Amen.
Thank you, John.
Now we begin today our Christmas series, The Gift of God.
Today the gift of God promised, and I invite you to open your Bible with me to Genesis
chapter 3.
Do you find that finding and selecting the right Christmas gift is becoming harder and
harder?
It used to be that all kids wanted was their two front teeth.
Now they want all of toys R-us.
We're going to start a support group right after Christmas for parents entitled Poor
R-us.
If you're interested in that, just circle 15 on your registration card.
One salesman held up a beautiful royal blue silk jacket and said, this is the very last
word, just the thing for the man about town.
And the woman said, I agree, but what do you have for the louse around the house?
Finding the right gift is sometimes kind of hard.
I read about a pastor who got a box of goodies from someone in the congregation.
He took it home and his wife opened it and there was a note inside and it said, Dear
Pastor, knowing that you do not eat sweets, I am sending candy to your wife and nuts
to you.
Finding the right gift can sometimes be a challenge, but I'll tell you one thing, God
knows exactly, exactly the gift that is needed.
God long ago promised a savior for the human race.
And we read about that for the very first time in Genesis 3, 15.
God is here speaking to the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
He has something to say to the serpent, something to say to the woman, to Eve, and something
to say to Adam.
He addresses the serpent first and among other things he says, And 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.
God long ago promised a savior to the human race.
Why does the human race need a savior?
Here in chapter 3 we come to an understanding for the answer to that question.
The human race was plunged into moral darkness and death, spiritual separation from God by
its transgression against the Creator.
Adam represented all of us in that test.
The Bible says that by that one man sin entered into the world and death by sin.
And so death has spread to all men for all have sinned.
It was because of the transgression of Adam that the human race is in need of a savior.
That was God's wisdom to identify us with Adam.
Some people think it's unfair that because Adam fell we're sinners too.
But you see it's because of that fact that God is now able to identify us with Jesus
Christ.
For just as our grandfather Adam represented us and fell into sin, so the Lord Jesus Christ,
our savior represented us on the cross and died in our place and can save us.
So the whole arrangement was the wisdom of God.
Now Adam and Eve are in sin and God speaks to the servant and pronounces judgment upon
him.
But in doing that God makes a promise.
It is the promise of the woman's offspring.
Now behind this serpent, of course, is the devil who was using the serpent as a vehicle
to tempt Adam and Eve.
And God says, I will put enmity between you, he says to the serpent, and the woman, but
not only the two of them right then, but he says, and between your offspring serpent,
the devil, your children, and hers.
So here the serpent represents all of the followers of the devil through the ages and
Eve represents the righteous through the ages.
God says there will be hostility between the offspring of both.
But then God moves away from the idea of a group to a person, for he says, he, the offspring
of the woman, he, one person, will crush your head serpent, Satan, but you will strike his
heel.
The devil deceived Eve, but her seed will one day bring his doom, says God, even though
that doom will come through the seed's suffering.
The promise that is made here is of a distant offspring who would bring judgment to the
serpent and Satan and along with it redemption to the human race which had just been plunged
into ruin and sin.
And so we have the promise of God made.
Sin has come to the human race.
God says judgment to the one who brought temptation to this serpent.
Redemption for the seed of the woman, for the race of Adam.
Redemption is promised.
Salvation.
And from that time there began a lineage from generation to generation as that offspring
promise began to be fulfilled.
And that's the second thing I want to do this morning.
We've seen the promise as it was made.
Now we want to see the promise traced.
To do that, open your Bible.
We're going to be moving through some texts this morning, especially here in Genesis.
Turn over a page or two in your Bible to chapter 5.
Moses is here collecting all of this information, pulling it together by the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit.
And he tells us in chapter 5, this is the written account of Adam's line.
When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
He created them, male and female, and blessed them.
And when they were created, He called them man, or Adam.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son.
It's not a bad idea to wait 130 years to have a son.
Adam waited 130 years.
He had a son in his own likeness, in his own image, and he named him Seth.
And so begins the first name from Adam and Eve in this lineage, this line that we're
going to trace.
Their son Seth was born in 130 AC after creation.
