Fallout - [Genesis 3:14-15]

My goal here this evening is to cover most of Genesis 3 and to really focus on a couple of verses.

As probably most of you know, World War II was the deadliest conflict, the deadliest war in human history.

Over 4 % of the world's population died during World War II. But specifically,

I want to draw a couple of things to your attention. One is Dresden. How many are familiar with the firebombing of Dresden?

It's a German city, and the Allies dropped more than 3 ,900 tons of explosives on Dresden, just setting fire to the whole thing.

In fact, I was looking at pictures of the city, and it looks like, guess what? Nobody lives there, right?

I mean, it's just like massive destruction with just a few walls left. Then I thought, okay, compare that to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where they dropped the atomic bombs, and I mean, just a relatively few thousand people died.

I mean, it was relatively few, like maybe 25 ,000 died in the firebombings of Dresden.

But the two bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are estimated to have killed somewhere around 129 ,000 to 226 ,000 people.

Boom, dead. The picture of devastation, of just absolute firebombing misery, is the picture that I want you to see tonight.

Because as we go through Genesis 3, spiritually speaking, that's exactly what we're going to see.

Spiritual annihilation, just decimation, explosion, destruction.

And out of that, we're going to see something good come. It's almost like if there was a huge explosion, and all you could see were ashes and smoke and just dust, and then your eye was drawn to one particular spot, and you could see something shining, something bright and clean and pure.

That's exactly what we're going to see tonight. If I asked you what the most famous Bible verse was, you'd probably say, what?

John 3 .16. I hope after tonight, you might say, well, I don't know, it might be the most famous, but the most important verse might be

Genesis 3 .15. One man said about it, he said, readers can understand the remainder of Scripture as an unfolding of the prophecy of this verse.

In other words, if you understand this verse, Genesis 3 .15, correctly, it will really help you understand all of the

Bible. I put it another way, I think maybe Friday night, whatever night it was, the rest of the

Bible could almost be viewed as a commentary on Genesis 3 .15. That's how impactful that verse is.

I'm just going to read verses 14 and 15. 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. Between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Now, without going through Genesis 1 and 2, there are two complementary chapters that give us creation accounts.

And the second gives us details that the first does not, including the motivation and the manner of Eve's creation.

But this evening, as we go through Genesis 3, we're going to see kind of a little bit of the impact of Eve.

We're going to see a lot of it, actually. But I have three kind of measuring sticks, three waypoints as we walk through this passage.

First, we're going to see, and they're martial terms. First, war declared.

Second, the consequences of war. And third, victory promised.

And I really thought, this is kind of like World War II, and I almost want to give a Winston Churchill -like speech, but what

God says is much better. And this really does seem like, as we read through it, a dark and impossible situation.

But God himself, in the midst of that, in the midst of this destruction, tells of Satan's defeat,

Christ's victory, and man's salvation. So first, war declared.

It's basically verses 1 to 6. You say, war? Yes, war.

Satan appears and immediately changes what Yahweh, what God, told

Adam. In verse 1, he said to the woman, did God actually say, and when you hear that, you ought to just think to yourself, well, he probably didn't say that.

If you have to say, did God actually say, right? Did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

Was that true? What's interesting is, well,

I mean, there are a number of things that are interesting, but it's interesting that Eve, we're going to find out that Adam and Eve are right next to each other.

They're both right there. And Adam remains silent throughout this whole process.

But watch Eve's response, and she's wrong. She says, you shall not eat of, here's what he actually said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

God never said, don't touch it, lest you die, right? He said, don't eat of it.

I heard on the radio probably about a month ago, and this really got me thinking about this whole thing. A man on the radio, apparently he's a preacher,

I don't know. They talk about him like he is a preacher. He's on K -Love, so I don't know what that means.

But he talked about this, about this misunderstanding, you could say, of Eve, about what

God had said, and he said that this was a generational miscommunication. That Adam, being the first person, had failed to tell the second person what

God had told him, right? So this was just a communication failure. That Eve didn't really understand because she wasn't there when

God said this, and Adam had somehow failed to do that. I don't think that's right.

You know, even though he's on K -Love, and I really appreciate that, I think he's wrong. If Adam had lied to Eve, or if he'd misled her, or if he'd just not informed her, wouldn't that have been sinful on his part?

That would have started the clock right there, the sin clock, I guess we could say. So what did

God say? Was Eve ignorant? And I think the answer to that is no. What did God say to Adam?

