A Hostile Heart: Genesis 3:15

Genesis 3:15 and the Curse on the Serpent

Turn into your Bibles to Genesis chapter three. We're going to be reading verses 13 through 19. It's actually page three in the Pew Bible. Here now God's inspired word. Then the Lord said to the woman, what is this that you have done?

The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go and thus you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall crush your head and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife 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. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.

For out of it you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you shall return. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I pray that you'd simply, I simply ask that you would bless the preaching of your word. May my mind and thoughts be removed.

May we see Jesus this morning. May your truth come forward and do what it's intended to in the hearts and minds of the people here. Transform us Lord God into the image of your son and may we bring you honor and glory.

It's in Jesus' name we pray. Please be seated. About a year and a half before I was born on January 31st, 1968, 70 ,000 North Vietnamese troops mounted attacks on American forces in South Vietnam. Over 100 cities, towns and military bases, including the US Embassy in Saigon, were attacked.

General Nguyen Yap, the leader of the Communist People's Army of Vietnam, planned the offensive to provoke rebellion among the South Vietnamese and to encourage the United States to scale back its support for the Saigon regime.

Although the United States managed to hold off the Communist attacks, news of the battle shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort. Despite heavy Vietnamese casualties, over 40 ,000 Vietnamese men lost their lives.

Over 40 ,000 Vietnamese men to the Americans 3 ,000 men, the North Vietnamese were victorious in this battle as it marked a turning point in the war because it was at this point that the United States made the decision to withdraw from the region.

The Viet Cong were outnumbered and outmatched, yet they were victorious in getting the United States to leave. On paper, the United States could have crushed them. They should have been afraid of us. The attack was a success because of the impact it had on morale, both with the soldiers and the American public.

People believed it was too costly a war to pull out, so we began to evacuate. The loss of American lives, although significantly less than the Vietnamese, was not worth the cost. The North Vietnamese were willing to sacrifice everything to win this war while we weren't willing to match their resolve or determination.

And the incident is significant because prior to the attack, the North Vietnamese negotiated a 48-hour ceasefire to celebrate Tet, their most revered holiday. But in the early mornings of the ceasefire, on the first day of Tet, the Vietnamese used the holiday to launch a surprise attack on our troops.

Subsequently, the attacks became famously known as the Tet Offensive, named after their New Year's holiday. Now, after reading the story about the Vietnam War, I can't help but think that the devil has mounted a Tet Offensive on the church, especially in America.

Since he's outnumbered and outmatched, he calls for a ceasefire and wants us to celebrate. And as Americans, we do. Then he comes in and wrecks havoc on us while we're distracted. And in doing so, he affects our morale and gets us to be more afraid of him than he is of us.

He gets us to believe that the cost to be a Christian isn't worth the effort it takes to fight. And so he breaks our resolve, gets us to withdraw from the battle and coast. The devil whispers, you're not really in a battle.

The battle's over. God's already beat me. All you have to do is enjoy the world that God gave you. You already have eternal life and you can't lose your salvation. You're a Calvinist, right? Relax, enjoy the blessings you have as a Christian in America.

Then even more deceptive, he'll use theology. You guys know God is sovereign. He does whatever he wants in the heavens and the earth and beneath the earth and none can stay his in. You don't need to fight.

He's all powerful. He's allowing this to happen, so it must be good, right? Romans 8, 28, all things work together for good. You're so blessed by God. Even Jesus says, don't worry about the cost. Don't worry about tomorrow.

Today has enough of its own troubles. All twisted lies designed to deceive you and get you to withdraw. All to postpone the devil's day of judgment, his judgment day. The devil can't win, so he'll delay by deceiving you now.

The enemy wants you to believe that your comfort, your enjoyment is more important than God's kingdom and make you complacent, withdraw. So are we really as hostile to the devil as he is towards us? Are we really as hostile towards him as we should be?

Or has he tricked us into believing that he's more powerful than us and that he is really fighting and really fighting him is not worth the short-term cost? I ask that because when you look out at the world, do most people look encouraged, fighting and hopeful or demoralized, complaining and hopeless?

More importantly, are you demoralized, complaining and hopeless? My sense is that there's a combination of complacency and fear that affect our mindset and cause us to tolerate sinfulness and allow the Canaanites to stay in the land.

