Advent Foreshadowed: Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus - Genesis 3:15

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and uh this is one of those times where we do break from our pattern of doing that, and uh during the Advent season, we'll have a series of uh uh themes that we pursue, and it's all gonna be for us, uh, centered on the theme of Advent.

I'm gonna put up on the screen for you there uh that our title for today, anyway, will be Advent Foreshadowed.

And along through the coming weeks, here's what we're gonna do.

Uh today, Advent foreshadowed.

Next Sunday, Advent promised, uh, the 15th will be Advent fulfilled, 22nd will be Advent fully realized.

We'll take a look at uh 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 uh you would like a copy of the text, raise your hand.

For today, we're gonna be in Genesis chapter uh, just a little overview of chapter one, 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.

Uh I seek to persuade you today that the gospel doesn't just begin with the New Testament, with Matthew and what follows.

It actually goes all the way back to the book of Genesis, the, 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.

Um, in the Christian church, Advent is a 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 uh return in glory.

As I say, we'll be looking at that on December the 22nd.

So 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.

Um 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 uh 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 we did God wrapping up human history, and then we we went all the way back to the beginning of the book and studied uh verse by verse, chapter by chapter, through the book of Genesis.

And so I'm excited today to revisit Genesis.

It does help us with some of the questions that people have asked for a really, really long time.

Maybe some of you will relate to uh some form of a question that you see on the screen right now.

Uh, where did everything come from is one of those questions I think the 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 uh often, but I think it's it's worthy of thought.

And where did everything come from does kind of 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.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

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 gonna find out there in the general marketplace of life.

And I like to uh uh uh sort of 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.

Um it's good for us, I think, to be thinking about these kinds of questions.

Now, before I read uh from uh Genesis chapter three, 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.

So, Genesis, it's the first book in your Bible.

So if you've got a Bible, Pew Bible, whatever, go all the way to the left, to the beginning of it.

And as a matter of fact, uh look at verse one of chapter one.

I'm not gonna read much of chapter 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 gonna put those questions back up on the screen for us, and um 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?

Um, chapter one goes on to spell out the creation event, which is cast here in terms of the sort of set like a it's like a week of activities of God.

Um 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 persons, the human beings, the male and female, he says, that's really good.

And he creates them in his image.

And 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?

And so now you start to see why Christians have this viewpoint, Bible-believing Christians.

I know there are others that might call themselves Christians that 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.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention Genesis 2 · chapter mention

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're 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.

And 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 that's that'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, a little better than a dozen verses there.

And I want to tell you right now that Genesis 1, 2 is amazing and awesome, mind-blowing, heart thumping, eye-popping.

But Genesis 3 kind of 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 we there are wars.

Why is there disease?

Why is there death?

It starts to answer some of those questions.

Look at chapter three with me.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord had made.

And he said to the woman, indeed, as 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 like two of you.

That's good.

People are moving away from those people right now.

I can see that.

Um, most people don't like snakes.

No, it's it's if you like them, that's fine.

Um, the the word in the Hebrew is nachash.

Uh it could be translated the shiny one.

Its verb form is to hiss.

Thus, you know, the English translators you know think this must be a shiny outside uh hissing noise.

Uh it and read the rest of the story and you see a snake.

Okay, that's a serpent.

And so they say the uh uh 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 are just thinking, well, the only lizard I know that talks is the gecko from Geico or something like that.

So, and and 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, You should has God indeed uh said this that you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?

Hmm.

So there's the first question in the Bible.

And 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 1, where Satan goes before the Lord God and questions humanity, Job, this person Job, he questions humanity before God.

Job 1 · chapter mention

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, and so he says, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world.

And another time is about whether or not he Jesus could actually trust God the Father.

Is God trustworthy?

And 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 asks the first question.

Indeed, has God said you should not eat from any tree in the garden.

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, that's 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 kind of an Old Testament Pharisee in a way, isn'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.

Well, the lest you die part is correct.

Um 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 gotta add something to this, I gotta really set up some rules, you know, and some some, is it uh indeed a first uh uh effort to be uh legalist?

I don't know, but it's it's right there.

She does say that.

Verse 4 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.

She gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

This so reminds me of uh first John chapter two.

