The Snake Crusher

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 78:56-72

Psalm 78:56–72 ESV

Yet they tested and rebelled against the Most High God and did not keep his testimonies, but turned away and acted treacherously like their fathers; they twisted like a deceitful bow. For they provoked him to anger with their high places; they moved him to jealousy with their idols. When God heard, he was full of wrath, and he utterly rejected Israel. He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh, the tent where he dwelt among mankind, and delivered his power to captivity, his glory to the hand of the foe. He gave his people over to the sword and vented his wrath on his heritage. Fire devoured their young men, and their young women had no marriage song. Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation. Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a strong man shouting because of wine. And he put his adversaries to rout; he put them to everlasting shame. He rejected the tent of Joseph; he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim, but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loves. He built his sanctuary like the high heavens, like the earth, which he has founded forever. He chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds; from following the nursing ewes he brought him to shepherd Jacob his people, Israel his inheritance. With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand.

Advent Reading: Advent 1 (Jordan and Elyse)

Advent Reading 1:

READ: Jeremiah 33:14-16

Advent is the time to prepare for Christmas,

to prepare for Christ’s promised coming, long ago and any minute.

As we prepare on this first Sunday of Advent,

we know God is calling us to something new, to face the unknown,

but we have a promise in Jeremiah,

a promise that God made,

a promise God made to the families of Israel and Judah.

God has promised a fresh and true shoot, sprouting from the Tree of David,

a new heir to rule the people honestly and fairly,

a new heir to set things right,

a new heir to make God’s people secure.

Jerusalem will live in safety,

and the motto for the city will be “God has set things right for us!”

(Someone lights the first PURPLE candle)

In the light of this first candle,

we face the unknown and remember God’s promise.

Thanks be to God, who keeps every promise to us!

May the Lord be with your spirit and Grace be with you.

Sermon:

Well once again and as always good morning church, I was glad when they said to me, let us go and Worship in the house of the Lord especially on Advent Sunday here, the first Sunday of Advent, we get to Light candles, and we get to start a Topical sermon series,

I don't usually do these. In fact there are usually exactly four sort of topical, sermons, topical sermons I do every year, and we do them for Advent. It's a little bit of a Just something different to make Christmas special. I would not say that it is a gift, since I think they are way harder and more stressful for me… But I I think it's good that we set aside time to intentionally remember the birth of Our Savior.

One of my challenges every year I sit down and think, okay, what sort of thought is Important for us to deal with this year. Or more to the point, what themes or Ideas do I want to preach for Advent, or do I think would be good for all of our souls? in the past We've done the character of Jesus, where we looked at sort of, Who he was in his character. We've done the four songs that we find in the birth narrative of Luke. We did Four passages from Isaiah one year And this year, I've titled our Advent series, “The child of Promise”.

My Hope and thought and prayer as we go through this. Is to know and understand how Jesus was The child that was longed for because he was the child who had been promised by God to his people, and to save the world since the foundations of the world itself. The goal is to see how Jesus is the Fulfillment of All of the promises that we all so desperately need and hold on to. Paul would write In 2 Corinthians that all of the promises of God find their yes and amen in Jesus Christ. What what does that mean? It means that every promise that God made Finds Its fulfillment and it's beautiful pinnacle of Glory... Of God following through on everything he would say… all of this is found in Jesus Christ.

To think on this a little more… What do we know about Jesus in his life? When he's born, the Magi, the wise men show up. Well, how did they know Jesus, the king of the Jews was going to be there? Well, there were promises about a child born in Bethlehem and things that would Herald his coming. The wise men knew the promises of God and they could see Jesus.

As Jesus continued his life. The disciples of John the Baptist asked how do we know the Messiah is here and Jesus says you tell John what you've seen, that the blind can see, the death can hear. The lame are healed. You tell John those things. And John was able to look back to the promises of God. And know that if that was happening Jesus was the promised one.

On the triumphal entry before Easter, when Jesus is walking and the people are praising him and they're saying Hosanna in the highest blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord... Why were they saying this? Well, They knew the promises that God had given and the promises helped them to see Jesus.

The book of Hebrews Hebrews chapter 11 is famously known as the Hall of Fame of But how could these people live by faith and what did they have faith in? I think this is a good Question Moses didn't have faith in Jesus… well, lets be careful, he did in that only Jesus can save, but he didn't know the name of Jesus. But what did Moses have faith in the promises of God.

Abraham had faith in the promises of God And those promises all pointed to and showed us who Jesus was And so, this year we're going to spend four weeks looking at I would argue are the four biggest promises. We could look to a lot of fulfilled prophecy. And in a lot of ways prophecies are promises. But we'll be looking at the four. Biggest promises as promises, that God made that find their fulfillment In Jesus.

