God's faithfulness to His Word is demonstrated throughout history, from the initial promise in Genesis 3:15 to the coming of Christ. The sermon refutes Marcion's heresy of a disconnected Old and New Testament, showing how Christ fulfills Old Testament prophecies and covenants, such as the Abrahamic covenant through Shem. The fulfillment of God's promises, exemplified by events like Alexander the Great's conquest of Tyre and Caesar Augustus's taxation, assures believers of God's control and His plan for salvation. Ultimately, the sermon emphasizes that Christ's death and resurrection crushed Satan's head, fulfilling God's redemptive purpose and calling believers to live holy lives in assurance of His sovereign plan.
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Deuteronomy chapter four and we want to begin our reading at verse twenty three and then we'll read verses twenty three and twenty four and we'll move on to Hebrews chapter twelve Deuteronomy four verse twenty three where Moses reminding the new generation who's going to go in and possess the land of Canaan that came out of they're the children of the people that came out of Egypt He says to them in verse twenty three, Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of anything which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee.
For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. Jealousy is sin. That which is a vice among men, is a virtue with God. What makes the difference? To say that God is a jealous God means that our God, by his activity, is protecting a love relationship. A love relationship which he has entered into with his people. And God reminds them that he is jealous over his people.
And he reminds them in a very definite way. Hebrews chapter twelve. Verse twenty five. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escape not who refused, him that speaketh on earth much more shall not we escape. If we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven. Whose voice then shook the earth, but now he hath preached? promised saying, Yet once more, will I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, yet once more, signifying the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. Let's pray together. Our Father, in the precious name of our Lord Jesus, we bow in thy holy presence. We begin this meeting tonight by singing, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Thou art the holy God of heaven. Thou art the God of creation. Thou art the God of creation.
who cannot countenance sin. Thou art of pure eyes and to behold evil, and you cannot look upon iniquity. So holy are thou. And yet you invite us into your presence. You invite us to come boldly to the throne of grace. And we can say simply thanks to thy dear son for making it possible for us to thus approach thee, for It's His work which has removed all guilt. Our conscience is clear. We can approach and we can approach for thanksgiving. We can approach in boldness and we can approach in joy.
We ask you, our God, that tonight, as we again examine thy word, that thou wilt enable that which is spoken to stick in our minds, that we may grasp these truths and not be ashamed to own them for the Lord Jesus' sake. We ask in His name for His glory according to your word. Amen. One of the greatest blessings that came to me as a young believer when I really started to grow in the things of God was the doctrine of fulfillment.
To see how God spake. As we noted this morning, briefly, and I'm going to go over some of the same material that we looked at this morning, but in a more lengthy way. But the thing is to see how God spoke and how it came to pass exactly as God said it would. We have a God who keeps His Word. Our God cannot fail. Our God is manifested. in the Word of God and through the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ as a God of infinite perfection and holiness.
And the fact that God keeps His Word is the greatest challenge that the man on the street, any boy, any girl will ever meet in their lifetime. God keeps His Word. Every promise that God makes, He keeps. The Word of God says, He that believeth is not condemned. That's a promise. And the day that I believed on Christ, I passed out of condemnation and into the realm of life. But His Word also says, He that believeth not is condemned already, because He has not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And the person who does not believe is already under condemnation and God will ultimately sentence that person to eternal condemnation. God keeps His Word. Now this is most important when we read the Bible to realize that we do not drift into heresy easily. And we don't want to drift into the heresy, especially the heresy that plagued the church in the Second century. The heresy that plagued the church in the second century was brought about by a man whose name was Martian.
And this heretic, he came to power in Asia Minor. And though he was excommunicated, his destructive teaching took hold. It took hold, and it lingered for almost two centuries. However, Martian believed and taught that there was a total incompatibility between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. He believed in a radical discontinuity between the God of the Old and the God of the New. Marcion therefore made his own Bible, and his followers followed that.
It had no Old Testament. there was no Old Testament to Marcion's Bible. And he had a severely hacked New Testament. And his New Testament consisted only of the Gospel by Luke, and that was an edited version. An edited version of the Gospel by Luke. And it contained ten edited Pauline epistles. The pastoral epistles were omitted in Marcion's New Testament. The problem with heresy, it never completely died out. For in the nineteenth century with the rise of liberalism, there are those who wished to separate what they considered to be primitive and the crude ways of the Old Testament from the new.