Just like Israel. Israel's like, hey, God gave us the promised land. Celebrate, rejoice. But God also said, rejoice and fight. You can do both of those things at the same time. We have to drive out the remaining enemies.

We're not done yet. We can rejoice and fight. So let's look at verse 315 again. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

It wasn't too far into the creation story, only three chapters in, that the devil mounts a successful Tet Offensive and Adam and Eve fall for it. And then, because of that, God pronounces a curse on the serpent, and then on Adam and Eve for eating the fruit that he told them not to.

And in verse 15, we can see God beginning to make a clear delineation between two peoples, two seeds, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And here is where the battle lines are drawn and a declaration of war begins.

There will always be two camps at war with each other. The curse on the serpent will mark the state of affairs from this moment on, on through the rest of Genesis and the Old Testament, on through to the New Testament and the cross, on through to today, and continue all the way to the final consummation of all things.

This war will always rage on. Sinclair Ferguson says this, the rest of the Bible is a footnote to Genesis 315. Everything from 315 on will point back to what God says he will do in these two verses. Let's look at verse 14 and 15 and see what this means for the serpent and then what it means for us.

In this curse, God tells the serpent three things. First, he's gonna crawl on his belly and eat the dust. Second, there's gonna be enmity between him and the woman, between his seed and her seed. And third, his head will be crushed.

The curse states that the serpent will eat dust all the days of his life. So the very thing that God breathed into, the dust, and used to make humanity, is the very thing he'll be eating without the power to breathe into it, without the power to create, because creation is the rightful act of God alone.

He cannot be like God. He cannot do what God does, and he knows it. Where God creates and defines, Satan will destroy and distort. You see the distortion of so many things in the culture that God has defined already.

So the very thing he longed for, to be like God, will elude him forever. And all the while, he'll be on his belly, so close to the dust. So close to the dust, yet unable to do anything with it. And then God declares, he will crush your head.

The he is a reference to one who will eventually come to defeat the devil. So Satan's end is ordained. He will die along with his seed. He is an outmatched and defeated foe already. And this curse should be a constant reminder to us of that.

Verse 15 is what most theologians call the proto-evangel, the first mention of the gospel. It's the first veiled reference to a particular seed who will come and crush the head of the serpent at some point in time in the future.

Now, since the serpent cannot win, where God takes dirt and breathes into it and makes something beautiful, Satan will now take what God made, what is beautiful, breathe on it and attempt to make it dirty.

He cannot create, so he will destroy. Steal, kill, and destroy. Like the Viet Cong, the serpent knows he can't win. So he launches a Tet Offensive. He offers peace, hey, cease fire, and then employs a sneak attack to kill our assurance, steal our hope, and destroy our resolve to fight, all to postpone his final judgment day.

He wants us to be complacent to the point where we believe the loss of our comfort is too high a cost so that we withdraw and stop fighting. He wants us to put our comfort before God's kingdom. And if he can get us to stop fighting and focus on self, on our own comfort and pleasure, his eating the dust will all be worth it.

What Enmity Means and Why God Gives It

But what's really interesting to me is that in the first half of verse 15, God places enmity between Satan and the seed of the woman. Now, that word enmity is a strong word. You read the New Testament and God says, blessed are the peacemakers.

Where does enmity come from? This term enmity means hostility, holy hostility, a lingering, deep-seated hatred between enemies. It's the type of word that just doesn't sound like it would be given by God to us.

Think about what's going on with Israel and Hamas right now, how deeply their hatred is for one another, for decades, and then feeling the pain of losing a relative to a brutal and horrific death at the hand of your enemy.

That's enmity. And it's enmity that God puts between us and the devil. Doesn't the devil have a lingering hatred between God and his seed already? Of course he does. He's full of hostility. So what's the purpose of this curse?

The purpose is this. God takes the enmity that Satan caused between us and God and now repositions it between us and Satan. Because of the fall, we're all born into a state, in a state of enmity toward God.

We're friendly with our flesh and our adversary, but we're not friendly with God. So the different thing in this curse will not be Satan's hatred of humanity. The different thing will now be humanity's hatred of Satan and sin.

Where Satan got us to turn on God, God gets us to turn on Satan. He reverses the curse. God turns us around so that we butt heads with the enemy rather than walking with him. He changes our direction, then guarantees our victory.

