Genesis 3:15

Discussion Questions

1. Was it surprising to learn that the gospel starts in Genesis? When you think about the story of Jesus have you previously limited it to the New Testament only?

2. Does knowing about the “proto evangelism” or “first gospel” (Genesis 3:15) change your perception about God’s love for us? How long did it take for God to enact his salvation plan after Adam and Eve transgressed? Were they required to do anything to enact His plan?

3. How did God show gratuitous grace, provision and protection to Adam and Eve amid the curses?

4. Pastor Jim pointed out that Adam and Eve committed the first religious act when they tried to cover themselves with man-made clothes. Are there times in your life when you use other tactics to cover your sin rather than come to Jesus for redemption, renewal and forgiveness? Can you identify them?

5. How do the questions Satan asks differ from the questions God asks Adam and Eve? What do you tell yourself regularly? Who are you listening to?

6. The sermon started with a list of common questions that humans face everyday. In light of this passage in Genesis, do you feel better equipped to answer any of these questions for those who are experiencing them?

7. Of the three fancy latin phrases theologians use to describe God’s redemption for humans which one do you find most inspiring? Have you heard of them before?

• Christus Victor- The theory of atonement by Christ’s triumph over sin though His death and resurrection.
• Satisfactio- The theory that satisfies God’s Justice
• Substitutio Vicaria- the substitutional sacrifice Jesus paid in our place once and for all.

8. We were encouraged by the sermon to recognize the reality of the battle, rest in the grace of God and live with confidence in Christ. Which do you find the most challenging?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, and this is one of those times where we break from our pattern of doing that. And during the Advent season, we’ll have a series of themes that we pursue, and it’s all going to be centered on the theme of Advent. I’m going to put up on the screen for you that our title for today will be Advent Foreshadowed. And along through the coming weeks, here’s what we’re going to do: Today, Advent Foreshadowed. Next Sunday, Advent Promised. The 15th will be Advent Fulfilled. 22nd will be Advent Fully Realized. We’ll take a look at the Book of Revelation there. And then, Advent Proclaimed on December 24th. That’s Christmas Eve, of course, and hopefully, many of you will be able to be with us.

If you would like a copy of the text today, raise your hand. For today, we’re going to be in Genesis, just a little overview of chapter one and two, but mostly looking at chapter three. Just raise your hand if you want a copy of that. Somebody would be glad to drop one off for you. Here are the notes and quotes too via the QR code. I seek to persuade you today that the gospel doesn’t just begin with a New Testament, with Matthew and what follows. It actually goes all the way back to the Book of Genesis, and that it’s part of the meta-narrative of all of Scripture. It’s this storyline that runs from the beginning to the end. God, in pursuit of a people He can call His own and God offering a way for each and every one of you, and me as well, to become His children, His sons and daughters. Not just His possession by right of creation, but actually in relationship with Him as sons and daughters.

What does Advent mean? It comes from the Latin word “adventus,” which means appearing or arrival. In the Christian Church, Advent is the season which believers reflect back in time on the first appearance of Christ, the first Advent of Christ, His incarnation. And then, we look forward in time with anticipation to His second appearance, His return in glory. As I say, we’ll be looking at that on December the 22nd. Once again, this schedule will be up there. You can download the notes if you would like them, and you can download that schedule as well. I love looking at the Book of Genesis. I’m really excited about it. It means “beginnings.” Some of you will know that. We studied the entire Book of Genesis during the pandemic actually. We were looking for something that we could study that was bigger than the pandemic, so we did Revelation and then we did Genesis on the heels of that.

So, we did God wrapping up human history, and then we went all the way back to the beginning of the book and studied verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter through the Book of Genesis, so I’m excited today to revisit Genesis. It does help us with some of the questions that people have been asking for a really, really long time. Maybe some of you will relate to some form of a question that you see on the screen right now: Where did everything come from? is one of those questions. I think philosophers typically will frame it like this: Why is there something rather than nothing? It’s a great question. It’s not one that a lot of people think about often, but I think it’s worthy of thought. And where did everything come from does cross our minds every now and then.

Does God exist? If so, who is God and what is God like? Who am I? What does it mean to be a human person? Do our lives have meaning and purpose at all? And how can we know that? Why does it seem like something’s gone wrong with the world? We’ll, look at that, especially today in Genesis, Chapter 3. And is there any hope for our redemption? I think these are questions people would ask, whether they’re Christians or not, whether they’re Bible believers or not. I think these are the kinds of questions you’re going to find out there in the general marketplace of life. And I like to frame them and put them on the screen and be mindful of them over and over and over again, so that when I’m in a conversation with somebody, I can ask a question or address a question that they might actually be thinking about, instead of trying to answer questions that nobody’s really asking. So, it’s good for us, I think, to be thinking about these kinds of questions.

