The following is a sermon preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi. Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning and a great honor to bring God's Word this morning in our worship. Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15. Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15. And as we come to God's word, let me pray for us. Father, in your light, we see light. And so we pray that you would illuminate the reading and the preaching of your word so that we might see Jesus more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly. And we ask this in his name, who lives and reigns with you, and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever praised. Amen. Let's hear the word of our God from Genesis chapter 3 verse 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. Grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever. I've got five one-word points for this sermon this morning, all beginning with the letter S. Five one-word points, all beginning with the letter S. Boys and girls, you can count them on your fingers. Each begins with the letter S. I thought I'd keep it simple so your parents could follow. Here we go. Seed. A seed. Reading the Bible is like watching a plant grow from seed to full flower, or a flower, as you say here. But where I come from in Texas, it's pronounced flour. Reading the Bible is like watching a plant grow from seed to full flower. A seed is actually a tiny plant encased in a hard shell. Everything needed for that plant to grow to full maturity and into full flower is in that seed. The DNA code in the seed is complete. And it's only a matter of time until that seed develops into a little shoot, then into a small plant, then into a big tree in full flower. And that's like reading the Bible. The early chapters of Genesis are like that. seed. They contain all the key information for the rest of the Bible story to develop. And we could say that about Genesis 3.15 in itself. It is the seed promise of the Old Testament. 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. This verse has been called the Proto-Ewangelion. The Proto-Ewangelion. It's just a fancy way of saying the first announcement of the gospel. And I want to suggest that this Proto-Ewangelion, this first announcement of the gospel is like a seed that organically grows through the scriptures until it comes to its, like a mature tree in full blossom in the coming of a Savior who defeats God's enemies and saves God's people. Now what I want to do with this seed promise is treat it a wee bit like a sweet. That's my second point, sweet. I want to see this seed promise like a boiled sweet. Now I am asking for your cultural flexibility here. Because where I come from in the United Kingdom, we call candy sweets. But candy, as you know, boys and girls, does not begin with the letter S. We can't say sandy. So we have to say sweet. In the UK, a candy is a sweet. What do you do with a boiled sweet, boys and girls? You put it in your mouth. You're told by your parents, don't crunch it. It's bad for your teeth. It's bad for your teeth anyway. Don't crunch it, swirl it around in your tongue and suck all the goodness out of it. That's what I want to do with this verse this morning. I want to suck all the goodness out of the seed promise of Genesis 3, 15. Notice with me what God promises here. I will put enmity between you and the woman, enmity between the serpent, a figure representing the devil, and the woman, Eve, the mother of all living. The promise to put enmity between the serpent and the woman is surprising for the very simple reason that God, as he speaks these words, the serpent and the woman are on the same side. They're on the same team. They're on team devil. You remember that the woman had joined the serpent's side when she ate from the forbidden tree. Yet here is God graciously bringing her back onto his side by forcing enmity between the serpent and her. No sooner had the serpent forced enmity between God and the woman that God now forces enmity between the serpent and the woman. And the enmity is not just between the serpent and the woman. It will continue between their respective offsprings. Do you see that in the second line? And between your offspring and her offspring. This enmity won't last for just one generation. It will be for all generations until it climaxes in a final fight between a single descendant of the woman and the serpent himself. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. It will be a bloody battle. It will end in injury for the offspring of the woman and in death for the serpent. And how is death going to come to this serpent? by an offspring of the woman, a seed, a male seed, a he, not a her, a him, not a her, a he, not a she. And what do we call male descendants of women? Sons. A son is going to come and defeat this serpent, which brings us to our third point. A son, a seed, a sweet and a son. We've seen the seed promise of Genesis 3.15. I've said I want to treat it like a sweet, like a piece of candy, swirl it around and get all the goodness out of it. And the main goodness of this seed promise is that it is a promise about a son, a coming son, Adam. was called God's son, but he forfeited that right by his disobedience. So God promised another son here in Genesis 3.15. Abraham was promised a son through whom God would make him into a great nation. David was promised a son through whom his kingdom would be established forever. The whole of the Old