Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Think for a minute about many of the blessings we enjoy because of the Jews. Whether or not anybody wants to admit it, many of the luxuries that we experience today, many of the benefits, many of the blessings that we have today are because of the Jewish people. We wouldn't be here reading you the Bible if it wasn't for the Jewish people. What a spectacular picture that's being created for us. What a remarkable picture that here, even early on, God tells us, "I'm going to give you the Messiah. He’s going to come through him."

Guest (Male): It's great to be with you again and welcome to Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. We'll be in the book of Genesis today, continuing our series on the prophecies that changed the world forever. You're about to hear the very first prophecy in the Bible that points to Jesus. All of this will get us ready for Easter. We'll start off in Genesis chapter three. Here’s Pastor James.

James Kaddis: I'm not going to get into the mechanics of how Satan deceived Eve and what happened with Adam. We saw all that happen. It was very sad to see what took place. Again, I do want to say this, that all of the sin that ends up getting committed is based on deception. It's based on very powerful deception that oftentimes when a person sins against God, what in essence they're doing is they are identifying a legitimate need that they have and they are seeking to fulfill that need in an illegitimate way. That's what sin typically does.

As a matter of fact, you have to watch this verse that talks about Adam and Eve when they chose first to eat, and you should see what ended up happening. Look at what it says in verse six of Genesis chapter three: "And when the woman," notice this, "saw that the tree was good for food." Okay, well, is food a need that she has to be able to live? Yes. If you add the pleasure that that brings in eating, there's one specific aspect. And that it was what, "pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."

This is so interesting because look at the characteristics that she observed in the fruit and in the tree. She saw that the fruit was pleasant, in other words, good for food, she saw that it was pleasant to the eyes, so it appeared nicely. I don't believe that God designed the world to look ugly. I think God designed the world to be pleasant and beautiful and spectacular and filled with colors and curves and just an immense amount of intricacies that we could spend our whole lives trying to figure out or understand.

God made this world in a way where his design characteristics are written all over. Did you ever notice, by the way, when structures are being built that oftentimes point people to sinful ideals and ideology? Those are structures that are void of beauty. They're void of symmetry. They're void of anything like that. Go to a communist country. Spend some time in a place like Ukraine or Russia, or go to a place where you see just this immense poison of socialism and communism filling it.

This is what you'll always see in countries like that. You'll go to the capital cities that far predate the function of communism that sort of ruled. You'll go back and you'll look at these capital cities that outlast any weird philosophy that was taken on, and you'll see spectacularly beautiful buildings. I mean, go to Red Square. Go to capital cities like Kyiv. Right now it's probably not so pretty, but you start going to cities like that and you'll begin to see immensely beautiful symmetry.

You'll see colors that are spectacularly just riveting. You'll look at the scope of just beauty in these buildings with the background of clouds or blue sky, and it just looks absolutely breathtaking. But then you go to cities that were built under the thumb and the arm of communism, and what do you see? Boxes. That's what you see. No windows, no color. Everything looks the same. There's a function of uniformity that is not indicative of any special design.

The closer you get to moving in the direction of rebellion against God, the further away you get from the beauty that God intended for us. This woman sees that the food is good, that the fruit of the tree was good for food. She sees that it was pleasant to the eyes and it was desired to make one wise. Did you know that when God created us, because he created us in his likeness and in his image, we would naturally gravitate towards the things that are good to consume?

We would naturally gravitate towards the things that are of particular beauty, and we would naturally gravitate towards the things that would seek to make us more like our creator, which of course the characteristic or the primary characteristic would be wisdom and understanding. So the things that she identified that would be good to gravitate towards was not sinful in and of itself. But what was sinful in and of itself was the perception that her partaking of something that God told her not to partake of was going to bring to her the need to fill the vacuum that existed in her heart.

Isn't that kind of a funny picture when you think about it? God gives us these desires because he created them within us, and then we seek to fulfill those desires outside of his will and all we do is destroy ourselves. That's exactly what Adam and Eve did. Adam and Eve had legitimate desires that God had created within them, but then they destroyed it by the pursuit of sin. I want to point all of that out because God in his judgment of them, as I said before, provides a way out.

