Introduction
The best stories make for the best daydreams. This is why we enjoy talking about our favorite stories, and theories about sequels or prequels or spinoffs. We love to understand the lore. This is because stories, at least the good ones, enchant us with the longing for the true story. The darkness defeated. The hero triumphant. The characters brimming with hard-won joy. But the lore matters. The OT provides us with all the hints, tropes, tension, and terror that make the arrival of the hero blaze with brilliant glory.
The Text
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Genesis 3:14-15
The Serpent and the Seed
Adam and Eve, in the midst of the Garden Temple of God, surrounded by manifold trees well-laden with fruit for their joy and refreshment, determined to embrace a lie, to feast upon a shadow, to drink in emptiness. The paradise of Eden was ravaged by a fork-tongued dragon. The God of all goodness came down to them, to judge their folly and sin. But the bitter cup of His judgement was sweetened by a merciful promise. That promise is contained in the Scripture we just read. The serpent became accursed, and though Satan amused himself with the notion that he had gained perpetual rule over mankind, God promised a perpetual rivalry between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s seed. And while this enmity would be fierce, it would be Eve’s offspring who would, though wounded, crush the dragon’s head.
Sadly, Adam and Eve were banished to the east of Eden. Cut off from the life-giving tree which God had intended for them to enjoy for everlasting days of bliss. Yet though the light of God’s glory was stripped from them, leaving them ashamed of their nakedness, God did not send them out clothed in their makeshift garments of fig-leaves. Instead, they went forth with finely crafted leather tunics, fashioned by the loving hand of God. But these tunics were bought with the blood of a lamb which was slain in order for them to be made.
The world had been formless and void before God filled it with the glory of sky and firmament, land and sea, sun and moon and stars, birds and fish, beasts and man. But now by Adam’s sin, the sorrow must have made the world seem formless and void once more. Yet God had promised a seed, so imagine their great hope when within Eve’s womb a seed sprung to life. When the son is born, she cries out, “The Lord has granted me a man.” The Hebrew language indicates to us that she believed that this man would be the mighty hero who would defeat the dragon and restore them to Eden.
Cain and Abel
Thus, she named the firstborn Cain, which means “gotten”. “Here,” she seemed to exclaim, “Is the one who will renew and restore mankind! I’ve gotten the deliverer!” Yet, as is likely, she gave birth to twins. When the second son was born, she names him Abel, meaning “breath”; the implication is that of fleeting breath. What could this mean?
This firstborn son of Earth, the first prince, applied himself to his father’s trade of gardening, while the younger son set himself to raising beasts. But like his father, the coils of the serpent began to wrap themselves around Cain. And he who would have been a savior to mankind is shown to be a seed of the serpent, and during a worship service to God, seething envy rises up in Cain’s heart against his brother. He who ought to have been a champion for mankind bludgeons his brother with a stone. The dust from which man had been formed and brought to life was weaponized to bring the first brother down into the dust of death. His blood cried out to God for vengeance against such devilish tyranny.
Corrupt Man and Righteous Noah
And so long ages went by, and the population of Earth grew. Likely into the billions. Lifespans were long. All the legends of Númenor and Atlantis are memories of that ancient world. Music, technology, industry, and economy flourished. But deep within mankind was the poison of the snake’s bite. His heart was coiled up with lust, wrath, envy, and lies, ready to strike out at every opportunity. Instead of the world being full of images of God, it was full of men who imitated the serpent. Lying, deceiving, rebelling against God and all that was good.
All men were like this, with the exception of the tenth-generation grandson of Adam, a man who was named Rest. Noah. God came to Noah and instructed him how to build a boat to save the world. God brought a deluge upon all the corruption of mankind, and in a floating new Eden, full of beasts, Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives were delivered.
When they emerged from the boat after nearly a year, a new creation lay before them. Could it be that the world had been delivered from the talons of the dragon?
Babel and Abram
Adding sorrow upon sorrow, as we go through our sad history, it soon became clear that the adder’s poison still infected mankind. The youngest son of Noah, in some grotesque and twisted perversion, resurrected the shameful corruption of the ancient world. It was spiritual necromancy. What God had judged and destroyed, Ham conjured up and reanimated. No sooner had mankind spread out from Mt. Ararat, then one of them, named Nimrod, began a slave trade. This slave trade served the attempt at one world government in the plains of Mesopotamia. These descendants of Noah, instead of walking by faith in God, defied God’s judgement through the flood and sought to build a tower. These ancient dragon worshippers thought that if God was determined to flood corruption then they would build a tower that the waters of God’s wrath could not overwhelm. Their hubris was such that they thought they could avoid God’s judgement by building a great tower for the purpose of the indulgence of their vain-glory and lusts. The ziggurat slowly rose higher and higher, but it was fueled by the blood of human sacrifice, ever the calling card of devil worship. These mighty men convinced themselves they did not need to acknowledge the God who made them. They exalted themselves to heaven apart from God’s blessing, apart from His presence, apart from His promise to deliver them from the serpent’s deadly venom. They thought they could build a tower which would escape any future floods, so God flooded them with a confusion of language. Thus mankind was scattered across the world.