Now, before I read from Genesis, Chapter 3, as we focus in on that, let me offer this prayer for illumination: Father, because You’ve invited, we’ve gathered. Because You are holy, we humble ourselves and bow before You. Because You’ve spoken, we’re eager to hear. Because You hear, we bring You our prayers. Because You provide, Lord, we will feast. And Jesus, because You lead, we will rise and follow. Because You died, the price for our sin has been paid and we’ve been reconciled to God. Because You rose again, we have eternal life. And because You save, we must sing. Give us now, we pray, a clearer vision of Your truth, greater faith in Your power, and more confident assurance of Your love for us. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Genesis, it’s the first book in your Bible. If you’ve got a Bible, a pew Bible, whatever, go all the way to the left to the beginning of it. And as a matter of fact, look at verse one of chapter one. I’m not going to read much of chapters one and two, we’ll focus on chapter three, but I think that first verse is a real keeper, especially in light of those questions. Matter of fact, I’m going to put those questions back up on the screen for us and listen for the answers in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

It’s astounding to me. The Bible nowhere seeks to prove the existence of God. It just declares the existence of God. It just proclaims there is a God. And we can very easily deduce from what we read in the Bible that there is a God, and we are not God. None of us are Him, but there is a God. So, when we ask the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing? Where did everything come from?” We can see right here in Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God did something. What did he do? He created. What did He create? The heavens and the earth. What does that entail? It entails literally everything. Everything above, everything that is around us, everything we can perceive, He is responsible for it coming into being.

There is this really great start to the Bible in answering some of the really big questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? Chapter one goes on to spell out the creation event, which is cast here in terms of a week of activities of God, and God continues to do His work, and then He steps back and reflects on His work, and He says, “It was good. It was good. That’s good. Yeah, that’s good. I like that.” And when He creates the human person, the human beings, the male and female, He says, “That’s really good.” And He creates them in His image, so we start to find an answer to the question, “Does human life have any meaning? What does it mean to be a human person?”

So now, you start to see why Christians have this viewpoint, Bible-believing Christians. I know there are others that might call themselves Christians. It may or may not be Bible-believing Christians, but if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, and you read that at the end of Genesis, Chapter 1, the beginning of Genesis, Chapter 2, you see that the human person was actually created with meaning and purpose, created in the image of God, to bear the image of God, to reflect the image of God.

Some do it better than others, no doubt, but that’s the mission. That’s the purpose. That’s the meaning of my life and your life. If you are a human person and if you are listening to me and can understand me, you’re likely a human person. But that’s the meaning, the big picture of your meaning. And why is it then that we start to define ourselves by lesser things and to build our identity on lesser things? Some of which are really good, but they were never meant to be the center of who we are. You were designed, every human life designed to bear the image of God. So, from the womb to the tomb, no matter how sick, no matter how successful, no matter how much of a failure, no matter how much fear, no matter how much you struggle, no matter how much you don’t like yourself, no matter how much nobody else likes you, you are created in the image of God. And it’s pretty amazing actually to let that sink in a little bit.

Let me jump from that big creation event of Genesis 1 and 2 and jump right to the beginning of Chapter 3. We’re going to read a few verses there, little better than a dozen verses there. And I want to tell you right now that Genesis 1and 2 is amazing and awesome, mind-blowing and heart-thumping, eye-popping. But Genesis 3 takes a little bit of a turn, okay? And if you have read this before, you know what I mean, but it’s an answer to this question: “What’s gone wrong with the world? Why is it that we don’t like each other, we hate each other, we can’t get along, and there are wars? Why is there disease? Why is there death?” It starts to answer some of those questions.

Look at Chapter 3 with me. “Now, the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” The serpent, how many of you like snakes? Anybody here like snakes at all? Okay. There’s two of you. That’s good. People are moving away from those people right now. I can see that. Most people don’t like snakes. No. If you like them, that’s fine. The word in the Hebrew is “nachash.” It could be translated “the shiny one.” Its verb form is “to hiss.” Thus, the English translators think this must be shiny outside, hissing noise, and read the rest of the story and you see a snake. Okay, that’s a serpent.

