And I will put enmity between you and the woman

[0:00] I'd like us to turn once again to the second portion of the scripture that we read, Genesis chapter 3 and reading at verse 15. In fact, reading at verse 14 through 15.

[0:20] The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

[0:32] On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

[0:46] He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. It's put to those words in verse 15.

[0:59] I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. The work of our salvation all begins there in Eden.

[1:19] It is a perfect work, a work which has been designed perfectly by our Heavenly Father, and was accomplished perfectly by the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son.

[1:34] If the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, and his death and resurrection, are the most important aspects or events in the history of the world, then we'd expect to find it everywhere in scripture.

[1:56] In the Old Testament and the New Testament, and so it is. Everywhere in scripture we find either the prophecy of it, or the outworking of the Lord's birth, death, and resurrection.

[2:14] Now, the first thing we see here is that it has its setting in Eden, in the garden, in Eden.

[2:28] The whole plan of salvation is brought into its outworkings there in that garden. As Satan, in the form of a serpent, tries to overthrow God's plans, and tries to outwit God by bringing about a fall.

[2:52] Now, one of the elements of theology is that God does not react to what Satan has done. God has always known what is going to happen.

[3:09] So he has planned the event before it comes to be. God has foreseen that man, mankind, would fall before the schemes of Satan.

[3:24] And so he had already planned a deliverer. Already planned a saviour for mankind. And that is the great wonder of the salvation that is affected by the Lord Jesus Christ.

[3:40] Now, what we have here is what happens to Adam and Eve there in the garden.

[3:57] Judgment comes upon Adam and Eve for their sin. In the day that they sinned, their souls died.

[4:10] They found themselves estranged from God. What Satan had come along and said was, Has God said this?

[4:23] Is this what God really said? Are we to take this as God's statement? Or is there some sort of other interpretation? And that's still the same temptation that drools in the world today, even in churches.

[4:39] Many churches want to try and interpret scripture to their own benefit. They want to try and attract the world by making the scriptures become more accommodating to the world and its practices and its habits.

[4:56] And so we find the truth of the gospel, the salt of the gospel, being taken out of it. And the gospel is no more than a philosophy.

[5:08] Something that men think and something that men imagine and something that men bring about by their own understanding of what they're reading. Whereas we know, as Bible-believing Christians, that what God has said is stated here plainly in the scriptures.

[5:26] We are to read, learn, inwardly digest, and practice it daily in our lives. It's not something that we can bring our judgment upon.

[5:39] We don't judge God's word. God's word judge us. The scriptures principally teach what we are to believe concerning God and what God requires of us.

[5:52] And there's the beginning and the end of the matter. It's not that we sit in judgment upon God's word. God's word sits in judgment upon us.

[6:05] So we all know what's happened here in this chapter. It's been read very often and we know fully its meaning. The devil has come to even the garden and tempted her to rebel against God by making her think that God didn't have her best interests at heart.

[6:32] He challenges God's word and he said, you shall surely not die. Has God surely not said? And shall have God's word not surely come to pass?

[6:45] And yet Satan here is saying, you shall not surely die. And also the temptation is that we shall become like God.

[6:57] But the reality is that we don't become like God. We become like Satan himself. That's the temptation that Satan cloaks his words with.

[7:13] You shall become like God. No, you shall become like Satan. You shall disobey God. You shall follow his leadings. You shall follow his teachings and his doctrines and his subterfusions.

[7:26] And you become more and more like Satan the more you go out of the way. And that's the prospect for all of us the longer we remain outside the influence of Christ.

[7:41] We don't somehow grow better. If we go back to the beginning of the 20th century there was a time there after the Victorian age everyone thought the world was getting better.

[7:55] Everyone thought that if we kept on going in this way in a very short space of time the world would become some paradise where there would be no wars and there would be only peace and people would relate to each other in a very humane and hospitable way.

[8:12] But two world wars since then has put a lie to that sort of teaching. That sort of philosophy has been thrown out the window. Man is no more than a ravaging wolf.

[8:29] He's no more than a man and a thing that will destroy and which will seek its greatest advantage. And we've seen that in every aspect of world history.

