The Cure for the Curse - Part A

Our greatest need is to be forgiven. This is why Jesus on the cross is first words recorded in scripture where, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

It is forgiveness. Today on Connect with Skip Hyting, Pastor Skip begins his series, Bloodline, tracing God's rescue mission from Eden to eternity with a message about the greatest need for all of humanity. Now, here's how you can help more listeners around the world connect with God's Word and grow closer to Jesus through broadcasts like this one today. You can play a vital role in this life-changing work today with a gift to support this ministry and help expand its reach into more major US cities. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give generously and share God's love with others. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you for changing lives. Now, let's turn to Genesis 3 and hear Skip's teaching for us today. Years ago, I was part of a movie set. I was part of a movie. It was a Billy Graham film called The Last Flight Out. I put a very, very, very minor role in it, but I played the role of the missionary doctor in this film. Thank you for that.

I'll be available for autographs any time for that. Nobody's really heard of this film, but anyway. I played this part, but the actor, one of the lead actors in this role had played in a movie called Black Hawk Down. He was a pilot in this movie who gets converted, and he was a pilot who helped rescue this village from these drug lords who were coming in and this one girl in particular who was serving there on the mission field. In the process of that, he comes to Christ. Well, in real life, this actor was not a believer. I could see him struggling with his lines and with some of the lines of the other actors, especially the line about the blood of Christ. The actor saying that Jesus shed his blood for our sins, and then he had to respond with something. He just stopped in the middle of one of the scenes and said, so what's the big deal about the blood of Christ? Well, I'm in this film, so I overhear this. I thought, okay, I have to insert myself at this point.

I did, and we had a very lively conversation. Basically, I said, look, without the blood, there is no message, there is no power, and we have no movie. I've thought about that scene, that time, that event many times since. I've discovered that all of history, especially redemptive history, centers around one pivotal event, and that is the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross. That is the main event, his death, burial, and resurrection.

Why is that? It's because forgiveness is our greatest need, and our greatest need happens to be God's greatest accomplishment. That's what the cross is all about. It provides an opportunity for God to forgive, and that is our greatest need. Our greatest need is not to know how to live our best life now or how to be the best you that you can be or how to turn your scars into stars or how to be a healthy person. Your greatest need, my greatest need, our greatest need is to be forgiven. This is why Jesus on the cross, his first words recorded in scripture were, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. It is forgiveness.

The great Bible scholar William Evans once said, you can cut the Bible anywhere and it will bleed. What he meant is that the atonement is on every page, in every book, in both testaments, old and new. It's either predicted or anticipated or acknowledged or celebrated.

It is what is called the scarlet thread of redemption. It is so monumental an event that it was in the mind of God before he even created the world. Revelation 13 calls Jesus Christ the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Before he created the world, he knew what would happen.

He knew he needed a rescue plan to fix the bad that would fall on the world. And so he planned before he created the world to send his son into it. And Jesus even referred to it that way. You remember after he rose from the dead, he's walking along the road because there's two disciples on the road to Emmaus from Jerusalem. They're all forlorn, bummed out that Jesus died, and they think it's over. And so Jesus walks up to them and says, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Ought not the Christ to have suffered and entered into his glory? And then Luke writes this, beginning at Moses, that's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the writings of Moses, beginning at Moses and all of the prophets, he expounded to them in all of the scriptures, the things concerning himself. In other words, he followed the bloodline from the Old Testament all the way through to show them how Christ would suffer. So then, all pre-New Testament history looks forward to the cross. All post-New Testament history looks back to it. The prophets anticipated it. God's people have celebrated it.

We still do. But sadly, some churches are scared of it. They don't want to mention the blood. They don't want to sing songs about the blood. It's going to turn people off. Unbelievers aren't going to like that we have a bloody religion.

Let's just talk to them about how to be the best them they can be, and they're afraid to talk about it. Charles Spurgeon, one of my favorite quotes ever, said this, there are some preachers who cannot or do not preach about the blood of Jesus Christ, and I have one thing to say to you concerning them. Never go to hear them.

Never listen to them. For a ministry that has not the blood in it is lifeless, and a dead ministry is no good to anybody. So, the next few weeks we're going to follow that bloody trail from the Old Testament all the way through to the New. Today, we are in the seminal verse, Genesis chapter 3 verse 15.

Now, let me give the setting to you. Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is about creation. God creates the world. A certain being, a special classification of being we typically call an angel, falls from God's presence to the earth, comes up with a strategy to bring a curse upon the earth, and the first man and woman, God's crowning creation, we call them Adam and Eve because of their Hebrew words that denote them, they in effect become the children of the serpent. They run away from God.

They try to run and flee from Him. God chases after them, clothes them in the garments of an animal, so there has to be blood sacrifice for that covering to take place, and kicks them out of the garden lest they live forever cursed because of what they did. Now, if you're just a casual reader and you're reading Genesis 1, you go, oh, this is pretty cool. And then Genesis 2, it even gets better. And then Genesis chapter 3, it's like, oh, at the first, pretty awesome. Until you get to this point and the fall happens, and you're in Genesis 3 reading this and you're going, well, now what is God going to do?

