CHRISTMAS IN GENESIS (Genesis 3:15)
CHRISTMAS IN GENESIS
INTRODUCTION:
Our world is obsessed with the future, everyone wants to know what the future holds. As we moved toward the election this year I was amused at times by the things people were predicting from who the next president would be to what would happen to our world depending on which person was elected president. I remember the morning following the election that I observed nothing had really changed, people were leaving for work, the schools were open and operating, none of the things that had been predicted happened. There was one streak that was broken, Clallam county for the past 40 years has voted for the president that was elected in each election, that trend was broken this year as the majority of the county voted for Kamala Harris.
In 2011 a man by the name of Harold Camping predicted that the rapture would occur on May 21, 2011, and that the destruction of the world would take place five months later on October 21, 2011. May 21, 2011, came and the rapture did not occur and on May 23, 2011, Harold Camping made a statement that he had miscalculated, and May 21st was a “spiritual” Judgment day, and the actual rapture and destruction of the world would occur on the same day, October 21, 2011. When that day came and went with no rapture and no world destruction Harold Camping and his following fell apart.
Many doomsday prophets have come and gone while the world continues on. We know from Scripture that there is a day of judgment coming, but we are given no date as to when this will take place. So how can we know that what the Bible teaches is trustworthy? We know that it is trustworthy, first, because it is given to us by God Himself, and second, it has a proven track record of being trustworthy. In our next four services culminating on Christmas Eve, we are going to be looking at Christmas in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was written over a period of about 1000 years and is full of prophecies about the future. The Old Testament contains about 300 prophecies about the coming Messiah that were yet future when they were written but have been fulfilled since that time in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. This is what I mean when I say the Bible has a proven track record, because prophecies made centuries ago were fulfilled in Christ. We will not have time in the next four services to look at all the prophecies that have been fulfilled concerning the Messiah, but we will look at what I believe to be four significant ones. This morning, we will find Christmas in the book of Genesis. Before turning to our text, let’s pray and thank God for His Word, thank Him that it is trustworthy, and ask Him to teach us from it this morning.
--PRAY—
SCRIPTURE:
This morning, we will only be looking at one verse of Scripture, but to get us within the context I will read a number of verses. Please, turn in your Bibles to Genesis 3, truly the most tragic and saddest chapter in the whole Bible. I will be reading Genesis 3:1-21 if you would like to follow along. If you are able, would you please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
Genesis 3:1-21,
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, “You shall not eat from any tree of the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.” ’ The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 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. 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 bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise 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 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.’ Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:1–21, NASB95)[1]
THE CONTEXT (Genesis 3:1-21)
Before we get to our verse of study for this morning, I want to make sure you understand the significance of predictive prophecy. Most of the prophecies concerning the coming Messiah were written down about 500 or more years before they were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This did not come about by accident, and it is certainly not a coincidence. Lee Strobel, the author of The Case for Christ, writes that the probability of fulfilling just eight of the three hundred prophecies made about the coming Messiah is one chance in one hundred million billion. That number is millions of times greater than the total number of people who have ever walked on planet earth! Mr. Strobel than quotes mathematician Peter Stoner who calculated the probability of fulfilling 48 of the 300 prophecies concerning the Messiah as one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion![2] With these kinds of staggering odds and the fact that all 300 prophecies were fulfilled in Christ gives us great confidence that:
- The Bible is the inspired Word of God, and it is completely trustworthy. No one could have made it up. The Old Testament points to the first Christmas. The New Testament fulfills what the Old Testament prophets had predicted and were longing for.
- Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be. These fulfilled prophecies give solid confirmation of Jesus Christ’s credentials and show us that He is God’s Son who gave His life for us so that we can be forgiven and know that we will spend eternity with Him.
As I already stated the passage of Scripture that I read this morning is the most tragic and saddest passage in the whole Bible. Adam and Eve, the very first man and woman, had everything they needed for life and happiness. They never experienced anything evil, they only knew good because everything that God gave them and provided for them was good. In return all that God asked was that they love Him and obey Him, and they could do this by following one rule and that was they were not to eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have read the passage, and we know what happens. The serpent indwelt by Satan deceives Eve and she chooses to disobey and eats the fruit from the forbidden tree, and she gives some to Adam and he chooses to disobey and eats the fruit, and the world is plunged into sin. Suddenly the innocence of Adam and Eve is gone and they immediately know that what they have done is wrong and for the first time since they were created by God they are ashamed of their nakedness, and they sew fig leaves together to make coverings for themselves. The relationship they had with God, their Creator, is broken. When they hear God in the garden, they hide themselves for the first time because they are afraid. Even when God gives them the opportunity to confess instead of taking responsibility and owning up to their disobedience, Adam blames the woman and in blaming her he ultimately blames God saying that the woman God had given him was the one who gave him the fruit, The woman blames the serpent for deceiving her. Suddenly what was paradise is no longer so. The entrance of sin into the world has ruined Eden. The smell of death is in the air. The serpent is alone and quiet, he alone is happy at the outcome. His plan is working out just as he had planned it. His hate for God caused him to hate God’s crowning creation and he showed the universe that no race of beings, even created in the image of God, could ever be trusted to freely obey God.