And then it says in verse 6 that Seth lived 105 years and became the father of Enosh.
The next one is Canaan, verse 9.
We trace it again to verse 12 where it says, Mahalelah was in the line.
And he had a son whose name was Jared, verse 15, followed by Enoch, his son, verse 18.
And then we come in verse 21 to this sometimes familiar name, Methuselah, who became the
father of Enoch, it says.
And verse 25, it says, when Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech.
And in verse 28, when Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son and named him Noah.
And so we have the tracing of the lineage from Adam and Eve down to the days of Noah.
It is interesting to me to notice that Adam lived until almost the time of Noah.
If you add up the years that are involved here, he died at 930 years of age.
He died during the lifetime of Lamech, Noah's father.
About 120 years after Adam finally died, Noah was born.
God allowed that man to stay around and for generation after generation to see his descendants
born into sin and experience its consequences.
Can you imagine that?
But all the way down through those generations, there was also the promise that Adam had heard
in the garden, that God was going to bring an offspring from Eve that would judge the
serpent and bring salvation for Adam's race.
And then he died, but the promise went on.
And Noah now is the bearer of that promise.
Turn over a page or two where we'll pick it up.
Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
And in chapter 10, we have the record of their descendants, first Japheth, then Ham, and
in verse 21, Shem.
The line went from Noah to Shem.
And then it says in verse 22, he had several sons.
One of them was the name of Arphax Head.
It was the last time we dedicated a baby around here with that name.
And then he was the father, it says in verse 24, of Shelah, and Shelah was the father of
Eber, and he was the father of Peleg, verse 25.
Now we've got to skip to chapter 11 to pick it up again to verse 18 where it says, Peleg,
when he was 30, became the father of Ruh, and then he became the father of Sarug, verse
20.
Verse 22, he fathered Nahor.
Verse 24, he became the father of Terah, who had a son whose name was Abram.
And now we understand why these chapters are included in the book of Genesis.
It is so that this promise of the offspring might be traced down through the generations
all the way now to Abram, who is of course one of the main figures in all of the Bible,
and certainly in the book of Genesis.
God calls Abram out from Ur of the Chaldees and gives him a promise.
Here's what he said to him, chapter 12, verse 2.
He said to Abram, I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make
your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all the peoples
on earth will be blessed through you.
What a marvelous promise God gave to Abram.
Then God began to reconfirm that promise and to make it more specific still, again in this
chapter, verse 7, it says, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring I will
give this land.
Abram believed that.
He built an altar there to God.
That turned over a page to chapter 13, where it says in verse 14, the Lord said to Abram
after Lot had parted from him, lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and
south, east and west, all the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring
forever.
When he talks about the offspring, he's talking about a large group of descendants, but there
is one who rises above all the rest in God's mind.
God says Abram, to your offspring there is going to be this blessing, a land.
In chapter 15, again God speaks to Abram.
He says in verse 4, and the word of the Lord came to him, this man will not be your heir,
that is your servant, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.
He took him outside and said, look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you
can count them.
Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be.
Now turn over to chapter 22.
Time passes.
Isaac now has been born.
Abraham is commanded to offer up Isaac.
He did.
In his heart God stopped him before the deed was actually consummated, but God was pleased
with Abram's faith.
And he says through his angel, verse 15, the angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven
a second time and said, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done
this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make
your descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and as the sand on the seashore.
Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies.
And through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed
me.
And so again God says, Abram, I am going to bring blessing to everybody on earth through
your offspring.
Well, Abram was an old man.
He died, but he had a son, the son of the promise whose name was Isaac.
Now turn to chapter 26 and we see God continued the line.
For God promises the covenant of Abraham to Isaac.
It says in verse 2, the Lord appeared to Isaac and said, do not go down to Egypt, live in
the land where I will tell you to live.
Stay in this land for a while and I will be with you and will bless you for to you and
to your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to
your father, Abraham.
I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all
these lands and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed.
And so the promise of the offspring that began with Eve and was traced all the way down through
those generations to Noah and then to Shem and then all the way down to Abraham now goes
on to Isaac.
