"The Seed" Genesis 3:15 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, in preparation for Advent, I want to make sure you all understand what Advent is.

Pastor Bill had talked about it earlier in the worship service, but remember Advent is this time of preparation for the Advent or the Appearing of Christ.

Advent has been celebrated since probably the second or third century of church history.

Although it was a little bit different than early in church history, it had its target date as January 6th, and so it was four weeks of preparation for January 6th, which is Epiphany.

Now, in some liturgical calendars, Epiphany is recognized as the date of several things.

It's the date where the wise men appeared to Jesus, uh, came and visited Jesus.

It's the date where Jesus was baptized, it's the date where Jesus turns the water into wine at the wedding of Cana.

Now we don't know of those actual, the actual date, but in the liturgical calendar, all those are celebrated January 6th on the date of Epiphany.

And for the first couple hundred years of church history, that was a baptism date because it was the date Jesus was supposedly baptized.

The church itself would practice baptisms on January 6th.

And the four Sundays leading up to that would be a time of prayer and fasting, especially for the baptismal candidates, until they were baptized on Epiphany.

Well, around the fourth or fifth century, baptism sort of shifted to Easter.

You know, there's no official, like now we move it to Easter.

Just gradually, over, you know, 100 years, they sort of drifted to Easter.

And so the Advent time remained a time of anticipating anticipation, looking towards the baptism of Christ, you know, remembering the baptism of Christ and the wedding of Canaan and how he launched his ministry and preparation for your heart to launch his ministry again as he returns back to earth to judge the dead and to take his church with him.

And that over time, again, has morphed into our Christmas celebration where we have four weeks looking forward to Christmas.

Well, we remember backwards that Jesus came in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, and we look forward to his soon return of Christ.

And so as I think through Advent, I'm trying to decide what to teach through in that period, which if you know me, you know it was not easy.

I talked everybody's ear off about this.

Uh, but I settled on Genesis because Genesis gives this pattern uh of in Scripture, these patterns that prophesy of Christ, that point forward to Christ, that we can then fill in with our understanding of who Jesus is.

So over the next uh six or so sermons, we're gonna look at pictures of Jesus in Genesis, and that'll take us through Christmas.

I have drawings of each of the six on the screen, but let me walk you through what they are.

As I look at the big picture of Genesis, I see Jesus in Genesis as the seed in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

I see him as the savior in Genesis 8 with the ark that rescues people from destruction, as Salem in Genesis 14, which is Melchizedek, the Prince of Salem, which is the Prince of Peace.

Jesus is our peace, the son in Genesis 15, where God tells Abraham, You will have an offspring, and that offspring will receive the promise, and he will be your son.

And then as a substitute in Genesis 22, where God himself will provide the one who dies in our place.

And then finally, as the scepter in Genesis 49, through the prophecy given to Judah.

We'll be looking at those all the way through Christmas.

This morning, we zoom back to Genesis 3 for the prophecy of Jesus as the seed, the prophecy in the garden.

That's where we'll begin this morning.

Now I'm drawn to Genesis because Genesis tells you where everything comes from.

It's the first book of the Bible, and it's the first book of the Bible.

Chronologically, it starts at the beginning.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

But it also starts with the origin story.

That's why it's called Genesis.

It just means beginning or origin.

It tells you where everything comes from.

Genesis tells you where creation comes from, where light comes from, where land and ocean comes from, where the stars and the sun come from, where animals come from, where people come from.

That's described at the beginning of Genesis.

It describes where marriage comes from, where sin comes from.

Genesis describes where work comes from, and sometimes you may ask yourself that as the alarm goes off Monday morning.

Why do we do this again?

Genesis describes where nations come from, where languages come from, where rainbows come from.

I'm sure you were wondering that.

And ultimately where Israel comes from.

These are all, it's the origin story of the world.

Where does the basics in this world, from languages to governments to people to marriage and all that, where does that all come from?

Running through all of it is a scarlet thread of redemption.

Where does redemption come from?

And you see that beginning in Genesis 3, where God prophesies redemption, Genesis 4, where he mandates it to be worshiped through sacrifice of blood, not of grain, through the narrative that runs throughout Genesis, constantly pointing you forward to the future Redeemer that will come.

Now, when you close your Bible at the end of Genesis, if you only read Genesis, you're not gonna have a full picture of who Jesus is.

Of course not.

If you end Genesis, you're not gonna walk away and going, oh, he's gonna be crucified on a cross in Golgotha outside of Jerusalem several thousand years from now as a substitutionary atonement for sinners, and he'll descend to the grave for three days and rise again from the grave and be exalted in heaven.

