We have seen the promise of a Saviour from the first glimpse of the gospel, the first hint of a Saviour, in Genesis chapter 3. The seed, the offspring of the woman, will crush the serpent’s head and one day the devil will be defeated. We have traced that promise through the seed, the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob through to its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Today is the second Sunday in Advent, when the church has traditionally recalled the witness of the Old Testament prophets looking forward to the coming of the Messiah. So tonight we will look at what else the Old Testament foretold about Jesus the Saviour.

There are many prophecies about the Messiah in the Old Testament. Some theologians find 40, others 50 and others more. I am not going to look tonight at the prophecies which foretold that the Saviour would be born in Bethlehem and escape to Egypt. Nor will we look at all the prophecies concerning the Forerunner who would prepare the way for the Messiah, or that Messiah’s ministry bringing healing and deliverance would begin in Galilee. There are of course specific prophecies about Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and about his betrayal. We have looked at Easter times at all the prophecies around Jesus’s death as foretold in Psalm 22 and in the typology of the Passover Lamb, and also in the Song of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. And the Book of Acts looks back at a number of prophecies concerning Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. We are familiar with all these things.
So instead this evening we will take a broader look at the kind of Saviour the Jews were expecting. I want to remind us of some of the titles which are given to Jesus Christ to see how these fulfilled the promises we find in the Old Testament. And I want to help us see that although there were a few hints in the Old Testament about the Saviour God would send, in one important respect the Saviour God sent was always going to be a big surprise.
One phrase springs to mind which sums up three aspects of the Jews’ expectations of their Messiah. “Prophet and priest and king”.
In the build up to Advent last year we saw how the Book of Deuteronomy looked forward to “a prophet like Moses”
Deuteronomy 18:15-19 15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, ‘Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this great fire any more, or we will die.’
17 The LORD said to me: ‘What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.
This promise foretells that God will send another prophet like Moses had been, representing God and speaking as God’s messenger to his chosen people. When Jesus came he fulfilled that prophecy in many respects. He brought words of prophecy, messages demonstrating divine knowledge and warnings of impending judgment. Like the Old Testament prophets he called for justice and righteousness, demanding repentance. Like Elijah and Elisha, Jesus worked miracles revealing God’s love and power. And Jesus was destined to be rejected by God’s chosen people, as all God’s prophets were. The Saviour would be a prophet.
Last year in Advent we also looked at the promises which pointed forward to the role of the Messiah as Priest. In particular we looked at Psalm 110.
Psalm 110:4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind:
‘You are a priest for ever, in the order of Melchizedek.’
Jesus applied the beginning of Psalm 110 to the Messiah. In Acts 2 Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost quoted that verse to demonstrate that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.
Melchizedek was the enigmatic figure we find in Genesis 14 who was both a King and a Priest of God Most High. He blessed Abraham and Abraham gave to Melchizedek an offering of a tenth of everything he had. The tasks of the priests were to represent the people before God and represent God to the people, and to offer sacrifices for sin. Psalm 110 makes a very clear link between Jesus and Melchizedek. The Messiah will be a priest forever, a priest like Melchizedek. And the Letter to the Hebrews unwraps this idea for us. Hebrews talks a lot about Jesus being our great High Priest. And in no less than four separate places, Hebrews quotes Psalm 110 to describe Jesus as “a priest in the order of Melchizedek”.
Hebrews 5 unwraps how Jesus served as a high priest.
Hebrews 5:1 Every high priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins…. 9 … once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10 and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
There is one particular aspect of Melchizedek’s priesthood which is significant for us. Melchizedek was immortal – he was thought to be eternal.
Hebrews 7: 3 Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.
Because the Old Testament text doesn’t talk about his birth or his death, by the time of Jesus the Jews thought of Melchizedek as a very special person. His priesthood was not bounded by mortality – he was eternal. He was greater than all the descendants of Levi who would become the priests in Israel. Melchizedek was even greater than Abraham, because Abraham gave an offering to him and not the other way round. Melchizedek was eternal and so was the Messiah. They would be priests forever and so they would be able to bring salvation which is eternal.
Psalm 110:4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”
Hebrews 6:19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 7:24 but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. 25 Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
So the Jews were expecting a Saviour who would serve as a priest, bring them into God’s presence and offering sacrifices on their behalf. But the Messiah would also be a king, and in particular a king in the royal line of great King David.
2 Samuel 7:11-16
‘ “The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: 12 when your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. 14 I will be his father, and he shall be my son. ,,,,. 15 … my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 Your house and your kingdom shall endure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever.” ’
Here we have another promise of salvation coming through a seed – this time the seed of David, the offspring of David. All God’s covenant promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and to the people of Israel were all renewed to King David, ultimately to be fulfilled in one of David’s offspring. It is that descendant who will have an everlasting kingdom and an eternal throne. The Israelites would wait in hope for another thousand years for that promised Saviour to appear. But at Christmas time we are always reminded of the promises of the Messiah as Warrior King which we find in Isaiah.
Isaiah 11:1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. 2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD— 3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; 4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
This warrior king would be a descendant of Jesse, the father of King David, great David’s greatest son. The Messiah would come to bring God’s justice and righteousness to a sin-spoiled world, bringing salvation to people who are needy and poor. And he will accomplish these things by the power of God’s Holy Spirit who gives wisdom and knowledge and brings people to a proper fear and respect for God. The Messiah will not only bring God’s righteousness but also God’s peace to our troubled world. Isaiah gives us beautiful pictures of the peace of heaven, when suffering and death will be no more.
6 The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. … 9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

