identity.

Christ Primary in Genesis 12-22

After His resurrection In Luke 24:13-27, Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus and walked unrecognized with His disciples who were discussing all the events that had happened primarily in the previous week. Jesus asked them what they were talking about, and they were astounded that He had not heard about these events. When he asked them “What things?”, they told Him about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, his crucifixion, the disappearance of His body and the reported appearance of angels at his tomb that very morning.  All this was related with sadness and perplexity about what it all meant. It was then that Jesus said,

“‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (See also John 5:39)

In this summary of Scripture above, you will come to understand that Jesus would have had to talk about Abraham and how he pointed to Himself in His suffering followed by glory. Although you might not expect it, God’s covenant with Abraham is LOADED with Christ as the major theme in these verses.

The Covenant With Abraham – The Promise

**There is a diagram towards the end of this lesson on page 9 that you may use to follow the development of this discussion about Abraham’s heir. It may be found also at: http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_7_-_Genesis_12-22_-_The_Covenant_With_Abraham.pages

When Genesis 12 begins, Abraham and his childless wife were living in Haran with his father Terah. The whole family had been on its way from Ur of the Chaldees to go live in Canaan but had settled in Haran along the way. When Abraham was 75 and his wife Sarah was 65, God spoke to Abraham and made a covenant promise him. Remember that Abraham was directly in the promised line of Shem through whom the Redeemer would come.

The covenant promise to Abraham is found in Genesis 12:3-4 in its initial portion, but it just keeps coming and unfolding in the following chapters with more information. Let’s take a look at each of these installments and see how the content of the covenant develops as time passes.

The first is in Genesis 12:3,4. Four simple facts are presented.

I will make you a great nation.
I will make your name great.
I will bless/curse those who bless/curse you.
All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

The second installment is just a few verses later in Genesis 12:7. “I will give your offspring this land.” God will give Abraham a LAND and OFFSPRING. It is easy to start concluding prematurely that the land and people are Canaan or Israel and the Jews or the nation of Israel.

In the third mention of this covenant promise in Genesis 13:14-16, God says he will give both ABRAHAM and his OFFSPRING this LAND FOREVER, and the offspring will be as INNUMERABLE AS THE DUST OF THE EARTH. Although many think the land is Canaan or Israel, Abraham knew right then that it wasn’t because God said the land given to his offspring would be theirs FOREVER. Isn’t it apparent that Canaan and Israel aren’t going to be there forever? The Bible tells us the end of this world is coming, all will be burned up, and there will be a new heavens and a new earth, II Peter 3:10-13. Therefore, Abraham looked forward to not just a small, local patch of land but to an entirely new WORLD that would be his and his offspring’s, which is exactly what Romans 4:13 says, “…Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world…”

In Genesis 15:1, the 4th mention of the covenant promise, God tells Abraham what the real objective of the covenant is: GOD HIMSELF is Abraham’s great reward. Here is a hint at what is coming. It is called the Immanuel Principle, that God will dwell in the midst of His people and be with them forever.

Let’s summarize what we have so far. God is going to make Abraham’s name great by making him into a great nation of people who are as numerous as the dust of the earth in their own land, which is the world, forever where God Himself will be the great reward. The land will not be the center of Abraham’s inheritance. The blessing of the covenant is that God Himself will be the heart of the inheritance and will be what the covenant promise is all about, which is exactly the condition that existed in the Garden of Eden where Adam lived directly in the presence of and in fellowship with his Creator . Here God announces that He is restoring through Abraham a people in a world that will be theirs forever and a condition (God with them) which will approximate Eden.

To continue the fourth announcement in Genesis 15:2-5, since Abraham had yet had no children to even suggest he was going to have any of the promises mentioned, Abraham concludes that his heir must be his servant Eliezer. However, God tells him that a son from Abraham’s own body – other than Eliezer his servant – will be his heir and through that son his offspring will be as numerable as the stars. Now let’s stop right here. No name of the child he will have is given. Nor is a time given when this will happen. It looks as if Abraham concluded somehow that this Son from his own body would be the “great reward” of God Himself and the One who would link together all these promises he was being given. You must remember that Abraham was in the direct line of Noah and Shem and Peleg through whom the promise of the Redeemer would come. So Abraham was probably aware of part of his heritage and the fact that the Conqueror would likely come through his branch of the family. It is not difficult to conclude that from what he had heard thus far that the promise was actually going to be realized through himself. When one reads Genesis 15:6, that seems to be exactly what Abraham thought because the text says, “…he believed the Lord, and He (the Lord) counted it to him as righteousness.” One is not counted righteous by believing just anything God says or by believing that any son would come from him but by believing in Christ who justifies the ungodly. This is exactly the point expressed in Romans 3:21-4:5. Jesus Himself expressed exactly what Abraham believed, and what became clearer and clearer to Abraham as his days passed, in John 8:56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see MY day. He saw it and was glad.”