I get that all that from Genesis.

No, but Genesis gives you the patterns of all of that.

Everything I just said is described in pattern form in Genesis, and then those patterns are repeated throughout the Old Testament with more and more clarity, increasing clarity, until finally you get to the New Testament and they all find their focus and their fulfillment in Christ.

And so that's why it's a pretty exciting exercise for me anyway.

I hope you're excited by it, to go back to Genesis and see the foundational form of some of these patterns, where the pictures of Christ come from.

And so this morning we begin with Jesus as the seed.

Jesus as the seed, and that's in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Genesis 3 is where Adam and Eve fall into sin.

At the end of Genesis 2, all was well in the world.

Adam and Eve were married, God made them for each other, and he had them married.

They were naked, they were not ashamed, there were no clothes yet, they hadn't been invented yet.

They lived a shame-free life of joy and happiness in Eden.

But then they were attacked by the devil and they fell into sin.

That's the story of Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The devil brings his war to Adam and Eve.

The devil has been expelled from heaven.

You get this from other parts of the Bible.

The devil was thrown out of heaven.

The devil wanted dominion on the earth.

He wanted to uh rule the earth.

He saw the earth was beautiful and wonderful and lovely.

He wanted dominion over it.

He wanted to be like a god on the earth.

And instead of giving it to the devil, God gave the earth to Adam.

Dirty, stinky, made from dirt Adam, and Eve made from Adam's rib.

And the devil revolts against that.

He wants the earth, and so he brings his rebellion to God.

He gets thrown out of heaven.

He brings a third of the angels with him, and he attacks Adam and Eve on the earth.

It's worth remembering this is where demonic activity comes from.

Demons hate people, demons attack people because they want control of the earth for themselves.

You know, demons hate all people.

Demons don't only hate Christians.

Demons hate everybody.

I've had people ask me before, why do demons attack non-Christians?

If non-Christians are apart from Christ and they're living a life of sin, wouldn't they be on the demon's side?

And when you look at the world, you see that most demonic activity in the world does appear to be in nations where there's very little gospel presence.

Almost like the there's an inverse correlation.

The less gospel, the more demons.

And there's a reason for that.

The reason is not because demons don't hate people because of their affiliation with Christ.

Demons hate Christ because of his affiliation with people.

Demons hate people because they're made in the image of God and they have dominion over the earth.

That's why demons hate people.

And they hate all people.

Anybody in the image of God is hated by a demon.

Anybody with dominion on the earth is hated by a demon.

And that's why the devil brings his attack to the earth, to Adam and Eve.

And by the way, one of the most central features of human existence is marriage.

It is the institution of marriage.

To husband and wife, to this is how Genesis 2 ends.

A man will leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, the two will become one flesh, they will multiply the earth, they will subdue the earth, they will exercise dominion through marriage.

That's the pattern in Genesis 2.

And so if the devil hates Adam and Eve and he wants to attack mankind, there's no better place to attack mankind than marriage.

And that's exactly what he does.

He goes after Adam and Eve, not even individually.

He goes after them at the point of their marriage.

Eve was supposed to be submissive to Adam and submissive to the Lord.

She was supposed to honor Adam and honor the Lord.

Adam was supposed to protect his wife and lead his wife as he honored the Lord, and that's where the devil attacked.

This is why the devil goes after Adam initially and not Eve, because by getting Eve, getting Adam to abdicate his leadership, getting Eve to step away from Adam and do something that both God and Adam had forbidden, is to attack marriage.

And that is what the devil does.

Eve eats, hands it to slacker, loser, villain Adam, who eats as well, and the whole human race is plunged into sin.

The devil has victory over mankind because now we're all born into sin.

He has victory over God because he's attacked marriage and eroded marriage.

And this is the attack that he will carry on throughout human existence.

This is why he continually attacks the institution of marriage.

That's what happens at the beginning of Genesis 3.

Adam and Eve are now exposed to sinners.

They are ashamed, they realize they're naked, they hide, they're ashamed of themselves for sinning, and they're ashamed of themselves in relationship to God.

They hide from God, which is not a good plan, ever a good plan to hide from God.

That doesn't work.

I remember when my kids were littler, not anymore, but littler, when they would play hide and go seek, and one of my daughters would hide in the middle of the driveway with her blanket and her hands over her eyes like this, just standing in the driveway.

It was adorable.

