{"id":1551,"date":"2021-11-28T20:37:41","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T19:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=1551"},"modified":"2021-11-28T20:37:42","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T19:37:42","slug":"the-seed-of-abraham-galatians-36-9-16-19-26-29-and-44-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=1551","title":{"rendered":"The seed of Abraham Galatians 3:6-9, 16-19, 26-29 and 4:4-7"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.
\nBut 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.
\nGenesis 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.\u2019
\nHe will crush your head. One day the serpent\u2019s head will be crushed, the devil will be defeated and all the damage he had done to God\u2019s perfect creation will be reversed. The \u2018he\u2019 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.
\nLast week we saw how this promise of salvation began to be fulfilled as it was passed on to God\u2019s Friend, Abraham and his descendants, Isaac and Jacob. God made many wonderful promises to Abraham.
\nGenesis 12 2 \u2018I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; \u2026
\nI will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. \u2026
\nand all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.\u2019
\nSo God\u2019s blessing would flow out through Abraham to all peoples everywhere. But the primary form of God\u2019s 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\u2019s offspring, Abraham\u2019s 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.
\nGenesis 15 5 He took him outside and said, \u2018Look up at the sky and count the stars\u2014if indeed you can count them.\u2019 Then he said to him, \u2018So shall your offspring be.\u2019
\nGod\u2019s blessings are promised to Abraham\u2019s seed. And this was Abraham\u2019s response to God\u2019s promise. 6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
\nAbraham put his trust in God. We will see this evening just how important that verse is to God\u2019s masterplan of salvation. And God \u201ccredited it to him as righteousness.\u201d
\nThat 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\u2019s glorious promises were confirmed to Abraham and to his offspring, to his descendants, to his seed forever. The same promises were repeated to Abraham\u2019s 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,
\nAll peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.
\nGod\u2019s 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
\nThe Israelites \u2013 the Descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
\nBut then God had a more wonderful masterplan of salvation, which would be accomplished through one specific seed of Abraham.
\nThe seed of Abraham \u2013 the Messiah \u2013 Jesus
\nThe Hebrew word for seed, zera, is singular but it can carry a plural meaning. It\u2019s 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.
\nGenesis 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.\u2019
\nWe 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\u2019s 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.
\nPaul explains in Galatians 3 what this means for us as we think about the promises God made to Abraham and to his seed.\u201d
\nGalatians 3 16 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say \u2018and to seeds\u2019, meaning many people, but \u2018and to your seed\u2019, 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. \u2026
\n19 \u2026. (The Law) was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.
\nGalatians 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\u2019s promises.
\nGalatians 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s head.
\n1 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\u2019s work.
\nJesus prophesied that his death would drive out the devil.
\nJohn 12 30 Jesus said, \u2018This 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.\u2019 33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.
\nIt was by his suffering and death on the cross that Jesus won the victory over the devil and all the powers of evil.
\nColossians 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.
\nSo 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.
\nHeb 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\u2014that is, the devil\u2014 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
\nJesus 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?
\nThe spiritual descendants of Abraham \u2013 believers
\nThe heart of God\u2019s masterplan of salvation was revealed in Genesis 15 verse 6.
\n6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
\nNew Living Translation \u201cAbram believed the LORD, and the LORD counted him as righteous because of his faith.\u201d
\nGood News Bible \u201cAbram put his trust in the LORD, and because of this the LORD was pleased with him and accepted him.
\nThe sin of Adam and Eve had separated them from the Holy God who had created them. But already in Eve\u2019s descendant Abraham that barrier began to be removed when Abraham, put his trust in God. This is how salvation works. And it is Abraham\u2019s spiritual descendants, those who put their trust in God, who receive the blessings of salvation.
\nRomans 9 6 \u2026 For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham\u2019s children. On the contrary, \u201cIt is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.\u201d 8 In other words, it is not the natural children who are God\u2019s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham\u2019s offspring.
\nSo 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.
\nIt is our faith that saves us, not our racial background. In Romans 4, Paul makes clear that Abraham wasn\u2019t 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.
\nSo 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. \u2026.
\nPaul goes on to explain that Abraham wasn\u2019t saved through the Law which God gave to Moses either, because Abraham lived before Moses. Abraham was saved through his faith. \u2026.
\n16 Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham\u2019s offspring\u2014not 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: \u2018I have made you a father of many nations.\u2019 He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed\u2014the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.<\/p>\n

Paul then explains in Romans 5 that just the same as Adam\u2019s sin brought death into the world, so Jesus\u2019s death brought salvation to all who put their trust in him. In this way those who have saving faith in Jesus are Abraham\u2019s true descendants. Galatians 3
\nGalatians 3 6 So also Abraham \u2018believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.\u2019
\n7 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: \u2018All nations will be blessed through you.\u2019 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.<\/p>\n

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. Christian believers are Abraham\u2019s true descendants. We are his seed and the heirs to all the promises God made to Abraham, and to Isaac and to Jacob.
\nGalatians 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\u2019s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
\nAbraham\u2019s spiritual heirs inherit all the blessings which Jesus has won for us on the cross. Adam and Eve disobeyed God \u2013 Jesus obeyed God. Adam and Eve brought guilt and condemnation into the world \u2013 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, \u201cJesus shall reign where\u2019er the sun\u201d puts it perfectly.
\n\u201cWhere he displays his healing power, Death and the curse are known no more;
\nIn him the tribes of Adam boast More blessings than their Father lost.\u201d
\nAbraham\u2019s seed, the Lord Jesus Christ, has fulfilled all God\u2019s promises and crushed the devil\u2019s head. We are Abraham\u2019s spiritual descendants. We share in Christ\u2019s victory over death and we also share in Christ\u2019s victory over the devil. Even during his earthly ministry, Jesus\u2019s disciples began to experience that victory.
\nLuke 10 (Jesus sending out the 72 disciples to preach and heal and drive out demons) 18 He replied, \u201cI 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.
\nChristians already have authority to drive out demons in Jesus\u2019s 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\u2019s head which has already begun. Because we have God the Holy Spirit living inside us, Christians can rejoice in Christ\u2019s victory over the devil. 1 John 4:4 \u2026 the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
\nAt 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.
\nRevelation 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.
\nWhen 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,
\nRomans 16 20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago we looked at the tragedy of the fall of man. We saw how in the beginning everything God created was very…<\/span><\/p>\n

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