Now if this morning's message sounds familiar to you at all, it might be because you have a very good memory and you can remember back to the first Sunday in December last year when I preached and I was given Matthew Chapter 1. Be assured I didn't just pull out last year's notes and rehash them. But given that we will be looking at the same passages, there may be similarities. So well done if you can remember a sermon a year ago. But we're looking this morning at the first in a series of readings that we'll be also looking at at the carol service. And these two passages bring together a promise right at the beginning of the Scriptures and how that promise, one of the ways that that promise is fulfilled in the New Testament. And it's the promise that God gave to deal with the curse of sin Now, if we're thinking of the curse, what does it mean to be under a curse? We need to understand what it means to be under a blessing. What does it mean for God to give us his blessing? And at the heart of the blessing of God upon his creation, upon his people, there is the idea of fruitfulness. God created the animals and he blessed them and said, Be fruitful, fill the seas and the air and the earth. He created man and woman and he looked at us and said, he gave us his blessing and he said, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, rule over it. So, connected with the blessing of God is fruitfulness. The blessing of God produces fruitfulness and the command to be fruitful and to multiply and to fulfil God's vocation for us as his people. is part of that blessing, it is the blessing that enables us to actually fulfil that fruitfulness. So with that in mind, we come to this passage in Genesis chapter 3, and I'm sure you all know the story that led up to this moment when God comes to commune with Adam and Eve, with his people, And he finds them not in that state of blessing, but in a state of shame and hiding from him. He confronts them in their sin. He says, what have you done? Why have you done this? And they shift the blame. The man says, it wasn't me, it was the woman. The woman says, it wasn't me, it was the serpent. And God pronounces this curse upon the serpent. We might expect, if blessing results in fruitfulness, we might expect that the curse results in fruitlessness. But that's not actually the case, such is the grace and mercy of God. There's a few things we need to notice about this curse that God pronounces, and it was significant, I think, that the passage that we were given actually ends at the end of verse 15. Firstly, the curse that God gives as a response to sin and evil is first and foremost a curse upon the serpent. It is an announcement, a pronouncement that God's enemies will not prevail, that sin will not prevail. God's main contention here is with Satan, with his enemy, with the one who has come into creation and sought to destroy and sought to bring his purposes and his blessing to nothing. So in this curse, cursed are you above all the livestock, all the wild animals, you will crawl on your belly, you will eat dust all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel." The first thing God does when sin enters into his creation and comes to destroy his purpose and destroy his people is to declare, no, that is not going to happen. My enemy will not prevail. Sin will not prevail. The curse is first and foremost upon his enemy. and within that is the promise of the seed who will come and will destroy the enemy. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. John tells us in 1 John 3.8, whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Some believe, and it can't really be proven, It's just a speculation that before this time, the serpent, the snake, was a creature running around on legs. Some say maybe he even had wings and he flew around. I'm not sure where they get that from. Maybe it's the imagery of the dragon. So we don't know exactly if that was a physical change that God brought in the snake. But since that time, the snake has been a symbol of the humiliation of God's enemies. He'll crawl on his belly, he'll eat dust. Snakes don't literally eat dust, but that is a term that is used of an enemy who has been defeated, who has been brought down and defeated and is lying in the dust and all they have to eat is dust. So whether or not this was the case, the snake is a sign. Is anyone here like snakes? If you're walking through the bush and a snake crawled across your path, would you say, oh, look at that lovely creature? Let's pick it up and give it a pat. It's right through every culture, isn't it? And even some cultures have these legends, this mythology of the dragon, of this dangerous, devouring, destroying creature. So the snake is this symbol of this enmity, of this fact that God's enemy is this despised, humiliated creature that eats dust that crawls on its belly and one day will have its head crushed and it will be destroyed. God has pronounced upon his enemy, the devil, the real serpent, behind the serpent, that he will be defeated. Second thing about this curse, is God had every right now to take away the fruitfulness of his creation. The blessing brought fruitfulness, now sin has come and has marred that and there is now a curse upon creation. God could have said, right, that is it. No more fruitfulness. It ends here with this man and this woman. It stops. It's all come to an end. But he doesn't. He says, The woman is going to have offspring. This fruitfulness is still going to continue, albeit in the midst of pain and sorrow and difficulty. There will be pain in childbearing. There will be pain in giving birth to children. There will be a battle between the woman and her husband, between parents and children. It's not going to be easy but this fruitfulness still continues. The mercy of God is still in there and that this fruitfulness continues because it is through this continued fruitfulness that God will bring about His purposes and will bring about this defeat. The third thing about this curse upon the serpent is that it will bring a restoration of the blessing ultimately for humanity. the woman's seed will crush the head of the serpent." I don't know if you noticed, and as I read commentaries, it doesn't seem that people pick this up, and maybe I'm wrong, but he doesn't say, the seed of the woman will