Sermon Tone Analysis

! Outline

!! A.Introduction [[Word Press Link|http://birthandlifeofchrist.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/5/]]

!! B. Prophecies

!! C. Preexistence [[Word Press Link|http://birthandlifeofchrist.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/the-christmas-story-part-2-his-preexistence/]]

!! D. Genealogies [[Word Press Link|http://birthandlifeofchrist.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/the-christmas-story-part-3-genealogies/]]

!! E. Annunciations

!!! Part 1 To Zacharias [[Word Press Link|http://birthandlifeofchrist.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/the-christmas-story-part-4-annunciations-a/]]

!!! Part 2 To Mary

!! F. Narrative

! A. Introduction

Before we begin the narrative of our Lord’s birth and the surrounding events, we need to establish a context for His arrival into the human race.

First, we will do this by looking at a number of prophecies of His birth, because His entire life, including His birth, was the subject of prophecy from the very beginnings of human history.

Secondly, we will establish that He pre-existed His humanity as the Second Person of the Trinity.

Third, we will look at His human genealogy.

In this study of His genealogy, we’ll establish its importance.

Before we study the narrative of His birth, we’ll also look at the prophecies which immediately preceded His birth, the annunciations to Zacharias, Mary and Joseph.

!

B. Prophecies

!! [[Bible:Genesis 3:15]] /And I will put enmity [hostility, antagonism] between you [Satan] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall crush you on the head, and you shall strike Him on the heel./

God saw to it that our Lord and His then future work on the Cross be revealed to the human race many centuries before He actually was born into this world.

Theologically, this verse is called the Proto-Evangelium, the first presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It came from the mouth of the Lord Himself to Satan through the serpent, but obviously intended for Adam and Eve’s ears as well.

They heard this message just before they received their punishments.

He gave them the Gospel so that they would have the opportunity to believe in Him and live as believers, guaranteed eternal life before they left the Garden.

Our Lord gave this promise of salvation to Adam and Eve after He had judged the serpent, yet before their judgment.

God preceded their judgment with the promise of redemption.

The immediate context of the verse deals with judgment after the first sin.

It is a break in the judgments God meted out to the serpent, and to Adam and Eve.

In this verse, we transition from the judgment of the serpent to an address to Satan, who is personified as the serpent.

How do we know the address is actually to Satan?

In Revelation 12:9 Satan is called “the serpent of old…”

/And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him/.

[[Bible:Revelation 12:9 ]]

/And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years;/ [[Bible:Revelation 20:2]]

Often readers of this first Gospel presentation to Adam and his wife don’t see this as a Gospel message, so we need to get a better understanding of what it teaches.

Note that in the immediate context of this passage, God presented His grace solution for their spiritual death before He judged them.

God’s grace always precedes judgment.

He always offers grace before He curses or punishes.

He announced salvation by grace in this verse, before His judgment of Adam and the woman as taught in Genesis 3:16-19.

There is no offer of salvation for Satan, since he was already judged and sentenced at his own trail before the Lord created the human race.

Salvation for the serpent; of all nature, I’m assuming for the animal kingdom, the serpent as well, is at the Millennium.

The first issue in this promise of salvation, presented in the first sentence of this verse, is the separation of and antagonism between the serpent’s seed, which is also Satan’s seed, those under spiritual death, and the woman’s seed, Jesus Christ.

Up to this time, the war between Satan and God had not included the human race.

Now, because Satan introduced sin into the human race, the angelic conflict took on another dimension, the human race.

God did not state this as a divine decree, announcing this enmity as a divine command, but defining a new line of demarcation or front line as it were in this age old war.

The reference to the woman’s “seed” is a prophecy concerning the virgin pregnancy and virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

A descendant of the woman, not man and woman would defeat Satan.

So this refers to the entrance of the God-Man into the human history.

Our Lord is called the woman’s seed because He came into the world directly through the woman, without a human father involved.

The Seed of the Woman is the first title of Christ.

He was born from the Virgin Mary who was made pregnant because the Holy Spirit supplied the necessary chromosomes.

