Dale Partridge - Genesis 3_14-19 - The Gospel Before the Gospel： God's Curse on the Serpent

00:00:00.000 Well, it is wonderful to continue the study of this weighty chapter of chapter 3 in Genesis.

00:00:12.380 This chapter is so weighty, I believe that the rest of Scripture turns upon this chapter.

00:00:21.620 All of redemptive history revolves around what has occurred in this particular chapter

00:00:30.980 Now this is our third sermon in chapter 3

00:00:34.220 And the first was titled The Serpent, The Woman, and the Collapse of Order

00:00:38.520 Gave that a few weeks ago

00:00:40.160 And it traced about how the fall of mankind came and reversed God's order

00:00:46.160 And collapsed humanity

00:00:50.080 Now, what I mean by that, if you look back in that text, if you want to understand some of the context there,

00:00:54.840 that though God created man first, woman second, and then placed the animals under his dominion,

00:01:02.400 we saw that the serpent reverses that order in that, you know, the serpent comes up to the woman,

00:01:10.920 and the woman comes up to the man, and it's this reversal and this collapse of order which causes the fall.

00:01:17.100 You even heard in that text a second, because you listened to the words of your wife, right?

00:01:23.140 So we saw this reversal occurring here.

00:01:26.980 And we know that humanity's fall resulted in the separation of God and eventually death.

00:01:34.940 Not just a physical death, but spiritual death, the separation of the soul from the presence of God.

00:01:41.040 It is why they were removed from the garden.

00:01:43.380 It was, in truth, a separation.

00:01:46.400 Now, last week, we saw how Adam and Eve's sin produced guilt, fear, and eventually caused them to hide.

00:01:54.980 And they hid behind their own fig leaves.

00:01:58.700 Now, we also saw that how, in our own way, we still do this.

00:02:04.520 We still hide when we sin.

00:02:07.060 We still run from accountability.

00:02:09.340 We still try to run from the eyes of the Lord in a variety of ways.

00:02:14.220 We hide behind our excuses by our justifications for why we did it, for our rationalizations to make sense of why it is okay that we transgressed against God's will. 0.79

00:02:27.680 Now, today we turn to part one of what is going to become a three-part series on the curse on the serpent and the sexes.

00:02:37.480 And today, this sermon will be titled The Gospel Before the Gospel. 0.64

00:02:43.420 So the gospel before the gospel.

00:02:46.100 And it's going to deal with the curse of the serpent.

00:02:49.140 So we're only going to get through verses 14 and 15 today.

00:02:53.340 Now, the term curse, it's nearly synonymous with the term judgment.

00:02:58.680 It's a very important term.

00:03:00.820 It pronounces upon this guilty party the certainty of a coming judgment or coming consequences as a result of their actions.

00:03:09.500 It's really a divine declaration of tragedy that will come.

00:03:17.220 Tragedy and suffering is coming after the words of the Lord.

00:03:22.040 And so we're going to read verse 14 together.

00:03:23.920 Let's go look at our Bibles.

00:03:25.980 Verse 14, it says,

00:03:27.060 Now, first I want you to notice a few things.

00:03:49.920 I want you to notice that not only the serpent is cursed, but all of the animals are cursed at this point.

00:03:57.060 It's an interesting observation.

00:03:58.820 The serpent is simply accursed above them all.

00:04:02.460 So there's a unique shift that's occurred.

00:04:05.260 The animals are now all cursed.

00:04:07.780 You might wonder, why?

00:04:09.420 Why are the animals included in all of the serpent's doing here?

00:04:13.380 Well, man had dominion over the animal kingdom.

00:04:16.340 We know that God had given dominion over all of creation.

00:04:20.280 And so when Adam fell, all creation fell with him.

00:04:23.940 Again, there was a representative.

00:04:25.840 of it, it's not just of humanity, but all of creation. As we learned before, Adam was made

00:04:30.160 from the Adama. Adam was made from the Adama. He is dust made from dust. And so you can't curse one 0.96

00:04:37.440 without cursing the other. You curse the Adam, you curse the Adama. And so essentially, when the 0.81

00:04:46.040 ruler falls, all creation falls with him. Now, we don't know exactly what the serpent looked like

00:04:52.800 before the fall, but apparently he had, well, potentially he had legs. The text suggests that

00:05:00.160 and that God's curse stripped them away and the serpent becomes the lowest of all of the creatures.

