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If you search engine “The Gospel Coalition Cult Christian Trumpism,” you will find what I am responding to here. This is part II which examines Michael’s reasons for his assessment on the rise of Christian Trumpism. I’m not linking TGC to my site because I don’t want to increase their traffic. The points below speak to the article in question starting with Michael’s reasons and follow the flow of the article from that point forward — generally speaking.

Michael’s three points for the rise of Christian Trumpism are;

1.) Christian Americanism
2.) End-Times Conspiracy
3.) Prosperity Gospel

Michael writes on #1

Christian Americanism is the narrative that God specially called the United States into being as an extraordinary—verging on miraculous—providence. Passages from the election of Israel in the old covenant are lifted out of context and applied to America.

BLM responds,

First, I should offer that I do not buy into the whole notion of American exceptionalism or the American Manifest Destiny. When I read US History I find chapters and chapters that are necessary to weep over. However, the chapters I weep over are the chapters that the Left tends to exult over (The War Between The States, entry into WW I, WW II, Yalta, The Civil Rights Movement, etc.), and the chapters I exult over the Left gnashes their teeth over (The Southern Confederacy, The 1924 Immigration Act, Freedom of Association, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, etc.). Because, as a Christian, I read history different than those of the “Christian Americanism” stripe there is a sense that I will agree with Michael here. However, as a Christian, I also read American history differently than Michael and his happy band of R2K Pilgrims read history and so there is also a sense in which I will vociferously disagree with the man.

However, having said that I still believe that God specially called these united States into being by an extraordinary providence — yes, even verging on a “remarkable providence” footing. (The Puritans preferred “remarkable providence” over “miraculous” since they believe that miraculous was a word saved for what happened in the Scripture.) Any dedicated reading to the founding of America forward demonstrates repeated remarkable providences in the formation of this country.

Now as to Michael’s disagreement with the idea of passages from the OT taken out of context and applied to America by our forefathers we must have a few words. First, let’s just admit that this is a hermeneutical disagreement and that Michael does not have the high ground here. Plenty of European Christians handled the idea of covenant in relation to their nation the same way America’s founders handled the idea of covenant. We could start with those who created and signed the Solemn League and Covenant. We could mention the Boers as they settled what we now know as South Africa. We could mention Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads. Actually, Michael refusing to see an application of the Covenant to a Nation is a feature in Michael’s R2K “theology,” and so the sine of this move is hardly as obvious as Michael wants to suggest it is.

Second, we need to keep before us that Michael’s “theology” does not allow him to even consider the possibility of any nation being a Christian Nation. Michael’s R2K “theology” rules that category out of bounds as a beginning presupposition. So, given that fact, it’s not surprising that Michael whines about applying Scriptural covenantal categories to any nation. Because of this reality, we are not surprised by Michael’s hand-wringing over this.

2.) Michael then tells us that he believes that the better lights of the founding Fathers were the reputed non-Sectarians. Michael will surely allow me to see Patrick Henry as preferable to his James Madison. We have noted numerous times on this blog that non-sectarianism is a myth and so I won’t take the time to refute that silly notion once again.

3.) As noted earlier Michael’s R2K does not allow him to speak of a ‘holy nation.’ We must understand that is completely sui generis to R2K, and their fellow travelers the Anabaptists, Lutherans, and Libertarians like Roger Williams. It is not a historically Reformed position and frankly, I resent Horton and the R2K Pilgrims constantly insisting that this idiotic position is the Reformed de ri​gueur position. Clearly, it is possible for nations to be covenanted and so be set apart as uniquely belonging to God. Indeed, as God is sovereign over all and has entrusted Kingship to His Lord Christ it is the case that all nations as being owned by Christ must take plights of allegiance to the Lord Christ lest He be angry and those nations perish in the way.

4.) Nothing that is said in #3 contradicts the reality and the role of the Church that Michael sets forth in his article as untrue. I would only insist that God’s Kingdom consists of those individuals gathered in their nations around “the lamb who was slain,” and that God has “ransomed peoples for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” in their tribes, languages, peoples, and nations to be a kingdom and priests to our God.

5.) Michael next, once again, reduces Christianity to his narrow definition of the Gospel. I have no problem saluting his narrow definition of the Gospel. However, it is definitely the case that Michael has a problem with a definition of Christianity that is totalistic in scope. Christianity certainly offers the good news not only of Justification as found in the Lord Jesus Christ freely given to the elect but Christianity also confers, by the working of the Holy Spirit in redeemed men, an ever-increasing becoming of what they have been freely declared to be in Christ. This means that men, by God’s grace alone, increasingly conform to the image of God’s dear Son. This sanctification means man goes from Christlikeness to Christlikeness and this Christlikeness is measured by walking in terms of God’s authoritative Law Word (see Heidelberg Catechism Q. 91). This means that there is good news in the reality that Christianity, like salt and light, preserves and improves man and all the Institutions, Disciplines, and reality that redeemed man touches. Holy men, in sufficient numbers, will create holy families, holy education, holy law, and yes, even holy nations.