Frederick Schralmacher was one of these, and he seems to be the patriarch of liberalism. And of course with him came Gaff and Wellhausen, who invented what he's known and taught in many of our so-called Christian colleges. Elon taught the Gaff-Wellhausen theory. It's been taught at Elon for a number of years. Sad to say, there are others have taught this theory as well. It's known as another, by another name, it's called the JED theory. And the JED theory just says that there were certain writers, there were the Jehovah-Istic writers that used the word Jehovah in their writings.
Then there were the Deuteronic writers, the farmers. And then there were the Elohistic writers. They used the term for God Elohim. And it's called writer J, writer D, writer E. God says Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. This is what is known as the JED theory. It is known as the Gap-Wellhausen theory as well. And with a rise of liberalism, a lot of the old heresies have been revived. It's interesting to note in what we read tonight that Deuteronomy four is quoted by the writer to the Hebrews as we read from Hebrews chapter twelve.
And it's quoted in a way that is a warning to us. Our God is a consuming fire. And that expression declares the glory of His holiness. The glory of God's holiness was manifested when He delivered Israel out of Egypt. The glory of God's holiness was manifested when He took Israel, this company that's being instructed in Deuteronomy, when He took them into the land of Canaan, across the Jordan River, and they possessed the land. Now, we need to listen to all that God has spoken.
God is a God among Sinai as well as a God among Zion and Mount Calvary. He reveals His love. He reveals His grace. God's love is a holy love. God's grace is a holy grace. God's wrath is a holy wrath. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. We read in Isaiah six, all the earth is filled with his glory. So to begin our study tonight, we want to begin where we began this morning at the seed plot of the Bible, Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen.
That's the seed plot of all God's purposes. For in the seed plot of God's purposes, God announces to Satan that, some very definite things. And these things must be taken into consideration, for God has spoken. And it's important what he says. Galatians chapter four, verse four says, When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under law to redeem them that were under law.
That passage in Galatians chapter four, verses four through six, it deals with a time when Jesus arrived. When God announced to Satan that the seed of the woman was going to crush his head, it was very important. But it took a few thousand years before the seed of the woman arrived. That should teach us something. I'm praying for Steve that he gets a job. I'm praying for Steve that he gets a good job.
And this is encouraging to me when I look at a passage like this, because God is never too late in what he does. See, Mother Eve thought that Cain was the answer. You see, I mentioned that this morning. But you see, Cain was not the answer. He was not the seed of the woman. He became a child of the devil, as we noticed from First John chapter three. But God, in the fullness of time, in the purposes of God, at the proper time, God moves. We see that in the house at Bethany in John chapter eleven.
Lazarus was sick. Our Lord waited a few more days. He didn't go right away. He loved Martha. He loved Mary. He loved Lazarus. And why didn't he go right away? The greater glory, friends, of raising Lazarus from the dead and manifesting the mighty power of God as to who he really is. He is the seed of the woman. God is never too late, and God is never too early. Now, this should comfort our hearts. This is something that we can pray in relation to one another about. Lord, we get anxious. I'm anxious to see Steve get a job. And I know he is.
But the Lord knows why he hasn't given him one yet. He knows why. But I'll guarantee you this. In God's purpose. He's not going to fail Steve. He'd be the first Christian that was ever failed by God. God does not fail his own. And if it appears that he does, and we have to make changes in our lives, as I've had to make over the years, I found that God is always right. God's always right. He never makes a mistake. So when we read Galatians four, verse four, When the fullness of the time has come, God sent forth His Son.
This implies a lot. This implies a period of preparation, beloved. And so there was. And when we look through the Old Testament, as we did this morning, what a period of preparation it was for the Son of God to come. God prepared Israel. He prepared the nations. Those of you who attend a Wednesday morning class, we have some wonderful studies on a Wednesday morning, if I have to say so myself, because I don't know if you ever prepare in a way like I do, but I get excited preparing. I get excited preparing.
And the other Wednesday morning, we were in Zechariah chapter nine, dealing with a preparation. for the coming of the Messiah. And we were dealing primarily with a man many miles away by the name of Alexander the Great. And we were dealing with a destruction of tire as found in Ezekiel chapter twenty-two. Now you may not enjoy some of these remote prophecies that God made. In Ezekiel chapter twenty-two, God says that he's going to scrape tire the city into the middle of the sea. Now that's a big statement.
