Beginnings (Genesis 1-11) / Lesson 4: The First Rebellion

So that'll be a great time as well. But why don't we go ahead and begin with a word of prayer and then I'll get started. Father, we thank you for your word. I thank you, Father, that you have shared with us truths that you call us to unearth and even tell us that they are spiritually discerned. So I just pray even tonight that our spirits would be open to the truth. Lord Jesus, you said that we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free. So I pray tonight would be a night of freedom and revelation as you speak to us through your word. I pray that you'll bring divine clarity and Lord, you'll just guide us into all the truth and I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, all right, let's go ahead and it's six o'clock somewhere, how about that? So let's go ahead and get started. Tonight we're in lesson four and it's Genesis three. So that's gonna be, didn't quite work out mathematically like you'd want to have them fours and fours but lesson four, Genesis three and I'm calling it the first rebellion and literally, we need to understand what I'm calling the coup that changed everything and so as we come to this, let me just tell you what I know. When we talk about Genesis three and the fall, most of us have in our mind certain things that, well, they're just in our mind.

Maybe if you, especially if you grew up in church, maybe you grew up in church with pictures like this and it was a man and a woman, maybe, you got on one side, they've got some clothes on for modesty, the other one, they've got bushes in front of them to kind of have modesty. Usually, they make them look like models that you'd find on a magazine and normally, it's an apple, which by the way, the reason why the fruit is seen a lot of times as an apple is because in the Latin Vulgate, when it was translated by Jerome and into the Latin Vulgate, the word for apple in Latin is malum and the word for evil is malum and they are spelled the same but they sound a little different and so they just kind of came up with this thing of evil and apple so they started using an apple. So that's how we got to that but and normally, the snake is there. It's usually a garter snake or sometimes, you might find it being a python and let me just tell you that tonight, we're gonna set all that on fire. How about that? It's cute for kids but it is as false as anything can be. It's not the story in Genesis 3. So I'm about to wreck some of your worlds and so as we come into it, you remember whenever we started a few weeks ago,

so we need to start having a perspective shift and basically, we need to come to a realization that we have been indoctrinated in what I call a cultural bias. I've talked about it in spiritual warfare. I've talked about it several times. We don't realize that we actually think we are getting smarter because of evolution and the evolutionary cultural mindset, the humanistic mindset of our culture. We actually think those things which is false as well. We are not getting smarter. As I've said before, we carry our smarts out and around in a phone we carry but we're getting dumber and dumber. They keep having to dumb down education just so that we actually think we're still making A's in college and so we need to come at this and understand these kind of things. How do we as 21st century believers understand the writings of Moses or I could say the scriptures? How does our modern worldview guide our understanding of scripture? So I talked about how we had to shift it and I showed you that and here's me and I did it. I've got a beard in this one so just wanted to, you know, in case you wanted to see what I,

we gotta make a shift from the 21st century believer back to the ancient idea of the Hebrew people. We need to be able to read the scripture. What were they reading when it was written to them? Does that make sense? It's for us but we need to come and see it that way. So basically we're gonna make a perspective shift and what do I mean by that? We need to begin to ask how do the ancient Israelites understand the writing of Moses? Instead of our 21st century, how did they understand it? Secondly, how did their worldview guide their understanding of scripture and of redemption? And if we don't go there, we are not going to understand the Bible. And I'm going to talk more about that. It's why we get all hung up with, well, did the snake have legs and Satan enter this thing or what happened and we're missing the story. So I'm going to, I'm going to share it tonight and we're going to look at it. So basically what we need to do is we need to attempt to dismantle the myth. And the myth is that there was some kind of talking animal, mythical apple, and basically bad decisions. We need to see what it really was, that it was a hostile takeover or a cosmic coup. And if we don't see that, we will not understand some of the things Jesus says. We won't understand the prophets. I'm going to share some of the things with you. And as we come to this, as I've been teaching this, I talked about it the first week, we're going to look at three different rebellions as we go into this. Tonight's the first one, but it's just basically the compound fracture of history. It's literally what happened that broke us in a way that was irredeemable apart from God's intervention.

