“Beginning With Moses, Part 14” by Romans
Youtube Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUnDKD1NMH4
We are continuing our Series "Beginning With Moses." On the Road to Emmaus, Jesus caught up with and spoke with two disciples who were sad and perplexed about the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection reports about Jesus, the One Whom they "trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:21). In response to their sadness and confusion, Jesus opened the Scriptures to them. We read, “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).
First, tonight, Jesus may well have included in His review of the things that concerned Himself, the many prophecies in the Old Testament that spoke about His birth. The first time it was mentioned, it was spoken of by God to the serpent after the Fall, and before Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden.
After Eve told God “the serpent beguiled me and I did eat” (Genesis 3:13b), we read God's words beginning in Genesis 3:15: “And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:14-15).
In order to establish a more firm foundation for this prophecy, I have included some fascinating insights from the Sermon Bible regarding both the activity of the serpent that led to the Fall, as well as the prophesied “seed of the woman” Who would restore the relationship between God and man: It reads, “Genesis 3:1: I. Satan’s temptations begin by laying a doubt at the root.
He questions; he unsettles. He does not assert error; he does not contradict truth; but he confounds both. He makes his first entries, not by violent attack, but by secret sapping; he endeavours to confuse and cloud the mind which he is afterwards going to kill.
II. The particular character of these troublesome and wicked questionings of the mind varies according to the state and temperament and character of each individual. (1) In order to combat them, every one should have his mind stored and fortified with some of the evidences of the Christian religion.
To these he should recur whenever he feels disquieted; he should be able to give "a reason for the hope that is in him," and an answer to that miserable shadow that flits across his mind, "Yea, hath God said?". (2) A man must be careful that his course of life is not one giving advantage to the tempter. He must not be dallying under the shadow of the forbidden tree, lest the tempter meet him and he die.
III. The far end of Satan is to diminish from the glory of God. To mar God’s design he insinuated his wily coil into the garden of Eden; to mar God’s design he met Jesus Christ in the wilderness, on the mountain top, and on the pinnacle of the temple; to mar God’s design he is always leading us to take unworthy views of God’s nature and God’s work.” J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 1874, p. 172 (Good Words, 1867, p. 310).
The tempter effected his purpose in Eden: (1) by a question; (2) by a negation; (3) by a promise. I. By a question. (1) Have we ever reflected on the tremendous power of a question? Some of the most important social and intellectual revolutions have sprung from a question.
And it was through a question that the greatest of all revolutions was effected, by which man, made in the image of God, was seduced from his allegiance—a question that has carried with it consequences of which no man can foresee the end. (2) Mark the subtlety of the question.
It aimed at destroying the blessed fellowship between God and man. "Men ask in vain," says Luther, "what was the particular sin to which Eve was tempted." The solicitation was to all sins when she was tempted to doubt the word and the goodwill of God.
II. The tempter makes the way to sin easy by removing all fear of the consequences. There is the negation, "Ye shall not surely die." We listen to the lie, and we stake our all, for time and for eternity, upon this blank and cruel negation.
III. The Satanic promise, Genesis 3:5. (1) It is malevolent: "God doth know"; He has a reason for the restriction; He dreads a rival. (2) It is fascinating: "Ye shall be as gods." The perverted pride of man’s heart is the tempter’s best ally.
J. J. S. Perowne, Anglican Pulpit of To-day, p. 209. (See also Contemporary Pulpit, vol. v., p. 119; and Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 13.)
References: Gen_3:1.—B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p. 348; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 113. Gen_3:1-5.—C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, p. 237; D. Wilson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 113; Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons vol. v., p. 17; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xii., p. 78, xviii., p. 83; Parker, vol. i., p. 132; R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 60; N. Blackwood, Sunday Magazine (1885), p. 235. Gen_3:1-13.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 551. Gen_3:1-16.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 146. Gen_3:2, Gen_3:3.—H. Melvill, Sermons on Less Prominent Facts, vol. ii., p. 107. Gen_3:3.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii., p. 118.
Genesis 3: Consider: (1) some of the consequences, and (2) some of the corroborative proofs of the fall. I. Beside and behind the outward consequences, there were inward results far more terrible. A disease had appeared on earth of the most frightful and inveterate kind. This disease was (1) a moral disease. The grand disease of sin combines all the evil qualities of bodily distempers in a figurative yet real form, and turns not the body, but the soul, into a mass of malady.