6.) Michael then offers,

Yet in scrambling for political privilege, the church loses confidence in the Spirit’s power working through this gospel and communicates to the world that it requires worldly supports for its success.

I’ll let Calvin’s sermon from I Samuel 8 repudiate Michael here,

“The Lord does not give Kings the right to use their power to subject the people to tyranny. Indeed when Liberty to resist tyranny seems to be taken away by princes who have taken over, one can justly ask this question; since kings and princes are bound by covenant to the people, to administer law in truest equality, sincerity and integrity; if they break faith and usurp tyrannical power by which they allow themselves everything they want: is it not possible for the people to consider together taking measures in order to remedy the evil?”

Was Calvin communicating to the world that he was looking to the world for worldly success in his admonishment for people to consider taking measures in order to remedy magistrate evil, the result of which would certainly mean political privilege for Calvinists?

Clearly, Michael Horton’s “theology” that protests Christian Americanism must be rejected just as much as the idea of American Exceptionalism or Manifest Destiny must be rejected.

7.) Next, Michael tees up his objections to End Times Conspiracy. I don’t have much disagreement here though I do discover a rich vein of irony when Michael complains about how End Times Conspiracists had a “biblical prophecy (that) was a Manichean dualism between “the planet Earth” and “Heaven.” The irony is found in a dualist complaining about other people’s dualism. Horton and his merry Pilgrim R2K acolytes have a “theology” that is besotted with dualisms. Indeed, one of their prophets even calls the R2K life the “hyphenated life.” It is true that Michael doesn’t draw a dualism between heaven and earth the way the Dispies he complains of do, but it is also true that Michael has a dualism between what he calls “the Common Kingdom,” and “the Grace Kingdom.” These dualisms of R2K are most grossly expressed in R2K dualisms of Natural law vs. God’s Law and Common Realm vs. Grace Realm.

8.) Oh, and Michael… I far more prefer the John Birch society than to your Democratic party.

9.) I completely agree with Horton on the Prosperity Gospel issue, though I must note that Michael’s R2K uber-pessimistic amillennialism is bound to itch more over the Gospel having success than what you’ll find in Biblical Christians who own a biblical eschatology. I also will add here that nobody (not even Michael) rolls his eyes more over the like of Eric Metaxes, Hal Lindsey, Jim & Tammy Baker, the Crouch’s, etc. One doesn’t have to be an R2K nutcase to find these other nutcases to be disturbing.

10.) Michael ends by writing;

“Blend these three ingredients––with a generous dose of hucksterism, self-promotion, and personality cult—and it’s not surprising that we have the cult of Christian Trumpism. Though it has nothing to do with serious politics or serious Christianity, it’s the culmination of many decades of exploiting both. And the end result is a dangerous enthusiasm that opposes both.“

Much the same could be written of R2k “theology.” There is plenty of hucksterism, self-promotion and personality cult in R2k. Doubt me? Just try disagreeing with R. Scott Clark. Doubt me? Just attend a PCRT conference. Doubt me? Just attend an R2K church for a month and see all the self-promotion of R2K.

As far as I’m concerned R2K and Christian Trumpism deserve one another. One can only hope that God will clear them both from our sight.

If you search engine “The Gospel Coalition Cult of Christian Trumpism,” you will find what I am responding to here. It is another hatchet piece by Mike Horton. I’m not linking TGC to my site because I don’t want to increase their traffic. The points below speak to the article in question and follow the flow of the article — generally speaking.

Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary California and if J. Gresham Machen were alive he would kick Horton’s backside out of his endowed Chair since Machen would not have agreed with a ruddy word Horton says in advocating surrender in the common realm.

1.) Please understand that I have absolutely zero tuck for the lunatic Evangelical “conservative” movement. I would rather gargle glass than being caught dead in a photo with some whack job blowing a shofar or standing listening to some unexploded Dispie pimple explaining that Trump is God’s answer for America. I have never voted for Trump because he is not a conservative and I certainly don’t think he is some kind of Protestant version of the coming Mahdi. So, unfortunately, I have to agree with Michael a little bit on the whack-a-doodles who show up at these rallies. But unlike Michael, I don’t label these people as Christians unless there is a category of “Christian dupes.” Michael seems to think that anybody who says “Lord Lord,” ought to be considered a Christian.

2.) However, unlike Michael, I don’t dismiss the idea of Christians supporting Trumpism as an ideological movement that includes the ideas of Nationalism, (MAGA) isolationism, and hatred of Globalism and I don’t think that somebody who supports that set of ideological convictions to be members of a cult, and I don’t think that if one attended such a rally that therefore that said person is automatically an idolater. He may simply believe that “Thou Shalt Not Steal” applies to election 2020 and that Trump is the genuine President.