So, they say, the writer of Genesis tells us, this serpent was crafty, so it’s very clever, very crafty, and it comes… And this is evidently a speaking serpent, and I know some of you’re just thinking, “Well, the only lizard I know that talks is the gecko from Geico,” or something like that. That one stands up, and this may indeed be a standing beast. It’s quite possible. You’ll see as we go along. It’s possible. I don’t know that, but it is possible. But the serpent comes to the woman, and right now, the only woman is Eve, she’ll be called that at the end of this chapter we’re reading, but we all know the rest of the story, and we know that it’s Adam and Eve at this particular point in the storyline. And the serpent says to the woman, “Has God indeed said this that you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?”

So, there’s the first question in the Bible. I like this because there are only three occasions where Satan is recorded as speaking in the entire Bible. Here, where Satan questions God in front of the human beings. Has God really said that? The second time we have the words of Satan recorded in the Bible is Job chapter one, where Satan goes before the Lord God and questions humanity. Job, this person Job, he questions humanity before God. So here in Genesis, Satan’s questioning God before humanity. In Job, Satan’s questioning humanity before God.

The third, the final time that we have the recorded words of Satan, there’s all kinds of discussion about Satan and talk about Satan throughout the Bible from beginning to end, but the only recorded words, three times, the only recorded words are these three occasions I’m describing to you. The third and final time, he doesn’t question God before man or man before God. He questions the God Man, Jesus, in Matthew chapter four, when Satan comes into the wilderness and tempts Jesus three different times. And three different times, for one is for provision, bread, sustenance if you will. One is to tempt Him in hopes of tempting Him, maybe he’s out for glory. So, he says, “I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the world.” And another time is about whether or not Jesus could actually trust God, the Father. Is God trustworthy? So, very struggling with all of that, and all three times Jesus bests Satan in his pursuit to try and defeat Jesus, the God Man.

So, the serpent comes, he asked the first question, “Indeed, has God said, you should not eat from any tree?” And they go, here’s verse two. The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it.'” You should underline “or touch it, lest you die.” And the reason “or touch it” you should underline is because it’s actually not in what God originally told Adam up in the previous chapter.

Here, we have the first occasion of somebody becoming a Pharisee, adding more rules, more regulations, heavy burden onto their understanding of what God has actually said, and then conveying that to others. This is really an Old Testament Pharisee in a way, ain’t it? You shall not eat it, which is true. That’s exactly what God communicated to Adam. And you shall not touch it lest you die. The “lest you die” part is correct. That’s what God did say. Death would enter the world if they ate the fruit. Now, did Adam miscommunicate to his wife? Some people posit that notion. It’s quite possible. Or did Eve somehow or another in her own mind think I got to add something to this, I got to really set up some rules and some… Is it indeed a first effort to be a legalist? I don’t know, but it’s right there. She does say that.

Verse four, “The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely shall not die!'” In other words, directly contradicting what God had indeed said that you would die if you ate the fruit of that one tree. “‘For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”

This so reminds me of 1 John, Chapter 2. I did a series of my podcasts, verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter study of 1 John. And in chapter two, I think it’s verse 16, you see there that we’re told that the three categories of temptation are the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. And he articulates it really clearly. Matter of fact, verse one of 1 John 2 is, “These things I’ve written to you that you may not sin.” And then he goes on to describe what temptation and sin actually look like when they’re at work in our lives, which Genesis 3 is a good lesson in that as well.

But here, we have in verse six, look at it, we have the same thing as 1 John 2:16. We have good for food. Oh, the lust of the flesh in a way, right? We have a delight to the eyes. There’s the lust of the eyes that John will pick up in chapter two of his first letter in the New Testament. And that the tree was desirable to make one wise, and there indeed is the pride of life. As well as in verse five, “You will be like God knowing good and evil.”

And if there’s one lust that every single one of us have, one lust that we crave, that we are so vulnerable to, it’s the lust for autonomy, to be the final word ourselves, to not allow God to be God but to be God ourselves. That’s at the core, at the center of all my unbelief, all of my sin. That’s what’s at the center of it. I want to have the final say on everything. So, the author of Genesis is describing how this woman was literally tempted. If you were looking at verse one, here’s the anatomy of a temptation in a nutshell. You doubt God’s word, verse one. You stoke resentment in verses two and three. In verse four, you look at willful unbelief there in verse four. It’s pretty clear. You shall surely not die. He’s tempting her to willful unbelief, contradict God.