I did a series of of my podcasts, uh, verse by verse, chapter by chapter study of 1 John.

And in chapter 2, you see, I think it's verse 16, you see there that we're that we're told that the the three sort of categories of temptation are the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

And it's it's 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 6, 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 2 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 5, you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

And if there's one lust that we, 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.

And so this woman is describing, or rather, the author of Genesis is describing how this woman was literally tempted.

And so you have, like if you were looking at verse one, doubt God's word.

Here's the anatomy of a temptation in a nutshell.

You you doubt God's word, verse one.

You res you sort of stoke resentment in verses two and three.

You 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 verse uh in verse five, the pride of life, you have verse sixa, sort of a rationalization and direct disobedience in verse 6b.

And so he's he's it's amazing when you look at this and try to pick apart what does this anatomy of a temptation look like?

It's pretty, pretty stark and pretty clear here.

Verse 7.

Well, the eyes of, because they both eat 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 to four, 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 had had no shame up to 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 a pharisaical thing, but a religious effort to try and, on your own, cover up for something that you know you did wrong, and they sew fig leaves together to try to cover themselves with those fig leaves.

Verse 8.

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.

You know?

Um, I remember my little one of my little brothers, um, when he used to do something wrong and he kind of got caught, he would do this cover his eyes.

Some of you do this, I'm sure.

But it covered his eyes.

He didn't want, if he if he felt like if he wasn't able to see you, then you probably weren't able to see him doing this thing.

And so he covered his eyes.

That's what's we're we're afraid.

We know we have a conscience.

God has given us a healthy conscience, and we have this sense that when we're doing something that displeases the Lord.

And 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.

Uh, there's 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 9, and here's what he said to the humans.

Where are you?

Oh, you gotta 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.

I'd call it a Socratic method, but it's before Socrates even existed.

So Socrates borrowed from God here.

Where are you?

Is 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 is a really interesting question.

Where are you?

Verse 10.

He said, I heard the sound of thee.

This is the human answering.

Adam answers, I heard the sound of thee 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 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 in the garden, all the way back with our first parents, all the way till now.

Great questions by God to ask.

Who told you you were naked?

And he asks, 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 whom thou gavest 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.

Some, it's you made, you know, if you had enough, then all that kind of stuff over and over and over again.

And we that goes all the way back to the garden.

And then, but notice this, it's it's it's even worse than that.

It's it's Adam isn't just saying Eve.

He's actually saying, it's the woman you gave me.

He's actually saying, God, you're responsible for this.

Oh my goodness, step back from the car.

That's like, wait for the lightning to fall.

You know, what's God gonna do?

It kind of draws me in.

I don't know if it draws you in, but it does draw me in.

And 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 passing 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 were deceived.

And I ate.

Yes, you did.

And that's very clear, and that's that's a bit that's actually a better confession than the one, a better response than the one Adam had.

Well, the Lord God says then to the serpent, so you can see him turn.

And please, I don't know, I don't know how to, uh 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 in a in a garden on a tiny little speck of a dust ball of a planet, you know, with a couple of humanoids.

I I don't know what that looked like.

But he, if he were fl if he were some kind of animal, some kind of angelic creature or whatever he looked like, I'm gonna say his nostrils flared a little as he looks at the serpent.

And I'm gonna say he looks at him and now he's gonna deliver this curse.

Watch this.

Because you have done this, see, there's no questions here.

There's just God judging the serpent.

Okay?

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 gonna say, No more legs, no more arms for you.

On your belly you shall go, and you, the dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity, this verse 15 is the one we want to focus on.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

And here we have this amazing, this amazing conflict.

He, and that that's a personal pronoun, did you notice that?

So he's what's the referent?

The the seed of the woman.

So he, personal pronoun, the seed is a he, it's not an it.

So it's another way in Old Testament um nomenclature of saying your descendant.

There's one descendant of yours in the singular, and he will, he's talking to this, 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.

He it could be translated, he will crush you.

Okay.

And then he says also, you shall bruise him, or this word could be wound him.

You can wound, you will wound him on the heel.

And and yeah, that's that's a lot like what you think it might mean.

We'll unpack it in a minute.

The woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth.

In pain you shall 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 be more 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 and female alike.

