The Long Expected Jesus: The First Glimpse of Jesus (Genesis 3:15)

This is the first message in a Christmas series for 2023. We begin with the very first promise of a redeemer given to Adam and Even in the garden after their sin. Spoken amid a curse, this promise is filled with hope and mercy. An exposition of Genesis 3:15.

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Jim Osman

Pastor-Teacher, Kootenai Community Church

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The expository preaching ministry of Kootenai Community Church by Pastors/Elders Jim Osman, Jess Whetsel, Dave Rich, and Cornel Rasor. This podcast feed contains the weekly sermons preached from the pulpit on Sunday mornings at Kootenai Church.

The Elders/Teachers of Kootenai Church exposit verse-by-verse through whole books of the Bible. These sermons can be found within their own podcast series by visiting the KCC Audio Archive.

Well, we have officially entered the Christmas season now since we are past December 1st. Some people start to celebrate Christmas earlier than that, but since I'm not a sociopath, I wait until December 1st. Not that I judge those who celebrate earlier than that. Don't judge sociopaths—that's one of my life rules. So for this month, we're going to be looking at some promises from the Old Testament concerning the Messiah.
And we've given considerable consideration to some of the Old Testament passages as we've been working our way through the book of Hebrews. We have noted again and again one of our constant themes, that we, as the recipients of the new covenant and as those who stand under the new covenant, we are the beneficiaries of blessings and promises that were foretold long ago. And now they have come to us. And we get to bask in the light of that. We have revelation and understanding and insight that saints of old did not have, and I mean saints prior to the coming of Christ, simply because we have seen how those promises have been fulfilled. And though they waited throughout the course of their lives, they did not see the fulfillment of everything that was promised to them. That's not to say that the promises failed, but it is to say that they were not yet fulfilled. And so viewing them with the eye of faith, though not substance, they were counted as substance, and they anticipated and looked forward to that, believing that God was faithful to do what He had promised to do.
And still today we are not yet living in the fulfillment of everything that has been promised to us. There are still promises yet to be fulfilled that we, like the Old Testament saints, look forward to with great expectation and anticipation, knowing and believing just as they had to that God will fulfill and keep His Word, all of it.
We have the benefit of hindsight that they did not have. And so as we go back into some of the Old Testament passages to look at the promises made of the coming Messiah, we're going to obviously be reading those passages and understanding those passages in light of the fulfillment. That is entirely proper. And we will do that. As we reflect upon some of these, we're going to bring to bear on our understanding of those passages some of the things that we know from how those passages have been fulfilled.
So let me give you a little bit of an understanding of the course ahead over the next couple of weeks. We are going to go back into the Old Testament, look at some of those promises. Today we're going to look at the very first promise of a Redeemer in Genesis chapter 3. Next week we're going to go into the Old Testament and look at the humanity of Christ that was promised and predicted. And then the following week we're going to go back into the Old Testament and look at the divinity, the deity of Christ as it was prophesied and predicted. And then on Christmas Eve, which is a Sunday this year, we're going to in the morning service look at the announcement of that Savior, and then in the evening service the arrival of that Savior.
Now let me give you a couple of introductory remarks here before we jump into our text. First of all, as I mentioned, we're going to be going into some Old Testament texts. Our focus is going to be the Old Testament promises at least for the next three Sundays, today and the next two. And then we're going to look at the fulfillment of that on Christmas Eve.
Second, we're going to be covering multiple passages per Sunday. Not today. Today we're going to be focusing on one passage, which is my standard, sort of typical approach to preaching. And I'm not one of the guys, not that there's anything wrong with this or sinful, but you will notice that typically my pattern is not to go bouncing around like a Bible drill to every passage that has to do with this, having you turn from one place to another. That's not how I feel comfortable preaching. So my focus is usually on one passage, and we zero in on that, reference others. But for the next two Sundays, next Sunday and the following one, we're going to be turning to multiple passages of Scripture. So it's going to be a little bit different as we look at multiple promises from the Old Testament concerning the Christ.