David’s descendant will bring peace – but God’s peace is much more than an absence of conflict. Shalom is wholeness in every aspect of our being. The Messiah will bring God’s righteousness to the earth. He will bring healing to those who are blind, physically and spiritually. In God’s power, he will bring freedom for those who are marginalised and oppressed and set free those who are trapped by evil in any way.
Isaiah 42:6-7 6 ‘I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles,
7 to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

All these blessings will not just be for the Jews. The Messiah will renew God’s covenant with Israel and bring them back from spiritual exile. But at the same time he will bring the light of God’s salvation to those who are not Jews as well. Salvation will be for all peoples everywhere. This wonderful salvation would come through a human being, but not just an ordinary human being.

Isaiah 9 6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and for ever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.

This Saviour will be very unusual in a number of ways. Wonderful counsellor – a figure of Wisdom, bringing God’s All-Knowing wisdom into the foolishness of the world. Mighty God – a figure of Strength, bringing the Almighty power of God into the broken world in miracles of healing and deliverance. Everlasting Father – a figure of Creation, the Creator stepping into his Creation to put right all the damage and hurt caused by human sin. Prince of Peace – a figure of Salvation, bringing God’s love and joy and peace to all who put their trust in him. And this kingdom would endure forever and ever.
So the Saviour to come would be a prophet and a priest and a king. But he would be more than a human being – he would be eternal. An eternal priest like Melchizedek and an eternal king who would reign on David’s throne bringing God’s blessings forevermore
God made all these promises in the Old Testament to send this Saviour, this Messiah. But there are also hints that God himself would come in person to bring salvation

Isaiah 35 3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way;
4 say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come,

Malachi 3:1-6 ‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the LORD Almighty.
Perhaps the most familiar promise that God himself would bring salvation is found in Isaiah.
Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
The son to be born, named Immanuel which means, “God with us”. So this brings us to the aspect of the Saviour which no Jew could have expected. The Saviour would be eternal – but only God is eternal. For this to happen the Saviour would have to be be both God and human. He would be the Son of God. And this is foretold in one of the Royal Psalms as it speaks about the King of Israel and calls him “the Lord’s anointed”. But this is also known as a Messianic Psalm because it points forward to God’s anointed Messiah.
Psalm 2:7 I will proclaim the LORD’s decree: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.