In addition, there is something even more significant here that comes from the New Testament and may not be so apparent without the New Testament. Galatians 3:16 says, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring (seed). It does not say, ‘And to offsprings (seeds),’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ.” So it is clear the promises God made to Abraham were also to Christ, who was the single heir, or Seed, of Abraham in whom all these offspring as numerable as dust and stars are found. What this means is that the promise of land (or the world) and people was to Abraham’s ONE SEED. The promises weren’t made to many people, which is what one could easily conclude without Galatians 3:16. If the promises had been made to many people, then the promises would have been made to the Jews. But Paul says in Galatians that the promises were made to one seed, or one person, who is Christ.

With that in mind, take another look at Genesis 12:3,4.

I will make you a great nation – God will make Christ into a great nation.
I will make your name great – a name that is above every name.
I will bless/curse those who bless/curse you – depending on what one does with Christ, that is his destiny.
All peoples on earth will be blessed through you – people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. It all refers to Christ.

View Christ through Genesis 13:14-16, “All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.” All the land, or the world (according to Romans 4:13) will be given to Christ, and the offspring through Christ will be as the dust of the earth (or innumerable). All of this accords with other Scriptures about Christ. For example, in Psalm 2:8 God says to His Son, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” There is the promise of people and land to Abraham’s single Seed.

Therefore, Abraham concluded somewhere in here that whoever his Son was going to be, He was his heir and all the offspring promised to Abraham was in that one Seed, or Heir, or connected to that Seed.

The Oath – Genesis 15:8-21

After Abraham believed God’s promise about the heir from his own body, he asked God this question, “How can I know I will take possession of the land, or world, you promised me forever?” He wanted some assurance.

That question provoked an incredible response from God, as it should have. God could have simply said to Abraham, “Because I SAID SO.” That would have and could have ended it all right there because the Bible says that God NEVER LIES, Titus 1:2, Numbers 23:19. But God didn’t do that. God did something that has never been repeated ever again. One who never lies does not need to do anything else when He makes a promise. His word is truth, and it is sufficient by itself. But in this case, God went further than that and backed up his promise with an OATH, or another short term promise to guarantee the long term promise. It was a promise to promise. The One who never lies took an oath to prove He was telling the truth. This is an incredulous event, and it has ramifications one would not expect. The writer to Hebrews refers to God’s promise and His oath in Genesis 15 as “two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie…” Hebrews 6:13-18. The first unchangeable thing was God’s promise. Then comes the second unchangeable thing, God’s oath.

He told Abraham to cut into pieces a heifer, a female goat, a ram, and place with them a slain turtle dove and pigeon. He caused a deep sleep to fall upon Abraham. God then gave Abraham a powerful vision in which He passed between the pieces of the slain and torn animals.

Abraham knew what God was doing. He had taken part in similar ceremonies. This is the way important contracts were sealed in his culture. If two people agreed to certain terms, instead of signing documents they would both pass between parts of animals that had been killed and hewn. They were declaring, “May this be done to me if I do not fulfill my promises.” God passed through the carnage of the dissected animals. It was a unilateral covenant. Only God passed through those pieces. He was saying to Abraham: “May this be done to me if I do not fulfill my promises to you.” He made a covenant to forfeit His own life should He fail. Since God cannot lie, Hebrews 6 says that this promise and oath together is a “sure and steadfast anchor for the soul (verse 19).” We have God’s promise, and we have His promise supported by His oath that what He promised to Abraham will come to pass. God essentially said that when you see the oath completed, you will know for an absolute certainty that I will fulfill my promise.