Today, we're just focusing on Genesis chapter 3. So if you're not there yet, you'll need to open your Bible to that passage. Genesis chapter 3. We're going to begin with the very first promise of a Redeemer, first as it appears in Scripture. This is the first—if you're just reading through the passages of Scripture beginning in Genesis 1:1, this is the first time you encounter a promise. It's also first chronologically. And just keep in mind that sometimes when you're reading Scripture what you see first is not always the first reference to that thing. So there's a difference between what you read in Scripture and what happens chronologically in Scripture. But this is the first promise of a Redeemer, both the first we encounter in Scripture as well as the first in history. We're going to go back to our first parents, Adam and Eve, back to the garden right after the fall, shortly, I believe, after creation.
And with that in mind, there's something to keep in mind regarding Old Testament promises and particularly early ones like this one in Genesis chapter 3, and that is that not everything that you might expect to have revealed about the Messiah is to be found in Genesis chapter 3. This is something that was characteristic of early revelation. It was not nearly as developed as later revelation. So we're going to read Genesis 3. We're going to read it through the lens of Christ in the New Testament, yes, but we also have to understand that not everything about Christ is revealed early in human history. It's much later that other things would be revealed. And this is the nature of what we call progressive revelation. That is to say, after Adam and Eve sinned and the Lord confronted them in the garden, He didn't just hand them a Bible with all sixty-six books and say, “Here it is, here's everything you need to know. Start reading this and you'll find out about the hope that is to come.” Revelation was given progressively, book upon book, line upon line, prophet after prophet over the course of time.
And what we find is not that later revelation cancels out earlier revelation, as if, “Yeah, I promised you a kingdom, but hey, some things have happened. We're not going to do the kingdom. We're setting that aside. We're going to spiritualize or allegorize it.” That's not the approach. And it's not as if God gets it wrong in the beginning, but then later on He has to come back in and correct it. It's that in the beginning we have laid out some general principles, some shadows, and then as time moves on through Scripture, we have more and more information that is added to that as things become clearer and clearer over the course of time.
And that's what we find here in Genesis 3. We don't find here, for instance, a mention of a king or a kingdom. We don't have in Genesis 3 any mention of a royal lineage, that the Messiah would rise from the dead, of a promised resurrected body, of a betrayal by a friend named Judas for thirty pieces of silver, of His birth in Bethlehem, that He would be a miracle worker, that He would have a church. We don't have here mentioned His rule or His reign. We don't have here mentioned His death on the cross specifically for sin, or that soldiers would gamble for His garments, or a hundred other things about Christ that we might add to that list.
So the details here in Genesis 3 are scant, but here's what we do have to remember and keep in mind. Adam and Eve—this is key—Adam and Eve were told everything that was necessary for them to place their hope in God for a coming Redeemer. Everything that they needed to know, to hear, and to trust for hope in this Redeemer is revealed in Genesis 3:15. Adam and Eve did not have to wait until later on when they would find out that this Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5), or born of a virgin (Isa. 9), or that He would be Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, the Father of Eternity. They didn't have to know all of that. What they had to know was what is promised to them in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. And that was enough. And if Adam and Eve would place their faith in that and believe that God's Word is true, they would be justified, declared righteous, and taken to Heaven on the basis of the information that God gave them. He gave them enough for them to place their faith in Him and to believe upon Him for that coming Redeemer.
So now let's read the passage, and we're not going to read beginning in verse 1 with the fall, but we're going to get down to the curses that are given to the serpent, then to the woman, and then to the man. So let's pick it up in verse 14, though we're not going to focus on every verse in this passage. We're just going to zero in on verse 15, but we'll catch all the context here. Verse 14:
14 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;
15 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.”
16 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.”
17 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.
18 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field;
19 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.” (Gen. 3:14–19 NASB)
Now the narrative surrounding this is a familiar one. It is after the fall of man. This is obviously after creation. I don't believe that there was a long period of time that passed between the creation of Adam and Eve and the fall and thus the judgment. I think it happened rather quickly. Scripture doesn't tell us exactly how long it took, but there seems to be no indication that a long period of time, certainly not thousands or millions of years, have passed between the finishing of creation and the fall of man.
The serpent was right there doing his thing that he does, deceiving and lying and twisting God's Word in order to ruin our first parents. Adam and Eve were created in perfection, moral perfection, with the ability to sin, the choice to sin, something you and I do not have. We are born in Adam only able to sin and to do nothing else. But Adam and Eve were born in a state of moral perfection, able to sin but morally perfect and without any imperfection in their righteousness.
