"The Snake Crusher" - Genesis 3:14-15

If you've got a Bible, we're going to start in Genesis 3. It's Christmas season.

I don't know if you've noticed.

Thank you. Someone's noticed.

And when I think about Christmas, I think about all the years I grew up in church

on Christmas, and we would always have fake snow on the stage and things like that.

I didn't think it was cool until they let us throw it at the end at each other.

I thought that was cool. But it always focuses around baby Jesus.

Away in a manger, Jesus in the manger. And I thought what might be nice for

us the next three weeks is just to look at who is the baby in the manger.

I think a lot of time has been spent and it's good time spent talking about

the Christmas story, and we'll spend some time talking about that next week.

But I really wanted to kind of zoom out a little bit and look at who is the baby in the manger?

Who is this child that everyone's been waiting on?

And I thought, I know when I think of Jesus, there's certain names that come to mind.

He'll be called Emmanuel, Wonderful Counselor, God with us. But the one I don't

hear much is Snake Crusher.

I don't hear when I say, hey, what do you think of Jesus?

And they're like, oh, you mean the snake crusher? That's not a title I hear often.

And so I thought it would behoove us this morning to spend some time talking

about the first title that Jesus ever really had in the Bible.

The first time that Jesus is mentioned, he's given this title, the snake crusher.

And it's an interesting look at why everyone had been waiting so long on this Messiah, this Jesus.

So if you have a Bible, we're going to be starting Genesis 3.

We'll jump around a little bit, but that's where we'll get started.

So let me just read this passage.

I've got Genesis 3, 14 through 15 in there. I'm going to read the first six

or seven verses of Genesis.

I know most of us have probably heard that before, but if you haven't, I want to read it for you.

Also, if you need a Bible, we have Bibles for you. Let us know.

We'll grab you one. We'll bring it to you right now. They're acting on that table.

I'm not going to be offended if you want to get up and grab one thank you all

right listen we already got one i got i got one i got two give me three give

me three give me three give me four all right all right anyway we want you to

see it we want you to see it with your eyes okay.

So Genesis 3, let me read 1 through 7, and then we'll focus on 14 through 15.

Now, obviously, Genesis 1 and 2 is God's creation of everything.

Genesis 2 zeros in on God's creation of man. He says it's very good.

He gives Eve to Adam, and that's his perfect helper.

Chapter 3 begins, 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 may 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, which God didn't say, lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows when

you eat 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 that the tree was desired to make one wise,

She took of its fruit and ate and also gave some to her husband who was with

her Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and

they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths Jump down to 14.

God pronounces Curses on each party involved and this is what he says to the serpent.

The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this,

cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field.

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

Listen, here's, if there was an umbrella verse over the whole Bible,

one of the major themes, especially in the Old Testament, is this verse right here.

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.

I think a lot of times people have a hard time reading their Bibles because

they don't read it as a story. They read it as a topic.

And so they want to learn about sin or they want to learn about a subject in the Bible.

They want to look into it like they would look into any other subject.

And so if you want to study D-Day or you want to study the Civil War,

you can get on and you can find all these different stories.

But if you fail to realize that all of those things are part of a much bigger

story, you really won't understand what's going on.

And I think if we'll spend a little time thinking through verse 15,

it'll help you read your Bible.

It'll help you see that when you drop into these certain places,

what you're really seeing is verse 15 play out.

That there are seeds of the serpent and that there are seeds of the woman throughout

the Bible. and they are constantly clashing.

They're constantly fighting against one another.

And so anytime you drop yourself into the Bible, it's good to know,

well, hey, where am I going to see this?

Because this is what God said, really, the history of mankind can be summed up as.

Even when Jesus is walking in the New Testament, what does he say to the Pharisees?

What does he call them? You remember he calls them a brood of what?

Vipers. That was not lost on the Pharisees. They knew exactly what Jesus was saying.

They knew that Jesus was telling them, oh, you're just like seeds of the serpent.

You're just like the offspring of the serpent.

You're acting just like them. That's who you are. You're like a brood of vipers.

Jesus isn't just telling them a mean thing. He's calling them evil to the core of who they are.

So again, the Bible begins with this serpent in the garden, right?

We get two good chapters and then everything falls apart.

And this serpent is cursed because of what he's done to God's perfect creation.

The serpent's incredibly powerful, incredibly cunning. He is smarter than you.

He's more powerful than you. He will defeat you and he defeats Adam and Eve.

Think about this. Adam and Eve have the perfect setup.

There's no disease. They can work and not sweat. They can have kids and it not hurt.