The oath included God passing through the pieces of meat, but it also included some very specific new information in 15:13-16, 18-21. God said that the physical descendants that would come from Abraham would eventually be in bondage in a land not theirs (Egypt) for 400 years. God promised He would deliver Abraham’s physical descendants from Egypt and bring them to Canaan once the Amorites had filled up their cup of sins. It is then that God will give Abraham’s physical descendants the physical land of Canaan in its entirety outwards to the boundaries defined in verses 18-21.

According to Joshua 21:43-45, God performed His oath perfectly about 600-800 years later. Solomon was at the height of his political power in I Kings 4:20-21 and II Chronicles 9:26 and still enjoyed the benefits of God having fulfilled that oath. Shortly afterward, the borders of God’s promise began to shrink because of Israel’s disobedience. By the time of the New Testament, all of that land possession promised in Genesis 15 was gone, and the physical descendants of Abraham have never received it back (and never will again) because the land promise was part of the oath and not part of the promise. Thus, the oath having been completed, we are assured the larger promise will be too.

Ishmael – Genesis 16

In Genesis 16, Abraham is still waiting for that son, or his Heir, that God promised him. He is now 86, and Sarah is 76. His wife thinks her age will preclude her ever having any children with Abraham. So she tells him to have a child with her maidservant Hagar, which Abraham does since he must have concluded the same as she and that God meant Abraham’s Heir would come through another, namely Hagar. It made Sarah very jealous of Hagar when Sarah discovered Hagar was pregnant. God made a promise to Hagar that her son’s descendants would be “too numerous to count.” (16:9) Abraham had heard those words before and probably understood them conclusively to mean that the Heir God gave him was going to be the son of Hagar. Abraham gave him the name Ishmael. Ishmael eventually became the father of the Arab nations.

The Covenant Reaffirmed – Genesis 17:1-8

In the fifth word from God in Genesis 17:1-8, God reaffirms His covenant of an increasing number of descendants through Abraham’s heir, or Seed, so that Abraham will be the father of many nations and that kings will come from him. This accords with Romans 4:16-18 where Abraham is called the father of many nations. We know at the end of time in the new heavens and new earth that the new world will be made up of those from every tribe, language, people, and nation (Revelation 4:9), and the glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it (Revelation 21:26). The people who make up this new world are called “kings and priests to God” (Rev. 1:6, KJV), or a “kingdom of priests” who will rule and reign with God in his kingdom. The same is repeated in Revelation 5:8-10, “…with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” This fuller description of the descendants of Abraham excludes just the Jews only as being Abrahams’ descendants because many nations are included.

God also repeats that this covenant is EVERLASTING. The land of Canaan will be both Abraham’s and his descendants’ EVERLASTING possession. And…God will be the God of both Abraham and his descendants. Here the Immanuel Principle is slightly expanded in this promise, but it is important to see that the descendants of Abraham through his Heir will be believers and own the Lord as their God. Again, everything keeps getting winnowed down in its specifics to a place and time that is not of this world but is more like a reestablished Eden before sin.

To summarize this again, God is going to make Abraham’s name great by making his Heir into a great nation of kingly, royal people who are as numerous as the dust of the earth and the stars of the sky in their own land forever, which is the world or new heavens and new earth, where God Himself will dwell with His people forever as their God. All these people are going to be in Abraham’s heir, Christ. The land will not be the center of Abraham’s inheritance. The blessing of the covenant is that God Himself will be the heart of the inheritance, which is exactly the condition that existed in the Garden of Eden where Adam, as God’s regent, enjoyed the Garden and all the earth in the presence of God. Here God announces that He is restoring through Abraham a people, a land, and a condition which will approximate Eden.

Circumcision – The Sign of the Covenant, Genesis 17:9-14

God then gives Abraham a physical sign of his covenant promise and its significance. That sign is circumcision and was to be placed on all of Abraham’s male, physical descendants and any brought into the covenant relationship with God who were not his physical descendants. It was to be a reminder of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants through Abraham’s Heir and how they became covenant recipients. He would circumcise their hearts. A circumcised heart is a heart that has had the flesh (sin) cut from it so that that person would love the Lord with all his heart and soul, and live (Deuteronomy 30:6). A circumcised heart would own the Lord as his God and God would dwell with him. So it was an apt emblem of the promises made to Abraham for any of Abraham’s descendants to bear. (As an aside, the sign of circumcision on males only and removal of sin by blood was later changed to baptism and removal of sin by water in the New Testament after Christ had fulfilled all the covenant promises given to Him by the Father. The new sign included both males and females as a signature of completion of the covenant.)