00:05:08.260 Now, it was said here in the text that it was condemned to essentially slither

00:05:12.360 and eat dust all the days of his life. Now, this is what I would call a memorial of humiliation.

00:05:22.500 You are low to the serpent. 0.99

00:05:25.120 You are low to the serpent. 0.74

00:05:28.160 You know, we live in Arizona. 0.95

00:05:30.640 We know that that curse still stands.

00:05:32.860 I see snakes all the time.

00:05:35.160 My children will come in, they'll bring snakes and wang them in the window.

00:05:40.720 Hey, I caught a snake.

00:05:41.980 We know lots of rattlesnakes have been found in our area.

00:05:46.960 We found two or three of them on our own property.

00:05:50.220 But why does that matter?

00:05:52.820 Well, I think it really is kind of a testimony to the integrity of God's justice.

00:05:59.280 These things are still here and they're still on the ground.

00:06:02.220 It also stands kind of as a quiet rebuttal against the theory of evolution.

00:06:06.720 They're still the same, okay?

00:06:08.420 They're still the same.

00:06:09.780 The serpent, you know, at least one creature, has remained completely unchanged for 7,000 to 10,000 years.

00:06:15.740 It's just there, doing what it was supposed to do because of God's curse,

00:06:19.400 to slither around and eat the dust.

00:06:22.540 Now, throughout Scripture, we see this image of eating dust.

00:06:26.640 It's really a curse of humiliation, of condemnation.

00:06:31.260 It's a meaning of defeat, disgrace.

00:06:35.720 Micah 7.17 says of Israel's enemy, it says, 0.67

00:06:40.060 They will lick the dust like a serpent.

00:06:42.940 Psalm 72, 9 says,

00:06:44.700 May the desert tribes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust.

00:06:50.260 Isaiah 49, 23, it's prophesying of a future Christianized world.

00:06:56.160 And it says,

00:06:57.880 Kings shall be your nursing fathers, and queens your nursing mothers. 0.99

00:07:01.800 With their faces to the ground, they shall bow down to you and lick the dust off of your feet. 0.95

00:07:07.460 Matthew 10, 14, Jesus is talking to the disciples.

00:07:10.880 Famous line, he says,

00:07:12.080 If anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that town.

00:07:18.800 So you have this kind of motif.

00:07:20.820 There's actually more scriptures that I didn't include in here.

00:07:23.600 So dust becomes a symbol of judgment.

00:07:28.200 It's a symbol of disgrace.

00:07:30.420 And one group is condemned to crawl in it.

00:07:32.980 To crawl in the dust.

00:07:34.720 To be left in the dust.

00:07:36.700 To eat of it. 0.98

00:07:37.280 To lick it.

00:07:38.280 The other is called to shake it off.

00:07:41.240 to get rid of it.

00:07:43.660 And so the serpent licks the dust in humiliation

00:07:46.520 and God's people shake it off in victory.

00:07:50.160 There's a bit of a theme here that's going on

00:07:51.960 that you need to see.

00:07:53.140 Now, even in the midst of the fall,

00:07:55.500 it's kind of a dark section of Scripture,

00:07:58.560 you see this little glimpse of hope.

00:08:01.780 You see this little glimmer of hope in the gospel.

00:08:07.480 and it's what's called the Proto-Evangelium.

00:08:12.880 Evangelium, you're going to have different scholars say it different ways.

00:08:16.460 It means the first good news.

00:08:19.160 Proto meaning first, evangelism is really the rooted Greek word for good news.

00:08:25.980 It's the first good news.

00:08:29.940 In fact, it's the first messianic promise in all of Scripture.

00:08:33.520 And we see it right here in the midst of the curse to the devil.

00:08:39.400 It says in verse 15, 1.00

00:08:42.320 I will put enmity between you and the woman 0.97

00:08:45.920 and between your offspring and her offspring, 0.97

00:08:50.320 or seed, you might say seed in your passage.

00:08:52.620 He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

00:08:59.500 Well, let me start off with this.

00:09:02.860 While the curse is spoken to the serpent, the curse is spoken to the serpent.

00:09:08.780 It's most directly aimed at the spirit that has possessed the serpent, which is the devil.

