Genesis 1:1-3:19: On the Serpent, the Promised Seed, and Nahash the King of the Ammonites

I think what's important when you're reading these early chapters of Genesis is to recognize that this is a description of the created order. But it's also the foundation for how we think about everything else that's going to happen in the Bible. It's giving us pictures and images that are going to repeat or maybe even reverse throughout the rest of the Scripture. So this is foundational. For instance, you think about Noah's Flood. Welcome to the first episode of Bible Talk. It's a new podcast brought to you by Nine Marks. Nine Marks exists to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches for more visit 9marks.org. My name is Alex Duke and I work as the managing editor for Nine Marks and with me are two of my friends, Samamadi, who is the senior editor for Nine Marks. He's also in charge of these little booklets we've been putting out in the last year, the church question series, and Dr. Jim Hamilton, who is the professor of biblical theology at Southern Seminary and also the senior pastor of Kenwood Baptist Church, both in Louisville Kentucky. Thanks for joining me, guys. Thanks, Alex. Glad to be here. Thanks. I'm excited about this. The point of Bible talk is, well, it's to talk about the Bible. I'm going to be a bit more specific about what that means in a moment. Before we do that, I just want to ask you both a question, Jim, I'll start with you. When did you fall in love with the Bible? When I was a junior in high school, I don't remember what prompted me to do this, but my parents had given me a new copy of the New King James Bible. It was sort of the first nice Bible. It was leather bound, bonded leather, but it was a nice Bible. And it had a read through the Bible in the year program in the back. And for the first time in my life, I'd grown up in church, but I actually read through the entirety of the Bible on that read through the Bible in a year program. And I can just remember being just struck with the glory of God and these promises that were made. And sometimes I thought Paul just put sentences and words together in ways that were magnificent. It was wonderful that year. And after that, I just really had a strong desire to understand the scriptures. Sam, what about you? I had a faithful pastor growing up who would preach through books of the Bible and that was helpful in giving me an appetite for scripture. In high school and college, I came to the Bible in a more thorough way because I was driven to it by conversations with Mormons. I grew up in Utah by virtue of the conversations that I was having at school. It drove me into the Bible more fully. And then I would say also, Jim drastically increased my love for the Bible by helping me discover biblical theology. Hallelujah. And biblical theology for those who don't know what that is would be what? Understanding the storyline of the Bible and how it all fits together. Yeah, similar. I, you know, Sam, I thought you were going to say the attempt to understand and embrace the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors just trying to bring it down to you. That's it. It must be an inside joke. Yeah, similar. I'm thankful for the church I grew up in for, you know, hundreds of reasons. But I would say they, they use the Bible often as a kind of pretext to get somewhere rather than a text that had something to say on its own. And then it wasn't until college, I went to Western Kentucky University and I showed up at this Baptist church with a pastor named Steve Hussung who opened the Bible on a Sunday morning and preached. I remember from Genesis, chapter six, and I heard a sermon like I never heard a sermon before. And then I went back the next Sunday and he just preached the next set of verses in Genesis six. I remember tapping my buddy, my buddy John on the shoulder and being like, what's happening right now? Like we just, we just did this. It's like, you know, we're jumping out of the bath and into the shower. It doesn't make any, what's the point of this? And well, for the next four years I learned about Exodus and preaching. I heard the Bible. It came to life and yeah, I mean, I, of course, I'm not a perfect Bible reader or Bible student, but I would say that's the time that I fell in love with the Bible in early college. Praise God. As I've been preparing for this the last few weeks, a verse that has struck me, it's kind of the, the worrying engine behind what we want to do with this podcast, Psalm 111.2. The Psalmist writes, great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them. That's what we want this podcast to be. A kind of opportunity to, to study the works of the Lord so that we might delight in him. Amen. Try to do that, all right, a weekly conversation, season one, Lord willing, we've all learned to say Lord willing a lot this year, we'll run through the rest of 2020 and we hope to cover the Torah, the first five books in the Bible. And then if it's useful, perhaps we'll, we'll go on from there. So, so I'm really, I'm really excited, brothers, thank you for, for joining me. And with that being said, you know, let's get started. We're going to do Genesis 1 to 3 in this first episode. So, so Genesis 1, verse 1 says, I can quote it for memory. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now I have memorized that verse, I don't know as long as I don't remember not knowing it. It's kind of lost, it's luster. So, so Jim, why is that verse so important? Why is it even, even a startling way to begin scripture? Well, for one thing, it tells us right at the outset that there's only one living and true God who's responsible for everything that is. So there's not a God who created the heavens and then a different God who maybe created the earth. Or there, there's also, I think the Bible, would, the biblical authors would argue. There's not one God who defeated another God and then used the material parts of that defeated God's body to build the heavens and the earth. There's one living and true God. And from there, everything else follows as, as my colleague Peter Gentry often says, there's really only one major doctrine in the Old Testament. It's the doctrine of creation and everything follows from that. And it's a stunning verse, too, in its brevity and its concise power. There are exactly seven Hebrew words in Genesis 1.1. And I think we can see that that's intentional from the fact that there are 14 Hebrew words in Genesis 1.2. So Moses is being intentional about the way that he's presenting things. And then, you know, through this chapter, ten times, we read, and God said. So right at the outset, you're introduced to this God who's created everything by the power of his Word. And so as the days of creation progress, I mean, you have days 1 to 3 and days 4 to 6. I was reading in your book, God's glory and salvation through judgment. You might be quoting someone, but I think these are your words. You say, days 1 to 3 is God prepping the canvas and days 4 to 6 are the canvas being adorned by its master. So help us understand what's going on with the various divisions in those days. Well, I'm not the first person to say this sort of thing. But I think that what is happening is God is addressing the formless void. And so in the first three days, it's as though creation is being formed. And then in the next three, it's as though it's being filled. Because you have God creating light and darkness in day 1, and then day 4 that corresponds to that is when God puts the sun, the moon, and the stars, which radiate the light. And then in day 2, God creates the expanse of the heavens. And corresponding to this in day 5, this is when God is going to make the birds and He's also going to make the water creatures. So He's formed and then He's filled day 3. It gathers the waters into seas and causes the dry land to appear day 6. God creates the land animals. And so there's this orderly forming and filling that is resolving the problem of the formless void that is introduced in Genesis 1 and 2. And it's all moving toward a culmination, right, the creation of man. And so Sam, read for us, Genesis 1, verse 26 and 27. Genesis 1, 26 says, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'" What does it mean to be created in the image of God, and how does the fact of being created in the image of God? How is it connected to that command to have dominion? Well, I think the first thing we should know is how radical and even scandalous Moses words would have been. In ancient Near Eastern cultures, only the king bore God's image. Only the king was made in God's likeness. This was something only Pharaoh might claim. And yet Moses here says that Adam, and by implication his children, are all bearers of God's image, right? Even Moses' original audience, liberated Hebrew slaves, are royal image bears. So the bear God's image means that we are servant kings, right? We're sons of God who mediate his righteous rule over creation. God designs us to represent him and to show his righteous character and to glorify him as the creator. So God fits us to do something. We're fitted by God to do this kingly task, and then I think we see a correspondence between what God has just done and what he calls Adam to do as, you know, a king over creation. God has just formed the earth in days one through three, and then he's filled the earth in days four through six. And what are the commands that God gives Adam? Well, he says, have dominion over creation, right? That's the forming work, and then multiply image bears. So that's the filling work. So bearing in God's image communicates. Not only are worth and dignity as the crown of God's creation, it also tells us something about our moral responsibility to represent God rightly by living in a way that magnifies His benevolent, generous, kingly rule. Jim, anything to add about those phrases at the end of Genesis 1? Sure. I think that one of the big ideas that is maybe not on the surface of what Moses says here, that is implicit and that later biblical authors are going to pick up on and draw out is the idea that God built the world as a cosmic temple, so that the world is going to be represented by the tabernacle and the temple that God later gives to Israel. And in this cosmic temple, God did not put a carved image, which He forbids, or a block of wood or stone or a molten image or something like this. No God put His own image and likeness, the living, breathing, worshiping, human being. And just as Sam said, that human being is to represent God's presence and God's power, God's authority, God's reign, in God's stead, in God's cosmic temple. And this is exactly what the idolaters, they sort of do a knock off, a cheap sleazy rip-off of the real thing when they build their little temples and then they put their little