particular tree. Now what that's telling him is that yes, you have an exalted authority so that you are even in a position to judge an angelic being, but you're not God. I am God and you are a servant and therefore here is a commandment that's me going to make you recognize and to acknowledge that I am indeed the ultimate sovereign because there's no other explanation that makes any sense of this pro what why shouldn't he eat of this particular tree. God had already identified all vegetation as we saw at the end of Genesis 1 all vegetation had been identified by the word of God himself as for food so it made no sense now just in general apart from the word of God itself it would make no sense why wouldn't this one chunk of food this one specimen be for food since all the rest is made you just couldn't appeal to common sense you couldn't even appeal to the previous word of God the only thing going here was that God said don't do it so this particular prohibition was very well designed to put to make the test of obedience a very acute the only thing the facing him is will I obey the authority the absolute authority of the word of God will I live by every word that's coming out of the mouth of God including this new strange currently self-contradictory word will I do that our won't I and so this negative aspect of it was well calculated to put Adam in his place as a servant under the authority of God at the same time that it was highly exalting him by giving him the authority to judge Satan but in any case there is the the tree of that's how the tree of knowledge and fits into this whole scheme of his cultic task of guarding the garden of arm again so judgment if we're thinking of of this as the eschatology of the creation order that's what we're we're talking here's the created order didn't happen this way but this is the way it's laid out in terms of the covenant here's the eschatological progress it's going to lead up to through the the eschatological logical goal of consummation and look where judgment where final judgment takes place here would have been the final judgment of the world would have taken place right at the beginning because he would have been the final judgment of Satan at Adam instead of inviting him and welcoming him and accommodating his evil presence in the sanctuary would have confronted him faced him down damned him condemned him rejected him and handed him over to God for final judgment and so the final judgment of Satan and his so horde could take place then and there there would have been no reprobate men and that would have been the final judgment of the world slay the dragon and then move on to build a house of God those those two moments in human history even in the pagan creation miss that pick up on this those are the two big moments that make the drama of mythology is that the slay the dragon the hero God does and then he he he builds the the royal palace where the marduk bill or what have you but the the true thing from the beginning was that that was the task of man just to slay the the old dragon right from the beginning and then move on with that cultural task that we were talking about of producing mankind producing the temple of God well that was the probation phase that was the probation task now if he had passed it then the tree of life was there and waiting to be the sacramental ceremonial seal now that Adam you have passed beyond probation into this new state where the promise blessings will will be conferred upon you the the conferral stage and the very first thing that they would have enjoyed was the verdict of God you have passed the probation the word of approval the word of approbation okay your performance has been praised worthy it is meritorious it has earned the reward and the reward will proceed to be bestowed upon you in these two stages of confirmation and later on of of consummation so you are now beyond probation there's no more testing of you you are now secure you are beyond probation and need I underscore again of course that that which Adam failed to achieve that Jesus does achieve and he receives the word of approbation and you receive it by faith by grace he imputes to you that meritorious deed that receives the word of approbation and places you believer in Jesus Christ beyond probation so that you are now secure in Christ confirmed in eternal life and bound for glorification and so there would be the forensic there would be the forensic fruit of a successful probation expressed in God's word well done good and faithful serve the word of approbation and then secondly there would have been the the spiritual confirmation see confirmation spiritual confirmation the the the advance from his original state or he was yet under probation and where he might sin but where he was able not to sin but also able to sin and now he would be confirmed in righteousness no longer able to sin beyond probation beyond temptation beyond a sinning is confirmed spiritually in a state where he can no longer sin which is he's confirmed in eternal life who would do this what a change what what a subjective spiritual change the Holy Spirit the glory spirit creates man in God's image in the first place in that original good state the same Holy Spirit of God would surely be the one who just is under the redemptive program it would be this Holy Spirit who works this inward change and transformation in God's people he would be the one who would work this and then to fill out the story of course it is the same Holy Spirit in whose likeness man was created at the beginning in royal dominion and moral excellence it would be that same glorious spirit who would complete the fashion of man in his own image by reproducing his own visual glory in man at the