00:09:14.240 So you've got to have some distinctions here because this is a little bit poetic,

00:09:17.060 a little bit of a riddle going on here that you'll see.

00:09:21.780 So if the first part of the curse applies to the animal itself,

00:09:25.760 you're going to crawl around and eat the dust.

00:09:29.160 The second part of the curse really targets the devil, the demonic power working within this animal.

00:09:37.120 And so you have some distinctions here as we're going to make a didactic reality of this.

00:09:42.420 Now, I want you to just pay attention.

00:09:44.660 Look at the text in verse 15. 1.00

00:09:45.700 It says, I will put enmity between you and the woman. 1.00

00:09:50.180 Now, at this point, there's enmity between God and man, between Eve and Adam. 0.99

00:09:58.160 between Eve and God, but there's not enmity between Adam and Eve and the serpent.

00:10:05.380 There's enmity between the serpent and God. There's enmity everywhere except between man

00:10:12.020 and the serpent. It's interesting, just think about this for a second. There's enmity everywhere

00:10:17.660 except enmity between man and the serpent. And what does God do? He relocates the

00:10:27.880 enmity. While the enmity is actually between God and man, and the serpent and man, God relocates

00:10:36.180 the enmity to place it between man and the devil, and God and the devil. It's really an amazing

00:10:44.540 shift, and a little bit of the start, where we start to see that God is coming in for redemption

00:10:52.320 here. There is some justice that is about to occur.

00:10:58.480 This first section here

00:11:00.220 in 15, God is declaring

00:11:03.620 a holy war. There is a holy war that is about to be

00:11:08.260 had. The curse upon the serpent

00:11:11.860 it's not only a judgment, it's an announcement of divine conflict

00:11:16.140 that will happen throughout the rest of history.

00:11:19.760 There will be a divine conflict happening not just between Eve and the serpent, but throughout the rest of history.

00:11:31.400 Now, because the woman was the vessel attacked by Satan.

00:11:35.140 This is really cool, guys. Pay attention to this.

00:11:36.900 Because the woman was attacked by Satan, God makes the woman the vessel of his vengeance. 0.78

00:11:45.340 I love it. I love it. 0.89

00:11:47.620 Satan used the woman to bring death into the world.

00:11:50.680 So God will use the woman to bring redemption and life into the world.

00:11:56.480 Satan destroys Eve.

00:11:57.920 So God says, you know what?

00:11:59.120 Through Eve will come the one who destroys Satan.

00:12:02.120 It's really beautiful.

00:12:04.060 Poetic justice.

00:12:08.360 Now this is a form of what we would call divine irony.

00:12:11.840 Divine irony.

00:12:12.840 And you need to learn it.

00:12:14.100 You need to learn it because the church is forgotten.

00:12:15.960 And I'm going to explain why.

00:12:18.520 God uses this all the time.

00:12:21.700 Satan used a tree to bring about death.

00:12:24.460 God used a tree to bring about life. 0.86

00:12:27.420 Pharaoh used water to drown the Hebrew children. 0.78

00:12:30.300 God uses water to drown Pharaoh's army. 0.72

00:12:34.260 Haman built the gallows for Mordecai. 0.52

00:12:36.420 Haman was hung there by the gallows he wanted to have built for them, for his enemies.

00:12:42.240 He's now hung.

00:12:43.280 Satan used death to destroy humanity 0.65

00:12:46.700 Christ used death to destroy Satan

00:12:48.860 Satan says take and eat 0.87

00:12:52.240 to Eve and Jesus says take and eat

00:12:55.940 to live over and over

00:12:58.860 and over again you see this kind of poetic justice

00:13:01.760 this divine irony

00:13:03.060 Genesis 50 20 regarding Joseph

00:13:07.520 he says you meant evil against me but God meant it for good

00:13:11.480 God takes these tragedies and turns them into triumphs.

00:13:15.660 It's amazing.

00:13:17.220 Hebrews 2.14, through death, he destroyed the one who has the power of death.

00:13:22.240 That is the devil.

00:13:25.360 Now, poetic justice, why does the church need to learn this?

00:13:29.100 Because everybody else gets it but us.

