Christ is also found in Genesis chapter three. Verse 15 says, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” In this verse we see a wonderful title of Christ, “the seed of the woman.” God created man and placed him in front of the tree of life, but man fell. The subtle serpent entered in to damage man. Thus, God intervened to exercise His judgment, mainly upon the serpent. God told the serpent that the seed of the woman would bruise his head. This meant that someone would come to destroy Satan. The seed of the woman who came to destroy Satan is Christ. Hence, in the first three chapters of Genesis, we have Christ as the image of God, as our life, and as the One who destroys Satan. How wonderful! This is the kernel of the first three chapters of Genesis. If we do not have Christ in these chapters, we do not have the kernel. Rather, we merely have the record of creation, of the garden of Eden, and of the fall of man.
Although we have Christ as the image of God, as our life, and as the One who destroys Satan, we do not have the church in the first three chapters of Genesis. Genesis, of course, has not only three chapters, but fifty chapters. In chapters two and three we have Adam, and in chapters four through fifty we have seven important persons: Abel, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Joseph. These people together are a type of the church.
In Adam we see God’s purpose and man’s fall. In Abel we see the return of the fallen man to God (Gen. 4:4). Man fell in Adam, but he came back to God in Abel. Hallelujah for this return! With Enosh we have the beginning of calling upon the name of the Lord (Gen. 4:26). Some Christians do not agree with the matter of calling upon the Lord. However, this practice began with the third generation of mankind. The name Enosh in Hebrew means “frail, mortal man.” Man is fragile and easily broken. After fallen man returned to God, he realized that he was weak, frail, and mortal. When he realized this, he began to call on the name of the Lord that he might receive help, supply, strength, and nourishment. Thus, in Abel we see man coming back to God, and in Enosh we see man realizing his weakness and beginning to call on the Lord for help. Undoubtedly, by calling upon the name of the Lord, man received the supply from God.
In Enoch we see a man who walked with God (Gen. 5:22). Enoch, the man who walked with God and lived by God, was eventually raptured to God (Gen. 5:24). Please pay attention to the sequence here: with Abel man returned to God, with Enosh man called on the name of the Lord, and then with Enoch man walked with God. After Enoch, we have Noah, in whom we see God’s reign. Noah represented God in ruling over the world. At the time of Noah the man who had returned to God also had dominion over all the earth. Man had not only returned to God, received help from God, and walked with God; he also reigned over the earth for God. However, like Adam, the descendants of Noah also fell, even to the point that God gave up the created race.
After it became necessary for God to give up the created race, He came in to call one man, Abraham, out of the fallen race and to establish him as the head of the called race (Gen. 11:27—12:3). In the case of Abraham, we see that he, the called one, was justified by God through faith (Gen. 15:6). Isaac inherited from Abraham all the blessings through faith. In Jacob we see both transformation and reigning. In Abraham we have justification; in Isaac, the enjoyment of the inherited blessing; and in Jacob, a transformed person possessing the element needed to reign over the earth. Jacob eventually reigned over Egypt through his son, Joseph, who represents the reigning aspect of Jacob’s life. In Jacob we see a transformed, mature person who rules over the entire earth. This is the fulfillment of God’s will to have a heavenly ruling on earth. All this put together is a shadow, a type, of the church.
In the first three chapters of Genesis we have Christ as the image of God, as our life, and as the One who destroys Satan. In the following forty-seven chapters we see a shadow, a type, of the church, composed of the saints from Abel through Jacob with Joseph. All these people are the composition of the church. Whatever we see in each of these men is an aspect of the church. The church must be composed of people who have returned to God, who call upon the name of the Lord to receive help, who walk in the presence of God and live by Him, who have dominion over the earth, who have been justified by faith, who inherit all the blessings by faith, and who are transformed and matured to possess power to reign on earth. This is the church.
Therefore, both Christ and the church are hidden in the book of Genesis. In the first three chapters of this book we see Christ, and in the last forty-seven chapters we see the church. Christ is God’s image, our life, and the One who destroyed Satan. This Christ brings forth and produces the church, the composition of so many persons. Therefore, the kernel of the book of Genesis is Christ and the church.
Now we see not only the tree, the fruit, the skin, the meat, and the shell of the book of Genesis; we also see the kernel. It took many years for me to see the kernel in this book. But Christ and the church are both hidden here. Who can deny that the kernel of Genesis is Christ and the church? Because this kernel is so hidden, we need a spiritual x-ray in order to see it. Without such an x-ray, we cannot find Christ and the church in Genesis. But now we have seen that Christ and the church are the kernel hidden within the fifty chapters of this book.