In Acts 4 the Early Church understood the whole of Psalm 2 to point forward to Jesus. ACTS 13, Hebrews chapter 1 and Hebrews chapter 5 applies Psalm 2 verse 7 specifically to Jesus.
I will proclaim the LORD’s decree: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.
Jesus was the Son of God. The voice from heaven as Jesus was baptised confirmed it. Matthew 3:17 ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ And the voice from heaven at the Transfiguration of Jesus confirms it. Mark 9:7 ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!’
Jesus was the Son of God. But we should realise that the Jews really didn’t expect that. They couldn’t expect that. Their Almighty Omnipresent holy transcendent God could not be both divine and human – God into man won’t go. And the Jews had stood out from all the nations around them for centuries in believing that there was only one God. So the idea that God could have a Son who was also God would be a complete surprise to them.
So here is the witness of the Old Testament. God’s chosen Saviour would be prophet, a priest and a king. He would be eternal and, completely unexpected, the Saviour would be the Son of God. God’s masterplan of salvation had already been revealed and it was about to unfold. The Son of God would be born as a descendant of great king David. all through the faith and obedience of a young woman called Mary. But Mary’s baby would be much more than an ordinary human child. Almighty God would be born as a tiny baby, Jesus of Nazareth “the Word without a word.” Of course, this incarnation of the Son of God would require a miracle – the Virgin Birth. Jesus’s ministry and death and resurrection were unique. So we are not surprised that the circumstances of his birth were unique as well.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in the closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:18)
Here is the Saviour God had promised.