representations of their God into that temple. God has built the cosmic temple and put the representation of Himself into it. And is there a way that the maleness and the femaleness of humanity sort of does this distinctly? Like, how are we to understand the gendered aspect of creation in relation to what you guys are talking about? It's obviously part of God's very good created order. God saw all that He had made and it was very good. And it's also necessary for what God has created the man and blessed the man and woman to do. So Genesis 128, God blessed them, which is surprising every time I think of or encounter those words. In part, I think because of how poorly humanity has done and how wicked and evil we are. But God's immediate words when He's made the man and woman in His image, the first thing He does is bless them and then He says to them, be fruitful and multiply. And this is something that a man cannot do without a woman, a man cannot be fruitful and multiply without a woman and a woman cannot be fruitful and multiply without a man. It is biological, biologically impossible and even in that we see God's ultimate purpose. If He's built a cosmic temple and He's put the image and likeness of Himself into the cosmic temple and then He blesses them and says to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. What He seems to want is for those who represent His character and those who reign in His stead to fill the cosmic temple so that every corner of creation will be populated by reigned over, influenced, be present in, everywhere so that really the upshot of this is that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting, the name of the Lord will be praised and as the waters cover the seas so the dry lands will be filled with the glory of God. This seems to be what God is after. And the complementarity of male and female is necessary to that for them to be fruitful and multiply. The end of creation, when He's finished His work, God rests. Why does He do that and what does that mean for us? Well, what God is doing is He's establishing a pattern that He wants Adam to follow. Adam is, I think, called the follow in this same pattern that's then going to be repeated with Israel working six days and then resting on the seventh. But I think in that there's also this expectation that creation is headed toward something. It's headed toward this eschatological Sabbath rest that if Adam will obey God's commands and follow after the Lord and carry out this creation project and subdue creation and fill it with image bears, then that's what they're headed for. There's an eschatological Sabbath rest that they are going to enjoy along with God. Eschatological. Remember, explain things to me like I'm five. It's a good rule. End of time. End of time. There is a point to creation. We are headed toward something and for us that means we ought to rest. We ought to take one day a week where we do nothing. What's the application? You're teaching this to people who don't know the Bible. What's the take home lesson? I don't think we are under the mosaic law and under the Sabbath law in the way that Old Testament Israel was. I do think there's probably something to be said here about a general pattern of rest that we ought to follow in the sense of putting aside worldly labor, trusting the Lord to provide for us. I think that's probably a legitimate application to be drawn from this text. Any hard comments on the Sabbath? Well, first I'd like to just chime in on why does God rest? And I think it's related again to this concept of the cosmic temple. It seems that in the ancient Near Eastern culture, the expectation was that once a king got his palace built, then he would take up residence and he would rest in that palace. So I think Moses is being both culturally accommodating his message so that his heirs will understand who God is. And he's also, at points, contradicting their expectations and engaging in a corrective redirection of some cultural ideas. But this is an area where I think he's presenting God as a king who has completed his palace and his palace is the cosmic temple. And he's putting a finger in the eye of the gods who the Israelites would know about. Yes. And if you're just reading, let's say you're reading the Bible for the first time, I think Genesis 2 would come across a bit strange. It feels like a repetition of what you just read, but moving from the general to the specific. So you've got a creation of earth or land and then it has a name, Eden, you've got a creation of man and then the man has a name and it's Adam. So what is Moses up to, Jim, in Genesis 2? Well, I think for one thing, he seems to want to give more detail on the creation of the man and the woman. And so in Genesis 2, I like their uniqueness and importance. Well, sure, but also to bring out the fact that the man was created first and then that the woman was created to be a helper fit for the man. And so you have this sort of summary general statement in Genesis 1, 28, 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him male and female, he created them and that's sort of like, hey, we had a parade on Thursday. And then you come back in Genesis 2 and he tells you which floats came by and which order as he describes the parade to you. And I think this is important because it does seem to establish male headship and it seems to establish, well, it establishes the things