And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.β (Genesis 3:15)
Hope
Christian Living
Lent & Advent
0
I'm going to read the passage, it's just one verse, Genesis 3, 15. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Heavenly Father, I pray that we can see how there is hope in this passage of Scripture. Lord, in the past we've looked at this as a first prophecy, the first prophecy concerning the coming of Jesus Christ, and today we'll do the same, but look at the issue of hope, and how this first week of Advent, as we have hope for the coming of Christ, we'll see how the ancients did as well. We pray your blessing on this service, we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Hope, and now you don't have the outline on the back of the bulletin, because there's a picture there instead. And I should mention that I took the entire week off, so this could be a short sermon, I haven't done that for a while, but every once in a while I'll take a week off, and when I do that, I don't always set everything aside, but this week I actually did. But this is what the Lord has laid on my heart concerning this passage of Scripture for this first week of Advent. We're talking about hope, and there are different locus of hope in this, and the first thing we see is hope for enmity. Wait a minute, why would we be hoping for enmity? The quality of being an enemy, the opposite of friendship, ill will, hatred, unfriendly dispositions. It expresses more than an aversion, less than malice perhaps, but differs from displeasure, denoting a fixed or rooted hatred, whereas displeasure is more transient. It's a state of opposition, according to Webster's 1828 dictionary. So why would we have hope for enmity? Well, they did here. They had a hope for enmity because there would be a stark difference between the way of God and the way of Satan. So the first thing we want to talk about when we think of hope in this Advent season is the hope for enmity between God's people and the people who walk in the ways of darkness. There should be a very stark difference. There should be this enmity, this hatred, this actual unfriendly relationship between us and the world, those who are in the world, so that we aren't going to be fooled by what the world tries to dish out to us, and say, well, here's the way you should walk, here's the way you should go, here's the sophisticated approach to life, here's what is really important in life. So we need to see that there's a hope for enmity in this particular passage, in this particular prophecy concerning the coming Christ, the seed, the true seed, and the seed of Satan. So if that's true, and it is, one of the things that this enmity should do is keep us on our guard. That's one reason we have this hope that it will actually exist, that the world will be unattractive to us. Obviously, if someone hates you, if someone has malice towards you, if someone has a fixed and rooted dislike of you, you're not going to be wanting to have a relationship with them. So there's hope for enmity here. Now you might wonder, who is it that's going to stir this up? Because after all, you think, I'm a nice person, I get along with everybody, and I kind of do myself, I find it easy to get along with people in most circumstances, at least for a time. So you wonder, who is it that's going to stir up this enmity between the people who follow Jesus Christ, who are following at this point in the old covenant age, looking ahead to the coming of the Messiah, and in our situation, those who live in the reality of Christ having come. Well, the answer is that our godly lifestyle should stir up enmity. Look at Jesus Christ. He didn't go out looking for trouble. He simply spoke truth. He simply did what he was supposed to do. He was told to walk in a particular fashion, and people hated him because of it. So our lifestyle should stir up enmity. It should cause people to be displeased about our behavior. They should say, well, I don't like what they're doing. That doesn't sit well with my view, my philosophy of life. The ungodly will, in that point, really be the ones to initiate any kind of action that comes from the enmity. Because our lifestyle, our witness, should be something that stirs them up. Again, looking at Jesus Christ. Look at how they treated him. It wasn't as if he was, again, trying to get them. He wasn't trying to get their goat, necessarily. But, and I suppose in those days that would have a double meaning, taking their goat. But what I'm saying is that when we are godly in the same fashion as Jesus Christ, there's going to be some action on the part of the ungodly against us. I've said this before, and I've said it with some shame, that we don't, as a people and myself individually, we don't experience really any persecution. Not much at all. The occasional scoffing or sneering remark, perhaps, but nothing like Jesus Christ. Nothing along the lines of what he experienced. So this enmity might take the form of mere ridicule, but throughout history it's taken the form of anything from ridicule to murder. The martyrs were put to death by those who were at enmity with the ways of God, at enmity with the seed of the woman. Whatever effect that Satan is trying to maximize, you might think of it in those terms, will dictate the form that the enmity takes. The hate for the people of God sometimes is realized in an attempt to woo the people of God into the ways of Satan. That's a form of hatred that the world attempts to draw us into its web. The strange thing is, and you see this among young people and old people, doesn't matter your age, but people think that they're getting along okay with the world. They think that things are going well because they're getting along with people who are worldly. They might call themselves Christian. They might call themselves religious. I don't know, good grief, most of the people that I talk to