The serpent inspired this building project as a vain attempt to escape from God’s justice, but God had a building project of His own. God hadn’t forsaken His purpose to fill the world with men and women who would bear His image of perfect goodness and righteousness. So, He called out to the tenth grandson of Noah. A man named “Father” (Abram); but he was a father without a son. God invited Abram to come out of the midst of those who had given themselves over to the worship of demons under the guise of the moon and stars. The Maker of those stars called Abram to trust a promise that He would give to Abram as many descendants as there were stars. He was a sonless father, called out of the midst of pagan stargazers, to trust a God who promised him more sons than there were stars. And so…Abram believed.
Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Israel
But the years dragged on. The promised son never came. Abram’s wife, Sarai, invited him to try to raise up a son through her handmaid Hagar. Indeed, a son was brought forth from this conniving, but he was to be a wild ass of a man, Ishmael by name. But this was not the seed which would defang the devil. Instead, God had promised a son would be born by Sarai. This was so marvelous that Sarai laughed, and so God, when He had at last fulfilled His word, and a son was born unto them, they named him Laughter. This was all too good to be true.
But Ishmael, the firstborn, once again persecuted the second-born. The long strife between Satanists and Saints continued. So Abram sent Ishmael away, so that Isaac might too receive the promised blessing from God. In due time, Isaac himself was married. Yet his wife’s womb was empty. Over and over again, the God who hovered over the formless world to form it into a glory hovered over the wombs of barren women to grant them mighty sons. Once more, twins were born: Esau and Jacob. Even from the womb, they battled fiercely with each other. While Esau craved the blood of beasts, Jacob longed to grasp the blessing of God. In fact, he strove many years to obtain it, and in due course, He wrestled with God Himself and was assured that this blessing, the blessing of the promised dragon slayer, would come through this God-wrestler’s offspring.
Potiphar’s Wife and Joseph
The God-wrestler, Israel, had twelve sons, and the first 10 despised the eleventh son: Joseph. So although they were the descendants of righteous men, they were more like Nimrod, selling their brother into slavery to Egypt. There, Joseph brought blessing with him, and this caught the tarantulic eyes of the wife of Joseph’s master. She plotted by cunning to ensnare Joseph in her web of lust. Would the righteous seed be devoured by the spider? By faith, Joseph fled her seductive venom, and, in time, God raised Joseph up to sit at the right hand of the world’s most powerful king. The seed seemed to have triumphed.
Pharaoh and Moses
But as the decades turned to centuries, the Egyptians forgot the Hebrew who had saved them from the famine. A Pharaoh arose who thought himself a deity. He fancied himself the incarnate version of Horus, the falcon-headed god, and he represented the other nine gods. You know, the ones with the heads of baboons, hippos, frogs, crocs, and lionesses. He was the king sent by the beast gods. But these were all servants of the serpent, and because of this, they inspired Pharaoh, like a bird of prey, to swoop down and attempt to devour the children of the God-wrestler, Israel, in the waves of the Nile.
Yet, God saved a Hebrew boy from this ravenous beast through a makeshift ark. This boy was drawn out of the river that would have been his death. By God’s providential hand, this boy became a prince, then a shepherd in exile, and at last sent to tell the Pharaoh that he must relinquish his grip upon the promised seed. The godling hardened his satanic heart, and so God brought 10 battles down upon the land of Egypt, mocking all the demon gods and their funny beastly idol. Thus, Moses led God’s people out triumphant over the seed.
Giants and Joshua
At long last, the children of the promised seed had become a mighty host. As God brought them by Moses’ leadership to the land He had promised to Abram they seemed unstoppable. Until, they heard rumors of mighty giants. The Anakim dwelt there. Offering human sacrifice to their monstrous gods. This was the plan? To drive out men who were more like ogres, cave-trolls, and cyclops? The people would have despaired had not a man whose name meant Salvation (Joshua) led them in and scattered the giants.
Philistines and Samson
Would this be the time that the promised seed came forth to take His throne? Once more, our hopes are disappointed, as the people desert the covenant promises of their God, and give way to idols and fear of the other peoples’ idols. Most prominently, the Philistines, whose god was depicted as half man and half scaly, sea-monster. The Israelites suffered under the might of these Philistines, until once again, God raised up a mighty man of faith, Samson, to subdue these enemies. Samson’s last act was to destroy the temple of this fish god, along with thousands of these worshippers of Leviathan.
