And this is the word of the Lord.
Then the eyes of both Adam and Eve were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
And they sewed fig leaves together, and they made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
But the Lord God called to the man and said to him,
Where are you?
And he said,
I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.
He said,
Who told you that you were naked?
Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?
The man said,
The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.
And then the Lord God said to the woman,
What is this that you have done?
And the woman said,
The serpent deceived me, and I ate.
And the Lord God said to the serpent,
Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock,
and above all the beasts of the field.
On your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
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 is God's holy word.
Let's pray.
Father, we come today, all of us in different places emotionally,
different places and circumstances in our lives right now.
Some of us here or watching having lost a loved one.
Some of us facing losing people in our lives.
Some of us dealing with long-term disease.
Some of us dealing with the weight of emotional and mental strife.
Some of us with decisions that are coming this week that are difficult.
Some of us celebrating good news, recent news.
All of us from different places, Lord, you know every one of us.
You know what we need today.
So we pray now, Holy Spirit, living breath of God,
open our hearts to receive your word in exactly the way we need it.
Exactly the way you come to speak through it to us, each of us.
And we pray that now, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
We're in a five-week series looking at Genesis chapter 3.
So five weeks, one chapter, because Genesis 3 is so foundational and so important.
And Genesis 3 is all about what broke the world.
And the answer so far that we've seen is that we broke the world.
Humanity broke the world.
So we did not trust in the Lord.
God gave a command in the beginning of human history,
don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And it was a lack of trust that God is good, that God loves us,
that brought humanity to this breaking point here in the beginning.
And Milton, John Milton, in Paradise Lost, I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago,
he talks about how this scene, he described this scene,
where Eve takes from the tree the fruit and she bows before the fruit.
And C.S. Lewis commenting on that says,
in the beginning humanity bowed before a vegetable.
And that's what broke the world.
And it's a cheeky thing to say, but what he's saying there is that we as human beings always choose,
our hearts choose to worship creatures rather than the Creator.
We bow before vegetables.
We bow before anything in this world that God made.
And we turn things into God.
We flip the world upside down in that way.
And that is called sin.
So sin is what Genesis 3 is all about.
And there are people in our modern city, a city like Edinburgh,
that will come and say sin, it's just this puritanical, old traditionalist concept.
But sin is real.
And I think every single one of us knows that.
We feel that down in the bottom of our souls.
No matter what you might believe in today,
I think probably there's some sense at the bottom of your heart
where you wrestle with the sense of guilt that I am not who God made me to be.
And that's all that we mean by sin.
And so Adam and Eve, in this moment, you know, they light a match,
they set the world on fire.
They open the floodgates, the waters come pouring in, the world breaks.
If you pick up an old clock, you know it has lots of different gears in it.
And if one of the teeth on one of the gear wheels breaks,
it throws that entire gear wheel off its circuit.
And the whole clock stops.
And in the same way, the teeth, the image of God,
we, the gear that God made to be the pinnacle of His creation, humanity,
we broke.
And so with that, the whole world got messed up.
The whole clock got messed up.
And that's called sin.
And last time we were looking at verse 7,
we were looking at the same set of verses,
and we focused on verse 7 and 14 in particular,
and this concept of nakedness.
That nakedness is not just physical nakedness.
It's spiritual as well.
It's exposure.
It's that we know from the beginning of history that we are not who we should be.
We feel that guilt and shame.
And we looked at how the serpent was so crafty and deceiving us.
Verse 14.
And so last time we said,
because of our sin,
there is alienation in our lives in all sorts of ways.
We are alienated from ourselves.
We don't really know ourselves.
We're alienated from other people.
You know, Adam blamed Eve
and broke marriage in a way in that moment.
But today we come to learn that the greatest cost of sin
is our alienation from God.
The greatest cost is that we are separated.
We're alienated from God.
We hide when God shows up.
And that's what we read about here in this passage today.
Our greatest problem,
we hide from God.
And God's tender solution
is the seed.
So let's think about those two things.
Our great problem is that we hide from God.
God's tender solution
is what we learn here is called,
in verse 15,
the seed.
So first,
hiding from God.
If you look down at the passage with me,
in verse 8,
God shows up into the Garden of Eden
and it says here
that they, Adam and Eve,
they heard the sound of the Lord God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
That's how it's translated here.
Now there are two big interpretations
of this moment.
And it's okay to be on either side of this,
let me say up front.
The way it's translated here
that God came walking in the garden
in the cool of the day
is translating it
the way the King James Version did.
And the King James Version
translated the way
a very old translation did,
the Latin translation,
many, many centuries ago.
And it took
what is sort of a metaphor in Hebrew,
the cool of the day,
it literally says
the wind of the day,
and translated it
understanding that
it's talking about something
like the evening breeze,
the cool part of the day.
And so in the first interpretation
of this moment,
it says,
God walked into the garden
and you could hear His sound.
And He came in the evening breeze,
the cool of the day.
And you get the sense
that there's sort of
a gentleness about this.
There's a calmness about this.
God breezing in,
walking in in a gentle way.
The other interpretation
is almost the exact opposite.
Okay?
And it's because these words in Hebrew
can mean multiple things.
And so the other interpretation
is that when it says
God walked in the garden,
sometimes the word
to walk for God
is used in other parts
of the Old Testament
where God the judge
walks into the space,
the courtroom,
temple,
the courtroom,
temple,
garden,
perhaps.
And the word sound
is sometimes used
for those moments
to talk also about thunder.
