We are going to be in Genesis chapter 3, and I'm going to read just a few verses around the verse we want to look at specifically, Genesis 3. And I'm going to start in verse 14. The context is Adam and Eve have sinned. They've listened to the voice of the serpent rather than the voice of God. And now the Lord comes to the garden, and He comes in a sense in judgment, and He comes to pronounce curses on His creatures that have rebelled against Him. And He curses them in the order of their rebellion, which is important. He curses first Satan, the serpent. We know it's Satan because in Revelation, we're told that old serpent, the accuser of the brethren, who is Satan, So while the Genesis narrative doesn't tell us it's Satan, obviously the rest of the Bible does. And God first pronounces curses on him, then he pronounces curses on Eve, and then Adam, because that's the order in which his creatures rebelled. And it's obvious and it makes a lot of sense. And so I'm just going to read to us Genesis 14, I mean Genesis chapter 3, 14 through 16. So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go. You shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. It's interesting that God comes and pronounces the curses in the order in which he dies, not because it would be unusual, but because of what he pronounces in that first curse on the serpent. Theologians are going to call Genesis 3.15, where you see God promising to put enmity or war between the serpent and the woman and between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed. Theologians call that the proto-evangelium, the first preaching of the gospel. Proto-first, evangelium, gospel, the first gospel. That's the first gospel proclamation. It's interesting because you see, even as God is coming to pronounce curses, and he has to pronounce curses, as he's coming to pronounce those curses in the order in which they're due, that he actually comes with the gospel before he even curses even Adam. I think that's a powerful point. And he does it in the garden. He could have kicked him out of the garden. But you see, even in God's justice in pronouncing this curse on his great enemy, on the devil, that he embeds his mercy in it and his grace in it for mankind who he's going to redeem. He's going to redeem descendants of Adam. And so God embeds his grace in that first curse on the serpent is where the gospel is found. Now, you're going to get liberal theologians that are going to say all kinds of things about this language because the language is very metaphorical and symbolic. And liberal theologians are going to say this is just an animalistic thing and they're going to strip all the theology and all the spirituality out of it. In contrast to liberal theologians who hate Jesus, Jesus is going to tell us how important this verse is. It's so important that Sinclair Ferguson actually says that the rest of the Bible is a footnote to Genesis 3.15. The rest of the Bible is a footnote. So if you imagine on a page Genesis 3.15 and then thousands of pages of footnoting explaining that verse. Very helpful way to put it. And it's very true. And what you see from Genesis to Revelation, when you come to Revelation, what do you have? You have the ultimate victory of the seed of the woman, Jesus, over the seed of the serpent, Satan and everybody in his kingdom, Christ and everybody in his kingdom. Standing on Mount Zion, you have those two kingdoms. And the Bible really is a tale of two seeds. That's the best, that's what I'm going to title this talk tonight. A tale of two seeds, the seed of the serpent, the seed of the woman, Satan and everybody in his kingdom, Christ and everybody in his kingdom. Notice a few important things just about the text itself. It's God who declares the war. Now, in a sense, you can say, well, Satan declared war when he rebelled. We don't know much about the fall of Satan, but we know he did rebel. We know he hated God's image bearers. We know that he tempted them. God was sovereign over that. But Satan, in all of his malice, sought to destroy and mar God's image. And he was seemingly victorious because he did deceive Eve and he did, in a sense, bring about the fall, though Adam and Eve acted, the Westminster Confession says, they were left to the freedom of their will. But Satan is that great enemy. He is the father of lies. He's a murderer. Jesus will tell us all those things about him in the Gospels. He's the accuser of the brethren. He hates God's people. But at this point, he has gotten humanity to side with him. So all of humanity is now on Satan's side. And so God sovereignly, and I think this is one of the beautiful things about the Bible, and what you're going to see from this verse and the first preaching of the gospel is that God doesn't actually say Adam and Eve are to do anything. God is the one that's going to bring the victory. The Bible is God-centered at its inception. Yes, not just in creation, but even in the curse and the promise of the Redeemer, that God is saying, I will. It's the first of many, many, many I wills. And you think through the Gospels, Jesus is always saying, I will, I will, I will, I must. Yahweh is always saying that through the scriptures. Notice, I will put enmity, I will put war between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Old Southern Presbyterian named Stuart Robinson, he was a 19th century biblical theological Southern Presbyterian. I gave you the sheet he has in his book Discourses of Redemption 8. Eight things that he believed Genesis 315 taught. I think he's