[8:42] Whether it's in the Roman times or the times our Lord was born into this world. Whether it's been in the times of the great empires that have followed since then.

[8:54] The British Empire or the attempt at German dynasty in the world. All these have been brought about by men trying to impose their own mind and their own will upon the world in which we live.

[9:11] And that again is Satan's devices. Now, to the gracious benefit of Britain and its peoples, the Lord used that expansion and that driving out of people even to the colonies like North America and New Zealand and Australia.

[9:38] Taking the gospel with them to spread the gospel. The Lord used men who were missionaries of the cross to go to places like China and India and the Middle East to take the gospel.

[9:52] And the Lord blessed this nation because of that. But the moment we turn aside from such endeavors, the moment we put aside God's word, the moment we forget whose we are and whom we seek to serve, God withdraws his arm.

[10:07] He withdraws his blessing. And we see our nation and its peoples descending into divisiveness, descending into controversy, descending in a situation where no one knows anymore who God is.

[10:25] Everyone does that which is right in his own eyes. Everyone seeks to worship their own God, the God they made in their own image. And Satan would want no more than that.

[10:37] for everyone to do what he wants to do and that which is right in his own eyes. Satan wouldn't want anything better for mankind than that. And that's what he tried to accomplish in the garden and that's what he's accomplishing still in our own experience.

[10:54] So when Adam and Eve fall from their first estate and they are brought from a state of innocence into a state of guilt and fallenness, we find God seeking out Adam in the garden, seeking him out while he was still in his sin.

[11:20] And it's not God who causes the controversy, it's man who causes the controversy. It is man who disobeys God. It is man who causes God's anger to surface against him.

[11:34] But it's God who begins the reconciliation. It is God who comes out with this message of hope to the man and the woman.

[11:45] and the message of hope is here in these verses in verse 15. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers.

[11:57] You shall bruise his heel but he shall crush your head. That's what the theologians call the proto-evangel. The first proclamation of the evangel to the world.

[12:12] And even in his state of fallenness there is this message of hope directed towards mankind. God promised judgment on the devil saying I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.

[12:34] But he puts hope into the heart and to the breast of Adam and Eve. I will put enmity between you and the devil.

[12:45] And the hope that is there in those words is that God will raise up a deliverer to crush Satan, to bring us back to our first estate of fellowship with God.

[13:00] If God had not put enmity between the devil and the woman, Adam and Eve would have become more and more like the devil as I've already been saying and seen things from the devil's perspective.

[13:17] They'd have seen the world, they'd have seen their interests, they'd have seen their relationships in the way the devil wants to wants them to appear to us.

[13:29] but God didn't want that. So that's the reason he puts enmity between the devil and mankind.

[13:42] So here is that first promise of a savior. The first appearance of grace in the history of the world.

[13:53] Very often, and it's a very good definition, our undeserved favor of God, God's grace towards us. But grace is also God's determination to make you and me Christ-like, to turn us from what we are into what he wants us to be, to conform us to the image of his own son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

[14:17] That's God's determination. And he will accomplish it in whatever way that he can. He will bring us to himself. the promise of a deliverer from God to be born of a virgin.

[14:35] It's the prophecy of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. On the devil's heart, the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ seemed to put the Lord exactly where the devil wanted him, in his domain.

[14:51] As long as the Lord was enthroned in heaven, as long as he was seated enthroned on the father's right hand, the devil couldn't touch him. The devil must have rejoiced in thinking that the Lord Jesus Christ was going to come to this earth, that he would come into his domain.

[15:09] him. That's exactly where the devil wanted him. The devil would have made Joseph to want to divorce Mary because she was unchaste, because she was a fallen woman in the natural way of looking at things.

[15:36] But the angel came to Joseph and told him of God's plan, told him that the Holy Spirit had overshadowed me, and the child in her womb was holy, and not to be afraid to take her as his wife, and to raise up the child as his own child.

[15:58] You know, the story of the trip to Bethlehem, and also the flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. Why did that family flee from Bethlehem to Egypt?

[16:15] Well, again, the devil was inspiring Herod and all his cohorts to destroy male children under two years of age.