They have all the food they could ever want. They have all the perfect drinking

water they could ever want. everything in their life is perfect,

and yet Satan is still able to convince them that God's withholding something good from them.

It's a whole lot easier for Satan

to convince you that God's withholding something good from you, right?

Because we don't have any of those things.

And Satan is still doing the exact same thing today as he was then.

What does Peter say? Be careful, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like

a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Listen, he doesn't devour you by beating you up, by causing you misfortune. Surely he can.

The way the devil mainly devours people is by convincing them that God is not good.

By doing the exact same thing he did to Adam and Eve in the garden,

by convincing them that God is withholding from you something that would make your life better.

Just think about the struggles you have.

They can almost all be tied to the fact that you feel like you're missing something,

that if you could just have something that God wasn't giving you,

that everything would be better.

Or maybe you're just not honest about those things, right?

We say, I'm fine, I'm good, nothing's wrong.

When deep down we're going, you know, there's a lot of things that would make

my life a lot better. And that may be true.

But I want you to hear that first before we talk about the snake crusher,

before we talk about what's going on,

I want you to hear me say that that is the issue that the serpent brings up

in the garden first is, is God really good?

Is those commands that he gives you really for your good?

Is that really going to be a thing? He's withholding some of you.

If you would free yourself from those commands, your life would be a whole lot better.

I think that describes a lot of the American Christianity that you see is,

yes, we're Christians, but no, we don't do anything that God asks us to do because God loves us.

And why would God love us and still ask us to do things that we don't want to do?

That is the serpent at work.

So the first thing we see about the snake crusher is that the snake crusher

is promised that God will raise up an offspring of the woman.

That's a singular offspring.

And they will bruise the head or they will crush the head of the serpent.

I want you to see this though.

So I thought there's, I'm not lying, literally hundreds of examples I could

give you of this, but I just wanted to look at the book of 1 Samuel.

And I called this point in my notes, shadows of the snake crusher.

This sounds like a rock band. I don't know. I feel like this is way,

like I need to be wearing black. I don't know. Like we should have had a rock band this morning.

Some skulls back here, maybe.

Never thought I would say snake crusher so much on Sunday morning. This is fun.

Shadows of the snake crusher. I told you that this verse lays out a narrative

in scripture and we see these two offspring fighting back and forth.

And so I I thought, let me just take one book of the Bible.

1 Samuel, let me give you three quick examples of how you see this.

So in 1 Samuel chapter 5, 3 through 4, if you want to turn there, you can.

1 Samuel 5 · chapter mention

We're going to move pretty quick, but if you want to write these down and read

them, I definitely encourage that.

In 1 Samuel chapter 5, the Philistines, the perennial enemies and persecutors

1 Samuel 5 · chapter mention

of Israel, God's chosen people, God's offspring, had captured the Ark of the covenant.

And they had placed it inside their temple directly in front of their God, Dagon.

Right? We've got the seed of the woman, God's chosen people,

Israel, the seed of the serpent, the Philistines.

And there are what? There's enmity between them. It's almost like God told us there would be.

And the Philistines come in and they take the very presence of God away from his people.

They're saying, listen, this is what you think God's presence is for you.

We're going to take that and we're actually going to put it in front of our

God because now your God's going to worship our God.

This is what it says in 1 Samuel chapter 5, 3 and 4.

1 Samuel 5 · chapter mention

It says, And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day,

behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord.

Remember what we read at the beginning?

Everyone, everything will bow the knee to Christ Jesus, will bow their knee to God. So did Dagon.

Verse 4, I'm sorry. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place.

But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face

downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord again.

But this time the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off the threshold. Sounds familiar.

The seeds of the serpent rise up against the seed of the woman.

What does God do? Cuts off the head of their God.

Returns the Ark of the Covenant back to his people, the presence of God back to his people.

1 Samuel 16 and 17, a story you're going to be very familiar with.

There's another seed of the serpent here. His name is Goliath.

The Hebrew even makes this very clear.

He talks about that Goliath is dressed in scales. It uses this serpent language,

literally the exact same word that it talks about serpents with.

It uses to describe Goliath.

And he trespasses into the promised land. He trespasses into God's place,

kind of like trespassing into Eden.

He defies Israel's God and his people, and Goliath mocks God,

and he mocks God's people. And what do God's people do?

They rise up and they fight this guy because they can't believe they would say

something about God. No, they're scared.

They're scared. This guy's going to kill them.

He's bigger and stronger than them. Let me just say, we give them a hard time.

