The Prophetic Plot Unfolds
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:8-10)
Introduction
In the last Essentials teaching in The Predicament section, The Corruption of Sin—Part 2: The Plot is Established, I covered what happened after the serpent deceived Adam & Eve, how God said to the serpent:
... "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" (Genesis 3:15).
We learned that this second part of God's declaration to the serpent was actually an important prophecy. Concerning that, I wrote:
God made known that there will be hostility between Satan and the woman—hostility between Satan's offspring and her offspring—and that a male child of the woman will crush the head of Satan. This prophecy foreshadowed the epic struggle that unfolds throughout the Bible—much of it still yet to come—using types which are anticipative figures or prophetic symbols.
Then, after analyzing the 12th chapter of the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, we were able to make this interpretation more clear: the woman is Israel, her offspring is the male child, Jesus Christ, the ancient serpent is Satan, and his offspring are the "children of the devil" who do not know Jesus Christ.
In the Essentials teachings I will refer to the offspring of the woman as the Seed or the Seed of the woman. This comes from the New King James Version (NKJV) translation of God's prophetic declaration to the serpent:
"And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel." (Genesis 3:15)
By capitalizing Seed, this translation makes it readily apparent that the Seed is the God-man.
This is the prophetic plot that is essential to understand. The Essentials series will target the unfolding of this plot as we move through Biblical history. The establishment of the woman (Israel) is the main focus of the Old Testament. The life of her Seed (Jesus Christ) is the main focus of the New Testament.
The Pre-Flood Era
After God made clothing for Adam & Eve, He permanently removed them from the Garden of Eden as the Bible describes here:
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—" therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 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. (Genesis 3:22-24)
In the Essentials teaching Higher Orders of Celestial Beings—Angelic Princes, Cherubim, and Seraphim I explained that the flaming sword may have been God's Shechinah glory presence covered by cherubim and that this may have served as an altar for ancient believers. This is confirmed by the fact that the Bible does not mention any pre-Flood era believers making altars. Yet, immediately after Noah left the ark he "built an altar to the LORD ..." (Genesis 8:20). After Cain killed Abel and was confronted by God, we are told that "Cain went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden" (Genesis 4:16). Why does it say that Cain "went away from the presence of the LORD"? This makes more sense if we consider that Adam & Eve and their descendants were settled near the Shechinah Glory (flaming sword) altar.
Cain moved eastward and his offspring became a separate ancestral line:
Cain —> Enoch —> Irad —> Mehujael —> Methushael —> Lamech —> Jabal / Tubal-cain
The ancestral lineage of the male child Messiah would flow through Seth, Adam & Eve's third son:
Seth —> Enosh —> Kenan —> Mahalalel —> Jared —> Enoch —> Methuselah —> Lamech —> Noah
Two of Seth's pre-Flood ancestors, Enoch and Noah, were commended in Hebrews for their faith:
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. (Hebrew 11:4-7)
Moreover, we can see that Lamech had the Spirit of God because he prophesied concerning Noah:
When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, "Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands." (Genesis 5:28-29)
It could have been that Adam and his descendants through Abel and Seth continued to make sacrifices at the "flaming sword" until the Flood.
And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, "God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him." To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. (Genesis 4:25-5:4)
This is an interesting passage. It seems that Adam & Eve and their righteous descendants came to the realization that they were of a flawed (sinful) nature which was different than how God originally created Adam. Something seems to have clicked at the birth of Enosh because "at that time" people began to call upon the name of the Lord." They began to seek the personage (name) of God. This happened when Enosh was born. Abel was a man of faith but died young. Perhaps when it became apparent that the (older) Seth was not going to be the promised offspring that would bruise the head of the Serpent, then they began to call upon the person of the Lord, the Son of God, for this. The Hebrew name Enosh means "man". The fact that Enosh was named this and it was "at that time" that people began to call upon the God-man leads me to conclude that this was a time of revelation that God Himself would be their promised savior.