Isaac, Abraham’s Heir? – Genesis 17:15-22

God at last announces the coming of the promised son from both Abraham’s and Sarah’s own bodies. Abraham is now 99, and Sarah is 89. Abraham laughs at these words when he hears that his wife is going to have a baby and tells God to just let Ishmael be his heir, as he had probably supposed he was anyway. But God said, “…your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.” The Ishmaelites will be blessed by God with great numbers, but the blessing they receive will not be the blessing promised by God through Isaac.

The 6th and final covenant word comes to Abraham in Genesis 21:1-12. In this chapter, Isaac is born. About three years after he is weaned, there is a feast to celebrate. Ishmael, who is about 14 years old mocks Isaac and his mother Sarah. Sarah becomes very angry, casts out both Hagar and Ishmael, and declares “that slave woman’s son will never share the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

This greatly distresses and upsets Abraham, but God tells him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” So now Abraham learns that not even Isaac is Abraham’s Heir. Rather, that Heir is coming THROUGH ISAAC.

Genesis 22 – The Sacrifice of Isaac on Mt. Moriah

All the previous information explains why in Genesis 22 Abraham was able to take his son Isaac, at God’s command, to be sacrificed on Mt. Moriah. Abraham knew that Isaac carried the Seed, or Abraham’s Heir, in whom were all of Abraham’s descendants and the land he looked for. Yet he was willing to sacrifice him. Why? He believed that God could order the killing of Abraham’s son Isaac through whom Abraham’s Heir would come if He wanted to, but eventually God would have to raise Isaac from the dead because God had made both a promise and taken an oath, which made it impossible for God to lie. So, in a sense, Abraham believed in both the death and the resurrection of the coming Seed promised to him. Hebrews 11:17-19.

Genesis 12-22 Viewed From the New Testament

Now all of this discussion squares precisely with what the New Testament says Abraham believed. Read Hebrews 11:9-19, 39-40. Abraham and all the saints of the Old Testament who followed him looked for a country of their own…a better country…a heavenly one, not the land of Canaan. They looked for a new heavens and a new earth. It is interesting to note verses 39-40, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.” Even though Joshua 21:43-45 says that the Jews received all the land of Canaan as promised by God so that “not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled,” nevertheless, “…none of them received what had been promised.“

Romans 9:1-9

The diagram below illustrates the facts in Genesis 12-22 and the information referred to in Romans 9:1-9. In these verses in Romans, Paul sorrows for the people of Israel. He says that he would, if he could, be cut off from Christ for the sake of his people. He says that they had every advantage a people could have for being saved from sin. They had the adoption of sons, the divine glory, the covenants, the law, the temple worship, the

promises, the patriarchs, and even the lineage of Christ traced through them. But they were still lost in their sins because of unbelief.

Well, what happened? If they had these promises that they were the chosen people of God as the descendants of Abraham who would inherit an everlasting land, then they should have been saved and inherited the promises. Or, God’s promises to them have failed. But the fact is that neither of these is true. As a people, they are not (and never were) the chosen people of God to whom the promises were made, and God’s promises NEVER fail. There was an OATH and a PROMISE that they would not fail. Then how do we account for this failure of all of Abraham’s physical descendants to be saved?

The answer is in verses 6-9. Abraham had a son named Jacob whose name was later changed to Israel. Jacob, or Israel, had 12 sons. Each of those sons became one of the twelve tribes of Israel, or of Jacob, from which came the Jewish nation. So every natural born Jew is from one of those twelve tribes or sons of Jacob whose name is also Israel. Paul says ” not all who descended from Israel (Jacob) are Israel (or the promised descendants of Abraham).” Right there Paul makes a distinction between two different Israels. Paul earlier spoke of two different Israels in Romans 2:28, 29. There he differentiates between an OUTWARD Jew and an INWARD Jew, one whose heart is circumcised and one whose heart is not circumcised. We might call this the difference between a PHYSICAL Jew or Israelite, and a SPIRITUAL Jew or Israelite. Or, we could say a Jew who is a natural descendant of Abraham and a Jew who is a child of the promise through Abraham’s Heir, Christ. So although it appears that Israel as a whole may not be saved and, therefore, that God’s promises have failed, if one takes into account this distinction between the two Israels, God’s promises have not and will not fail at all because not every individual Jew is really a Jew in the truest sense of the word. There are Jews who are the natural children of Abraham, and there are Jews who are children of the promise. The true children of God do not run through the naturally born children of Abraham but through the line of promise that runs through Christ.