Then when you read Ezekiel chapter twenty nine, I'm going out on a limb, I'm sorry, but to get your attention. In Ezekiel twenty nine, God tells Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, he said, you labored at the wall of Babylon till every head was bald and every shoulder was bare. And then God says, but I've given you Egypt. You've done a work for me at Babylon, but I'm going to give you Egypt. See, you did a work for me at Tyre, the city of Tyre. The city of Tyre had a wall, a hundred and fifty feet high. And Nebuchadnezzar couldn't get in.
But God says in Ezekiel twenty-two, and again in chapter twenty-six, he's going to scrape Tyre into the sea. Does God mean what he says? Does God keep his word? You see, in the III BC at the Battle of Issus, Alexander the Great from Greece, he defeated the Persians. He defeated the Persians at the Great Battle of Issus, what they call the outstanding battles of world history. And that gave Alexander the Great free reign to go down the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. And he came to Tyre.
When he got the Tyre, he couldn't get in. There was a wall. But Alexander the Great scaled the wall. And when he got in, he found it was empty. There wasn't anybody in the city. Tire had moved about seven hundred paces out into the Mediterranean Sea on the little island known as Iraq. And that became their fortress in the Mediterranean Sea. And Alexander the Great, he got so angry, he took the wall and the city of Tire and scraped it, as the word of God says he would, into the sea.
And he built a causeway out into the sea, and he took Tire. When we understand what God is doing, and we read a passage it says, when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son. You see, even in the sending forth of His Son, I get excited when I read Luke chapter two, verse one. A very simple verse, and it came to pass in the days of Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. You see, it has reference to when the fullness of the time has come. You see, here is a mother who is pregnant with child by the Holy Spirit.
She's living in Nazareth. But Micah the Prophet said, the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem, quite a distance away. How's she going to get there? Oh, God simply does something very simply. He just taps a man a few thousand miles away by the name of Caesar Augustus, because everybody likes to be taxed. And leaders like to tax. So he put a taxation on. And then with a taxation, everybody had to go to their city where they were born in order to be registered. And Mary and Joseph have to go to Bethlehem.
And while they were in Bethlehem, what happened? When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under law, to redeem them that were under law. Beloved, that means of His preparation made for the coming of the Son of God. And through Alexander the Great, beloved, we're back to him now. Alexander the Great, who conquered Tyre, who conquered the western shore of the land of Palestine. He was good to the Jews, and he spread the Greek culture. In spreading the Greek culture, the Old Testament scriptures were translated by seventy scholars in a place in Egypt called Alexandria, and it's known as a Septuagint version, the version that our Lord Jesus quoted when he was on earth.
Beloved, when the fullness of the time has come, God sent forth His Son, What a passage. A period of preparation was very definite. So there was an era which not only anticipated the coming of Christ, but by its raw emphasis, it led to the coming of Christ. More than that, it demonstrated the need for the coming of Christ. When the fullness of the time has come, at the right time, God arrives on the scene. This is a God, beloved, who died for our sins at the cross on Calvary's Hill.
Up to this very point, the point of the fullness of the time, history had been running toward this very goal. For the scripture tells us in Second Corinthians chapter one and verse twenty, all the promises of God are in him, in him are yea, and in him amen. It was Augustine, or you might say Augustine. It was Augustine who coined the well-known saying, the old is in the new revealed, and the new is in the old concealed. Now, when you go through the gospel accounts, we see how our Lord fulfilled the Old Testament.
Matthew five, seventeen, think not that I am come to destroy the law of the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Hebrews chapter ten verse seven. And we had in the Sunday school lesson this morning. Lo, I come in the volume of the book. It is written to me to do thy will, O God. Now, there are many today who would use this expression. We should study the Old Testament on its own terms. We should leave out the Christological focus. That would leave us only with a historical, grammatical of the Old Testament.
And you and I know that if we miss Christ, we miss it all. Christ is the focus of the Old Testament scriptures. It is what he said to the Pharisees in John five. Search the scriptures. For in them ye think ye have eternal life. For they are they which testify of me. Now that brings us to Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen, where we began this morning. You see, in Genesis three fifteen, this is a statement made to the serpent, the devil, and its full meaning. Genesis three fifteen is a passage that needs to be studied.