We have lots of pictures of it and remember them fondly.

This is what people are like trying to hide from God.

They close their eyes and think, if I don't see God, he can't see me.

And we'll, of course, laugh, but every time we sin, we are doing that.

Every time we sin, we think if I just pretend God isn't there, if I pretend he doesn't see, if I pretend he doesn't care, then he won't see and he won't care and he doesn't know, but you cannot hide from God.

And so God arrives on the scene and says, Where are you?

And you're hiding.

Why are you hiding?

It's because you sinned.

Of course, God knows all of this.

And God calls out Adam and Eve, and he begins his uh curses, and he begins with the serpent.

This is verse 14.

Remember, first he asks Adam and Eve, What have you done?

They all blame each other.

Adam's like, It's the wife you gave me.

You made her, I didn't make her.

What do you want from me?

My goodness.

Eve blames the serpent.

Uh how do I know?

He was a smooth-looking serpent.

Look at his scales, shiny.

And the God curses the serpent.

Verse 14, because you've done this, cursed are you above all livestock, above all beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go, and dust you'll eat all the days of your life.

Now, I don't know if this means the snakes used to walk on legs.

I I mean it could be an implication of this.

I have not seen a snake before the fall, so I can't comment beyond speculation, but that would be one possible understanding of this, is that maybe snakes used to have feet.

And I kind of buy into that because the way snakes operate now doesn't make a lot of sense.

Um, it is a great mystery.

How do their bodies move?

And I know I've watched like slow-motion National Geographic videos of it, and I've heard biologists talking about it, it still makes no sense.

I mean, how do they get propulsion?

Isn't this some kind of closed system that generates its own momentum?

That shouldn't exist.

And they slither around the ground and they make unpredictable moves and they jump this way and they jump that way, and this is why snakes freak you out, because they don't work right.

Like you can't predict their movements.

You know, they slither across the stage and you don't know what to do.

Like, which way is it going?

It does it see me.

I can't tell.

Its eyes are going that way.

This is this is messed up.

And whenever you respond to a snake that way, you yell and you scream and you jump on your table and you call your daughter to take care of it, or whatever happens in your own in your own instance.

That's a normal way to respond, okay?

It's normal to respond that way because all of the animosity towards sin is funneled here towards the snake.

And that's how sin operates.

Sin doesn't make a lick of sense, it doesn't move like it's supposed to.

Sin is unpredictable.

It pounces this way and that way.

You don't know if it's looking at you or not.

You just know that it bites if you don't anticipate it, and you can never anticipate it.

Snakes and sin are practically the same thing.

And that's the point of this initial curse.

That the devil will be cursed and on his belly he shall go.

And this starts in verse 15: enmity between you and the woman.

This shows us the need for redemption.

The passage here describes a war between the descendants of the devil and the descendant singular of Eve.

There's going to be a battle between sin and righteousness, between darkness and light, between those affiliated with the devil and those affiliated with God.

Those are the battle lines, and they're very clearly drawn.

This is captured in the word enmity.

There's going to be war.

There is conflict between the two groups, those that are in with sin and those that are in with God.

The difficulty here is because of depravity, we are all born into sin.

That last sunset there in Eden, when the sun rises the next day, Adam and Eve are found outside of Eden.

We are all born outside of Eden.

We are all born in sin.

We are born outside of paradise.

God does not walk with us in the garden anymore.

We are isolated and banished from his presence.

We are born loving sin and rebelling against God.

That's what our heart disposition is.

And listen for a second, please.

You cannot rightly understand yourself unless you see yourself in this story.

You can't understand why things are going wrong in your life or why there's conflict in your life or why your conscience convicts you of sin, why your kids don't like you, or your parents don't like you, or whatever.

You cannot describe or understand conflict in your life absent this war right here.

You are born into sin.

Your heart has a disposition, it inclines towards sin.

You have to teach a little kid how to read and write and walk and talk and eat with their hands.

You do not have to teach a little kid how to sin.

They come, batteries included, they come out of the box pre-programmed that way.

And that is true of you.

You're born in this world with an inclination towards sin.

And so you grow up, and your heart produces sin and you love sin and you serve sin and you pursue sin.

And the world was made in such a way that those who serve sin don't mesh with it.

God designed the world to be lived in wisdom, not in sin.

And so sin is kicking against the goad, so to speak.

Sin is going, petting the cat backwards, it's going uphill.

It doesn't fit.

And so there is conflict and strife between you and the Lord, between you and your family, between you and your boss, between you and your neighbors, between you and everyone.