He says, he will crush your head. God changes our nature and then gives us enmity so that we will fight. It's given to us so that we will join God in opposing Satan. Now the result is that enmity will flow both ways, not just from Satan towards us, but from us towards Satan.

However, there are curses for us too. After God curses the serpent, he curses Adam and Eve. So there's a penalty for their disobedience. As the women know, there's pain in childbirth. And men are like, whew, whew, glad she got that one.

However, men will now toil and work the ground. It's gonna bring forth thorns and thistles. Therefore, we too suffer the effects of that curse today. So guess what? You should be mad at the serpent. You should have a holy hatred towards him.

He's a deceiver. God's plan does not include us being friends with the serpent. James would say it like this. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

When Adam and Eve bit the fruit, they entered into a peace treaty with the wrong party. They friended Satan on Facebook. And since you can't be friends with both, for the saints, peace with God is the promise of enmity.

Enmity between us and the serpent. Since his curse entails his destruction and our victory, we should be elated that we're on the right side of the equation. We have peace with God. We should be the boldest, most hopeful, grateful people on the planet, strong and courageous, and continually inspiring hope in others.

We have peace with God. And if God be for us, who can be against us? We should be encouraged, hopeful, and fighting. So we need to learn how to tap into this enmity and cultivate a hostile heart to renew our fight for the kingdom and reclaim our hope in the gospel.

If there was ever a time to be bold, it's now. Step one in cultivating a hostile heart is to learn what God loves and what God hates. The human heart comes out of the womb, loving what it should hate and hating what it should love.

This is the doctrine of total depravity. Our hearts need to be reset on the spirit. Romans 8 tells us the mind on the flesh is death, but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace. Who are the people who like death?

We stand in front of that mill every Friday morning. For the mind that is set on the flesh is at enmity, hostile with God, for it does not submit to God's law. So there's only two options. If your mind is not set on the spirit, it's set on the flesh, worldly things.

That's enmity towards God. A mindset on the flesh is hostile to God, open to being confused and misled, open to believing the lies of the enemy and walking in them. Because the world is always speaking lies to us, always catechizing us, luring us to set our mind and flesh and lead us.

The world is obsessed with social media. That's one way they catechize us. Listen to what one of the statistics are. Studies have shown that young adults who spend most time on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have a higher rate of reported depression than those who spend the least time.

These studies have shown that users can have a 66 higher rate of reported depression. Additionally, eight studies have reported that women who use social media have a higher depression symptoms than men.

Read your Bible, life and peace, stay on social media, depression. Now, saying that, I recognize that social media can be a good tool or a bad tool because I put up a post on social media just this week about Travis Kelsey and Harrison Butker, right?

Travis Kelsey was at a commencement address and he says, oh, you should be drinking beer and partying. He was lauded. Then Harrison Butker gets up and he says, you should have a family and your wife should raise your kids and you should look to give a voice to the unborn.

He was derailed. They were screaming at him. The NFL came out and made a statement. His views do not necessarily represent the NFL. So he talks about something that's virtuous and good. The NFL puts out a statement.

These views may not represent what we believe. Travis Kelsey says, drink beer and party, silence. You don't think the world's catechizing you? Kids on social media hear this. They absorb this. There is a deep-seated hatred of family and authority.

A mindset on the spirit brings life and peace. Reading your Bible brings life and peace. Social media results in confusion, fear, and despair. Why would I spend time on that if I'm in the middle of a battle?

Steve Lawson says it like this. Setting your mind on the spirit is not a matter of us having more of the spirit, but the spirit having more of us. Your level of hope will be determined by what you set your mind on.

Wasn't it David who said, on your newspaper, I meditate day and night? On Fox News, I meditate day and night. On Facebook, I meditate, no. On your word, I meditate day and night. Someone did a message about marinating in God's word around here.

Do you realize you will take on whatever flavor it is that you're marinating in? I meditate day and night, David said. David meditated on the Torah so that he would learn who his God was and what his God loves, and so that he wouldn't fear man.

As David was meditating on God's law, he was learning, what am I loving that I should be hating? We have to ask ourselves, what are we loving that we should be hating? So step one is knowing what to love and what to hate.

What are we loving that we should be hating? Cultivating a hostile heart is gonna go into two directions, one inward and one outward. David said, I hide God's word in my heart that I may not sin against him.