Saul and David
But this deliverance from the coils of the serpent led Israel not to seek their God for salvation. Rather, they selected a man from amongst them to be their king. This king’s heart was coiled up like a cobra, although he stood head and shoulders above them all. Saul trembled before the giant Goliath, who wore armor like the fish scales of the god he served. Saul hunted in shades of Sheol’s death for the words of life. Israel’s first real king sought for the dead amongst the living. The serpent schemed to poison the nation who had been so recently delivered from the Egyptians, Canaanites, and Philistines. The rot was within Israel.
But to stymie the serpents schemes, the Lord elected a teenage shepherd boy, to arise and rout the sanity of Saul, the Giants of Philistia, and the apathy of Israel. With a sling, and a harp, and a heart turned to the Living God, this man named Beloved, David along with his son Solomon, raised Israel to her greatest height. A glorious kingdom was won. A splendorous temple was built. God assures David that his throne would one day be the throne of an everlasting King. A king who would rule in justice and peace.
A Kingdom Split in Two
At this point it might seem like the dragon had been overthrown, thwarted, sent packing. But, as before, the tendrils of his kingdom creep back it. Cracking the kingdom of Israel into two. The older brother once more persecuted the younger. The Northern Kingdom, Israel, gave itself over to worshipping beasts in the form of golden calves. While the Southern Kingdom, Judah, fared only slightly better. Both kingdoms opened the door to the idols of the nations, and closed their ears to the razor sharp words of the Prophets.
The rivalry spoken of in the Garden only seemed to grow in scale. Now entire empires pitted themselves against the threat of a holy seed who would crush the beastliness of man’s sin. The Assyrians and Babylonians carried off the decimated people of God. The prophet Daniel put it in vivid picture for us. These pagan empires, with all their might, and treasure, and power, and glory, and cunning were like ravenous monsters rising from the sea. The Babylonian empire was like a Winged Lion; but after its century of devastation itself was devastated by another beast. Like a bear emerging from hibernation, ready to feast, the Persian empire arose. But it too was soon overthrown by the four-headed, winged leopard of Alexander’s Greek empire. But the great Alexander soon was swept away by the Eagle of the Roman Empire.
Throughout all this, the people of God diminished in glory and significance. The promises seemed obscured by the ravening power of these animalistic kingdoms. All the stories are in fact one singular story. The seed of the serpent continually fought agains the seed of the woman. No matter how good, mighty, glorious, or upright the people of the woman’s seed seemed to be, their heel, like Achilles, continually was struck with the venom of the beast. The boa constricted itself around the people of the promised seed.
See the thread. Hear the theme. Adam and Eve hearkened to the serpentine beast, and over and over mankind gave themselves over to such beastliness. Cain mauled his brother like an ox. Nimrod hunted his fellow man like a tiger. Ishmael kicked like a wild donkey. Esau prowled around like a bear. Potiphar’s wife spun her webs. Pharaoh acted like a falcon clutching its prey. The Canaanites worshipped their sea-monsters and minotaurs. God’s own people gave themselves over to worshipping the demons in whatever shape tickled their fancy, whether it the celestial bodies of sun, moon, and stars, or terrestrial in the bodies of lions, oxen, trees, or eagles. All of this because the serpent had enchanted mankind. From Eden until the Roman Empire the race of man, on the whole, showed himself to be dragon servants.
What it all points to
When you step back and consider all this, you see that the Christmas story is the story of mankind being captive to the monsters and ghouls and beasts. Man was under bondage to Satan’s tyranny at every turn. Yet God was not bound by this tyranny. His promised seed would soon be planted, and grow into a new Eden. The Lord raised up godly men at every turn to strive against the serpent, laboring to strike a death blow. Too often these heroes of the faith had their heels struck by the serpent, and some downfall befell them. The gloomy clouds of night really did surround mankind. But with the coming of Christ, death’s dark shadows were about to be put to flight. This is what the Christmas story invites us to see and believe. The darkness will be brought to an end. The dragon’s empire will be overthrown. The reign of beasts will end, that a new Adam, descended from Noah, and Abram, and David might exercise an eternal dominion. The poison of the serpent’s bite will be drawn from the wound by the healing hands of a child king born in Bethlehem.
Charge and Benediction
There are two ways of being human. The first is to heed the serpent’s lies and thus become a servant of the beast; this is how you become un-manned, you become like the beast you worship. The other is to trust entirely in God’s promise, specifically the promise we’ve traced today, that God sent a Seed, Jesus Christ, to become the fountainhead of a new humanity. By faith in Christ you become a true human, a true image of the Triune God. One way leads to everlasting death, the other to everlasting life. Christmas challenges us to orient our whole life around that reality.
Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Hebrews 13:20-21
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