The Sufferings of Christ (Genesis 1-3) 20230312 ~ Pastor Rodney Zedicher ~ Ephraim Church of the Bible ~ www.ephraimbible.org
03/12 Lent; The Sufferings of Christ; Genesis 1-3; Audio available at: http://www.ephraimbible.org/Sermons/20230312_sufferings-of-christ.mp3
All Scripture About the Sufferings of Christ and His Glories
Peter spoke of the salvation that belongs to us who trust in Jesus:
1 Peter 1:10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
According to Peter, the prophets by the Spirit of Christ prophesied about the grace that is now ours; specifically pointing to ‘the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow’. In this they were serving us who have now received grace through the good news of Jesus Christ crucified and risen. I thought it would be fitting, in the weeks leading up to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, to look at some of these prophecies that point us to the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
Peter learned this from the Lord himself. Jesus said to two of his despairing disciples whose hopes had been crushed by the crucifixion:
Luke 24:25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
According to Jesus, the crucifixion was not a tragedy; it was essential. And it was the plan all along, prophesied by all the prophets beginning with Moses, who wrote the Torah, Genesis to Deuteronomy. According to Jesus, all the Scriptures are about Jesus, specifically his sufferings and his glories.
Luke records that later on that evening of Resurrection Sunday, Jesus appeared to his disciples gathered in Jerusalem and said:
Luke 24:44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.
The Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms, our entire Old Testament, was written about Jesus, about his sufferings that brought about our forgiveness.
God’s Good Creation; Genesis 1-2
Today we are going to begin at the beginning of the Law of Moses, in Genesis. In the beginning God already existed. In the beginning, God created everything that exists with his word. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and he formed them and filled them with all kinds of living creatures, and everything God created was good.
Then God created man in his own image; male and female, to reflect his character and his good and kind authority to the rest of his creation.
Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
And’ God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good’ (Gen.1:31).
Genesis 2 rewinds and zooms in on the details of his creation of man and woman in his image.
Genesis 2:7 then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God established the rhythm of work and rest, and planted a bountiful garden filled with everything pleasant and good, everything needed, everything to be enjoyed.
Genesis 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
God gave purpose and dignity, value and worth. He gave man responsibility and authority, but authority under his own good and absolute authority. Of every tree of the garden, pleasing to the eye and good for food, you shall surely eat. Only one tree is off limits, under penalty of death. The good gift of God is eternal life, but the wages of sin, of disobedience, of rebellion, is death. Even this, man exercising authority over all creation, yet under God’s good authority, with boundaries, was good.
The first thing that was not good in all of God’s good creation was that there was yet no woman.
Genesis 2:18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
God created woman out of the side of man, to be the complement that completes him.
Genesis 2:23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Rebellion; Genesis 3
All this, God said, was very good. But in chapter 3, we are introduced to the crafty serpent. He too was a created being, not in any sense equal to God. But he planted seeds of doubt and began to question the goodness of God and the truthfulness of his word. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Gen.3:1). “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen.3:4-5).
Genesis 3:6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
Man had set himself up as God, defining for himself right and wrong. Man had chosen to believe an alternate narrative, a conspiracy theory really; that God was not good and gracious and awesome, but weak and afraid, fearful of competition. What God said was off limits was not for our good, to protect us, but to prevent us from becoming all that we could be. It was a vicious lie, as they quickly came to discover.
The Wages of Sin
The consequences of the first sin began to unfold. What was clean and pure and beautiful and good became stained and tainted, twisted and dirty. Shame, guilt, covering up, hiding, then blaming, accusing. The LORD God still initiating, pursuing, seeking, calling. What must it have been like to walk with the LORD God in the garden in the cool of the day? But that fellowship had been shattered, destroyed, lost.
God had given them every good thing to enjoy, and blessed them. But in their rebellion they brought a curse on themselves instead. Mortality. The wages of sin is death. An end to every good gift. Man was made from dust, and now will return to dust. The ground cursed, so that it brought forth thorns and thistles, so that man would eat of it by the sweat of his face all the days of his life. Work no longer full of purpose and joy, but now meaningless toil. Pain for the woman in childbearing, pain in relationships. Authority no longer pure and good, for protection and blessing, but twisted and abused for personal gain.
God’s Grace Displayed in Death
Genesis 3:22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Expelled from God’s good and beautiful garden. Expelled from intimate fellowship with God. Driven out, forbidden re-entry with fearsome creatures and a fiery flashing sword.