Testament is the long search for this promised son. And it begins here in Genesis 3.15. I love how Sinclair Ferguson puts it, the whole of the Old Testament is really just a footnote to Genesis 3.15. Now, I think that there are seven things that we can learn about this son from this one verse. That's right, I did just say seven. Now, boys and girls, you know if you add five and seven together, you get 12. Don't tell your parents, but this is really a 12-point sermon. They haven't worked that out yet. A seed, a sweet, a son, and under son, we're gonna look at seven things about this son. Now, you may be thinking of that old ditty, wonderful things in the Bible I see, some put there by God, some put there by me. You're going to be wondering whether I've put them there, but I hope I'll convince you from the text that no, we can deduce these seven things by good and necessary consequence from this one verse. Here we go. Number one, this son will descend from a woman with no mention of his father. The son will descend from a woman with no mention of his father. Now that's surprising because it is the man who holds the power of begetting descendants. Basic biology tells us that the seed that produces offspring resides in the man. Yet there is no mention of Adam here. The son will descend from the woman without the help of a man. At least that's what's inferred. Of course, in order for this woman, Eve, to have any offspring, Adam needs to be involved. But the emphasis here is on this coming son coming from a woman without reference to his father. So in one sense, we should read the rest of the Bible story with an eye on the women of the Bible and not so much on the men. What we have here are the faintest echoes of a virgin birth. So that's the first thing about this son. He will descend from a woman with no mention of his father. Number two, he will be a representative son, a representative son. He will represent all the offspring who descend from the woman. This is seen in the singular collective sense of offspring in the Hebrew language. The word for seed is sera. It only ever occurs in the singular. But a singular noun can be used for an individual person or a collective group. We do it in English, boys and girls. What do we say when you see a group of fish? Do you say, look at all the fishes? Or as my daughter Hannah says, we've seen the fishies today. No, it's just fish. It can refer to a single fish or to a group of fish. Well, same with the word seed. The offspring of Abraham could refer to the collective group of the descendants of Abraham, or it could refer to an individual offspring of Abraham, like Christ, for example. Well, if you go back and look at verse 15, you'll see that this singular collective sense of seed is used in the second line, and between your offspring and her, offspring. That's the collective group of the descendants. And then the third line, he shall bruise your head. This son will represent that collective group. He will be a representative son who will fight on behalf of the offspring of the woman against the serpent himself. So he will descend from a woman with no mention of the father. He will be a representative son. And third, he will be a warrior son. A warrior son. Because he is going to bring the enmity to a final point in a battle with the serpent, this son is a warrior son. He's a fighting son. Because he will enter into a climactic battle with the serpent toward the end of history. We might call him the serpent-crushing son. He's going to be a warrior son. That's the third thing we can deduce about this son. Here's the fourth. He will be an obedient son. He will be an obedient son. The mission of this offspring is to fight the serpent. That's the mission that God has set for him. And if he's going to fulfill it, then he must be obedient to it. He must be a son who is prepared to accept the challenge. He must be a son who is prepared to fulfill God's purpose in his life. In short, he must be an obedient son, a son obedient to God's plan for his life, which is to come and fight the serpent and defeat him. Now, the reason I speak about his obedience is because it's not going to be an easy fight for this representative son. It's going to involve Sacrifice, which brings us to the fifth thing about this son. He will descend from a woman with no mention of his father. He will be a representative son, a warrior son, an obedient son. And fifth, a suffering son. He's going to suffer. In the fight with the serpent, he will be injured. The serpent will bruise his heel. The anatomical part of the body is significant. Look back at verse 14. Because the serpent is cursed to crawl on its belly all its days, the heel is really the only part of the body that the serpent can bite and bruise. But we mustn't think that the serpent is going to take the son by surprise, sort of sneak up behind him and bite him in the heel, at which point the son turns around and thinks, what's going on here? Now, notice the order of events in the third line of verse 15. He, the son, shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. The son goes looking for the serpent and crushes him in the head. And in the moment of crushing him in the head, the son himself is injured. The son will crush the serpent through injury, and he will have scars to prove it. When a snake bites a person and sinks its fangs into their skin, what's left? Some scars. Well, this son will go into this fight and have some scars as a result. He will be a suffering son. He will suffer, but He will not be defeated, which brings us to the sixth point about this son. He will descend from a woman with no mention of his father. He will be a representative son, a warrior son, an obedient son, a suffering son. And sixth, a triumphant son. A triumphant son. We see this in two ways. First, notice the reversal in the order of references to the serpent and his opponent. In the first line of verse 15, the serpent is mentioned first between you and then the woman. In the second line, the serpent's offspring is mentioned first between your offspring and then the woman's offspring. But now notice in the third line, the order flips around and the individual offspring is mentioned first. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. The flipping of the order is significant. It shows that the ultimate victory will belong to the seed of the woman, to his offspring. He will ultimately get the victory. Now in the Old Testament, most often it's the offspring of the serpent that seems to get the victory over the offspring of the woman. Egypt over Israel. The Canaanites over Israel. The Philistines over Israel. Assyria over Israel, Babylon over Judah. All through the Old Testament, the offspring of the woman seems to be the more dominant, triumphant offspring over the offspring of the woman. But when he comes, when this representative son arrives on the pages of history, he will get the upper hand. I love that bit in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Beaver's poem about Aslan. Wrong will be right when Aslan comes in sight. At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more. When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death. And when he shakes his mane, we will have spring again. This is the first way we see that he's a triumphant son, just by the order of the parties mentioned in the third line. The second is more obvious. The son will crush the serpent in the head, which means the serpent will receive a fatal blow. He will die and be destroyed as a result of this battle. Now what's striking in the rest of the Old Testament is that when the representative for God's people gets victory over their enemies, it often ends with a blow to the head. Boys and girls, you know any Old Testament stories where the enemy of God's people gets defeated with a blow to the head? Goliath. David strikes Goliath in the head with a stone, but he's not the only one to defeat the enemies with a blow to the head. Joshua captures the five Amorite kings and gets his commanders to lie them on the ground and stand on their necks before he hangs them on trees. Deborah and Barak fight for Israel against Sisera, the representative for the king of Hazor, who eventually gets a tent peg in the head. And then, of course, as I mentioned, David kills Goliath with a stone to the head. In other words, as the Old Testament develops, You see that God saves his people through a chosen representative who defeats their enemies by inflicting a deadly blow to the head. All of these fights in the Old Testament, they're all mini-dramas of Genesis 3.15, each of them pointing forward to the ultimate fight when this representative, warrior, obedient, suffering but triumphant son will fight serpent and get the victory with a blow to the head. Well, I did say there were seven things about this son, we're at number six. Number seven, he will be a second and last Adam. He will be a second and last Adam precisely because he will do what the first Adam was supposed to do, crush the serpent the head by a tree. We can say that this son will be a second Adam and precisely because he will triumph in his fight with the serpent where the first Adam field, we can say that he will be a last Adam. If he does what the first Adam should have done, crush the serpent in the head, then he's a second Adam and if he defeats the serpent then there's no need for a third Adam. So we can safely say that he is the second and last Adam. So, we've swirled this verse around like a boiled sweet in our mouths. We've seen seven things about this son. He will descend from a woman without mention of his father. He will be a representative son, a warrior son, an obedient son, a suffering son, a triumphant son. He will be the second and last Adam. But just who is this son that we're talking about? With whom does this seed promise of Genesis 3.15 come to full flower, to full blossom? Well, that brings us to the next S, skull, a skull. In the New Testament, When Jesus is crucified, we read that they crucified him at a place called Golgotha. It is a Greek transliteration of an Aramaic term which means place of a skull. Some people think that the place gets its name from the shape of the hill on which Jesus was crucified. Apparently, it looked like a skull, perhaps. Well, maybe or maybe not. We don't know. But we still get the idea of the skull. It represents death. It represents defeat. But isn't it interesting that the anatomical part of the body that is mentioned is a skull, not a heel? Remind you of anything? He shall crush your head. What happens when an animal's head is crushed and it lies out in the sun, turns into a skull, a decaying skull. Death was what the serpent brought into the garden. Death was what Jesus suffered in our place on the cross. And yet by that same death, the serpent's head was crushed. And so the New Testament shows us that the seed promise of the sun finds its ultimate fulfillment, its full flowering, its full blossoming in the