00:13:32.420 Okay? 1.00

00:13:33.020 The Muslims, it's why the Muslims turn churches into mosques. 1.00

00:13:37.460 it's why they rename america's streets with names of islamic leaders they understand poetic justice 0.79

00:13:45.960 they understand that what we've just this principle we've forgotten victory is not merely about

00:13:54.580 winning victory is not merely about winning it's about reversal it's about reversal

00:14:02.380 It's about using what was once against you to now serve as your cause.

00:14:09.340 It's about dominion.

00:14:11.420 It's about colonization.

00:14:13.720 It's about taking over and putting everything under the submission of Christ that was once against Christ.

00:14:22.400 It's about poetic justice.

00:14:25.420 The serpent struck at the heel.

00:14:27.980 God used that very strike to crush his head.

00:14:31.260 Over and over and over, God flips it on its head.

00:14:38.020 God expands the curse beyond the individual serpent and the woman.

00:14:43.700 And he reveals this greater conflict.

00:14:47.720 A war.

00:14:49.940 A holy war between two seeds.

00:14:54.020 It's really talking about two lines, two spiritual families.

00:14:58.020 Satan's offspring 0.93

00:15:00.440 and the woman's offspring. 0.85

00:15:04.860 It's not about two individuals.

00:15:08.680 We know that Jesus even says

00:15:11.280 you are of your father, the devil.

00:15:15.480 It's about two spiritual families. 1.00

00:15:17.960 The children of darkness 0.79

00:15:19.280 and the children of light.

00:15:20.800 What family are you part of?

00:15:23.400 It's a very important question.

00:15:26.200 Are you children of the light?

00:15:28.020 Or are you children of darkness?

00:15:34.080 The thing that's interesting here is that Satan doesn't bear children in the sense of there's no baby demons being born. 0.50

00:15:47.380 And we're going to see here in a minute that women don't have seed technically in the way that men do. 0.88

00:15:55.680 Eve is called the mother of all the living. 0.98

00:15:58.720 The mother of all the living.

00:16:01.360 Now, does this mean that every human being that comes from Eve is a child of light?

00:16:06.480 No, no.

00:16:08.240 Scripture testifies against that because Scripture shows us in the very next chapter,

00:16:13.600 Genesis chapter 4, Eve's son Cain murders her other son Abel.

00:16:19.080 In 1 John 3.12, in the New Testament, says of Cain,

00:16:24.560 It says of Cain, if I can not lose my space here, like I just did.

00:16:33.700 It says of Cain, it says, Cain was of the evil one.

00:16:38.800 Cain was of the evil one.

00:16:44.740 So her offspring can't refer to all humanity.

00:16:47.340 There's a distinction here.

00:16:48.660 Some of her offspring are going to be good and some of them are going to be evil.

00:16:51.780 but specifically this is speaking to those whom God has chosen to be his this is the intersection

00:17:02.920 of the doctrine of election there are some that are elect there are some that will be redeemed

00:17:09.560 and there are some who will not there is no injustice here there is just justice and there

00:17:15.560 is just mercy.

00:17:19.580 So her offspring has this two-fold meaning, right?

00:17:22.980 First, collectively, it's talking to the elect,

00:17:26.360 the people of the light, the people of the Lord.

00:17:34.240 The descendants of God through faith.

00:17:37.700 You know, we know when Gabriel comes up

00:17:39.820 and speaks to Mary,

00:17:42.280 You shall name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sin.

00:17:48.460 There's a distinction there.

00:17:49.700 There are his people and there are people who are not his people.

00:17:53.220 My sheep hear my voice and they know me and they follow me. 0.99

00:17:56.720 Meaning that there are those who are not his sheep.

00:17:59.660 In fact, Jesus says in John 10, he says, you are not my sheep.

00:18:05.300 You are not my sheep.

00:18:06.640 now secondly this is ultimately talking to the promised seed Jesus Christ

00:18:13.180 who will crush the serpent's head

00:18:14.760 so there's this double meaning

00:18:17.300 you got the people of the Lord

00:18:19.820 who will ultimately manifest in the true seed

00:18:24.100 Jesus Christ

00:18:25.380 now let's just back up for a second

00:18:30.460 so we have two heads 0.99

00:18:31.640 or patriarchs that emerge

00:18:34.500 out of Eve

00:18:36.900 You have Cain, who is of the devil,

00:18:39.880 and he kind of is this representative of the serpentine lineage.

00:18:44.100 And then you have Seth that comes,

00:18:47.780 who is, if you look to the genealogy in Matthew chapter 1,

00:18:51.160 is the messianic line.