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, or earth sustain,
Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Two weeks ago we looked at the tragedy of the fall of man. We saw how in the beginning everything God created was very good. But then the devil, in the guise of a serpent, deceived the first human beings into disobeying the only command God had given them. Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and this one act of rebellion had three terrible consequences. Evil had entered creation and had a grip on every part of it, including human beings. The very earth was cursed, pain and suffering and death had entered the world. And human beings were separated from God their creator. Because of their sin, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden.
But in the middle of the story of the fall we found hope. There was the first glimmer of the gospel, the first hint of a Saviour, and it came as God pronounced a curse on the serpent, the devil.
Genesis 3:15 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.’
He will crush your head. One day the serpent’s head will be crushed, the devil will be defeated and all the damage he had done to God’s perfect creation will be reversed. The ‘he’ who will accomplish this salvation will be an offspring of the woman, literally the seed of the woman. This is the first gospel, the protoevangelium, as we find it in Genesis 3, the first hint of a Saviour, in the promise of the seed of the woman.
Last week we saw how this promise of salvation began to be fulfilled as it was passed on to God’s Friend, Abraham and his descendants, Isaac and Jacob. God made many wonderful promises to Abraham.
Genesis 12 2 ‘I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; …
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. …
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’
So God’s blessing would flow out through Abraham to all peoples everywhere. But the primary form of God’s blessing to Abraham would be a land he could call his own, where he could live in prosperity and safety, the Promised Land. One day salvation will come through the seed of the woman. But on the way to that salvation, even before that, Abraham’s offspring, Abraham’s seed (same word) would inherit the Promised Land, and in that way, through Abraham and the seed of Abraham, all peoples on the earth will be blessed.
Genesis 15 5 He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’
God’s blessings are promised to Abraham’s seed. And this was Abraham’s response to God’s promise. 6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Abraham put his trust in God. We will see this evening just how important that verse is to God’s masterplan of salvation. And God “credited it to him as righteousness.”
That day God made a covenant with Abraham to guarantee his promises to him. 24 years later God confirmed that covenant and gave to Abraham the sign of the rite of circumcision. All God’s glorious promises were confirmed to Abraham and to his offspring, to his descendants, to his seed forever. The same promises were repeated to Abraham’s son Isaac and to his son Jacob, to whom God gave the new name Israel, the father of all Israelites. So the promise passed down through the line from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob,
All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.
God’s wonderful salvation would be brought to the world through the offspring of the woman, initially through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all their descendants. Which brings us to the question for this evening. Which offspring are we talking about? Who is the seed of Abraham? Or who are the seed of Abraham? For centuries these promises were fulfilled in the literal descendants of the Patriarchs and then God renewed them in his covenant on Mount Sinai with the nation of Israel. For more than a thousand years the seed of Abraham were recognised by the world as
The Israelites – the Descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
But then God had a more wonderful masterplan of salvation, which would be accomplished through one specific seed of Abraham.
The seed of Abraham – the Messiah – Jesus
The Hebrew word for seed, zera, is singular but it can carry a plural meaning. It’s just the same as the English word sheep which can mean just one sheep or any number of sheep. Zera can mean one seed or it can mean many seeds, one offspring or many offspring, one descendant or many descendants. We saw last week how one particular promise to Abraham points towards a singular interpretation. On Mount Moriah God made these wonderful promises to Abraham.
Genesis 22 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’
We saw last week how the word offspring in that last sentence was likely to refer not to many descendants but to one single descendant who would bring blessing to all the nations of the earth. We saw that as another announcement of the gospel, a second hint of a Saviour. The seed of the woman who would sacrifice himself to crush the serpent’s head and defeat the devil. The Saviour who would free us all from pain and suffering and even from death. The seed of the woman who would bring human beings back to God once again.
Paul explains in Galatians 3 what this means for us as we think about the promises God made to Abraham and to his seed.”
Galatians 3 16 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds’, meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed’, meaning one person, who is Christ. 17 What I mean is this: the law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. …
19 …. (The Law) was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.
Galatians tells us that Jesus was the seed of Abraham, the single offspring or descendant, who would bring salvation. Jesus would be the focus and embodiment of all of God’s promises.
Galatians 4 4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Jesus was the seed of Abraham, indeed he was the fulfilment of the promises God made to the seed of the woman. Jesus came to crush the serpent’s head.
1 John 3 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
Jesus prophesied that his death would drive out the devil.
John 12 30 Jesus said, ‘This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ 33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.
It was by his suffering and death on the cross that Jesus won the victory over the devil and all the powers of evil.
Colossians 2 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
So all who put their trust in Jesus are set free from the grip which the devil and all evil has on their lives. By defeating the devil Jesus has also reversed the effects of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden which brought death into the world.
Heb 2 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Jesus was the seed of the woman and the seed of Abraham who brought salvation. But who is it receives all these blessings of salvation bought by Jesus at such great cost?
The spiritual descendants of Abraham – believers
The heart of God’s masterplan of salvation was revealed in Genesis 15 verse 6.
6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
New Living Translation “Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD counted him as righteous because of his faith.”
Good News Bible “Abram put his trust in the LORD, and because of this the LORD was pleased with him and accepted him.
The sin of Adam and Eve had separated them from the Holy God who had created them. But already in Eve’s descendant Abraham that barrier began to be removed when Abraham, put his trust in God. This is how salvation works. And it is Abraham’s spiritual descendants, those who put their trust in God, who receive the blessings of salvation.
Romans 9 6 … For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 8 In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.
So Paul, who was of course himself a Jew, indeed a Pharisee of the Pharisees, is saying that nobody inherits their salvation just by being an Israelite, a racial descendant of Abraham and Jacob. Rather it is the people who put their trust in God who are the true descendants of Abraham and inherit all the blessings God promised to them.
It is our faith that saves us, not our racial background. In Romans 4, Paul makes clear that Abraham wasn’t saved by being circumcised, the sign of being Jewish. He was saved through his faith even before the sign of circumcision was given. It is faith that matters, not Jewish heritage.
So then, (Abraham) is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. 12 And he is then also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. ….
Paul goes on to explain that Abraham wasn’t saved through the Law which God gave to Moses either, because Abraham lived before Moses. Abraham was saved through his faith. ….
16 Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. 17 As it is written: ‘I have made you a father of many nations.’ He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.