crush the seed of the serpent. He says, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. The seed of the woman, this offspring, this one who is to come, will actually destroy the head of the line of the serpent, not just one of his descendants. It will be a complete destruction, a completely wiping out this line of the serpent. And through history then we see this battle, this conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. All humanity in sin are children of the devil. Jesus made that very clear when he was speaking to Jews who refused to believe, who declared, we are free, we've never been slaves to anyone, Abraham is our father, God is our father. And Jesus says, no, actually, you are of your father, the devil. While you remain in your sin, you have forsaken God as your father, and you have taken on this de facto fatherhood that Satan offers. You have put yourself under the fatherhood of Satan and so you have become his offspring, his followers. We have become complicit with the devil in his opposition to God and so we have become God's enemies because the devil is God's enemy. We are actively working against him as we seek to suppress the truth. in unrighteousness. So this battle has continued right down through history. But through the cross, we are restored to become children of the Father, when our father, the devil, is overthrown in this seed. Those who live by faith, those who are righteous by faith, are of another line. They are of the seed of the woman. This word, offspring, is a collective singular. It's a bit like, my children always laugh when we go to a Chinese restaurant and they look at the menu and it says, soy chicken with noodle. I think, oh okay, we'll get a bit of chicken and we'll get a noodle. Chinese speakers here might be able to clarify this, but my understanding is that noodle is a collective singular. It doesn't just mean one noodle, it means noodle as a meal, as a whole. So noodle means a whole plate full of noodles. So that's what a collective singular means. This word offspring, could apply to a group of people as a whole. So in that sense it applies to all of the woman's offspring, all of those who are living by faith, are righteous by faith. But it also can apply to a single person, to one person, and we'll look at that in a moment. So a group of people or one person in whom all of the people are embodied. All of these people are drawn together. And the seed of the woman, we know, is Christ. He has taken on our flesh. He has drawn all of humanity into himself in his one person and has crushed the serpent's head at the cross. So as I said, ever since this time, God's people, the seed of the woman, have been waiting, have been expecting, have been longing for this one to come, this offspring to come. I'm sure every woman of faith down the centuries, and especially in Israel, has thought, will my son be the one that God has promised? As time went on, it became very clear that This seed would be of a particular tribe and then of a particular family and a royal line. But there was this longing, this waiting for this one to appear that would crush the serpent, that would bring an end to the curse and would restore God's blessing. The story of the Old Testament shows sin, violence, infertility and hostility of rulers and earthly rulers that just seem to be working against this promise time and time again. You can probably think of many stories in the Old Testament of infertile women, of the threat to the royal line, of everything that seems to be standing against God's purpose being fulfilled and then it continues, God's faithfulness stands. Satan has been working furiously ever since this time to try and thwart the purposes of God. The last thing he wanted to see was this seed to be born and his head crushed. You might want to turn with me to Revelation chapter 12. One role that the book of Revelation plays in the scriptures is that it just brings together so wonderfully and so uniquely the Old Testament and the New Testament, and shows us how the old is fulfilled in the new and how God has been working through all of history to bring these things together. So if you're ever struggling to read in the Old Testament, thinking how does that fit? How does that fit into the New Testament revelation? There's a good chance that you'll find it in Revelation somewhere, how it's brought together. But in Revelation chapter 12, John sees this great and wondrous sign appearing in heaven. It's a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. That's an image that is symbolic of Israel. If you remember, Joseph had dreams of the sun and the moon bowing down to him. And the 12, whenever you see 12 in Revelation, it's symbolic of the people of God, the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles. So this woman here is symbolic of Israel, but also in a way symbolic of every woman in this line of the woman's offspring. It could be symbolic of Eve, it could be symbolic of Eve's descendants. Everyone in that line who is potentially the mother of this seed, is represented here by this woman. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. She was in labour. And we know that imagery, don't we, from Romans of creation being in pain like a woman in labour, in anticipation, waiting for the sons of God to appear. It's the same imagery here, this woman, Israel in labour, expecting, waiting, knowing it's about to happen and longing for it to come, longing for that child to come. Then another sign appeared in heaven. An enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his head. He's mimicking God, trying to take the place of God in his authority and power. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment he was born." That's a picture of Satan, through history, waiting, looking to see what God is doing in history, and saying, I want to destroy what God is doing. I want to devour his purposes. I want to bring his plan to an end. She gave birth to a male son, a male child. A male son, of course, a male son. Gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. So at the moment the devil thought, OK, here's my opportunity. I'm going to bring God's purposes to an end. It comes to nothing. The child's snatched up and his opportunity is lost. And the passage goes on to speak of his efforts to try and destroy the woman, to destroy the child, but all his plans come to nothing. God's purpose prevails through all of that. And so while I said Satan has been actively working to try and thwart God's promises and that there has been this struggle, this battle, this enmity throughout the ages, From a horizontal level, it can look like Satan is doing quite a bit of damage, that he's actually hindering God in his purposes, that there's this cosmic battle between God and Satan, and Satan seems to get the upper hand, but then God just manages to get through finally at the last minute. But it's not actually like that. God's purposes are being worked out faithfully and continually, and the devil would like us to think that he is prevailing, but he isn't. When I was a child, I had a friend with one of those little yappy terrier dogs. I can't remember what it was, just an annoying little dog. And this dog had a thing against bicycle tyres. So when I'd go to his place and we'd ride his bikes, this dog would come and try and bite our tyres as we were riding along. It was quite funny. He didn't actually hinder us. He didn't actually do anything to stop our fun. The only possible outcome of him doing this is that we'd ride over his head. And that's kind of the image that I have of Satan at work in history. this little yappy dog who likes to think that he's a big shot. He's like us to think that he's a big shot, that he's bringing some sort of end to God's purposes. But he's just sort of yapping away and he's not actually hindering God at all. If anything, God uses him to actually accomplish his purposes. So Satan has been working furiously but God's faithfulness has been prevailing. God has been demonstrating his faithfulness throughout history and in these instances where it seems that the promise has come to an end, God's faithfulness then shines through and he calls us to live by faith in him, not in the things that we see and experience. Let's just think of some of those incidents through scripture. Straight away after this event in Genesis 3, we have Genesis 4, Cain and Abel. Eve gave birth to Cain and said, I've given birth to a man, in fact literally the man. Maybe she thought, this is it, this is the offspring. My son Cain is going to be the seed that will crush the serpent's head. She gives birth to Abel. Cain rejects the grace of God. He murders his brother. So where's the promise? It seems to have come to a stop. Then Seth is born. And it's interesting that the writer of Genesis makes a comment that at that time, the time that Seth was born, people began calling on the name of the Lord. God's faithfulness was manifested in the birth of Seth, that this line would continue, that his purpose would be fulfilled, and that led people to call on him in worship and thanks and praise. Leading up to the flood in Genesis chapter 6, mankind has become so wicked that God's resolve was to wipe them out, put an end to the promise. But one man was saved and his family, Noah, And Noah's name means comfort. His father said, I'll call him Noah because he will comfort us in the labour and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed. So in the midst of the curse, Noah is born and he is saved and the promise continues through him. Abraham, the promise was given to him to make him a great nation. We see things starting to unfold here. Abraham will have a child, will have a seed, and through your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed. But Sarah of course is barren, she can't have children. And then Isaac is born miraculously, the faithfulness of God coming through again. God tests Abraham. Are you prepared to trust in my faithfulness to my promises? Even if I tell you to sacrifice your only son, the one on whom this promise actually hinges, are you prepared to trust my faithfulness in this?" And again, God saves Isaac by providing a ram as a substitute. A little bit further down the track, Jacob and Esau. A bit like Cain and Abel revisited. Jacob is the one through whom the promise is to be fulfilled and he has to flee for his life because his brother Esau wants to find him and to murder him. Is this an end to the promises? God affirms his faithfulness to Jacob and Jacob wrestles with God and comes to understand that God is still going to be working out his promise through him. There are so many stories that we could look at through the scriptures where this scenario is played out again and again and again, where from a human, horizontal perspective it seems as if the promise is finished, the promise is under threat, but God just comes through with his faithfulness to say, no, I gave the promise in the midst of the curse, my enemy will be defeated, the curse will be reversed, you will be redeemed, and I'm going to faithfully continue on with that promise. Then we come to Isaiah 7, where Ahaz, the king of Judah, is faced by a fearful enemy. The king of the northern kingdom of Israel has allied himself with the king of Aram, and they are intent on destroying the kingdom of Judah. So again, this is a situation where the promise seems to be under threat. The royal line has been continued through the kings of Judah and the understanding is this promised seed will come from the line of Judah, from the house of David, And the history of Israel and Judah is this ongoing struggle. Is the royal line going to continue? Are we going to see this king to be born? So there's this case where Judah is under threat. The king of Judah is under threat. God promises to Ahaz, despite the fact that Ahaz did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. He wasn't a faithful king. He gave him a promise. He said, the Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel. This was a sign of deliverance but it was also a sign of judgement because he goes on to say, what's going to happen is the two kings that you fear that are going to come and wipe you out, they are going to be destroyed themselves, they are going to be defeated themselves by the king of Assyria. He's going to come down and he's going to lay their land waste, but he's also going to lay your land waste. The Assyrians came and they conquered the entire region. They didn't just take the Israelites off into captivity, they took all of the surrounding nations off into captivity too. So this child who was to be born would be