So first, David was cultivating a hostile heart to his own sin. He wasn't cultivating a hostile heart to other people's sins, he was cultivating a hostile heart towards his own sins. The sins he became complacent with, he started with self.

David had to hate the sin in himself more than the sin that he saw in others. So in learning what God hates, I need to first become hostile to my own sin. I have to identify, where's the Tet Offensive in my own life?

Where have I made a peace treaty with my pet sin and called a ceasefire? Ask yourself, where am I at peace with my sin? The enemy wants us comfy and cozy with our sin, conformed to the pattern of this world, while God wants us hostile to it, conformed to the image of his son.

The enemy wants your eyes focused on self. In fact, if you look back at what happened in the garden in verse 11, God asked Adam, who told you that you were naked? He didn't even know until the fall. Prior to this, Adam's eyes were focused up on God.

But when sin came into the world, entered into the world, not only did he fall, but his vision fell, his attention fell, and descended on himself. In addition to that, he recognized his lack. He focused on what he didn't have.

He realized, I don't have clothes. Our hearts need to be focused on what we have, not what we don't have. We have the blessing of eternal life. Knowing Jesus outweighs any material possession you can have in this life.

There was a really smart guy who experienced all this once, and here's what he found out. He said, I neither withheld anything from my eyes that they desired, nor did I deprive any pleasure from my heart.

My heart rejoiced in all my toil. Yet when I considered all the effort that I expended and the toil with which I toiled, then behold, everything is vanity, a chasing after the wind. That was written by Solomon, AKA the wisest man on earth apart from Jesus.

And he calls pursuing the world a chasing after the wind, vanity. This is what will happen if you focus on what you don't have rather than on what you do have. If you do that, you need to stir up the enmity that God gave you and get hostile to that.

As a Christian, you have peace with God through Jesus, your sins have been paid for, and hell is not your destination. For we brought nothing into this world, we can take nothing out of it, but if we have food and clothing, be content with that.

Did you ever see anybody on Facebook do that? Be content with food and clothing. No, we're vacationing in Hawaii this week, and then next week it's this place, and this is the car I have. Church, the world is looking at us to see what we value.

Remember, if Jesus doesn't mean everything to you, why would he mean anything to them? We need to cultivate a holy dissatisfaction for the things of this world. Use the enmity that God has given you and cultivate a heart that is hostile to anything that would take your eyes off Christ and onto your lack, what you don't have.

Until we do that and become grateful to God for what we already have, we will never become others-focused. We will never get past the me project. So the first step in cultivating a hostile heart is to aim our hostility inward toward our own sin and selfishness first.

The second step is aiming our hostility outward at the right target, at the proper enemy. So do a five-second gut check and ask yourself this. Who or what are you most hostile towards? If someone looked at your life, what would they say you're most hostile about?

Taylor Swift, Hollywood, Joe Biden, MSNBC, Dallas Cowboys. Those are not your real enemies. Your real enemies stand behind those things. May I remind you that your enemy is not your husband or your ex-husband?

Your real enemy is not your wife or your ex-wife. Your real enemy is not your kids or your boss or your political party. Your real enemy is not a competitor in your business or a coworker. Your real enemy is not your brother and sister-in-law in the Lord that goes to another church and holds a different view.

Your enemy is not your mother-in-law. I had to put that in there for me. Not really. But it's interesting what we learn when we meditate on God's law, like David did. In the Ten Commandments, the first four deal with our relationship to God, right, vertical, and the last six deal with our relationship to humanity.

When we get to the New Testament, we say this every Sunday in the Prayer of Invocation, Jesus boils it down to two. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Love God, love people, not heart. When you look at the commandments, love for God naturally flows into love for people. Anything that gets in the way of those two things, that's the intruder. That's the real enemy.

Cultivate a heart that would get hostile to whatever we get between you and people, enough to not share the gospel with them, because that's not loving. They are not your enemy. If anything tries to get between us loving God or us loving people, get hostile.

We sometimes aim our hostility in the wrong direction and hit people by mistake. Should we hate unbelievers? Should we hate people who are gender confused? Should we hate people who are Marxists? Do we walk around like we're wearing a black robe with a gavel ready to judge someone?