You have in verse five, the pride of life. You have verse 6A, sort of a rationalization and direct disobedience in verse 6B. So, it’s amazing when you look at this and try to pick apart what this anatomy of a temptation looks like. It’s pretty stark and pretty clear here. Verse seven, “Well, the eyes…” Because they both eaten now of this fruit that they were not supposed to eat, “The eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.” Here, you see, they have been completely free, completely without guilt or shame. Everything life as it was meant to be – flourishing in every way – and now that has been destroyed, disrupted in a bad way.

And the eyes of them, they were both open and they knew they were naked. That’s shame. They have had no shame up until this point. They weren’t afraid to be naked together. There was no sense of that. But what do they do? They do the very first religious act in the entire Bible, not just the pharisaical thing but a religious effort, to try and on your own, cover up for something that you know did wrong. They sew fig leaves together to try to cover themselves with those fig leaves. Verse eight, “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees.” Here, sin, temptation, sin has borne its proper fruit of shame, and now people are hiding from God. First occasion of that, hiding from God.

We do it all the time now. I remember one of my little brothers, when he used to do something wrong and he got caught, he would do this, cover his eyes. Some of you do this I’m sure, but he covered his. He felt like if he wasn’t able to see you then you probably weren’t able to see him doing this thing, so he covered his eyes. That’s what we’re afraid of. We know. We have a conscience. God has given us a healthy conscience, and we have this sense that when we are doing something that displeases the Lord. So, here they are, and the Lord God comes walking into the garden and they’re hiding behind trees.

You cannot hide from God. Their thinking has gone wrong. You can’t hide from God. He created those trees. He created the air that those trees breathe, he created the water they drink, and he created the space that they occupy. He created the human persons themselves who are hiding behind those trees, so you can’t hide anything from God. And then, the Lord God called out, verse nine, and here’s what He said to the humans, “Where are you?” You got to underline. Underline those three words. I don’t care if it’s a pew Bible, underline it in the pew Bible too. We want everybody to get this.

It’s still a great question, because God already knows the answer to the question. God’s questions are all rhetorical questions. He’s asking questions. This is the second question in the Bible, by the way. The first question was when the devil or the serpent asked the woman, “Did God really say?” Here’s God asking a question, and He’s doing it, what I’d call it a Socratic method, but it’s before Socrates even existed. So, Socrates borrowed from God here. Where are you? It’s still a very good question. Where are you? And the Lord wants us to consider that. Where are we? and How did you get there? which are really interesting questions. Where are you?

Verse 10, he said, “I heard the sound of You…” This is the human answering. Adam answers, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid.” First mention of fear or being afraid in the entire Bible right there. There’s been no fear, there’s been no shame, there’s been no guilt up until now. And I was afraid. Why? Because I was naked. So, he was ashamed and afraid, and he hid himself. He thought maybe he could hide himself and assuage some or alleviate his fear and his shame.

And God says in verse 11, “Who told you that you were naked?” This is a great question too. Who told you that you were naked? It’s like the Lord saying, “Who are you listening to? Who is it that lied to you?” That’s a great question for us today. Where are you and who are you listening to? Still really good questions for us. All the way back with our first parents. All the way until now, great questions by God to ask. Who told you you’re naked? And He goes further, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

I love the tenderness of the Father here. He’s trying to help His son and daughter learn. He’s not just scolding them, He’s not just berating them and shaming them. He’s saying, “Think this through. Who did you listen to? And then, who told you this about yourself? Who’s lying to you?” Really important that we are aware of that. The man said, “The woman who You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”

This is, by the way, the first instance in the Bible of passing the buck, and we have only perfected the habit in all these millennia since then. We still do it. It’s not my fault. It’s always somebody else’s fault. I’m not the one that did it. If you had enough, then all that kind of stuff over and over and over again, and that goes all the way back to the garden. But notice this, it’s even worse than that. Adam isn’t just saying Eve, he’s actually saying it’s the woman you gave me. He’s actually saying, “God, you are responsible for this.” Oh, my goodness! Step back from the car. That’s like wait for the lightning to fall. What’s God going to do? It kind of draws me in. I don’t know if it draws you in, but it does draw me in. So, he says the woman that You gave me. And then the Lord God turns to the woman, and He says in verse 13, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Now, she’s actually telling the truth, however she is pointing to someone else. She’s learned the art of passing the buck. It must be a book, the art of passing the buck, and so she read the book her husband wrote, and she’s now quoting from the book her husband wrote and points to the serpent, but she is actually truthful in what she says. The serpent deceived me. That’s true. You are deceived. And I ate. Yes, you did, and that’s very clear and that’s actually a better confession, a better response than the one Adam gave.