And we're going to be able to see that we're going to look at that. Tonight was the first one. And we need to understand literally this first rebellion because in understanding it, it's the key that will help us unlock the logic of the rest of the Bible. So let me just kind of give you a quick, and this is a snapshot overview of just kind of what we're doing with the three rebellions. And I put Genesis 1 through 12 because I'm not really going to spend much time in Genesis 12, but it's basically God's answer, if you will, God's counter strike, if you will. But the first rebellion is in Genesis 3, and it's when a high ranking angel leads humanity to defect from God's authority, and that's what happens. We're going to look at that tonight. The second rebellion found in Genesis 6 is when the sons of God corrupt the human genome to block Genesis 3.15 that we're going to look at tonight. The third rebellion is found in Genesis 11, and that's when humanity refuses to fill the earth, and so God divides the nations under rebel rulers, angelic rebel rulers. But then God's counter move we see in Genesis 12, and that's when he calls Abraham as his vehicle for the Redeemer. So that's where we're going to be going and what we're going to be seeing over these weeks and just trying to get us ready so that we can get ready for tonight. So the big idea basically is this, if you have your outline, I want to write this down. Genesis 1-11, three things I want to share with you. One is not primarily about human morality. In other words, here's kind of the way, and this is a struggle, and it is for all of us. I mean, it's like they ate the wrong fruit and God just wiped them out. It's almost like the death penalty for a parking violation. I mean, it sounds ridiculous when you look at it that way, but that's not what happened. And so when we're saying it, it's not primarily about human morality. It is, that's part of it, but that's not the primary. What is it? It is a cosmic war narrative.

It is showing us the war that's really happening. I've been reading a book about a guy talking about being in Somalia during the civil war and just that was going on over there, the devastation that was going on in that time and the killings and the brutality and the starvation. And we look at that and go, oh, that's just terrible. And we think that, but what we need to see is from a spirit perspective, you and I are in that kind of environment spiritually where rebel forces have been destroying and killing. People are imprisoned and being broken and just dismantled in this world we live in. That we're in a cosmic war. But then I want us to write this third thing, is Genesis 1 through 11. It is a promised rescue mission. Tells us all of this. So as we come to this tonight, we're going to, and I'm going to help you a little bit. I'm going to, we're going to leak into some things in the Bible. the other places in scripture as we get toward the end of it, as we start understanding, but it's going to help us. Section one, let's go ahead and go there. Section one is basically who is the serpent? Genesis chapter three verse one, let's just look at that verse and then I'm going to give you the Hebrew word and we're going to look at this. Genesis three one says, now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? The Hebrew word that's used there is the word nakash. It's actually a k sound that CH makes, not a ch, but a k. We don't make that sound in our language, but if you've ever been to Israel they sound like they're hocking up something, I hate to say it that way, it's an awful brutal way of saying it, but they just use a lot of ch, ch, ch in their words. But the word means much more and I'm going to show you this, but then I want to try to help explain it a little bit, okay?

And so stay with me, but the word itself, the nakash, it has more than one meaning. As a matter of fact, it has what I'm calling, I'm just going to call it the triple meaning and in your outline, the name of the being, the serpent, we call it, has three meanings. So if you have your outline, you want to write that down. As a noun, the word means serpent, so it does mean that, I'm not denying that. As a verb, it means, as an action verb, it means divination or to divine or to, it means magic, cast spells. And as an adjective, it literally, as an adjective, means, I said it this way, it means luminous or gleaming. You could say, if you didn't want to put that, you could say shining or polished copper. It's important to see all of those. Now why is it important to see those? Well for several reasons, I'm going to show you again in a minute, but just to kind of help you, there are two passages in the scripture, we've talked about this before, but it's pretty well understood in, even among biblical scholars, that in Ezekiel chapter 28 and in Isaiah chapter 14, we see prophetically given to us pictures of Satan and of the serpent, of this being. And so as we begin to look at this, we see these things. Let me just give you the one that is found in Ezekiel 28 verses 13 and 14. Listen to what it says about this person. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering. That means he was luminous. He was shining. Does that make sense? Precious stones shine. They illuminate, especially in the light of God. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you, this is God talking, I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of God, which by the way, have you ever thought of Eden

