Good morning! This past week we entered into a traditional holiday period known in the church as Lent. Lent isn’t really something we are overly familiar with in the church of christ and christian churches, other than perhaps having pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Essentially Lent is the period of 40 days leading up to Easter. Many denominations will use the 40 day period to give up something for God, in emulation of Jesus when he was in the wilderness fasting for 40 days. The idea is to help bring you closer to God, and to help you to begin focussing on the life and death of Jesus in the weeks before Easter. So what I would like to do as we come closer to the Easter season, is to begin to focus ourselves directly on Jesus, in a unique way. I would like to spend the next 6 weeks looking at prophecies throughout the Old Testament that looked forward to the coming of a messiah. I would like to try and put ourselves in the shoes of the people who first heard these prophecies, so that we can feel the excitement and longing that they would have felt for a Saviour to come. I think that it is easy to sometimes take Jesus for granted. For our entire lives, we have had the option of choosing Jesus. But we have never experienced a world in which a messiah was promised, but not yet here. A world in which your hope was put in sacrifices and keeping the law. So I hope that looking at these prophecies will help us to feel that deep sense of longing, and the excitement, of a messiah long awaited and finally come to save us all. And as we move closer to the arrival of Jesus through these prophecies, it will also be encouraging to watch the season slowly change outside the window as well, bringing the hope and promise of spring.
We are going to start this series with the very first prophecy of Jesus in scripture, which believe it or not, is in the third chapter of Genesis. From the very beginning we will see that God has had a plan to restore all creation to himself. From the moment that creation was cursed and broken, there was a Saviour destined to come and save mankind. But to understand why we need a Saviour, we begin by looking back at the moment that the human race first fell to sin. Adam and Eve were living in paradise in the Garden of Eden. Satan came in the form of a snake and deceived Eve into believing that if they ate fruit from the forbidden tree, that they could be like God and know the difference between good and evil, but that they would not die as a result. So she ate it, and took the fruit to Adam, and he ate it. Because of this, they DID know the difference between good and evil. But it became their downfall. That brings us to this section of Scripture, the curses section. This is when God issued curses as punishment for their sin, this is the moment that Creation is bent and broken. So let's read this passage
Genesis 3:9-19: Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall crush your head, And you shall strike him on the heel.” To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.” Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have 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 will eat of itAll the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
I wanted to read all of this section so that we had the full context of the passage and the situation, but we are really going to look specifically at the curse of the serpent, v. 14-15. But before we do that, I want to cover some contextual pieces that will give us a better understanding of some of the imagery that is used in the first part of Genesis, the first being the serpent or snake. There are approximately 50 references to serpents in the Bible, and for the most part they fall into one of three categories, the most common being as a reference to Satan or his agents. We see this here in this passage, we see it in various places in scripture, and then we see it a lot in Revelation. Revelation 20:2 says: And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. So we can see how this “serpent of old” is referred to as Satan, but in Revelation he has grown into a dragon. And this serpent-dragon that is Satan is referred to as “the deceiver” Revelation 12:9: And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
The second category that snake references fall into is as a metaphor for craftiness and shrewdness. Genesis 3:1 says: Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And then in Matthew 10:16, we have Jesus use snakes as an illustration for how we should be: Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.
The third category of snake references is as a metaphor for danger and punishment. Snakes posed a genuine danger, and often struck from hiding places without warning. Isaiah 14: 29 says: Do not rejoice, O Philistia, all of you, Because the rod that struck you is broken; For from the serpent’s root a viper will come out, And its fruit will be a flying serpent. Another example of ths is Amos 5:19-20, You who are longing for the day of the LORD, what purpose will the day of the LORD be to you? It will be darkness and not light; As when a man flees from a lion, And a bear meets him, Or goes home, leans his hand against the wall And a snake bites him.
The fourth category of snake references is a sign of the restoration of creation. Isaiah 11:8-9 is an example of this, The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea.
So we can see that serpents and snakes play a number of roles in biblical imagery. In this curse section however, the reference is clear: This is Satan, the deceiver. As a result of his actions, mankind falls to sin. That does not take away our fault as humans, they still chose sin and disobedience! But Satan deceived them into believing that God was trying to keep them from being like he was, and that was the only reason he would not let them eat this fruit. Presented with this deception, they chose to sin and disobey God, and as a result, these curses come into play.
So let's talk about curses for a moment. There are three kinds of curses in scripture. There are curses in regards to the creation order, interpersonal curses, and curses relating to God’s covenant relationship with Israel. Most other cultures during the time saw curses as some sort of magical thing that you did to harm someone else. But biblically, curses were God changing something in the order of the world. C.S. Lewis in his Space Trilogy uses the phrase “bent ones” to describe humanity. Something is bent or broken, it is not how it is supposed to be. So in our passage here, this is the first set of curses in history, and they are of course creation curses. And the very first curse in history is given to the serpent. Lets read that part again, Genesis 3:14-15: The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall crush your head, And you shall strike him on the heel.” So that first part, most English translations translate this as cursed above all the livestock, or cursed more than all cattle. A more proper translation of the hebrew would be: Cursed FROM all livestock, cursed from being among the community of animals. This is the first curse. The second is to Eve: To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.” And then third to Adam: Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have 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 will eat of it All the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
Something interesting to note here, is that while God does change things in the creation order in these last two, he does not tell Eve or Adam that THEY are cursed. To Eve he says that he is changing childbirth so that it will be significantly more painful, and he is changing her relationship with her husband to that in which the equal partnership they had is no longer equal, this is the beginning of male domination in the world. That is something that we don’t often realize is actually bent from the original creation order, but here we see that it is actually the result of SIN, NOT God’s intended creation order for the world. Then to Adam, he says, “Cursed is the GROUND because of you.” So the ground is cursed because of their actions, yes. And that curse will cost him, it definitely will affect him. But even though there are changes made to the creation order that directly affect and punish Adam and Eve, we do not see God use the same harsh language with Adam and Eve as he does with the serpent, he does not say that THEY are cursed directly.