00:18:53.880 And so you have this kind of tracing that happens through the Old Testament.

00:18:58.640 And so the elect is not Cain, it was Abel, and then Seth.

00:19:03.920 The elect is not the world, it's Noah. 0.71

00:19:07.500 The elect is not Ham, it's Shem. 0.79

00:19:10.660 It's not the nations of Babel, it's Abraham.

00:19:14.360 It's not Ishmael, it's Isaac.

00:19:17.380 It's not Esau, it's Jacob.

00:19:20.520 It's not Pharaoh, it's Moses.

00:19:26.160 It's not Egypt, it's Israel.

00:19:27.960 It's not Saul, it's David.

00:19:29.260 It's not the false prophets, it's the true prophets.

00:19:32.980 It's not Herod, it's Christ.

00:19:35.140 It's not the Pharisees, it's the fishermen.

00:19:37.200 It's not Judas, it's Paul.

00:19:38.700 On and on and on.

00:19:40.540 This counterintuitive narrative.

00:19:43.780 You never expect it. 0.86

00:19:48.220 Twelve regular men are going to go and overturn the Roman Empire? 0.99

00:19:58.080 Fishermen, farmers? 0.93

00:20:02.000 Again, you can see this lineage, Matthew chapter 1, verses 1 through 16.

00:20:09.860 But through this promised seed comes the Christ, the new Adam, the second Adam, the better Adam.

00:20:21.580 You want to read about that Romans chapter 5.

00:20:24.840 And what also comes from that Adam, the first Adam, what came from the first Adam?

00:20:31.520 Eve.

00:20:32.620 What comes out of the second Adam? 0.93

00:20:36.240 The church. 0.97

00:20:37.940 The new Eve. 0.77

00:20:39.180 The bride of Christ. 0.80

00:20:44.660 And in the same way that the first Adam and Eve produced a fallen humanity,

00:20:50.600 you know what Adam and Eve were really good at?

00:20:52.860 Replicating death.

00:20:55.380 You know what the second Adam and the second Eve are good at?

00:20:59.840 Replicating life.

00:21:02.000 This is what we see.

00:21:04.340 The dominion mandate that was intended for Adam and Eve to be fulfilled.

00:21:11.120 Multiply and fill the earth. 0.91

00:21:14.400 Jesus comes in with his bride, the church.

00:21:17.500 And he multiplies and he's filling the earth with people filled with life.

00:21:24.660 1 Peter 1.23 says,

00:21:27.500 You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable.

00:21:32.200 Through the living and abiding word of God.

00:21:38.020 And though Christ has already conquered the serpent, there is at some degree a war still going against the offspring of Satan.

00:21:48.760 We know that there's this battle, and this battle is this.

00:21:53.900 Christ has already won.

00:21:56.880 The war is over in the sense that the battle's done. 0.91

00:22:00.580 It is our job to declare who won.

00:22:04.960 That is what the Great Commission is.

00:22:07.260 I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.

00:22:10.820 Go and tell everybody.

00:22:14.400 And that's what you're doing.

00:22:16.240 That's your job now.

00:22:18.680 It's not to say that he's going to win in the future.

00:22:22.320 No.

00:22:23.320 You walk into the world and you go, your king has been conquered.

00:22:27.380 Submit to Christ.

00:22:29.260 Submit to Christ.

00:22:30.580 now again i want to touch on this phrase the seed of the woman it's very important you guys are

00:22:37.440 going to be theologians we want to understand this we want to understand the scriptures

00:22:40.820 this is difficult because especially for the old testament jews they're trying to figure out what

00:22:46.960 is what is being meant here there are over a hundred passages of scripture that mention seed

00:22:52.400 and every single one of them speaks to the seed of man the seed of man what is the seed of woman

00:23:01.260 What's it talking?

00:23:02.500 What is the seed of the devil?

00:23:05.300 What is talked about here? 0.93

00:23:11.480 Now, because Jesus, the Son of God, is the true seed of the woman,

00:23:17.640 what this is really saying is that he's not going to be conceived by a man.

00:23:23.300 He's going to be conceived by the Holy Spirit.

00:23:26.880 He's going to be the virgin birth.

00:23:30.320 This is a bit of a prophecy to that miraculous birth that's coming.