(2) The disease is universal in its ravages. The entire being is encrusted with this leprosy. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. (3) This disease is deep-seated in its roots. Its roots are in the very centre of the system, and it infects all the springs of life. It makes us cold and dead and languid in the pursuit of things that are good. The enemy, through the subtle power of this disease, has penetrated into the very citadel of man, and waves his flag of victory upon its highest battlements.
(4) This disease is hereditary. It is within us as early as existence; it descends from parent to child more faithfully than the family features or disposition or intellect. (5) This is a disease which assumes various forms and aspects. Its varieties are as numerous as the varieties of men and of sinners...
In that great hospital, that magnificent madhouse called the earth, we find all kinds and degrees of moral disease, from the fever of ambition to the consumption of envy, from the frantic fury of the conqueror to the dull idiocy of the miser. (6) This is a disease which defies all human means of cure, and a disease which, if not cured, will terminate in everlasting destruction.
II. Apart from the declarations of God’s word, there are strong and startling proofs of a fall. (1) There are all those dreadful phenomena mentioned above, which are connected with man’s present diseased moral condition. (2) The doctrine of a fall alone explains the anomalous and ambiguous condition of man. The fracture he has suffered has, in its very fierceness and depth, opened up a light into his structure.
From the great inequality of human character we cannot but conclude that a catastrophe must have overwhelmed the whole mass of mankind and reduced them to a medley of confusion. We find the echo of man’s fall in every strain of primeval song and in every breath of old tradition.”
G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega, vol. i., pp. 98, 130. References: Gen 3—F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 24.; J. Wells, Bible Echoes, p. 19; J. Brown, Good Words (1885), p. 676; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 79.
Genesis 3:4: I. There are many things against which God has uttered His voice in every man’s heart; in which, even independently of written revelation, He has not left Himself without witness. He who lives in concealed or open sin knows full well that God hath said he shall surely die. But in the moment of temptation the certainty of ruin is met by a counter assertion of the tempter, "Thou shalt not surely die":
"Do the act and cast the consequences to the winds." We have a notable instance of this in the case of the prophet Balaam. Men with the full consciousness that God is against them persist in opposition to Him, till they perish; persuading themselves, from one step to another, that matters shall not turn out so badly as God’s words and God’s monitor within tell them that they shall.
II. There are other... persons... who are caught by, "Thou shalt not surely die. (1) God has declared, "To be carnally minded is death." To be carnally minded is to be of the mind of the children of this world, to view things through a worldly medium, to pass day by day without a thought beyond this world, and as if there were no life after this life.
Of this kind of life God has said that it is death, that those who live it shall surely die—nay, are dying now; and by this is meant that such a life is the immortal spirit’s ruin, that it breaks up and scatters and wastes all man’s best and highest faculties.
What can await those who frustrate the best ends of their being but misery and ruin? "Ye shall not surely die" is the tempter’s fallacy with which he deludes the carnally minded. He persuades them that they can give this life to God’s enemy, and yet inherit life eternal.
(2) God has said, "He that hath the Son hath life; but he that hath not the Son of God hath not life"—i.e., "If ye have not the Son of God ye shall surely die." How many of us have any persuasion of the reality of this sentence of death? How many have cared enough about it to ascertain what it is to have the Son of God?
Whosoever has not by his own personal act taken Christ as his, has not life, and must certainly die eternally: first by the very nature of things, for the desire for God has never been awakened in his heart, the guilt of sin has not been removed from him, nor its power over him broken; and then by solemn declarations of the God of truth—"He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, for the wrath of God abideth on him."
III. Mysterious as the history of our fall is, its greatest wonder is this: that God out of ruin hath brought forth fresh beauty; out of man’s defeat, His victory; out of death, life glorious and eternal. Thou shall surely live is now the Divine proclamation to man’s world. "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. i., p. 100.
References: Gen_3:4.—B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), p.211. Gen_3:4, Gen_3:5.—E. B. Pusey, Lenten Sermons, p. 107. Gen_3:4-6.—E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, 2nd series, p. 101. Gen_3:5.—J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 326; Expositor, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 399; Parker, vol. i., p. 362. Gen_3:6.—H. Thompson, Concionalia, vol. i., p. 76; Sermons for the Christian Seasons (1853), 1st series, vol. i., p. 217; G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, p. 1. Gen_3:6-21.—R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 71. Gen_3:6-8.—J. A. Macdonald, The Pulpit Analyst, vol. i., p. 301. Gen_3:7.—J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 326;
Homiletic Magazine, vol. xv., p. 239.