There's conflict because of your sin.

Sometimes you're the innocent victim of circumstances.

Sometimes people sin against you, of course they do, and it's still the wages of sin.

Your heart responds to it in a wrong way because you're a sinner.

That magnifies the conflict that you weren't initially responsible for, gets magnified by your own sinful response to it.

Sin cascades and magnifies and multiplies.

That's the battle lines.

God is opposed to sin.

The eyes of the Lord look for the humble to exalt, but He hates the proud.

Our hearts are born with pride and animosity and hostility towards God.

We are born in the slave market of sin.

We're born slaves to sin.

We work for sin.

Sin owns us.

We can't run away from it.

We can't escape it.

We find ourselves in this conflict with sin all the time.

That's at a global level.

There's wars.

That's at a cultural level.

There's consumerism and materialism.

That's at your own heart level.

Conflict with the people that you know.

Listen, that's in your own mind.

You want this war like in a crystallized form?

You're tempted to sin and your conscience says, don't do it, that's sin.

And you tell your conscience, be quiet, and you have a fight, a war inside of your mind over the sin.

You know it's sin.

Your conscience tells you it's sin, but your flesh wants to do it.

There's this battle inside of you, and often your flesh wins, slays the conscience, and you go and sin anyway.

That's the war played out in your own mind.

Next time maybe your conscience puts up less of a fight, too, huh?

Next time you're tempted to sin, your conscience says, Hey, yesterday you did it and I told you it was sin.

And your flesh says, Yeah, yesterday you told me it was sin and I did it anyway.

I'll do it today again, too.

And there's that battle, eventually your conscience is killed and suppressed.

That's the war that happens in the individuals' minds over sin.

That's the enmity in verse 15.

There is a war between those who follow sin, those who follow Satan, and righteousness and God.

That's the war.

That's why we need redemption.

We cannot free ourselves from this battle.

We are under in the categories here.

You have the offspring of the devil, those that follow him, and the woman.

And by the way, the woman between the devil's offspring and her offspring, her offspring is singular.

Singular means there's one seed it's talking about.

That there will be one person born to Eve, that she will be, or Eve will be the one who brings the offspring into the world through her seed.

That's the second part of our outline.

The need of redemption followed by the seed of redemption.

The seed of redemption in verse 15, the middle phrase, between your offspring, the devil's offspring, and her offspring, her seed.

The war gets personified.

It's a global war between righteousness and sin, between darkness and light, but the war is personified in two individuals, the devil and the woman's seed.

Now, seed is singular, it means one person is going to come from Eve.

Also, if you recall, it's an unusual phrase because if you remember back to the birds and the bees talk, the seed comes from the man, not the woman.

It'd be a very strange phrase to say the seed of the woman will bring life into the world.

No, the seed of the man brings life into the world.

Not the seed of the woman.

And yet here the prophecy is the seed of the woman.

This is pointing forward to a human being because it's from Eve, but a human being unusually born.

I think it's pointing towards the virgin birth, where there is no male seed involved with the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Of course, you don't get that just from Genesis 3.15.

You have to extrapolate out and see the pattern that Genesis 3.15 establishes that a descendant of Eve will defeat the devil, and you find it fulfilled in the New Testament with the virgin birth.

But the point is there's a conflict between those who follow Satan and those who follow God, and that conflict finds all of us on the devil's side, except for one person on Eve's side, the descendant of Eve, the singular descendant, the singular seed of Eve, will be the one who brings restoration and redemption.

It's a battle between those who love God and those who don't, and those who don't are the all of us and those who do are personified by one person who is yet to be born.

It's a future prophecy.

This speaks of the humanity of the Savior.

The Savior who brings redemption, the Savior who defeats the devil will not be an angel, but will be a descendant of Eve.

And this is a big new big deal to the devil.

Remember, the devil is attacking mankind.

He hates mankind.

And here God tells the devil, you're going to get crushed not by Michael the Archangel.

You're going to get crushed not by Gabriel.

You're going to get crushed not by a legion of angels.

No, devil, you're going to get crushed by somebody born to Eve.

I mean, that's a finger right in the eye of the devil.

It's going to be a human being that does this to you.

Devil, and what's going to happen?

What's the seed going to do to defeat the devil?

Well, it says in verse 15, he will bruise your head.

The word bruise there is that's an okay translation because the word can mean bruise, but when I read bruise, sometimes I think of like back in high school, me and my friends would punch each other in the arm and you get like a bruise in the arm.