3.) Michael seems also to miss the Schaefferian idea of co-belligerence. Francis Schaeffer taught that people from other expressions of faiths can come together to support particular issues or candidates as long as they understood that their agreements only went as far as the particular issue or candidate at hand. This means that sacerdotal brained Roman Catholics and comic book eschatological Dispies, as well as glossoholic Pentecostals, can hold hands with dour Reformed types and together support an issue or a candidate at a rally without surrendering their conviction that the other chap is an idolatrous son of a mother without a father — religiously speaking. Why, even humorless R2K theologians like Michael could attend one of these rallies he laments without having to worry about being painted as an idolater all because other looney-tune idolaters were at the same rally with their shofars, prayer beads, and Mahdi obsessions.

4.) Michael invokes Rod Dreher, Beth Moore, and David French as profound gurus.

And Michael wants to complain about Evangelical asylum escapees at these rallies? Michael … Dude… something about casting stones while living in a glasshouse.

5.) Here’s a question to ponder. Why is it that Michael and the R2K wonder boys never punch left. It seems to me that these theological tykes are forever punching right but seldom if ever punch left. This would fit my theory that the R2K boys are in point of fact leftists wearing the brilliant disguise of Karo syrup piety.

6.) One chief problem of R2K is it seeks to reduce Christianity to “the Gospel,” (Horton’s ‘good news’ in the article) as if Christianity has nothing else to say to Christians except as it pertains to learning that Christ will receive sinners. Doubtless “the Gospel” is the centerpiece of Christianity but to suggest, as R2K consistently does, that Christianity = narrowly defined Gospel is a gross reductio ad absurdum. So, while the good news, narrowly defined is certainly not a Christian society or any political system as Michael says, that doesn’t mean that the good news of Christianity does not multiply so that it has far-reaching implications that touch the issue of Christian social order, or Christian political systems.

7.) Michael says in the article,

“The Lord gave us Christian freedom to vote our conscience.”

Is Michael really suggesting that Christianity as a faith system has nothing to say about the wickedness of Totaltairan Socialist political systems? Is Michael saying that voting for a Totalitarian Marxist is acceptable for a Christian since doing so would not violate their conscience? And this man has the chutzpah to complain about Dispies blowing shofars?

8.) Michael doesn’t say it explicitly here but the implications of what this child theologian is saying is that the third use of the law is mute. Now, Michael would say here that he supports the third use of the law but not as applied to the civil realm. The third use of the law is for Christians in their personal individual lives but Christians should not apply the third use of the law to the public square. This is a feature of R2K’ism and is one reason why R2K is heretical.

9.) Horton proclaims his credentials as a minister in order to speak out against idolatry. Who will speak out about Horton’s and R2K’s idolatry of allowing for other Kings in the common realm other than King Jesus? Dr. Michael has eyes full of beams while complaining about sundry motes elsewhere.

10.) Michael complains about Evangelicals marching on Washington to perpetuate a cult. But what of the R2K cult of which Michael is a leading guru? How many Reformed churches have wannabee Hortons in their pulpits because of the pablum being spit out at Westminster West and like Seminaries across the country?

11.) Michael’s leftism comes out with this statement;

We might have ignored this as a spectacle, a performance by a handful of voices in opposition to the Constitutional system of our republic.

Opposition to the Constitutional system of our republic? Has Michael given up on the Eighth Word? Why isn’t Michael writing articles about how God hates theft, cheating, and chicanery? Instead, we get from this Boy Wonder a statement that suggests that what is happening in Election 2020 has anything to do with the Constitutional system of our republic.

Michael Horton then gives three reasons why this spectacle has arisen within the Church of Christians being political in a direction he does not like. I will deal with those three reasons in part II. Can anybody tell me what Michael wrote when America’s cities were burning down this past summer as pursued by the Christian left?

In Medieval Europe right up to the Enlightenment forced conversions were required if one wanted to say in Christian lands. It is where we get the idea of the Mooselimb Moriscos and the Jewish Conversos. But aren’t we living through that same kind of thing right now? Effectively Biblical Christians are being told, through the cancel culture of the Jewish Cultural Marxists that they must convert to the religion of Cultural Marxism or they will become non-persons.