Here God asks an important question: "Where art thou?" (1) Where are you?—are you in God’s family or out of it? When you are baptised, you are put into God’s family upon certain conditions—that you will do certain things; and it depends upon you how you live, because if you do not love God you cannot be God’s child.
(2) Supposing you are one of God’s children, "Where art thou?"—near to thy Father or far from Him?—because some children are nearer to their fathers than others. Mary and Martha were sisters, and they were both Christians, but one was much nearer to Christ than the other. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, Martha was "troubled about many things." If we delight to tell Jesus everything, then we shall be near God.
(3) Are you in the sunshine or the shade? If you follow Christ you will always be in the sunshine, because He is the Sun. (4) Are you in the path of duty? Are you where you ought to be? The path of duty is a narrow path, sometimes a steep path. God could say to many of us, as He said to Elijah, "What doest thou here?"—thou art out of the path of duty. (5) How have you progressed? The surest way to know that we get on is to be very humble. When the wheat is ripe it hangs down; the full ears hang the lowest. J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children, 1875, p. 177. References: Gen_3:9.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii., p. 129; J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. i., p. 5; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 412; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines of Sermons (1887), p. 276
Genesis 3:12 I. Adam, we find, was not content to be in the image of God. He and his wife wanted to be as gods, knowing good and evil. He wanted to be independent, and show that he knew what was good for him: he ate the fruit which he was forbidden to eat, partly because it was fair and well-tasted, but still more to show his own independence.
When he heard the voice of the Lord, when he was called out, and forced to answer for himself, he began to make pitiful excuses. He had not a word to say for himself. He threw the blame on his wife. It was all the woman’s fault,—indeed, it was God’s fault. "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."
II. What Adam did once we have done a hundred times, and the mean excuse which Adam made but once we make again and again. But the Lord has patience with us, as He had with Adam, and does not take us at our word. He knows our frame and remembers that we are but dust.
He sends us out into the world, as He sent Adam, to learn experience by hard lessons, to eat our bread in the sweat of our brow till we have found out our own weakness and ignorance, and have learned that we cannot stand alone, that pride and self-dependence will only lead us to guilt and misery and shame and meanness; that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved from them, but only the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 347. Reference: Gen_3:12.—Bishop Armstrong, Parochial Sermons, p. 85
Genesis 3:15: I. The first intention of the work of Christ upon this earth is a declaration of war: His warfare and our warfare; the warfare of persons and the warfare of "seeds"; of the two great principles of good and evil.
II. Christ did bruise and crush the serpent’s head—his strength, his being, his whole vitality. He fought alone in each great single combat. When the cross was reared against the power of the arch-enemy the crushing was complete; and when He, Conqueror over the conquered grave, rose again, then the crushed head had received its death-blow.
III. The worst possible position in which men can be placed is a state in which there is no inward spiritual conflict. Quiet in the soul is the quiet of the grave. Where there is conflict there is life. J. Vaughan, Sermons, 9th series, p. 53.
I. Notice the fall as a history. The consequences of the fall were: (1) shame; (2) fear; (3) self-excusing; (4) punishment; (5) an exclusion from the original Paradise and from the tree of immortal life within it. II. Notice the fall in its typical and representative character. (1) Something is presented for consideration. Ponderings of sin, parleyings with temptation—these are the things which we must resist, if we would keep ourselves unspotted and pure in the great matter of the soul’s life.
(2) For see how bold the tempter becomes who has once got a hearing. He ventures upon challenging God’s prohibition; says out, "Ye shall not surely die." (3) Sin cannot rest till it has drawn others in. The woman must make her husband eat; the friend corrupts his friend; the brother entices his brother; and so a deluge of misery enters the world in one drop of sin.
(4) Man, even fallen man, differs from the evil spirit in this,—that he still, at least in the early days, is conscious to himself of his own sin; is but half its friend; has many misgiving
s and many self-reproaches, even though his life is defiled and spoilt with transgression; and herein lies for man a possibility of redemption, which for fallen angels is not.
III. Notice the fall in its reversal. (1) Read as a reversal of Adam’s fall the record of our Lord’s temptation. Then did the "strong man armed" meet a stronger than himself, and retire from the encounter foiled and vanquished. (2) Thus has it been in a lower degree with all who in Christ’s name have gone forth to the conflict with temptation. (3) Read finally in this light the last chapters of the Book of God. C. J. Vaughan, Christ the Light of the World, p. 112. This text contains: (1) a promise of Christ; (2) a prophecy of His sufferings; (3) a prophecy of His final triumph. R. W. Dibdin, Penny Pulpit, No. 1872
I. The first time Prophecy opened her lips, it was to pronounce these words. To our first parents they were full of hope and consolation. In some mysterious way their loss was to be repaired; a Deliverer was to be provided. This promise was all their Bible. What, in truth, is all the rest of Scripture but the development of this great primeval promise of a Redeemer?