right about all of them But we really got to focus because before we can go off and look at how this expands out in the unfolding of Revelation We got to get this text. Let's say what is this teaching? What could Adam and Eve by the working of the Spirit have understood of? hearing that curse, what could they have understood in that promise? Well, notice first, Robinson says there that the Redeemer would be a man. It's masculine. He shall bruise his heel. He shall crush his head. So the Redeemer is going to be the conqueror. I mean, clearly, this is a promise of one who would conquer the devil. the crushing of the head you don't recover from, the bruising of the heel you can recover from, even if it's severe, but that he, it would be a male, he, the seed of the woman, would be a man, Redeemer. Then Robinson says the Redeemer would be more than a man. Now this to me is intriguing. If you haven't looked already ahead, why do you think he would have to be a man and yet he would have to be more than a man? I looked ahead. Well, if you've looked ahead, go ahead and cheat and take on the devil. Yeah. Well, and he's got to conquer the one who just conquered man. So what Robinson's going to say is, how could a conquered humanity defeat the one that conquered it? But in order to defeat the one that conquered it and redeem humanity, he would have to be man. But he would have to be more than a man. who would have to be God, we'll learn, as the scripture unfolds, in order to defeat the one who defeated man. Logically, that makes sense. A defeated people can't defeat the one that defeated them. But in order for those people to be redeemed and delivered and rescued, he would have to be both one with them and greater than them. There's the incarnation, Genesis 3.15. It's beautiful. Then notice that Robinson says, point three, the Redeemer would represent a people. Well, we'll know that as the scripture unfolds because we'll be told in Galatians that the seed that was promised to Abraham, and this is a really important thing, all the covenantal promises through the Old Testament, there's that seed promise running through. God says, I'm going to give Abraham a seed. The seed is coming from Genesis 3.15. Abraham's going to have a seed. David's going to have a seed. Noah even had a seed in him on the ark. All of them carrying through. Moses didn't. That makes covenant theology a little tricky. Abraham, Noah, Noah, Abraham, David, and then ultimately Christ, who is the seed. And Paul will say in Galatians 3, the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed, not many, but as of one who is Christ. But then in the same book, he'll say you are Abraham's seed. Because in union with Jesus, he represents a people collectively. He will put a definitive line between humanity. who's elect, that He came to redeem, who would believe in Him and would be united to Him, and the rest of the world, He would deliver us, He would transfer us from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God. Genesis 3.15 is teaching all of this. Because the question is, how can He have a seed? How can He have an offspring? How can this Redeemer have an offspring? Well, he's going to redeem them and he's going to transfer them because right now everybody's on Satan's kingdom. So how can he have a people unless his work represents them and they are then united to him? Notice, expanding on this a bit, in 4, Robinson says the Redeemer would gather a collective group of redeemed individuals to himself And again, I just broke this down for you. This is seen in the use of the word seed in scripture. Christ is the seed. We are the seed in him. It's interesting. The word is like the one in the many. The seed is singular, but seed can also be plural. It's the one in the many. And this was the beginning of the visible church on earth. There would be a corporate nature to the redeemed. Now, this is really cool. When you look in Genesis, you see that line, right? You see that line being drawn between the descendants of Cain, covenantally, and the descendants of Seth. Remember, Abel gets murdered. God replaces him. He appoints another seed, another offspring, through whom Christ is going to come. That's the covenantal line. God works in that line. You see that he redeems people in there. Enoch and Noah, Methuselah, all that godly line that we're told about in the rest of scripture. But notice in Genesis 5, at the end of Genesis 5, I'm sorry, The verse I'm looking for is here in 4 or 5 where it says, Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. 425, thank you. As for Seth, to him also a son was born and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the Lord. Well, we can't assume, and Jonathan Edwards is going to talk about this, you can't assume this is the first time anybody ever prayed because we're told Abel before this worshipped God by faith and his sacrifice was acceptable. So he was calling on God. So Edward says this is the reference to a corporate gathering of worship. So the point is that the Redeemer here has already built his church. Genesis 3.15 is teaching a collective people that collective people would be God worshippers through him. Now Notice the fifth thing that Robinson says. Redemption would involve a new nature. This may not seem as significant to you on the surface in the text, but he's going to flesh this out theologically. Before this promise, men were all hopelessly lost in sin. Man had made himself a slave of sin and Satan. He had a fallen, corrupt nature. In order for there to be enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, those who would become the seed of the woman would necessarily have to have had a different nature. They would have to have their nature changed. They would have to have their heart changed. They wouldn't want to be with the woman seed if he hadn't changed their nature. So Robinson's reading all of his theology into that promise. Now, whether Adam and Eve would have gotten all that, obviously, they wouldn't have seen as much as we can see. But I think they could at least see some of these things if the Spirit was at work in them, enabling them to. Six, it would be the gracious work of God in giving His people a new nature. They didn't deserve it. They didn't do anything for it. God said, I will. Again, that emphatic I will of the grace of God in the gospel. So if there was a new nature that they would get, they would get it because God was sovereign. God was gracious. God would do it. Seven, the Lord would put enmity between the devil and those in his kingdom in Christ and those in his kingdom. So the war is not just between Satan and Christ. The war is also between the people in Satan's kingdom and the people in Christ's kingdom. Hence, persecution. Hence, Israel. And we'll talk about this in a moment. Hence, Israel's opposition with the nations in redemptive history in the Old Testament. That's an outworking of this. That war in the Old Testament, the persecution in the New Testament, that is all a manifestation of the unfolding of Genesis 3.15. It's all in there. Genesis 3.15 is the acorn. The rest of the Bible is the tree growing out. And so everything in every part of the Bible in some way is related to that. And so that makes a lot of sense. Why does the world, Jesus said, don't be surprised when the world hates you. It hated me before it hated you. I took you out of the world. You're not of the world. He is. He is unpacking Genesis 315 in light of himself and saying, this is why there's enmity. This is why the world hates Christ. You know, It ought not be a surprise to us when we see how much the world hates true Christianity because God has brought us out of the world and the world and all of its unbelief is in Satan's kingdom, denominated by Babylon in the book of Revelation, used under other figurative terms. So, seven, the Lord would put this enmity between Satan and everybody in his kingdom, Christ and everybody in his kingdom. Finally, eight, the Redeemer would die a vicarious death on behalf of his people. Where does he get that? From Genesis 3.15. That there would be substitution, that it would be a vicarious death. Where does he get that? It doesn't say that the woman's seed collectively would have their heel bruised, though I think that's true. But he would have his heel bruised and he would crush his head. So Jesus would have his heel bruised. That's, by the way, the cross. The cross is merely the heel bruising of Jesus. Go tweet that. The cross is merely the heel bruising of Jesus because why? He rises from the dead. He didn't have his head crushed, he died, but it was as if all he had was a wound on the back of his foot. But that same foot then coming down and crushing the enemy in his death on the cross. The cross is that cosmic climax of the battle of Genesis 3.15. Everything's moving to that in the Old Testament. Everything's flowing out of that in the new which is why it's interesting when Jesus starts his public ministry What is one of the first things he has to do? Well baptism right after that though He has to go head to head. He has to enter enemy occupied territory. And for the first time in human history, the seat of the woman and the seat of the serpent meets at the beginning of the messianic ministry. Now, he's not going to defeat him there. It's going to be a prelude. He first has to endure the temptations. Then what does Jesus do? He starts casting out demons. So he starts plundering Satan's kingdom by healing people, casting out demons, exercising people until finally at the cross, he comes back again head to head. And it's interesting, check this out. In the wilderness, the devil says, if you are the son of God, which is what the father said to him in his baptism, you are my son. Just like he tempted Adam and Eve to question God's Word, now with the Son, if you are the Son of God, if you are the Son of God, if you are the Son of God, when he's at the cross, what do the chief priests and scribes say to him? If you are the Christ. And you see Satan's there. You see Satan's there. With the chief priests and the scribes, he's there. So, at the beginning of the Messianic ministry, he has to go face to face with the serpent himself. Then he goes and he takes on his kingdom, as it were. plunders it, redeems people out of it to show what he had come to do, and then he finally and fully, Colossians 2, he disarms principalities and powers. When he's hanging on the cross, he's taking their weapons away, triumphing over them in it. Now, When we think about the atonement, when we think about what Jesus does at the cross, the cross is very multi-sided. And the mistake a lot of people have made is they want to just say it's only this. It would actually be a mistake to say the cross is only Christ for me and my sin. It would be an equal mistake to say the cross is merely and only Christus victor, Christ conquering Satan. That would be a mistake. It would be a mistake to say that the cross is merely God displaying His justice and displaying His attributes. It is all of those things. It is sin. It is Satan. It is the world. It