While pondering this, it is helpful to have the New King James Version translation of our guiding verse in mind:
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." (Genesis 3:15; NKJV)
Satan (the serpent) was warned that he would be put under the foot of the offspring of the woman. The woman was going to have a child—her "Seed" as the NKJV translates it—that would crush him. We know now that the woman is Israel and her Seed is Jesus Christ (Revelation 12), but at the time, it was reasonable to conclude that Eve was soon going to give birth to the Seed, to the Messiah. Satan did not know all that this prophecy would entail.
After ancient believers began to call upon the person of God, it was not coincidental that the next event in the Bible (after an account of Adam's family tree) was Satan's scheme to try to genetically corrupt the Seed of the woman. I covered this topic in complete detail in the Essentials teaching on demons. In that teaching, I finished my coverage of the event with the following:
Coinciding with (apparently) or enhanced by (seemingly) these events "the wickedness of man was great in the earth ... and every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." God had had enough and decided to destroy everything since man had become unsalvageable. However, "Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD" because he "was a righteous man" that "walked with God." Moreover, the Spirit included the critical fact that Noah was "blameless in his generation" or, as other quality English Bibles (e.g., ASV, NKJV) translate this phrase, he was perfect in his generations. (The Hebrew word, tāmîm, translated here in English as "blameless," means "complete, whole, entire, sound, perfect.") What this means is that Noah's lineage was not genetically corrupted ...
Noah's faith, righteousness, and the genetic inviolability of his family made him God's candidate to restart the world after a dramatic cleansing, a massive worldwide flood.
Abraham
Abraham was the first patriarchal father of the nation of Israel. The Bible primarily contains the genealogies of Adam to Shem (Genesis 5:1-32) and Shem to Abraham (Genesis 11:26) so that we can trace the Seed to Israel, the woman from whom He would come.
Although Abraham was born in year 2009 of the world, the promise of the Seed would not have been lost to him. Keep in mind that Lamech, Noah's father, lived when Adam was alive and Terah, Abraham's father, lived when Noah was alive. Righteous Noah likely had at least some influence on his descendants from Shem to Abraham. This may also be why Isaac and Jacob would later take wives from their own country.
God called Abram (He later changed his name to Abraham) out of Mesopotamia:
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:1-3)
Abram migrated westward and settled in Canaan after which the Lord gave him more details:
The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” (Genesis 13:14-17)
Source: The Graphic Bible
Origins of Israel
God would later make a covenant with Abram and define the boundaries of what would eventually become Israel:
On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.” (Genesis 15:18-21)
God granted Abram's descendants the territory that stretched from Egypt to the Euphrates. Hundreds of years later, Israel would eventually reach its greatest geographic extent under King David and King Solomon, fulfilling the boundaries that God promised Abraham:
Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and drank and were happy. Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. (1 Kings 4:20-21a)
Melchizedek
One day, after Abram's household troop defeated an alliance of kings from the East and rescued his nephew Lot, the mysterious priest Melchizedek visited him:
And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said, "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!" And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. (Genesis 14:18-20)
Through a prophetic Psalm of David, the Holy Spirit later revealed the following declaration from God the Father concerning Jesus Christ:
The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." (Psalm 110:4)
Altogether, the Old Testament reveals the following aspects about Melchizedek:
- Melchizedek means, "king of righteousness."
- He was the priest of the the Most High God (the One, true God—"Possessor of heaven and earth").
- He was also a king—of ancient Jerusalem (Salem).
- He honored God with bread and wine which would later represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the latter also signifying a new covenant.
- God the Father made an oath that Jesus Christ would be an eternal priest after the order of Melchizedek. (Psalm 110; Hebrews 7:28)
When pondering the origins of these things, the question arises, what is a priest and why is one needed?
In the last Essentials teaching I explained the following concerning the introduction of sin into our world:
... after Adam & Even sinned their shame drove them to sew fig leaves together to make themselves clothing. After God explained to Adam & Eve the consequences of their sin, we are told:
And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)
God had to kill at least one animal to make these clothes which set a precedent: the shedding of blood is required for the remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). We can surmise from the 4th chapter of Genesis that this animal was most likely a sheep.
Man's initial response to the shame of his sin was to try to cover it up himself. God's response foreshadowed a lesson: God will sacrifice a lamb to atone for the sin of man.
