I'm gonna get asked to turn to the beginning of the bible to Genesis 3 this morning. That's a great place to start, a logical place to start, because we are beginning a new series as well. Over the next few weeks leading into Christmas, we'll be looking at the theme of the portraits of the Messiah, portraits of the promised anointed king. And we lead, obviously, into Christmas with these old testament visions or illustrations or prophecies of Christ. And we begin by the first one in Genesis 3.
Our passage begins at Genesis 3:1 and we continue to verse 15. Genesis 3:1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we might eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.
But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So 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 to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And 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 of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
God said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman you gave to me to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.
The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly, you shall go and eat dust and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So far, our reading.
As we begin our series on the portraits of the Messiah, we're doing so on our way to Christmas. This morning's passage from Genesis 3 is the first portrait of Christ that we see in the old testament. You might look at it and think, well, it's not a very clear photo like image of the Messiah, but still it is a sketch, a silhouette that we nonetheless find a promise being made to Adam and Eve. That someone will come, an offspring of theirs, that will bruise the head of the serpent. The NIV translated, that will crush the head of the serpent.
I've read articles and I've listened to documentaries from progressive bible scholars who try to argue and make a case that this promise in Genesis 3:15 specifically, is not about a messiah, but about humankind's strained relationships with snakes. This is a huge relief, obviously, if you have ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes. Because now you can tell people, see, it's biblical. If you are like these progressive scholars, you might try and argue that Genesis simply wanted to give an ancient parable about why humans hate snakes. That's what they argue.
But begin reading Genesis 1 all the way through to the end of Genesis 4, and you will soak in a story that you and I both know is much bigger than humans and snakes. It's not about our fears and our phobias, about a slithering creature. Why do I know this? Because I know that every other part of Genesis 1 through to Genesis 4, every statement that is made there has cosmic weight associated with it. Every single element is setting up the foundation blocks for the human condition.
And in Genesis 3:15 specifically, a certain truth is locked in for us. There is a conflict between Satan, the enemy of God, and because of God, human beings, is a conflict between Satan and us. So the serpent of Genesis 3 is no ordinary snake. And then the utterance of God made here in verse 15 is no ordinary statement. It is a promise of a saviour.
In other words, we are told that Satan will continuously strike at the heels of humanity, but humankind will crush the skull of Satan. Now, this sort of dualistic statement. Remember, there's two clauses here. Satan will strike the heels of man. Man will crush the head of the serpent. This dualistic statement requires some reflection this morning.
Think, for example, of the image of the serpent that strikes at the heels. It carries with it the image or the nuance of him hitting us from behind and below. Doesn't it? To strike at the heel, it is behind us and it is down below us. Sneaky and sinister, in other words.
Like an angry eastern brown snake that we get in Queensland, that gets us from down and below. So satan does by sneaking temptation to sin in our hearts. It's the way he did it with Adam and Eve, when he tempted them to break the one thing, the single thing that God told them not to do. You can eat, you can enjoy every part of paradise, But there's one thing, don't do it. This command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge between good and evil, God gives as a command of testing.
God gives as a securing of the idea of free will in mankind. There isn't a way out of obedience to Me. Don't do it. But there is a way that you can reject Me. Satan's deceptive manipulation of Eve, however, and then Adam and Eve's eventual mutual fall into sin, shows how Satan operates.
He strikes from behind and below. The places where we don't think he will get us. The places that we are least aware of. That's the first part of the prophecy. The second part is that humankind will crush the serpent's head.
And this is where the promise feels a lot more open ended. A strike on the heel from a snake can be deadly. Yes. I mean, you don't wanna get bitten by a eastern brown. It can be deadly, but it isn't always fatal.
It can be painful. Sometimes, it's just plain annoying. If you're, you know, the crocodile hunter or something like that. A strike on the heel may not kill someone, but having your skull crushed, well, that is fatal every time. And yet, it leaves us with this question, this problem.
If this verse here is not talking about snake phobias, if this sentence here has cosmic weight, then when has Satan had this fatal final moment? When has any human being ever crushed his skull? To be honest, every thoughtful and honest human being, whether they confess to being a Christian or not, will say, yes. I struggle with being good. I struggle with being kind, with being honest, with being fair at times.
Every honest person will say, if something like sin does exist, I will put up my hand and say, yep. I have struggled with that thing called sin. Every single human being can accept that first part of the promise. This Satan that leads us into sin does strike our heels. But no human being would ever dare put up their hand and say, yes to the second half of this promise, that they have crushed the skull of Satan?