that Paul appeals to when he says that he doesn't permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. He appeals to this Genesis 1 and 2. And it's important that this is prior to, yes, it's prior to sin, it's prior to words of judgment, it's prior to the distortion of relations between man and woman that we see in Genesis 3.16. Same thing to add. Which is that another reason that Genesis 2 comes in with more description is to emphasize the points that Jim has already been making from Genesis 1. For instance in Genesis 2, Adam is told to work and keep the garden. That's language that we're later going to see in the book of numbers that's applied to priests who are working in the temple. So I think what Genesis 2 is doing is it's taking Genesis 1, 26, 27 and 28 and it's double clicking on it. Right, it's kind of expanding that window to give us a fuller look at what's happening and give more detail into who is this person, Adam, this image of God who is a priest king in God's temple and what is it that God exactly is requiring of him. And it's important that Moses also wrote numbers and so he's using the same verbs, it's not just an accident. One thing I think that's important for Christians to know and one of the things I think that I learned most at this sort of in college when I sat under Pastor Steve's preaching was that the Bible is one book, it's not just a series of disparate stories or the worst version of that would be an angry God and a happy God or something like that. But it's one book. And so as I was reading through Genesis 2 specifically around verse 10 and you start reading about these rivers and gold and it's like, oh man, this sounds so beautiful. And it recalled echoed in my mind where the Bible ends, what's going on there with that sort of connection, the similarity that you see in Genesis 2 with the description of Eden and then Revelation 21 and 22 where you see a new Jerusalem, new heavens and a new earth. Are those similarities meaningful? Well, I think that in Revelation 21 for instance when John describes the dimensions of the city, it's a perfect cube and the perfect cube in the Bible points to the Holy of Holies. That's the place that's going to have the same dimensions in relationship to one another that the new Jerusalem is going to have. So I think what John is communicating is just what Sam and I have been articulating that at the beginning the very good creation was a cosmic temple which was defiled by human sin. And what God has done is set out on a project that will cleanse the temple that will deal with man's sin and that will make it so that God can dwell in man's presence. And man not be destroyed by that as God's holiness breaks out against his sin and results in his death. So I think that the things you're seeing about the river, the flowing and the tree of life on either side of the river and Revelation 21 and 22, I think these things are, yes, it's indicating that the new heavens and new earth are going to be a new and better e and a cosmic temple in which God Himself will dwell with man. I think what's important when you're reading these early chapters of Genesis is to recognize that this is a description of the created order, but it's also the foundation for how we think about everything else that's going to happen in the Bible. It's giving us pictures and images that are going to repeat or maybe even reverse throughout the rest of scripture. So for instance, you think about Noah's flood. What's Noah's flood? It's creation turning in on itself. God separated the drylands from the water. But in the flood, you have the waters coming over the drylands again. Genesis is foundation. We see that in the New Testament, right? Matthew begins his gospel with this is the book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ or John's gospel in the beginning was the word. They're clearly calling you back to this original created order that's established in Genesis to help you realizing that what God is doing in redemption is restoring the created order. He's restoring it to what it ought to be. That's evidence of both the sort of holy spirit, superintending every author and the New Testament authors knowing their Old Testament. Indeed. Part of me wants the Bible to maybe end at Genesis 2. You read the last verse of Genesis 2 and verse 25. The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. But we know some bad stuff happens. So Sam, Genesis 3, where does this serpent come from? So the serpent is Satan, right? We see in Revelation. John says he refers to the dragon that serpent of old when he's talking about Satan. So clearly this is Satan. He was he's a created being who has fallen and he's rebelled against God. And now he's coming to attack God's image. And what he does in the temptation is he's doing a couple of things. But notice number one, he is wanting Eve to doubt God's goodness and generosity. Right? He points out this one tree. Right? I gave them every tree of the garden. And Satan points to this one tree. And he says, did God really say you can't eat of any of these trees? Well, no. God only said you can only, you know, not touch this one. You can't eat this one tree. But what he's also doing, he's not only moving them to rebel against God. He's overturning the entire created order. He's having them kind of set themselves up as rival gods because God made them in his image. God gave them dominion over