Or shouldn't we be walking around with a white lab coat and a stethoscope ready to diagnose someone's condition and give them the cure? Ephesians 6 tells us, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

If you recognize that, you will aim your enmity at the serpent, not the seed. He wants you to think that they're your enemy, not him. So we cultivate an inward hostility towards our own sin and an outward hostility towards the proper party.

Loving Your Enemies and Fighting the Real Battle

Next, we have to put this hostility into practice. Jesus says, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. So loving people is not an option for Jesus.

This is not optional. In this passage we read this morning in Joshua 1, the Israelites are finally going to get into the promised land. After 40 years of disobedience and the death of Moses, they're right at the threshold.

So God tells them, every place your foot touches, and every place your foot touches is yours, and no one will be able to stop you. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I'll be with you.

I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause these people to inherit the land that I swore to give to their fathers, their fathers to them, to them. Great promise.

Three times God tells them to be strong and courageous, not to be frightened or dismayed. I wonder why. Not because they're such great warriors, but because he will be with them wherever they go. I will be with you.

God promises to go with them. If Jesus walked through that door and said, go into the neighborhood and evangelize, I'll come with you, who would not go? Of course you would. Why? Because Jesus said to go and he's coming with you.

Sadly, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh agreed to go fight with their fellow Israelites, but they didn't want to stay in the land that God promised them. They forfeited that promise, that promised inheritance from God.

You go, we'll help you fight, but we're gonna stay here. We like it here, it's more comfortable here. They became complacent with their lot and not hostile to the enemies that God commanded to drive them out.

Incidentally, Manasseh, that tribe, Manasseh himself would go on to be the worst king Israel ever had. Even tradition says he was the one who had Isaiah sawed in half. Thankfully, he repented on his deathbed, but that's what happens when you're complacent.

When David didn't go out to fight, what happened? He sinned. Remember, the devil wants us to be more afraid of him than he is of us. He wants us to believe that the cost to follow Jesus isn't worth the effort it takes to fight and then gets us to withdraw.

Relax, enjoy. God is sovereign. He's all-powerful. Your sins are forgiven. No rush. It's a ceasefire, joy. But the real situation is that we're in a real spiritual battle and our people are ensnared and people are ensnared by the world and the schemes of the devil.

Our job isn't to chase them out of the land. It's to reconcile them to God, not to chase them out of the world, but to chase the world out of them. We get to pray and proclaim the gospel and speak the truth to the people in the world.

We get to love God and love people. And if you've been saved by God and you know that it was by grace and not something you did or deserved or did to impress God, how can you not share that with others, the people who God told you to love?

Not sharing the gospel is selfish. Not praying for them is selfish. We say many times that worship is warfare and our prayer is our most powerful weapon, but our prayer meeting isn't packed. Our desire, our desire is to see that meeting packed, that we wouldn't have enough room to put everyone.

Prayer is powerful, but the devil whispers, relax, you're not in a battle. You're saved. All you have to do is vote for the right guy in November. It'll all work out. Solution to our problem is not political, it's spiritual.

Could you imagine if you showed real love to someone who seriously wronged you? If you've ever been deeply hurt or wronged by someone, love and forgiveness is difficult, but think about what can happen if you do that.

In November of 2003, Gary Ridgway, who's known as the Greenway Killer, he's the most notorious serial killer the United States has ever known. He was sentenced to 48 consecutive life sentences for the brutal killing of 48 women.

He did unspeakable things to these women and young girls. At the trial, each victim's family was allowed to give an impact statement. In other words, the family's gonna tell Gary Ridgway how what he did impacted them.

One by one, each family member came forward and viciously cut into this guy, and it's understandable. Their hate matched their hurt. Ridgway, face stoic, didn't flinch, blank stare. That was until Bob Rule, who's 16-year-old daughter who was violently murdered by him and raped, came forward and spoke.

And if there's anyone who could have held enmity towards this man, a holy hatred towards someone, it was this guy. And these are the words he said. Mr. Ridgway, there are people here that hate you. I'm not one of them.

You've made it difficult for me to live up to what I believe, and that is to do what God says to do. That is to love your enemies. You are forgiven, sir. With that, Gary Ridgway broke down in tears. Love broke him.

Bob Rule exercised love toward a man that deserved none of it. He made an impact statement for the kingdom of God. Why? Because he was shown the love of a God when he deserved none of it either. Bob Rule knew the Savior and the depth of his own sin and the great cost at which he was forgiven.

