Scripture: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-15
In Luke chapter 24, two disciples of Jesus are returning from Jerusalem to their hometown of Emmaus, about eight miles away. It’s Easter Sunday. Although some of their fellow disciples told them that they found the tomb of Jesus empty, they don’t know what to make of it. As of yet, along with most of their fellow disciples, they don’t believe that their Lord has been resurrected. So they head for home, discouraged and confused.
Then the resurrected Lord meets them on the road, but, as Luke tells us, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”[1]At Jesus’ prompting, they tell him about the events of Good Friday as well as the reports of the empty tomb.
Jesus tells them: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then Luke writes: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”[2]
To say “Moses and all the prophets” is shorthand for the entire Old Testament. And when Luke says that Jesus “interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself,” he’s implying that all the scriptures—which at that time meant only the Old Testament… all the scriptures have something to say about Jesus Christ and his gospel.
The Bible—the whole Bible, both the New Testament as well as the Old—is all about Jesus!
So, beginning today, up through Palm Sunday, I’m going to preach a new sermon series called “The Gospel According to the Old Testament,” which will cover many Old Testament passages that communicate something important about who Jesus is, what he does to save us from our sins, and how we should live our lives as a result.
In today’s scripture, we just heard about where humanity’s problems began. But even here—praise God—we get a glimpse of Jesus and his redemptive work on the cross!
So today’s sermon is broken into three points: Point Number One, the text; Number Two, the test; and Number Three, the triumph.
But first… the text…
What kind of story is this? Or what kind of literature is this? How do we interpret it? It seems strange to us—I mean, walking and talking snakes? What’s going on here?
A few years ago on Twitter, I came across this meme, which is based on today’s scripture: It’s a picture of Adam and Eve hiding from God. It reads, “Adam and Eve hid among the trees. The omniscient God asked, ‘Where are they?’ Think about that one calmly.”
The person who made the meme is an atheist or skeptic, and this is their way of mocking Christianity and the Bible. But it’s also inaccurate: God asks not “Where are they?”—as if God genuinely can’t find them—he asks, “Where are you” because he knows Adam and Eve as his children—and as dozens of commenters pointed out in reply—parents often ask their young children questions to which they already know the answer! God is asking a rhetorical question, hoping to give Adam and Eve the opportunity to fess up, to come clean, to be honest about what they’d done.
Still… this internet skeptic, like many people today, is troubled by the very human ways in which God is pictured, especially in these early chapters of Genesis. And I agree that these early chapters don’t seem quite like a straightforward historical report—and certainly not like the front page of a newspaper or a breaking story on cable news.
Should we be bothered by this?
Not at all.
Dick Lucas, a well-respected (and now retired) evangelical pastor in the Church of England, explains it like this: In Second Samuel chapter 11, King David sleeps with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, he gets her pregnant, and then he attempts to cover up his sins by having her husband Uriah killed—terrible sins! Chapter 11 reports these events in a straightforward way. But in the very next chapter, 2 Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan tells David a parable… a parable about these same tragic events… And only through that parable does David finally see himself clearly.
Dick Lucas’s point is, both the straightforward historical report and the parable are each completely true. They just communicate truth in different ways.
It’s possible that something like that is happening in today’s scripture.
So if we want to say Genesis 3 includes figurative, or metaphorical, or poetic, or parable-like language, I am perfectly okay with that… so long as we also recognize that God, through these God-breathed words of scripture,[3] is telling the truth about how a real Satan tempts actual human beings—the first human couple—into committing humanity’s first sin.
My point is, regardless how we interpret it, the Bible is telling a profound truth in precisely the way God wants tell it: there was a first couple, Adam and Eve; there was and is a real devil who tempted them to sin; and of course Adam and Eve fell into sin. And it happened something like this…
So that’s Point Number One, the text…
Point Number Two… the test…
How does Satan tempt these first humans? What strategy does the devil employ to get Eve and then her husband, Adam, to sin?