We're going to look at a huge swath of the Old Testament. What we're going to cover in a lot of ways is the history of God's people from before they were God's people. WE are going back to the very very beginning, at least that's we'll be talking about today. Then we will go forward, All the way to David and everything in between. So We're going to try to cover in the next four weeks and that's a lot. But I think we can do it. And above all else my hope and prayer is that this year, as we look at these promises, we will appreciate all the more The child that was born to the Virgin Mary. Laid in a Manger. That we will see in him. Not just some sweet innocent child, though. In many ways, that's what he was. But we will see in him the Fulfillment of all of God's promises to his people and therefore his promises to us. And these promises, as I mentioned, Start at the very beginning.

Our text for today is Genesis chapter 3. We will be looking at just two verses today. Verses 14 and 15.

And I want to lay a little bit of groundwork before we dive into this. By going to the book of Romans before we read Genesis. Let's read the book of Romans. Romans chapter 3 verse 23. This is what Paul says.

Romans 3:23 ESV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

All of us. Have sinned, sin is the one Universal thing that ties all people together. More than the time they live, the place they live, the color of their skin, more than anything else that ties people together. Sin is the one thing that we all have in common. All have sinned scripture says. And sin carries with it God's righteous and just punishment and judgments. And as we open to Genesis chapter 3, what I want you to know and understand is this is immediately after man has sinned sin has entered into the world and God is now going to Proclaim his very first judgment upon sin and sinners.

Well, lets be specific… the text we're looking at today is in fact, God pronouncing his judgment upon the serpent. Upon Satan because of his role in causing and… tempting. Let's say tempting, we didn't cause he tempted man. To sin. And so, All have sinned. This is what ties us all together but here at the very opening we're going to get God's promise. In regards to those who have sinned. So these are the words of the Lord for us. This morning, Genesis chapter 3 starting in verse 14.

Genesis 3:14–15 ESV

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 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.”

These are the words of the Lord for us this morning. Let's open with a word of prayer.

Our Holy Father in heaven, The God Who saves and redeems and The God Who has promised To make for himself a people to glorify yourself. but ultimately you have saved us for our good as well. We thank you for the precious gift of being known by you and of knowing you. We thank you that you are willing to condescend first and foremost to Covenant, to be with people. But even more, we see that in the person and work of Jesus Christ, as he put on flesh lived the life, we could never live. Suffered and died. And rose again. So that we might also rise in glorious Victory. Thank you. For this precious gift of your son. We thank you for the spirit at work in our lives, teaching us, molding us shaping Working in. Help us. To see clearly all that you have said and done convict our hearts. Stir our affections towards you. I ask this morning that you would speak through your servant, It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.

It's really hard for me. To just dive in to a passage like this. Something you may not know I have. Pastor friends. I almost said something. You may not know, I have friends. I I have friends, I promise. Something you may not know is I have certain Pastor friends that I love and trust and respect and every so often I'll send them a sermon of mine and just ask for their honest feedback. What could I do better? Did I make the points that I thought I was trying to make Etc? And one of my friends a while back, he asked me.. I sent him a sermon and he asked me: do you start almost every sermon just Repeating what you said the week before?

No surprise to you all here, Yeah, kind of. And that is intentional. I think it's important. And when we're going through Philippians... We're paused Philippians to do this Advent series... but you know, we're going through Philippians Will never fully understand Philippians 4 13. Until we understand Philippians 4 1-12 which we won't understand until we've understanding Philippians 3 it all Builds on each other and we lose great value and goodness when we just sort of pluck verses out and make them say what we want to say. And so, here I don't have the privilege of getting to say, you know, last week we talked about and then just remind you very quickly, what little thoughts we saw. And so I'm cheating today and instead of that being just in the introduction, That's your whole first point, we need to spend some time here dealing with The context or else we might be very confused.

The CONTEXT

If we just open this up and read it, and we didn't know anything about Genesis 1, 1 through 313, and it starts with. “And the Lord God said to the serpent” there are many questions that we should ask. Well, who's a serpent? Well the serpent is the deceiver? It's Satan in a sort of Physical form. Snakes in and of themselves are not evil though. They still bear the mark of the curse that we read. The reason this serpent was cursed was because the serpent was deceitful, wicked, and crafty because the serpent here was Satan. So it's not just the serpent. God is saying to our enemy. And that is how we should read this. He says to the one who goes around seeking to find those that can he can devour right? The, the deceiver the tempter That's who God's speaking to.