As God surveyed the wreckage caused by the disobedience of Adam and Eve He immediately begins to deliver judgment and He starts with the serpent, the liar, the deceiver, the tempter. Then He will come to the woman and then the man, but He speaks to the serpent first. In Genesis 3:14 God passes judgment on the serpent by placing a two-fold curse in which the serpent is cursed more than any animal God had created. What the serpent looked like before the fall of mankind we do not know, but after the fall he was cursed to forever crawl on his belly with no legs or arms and because he would be forced to go on his belly he would be an eater of dust. The bad news for the serpent is that there is no good news for him. God does not ask him what he had done or why he had allowed Satan to use him, God just judges him because Satan had already been judged when God cast out of heaven. In Ezekiel 28 we read of Satan’s pride and corruption and of his judgment. In verse 17 of Ezekiel 28 we read, “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. I cast you to the ground...” (Ezekiel 28:17a, NASB95)[3]
Between the judgment of the serpent and the judgments of the woman and the man, God gives a promise, and this is where we find the first mention of Christmas in the Old Testament. This verse is the first gospel sermon ever preached on the face of the earth. Theologians call this verse the “protoevangelium” or the “first gospel.” These words spoken by God are the first mention of redemption. Everything else in Scripture flows from this one verse. Just like the small acorn contains a mighty oak tree, so this verse contains the entire plan of salvation. This verse has been called the sum and summary of the whole Bible. In this verse, we are told that Jesus came to overturn the curse brought on by sin. If we are to ever understand the true meaning of Christmas, we cannot ignore the clear teaching in the opening chapters of the Bible. Let’s look at this verse phrase by phrase.
ENMITY BETWEEN SATAN AND THE WOMAN (Genesis 3:15a)
The promise of redemption begins with a prophecy that there will be enmity between the serpent and the woman. Here God is not speaking of the animal whom He just cursed to crawl on his belly and eat dust, but now He is referring to the one who indwelt the serpent to deceive Eve. Here God is saying that there will be hostility between Satan and mankind. The apostle John in the final book of the Bible, in Revelation 20:2 looks back on this passage in Genesis 3 and refers to Satan as “… the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan…” (Revelation 20:2b, NASB95)[4] Eve understood that she had made a huge mistake and because of that she would never be a fan of the serpent. Steven Ger writes in The Popular Bible Prophecy Commentary, “This passage contains far more than the mere origin of the antagonistic relationship between mankind and snakes. It is the theological explanation of the conflict of good and evil.”[5] This never became more clear to me until I lived in Haiti. The Haitians are deathly afraid of snakes, even though there are no poisonous snakes in Haiti. They do have boa constrictors and one time while I was serving as the maintenance director at our mission’s hospital I received a request for the wood of a dead tree that was on the hospital’s property. I gave the go ahead to cut down the tree and that the wood be given to the men who had requested it. When they cut down the tree they found that it was hollow and when they split it open they found a boa constrictor curled up inside sleeping. Well, this sent the man splitting up the tree and my Haitian employees into a panic and they came rushing to me. I went with them to see what the problem was and when I arrived I found a six-foot-long snake just waking up and stretching out in the sun. None of the Haitians would go near it, but I was informed that it was probably eating the chickens and young goats owned by our neighbors. I grabbed one of the machetes that they had been using to split up the tree and I chopped the head of the snake off and suddenly I became the hero of the day. Then I learned why the Haitians are so deadly afraid of snakes, the main god of the Haitian pagan religion is Damballa and he is a huge snake. The serpent of old, Satan. The enmity, the hostility is still there.
