40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 7

Episode Date: March 4, 2015

The guys talk about Adam and Eve being driven out of Eden and Cain and Able.

you are listening to a podcast produced and distributed by christholdfast.com please visit christholdfast.com for additional resources this is 40 minutes in the old testament Well, thanks for joining us for another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. This is episode number 7, and I am Daniel Price, and I am joined, as always, by Brandon Hanson and the main man, Chad Bird. How are you guys doing tonight? Hey, we're good. Hello to everybody, glad that you're back here with us And looking forward to jumping into Genesis 4 tonight

Yeah, can't wait, looking forward to it There's no need to wait because we've only got 40 minutes So Chad, don't make us wait, let's go Alright, let's get to it I want to mention a couple of things about Genesis 3 To kind of wrap that up and also to use those as a transition into Genesis 4. Because these are really a couple of important things

because they answer questions for us that I think sometimes come up and we might not even always ask them, but we might actually wonder in the back of our minds what the answer might be. And one of those is, if you look at the promise that we covered last week That promise in Genesis 3.15 about God putting enmity between the serpent or Satan and the woman. And in particular, that he would send this seed who would bruise the serpent on the head, but whose heel would be bruised. So we call that the Proto-Evangelium, the first gospel promise. The first explicit prophecy of the coming of the Messiah to destroy the work of the devil.

Now, we look at that verse, and we can see that God is promising here to send his son. But you might ask, how did Adam and Eve hear this promise? Did they really understand what God was talking about, or did this just basically go over their heads? So are we seeing more there than perhaps they did? Or did they not even hear it as a prophecy at all? Did they just hear it as some kind of vague reference to God doing something in the future? And there's a couple of verses that we'll look at, one in Genesis 3, one in Genesis 4, which, to me, go a long way toward answering that question about how Adam and Eve understood Genesis 3.15.

And the first one, although I don't think it's quite as clear, I think at least pushes us in that direction. And that's when you look at what Adam named his wife or how he changed her name. That's in verse 20 of chapter 3. It says, now the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. Or you could translate that also. because she was the mother of all life. And I think already there, in Adam changing her name from, remember originally she was called woman, she was called Isha, the Hebrew there.

The man is E, she is Isha, because she was taken out of the man. But this is a name change, which is always significant in the Bible, as you know. There's always a meaning behind that name change. And significantly, Adam does this. He gives her this new name immediately after God's speech. I mean, it's the very next verse. So God addresses the serpent. He addresses the woman.

He addresses Adam. And then as soon as that's finished, it says, Now the man called his wife's name E, because she was the mother of all life. And I think what's already going on here is that Adam realizes that from Eve, from a woman, is going to come forth this seed who is going to give them life again. The God is going to send this seed from the woman

who is going to reverse the effects that they're already beginning to feel because of sin. So Adam hears the promise, Eve hears the promise, and Adam's first reaction is to say, well we need to change your name Eve we need to change it to something which signifies that from you is going to come forth life and that life is going to be for all

because from you the seed is going to come forth now Adam was wrong in the sense that it didn't come from his wife it didn't come from Eve but you can already see there this anticipation that Adam has that things have gone terribly wrong but God promises that he's going to reverse that so that they become good again

that in place of death there is going to be life so I think that's significant to point out and I'm going to go back to that in just a couple of minutes when we get to Genesis chapter 4 verse 1 but I want to put it out there now and the second thing that I want to say about the end of chapter 3 is significant because of its connection with the life of Christ. In those closing verses, verses 22-24 of Genesis 3,

God says, this is some of this inner God talk, God talking to himself. He says, Because a man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, now lest he stretch forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever, dot, dot, dot. because of all that God sends him out from the Garden of Eden

but the verse I want to pinpoint and the verb I want to pinpoint from that verse is in 24 it says so God drove the man

out and at the east of the Garden of Eden he stationed the cherubim now Now, the verb that's used there in Hebrew, it's a forceful verb. First God says he's going to send him out, but in verse 24 it says he drove the man out from the garden. What I want you to hear in connection with that is another story. The Bible often does this.