Biblical Christians in America are living through high tech persecution that works upon them to incrementally, slowly but assuredly to convert them to the religion of Cultural Marxism. This is seen in our Churches, many of which have themselves converted to be expressions of Cultural Marxism. Radical Two Kingdom “churches” for example have embraced the motif of surrender to the culture by insisting that the motif of the Christian faith are pilgrimage and exile. It’s a wonder that these “Reformed” churches don’t use crucifixes since their “theology” always has Jesus remaining on the cross. So, what you find in these “barely Christian R2k churches,” is a Christianity that has so made peace with its oppressors that it is willing to cancel worship — cancel Word & Sacrament — just because some Cultural-Marxist American Christ-hating Governor tells them to do so on the flimsiest of reasons. Our churches are being turned into enemy outposts. Our ministers, by not resisting Cultural Marxism in the public square are leaving the city walls unprotected. If they will someday be saved it will be as by fire.

And so our Churches and our persons are being slowly converted to being Cultural Marxist. We have no ability to resist because we are infected with the only pandemic we should be concerned with and that is the pandemic of anti-Christ thinking. The really odd thing is that we are doing it to ourselves. The fifth-columnists have bored their way into our Christian institutions and have redefined Christianity so that Biblical Christianity is no longer counted as Christianity by these functional Cultural Marxists.

Doubt me?

Just try preaching like Chrysostom, Calvin, or Luther on the Jews — the intellectuals behind Cultural Marxism — and see how long you’d last in Reformed Pulpits. Start exposing the main Cultural Marxist nerve found in today’s American Christendom and see how long people would keep returning to hear this needed message.

Show me a Christian and I’ll show you a Cultural Marxist.

What we are trying to do during this Advent Season is give a broad sweep of the Old Testament in order to identify just exactly what our spiritual Fathers & Mothers were looking for in the promised coming Deliverer. Indeed, the reading of the Old Testament is a reading of the expectation for this one God promised who would set the world aright.

Our hope is here that by understanding their expectation as formed by God’s revelation we will have a better idea of who it is we worship… Jesus the Christ.

This is a goal of the Christian life… to know Him and to make Him known. Too often we worship a Jesus of our own crafting. By understanding the sweep of Scripture we can help avoid worshiping a Jesus of our own making and worship the same Jesus they were anticipating due to God’s Revelation.

Last week we began to look at the Pentateuch and we noted several truths in regards of whom the OT Saints were looking.

1.) Gen 3 teaches us that this coming promised one would be a man of violence. He would come to crush the head of the enemy. He Himself, upon His arrival said He had come to bring a sword thus confirming that the Jesus we serve is more a 11^th century Crusader than he is a 21^st century Dr. Phil.

2.) Gen. 12 taught us that this coming promised one would be blessing to all the nations. The coming one was not intended to be a provincial deliverer. He would come not to just bless Israel but to bless all the nations as nations. The deliverance this promised one would bring would be a deliverance that would be as wide as the curse is found. Here we begin to see the eschatological optimism that should be characteristic of all of those who believe in the Messiah. The coming deliverer that they expected would be a deliverer who would rescue all the nations. Christmas time then is, in part, a time when we should remember that the Christ who finally came in the first advent is a Christ who leads the nations in His victory train, blessing them each and all as He rules over them.

3.) We might also say that Gen. 12 teaches us that genealogy is important. This promised one would rise up out of the seed of the Hebrews. So, anyone who would make the claim of deliverer must be able to trace his genealogical descent back to Abraham.

4.) But it gets more specific then that as we looked at last week. This deliverer they were anticipating would come from the royal line of Judah. Gen. 49 teaches that the expected one who will set the world right will be the lion of the tribe of Judah and that line will be a royal line.

The idea of a man of violence who crushes His enemies as coming from a royal line is encapsulated in Numbers 24,

A star shall come forth from Jacob, And a scepter shall rise from Israel, And crush through the forehead of Moab, And tear down all the sons of Sheth. And Edom shall be a possession, Seir, it enemies, also shall be a possession; While Israel performs valiantly. One from Jacob shall have dominion, And shall destroy the remnant from the city” (Numbers 24:16-19).

5.) In Exodus we see a type of the deliverer who is to come in Moses. He will stand in as God’s representative and do battle with God’s enemies. As a type of the coming deliverer Moses will provide Exodus out of the bondage of sin and will set God’s people free. Moses also gives us a type of the coming deliverer inasmuch as Moses is a Prophet… a spokesman for God… God’s mouthpiece. Moses teaches us that the coming deliverer, first promised in Genesis 3, will be a Prophet

“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him” (Dt. 18:15)

But Moses also, as a type, teaches us that the coming deliverer would be Priest speaking to God for the people. A Priest is person who mediates between God and his people so that God will receive them into his special holy presence to grant them his blessing.

11 Then Moses pleaded with [d]the Lord his God, and said: “Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” 14 So the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.

So, having only moved through Numbers we learn that the promised head crusher of Gen. 3:15 would be a man of violence, who would be from a traceable Hebrew line … a traceable Kingly line, and would speak as both a Prophet and a Priest. We have learned that He would be a blessing to all the Nations.

