"To Abraham and His Seed" 5       This is an edited version of the lecture titled, "To Abraham and His Seed," which was preached on May 28th, 2007.       "One who will come from your own body shall be your heir." Then He brought him outside and said, "Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them." And He said to him, So shall your descendants be. And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. Then He said to him,  "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it."    Genesis 15:4-7           Genesis - the Foundation of the Old TestamentThere are times when we read Psalms or the book of Isaiah simply as stories. We think of the book of Isaiah simply as the prophet Isaiah's record of future events or a record of what happened to Israel. We may think of the books of Ezekiel, Jonah, and other prophets in the same manner. It is because we do not understand the book of Genesis very well that there is much misunderstanding and confusion about other books of the Bible.In the New Testament, this applies to John's Gospel. If we do not correctly understand the contents of the Gospel of John we may  misunderstand other parts of the Bible. Not only the Gospel of John but all of the four Gospels, including the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke - which explain the Gospel of John - are quite difficult. Many passages do not seem realistic. For instance, a man's ear was cut off but Jesus touched it and it healed. A person suffering from an illness was healed just by touching the fringe of Jesus' clothes. We read about such incidents in the four Gospels. If we do not sort out these matters clearly in our mind, we may misunderstand the entire Bible. That is why we studied the four Gospels in our fellowship. While we were studying the four Gospels, we were separated - by doctrine - from those that misconstrued salvation and being born again and went astray.In the Old Testament, the book of Genesis contains the basic frame. To compare the Bible to the human body, Genesis acts like the bones. The Gospels in the New Testament, which describe the life of Jesus, act like the blood, in that these Gospels hold the life of the entire Bible. Of course, you cannot say that any one particular book is more precious than the other books among the 66 books of the Bible. They are all God's words, and any of the verses can give you life and provide spiritual food.The Bible explains God's intent in creation - which begins with the words, "God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1) - and it explains God's purpose and method in guiding history. However, no one summarizes them and teaches them to us in the way that students are taught in school. Often, you cannot find answers and explanations of the meaning of what we find in the Bible. Therefore, the Bible says, "And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God" (Deuteronomy 17:19). It tells us to read it all the days of our lives. If you do not read the Bible, you cannot understand it. Those of us that live during the Church era have been given the opportunity to read the word straight from the Bible, and it is through fellowship about the word with other believers and through our efforts to live according to the word that we come to understand the meaning of the Bible that we did not know before. This is the secret of fellowship. When we carefully read and examine, in Genesis, the order in which God created the heavens and the earth and guided history, then we can get an idea as to how God guide history in the entire Bible. This is why I find the book of Genesis fascinating every time I read it. When our children enter Sunday school, the first thing that they learn is probably Genesis. It is necessary to learn and understand the content of the stories as historical events. I do not believe that it is necessary to force upon children the meaning behind these stories. We simply hope that they will naturally discover the meaning behind them by studying the stories.How are we doing in this regard? We can read the Bible independently and understand the words in the Bible, and we have the ability to understand what God is trying to teach us; it is necessary for us to ask ourselves about the attitude we have towards Genesis. We must ask ourselves this question.As I mentioned last time, Genesis chapter 14 contains names that are difficult and insignificant, so it may seem bothersome to read. The names are very difficult as well. However, if you apply it to our lives and to the times in which we are living, as you read it, then we can discover, little by little, the profound meaning that God wants to convey to us. Furthermore, when we read the same passages after some time has passed and we have become more mature, then we may understand it even better than we do now. The extent to which you understand the words in the Bible depends on how wide open the eyes of your spirit are.If you do not read the book of Genesis carefully and observe in detail the meanings that are revealed in it, then it will become increasingly difficult to understand. It is analogous to solving a math problem. Children that just started school will follow along even if you teach them the multiplication table before teaching them how to add. However, there is a reason that the schools teach addition first. This is because it is the basic step to learning mathematics. The children that did not have a proper foundation and learned the more difficult topics first find it difficult to think systematically or to use a formula to solve problems. Children that do not go through the basic education system may not know how to solve a difficult problem later on. You have to button the first button properly. The same applies to Genesis. When we understand it well, it will help us as we read other books of the Bible.   