To Genesis chapter 3, Genesis chapter 3, we continue our series preaching through the book of Genesis, the book of beginnings, book of foundational things we have seen. And you'll notice that we're going to read verses 8 through 15. As you arrive there, I invite you to stand out of respect for the reading of God's inspired word. I'm gonna go ahead and begin in verse six, which might give us a bit more context. Verse six. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, 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. They sewed fig leaves together and they made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and 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. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. When I was a kid, I was part of a Bible program that had me memorize what they called power passages of the Bible. What do you think some of those power passages might be? Famous? Short, concise passages that when you hear them, wow, it's like the whole gospel was just packaged into one place. Of course, we know that all of scripture is inspired. There are no important passages above others. The whole thing is God's very word to us. But there are some passages that God has given us, I would even dare to say as a gift, to say, here it is. Short sweet simple and beautiful served up for you in one sentence. And of course we think of John 316 right John 316 I think was on one of those On one of those temporary tattoos on Jim on Tim Tebow during a football game and You know people would see that Oh, that's John 316 for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life and That's one that you probably want to memorize. John 14, 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. See, the book of John has a lot of power passages. Nice, simple, direct, capturing the gospel. But Genesis 3, 15, now there's a power passage. There here in this place, in our passage, we see the whole story of the Bible. Summed up in just one brief prophecy, one brief phrase, Genesis 315. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. We need to focus on this today. Maybe a football player will get Genesis 3.15 right on their cheek. John 3.16 here and Genesis 3.15 on the other. But whether or not they do that, we need to focus in on it today and see what Genesis 3.15 is showing us. And what you need to see is that Genesis 3.15 is a summary of the whole storyline of the Bible. And the rest of the scriptures, we could say, are like an extended footnote to this single verse. Genesis 315 is the first telling of the gospel, the first time that the good news breaks forward for us to hear, to perk up our ears to say, wait, could there be hope after the fall of sin? We have to realize the context in which this prophecy comes to us. This is moments, moments after Adam and Eve just made the most tragic decision, not just for their lives, but for all of Lives and for and for the entire universe they plunged God's very good creation into selfish sin They broke God's creation. They introduced death into it. They introduced introduced curse into it and for what? For their chance to play God for a moment deciding for themselves. What's good and evil and Then they hid themselves in their shame And then they pointed fingers at one another and played the blame game. We'll talk a little bit more about that next week. And the blame goes from Adam to Eve to the serpents. So here's God. He's exposed, he already knew, but he's exposed this selfish source of sin in the man, in the woman, in the serpent. And then God sets himself up as a judge. And he says, I have curses to lay upon each of you, the serpent, the woman and the man. In other words, working backwards to the true and true source of responsibility is Adam's headship is last because because it was his duty to crush the serpent under his feet. once that serpent came in lying and deceiving. He was tasked with guarding the garden, and he failed. So God works his way backwards. He starts with a serpent, then he goes to Eve, and then he goes to Adam, and he's bringing these curses to bear on a humanity that has cursed God. But at the very moment when humanity most deserved God's curse, he surprised us with his blessing. And here it is, tucked, hidden away, Genesis 3 15 and the promise is basically this through faith in Christ we find victory over Satan and his lies Through trust in Jesus we find victory over Satan victory over his lies There's a lot here Genesis 3 14 look there You'll see that God is cursing this serpent and some theologians, well, let me put it this way. Some liberal scholars want to somehow read this just to be the mythical story of how people came to be afraid of snakes. And if you read the whole Bible, you'll see that it's not possible at all. In fact, right here, there's every indication that we're talking about more than just a serpent. We're talking about more than just a snake. We're talking about the very forces of darkness. And yes, the snake is a symbol of that. Satan came in the disguise of a snake in the form of a snake, but there's more going on here. The first thing I want you to see that's going on here is a conflict that runs throughout history. A conflict