Already, in this sweeping overview, we see in place the idea that the coming promised deliverer that our Old Testament brethren expected would have to be a Prophet, Priest, and King. Christmas time is a time when we remind ourselves that the deliverer they expected would be a Prophet, Priest, and King and if it is the case that we would be their children then we should learn Jesus as Prophet, Priest, and King. We should seek to understand those categories. We should seek to worship Christ in those capacities. In order to be Christmas tide Christians, we should be able to articulate how it is that Jesus the Christ was and remains to His people a Prophet, a Priest, and a King. We should be able to explain why each office is instrumental in the accomplishing of His assigned tasks. We might even be able to find the idea of Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King as a deliverer for the Nations in the birth narrative of Jesus the Christ.

Here we see the tattered remnants of Christendom making merry during this Christmas season, but how many Christians making merry can give just a 101 explanation of Jesus Christ as the Great High King, as the mouthpiece of God, as our Great High Priest?

Before we leave the Pentateuch let us see one more glimpse of what was to be expected of this deliverer.

As the promised one would come as a King we would expect Him to come with the King’s law. He Himself testifies that this is so when in his first advent He says that not one jot nor tittle will pass away. That law the King would come championing. The high respect for the Law that the expected one would have is wrapped up in His role as King. As you recall the King in Scripture was required to

write for himself a copy of this law in a book, (Dt. 17:18).

That same law that the King came to honor commanded the conduct that God’s people would be characterized by. This law if honored would mean God’s blessing and if dishonored would mean God’s heavy discipline upon His people. The deliverer was expected to be a deliverer who would honor God’s law. This honoring of the law extended to His being the great sacrifice anticipated in that law system. Thus the sacrificial system provided yet another picture of the expected deliverer who would later be called the lamb of God. Here we begin to see, what perhaps might be thought of as a contradictory picture. The expected one would be a warrior King, the mouthpiece of God, the Great High Priest, a champion and deliverer of God’s people and yet he would be the brazen Serpent in the book of Numbers 21:25ff lifted up that all might look to and be healed. This champion would be the lamb of God taking away the sins of all who would look and live.

So, we have added to our previous expectation of the 1^st Advent of the deliverer that He would champion God’s law as King and would himself be the final sacrifice since the blood of bulls and goats could never completely take away sin.

This is the deliverer they were looking for on that first Christmas. It’s doubtful that they understood all they were looking for. Do we understand after the first Advent the one who we worship on this Christmas?

Well, that is the Pentateuch and Christmas. A great deal more might be said but with these first five books of the Bible we begin to see the expectations of the deliverer that the Saints of the OT had.

When we move out from the Pentateuch into the books of History we receive more information about the expected one.

Joshua, and Judges are heavy on the theme of the expected one being a deliverer. Israel disobeys God’s law and then come under the foot of some tyrant. Israel cries out and God sends a deliverer to rescue them from their bondage. This is the theme that we looked briefly in Exodus. These deliverers are types of the coming Messiah who will crush the head of the serpent and so provide exodus for God’s people from oppression.

Canaan, in the history of Redemption, is a type of serpent infested land and Joshua and the subsequent Judges are serpent head crushers. They are deliverers and so provide a type of Christ.

Joshua, Judges, and Ruth focus on the the land Promise in Gen. 12. Modern Christians don’t see the land promise any more of much significance but it is my conviction that the Land promise has been expanded so that the Messiah and His people inherit all the Earth as His own. Allow me to steal from what will be emphasized in a subsequent sermon in this series and that is the reality that all the earth will become the Deliverers so that the land promise in the OT is the antitype to the type of all of the earth as the Great King’s possession.

For the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, As the waters cover the sea. Habakkuk 2:14

All the ends of the world Shall remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations Shall worship before You. Psalm 22:7

So, we learn here that the coming deliverer King has a Kingdom and that Kingdom covers the Earth.

This belief distinguishes us from the amillennialists who believe that Christ’s Kingdom is primarily a spiritual Kingdom. As those with a biblical eschatology we believe that the spiritual Kingdom incarnates itself corporeally so that Christ as a Spiritual King is a King over real real estate and peoples. This is the Jesus who arrived at the first Advent and it is this Jesus whom we worship.

Let us say just a wee bit more about the books of History and what they tell us of the King they were expecting.

Perhaps the most important thing about the Messiah-Deliverer that we learn from the Davidic Kingdom is the Promise given to David by God that he would always have a seed to rule from His throne.

David before becoming King is promissory of becoming the anti type deliverer as he has in his resume serpent head crushing.

Just as Moses before him had faced the Serpent clad Pharaoh so David faces the serpent attired Goliath. The armor that Goliath wore could well have been covered with serpent skin. David, as an anti-type of the Serpent head crusher to come literally crushes the head of Goliath.