being a mountain? A lot of times we think of a garden, we think about it out back and we till up an area and we plant some flowers. But if you go to the garden of Gethsemane, it's a mountain. In fact, gardens, many times, in fact, in, in pagan literature, when they talk about the garden areas for their gods, they were on mountains. But here he's talking to him. He says, he says, let me go on and say, he says, you were on the holy mountain of God in the midst of the stones of fire. You walked. And it's important to understand when we come to this, the serpent, the Nakash, whatever you want to call him, was not an intruder. He was a throne guardian and he was stationed there. He was there in the garden and it's important to know that. I'm going to talk about that in just a minute. Now I know that some of you are going, okay, you're just kind of throwing me off. Because we like to go, here's the way we like to study and there's nothing necessarily wrong with this. We like to say, we're going to take the verse, we're going to find, listen, in Hebrew, Greek and Latin did the same thing. You go find the verse. main verb, from there you go to the subject, from there you go to the direct object, and you put together the sentence structure of any of those languages and that's the way you understand it. And then you take those words and you understand what they mean, that's what you do. And so we do that, that's a very western culture mindset, there's not anything necessarily wrong with it, it's just not complete. So I want you to think about what we're looking at in this story. It is a true story, it's not a fable, it's not a fairy tale, but as we read it, we need to think about this in a way similar to the way Jesus taught in parables.

Now it's not a parable, so don't hear me say that, but you remember whenever he was teaching, for instance, whenever he was teaching and he started teaching about the sower, you remember? And he said the sower goes out and he casts seeds, and to some he casts on the path and some of the seeds land in rocky soil, and some land in thorny soil, and some land in good soil. And then he explains, you know, and the ones that lands on the hard soil, the birds come take it away, the ones in the rocky soil, it grows quick and then dies, grown in the thorns, it starts growing up, gets choked out, and the good soil, 30, 60, 100 fold. And then he stops, he doesn't say another word. So the vast majority of the people go, well I guess he's into agriculture. In the Western mind, that's where we would have gone. And then his disciples go to him and they say, hey, why do you do it that way? And this is what he says, and don't miss this, and it's in Matthew chapter 13, I'm not going to have it on the screen, but let me read it to you, 9 through 16. He says, what did I tell you, what's the most often quoted statement of Jesus in the Bible? He has ears to hear, he starts off in verse 9 of Matthew, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Then the disciples came to him and said, why do you speak in parables? Then he answered, to you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he who, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed in their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says, you will indeed hear, but never understand. You will indeed see, but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.

But blessed are the eyes, are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. I'm going to tell you, friend, the Western church, sadly, is primarily deaf and blind, because we come to the scripture in the way we want to understand it, the same way that as there was a religious people were coming to Jesus. They had the scripture about the Messiah. They knew exactly, I mean, details about the Messiah, and when the Messiah shows up, they reject him because he doesn't fit their structural ideas, and sadly, that's the way we come to scripture, and that's why vast majority of the Western church sees Genesis 1 as being just nothing but just a fable, Genesis 3 as just a cute story that we tell our children, and we can put up little cute things on there about these two people, but that didn't really happen like that, and it's why, sadly, the church has lost what's really happening, and it's amazing to me, and I don't mean this ugly, but whenever I tell, has told stories about the demonic, and the things I've come in, people in the churches, and they just kind of, one, they sit amazed, secondly, though, they sit incredibly nervous. When I tell those stories in any other country that I've told them, they just kind of go, yeah, well, this Western guy, Western church guy, American, I think he almost understands, but you see, we look at the African and say, well, he's just not educated, and they look at us and say, your mind's confused. So what I'm saying is I want to help you understand that as we come to this, that God is telling us more here than what we think. we can understand it. So let's just be, instead of being like a 21st century worldview, you know, idea, let's just ask the Holy Spirit to guide us. I'm not even asking you to go back to them, I'm just asking, let's let the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, here's what the Bible says, the natural person, that means the person in there just naturally the intellect, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. So God wants to teach us the truth, but he's going to do it his way. He's not going to bend to make the American feel better about ourselves. He's going to say, hey, I'm ready to tell you all of it. I'll show you. So this brings me to another question, which maybe you've had. Why were Adam and Eve not afraid? I'll be honest with you, if I go