If you go back to just Genesis 2, verses 16 and 17, And the

Lord God, Yahweh, commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

For in the day that you eat of it, not touch of it, touch it, but the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.

That's the thing. You can't do that one thing. But that's not what Eve said. She said,

Neither shall you touch it. Now, if we just keep in mind, Adam's right there. Does he say, Oh, that's not right, Eve.

Stop lying about what God said. No, he doesn't say anything. And it gets worse.

Because here in verses 4 to 6, we're going to see that Eve and Adam agree with Satan.

They take Satan's side. They stand with Satan and against God. Verse 4,

But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So 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 to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

How do I know that Adam was right there? It's right here in the text. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

She didn't have to go looking for him. She didn't go have to get him out of bed. He was right there and he ate.

Satan offered Adam and Eve what was not his to give, which was that they could be like God.

Yahweh told them that death would result from violating his commands. Satan said, you violate

God's commands. And guess what? You're going to be just like him. He just doesn't want that for you.

He's not looking out for you. I am looking out for you. You can trust me because I'm a snake.

I mean, when you think about it, it's kind of,

I mean, I think he gets full points for just sheer chutzpah, for guts.

How do you do that? Right? You will be like God. Don't listen to God. I'm telling you something else.

God says that you will die. I say false. You should believe me. And they believed him. They took his side.

And again, notice in verse six. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, she liked to look at it.

And the tree was to be desired to make one wise. What's she doing before she eats?

What's she actually doing? She's entertaining the sin. She's running it through her head. She's thinking this would be great.

This is, it looks good. I like it. I really think it's the first example of what

James wrote in James one says, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

She was doing what James would later write about. She could have rejected what

Satan said. She could have quoted the word of God like Jesus did when he was tempted.

Right. When Satan came to him, Adam could have done his job and protected Eve. He could have protected the garden.

He could have slapped the fruit. Don't don't eat that. Woulda coulda shoulda.

Right. They missed on all counts. Instead, she took the fruit and ate and gave it to Adam.

Whatever the fruit was, you can speculate all you what was it? Apple, pineapple. We don't know.

It doesn't really matter. But eating it was devastating and would impact all of humanity.

All of us are still suffering as a result of it. Their creator and sustainer, their friend, forbids them from doing one thing.

One thing. And Satan shows up and convinces them to do that by lying to them.

And it's really amazing because they had no sin nature. In other words, they had no proclivity to sin. They weren't born with original sin.

Right. Satan tells them you shouldn't trust

Yahweh. You should trust me. And they did. R .C. Sproul used to call sin cosmic treason.

And I think in the definition of cosmic treason, this sin fits it fully.

Why? Because they essentially said, thanks, God, but no, thanks. We're going to align ourselves with this serpent, with Satan.

They chose Satan to be their friend. Their confidant, their ally, and you could say their spiritual father.

This was rebellion, treason, a declaration of war. So that's war declared.

Second, the consequences of war, the consequences of war.

The first consequence of war is guilt and shame. Look at verse seven. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and 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 among the trees of the garden. Now, they didn't, obviously, they didn't physically die immediately.

But. Since they came into being, since God created them.

They had no clothing, and yet they had no awareness that they had no clothing. Right.

It had never occurred to them that they were naked. And you say, well, how could that be? Because they were in a state of innocence.

They had no idea what nakedness or non -nakedness was. They didn't have any advertising to tell them they needed the latest and greatest clothing.

They had no clue. But Satan had promised them that they would be like God if they ate of the fruit.

And there was a certain enlightenment that came to them because they were aware of something.

And they were aware of the fact that they had no clothes on. Well, why is that? I think it's because their conscience was initiated.

They knew that they had sinned. They knew that they had done something evil. And they were undone, essentially, in the presence of God.

Their treason resulted in the death of innocence. And it introduced guilt and shame into the world.

Adam and Eve, like all of us, had consciences. And their first response to the fact that they were guilty was to do what?

It was to hide. Maybe if God doesn't see us, right, then we'll be safe.

And I thought as I read through this and as I studied it, I thought, you know what, so much of what we see here in Genesis 3 reminds me of what kids do, right?

I'm in trouble. What am I going to do? I'm going to hide, right? Step one.

If I'm in the closet, right, maybe mom and dad won't find me. I mean, did they really think hiding would work or that fig leaves were going to make them seem less guilty in front of God?

Here's what's true. Guilty people do what? One of the things they do, I mean, there are a number of things that they do, but they panic.

Guilty people act irrationally. You know, if you watch police shows and you think, well, I would never do that.