It is language in such a way that you hear also a reference to another story, to a later story. And that later story that I want you to hear in connection with God driving Adam and Eve out is another driving out that happened later. And it's what's recorded in Mark chapter 1. In fact, the Greek translation of Genesis 4 verse 24 where it says he drove the man out. He uses a verb there that's ekbalo, to cast out or to drive out. That exact same verb occurs in Mark chapter 1 when it says that after the baptism of Jesus, immediately the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness. Now listen to those two verses in concert.

Genesis 4, 24, so God drove the man out of the Garden of Eden. And then Mark chapter 1, and immediately the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness. Now what you hear in just those two verses is an indication of what Christ is doing. he comes as the as the second Adam as the Adam he is going to go through the same experiences

that the first Adam went through in the sense that he will become a man and he will be driven out and he will be tempted by the devil except in his case, in the case of Christ he comes to not only to relive

but to undo the effects of the first Adam and one of the ways that he does that is by being driven out into the wilderness to face the very one who brought Adam and Eve down in the first place so Christ goes into the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days and while he's there as the second Adam

he too is tempted and yet unlike the first Adam he does not disobey the commands of his father And he does this not just to show that, oh, he's strong, he's God, he's able to resist temptation, but he does this precisely in order that he can win salvation for us by undoing the effects of the fall of our first father. So when you listen to the story of Genesis and the end of Genesis chapter 3, always listen to it with one ear

and then with your other ear listening to the stories in the gospel because very often you're going to hear how Christ in his ministry is acting as the second Adam he is repeating and he is redeeming

in his life as the second Adam and he's doing it in order that he might give us even more than we lost in the first Adam we lost innocence in the fall of Adam. We lost righteousness in the fall of the first Adam. But in Christ, we not only regain innocence and righteousness, we now have a God who is actually

flesh and blood with us and who reunites us to the Father by bringing us into communion with himself. Yeah, there's a difference that God in his sovereignty seems to think is a big difference and there's a difference between innocence

and redemption and so there's there's a difference between having someone who creates you and loves you and you're innocent

in a very real sense you're worth loving uh you're you're good and and uh and that's not a bad thing that's a very it's a very good thing but that's not the same as being redeemed and loved and uh so the what what we gain in christ is redeemer is something adam never had before the fall he had a relationship with god that was one of creator and creation but he did not have a relationship with god which is one of a fallen a fallen man and a redeemer he didn't have that and um and so even even though adam i'm sure could have said yes god is love not the same way that not the same way we can now

because love is best shown to us that uh that while we were sinners christ died for us and so So to be redeemed and restored by love is different than just being loved without that. And God, I think, thinks that that's better. Yeah, that puts it perfectly. I think this came up in our conversation last week as well, how the fall was the opportunity for God to demonstrate the true depth of his love for us. Certainly he loves creation, certainly he loved Adam and Eve, but to love his perfect creation is different than him looking at a fallen creation, at people who have become, you know, at enmity with him, his enemies, and yet he still loves them. Well, I mean, it's Jesus who says, you know, I mean, hey, you love those who love you? I mean, anybody can do that.

You know, you do good to those who do good? Anybody can do that. Don't the heathens do that? Everybody does that. But God, you know, and as Christians, you know, we're told to love our enemies and to do, you know, pray for those who persecute us and this kind of thing. And this is exactly what God does for us. And there's a huge difference there, you know, that, sure, like, yes, God loves his creation in its perfect state. And that's good.

It's a good thing. But it's not an astounding thing. Because everyone does that. We love people that are good to us. We love people who love us. It's very different for God to come and love and die for his enemies. It's very different for God to take on flesh and be crucified and pray for those who persecute him as they're doing it. It's very different.

It's a very different love there. We struggle to do that. But God shows us just what he means when he says, I am love. Exactly all of that entails. And talking about him being driven out in the wilderness, you know, in the two Adams thing. You have Christ doing in a fallen, barren wilderness what Adam couldn't do in perfection. I mean, he's the second and greater Adam. That there's Adam in a perfect garden, everything he needs taken care of, and he falls.

