The Promised Seed

Greeting

Good morning, church. Thank you all for being here on this beautiful, frosty morning! We had a lovely couple days of fall weather, and now I guess winter is here!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Did anyone get out and brave the Black Friday lines?

More important question; Does everyone have their Christmas tree up now? If not, you’re late! Get to it! It’s finally Christmastime!

And on that subject, I’m honored as always for the opportunity to step into the pulpit and share a word with you this morning. And I’m especially excited because this morning begins our advent series.

This morning we’ll be kicking off our Advent series in a little bit of a different place than you probably expect, but it’ll be good, I promise. So if you have your Bible with you, go ahead and turn to Genesis 3 and we’ll read from it in just a moment. If you don’t have a Bible, there are plenty of them in the pew backs, feel free to grab one of those. And if you need to hang on to it, please feel free.

I’m not sure if I’ve adequately conveyed this yet or not, but I LOVE Christmas.

I love the traditions, I love the music, I love the food and the gatherings, and just everything that comes along with it.

But more than all of that, I love the story of Christmas.

But I, like I’m sure many of us do, get so wrapped up in the festivities of Christmas that I tend to neglect considering the depth and meaning of it, often tearing up with more excitement over Christmas tree cakes coming to the store shelves than over the Messiah coming to set His people free.

So over these next four weeks, as we are reminded of the divinity and importance of Christ, I encourage you, more than ever, to dwell long on these truths. As we enter this season of get-togethers and gift exchanges, be reminded of Him in all of these things.

And Likewise, be bold in your faith. As I’ve mentioned several times over the last few weeks, lost souls are more receptive to the good news of the gospel at Christmas and Easter than any other time of the year. And as we’ll see in our text this morning, thats for an obvious reason - these are the most foundational moments in the gospel message. Which means these are the most hope-filled moments in scripture. There is simply no easier time to share the hope of Christ with a hopeless world than at His birth and at the fulfillment of His word.

With that said, let’s go ahead and dive into our passage for this morning. Again, we’ll be in Genesis 3. Our main focus will be specifically on verses 14 and 15, but we’ll read from verse 1 through 21 for greater context. So please follow along with me as I read.

Passage

Genesis 3:1–21 CSB

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. 3 But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’ ” 4 “No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” 11 Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man replied, “The woman you gave to be with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.” 13 So the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 So the Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock and more than any wild animal. You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. 15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.C He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel. 16 He said to the woman: I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children with painful effort. Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you. 17 And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’: The ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it. For you are dust, and you will return to dust.” 20 The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.

Prayer

Let’s pray;

Heavenly Father, I thank You for Your word and the power of it. I pray this morning that You would speak to Your church, through Your Word, by Your Spirit, and for Your glory, and I pray this in Christs name. Amen.

Introduction

Growing up, my dad and I would go every year on a father-son hunting trip. My birthday is October 14th, dads is October 9th, so we would take the weekend between them and spend several days out at Canton lake. We did this from the time I was about 9 or 10 until around probably 16 or so.

Now if you’re not a deer hunter, you may not realize it, but those are usually very early mornings. You typically want to get into your blind or tree stand at least 20 or 30 minutes before sunrise, and then you have to factor in how long it takes to get to your location. You could be talking about leaving camp as much as an hour before sunrise. And then on top of that, you’ve got to get all geared up before you head out. Put on camos, put on scent free spray, grab your calls and binoculars and such, and we’re bow hunters, so you also have to get your bow out of the case and attach the quiver, put arrows in the quiver, etc. You get the picture. All this to say you would have to wake up sometimes at like 5am to get ready to go. And if there’s one thing pre-teen boys are quite well-known for, its waking up early, right? Yeah. Some of you can already see where this is going.

So one morning on one of these trips, 5am rolls around. Dad’s alarm goes off and he starts getting ready. He jostles me to wake me up. I give him a grunt and roll back over. He tries a couple more times and at one point asked me if I was going to go out this morning. I told him no and went back to sleep.

I’m not sure how much time passed, but at a point I was jolted awake when my brain caught up and said “What are you doing?! You’ll never survive in this tent by yourself! GO!”

So I jumped up and absolutely scrambled to throw on all my clothes and boots, grab all my stuff, and hoof it down the trail to catch up with dad.

I know these woods like the back of my hand. I’ve spent so much time there that if you asked me right now, I could draw you a pretty detailed map of the area, trails, ponds, fields, etc.

All that to say, I knew where I was headed when I took off running after dad.

