The First Prophecy

Genesis 3:15                            The First Prophecy

5/3/15              D. Marion Clark

Introduction

On the road to Emmaus Jesus taught two of his disciples how the Moses and the Prophets foretold his person and work. He later took all of his disciples through a course on the Messiah in the Scriptures. They had not recognized him because they had not understood the Scriptures. We will take time for five Sundays to examine a portion of what he would have taken them through.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He created the sun, the moon, and the stars; he created the ground, the mountains, the seas, and all the creatures inhabiting the earth, the sky, and the waters. Finally, he created man:

So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them (1:27).

God placed the man and the woman in the garden. His intention for them was eventually to multiply and fill the earth, so that all of the earth would be a holy place of blessing where God is glorified through obedience, service, and worship.

But God had an enemy, a creature created before the world, a creature who was one of the angels. He had rebelled against God. God struck him down, along with a host of angels who had gone to his side. Though defeated, he remained dangerous, and when God created the world, he slipped in. The result was the Fall. Satan (which means Adversary) successfully tempted Eve and led both her and Adam to sin against God. God pronounced punishment upon all three parties. He turned first to Satan who was in the form of a serpent.

Text

 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.
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.”

Verse 15 is both a pronouncement of war and a prophecy of victory. The temptation in the Garden was Satan’s Pearl Harbor. He sneaked in and came unsuspected on his enemy before war had been declared. God’s curse was his declaration of war between man and Satan. There would now be an ongoing battle between Satan and his forces against the offspring of Eve. Satan would claim the world as his dominion and would take many of Eve’s offspring under his power. Indeed, all of Eve’s offspring would bear the death-mark of sin, though there would always remain a remnant, a line throughout the generations who would be faithful to God. Thus, through the ages there would be two competing humanities, as Francis Schaeffer termed them – those of the world’s kingdom under the sway of Satan and those of God’s kingdom. St. Augustine spoke of them as the two cities, meaning the two societies.

In the following two chapters of Genesis we see these two societies expressed in genealogies. There is the genealogy of Cain, who, as the Apostle John claimed, belonged to “the evil one.” He produces Lamech, who also kills a man, even glorying in his deed. Eve gives birth to Seth, whom she celebrates as a replacement of Abel. From Seth comes a godly line that includes Enoch, who “walked with God” (5:22). After Seth is introduced, it is said that people began to “call on the name of the Lord” (4:26). This godly line eventually becomes nationalized as Israel, the covenant people of God.

What characterizes the relationship between the two humanities is the enmity that Genesis 3:15 speaks of and that Satan, in the form of the serpent, has already demonstrated. Satan hates God and any who worship him, and he will use his legions and his kingdom to harm God’s kingdom and people. Thus, the people of Israel are continuously oppressed – from their time in Egypt, then their time in Canaan under the judges, and throughout their period under kings, so that eventually the northern kingdom of Israel is conquered and scattered, and the southern kingdom of Judah is conquered and sent into captivity. Even so, there always remains a remnant faithful to God and preserved by God.

But there is something more going on than simply Satan’s kingdom being spiteful. Besides battle being declared in Genesis 3:15, there is also prophecy of victory. Somewhere, sometime, a champion will arise from the descendants of Eve. That offspring will bruise the head of Satan; he will produce a decisive blow. And so, Satan will attack the godly line in an effort to prevent that champion from being conceived.

It’s like “The Terminator”! Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fellow cyborgs are about to lose their war against humans because of a champion leading the human resistance. So he goes back in time to prevent that champion being born. Satan knows the prophecy of the champion, so he does what he can to prevent the birth of the champion. Thank goodness, Arnold fails, but the enemy later sends an even more advanced assassin to kill the champion who is now a young boy. The champion has been born, so all the more the enemy seeks his death.

And we see this when Christ is born. Satan stirs in Herod’s heart the attempt to slay the newborn Messiah in Bethlehem. Joseph takes his son to Egypt, and, when he returns years later, moves back to Nazareth far from Herod’s dangerous son who is the new king. When Jesus is baptized and revealed as the Messiah to come, Satan tries to repeat his success in the garden. This time he finds Jesus in the wilderness. But he is unable to tempt Jesus to sin and is himself defeated through Jesus wielding the sword of God’s Word.

But Satan does not give up. He attempts again Jesus’ premature death. His townsmen try to throw him over a cliff after he preaches in Nazareth, but Jesus “pass[es] through their midst” (Luke 4:30). Satan stirs up others to stone him (John 10:31), but they fail to follow through. Other attempts are made to arrest him, all of which fail. Jesus will eventually be arrested, be beaten, and be killed but at God’s timing and for God’s purpose of redemption.

Satan even tries to use Jesus’ own disciples to avert his mission. There is the poignant scene when Peter makes the great confession that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah), even the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16:16). Jesus blesses Simon for such a statement. But the happy occasion turns sour. Let’s pick up the story.

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. ²² And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” ²³ But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:21-23).