creation. And yet Satan comes to them and he says, yeah, but if you eat from this tree, you will be like God. Well, they're already like God. They're already made in his image. Right? They're already after his likeness. But what Satan is trying to do is he's trying to bend their heart in such a way that they want to be a rival to God. They want to knock God off his throne and become the new gods of creation. So do we see that kind of temptation, sort of, you know, Satan's method of temptation, play itself out in other places, whether in Genesis or other parts of scripture, the reversal of creation, the sort of anatomy of the temptation, the logic of what Satan is using. Is there a, does that pattern repeat itself? Sure. I think I think Satan doesn't come up with new strategies. He, all he can, he's not a creator. So all he can do is take good things that that God has given and try to get God's people to to take those things in ways that God has not allowed. And so that's what we see him doing here. I think it's also interesting if I can just go in the direction. I think it's also interesting that later in Leviticus, the serpent will be identified as an unclean beast. And so here again, you know, some, the holy place, the clean place, the serpent has infiltrated that place. And it seems to me that this indicates that even before the serpent starts talking to the woman, Adam has already failed to keep the garden. And the presence of the snake indicates that he is failed to keep the garden. And I'm inclined to think this is in part why God first calls on Adam, called to the man and said to him, where are you? Instead of going directly to the woman who had transgressed first, you know, I think Adam has failed to keep the garden. And then it seems to me also that it's implied, at least implied, that not only was Adam supposed to keep the snake out, but if that snake starts questioning God's character, why doesn't Adam intervene and say, you're not talking to this woman anymore, snake, or even Eve don't listen to him. Look at everything that God has given to us. He doesn't do anything. And he's standing right there when the woman takes the fruit and she ate and gave also some to her husband who was with her and he ate. So Adam is just totally failed in his responsibility in this situation. Alex, going back to your question about seeing similar events like this in scripture, one passage that immediately comes to mind is Matthew 4, right? Jesus in the wilderness. And there we have a little bit of a different picture. It's almost as if, you know, Jesus is in Satan's home court territory, right? He's not in a lush garden like Adam is. He's in the wilderness and Satan comes with these temptations to Jesus, but Jesus, unlike Adam, succeeds where Adam failed. He is the true and better Adam who comes to restore righteousness and to do what Adam should have done. You know, in Luke's gospel, he has the genealogy right before the temptation narrative and it concludes with Adam the Son of God. And then he immediately presents the serpent, or the devil saying to Jesus, if you are the Son of God in the temptations. So I think Luke means for his readers to connect those. So in Genesis 2, 17, God tells the man and the woman, he says, "If you eat of this tree, you will surely die, but they don't die. Or do they die?" Well, I think the fact that they hide themselves when they hear God coming in the logic of the narrative, it shows that they obviously now fear God in a way that they did not fear him before. And so they're alienated from God. So spiritually speaking, if you're in the presence of God, you're in the realm of life, if you're outside the presence of God, you're in the unclean realm of the dead. And by hiding from God, they are showing that they don't belong in the realm of life. And not only are they alienated from God, they're also alienated from one another. So the the previous harmony and unity and uninhibited nakedness has been destroyed, and they're now covering themselves, they're now hiding themselves, and then they're accusatory with one another. So in a spiritual sense, I think they're dead when God calls upon them. And a person who is spiritually alive, when God said to Adam, "Where are you?" I think would say, "God, I know you to be a merciful God. I have transgressed your commandment. All I can do is seek your forgiveness and appeal to your mercy." And that's not what Adam does. Adam, he tries to dodge the question. He avoids confessing what he's done. He's in no mood to confess his sin. So I think spiritually, both the man and the woman are dead until God speaks the word, the life-giving word of promise. And then in God's words of judgment, he tells them, "You are going to die." So they've died spiritually. They're going to die physically. And I think when we follow how the story develops, what we come to is that in the Bible, death is a much more expansive concept than how you and I typically talk about death, which is usually just the cessation of bodily life. But in the Bible, it seems that death is, yes, it is that kind of like ultimate cessation of bodily life and even judgment, spiritual death as Jim was talking about judgment in the afterlife. But it's also all of the elements of the curse. Everything that happens to Adam and Eve from here on out is death. They're even exiled from the Garden of Eden. And if you look at how the rest of the Bible, specifically