In verse 7, Paul takes it back even a step further. “Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children.” In other words (verse 8), “it is not the natural children who are God’s children.” Paul is saying that because you are a Jew and can trace your lineage back to Jacob, or Israel, and even back to Abraham to whom the original promise was made does not mean you are one of Abraham’s seed. So the Jews as a whole that are born to the twelve sons of Jacob are not the seed of Abraham.

Then who is? The answer is in verse 7, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” If Abraham’s offspring is reckoned (regarded, thought of as) through the promise made to Abraham through Isaac and ultimately through Christ and not reckoned (regarded, thought of) as through the natural born children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then it is as verse 8 says, “…it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.” The offspring of Abraham takes a sharp turn from the Jewish nation – which is not in the line of promise – and runs through Christ who IS in the line of promise. In the diagram, it is plain to see that the line of promise goes from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Judah and eventually to Christ, and the Jewish nation as a whole is bypassed. So those who are in Christ, or promised to Christ, are the seed of Abraham. As Paul says in Galatians 3: 7, “…those who believe are the children of Abraham.” Again in Galatians 3:29, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

How All This Fits Together In the History of Redemption and God’s Promise to Crush the Serpent’s Head

To tie all this together into the story of redemption up to this point in the Old Testament, during the days of Abraham, God finally opened the windows of heaven and brought in a solar system of information and light about the Conqueror of Genesis 3. The world had waited thousands of year to hear anything beyond the promise of Genesis 3 that a Deliverer was on the way. Maybe many had given up hope. Probably few paid any attention because it had been so long. Little information had come. The devil had made some significant advances, but in the end, they were all frustrated. Then, like a brilliant sun across the sky just after it lifts above the horizon, blazing revelation poured down from on high through Abraham. In these chapters, God said that the essence of Eden would be restored. Whereas the devil had brought the human race under condemnation and had alienated His creation from Him, God said He was going to renew everything with a new world and a people more numerous than the stars of the sky and the sands of the sea. These people would be kings and reign with the Lord. The Lord would be their God, and He would dwell in their midst forever. The Lord would fulfill His promise through one Child of Abraham who would come through Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. This Child, even if He were killed, would come back from the dead. Nothing could stop Him.This was a promise from God that was backed up by an oath. There was NO POSSIBILITY of failure. God would redo all the devil had undone. The devil’s doom was sure. The world could rejoice, but it was a dark day for the kingdom of darkness. The Lord moved His pieces on the chess board with authority and at will to let the devil know that He was in charge and that it was only a matter of time when the Heir of Abraham would stamp on the dragon’s seven hideous heads.

But this information also let the devil know where he could grab on to the end of the ball of yarn and just follow it along till he came to the Redeemer for whom Satan himself had plans of his own.

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Playing Chess With the Devil. Making Sense of the Most Popular Book In the World. Genesis 1. The Creation. Lesson 1

Genesis 1:1

The Bible begins with the Creation of the world in Genesis 1. Although Scripture says that God created the world, John 1:1-3 and Colossians 1: 15,16 say that Christ was fully participant as God in the creation that was made for His own glory. The creation is a demonstration of the omnipotent power of God to create everything from nothing (Hebrews 11:3). , The Bible never tries to prove the existence or the power of God here or anywhere else. That fact is ASSUMED because the Scriptures teach that all men have an innate knowledge of their Creator and His existence. It is built in every one of us (Romans 1:18-20; 2:14, 15). Thus you have to work hard and fight against this knowledge that is always evident to you. You have to deceive yourself into believing that there is no God because the entire creation is screaming the glory of God night and day to all its inhabitants (Psalm 19:1-4), which leaves each of them without any excuses. (Romans 1:20)

The opening verse of the Bible presents these two very important truths:

1. There is a Creator

2. And there is a Creation

You might say that the Bible teaches Two-ism about the world and reality. All is two. There is a Creator and there is a creation. The Creator is not His creation. He lives apart from it and above it. And the creation is not Him. Nothing in His creation contains divinity – not Mother Earth, not any animals, not any humans. They are creatures. They were made by the Creator. Divinity and creature remain distinct.