In an episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza’s dreams are starting to come true: a TV network has picked up a show that he and Jerry Seinfeld, his comedian friend, have been writing. Things don’t usually go George’s way in life, so this good news is unusual and unexpected!
But then… George notices a “strange discoloration” on his lower lip. He goes to the doctor—and he expects the doctor to say, “Oh, that’s nothing.” But nope… The doctor wants to biopsy it. Uh-oh! It might be cancer!
In a later scene, George is talking to his therapist: “God would never let me be successful; he’d kill me first. He’d never let me be happy.”
The therapist said, “I thought you didn’t believe in God?”
George said, “I do for the bad things!”
And that’s kinda sorta what the devil is doing to Eve… Trying to get her to believe that God is actually working against her. That God wants her to be less than fully happy. That God wants to deprive her of happiness and joy.
Look at verse 1: Satan—in the guise of the serpent—asks, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
So the devil is quite literally calling into question God’s Word to Adam and Eve. And of course, going back to chapter 2, verse 16 and 17, that’s not even close to what God said. Far from saying, “You can’t eat of any tree,” God said, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden”—except one.
If you’ve heard a sermon on this text before, you’ve probably heard us preachers make a point about the necessity of knowing God’s Word, the Bible. And believing it. And while I don’t disagree for a moment, I don’t think that’s Eve’s main problem. She knows that God doesn’t want her to eat this fruit, and she does so anyway… along with her husband.
The test, in other words, isn’t whether she knows God’s Word, or understands what God wants from her; or how God wants her to live… She understands those things well enough—although she adds a little to the prohibition, saying that God told them not even to touch the tree… God didn’t say that. But Eve’s problem goes deeper than a failure to understand God’s Word: Eve’s problem is, she doubts whether she can trust the God who spoke this Word.
In other words, Satan instills within Eve doubts about God’s character, his trustworthiness… his very goodness!
And this satanic strategy might ring a bell when… when this very same Satan later shows up later in Matthew chapter 4.
Recall that the devil shows up for Jesus when Jesus is on the brink of starvation—having been led by God to fast in the wilderness for 40 days. There’s no food in sight. Meanwhile, forty days earlier, when Jesus was being baptized by John in the Jordan, he heard the voice of his Father from heaven: “You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased.”[4]
So Satan means to put the Father’s affirmation of his Son Jesus to the test: He says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
In other words, it’s as if Satan were asking Jesus, “What kind of loving Father—and God is your Father, right? What kind of loving Father would lead you—his beloved Son, after all—out here in the middle of nowhere to starve to death? Surely a loving Father would want you to eat… yet he doesn’t appear to have provided you with any food himself.
“Are you sure he loves you the way he says he does? Are you sure you can trust him?”
Similarly, in the garden with the first couple, Satan questions God’s character: “You’re not going to die if you eat of this tree. God only told you that because he knows if you eat of it you’ll become just like him. And he doesn’t want that! He wants to be on top! So he’d be jealous. Do you really think you can trust a God like that?”
In both cases, therefore, Satan is tempting them to believe that God doesn’t have their best interests at heart. God isn’t going to take care of them. God doesn’t really love them… So instead of depending on God completely, Satan tells them, they’d better depend on themselves. Instead of trusting in God completely, they’d better trust in themselves. “Go ahead,” Satan says, “eat that fruit”; “Go ahead, turn that stone into bread.”
That’s the test… It’s as if Satan were saying, “There’s more happiness out there for you to experience than God wants you to know. He’s holding you back. He’s keeping you from enjoying it. He’s keeping you from enjoying your best life now.”
What about us? Do we ever doubt that God wants us to be happy, contented, and satisfied?
I was around 30 years old when I first began to sense God’s call into pastoral ministry—I was 34 by the time that I was ready to act on that call… to make the big move… to leave the relative comfort and security of of a prosperous engineering career—with Lisa’s great encouragement. It was a decision we made together. My youngest child, Ian, was literally one month old when we sold our home and moved down to a town called Forsyth, Georgia, just above Macon, where I would pastor a tiny Methodist church, and live in the church parsonage for those three years of seminary.