Paul then explains in Romans 5 that just the same as Adam’s sin brought death into the world, so Jesus’s death brought salvation to all who put their trust in him. In this way those who have saving faith in Jesus are Abraham’s true descendants. Galatians 3
Galatians 3 6 So also Abraham ‘believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’
7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. Christian believers are Abraham’s true descendants. We are his seed and the heirs to all the promises God made to Abraham, and to Isaac and to Jacob.
Galatians 3 26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Abraham’s spiritual heirs inherit all the blessings which Jesus has won for us on the cross. Adam and Eve disobeyed God – Jesus obeyed God. Adam and Eve brought guilt and condemnation into the world – Jesus brought forgiveness and righteousness. Adam brought death into the world but Jesus brought life, eternal life, life in all its fulness which not even death can take away. A verse in that great 18th century hymn by Isaac Watts, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” puts it perfectly.
“Where he displays his healing power, Death and the curse are known no more;
In him the tribes of Adam boast More blessings than their Father lost.”
Abraham’s seed, the Lord Jesus Christ, has fulfilled all God’s promises and crushed the devil’s head. We are Abraham’s spiritual descendants. We share in Christ’s victory over death and we also share in Christ’s victory over the devil. Even during his earthly ministry, Jesus’s disciples began to experience that victory.
Luke 10 (Jesus sending out the 72 disciples to preach and heal and drive out demons) 18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.
Christians already have authority to drive out demons in Jesus’s name. Breaking the hold which the devil has over lives through the ministry of deliverance is part of the arrival of the kingdom of God and an aspect of crushing the devil’s head which has already begun. Because we have God the Holy Spirit living inside us, Christians can rejoice in Christ’s victory over the devil. 1 John 4:4 … the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
At the same time our ultimate victory is still to come. At the end of time, on the day of Judgment, the devil who has already been crushed will ultimately be completely and utterly destroyed.
Revelation 20 10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
When the devil is finally destroyed all the damage his lies will come to an end. All the problems Adam and Eve brought into the world by their sin will be reversed. The war is already over but the mopping up operations are still continuing. Until the devil is ultimately destroyed for us as believers there may be times when the battle against the world and the flesh and the devil seems to be so fierce. But here is a glorious promise which links into the first hint of the gospel which we first found in Genesis 3. Paul writes to the Romans,
Romans 16 20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

Last week we looked at the tragedy of the fall of man. We saw how in the beginning everything God created was very good. But then the devil, in the guise of a serpent, deceived the first human beings into disobeying the only command God had given them. Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and this one act of rebellion had three terrible consequences. Evil had entered creation and had a grip on every part of it, including human beings. The very earth was cursed, pain and suffering and death had entered the world. And human beings were separated from God their creator. Because of their sin, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden.
But in the middle of the story of the fall we found hope. There was the first glimmer of the gospel, the first hint of a Saviour, and it came as God pronounced a curse on the serpent, the devil.
We read in Genesis 3,
14 So the Lord God said to the snake, ‘Because you have done this,
‘Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
15 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.’
He will crush your head. One day the serpent’s head will be crushed, the devil will be defeated and all the damage he had done to God’s perfect creation will be reversed. The ‘he’ who will accomplish this salvation will be an offspring of the woman, literally the seed of the woman. This is the first gospel, the protoevangelium, as we find it in Genesis 3, the first hint of a Saviour, in the promise of the seed of the woman. Tonight we will see how this promise began to be fulfilled in the life of the first true believer, the Patriarch Abraham.
When Abraham was 75 years old, God called him to uproot his wife Sarai and his whole household set out on a journey to a land he would show him. And God made a number of glorious promises to Abraham.
Genesis 12 2 ‘I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you;
As we saw last week in our morning sermon on the Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6, God’s blessings take all kinds of shapes which together would make this one man Abraham into a great nation. There would be children and land and all kinds of material prosperity.

I will make your name great, so Abraham would become important and famous and powerful. But as always, when God blesses people it is not just for their benefit. They are blessed so that they can become a blessing to other people to. So God promises
I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
Abraham would be God’s agent taking God’s blessing to other people too.