Isaac had two boys who didn't get along.
It wasn't the first time that's ever happened.
One of them's name was Jacob and he was the one that God chose through whom the promise
would continue.
Chapter 28 now verse 14, your descendants he says to Jacob will be like the dust of
the earth and you will spread out to the west and the east to the north and the south all
peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.
So you see what God is doing?
Now Jacob had a bunch of sons, didn't he?
He had 12 sons and he had daughters but God selected one of them through whom the promise
would continue.
His name was, does anybody know?
Judah.
That's right, I heard it out there, I'm pretty sure.
Chapter 49, Jacob is now an old man and he is giving his blessings to his children.
He comes to Judah and he says in verse 8 of Genesis 49, Judah your brothers will praise
you, your hand will be on the neck of your enemies, your father's sons will bow down
to you.
You are a lion's cub, oh Judah, you return from the prey, my son.
Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness who dares to rouse him.
In verse 10, the scepter will not depart from Judah.
Now Jacob is saying this about his son, the scepter, the emblem, the symbol of sovereignty
and reign.
He says the scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from between his feet
until he comes to whom it belongs.
What?
The scepter.
Some translations put the name Shiloh here because that's literally what it says.
It may in fact be a proper name for the Messiah.
But he says that the line will stay in Judah, it will be a royal line, the descendants of
Judah will reign over his brothers, they will bow down to him.
And that line, that royal line will stay in Judah until he comes to whom the scepter really
belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.
We don't have time to trace it any further except to note that in 2 Samuel chapter 7
verse 12, God speaks to one of the sons of Judah whose name is David.
And he promises to David that there will be one who will reign after him over an everlasting
kingdom.
Now there was an immediate fulfillment of that in Solomon, but the fullest fulfillment,
the ultimate fulfillment of it, the everlasting nature of that kingdom is in the one who is
called in the New Testament the son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who was born
in the city of David, Bethlehem.
And so the lineage is traced.
God made the promise all the way back in the garden and then he began to fulfill that promise
from generation to generation.
There was someone chosen until all the way down to Mary.
The angel of Gabriel appears to her and says, you're going to be with child of the Holy
Spirit.
And she just happened to be engaged to a man named Joseph who was also the royal line of
David.
Just happened to be.
And to Joseph the Lord said, she is bearing a son.
He will save his people.
And so we have the promise kept.
Isaiah foresaw it.
Seven hundred years before he said, speaking to all the people of Israel, he said to them,
for unto you a child is born, unto you a son is given.
And the government will be upon his shoulders and his name shall be called wonderful counselor,
the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
Isaiah was looking ahead to the day of Christ.
And then came that angel to announce his birth to Mary and to Joseph.
And then the whole bunch of them came to Bethlehem to announce it and said, he's here, go and
see.
And they did.
And reflecting upon that, the apostle Paul said, in the fullness of time, when everything
had been prepared and it was just the right moment, in the fullness of time, God sent
forth his son born of a what?
A woman.
To the serpent he said, this woman's seed is going to come and deal with you.
And he was born of a woman.
It is Hebrews that gives us a terrific insight into this whole thing and sort of ties it
together.
I invite you to turn to Hebrews chapter 2.
He is writing about the superiority of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's greater than the angels, says the author.
We're going to pick it up in verse 10 of Hebrews 2.
It says, in bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God should make the author
of their salvation, that is the leader, the originator, the source of their salvation,
perfect through sufferings.
That does not mean that Jesus needed to be morally perfected somehow and that his suffering
improved him.
Not at all.
He was absolutely righteous.
There was nothing to be improved in him.
But what this means is that he was fully equipped by all the sufferings that he went through
to identify with us in the human race.
He was born without sin and yet he suffered as though he were a sinner.
And that suffering equipped him to identify with us, to be our Savior and our high priest.
Then it says in verse 14, since the children, that's those of us who believe on him, since
the children have flesh and blood, he too, that is he in absolutely identical fashion,
shared in their humanity so that by his death he might do two things.
Now notice it because this is what ties it back to Genesis 3.15.