II. Never for an instant was this tremendous announcement absent from the recollection of the enemy of our race. Thoroughly versed in Scripture (as the history of the Temptation proves), he watched with intense anxiety the progress of prophetic announcement to mankind concerning One that was to come.
III. It is not to be supposed for an instant that Satan understood the mystery of our Lord’s Incarnation. Caught in the depths of that unimaginable mystery, he did not know until it was too late that it was Very and Eternal God with whom he had entered into personal encounter.
Repulsed in the wilderness, he was made fully aware of the personal advent of his great Enemy. At the death of Christ the kingdom which he had been consolidating for four thousand years was in a single moment shattered to its base. J. W. Burgon, Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates’ Journal, Feb. 19th, 1880. References: Gen_3:15.—Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons, p. 93; S. Leathes, Truth and Life, p. 14; J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses, p. 98; H. Melvill, Sermons, p. 1; J. G. Murphy, The Book of Daniel, p. 3; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii., No. 1326; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. vi., p. 9; C. H. Bromby, Good Words (1879), p. 169; W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul, p. 68; B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine (1887), pp. 351, 352; R. Glover, By the Waters of Babylon, p. 218, A. B. Grosart, Congregationalist, vol. ii., p. 170.
The Preacher's Homiletical tells us, “The result of the fall of our first parents is an eternal enmity between Satan and humanity. “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field: upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life; and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.”
We observe:—1. That this curse was uttered in reference to Satan. It is true that the serpent is here addressed, but merely as the instrument of the evil spirit. The punishment which came upon an irrational animal was symbolical of that permitted to Satan. Each became the object of a contempt which should be perpetual.
That this language is used in reference to Satan is evident from the fact that the human race should triumph over the serpent which indication would have been unneedful had it merely referred to the reptile rather than the devil. Thus we learn that the agents of Satan are neither free from guilt or punishment.
2. We observe that this address is different from that made to Adam and Eve. God said to Adam, “Hast thou eaten of the tree;” and to Eve, “What is it that thou hast done?” But to Satan he puts no interrogation. And why? Because heaven knew that it was impossible for hell to repent, whereas man would be able under the proclamation of Divine mercy, to confess his sin and to receive forgiveness.
The misery of Satan is irretrievable. For the sin of man there is provided a Divine remedy which he is urged to obtain. The questionings of God are merciful in their intention. Let us therefore penitently respond to them. 3. We observe that there was to commence a severe enmity and conflict between Satan and the human race. The serpent was no longer even the apparent friend of Adam and Eve, but their open enemy. Their recognized foe.
The enmity of hell toward earth is well defined in God’s word. It is thoroughly illustrated by the moral history of mankind. (1) This enmity has existed from the early ages of the world’s history. Its rage and ruin were co-existent with the progenitors of the race, and was directed against their moral happiness and enjoyment. It did not commence in any after period of the world’s history, and consequently not one individual has ever been exempt from its attack.
(2) This enmity is seeking the destruction of the higher interests of man. It does not seek merely to injure the mental and physical sources of life, but the spiritual and eternal. It seeks to rob man of moral goodness, and of his bright inheritance beyond the grave. It endeavours to defile his soul.
(3) This enmity is inspired by the most diabolical passion. It is not inspired by a mere love of mischief and ruin, not by a desire to have a gay sport with the welfare of man, but by a dire and all-conquering passion for his eternal destruction. This points to unremitting activity on the part of Satan. To inconceivable cunning.
2. This enmity, while it will inflict injury, is subject to the ultimate conquest of man. The serpent may bruise the heal of humanity, but humanity shall certainly bruise his head. Satan will be defeated in the conflict. His power is limited. Instance Job. Christ is his eternal conqueror, in Him the seed of the woman struck its most terrible blow. Thus the fall of our first parents has exposed humanity to the fierce antagonism of Satan.
But this may be for our moral good, as the conflict has brought a
Divine conqueror to our aid, it renders necessary—and may develop energies which shall lend force and value to our characters, and which otherwise would have remained eternally latent.