The Biblical Worldview of Two-ism, or The Creator and His Creation (See diagram at http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_1-_Genesis_1.pages)

But there has been a revival in recent years of Paganism, or the religions of antiquity that dominated Greece and the Roman Empire. Paganism teaches there is no Two-ism in the universe. There is only One-ism. The diagram below illustrates the worldview of paganism or One-Ism. All is one. This includes pantheism and modern Wicca. In One-ism, everyone and everything is part of the ONE, the one being, the one substance, the one spirit. There is no Creator and creation distinction as in Two-ism. In fact, there is no Creator at all like the one in the Bible. That God is despised. Almost everything about One-ism is the opposite of what you read in the Bible. Since everything is ONE, everything is in ONE circle – all humans, animals, rocks, trees, even God.This is the essence of Eastern religious teaching that was introduced into this country in the 60‘s, known today as neo-paganism. It is also known as New Age Spirituality, or the new spirituality. But it is also called Paganism, which many people today are proud to endorse as their religion. If you hear a person say, “I don’t go to church, but I am spiritual,” then you are probably listening to someone who believes in One-ism, not Two-ism. The Bible gives the real definition of paganism in Romans 1: 25. People who are pagans are those who “exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

If everything is in one circle – including divinity – and has the same nature, spirit, and substance and is not fallen creation as in Genesis 3, then everything also has divine nature too. So you are not just a human. YOU are divine. YOU are god. You have a divine, spiritual nature. Your problem is that you just need to realize this. But you are not the only one who possesses divinity. So does everything else because it is all part of the great ONE. And because everything contains divinity and is equally part of the ONE, all things are equal in value. Tiny minnows of Mother Earth in the bays of California are as valuable as any human life, even babies. Death is a good thing if one goes back into the ONE. Therefore, abortion is easily absorbed. Because there is no Creator (and there is concerted effort everywhere to eliminate God from the Western culture), homosexuality gains strength from Paganism. With the God of Genesis 1 and 2 out of the picture and the Two-ism of the Creator/creature distinction eliminated, there is no difference between male and female and no need to keep the same sexes apart from one another. Romans 1:18-28 shows the plunge into homosexuality when you exchange the truth of Two-ism for the lie of One-ism. Paganism gives rise to the occult and witchcraft, nature as divine (and not fallen as in Genesis 3), the worship of The Goddess and Mother Earth (in Bible times it was the worship of Diana) as symbols of Paganism in the place of the male image of God in the Bible, animal and nature worship, and radical feminism, which the Goddess image, not the male image, of God drives. When you abandon the Two-ism of Genesis 1, all kinds of aberrations begin to develop. Many of these are outlined in the Romans passage above. The movie Avatar was constructed on the theme of One-ism.

The Pagan Worldview or One-Ism (http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_1-_Genesis_1.pages)

Paganism’s worldview is that there is only ONE. Everything shares the same nature, including divinity. There is no other second reality. In other words, there is no Creator.

If you wish to study this further, read the books of Dr. Peter Jones of Westminster Seminary in Escondido, CA. You can find videos of him on YouTube if you search under “Peter Jones, paganism”. Access his web page and all resources at http://www.truthxchange.com/welcome/.

Genesis 1:3-31

Genesis 1:1-3 states that God made his creation in rough form, and then come the creation days in which he brings order and purpose. Genesis 1 is hotly debated in both the church and the world. It is a particularly big issue in public education because Christians insist that Two-ism be taught in schools under the Intelligent Design model. The world does not want Two-ism in its public schools for two reasons. One, they do not want God in anything they do, nor do they want the Creator to have any bearing on their behavior or conscience. Two, they do not believe the Biblical account of creation jives with the accepted theory of evolution and science. This, of course, is a ruse because Romans 1:18-21 teaches that the world is merely suppressing what they know is the truth.

But what do the creation days of Genesis 1 teach? Most people approach these creation days as telling us HOW LONG it took God to make His creation. But you have two different opinions about the length of time that it took.

The creation days are literal 24 hour periods of time. So the world was created in six 24 hour days.