Okay, wait and see what happens when you're really guilty, when you really have something to hide and see how you act.

What does Proverbs say? Proverbs 28 .1. So a verse that Pastor Mike likes to use frequently in counseling sessions.

He'll say, you know, the wicked flee when no one pursues. But it's true, right?

People who have guilty consciences run for absolutely nobody's pursuing them.

Nobody's chasing them, but they run anyway. And that's what they were doing. But look at how graciously the omniscient

God is toward the rebellious Adam. Verse nine. But the

Lord God said to the man or called to the man and said to him, where are you? Didn't God know where he was?

Of course. Of course he did. So what does he say? Where are you?

It's a simple question. And we get the idea just from the way that it's portrayed the pre -incarnate

Jesus. That's who we're talking about here, right? The Lord God Yahweh would come in to the garden and the cool of the afternoon would walk.

We get the idea that it was probably pretty normal, as we would expect, for Adam to greet

Yahweh, for him to go say, you know, I don't know.

Good afternoon, Lord. Whatever the greeting was, you know, that it was common for this.

But today, on this occasion, Adam's nowhere to be found.

True or false. Sin creates distance between people and God.

It's true. It's always true. It's true for us today. If we're in a pattern of sin, do we feel far apart from him?

The answer is yes, we do. Has he moved? No, we have. We've gone away from him.

And that's what happened here. And that's why they're hiding. So that's their first response is, let's hide.

Again, I think it's a childish response, but so is their second one. Blame shifting.

Put the blame on somebody else. Don't take responsibility for your own actions. Blame somebody else. Adam wants to blame

Eve. But more importantly, he's blaming God. God asked him two questions.

Essentially, he says, who told you you were naked?

And did you eat the fruit? I told you not to eat. Did you do what I told you not to do? Now, notice that Adam doesn't even bother to answer the first question.

Who told you you were naked? He doesn't even answer that. As of the second, he pleads, essentially, not guilty.

And it's not my fault. It doesn't make any sense. But again, guilty people typically don't make any sense.

Verse 12, the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, your fault, God. If you didn't give me this woman, we wouldn't be standing here right now talking about this.

Then he says, she gave me fruit, the fruit of the tree, and I ate. Your fault for giving him to me or giving her to me.

Her fault, forgive me the fruit, not my fault. Reminds me of so many times.

I mean, this is this is a Genesis three is essentially a crash course on anthropology.

The study of man, criminology, the study of the criminal mind, right? And psychology. What how do people think?

This is perfect. I'm going to hide. I mean, the only thing they didn't do was like cover up the evidence, which they ate it.

So, I mean, what else was there? He's caught.

He broke the law. There's one law. You know, there's one law. Do not eat of this tree. He broke that law, but he's not going down on his own.

He's going to take somebody with him. I mean,

I don't know what he was thinking. Get a plea deal. You know, I'll flip on Yahweh and he'll he'll go.

No, come on. Maybe maybe he'll take Eve and punish her and not me.

But Eve does the same thing. She's not going to say, oh, it's my fault. She says.

It's the serpent. Verse 13. 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. Not my fault.

The salesman who showed up at my door. Now look at the punishment.

It's interesting that Yahweh addresses. Now, if we read through it, we'd go, well, okay.

Eve was the instigator. So why wouldn't you? I mean, I'd talk to Eve first.

Probably Adam is the responsible party. He's the one in charge.

So God talks to Adam first, then Eve and then the serpent.

He's already talked to Adam. He's talked to Eve. And now he's going to talk to the servant or the serpent. Now to just back up for a minute.

Here's kind of a fun question. What's the first sin? The first sin ever.

I almost feel like Pastor Mike was trying to do this at the fire thing the other day. Trying to trick somebody to get the wrong answer.

Brian. Okay. It was Satan, in fact, right?

We know that because even if we, you know, we can look at the Old Testament and we could study various texts.

We could argue about who it is and who it isn't. But what does Jesus say? He says that Satan was a murderer from the beginning in John 8, right?

And what does that mean? It means that Satan fell. We know that he fell before this whole episode in the garden.

So obviously his sin was preceded anything else. Now, what was the first sin of humanity?

I mean, you know, I don't want to put the pressure on Brian. So I want to ask. I already basically told you.

Listen to Genesis 2 .15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and do what else?

And keep it. Watch over it. Protect it. So we could say

Adam had two jobs. We could arguably say he had three.

One was to provide headship over Eve. Fail. One was to make sure that the tree didn't get eaten.