The result of the fall of our first parents is the anxious toil of man, and the comparative unproductiveness of his labour. 1. The anxious and painful toil of man consequent upon the fall. Some people imagine that work is the result of the fall, and that if our first parents had retained their innocence all men would have been born independent gentlemen! This may be a nice dream for the idle, but it is far from fact. Adam worked before he yielded to temptation, he tilled and kept the garden. But then there was no anxiety, peril, or fatigue associated with his daily efforts.
The element of pain which is now infused into work is the result of the fall, but not the work itself. Work was the law of innocent manhood. It is the happiest law of life. Men who rebel against it do not truly live, they only exist. All the accidents of which we read, and all the strife between capital and labour, and all that brings grief to the human heart connected with work, is a consequence of the fall. The excited brain should remind of a sinful heart.
2. The comparative unproductiveness of the soil consequent upon the fall. The ground was cursed through Adam’s sin, and he was to gather and eat its fruits in sorrow all his life. By allowing Eve to lead him astray Adam had, for the moment, given up his rulership of creation, and, therefore, henceforth nature will resist his will. The earth no longer yields her fruits spontaneously, but only after arduous and protracted toil.
The easy dressing of the garden was now to merge into anxious labour to secure its produce. Demons were not let loose upon the earth to lay it waste. The earth became changed in its relation to man. It became wild and rugged. It became decked with poisonous herbs. Its harvests were slow and often unfruitful. Storms broke over its peaceful landscapes. Such an effect has sin upon the material creation.
3. The sad departure of man from the earth by death consequent upon the fall. How long innocent man would have continued in this world, and how he would have been finally conveyed to heaven are idle speculations. But certain it is that sin destroyed the moral relationship of the soul to God, and introduced elements of decay into the physical organism of man.
Hence after the fall he began his march to the grave. That man did not die immediately after the committal of the sin, is a tribute to the redeeming mercy of God. Sin always means death. Sin and death are twin sisters.
IV. The grand and merciful interposition of Jesus Christ was rendered necessary by the fall of our first parents. Man had fled from God. He could not bring himself back again. Man had polluted his moral nature by sin. He could not cleanse it. The serpent’s head had to be bruised. Death had to be abolished. God only could send a deliverer. Here commenced the remedial scheme of salvation.
An innocent man would not have needed mercy, but a sinful man did. Hence the promise, type, symbol, the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection and ascension, all designed by the infinite love of God to repair the moral woe of Eden’s ruin.”
Finally, I will allow Albert Barnes to close out our investigation, tonight into the first prophecy of the coming of the Messiah: “For the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” This expression indicates that the woman was no longer at one with the serpent. She was now sensible that its part had been that, not of friendship, but of guile, and therefore of the deepest and darkest hostility.
When God, therefore, said, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman,” this revulsion of feeling on her part, in which Adam no doubt joined, was acknowledged and approved. Enmity with the enemy of God indicated a return to friendship with God, and presupposed incipient feelings of repentance toward him, and reviving confidence in his word.
The perpetuation of this enmity is here affirmed, in regard not on
ly to the woman, but to her seed. This prospect of seed, and of a godly seed, at enmity with evil, became a fountain of hope to our first parents, and confirmed every feeling of returning reverence for God which was beginning to spring up in their breast. The word heard from the mouth of God begat faith in their hearts, and we shall find that this faith was not slow to manifest itself in acts.
We cannot pass over this part of the sentence without noticing the expression, “the seed of the woman.” Does it not mean, in the first instance, the whole human race? Was not this race at enmity with the serpent? And though that part only of the seed of the woman which eventually shared in her present feelings could be said to be at enmity with the serpent spirit, yet, if all had gone well in Adam’s family, might not the whole race have been at enmity with the spirit of disobedience?
Still further, do we not pass from the general to the particular in the sentence, “He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel?” Is not the seed of the woman here individualized and matched in deadly conflict with the individual tempter?
The doom here pronounced upon the tempter must be regarded as special and secondary. It refers to the malignant attack upon man, and foretells what will be the issue of this attempt to spread disaffection among the intelligent creation. And it is pronounced without any examination of the offender, or investigation of his motives.
It is singular to find that this simple phrase, coming in naturally and incidentally in a sentence uttered four thousand years, and penned at least fifteen hundred years, before the Christian era, describes exactly and literally Him who was made of woman without the intervention of man, that He might destroy the works of the devil.”
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Beginning with Moses, Part 14.”
This Discussion was presented “live” on October 25th, 2023
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