Look at what he says. This is interesting as we skip down, he goes and speaks to them and says, deals with them in terms of the judgment that they had done. Verse fourteen: "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, 'Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.'" My precious niece asked me a question about this, and it was a question that related to snakes, if they had once walked, and do they not walk anymore, and was that all because of the curse.

I said I believe that was probably the case, and I don't think that snakes probably slithered around on the ground prior to the curse. I mean, I could be wrong. The Bible doesn't just give us enough. But look at this verse fifteen: "And I will do what? I will put enmity between thee and the woman." This, by the way, this is the curse being given to Satan, but it relates to mankind. "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed, and it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel."

This would be the very first prophecy that we see in the Bible that points to Jesus Christ. Because what is this talking about? Enmity in between thee and the woman. What are we talking about? We're talking about the picture that is developed by the one who gave birth to the Son of God. We're talking about the picture of Christ coming forth. And the funny thing about this is there is a prediction that his heel would be bruised, meaning the condition that he would experience would be that of what is temporary, but then Satan's head would be crushed.

That God would crush the head of Satan through the person that Satan tried to destroy by destroying his heel or bruising his heel. The death of Jesus Christ was what? It was a very temporary moment in history because he resurrected from the dead. And in resurrecting from the dead, what does he do? He ends up crushing Satan underneath his feet. It's interesting because we actually have people that write about this later on in the New Testament. Perhaps one of the most prominent of passages is one of my favorite ones in the Bible.

Let's go to Romans chapter sixteen. This is certainly of notoriety here. I think the Apostles were amazing men because the Apostles understood the Old Testament so well that anytime they wrote letters, they were able to in a way so easily just integrate the word of God into their writings. Look at the exhortation that comes up, and I love this. I think to me it's a very, very powerful passage. He says in Romans 16 verse 19, by the way, I will tell you this is the reason that motivates me never to ever get into what we would call counter-cult ministry.

I think there's something very dangerous in studying false theology in order to defend it against real theology. My goal for everybody is learn the Bible so well that you don't have to study the false because the better you know the Bible, the easier it is to defend yourself from the false. Make any kind of sense? I used to see these guys getting together in these study groups learning Jehovah's Witnesses' ideas or Islam or Mormonism or whatever, and they would spend so many waking hours learning the stuff.

But their awareness of the scriptures was just completely gone. So they knew all the bad teaching, but they didn't know enough of the good teaching to understand what the differences were in a real way that was tangible to people that they were trying to minister to. All they were learning to do was become really good at arguing with one another and giving lectures, but they didn't really truly understand the Bible. But look at what the Apostle Paul says here. I love this. He says, "For your obedience is come abroad unto all men."

Look at what he says: "I am glad therefore on your behalf, but yet I would have you," notice this, "wise unto that which is good and simple concerning evil." In other words, the way that this is translated in other passages, it says be excellent in all of the things which are good and allow yourself to become innocent of that which is evil. Now he doesn't just leave it there. He doesn't say, "That's it, adios, have a nice day." He gives a reason for this counsel. Look at the reason that he gives.

And by the way, can I just tell you, this is Genesis chapter three reasoning. This is Genesis chapter three reasoning. Look at what he says. He says, "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." By the way, the translation in the King James is absolutely broken. It doesn't do a good job of justifying what it says in the Greek. What it's actually translated in the Greek is: "The God of peace shall soon destroy or crush Satan underneath your feet." Isn't that pretty amazing?

So now we know that there's an association between the promise that was made early on in Genesis and salvation given to the church of Jesus Christ. That Jesus was the one who would defeat the effect of sin that Satan tried to create to destroy the people of God. By the way, just so you understand, understanding this tactic of the enemy is so important because if you understand this tactic of the enemy, then you will understand an overwhelming majority of how this tactic has been used throughout history and even throughout the Bible.

We talked about one such tactic this morning. We talked about the story of Balaam. If you remember the story of Balaam, what happened? Balak, who represented a people group that was an enemy of the true and living God, wanted Balaam to pronounce curses upon the children of Israel. But Balaam said, "I can't curse the children of Israel because God won't curse the children of Israel. God told me that they're going to continue to win, so I can't say what God won't say. I can only say what God says."