home tonight, and I see a stray dog, and he walks over to me and goes, hey Dave, how's things going today? I'm going to kind of flip out a little bit, all right? I'm probably going to go to the emergency room to just check to see if I've just finally gone over the edge. But they just had a conversation. They didn't even act like they were scared, afraid. They didn't go, what are you doing here? In other words, it may not have been the first time. So why? There's a lot of reasons. Last week I kind of touched on the fact that Eden was the headquarters, the in-between between heaven and earth. It was the divine connection point. In Revelation, it talks about the new Jerusalem, and it gives all these instructions about it. We read about it. So whenever we see this, it was that place. So the serpent, the Nakash, whatever you want to call him, he was a resident. He could go both places. He was familiar. His appearance was as a shining one. He appeared majestic, overwhelmingly majestic. Let me tell you an interesting, by the way, just a side note. If you've ever, in fact you can go Google this, but if you go and look at what, if they show pictures of what the Pharaoh wore on his head, many times there is a serpent, usually a cobra. The cobra, serpent, was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, and he was a god, that was a guardian god. You find them in the Mesopotamian pagan worship, the serpents as guardians. And now we have in Nechash, the serpent. Revelation chapter 12 calls him that ancient serpent. The deceiver, which is also another word for diviner, is to be a deceiver. So we see these things here, and we even see, and I put down here 2 Corinthians 11, 14, that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. How can he disguise himself as an angel of light? Because he's luminous. Does that make sense? Good. Well that's section 1, how about that? Let's go on to section 2, that I'm calling the coup. And listen, if you're a chicken farmer, it's not coop, it's coup. How the first rebellion actually happened. The first rebellion actually happened actually unfolded. How did it happen? What took place? So let's just walk through it. And as we start, I thought it would be important to really go back and say, why did the serpent do what he did? Why? I touched on it briefly last week, but let's just go back to it, because they're just as old as ancient times. Let me just read them to you.

to you. It was a calculated, I think I wrote this down. Yeah, put this down. The serpent's action was calculated and premeditated. It wasn't a whimsical, hey man. He wasn't playing a joke. He was on a mission. He had a purpose. He was calculated in what he did. I'm going to show you what he did. Why did he do it? First and foremost, out of envy. God granted humanity authority to rule with him. He just could not stand the fact that we had been given dominion. We'll look at that in just a second. Also, and I'll read this later in Isaiah 14, he desired autonomy. He wanted to be his own ruler. I'll show you that. And literally what happened was, you see, here's something that sometimes we don't realize. But when you, well, we kind of would, I guess we would understand this. When you have a quote Benedict Arnold, if you remember that whole idea. A person who says they are following a certain king or ruler or leader or group, but then go and begin doing what another ruler or leader or king says, they have shifted allegiance. They have given themselves over another ruler. Does that make sense? And so Satan knew he couldn't defeat God. He knew that. But if he could get these beings that God created to have dominion, if he could get them to not follow God, but instead follow him, then guess what? We shifted allegiance. Legally. That's, he knew that he could pull that off and that's important for later. But let me just give you this, what I'm just going to call the four step methodology of deception. Step one, sow doubt. Plant that in. Did God actually say, sow doubt? This is actually the way he deceives us. I mean, does God, does God really say this? That's step one. Step two, I just put here, distort the boundary. But really what he did was he reframed God's intentions of, you don't eat, you can eat from any tree except for this one. He distorted that to make it sound like God was holding out. Why would God put a boundary up? He's holding out on us. Why would he say that you can't do that? Well, he's holding out on us. Number three, step three, deny the consequences. You won't really die. And then you offer, I just called it here, autonomy. You offer them the opportunity to be their own gods. You don't have to listen to God. You can do what you want to do. For God knows in the day you eat of it, you will be like him. And that's what he did. And so I know that we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we get on Adam and Eve in this story. But the truth is, think about having someone you really

trust. Let's just say that you work for a company and there is an executive vice president that you trusted. I mean, you've worked with him for years and he comes up. and says, hey, listen, and he tells you to do something that you know the boss has said don't do. And you say, well, he told us we couldn't do that. Look, man, he just doesn't want you to really find out something and I'm telling you, if you'll do this, there's gonna be some doors open and you're listening to the executive vice president. You're not just listening to some guy on the street, you're listening to somebody who's also another boss there. And so in that moment, you just say, well, okay. And then the next morning you come in and the boss, the CEO fires you because you did exactly what he told you not to do. Because you didn't know that the executive vice president was forming a coup, he was gonna get, he was trying to oust the CEO and build his own allegiance to follow him. You didn't realize that. Well, that's what happened. So just to remind all of us, the moment it happened. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, able to make one wise, she took of his fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband and just don't forget this, who was with her. He wasn't off, you know, tilling the garden or naming an animal. He was standing right there.