It's like a little bruise, that kind of bruise.

This is more like the word for bruise for like you fell off a motorcycle kind of thing.

You fell down a flight of stairs, kind of bruised.

And when your head is bruised that way, it's uh you know, it's idiomatic for getting your head bashed in.

That's what this means.

That the seed of Eve is gonna bash the serpent's head in.

Gonna stomp on the snake's head until his head is bat is concave.

That's the image here.

The seed of the Is going to destroy the devil by bashing in his head.

That's a pretty graphic prophecy, but it's what the Savior will do.

Now the Savior is going to get struck in this battle as well.

Look at the last phrase in verse 15.

You shall bruise his heel.

The serpent will bruise the heel of the seed.

And in a description of a battle with a snake, that is makes sense as well.

I mean, I don't often fight snakes, but when I do, I fight with my feet.

You're going to reach down under your hand.

You're in striking distance there.

So you fight the snake with the foot.

You try to kick the snake or whatever.

So if you're going to kill the snake by bashing in its head, but the snake gets one bite in, it would make sense, it would happen on your heel.

That is the logical place the snake would get its victory.

And the snake crushes the heel of the person that bites, which is very different than saying the snake crushes his head.

This is not equal.

I mean, if I were to tell you there's going to be a fight, one guy is going to bruise his heel and the other guy is going to get his head bashed in.

Which person do you think will win the fight?

There's no doubt about who's going to win the fight.

The point is the devil will be destroyed, and the one destroying it, the Savior, the Redeemer, the one who brings peace between sin and God, that person, he's going to get struck in the battle.

That's the pattern of Scripture.

Judgment.

I mean, big picture, the pattern of scripture here is judgment with hope.

That's the pattern that will be filled out the rest of the Bible.

People sin, God brings judgment and then hope.

Or people sin, God points to a redeemer to atone for their sin and reconcile the two parties.

That redeemer will be victorious over the devil personally, but will be wounded by him as well.

That's the big picture pattern from Genesis.

That pattern begins in Genesis 3 with this prophecy.

The devil rebels against God and attacks humans and ushers in a war.

But Eve will give birth to one who will defeat the devil.

Now there are other prophecies about this person throughout the rest of the Bible.

Of course there are.

This isn't a sit.

The other prophecies launch you on a search for who this Redeemer will be, which is our third point.

The search for redemption.

You see the need for redemption, the seed of redemption, and find the search of redemption.

At the end of verse 15, God just moves on, tells the woman that child bearing will be hard and painful, tells the man that work will be hard and painful, and all y'all are gonna die anyway.

That's how Genesis 3 is wrapped up.

Nevertheless, Adam and Eve go on to have a family.

You have Cain and Abel.

Perhaps Abel will be the savior.

He worships God through redemption, doesn't he?

He brings the sacrifice, but Abel is not the savior.

Abel finds himself murdered.

So maybe Seth will be the savior.

After Abel is murdered, Adam and Eve have Seth.

They name him Seth.

Seth is the word for seed, by the way.

They name Seth seed, like maybe he'll be the one.

Seth isn't the one.

Later you find Noah.

Noah's born.

Noah's parents named to Noah.

It means his hand will bring peace or his hand will bring deliverance.

Maybe Noah will deliver the world from suffering and from the grip of the devil.

You know what?

Noah is the worst named person ever.

Noah didn't bring peace to the world.

Noah brought judgment to the world.

He actually, the whole world died.

That's not righteousness and deliverance to the world.

That's justice and wrath.

Who's the seed?

You see the promise get transferred to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to Judah, to David, Solomon.

You can trace this promise all the way down to the Old Testament.

The difficulty is nobody knows.

In the middle of the search for the seed, God develops nations.

God develops languages.

How can you find, even if the seed was born into one nation with one language and one tribe and one culture, how would the rest of the world even know about it?

Earlier this week, I came into the worship center when nobody else was here and I hid a pomegranate seed.

There's one pomegranate seed hiding in here.

You're not gonna find it.

You're not gonna find it.

It's well hidden.

Even if everybody looked for it, I'm pretty sure nobody would find it.

I also don't know how long do the things last before it like pops and I don't know what happens to it over time.

So who knows?

The point is, it would be very tricky to find.

Imagine that kind of search at a global level.

There's a seed that will be born somewhere in some country, in some language group, that will bring peace between God and man.

Good luck.

Find him.

It's an impossible task.

Impossible.