end of the story but before we come to that what would be the nature now here he is he has approbation he spiritually confirmed in in righteousness all of this imputed also to all of the the company that would be coming from him but now there's a long period from successful probation through the consummation of all things that whole cultural task that we talked about still remain to be accomplished fill the earth and subdue it well there are only two of them there and they were just in the garden of Eden that whole job remained to be done and so the first the probation phase is characterized by a cultic focus now that priority of priesthood does continue but the thing now that becomes distinctive of this new stage would be the cultural task the the movement out from the focus in the garden of Eden the mountain of God is that that cultic focus of a whole man's whole developing life but he wasn't to stay there he was to expand from there and to move out from the cultic focus to the cultural fullness one or two else I keep looking up that dictionary and I think every time I do it says two else are preferable and one L is acceptable but I have to work like that that no matter how many times you use them and then you have to look at the dictionary every time anyway you can never seem to learn that's one of mine but in any case the characteristic of this period would be to move on and from the garden to expand on God's the city of God all all over the globe by the process of population expansion appropriation occupation the taking over the whole earth it's cultivation and so on that whole thing that we tried to describe that would have been what would be going on and that whole thing we said could be described in terms of the function of building the city of God from that small starting point where we're just the one individual family until you have many families and they expand and the Polish the city becomes big so this is the period of achieving cultural fullness there is there is there is a predestined play Roma a predestined fullness that God has in view of mankind and that has to be produced not just the original human pair but this huge globe spanning a globe covering family of Adam and Eve the fullness the predestined play Roma God could decide when enough was was enough and he would and by that time the city of God would be a mega it would would be a big city and so city house house of God these are just alternative images for the same basic reality this city of God is the temple of God it which is it is the house of God and temple building that's what we said the cultural task is that of building the temple so that all things ultimately come to expression in the worship and the glorification of the Lord and temple building is always in the ancient world of task for kings so it's a culture building that you know functioning within the temple is the priestly function building the temple is everywhere a task for kings that's like the the cultural task as we said the king the function however subordinate to the ultimate priestly use of the house of God so that's all right the talking about a Christian philosophy of culture here are some basic ingredients in it that would have been the purpose of culture right from the beginning producing at last mega polis now that's not the last word on the subject in fact what talking about a Christian philosophy of culture what we should learn from this is that any human culture that we develop is simply a temporary substitute a temporary substitute for for the real culture the real culture then comes with the next step when we pass beyond spiritual confirmation beyond spiritual confirmation to physical glorification and that's that's the last step in in this process then the conferral of the ultimate completion of of the image of God in man in terms of this visual glorification that will take place at which point now it will still be the city of God heaven in in redemptive dialect we speak about the New Jerusalem apart from the redemptive process speaking in terms of an original dialect it's just the city only it's not just the the big but it's it's the beyond city and so I coined the term using meta in the in the sense of beyond and so just as a way of expressing what the ultimate goal was of human history from the outside it is the beyond city it's beyond anything that human effort even in this in this state could have performed we could take it only so far and build the big city we couldn't glorify ourselves and so Metapolus is this when the Holy Spirit takes the big city that man has produced and he transforms it by transforming the people who make it up by physically glorifying them and that is the glory heavenly the Saviour the the consummation city of God that's the beyond city the Metapolus God is there in as I say in the redemptive developments New Jerusalem becomes the name for this generic Metapolus and as I say meanwhile then what's the purpose of what's the purpose of our of human culture it's the temporary substitute it's until the real thing comes and you think of all our cultural developments and whatever our technology can achieve the terms of communication and transportation all these are wonderful things that we are boggle within in our day and and yet they are only temporary experience and if it takes seriously the concept of physical glorification then that obviates the need for all of our man-made technology and you no longer need the spaceships marvelous as they are to go to the moon or to Mars or whatever and I hope they don't try that but you know that they're marvelous but when you have a body such as Jesus who was sent into heaven on the ecology you don't need that that technology that's only a temporary substitute until