Unfortunately… in the heavy darkness just before the sunlight cracks the horizon, a lot of trees look the same. And as I followed a trail I’d followed dozens of times, spotting trees and other waypoints by dim flashlight, I mistook one tree for another and made a turn far too soon. It didn’t take me long to realize my mistake. I was lost. As the reality set in, I became more and more hopeless and more and more distraught. I screamed for my dad as loud as I could several times. I couldn’t even tell where I was, so I had no idea how far away he was. As I would shout helplessly into the darkness, I would sit and wait for a response. And time after time I heard nothing. Cold, hungry, scared, and desperate, I decided to do the opposite of what you should do when you’re lost - I was going to try to make my way back to camp. It didn’t take long, because as sunlight would soon reveal, I wasn’t even actually that lost. In fact, were it not for a couple trees, I was in eyeshot of the camp site the entire time.

So I found my way back to the campsite, and sat in my chair near the fire pit for a few minutes, but ultimately the rustling of what was likely just bunnies and birds triggered my irrational fear of bears, and I took refuge in dads truck.

But in the freezing, frosty glassed cab of that Chevy pickup, even though I was still shaken from the experience, I was calmed with expectant hope. I knew that, with the exception of the infinitesimally small chance of a bear attack, I was safe, and that dad would soon return. Either because of my shouts which pierced the morning air and also the eardrums of any deer within a mile radius, or because we only hunted until about 10-11am before we would take a break for lunch.

It felt like an eternity, but it was probably only about 10 minutes, but dad did soon arrive, and a deep sense of relief washed over me.

But as I read our passage this morning, and try to picture myself in this moment, this is perhaps the one moment in my life I can think of to best relate to this passage. Lost in total darkness, scared, but taking comfort in the fact that help is on the way.

Which brings us to our main idea this morning, which is that;

Main Idea

In the midst of the curse, God plants hope.

A promised seed of salvation. A light in the darkness. A savior who will crush the head of the serpent.

And this promise was given, obviously to Adam and Eve as we see in our passage this morning. But we know it wasn’t just given to them. This seed foretold - promised - in verse 15 was a beacon of hope not just for them but for all of mankind. For you, for me, for our families, for every lost soul who would come to Him in faith.

And although I could talk from now until dinner about this passage, I’m sure some of you want to eat lunch today, so there are two things I want us to notice in our passage this morning.

The Reality of the Fall

First, we see the reality of the fall, and we see this in verses 16 through 19. Allow me to re-read;

Genesis 3:16–19 CSB

16 He said to the woman: I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children with painful effort. Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you. 17 And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’: The ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it. For you are dust, and you will return to dust.”

Our existence is plagued with reminders that we live in a fallen world.

Every time you turn on the news, there’s some new story about disease or devastation. The consequences of sin really aren’t a mystery to us. Even unbelievers recognize there is pain and toil and fear and all manner of discomfort in life.

But the curse issued here in Genesis 3 is much deeper than that.

What do we see here?

labor pains for women

Dichotomous relationship between spouses

Ground is cursed

Labor is difficult

But what do these represent?

Let’s look back for just a moment before the fall. Genesis 2:7-9, 15-17

Genesis 2:7–17 CSB

7 Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And then skipping ahead to verse 15;

Genesis 2:7–17 CSB

15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

There are a couple things I want us to notice here. Firstly, notice the sort of effortlessness with which the trees and plants arrive. Even Adam himself, for that matter. God breathed - something we’ve all done hundreds of times since we got here this morning - and Adam had life. And then we see in verse 8 that God planted the garden, and then we see in verse 9 that God caused food to grow. Each of these things happening under the simplicity of divine authority.

But I also want you to notice here in verse 15 of chapter 2, Adam is placed in the garden to do what? To work it.

But isn’t work a product of the fall?

As we understand it and experience it, yes. But, there are two different words used between verse 15 of chapter 2 and verse 17 of chapter 3.

In chapter 2, when the Lord places Adam in the garden to “work” the Hebrew word thats used there is “uh-vahd” which does describe work, but rather than like hard labor, this word conveys more of a sense of work in service of someone greater, or a worshipful service.

Whereas work is described again in verse 17 of chapter 3, but with a very different word, this time “its-tsaw-bone” which conveys a much more dreadful, tiresome, painful, difficult work.

Most of us I imagine know and understand that before the fall, everything was perfect, and after the fall we live under the consequence of sin.

But I want us to recognize the implication - it’s much bigger than life just being hard sometimes.

It is a distance - a separation from God and from His original, perfect design.

In Eden, Adam and Eve existed in a harmonious union with Christ. Living to honor and glorify Him.

But it was the temptation to “be like God” - to elevate themselves to a position in which they were never created to be - which ultimately broke this covenant with God and subjected humanity to the consequences of the fall.

And lest we forget, or be tempted to isolate original sin from our own, let me use share a quote from R.C. Sproul which you’ve all heard from me often;

“We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners.”

We are every bit as separated from God in our sinfulness as Adam and Eve were in theirs.

And although God would have been perfectly just to let Adam and Eve die in their sin, He provided a promise. Not just for them, but for each of us. And this brings us to our second point this morning.