They were provided with everything that they needed, everything in the garden. This is something to keep in mind. Adam and Eve were given everything that they needed. They had no wants, they had no needs, there was no lack of provision, everything was provided for them. They had the entire creation and a lush garden. All of the produce, all of the food that they could want, it was all there. No bacon, I grant you, but everything else was there. They had no want and no need at all. And in that state they fell. Now compare that just for a moment with the Lord Jesus Christ, who in His temptation went forty days without food and had none of those luxuries, and yet He resisted the temptation from this same serpent. The contrast there is striking. Adam had everything, and he abandoned it, rolled the dice, and fell, ate what he should not have eaten. The Lord Jesus Christ had none of those things. And yet He was tempted and He stood strong.
So, Genesis chapter 2:16–17: “The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” That was the statement. Real simple. One tree. You have everything else in the garden. One tree—don't eat from it. They could walk up to it, they could observe its beauty, they could tend it, they could look at it. They just weren't supposed to eat from it. That was the one thing they did. They had one job. They had one job and they failed at that one thing.
The serpent comes in and casts doubt on God's Word, questions God's motivations for even giving them the prohibition. And so Eve sinned by eating the fruit, and Adam followed her and ate the fruit. The Scripture says that Eve was deceived, but Adam was not deceived. I think he ate willingly. And immediately they realized that they were naked, as something had changed, and they hid from one another, and they hid from God.
In Genesis 3:11, God confronted them and said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Now the Lord knew what had happened. Obviously, He was more than just an observer. He was there for the whole thing. He knew what had happened, but the question is intended or designed to elicit from Adam a response. It's intended to make Adam reflect upon what he had done and how he had violated the command. And so rather than just charging Adam with his crime, the Lord begins to question the man and the woman in order to bring forth a confession of their own guilt. And of course Adam does what every man has ever done since the beginning of time—he blames his wife. What have you done? She did it. And then He turns to the woman. What have you done? The serpent did it. Notice the shifting of blame? This happens in relationships, and this is what we do so naturally. It is so innate in us that when confronted with something, we shift the blame. We skirt it, try to avoid it, blame somebody else for it, make an excuse. This is what they did.
And so this of course brings a curse upon all three parties. You'll notice in verses 14 and 15 that the Lord begins with the curse upon the serpent. I think that that is significant. It goes from the Lord confronting Adam, who really was the responsible party for all of this—He confronts Adam and then moves to Eve, and she blames the serpent, and then the curses unfold in the opposite order. The Lord addresses the serpent and then the woman and then finally the man. So there is a chiasmus there, a progression that goes from the man to the woman to the serpent, from the serpent to the woman to the man. The Lord addresses them and curses them in opposite order.
Each curse, and this is something you should observe, is uniquely suited and attached to the creation mandate and to the role of both the man and the woman. So for instance, the woman's curse is that she would bring forth children in pain and with difficulty and that there would be this conflict between the man and the woman. So whereas the woman was supposed to be submissive to the headship and the leadership of the man by virtue of the fact that the man was created first and God had ordained him with a position of authority as the head of the home, now because of the curse there would be this conflict that would exist within the home and between the man and the woman. The woman would desire to have that position of authority and not submit to it and the man of course would rule over the woman. You have this conflict and strife that begins at the beginning, and now it has worked out in every relationship that has ever existed between men and women since the beginning of time.
The man's curse is uniquely suited to his role and responsibility, which is his work and his provision. So man now would have to work and provide, and this task would be toilsome and taxing and exhausting and frustrating, and labor would no longer be as fulfilling as it once was. So now it is by the sweat of his brow that man brings forth the fruits of his labor to provide for his family. This would now become difficult. And it wasn't difficult before the fall. Work was, before the fall, what it will be in the new creation. When we get to work, it will be ultimately fulfilling, and we won't have to deal with any of the thorns or the thistles or the curse that comes upon us.
And then now the serpent is cursed with crawling as a vile and disgusting and despised—I mean, even today we use the term “snake in the grass” to describe somebody who is devious and deceptive and untrustworthy and duplicitous. And so now the curse is upon the snake as well.