call themselves religious and many of them call themselves Christian. I'm reminded of a fellow I used to work with who I was witnessing to him one time, and this was over a period of time. It wasn't as if I just walked up to him and said, hey, you need to know Christ. I had worked with him for quite a while. And he said, well, look, you don't seem to understand. I am a Christian. All Americans are Christians, aren't they? Well, in a sense he had a point because our heritage is Christian, but he was not a believer. He wasn't born again. It was obvious, and when I asked him further questions, it became all the more obvious. But that kind of person, the people who are in the world, who they might have the cloak of Christianity, they're actually at enmity with the ways of the kingdom. And they're going to try and draw us into their web. Why do they do that? Well, because they are hateful of the things of God. You've heard the term misery loves company. Well, sin loves company as well. And so the form that this entity takes is widely different depending on the circumstance. Satan is a master strategist, I guess you could say, and will use whatever tactic is going to work and often draws the people of God apart because he does so in a way that is attractive to us. And it should not be. But I guess what I want you to see at this point is that this entity always leads to some action. There's going to be either strife between God's people and the people of the world, or there's going to be some kind of drawing away. There should be strife. We should not allow them to draw us into the ways of the world. Well, you might think, I don't see that in my life. I don't see enmity. Is that what happens then? Does that mean that some kind of a truce has been called? And the answer is no. Again, I want to impress upon you that if there is a lack of strife, a lack of enmity between yourself and the world, it's because Satan's winning this round in your life, or my life, whoever's life it might be. If we don't see some strife there, if we feel comfortable and cozy doing the things of the world, mixing and rubbing shoulders with the people of the world, then Satan's already won that round. If we're not experiencing enmity, then we have compromised with the world. To be friends with the world, according to James 4.4, is to be at enmity with God. So we've crossed the line, if that's our circumstance. If we are not experiencing some conflict, then we've crossed the line, and now our conflict is with God himself. So, enmity should cause in us this state of being alert. That's why we should hope for enmity. That's why we should hope for this prophecy, this word that God spoke on this day that Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden. There's actually hope here, not just for the coming seed, but for this state of enmity, where there's two opposing worldviews. Where there is a stark difference between the ways of God and the ways of the world. Where there is a very clear choice to be made between hatred for the world and love for God, or hatred for God and love for the world. We can't serve two masters. There's always a need for clarity. And this hope for enmity helps to clarify. Do you understand what I'm saying here? Do you understand why that would be the case? Because if we're getting along, it's very easy to let the lines between the world and what we should be doing become fuzzy. And we think, well, I can get along. And we'll talk a little bit here in a minute how this all works into evangelism. Because I'm not wanting to think that we should be out there shaking our fist at everybody we see who is not in the kingdom and say, we're at enmity, I can't have anything to do with you. I'm not suggesting that. We'll talk about how we can live in this state of enmity without being at literal war with people. Well, let me summarize this first point. The first thing I want you to realize is that one of the things that the first week of Advent tells us is that we should have a hope for enmity. We should hope that there is this conflict between our life and the world. Because if there is no conflict, then there is no clarity. We need to hope for this clarity, for this godliness, hope for a strong witness. So if we make some application, we can easily see that just like the ancients, we need to continue to hope for this enmity. So that we have this clear, powerful witness to the world. And they can see this difference. They don't feel comfortable around us and we don't feel comfortable around them. And that's really the way it should be. And we'll talk, as I say, in just a minute about the issue of evangelism. The second thing we see in this passage is what we always talk about and that is the hope for the coming seed. That's what we commonly talk about on this first week of Advent as we discuss hope and prophecy. Prophecy, of course, we read in Isaiah how there was a prophecy concerning the coming Messiah and what he would be like and what he would be doing as the promised seed. So we do, obviously, hope for the coming seed. And we might wonder how much they understood back then. We've talked about this before. Their understanding, of course, would be limited. There would be, in a sense, really a greater need for faith than what we have. We live on the other side of the event that was prophesied here. And so it's easier for us to embrace that. It should be, anyway, because we have the Holy Spirit poured out upon us. Their knowledge of God's character is what would make the difference, really, because it's not so much that they would have a full understanding. Indeed, Eve named her son, who was born after the death of Abel, Seth, which means another seed. So it's possible she thought that Seth was the seed that was promised, that thinking maybe Abel was the seed that was promised. And he was gone, so Seth is the new one. He's the one that was promised by