He was fueled by love, not hate. And in my mind, I'm picturing this scene, like if the enemy, the devil, had a control room, I'm picturing the control room. Something's wrong, something's wrong. Bob Rule's gone off script.

He's lost his mind. This isn't supposed to happen. He should hate Gary Ridgway. I want them all to hate each other. No, it was love that broke Gary Ridgway, a love that shocked people. Right? A love that shocks people is what breaks the power of the enemy over this world.

Cultivate a heart that hates darkness and loves people. Bless those who persecute you. Practice that. One of the pastor's favorite early church fathers is Polycarp, right? And the Romans were coming to take him, to burn him at the stake.

And what's Polycarp doing? He's making them breakfast. No, no, no, sit down, eat, I wanna feed you. Kingdom before comfort. Next, we should recognize the duration of the battle. Jesus said it is finished.

He didn't say it's over. Our sins are paid for, we have eternal life, but we still have a war to fight. There's no cease fire until the serpent is cast into the lake of fire. It ain't over till it's over.

However, we're not betting our lives on a maybe. God said he will crush the head of the serpent. Our surety comes from knowing the power of the God we have peace with. Why are you still afraid? This is probably the most important thing I'm gonna say this morning.

Your fears will reveal what you hold most dear. What you fear will reveal what is most important to you. When you take your eyes off self and look upward, we see who we have peace with, who our hope is in, and who goes with us.

He is to be what's most important in our life and what's most dear to us. Get hostile to anything that would make you fear or doubt the power of God. In loving people, we have to recognize that they are friends with the enemy and unknowingly believing lies.

They have peace with the wrong party. We hold the only cure for their condition, it's called the gospel. And since we received it by grace, who are we to hold it back from someone else? Who are we to hold it back from the people we're commanded to love?

Christ the Seed Who Absorbs the Curse

Lastly, we need to recognize the seed, God's final solution. The seed singular in this case refers to Jesus. He is the solution to the problem. He will crush the head of the serpent. God places Jesus who is the ultimate enmity at ultimate enmity against the powers of darkness between us and the serpent.

Because of God's hatred of sin and his love for us, God places Jesus on the cross in our place. Jesus defeats the serpent at the cross, crushing his head and he's awaiting and the serpent is awaiting his final sentence.

However, we still have the second half of the curse on Adam and Eve to deal with, towards us, Adam and Eve and us. So now listen how Jesus deals with that part. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

In pain you shall bring forth your children. For Jesus, in excruciating pain, Jesus' death on the cross brings forth the birth of God's children. To Eve, and your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.

Jesus, as husband, guards his bride and his desire is to rescue and protect her. To Adam, because you listen to the voice of your enemy, Jesus' sheep hear his voice and will never perish. And have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to, Jesus becomes the fruit of the tree of life on the cross that we now eat from.

Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. Jesus wears the crowns of thorns brought forth for us. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. Jesus sweats drops of blood as he faces crucifixion and becomes the bread of life.

Until you return to the ground for out of it you were taken, Jesus returns to the ground and dies our death. For dust you are and to dust you shall return. Jesus descends into the dust but then is raised up from it permanently, bringing us with him.

Jesus not only carries out the curse on the serpent, he absorbs and satisfies the curse meant for us. Jesus put his kingdom before his comfort to bear our curse. In the same way the Vietnamese were willing to sacrifice everything to win that battle, Jesus was willing to sacrifice everything to win this battle.

He bore our curse so that we would go from hopeless to hopeful so that we would fight. Stir up that enmity. From there's no hope for us to there's no hope for the serpent. Don't become complacent and believe that there's a ceasefire.

There's a real battle going on for your souls. Be strong and courageous, not frightened in anything by your opponents. That is a sign to them of their destruction but of your salvation and that from God.

Things in this world have to change but the change has to begin within us. We need to look inward. Put to death those lingering sins. Then we have to look outward, directing our hostility toward the proper party and cultivating a hostile heart, exercising a shocking love to the world and a fight for the truth because we're in a battle.

If you're not a Christian, the curses in Genesis 3 will fall on you. You need to repent and believe the good news. You're not fighting against the devil, you're with him. Friends, we really are in a spiritual battle.