That's not the worst response.

Right it's the response we have often to things in our life like that first samuel 17 49-51,

you know the story david goes and grabs some stones he puts

them in a thatchel the armor's too big for him he takes it off right he's the

youngest he's the run of the family and yet here he is david put his hand in

his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the philistine on his forehead

the stone sank into his forehead and he fell on his face to the ground sounds like Dagon?

Sounds like another seed of the serpent bowing their knee to the God of the Bible.

So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone and struck

the Philistine and killed him.

There was no sword in the hand of David.

Now, in study school, that's usually where they stop for us.

So I know this is maybe a little graphic, but I think it's in the Bible.

And so I want to read it for you. Verse 51, then David ran and stood over the

Philistine and took his own sword and drew it out of its own sheath and killed

him and cut off his head with it.

When the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.

Again, seed of the serpent against the seed of the woman fighting.

And what does God do? He raises up a man that no one saw coming to go and fight on behalf of his people.

And what does he do? He cuts off the head of the serpent.

Are you seeing the theme? This is getting pretty obvious.

We could do this over and over and over again.

One, and I think this one's maybe a little more controversial,

but I think I see the same kind of language in it, and it looks at King Saul.

I'm not going to make a statement on whether or not King Saul is saved or not.

I think that's a long conversation.

I think you'll see where my answer lands by the time I get done with this point,

but I just want you to see the imagery more than anything else.

I want you to see Genesis 3.15 playing itself out in the scriptures.

Saul, the first king of Israel, persecutes David, the seed of the woman, God's chosen king.

When he finds out that David's been chosen to be the true king of Israel and

his own power and his own prestige is threatened, what does he do?

Well, he tries to chase down and kill David and David doesn't kill him until

the time that he's supposed to.

In fact, David never kills And what happens to Saul?

Well, we learn in 1 Samuel 31.

Verse 4 says, Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, Draw your sword and thrust

me through with it, lest the uncircumcised come and thrust me through and mistreat me.

But his armor-bearer would not,

for he feared greatly. Therefore Saul took his sword and fell upon it.

What does Saul do? He falls face down in the dirt.

That's not the end of the story. Verse 8, The next day when the Philistines came to strip the slain.

They found Saul and his three sons falling on Mount Gabo. And what happened?

So they cut off his head and stripped him of his armor and sent messengers throughout

the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to the house of their idols and to the people.

Maybe, verse nine, one of the greatest verses to show you how God is at work

even in the midst of when the enemy thinks they're winning.

They find the king of Israel slain on the ground.

They cut off this guy's head and they paraded around to all their different

temples and all their different idols that they're worshiping to say,

our gods are greater than your God because your king is dead.

All the while God sits and goes, oh no, that's a king, but that's not my king.

That's the king the people wanted. And I allowed them to have that king, but that's not my king.

You think you've killed me. You think you've cut off my own head,

but actually all you've done is getting rid of the enemy of my own king.

Now David can rise to the throne and David can take his rightful place over God's people.

Again, I think the imagery is the exact same.

Again, I could do this over and over and over again, but there's a problem with

every single one of these shadows is that they lack the ability to crush the

head of the actual serpent.

They can kill the seed of the serpent. They can kill his offspring.

They can win momentary battles over Goliath and over Dagon.

They can win these momentary struggles. The problem is the serpent is still

alive and he's still producing offspring.

Each and every one of them has a issue that we all have, right?

They have sin in their lives.

None of these people are perfect. David is far from perfect.

Moses is far from perfect. Abraham is far from perfect.

So they are unable to do anything about the source of the problem, right?

The wages of sin is death and every single one of them dies,

which brings us to the promised snake crusher.

The snake crusher is born.

Jesus enters the world. Don't miss this. a baby born of a virgin, the seed of a woman.

No man involved. It's almost like God planned it that way.

Placed in a manger, and he seemingly needs everything done for him like every baby that existed does.

He needs to be changed, he needs to be fed, he needs to be burped,

he needs to be taken care of, he needs to be held when he cries.

He needs every single thing done for him, yet this baby in a manger lays there as the snake crusher.

He is just as much the snake crusher the day he is born as he was the snake

crusher in Genesis 3.15.

Because the eternal God has become man, the snake crusher has taken on flesh.

He has become like the ones that the snake is crushing.

He has become like the ones that the serpent is out to destroy.

This baby will grow and be tempted in every way and never fail.

Going to get into Jesus' birth story next week in depth, but I love how Luke lays this out.