this prophecy of God as recorded in Genesis 3.15. Well, that wasn't the case. It wasn't the seed that was promised. He had something to do with that. But the ancients didn't have a full understanding. Not that we have a complete understanding, either. We should have more than they. So when we look at this passage and we look at what they were dealing with, we think about how they had to have a greater faith. We also, when we think about where they came from, they were confronted with something that was completely foreign, having come from a life of perfection, having come from an intimate relationship with Almighty God, suddenly thrown out of the garden. And for myself, I would think that would be a real cause for complete despair. We can't really comprehend that because we've always lived in this realm, in this life, in this world that has been tainted by sin. We don't have the face-to-face relationship that Adam and Eve had with Yahweh, the creator of the universe. And so to go from that to being expelled from the garden, to be pushed away from relationship, would, I would think, cause someone to fall into deep despair. So this hope for the coming seed was something that they had to hang on to because what that meant was that one day they would be back into intimate relationship, intimate fellowship with Almighty God. So it's important for them to understand this, important for them to have some grasp on this, but it's also important for us to realize that they were going to grow in their understanding. It's not something that would be full and complete. The writer of the book of Hebrews, I think it's Paul, he says that the ancients lived in faith, looking forward to what they were hoping for. So this hope that they had was in the coming Jesus, coming Christ, Jesus himself. And in a sense, it wasn't limited to just to that. True Christ is the true seed. I said true twice, but I guess you get the point, that Jesus is the true seed. He's the one who fulfilled this prophecy in its completeness. But in a sense, there were many seeds. In a sense, Seth was a seed. He was a type. And as were many types to come. So there is a way in which this hope was reinforced, and not fulfilled, but reinforced and strengthened throughout time as these different types would come along and give some witness concerning the coming Jesus, coming Christ, I should say. Well, as this went on, there were certain things they were supposed to do. They weren't supposed just to sit back and do nothing while they waited for the seed. In Revelation 12, we referred to this before, but it's clear from Revelation 12 that the Christ came from the godly bride, came from the people of God. So, hypothetically, I'm speaking humanly here, if the people of God had abandoned all hope, if the people of God walked away from Yahweh so there were no people of God, humanly speaking, there would have been no way for the seed to ever come. There would not have been a faithful young woman named Mary from whom Christ could be born. See what I'm saying here? So it was important that they couldn't just simply say, well, the hope is future, we can do whatever we want now. They had a responsibility to maintain that faithful people from which the seed would come. On the other hand, we can recognize the fact that God's in control and so he was going to maintain a faithful people, no matter what. This would be accomplished according to his will, according to his timing, and in the place that he desired. So we have that tension there, that paradox that is often present in the life of the believer that God's in complete control and yet we still have responsibility to do the things that he calls us to do. So they were supposed to maintain this witness, they were supposed to pray, they were supposed to teach their children to convert others to the truth, they were to look forward to the succession of this covenant reality, to the continuity of the covenant. Now, this was very, I guess you could say, very open-ended for them. And as we all know from just the way that some people think about the end times today, for instance, people don't like to have an open end to things. They want to know when and so forth, at least have a very good idea. But there was no indication in the old covenant administration as to when this seed would come. I think, according to what we see in the text and even the circumstance of Eve naming Seth the second seed, we see that there may have been They have been an idea that the seed would come very quickly. So when that didn't happen, they could again have slid into despair, but this would have required faith to maintain this witness, to maintain this hope, to have trust and confidence in God. So let me summarize this idea and make it clear that hope doesn't necessarily rest on complete understanding. They had to know the character of God, but they didn't have to know everything that God was going to do. They had to have faith in God and they had to have a solid relationship with Yahweh. We look at our application of this point, we recognize of course that the true seed has come in Jesus Christ, but now our hope is that He will be manifest in our lives. And of course hope for the final victory, which leads us to the third point of this passage, this verse in Genesis 3, and that is the hope in victory. Hope in victory. A once and for all victory? Well the answer would be yes and no, because obviously with the coming of Jesus Christ, His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, it was a complete victory over the forces of evil. There's no question that Christ won the victory once and for all at the cross. It is done. Peter says that everything we need for life and godliness is given us already in the person and the work of Jesus Christ, in the Word, in the Word made flesh. And yet the victory is progressive. We've talked about this many times, that the whole idea