But a few weeks before that, I turned in my two-weeks’ notice at work. Everyone around the office found out what I was doing. Most were happy for me. But then a coworker named Wayne came over to my cubicle—and started laughing… He laughed like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard! With sarcasm in his voice, he said, “You’re really doing this? Changing careers? Sacrificing so much? That’s crazy!”
So he laughed… And I laughed, too… because I wanted him to know that I knew how to take a joke.
But inside I wasn’t laughing… There was a small part of me—perhaps a very small part, but it was still there—that worried… worried that Wayne was right. “Maybe what God is asking me to do is crazy. Maybe God won’t take care of me… Maybe I won’t be happy with such a drastic change in my life.”
What a fool I was back then for having those thoughts!
See, I actually believed that answering God’s call, on the one hand, and being truly happy, on the other, were somehow at odds with one another… that I was going to have to sacrifice at least some measure of happiness to do what God wanted me to do.
Looking back on it, I now see that that thought was crazy!
I’ve said this a million times, but it bears repeating: the only path to true and lasting happiness in this world is through faith in Christ and obedience to him! Pastor John Piper famously says, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him”—which I believe expresses profound biblical truth!
God wants us to be happy… happier than we can even imagine! It’s just that happiness isn’t found in earthly treasures—like a prosperous career, money, success, romantic relationships, large families, good health, popularity…
This is where the “prosperity preachers” go wrong… While they understand that God wants his children to be happy; they somehow believe that worldly treasures have something to do with happiness. And as a sign of God’s favor he’ll give you worldly treasures. That’s a terrible lie! As I know from personal experience, some of the happiest Christians in the world have very little material wealth, by our standards.
Remember the Rich Young Ruler. Jesus asked him to give away literally everything he possessed. Jesus doesn’t require that from the vast majority of his disciples, as we see from the rest of the New Testament. But what I want us to consider is, if the Rich Young Ruler had only done so—if only he had the faith to do so—then he would have found true and lasting happiness as a byproduct of his faithfulness.
I want true and lasting happiness. I want joy. Don’t you?
Anyway… Twenty-two years ago, I didn’t quite understand that God’s call into ministry—for me—was just one more step—in a lifelong series of steps—on the path to true and lasting happiness… I was confused back then.
By contrast, let me tell you about a creature that is never confused about where happiness is found… he is the greatest dog ever. His name is Ringo. He’s an English Springer Spaniel. You’re going to want to come to the birthday socials at our house to meet him, if nothing else! We brought Ringo into our family six years ago, and he melted all of our hearts immediately. He is simply the best!
Anyway… Ringo knows one thing for sure: he knows that we have literally everything he needs for happiness in life. He knows that his happiness is found in us alone—Lisa, myself, my three kids… As long as Ringo has us, he has everything. That’s what he believes. There’s a kind of faith there… almost child-like… dog-like, I guess.
Now, that doesn’t mean Ringo isn’t incredibly annoying sometimes when he’s hungry, for instance, and wants us to feed him. But he’s annoying toward us—because he looks to us alone to make him happy and to satisfy his needs.
But we never have to worry about Ringo running away—if he gets off his leash or gets out of our fenced-in backyard. Because his greatest desire is to be with us.
Contrast Ringo with his late sister, Neko, who died a year ago… For the fourteen years we had her, Neko often made us feel as if we were holding her hostage against her will… Because she seemed to want nothing more than to bolt out of any open door or open gate she could find—out of any crack or crevice she could find—and run far, far away from us.
But Ringo… he just wants to be right by our side all the time…
And that, of course, teaches us something about how God made us humans… how we’re meant to relate to God… how we’re meant to know that all of the happiness, all of the contentment, all of the joy, all of the satisfaction that we crave is found in him alone… through faith in his Son Jesus!