the real thing which is physical glorification has been bestowed many of all of the benefits capacities and capabilities and and far beyond anything that our technology will ever achieve you know if all of that just built in to the the the product of God's or you know transforming creative hand and so that's so much for our our present culture we won't be able to take that with us that raises some interesting questions I suppose we could get into as to well any of the music we know via be a part of the heavenly will all the artistic achievements find a place in and in heaven are when that and now of course redemptively this point involves the judgment of the world and the post-poll history the coming of of Metapos the coming of New Jerusalem companies the passing away of the earth and all the works that are in that person in Peter all the works that are there in and is that saying that every visible vestige then of a human culture and achievement disappears you know becoming virtual darkness when when the the son of consummation arises or is there any carry-over at all I say that we could speculate upon it is especially the area of music you wonder if if the elements of music and harmony and beauty that are there when to essentially be they'll always the same ones and and and then at last I I could pick up that violin I used to play when I was a kid in hardy speech on any any more and and and do better than you sack problem and boy that would be great you know okay that's that's that's speculation now we get back here any comments on any of this roaming around the cosmos you're not fighting all right well coming back to yes sir since the fall yeah that that we will certainly want to be dealing with and the main point out try to be bringing a bringing out is that they're we no longer have the cultural mandated though there is just one cultural mandate that we had before the fall and that's though that one continues because the distinctive indispensable point of this cultural mandate was that you were building the holy city of God now there is a cultural mandate after the fall but it is it comes through the context of common grace and common grace is not involved in building the city of God and so there is in a formal sense some continuity there is still procreation that's still a function of mankind is to is this to fill the earth and there is still to some extent at least a an exercise of dominion over over the over the world as comes out in the technology we're just talking about and so on but when all of this is said and done the the big city that we are building is that not the holy city of God it's the perverted thing that we see in all of our cities around about us now so there is a cultural task but it is our rendous mistake to speak of that is the cultural mandate that was given at the beginning and because then you begin to reject the thought that the kingdom of God that comes only through the supernatural grace of God in Christ and you assume a social gospel type being that everybody's involved in building the kingdom of God out there apart from Christ which simply isn't the case but we under our discussion of common grace yeah well in terms of assuring the blessing but meanwhile here is this mandate that God has already given to them to fill the earth and so do it and they wouldn't have already begun that yet and and God's purpose is that that that metaphors will be made not not just of Adam and Eve but but a huge multitude of so there is this as I said now redemptively we speak about that multitude who are electing Christ I was trying just sort of to use some analogous language so I spoke about a predestined play Roma huh but in any case God would have a full company that we had in view the constitutes this living temple and and the and the first step and the production of that was that they would be produced in the normal process of human beginning it wasn't that God would create them himself in a moment this multitude of descendants who weren't really but but but history would have been completely different than we know it now and in our pursuit of culture because just imagine him a history in which you are not dealing with the problem of sin and this effect where so much of our culture now is devoted to the remedial aspects of correcting the effects of sin and the expression of sin in society so that so much of our culture comes to expression in dentist and surgeons and police and all of this stuff you know which is correcting the effects of the fallen and if we didn't have to consume all of our cultural energies in that direction hard to imagine what kind of progress would have been made much much sooner than than we have yeah even there there would have been needed this additional act see the you know the first Corinthians passage as you know we have shared in the first ad and we have the earthly body but now there is still an necessity to enter into heaven to share in the likeness of the Lord from heaven and that kind of transformation would have been just as necessary for for Adam even apart from sin of course the one difference is then that that transformation for us now involves not just glorification but resurrection because we we as a result of the fall experienced death first in the case of Adam he would have been a pure and simple not so simple super natural act of glorification but they there would have been resurrection would have been part of that experience but but transformation metamorphosis from unearthly body to a heavenly body would still have been necessary to to equip him for heaven until that time I mean heaven would the heavenly dimensions of the cosmos would still have been invisible and beyond his perceptions and would have taken glorification