He came as the seed of the woman.
He became a human being.
He joined himself to flesh and blood, our humanity.
In every aspect he was perfect man so that he might die.
And in that death he might do two things.
Number one, destroy him who holds the power of death.
That is the devil.
What did God say to that serpent?
You're going to strike his heel but he's going to what?
He's going to crush your head.
He's going to smash your head.
He's going to destroy you.
And that's exactly what the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus did when he died.
He said that he might destroy, that he might take the power away from the devil.
And number two, free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.
When death entered the human race back with Adam and Eve, death became a great fear.
And from generation to generation the fear of death became one of the chains holding
the race of Adam in satanic slavery.
And now the Lord Jesus Christ has not only destroyed the devil, he has freed us who were
in bondage to the devil and to the fear of death.
He has freed us.
John joins in with this in 1 John 3, 8 when he says, for this reason the Son of God was
manifested that he might loosen the works of the devil.
The devil had it all tied up, all bound up just the way he wanted it.
And Jesus came in and loosed the whole thing.
And so you see that the Lord Jesus Christ is fully the promise that God made in the
garden.
The promise has been kept.
God keeps His promises.
Nothing that God ever utters fails.
Listen to His, humanly speaking, His great, great, great, great, etc.
Grandfather David, who writing about God's Word says in Psalm 119, your Word, O Lord,
is eternal.
It stands firm in the heavens.
Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever.
All your words are true.
All your righteous laws are eternal.
When God speaks, we'd better listen because what God says will last forever.
Isaiah said that we human beings are like grass and flowers.
We fade and we wither and we're gone.
But he says the Word of our God stands forever.
And we have seen how God has kept His Word.
And God will keep His promises to you.
God will keep His promises to you.
As we come to the Lord's table, we are reminded He kept His promise.
And so as we partake of the elements, may it be with the commitment in our hearts that
we will do the same for Him.
We'll keep our promises to Him.
You will never break God's promises by leaning on them.
Did you know that?
That's what they're for.
If you've not trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, listen to this promise.
Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.
You can lean on that promise.
It'll never break under your weight.
Never.
I don't care how heavy your sin is.
It'll never break.
If you will call on Him today who died for you and rose again from the dead, that promise
will take you safely to heaven.
You'll be saved.
What other need do you have for provision, for guidance, for protection?
Whatever the need.
Find the promise of God and lean upon it.
It will never break under your weight.
God's promises are always greater than our needs.
Whatever your need is today, there's a promise of God that's greater.
There's no exception to that.
What we need to do is to put our weight on them, just to trust the promises of God.
Old Uncle Oscar took his first airplane ride.
He had been scared.
When he got back, his friends were eager to hear how it had gone, and so they asked him
at their first opportunity if he enjoyed the flight.
Well, he said, it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, but I'll tell you this, I never
did put my weight down.
You ever feel that way when you're flown?
The promises of God are so sure you can put all your weight on them.
Your faith just rests on it, because God keeps His word.
He keeps His promises.
Let's pray.
Now, Father, we thank You that You are a God of promise, and that none of Your promises
ever fail.
Indeed, all of the promises that You have made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will yet
be fulfilled.
We thank You this morning as we come to this table that You have fulfilled the promise
of Genesis 3, 15, that the seed of Eve was born, that He partook of our humanity fully,
and died, and in His death destroyed the devil, and in His death redeemed us.
We come to this table with gratitude for that saving work, for that kept promise.
Let's reflect upon that and upon what our hearts response ought to be as our servers
come.
As we're gathering the cups up, I'd like for us to sing a verse of 170.
It is a hymn that ties together the whole story.
It begins with the wonderful experience in Bethlehem and concludes with Jesus coming
again.
It's called One Day.
One day when heaven was filled with His praises.
One day when sin was as dark as could be, Jesus came.
I'd like for us to sing that together, 170, the first verse in chorus.
And let's stand as we do, please.
One day when heaven was filled with His praises.
One day when sin was as dark as could be, Jesus came.
Don't be like Uncle Oscar.
Put your weight down on the promises of God.
He keeps them.
We're dismissed.