[16:26] See, the devil is still going on with his plan, with his desire to destroy the Lord Jesus Christ, because now he's in his domain. He wants the child to be unprotected by the earthly father, for Mary to be an outcast.

[16:43] He wants Herod to destroy the Lord Jesus Christ in his infancy, so that he wouldn't grow to manhood. But the Lord and Joseph and Mary escape to Egypt, after God had warned them in a dream of Herod's plan to kill Jesus.

[17:00] And then when Jesus grew into a man, and was about to begin his work, the devil comes to him in the wilderness.

[17:13] You know the story of the temptation in the wilderness. He brought about three temptations, but they were all with the same idea of trying to get the Lord to deny the sufficiency of God, to deny God's provision for him.

[17:33] If you bow down and worship me, I will give you all the kingdoms of this world. If you go to the temple and throw yourselves down there, it's written in the Psalms that he will send his angels to protect you and lift you up.

[17:49] If you're so hungry, turn these stones into bread. And again and again the Lord refutes these temptations by saying man shall not live by bread alone.

[18:02] You shall not tempt the Lord your God and you shall only bow down and worship the Lord your God and none other shall you serve.

[18:13] And so in all these different ways the devil is trying to overcome the Lord Jesus Christ's devotion to his father and his obedience to God's commands.

[18:30] And he does it when the Lord is in the wilderness. The Holy Spirit, we're told, drives the Lord into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan 40 days and 40 nights.

[18:44] Now we're already told of these three temptations and no doubt there would have been many others but all with the same design to get the Lord to lean to his own wisdom to his own strength to his own ability to do anything he wanted to do and not to trust in the provision and the supply of sustenance by his heavenly father.

[19:12] He's trying to turn the Lord away from his line of duty as he does to all of us. He comes to us in temptations, he comes to us with thought, he comes to us with imaginations.

[19:26] Now, it used to be said, I'm sure it's still said in certain circumstances, you can't stop the cross flying over your head, but you can stop them building nests in your hair.

[19:41] You can stop those temptations with fomenting in your mind and making plans to accomplish them. The temptations will always come, the devil will always come in trying to get us to fall from grace.

[19:55] That is not the problem. The problem is when we toy with these temptations, when we feel ourselves being drawn towards them and eventually succumbing to them.

[20:10] but the Lord Jesus Christ isn't drawn away from the line of duty. The line of duty that his heavenly father had laid out for him.

[20:23] And just as with Adam and Eve, the devil tried to get the Lord Jesus Christ to doubt God's word and to doubt God's provision and to rebel against God.

[20:41] As we saw by using the scriptures, the Lord defeated the devil. And from then on, the Lord tries again and again to destroy the Lord Jesus Christ.

[20:54] Remember as I said, the Lord Jesus Christ is now in the devil's domain. He is the prince of this world. That's what the Lord calls him. He's in the devil's domain.

[21:05] And so the Lord Jesus Christ fights against principalities and powers and wickedness and high places. We're taught to do that ourselves. But the Lord has already done that.

[21:17] He's shown us the way that it's going to be. Yes, we can be more than conquerors by resting and trusting in Christ. But it's only in that resting and trusting in Christ we should be able to overcome.

[21:32] We shall never be able to do it in our own strength. The devil is far more wiling and far more strong than any of us could ever be. But in Christ Jesus we can rise up more than conquerors and defeat every idea and every temptation of evil.

[21:50] As I said, the Lord was facing the devil at almost every turn. We have some of the occasions given to us in the scriptures.

[22:01] the devil tried to destroy the Lord in a storm on Galilee when he was asleep. The devil raised up a storm and tried to sink that ship.

[22:12] When the disciples waken him he just says to the storms awake, peace and be still. And the disciples are brought to see no man can do these things.

[22:25] Even the wind and the waves obey him. So I'm not only trying to paint here a picture of the temptations that are going on between or the warfare that's going on between Satan and the Lord.

[22:39] But also who the Lord Jesus Christ is. We read that in the Gospel of John chapter 1. In the beginning was the Word and the Word of God and the Word was God.

[22:51] Our Lord Jesus Christ is God. He is the only God we shall ever know. It is before him that we bow in wonder and love and praise.