to open up the whole cosmos so that he sees it in all of its glory dimensions and thus the whole thing becomes for him a new heavens and a new earth yeah yeah I was just yeah all I tried I tried to say was that before the fall there would be no need if all that was in view is that had Adam sin then God would have judged him and that would have been the end of history huh and and and that would have meant then there is being consigned to hell itself with the the devil and his angels and then I was trying to make the point that that hell does not involve the physical death but rather it is certainly spiritual death but it doesn't involve bodily death in the sense of separation of body and soul or whatever because it takes a physical resurrection we know and post-lapse history for the wicked to be ready for help and so I was just saying then that there was would be no rationale for physical death you if Adam sin there would be no point in God killing him and then raising him up quick to he just no no no place in the scheme that's all I was trying to say there but then once the fall does take place and within the context for now God is working out a redemptive program which goes on for generations and so on there we begin can begin to see something of God's purposes and introducing the phenomenon of physical death as they step prior to or less than then hell itself second that let's see when the after eight what else did I want to cover in this area well look why don't we just try to finish off what we want to say here for the most part about the covenant of creation there in that what page are we on yeah eschatological sanctions threatened curse okay page 65 and that this is material then that we have already covered so just to keep moving through kingdom prologue to see where we are on page 65 and I have the subject of the probation tree all right in this chart we then went into that here here was the tree of the knowing of good and evil the probation tree and and so I was just trying to condense a little bit that of those pages for you and then page 67 following is the analysis of this whole arrangement as a covenant of works and we spent a good deal of time earlier on when our overview of the covenants and in making this point that this was a covenant of works and there was no grace element found in the thing whatsoever it was a straight covenant of works it was the law gospel contrast that we encounter and so there's no need I trust to at this point to reverse that again and that would take us then and you know that's as important as anything we're gonna be dealing with the whole the term so that if you have questions on that I hope that we can find occasion to talk about it in several of the articles that we distributed here deal with that but having dealt with it at length I think we need not write at this point deal with the again which would bring us then to chapter 5 which is simply now here's the arrangement we've analyzed how did it work out we all know that it ended with a tragic fall of man and as far as that goes again this whole attempt to give an exegetical analysis of the process of the fall I've tried to work it out on these pages and I would suggest that you you read them there and again I think this is something that in the interest of keeping this thing moving I can pass over at the present unless you have been reading ahead and had some particular questions you wanted to raise already about this the the opening thing of how God appeared in Genesis 3.8 we discussed that text and said that the usual translation of that the Adam and Eve heard the the sound of God walking through the garden the cool of the day is not at all what the text is talking about there's no cool of the day there the text is talking about God came as the spirit capitalist of the judgment day here's a picture of a theophany of it judgment theophany and then he engages in his interrogation Satan in the process of the fall has achieved his ends and God now honored and by the way in the process of of the temptation and fall before the final overt act of eating of the forbidden fruit and Eve then playing the missionary together husband to also participate in in the the devil's sacrament of death with her before they ever get to that point all of the major obligations of the covenant of creation have been really trampled upon the the covenant involved it had a community structure you know it had a family structure with the authority of the husband over the way and and they have sinned by omission in that respect Satan has contrived the things so as to contradict the divine order by approaching the woman first and both Adam and Eve are content with this subversion of God's authority structure that was going on there so they have failed in terms of of community obligation the community authority structure the family authority structure the husband life authority structure they have failed they're all already by sin of omission they don't challenge the fact that that the Eve is put in the primary place of responsibility and then they had this cultural responsibility of exercising dominion over the whole world including the animals and here comes one of those animals acting like it was the the peer of the equal or even the superior to man this talking serpent and that they don't challenge that they accept this contradiction of the divine orders so they have failed in terms of their community responsibilities they failed in terms of their cultural position as having to mean over the animals and then third and worst they have failed in terms of their cultic responsibilities and this brings us back to the point that they had been placed there as the guardians of the the cultic center and they were to keep