In the next chapter of Genesis, we see Abel offering a lamb to God and are told that the Lord respected his offering, reaffirming that the shedding of blood is required for the forgiveness of sin.
Historically, God called men into priestly offices to offer sacrifices to Him on behalf of the people for the forgiveness of their sins. God called Melchizedek into priesthood and established a priestly order from him. Psalm110:4 affirmed this and specified that the Son of God would be an eternal priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Melchizedek was thus a righteous king of ancient Jerusalem and priest of God who honored Him with the very elements that would later signify new life through Jesus Christ—all before the nation of Israel even existed. He foreshadowed the great eternal High Priest (Hebrews 3:1; 7:24) who later arose "in the likeness of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 7:15b). Concerning this Jesus, the Letter to the Hebrews notes:
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:14-18)
To partake of death so that He might deliver the faithful from the powerful of death, the Son of God had to be born of a woman and enter into our world. We know now that He came from the nation of Israel, from the tribe of Judah. He "had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." It is fitting that Jesus would arise after the order of Melchizedek instead of the Levitical priesthood (Jewish priesthood) since He died "for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).
Foundation of Faith
Genesis' account of Abram's response to God's promise that he would have a son for an heir is a very important Old Testament passage.
And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: "This man [Eliezer of Damascus] shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir." And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)
The Hebrew word zera, translated here in English as "offspring," means "seed." It is the same word translated "offspring" or "seed" in "Seed of the woman" in our introductory verse, Genesis 3:15. The fact that "seed" is singular is important because it connects God's promise to Abram back to the Seed of the woman, Jesus Christ. Confirming this, Young's Literal Translation (YLT) translates this verse as follows:
and He bringeth him out without, and saith, 'Look attentively, I pray thee, towards the heavens, and count the stars, if thou art able to count them;' and He saith to him, 'Thus is thy seed.'
Here the Holy Spirit revealed the crucial fact that Abram "believed the LORD" and thus became righteous before God through faith. Concerning this, the apostle Paul wrote the following at length to the Romans:
For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. (Romans 4:13-25)
and the following to the Galatians:
Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” 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”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:7-14; 23-29)
It is critical to recognize that the righteousness that ensures salvation has always come through faith. Abraham was the father of faith and his promised seed was Jesus Christ. It is not the physical descendants of Abraham that are righteous, but the spiritual descendants in Christ, regardless of the whether they are Jewish or not.
God Will Provide the Sacrifice
Later on in Abraham's life, after his son Isaac had grown, God tested Abraham:
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." (Genesis 22:1-2)
According to the late Dr. Chuck Missler, God led Abraham to the very spot where Jesus Christ would later be crucified!
So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”
And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” (Genesis 22:5-18)
Abraham demonstrated his faith by doing what God told him to do and believing that He would even raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:19), if necessary, to fulfill His promise.
That Abraham said, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering" and that he named the mount, "The LORD will provide," implying a future outlook, uncovers the fact that Abraham had the understanding that God would provide the sacrifice for sin. What draws me in here is that God was subtly revealing His nature to His friend Abraham by using his situation—"you have not withheld your son, your only son"—to make him feel what He would feel when sacrificed His only begotten son. James wrote that "Abraham ... was called a friend of God" (2:23).
Finally here, the "angel of the LORD," who is the Son of God (another Essentials teaching will cover this), confirmed that the promised "offspring" or Seed would be Jesus Christ and extend to His body, the church. The angel of the LORD promised that the Seed would "possess the gate of his enemies." When Jesus first mentioned His church to Peter, He declared:
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18)
Possessing the gate of His enemies aligns with God's promise that the promised Seed would bruise the head of the serpent's seed.
The Prophetic Plot: The Coming God-Man
In conclusion, the book of Genesis subtly unfolds the foundational aspects of God's prophetic plot to ultimately send the Son of God, the second person of His Triunity, to redeem man from sin as the God-man—fully God and fully man. Jesus Christ became the eternal High Priest after the order of Melchizedek. All who call upon Him, through faith, will be delivered from the eternal destructive penalty of sin.