of the covenant progressing, moving forward as we manifest, it's cumulative you might say, as the people of God bring their arena of activity under the authority of Almighty God, under the authority of Jesus Christ. That was true in the old covenant by the way, just as it's true in the new covenant today. The cross was a victory because, I want you to consider what it was like with man before the victory at the cross. First of all, think about Adam and Eve, and as I was thinking about this yesterday, I was talking to you guys about it a little bit yesterday, and how the sense of despair, I can imagine what that would be like, not really, but have some idea what that would have been like to be shoved out of this relationship. To still have contact you might say with Yahweh, but to no longer have this face-to-face relationship. And so they were acutely aware of what they had lost in this change of circumstance, whereas people today aren't so clear on that obviously. But Adam and Eve would have been very aware of the stark difference between what had been and what now was. And so the victory of the cross is complete. It is the restoration of mankind to this relationship. And our problem is that we don't understand the depth of this relationship. For us it's something we do on Sundays, or maybe throughout the week we'll pick up our Bible and read it. But for us it's something that we keep in our head, but we often don't live out. I know I'm guilty of that as much as anybody else. Because we don't consider what Jesus Christ accomplished with his death and resurrection, with his ascension. And we look at that and we think about how great that might be, but we don't think about the washing away of our sin, for instance. That's too abstract for us, and I think it's too easy for us to let that be a simple platitude rather than a life-changing truth. Our sins have been washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ. We have been restored to relationship with Yahweh, the creator of the universe. We have the power of God within us that enables us to live a life that is manifesting victory, manifesting the presence of the seed. So we think, well, in that case the old covenant people were just supposed to hold on until the seed came, until victory was declared in this work on the cross. And the answer of course is no. I remember we were talking about that enmity that was supposed to be present to keep this stark difference between the people of God and the people of the world. And they were supposed to prepare that seedbed that was the place, the people, the remnant from which the Messiah would come. And they were supposed to build and to work and to praise and to worship, do all the things that we're supposed to do. And so I can assure you that this hope for the seed, the hope for victory was going to influence the life of the old covenant believers, and it should influence our life as well. Influence them in everything that they did. You look at the life of Abraham, for instance, you look at how he left his homeland and went to a land he was unfamiliar with, had no friends, had nothing there, and did what he was supposed to do. They were duty-bound to live lives of obedience just as we are. And again, to maintain that enmity, that stark difference between themselves and the world. So they were hoping for victory, they maintained this life of enmity with the world, they looked forward to the coming of the seed, and they would look to the word of God, whether it be written down in the days of Moses and thereafter, or just what was available before that. And when they would come to this passage, when they would come to this story and read this, they might think, well, that doesn't sound a whole lot like victory to me, because after all, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. It sounds like there's going to be kind of a give and take here. And it sounds to me, they might say, that this Messiah will be only so powerful and he won't be able to do quite the job, he'll crush the head of the serpent, eventually would understand that. But in the doing of that, he will be wounded himself. And indeed, they would look at their own lives, look at Abraham, for instance. Was he perfect? No, he stumbled many times. Look at Jacob, the things that he did, indeed, he literally limped as a picture, as an illustration of the seed and what he would do and what he would be like. Moses, the greatest man of the old covenant era, and yet he was kept out of the promised land because of his sin. David, someone who had a heart after, a man after God's own heart, excuse me, someone who was a man after God's own heart, and yet we see that he was not immune to sin either. So these examples would remind the people of God that, yes, the victory was coming, but even the Messiah wouldn't fail, wouldn't sin, but he'd be wounded in the defeat of the seed of the serpent. So it would give them an idea of what it was that was coming. Messiah's victory would be not without cost, the Messiah's call to follow him would be with great cost as well. Again, when we summarize this point, we recognize that the old covenant believers didn't fully understand this victory. They embraced what it was to come with hope. They had hope that the Messiah would one day overcome the seed of the serpent. We don't really understand the nature of the victory of the cross either, I believe. Sometimes we think we do, but we don't understand its comprehensive nature. We don't understand its progressive nature, how it moves forward, and its cumulative nature. We don't understand those things, although we need to, because this is the season for hope. Let me wrap this up, give you some applications, ask you some questions, and the first thing I want to ask you is, do you hope for enmity? Think about that for a minute. You wake up each morning and say, Lord, I pray that I will experience