Dev: Nov 30 - Genesis 3:14-15

¹⁴ The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,

cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
¹⁵ I will put enmity between

you and the woman, and

between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

Genesis 3

 

With amazing specificity, the Old Testament prophesied about the life of the eventual Messiah, the long anticipated King.

 

Now, think about this … If one wanted to fake being the Messiah, one could align his life with some of the prophesies. He could do what the Messiah was supposed to do.

 

But did you know that two things are hard to fake? How you’re born and how you die!  

 

That’s why God focused most of the prophecies on the unfakable – the birth and death of Jesus the Messiah. (It’s hard to fake those things!)

 

Now, today, I’m not going to start with the most famous of these prophecies. (They’ll get more and more familiar as the days go on.)

 

Rather, I’m going to start simply with a lesser known – yet crucially important – prophecy from the opening pages of Scripture. Why? Because it shows that sending a Savior was God's plan from the very beginning!

 

In opening pages of Genesis, if you remember, the serpent (Satan) tempted Eve, and when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, sin entered the world. And with sin came consequences. Adam and Eve (and thus eventually all humanity) were kicked out of the Garden. Man now had to plow hard ground to plant and harvest and survive. Pain entered the world, even and especially in a woman’s childbirth.

 

But there was one more set of consequences. As our scripture verse for today proclaims, this judgment falls upon “the Father of Lies.” “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you … [from now on] upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat.’”

 

Satan, you see, viewed tricking humanity into sin as a victory. He toppled God’s treasure – humanity. But figuratively and literally, Satan and the serpent were made even lower than low – crawling on their belly, eating dust.

 

Now here’s the prophecy: God speaks of “enmity” and strife between Satan and humans. That’s the daily battle that all find ourselves stuck in. But think bigger than that: In the great cosmic war between good and evil, who will strike the fatal blow to Satan? Well, do you see the prophecy in this verse? The victor will be the “offspring” of “the woman.” So, while Satan “will strike his heel” (a painful wound), the human offspring (Jesus, born of Mary) “will strike [Satan’s] head” (a fatal blow).

 

Yes, anger, lies, hatred, and deceit struck Jesus painfully on earth. He would be mocked and beaten. He was to be stripped and whipped. Crucifixion was his human trajectory. And the serpent thought that he had won the war. He hadn’t! And the empty tomb emptied Satan’s hope. His head was struck by a crushingly fatal blow.

 

Now, like a writhing leviathan, he’ll still wiggle and squirm and lash out while hopelessly injured. He’s dying. He’s not dead yet. Nevertheless, the victory has been won.

 

And page three of the Bible – Genesis 3, written about 1500 years before Jesus’ birth – prophesies the whole story of Scripture!

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who wants to invent

a Christmas dance.

Let’s call it, the Serpent Stomp!

By sharing the hope of Christmas,

with a dark and cynical world,

let’s stomp out Satan’s lies