“Whom have I in heaven but you?” the psalmist asks in Psalm 73. “And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” The word portion there means, one’s greatest treasure.
Our greatest treasure is found in God. The devil will tempt us again and again to doubt that…
Adam and Eve failed that test; Jesus passed it with flying colors.
And it’s a test, by the way, that every single one of us—not counting Jesus—has failed.
And that’s Point Number Two, the test…
But that raises the question, doesn’t it?
Are we in trouble? Are we lost? Will we be exiled from God’s presence the way Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden?
If Genesis 3 ended there, the answer would be yes.
The good news is, it doesn’t end there…
And this brings us to Point Number Three… the triumph…
Because even here—at the very beginning of the Bible, at nearly the very moment when sin enters the world—God speaks a word of hope. Before Adam and Eve are driven out of the garden, before judgment has the final word, God makes a promise.
This promise is found in verse 15.
So let me first read that verse in the easiest-to-understand translation, the NLT, and then let’s make sense of it. One thing to remember here is that God is speaking to the serpent:
“And I [God] will cause hostility between you [the serpent] and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.”
On a literal level, the first part of the verse seems to be explaining the simple fact that the vast majority of people throughout the world are terrified of snakes… especially poisonous snakes… and always have been. Including yours truly.
So that seems clear enough…
But God continues… “He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Who is he? That’s a big mystery!
Suddenly the verse is speaking of one descendant of this woman, Eve—not a group of descendants, as in the first part of the verse. No, now the author refers to the singular pronoun—“he”—not plural.
Isn’t that strange?
And whose head is being “struck” here? Not future descendants of the serpent. No… God is speaking of the exact same serpent who led Adam and Eve into sin in the first place.
The Amplified Bible’s translation adds a couple of words to get the nuance across: “He shall [fatally] bruise your head, And you shall [only] bruise His heel.”
So the Church has always considered Genesis 3:15 a messianic prophecy—right here at the beginning of the Bible.
And Paul himself likely refers to this verse in Romans 16:20, when he writes, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”
So Genesis 3:15 tells us that Christ will win a decisive victory over the devil… but how?
In a most unusual way… but in a way that looks back to Genesis 3: Like Adam and Eve, Jesus faced temptation in a garden—except his garden was called Gethsemane. Like Adam and Eve, Jesus faced a temptation that had to do with a tree. Except the tree that tempted Jesus was made into a cross.
And the outcome of Jesus’ temptation was very different.
God told Adam and Eve, “If you obey my Word concerning this particular tree, you’ll live forever.” But Adam and Eve didn’t obey, and they died—and the rest of humanity died along with them.
God told Jesus, “If you obey my Word concerning this particular tree, you’ll die… a god-forsaken death… you’ll experience abandonment by me.”
Of course Jesus, unlike Adam and Eve, did obey, even though it meant death for him… that through Christ’s death the rest of humanity might live forever.
And so God is offering us the chance to live forever—not by proving ourselves, not by grasping for wisdom or happiness on our own, but by trusting him again.
That was the original test in the garden… Do you trust me?
Adam and Eve said no… Jesus said yes.
And now, every day, in a thousand small ways, that same question is put before us again.
For instance, when God calls us to forgive instead of retaliate…
to give instead of hoard…
to obey instead of control…
to follow instead of flee…
The question underneath it all is the same: Can I trust him?
And the cross answers that question once and for all.
The God who did not spare his own Son—but gave him up for us all—can be trusted…
With our future…
With our happiness…
With our lives.
The Gospel According to the Old Testament begins here: with a serpent defeated, a Savior obedient, and a God who proves—once and for all—that he loves us… that he’s good… and that he can be trusted with our lives.
[Introduce “baptism of the Lord” liturgy…]
[1] Luke 24:16
[2] Luke 24:25-27 ESV
[3] 2 Timothy 3:16-17
[4] Matthew 3:17 ESV