The Promised Seed of Salvation

The promised seed of salvation. We see this in verses 14 and 15

Genesis 3:14–15 CSB

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock and more than any wild animal. You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. 15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.C He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.

In the 18th century, deism peaked in popularity. In the centuries since, it has waned, at least in the classical sense. Although it can be argued without much effort that it is still very much alive today, and just goes by other names. But if it walks like a duck…

Anyway, the main point of deist thought was a belief that there is a God - although arguably not the God of the Bible - and that this God created everything, and then just sort of stepped back and said *brush hands* “yep, looks good. They’ll figure it out.”

But what we see in the arc of scripture, and more specifically in our text this morning, is something altogether different.

To make this clear, I want to take a very quick detour. To the very beginning of it all. You don’t need to turn there. In fact, I’m quite certain each of us could simply recite it. The very first verse of the Bible says what?

In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth.

But it’s that word “created” I want us to pause on.

All of us have created at some point. Whether it’s something as simple as a playdoh snake or something as complicated as an ornate piece of carpentry.

But when we create, we resemble something very much like that being which the Deist envisions. We assemble our creation and then at best, place it on display for others to see. But thats pretty much the end of our involvement with it.

But, scripture itself betrays this image of God as some cosmic clockmaker.

That word “created” used here is the Hebrew word “bah-rah” which does translate to “create”, but there are two special things about this particular word. Firstly, it is only ever used to describe divine creation. And secondly, this word carries with it a connotation not only of creation, but also of divine sustenance. That what God creates, he also sustains. And we see that as we continue to read on in the creation narrative. If God were simply the great maker in the sky, and thats it, the creation story could have simply ended at verse 1.

But God continued to provide that which would sustain His creation.

He created water and sky, land and ocean, day and night, stars and plants and animals, and ultimately man.

And we see this same character of God as we look back our text this morning.

God promised death in exchange for disobedience. And although in the sense that spiritual death - separation from Him - was brought to creation, in His great mercy, he not only spared physical life, he sustained spiritual life.

From the earliest moments of human history, God promised to us the One who would deliver us from the bondage of sin. This offspring who would crush the head of the serpent was as much literal as it was metaphorical. Where the serpent represents all that is opposed to God - sin and separation - the literal offspring of Eve, that is, Jesus, humbly came into creation and crushed the head of the serpent by providing atonement for sin, reconciliation, and eternal life with Him for those who believe.

Paul summarizes this whole redemptive arc in Romans 5, verses 12 through 21.

I would encourage you to write this one down and come back to it a few times over the next week. Because it’s such a beautiful and concise summation of all we’ve covered here this morning.

Romans 5:12–21 CSB

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned. 13 In fact, sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not charged to a person’s account when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression. He is a type of the Coming One. 15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the many. 16 And the gift is not like the one man’s sin, because from one sin came the judgment, resulting in condemnation, but from many trespasses came the gift, resulting in justification. 17 If by the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. 18 So then, as through one trespass there is condemnation for everyone, so also through one righteous act there is justification leading to life for everyone. 19 For just as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 The law came along to multiply the trespass. But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is the God we serve. This is the savior we look to with hopeful expectation.

The consequences of sin are still ever-present around us, but we have already received the promise of that seed of salvation. And although we live in a fallen world, those who have placed their faith in Christ can be assured that He has secured life with Him.

If you’re here this morning or even if you’re listening to this sometime after the fact, and you have not placed your faith in Christ, please come talk to me, Darrel, grab someone next to you, email us, text us, whatever you feel comfortable with, but we would love nothing more than to have the opportunity to share this free gift of salvation with you.

But just as generation upon generation watched with hopeful expectation for the promised savior, we too, on this first Sunday of Advent await the promise of His return, and with it, the ultimate defeat of sin and death.

As we conclude our time this morning, I want to challenge us as we go on from here to spend time this week simply expecting. I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend nearly enough time looking to Christ with joyful expectation. It’s just so easy in the midst of fallen nature, to lose sight of the glorious promise that Christ will return, and will make everything perfect. So spend time this week considering that reality, expecting that reality, and giving Him thanks for that reality.

In just a moment, we’re going to enter our time of prayer and response. During this time, as we always do, we’ll have the Lords Supper elements available. Take some time to pray. We encourage you to pray out loud, pray with someone around you, and when you’re ready the elements will be available. You do not need to be a member of our church to participate, but we do asked that you are a believer who has followed in baptism.

Let’s pray;

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, I thank You for this morning, I thank You for this church, and I thank You for this opportunity to preach Your Holy Word. I pray that as we go on from here, entering this joyful holiday season, that we would remember You in each celebration. That we would delight not only in the joy of salvation brought by the savior we celebrate this season, but that we would delight in the joy of His return and ultimate victory. I pray all of this in Christs name, for your glory. Amen.