Fail. But what was his third one? To protect the garden. And I wrote this, and I think this is wrong.

When Satan came strolling in, well, he was a serpent, so he didn't really stroll in. I mean,

I guess I have the Geico gecko kind of strolling in. That's Satan in my mind. I don't know.

But when Satan entered the garden, Adam should have just said, right then, right?

Picked him up, threw him out. That should have been that. That was his job. So I'd argue the first sin was really failing to protect the garden.

But it gets worse from there, of course. Now let's look at, we're going to be talking about the different punishments.

First, Satan's punishment. Then Eve's punishment. And Adam's punishment. But I'm only going to do half of Satan's punishment.

The reason is because, like I said, the last thing that we're going to talk about is, I guess

I'll call it the Declaration of Peace. And that comes in verse 15, the second part of Satan's, the communication of punishment, the sentence on Satan.

Let's read the first part of it, though. Verse 14. 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 thus shall you eat all the days of your life. Now, I'm not going to get into the weeds on this.

I'm just going to say, you know, reading the different commentaries, here's what I know. A serpent, or the serpent, did not have legs before it went in.

You know, it didn't, so it wasn't the removal of legs that God's talking about. He didn't have wings. He wasn't some kind of, you know, flying dragon or something like that.

So how was this a punishment, that he's going to have to crawl on his stomach? Because he was already doing that.

Here's how. Because the garden was what? The Garden of Eden was a lush place.

It was not a dirty, smelly, nasty place, which is what the earth is going to be turned into.

God says to him, you know what, you've had it good in this garden, but for the rest of your days, you're going to be eating dust.

It's going to be ugly. And as I said, we'll get to the rest of Satan's punishment here in a moment.

And notice he doesn't ask Satan any questions. He doesn't say to him, Satan, why did you do this?

Or why did you, why? Because there's absolutely no point to it. The answer is known, because he's the ultimate liar.

He's the father of lies. So no interrogation is even considered here.

Eve's punishment, verse 16. I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain, you shall bring forth children.

Now, let me just stop there for a moment. What does that mean? I mean, there are wackos who say that, you know, there was a different way for childbearing before the fall.

We don't know that. Why? Because there were no children born. Right. What we do know is that childbearing, the pain of it, as bad as it is, was multiplied as a result of this.

God says so. Then he says, your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.

What does that mean? I'll tell you what it means. It means this, that submitting to your husband is what?

Very difficult. Why is that? Well, because men have their own curse, which we're going to get into in a minute.

But they tend to be lazy, selfish and failing to love their wives. Right. As Ephesians 5 commands.

So it's really no mystery that God commands wives to submit to their husbands because their nature is to do what?

Is to rule over them. And it's no wonder that God commands husbands to love their wives.

Why? Well, first of all, to symbolize what Christ and the church, the relationship between those two.

But also because it goes against their nature. Husbands naturally are lazy and selfish and don't want to do that.

God calls for a supernatural thing in Ephesians 5 as a result of being in Christ.

Commentator Kidner says this. He says, while even pagan marriage can rise far above this, this desire for wives to rule over their husbands.

He says the pull of sin is always towards it. Right. The pull for wives is to run the household, to lord it over their husbands, to really run things.

The pull of husbands is to unplug. Let go and let the wife take charge.

Now, Adam's punishment. Verses 17 and 19. Because you have listened to the voice of your wife.

Right. You let her take charge and have eaten of the tree which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

It was not going to be that way until you fell. Now, did God know this from the beginning? Yes. Did anything happen that upset

God's plan? No. Want to be clear about that. But this is a direct result of Adam's actions.

He also says thorns and thistles that shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the plants of the field.

In other words, it's going to be hard work. Was it hard work in the garden? No. Were there thorns and thistles?

Yes, but they were behaving nicely, I guess we could say. Verse 19.

By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Life is going to be hard for you, Adam. That's what you have brought on yourself.

Now, I do think Adam's response is noteworthy, because I'm going to say that this is really...

I'll call it the first act of faith. Well, maybe first act of repentance is better, right?

Look at verse 20. The man called his wife's name

Eve, because she was mother of all the living. Now, up to this point, how many children did they have?

Zero. What was her name up to this point? The woman, which you really think, well, that's terrible.

Except, what's Adam's name? The man. I mean, it sounds really terrible, but it's like, okay.

I mean, they didn't have a long list of names. There weren't books of baby names and stuff like that.

It was just Adam and man, woman, that's it. But it was an act of faith, because they had no children, but it's also an act of repentance.