However, well, the Lord God says then to the serpent… So, you can see Him turn, and please, I don’t know what this looked like, because I don’t know what it looked like for God. Infinite God, almighty God, to be walking in a garden on a tiny little speck of a dust ball of a planet with a couple of humanoids. I don’t know what that looked like. But if He were some kind of angelic creature or whatever He looked like, I’m going to say His nostrils flared a little as He looks at the serpent, and I’m going to say He looks at him, and now He’s going to deliver this curse.

Watch this. “Because you have done this.” See, there’s no questions here. That’s just God judging the serpent. “Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, more than every beast of the field. On your belly, you shall go.” This is one of the reasons some people think maybe it was a standing-up-tall kind of creature of some sort, and now he’s literally going to say, “No more legs. No more arms for you. On your belly, you shall go and the dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity…” This is verse 15, it is the one we want to focus on. “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.”

Here, we have this amazing conflict. He, and that’s a personal pronoun. Did you notice that? What’s the referent? The seed of the woman. So, he, personal pronoun, the seed is a he. It’s not an it. It’s another way in Old Testament nomenclature of saying your descendant. There’s one descendant of yours in the singular, and He’s talking to the serpent. He, that descendant, will bruise you on the head. In other words, this is going to be a lethal blow. It could be translated, “He will crush you.” And then, He says also, “You shall bruise him,” or this word could be wound him. “You will wound him on the heel.” Yeah, that’s a lot like what you think it might mean. We’ll unpack it in a minute.

To the woman, He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain, you should bring forth children. Yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” So, the delivery of children will be painful. The relationship between husband and wife will become more difficult, more complex. Then to Adam, He says, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree.” I’m glad He added that in there, because I don’t know about you any husbands in the room. I find it’s actually better for me to listen to the voice of my wife. She’s usually right more often than she’s not. But in this particular case, we’re all sinners in this room, male, female alike. And this is Eve too. She’s culpable as well, because of what she said to her husband, what he should not have done is eat the fruit.

But that’s what she conveyed to him, and she gave the fruit to him. “You’ve listened to her, and you’ve eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In toil, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles, you shall grow for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, to dust you shall return.’ Now, the man called his wife’s name Eve because she was the mother of all the living.”

I’ll stop reading the text there, but I’ll point out to you that work itself has become toil. It was changed dramatically here. It was a lovely thing to be placed in the garden. Before the fall, when everything was as it should be to tend. To the garden, to be involved in that great work, and to eat from the thousands of different trees and plants they were allowed to eat from. And yet, they fixate on this one as the serpent tries to tempt them away from what God said to them. And then, they are lured into that temptation, and they do listen to the deceptive lies of Satan, the serpent, and eat that fruit, and death literally enters the world here.

Because pain in childbirth, work becomes hard, thorns and thistles. Evidently, there weren’t any up until now. And you’ll have to by the sweat of your breath, you’ll have to do your work. So it really becomes a hard thing, and people are tempted of course to ask questions, “Why is everything so hard? Why does it have to be pain in the world? Why does there have to be…” And we ask those questions quite naturally. We want to understand what God has done in all of these things. But here we have in the middle of this chapter, which is kind of dark. It may be the darkest chapter in the Bible in terms of its impact, because we’re all still suffering from the choice our first parents made.

We’ve inherited this sin, original sin that’s been handed down to us. Original sin is a doctrine of biblical theologians, and I know there are some people that deny original sin, but I actually agree with Chesterton who once said, “Original sin is the most provable doctrine of the Christian faith because you can see it on the street.” And I always add in there, and I can see it in the mirror as well. I see it in others. I see it in myself as well. It’s so easy to prove. When a baby is born, parents, how long did it take your kid to say “mine” or “no” back at you? It doesn’t take long. You didn’t have to train them in that. It’s not like you sat around going, “Now, repeat after me. No, mommy.” You didn’t do that. You didn’t say them. Now, when another child comes in the room, make sure you take their toys. Nobody had to teach them that. They come by that quite naturally. Original sin is all around, so we start to answer the question.

Now, what has gone wrong in the world? You see it up on the screen? What’s gone wrong in the world? Is there any chance, any hope of fixing what’s gone wrong in the world? Because it’s not just out there in the world, it’s in here as well. It’s in here as well, and we need help with it, and that’s one of the reasons I love this chapter, and I love verse 15, which is what we really want to camp out on, because I think in verse 15, which I’ll put on the screen right now, there is the beauty of a promise in the midst of a curse. You see it up there? Yeah.