3 I will bless those who bless you,
And God would also watch over Abraham and defend him and keep him safe.
and whoever curses you I will curse;

But more than that
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’
So God’s blessing would flow out through Abraham, not just to the people he met but indeed to all peoples everywhere. But the primary form of God’s blessing to Abraham would be a land he could call his own, where he could live in prosperity and safety, the Promised Land.
7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
There were so many rich blessings waiting for them in the land flowing with milk and honey. For Abraham and his descendants the curse on the ground would begin to be lifted in the Promised Land. So many blessings, but they are especially for his offspring, his descendants. And as I am sure that you have already guessed, the Hebrew word for offspring there is zera, seed. One day salvation will come through the seed of the woman. But on the way to that salvation, even before that, Abraham’s seed would inherit the Promised Land, and in that way, through Abraham and the seed of Abraham, all peoples on the earth will be blessed.
In Genesis 15 God repeated his promises to Abraham and made a covenant with him.
Genesis 15 After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:
‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.’

God will protect him, and Abraham would enjoy the very great reward of a relationship with God. But then there was a problem. Abraham didn’t have any children to inherit and pass on God’s blessing. Abraham’s only heir would be his servant in his household. So God made a remarkable promise to Abraham.
Genesis 15 4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: ‘This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.’ 5 He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’
Again, you guessed it, the word translated offspring or descendants there is zera. God’s blessings are promised to Abraham’s seed. And this was Abraham’s response to God’s promise.
6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

We will see in weeks to come just how important that verse is to God’s masterplan of salvation. Even though he was over 75 and his wife Sarai was way too old to have children, Abraham believed God. He put his trust in God. And God “credited it to him as righteousness.”
New Living Translation “Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD counted him as righteous because of his faith.”
Good News Bible “Abram put his trust in the LORD, and because of this the LORD was pleased with him and accepted him.
The sin of Adam and Eve had separated them from the Holy God who had created them. But already in Eve’s descendant Abraham that barrier began to be removed.
In Isaiah 41 verse 8 God addresses the Israelites as “you descendants of Abraham my friend.”
The Letter of James 2 explains it like this
James 2 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,’ and he was called God’s friend.
So with Abraham, God was beginning to deal with the separation caused by sin. Abraham was called God’s friend.
That day God made a covenant with Abraham to guarantee his promises to him. 24 years later God confirmed that covenant and gave to Abraham the sign of the rite of circumcision.
Genesis 17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.’
3 Abram fell face down, and God said to him, 4 ‘As for me, this is my covenant with you: you will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.’

“I will be their God”. Here we see the beginnings of the reversal of the separation between God and human beings cause by the fall.
So all God’s glorious promises were confirmed to Abraham and to his offspring, to his descendants, to his seed forever. The same promises were repeated to Abraham’s son Isaac.
Genesis 26 2 The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. 3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. 4 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, 5 because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws.”
Through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed. And then in his turn Isaac’s son Jacob had a dream at Bethel where God repeated his promises to Jacob.
Genesis 28 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.
So the promise passed down through the line from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob,
All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.
God will bring his blessing to everybody everywhere, through the seed of Jacob.
God’s wonderful salvation would be brought to the world through the offspring of the woman, initially through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all their descendants. But there is another promise to Abraham which makes us believe that it is one particular descendant who will crush the devil’s head, reverse all the damage caused by the fall, and bring blessings to everybody.
You will remember the occasion on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22 when God put Abraham to the test by asking him to sacrifice his own son Isaac, God’s gift of a miracle child. As Abraham was about to demonstrate his faith and obedience, God commanded him not to make the sacrifice but instead to sacrifice a lamb which was caught in a thicket. We can see those events as prophecy that one day God would himself give up his only son. And some words of Abraham’s were also prophetic. “God himself will provide the lamb for the offering.” Indeed God would give Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
But listen to what happens next.
Genesis 22 15 The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, ‘I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’
“Through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed.”
As we said last week, the grammar of the Hebrew word for seed or descendant or offspring, zera is singular. But, a bit like the English word sheep, it can have a plural meaning. So it can mean one descendant or many descendants. That word zera, actually comes three times in God’s promise to Abraham. Descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Descendants will take possession of the cities. But then to highlight the significance of the third promise, the NIV changes the translation of the same word to offspring. through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’
The translation of this third promise is deliberately ambiguous. It could mean descendants or it could mean just one descendant, just one offspring, just one seed. In the context of Abraham offering up Isaac, it seems likely to me that this is prophetic and that the reference is to a single offspring, one particular descendant, just one seed of Abraham who would bring blessing to all the nations of the earth. So here we have the second announcement of the gospel, a second hint of a Saviour. The seed of the woman who would sacrifice himself to crush the serpent’s head and defeat the devil. The Saviour who would free us all from pain and suffering and even from death. The seed of the woman who would bring human beings back to God once again.