Who would dare to put up their hand to say yes to that? That they have dealt a mortal wound to this ancient enemy. That they have so vanquished our arch nemesis, that never ever again will they experience his attacks. Never ever again will they fall into that thing that he drives them into. No honest person could put up their hand for that.
Why? Because none of us have fought that battle and won. At least, not for very long, even as Christians. And yet, the promise here is that Satan is going to be conquered. And not just conquered, dealt a fatal blow, Skull crushed.
And it's for this reason, in light of the cosmic weight of every single other detail in the opening chapters of Genesis, that we come to realise that the promise of a full and final conqueror is a promise given to Adam and Eve. And right here, at the beginning of the bible, like a thin pencil sketch. Just an artist making his initial ideas on paper of what he's going to finish up with. A face, a set of eyes. And then just like that, the moment is gone.
And we roll on to Genesis 4, and we see Cain and Abel, and we see murder, and we see strife, and we see hatred of God. But from this moment, from this utterance, millions of lifetimes pass, and not one of them is the conqueror. The ensuing books and chapters of the bible only go on to prove this one thing, that we don't win against Satan. We don't win against sin, at least not for very long. And in the end, without God's intervention, Satan always gets us.
But along comes Jesus. And alongside many other promised elements in the old testament, the bible that we're going to be looking at over the next few weeks, along comes Jesus and His crowning achievement according to those who knew Him, who loved Him, is that He dies on a cross. And that three days later, He rises from the dead. Why is that the crowning achievement? Because in that action comes the conquering over Satan.
You see, at the heart of the struggle between man and Satan is a bigger struggle. So even in our tension with Satan, there is a bigger war going on, and that is the battle between God and Satan. His tension with us, his striking at our heels, is a proxy war against God. If we are God's crowning centrepieces in the kingdom that He has. If Satan can take down the centrepiece, what does that do to the kingdom?
Satan wants to steal God's greatest creation in the kingdom. Consumed with hate, his sole corrupted desire is to mar God's glory. Satan hates that God is king. Satan hates that kingdom. Meanwhile, Jesus and His work on the cross becomes the moment where Satan's head is crushed.
His power is taken from him. Jesus is this promised special offspring of the human race. And all along, the Bible is pointing us to Him. We jump ahead to the New Testament that breathes insight into Genesis 3 for us. We come to the New Testament and we see Jesus after His resurrection visiting His disciples, giving understanding to the enormity of the resurrection, what was achieved on the cross.
Jesus comes to His disciples and there's this special moment in Luke 24 where Jesus meets with two very disheartened disciples on their way to Emmaus. Who remembers that story? And they're walking along and they are mourning. They go back home after spending days, weeks in Jerusalem mourning the loss. And Jesus sidles up next to them.
And all the way, He tells them about how the Messiah had to suffer these things. Listen to this in Luke 24, and we'll put it on the screen. Luke 24:25-27. He who is Jesus said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and then enter into His glory?
And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself. A few verses later, this is not to the two disciples anymore, this is now to the apostles, the 12, the leaders of the church. He appears to them in verses 44-46, and this is what He says to them. These are My words that I spoke to you while I was with you. That everything written about Me in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.
Then Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures and He said to them, thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. In other words, Jesus takes them to Genesis. And beginning with Genesis, He goes through to Moses, He goes through to David, He goes to Isaiah, He goes to all the minor prophets and He says, guys, it had to be this way. Don't you see? And so amazingly, even as we begin this journey this morning in Genesis 3, Genesis 3 and Luke 24, the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke, they stand on opposite sides of the cross event.
And yet both communicate the same message of the glory of God achieved in Christ. That is that Satan is defeated. And that through Christ's defeat of Satan, His people defeat Satan. The book of Acts records then in its first chapter, just following on from Luke 24, that there were forty days between Jesus' resurrection, forty days between His coming back from the dead, and then His ascension, and He appears to the disciples many times, Luke tells us. And then in Acts 1:3, there's a time where He spends time teaching them, it says, verse 3, about the kingdom of God.
On this, George Eldon Ladd writes this. I mean, of all the things that Jesus could say, why talk about the kingdom of God? And Ladd says, we are undoubtedly to understand this to mean that Jesus was instructing them in the relationship between His proclamation of the kingdom and His death and resurrection. All that teaching of Jesus saying that kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of God is like, that is tied with what was achieved on the cross. It is being fulfilled.