a sign of judgments upon the enemies of God, the enemies of God's people, but it would also be a judgment upon his people themselves. The coming of Emmanuel, God with us, wasn't a warm fuzzy. It wasn't designed to make Ahaz feel nice and comfortable or to make us feel nice and comfortable. The judgment God would bring upon his enemies he would also bring upon his people. So God would deliver his people, but it would be through judgement. And as we saw, within the pronouncement of the curse, the judgement of Genesis 3, there is this promise of deliverance as the enemy is defeated. So the fulfilment of this passage in Isaiah 7, in Matthew chapter 1, is the pronouncement, it has finally come to pass. This struggle, this battle, this appearance that things are not working out as they should be has finally come to an end because finally the seed has come. This one who will break the curse, who will defeat God's enemy has actually come in this child, in Emmanuel. This passage is not so much about affirming Jesus' divinity or affirming the virgin birth. Those things are in there and are true. But this passage is primarily about affirming the faithfulness of God in fulfilling His promise that He made so long ago. The key verse there in that passage is verse 22. Sorry, this is in Matthew chapter 1. All this took place to fulfil what God had said through the prophet, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. All this, what is the all this? Is it just those events leading up to Jesus' birth in the lives of Mary and Joseph? I think it's actually referring to all this. All this has taken place from the moment of sin entering the world and God giving the curse upon sin and his pronouncing of judgement upon sin. All of this, throughout the centuries, throughout the millennia, has been to fulfil the promise that God gave that he would send the seed. So God would come. God has come. God has brought judgement and this judgement has been borne by his son, by this seed. This seed who became a curse for us that we might become the righteousness of God. He has destroyed all condemnation and he is removed from the serpent, the father of lies. We are told that the devil is the accuser of the brethren. The ammunition that he has to attack us with is Condemnation is the accuser. He points out our sin. He says, you are a sinner. You deserve hell. You deserve death. That has been removed. All his ammunition has been removed because the curse has been taken, because our condemnation has been taken in the cross. A modern approach, and by modern I don't just mean recent, but modern in the sense of before postmodern. Modernism is the... That doesn't really make sense, does it? Pre-postmodern. Modernism is a term that sociologists use to describe our Western scientific, logical, rational way of thinking, where everything, if we're going to believe it, has to be based on proof, has to be based on evidence. So, in this age, which apparently is passing and moving into post-modernism, but most of us here really are modernists still, the approach in evangelism or apologetics is to give proofs, is to say, OK, you're not a Christian, I will prove to you that Jesus is the Son of God by showing you a series of evidences, things he said, things he did, And I'll use reasoning to say, well, if he said those things, he was either crazy or he was a liar, or he was who he said he was, and then I'll show that he couldn't have been crazy and he couldn't have been a liar, therefore, I've proven it to you, haven't I, that Jesus is the Son of God, so now you have to believe, because it's all been logical and rational and obvious. That's an approach that we may take, we may want to take, But it's an approach that appeals to the mind, it appeals to reason, it appeals to my ability to process the facts and to work it out and decide whether I agree with it or not. And many people have actually been converted by the grace of God through that approach, faulty as it may be. But what people need is not a statement of proof or objective fact, Although these things are facts, Jesus is the Son of God. He was born of a virgin. What they need to hear is an announcement of the faithfulness of the Father in working faithfully through history to fulfil His promise. His faithfulness in sending the One, sending His Son, that promised seed who has crushed the head of the serpent, who has brought an end to the curse. That He has done it at just the right time. He didn't do it with the first generation after Adam and Eve. He didn't do it 2,000 years ago. Actually, sorry, he did it 2,000 years before it actually happened. He did it at just the right time. It might seem that Satan has delayed his purposes, but it was at just the right time, just the time the father planned. He sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law and under the curse of the law. This is all the proof we need. The faithfulness of God demonstrated in the sending of His Son while we were still sinners at just the right time. So let's enter this Christmas season. I know the world has said it started back in September sometime. Let's not let the world tell us when Christmas starts and ends. Let's enter this Christmas season, at least for us as a congregation, as we go through this series leading up to that celebration, with a renewed sense of the faithfulness of God in fulfilling His purposes. If He has been faithful through the millennia to fulfil His purpose in Christ, He will continue to be faithful through all eternity. Let's pray. Father, what wonderful news to hear that a child has been born, that he has the name Emmanuel, God is with us, and that in him all the fullness of God himself, Father, Son and Spirit has come to us, that he in himself has borne that curse, has borne our judgement, and has delivered us from the power of death and sin and Satan himself. Father, enable us as your people to move forward into this season of Christmas as we mix with friends and family and work colleagues and those in the community. Father, may we proclaim your faithfulness to our generation. May we be not ashamed of this message, this good news of great joy that has come to us. May we be faithful in proclaiming Christ, the promised seed who has given himself for us, who has broken the curse and who has set us free. And we pray in his name. Amen.