There's Christ in a fallen world in a barren desert, and he conquers. It's an awesome thing. Yeah, it is. It's not a perfect parallel in the sense that you have two equals who are – it's not as if Jesus was in a garden when all this was happening, as you're saying. He's been fasting 40 days and 40 nights. Adam had as much as he wanted to eat. Eve had as much as she wanted to eat.

So it's like he upped the ante, if you will. And the devil tries to play the same trick on him and use the words of God to try to get Jesus to fall the same way he did with Eve. Did the Lord really say – he puts doubt in her mind as to what God has said. With Jesus, he tries to take God's words and twist them to make him do something that he shouldn't do, but Jesus isn't buying it. And he, instead of questioning the words of God, spouts the words of God right back to him and diffuses them. And I think that we could say that Satan approaches Adam and Eve the same way that he approaches Jesus in as much as he tries to get all of them. And we can say the same thing about us as well. He tries to get them to question the Father's love for them.

So with Adam and Eve, he gets them to question whether God is truly good to them, whether he really loves them enough, because he's withholding something from them. And then, in the case of Christ, he begins his temptations by saying, if you are the Son of God, then do this. And if you think about, for instance, the temptation to turn the stones into bread, Christ has just been baptized. The Father has just said to him, you are my beloved son, and you I am well pleased. So that happens. Christ goes out into the wilderness, and for 40 days and 40 nights he has nothing to eat or to drink.

and the Satan comes along and he takes the words that the father spoke at the baptism and he puts them in the form of a doubting question. So the father said that you're his beloved son, but look at you, look where you are, look what you're suffering. So are you really the son of God? If you are, then why is this happening to you? so he tries to get Christ to question his sonship in the same way that he tries to get Adam and Eve to

and succeeds in getting Adam and Eve to question that they are the children of God that God has promised to take care of and to give his good gifts to so there's so much there's a richness to the two narratives of Genesis 3 and then the temptation accounts in the gospel

a lot of beautiful theology in the second Adam so I guess that's going to wrap up Genesis 3 we could spend probably at least a thousand more podcasts talking about Genesis 3 but there's a whole lot of the Old Testament that we haven't got to yet

so I guess we'll get moving and work our way through chapter 4 and the time that we have left tonight Okay, so I want to go back to something I was mentioning at the beginning in reference to what Adam and Eve thought about this promise that God gave them. Because the opening verse of chapter 4 is the second indication that Eve, when she heard the promise that God gave to her, not only believed the promise, but she understood it in a really amazing and deep way. I'll explain what I mean in just a second

Let's first of all take a look at what that verse says And I want to talk just a minute about the Hebrew in that verse So Genesis 4 starts out with Adam My translation has he had relations with his wife The old King James as he knew his wife So he had relations with his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth to Cain

and she said and this is where I want you to listen carefully and if you know your translation or if you're looking at a translation see what it has to say and then I want to say something about the Hebrew I'm looking at the New American Standard

and here's how it translates what Eve says I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord And I think that most English translations render it something similar to that. Now, I'm going to take a leap here, which in my opinion is really not much of a leap because it's really following the literal translation of the Hebrew. And this is the same way that Luther took the verse as well.

And I'm going to translate Eve's words this way. I have gotten a man namely the Lord the Hebrew there does not have this translation that many of the translations have the Hebrew does not have with the help of the particular particle that's used there in Hebrew

ordinarily is an indication of the direct object or it's an explanatory article that is kind of shedding further light on something that was said before it. So there's no with the help of the Lord in the Hebrew here. Instead, if you were to translate it literally,

it's I have gotten a man, namely the Lord. Now what if, this might be the first time that you've heard this, But this is – I'm not just making this up. I promise you. Go read Luther on Genesis 4, and he'll say the same thing. So what does this mean? Well, here's Eve. She has sex with Adam. She gets pregnant, and she gives birth to her first child. It's a male. Now notice the two things she says. Notice what she doesn't say. She doesn't say, I have conceived and given birth to a boy. Or she doesn't say, I've conceived and given birth to a child.