the unholy out and here that they have already they've already lost the battle because of Armageddon because they have accepted rather than slaying the dragon they've come and patented his little head and made a covenant with him and so they have by sins of omission failed all and it's just an anti-climax then when they go on overtly to take over the tree and the fruit of the tree and eat it and so forth so that's the you know the the process of the fall and God comes and you know he honors his own authority structure where Satan had subverted it because God goes to the man first and interrogates him and then the woman and then that the serpent now in pronouncing the judgment he pronounces judgment in the order in which sin arose and the sin arose first and Satan and so God said it word of judgment there in Genesis 314 and 15 begins with the judgment on Satan and then it had moved on to the woman and so then God's word of judgment to the woman and to the man follows and so that is the the way the thing unfolds and but in the process then what we do want to stop and pause over now is especially this word of judgment that God pronounces this classic text in Genesis 314 and 15 because it is something then which is an ultimate word on this history of the covenant of creation but at the same time it is an inaugurating word with respect to the whole new order of the covenant of redemption so we'll be looking at that and then the word of judgment on Adam and Eve which takes the form of a common curse and their expulsion from the garden and that will be ready to move into the covenant of grace so let's take our five-minute break here I would suggest and come back on fire. Discussion of Genesis 314 and 15 and so we are winding down the story of the history of the covenant of creation and the tragedy of the fall and the judgment of God now Adams was called to judge the serpent and he had failed and he got himself now is enters into the picture as the heavenly judge and he is going to pronounce the judgment on Satan and now whoever it is necessary as well to pronounce a judgment on the man and the woman as well as Satan because they have failed it's also the case that whereas as I said if Adam had done what he was supposed to have done the final judgment of Satan who presumably would have transpired then and there now terms of redemptive history Satan of course is to be finally disposed of by the Lord but not until the end of a long history now meanwhile however God does pronounce that ultimate doom and that is what we have primarily in Genesis 314 and 15 now remarkably this word which is essentially a word of a curse on Satan as you all very well know it hasn't tailed in it the promise of a Messiah and salvation at the same time so the gospel comes to its earliest statement in this word of cursing on Satan you're familiar with the classic understanding of this as a Messianic prophecy and that certainly in my judgment is the right approach to the understanding of this passage if we have time we can flip over to what is an effect and inspired interpretation of Genesis 3 in the book of Revelation chapter 12 and we shouldn't be at all hesitant or ashamed of seeing in Genesis 315 precisely what the church has always seen there is a prophecy about the Messianic seed of the woman who should win the victory over the satanic serpent who would slay the dragon ultimately so there was a a real serpent there huh this is a kind of historical events there was a real garden their real trees Adam and Eve a historical individuals and and there is a real speaking serpent of course there is something more involved in just a speaking serpent there is the satanic person who uses the speaking serpent as his agent as his vehicle and Satan's approaches a subtle its camouflage it's sinuous and and now for whatever reason that he is not allowed or whatever by God to make a more spectacular kind of appearance in there they garden but whatever the reason this is the particular form that he selects to approach the man and the woman and he sees in that sinuous subtle locomotion of the serpent something which provides an apt physical representation of his own subtlety in the sense of his psychological tempting approach and so he selects this agent for himself and God then picks up on that imagery that's that's the image you want for yourself fine and now however God sees some other features of the serpent not just its sinuous movement but it's lowly position there crawling in the dust virtually eating the dust and God sees us upon those aspects of the serpent and not are figuratively now to describe the fate and the doom of the devil of the Satan himself so on verse 14 the Lord says by way of judgment on the serpent because you have done this now he doesn't pause to interrogate him or to give him a chance to make any excuses or anything but he he's done this and God pronounced it so because you've done this therefore then the Hebrew reads our rure atah kerset kerset are you and so this passage is basically a word of curse on which the blessing comes in sort of sideways before you're through but primarily then it's kerset are you and then you get the language which in the Hebrew could either be a thought of separation or comparative the Hebrew preposition min could either mean that you are cursed in the sense of being separated from all others or comparatively you are cursed beyond all others and and so it would be the intense measure of the curse that's being pronounced on him in terms of this figuratively of the serpent up of all the livestock and all the wild animals you will crawl in your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life so as I say there are these features of literal serpents that God uses to