“I’m going to put enmity between the woman, you and the woman,” God says to the snake, “and between your offspring, your seed, and her seed or offspring. He shall bruise your head.” There’s a promise, right? It’s a beautiful diamond in the midst of a pile of charcoal. It’s God’s promise in the middle of this curse. Paul Tripp has a new daily devotional out. You need to get it. It’s called Everyday Gospel, and the very first reading is for January 1st. There’s a reading for each day, 365, and it’s just a brilliant devotional. I think Paul is a great thinker.

Here’s what he says in January first’s reading, “The beginning of the Bible is wonderful. It’s awe-inspiring. It’s heartbreaking. It’s cautionary. It’s hope-instilling all at once.” He’s right. “Since God created us to be meaning-makers, He immediately presents us with the wonderful and awful realities that we need to understand in order to make proper sense of who we are and what life is really all about.” I mean, that’s it in a nutshell. He just summed it up beautifully.

As we observe Advent, we look back in time to recall in this chapter here, the beginning of the beautiful story of Advent. When God says in the middle of all of that curse, “He will bruise your head to the serpent.” The woman’s seed is Jesus, and He indeed bruised or crushed the head of the serpent when He died on the cross and in His glorious resurrection. And it’s beautiful. Actually, a lot of theologians call this the protoevangelium. It’s also pronounced euangelium. If you prefer that pronunciation, you’re welcome to it.

But here, we see the beauty of a promise in the midst of a curse, and it is indeed. Proto means first, and evangelium just simply means the gospel, so it’s the first gospel we have in our Bibles. It’s the first hint or foreshadowing of the gospel and that’s why we wanted to bring it forward today as Advent foreshadowed. He’s coming, and that’s what verse 15 says, and I think it says it so beautifully.

I’ll give you three things that I think we could highlight out of this passage too. One, I think we need to be aware that there’s a cosmic conflict, rebellion versus redemption. Maybe you’ve wondered if there’s a parallel universe or another dimension, some other reality that we aren’t naturally aware of. Well, in some ways, the Bible is suggesting that there is because the Bible is saying there are creatures and beings and activity that is happening that’s all beyond your five senses. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, all of that. Those devices, those tools that we have to explore the reality we live in, that’s not going to help us in the immaterial world, and God’s Spirit operates in the immaterial world as well as in the material world if He wants to. Why? Because He owns it all. He created it all, and He can step into it if He wants to. It’s His.

There are some limited finite creatures, like Satan and like demons and devils mentioned throughout the Scriptures, who can operate on a leash, but they have some smarts… He’s more cunning, more crafty. We’re told here in verse one of chapter three, and has the ability to draw you, to draw me into a lust of the eyes, a lust of the flesh, or perhaps the pride of life, which is, again, really that pride of life thing I think is at the core, it’s at the root of all my sin. Pride. It ruins us in every single way.

John Stott sums up this conflict, this struggle that we have trying to assert ourselves and our lust for autonomy. He says, “The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting Himself for man.” You see how succinctly that is put. It sums it up. What is sin? We so quickly move to the Pharisee thing of trying to describe sins, acts of sin instead of dealing with the condition of sin, which exists before we get to doing these things over here that are sins, acts of sins. We’ve got a problem, and it’s a cosmic conflict that we’re all in. Will we choose the road of rebellion or the road to redemption on offer to us through Christ?

Secondly, I think in Genesis 3:15, not only is there sort of evidence of a cosmic conflict, but there’s also the divine solution on offer here. A deliverer will come. A He. It’s actually a person. He will come, and He will bruise that serpent. He will bruise that serpent’s head. He will crush that serpent’s head. I think that’s such a powerful thing for us. It changes. I mean, it’s one thing to acknowledge what the problem is, this cosmic conflict. It’s another thing though to say now God has done something about it and to put that forward as well. He’s going to not just hear about it, not just observe it, not just throw shame at us. He’s actually coming to do something about it.

That’s God’s divine solution. The deliverer will come. The theologian, Fleming Rutledge, who I think is quite brilliant. Her book on Advent is wonderful. Her book on the crucifixion is wonderful. She says, “In the birth of our Savior, we’ve received something that is beyond our deserving, beyond our preparations, beyond our human potential, beyond even our expectations. It comes to us in the words of beloved carols, in a silent night, in the dark streets, in the bleak midwinter, in such a world as this to save us all from Satan’s power.”