This does seem to be the natural reading of Genesis 1. There are many points to reinforce this interpretation. But it has problems. A long-standing problem has been the 4th day. Sun, moon, and stars are introduced on the 4th day, but there is already light on Day 1. However,  many conservative Christians subscribe to this view.

2. The creation days are LONG days. They are ages, perhaps thousands or millions of years.

Many conservative, orthodox Christians subscribe to this view too – and have throughout the age of the church. Many good arguments favor this interpretation. It has been used to attempt to reconcile the teaching of the Bible with the teaching of modern science.

But there is another way to view the creation days of Genesis 1. It is called the Framework Hypothesis. It has many opponents but many conservative, Biblical scholars promote this as consistent with Biblical orthodoxy. It says Genesis 1 is not about HOW LONG it took God to make his creation. It is about the pattern, the organization – or the ORDER – God set in His creation. It says that on the first 3 days, God made three different spheres or domains or kingdoms that make up His world. This is illustrated below. (See diagram at http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p38279198&d=Lesson_1-_Genesis_1.pages)

Days

Spheres

Rulers of the Spheres

1

Space/Light

Sun, Moon, Stars – Day 4

2

Sky, Seas

Winged Creatures, Fishes – Day 5

3

Land, Vegetation

Land Animals, Man – Day 6

You will notice that on Day 1, God made light. But how was there light without the sun, moon, and stars that were created on Day 4? It would seem that Day 1 included the creation of sun, moon, and stars in the same day. Following that logic, it would seem that birds and fishes (Day 5) were also included on Day 2 when God made the skies and seas, and land animals and man (Day 6) were also included on Day 3 when God made the land and vegetation. If this is correct, we don’t have 6 days of creation in Genesis 1. We have 3.

Then there is the 7th day when God rested, the Sabbath. That is not literal either. Even though it is called a day, it has no morning or evening.

Not all the questions related to this view or any of the others can be answered here. Just be aware of them and know that Bible believers hold these various views and still believe the basic truth presented here that the Creator of the world is the Lord God Himself. You can find each of these views explained further by doing a Google Search on any of them. One excellent presentation of the Framework Hypothesis is presented here – http://www.asa3.org/gray/framework/frameworkOPC-SC.html

But what could possibly be the purpose of dividing up what happened in creation into these 2 parts – Days 1-3 and Days 4-6? Instead of giving us a chronological presentation of Genesis 1, the Bible is giving us a TOPICAL presentation of Genesis 1. In other words, Genesis 1 is teaching that God made His creation with three major parts to focus on. He is not drawing our attention to TIME. He is focusing our attention on the order, the major parts, or the organization of His creation. In the first three days, he presents those main parts of His creation. But on the second three days, he has us contemplate who or what is dominating or ruling those spheres he created.  It is sort of a topical outline to help us think about what he has done in what He has made.

If this is true, then the endless arguments about whether the six creation days were six literal 24 hour days or whether they were ages of time misses the point entirely! If the Framework Hypothesis is correct, Genesis 1 has little, if anything, to do with time or length of days.Then what IS the point? It would be that God made three major parts that dominate His interest – space with its heavenly, light-giving bodies, the seas and the atmosphere about earth with the creatures who dwell there, and the land and vegetation with the animals and the most excellent creature of all that reflects His magnificent image, man. It is interesting to note that even though the earth is a mere drop in the ocean of creation, it is the most detailed in its creation description. Most of the account of the creation focuses on the earth and the creation that dwells there. Even more detailed and pin-pointed – like a microscope moving in for a closer look – however, is the man and woman that God created, two molecule specks on the drop in the ocean of creation. Of all the creation account, the man and the woman are not only the most genius of God’s creation, they and their generations are the centerpiece of his interest. This is a foreshadowing of the redemption that is coming for Adam and Eve and their generations as the narrative narrows down like a funnel from the endless breadth of the universe and hones in on the smallest entity that he made in His own image. So Genesis 1may be magnifying the glory that should be given to the Creator because out of the enormity of His creation, he set His desire and redemption that begins in Genesis 3 on man.

As Psalm 8:3-6 says:

3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:

To summarize, Genesis 1 is above all declaring that the Lord has created a magnificent universe. But if you think that is glorious, wait till you see what He has done – and will do – with the creature most like Him! It is not about how long it took Him to do it.

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