that runs throughout history. God teaches us in his word right here in Genesis 3 15 to see all of human history as a bitter struggle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the offspring, the children of the devil and the children who belong to God. And you'll see it there. What does it say? I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. Now, it's true. that, I mean, if I saw a snake slithering around my feet, there'd be some enmity involved, right? I'd be jumping back. But what we see is the scripture invites us to move beyond that to see the cosmic war, the forces of darkness represented in the snake and then God's people and how they find themselves in fierce opposition. We see it, we're gonna see it in Genesis chapter four with Cain and Abel. And the Apostle John says, he's reflecting on Cain's murder of his brother Abel, and he says, Cain was like his father, the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning. You see what John's doing? He's saying that Satan has a seed, and you see that seed going beyond Satan himself when you come right away to Cain, who murdered his brother. And then you see the seed again, many, many different places. But let me just take you to a snapshot of David versus Goliath. And David shows up, and he shows up versus this powerful giant called Goliath. And the scripture says that Goliath comes wearing armor that looks like scales. He is the embodiment of the serpent. He looks like a snake with the scales he's wearing. He looks like the red dragon. come to crush or attempt to crush God's people, to deceive them, to take them down. And then you flash forward again through countless stories of the seed of the serpent, the seed of the woman, but you come to Jesus versus the Pharisees. And what does Jesus say of the Pharisees? He says, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. You see what Jesus is doing? He's saying, Genesis 3 15 Showed a cosmic conflict beginning between good and evil between Satan and those who are who belong to God and it hasn't stopped Jesus says it's it's here in my own day and it's it's here with those who are who are Opposing the very truth that I'm speaking They'll tell you lies. The Pharisees will spin lies like their fathers So this is the story of the Bible, the story of a conflict, of a war that rages back and forth. And we see at different points, one team looking like they have the upper hand and then another team will push in. Now, let me ask you this. Is this war still raging in our own day? Yes. Yes. The serpent still wages war against God and his people. And we see this enmity, especially in the lies that deceive each generation. You know, in men's group, we've been reading a book, Truman's book, Strange New World. And one of the things that we've been impressed with, not in a good way, but what we've noticed is that It's not by random coincidence that we now live in a society that props up individual choice above all else. It's not by accident that we live in a society that over and over again in different ways raises that question, did God really say? From Rousseau to Marx to Nietzsche to Freud, The great thinkers that have formed our day and age have led us to ask, just in more modern terms, that same question that the devil asked. Did God really say, would you like to be like God? Would you like to decide for yourself what is good and what is evil? questioning the generosity of God. We see it all over today, don't we? We see it in schools. We see it on billboards. We hear it from politicians. It's all over. Did God really say? We need the discernment to say, oh, that's the serpent speaking again. That's the serpent speaking again. There is a war that continues to rage. And I want you to notice that there is no new neutrality in this war. I want you all to hear this. What I mean is this. There's no. I'm going to stay out of this one. I don't know what I think about what God says, but I also definitely don't want to be on the devil's side. So maybe I'll just be over here and wait it out and see how things end up. No, you are either on one side or the other. You either belong to the Lord Jesus Christ and your and your mind is being slowly but surely consecrated unto him, thinking his thoughts after him, or. You stand with Satan. And some of you say, I don't like to think that I would stand with Satan or that my friends that don't believe in Jesus would stand with Satan. You need to understand sometimes it's unwitting. Sometimes we deceive ourselves and think that we're just being an independent agent, but in reality, we're believing the lies of the evil one. You need to ask yourself this morning, whose side am I on? Kids, you have to ask yourself this too. Do I stand with the Savior or do, or am I being pulled by the lies of the serpents? You either stand with the seed of the serpent or the seed of the Savior. Ephesians 6, 12 reminds us that we do not just fight against flesh and blood, but against what? Cosmic powers over this present darkness. If we could only pull back the curtain, we would see, we would see sinister forces, demonic forces that we don't even understand exist. The scripture affirms they're there. We don't want to try