It is being ushered in. In other words, Jesus' final words to the people He would entrust to building His church. And through His church, the kingdom, the one thing He wanted to leave behind was that God's kingdom has won. And now, it is up to them to continue the work, to see through that victory, to bear witness to the power of that kingdom. And this kingdom, as we saw in our series on Acts, cannot be resisted.
It will keep growing. Theologian and pastor and author, Sinclair Ferguson speculates that He would have begun His conversation with those two weary disciples on the road to Emmaus by going first to Genesis 3:15. Ferguson concludes with this quote. We could say that the bible is simply a series of extended expressions, footnotes, and expositions of this word of conflict in Genesis 3:15, and ultimately, of Christ's final victory over the serpent. In other words, Genesis 3:15 gives us the summary of the entire bible.
It will go on to explain what the bible and the kingdom of God is all about. So that's why Jesus' first words, when He started His three year teaching ministry remember that? Mark 1:15. The first thing Jesus said when He started His teaching ministry was what? Repent and believe the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand.
What does a king do? He owns the kingdom. What does a king do? He wins back his kingdom. And so I believe Christ's message to His disciples in Luke 24 is that He is the promised seed of the first woman, Eve.
He is the last Adam, as Paul will write. He is the anointed head offspring, our representative, the one who will crush the head of the enemy, and finally, set His people free from that continuous assault. And so we have to see that even in Genesis 3, that the entire bible from beginning to end is carrying this one singular message that Jesus Christ conquers His enemy, Satan. And the amazing thing is, we have this amazing bookend. Genesis 3, and then I wanna go to Revelation.
Turn with me to Revelation 12:9. Listen to the words. See the consistency of the imagery. Revelation 12:9, and the great dragon was thrown down in the vision of John. That, what?
Ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And these brothers, these sisters have conquered him. How?
Is it by their own crushing of the skull of Satan? No. They have conquered Satan by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. Do you see that? See all those images again coming back?
The authority of Christ, the kingdom of God is set up. God's kingdom is secured. Satan's attempts to overthrow that kingdom has been foiled, and it's been foiled by the most surprising of methods, the blood of a lamb. And remember when the blood of the lamb happened? Is it at the end?
Is it at the end times? No. It happened at the crucifixion. It happened at the resurrection. The victory has been won.
A meek lamb is sacrificed in order to have a victory. God's people have that victory through the blood of a lamb. But notice this last element. It is the power of that lamb's blood, and also the word of these brothers and sisters' testimony. That is where we come in.
It's not simply or completely or singularly what the lamb has done. It is how we respond to what the lamb has done. It is our testimony which simply means our faith, our belief, our witnessing, and saying, yes, this is true. The lamb has done this that gives us that victory. In other words, we are saved both by the work of the cross and by my willingness to receive the benefits of that victory through my faith.
Meanwhile, Revelation 12 tells us that the ancient serpent has been thrown out of heaven and down to earth. What does that mean? What is it a good thing that Satan is down here with us now? Well, Satan is described in Revelation as being the great accuser of God's people, who John tells us, accuses us day and night before God. But now, notice that Satan, who had access to heaven, is there no longer.
He's been thrown down. We see a behind the scenes look of what this was like before this event in Job 1. Satan accuses Job to God of being faithful to God simply because he is so blessed. We see Satan as the accuser. He is the prosecutor who brings to God accusations of real sin and perhaps, in Job's case as well, false sin.
If anyone's seen Lord of the Rings, there's a great character by the name of Wormtongue, who is that slithering, sinister, sneaky adviser to the king of Rohan, who whispers to the king all the time, trying to empower himself, enrich himself. That's the image of Satan that I have here. Satan schemes to work both against us and God. On the one hand, he cons us into sin. And then at the other hand, he would go to God to say, have you seen what they did?
Revelation 12 tells us, no longer Satan. You are not welcome in heaven anymore. Here in Revelation, we see the prophecy of Genesis 3:15 fulfilled. He is thrown out of heaven, barred from any longer bringing any accusation of God's righteous people before Him. Therefore, as the great prosecutor of our sin, Satan is silenced.
His accusations are quashed. His slanderous mouth is muzzled. The slithery accuser no longer holds sway over God's thoughts concerning us. Never again will Satan see the glory of heaven. Never again will he witness the splendour of God.
He has fallen from heaven's throne room. And while he is here on earth for a time, his final destination is farther down below. He will end up in hell. And contrary to popular belief, hell is not the domain where Satan rules. Satan in hell is just the number, along all the other enemies of God who have not received the word of forgiveness.