In Luke chapter 3, towards the end, we have everybody's favorite section of

Luke 3 · chapter mention

Bible reading, genealogies, and we get the whole genealogy of Jesus.

Luke 3.23 begins like this, says, when Jesus began his ministry,

he was about 30 years of age, being the son of Joseph.

That's not his birth father, right? Joseph is his dad.

And then it goes through every single person from Joseph to David to Judah to

Abraham to Noah, all the way back down to Adam.

Now, why does Luke do that? Luke does that because he wants you to see it.

He wants you to see it. He wants you to see that God made a promise back in

Genesis that he would send someone in the same line from the same parents, that he would do it.

He would send someone to crush the head of the serpent.

And this is that guy. He's the one.

The reason I love the way Luke does this is beginning in chapter four,

it goes immediately into Jesus's temptation in the wilderness.

You get a genealogy of Jesus. And the very next verse is the Holy Spirit draws

Jesus out in the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days.

Is it to say, hey, here's the lineage of these shadows of the snake crusher.

Here's all of these people that God has raised up to take care of certain things along the way.

But there's something different about this snake crusher. And the difference

is he was tempted and did not fail.

Wasn't in a garden with everything taken care for him. He didn't have the perfect

situation. In fact, it was the exact opposite.

He was in the desert with no food.

And yet, though he was tempted, he continually answers with what?

God's word. The exact same thing that Eve should have done. The exact same thing

that Adam should have done.

No, no, no, no. That's not what God said.

No, you're trying to convince me that God's not good, but he is good.

Now you're trying to convince me that he's withholding things from me because

I'm out here and I'm hungry, but I know he's good.

So where or what does that mean for us during the Christmas season?

Talking about snake crushers for 35 minutes means that we can trust that the

baby we celebrate in the manger is the one who will soon crush the head of the serpent for good.

He's already mortally wounded the serpent, right? When he lived the perfect

life, died the perfect death, and rose again on the third day,

descended after 40 days, sitting at the right hand of the Father,

interceding for you and me, the fatal blow has been given.

But the serpent still squirms, and we still catch some of those strays.

This is again why in 1 Peter 5, 8 through 9, Peter reminds us,

be sober-minded and watchful.

Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion,

seeking someone to devour.

What does he say? Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds

of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

Listen, Peter doesn't tell them, hey guys, listen, Jesus is going to crush the

serpent, so don't even worry about it.

Jesus is going to crush the serpent, and he loves you, so just kick your feet

up and kind of just go along with the flow, and man, you're going to mess up,

and things are going to be tough, but don't even worry about it, man.

Do what you want to do. Do what makes you happy, because God's going to do it for you.

No, Peter says, listen, if you trust in the snake crusher, if you trust that

he is going to end this adversary, the devil, then know that you can resist him.

Know that you can stand firm.

Fight. Fight for what you know God has called you to do.

Don't be like the people in Galatia who had said, well, when I sin,

grace abounds more, so I should just sin more.

I should just do whatever I want to do. The hardest thing about being a Christian

where we live is that however you want to be a Christian, you can find someone

to tell you that it's okay to be a Christian that way.

You don't have to look very far for you to find somebody that'll tell you,

yep, no matter how you want to live your life as a Christian,

it's okay to live it that way.

Incredibly dangerous place to be. Peter wants them to know, hey,

listen, this is a fight. This is a struggle.

Be sober-minded.

Be clear-minded. Read your Bibles. Know what God has asked of you.

Know what God requires of you.

Know God's law and follow it. Do what God is asking you to do because,

yes, he will kill the serpent.

Yes, he has already dealt the fatal blow.

However, if you truly believe that he's going to rid the world of the serpent

forever one day, then your life will reflect that by doing everything you can

to follow the snake crusher.

Because the Bible only gives us two options. There's no middle ground.

Jesus also says to the Pharisees, you are like your father, the devil.

Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, every single one of them makes clear,

especially I would say Ephesians 2,

makes clear that before you knew who Christ was, you weren't just lost,

aimlessly walking around, not knowing where you want to be.

Ephesians 2 would say that you were following the prince of the power of the air.

There's no middle ground. So as we even prepare to take the Lord's Supper as

we finish, this reminds us that we do not come to the table because of something

we've done and because of something that's been done for us.

Sitting at the table, Jesus looking at his disciples, what does Peter say? I would never deny you.

You ever been there? You ever been at like a revival or maybe back at a church

camp or maybe a really emotional Sunday morning service and you're feeling hammered

by your sin and you're really feeling convicted.

And so what do you say? You look at God, you go, God, I will never do this again.

