Promises of a Messiah – Genesis 3:15

The Christmas displays are already out here in Mexico City, and so I thought it would be appropriate to start a Christmas theme here at Finding direction.  🙂

There are 12 Sundays before Christmas, and since I’m doing some study this year on the prophecies of the Messiah, I thought maybe I’d share some thoughts on a different prophecy each Sunday for the next 12 Sundays.  So without further ado, let’s start right at the very beginning, with one of the most famous prophecies of all…

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. (Gen 3:15)

This is sometimes known as the protoevangelium or first Gospel.  It was written down by Moses over 1400 years before the birth of Jesus, but the words actually date back to the dawn of human civilization.

You know the story – the serpent in the Garden of Eden tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.  Eve ate, gave some to Adam, and he ate, and then God showed up and pronounced judgement.  This was a part what God said – in the midst of curses, a hint of hope.

Only a hint at this point, of course.  Now I think Adam and Eve would recognize that God had already shown them mercy, but what did these words mean?  At first glance, the obvious relationship of humankind with snakes.

It seems from verse 14 that the snake was changed when it was cursed – changed to become the creepy crawly that it is now, licking up dust.  Doomed to bite at people’s heals, and be crushed by their feet.

But perhaps Adam and Eve and their first descendants may have recognized more from these words.  It does seem God taught them and their descendants more about the hope of redemption, since we soon see their children offering sacrifices.  Some have wondered if the specific reference to the woman in this statement is a hint of the virgin birth.  Is there more hidden here?

Still, the main focus of the passage is not a great triumph, but an ongoing enmity – continual hostility throughout history, between both humans and snakes and also humans and satanic forces.

Jesus finally destroyed Satan’s power, and the power of death, at the cross.  But it is in the future that Satan will be finally and forever dealt with (Rev 20:1-10).

We know that as time went on, future writers did see this as a reference to more than just snakes and people.  Satan is clearly said to be the serpent in Revelation 20:2, for example.  And why did Jesus come, asks John?  To destroy the works of the devil (1Joh 3:8).  The writer of Hebrews explains that Jesus came as a man to destroy the devil himself, the one who has the power of death (Heb 2:14-15).

Paul alluded to these words in Genesis in the book of Romans:  The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (Rom 16:20)  Paul may have been referring to the removal of false teachers in the Roman church.  But of course there’s a wider context.

All through Romans Paul talks of believers being in Christ.  It fits Genesis 3:15 well to suggest that God would still crush the devil under the feet of the True Church, the body of Christ.  The triumph is not the Church’s, but Christ’s.  But we are a part of it, being in Him.  Defeated at the cross (Col 2:13-15), Satan and his forces will finally be crushed by God.

But to Adam and Eve, and all early humans who hoped for some kind of salvation from God, none of this was clear.  Instead, there stretched out ahead an unknown time of wearisome harassment from nature and from unseen evil powers.  And a hint – just a hint – that a human being would come who would finally crush the head of the serpent once and for all.