Verse 15, this is our focus, and now we've gone past our context here to our verse. These words in verse 15 contain the first promise of a Redeemer. Verse 15 is called the proto-gospel, or the beginning of the gospel, the first message of the gospel. And that's a good description of it. That's what it is. Spurgeon has rightly noted that this is probably, perhaps, the best sermon ever preached because he says Yahweh Himself is the preacher and the entire human race is the audience. Now granted, it's only two people, but it was the entire human race. The entire human race is the audience, as well as the serpent, but Yahweh Himself is the One now who is promising a Redeemer. And if you believe as I do that every revelation of God in the Old Testament was the second Person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is speaking to them, then what you have here is the Lord Jesus Christ foretelling to Adam and Eve—to the serpent in the presence of Adam and Eve—what He would come to do. But it is addressed to the serpent, and Adam and Eve, before they ever get a glimpse at their own curse, get a glimpse at this hope.
Spurgeon said this:
These words were not directly spoken to Adam and Eve, but they were directed distinctly to the serpent himself, and that by way of punishment to him for what he had done. It was a day of cruel triumph to him: such joy as his dark mind is capable of had filled him, for he had indulged his malice, and gratified his spite. He had in the worst sense destroyed a part of God's works, he had introduced sin into the new world, he had [s]tamped the human race with his own image, and gained new forces to promote rebellion and to multiply transgression, and therefore he felt that sort of gladness which a fiend can know who bears a hell within him.
That was good. Everything Spurgeon said is good and that's particularly good. Here on the very soil of Satan's alleged triumph, which is the garden, is the very place where the Lord confronts him and reminds him that what he has begun now will only end in his ultimate and final destruction.
And it is in the context of that, the Lord's curse upon the serpent, that Adam and Eve hear the words of hope. Before they hear their own curse, before they hear their own sentence, before they hear of their toil and their pain and their suffering, their struggle and ultimately their death, that they will return to dust, before they hear any of that, they hear of the ultimate triumph that One will come who would destroy the serpent.
And Adam and Eve were ripe for judgment. They deserved at that moment to be executed and cast into everlasting damnation with the serpent and to be forgotten for all of eternity. That is what they deserved. They were ripe for judgment. They had rebelled. They had taken everything good and spoiled it for themselves, for the creation, and for all of their posterity. And if God had judged them at that very moment and cast them into Hell, He would have done them no wrong. He would have given them what they justly deserved. But He doesn't do that.
Instead, He unfolds for them a promise of redemption, a promise of grace. These are words of mercy in verse 15 that are not addressed to Adam and Eve, but Adam and Eve hear this because it is addressed to the serpent, whose destruction is promised. And Adam and Eve hear the promise of grace, and I have to think that that is intentional. Well, I know it is intentional because the Lord doesn't do anything unintentionally. So I know it is intentional for Adam and Eve to hear the promise of hope before they ever hear of their judgment. You see, God could have just told them, “Pain, suffering, death, disease, destruction, and ultimately dust is what you deserve, and that is what you have coming.” And He could have abandoned them there and let them live out centuries before He ever gave them a word of hope. But the Lord doesn't do that. Instead, the Lord gives them a message of hope and mercy in the midst of what He is addressing to the serpent that Adam and Eve get to hear before they even hear of His judgments. That is a merciful thing.
So this is the promise that there shall arise in the future, in the fullness of time, a champion, a victor, who though He suffers shall destroy the devil, crush his power, and crush the serpent's head. Genesis 3:15, this is our passage. And yes, we're finally there. “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." In those words of hope, we're going to notice three things about the coming Savior: first, His virgin birth; second, His vicarious suffering; and then third, His victory over Satan.
Notice first the promise of His virgin birth. It is in the phrase “the seed of the woman.” Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.” Now the Lord here is not talking about the literal physical serpent, the snake. You get the idea, the impression, and it is a right one, beginning in verse 15, that the Lord is now addressing the spiritual entity that is behind the snake's deception. It is Satan himself that is being promised a destruction here. The word seed that is used there is often translated as “offspring.” It means “offspring” or “descendants” or “child” or “children.” It's also used of literal human semen. But that is not its meaning here. Here it is not used literally in either case, either of the woman or of the snake.
Now you'll notice that the passage says that the serpent has a seed and that the woman has a seed. And that does not mean, of course, that Satan has literal physical progeny, descendants, or offspring, as if he is able to reproduce in some way. He isn't. But it does mean that he has spiritual children or spiritual descendants. Scripture talks about those who belong to the devil and that they are not those who belong to God. You either belong to the devil or you belong to God, but you don't inhabit any kind of middle ground where you belong to some third entity. There are children of the Lord and there are children of the devil. And you are born into this creation a child of the devil, a child of wrath. And you must be born again and adopted into God's family if you are to have redemption.