And we may rest assured that the devil has studied it. Satan has studied it if Christians are lazy. In the study of Scripture, just remember this, Satan isn't. I'm sure he studied it. And we learned three things this morning from that passage in Genesis three-fifteen. I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed. It shall crush your head, but you will bruise his heel. We learned three things. Number one, that the deliverer would be one of humanity. He would be the seed of the woman.
Number two, he would be a male descendant. See, God can speak with exactness. That's something you and I can't do. See, when we were expecting our children, we didn't know until they were born whether it was male or female. We didn't have this. sonar and all and everything else that they use today to know beforehand whether you should buy pink or blue. We didn't have that. So we bought white. It would fit anything. You see, that's how it is. But you see, if I would have said it's going to be a boy, I could have only been fifty percent right.
But God said it's going to be a boy. It's going to be a male child. He shall crush your head, is what God said to the devil. The deliverer is going to be a male child. And by the way, that holds true when it comes to Samson. In Judges XIII, the angel of the Lord said to Manoa, his wife, he's going to deliver the children of Israel from the oppression of the Philistines. He's going to begin to deliver the children of Israel from the oppression of the Philistines. of the Philistines. In other words, he said he's going to be a son. I'm going to give you a son. More than that, the tempter's defeat.
The third thing. Not only that he's going to be one of humanity, not only he's going to be a male child, but number three, the tempter's defeat will be total. It's going to crush your head. Now, it's Christ himself who made reference to this great prophecy. He made reference to it in John chapter twelve. And I want you to turn to John twelve for a moment. In the twelfth chapter of John, I remember a man in Harrisburg who, from the Kalker Street meeting, Thornton Kalker Street, who loved this twelfth chapter of John.
Earl Whitaker was his name. And we always called him Doc. He's a man who studied the Scriptures. But here in John chapter twelve, it's an important chapter, by the way. Verse thirty-one, the Lord Jesus said, Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. What does he mean by that passage? He means, as he says back in verse twenty-three, The hour is come. The time has come when I'm going to assert my power as the deliverer of my people. You see, then shall the prince of this world be cast out.
Then Christ goes on in John chapter twelve, and he tells how he will accomplish the defeat of the serpent. He says in verse thirty-two, and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. In other words, I'm going to draw all my people to me by taking their place as their substitute, by being lifted up from the earth, by being made sin, by being crucified. I'm going to draw them to myself. Somehow the deliverer is going to defeat the enemy by dying. That's what he's saying.
back in John chapter three when he was explaining to Nicodemus the new birth. In verse thirteen he said, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Here he said, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me. He signifying how he's going to accomplish his death verse thirty three this he said signifying what death he should die don't miss verse thirty three our Lord was speaking of his death and the Apostle Paul goes on to refer to this promise in Romans chapter sixteen and verse twenty where he says and the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly in other words Here the hope of Paul expresses a future deliverance and one that he was looking forward to as a believer.
And this fits in well with that which we have in Revelation twenty. In Revelation twenty we have the outline of Satan's final defeat. He's being cast into the lake of fire where the beast and the false prophet are. Revelation chapter twenty. And here we find, and we conclude that Satan's defeat was accomplished at the cross, and it's going to be brought to fruition at the second coming of Christ. Isn't it amazing in creation, at the dawn of creation, when man sinned, God made the announcement?
In the fullness of the time God's Son came and was lifted up, And he crushed the head of Satan. But Satan is still around. And in patience we await. Well, the coming of the Lord. For throughout this age, our Lord Jesus is delivering a people. A people whom God the Father gave to him before the foundation of the world. He's delivering them from Satan's clutches. and under their feet he's going to bruise the tempter as we read in Romans chapter sixteen and verse twenty and the other defeat of Satan will take place before their eyes a dark God on the throne beloved when we see and understand something of the doctrine of fulfillment.
It enables us to grow in the Lord, and it gives us assurance that we have trusted in Him who alone is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. Well, this morning we moved on to the book of Genesis, and we moved over to chapter nine, you remember, that man by the name of Shem. For the first time in history, when you get to Genesis chapter nine, after the flood, Noah's son, Shem, God, he said, to be the God of an individual. He's a God of Shem.