So let's go back to the snake's curse, and look at this, because this is where our first prophecy about the coming of a Messiah lies. He is cursed from all living creatures, cursed to be apart from them. On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life. The snake crawling and eating dust will be a perpetual reminder to us of temptation and the fall, a reminder of Satan's deception of mankind. And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; so we have this perpetual, ongoing struggle between Satan and the future human race, between satanic forces and mankind. This is a declaration of war between Satan and humanity.
And then we get to the prophecy: He shall crush your head, And you shall strike him on the heel. So earlier, it says there will be enmity between the serpent and the woman’s offspring. But here, we have this change in pronoun. Before it is offspring, that is us. But now we have this “He”. HE shall crush your head. And this, this is the first prophecy of Jesus. We have the fall of humanity. We have the curses, the bending of creation from its natural order. But in that very same moment, we have the promise. We will be at war with Satan and his demons. But someone is coming, and he is going to crush the head of the serpent, he will defeat Satan for good. Satan will strike his heel, it will not be without cost. But the illustration has such a beautiful contrast. Satan will strike his heel, the back of his foot, but Jesus is going to deliver the fatal death blow to Satan. It is the first wisp of the gospel, of good news, right in the moment that made the gospel necessary. No sooner was the wound given, then the remedy revealed. Otherwise, there would have been no hope at all. This is the first prophecy of Jesus, of a Messiah to come and defeat the power of sin once and for all. The one who deceived us will be destroyed.
Ok, so now we have studied this passage, we have seen the prophecy. And now we move to application. What do we take away from this prophecy? What should you leave here with today? This passage does four things for us, and this is what I hope will stick with you when you think back on this prophecy in the future:
First, this prophecy creates an expectation of a redeemer who would be a descendant of Adam and Eve. This passage says that He (Jesus) will be the seed of Eve, a descendant. This is important because of the incarnation. Many have argued over the centuries about the incarnation of Jesus, and whether he was truly both God and Man. Some have said that he was fully God, and only appeared as a man. This is what the Gnostics believed in the first and second centuries. They believed that Jesus only APPEARED to be human. However, this prophecy directly says that the messiah will be the seed of Adam and Eve, which means he must be a man. This is the first glimpse into the future plans of God. From the very beginning we see that the messiah will walk among us as a man.
Second, This prophecy establishes parameters by which God will redeem his people from their sin. It says here that the heel of the saviour will be stricken by Satan. And while this doesn’t literally mean that Jesus was going to have his heel bitten by a snake, it does point to the shedding of blood. Hebrews 9:22, “... all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” In Judaism, blood was very tightly associated with life. Leviticus 17:11-12 says, and this is God speaking, “I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”. This is the basis for the idea of animal sacrifice in the Old Testament. Romans 6:23, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. We usually celebrate and focus on the last part of that verse, as we should, but let’s stop and think about the first part: The wages of sin is death. The price for sinning against God is death. This is why they sacrificed animals to God. They were trying to substitute the life of creatures for their own, to pay for their wrong doing. The life was in the blood of the animal, so when people sinned, they tried to give God the life of another animal instead. I don’t want to go into this in too much detail because we are going to talk about this concept during some upcoming weeks. But the point here is that the parameters are already set in this prophecy. Jesus will deal Satan the death blow, but through the shedding of his own blood. His heel will be stricken, he will suffer and pay for that death blow with his own blood.
Third, This prophecy establishes a cosmic explanation for the disorder of the world. From that point on, we have been at war with Satan. This war is prophesied by God. Adam and Eve did sin, yes. They chose to rebel against god. But Eve’s sin was more than her own internal thoughts, she didn’t come up with all that on her own. The serpent spoke to her, and deceived her into believing she could be like God. This is why Satan is called the deceiver, and he does the same to us, does he not. He subtly and quietly deceives us into thinking we can be gods of our own, through our desires and temptations. Look at our world, and you will see many examples of people trying to become their own gods. Whether it be a legacy, money, power, sex or however many other things, people are trying to become gods. Satan tries to deceive us every day, and in our society it would do him no good to boldly reveal himself as who he is. 2 Corinthians 11:14 says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. And Ephesians 6:11 says Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. He is a scheming, lying, deceiving manipulator! And he is at war with all of us. Even though Jesus has dealt the death blow and won the war, the battle is still raging on until Jesus returns. This is the world order that has been established, the reason for the pain and suffering and disorder we see around us.
Fourth, The principle of the victory of the kingdom of God over the kingdom of darkness is established from the very beginning. We have the benefit of looking back and having the full picture of what God has done. But back before Jesus, they didn’t know HOW God was going to do it, but they had prophesies that showed that he WOULD do it. And what we see here in this first prophecy, is that God announced his intentions to defeat Satan and redeem the world from the moment that it became bent.
Well I hope that this has been an encouragement to you! I always enjoy going back to the beginning, and seeing how God has tied everything together. What seems disorderly and confusing to us, is all a part of God’s plan. From the very moment that humanity fell to sin, God knew exactly how he would bring us back to him. From the moment Adam and Eve put the fruit to their lips, God saw Jesus on the cross, suffering and dying to redeem us from ourselves, from sin, and from death. He would come as one of us, as a man, but as God. Even though a war was declared that day, God had already planned the final battle. As we begin this approach to Easter and as we study these prophecies looking forward towards Jesus, let's remember how deep God’s love is for us, and how immense the sacrifice that Jesus made in our place. PRAY