That’s exactly God’s purpose in 3:15 there. That’s what God intends to do. That’s His divine solution to our cosmic conflict that we all have. And therefore, I would point us to the victorious savior. He is Christus Victor. He is our Savior. Notice the timing of this promise in verse 15. God doesn’t wait for Adam and Eve. You’ve got to notice this. God doesn’t wait for Adam and Eve to sort it out themselves. He didn’t even wait for them to get down on their knees, walk forward as people played the piano a little bit slowly and an invitation is given.

There’s none of that. God’s making promises. He’s on the move. That’s mind-blowing. That’s the kind of God I want to worship. Perhaps, it’s the kind of God you want to worship as well. He’s a victorious savior. He’s come. We look back on His first appearing, and He’s coming again to set the world to rights. Because He came the first time to crush the serpent’s head, which He did on the cross, and in His glorious resurrection, putting death to death. And at the end of all time, when He comes to wrap up human history, He will wrap it all up.

I think that the Apostle Paul must have had Genesis 3:15 in mind when he wrote Romans 16:20, “And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” Church, the God of peace will crush the serpent’s head under your feet. His power to influence, harass, annoy, distract, deceive you – that will even be done away with. I love that that is what the apostle John was keen on. I think both Paul and John, not the rest of the Beatles, but Paul and John here. These guys. I think this Paul and this John actually had Genesis 3:15 in mind.

Here’s what John writes in Revelation 20, “And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison, will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle.” So, deceiving. Gathering for a fight, looking for it one more time, out of prison. “Their number is like the sand of the sea.” There’s just thousands, thousands, and thousands of these minions of the devil. “And they marched up over the broad plane of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” That’s worth a Presbyterian amen. Amen.

I mean, you can be a little bit, but I’m just telling you. The end of evil is described there. That should thrill you. That should make Advent, Christmas, all that we’re talking about with Christ coming, that should put a whole new slant on the whole new thing. It’s not really just… I mean, I love presents under the tree. I love the lights. I love the carols. I love the songs. I love all that stuff. But it all points to a greater reality, something really big that’s going to happen. Something has happened, and something even bigger that’s going to happen that is promised as Christ, when He comes, will indeed be victorious and crush the head once and for all of that serpent.

Theologians use Latin phrases so that we will keep them employed because we need them to help us understand these words. Here are three of them. I’m not a Latin expert, but I do enjoy languages and just exploring them. “Christus Victor” is the title that theologians will use when they’re talking about different theories of the atonement. And this emphasizes Christ’s triumph over sin, death, and the powers of evil through His death and resurrection, liberating humanity from bondage, reminding us that what God begins, God completes. Christ will be… Christ is victorious. So, we sing Christus Victor. We will sing that today ourselves, but we also know Jesus as our champion. He is our champion, and we are victorious because of Him.

“Satisfactio,” introduced by Anselm of Canterbury. This theory views Christ’s death as satisfying God’s justice, repairing the honor, offended… God’s honor, offended by human sin. Humanity owed a debt to God that only Christ could fulfill. Great. Romans 3, 1 John 2, you can look that up if you’re interested. “Substitutio Vicaria,” it means vicarious substitution, or some of you will know it, substitutionary atonement. This is the way most reformed theologians would refer to. It focuses on Christ’s death as a substitutionary sacrifice. That is taking the penalty of sin that Jim owed. I was due that penalty. I was to pay that price, and yet Jesus paid it for me, and He did the same thing for you if you’ve trusted and hoped in Him. So, His death on the cross is effected a substitutionary atonement. It has paid the price for my sin once and for all. That’s beautiful. So, we come to the table, and we have to say thank you.

Now, which of these three up on the screen there, which of these three is accurate? Yes, all of them. He’s all of that. I got to be honest, there’s more. He’s more than all of that. But those three are some beautiful jewels to dwell on and think upon as we look back at Genesis, Chapter 3 and the promise in the middle of the curse that tells us that God is going to take care of what has gone wrong in the world and what has gone wrong even with us.

I’m not strong enough. You are not strong enough to defeat the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. I cannot be victorious over those things. You cannot either, whether you admit that or not. I’m just telling you it’s true. We need Christus Victor. Before God, we need Satisfactio, we need Substitutio Vicaria. We need all of who Jesus is and all that He offers to us. John Piper says it this way, “There are some wells that don’t run dry. Some horizons that expand as you approach. Some stories that reach back forever forward into eternity, down to the depths of mystery and up to the heights of glory. Advent is one of those. It’s inexhaustible.” And that’s why I’m really excited thinking about next year to be able to talk about these things again. They’re wonderful, and we should be wonder-filled.