depict the fate of this superhuman that is and fall an angel figure that that he is doomed to death to experience death at the level of that that's such a barrier being can experience a death and then the Lord goes on in verse 15 having stated in figurative terms the basic and ultimate thought that that God is declaring holy war against Satan he's pronouncing Satan's ultimate doom that that's plain and simple the Satan will be destroyed he will fail God will judgment that's already been stated now verse 15 simply spells out a little bit it's short it's cryptic but nevertheless verse 15 is spelling out a little bit the course of this holy war God declares this holy war against Satan which will end with his destruction and now verse 15 describes the two three stages along the way that God's went to win conduct this holy war first by reversing the victory that Satan seems to have won God instituted creation a good covenant relationship between himself and the man and the woman Satan has been successful in reversing that allegiance so that Adam and Eve in effect have thrown out off their allegiance to Yahweh Elohim the creator and they've made a pact of death with Satan now there will be a second reversal a redemptive reversal which will put things back to the way that they were at the beginning and ultimately even better and so Satan had to begin with the woman and the Lord and now says I will put enmity between you and the woman you made a covenant of peace with her and she with you I'm gonna reverse that and your defeat will take the form that you're gonna lose this convert and instead of peace between you there there will be hostility now isn't that just a negative way of saying that I'm going to restore the woman to covenant fellowship with me there the two masters is God and Satan and to be the enemy of one is to be the friend of the other and so if there's enmity now between the woman and Satan it means that she is once again the friend of God so this is as we said a curse on Satan and at the same time the year of faith is listening there you can hear the message of the gospel the promise of reconciliation with the Lord is here so the commencement the commencement of this process of holy war is with the woman mother Eve is going to stand there she's going to be the center of the army of the Lord she's gonna hold the banner of the Lord's army there and fighting the war against Satan from this promise no as we'll see in Genesis 320 that Adam as I was just saying if you're listening there with the the era of faith you can hear the gospel and I was thinking precisely of Adam standing there and hearing that and in verse 20 he virtually says amen to it and the way he now renames Eve so I think the evidence is to the effect there that not only Eve according to this explicit word is is electing Christ if you will but Adam also in the verse 20 as we'll see he gives evidence of faith and then in verse 22 21 God sort of seals this arrangement will come to it but yeah I think the evidence is Adam as well as Eve is electing Christ so that by the time they leave the garden they're expelled they are electing in Christ they have to be expelled meanwhile but they are so it's going to begin with the woman but it won't stop there and then it goes on to speak about the sea that the offspring of the Satan will have his offspring in the world and and Eve will have her offspring and the biblical evidence certainly as Jesus echoes this kind of terminology and as it's echoed in first John 3 isn't it this language of the seed of the serpent and the seed of God refers to the elect and the reprobate very clearly and so the thought now is that in the world Adam's descendants and Eve's descendants after the fall there will be such descendants that's just taken for granted that they will follow the cultural mandate there they're they're a cultural mandate there there will be the populating of the earth but there will also be this cleavage this antithesis between among the descendants of Adam and Eve so that on the one hand there will be those who continue to be like their new father the devil that in effect is what has happened in the course of the fall those who are made in the image of God God their Heavenly Father have now taken on a likeness to the devil he is their new father they have been remade in his image he's the liar from the beginning the deceitful one and you read their responses to God when he interrogates them and you can see that they are deceptive liars that like their new father the devil and and there will be those that are reprobate who continue just to exhibit the likeness of their father the devil they are the seed of the serpent but there are others with whom God will put enmity with the serpent you will recreate them in his own image they will be his kids again they will be his children once again and so there will be this division in mankind the woman again Satan and a whole company of others who will rally to the banner that the Eve is raising in the name of the Lord over against those who are the hordes of Satan and so the battle that has commenced will continue through history and then the verse brings us to a climax of this holy war when out of the corporate seed of the woman there emerges the individual seed of the woman out of the corporate army which is called the seed of the serpent Satan himself steps forward to be his own champion of his own army because you know who who is being addressed here enmity I will put between you and the woman God is in talking to a snake he's talking to obviously the serpent behind the snake you Satan a second person singular this is it's not a possibility that it's a corporate plural it's it's a singular you which means then the Satan himself so