is God displaying His attributes, His justice. And it is in all those ways, it is in all those ways that Christ is preeminent in the work of redemption. But I think it's interesting that oftentimes we fail because we know our sinfulness and we know our need for a Savior. We often think of the cross as first and foremost, Christ dealing with my sin, when I actually think the cross is first and foremost, Jesus dealing with Satan. It is first and foremost, Jesus dealing with Satan. Remember when Peter tries to Stop Jesus from going to the cross. And he says, far be it from you, Lord, this will never happen to you. And Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. He sees that Satan is using Peter. You're you're not mindful of the things of God, the things of men. Satan is trying to stop Jesus from going to the cross in that way. Maybe he knew what it would mean for him because this curse was pronounced on him so many thousand years before. What I want to talk about briefly in this series is we want to look more at kind of the redemptive historical unfolding of Genesis 3.15. I want to talk about the importance of this in understanding your Bibles, especially the Old Testament. You know, a lot of people get hung up on Haram or fair. Jihad, holy war, how could a good God command Israel, his people, to kill all these other nations? And usually the answers you're going to get are going to range from they weren't innocent, which they weren't, to you're going to get just a diverse view of what God was doing and I think the easiest way to understand Israel in the Old Testament in relationship to the nations was that typologically they were the seed of the woman. We talked about Israel was a type of Christ, God's son. God says to Israel, you're my firstborn, my son, but really Christ is. So in redemptive history, Israel is a type of the seed of the woman. What does that make all the other pagan nations? The representation of the seed of the serpent, pre-eminently the Philistines, which you see, you know, even Dagon, their god-looking, serpent-like, and Pharaoh even having the serpent on his hat. So, all of their enemies, under the power of Satan, under the false teaching of Satan, under the lies of Satan, are really aiming their hatred not against Israel, but against God. They're really aiming their powers against him. Jonathan Edwards actually believes in the unfolding of redemptive history that God floods the world. You know where it says the world was full of violence? And God, you know, not just the sons of man, the sons of God and the daughters of men, that whole thing, but there was violence everywhere. And Edwards actually thinks that was persecution against the visible church, against the covenant people. So there already, this is probably the seat of the serpent, seat of the woman. That's a bit inferential, but I think he might be right. That there again, why, why, what was, why mention this violence? Because it was aimed at the church. Satan was trying to stomp out God's work. He was trying to stomp out the Redeemer. You see that all through redemptive history, right? You see it with Esther. That's the whole significance of the book of Esther. It's not about some virtuous woman that you want your daughter to be like. In fact, she goes from the concubine's house to, she goes from the virgin's house to the concubine's house. She probably slept with them. So the point of Esther is not be like Esther, she was really virtuous. She was courageous, God used her to save the people so that the Redeemer didn't get stomped out. So that the Redeemer would come. So again, you see how Genesis 3.15 in the Old Testament is always working. I will say as an aside, It's interesting that when God gives Israel the Holy Land, when he gives them Canaan, he tells them to go in and eradicate all their enemies. And he doesn't tell them to go and eradicate all the people of the world. I think that's an interesting thing that often gets overlooked. A guy named Meredith Klein is going to say that's because before there was a temple, The land was the temple. It's the Holy Land. It's where God's going to dwell with his people. Israel was said to be a kingdom of priests. God said, you are a priesthood. And the priests were to cleanse the temple. So Israel going into the Holy Land, when God says you're to drive out all the inhabitants, they are to cleanse the temple. I think that's the most satisfying Though there's no Bible verse that says that, I think it's the most satisfying answer of why God told Israel. And in that way, He was wanting to preserve the seed of the woman until the seed of the woman came. Now, it's interesting. When you come to the Gospels, you might think that would still continue. But when Christ comes, who does He address as the seed of the serpent? The Pharisees and the scribes, the leaders of Israel, the covenant people. He actually says, brood of vipers. John the Baptist says, offspring of the serpent. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? And Jesus will everywhere say to the Pharisees, you're of your father the devil. Now that's true of all mankind. That's true of natural man, obviously. It was true, interestingly, even of the covenant people when Jesus came because they rejected the seed of the woman. They rejected the Christ. I think that's really helpful as you look at the Gospels, especially bringing Genesis 3.15 through it, seeing what Jesus is doing. Everything he's doing is bound up in that first promise. As the epistles move on, you still see Satan's activity aimed at the church. There's a place in Revelation 12 where it says, And I think it's reflecting on redemptive history, Old and New Testament. It says that the woman was travailing in birth. She had the 12 stars. And it's taking you back to Jacob. It's talking about the old covenant church. And she's pregnant and she's going to have a baby. That's Jesus. That's Jesus being born through the covenant people, through the covenant line as an Israelite. And the devil comes to devour him, but he's caught up to heaven. That's the ascension. I mean, this is like very simple. That's the ascension. So then who does the devil aim his focus on? He drives the woman into the wilderness. That's the New Covenant Church. Old Covenant Church. She's pregnant. She has the Redeemer. He's caught up to heaven. He's safe. He's ruling. Satan aims now his focus on us. And we are driven into the wilderness, as it were. We are, in a sense, in the wilderness of this world as believers passing through. Satan has... you have a big bullseye on you if you're a believer. You have a giant bullseye. Yeah, no. Wow. I wish I could just clip that. Satanist Fox News as much as CNN. Mormons aren't Christians? Wow. Thank you, Joel Osteen. But you do see that Satan is at work in the New Testament church and is at work seeking to destroy the seed of the woman, those who by faith are united to Jesus. In the New Testament, I think, after Jesus cast out demons and after he disarmed Satan, in the book of Acts, you actually see a progressive lessening of the work of Satan in demon possession, I think. And then as you go through the New Testament, All you really hear about is doctrines of demons, that his preeminent work throughout the rest of the New Covenant era, not saying demon possession never happens, but what I'm saying is his preeminent work, as you look at the unfolding of the Bible, is doctrines of demons, forbidding to marry, forbidding to eat certain foods, denying the gospel. These are demonic things at work to lead astray people to destroy the church of Jesus. Interesting, Romans 16, 20, go ahead and turn there. One of the last verses in one of the greatest books in the Bible is going to take us right back to the beginning, to Genesis 3, 15. Somebody read to us Romans 16, 20. And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. There is no way to understand what Paul is talking about other than Genesis 3.15. The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. You, who are united to Jesus, who are justified in Christ, who are righteous in Christ, who have believed on the Lord Jesus, who are confessing with your mouth and believing with your heart everything Paul says in Romans. You who are filled with the Spirit of Jesus, who are united to Jesus, who are in Him as the second Adam, you will crush Satan under your feet. Oh, that's going to be a good day. When you get to crush the devil under your feet, the church triumphing over. Now that imagery, and I didn't say this at the beginning, that imagery of crushing the head actually is played out in the Old Testament whenever kings were defeated. Maybe you've read this. Sometimes they put their foot on the neck. And even that was a sign of, you know, eating the dust, just like the serpent is said to eat the dust. What it means is he's going to be trodden down. And it's supremacy, his foot being put, his head being, the king's head being put under the foot. And that's what's going to happen. Jesus has already conquered Satan. You know, I sang last week at this conference. I love Luther's hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. So powerful. I never get tired of singing it. It's a spiritually militant song. Not a militant song, but a spiritually militant song. But there's one line I don't like in there. It says about the right man's on our side, the Lord of Sabaoth is his name, from age to age the same, and he shall win the battle. I don't like that. because he has won the battle. We will win the battle, is what Paul is saying in Romans 16, 20. He has won the battle. Jesus is not waiting to win. He has won. He has come conquering and to conquer. And the book of Revelation, as we finish this off and you go out in your Bible, you see Genesis 3.15 now in cosmic array, where I actually think It's giving you a consummation of God's work of redemption, Old and New Testament. It's not all futuristic. I see it as cyclical, saying this is what God has done in Christ. And then, yes, there is that future consummation of being in the new heavens and the new earth. And there's no more devil. He'll be locked. He'll be sealed up in the lake of fire. He will be done away with and banished. And in the new heavens and the new earth, there will be no evil. There'll be no wickedness. There'll be no accuser of the brethren. There'll be no tears. There'll be no sin. There'll be no sorrow. Everything, Tim Keller says, everything bad will become untrue. I think that's helpful. Everything will be reversed. And it all goes back to God's first promise. Now, in a sense, it all goes back to eternity. because God chose His people in His Son who He chose to be Redeemer. And that promise of Genesis 3.15 is the breaking in of God's eternal plan after the fall, which was God's plan to bring about the new heavens and the new earth. So I just wanted to put this out there. I want to give you guys some time to talk about this. But I really think if we miss that, we miss everything. If you miss that, you miss everything. I don't know how people understand their Bibles if they don't get that