Eventually God makes covenant with David’s house so that we learn that the coming deliverer will have to have the papers to show he belongs to David’s house.

“The LORD also declares to you that the LORD will make a house for you. When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men, but My loving kindness shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:11b-16).

Later Jesus will become known as the “son of David” (cf. Luke 1:32; 2:4; 18:38).

In the short term the promise had to do with David’s sons and subsequent seed. Men who committed iniquity. Men like Solomon, Rehoboam and the Kingly line of Judah. But this promise includes the word “forever” and so gives the reader expectation that the future deliverer will be, as we have established a King.


During this period many if not most of the Psalms were written and they provide much insight into the first advent of this coming deliverer.

Psalm 2 

In this Psalm we learn that the coming deliverer will crush the wicked who oppose his righteous rule by refusing to Kiss the Son. The Nations are told to worship God’s installed King now or face the wrath of that coming King and so perish in the way.

And yet Psalm 22 gives us that paradox of a suffering deliverer on the Cross.

Psalm 22 Here we hear the words of Christ on the Cross; “My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken me?” thus identifying the Savior with the One whose sufferings are described in this Psalm.

Here the seeming contradiction is accentuated regarding the person of the promised deliverer. On one hand we have this Authoritative King. While, on the other hand, we have the promised deliverer as a suffering servant.

Psalm 45 is written for the celebration of the deliverer King’s wedding. As such it centers on the splendor and majesty of the coming King (vss. 3-6), and upon the fact that His throne is eternal (v. 6). An eternal throne? An eternal throne implies an eternal King and here we get a hint that the Deliverer will be very God of very God as well as very man of very man.

There in Psalm 45 the bride of the king loves righteousness and hates wickedness (a picture of the church?) and has been chosen by Him as His bride. The splendor and beauty of the bride is described as she has been prepared for her presentation to the King.

Psalm 72 Portrays for us the reign of the righteous King, who judges the people with righteousness and justice and who is the protector of the afflicted. He is the one who will bring deliverance to His people.

Psalm 110 speaks of the installation of the Messiah at the right hand of God, who will rule over His enemies. Not only is He to rule as king, but He is also an eternal priest after the order of Melchizedek (v. 4). He will come to the earth to destroy His enemies.

So, we see expanded what we found in the Pentateuch. We see the deliverer promised as a coming King who will crush the head of the serpent and His wicked people. We see the deliverer as one who will protect and avenge the righteous afflicted. We see a descendant of King David whose reign had no end.

The is He who they were looking for in the 1^st Advent. This is who has even now been installed on His Holy Hill. This is the one who is crushing the wicked and will continue to crush the wicked as the wicked attack His people. This is the one whose law Word must be championed as the Great Eschatological King so that it sways over all the nations.

And this is the one we worship during this Advent season. He is not a Jesus of our own making. He is this Jesus and we ourselves must learn this King and not replace Him w/ a Jesus of our own making lest we perish in the way.

And the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly shall you go, And dust shall you eat All the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel” (Genesis 3:14-15).


As we enter into Advent we are reminded that the essence of Advent is the idea of waiting, and anticipating, and hope for a coming deliverer… A coming Messiah. In Advent, we try to put ourselves in the place of the faithful waiting Hebrew looking for the coming of the Messiah to heal the world’s sin, to crush the protagonist, and to provide salvation and we do this in hopes of understanding the role and purpose of the Messiah better.

We remember that all this waiting and anticipating is because of the reality of Sin. Here in the Genesis passage God’s perfect world has been despoiled and defaced by sin. God pronounces judgment but in that judgment, God promises a coming deliverer and the wait for the deliverer begins. The look for the first coming… the first Advent begins.

That first Advent, we know, was about the coming of the King to pay the penalty of sin and in so doing crushing the head of the Serpent. In the first Advent, the inauguration of the King and Kingdom occurs but now we live in the season where we wait for the consummation of the present Kingdom when what we have in bloom will be to us the full flower.

Now we are in the period of waiting for the Return of the King.

Waiting and anticipating did not diminish Israel as it waited for the Coming of the King and it does not diminish us. Waiting and anticipating does not diminish us any more than waiting and anticipating diminishes a woman with child looking forward to the arrival of her child. In point of fact, the waiting and anticipating make the final day all the sweeter. So, there is the bittersweet in the Advent season. We are reminded of the wait but we are also reminded of the glory of that day when the wait is completed.

During this Advent season … this season of our own waiting and anticipating, I thought we would spend a little time looking at Israel’s waiting and anticipating for the first Advent of the promised deliverer.

That sense of waiting and anticipation begins in this passage. As we said sin has entered into God’s creation and His image-bearers have been defaced. Man has fallen but if man is to be restored it is must be God who performs the restoration. The door that will end the waiting must be opened from God from the outside via His timing and His sending of a deliverer.