The Lord God said to the serpent… So We need to know who the serpent is. There's context here. He says to the serpent, BECAUSE YOU HAVE DONE THIS.. because you have done this. What did the serpent do? Here’s more important context. We touched on it because I wanted to get our minds in the right place but lets look more closely…

the serpent chapter 3, verse 1 was more crafty than the other of the any of the other beasts of the field of the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree? In the garden... Most of us are familiar with this story. The Serpent comes to the woman. Did God really say you can't eat of any tree? And then Eve comes back and she replies to the serpent wrong. This is an important part of this story. God said to them… what God said was you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Any other tree you can eat except for this one tree, you cannot eat.

And Eve. In her sort of pharisaical, mind has inflated and conflated what God has actually said with what she thinks. Her response is, well, yeah, we can eat of any of the trees, but we can't eat or even touch the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. So She got it wrong And the serpent sees his opportunity and then lies. No, you're not going to die. In fact, the serpent says, if you eat of this tree, it's not you're not going to die. It'll actually be good for you. You will have knowledge of Good and Evil. The scales will fall from your eyes.

Genesis 3:5 (ESV)

and you will be like God

The serpent tempts, the woman. By inflating her sense of self and pride inflating her desire to sit on the throne that only God should have And so, the woman

Genesis 3:6–7 (ESV)

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.

The man and the woman tempted by the serpent sins and immediately they saw their shame. The idea, they saw they were naked wasn't like some prudish thing… In some sense, they didn't know what naked was because there was no shame. There was no hiding everything, they were pure and innocent. And this was all broken when they sinned, and importantly for what we are looking at today, the serpent tempted them and they sinned.

So what is the this the Lord says to the serpent, the deceiver the tempter because you have tempted. These people because you've done this. This is the context.

To zoom even further out… God, created all of everything. That's Genesis 1. God in particular created man that’s Genesis chapter 2. He created man and we've read for the first time in Genesis 2 that it wasn't good for man to be alone so God created a help mate for man he created Adam and Eve man and woman God created them.

And there in the garden, they Fellowship, they walked with God, they experienced the true beauty of fellowship and communion that we all long for And that beautiful... We call it the edenic Vision.... that beautiful vision in and of the garden With shattered, because the serpent came in, he tempted the woman, the woman ate, she gave it to her deadbeat husband, who wasn't helping shepherding, or guarding her, and he foolishly ate as well.

They sinned, they saw their nakedness and they were cursed by sin. And yet, when that happens, note where God goes first, He will speak to the woman and he will speak to the man, we will get there, but where does he start and HOW does he start.

here's a thought, here's your homework for today when you go home today. We're just looking at what God Said to the serpent and there's an important word here: because you have done this CURSED, are you... but your homework for today is to see if that word shows up anywhere else in Genesis 3… Ill give you a hint.

If we read what God says, to the woman and to the man, though, it's difficult and painful. The word curse doesn't show up once. I think that's intentional. We have to be careful and understand the words God uses are important and the words God chooses to use and then therefore doesn't choose to use are important. there's importance there. And so, the context here is, man and woman have sinned, the serpent has tempted them, God's going to enter the scene. And he speaks first and foremost to the tempter. To the serpent. He curses him.

The curse is, in one sense, unique to the serpent. And this, we see represented in animals today, Cursed, are you above all the livestock above all beasts of the field on your belly you shall go it'll go and you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

So he speaks to the serpent in a sort of serpent way here. cursed are you to go on your belly? No legs Etc. But then, we get to the beauty of The content.

The CONTENT

But then, look what God says. Verse 15. I, I don't want to overstate this. So, I'll try not to exaggerate this.

Genesis chapter 3 verse 15. Might be the most important verse in all of the Old Testament.

Our understanding of Genesis through Malachi hinge upon Genesis 3, 15. It is pivotal to the point that I do not think that I could overstate the importance of this verse.

I took a seminary class, I went out and I did an intensive Seminary class just three months ago. The topic was Genesis through Deuteronomy first five books of the Bible. And you might think, five day class, five books of the bible, a book a day sounds about right… We spent the first two and a half days dealing with Genesis 1 1-315. This is how important this stuff is. In a week-long class more than half of it was devoted to getting to here and seeing what's going on.

And note the content then of this promise. I will put enmity Between you and the woman. So God is speaking to the serpent and he tells the serpent, you serpent, you and the woman are not going to like each other. There will be enmity. Battle Strife Discord between you two… And between your Offspring. And her Offspring.

What we have here is the beginning of what theologians call... and you're gonna have to bear with me.. because this is so big. There's, there's big pictures, we have to deal with here and we can’t escape some of the depth of theological thought that is here...