00:23:34.000 And no one could have expected it, even though it talks about it a bit in the Psalms.

00:23:40.400 But it's an amazing thing.

00:23:42.460 This Messiah will not have an earthly father.

00:23:47.660 Which is so important to the gospel, by the way.

00:23:50.440 You know, it's so important to the gospel.

00:23:52.600 Because if Jesus had an earthly father, that means that he would have inherited the original sin that came from man.

00:23:58.680 Because that man, that father of his, would have been a descendant of Adam.

00:24:02.640 And because Adam is corrupted, everything that comes from Adam is also corrupted.

00:24:06.640 And therefore, Jesus would have been born with sin.

00:24:09.320 And if Jesus is born with sin, then we know Jesus could not have died for your sin.

00:24:13.960 Because he would have died for his own sin.

00:24:16.320 And he would not be able to operate as a sinless substitute on your behalf.

00:24:22.680 But now, because Jesus is a new Adam, born of the seed of the Holy Spirit, he's born without sin.

00:24:28.100 And he can die on the cross, not for his sin, but for your sin.

00:24:32.920 It's an amazing, amazing reality to understand these truths of the gospel.

00:24:43.860 Now, this is very important.

00:24:48.820 Because Roman Catholic art, you may have seen it.

00:24:52.120 It has Mary often depicted with her foot on the head of a snake while she's pregnant with Jesus.

00:25:06.440 The scripture does not say that Mary will crush the serpent.

00:25:10.620 The scripture says that her seed, Jesus, will crush the serpent.

00:25:17.600 Very small distinctions, but very important.

00:25:22.120 Now, Adrian Rogers said of this verse, he says,

00:25:24.480 Not only a battle, not only a birth, but a bruising is prophesied.

00:25:30.000 I love it.

00:25:30.980 Not only a battle, not only a birth, but a bruising.

00:25:35.760 Now, the bruising of the serpent's head happens through a divine paradox.

00:25:40.220 A divine paradox.

00:25:42.000 As I mentioned earlier, what looks like Satan's greatest victory

00:25:45.420 at the crucifixion of Jesus was, in fact, his greatest defeat.

00:25:52.900 Now, at Golgotha, Golgotha, the place of the skull, that is where Jesus was crucified.

00:26:01.040 Christ brought about the death of death.

00:26:05.780 There's a great book, a great Puritan book called The Death of Death and the Death of Christ.

00:26:11.700 It's an amazing thing to think about.

00:26:14.740 Some early Jewish and Christian traditions even suggest that Golgotha got its name

00:26:19.020 because Goliath's head was buried there at Golgotha.

00:26:25.900 And tradition says that the foot, the foot of the cross was actually there

00:26:32.200 and it went down and crushed the skull of Goliath.

00:26:35.860 That essentially the true David, the new and better David, Jesus Christ,

00:26:40.880 crushes the head of the ultimate enemy of God's people.

00:26:45.480 I don't know if it's true, but it's cool, right?

00:26:47.640 It's cool.

00:26:52.480 But again, this crushing is multidimensional.

00:26:55.220 It's multidimensional.

00:26:57.220 While Christ has kind of delivered this fatal blow

00:27:00.520 to Satan on Calvary, 0.80

00:27:03.760 the body of Christ, the church, the new Eve,

00:27:07.120 participates in this crushing to some degree.

00:27:09.200 We know Romans 16, 20 says, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

00:27:15.860 Under your feet.

00:27:20.020 Now Eve is sitting here hearing this curse to Satan.

00:27:26.520 And she certainly does not understand all that we understand.

00:27:30.760 She doesn't understand all that we understand.

00:27:34.660 She was thinking in the immediate.

00:27:36.280 okay i'm gonna have a baby coming here i'm gonna have some offspring

00:27:42.260 uh when she gives birth to cain we know her hope was high she says genesis 4 1 she says

00:27:51.880 i have i have gotten a man with the help of the lord uh your scripture might say i have

00:27:59.080 i have gotten a man from the lord in hebrew actually that word from isn't there

00:28:05.160 It can actually be translated, I have gotten the man, the Lord.

00:28:10.940 And so there is, some scholars believe that Eve actually believed, I have begotten the Lord.

00:28:18.780 And we obviously know that, no, you have not.

00:28:24.220 The curse was not for this child.

00:28:30.300 Cain became of the devil.