He was with her. And I just said it this way, this wasn't absent leadership. This was silent complicity. And that's what happened. We gave over our dominion. We gave over our rule. Now let's go look at section three, the aftermath. And I do have a lot even after this. So don't, if you think we're gonna get out early tonight, I'm gonna do my best to get out on time. But the consequences and then the counterstrike. So what happened in the immediate fallout? There's three things. You have this in your outline. You wanna write it down if you want. First was spiritual death. Second, we were created in a way and there's a lot of belief in this and I wanna be a little bit careful on how to say it, but there is a pretty strong belief that there was something about us that was luminous. The presence of God was, and let me give you an example in the scriptures that might help you. You remember when Moses was on the mountain with God and he'd been on the mountain with God and when he came down, he was glowing. You remember that? And there's pretty strong belief and there's a lot of Jewish teachings that said we were luminous.

And I would say it would be more similar to glowing in a way similar to what Moses was doing when he came off the mountain. And so when Adam and Eve saw that they were naked, it didn't mean they saw, oh man, I didn't realize I didn't have clothes on. It was that they realized they had lost the luminosity. Suddenly they were like the other animals. They didn't have the glow of God's presence on them. Does that make sense? Death came. Next, second immediate fallout is the birth of religion. What is religion? It's man's attempt to be right with God, to cover our guilt. It's human effort. Next week we're gonna look at the first murder. I'll talk more of that in just a minute, but it was actually over worship, it was over religion. And then the third thing is broken fellowship. You look and see not only was their fellowship broken with God, but it was broken with one another. It says they sowed fig leaves for themselves, and the way it says it is, Adam went and did his and Eve did hers, and I'm sure hers looked a lot better. But, you know, they did. And so that was the immediate fallout, was spiritual death, the birth of religion and broken fellowship. And you just see also in it a collapse of responsibility. Notice the blaming, the unwillingness to say, it was me.

I mean, you first of all, you have Adam up at the top, you know, it was the woman that you gave me. In other words, he's even blaming God. He blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, the serpent looks around and nobody else there. But I think it's important to remember that the mark of taking responsibility is a mark of being an image bearer. As believers, what is it that the Bible says? If you will confess your sin, he is faithful and just to forgive. But most of us in our culture has gone this way to a whacked out way and that is we want to blame our parents, our upbringing, our job, our boss, our, you know, and I'm not saying that they didn't play parts in it, I'm not saying that. But the reality is we ultimately made the dumb decisions. And there is that, you know, in fact, I can tell you in pastoring for a long, long time, I can tell you the mark of true repentance is when a person acknowledges I have sinned against God. Psalm 51, against you and you alone have I sinned. That's the cause. That was David's repentance following his adultery and murder. So let's go on to the next thing that we see that happens. Another fallout is what I'm calling the dethroning of the serpent. The dethroning of the serpent. Let me just give you the verse here. It's Isaiah 14, verses 12 through 14 and I want you to see what was in the serpent, the Nekash, the devil, Satan, what was in his heart. And this is a prophetic giving that was actually an illumination that was given in scripture in Isaiah 14, verses 12 through 14. It says, how you are fallen from heaven, O day star, O son of the dawn. How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, notice what he was warning, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God.