In John 8:44, Jesus said to the Pharisees who were trying to kill Him, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.” See, this is what makes us, naturally born, his children. We desire to do his will. “He [that is, the devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). He is the father of liars as well. In 1 John 3:10, we read, “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.” There are the children of God and the children of the devil. And there are ways that we can tell, Scripture gives us, those who belong to the devil and those who belong to God. And there is no, again, no third category. All of the unregenerate belong to the kingdom of Satan. They belong to the kingdom of the serpent. They are in darkness and in his kingdom. They are allied against God in their sin and their rebellion. And there are only two families: those who are allied against Yahweh and His purposes and His Word, and those who have been born again and adopted into the family of God.
Now in what sense are we speaking here of the woman's seed? Because this is an odd phrasing for the author to use, and it's intended to be odd, but there is a sense in which all of us are also the seed of the woman, if by that you simply mean descendants or offspring, because all of us come from Eve. So in that sense, that could be said of all of humanity, but this passage is not describing all of humanity because the very next phrase says, “He”—that is, one particular seed the Author has in mind. God has in mind one Person whom you can call the seed of the woman in the sense that this passage is speaking of the seed of the woman, and that of course is Christ, the One who would crush the serpent's head.
And between the seed of the woman—that is, Christ—and the seed or the children, the offspring as it were, the spiritual clan of the devil, there has waged, since the garden, this hostility and enmity and war. It is a truth war that is being waged out on the stage of human history, and it is a war between those who are in the family of the devil, who are his by virtue of their birth in the original Adam, and the One who is the seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus Christ. So there is a perpetual state of battle and hostility that exists, a war over the truth, and there can be no brokered peace between these two families, between these two sides. No brokered peace. There's nothing, and I mean nothing, that the church, that the true believer can do to have peace with the devil and his kingdom. You can't act like them, entertain yourself like them, gather together and look like them. There's no peace that can be brokered because these two kingdoms are always at war. They have been since the garden and they will be until the Lord returns and crushes finally all the kingdoms of this earth and makes all of His enemies a footstool for His feet. Matthew Henry said this: “Heaven and hell can never be reconciled, nor light and darkness; no more can Satan and a sanctified soul, for these are contrary the one to the other.”
Now let me make something clear here lest you walk away misunderstanding this. This is not to say that every unbeliever is our personal enemy. They're not, they're the mission field. So yes, the children of the devil are at war with our Savior and they're attacking Him, and since they cannot get into Heaven, claw their way into Heaven and attack Him personally, which they would if they could, since they can't do that, they're going to go after the next best thing, and guess what that is? Those who represent Him here. So they are at war with Him. They are not to be viewed as our personal enemy, they are to be viewed as our mission field. They are the ones whom we respond to with love instead of hatred. We don't return attack for attack. We don't return hatred for hatred. Instead, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: be reconciled to God through the Lord Jesus Christ because God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that you and I might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:20–21). So our mission is not to go to war with every unbeliever and attack them personally and do to them what they do to us. It's not a tit for tat, sort of a conflict that we wage. Instead, we are pleading with men and women through the truth to be reconciled to God, and thus we are sort of pulling out of the devil's ranks, as it were, one person at a time into the kingdom of light. And we are therefore pillaging his kingdom in that sense, and we are bringing in converts to Christ. So don't think that the unbeliever is our personal enemy.
Now you say, what about the virgin birth? Back to that phrase “the seed of the woman.” That is a very odd phrase because typically in Scripture they would use that phrase to refer to the man, the seed of the man. But instead, here the Lord does not say to the serpent that the seed of the man will defeat the serpent, but the seed of the woman. And women don't produce seed. Men do. So you can read in Scripture about Abraham's seed, Isaac's seed, David's seed, Jacob's seed, these men who produced offspring through the seed. But to read the phrase “the seed of the woman” would have been odd to say the least to Moses's ears. It certainly would have been odd to everybody's ears who ever would have read this until we get to Matthew chapter 1, verse 20: “When [Joseph] had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.’ ”
So now, because of the virgin birth, you and I can understand what is meant by the seed of the woman, that the Lord Jesus Christ would be the descendant of Eve. He would be the descendant of Eve through Mary. So He would come from Eve physically in the sense that He is a descendant of Eve, though He is not connected to Adam because He does not go back to Adam through the seed of men. So if you trace the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam, you've got to begin by going through Mary and then eventually to Eve. And He is therefore, in terms of the seed of man and the fallenness and corruption of human nature, He is cut off from Adam's lineage in that sense, though He is connected back to Eve, the first parent, but not from Adam.