And then God isolates Israel, makes them different than the nations around them, different language, different culture, different dress, different food, different everything, tells them they'll have the seed.

There's so many contradictions and these tensions and these prophecies of the Old Testament about the Savior, too, as you read them.

You see it even in Genesis 30, 15.

He'll defeat the devil, but he'll get struck by him.

He's the Lord of life, but he'll die.

God tells David, but also when he sins, I'll discipline him.

He's gonna be a king, yet he's gonna be of ignoble birth.

He's gonna be poor, but with a rich person in his death.

Zechariah says, I'll look upon me, Yahweh, whom they pierced, and yet he's gonna be man, a descendant of Eve.

There are so many of these tensions all over the place.

That in the Old Testament, you're following these patterns through and you think they can't make sense.

Not one person, not one seed could be God, Yahweh, and man.

Not one seed could be the Lord of life and die, not one seed could be sinless and yet punished for sin.

This doesn't make any sense.

But those are the patterns that are spelled out.

And finally you get to the New Testament where all of those knots, all of those patterns are resolved in Christ.

In the Old Testament, you think, how can the Savior be Yahweh Himself and born to Eve?

In the New Testament, you find, oh, because he's a person with two natures.

He's truly God and truly man.

How can he be the Lord of life and yet die?

And you realize, oh, because he resurrects after he died.

How can he be sinless and yet crucified for sin?

Oh, because my sin was transferred to him, and as a sinless substitute, he could really bear the penalty for my sin.

How could he be a king and yet of ignoble birth?

Because he's the king of heaven and Yahweh establishes him on his holy hill.

He has no form or appearance that you would esteem him.

You look at him and think of nothing.

It's all resolved in the person of Christ.

This is the big picture pattern that is planted here in Genesis 3.15.

That God will bring redemption to the world through a Savior who is truly man and truly God, who is truly sinless and yet pays the penalty for your sin.

Earlier I said you can't fight this battle against sin.

You're a slave to sin.

You can't switch sides in this battle, but you can switch sides if Jesus redeems you.

That's the redemption language, the slave market language.

That you're a slave to sin, you're serving sin, you're fighting against God, you might have a war in your conscience, but you're just owned by sin.

And then Jesus pays the penalty for your sin, redeems you.

You're set free from the power of sin and death because the penalty for your sin has been paid.

That's where you're transferred from darkness to light.

That's where you're transferred from the devil's side to the side of righteousness in this battle.

And how does that transference take place?

It takes place through your faith that you place your faith in the woman's seed.

You place your faith in the offspring born to Eve, thousands of years later.

You place your faith in Jesus Christ who fulfills these prophecies in your place.

When you place your faith in him, that results in a change in your heart.

You turn from darkness to light.

You confess your sins.

You don't want to keep living in sin.

The person who says they walk in the light, but are walking in the darkness is a liar.

Because you realize I was walking in the darkness when sin ruled me, and now Jesus has redeemed me and brought me into the kingdom of his son.

You go being adopted from being a child of the devil to a child of Christ.

You're transferred from darkness to light.

You have a love for the light inside of you as you confess your sins to God.

That's how this change takes place.

And you are brought into God's own family.

That's the prophecy of the seed.

Earlier I said you can't understand your own life unless you read this kind of story through the lens of your own battle against sin.

And you recognize that you are on the side of sin when you were born.

You had an encounter with Jesus Christ that changed your life, it opened your eyes to the truth and brought you from darkness to light, and now you love Christ and you want to walk in the light.

You're on the side of righteousness.

Even though you still sin, even though you struggle with sin and you still fight, the battle still wages, you know, in your mind.

But you've been delivered.

If that's not you, if you've never been transferred to darkness to light, I pray that you would see in this story a plea for you to see the person of Christ as the seed promised to Eve.

The seed promised to all of us to redeem us from our sin.

God, we're grateful that you give us a clear picture of Christ.

We're thankful that He fulfills all righteousness, that He defeats the devil at the cross, freeing us from the power and penalty of sin.

And we know we're still in the presence of sin in this life, Lord.

We look forward to when you will come again and take us home.

Our minds not only look forward, but go backwards 2,000 years ago to that night in Bethlehem where you were born, and we see so many of these prophecies that seemed so much of an enigma resolved that night.

Virgin birth, esteemed not by the royalty, but worshipped by angels, worshipped by shepherds, visited by wise men.

At night that was in Bethlehem, just a few hours' walk away from Jerusalem.

You came to your own.

We're grateful for that night.

Um fulfilling the prophecy of the seed.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.