So what does this have to say to us, beyond marvelling at God’s amazing plan of salvation. Many things but just one for this evening. One of the first things I learned when I was training as a teacher was also one of the most important. It is the concept of “deferred gratification”. If you are teaching young people, you need to help them appreciate that the things they are learning will not bring them immediate benefits. Instead what they learn might be useful to them to get a job one day, or to enjoy the world around them. They will need to give up the exciting things they could be doing right now for the benefits they will receive in the long term – deferred gratification. I was lucky because I was mostly teaching chemistry, where you can always have fun blowing things up and setting fire to things and making pretty colours. And I was teaching computing, and who doesn’t love making a computer do what you want it to. But for most of the time for most teachers at secondary level, you need to persuade your pupils of the value of their education in the long term, in contrast to the effort they need to make right now.
God’s plans promised many blessings to the Patriarchs. But the greatest riches of those blessings were not to Abraham, Isaac or Jacob, but to their seed – their offspring and their descendants. All the peoples of the earth will be blessed, but not directly through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The wonderful blessings of salvation will come through their seed, their descendant, the Lord Jesus Christ. God called the Patriarchs to faith and obedience. But they themselves would not enjoy the greater blessings. Most Christians are quite good at trusting God and obeying God for the all blessings we receive as we do so – love, joy, peace, answered prayer. We are not so good at trusting and obeying when the blessings are not for us but for other people – for our children and grandchildren. We are not so good at trusting and obeying when the blessings will be for strangers. But God blesses us to make us a blessing to others. God calls us to step out in faith for the benefit of other people. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob trusted and obeyed God, and inspire us in our lives to do the same.

The first three chapters of the Bible tell us the story of the Creation and what happened next. In the first three days of Creation God spoke into the nothingness and created the light. He made the waters and he made the dry land. And we read, in Genesis 1:10. God saw that it was good. He created all the different kinds of vegetation and again we see, “God saw that it was good.”
On the fourth day God created the sun and the moon to separate day from night and God saw that was good. On the fifth day God created all the sea creatures and all the birds. Again God saw that everything was good and God blessed all these creatures. On the sixth day God created all the land animals, both livestock and wild animals. And God saw that everything was good. So he created human beings in his image, to be his likeness, to take care of his creation. And we read in
Genesis 1 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
So when God created the world everything was perfect. But then we have just read from Genesis 3 the story of how one act of disobedience and rebellion spoiled everything which God had created. The serpent deceived Eve and Adam and the first human beings disobeyed the one instruction God had given them – not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They did eat, and that one action brought sin into the world and ruined so many things.
We have talked in other sermons about how the Fall happened. This evening we are going to think specifically about the consequences of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. The first thing was that evil had entered into the world. The second consequence was that the whole earth was cursed and that also brought sickness, pain and death to all human beings from then onwards. And finally, worst of all, their sin separated human beings from God their Creator as Adam and Eve were banished from Eden.
Evil entered into the world in the form of the snake, the serpent. The Bible later explains that the serpent was actually the devil appearing to Eve to deceive her.
Revelation 12:9 refers to ” that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray”.
Revelation 20:2 talks about “the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan”.
In the form of a serpent, the devil lied to Eve and deceived her into disobeying God and into leading Adam to do the same. So God’s judgment falls first and foremost on the serpent.
Genesis 3 14 So the LORD God said to the snake, ‘Because you have done this,
‘Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
God’s curse is not so much on snakes as animals but more on the devil, Satan, for bringing evil into the world. And that was the beginning of the endless battle which all human beings are engaged in against the devil and all the forces of evil.
15 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.’
Then the second consequence of sin was God’s curse of judgment on the whole earth. This curse on the earth had a number of effects. It brought pain and suffering on to the earth, starting with Eve herself.
16 To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Not only human beings, but the land itself came under God’s curse.
17 To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,”
‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
This explains the ongoing battle which farmers and gardeners know so well to grow our food. And then Genesis 3 tells us that it was Adam and Eve’s sin which brought physical death into the world. In God’s perfect creation, human beings would have been immortal. But after their rebellion, Adam and Eve were doomed to die.