So with the right level of satanic inspiration, what does Balaam do? Balaam goes back and gives Balak counsel on how to stumble the children of Israel so that their actions can pronounce curses upon themselves. I wonder how that talk in the garden may have been with the Lord before Satan even approached the garden. Can you imagine? I guarantee you Satan wanted to destroy what God had given mankind. But there was nothing Satan could do to destroy it.

I would be willing to say that if Satan ever had a conversation with the true and living God about destroying what had been created for Adam and Eve and all of Adam and Eve's descendants, God would have said, "Nope, can't touch it. Nope, can't touch it. No you can't, no, no, no, no." Why? God had created them in perfection. And as long as they were walking according to God's commands, they would be completely protected from any destructive force that could ever take away all that God had promised them.

So what did Satan do? Satan got them to disobey the true and living God, and God was forced to do what? To curse them. Isn't that funny how that works? Satan will do that in our lives as well. If he cannot get God to stop blessing you, then he will get you to rebel against God so that you choose to walk away from the blessing of God. But God makes a way. He makes a way for redemption. We see that in Genesis chapter three. Here’s one of my favorite passages in the book of Genesis.

Genesis chapter twelve, we'll start in verse one: "Now the Lord had said unto Abram, 'Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.'" Take that, any of you people that think that Israel is a nothing state right now. But look at what he says: "And I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee."

And notice this, I love this because this is a prophecy concerning Jesus. "And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." Abraham, it's one of your descendants that in essence will bless the rest of the world. By the way, it's not just one of Abraham's descendants, it's through Abraham's seed. Whether or not anybody wants to admit it, many of the luxuries that we experience today, many of the benefits, many of the blessings that we have today are because of the Jewish people.

We wouldn't be here reading you the Bible if it wasn't for the Jewish people. What a spectacular picture that's being created for us. What a remarkable picture that here, even early on, God tells us, "I'm going to give you the Messiah. He’s going to come through him." Now in case you think that's not a valid idea based on a passage like that, how about we stop beating around the bush and how about we go to Genesis chapter forty-nine. I love this. By the way, it's interesting, I always thought that it would be really, really cool to sit down and examine all of these blessings and curses that are given by Jacob to all of his children.

Israel is about to die, he's on his deathbed, he gives these blessings and cursings to all of his children, and it's so interesting to see what came out of all of these blessings and curses. You literally can go back to Israel regionally speaking and you can figure out where they all trace back to. Like for example, Dan, which isn't really mentioned in Revelation ironically, it's kind of interesting, you don't really see much of a mention there. Dan was the tribe to the north, but because of the advent idolatry that had been given to them, or they had given themselves to, there was something that allowed them to be discontinued from all that God had planned for them originally.

Or how about Zebulun? Zebulun, there's a big old story behind Zebulun that actually gives us an indicator that these were the people that were prominently in the region of the Galilee, believe it or not. So let's get into the last verse here that we're going to go over today. And again, this goes back to all of the blessings and curses that Jacob gives to his sons before he dies. And I love many of them, they're all really cool. But let's focus right now on Judah.

Let's go to verse eight, this is an important one because who's the most notable person that comes from the line of Judah? Anybody? That's right, Jesus. You can be more confident in that statement, it's true. Verse eight, so look at this. And by the way, some people will ask if Jesus is of the tribe of Judah and he's not from Aaron, then how in the world can he be our priest? Well, of course you remember from the book of Hebrews, he doesn't come from the ironic line, he comes from the Melchizedekian line, which dates all the way back to what? Early Genesis.

It goes back to Genesis. So even Jesus being established as our priest is established in the book of Genesis. That’s one of the passages I was going to go over, but we just didn't have the time. So look at this, verse eight of chapter forty-nine: "Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise. Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies. Thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, thou art gone up. He stooped down, he couched as a lion and as an old lion, who shall rouse him up?"

It's funny how Jesus is oftentimes referred to as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, right? In kind of an interesting picture, all based on these prophecies that we can read about as early as the book of Genesis. But look at this, I love this statement: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until," what? "Shiloh come. And unto him shall the gathering of the people be." This is such a powerful picture. These prophecies came in other forms as well. Isaiah 9 speaks about this, many other passages throughout the Old Testament speak about this.