First of all, she calls him a man, which is odd. But then she goes on to call him Yahweh, because this is not just the Lord in the sense of lowercase, but this is actually the divine name. So I have gotten a man, namely the Lord. So if I can channel Luther here for a minute, this is what Eve thinks. she is in a fallen state now.

Just like God promised her, she had this pain in childbirth. This happened to her. So I guarantee you, when she was giving birth to Cain, she had these words of God echoing in her mind that he would multiply her pain in childbirth. But that's not all she had in mind. She also had in mind the promise that God gave her immediately before then that her seed, her seed would crush the head of the serpent

even as the serpent would bruise him on the heel. Luther calls her statement here a pious mistake, which I think is a beautiful way of expressing it. She made the mistake of thinking, and I think we can understand how she thought this, but she made the mistake of thinking that she was going to be the one who would give birth to this Savior. She thought it was going to happen right away.

So the first child that was born, she thinks is the Messiah. So she says what she says. She says, I have gotten or I have acquired a man, namely the Lord. In other words, Eve thinks that she's given birth to the promised seed. She thinks that Cain is the Savior. So, did Adam and Eve understand what God promised them in Genesis 3.15? I think they completely understood it. They understood that God was going to send a seed.

He would be the woman's seed, and he would be the one to undo the work of the serpent. Now, they made the mistake of, in their excitement and in their faith, thinking that it was going to happen right away. But I guess you can't fault them for that, because they were anticipating God to fulfill this promise to them. Notice, too, how Eve identifies who he is. She says, I've gotten a man, namely the Lord. So she identifies this child of promise with Yahweh himself. So it's like she somehow gets the fact that this promised seed

also has to be God, has to be the Lord Himself. It's not as if God is going to send something or someone that is separate from Him, but that He Himself is going to be the one who comes to redeem them. So I don't know if you guys have any reaction to that, if you're familiar with that understanding. But for me anyway, it really opens up the mind of Adam and Eve and what they were thinking when they heard this promise, that God really meant it.

and that God was going to deliver on that promise right away. Yeah, I've actually been familiar with that for a little while. It's interesting. The first time I heard it, I was like, yeah, right. Really? All the way back then, that's what they were thinking. And then when somebody showed me the Hebrew and opened it up for me like you just did there, it was like, oh, yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, I think – we'll get to this later on, but I think that same pious mistake that was actually made by Noah's father, because when Noah is born, he says that – he names him Noah because he says this is the one who is going to give us rest. So he thinks that the son who is born to his wife is actually the promised seed as well. And he's going to be the one who gives them rest from all of the evil that they've been experiencing since the fall of Adam and Eve. So you can see already in Genesis this faith in the promise and this anticipation that God is going to fulfill that promise. So much so that it's almost like every time a male child is born, they're thinking, is this him? Is this going to be the seed? And you can hear echoes of that then through the rest of the Old Testament. Now, this might be like – this is wild speculation, and there's no way to know this, but you do have to wonder what this does to how you treat a child.

You have another child, an Abel, but you're convinced that Cain is the Messiah. And Cain turns out to be quite the rotten guy. And what does that do to you? First of all, did they ever tell him this? Did they treat him differently because of this? Did he have this pompous pride before God because of this, the way that he approaches the sacrifice? What did this do to Adam and Eve when Cain kills Abel and then God marks him and casts him out? It's pretty devastating stuff to think about.

Yeah, it is. In fact, if I recall correctly, when Luther goes on to talk about what happens with Cain and Abel, he actually brings that out. But he suspects that because Cain is the firstborn, because Eve at least is convinced that Abel is the promised seed, that as they talk to him about this, that his pride grew, that he became full of himself. and as a result of this when he and his brother offered the sacrifice and God had regard for the sacrifice of Abel

and did not have regard for Cain and his sacrifice because he had such a high opinion of himself that that inflamed his anger all the more he had such a big head because he thought that he was God's chosen one

that when God didn't have regard for his sacrifice or for him that it was it was even worse because of that and and i suspect that it was uh when when he turns out to be instead of the instead of the messiah a murderer that that also was a was a an even worse blow to his parents because they had this false hope that they built up around him i think you see a sense of that just in the way that the text talks about it just in just in the english you see now adam knew eve his wife and she conceived and bore cain saying i have gotten a man with the help of the lord and then in verse two it simply says and again she bore his brother abel period he's just able yeah he's just he's just able and