He's talking about, I'm going to be the top one. I will set my throne on high, wanted to rule. I will sit on the Mount of assembly in the, in the far reaches of the North. In other words, I'm going to be at the highest point, the pinnacle. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high. So what does he say in Genesis three, if you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God. He it's what he wanted. He wanted to ascend. He wasn't saying in that, by the way, he was going to be God. He knew that he was a created being. He just wanted to rule. He wanted to have a throne that he could rule. So what does God say to him? Listen to what he says. And this is important for us to understand the story of serpent of, of all of this. And what he's really saying here is in verse 14 of Genesis three, he says on your belly, you shall go and, and dust you shall eat. Now we think all of a sudden he had legs, but that's not what he's saying. He's saying, you're not going to ascend. I'm casting you down to the dirt, to the earth. I'm taking you out of your already, because you're already great position. I'm throwing you out of that. It was literally an open humiliation that he was declaring to him, casting him down. That wasn't the ultimate. Let's find that out later that happened in Revelation 12, that I've talked about before. But it was God declaring, oh, you think you're gonna ascend?

Let me just tell you who you're talking to. You're not going to ascend, I'm casting you down. And he uses that picture of the serpent. I'm casting you down to the dust of the ground. And so we need to see, that's what he's doing here. And then he goes on from there, and you remember, he talks, and I'm gonna get to 3.15 in just a second. But in Genesis 3.16, he says to the woman, what does he say to her? He says, you will have pain in childbearing. And I want you to see that in her judgment, there is this, and why I put this before the other, there is this thread of grace. There is this thread of grace. He says, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. But in it, what he's also said to her right before this, and we're gonna look at next, is that there is gonna be a rescuer that's going to be born through you. And it's interesting that right before it, he says that the seed that he's talking about, which Galatians tells us is Christ, the seed comes through the woman. So it's also giving us a shadow of the virgin birth that we have here. Now you've heard those things, you've seen those things, but I wanna just, what I'm calling the gospel beginning, if I had up there the word proto-evangelum, but I thought, you know, I don't even like that word.

So I just said the first gospel. He gives the first gospel. And the first gospel is God's declaration of war against the serpent. And in it, I'm gonna show you, in this was, oh, by the way, I didn't tell you these. I didn't give you your fill in the blanks. His desire was to ascend and rule. Sorry, I just saw that in my notes. And underneath that, God stripped away his authority and cast him down. He wanted to ascend, God cast him down. God stripped away his authority and cast him down. Does that make sense? The first one, his desire was to ascend and rule. Sorry about that. I got excited, I wanted to get to 315 so fast, I couldn't stand myself. I really wanna get to what comes after it, but we're getting there. So the gospel begins, is really, it's God's declaration of war. I will put enmity. And enmity means hostility. And notice what he says here, get this. Between who? You and the woman. Throughout the scripture, it's always Adam that rebelled. And yet, God makes a declaration to the serpent and says, what I'm going to do,

is I'm gonna put a continual war against you and the woman, against your seed and her seed. Right? Now we all know that women don't have seed, and so we know that a woman has the egg. But God is saying, here, I'm going to do a supernatural work. And he's saying some things here that are of incredible importance for all of us to be able to see and we need to understand, is that he's saying things. And so I wanna get to it, I'm gonna give you three things in just a second. But I want you to see that in this, we are literally getting a picture of the cross. It's right here, I mean, God is, he is, it's veiled still. But us who live on the backside of the cross can see it. Because what does he say next? He says, you will strike his heel, he will crush your head. Now, don't you think about the picture for just a second. The way he says that, it's as though it is almost simultaneous. That as he, as the serpent is there, crawling on its belly, and a foot is raised, the serpent strikes, striking the heel. But as he strikes the heel right after it,

the head is crushed. But there is a striking of the heel. And if you've ever said, I don't know why, I'm gonna say it again. world. I mean, why didn't he just say he's going to strike his head and crush his head He's saying, you will strike his heel. And he's striking the heel. and not strike his head? Because he's picturing something. So I just want you to see this, And if you've ever said, I don't know why, I'm gonna say it again. the strategy of the cross, the bruising of his heel, what is that talking about? It's speaking of the crucifixion. So if you have your outline, Genesis 3.15, the Lord made three declarations. He said this, a human redeemer would come, a human redeemer would come. In other words, he said, through the seed of woman, it's a woman, it's the seed of the woman. In other words, it's going to be a human, but it's God's declaration of war, the saying, I'm going to bring a redeemer through the woman. And then the next thing underneath that, the crucifixion would look like defeat. You will strike his heel. So I'm not going to ask if anybody's been bitten by a poisonous snake. I don't even want to ask that because just the thought of it kind of gags me a little bit. But if you've ever been bit by a poison, you feel like you were defeated. I mean, you know, he got you kind of thing. But the third thing is the resurrection, the crushing of the head would destroy the serpent's work. 1 John 3 talks about that. The son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. He crushed the serpent's head in the resurrection. And there's going to be so much more I can tell you about. Just to give you an idea, let me give you a side note on that. So literally, here's what happened. If you want to know the legal ramifications of this, you see, when Satan caused the first, our first parents to join them, to choose their side, to become their own gods and come under his rule, he became the Lord of the dead or the Lord of death and hell. He had the keys of death and hell. And so every human