He's a God of Shem. In fact, when you examine this passage in Genesis chapter nine, the blessing goes even further. God says he's going to dwell in the tents of Shem. He's going to dwell in the tents of Shem. That means that God is going to have a special relationship with Shem's descendants. Now the man who was Shem's descendant was Abraham, and he enjoyed God's special care, for God made with him that great Abrahamic covenant. And therefore, when we come to the New Testament, In Romans chapter nine, verse four, it says concerning Israel as a nation, to them belong the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God and of whom concerning the flesh, the Messiah came.
The deliverer came from Shem to Abraham to Isaac to Jacob through Judah. Through David, and you can go down the list as you have in the genealogy in both Matthew and in Luke. You see, it was as a Shemite that Jesus Christ came. Remember what he said to the woman of Samaria? Salvation is of the Jews. That's what he said. And through his redemptive act of Calvary, our Lord Jesus, the one who said salvation is of the Jews.
He brought deliverance. And it's amazing, beloved. He calls himself a God of Shem. He says he's going to dwell in the tents of Shem. And then when the gospel came, he says, I want you to preach the gospel to the Shemites first. You know Romans one, sixteen. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth to the Jew first, the Shemites, and also to the Greeks. Ah, what a God we have. Well, quickly, let's try to apply this truth to our own hearts.
It's so important to see the fulfillment of God's purpose in the person of Christ for a number of reasons. You see, number one, it gives both confidence and assurance. I don't know of anything better than assurance. A number of weeks ago when I spoke, I introduced the message by saying it's one thing better than being saved. It's knowing that you are. That's assurance. And that's what we get when we study the doctrine of fulfillment. We don't need to say like John the Baptist had his apostles asked, are they he that should come or should we look for another?
No. We know and are sure that he's the Savior of the world, the deliverer of his people. He gives confidence and assurance why. Number one, God keeps his word. Not a word has failed of all that God has promised. But more than that, We know that our God is in control. Proverbs twenty-one one, the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. As the rivers of waters, he turneth it whithersoever he will.
Do I believe that? And it came to pass in the days of Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. Is the king's heart in the hand of the Lord? Yes. God says, I'm going to scrape higher into the sea. Is the king's heart in the hand of the Lord? Sure is. As the rivers of waters, he turneth the rivers wherever he will. Our God is in control. There's a second way, thing that this does, and we can apply it to ourselves, the God of the Old Testament called men under the Old Testament economy to live a life of holiness.
And God in the New Testament reaffirms this truth. He says, Be ye holy. For I, the Lord, your God, am holy. God didn't save me that I can do my own thing. God saved me in order that I might be holy. That I read in Ephesians one verse four. according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. The greatest organ in Europe was in a cathedral somewhere in Italy.
The great composer and organist, Felix Mendelssohn, always had a dream of being able to play that organ. And he finally got enough money together to make the trip. He made the trip, he got to the cathedral, and there was a man playing the organ. Felix Mendelssohn asked to play. The man said, I'm sorry, I can't permit anybody to play this organ. I'm in charge of this organ. Well, Felix Mendelssohn stood there.
He just waited and waited. Finally, after much insistence, he permitted Mendelssohn to sit at the console of the organ. And when Mr. Mendelssohn played that organ, the organist grabbed him and he said, Who are you? I've never heard sounds like this come out of this organ. Who are you? He said, I'm Felix Mandelson. Oh, he said, to think that the master has come. And I would have kept you from the organ.
My dear friends, God asks us to be holy. He's the master. Don't keep him. from the console of your life. He desires to live the life of Christ through His people. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask you now that you will take this word, blessed to our hearts. May thy grace, thy mercy, and thy peace abide upon all those who have truly believed in thee.
If there are any among us who have not believed in thee, go with them with divine restlessness. Don't give them any rest or any peace until they rest in thee. May the thought of the fact that you're the God who keeps these words, you keep all your promises. Search their mind, search their conscience until they rest in thee. And we'll give you the praise, the honor, and the glory. For thou hast spoken, thou hast redeemed, thou hast crushed the head of Satan.
And we await the day when we see thee face to face and can say to thee with humble submission, Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul. And we'll thank you in his worthy name. Amen.