even in part. You know, how they can see the organic unity from that first promise onward. It's interesting also, I will say one more thing that... God is merciful even to the woman, isn't he? Because the woman is the one that was deceived, Paul says, not Adam. She was deceived. And so God promises that the Redeemer is going to come from woman. In a sense, he's taking away her reproach. Isn't that interesting? You know that phrase where Paul says she'll be saved in childbearing. And then even the curse on her is a curse having to do with childbearing, but it's going to be in that childbearing that the Redeemer would come. because he'll be born of the Virgin Mary. But it's interesting how all that kind of ties together and resurfaces as you go through Scripture until Christ comes and all this is just blown open in the Gospels and then applied and carried along in the rest of the New Testament. Questions? Comments? Have you guys heard some of this? I guess you have? You've heard some of this? That's good. I find that this, like you say, this gives the backbone to the Bible. It does. If you don't have this, and you're reading Judges, and you're reading the wars, and you're reading the history, and it's like, so? Yeah. Right. But once you have Genesis 3.15 as the backdrop for everything, then it all makes sense. Do you all remember if you were here for Jesus is Israel where we talked about, maybe, I forget, first or second one, where we talked about how in the Old Testament everything's kind of earthly, preparatory. I mean, there's still God's working and Christ is still Redeemer there because He's eternal. But there's a lot of earthly, preparatory things. When Jesus comes, everything gets eternalized, Gerhard as Foss says. It gets spiritualized. And, you know, we're still engaged in warfare against Satan. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood like they did in that earthly theocratic kingdom that crashed in in redemptive history on Israel. But now, as everything's been eternalized and spiritualized, we still wrestle, but we wrestle against principalities and powers. We're engaged in holy war with the The very one Israel was engaged in holy war with. They weren't really engaged in holy war with the Philistines and the Amalekites and the Emirates. They were to be engaged with Satan. He was behind all those nations. Now, in a sense, in the New Covenant, God's ripped away all that earthly stuff, said, I'm going to redeem a people out of every tongue, tribe, nation, and language. But you're still going to be involved in holy war. You're still in holy war. We still believe in harem warfare, but it's spiritual and it's against our sin. It's against the devil. It's against the world. It's not a physical battle like it was preparing us for the holy war that God wages on his son at the cross. God waged holy war on us at the cross to make Genesis 3.15 real. For us to be the seed of the woman, God had to wage holy war on himself at Calvary and our sin on him as our sin bearer. That's why it can move from the physical to the spiritual, because in a sense it comes crashing down on the body of Jesus at Calvary, who is an eternal being, God and man. Does that make sense? I know the Bible doesn't say that explicitly, but I think it is taught. And not only would he have to be, you know, going back to the point where he'd have to be special, Well, not only would have to be special to overcome the devil, but to endure the wrath for the sin and eternal to become the curse, to become the eternal curse. He actually Paul says Paul doesn't say Jesus was cursed. He says he became a curse. That's unbelievable. I don't even understand that. I was thinking about that the other day. He doesn't say he became a he doesn't say he became cursed. He became a curse and became sin. He was accursed for us at Calvary. So and I think that even takes you back to the curses of Genesis, not just as they manifest in the Mosaic Covenant, which obviously Paul has in view in Galatians. but the curse that fell on humanity because of Adam's sin. You know, it really goes back to understanding Genesis 1 through 3 carefully. My dad used to say, and Cornelius Van Til, this great theologian, used to say, it's the key to understanding the Bible. Getting that. Has this been helpful to you guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been rich, man. Yeah, you see in the declaration of a savior and even understanding again, you know, where does I mean throughout scripture? We understand a woman always needs a seat, but you never hear about a woman having a seat Which speaks about the virgin birth, right? So they're always looking for the redeeming. Yeah. Yeah, you're just lucky you know, um re-enacting another passage like that really jumps out, um I thought it was really interesting, not even really taking into consideration the fact that, you know, we, by right, you know, always at that time, children of the devil. Yeah, children of wrath. That's right. Children of wrath. That's the language of offspring too. We all, Paul says, as a covenant member, Paul says, we all. We're children of wrath. I thought that was rich. Yeah. Sons of disobedience. That language of caring. And it's all coming out of Genesis 3.15. All of that is just flowing out of what God says there. There's something else I wanted to tell you guys about. Oh, well, you see, here's what I wanted to say. You see with Eve, her anticipation of God fulfilling this promise. So somebody might say, well, how do you know Adam and Eve believed? Well, because check this out. Check this out. Go back to Galatians Genesis 3. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you see Eve exercising faith because she thinks that Cain, she actually, she's greatly mistaken because, oh, and now first John, what does first John say about Cain? He was what? Cain was of the evil one. And he hated his brother. That's a reference back to Genesis 3.15. He was of the evil one. He is the seed of the serpent. But she thinks God's going to fulfill that promise immediately. She's hoping in that. She's trusting God. She doesn't know when. Eve is definitely in heaven. I say that with a little glimmer of doubt. I mean, I think the text does, and I think Adam believed too, and I'll tell you why. Notice, right after God curses Adam in Genesis 3, 17 through 19, and he tells him the ground's going to bear thorns, you're going to sweat from your brow to eat, and then you're going to die. You're going to die. That's like the worst one. I mean, death, you don't recover from that. You know, sweat's not too bad in comparison with death. And the sooner does God say, you're going to die in 19, 319, dust you are, to dust you shall return, that Adam calls his wife's name Life. Now, that ought to strike you as strange that he's not yet named her. She is Ishi in Hebrew. She is woman. He has not yet named her. He's going to name her. He's going to call her Eve, which means living because she's the mother of all living. Why would he name her? Right after God tells him he's going to die, why is he going to name her living? Well, some people said because she's going to have the rest of humanity and everybody's going to come from her. I don't think so. I think he is acting on the promise that through her, a Redeemer who would give life, who would reverse everything and would reverse that worst part of his cursed death itself is going to come from the woman. It's going to be the seed of the woman. So he calls her life because she's going to bring the one that brings eternal life. So I think Adam and Eve both believe the promise. And you see, right, that's the big promise, isn't it? That's the same promise we believe, is that God has brought that. See the woman, what does God require of Adam and Eve in that first promise? Well, implied that they believe. And obviously, we can say repentance and faith because you can't believe unless you're repenting. You don't have true faith unless there's repentance. But faith, they are to believe that God is going to do what he said he was going to do, which is the same thing God requires of us. There's no legal structure here of God saying you've got to do this and this and this and this. He says, I will. And they believe and they act on that. And I think they teach their son, and Abel acts on that. And then he gets killed, and Seth acts on it. And down the line, they pass on that gospel promise. I think this makes the Bible exciting. I think it takes away all the boredom, and makes it such a beautiful, beautiful book. You would also think that Adam and Eve, being that they did have fellowship with God, prior to the fall, and after the fall, that they would be I mean, if God made man and made him so that he would say good, there was something... We look at old antiquity and say they didn't know, and they were ignorant, this and that. I don't believe we have any... We're probably the least ignorant of any man and woman, couple, born. Well, because they had walked with God and talked with God and been taught by God. So they would probably get this better than we did. Well, and also, you have to remember, no one can believe without the Spirit at work. So even though we don't read in the text that the Holy Spirit was there, obviously, if anybody had faith, the Holy Spirit was producing that, regenerating them. The Spirit was at work in the Old Testament, not to the fullness and the scope at which He's at work now, coming from the resurrected Christ. But, very clearly, the spirits at work there, and again, this is not a matter of mere intellectualism. The spirit would have made them understand what God was saying. God would have enabled them to understand that. Also, interesting, this is super important for you. As you guys go out and you interact with people and you hear the lies and you hear the deceit and we see more and more and more, every religion's the same and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, When you look at every other religion, they all have some starting point in history, obviously, as does Christianity. But ours starts in the garden, right after the fall. You can say ours starts in eternity, but in time and space, Christianity started in the garden with Genesis 3.15. That is the first time God is the first preacher and he proclaims that message. And that is the promise of a redeemer. And that helps me a lot that, you know, all these different guys wrote this book. Moses wrote this and then all these other guys, right. And they all write about Jesus. And the Bible tells us it's as old as the garden. It's as old as creation. That increases my faith because Islam is not as old as creation. Islam is a lie that Mohammed made up. Mormonism is a lie. Jehovah's Witness, Bhagavad Gita, they're all lies. And none of them can claim to take it back to creation. None of them. We have a book that authenticates that, self-attesting. This promise is enormous. Genesis 3.15 is enormous for us to build our faith, to encourage us in understanding what God was doing, what He's doing with us, what He's going to do, what He has done in Christ.