This has been promised in the text.

15 And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

This is the kicking off of the first Advent. God has promised a deliverer and now fallen but redeemed man must wait for this offspring who will crush the head of the serpent. As we know living on the other side of the first Advent we yet remain in the waiting and anticipating mode as we await the Second Advent of our Lord Christ.

We get hints that Eve was convinced that the first Advent was at hand when she brings forth her son Cain. Listen to her language.

Gen. 4:4 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.”

Several commentators have offered here that Eve here is acknowledging God’s hand in the birth of the child and she sees Cain’s birth as the fulfillment of the promise of God that her seed would crush the serpent’s head. Thus, Eve may have thought her first son would be the promised Messiah and put her hope in him.

If this is correct Eve thinks that God has fulfilled His promise already but as we all know Cain is anything but a Deliverer but instead accentuates the tragedy of the fall and so the wait continues.

This wait continues on throughout the rest of the Old Testament. And that wait is what we are going to trace out the rest of this Advent season. As the Scripture unfolds we get a fuller and fuller idea of what and who Israel is waiting for. Who is this Deliverer? How will we know He had come? The Old Covenant answers that question and as it answers that question we get a fuller and fuller idea of who it is we now worship as at the right hand of the Father. So in this series of Advent sermons, we come to know Jesus the Christ… the Deliverer better.

Along the way, we will see that there was an ebb and flow … a waxing and waning to Israel’s expectation of the first Advent. We will see times where Israel’s hope seems to be almost snuffed out and yet by God’s grace continues to flicker. By seeing this my hope is that we will adore even more the greatness of the first coming of the King.

Indeed, much of the New Testament – especially the Gospels – is a declaration of how the Old Testament anticipated future realities that were found in Christ. The Gospel resound with the declaration that the King has come and the Advent has arrived.

This morning we are going to look at the Pentateuch … the first five books of the Bible to see some of how God limns out what is to be expected of this Deliverer when He arrives on the scene. We hope to hit the high points because to be exhaustive would find us here for quite some time. In doing this we hope that we can see some of the major themes of the Old Testament. In short, we will be looking at the forest for the next few weeks and not the trees. We do so in order to see what Israel looked for in the promised one who would crush the Serpents head. In doing so it is hoped we will understand who we worship as very God of very God even better. In so doing we hope to understand Christmas even better.

As we have seen from this morning’s text God’s pronouncement of the curse upon the Serpent begins to give us explanation of who it is Israel is waiting for.

And the first thing we know about this coming seed is that He is a destroyer of the entity of who would destroy God’s creation. This tells us that Israel is waiting for a Warrior King. This coming Deliverer will not fit on a sentimental Hallmark greeting card. He is more Conan the Barbarian than he is a Lennox Figurine. He comes as a destroyer of the destroyer and the destruction will be bloody. Who could have guessed from this first prophecy that it is the Deliverer who will be spilling His blood to crush the head of the Serpent?

In this promise that the coming Deliverer will be a head crusher, there is the promise that in the crushing of the head of the enemy will be the salvation of God’s people. Only as the Serpent is destroyed will salvation be found. This theme continues throughout Scripture. For example in Romans 16;

20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

As a brief aside we should note that it is likely the case that not a little of our mythology of slaying Dragons and so saving the fair maiden comes from this idea. The English Mythology of St. George slaying the Dragon. The whole idea of Beowulf and the destruction of Grendel. Much of our ancient mythology of a noble Knight slaying a beast Dragon bent on destroying mankind likely comes from the idea that the Messiah- Deliverer will crush the head of the Serpent. This is one reason why Christianity is a man’s religion. Christ is the Alpha Male who comes to rescue the Church (the fair maiden) and so sets all things aright. A pity then that Christ has been turned into a pajama boy inter-sexual hermaphrodite by the modern Church.

It is this promise of a Deliverer that makes bearable the judgment passed on Adam and Eve. Yes, there will be pain in childbirth but it will be through the bearing of children that the Warrior King will arrive. Yes, Adam will till the earth by the sweat of His brow but in the tilling of the earth, He will be constantly be reminded of the coming Deliverer who will deliver Him from His labors.

As the Advent story continues to unfold it is quickly seen that neither Cain nor Abel will be the promised Deliverer. Already Adam and Eve are learning that the destruction that they wrought will not be so easily fixed. Another man child arrives… Seth.

Seth may have offered hope again that He was the Deliverer but when we get to Genesis 6 we see that Seth and his line is not the answer as they dilute their seed by having carnal relations with women who were opposed to God and His people. Indeed in Chapters 6-9 wee see that the whole human race has been so corrupted that God resolves to start over again with a second Adam … Noah. Perhaps Noah is the promised Messiah? Noah is the head of the Human Race…. He is put into a new garden as it were but we quickly learn that just as Adam fell by the fruit of the tree so Noah shows himself no Messiah by his partaking of the fruit of the vine which in turn leads to an unseemly event by Ham (Gen. 9:20-27).