in the prophets, talks about exile, they talk about it as a type of death. When Israel returns to the land, it is as if they are being resurrected from the dead. And this is important because when we look at how the Old Testament witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, the death and resurrection of Jesus, it does so most frequently through these types of patterns where we have kind of a feature of death and then resurrection from that. So David talking about, "Lord, you redeemed my life from the pit." Well, that's death and resurrection. Israel coming out of exile. That's death and resurrection. Jesus makes this same point just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days. So the son of man will begin there. What's Jesus doing there? He's appealing to patterns of death in the Old Testament and deliverance as types of his own death and resurrection. So they've been judged and God speaks judgment to them in the curse. Genesis 3, 14 to 19. And what ways and what different ways does the curse apply? What ways does it apply to the man? What ways does it apply to the female? What ways does it apply even to the serpent? So with the serpent, it's only to the serpent that the Lord says the words in verse 14, "Cursed are you." And those are important words because they actually help us to understand what's said in 315 when he speaks of the offspring or the seed of the serpent. In the very next chapter, God is going to say to Cain the very, the same Hebrew phrase, "Aruhr ata," "Cursed are you," when he tells him you are cursed from the ground. And then later, the son of Noah will be cursed for his sin. And then later still in Genesis 12, anyone who's opposed to Abraham, anyone who dishonors Abraham is going to be cursed. So we're being helped to understand who the seed of the serpent are as they're being cursed like their father, the devil. And then enmity is introduced between the serpent and the woman and between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. So I think there's going to be a conflict between the people of God and the people who don't belong to God. And that conflict is, I would say, continuing. And it's going to continue. you until Christ returns. To the woman, it seems to me that both things that she was created to do, to help the man, and to be fruitful and multiply with the man or touched by these words of judgment, and then with the man, the thing that he's charged to do, to work and keep the garden, to have dominion over the animals, and to subdue the earth. This is all made much more difficult as the ground is cursed. So I think those three areas, enmity between the seat of the woman, seat of the serpent, difficulty between male and female, and then difficulty with all creation. That's really, that's all our problems. Well nestled inside the curse and you alluded to this for a moment, there's a little spark of good news. There's a hint that this story that was once good but has since turned quite bad is actually not a tragedy, but a comedy that there's a happy ending coming. Jim, could you read for us Genesis 3, 15? Sure. And then explain to us why it's one of the most important verses in the Bible. Sure. So just if I may as I read it, I'm going to add some sort of narrative elaborations. So the man and the woman, or the man has been told, in the day you eat of this tree, you will surely die, dying you will die. They've eaten of the tree, they've hidden from God because they expect we're going to die. God has called them out and now God is talking to the serpent. And as he says to the serpent, in Genesis 3, 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman. In terms of the narrative logic, I think Moses intends for his audience to feel the surprise that there's going to be ongoing conflict with the woman. She was supposed to die. She ate of the tree. She should die. What is what is this enmity? How is this conflict going, is she not going to die? And then when he continues, as Moses continues to present the Lord speaking, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. Well now it's not only the woman who's not going to die. The man is not going to die because the man is necessary for seed. We can have no children if we don't have both a man and a woman. And the fact that there's going to be enmity means that the man and the woman have not gone over to the serpent's side. They're going to be opposed to him. So these are life giving words of hope in the fact that they promise life is ongoing and the conflict is ongoing. You're not just surrendered to Satan. And you get to go on living and there's going to be this ongoing conflict between those who belong to Satan and those who come from you. And then the final phrase of the verse, he, and this is a masculine singular. You know, you've got this word offspring or seed, which can, it can refer to one seed or to a bag of seed. It's a collective singular. The same same form is used when you're referring to many or to one. But when it's got singular pronouns, it indicates that we're talking about one seed in particular. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. And I think we're meant to see here. Okay. A heel wound, we can survive that. But a head wound is likely mortal. So the man and the woman, they're not given over to Satan's team. There's going to be, and they're not going to be immediately executed. They're going to be allowed to go on living. They're going to have offspring together. So the the disharmony and the difficulties and relationship that have been introduced are going to be overcome. And then their offspring, one of them is going to deliver what looks like it could be a mortal wound to this enemy who has introduced rebellion into God's creation. And you would say those two tracks, seed of the woman, seed of the serpent, you can just follow them until we get to revelation. Absolutely. Absolutely. So John the Baptist, the Pharisees, come out to him and he says to them, "You brute of vipers." You know, he's basically saying to them, "You people are seed of the serpent." And then Jesus tells his opponents in John 8, "You are of your father, the devil." He's essentially saying to them, "You are seed of the serpent." John, first John 3, by this we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. And then he explicitly links the children of the devil with Cain. I think reflecting his understanding of the cursing of the serpent and then of Cain and Genesis 3 and 4. And as I said earlier, we have to remember that Genesis in these first three chapters, it's establishing a set of patterns and images that's just going to repeat all throughout the Old Testament, leading up to Jesus. So what do we find in the very next story? Cain killing Abel, right? Seed of the serpent versus the seed of the woman. The same thing happens with the brothers of Joseph. You have righteous Joseph who is persecuted by his brothers. It's a Cain-enable repeat. You have Pharaoh persecuting the children of Israel. But what's really interesting is when you get to the monarchy in Israel, you have, for instance, Saul going out to war against Nahash, the King of the Ammonites. I know we would get to Nahash, the King of the Ammonites today. And that name Nahash means it's the same word as serpent here in Genesis 3. When David goes against Goliath, Goliath is described as wearing "scaly armor," right? He is the seed of the serpent. And David, what does he do? He crushes his head. He throws a stone into his forehead and it sinks into his head. So we have these conflicts emerging throughout the Old Testament. Built on Genesis 3.15, that's creating an expectation of someone yet to come who's going to do this fully and finally. So, Jim, is it too simplistic to say Genesis 1 to 3 is about Jesus? I probably wouldn't put it quite like that. I think, though, that it's not too simplistic to say that the introduction of the hope of the seed of the woman is going to be realized in Jesus. I mean Moses doesn't know that he's going to be named Jesus. And Adam, you have Adam and then Jesus is going to be the new Adam. So there is a sense in which this is all building up to Christ. But I think we want to be sensitive to authorial intent, and I think we want to be sensitive to the intent of the human author, Moses. And so, do I think that he means to present Adam as a prototype? Yes. And a prototype of the one who's going to come and resolve all these problems, yes. And does Moses understand that there's something significant about marriage, Genesis 2.24? Yes, I think he does. And he begins to present the relationship between Israel and the Lord as a marriage. And if they're unfaithful to that, they're committing spiritual idolatry or adultery, sorry. And then does Moses think that the seed of the woman, so yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Jesus all the way through all the promises of God are yes and amen in him. But it does make me a little uncomfortable to say, Jesus, Genesis 1 through 3 is all about Jesus. Well, before it gets better, it does get worse. And we'll see that Lord willing in our next episode. Jim, Sam, thanks for your time. Thanks, Alex. Yes, thank you. Friends, thanks for listening. And remember, Psalm 111, verse 2, great are the works of the Lord studied by all who delight in them. Well, here we are. I just want to do a few rapid fire questions that sort of, you know, a member of your church might have after reading these chapters of Scripture. It's kind of like the post credits seen in a Marvel movie, surely you're familiar with that. The first one, Genesis 1.27, the Lord says, "Let us make man in our image." Is that referring to the Trinity, Jim? Well, on the one hand, I want to say, I don't think that Moses and his human understanding had a fully developed understanding of the triune God. I don't think that had been revealed to him. On the other hand, this does break a significant pattern. Seven times in Genesis 1, you have let there be. And now all of a sudden, you get to the creation of man, and God says, "Let us." And then you do have in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and Genesis 1, 1. And then in verse 2, you have the spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters. Now, again, does Moses think that the spirit is a fully a person in distinction from the Father? I don't know that Moses has all this conceptualized. However, another remarkable thing about this narrative is that when God says, "Let us make man," he then made them male and female. So when he makes man in his image, he makes a multiplicity of persons. And then there's this interesting, curious reality that in Genesis 2, 24, the two shall become one flesh. And that word "Echad" is the same term that's used to describe the Lord as one in the Shema. Hero is real, the Lord are God. The Lord