How's He going to fix this? Will He ever come up with a plan to restore this crowning creation that has fallen? The answer comes in Genesis 3, verse 15. So I'm going to direct your attention to Genesis 3, but that's for context's sake. Go back to verse 8, down to the 15th verse. Verse 8 reads, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you? So he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, God said, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you that you should not eat? Then the man said, the woman whom you gave me to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate.

This is called passing the buck and it started that far back. And the Lord said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.

So she's also passing the buck. Both of the statements, however, were true. So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field on your belly you shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. Now here's the verse, look at it with your own eyes. Genesis 3 15, and I will put enmity between you and the woman between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now I've chosen to look at just that one verse and mosey our way through it, drilling deep into the words and phrases of this promise, because this promise contains no less than five realities, five certainties from this one promise.

Here's the first. There will be conflict. This verse promises conflict. Notice the word enmity. That means conflict. I will put enmity or I will put conflict or I will put hostility. Another translation says a feud will break out. You could even say to be at war with.

He is promising a war, a conflict. Now let's let's push the pause button. It's creation. So far everything is good. God says it's good.

Seven times in the first couple chapters, God does something, goes that's good, that's good, that's good, that's good, that's good. That's good. That's good. It's all good. There's only one thing that wasn't good and God fixed that and that was it's not good that man should be alone. So God fixed it by creating a woman to bring her to the man. So now that's good.

It's all good. Now it's a romance novel. You've got Adam and Eve and they're in love and it's a match made in heaven and you wonder, they're going to live happily ever after, right? Hardly. Now it all changes because now we meet a creature that is not even mentioned until now. He is called here the serpent. Really a poor translation. Nahash is the Hebrew word.

It can be translated the shining one. Some special creation of God called the serpent. Now we know who this is because we've read the rest of the book. Who is the serpent? It is Satan. We know that because and remember in school they would say the answers are in the back of the book. Well, the answers are in the back of the book. The last chapter of the Bible, Revelation, reveals the identity of the serpent.

Let me read it to you. This is Revelation 12 verse 9. So the great dragon was cast out. That serpent of old called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world. He was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him. Do you remember the Lord Jesus Christ made this statement, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning? That's where the conflict began.

Now there are two chapters we don't have time to really look at this morning. Ezekiel chapter 28 in the Old Testament and Isaiah chapter 14 give details as to who Satan was originally. Ezekiel calls him the anointed cherub that covers, so presumably a guardian of some sort maybe over God's throne. Isaiah tells us that he goes by the name Lucifer.

You've heard that term before. Lucifer is a name that means the morning star. So he was a star who wanted to be a director.

He wanted to direct the show and he said, I will, five times in that passage in the Old Testament, I will exalt myself above the throne, the stars of God. That is Lucifer. He asserts his will against God's will. Now up to this point there's only been one will in the universe.

That's why everything's so good. Now there's this being who decides now I'm going to do my own thing against the will of the Creator, beginning the conflict but the conflict spreads. And it spreads through other angelic beings.

They follow in the rebellion. Revelation 12 tells us Satan drew one third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. So like Satan, a star, these other stars these other angelic beings fell to the earth. They became a highly organized network of powerful spiritual beings and they seem to have such a vast organization that they have rankings. And Paul the apostle seems to refer to these ranks when he writes in Ephesians chapter 6 these familiar words, we struggle not against flesh and blood but against rulers, authorities, powers, spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms. So the conflict spreads from a single being to multiple beings a third of heaven but then it spreads now to the earth.

He falls to the earth, that becomes his domain and the conflict spreads into the human realm. That's what Genesis 3 is all about. Genesis 3 is the darkest day in all of human history. It's the day that Paul refers to in Romans chapter 5 when he says, through one man sin entered the world and death through sin thus death spread to all mankind. He was talking about this very day of Genesis chapter 3.

So one act of disobedience and the sin virus was introduced into the bloodstream, the bloodline of humanity. So there will be conflict. That's the first certainty in this promise.

Here's the second. There will be a continuing conflict. Notice more deeply it says, I will put enmity, conflict, hostility, between you speaking to the serpent and the woman. The woman at this point is Eve. And between your seed and her seed.

So your offspring will have conflict with the offspring of a woman. What does that mean? Well it means far more than far more than people are going to hate snakes and snakes are going to want to bite people. There's a spiritual component here in this prophecy.

It means there's going to be an ongoing conflict between humanity whom God loves and pursues and redeems and Satan's crowd influenced by those demons that fell but encompassing the world of humans that the Bible sums up by a single word, world, the world. The world doesn't agree with you. The world does not sympathize with you. The world by and large does not believe in your Jesus or the cross. And sometimes you feel so outnumbered by them at work or at school or in your family. You're thinking, man, you know, nobody else believes like I believe. That shouldn't surprise you actually.