And how does the Lord accomplish this, that the Lord Jesus Christ could be fully human and have a fully human body? It is only by making Him in every respect the descendant of the woman, but not Adam. And He does this through the virgin birth, so that Jesus's lineage goes back through Mary to Eve—so He is fully human—but the lineage goes back in such a way as to not connect Him to our fallen father, Adam. And therefore He is not of the first Adam like you and I are. Instead, He is the second Adam, the father, the head, the chief of an entirely new race: those who are in Christ. And if you are in Christ, you are no longer in Adam. In Adam, all die, and in Christ, all who are in Him are made alive. And so in that sense He is the seed of the woman. Galatians 4:4: “When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.” So Christ can properly be said to be the seed of the woman because Adam was not His father in any sense. Adam was not His father. He is conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of a woman, a descendant of Eve and the offspring of Eve, but in no sense the offspring of Adam.
This is a reference to the virgin birth. And the virgin birth, by the way, was a normal birth process. It was a normal gestation, a normal birth process. It was a normal Child in the sense that about Him there was nothing that would indicate that He was anything special just from looking at the Baby. But He was certainly the fulfillment of this promise. And here the Lord is indicating at the very beginning, verse 15, that this Redeemer would come into the world in a way that is unlike anybody else who has ever come into the world. He's the seed of the woman and not the seed of the man.
And see, this would have struck both Adam and Eve as odd since Adam was standing right there. And you might have expected for the Lord to say, “Through the seed of the man, he'll crush the head of the serpent.” That's not what the Lord says. The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. And here is a shadowy foretelling of the virgin birth of Christ.
Second, these words of hope describe not just His virgin birth, but His vicarious suffering. And I use the term vicarious here for two reasons. First, because it starts with V and I needed something to make the alliteration work, but second, because I want to remind you that the suffering that is described here is a substitutionary suffering. It's not just generic suffering. It's not just pain for the sake of pain. There is a substitutionary element going on here. And though the substitution is not mentioned here in this Scripture, it will be developed later on in Scripture, where some of the similar language is used. Like Isaiah 53, for instance, talks of our Savior being bruised and crushed for our iniquities. There's a substitutionary element that is used there.
So Genesis 3:15—look at the last phrase, and then we'll back up and look at the previous phrase. “You shall bruise him on the heel.” Now again, these words are not addressed to Adam and Eve but to the devil. And this is in a pronouncement of his destruction. The seed of the woman would be bruised, would be crushed there. The word that is translated “bruised” there means to break or to crush or to overwhelm. It's used two other times in the Old Testament, once in Job chapter 9: “For He bruises me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause” (v. 17). And by the way, both of these other references to this word bruised have the idea of being overwhelmed. In fact, that is how it's translated in Psalm 139:11: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night.’ ” It has the idea of overtaking and overwhelming, of completely crushing one, overwhelming one to the sense of being crushed. And so here it describes One who is bruised or broken or crushed or overwhelmed.
And the devil did strike a blow against the seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus Christ. But that blow was not like the blow that Christ struck against the serpent. And notice the picture here of a heel and the serpent crushing the heel, and the Lord Jesus or the seed of the woman crushing the head of the serpent. The picture is—so here's the wrong way to think about it. Let me give you the wrong way to think about it first. The wrong way to think about it is that there is this conflict or war going on, and the devil is going to strike his blow, and that's just going to bruise the Lord Jesus Christ, and then the Lord Jesus Christ is going to strike His blow, and that's going to crush the devil. That's the wrong imagery.
The imagery is that the devil is slithering through the grass, and the heel comes down and crushes his head, and in the process of crushing the head, the heel is bruised. In other words, only one person landed a blow, and it was the seed of the woman. And that blow crushed the serpent's head, and in the process, the heel of the seed of the woman was bruised and crushed as well. And that describes the suffering. Isaiah 53:5: “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities [this is speaking of Christ]; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.” Isaiah 53:8: “By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?”