Satan is as much a captive of that place as anyone else, stripped of all his power, his glory, his influence, and his ego, Satan would be another pitiful creature stuck in the eternal entropy of the abyss. How does all of this happen? Well, the ending was given away at the beginning. Satan will be conquered by a man. Simon de Graaf, in his three volume series, Promise and Deliverance, which really carries through the covenant promises of God through the bible.
He writes about Genesis 3 in this way. Just as man destroyed the world in the beginning, another man will rebuild it. Although Satan would go on to do man much harm, a man would one day be born who would completely overcome Satan and rescue the world. And that man is Jesus. It's a wonderful moment then every year that at Christmas time, we sing carols and songs and hymns that speak about the deliverance that Christ achieved.
But not only do these songs talk about our deliverance from the power of sin, it often talks about a deliverance from the darkness that descended on the earth through the evil one who is seeking to destroy everything that God had created as good. And if you follow that thread in Christmas time, you listen to the gospel stories again, if you follow that thread through the New Testament, you see all along that Jesus had to be this ultimate representative human. He was the offspring of Eve that was constantly struck at by Satan. We see this at the very beginning of the gospel account. We see Satan doing this, striking against Jesus from the beginning.
Every year, we have that heartbreaking portion of the Christmas story, where we read of evil king Herod killing hundreds of little baby boys in order to annihilate the king who was going to usurp his authority. And then you follow that line throughout the entire New Testament, and you see kings Herod's whole dynasty, his lineage kept trying to accomplish this. Herod the great massacres hundreds of boys, then he dies. Afterwards, we're told that Joseph and Mary don't go back to Judea because Herod's son, Herod Archelaus, is now king and he would kill Jesus as well. Later in the gospels, we see this king's brother, Herod Antipas, beheads Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist, and then he gives his permission to the Romans to crucify Jesus.
Then we come to the book of Acts, and Herod's great grandson, another Herod, Herod Agrippa, has the apostle James executed, the first of the apostles to be martyred. And then finally, when Paul comes to preach to him, as he is a prisoner, he laughs at Paul and says to Paul, do you expect me to become a Christian in one afternoon of your preaching? What dynasty sets itself up against a little baby born in a tiny place called Bethlehem? It's not the dynasty of a man. It's the dynasty of a dragon, a serpent, a creature consumed by hatred for God.
Strike after strike at the heel of Jesus and yet, Jesus conquers and His church conquers with Him. And so Hebrews 1:8 concludes it so well. But about the Son is said, Your throne, O God, will last forever and ever. A sceptre of justice will be the sceptre of Your kingdom. And this is the glorious good news of the kingdom of Jesus.
He has been granted the kingdom. And He will one day open our eyes to see the full extent of that victory. And again, today, He invites us to raise our hands and say, I want to be in that kingdom. And I need Him to be my king. Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, we thank You for this powerful image that we have right at the beginning of You. And Lord, although it is now easy and amazing and special and humbling to see in these opening verses glimpses of You, outlines of Your figure. We realise, Lord, how difficult it would have been. How mysterious it would have been for those first believers to have understood. Lord, without You breathing Your truth into our lives in order to understand this, we will wind up thinking that this is a story about a fear of snakes.
We will listen to these words and we will think of a cute story, of a mythological poem about mankind just needing to work a little bit harder to try and somehow regain favour with God. That we, somehow, have the power of the offspring of Adam and Eve in us to conquer our sins, to conquer enemies that may stand against us. My God, but it is so much bigger than that. We were lost so much more severely than that. We were in the battle of our lives and we were losing.
And Lord Jesus, You had to come. Thank You, Lord, for the amazing sovereignty that You had, that even at this moment, You had us in mind. And even before this moment, Lord, we are told that in love You predestined us to be saved according to Your great mercy and for the express purpose of Your glory. O God, that humbles us and reassures us so much. There is nothing that can be done, no power that can raise itself up against You, that will overthrow what You have desired to do in Jesus.
So thank You, Lord, that now through Him, we are conquerors more than through Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. We reign with Christ. We have conquered Satan with Him. And so for the sin that still holds on, that still ensnares and entangles, Lord, we pray that You will give us the power, give us the understanding that we are those conquerors, that we can break those cycles, those powers, that we can hear even when Satan, who is down here with us, even when he whispers in our ears, we have the power to resist. Help us to see that we are these kings, these conquerors alongside our Lord Jesus.
In His powerful name, we pray. Amen.