May I ask you today: Where are you and who are you listening to? The devil, the serpent in Revelation, Chapter 12 is called the accuser of the brethren. And he is lying to you all the time. He’s accusing you of things that aren’t sin, that somebody somewhere along the line told you might be sin, some legalist. And he’s trying to make you feel guilty about that. He’s also, at the same time, he’s trying to all lure you into sin. He’s lying to you about what is right or permissible. He’s lying to you about that all the time. And then once he gets you to fall to that temptation and fall into sin, then he goes into accuser of the brethren mode. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. Lure you into it, get you to do it, and then accuse you over and over and over of doing it. And that’s why we need Christus Victor. And that’s why we need all of who Jesus is as our Savior, our Redeemer, and our Lord. Who are you listening to?

I lie to myself more than anybody else. I would argue that you lie to yourself more than anybody else as well. I’m constantly telling myself I’m right when I wasn’t right. I’m constantly telling myself I’m wrong when I wasn’t wrong on something. I’m constantly berating myself. I’m constantly exalting myself at the same time. We all do that same kind of stuff. Where should we turn our ears toward? And I think God’s question to Adam and Eve there, “Who told you that?” He’s inviting us to listen to Him, to turn to Him. He’s the one that’s looking for us, “Where are you?” and wants us to come home to Him.

How should we respond today? Recognize the reality of the battle. See, if you don’t think there’s a battle, he’s already won. If you don’t think there’s a devil, he’s got you right where he wants you. Jesus talked about the devil more than anybody else. And I’m not talking about some images we have of the devil, some guy in red tights with a pointy tail and a pitchfork and all that. That’s not it. I don’t know what he looks like. I can’t tell you. I don’t think he’s much really bothered by me at all. I think it’s one of his millions of minions that’s after me all the time. But I know this, we have an enemy of our souls. You have an enemy of your faith. You have an enemy of your marriage, and it’s not your spouse. You have an enemy of your family, and it’s not your family members. You have an enemy of your faith that doesn’t want you to turn to Christ, doesn’t want you to listen to the Word of God or study the Word of God.

And parents, I’m sorry, this is so true. If you treat things like Bible study and prayer time and even singing worship time together or coming to church together with your family, if you start to treat that casually, trust me, it won’t take long for your children to treat it as completely irrelevant. That’s just a wake-up call. That’s not meant to be shame or guilt or anything. It’s just a wake-up call. More is caught than taught. They’re watching and they’re learning.

If you continue to study through Genesis, you’ll see the same kind of thing happen. So, recognize the reality of the battle. Rest in the grace of God. So important for us but live with confidence in Christ. He is our victor. He’s the one we hope and trust in. Where are you, and who are you listening to? This is Advent Foreshadowed. Let me close in prayer:

Thank You for Your Word, God, as ancient as this text is, as filled with mysteries, as many questions that get stirred up in my mind about the details here, here’s what You’ve said to me and to us this morning. That with all that’s gone wrong in the world, we have a hope because Jesus was victorious in the cross and in the resurrection. Help us now. Grant us the faith that leads to repentance, that we might come and trust You and hope in You this Advent season. We pray in Jesus’ name and for His sake. Amen and amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs:

“Angels From The Realm Of Glory“ by James Montgomery
“Hark The Herald Angels Sing“ by Text: Charles Wesley Music: Felix Mendelssohn
“O Little Town Of Bethlehem“ by Phillips Brooks and Lewis Henry Redner
“Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus“ by Music: Stralsund Gesangbuch, Words by Charles Wesley, Arranged by Keith Getty, orch. by Paul Campbell and John Langley
“Christus Victor (Amen)“ by Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty. Matt Boswell, Matt Papa, Bryan Fowler
“Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois

All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #200369

Call To Worship: Advent Foretold

Leader: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
People: He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him.

Leader: In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
People: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Leader: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
All: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Confession

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against You this day, in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole hearts; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of Your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us, that we may delight in Your will, and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your Name. Grant to Your people pardon and peace, that in Your great mercy, we may be forgiven all our sins, and serve You with a quiet and contrite heart. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

Classic Prayer: John Murray, 1898–1975

Father, during Advent, as we consider the event when “the infinite became finite, the eternal and supra-temporal entered time and became subject to its conditions, the immutable became mutable, the invisible became the visible, the Creator became the created, the Sustainer of all became dependent, the Almighty infirm,” we are humbled and grateful to begin to understand that “it all is summed up in the proposition, ‘God became man'”…and even more, that he is Immanuel, God with us.

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