And it is His virgin birth and His vicarious suffering, and then third, notice His victory over Satan. In verse 15: “He shall bruise you on the head.” Same word is used of being bruised on the heel. He shall bruise or crush or overwhelm to break or destroy your head. So Satan would crush the Redeemer's heel as the Redeemer crushed Satan's head. One blow. Now if two people get into a fight and one person's heel is crushed but the other person's head is crushed, who is the victor? The person whose heel was crushed. And so this describes His victory over the devil. It's a vivid picture. The war that began here in the garden, this would result in the Redeemer being wounded, and the serpent would be destroyed. The blow that is struck by the heel to the head would be a final and fatal blow that would undo all of his authority, all of his kingdom, and all of his power.
In fact, the word head here was described—actually the idea of headship was described in Sunday school this morning. The idea of “head” here can refer to a literal physical body part, the one out of which all the words are flowing this morning, my head. It can refer to that. It can also refer to the fount or the beginning of something. The word can be used to describe the top of something, like the head of a pyramid. And the word can be used to describe one who rules or exercises authority, one's authority or rule, like the head of state, who has a certain degree of authority and rules over a certain kingdom or is the head of a kingdom.
And I think here it is used in two senses. The idea of a physical body part being crushed is intended to portray or to picture the idea of a complete annihilation and destruction. But what is it that is being described here? Just the devil's head gets crushed? The devil's a spiritual being, in case you don't know that yet. So he doesn't have a physical head. But what is it that is crushed? It is his rule and his authority. Colossians 2:14–15: Christ, on the cross, has “canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.” He disarmed authorities and rulers. He disarmed the spiritual realm, all of Satan's power. He once had the power of death over us and the power of the fear of death, but that has been taken away. Hebrews 2:14–15: “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.”
So what has been destroyed when the head of the serpent was destroyed? The head of the serpent is crushed, and the imagery, again, is of the serpent slithering through the ground next to the heel of the seed of the woman, and the seed of the woman crushes the head of the serpent, one blow which is final and total and destroys it. But metaphorically speaking, or allegorically—not allegorically, that's the wrong word. Metaphor, let's just stick with metaphor. Metaphorically speaking, it is his power, his rule, his authority that has been totally stripped from him in that one fatal blow.
So the devil, for the believer, the devil used to hold you under the sway of his authority and his power as your head, as your father, as your spiritual authority. But that has been stripped. And now the Lord Jesus is plundering his kingdom, calling out men and women from every tribe and kingdom and tongue on the face of the planet, bringing them to Himself. He has triumphed over the strong man and He now plunders his house. And so Satan's authority to keep you in power has been broken. Satan's ability and authority to keep you in the fear of death has been broken. His kingdom has been destroyed. The crucifixion was the crushing of the devil's head. And now his doom is sure, his destruction is certain, and his kingdom is defeated.
But, you say, I look around me and it doesn't look like his kingdom has been defeated. It has been defeated. But right now all of the rebels are just running around doing their thing as they wait until that day when all of His [Christ’s] enemies will be made a footstool for His feet. But because the Lord Jesus Christ crushed the head of the serpent on that cross, disarming and triumphing over all power and authority, because He has done that, the devil's doom is certain. And now we are just waiting for that to happen. Now we are just waiting for the fulfillment of that promise. But he is a defeated foe.
And this was the eternal plan of God: to redeem a people for Himself through the death of the Redeemer, that He would then call those people to Himself, those for whom He was wounded and crushed and broken on that cross. He would redeem them and forgive them. He would sanctify them and cleanse them from their sin, glorify them, give them His righteousness, adopt them as His sons, and seat them with Christ in heavenly places. That is what He has done through the death of the seed of the woman.
And eventually Satan will be bound and later triumphed over and then thrown into the lake of fire which burns forever and ever. And all His saints will receive the kingdom. We will step into the new heavens and the new earth. And there will be no more fall, no more death, no more destruction, no more devil. And he will be punished forever and ever, and you and I will reign victoriously with Jesus Christ for all of eternity. This is what the Lord has done for those who are His—born of a virgin, suffered vicariously, and conquered our enemy. This He has done for us on our behalf as our substitute. He lived in our place. He died in our place. He did everything necessary for you and I to have not only forgiveness but the righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.