enmity with the world today. We have jobs to do, and people we have to rub shoulders with, and we say, well, I would rather get along with folks. So do we hope for enmity, or do we try to befriend the world instead? Do we say, it's better just to get along, can't we, as in the immortal words of Rodney King, I think it was, can't we all just get along? And the answer is no. Sometimes it seems difficult, but we are supposed to be at a sharp difference with the world. We evangelize while we maintain that enmity with the world. And again, it's not that we are stirring up problems, it's just that if we have a strong, powerful witness, as Paul says to Timothy, anyone who wants to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Jesus said that don't marvel if the world hates you, because it hated me first. And if you're walking in my footsteps, it's going to hate you as well. So we should hope for enmity. We should hope that our witness is so direct, so sharply different from the world that they will not be able to simply say, well, it's just the way they believe, we can all get along. It shouldn't be that way. Not because we are obnoxious, not because we say things to stir people's wrath, not because we have a holier-than-thou attitude. Those things are going to stir enmity for the wrong reasons. Peter speaks of this issue, he says if you suffer for doing wrong, well, so be it. But if you're suffering for doing right, then you should take glory in that. So the enmity that I'm talking about is not an attitude that is self-centered or arrogant, but it is a lifestyle and a commitment to the things of God that does not allow for compromise with the ways of the world. Even as we reach out to folks, they're going to appreciate our strong stand for truth more than a wishy-washy, well, it's okay if you believe what you want to believe. This is what I believe, but you can believe what you want. I kind of wish you'd believe what I believe, but it's okay. See, that doesn't get you anywhere, does it? Enmity. Do you hope for enmity? And when I say that, I want you to be able to think through what that means. I've given you the explanation. So when I tell you to hope for enmity, I want you to understand what that is about and how it means a sharp difference with the world. A sharp difference with the world that is expressed as we manifest Jesus Christ in our life and our actions. Secondly, do you hope to reveal Jesus Christ? Which obviously, if you're doing that, you'll have the enmity with the world because they won't like what we're doing. So we should hope to reveal Christ. The ancients hoped for the revelation of the seed, the coming of Jesus the Christ. We hope to reveal Jesus Christ in our life, in our words, in our thoughts even. We should obey the Word of God. That's going to reveal Jesus Christ to the world. We should pray on a consistent basis. That will reveal Christ to the world. So how does that reveal Christ to the world? Because if you're in communication with the throne of heaven, it's going to be expressed in the way you live your life. If we have a consistent prayer life, it's going to be expressed in what we say, what we do. And again, I preach to myself on these issues because it's so easy to get into a rut. There's so many things that press in upon us, paying the bills, getting to work through the snow and so forth, all the things we have to deal with. But we need to have this hope that we are revealing Jesus Christ to the world and we need to move forward in that, to do what needs to be done, to get into God's Word, to spend time in prayer, to discipline ourselves, to deal violently with those things that would keep us from obeying Christ and His Word. Finally, do you hope for victory? Now and ultimately, in our daily life, we need to hope for victory. And the first step is to even consider that. We might think, well, I'm getting along okay. I don't need to make any changes. I think it's all right. I can't take this too seriously. It might get in the way of my life. If I were to do that, then I might have to actually alter some of the things. I might have to give some things up. I might have to change my attitudes. I might have to change the way that I act or whatever. So if we have a lackadaisical attitude, if we are simply getting along, so to speak, we're not going to have hope for victory because we won't even really care about it. Victory on a day-to-day basis means that we manifest Jesus Christ, we cultivate this new creation and we manifest Jesus Christ, we're at rest in the relationship we have with Him. So that's victory day by day. We also need to have hope for the ultimate victory, the triumph of the gospel, Jesus Christ coming back to cap off the kingdom. That'll happen someday. And we should have hope in that as well, that we know that this history, this world, everything's moving forward to that ultimate victory of Jesus Christ when the victory that was won at the cross is fully realized in this life and realm. This is a season for hope and yet we need to be clear about what it is that we hope for. Do we hope for world peace or our political party in power or do we hope for prosperity? We're called to hope for things much different than the world, much more important than what the world considers important. And so I want to encourage you as we close this morning to hope for enmity with the world. That means growing in Christ's likeness. So I encourage you to hope for Christ's character to be manifest in you as well. And I also encourage you to hope for victory daily, victory in Jesus Christ, and ultimate victory with Christ's return to cap off His kingdom here on this earth. So I encourage you to hope this season for things of God and His breakthrough. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this season of the year that reminds us in which we celebrate
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