And Abel in Hebrew means vanity or breath or like nothingness. So here you have Cain, this one acquired from the Lord, and then you have his brother who's nothing, who's vanity. So you can see that in the very ways in which the two of them are named. And it's fascinating to see how various commentators have taken Genesis 4 and used it as sort of a bigger narrative by which you can understand the whole rest of history. Because Luther talks about, and others talk about how you have basically the church of Abel and the church of Cain. And this is kind of the enmity between the woman seed and Satan seed that we talk about in Genesis 3. How the true church is pictured as the church of Abel, which in the eyes of the world or in the eyes of the church of Cain is nothing.

It's vanity because it's persecuted, it suffers. There's nothing about it to attract people because of its outward pomp and glory. Instead, it suffers under the cross. So this narrative in Genesis 4 is really a much broader story about really the whole history of the world and the conflicts that we see between good and evil, between the church and the world, between truth and falsehood. So anyway, let's move on just to – in the time that we have, I think we still have about maybe eight or nine minutes left to talk about the sacrifice and what happened as a result of it. we're told that Abel was a keeper of the flocks and Cain was a farmer, basically.

And then we have the first recorded instance of sacrifice being offered. And if you're familiar with the story, you remember that Cain brings an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. And then Abel brings an offering that's the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. Now I want to say first of all that there was absolutely nothing wrong

with the offering that Cain brought. You'll sometimes hear that. Oh, there must have been something inferior about the offering of Cain. Or, well, Abel brought the sacrifice of an animal, so a bloody sacrifice. But Cain just brought an offering that was a grain offering. But there is nothing in the biblical story to suggest that what Cain brought, that the substance of his offering, was in some way wrong or inferior to Abel's offering. It does say that Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions, but that doesn't indicate that they were somehow better.

In fact, both of these kinds of offerings, a grain offering as well as the offering of animals, both of these found their way within Exodus and Leviticus as part of the ongoing sacrificial life of the Israelites. So Cain was bringing of the stuff of his vocation. He was a farmer, so that's what he brought. Now, Abel was bringing the stuff of his vocation because he was a shepherd. He watched over the flock. So when you read this story, don't imagine, don't interpret it moralistically, in other words. Don't think that, oh, well, Abel did what was right. He brought the good stuff.

Cain did what was wrong. He brought the inferior stuff. This isn't about the quality of the offering. It's about something that is much deeper and much, much more important. Now, the story goes on in verse 4 to say that the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard. And Cain's reaction is that he becomes very angry and his countenance falls. in genesis itself we are never given a a clear indication as to exactly why god had regard

for abel and for his offering but didn't have regard for for cain and for his for his offering however there's a there's a very significant verse that sheds light on genesis 4 in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 11 is a chapter that records much about the life of the saints. And in reference to this particular incident, Hebrews chapter 11 verse 4 says, By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts.

And through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. Now, this is extremely important because what it does is it orients our whole understanding of what's going on here in this conflict with Cain and with Abel. The reason that Abel's offering is accepted is not because Abel was a better man. It's not because his offering was a better offering. The reason that Abel's offering was accepted was the same reason that Abel himself was accepted, because he was a man of faith. He believed in the promises of the Lord, and on account of that faith, God accepted him, God accepted his offerings. Cain, on the other hand, he thought that he should be accepted and that his offering should be accepted

simply because of who he was and what he brought So the faith that is in Abel the lack of faith that is in Cain is central here and it helps us to understand in the bigger picture, in the broader perspective The reason that we, anything that we are, anything that we do is acceptable to the Lord as well. So what is it about me that's acceptable to God?

What is it about me that I might do my good works or my offerings that are acceptable to God? Well, it's nothing about me. It's nothing about my works. There's nothing about me that's superior in any way. There's nothing about anything that I do that's superior. The only reason that God accepts me is because by faith, I am connected to the one who is entirely acceptable to the Father. So by faith, I am connected to Christ, who is the one who is perfect on my behalf. By faith I am connected to Christ whose works are perfectly acceptable to the Father.