to make total sense of this because we can't, but we should acknowledge it's there. There's a dark force raging behind this present world and its system. and so the need for discernment, and so the need for intentionally Christian education in the forms that that would take, and so the need for us to be alert and diligent and ready and engaged in the battle, engaged in the fight for our minds, for our lives, for our holiness, and for that of our children. The conflict runs throughout history. And that's the first thing we see in Genesis 3.15, the enmity between the man or between the serpent and the woman, between the forces of darkness, between the forces of God. Now, as soon as you understand this, you say, there's nothing that I can do to fight this war successfully unless God give me his aid, unless God give me his strength. And that's exactly where Genesis 3.15 takes us. If you're discouraged when you hear of forces of darkness and cosmic conflict, then you should look to what Genesis 3.15 states, which is this, that the seed is not just a collection of people. It's not just a bunch of descendants. The seed of the woman is one person. It says he, he will come. He will, will, will, will bruise, will crush the head of the serpent. You see, the good news is that God immediately, right away, announced his strategy to win the cosmic war. He said that he's sending a head crusher. He's sending a head crusher. He told Satan that a descendant of the woman would come to deliver a death blow to his head. Now that's interesting, isn't it? Because that's where you'd squash a snake, isn't it? Right on his head. But it's also right where the serpent's lies have come from. From his flickering tongue. That's where the offspring is going to land a death blow. Right where it counts. Now, you need to understand this. The entire Old Testament, just as the entire Bible tells the story of this conflict that builds and builds and builds and builds. Well, it also tells the story of a gospel of good news that builds and builds and builds all the way up to this grand finale. But what you need to hear is it's telling us about a head crusher is going to arrive. And God prepares us for that head crusher by showing us all these different Miniature head crushers first we see Joshua the great warrior standing on the necks of the Kings that opposed him and then you see JL a daughter of Israel hammering a tent peg into the into the head of Sisera the evil forces that that try to take down God's army and then you see David Landing that that stone from the slingshot where right in the head right in the forced head the forehead of Goliath All of this, all of this head crushing is leading us up to who? To Jesus, to Jesus the Lord. He arrives in the New Testament with this grand entrance, the serpent crushing savior. 1 John 3 says this, the son of God came to destroy the work of the devil. Another power passage. The son of God came to destroy the work of the devil. That's what Jesus came to do. Maybe some of you this week, kids, I'm thinking especially of you, maybe you can think of the Bible stories that you know of. Maybe you can think of time after time where God was crushing the heads of his enemy, destroying them, and how all of that was leading up to Jesus. The great unified story, the big connected story of the Bible. Jesus's mission was a full-on assault against the forces of darkness, to undo what Satan started in Genesis chapter 3. Yet Christ's victory came at a painful cost. Painful cost. Genesis 3.15 says that the Savior could crush the serpent's head, but only because what? Because that snake had first latched his fangs onto his flesh. the serpent will bruise his heel. You can picture, can't you? The foot of a man coming down, crushing on a serpent, but he can only crush the serpent on the ground because that serpent has opened his fangs and his teeth are biting and pumping venom into the foot of that head crusher. And as he slams down his foot, that's the very moment that the pain shoots through him. It's the gospel. It's the gospel right here in Genesis 3.15. The Savior could crush the serpent's head, but only because the snake had first latched his fangs onto the Savior's flesh. Friends, on the cross, Christ took the deadly bite from Satan. He died the cursed death that you and I deserve to die. And in dying for our sins, Christ took away Satan's power over us. He secured the serpent's defeat. That's what he did. Satan thought, I've got him. I've got him in my clutches. But he realized only in that moment as he was killing Christ on the cross. that it was in one sense a trick, that he was not the one taking Christ, but the heavenly father had given the son as a sacrifice for your sins. It was not Satan robbing Jesus of his life. It was Jesus willingly laying down his life for you. It was the father giving his son as a sacrifice for you. To defeat the serpents. To undo death. To restore us to fellowship with God. Do you believe that? Have you trusted in this savior? Is he yours? This is how you belong to the seed of the woman. Looking to the the seed of the woman, truly God, yes, the son of God, but also truly man. He had to be man to die the death that we