moment when Jesus, God's Son, dies on the cross at a place resembling a skull. In that moment on the cross, Jesus suffers at the hand of the ancient serpent, Satan, and yet in that very same moment, he's also crushing him in the head. It's not that the ancient serpent, Satan, catches Jesus unawares and bites him in the heel, so to speak, by having him crucified. No, it's that Jesus willingly went into battle with the serpent on the cross, fully aware of the injuries that he would receive so that he could crush the serpent in the head. The first Adam was supposed to crush the serpent in the head by a tree. Jesus, the second and last Adam, crushes the serpent in the head on a tree. We see many parallels between Jesus and Adam at the cross. Adam entered into battle with a serpent naked beside a tree. Jesus enters into battle with a serpent naked on a tree. Adam brought the curse of thorns and thistles into the world by his disobedience. Jesus wears a crown of thorns on his head and takes the curse by his obedience. Adam did not fight the serpent. He was not willing to sacrifice anything in a battle with the serpent for his bride, but instead he capitulated to the temptation. Jesus fights the serpent. He is willing to sacrifice even a great cost to himself for his bride. and he resists the temptation. He suffers death on a cross, and he has five scars to prove it. But that is not the end of Jesus on Golgotha's hill, on the hill of the skull of death. No, it was only the beginning of his victory. Yes, he was injured, but he was ultimately triumphant. And that triumph was given clear public display when God raised him from the dead. Here, then, is the son of Genesis 3.15, the representative, warrior, obedient, suffering but triumphant son, the second and last Adam. Here is the offspring of the woman. Have you ever wondered about the references to Jesus' mother at the cross in the four Gospels? In each of the Gospels, we're told that Mary, Jesus' mother, is watching him die. Now, we Protestants get all a bit nervous about Mary being close to the cross. We're like, sort of, get her away. We don't want her too close to the cross. Because Roman Catholic teaching teaches that Mary is there interceding for him, helping him through his sacrifice. And of course, we reject that, but let's not push her away. She's there. What is she doing there? She's pointing to the cross, saying, the offspring of the woman. So we have the seed of the woman dying at the place of a skull. So we've seen four S's. You still counting boys and girls on your fingers? A seed, a sweet, a sun, a skull. You ready for the final one? A shed. Shed. It's actually a tool shed, but that begins with T, so I thought I'd shorten it. A shed. Let me take you to a tool shed in Oxford, England. C.S. Lewis once wrote a beautiful piece called Meditations in a tool shed. Outside his house in Oxford, there was a tool shed. And one day, C.S. Lewis was out working in the shed, and he noticed a beam of light shining through a crack at the top of the shed door. And as he was standing there, he was outside the light, looking across this beam of light, noticing specks of dust, et cetera. And then he thought to himself, I wonder what it would be like to step into the light and look along the light. And so he stepped into the light and started to look along the light and there he saw out through the crack in the door the blue sky and the trees and the birds flying. And C.S. Lewis realized that it is one thing to stand outside the light and look across it and see things in it. It is quite another thing to step into the light and look along it. I think reading the Bible can be a bit like the experience of C.S. Lewis in the tool shed. You can read the Bible and see the seed promise of Genesis 315 developing as the Bible unfolds. You can read across it from the outside. And it's all very interesting, all very intellectually stimulating, especially for seminarians. But it's a very different experience to step into the light of Genesis 315 and read the Bible along the beam of light from the inside until you see Jesus. So let me ask you this morning, where do you stand? Are you outside the light, looking across the light, along the light? from the outside, seeing very interesting connections from Genesis 3.15 all through the Bible to Jesus? Or have you stepped into the light and looked along the light and seen your Savior hanging on a cross, defeating the serpent for you? Boys and girls, have you stepped into the light Moms and dads, have you stepped into the light? All of us, have we stepped into the light? It is possible to sit in church your whole life and look across the light and never step into the light. If you are not in the light, why not ask God this morning, to open your eyes and draw you into the light so that you can look along it and see Jesus. And if you are already in the light, then rejoice that God in his grace chose to bring you into the light, to open your eyes to see that Genesis 315 is all about Jesus, the savior of the world. Let us pray. Father, we pray that you would open our eyes so that we would see Jesus this morning through this verse. We pray that you would draw us again into that light, that we would look along it and not just across it. Give us saving faith in Christ, the offspring of the woman we pray. And we ask this for his fame and glory. Amen. You have been listening to a sermon preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi. Our contact is www.fpcjackson.org.