So just like Abel was acceptable because he acted by faith, so I'm acceptable and you're acceptable inasmuch as by faith we are connected to Christ himself. and it's because of his sacrifice, it's because of his works done on our behalf that God looks upon us as righteous. God looks upon our good deeds as righteous, not because they're righteous in and of themselves, not because I'm righteous in and of myself any more than Abel was. But that faith is what connects us to the acceptable one, and in him we are accepted by the Father.

it's interesting that that faith and uh you know which belief in in god's word and what god has said and what god has promised positive or negative um is is all that matters i mean that way with adam and eve says don't eat of this tree or you will surely die they doubt it that's what you get but you see that like you know Hebrews 11 is the go to chapter for this

but you see it Abel's accepted because of faith Abraham's accepted because of faith and so on and so on faith in it's really as simple as this that you believe that God doesn't lie

that what he said is true that's it that's it that's that's the dividing line uh between because because all there are is bad people there aren't any there aren't good people and bad people they're just bad people they're the only dividing line between them is do you believe that what god says is true yeah it's just it really is as simple as that i think we make it more complicated it has to be, because it seems too simple. I mean, there's no way that it could be that

simple, but it is. We are all under the judgment and the penalty of the law. And the only way that we are out from underneath that is by God granting us the gift of faith that unites us to the one who redeems us from the curse of the law so i don't make myself better i don't somehow improve my works so that they're acceptable to the father i believe that what god has done for me in christ is in fact true and because of that gift of faith that god gives me then i'm acceptable as abel was accepted

my works are pleasing to the father because they are they become the works of become the works of christ yeah and and when you're talking about faith too i think that sometimes even this we can turn into to something weird that it's not you know do you believe it you know a lot of times i had a guy ask me the other day um if i uh he was talking about the lord's supper and he was asking it he said do you so you believe that uh that the body and blood of christ are there with the bread and wine and i said no but i confess it you know and like this is just this is just brutally honest you know where um you know and i think that i think that this is the thing too is that you know i believe help my unbelief i approach the altar that way i believe that

that you're here that your body and blood are here help me to believe it i believe it help me Help me, I want to believe it That's enough That is enough I was teaching Bible class this morning And I said something very similar I asked if the worship service Was for unbelievers as well

And I answered my own question Like a lot of teachers do I said I hope it is Because I am one of those Unbelievers many times That is to say I struggle with doubt.

I struggle with believing the promises of God. So I pray that same prayer, Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief. And he does. He does. Faith is not a matter of having enough faith. It's not a matter of having a strong enough faith. It's simply a matter of having faith

that Christ fills with himself. And that's all. Yeah. You know, when Jesus says that if you had a mustard seed of faith, you could say that this mountain would be cast into the sea. I don't see a whole lot of that going on. He doesn't tell us this to make us pursue mountain moving, but just to show us how little faith we have. If we even had the – even a mustard – if you had that much, you could do this, but you don't even have that much. but but the point of that really is that there is a mountain that needs to be cast into sea and

what it is is a mountain it's a mountain of unbelief and transgression and sin and the smallest amount of faith even a mustard seed of faith will cast all of that into the sea of forgetfulness that's what he's saying but um and so yeah uh you know just just the tiniest bit But just enough to say, I believe, help my unbelief, that much will cast that mountain of transgression as far as East is from the West. And that's the dividing line. That's it. That's what separated Cain from Abel. and i i think uh i think at that our our 40 minutes is just about up to uh pick up the rest of genesis 4 next week that's it we are out of time so thanks for joining us uh you can uh go

over to christ hold fast.com and check out uh back episodes of the 40 minutes in the old testament and you read some articles and check out the other stuff the other podcasts and other things we've got going on there and uh please go over to itunes and subscribe and rate and review this podcast and please uh share it on social media and wherever the whatever it is that you do out there in the in the world if you would help us promote this that would be that'd be great and we'd really appreciate it so we'll see you guys next week Thank you.