[23:04] And even in glory it's the Lord Jesus Christ whom we shall see. Why? Because he will still have a glorified body.

[23:17] He will still have that body that is being glorified and being perfected ever since the resurrection. But it will be a human body.

[23:27] we won't see God the Father because he is a spirit. We won't see the Holy Spirit because he is also a spirit. But the Lord Jesus Christ is the God man.

[23:39] He is the God man now and forever more, bearing in himself the wounds of triumph. The nail imprints in his palm and his feet and the spear thrust in his side.

[23:56] These are battle victory signs that he has emerged and that he has taken captivity captive and emerged from that captivity victorious.

[24:11] And so, as I said, I'm trying to paint this picture in our mind of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Not just the temptation and what he's overcoming for us and for our salvation, but also who he is.

[24:24] He is the only God we shall ever know. He is the God before whom we shall bow in wonder and love and praise. And so, the devil tried to destroy him on the Sea of Galilee.

[24:37] When he went to Nazareth, the people tried to throw him down off a cliff. On other occasions, they took up stones to stone him to death. On every occasion, the Lord escaped out of their clutches.

[24:52] But we find that when the devil was unsuccessful with the common people at that time, he did get them to turn away from him.

[25:04] At one time, they followed him gladly, but then they turned away and only left the close followers of the Lord. The 12 chosen ones, the 12 apostles, and just a few more.

[25:16] all the rest turned aside. And the Lord asked them, will you also go away? And they turn and say, as we would, to whom else shall we go?

[25:30] You alone have the words of eternal life. And surely that's the same for us as we go through our lives. To whom else shall we go? Which other leader?

[25:42] Which other general are we going to follow? Which other teacher? Christ alone. has the words of eternal life. He is our Lord and he is our God. Now, as I said, the devil turns now to the religious leaders.

[26:01] And they had shown their hatred of God by killing the prophets and disobeying every prophet of God that had ever been sent to them.

[26:14] even working out the parable that the Lord tells them in the gospel of Matthew chapter 21. The Lord tried to warn them about what was going to happen.

[26:28] He told them about that parable about the landowner who let out his land to his servants and he was gone a long time and when the landowner sent his servants back to receive the fruit of the land, they killed.

[26:41] the first one, he sent others more noble and they killed and stoned others and they sent, at last he sent his son and they said this is the year, let us kill him also.

[26:55] And so in this parable the Lord is even describing to them long before it happens what they are going to do. But the hatred of the scribes and the religious leaders of the world was so much that the devil is able to infiltrate their minds and their desires and so bring about their own downfall in planning the downfall of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[27:19] And so the devil is no quitter and eventually he enters into the heart of Judas to get him to portray his master.

[27:30] You see all the time he's trying to destroy the Lord Jesus Christ in his humanity. The devil knows an awful lot of things.

[27:43] He has a greater need of knowledge but he is not all-knowing and that's his failure. He is not all-knowing and he thinks that if he can destroy, if he can kill the Lord Jesus Christ he is going to win.

[28:00] But in this moment of triumph he must have forgotten the words in the garden. You might bruise his heel but he will crush your head.

[28:17] When Christ rose on the third day victory was complete. When the devil had the Lord Jesus Christ nailed to the cross, when he saw the spear pierce his side and his blood pour out upon the earth.

[28:38] He must have been celebrating his victory. He must have been rejoicing in what he'd been able to accomplish. I wonder how long it took for the devil to realize that all the time he had been carrying out God's purposes.

[28:58] The purposes for the salvation of mankind. Christ rose from the dead. He took captivity captive.

[29:12] And what the devil had failed to see and also all who oppose God is that all their power comes from God. God allows people to exercise the power in any way they want to use it.

[29:31] If they wish to destroy themselves he will allow them to destroy themselves. But if you are in Christ he will prevent that. He will do everything in his power to save us everything in his power to restore us to our rightful place in his affections.

[29:50] the devil thought if Adam and Eve could be made to sin or the Lord Jesus Christ could be made to fail he'd win.

[30:03] That was to overlook the fact that God is love to those who believe in him and trust in him and call upon his name.

[30:15] That's the great message of the gospel. God is a God of love to those who receive and rest upon him alone for their salvation.