19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’
Paul explains this to the Romans
Romans 5 12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.
NLT 12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.
So the Fall brought judgment on the whole earth and brought death into the world. Even worse than all of this, Adam and Eve’s disobedience had another terrible consequence. Their sin separated them off from the holy God whose eyes are too pure to look on sin. Beforehand, God used to walk with Adam and Eve in the Garden. After they had rebelled, Adam and Eve had to hide themselves away from God because of their guilt and shame. Now they were both afraid of God. Because of their sin God cast Adam and Eve out from the Garden of Eden and out from his presence.
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Evil had entered God’s perfect Creation. This brought pain and suffering and death and a curse on the ground. And it left human beings banished from Paradise. This is how the Bible explains the world of tears we live in and why all human beings are naturally separated from God their Creator.
But here in Genesis 3 we also find a wonderful promise of hope! Let me give you the Greek word theologians use for it – the protoevangelium, the first gospel. In the second century the Early Church Fathers Justin Martyr and Irenaeus preached about Genesis 3:15 as the very first appearance of the gospel and the very first prophecy of the Messiah in the Old Testament. This first gospel comes in the second half of God’s curse on the serpent, the devil.
Genesis 3 15 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.’
Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner described this promise as “the first glimmer of the gospel” and “the first hint of a Saviour.”
The Hebrew word translated as offspring in the NIV is zera. It literally means seed or seeds. It is sometimes translated as descendants or posterity, to refer to a family line which is more than a generation removed from the original person. The meaning of zera can be singular or plural, descendant or descendants. But here in the Hebrew and also in ancient translations of the Old Testament, when it says “he will crush your head” the “he” is always in the masculine singular. “He” will be a single male individual, one specific descendant of Eve, the seed of the woman.
Genesis 3 15 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.’
Good News Bible I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring’s heel.
So here is the wonderful promise of the protoevangelium, the first gospel, the promise of the seed of the woman. One day a particular offspring, a descendant of the woman, will crush the head of the serpent and destroy it!
The devil brought evil into the world, and pain and suffering and death and banishment from God’s presence. But Adam and Eve also bear some responsibility. It was the first human beings who rebelled against God and disobeyed his only command to them. So it will be necessary for a human being to be at the centre of God’s masterplan of salvation. It would have to be a human being who would crush the devil’s head and so reverse all the damage caused by the Fall. It would be an offspring of the woman who would defeat death. And it would be the seed of the woman who one day would bring human beings back into relationship with God our Creator, so that we could walk in fellowship in God’s presence once again. With hindsight we can see that the promise of the offspring of the woman here in Genesis 3:15 is indeed the first hint of a Saviour. It is prophecy about the the Lord Jesus Christ, who God would send to set us all free.
Hebrews 2 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
On the cross Jesus did indeed defeat the devil. Jesus defeated death and set us free from all the devil’s power over human beings. By his cross and resurrection Jesus reversed all the damage done by the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Next week we will see how this hope of seed, of offspring and descendants, was expressed in God’s covenants with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And in the weeks to follow we will look at how the New Testament understood Jesus to be the fulfilment of these promises, the seed of the woman. All leading up to our celebration of Christmas as we see how God became man, to be the offspring of the woman, the seed who brings us all salvation. But it all began here in Genesis 3, with this first hint of a Saviour.