This is the beginning of what we call seed theology. And you could think: why do we call it seed? There's no seeds here. Well, in the Hebrew, the word that the ESV translates offspring and note, the NIV does Offspring too. So it it's no better in this regard. King James... Some of these older ones they actually just go with seed because the word, the Hebrew word means seed. The most literal interpretation of that word is that thing you plant in the ground.

but that is not all it means, because it ALSO also offspring and descendant because much like a tree produces seeds and the seeds grow up into new trees. So people have offspring and The Offspring grow up into new people. And so they would use the same word. And so what God is saying, is we're introducing here in Genesis 3, 15, The enemy of all mankind. Who is the one that we all have enmity with? Here's the way we should read this. If you are descendant from a woman. If you were ever in a woman and then born of a woman, Which we all were. Then there is enmity between us and the serpent. And here, we also need to see the seed of the serpent.

What's going on? Well, here is the foundation of The distinction between the world and God's people. In Paul, he uses slightly different language. Sometimes we do have the world and the church, in the world, in God's people. But he also uses those who live by the spirit and those who live by the flesh. And those who live by the spirit, the spiritual ones are the sons of God and those who live by the flesh are the sons of the devil.

And here in Genesis 3, 15 we see the division, we see the starkness that on one hand, you will have the seed of the woman The spiritual people, God's people. And on the other side, you will have the seed of the serpent, the world, the flesh. So we see right now the the distinction and and the the line that begins to divide all of us, it's here in Genesis 3 15.

And there will be enmity and there will be Strife. And the reason the world does not love you is because it does not love Jesus and be blessed when the world hates you and persecutes you and reviles you… It all comes back here to Genesis 3 15. And the Rebellion everything we see in the world...

The world and their desire to you to like overthrow God's definitions of, man and woman. And the world's desire to overthrow God's definition of marriage and the world's desire to overthrow God's definition of family, and the world's desire to overthrow all of these things. It stems back here. Genesis 3 15 It's the enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. We see it all here.

But what's the promise? He shall bruise your head. And you shall bruise his heel.

He Will deal to you a fatal blow… you shall harm him.

If you could take a gunshot to the Head or a gunshot to the heel, which would you pick?

If you could take being hit with a sword in the head or in the heel, which should you pick?

To say he shall bruise. Your head means he will defeat you He will crush you. You shall bruise his heel. God here promises… this is what we can't miss… God here promises that there will be a seed of the woman, a spiritual seed but also a physical seed of the woman who will crush and defeat the seed of the serpent, the enmity that starts in Genesis 3 between the serpent and the woman will continue and it will continue for some time. But God promises, there will come a child, a seed of the woman who will defeat the serpent. That's the promise that we look for. That's what we long before.

So if that's the content, that's the promise. Now we look for the child,

The CHILD

Here's the promise, there will be a descendant of the woman who will defeat the serpent.

Well, now we start looking... And I encourage you maybe this year, right? We're about to start a new year. And one of the things that we, we do in the New Year, is we set New Year's goals and New Year's resolutions well, I have a challenge for you this year.

If you decide to read through the Bible, good. Do it! but try and Do so looking for this conflict. Read the Bible. Seeing and understanding. The enmity between the seed of the woman and the seat of the serpent. And this thought He shall bruise your head. Shall bruise his heel. Because if you read it in mind, this picture just leaps off the pages, and this in both good and bad ways. Good in that we see that God is with his people, but bad because there is a constant fear and tension that maybe this promise might not come true.

Genesis 3, the woman will have an offspring. It will defeat the serpent.

Genesis 4:1 ESV

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.”

What is Eve saying here? She is saying I have an offspring. I have gotten a man. I have gotten to see a seed. And so the hope is this man that I have gotten, he will be the one to crush the serpent. But We all know the story of Cain and Abel. That's not how this worked. Cain kills his brother Abel. The battle between good and evil between the the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, we see it taking place in Genesis 4. And the seed of the serpent, Bruises the heel of the seed of woman. But when you read this story, that's not what it feels like. Cain kills Abel. Did God's promise fail? Wait a second, did the seed of the serpent just kill the seed of the woman?

God's still in control. Cain faces punishment.

And we get to Noah just flip a few chapters We enter Genesis chapter 6 and Noah in the flood and man has begun to increase. Okay, well look, we have now a lot of descendants from the woman. And yet. Mankind was wicked and evil such that all the intentions of all of their thoughts were evil. Continuously, that's how the Bible describes this. And so God says I'm done. but then He sees Noah. And he looks to Noah. and Noah finds favor in God's eyes. And God Saves Noah. He preserves in Noah, the seed of the woman. And we could keep going and reading through scripture.