[30:29] Whatever their lives might have been whatever crimes or sins might be laid at our door if we are in Christ Jesus he will save us.

[30:40] That's the reason for the Lord Jesus Christ coming into this world. It's a love that will not let us go. the devil recognized that what was to be accomplished by the death and the rising again of Christ was his own destruction.

[30:59] Realizing it too late but realizing it eventually that all that he had done, all he had planned, all he had schemed for the destruction of Christ was really his own destruction.

[31:12] Today the devil is defeated four. yes he is like the lions and he's on a chain.

[31:23] He'll only be allowed to accomplish what God allows him to accomplish. He can go no further. There was a time when the whole world was blinded in ignorance but that ignorance is no longer in place.

[31:36] The gospel is preached, missionaries have gone all over the world and those today who disregard Christ do so in a willful rejection of who Christ is and what his claims are.

[31:49] There's hardly a people on the whole surface of the world that haven't heard of Christ and if they don't follow him, they're rejecting him willfully. It is our prayer that none here would reject him willfully.

[32:04] Having heard who Christ is, having heard what he's accomplished, what he's suffered for us and for us, our salvation, surely none of us will leave this place without knowing Christ's desire for us and experiencing a drawing of our own hearts toward him.

[32:28] And so this whole aspect of Adam and Eve having sinned and would have perished with it, but the God who is rich in mercy with the love he has loved us with quicken them together with Christ even as he quickens us together with Christ.

[32:58] We know what we are. We are sinners. sinners. We know that we deserve nothing less than God's wrath and curse both in this life and love just to come.

[33:12] But he has loved us with an everlasting love. He has loved us according to the covenants he made with Christ before the world began.

[33:24] And God will be faithful to those covenants. God will keep his covenant that he made with the Lord Jesus Christ. He has given his son a certain number and he will save those.

[33:35] To his uttermost he will save them. He sent his Holy Spirit to indwell us, to guide us, to direct us in the ways of righteousness. God said he was going to send his own son.

[33:50] And when the fullness of the times was come two thousand years ago God sent his son to be born of a woman and made under the law to redeem us who are under that law that we might receive the adoption of sons.

[34:07] If only all of us met here this evening would trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for time and eternity. This narrative that we've been reading and speaking about here today is the narrative of the story of redemption.

[34:29] redemption that God planned, that God accomplished, that God brings to pass in your experience and mine. It begins in the garden immediately after Adam and Eve fell.

[34:45] See how instantaneous is God's response to sin if we are his. And yes, Adam and Eve were God's children by creation but also in grace.

[34:59] And nothing will separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus. They were created in a state of innocence. They fell into a state of sin but in Christ Jesus they were restored to that position of grace and favor with the heavenly Father.

[35:22] And to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is rich in mercy save them. And he will save you and me also if we but trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[35:36] We don't have to do anything. We don't have to promise to be good. We don't have to promise to do great works. We don't have to promise to do anything.

[35:46] Simply receive and rest upon Christ alone. Laying aside all our own righteousnesses which are as filthy righteousnesses.

[35:57] Nothing that you and I could do or could ever do that we might boast of in the presence of God. He's done all things well. And all our works, even the best of our works, are as filthy rags in his sight.

[36:14] Help us by the Holy Spirit. Let our prayer be that the Holy Spirit would help us to flee from them to Christ and lay our confidence and our hope in him alone.

[36:28] Let us conclude our worship singing to God's praise in Psalm 46. Psalm 46 on page 271. God is our refuge and our strength and strength of present day.

[36:43] Sing down to the end of the verse, Mark 7. And that's six stanzas to God's praise. God is a refuge and strength of strength of present day.

[37:09] Therefore although the earth we will not be afraid, we will not be afraid, though hills and hills and she's be past, though waters and are in at ALL.

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[39:01] And even greater I am just thee For the kingdom is where The Lord called out of heaven In his light in the air To bear on fear The Lord of hosts upon our side That God can be with me The Lord of hosts upon our side The Lord of hosts upon our side

[40:03] To the Lord of hosts upon our side And now may grace, mercy and peace In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit One God rest on you And abide in you now and always Amen Amen