The woman’s ovum, at time of fertilization is without corruption from the old sin nature; hence the importance of the virgin pregnancy.

Our Lord had to be born perfect, without contamination from the old sin nature in order to fulfill His ministry of substitutionary spiritual death.

This is also a prophecy about the new Tree of Life, the cross of Christ, in contrast to the one in the Garden from which they were soon to be expelled.

Why is there this hostility between Satan’s seed, human beings who are always born spiritually dead and the Seed of the Woman?

When Satan appealed God’s sentence, which he’d be thrown into the Lake of Fire for his sin of arrogance, the battle line was drawn.

All those born imperfect are immediately hostile to and in opposition to God’s perfect righteousness.

Through this verse, God also set the barriers for hostility in the next phase of the angelic conflict.

Until Satan is finally subjected to his sentence, this hostility will always exist in this devil’s world.

Satan has actually has two seeds: all fallen angels, and unsaved members of the human race.

Many unsaved perpetuate their spiritual death till the point of physical death, from which there is no salvation.

The Seed of the Woman will redeem the Satan’s seed; the human race, born spiritually dead.

When anyone believes in Christ he becomes the seed of Christ.

In the next line of this verse we are presented with the mechanics of salvation; faith in the then future work of Christ on the cross, bearing the sins of the world.

Though faith is not mentioned, the faith mechanic is believing the message presented.

We all make decisions daily, whether or not to believe a message.

I reject most advertising messages I hear, but I believe some then act upon that belief.

I've been burned a few times, of course.

But the point is this.

If you believe something you are told, you assimilate it into your thinking as true, then, on some level you act upon it.

As we've noted in other lessons, once you believe what the Holy Spirit communicates to you, through someone, then He makes it effective.

You don't even have to act upon it, He does all of the work!

As we'll note later in this study, Adam and his wife did believe what they were told.

As a result, they gained eternal life before they left the Garden.

I’ll read the next line then expand it with some explanations.

He shall crush you on the head and you shall strike Him on the heel.

As we mentioned before, “He” is the Seed of the Woman, Jesus Christ.

Every woman is born with cells which are uncontaminated by spiritual death.

These are her ovum.

These cells only become contaminated when fertilized by the male sperm, resulting in spiritually dead offspring.

Since God the Holy Spirit supplied the necessary chromosomes, our Lord was born without that contamination that afflicts every other human being.

The next two important words, “crush” and “strike” are translations from the same Hebrew word, SHUPH שׁוּף in the same form.

The only exception in the form of the verbs deals with the built in subjects, “he” and “you.”

Why then, do we translate the same word in two different ways.

The answer lies in the principle that the context and use of a word determines its meaning.

The grammarian Gesenius communicated this in so many words.

We can understand from the context of each use, that the given translations are appropriate and accurate.

The first use, translated, “crush,” SHUPH שׁוּף, in the 3rd person masculine singular, qal imperfect designates our Lord’s victory in the angelic conflict.

The creature our Lord will crush is Satan.

Our Lord, when His victory is complete, will have defeated Satan twice.

He dealt him the first defeat at the First Advent when He bore the imputation and judgment for the sins of the world.

Satan’s second and final defeat occurs both at the beginning and ending of the Millennium.

At our Lord’s return, He will imprison him for 1000 years, and then at the end, He will throw him into the Lake of Fire.

So, the crushing of the serpent’s head is the declaration of our Lord’s victory over Satan in His two advents.

The second use of SHUPH שׁוּף, the 2nd person masculine, qal imperfect, translated “strike,” has Satan as the subject.

His striking our Lord’s heel refers both to the fact that he introduced the venom of sin into the world, of which He bore both the imputation and punishment, ultimately withdrawing that venom.

It also refers to the physical abuse our Lord bore prior to and on the cross.

Our Lord necessarily suffered substitutionary spiritual death for us, paying for the sins of the world.

Satan introduced the concept of sin into the human race; our Lord was stricken with sin.

Human volition took Satan's introduction of it and ran with it, thanks to spiritual death that resulted from the original sin.

So, by sin, our Lord was struck, as if from that serpent of old.