And this is this is Eve too.

She's culpable as well.

Because 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.

And 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 it'll 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, was changed dramatically here.

It was a lovely thing to be placed in the garden when everything, 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 all 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 uh listen to the deceptive lies of Satan, the serpent, and and eat that fruit, and death literally enters the world here because birth, you know, pain in childbirth, um, work becomes hard, thorns and thistles, evidently there weren't any up until now.

And you'll 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, um, 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 we ask those questions quite naturally?

We we want to understand what God has done in all of these things.

Um, 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 the of uh of biblical theologians, and uh.

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.

How long, parents, how long did it take your kid to say, mine, or no, back at you?

You know, it didn't take long.

You didn't have to train them in that.

It's not like he sat around going, now repeat after me, no, mommy.

They you didn't do that.

You didn't say them, now when another child comes in the room, make sure you take their toys.

You didn't, nobody had to teach them that.

They they come by that quite naturally.

Original sin is all the buttons.

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'm so 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 this there is the beauty of a promise in the midst of a curse.

You see it up there?

Yeah.

I'm gonna 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 uh 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 uh devotional.

I think Paul is uh a great thinker.

Here's what he says in uh January 1'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 seed, the seed of the woman, 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.

It's actually a lot of theologians call this the proto-evangelium.

Um, it's also pronounced Evangelium, 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.

Uh evangelium just simply means the gospel.

So it's the first gospel we have in our Bibles.

It's the first sort of 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.

Um, 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 is that's all beyond your five senses.

You know, sight, hearing, taste, touch, uh, smell.

All of the you can't, that stuff, you're that those devices, those tools that we have to sort of explore the reality we live in, that's not gonna help us in the immaterial world.

And God, his 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, they have some str he's more cunning, more crafty, we're told here in uh 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's just it's it's it's a it ruins us in every single way.

John Stutt sums up uh this conflict, this sort of struggle that we have, uh trying to assert ourselves and our lust for autonomy.

He says, the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God.

Well, the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

You see how succinctly that is put?

It sums it up.

What is sin?

And we 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 are we is there a sort of an 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 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 it's 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 gotta 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.

And 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 Apostle John was keen on.

And I think 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 numbers, uh 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 plain 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 the Presbyterian amen.

I mean, you can 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's coming, that should put a whole new slant on the whole new thing.

It's not really just, I mean, I love presence of the tree.

I love the lights, I love the carols, I love the song, 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 to us.

Christ, when he comes, will indeed be victorious and crush the head once and for all of that serpent.

Theologians uh use Latin phrases so that we will keep them employed because we need them to help us understand these words.

Um here are three of them.

Uh, I'm I'm not a Latin expert, but I'm I do enjoy uh uh languages and just kind of exploring them.

Christus Victor is the title that theologians will use when they're talking about different theories of the atonement.

And this uh 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.

And 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.

Um, this theory views Christ's death as satisfying God's justice, repairing the honor uh uh offended, uh God's honor offended by human sin.

Humanity owed a debt to God that only Christ could fulfill.

Um great.

Uh Romans 3, 1 John 2.

You can look, you can look that up if you're interested.

Substitutio uh vicaria.

Uh it means vicarious substitution, or some of you will know it, uh substitutionary atonement.

This is the way most reformed theologians would refer to it.

Um, 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 will 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 he is the 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 we 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.

And I gotta 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 our what has gone wrong in the world and what has gone wrong even with us.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

I'm not strong enough, you're 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.

We need uh before God, we need satisfactio, we need substitutio vicario.

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 wonderful.

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.

Revelation 12 · chapter mention

And he's 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 tell you, make you feel guilty about that.

He's also at the same time, he's trying to lure you into sin.

He's lying to you about what is right or permissible or would honor God.

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 uh listening to?

I lie to myself more than anybody else.

I would argue 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.

So, 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 the, you know, the some images we have of the devil, you know, 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, 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.

We have you have an enemy of your faith, you have an enemy of your marriage, yeah, 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.

So 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.

And if you continue to study through Genesis, you'll see the same kind of thing happen.

So recognize the reality of value, 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.

Who are you?

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, um, as filled with mysteries, as many questions that get stirred up in my mind about the details here.

Um, 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.