is one. So within Moses' conception of oneness in Genesis 2, 24, you have a plurality. In the let us make man, you have both male and female created. Now, all I mean to be saying here is that there are these interesting dynamics at work. And then as you proceed through the book of Genesis, you know, Genesis 18, verse 1 is going to tell us that the Lord revealed Himself, the Lord appeared to Abraham, and what Abraham sees are three men. And then in the next chapter, when when the Lord reigns down to Genesis 19 19 or 19 24, sorry, it says, "Then the Lord reigned on Sodom and Gomorrah, sulfur and fire from the Lord." So it says, "Though there's one Lord up in heaven, and there's one on earth, and the one on earth seems to be reigning from the one on heaven, fire and sulfur down." I mean, you have a lot of curious intriguing statements in the book of Genesis that from our vantage point fit perfectly with the doctrine of the Trinity. I don't know that Moses had it fully realized in his mind. We can ask him. Yeah, one day. Some folks will say, say I'm this for you, that Junes is one to three is, you know, It's like a it's like a fairy tale. Right. It's like obviously not meant to be read as true Why is that not an acceptable position for a Christian or at least someone who's taking the Bible on its own terms to hold? For at least a couple of reasons number one I don't see anything in the text that would suggest that we ought to read it as anything other than history There's there's no talking snake. I don't I don't see anything in that to suggest that it's not history You know, I I think the biblical authors will flag with You know phrases by which they'll you know the flag. This is this is this is a this is a parable or this is a fictional story I don't see any of those flags in Genesis now you have some fantastic details like a talking snake or whatever But but again, there's nothing in there to suggest you ought to read this as a genre as anything other than historical narrative more than that Jesus and the apostles read this as history right Jesus whenever he talks about the Garden of Eden about Adam and Eve He assumes the historicity of these things as does Paul in Romans 5 and I think the most intellectually honest and Academically respectable thing to do is always agree with the person who rose from the dead man Hallelujah Jim where did this brief answer? Where did say ten come from if the Lord everything the Lord created was very Good, I could see a person reading this and being like whoa, whoa, where did this serpent come from? Yeah, that's a great question and you know in in Revelation 12, I think this provides John Milton with his starting point Milton in Paradise Lost suggests that prior to the creation of this earth and this realm There was a rebellion in heaven that resulted in Satan being cast out and he Uses some of the details and imagery that we see in Revelation chapter 12 at the you know We we have other light from a passage in Ezekiel where Ezekiel he he's addressing a human king but the human king Seems to be the the seed of the serpent and he says you were in Eden the Garden of God. That's Ezekiel 28 verse 13 So maybe Satan was a Guardian he's referred to here as a a guardian cherub that was on the holy mountain of God and So perhaps Satan was one of the beings who was meant to protect the garden and he rebelled I don't know last question. This is a nine marks podcast So of course we have to figure out a way to talk about polity from Genesis 1 to 3 Jonathan Lehman writes in his book I believe it's don't fire your church members He says the argument of this chapter. It's it's referring to the chapter in the book is this the office of priest king given to the federal head Or every man Adam which involved working and watching over the place where God dwelled was further specified in the life of Israel fulfilled in Christ and has now been reconferred on every member of the church in the new covenant era That means that every member of the church possesses this same office as mediated through Christ Specifically church members are charged with working on behalf of Christ kingdom and with watching over the membership and the teaching of God's new covenant temple Garden the church a pastor a Presbyteria or bishop that prevents church members from doing this work Therefore usurps granted authority and prevents them from doing the very work that God has commissioned them to do So you see even in that quote some of the things we talked about cosmic temple is Jonathan crazy I think that that that passage that you just read is an accurate reflection of what Paul teaches for instance in 1 Corinthians 5 where he refers to the church as God's new covenant temple and Christians are later identified as Priests within that temple. Well, what are they supposed to be doing? They're supposed to be doing what Adam was doing as a priest working and keeping This garden sanctuary this temple. How do they do that? Well Adam was supposed to keep the serpent out right? He was supposed to keep the temple pure and I think the the way the new testament Works together all of these different ideas is to show that we the church are Priests in God's kingdom that we are serving in this new covenant temple called the church and the way that we keep it Pure is by overseeing one another's membership in the kingdom and exercising church discipline. Thanks brothers. Thank you You