ENMITY BETWEEN SATAN’S SEED AND THE WOMAN’S SEED (Genesis 3:15b)
God goes onto say that this enmity will not just be between the woman and the snake, but it would continue throughout history between the seed or offspring of Satan and the seed or offspring of Eve. Collectively this refers to the men and women of faith in every generation who have by faith believed in God and His promises. Throughout the Bible we see this struggle between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of Satan who are those who have chosen to reject God and are therefore the offspring of Satan. Now each and everyone of us is born an offspring of Satan because we are born with the sin nature which we inherited from Adam. It is only when we put our faith in Jesus Christ believing that His death on the cross paid the price required for sin and believe that God raised Him from the dead on the third day after His death that we are then transferred from Satan’s family and adopted into God’s family becoming sons and daughters of God. John explained it this way in John 1:12, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,” (John 1:12, NASB95)[6]
THE WOMAN’S SEED WILL CRUSH SATAN’S HEAD (Genesis 3:15c)
The next phrase of this verse is where we really begin to see Christmas, because suddenly the seed of the woman becomes a specific person. The next phrase says, “He shall bruise you on the head…” (Genesis 3:15c, NASB95)[7] The use of the phrase “seed of a woman” now becomes very significant because it is not the normal phrase. The seed for conception comes from the man, we see this very clearly in Galatians 3 where Paul speaks of Abraham and his seed. This is shown in the lists of genealogies where it is the father who begets children. So why through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit does the author of Genesis use this phrase that is abnormal? The only reason that the author would use the phrase “seed of a woman” would be to tell us that this conception would not involve a human father. All the way back in the opening chapters of Genesis God predicts and promises that this child who is to come and will crush the head of Satan would be virgin born. Here we clearly have reference to the first Christmas when the God-Man, Jesus Christ, was born of a virgin and laid in a manger in Bethlehem. The angel Gabriel’s response to Mary when she asked how she could conceive and have a child since she was a virgin is recorded for us in Luke 1:35, “The angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.’ ” (Luke 1:35, NASB95)[8]
SATAN WILL BRUISE THE HEEL OF THE WOMAN’S OFFSPRING (Genesis 3:15d)
The final two phrases of this passage speak of the greatest battle for the souls of men ever waged on earth, this verse not only describes the wonder of the first Christmas, but it also describes the horror of Good Friday and the glory of Easter morning. We are told that Satan will bruise the heel of this one born of a virgin. God’s Son, Jesus Christ, will receive a wound from Satan that will cause the world to believe that Satan has won. The wound described here is the crucifixion of Christ. Satan believed that when his offspring put Jesus on the cross that he had experienced a great victory, mankind was his. Satan believed that he had defeated God by putting to death the Messiah. Satan failed to realize that the death of Jesus Christ was his undoing, the death of a perfect, sinless person was a substitute for all the sin ever committed in the world by mankind. Satan’s judgment came at the cross. The Seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, applied the crushing blow to Satan’s head when on the third day after His death He rose from the dead bringing salvation and eternal life to all who would believe in Him. So why is Satan still around and exercising so much power if he has been crushed by Christ’s death and resurrection? At the cross Satan was judged and his sentence announced, but he is allowed to roam the earth awaiting his final execution. You and I do not have to be bound by his power because our freedom has been purchased through Jesus Christ.
CONCLUSION:
The consequence for eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was death. The moment that Adam and Eve ate the fruit they died spiritually. Their relationship with God was severed and they no longer enjoyed the communion that they had with their Creator before their sin. They also began to physically age and physical death became the plague of the human race. There is also a third aspect of death and that is eternal separation from God in the lake of fire. The coming of the Seed of the woman and His death and resurrection makes it possible for man to be made spiritually alive again through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and it makes it possible for man to escape the lake of fire. When we believe that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be and believe that His death of the cross paid the penalty for our sin and that He rose from the dead on the third day we are saved from God’s wrath against sin, we are saved from the lake of fire. There is nothing that we can do to make ourselves acceptable to God. Verse 21 of our passage this morning tells us that God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve. This was to show Adam and Eve that death was the penalty required for sin. An animal had to die so that Adam and Eve could be clothed. God provided the clothing, and He clothed them, a beautiful picture of God’s gift of eternal life and Christ clothing us in His righteousness that we might be acceptable to God.
God has provided the way for you and me to be acceptable to Him, the incarnation of His Son that first Christmas. Jesus Christ was born into this world that He might pay the price for our sin. The gift is yours. We receive a lot of gifts at Christmas, but of all the gifts you are to receive this is the most important one. What will you do with this gift?
For those who have already received this most important gift, this is a wonderful time to reflect and be thankful for what God has done for you through the Lord Jesus Christ. Come and worship at the manger, come and worship at the cross, come and worship at the empty tomb and anticipate worshipping at the throne.
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[2]Strobel, Lee, The Case For Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich. : Zondervan, 1998.
[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[5]LaHaye, Tim and Hinson, Ed, editors, The Popular Bible Prophecy Commentary. Eugene, Ore. : Harvest House Publishers, 2006.
[6]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[7]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[8]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.