He's trusting God, right? He's gone from not trusting him, not believing him, disobeying his word.

And now he says, I've just heard what God said. I believe him. We'll get to verse 15, where he says that in just a moment.

I heard what God said, and I believe him. Now again,

God shows compassion to Adam and Eve. Verse 21, and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them.

Forget about these fig leaves. I'm going to basically kill some animals and clothe you.

And I think that really does prefigure kind of the sacrifice for sin. It kind of institutes the whole sacrificial system.

The mindset of sin brings for sacrifice. But then he evicts them from the

Garden of Eden in 22 to 24. Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us, right?

Like one of the Godhead in knowing good and evil.

Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the

Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man, drove out the man, and at the east of the

Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the tree of life.

Now, it's interesting. Why was he worried about him taking the tree of life? Well, theologians say that if he'd taken that tree of life, then what would have happened?

He would have Brian. Brian. Okay. They would have continued in that fallen state forever, right?

They would have entered eternal life in a fallen, unrepentant, well, in an unforgiven condition because nobody had paid for their sins yet, right?

So God was doing them a favor, a major favor. This is a grace by driving them out of the

Garden of Eden. And then notice also he puts angels in charge of making sure they can't return to the garden, just like he was supposed to protect.

Adam was supposed to protect the garden. Well, now he's got creatures in place who will not fail at their job.

Adam failed. These cherubim are not going to fail. So we've seen war declared.

We've seen the consequences of war. Really, this kind of spiritual nuclear wasteland, destruction, almost hopeless.

So it would appear. And now we come to victory promised. And it really is amazing that our salvation from sin is first announced in what is a curse on Satan, right?

Curse on the serpent, who just for the record, I think that's a possessed serpent.

Verse 15. 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. Yahweh announces that he will put enmity or hostility between Satan and Eve.

Now, why does God have to do that? Why does God have to establish this?

Well, it's simple. Because Adam and Eve have stood, you know, and saluted

Satan. They're on Satan's side. We're back to that. We're back before Adam's repentance. They'd made themselves enemies of God through their disobedience.

They weren't going to declare war on Satan unless a work took place inside.

In fact, I think you could argue that what it's true. It's true today. And it was true then.

You must be born again. There had to be something that took place. They experienced spiritual death. They had to be brought to spiritual life.

And I think God does this right there. And then he took them from the camp of Satan from being in essentially his followers and made them

God's people, God's followers. But the history of Satan, the story of Satan is one in which he's always trying to defeat the will of God.

Right. I mean, you can go throughout the whole Bible and I don't have time, obviously, to do all that. But even if you think if you're

Satan. Satan here tonight. If you're Satan and you want to thwart the will of God, maybe your first step is what?

To get Adam and Eve to fall. To get them to sin. And when you think about it, that must have seemed.

Like pretty crazy. Adam and Eve have no sin nature.

He has no in with them. All he could do is walk up to them, crawl up to them, slither up to them and lie.

What are the odds that are going to work, that that's going to work? Well, it did. I mean, they had paradise and they gave it up.

Satan would later basically through his offspring create so much sin that God wants to destroy the world.

And he only saved no one in his family. Satan would tempt

Abraham and Sarah. They would fall into grievous sin over and over again. Satan sought to destroy

Israel. He even tried to have Jesus killed as an infant.

By doing what? By having Herod kill all those young ones. Only the all powerful

God could cause the traitors to switch allegiance. And he does it.

As Voss said, by becoming man's ally in the conflict against the serpent.

In other words, I'm going to be on your side, Yahweh says. And if we think about it, it the name

Emmanuel, God with us.

He is with us in every sense, including being on our side in this spiritual battle.

Now, why is, why does God say in Genesis 315, the woman, the seed of the woman, why is she specified?

Why is it her seed versus Satan's seed? And we know the answer, but we know the answer from the

New Testament. We know the answer because, well, I'll get to that in a second, but her seed.

I want you to think about it this way, because we'll get one part of it right.

Her seed is ultimately Jesus, and that's correct. But it's also everybody who's in Christ.

Everyone, every Christian is her seed.

Let me back up just a second to talk about Jesus. Why was it important? You ever wonder about this?

Why was it so important that Mary be with child while she's betrothed before she gets married?

Why is that so important? I'm sorry.

Okay, exactly right. They wouldn't have been together, right? I mean, the natural course of things, if they're married, then she would no longer be a virgin.

The miraculous nature of the birth of Jesus could only be understood if she was pregnant before they got married.

