Satan’s temptation of Eve and her subsequent fall and Adam’s in
the Garden of Eden is the greatest scandal ever in human history. They fell
from innocence into the grips of sin and into the judgment of God.
When Adam and Eve sinned against God, there had to be consequences:
- The serpent, an instrument of Satan would be made to crawl on his belly and eat dust.
- The woman, Eve, who had been deceived by Satan through the serpent, would experience sorrow in conception. Gynecology remains one of the fields of medicine in most demand today because of this.
- The man would have to work by the sweat of his face in order to get the ground to produce. There would no longer be just a garden which produced food unassisted such as Eden – Paradise lost.
- All humans would have to experience death. Sure enough, all have.
But God not only established judgment on the human race. He also
provided deliverance and tells us how he would do that. He says to the serpent
in Genesis 3.15:
And I will put enmity between you
and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel."
Obviously this moves beyond enmity with a snake and a woman.
It must go deeper. The bible refers to this: “...that serpent of old, who is the
Devil and Satan.” (See Revelation 12.9 & 20.2).
There would be, in human history, a great fight between the
human race and the offspring of Satan (meaning those who would follow his
dictates and promote his evil intent).
The latter half of verse fifteen switches from plural to
singular. Though the seed of the serpent would bruise the heel of the woman’s
seed, it would not be a final, mortal wound. A wounded heel is neither fatal
nor final but a wounded head, the wounded head of the serpent, would be terminal.
The woman’s seed (singular) would deal a fatal blow to the head to the seed of
the serpent.
What a promise from God! This would be the early gospel or Protoevangelium, the only gospel that
mankind would have for the earliest centuries of its existence. God would
provide someone from among the human race who could overcome what Satan had
just done to humanity.
At the cross of Calvary, the devil had Jesus where he wanted
him – suffering and dying, vulnerable and seemingly helpless. Satan struck a
blow to his heel – even literally as the nail pierced through his feet. But
that wasn’t the end of the story. Jesus would there die for the sins of
humanity and be buried but wouldn’t be left to destruction. He would rise
again, and in doing so, extend his knockout punch to our adversary the devil.
To kill a snake, you can’t just pulverize him in the midsection.
You must strike him directly to the head and that’s exactly what Jesus did to
Satan. Oh, the devil’s still in business today, but the count is in. He has
lost and will finally be cast into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20.10)
Jesus is the seed of the woman. You will notice that he is not called "the seed of the man," for Jesus had no earthly father but was born of a virgin. We’re told in Galatians
4.4-5:
But when the fulness of the time was
come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem
them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
This is what must have inspired Isaac Watts to write:
No more let sin and sorrow grow.
Nor thorns infest the ground:
He comes to make his blessings flow.
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as the curse is found.
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