In Gen. 11, which we’ve considered the last couple of weeks mankind is once again at a flood point already. But instead of being visited with a flood God visits mankind and in blessing and judgment confuses their language. But we note that in the context of all this the seed promise first mentioned in Genesis 3… the promised serpent crushing seed… is now re-articulated to another Man … Abraham.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house. To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).

We now learn that this Messiah who is being waited for is not only going to crush the Serpent’s head but he is going to a Messiah who has global implications. This Messiah who is being waited for is going to be a blessing to all the Nations. Here we find the beginning of the post millennial hope. The Messiah …the Warrior King who will crush the serpent’s head will be a blessing for all the Nations.

This Global champion who crushes the head of the Serpent will be the seed of Abraham (Gen. 13:15, 22:18) refers to Christ as we are taught in Galatians 3:16.

16 Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ.

Abraham knows that the promised head crusher will come through his line and yet as I said at the outset hope waxes and wanes. Abraham is an old man with an old wife and yet despite God’s promise is without issue. He decides that He will help God along in God’s Messiah promise business and at his wife’s insistence take the wife’s maid to have this promised male issue. Abraham threatens the line by pawning Sarah off as a sister but God protects His promise.

Then the promised son finally arrives and God tells Abraham to sacrifice the seed (Gen. 22). From that incident, God’s people looking back realize more about the story of the Deliverer. We see through this type that like Isaac the coming Deliverer upon whom the hopes of the nations is placed will Himself become a sacrifice. God Himself will put forth His only Son who is obedient to the Father to the point of death in order to heal the wound inflicted in the Garden. The later suffering servant passages in the prophets underscores this aspect of the Messiah. So, divine irony is introduced as to who the Deliverer will be. Yes, he will be a head crusher but not without suffering in the battle. However, this is consistent with the promise in Genesis 3. His own heel will be struck by the servant.

If we next consider Jacob we see that he is in the line of the Messiah. Jacob has his name changed and we see that if the seed is going to come from this line it is going to because of God’s great grace to make it so. Jacob’s name means “deceiver,” and he is hardly the kind of man you’d expect the promised line to come through. Yet, God’s promises come clearly to Jacob and we learn about the Messiah to come in an incident where Jacob sleeps and dreams. Jacob has a dream of a ladder ascending to heaven which we will later learn points forward to Christ, as our Lord’s words in John 1:51 will later indicate.

51 And He said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter[a] you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

This teaches us that if one is to deal with Heaven one must do so as through the son of man. There is no other name by which men must be saved. This teaches us that Jesus is the one upon whom heaven.

We learn through the promised line of Jacob and His sons that if a rescue of mankind is going to be accomplished it will have to be accomplished by God because the seed of the woman never looks very good. Humanly speaking, Jacob’s sons were even more of a wreck than Jacob so far as their ability to fulfill God’s purposes and promises to Abraham.

Reuben lay with Jacob’s concubine (Genesis 35:22). Joseph’s brothers were violent men. They dealt severely with the men of Shechem, action which caused Jacob to fear for the safety of his family (Genesis 34). These same men nearly killed Joseph and did sell him into slavery, with no compassion on either their own brother or father (Genesis 37). And Judah was willing to have inter into a sexual union with a woman he thought to be a cult prostitute (Genesis 38). These are not the kind of men which inspire confidence, especially in regard to the fulfillment of God’s gracious promises. Nevertheless, it was of Judah that Jacob prophesied:

“Judah, your brothers shall praise you; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s sons shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He couches, he lies down as a lion, As a lion, who dares rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Genesis 49:10-12).

Here we learn that the specific line that the Messiah will come through is the line of Judah and later Revelation in the NT tells us that Jesus was from Judah through both Mary and Joseph’s lineage.

This promised line from whom the Messiah-Deliverer will come goes down into Egypt to escape hardship and famine but while in Egypt the line is attacked by a Pharaoh knew not Joseph so that once again the promise of the deliverer begins to wane. There is genocide in the offering as Pharaoh seeks to snuff out the seed (Ex. 1:15-16, 22). And yet in another divine Irony God plays a trick on Pharaoh and has the one who will deliver Israel raised in Pharaoh’s own courts by his own daughter.

Moses Himself becomes a picture of the future deliverer as God uses him to first reign blow after blow upon the Pharaoh Serpent and then to finally crush the Serpent Pharaoh’s head at the Red Sea. Through Moses Israel is delivered from this bondage and to the careful reader, it is learned that Christ will deliver his people from the bondage of sin and will set them free.

We will pick up the narrative next week.