But even in this there is grace. Cut off from the tree of life so that mankind could not live forever in this broken, twisted, fallen state. Death became a mercy. ‘Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin’ (Rom.5:12). Death entered God’s good creation, and all creation has been groaning under the weight of sin ever since (Rom.8:22). But this groaning is groaning for something, something lost, that this is not how it was meant to be, in hope that it may one day be restored. The way to the tree of life was guarded, so that it could be opened again one day.
God’s Grace Displayed in Substitution and Clothing
God had said ‘in the day you eat of it you shall surely die’ (Gen.2:17), and everything in God’s good creation began to die that day. Death did happen that day in the sense of separation from intimate fellowship with God. But Adam and Eve were not the first to experience physical death. Before God expelled mankind from the garden, Genesis 3:21 says:
Genesis 3:21 And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Skins or hides come from animals, and the implication is that God himself made the first sacrifice of a substitute. Blood was spilled, something died that very day, but it wasn’t the ones who had rebelled. This was a gruesome and graphic picture of the wages of sin, but also an amazing grace. It should have been Adam’s throat that was slit and Adam’s blood that was spilled. But this pointed to satisfaction of justice by the sacrifice of a substitute. God graciously covered their shame and clothed them in the skin of another, an innocent victim. The leaves of their own efforts stitched together were utterly inadequate to cover them. God himself made a better covering, clothed them in a garment of his own making.
The Seed of the Woman Bruised but Victorious
God also cursed ‘the great dragon, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world’ (Rev.12:9)
Genesis 3:14 The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
This is often called the first preaching of the good news. The serpent is cursed, and his ultimate doom is promised. The serpent crushing blow will come from the seed or offspring of the woman. This promises that Eve will live to see another day, will live to have a son. But beyond that, the language of ‘the seed of the woman’ points far ahead to the virgin birth. It promises that one day, this epic battle between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent will end in the Seed of the woman bruised but victorious.
Execution by crucifixion seems much more lethal and extreme than a mere bruising of the heel; the dejected disciples on the road to Emmaus probably felt that the serpent had crushed the skull of the Son of God. The great dragon himself may have thought that he had won; ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours’ (Mk.12:7). But this is the great irony, that in dying he destroyed death, and in being crucified, he became a curse for us;
Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—
It was in his being crushed in our place that Jesus crushed the skull of the serpent.
Swallowing Death and the Cup of Wrath
Listen to the prophet Isaiah speak of that day:
Isaiah 25:8 He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. 9 It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
Isaiah 27:1 In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea. 2 In that day, “A pleasant vineyard, sing of it! 3 I, the LORD, am its keeper; every moment I water it. Lest anyone punish it, I keep it night and day; 4 I have no wrath. Would that I had thorns and briers to battle! I would march against them, I would burn them up together.
Jesus swallowed up death, taking death into himself and dying. Jesus removed our shame and the curse by becoming a curse for us. Jesus strips us of our fading leaves and the filthy rags of our own righteous deeds and clothes us in his own perfect righteousness (Is.64:6; 61:10).
This is how the Lord slays the dragon; his wrath toward us is gone, because his only Son drank down the cup of God’s wrath toward sinners (Rev.14:10; Mt.26:39,42). The curse is reversed and forgotten, and our Lord Jesus himself is the keeper of his pleasant garden. And he invites us in, to enjoy sweet fellowship with him.
Luke 24:25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
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2023.03.12 Sermon Notes
Genesis 1-3; The Sufferings of Christ
The prophets prophesied about the sufferings of Christ
1 Peter 1:10; Luke 24:25-27, 44-48
God’s creation was very good
Genesis 1:28, 31; 2:7-9, 15-18, 23-25
The lie of the serpent that we should be like God
Genesis 3:1, 4-5
The wages of sin is death
Genesis 3:6-13
God’s grace displayed in death
Genesis 3:22-24; Romans 8:22-23
God’s grace displayed in substitution and clothing
Genesis 2:17; 3:21; Isaiah 64:6; 61:10
The Seed of the woman bruised but victorious
Revelation 12:9; Genesis 3:14-15; Galatians 3:13
Swallowing death and the cup of God’s wrath
Isaiah 25:8-9; 27:1-4; Revelation 14:10; Matthew 26:39, 42
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Pastor Rodney Zedicher ~ Ephraim Church of the Bible ~ www.ephraimbible.org