I'll never speak that way to them again. I'll never say those things.

I'll never look at those things. I'll never act that way again.

Maybe a week, two weeks, a couple months, you do it again. You find yourself back where you started.

Peter is much the same way. Jesus, I would never do that. I would never sin against you that way.

I would never do those things." What did Jesus say to Peter?

He doesn't say, well, you better not.

Not do those things. If you do those things, you're off the team.

If you do those things, you're kicked out of the club.

If you do those things, you might as well be the seed of the serpent.

No, Jesus looks at Peter and loves him and says, Peter, you will do those things. You will.

The same way Jesus can look at you and me and I can look you dead in the eye

and say, you will sin. You will.

You will fail God. You will.

Your hope is not that you won't fail God. Your hope is that he won't fail you.

And so Jesus says to Peter, Satan would have you and sift you like wheat.

The serpent would have you and sift you like wheat. What does Jesus say?

But I have prayed for you.

What does the Bible say Jesus is right now? At the right hand of the Father doing what?

Interceding for you. He looks at you and me. He says the exact same thing he

says to Peter, he's present and he looks at you and he says, I am praying for you.

I'm interceding for you. You will fail. You will blow it.

But as you come to the table, remind yourself that God has not failed you,

that he keeps his promises to you, that he loves you dearly,

and that he will soon crush the head of the serpent.

And your greatest adversary, the one who hates you more than anyone else in

your life hates you, the one who would love nothing more than to see you destroyed

and cast out of God's presence forever, that one enemy,

God will crush forever.

And you will live eternally with God in a place better than Eden,

because Christ will be there with you, walking with you and looking at you and be present with you.

Again, that you did not come to this table because you've done something,

but because something has been done for you.

Secondly, just be reminded that this table is a place to remember the sacrifice

that Christ has made for you.

This do in remembrance of me, that as we take the cup and we take the bread,

it's not something that we do to make God happy with us.

It's not something that we do to make ourselves feel better.

It's not something that we do so that we can leave here saying,

man, so glad I came this morning because I got to do that.

Now I feel like I've really checked the big spiritual box for myself.

It's something that we do to remember that the blood was spilled and the body

was broken so that he might bring us to God.

So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to pray.

I'm going to ask that if you're an adult or guardian, you have some kids,

we're going to have everybody come up front.

There's juice and bread over here. I'll move that out of the way and just grab

one, come back to your seat, and And then we'll take the Lord's Supper together.

Just a reminder, the Lord's Supper is for baptized believers.

And so if that's who you are, we invite you to take that. If that's who you're

not, we're not trying to be mean.

We're just trying to say that's what Christ has told us to do.

And so that's what we're going to try and do.

Okay, so let me pray as soon as we get done praying. If you want to come up

and grab a cup, they're stacked in there.

So just make sure you grab the bottom cup, because if not, you're going to get

back and then you're going to have to eat something else for the bread.

Okay. So let me pray, and then we'll come get the elements. So let's just pray.

Father, thank you that we can come this morning and not fear because you're present.

Thank you that we can not fear because Christ is born as a baby,

but he is the snake crusher.

He is the one that will ultimately fulfill the promise you made in Genesis 3.15. Okay.

The power the snake has, the power the serpent has over us is that he holds

the power of death over our heads.

Not that he's the one that causes our death, but he's the one that brought us

to a place that we have to die because our sin exists, and you say the wages of sin is death.

But because our snake crusher was sinless, even when the serpent bit his heel,

he arose three days later,

triumphing over death, so that if we would place our trust in Him,

we would become more than conquerors, not because of something we've done,

but because of something He's done for us.

And would the table be a reminder of that? Would the table be a reminder that we did not.

Crush anything under our feet, but that we, like our first parents,

Adam and Eve, were crushed,

that we gave in to the serpent's lies, that we trusted him.

We thought at times that you were not good, that you were not gracious,

that you were not kind to us.

We believe at times that you withhold things from us that we think we deserve,

that you withhold things from us that we think would complete our life as if

to doubt that you are sovereign over all your creation and that you love us dearly,

but that while we were sinners, you sent Christ.

While we doubted your love for us, you never stopped loving us.

While we doubted your goodness, you did the greatest thing.

Even now, as we live our lives, there are times where, like Peter,

we are convinced we will never fail you, and we barely make it to the next morning

without failing you multiple times.

Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. You intercede for us,

making our case, not based on what we've done, but based on your nail-pierced

hands, the blood you spilled, and the body that was broken.

God, we remember that as we come to the table. In the name I pray. Amen.