deserve. And so he comes the seed of the woman, the seed of Adam, the seed of David, the seed of Abraham, the seed of Mary. And he comes. true man and he dies for our sins and by believing in him we are united with him we are identified with him and we are connected to him as He dies for us. He died for us on the cross and now We share in this gospel at the center of history. It's ours It's the turning point and in our now we have hope for the conclusion of history We've heard of the conflict throughout history. We've heard of the gospel at the core of history. Now we need to hear of the hope at the conclusion of history. Now we share in Christ's victory and extend his triumph. There's a question that comes to us as we look at Genesis 3.15. You say, is this talking about one guy or is it talking about a whole group of people? Is seed singular or plural? Right? Kids, you know what this means. If we're talking about a seed that's singular, it just means one seed. If we're talking about seed that's plural, it means a bunch of them. The Bible's kind of ambiguous here. In other words, it's not telling us exactly whether it's one or many. The reason why is because it's both. It's Jesus. It's one seed. It's Him. He came to crush the seed of the serpent. But in Christ, it's also us. So that Romans chapter 16 verse 20 says this the God of peace will soon crush Satan underneath your feet That gives us hope today Satan's lies are powerful an entire world system with political educational and spiritual power leverage to do his bidding but Satan has seen two great days before in history and they both ended miserably and The first great day was in the garden. He said, I got him. I got him. They believed my lies. And guess what? Then Genesis 3 15 come curses hurled down upon his head. He goes slithering away into feet until the second great day of Satan, which is the cross. And Satan thinks, I got him. I got Jesus. And then what happens? He realizes His victory was nothing but a being crushed underneath the the Savior's feet And so when we see Satan With his death death gasp trying as much as he can to deceive us in the world today We look at him and say Satan. We already know you've had great days before and they were not so great. They ended in miserable defeat Satan that's what's coming for you this time. It will be final when the savior comes back He will crush you under our feet That's the hope that gives gives you hope doesn't it that you can be part of this head crushing in? Catechizing your children in raising them in the lord and teaching them to be disciples opening the rich passages of scripture teaching them power passages and also teaching them from the catechism that summarizes scripture so well. The big themes and summaries of scripture and teaching them to live, disciplining them when they veer from the Lord, pulling them back, talking to them, reasoning with them, but pleading with them to follow the Savior. And then ourselves living holy lives. This is how we crush the serpent underneath our feet. We dedicate ourselves to Jesus. We dedicate our families to Jesus. We live part of God's corporate people, the church. That means that every time a snake bites, we remember the war between God and the deceiver who first tempted us to sin. You know that whenever you see a snake bite, kids, You ever seen a snake bite? I don't know if any of you have been so daring to put out your finger to a snake. I wouldn't encourage that. Ask your parents first. Always ask your parents first before you let a snake bite you. Yes, but have you ever experienced a snake bite? Have you seen one? It reminds you, oh, that's painful. There is enmity between the forces of darkness and the people of God. But you know what? You ever seen a snake slithering away on the ground? eating dust, its tongue flickering as it goes into the weeds. Every time you see a snake take off, you know what? It reminds you that Satan, his reign will not last long. His doom is sure. He's a goner. A death blow has already been laid to his head. He was humbled to the dust in Genesis 3. He was crushed on the head in, in the Gospels, on the cross, and he is going to be finished forever in just a little time. Revelation chapter 12, he knows his time is short. And so we look forward to the day when God will fully and finally trample Satan underneath our feet. Let us be diligent to trample him, trample upon him as we wait for that final day. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we reject the lies of the evil one. And though he gather great forces in our day and age and throughout all history, we know where this all ends. It's already written. You wrote it in the very beginning in Genesis three. It ends with the devil's defeat. Lord, we pray that would give us great hope, not because we're so great, not because the church is so great in number or so dedicated to you, but because our savior is great. and He did everything necessary on the cross to now equip us to live the kind of lives that trample over Satan. We long for Him to come back so that that final blow will be laid to the evil one, for His time is short. Keep us persistent, keep us persevering, we pray in Christ's name, amen.