Abraham! Is Abraham the seed of the woman? kinda but Abraham messes up.

And then in Abraham we have Isaac and Ismael… and it gets messy. And the battle and The Strife and the tension continues. So we read looking for the one who will crush the head of the serpent… It's not Abraham. It's not Isaac. It's not Jacob. And then… Moses shows up is Moses The seed of the woman? Is Moses, the one who will crush the head of the snake? will Moses, The representative of God's people be able to defeat Pharaoh, the representative of the seed of the serpent... He does. Still not perfect. and he doesn’t even make it into the promised land...

And now we go into the promised land and we have what's in one sense. The war between the seed of the woman in the people of Israel and the seed of the serpent, in the armies of the, the people living in the promised land. And there is heartbreaking because the seed of the woman doesn't crush the head of the serpent, like, God tells them to instead, they play games And they make deals. And they do things, they shouldn't do. And they allow the idol worship and the seed of the serpent To influence and corrupt what should be the pure seed of the woman.

Then we get to the time of judges. And if you've been here a while you, we went through, we preached through the Book of Judges, it's bad Like, where is the seed of the woman? If, if this is supposed to be God's people, and they are acting this bad? And the judges themselves all fail over and over and over again… Did God’s promise fail? There must be no seed of the woman. And the people cry out, they long for a king and they ask for Saul and Saul is not it Saul's Definitely NOT the seed of the woman… But enter David. David's good. David is the seed of the woman... and yet David fails and David dies and Solomon takes over. And the people fall utterly into civil war.

And so now we have The seed of the serpent in the Babylonia Syrian Empires, they come over and they take over and they throw into Exile all of the seed of the woman and it feels like God's promise has failed… Because the seed of the woman was supposed to crush the head of the serpent and yet they themselves are feeling crushed. Did God's promises fail? No, they just haven't come true fully yet.

And then we read. Matthew. Chapter one. Verse 1. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The son of David. The. Of Abraham.

Why would the New Testament? Have you ever thought this ask this question? Why would the New Testament start with a genealogy? To be boring? No.

Because let's pretend you've done all your homework. I just assigned you've read through the whole Old Testament, with this idea of the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman, and they're battling it out. And the seed of the serpent seems to keep winning!

I thought you were just supposed to bruise his heel, why is it seem so bad? Why are we in exile? Why are we destroyed? Why is this happening?

Well, here we are: Jesus Is the seed of the woman. He's of the son of David, he's of the son of Abraham, the promises that God made… and we will cover those. We're going to come to and look at the promises to David and to Abraham and to Moses Those will be the next subsequent weeks, but for today, You'll just have to trust me. God, made those people promises too, each one building upon the previous…

And so, Matthew 1 opens and Matthew is begging us. He's begging us. Look at this and see in Jesus, the Fulfillment of the promises that started all the way back in Genesis 3, the promise of the snake crusher, his name is Jesus. We can note, and we should note: It wasn't just Matthew who thought this.

There's another book in the New Testament that has a genealogy. We sometimes think oh the Old Testament's hard because it's nothing but genealogy. We find two genealogies in the New Testament. One is in Matthew. The other is in the Book of Luke. And Luke. Goes a little bit different He doesn't just go back to Abraham.

Luke 3:23 (ESV)

Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed… jsut think nabout this for a second... because he was truly the son of the virgin Mary, the SEED OF WOMAN in a unique way!) of Joseph, the son of Heli,

on and on and on and on and on and on verse 38

Luke 3:38 ESV

the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

Who is Adam's wife? Eve. The woman. In Genesis chapter 3, Luke. And Matthew. And all of scripture is begging. You to see that. Jesus is the Fulfillment of the promise. But there will be one. Who will crush the head of the snake Who will defeat all our enemies. It's Jesus.

So, what is, and who is the child? The innocent child lying in the manger, the one whom Angels Sing the one whom the wise men come bearing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. Who is that child? That child is the promised snake crusher.

That child is the one who will crush the head of the serpent. This emnity is the reason the snake fights back so hard. Why did Herod kill all the young boys? because the snake knew the promise and wanted to make sure that this child could not eventually crush his head.

And we can note that serpent, surely does bruise his heel. Inflicts upon him a dire wound. It is, in fact, a lethal wound, and yet, Because of the power of the seed of the woman, He rises In glorious Victory. Thus, crushing the head of the serpent.

So now, oh death. Where is your sting? Where is your power? There is none. The serpent who by tempting the woman brought death into the world. Now death has lost its sting. He has been defeated for Jesus is the child of Promise. May we rejoice in that all the more this Advent season.

Let's pray.