born of Adam, every human was destined to come under his rule and to come for eternity imprisoned in his prison of hell. But he made a strategic error. And we're going to see in just a second how the enemy has been through history, has been wanting to kill the coming of the redeemer. To kill, if I can keep him from coming, I can keep this from happening. Genesis 3, 15, I'll never lose. I can forever have my rule and my reign. And so what does he do? He says, ultimately, if I can kill him, I've won. But here was the problem and it was legal. Adam and Eve made the choice. And through the human genome, we follow that because of Adam's rebellion. However, Jesus came as the second Adam. Jesus did not sin. He did not agree to follow Satan. He did not agree to the coup. Even in the wilderness when he was being tempted, he chose not to follow. And so when he died, Satan thought he had won. However, it was an illegal move by Satan. And so when Jesus entered into that realm of the dead, he conquered. The Bible talks about it and we're going to look at it in just a second. Let me give you this, just to give you an idea about what I'm just calling the seed war. And it's not new to me, but it's, I want you to see since Genesis 3, 15, we're going to look at some of these, but just give you some ideas about how the enemy has worked through history to destroy the coming of the Messiah. We see it, actually we're going to see it next week in Genesis chapter four with Cain killing Abel. And I'm going to talk about that. We're going to look at that. As a matter of fact, in Hebrews chapter 11, verse four, listen to what it says. By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain through which he was commended as righteous. God commending him by accepting his gifts and through his faith. And though he died, he still speaks. first time, the hope of eliminating, even at the start of the woman's seed. We'll look at this next week, but do you remember whenever God says to Cain, why are you downcast? Behold, sin is crouching at your door, waiting to have you. We're going to look at that next week, but we see this from the spirit world realm, we see what's happening here. He wants to stop the Genesis 3.15 promise that God made. You go on to the next one, you find in Genesis 6, the Nephilim, we're going to look at those, the sons of God, they were attempting to corrupt the genome because notice that they were going after the women, because if they could get the women, they could corrupt the genetic makeup of humans. They almost succeeded. We'll look at that later on in a couple of weeks. In Exodus chapter one,

we have what Pharaoh did. He attempted to kill all the Hebrew boys. What was he trying to do? He was trying to annihilate the continuation of the chosen people, and then what is going to happen to the girls? They're going to intermarry with the Egyptians. There's no longer a God's people. Does that make sense? You go on from there, and you go to Esther, and you find in the story of Esther, what Haman, whenever he got mad at Mordecai, he didn't just get mad at Mordecai and try to get rid of him. Satan so entered him and so filled him with evil, he wanted to annihilate and massacre all of the Jews. You remember what happened? Mordecai found out, and he goes and he says, go tell Esther what's going on. She needs to go to the king and stop this. Do you remember what Esther said? I can't do that. If I'm not invited in, he could kill me right there. Here's why I want you to see the Genesis three story. This is why it's going to make sense to you. How could Mordecai say what he's about to say? He could say it because he understood there's a bigger battle, a seed war going on. Listen to what he says, just I'll read it to you. It's Esther chapter four verses 13 through 14. Then Mordecai, so sent the word back to Mordecai, told them to reply to Esther. Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace, you will escape any more than all the other Jews. Now listen, for if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place. How could he say that? Because he understood that the war that's going on is a seed war of Satan against God's promised redemption and Satan is not going to win, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this. And then of course, Mordecai says, whenever Jesus was born and Herod finds out, you know, where's the king of the Jews? Go find out where he goes. Bethlehem. What does he do? Let's kill all of them. What was he trying? What was Satan trying to do? Kill the Messiah, the seed. Does that make sense? So I'm trying to, I want you to see that, that we see this throughout the scriptures. So as we're thinking about this, there's a garden that everything went bad and then there, but there's praise God, another garden. In the garden of Eden, there was a first Adam. In Gethsemane, there was the last Adam. In the garden of Eden, a choice was made, not was made my will, not yours, but in Gethsemane, not my will, but yours. In Eden, it was choosing the serpent's voice, but in Gethsemane, not my will, but your will be done. Reversing that autonomy. And the result of the first garden was ruin, and the result of the second