That's fulfillment of Genesis 315, the seed of the woman. And also

Isaiah 714, right? A virgin. Jesus had to be born without original sin.

That is to say, without the sin of Adam, without what we would read about in Romans 5.

I'm not even going to go there. Romans 5, that in Adam, we all fell.

He was our representative, our federal head. He fell and we all receive as by virtue of being born.

We receive that original sin. We are in Adam. But Jesus was not in Adam.

He was born of a woman. And he was born of a woman physically so that we might know that he was truly man.

He had to be like us in order to pay the price for our sin. But Jesus was born of a virgin miraculously by the work of the

Holy Spirit so that we would also understand what? That he was truly God.

He had to be God for his substitutionary death to have infinite value. So that all who ever believe would have their sins paid for.

Every believer, as I said a moment ago, is the offspring of cry or of Eve by being by virtue of being in Christ.

Right? We're no longer in Adam. We're in Christ. We're in the second

Adam, the one who did not fail. And the battle line that Yahweh draws in Genesis 315 cannot be more plain.

Every believer is on the side of Christ. Or should I say it this way? Christ is on the side of every believer and he's against Satan.

What does that mean? The implication is that Satan, as Genesis 315 says,

Satan has offspring. Well, how so? You are of your father, the devil.

Right? Before salvation, we were all. What? Dead in our sins and trespasses, but we also walked about according to the prince of, you know, the prince of darkness,

Ephesians 2. We were all children of Satan. We were all enlisted in his army.

As we study the Bible, what do we see? We see the hatred that unbelievers have for believers.

They had it for the Lord. Jesus said, what? If they hate you, if they persecute you, guess what?

They hated me first. Right? This is the history of mankind.

We even see it today. The hatred that unbelievers have for the church. God announces that.

And again, in Genesis 315, he says, listen, he's talking to the serpent. He says between your offspring,

Satan's offspring and her offspring, between those. I'll put it this way.

Those who are not in Christ and those who are in Christ. But notice it also says he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Satan and his children attacked Jesus. They crucified him. They could have released

Barabbas, the terrorist. Or they did release Barabbas, the terrorist.

They could release Jesus. But they crucified him. And yet Jesus rose victoriously.

The serpent bruised his heel, thought he had a great victory. Put him to death.

That's the end. That's the end of God's plan. Just like it was the end of God's plan of the garden. Satan always thinks this is the end of God's plan.

The greatest weapons Satan and his offspring have are what? Persecution.

Death. They can put you to death. They can burn you alive at the stake. And guess what? It's painful.

But it's an inconvenience on the way to eternal glory. Let me just read 1 Corinthians 15 verses 54 and 55.

When the perishable, in other words, when your mortal body. Puts on the imperishable.

And the mortal puts on immortality. Immortality then shall come to pass the saying that is written.

Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death. Where is your victory? Oh, death. Where is your sting?

In other words, it's removed for those who are in Christ Jesus. We've seen war declared.

Consequences were victory promised. After the fall, spiritually speaking, the world, as I said, was a wreck.

Spiritual nuclear war had occurred. And there was nothing but destruction and devastation. Physically, again,

I think the garden probably looked nice for a while. It took a while for decay and disease and everything else to have its effect on it.

This seemed to be a monumental victory for Satan, but it wasn't. Omnipotent God dismissed

Satan's victory by doing what? By making a promise, a covenant between himself.

And those whom he chose before the foundation of the world. Those who would come to trust in him.

He would provide a sacrifice for sin. He would redeem them and they would, in him, in Christ, triumph over Satan.

In Genesis 315, Yahweh, the covenant keeping, trustworthy, unchanging God, announces that he will provide a final victory over Satan through the offspring of the woman.

And he has. Satan has lost.

His doom is sure. One little word shall fell him. Jesus Christ is victorious.

God planted an eternity past promise at the very moment Satan imagined himself a victor and accomplished it through Jesus.

In fact, let me just read Revelation 12, nine. And the great dragon, listen, was thrown down that ancient serpents who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.

He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. In Revelation 20, it talks about him being thrown into the fire.

Satan loses, Jesus wins, and those who trust in Christ in his life, death and resurrection will not be disappointed.

Indeed, they will spend eternity with the one who redeemed them from the fall.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the truth that even in the midst of darkness, of despair, of destruction, of really what seems to be a hopeless situation.

You provide and you provided a promise, a promise as sure today as it was back then that Jesus Christ would save sinners.

Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his life, death and resurrection.