00:28:32.600 And the redemption was coming later.

00:28:35.160 it was after this kind of devastating realization that Cain is not the Messiah

00:28:44.300 that's going to bring them back to Eden, back to peace with the Lord.

00:28:51.540 At the very time that this happens, Genesis 4.26, you can turn one page over,

00:28:56.800 it says, people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

00:29:01.940 Call upon the name of the Lord.

00:29:03.740 It's the very first prayer recorded in Scripture.

00:29:07.320 And what are they praying for?

00:29:09.480 They're saying, oh Lord, I'm calling on you to fulfill that promise that you gave to Eve.

00:29:17.040 Bring that serpent crusher.

00:29:19.220 Bring us back into Eden.

00:29:22.580 And from that moment forward,

00:29:25.480 every faithful person began crying out to God to fulfill his promise of redemption.

00:29:33.720 Just this long-lasting echoes throughout time until the coming of Christ.

00:29:40.960 It's a really great message to understand as we anticipate Christmas.

00:29:45.500 Just this beautiful groaning and waiting for the Messiah.

00:29:50.840 Now, as I get ready to close here, we often forget this last half of verse 14.

00:29:57.160 He shall bruise his heel.

00:29:59.620 He shall bruise his heel.

00:30:01.200 where does the serpent strike

00:30:04.920 I mean we know this

00:30:06.040 95% of all snake bites

00:30:09.000 are at your foot

00:30:09.820 right

00:30:11.060 that's why you should wear boots

00:30:12.880 if you live in Arizona

00:30:13.600 right

00:30:13.960 now on the cross

00:30:16.840 Christ was struck by the serpent

00:30:18.460 not with a literal venom

00:30:20.140 but with the full sting

00:30:23.220 of sin and death

00:30:25.260 sin was imputed to Christ

00:30:28.720 it was not infused into him

00:30:31.140 he was without sin, but it was imputed to Christ.

00:30:34.700 We know 2 Corinthians 5.21 says,

00:30:37.280 For our sake, God made Christ to be sin,

00:30:41.320 who knew no sin, so that in Christ

00:30:44.080 we might become the righteousness of God.

00:30:47.020 It's an amazing thing when you start to connect your systematics.

00:30:52.180 In a sense, before the serpent was crushed,

00:30:54.160 this is very, pay attention here,

00:30:56.100 in a sense, before the serpent was crushed,

00:30:59.960 The son was crushed.

00:31:02.180 The son was crushed.

00:31:04.220 Isaiah 53.10 even says,

00:31:07.420 It pleased the Lord to crush him.

00:31:11.100 It goes on saying,

00:31:12.360 He was pierced for our transgressions.

00:31:15.080 He was crushed for our iniquities.

00:31:19.780 So the bruising of the heel

00:31:21.840 was the suffering of Christ.

00:31:25.080 It was the humiliation of Christ.

00:31:27.120 It was the death of Christ.

00:31:29.000 Just because the text right here

00:31:32.060 In this first gospel before the gospel

00:31:34.220 Limits the language

00:31:35.720 It does not mean that the pain was minor

00:31:40.000 We can look at it

00:31:41.700 Oh it bruised his heel

00:31:42.560 That's not that big of a deal

00:31:44.120 No

00:31:46.580 The heel had been struck

00:31:50.240 But the entire body bore the curse

00:31:52.360 And yet even in that bruising

00:31:55.860 The victory was already secured

00:31:57.400 We know, again, 1 Peter 2, 24, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

00:32:08.220 By His wounds, you have been healed.

00:32:13.120 Amen?

00:32:14.200 Amen.

00:32:14.840 Let's pray.

00:32:16.460 Father, we thank You, Lord, for this incredible redemption.

00:32:23.640 Lord, we ask that you would help us to understand it more,

00:32:25.900 that we might be able to communicate it more,

00:32:28.240 that we might be able to worship in it more,

00:32:31.160 to revel in it more.

00:32:35.340 Lord, we thank you for redeeming us,

00:32:37.740 that we have become children of light by your will

00:32:40.440 and by your grace.

00:32:43.100 We thank you for all these things.

00:32:44.480 In Jesus' name, amen.

Dale Partridge - November 11, 2025

Genesis 3_14-19 - The Gospel Before the Gospel： God's Curse on the Serpent

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