God's Way of Guiding HistoryThe first verse in Genesis chapter 15 says, "After these things."After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision. (Verse 1)   To when does the phrase, "after these things," refer? Abram and Lot first went separate ways, and then Abram rescued Lot, who had been taken captive. Then, Abram met the king of Sodom and Melchizedek, and gave one tenth of his goods to Melchizedek. It refers to the time after these incidents occurred. There is a certain order. The phrase refers to the time after these incidents.After that, God appeared to Abram and explained to him about the son that would be born from him. This is the fundamental reason for calling Abram from the Ur of the Chaldeans to enter the land of Canaan. God did not call Abram into the land of Canaan so that Abram alone could eat and live a good life there. The content of Genesis chapter 15 explains God's fundamental purpose in bringing him to the land of Canaan.Before I explain Genesis chapter 15, let us go back to, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) We must understand this in order to understand why Abram came to enter the land of Canaan. When you read Psalms or Stephen's sermon in Acts, the point is very simple. God brought Abraham so that Jesus could be born in the land of Israel. How did God guide history, what kinds of events took place, and what kinds of problems were derived from them? It is difficult to explain all of this in words alone, but please think about the overall picture as you listen.In Genesis it says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In Ephesians, however, it says that there was one event and one body that God had already planned, even before the creation of the world (see Ephesians chapter 1). In other words, before the history in which we live began, before "the evening and the morning were the first day" (Genesis 1:5), God predestined one body within the time frame of eternity. That is the Church.The record on how the work of establishing the predestined Church began makes up the content of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. Of course, Genesis does not say so. However, in light of the latter books of the Bible that follow, we can see that that was the purpose of the creation. In addition, behind the words, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," there was the power of Satan, who envied God's throne and wanted to be like God. From there, the events that led to the creation of this earth, on which we live, took place, and the heaven and the earth that were created in such a manner are the world in which we live. In the verse, "... created the heavens and the earth," "the heavens and the earth" include not only the heaven and the earth, but also the world beyond the heaven and the universe that is unknown to us. Within this space in the universe, which was created in such a way, "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep," the Bible says. That is how our story begins. On the sixth day, "God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:27). God created the garden and put the man, Adam, whom He created, there, and God told him, "You may do as you wish. You may eat as you wish, but you shall not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The day that you eat of it, you shall die." This commandment had been given to Adam. Then, Adam fell into a deep sleep, and God took a rib from Adam, while he was sleeping, and created another body. That is the woman named Eve, whom we know well.The commandment not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given to Adam. Genesis chapters 2 and 3 explain that when Adam disobeyed this commandment, all of humanity fell into the pit of sin. In that case, could Eve freely eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? It is not our place to answer this question in one way or the other. It is clear, however, that Eve was in the body of Adam when God gave the commandment to Adam. When Eve was made, Adam said, referring to Eve, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh" (Genesis 2:23). In other words, she shared life with him, that she had the same life as he. They had no choice but to share the same fate. This woman is a shadow of the Church, which was predestined to become one body with God the Son. That is the image of a woman. However, when the cunning Satan went to the woman and asked her, "Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" she was gradually deceived. She fell for Satan's trick and answered, "God has said, "You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'" When she heard Satan's words, she felt that the fruit of the tree of knowledge looked desirable to make her wise. This is the problem. Of course, this woman was not the Church that God had predestined. She was only a shadow of the Church. However, she was looking in the direction opposite of the commandment that had been given to her husband, who had been created by God and given the commandment by God. When Eve heard Satan's words, God's commanded was nowhere to be seen, and the tree looked good to her. So she ate the fruit of it. (See Genesis 3:1-6)When the woman - who was made from his flesh, and to whom Adam referred as, "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" - ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge at Satan's voice, Adam also ate. This is a very significant issue. There is an event that takes place as a result of Adam eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge.Originally, God created man to be good. He made man like

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