But when it says the scepter shall not depart from Judah, when it gives us this very specific line, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come, what he's talking about is the fact that the ability for those in Israel to put into effect any level of real justice would be taken away, would not be taken away until the Messiah came. This is really interesting because in the early Roman years, especially when the greatness of Judah was becoming more prominent, especially after the construction of the Temple by Herod, this became a big issue to Caesar.

Caesar did not want to see a Jewish state with self-determination at the level that allowed them to continue to execute rights of capital punishment or write laws because there was an awareness of the fact that that could turn into something much more substantial, especially with them in possession of something as prominent as the new Temple that had been constructed. So it was somewhere around the neighborhood of anywhere from 1 to 3 AD, there’s a lot of debate as in to when it actually happened, that the right to capital punishment by Israel was actually taken away.

There were lots of people who were very familiar with the Bible who ran around during those days ripping up their clothes, putting on sackcloth and ashes and yelling out, "Why God did you do this to us? Why have you forsaken us God? Why did you do this?" Because in their mind, the right to capital punishment was taken away, but yet Shiloh had not come. The problem is in their minds at least, Shiloh did come. He was born in a town that was inconsequential that they had not expected for him to ever be born in, although they should have expected it because of what the Bible predicted.

He was born in a little town called Bethlehem. And what's interesting about his very birth, which I think is so incredibly consequential today, is that that birth would be indicative of a picture that would be created for the whole world of the future King of the Jews. The future King of all of the world. Now we know that that kingship of Christ will not be put into effect until he literally takes back the title deed to the earth, but we oftentimes refer to him as our King today simply because we understand the role that he will one day take on, but has not taken on as of yet.

The thing that I think is powerful about what we read about in the book of Genesis is that Genesis tells us that our Messiah, our Savior, would be born by the time the Jews' right to capital punishment would be taken away. The thing that I think is even more remarkable about that is he adds this little statement to the end of Genesis 49, or the end of verse ten of Genesis 49, where you see him say this very simple phrase: "And unto him shall the gathering of all the people be."

You know what's really funny? When the Tribulation happens, at the beginning of the Tribulation, we know based on what we read about in the book of Revelation, and there's other passages that gives us a good picture of this, the Jews will be deceived into accepting this Antichrist, this false messiah. It's interesting to see that they're going to accept him, especially considering the fact that he's coming somewhere out of Europe. My guess is out of where old Rome was. He's not a Jew, he's a Gentile. Not only is he a Gentile, but he has no regard for anything, no regard for anything that's religious.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill and part of our new study, Prophecies That Changed the World Forever. Pastor James will be right back with more. There are a few ways you can listen to today's message or the entire five-part series again. We post all our programs to LightonTheHillRadio.com as well as OnePlace.com. You'll also find Light on the Hill on most major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google. We also have an app that makes listening to messages easy to do on any of your mobile devices. Just search for Calvary Chapel Signal Hill in the App Store or Google Play.

We're thankful to the Lord for the listeners that come alongside us with their prayers or financial support. It helps us do what we do every day. If you'd like to donate to the ministry today, please visit LightonTheHillRadio.com. You can also give through the Light on the Hill app. Start following James Kaddis on X, Instagram, and YouTube. Throughout the week he shares biblical encouragement and videos that deal with current events and Bible prophecy.

Pastor James is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill, and we'd love to have you join us for our Good Friday and Easter services, either in person or online. For more information, visit CalvaryChapelSignalHill.com. Now with these final thoughts, here's Pastor James.

James Kaddis: I'm going to make this assertion and I think it's an important one to make. The more you know the word of God and the closer you get to the word of God, the more closely tied in you are to God's ultimate purposes for you. And the better you get to live them out. The further away you get from God's word, the more removed you are from living through God's purposes and the more destructive your life becomes. Pay attention to these messages. We’re going through this time of the Easter season, the resurrection of Christ is what we celebrate. And we have a lot of reason to stop and to reflect upon everything wonderful that God has done for us. He’s done so much for us, you guys. We cannot forget his goodness. Amen?

Guest (Male): Next time on Light on the Hill, Pastor James Kaddis brings us the real story of Jesus and his death on the cross, looking into Isaiah. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.