And let me tell you why. 1 John 5 verse 19, John writes, we know that we are the children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. How's that for setting you apart?

Yep, you believe they don't, but the entire world is under the sway of the prince of all demons, Satan himself. So you're right. You're outnumbered. You're in the minority.

They're in the majority, but you happen to be right and they happen to be wrong. So there will be a continuing conflict. Now, I need to get your attention, so to speak, and just say that the next few minutes I need you to focus in because I'm going to get a little detailed here. But let me say that if you do not understand this ongoing conflict that the Scripture presents, the Bible will just not make sense to you. There'll be portions of the Scripture that you'll think, why is that there?

What's going on with that? That's a random set of stories that don't coalesce. So let me frame it for you briefly. We live in a parallel universe. What I mean by that is we live, there's a physical reality, but there's a spiritual reality. In our world, we call it the real world. We even say to people, hey, get real, man. You live in the real world.

This is the real world, okay? That's one world. The other world, I call it the really real world.

It's where a lot of the action is going on. It's unseen by us, just like you don't see sound waves or TV waves that are in this room, but you don't see them. They're invisible, but they are here. There's the really real world, a parallel universe of spirit beings, both angelic and demonic forces. 34 books in the Bible, 34 out of 66 books mention these beings, these angels. To be exact, 103 times in the Old Testament, 165 times in the New Testament, angels are mentioned.

The word angel is a word that means messenger. It's a special class of being. They are non-corporeal beings, meaning they do not have a body. Because they don't have a body, they're invisible. They are not subject to human decay.

They are not limited by the same limitations and hindrances we as humans experience. Ever since the fall, there has been this ongoing conflict in heavenly places, spiritual conflict, and invisible war, one author calls it, that has been going on from the fall of humanity all the way through. Now, one of the rules of warfare is to know who your enemy is and how your enemy operates.

So, first of all, you got to know who your enemy is. And if you don't believe in a devil, well, then he's already won. I don't believe, he's not real. There's no real thing as the devil.

So, he's already won. He's got your life hook, line, and sinker. Because he's so powerful, he's got you to believe he's not even there. But then, once you know your enemy, you do have to know how he works. Paul in the New Testament said, we're not ignorant of his devices.

Sadly, many of us are. So, the promise here is that some offspring of this woman will cause a bruising, or the Hebrew word could be translated, a crushing of Satan's head. Now, that's a pretty ominous promise. Let's say, before service, I ran up to you in the foyer and I said, hey, let me just give you a fair warning. After church, I'm going to find you and crush your head.

Fair warning, just letting you know. Now, I'd never say that to you. But let's say I said it to you and you really believed I was going to do that. Well, you're going to do one of two things.

Either you're going to avoid me and take evasive measures to get away from me because I'm a nutcase, or you're going to strike first, lest I have the opportunity to put you down. So, there is an announcement, a revelation that I give you, and you're going to respond to that revelation by countermeasures to take out the possibility of you being crushed. So, that frames for us what we call the invisible war. That's Skip Heutig, sharing why you and I desperately need forgiveness. In his message from the series, Bloodline, Tracing God's Rescue Mission from Eden to Eternity.

Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now, we want to tell you about a new resource that gives you powerful insight into the current war in Israel. Israel at War.

That's the title of a new book by Skip Heutig. Modern Israel has been at war from its very first day of existence. It's been the first day of existence, as Skip points out. On the day after Israel became a nation, that was May 14, 1948. On May 15, virtually every Arab neighbor attacked Israel to destroy it. Israel had been a nation one day.

They didn't have an organized army. Israel at War is up to date, concerning current events in the Mideast, and includes Skip's comments during his December tour of the Gaza border and a video link to Skip's interview in Jerusalem. The new book, Israel at War, is our gift to you this month to anyone who encourages the growth of Connect with Skip with a gift of $50 or more.

Make your financial vote of support at connectwithskip.com or by calling 1-800-922-1888. Israel at War will give you Skip's insight from over 40 trips to Israel and decades of Bible study. I know the Middle East seems like a very complex situation.

It's actually pretty basic. One side wants the other side dead. On one side you have a Jewish nation, a Jewish state called modern day Israel. Israel wishes to exist as a sovereign state living in peace.

Most Palestinians and other Arab nations, not all, but many of them, deny the right of Israel to exist. Receive Israel at War by Skip Heitzig with your gift. Go to connectwithskip.com or call 1-800-922-1888. Come back again tomorrow to hear the conclusion of Skip's message and discover what Jesus offers you. Satan has come to kill, to steal, and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the max. That's a Skip Heitzig free translation of have it more abundantly.

You're going to live life to the max. You're going to have an abundant life and I have come to do that. What he did I have done. I have come to undo. He ruined it. I came to fix it. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on his own. Make a connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.