was redemption. The tale of two gardens. By the way, if you ever want to teach a cool Bible study, that'd be a cool one. But then he goes on, and what I talked about earlier, he went and he invaded the domain of death. This is what it says in Colossians chapter two, verse 15. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame. Revelation chapter one, verse 18 says, I have the keys of death and Hades. How did he get the keys? He went and took them. Amen. It goes back to the garden. Do you understand how Genesis three makes? When you understand it as being more than just two people making a dumb decision, but a hostile takeover, a coup, an imprisonment of humanity so that we are no longer living as God intended us, and God says, nah, not going to happen, and how God changed everything. I mean, I could think about this, and we're going to look at this later, whenever we get into Genesis 10, I'm going to talk about the table of nations, and in the table of nations we find in there 70 nations. Now in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it has 72. So in our Bible, you ever know how sometimes it says that there were 70 and then it says 72 and that kind of stuff? Well, just think about that for just a minute. So what does Jesus do in Luke chapter 10? He sends out the 70 and then it also says 72, it can be either way, but it was God's reclaiming of the nations. It's the same thing that we find in Matthew 28, it's the same thing that we find in Acts chapter 2, we'll look at all of that later on, but in there he sends out the 70, why? Because of the 70 nations, and we're going to see in Genesis chapter 10, and how they were dispersed, and he sends out the 70, and what happens is whenever they're sent out, they come back, and what does it say in Luke chapter 10, verses 17 through 19, it says the 72 returned with joy, saying, Lord, listen to what they say, listen to it. Even the demons are subject to you in our name, or subject to us in your name. And he said to them, what does he say? I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority, and notice what he says, to tread on serpents and scorpions,

and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Do you see what he's saying? God's reclaiming. That's who we are. That's what we do. And basically, let me just get to the end of the story, because it's almost seven. Revelation 22, notice what it says in Revelation 22, it talks about the tree of life is restored. We've been banished from it, but we'll be back there with it. The curse is abolished. We will reign forever. The story ends where it began, only better. Ain't that good? And next week, it's going to be fun again, so just be ready. But here's the thing. When God began to awaken in me from that cultural bias that I find myself in, and listen, whenever I say this, I'm not throwing rocks at anybody, but our culture actually thinks we're smarter than everybody else, because we have more stuff, and that's actually how the Middle East smokes us, because they play that. Oh, look at them. There's out there, there's a bunch of desert dwellers, they don't know what they're doing. Look at how chaotic it is out there, and they're going, yeah, let them keep thinking that, because they're not smarter than us, and they then do things that we're not ready for. But whenever you get out of that, that Western culture mindset, that humanistic materialism that just says the supernatural is not there, and you begin to allow yourself to go back to the ancient ways the Bible talks about, go back to the way that the first century believers saw what was really happening, then you begin to understand why, like whenever I go to India, I can't wait to go talk about, when I get there, and talk about the apostles that went there, how Doubting Thomas went there and preached the gospel in India. How they talk about how those guys went. Why did they go?

Because they understood the three rebellions, and they understood the totality of redemption, and they knew that redemption was not simply an individualistic, I'm gonna get to go to heaven when I die, but it was a reclamation of the world by God, and taking back what had been taken. So man, that's where we're gonna go. Well, let's pray together, and then we'll be ready to go. Father, I just thank you for just the majesty of your word. And Lord, I just pray that, as I began, Father, I just come to the end and just pray, Father, that you have brought revelation where it needed to be. I just wanna ask that you'd even block things that just aren't from you. But Father, I do ask that for your children, that you would continue to share the secrets of your kingdom. Give us spiritual discernment to discern the truth that will walk us in greater freedom. And Lord, we give you the glory, and pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.