It seems like Jesus is throwing a temper tantrum with that remark about Satan. The truth is that Jesus recognizes that Satan is using Peter, with all of Peter’s good intentions, to tempt him. What is the temptation? To avoid the cross. Satan does not want Jesus on that cross, or, more to the point, to accomplish his mission on the cross. He is satisfied with a tortuous death, and watching his enemy, the Son of God, suffer would be pleasurable, but not if that suffering leads to the fulfillment of the prophecy that Satan’s head would be bruised, even crushed.

Satan has four tactics to defeat the prophecy of this offspring who will bruise his head, all of which he has attempted. Prevent the offspring’s birth; kill the offspring before he can accomplish his mission; tempt the offspring to forgo his mission; tempt the offspring to sin so that his mission fails. Be sure that he attempted that last tactic from the moment of Jesus’ birth to his last breath on the cross.

And he failed. Every tactic failed; every fight, every battle, every means of deceit and conniving failed. At best, all that he could do was strike the heel of the promised champion, and that champion delivered the decisive blow against his head.

That champion, who is our champion, broke the power of reigning sin. He set his people free from the bondage to sin. He broke the power of death, which no longer has victory over Christ’s people. He broke the power of Satan, who no longer reigns over us. Sin no longer can use the law of God to bring down God’s wrath upon us. Satan can no longer accuse us; our advocate is Jesus Christ who defends us. There may still be a war going on, but D-Day took place upon the cross. The final victory is secure. Our champion won the decisive battle on the cross and bruised the serpent’s head. Our enemy shall one day be thrown into the Lake of Fire, never to return.

Lessons

What do we learn from our brief text today? We learn that from the beginning God our Creator had a good plan for us and for his creation, and that, even though Satan marred the creation and sowed evil for us, God would not be thwarted from his good plan. Even as he judged our father and mother, even as he pronounced curses, he first declared a promise to send a champion for us. We learn that all of history, as recorded in the Scriptures, chronicles the war between Satan and God’s people, and delineate how that war reached its climactic point by the work of our champion on the cross. Christ is not one of many topics in the Scriptures. All of the history, all of the Scriptures lead up to and then look back to the cross. Here then are the challenges for us.

First, we must remember who has won the victory and by what means. We need to remember what the very victory is. It is the victory over sin, death, and Satan. They no longer hold power over our souls. They may still exist – and they certainly do – but they can no longer separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord. They no longer own us, no longer enslave us. The victory on the cross is our victory. Our champion claims us. He fought for us and he will not let us be snatched out of his hands.

Second, we must remember that we still have an enemy, Satan, who is still alive and active and seeks to undermine us personally. He has suffered a mortal wound, but he has not died and is all the more dangerous in his pain and desirous to wound God’s people. He will wreak as much damage as he still can.

How will he do so? He has many tactics. He has the sinful pleasures of the world by which to tempt us. He can attack our vulnerable weak flesh. His intent is to estrange us from our Father. He cannot snatch us out of our Father’s hands, but he can tempt us to feel that we have been shut out. When we sin, our natural tendency is to hide from God, as did our original parents. Because of shame – rightful shame – we hide, making ourselves estranged from our Father. But if we would remember the Scriptures – that Christ has won our victory and intercedes for us as our High Priest; that Christ has promised that we are never snatched out of our Father’s hands; that no one can bring a charge against us because Christ has justified us – when we remember and anchor our hope in the work of our champion, we will turn to our heavenly Father, knowing that in Christ we are his beloved children whom he has forgiven.

We must remember who has won our victory; we must remember that Satan still attacks us and be prepared by looking to the truths of the Scriptures. Third, we need vision to see through the seeming power of Satan to the greater power of God.

There is a story told in 2 Kings 6:16-18, recorded no doubt that we might learn this very lesson. An army has been sent to capture God’s prophet Elisha.

When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?”  He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”  Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

We are not likely to be granted such visions, but we have been granted already the vision revealed in Scripture of the war that is taking place, and, more importantly, of the victory that is already ours. We groan and moan about the troubles of this world and the threats against God’s kingdom. We look about us and see what seems to be the inevitable decline of true faith and certainly of holy living. What is going to happen to the church of God? According to Jesus, it is hell that should be shaking. As he told Peter (before Peter had made his blunder), the gates of hell will not be able to prevail against the church.

By the way, we fear the future of Christianity because we keep our vision restricted to our own country. A seismic shift is taking place in the Christian world. The center had been the Western world, particularly America. That shift has moved to the southern and eastern hemispheres, where the majority of Christians will live, if not already. Latin America, even more so Asia and Africa are seeing the large growth populations in the Christian faith. Satan is like the man trying to plug leaks in a damn that is holding back the waters of conversion. As soon as he plugs up one leak, ten more spring up elsewhere.

Our champion, prophesied at the beginning of mankind, has come; he has won the decisive victory bruising the serpent’s head; he continues to bring all things under the rule of God his Father, and the day will come when he lays all before his Father’s feet. Open your eyes to the pages of Scripture and see the victory of your Lord.