And the literal translation
of the cool of the day
is,
there's a footnote
in your ESV Bible,
the wind of the day.
And wind has already been used
in Genesis 1
as a word,
a metaphor for the Holy Spirit.
And if you've read
much of the rest
of the Old Testament,
you might know that
the day,
the word the day,
is often used to describe
the day of judgment,
the day of justice.
So Zephaniah 2.2,
the day of the Lord,
the day of judgment.
And so some commentators,
especially now,
come and say,
actually what's happening here
is they heard
the thunder of God
coming in the day
of the Lord,
the wind of the day,
the spirit of God
coming in the day,
the day of judgment.
And so they hid themselves away.
Now let me say this.
There are gospel-believing folks
and good commentators
on both sides
of those interpretations.
And it's okay,
it's okay that we're not
totally sure which one it is
because the outcome
is exactly the same
no matter what way
you go with it.
And the outcome is this.
that just after that
when God says
to Adam and Eve,
when they're hiding,
they're shaking in their boots
in fear,
God says,
where are you?
Who told you
that you were naked?
That moment
is an interrogation,
a questioning,
a line of questioning
full of mercy.
No matter which way
you go with it,
whether God comes in thunder
or God comes gently,
when he says,
where are you,
that is a question
of mercy.
That is a question
where Adam and Eve
are immediately not getting
what they deserve
in the very beginning
of human history.
And let me show that to you.
In verse 14,
we looked at this
a couple weeks ago.
Verse 14,
when God curses the serpent,
is there an interrogation
in that moment?
When God turns to the serpent,
is there a line of questioning?
Does God say to the serpent,
where are you, serpent?
Where are you, Satan?
Not at all.
There's no questions.
Instead, God comes to the serpent
and says,
you shall eat the dust.
In other words,
he's saying,
there is no hope for you.
Redemption is closed off to you.
Death,
the only thing you can taste
is death.
And that means that
when he comes to Adam and Eve,
even if he comes in thunder,
when he says,
where are you,
he's giving them
an opportunity.
He's giving them
an opportunity
to come out
from behind the fig leaf,
the tree,
and to come clean
and to run.
He's coming.
This is what Moses
wants you to see
as he writes this.
He wants you to see
that when God comes
in this moment,
he's drawing
and he's wooing
and he's inviting
and he's saying,
come close.
Even in the midst of sin,
even in the midst
of deserved judgment,
real guilt,
this is God.
The questioning
is invitation.
It's drawing and wooing.
There's a very similar moment
in the next chapter,
chapter 4, verse 9,
where Cain murders
his brother Abel
and God comes to Cain
and says,
where is Abel,
your brother?
Just like he came
to Ab and Eve
and said,
where are you?
He comes to Cain
and says,
where is your brother?
Now, God knows
where Abel is.
God knows Abel is dead
and God knows
where Adam and Eve are.
Where are you?
He knows that they're
shaking in their boots
behind the tree over there.
He sees that, right?
And in the same way,
what is he asking Cain?
He's asking Cain
the same thing
he asked Adam and Eve.
Where are you?
Where are you is
what is going on
in your heart?
Will you not come out
and come to me
and tell me
what has happened?
And I'm ready.
I'm ready to deal with this.
I'm ready to receive you
if you would just come out
and come and meet with me.
Guilt
and shame
is present
in every one of our hearts.
We all feel that.
And God is also present
in every one of our lives.
We learn in the New Testament
God is not far
from every one of us.
In him we live
and we move
and we have our being.
He is always revealing himself
to us.
Always.
And because of guilt
and shame,
because of our sin,
our sin drives us
into more sin.
Our sin drives us
to run
and to hide
from God
over and over
and over again.
And to get behind
the fig leaves
and the trees
and never come out
and say
to the Lord
when he says,
where are you?
What's going on
in your heart?
And he's drawing you
and he's wooing you
and he's inviting you.
The human being,
our hearts,
we run from tree
to tree to tree,
fig leaf to fig leaf
to fig leaf,
hiding
and staying away from him.
And we want him.
Do you know that?
That the deep truth
about our souls
is that you want God.
You want to be with him.
You want to know him.
And yet at the same time,
your heart wants
to suppress him
and push him down
in unrighteousness.
We are Jonah,
you know,
running to Tarshish
every time God
shows up in our lives.
And here in verse 8,
God shows up
to Adam and Eve
and they go
and they get behind
the tree
and he longs
for them to come out
and to meet with him.
Parents in the room,
you parents in the room,
or if you've ever
worked with children
or if you've ever
been a kid.
See, this is an
all-inclusive illustration.
I think I can capture
just about everybody.
If you've ever
worked with children,
if you've been a parent,
if you've been a child,
you know that children
feel guilt and shame
faster, quicker,
a little more.
They're smitten
and struck by it
quicker than we
hard-hearted adults
often are.
Our consciences
get seared
over the years
and we don't feel
guilt quite as quick
as kids do.
And so what do kids
do when they steal,
they lie,
they hit their sibling,
they first,
they run and they
hide quite often
and then they do what?
Then when they're
exposed,
they're naked,
that sin is naked,
they blame shift
and, you know,
he made me do it,
she did it.
And when a good parent,
what does a good parent,
a good teacher,
a good leader,
what do they do?
What do mom and dad
want?
Mom and dad,
mom and dad
do not want
to punish.
You know,
there's no desire.
I don't enjoy punishment.
None of us
want punishment.
Instead,
what we want is
we want them
to come out
and to say,
I lied,
I cheated,
I stole.
And in tears,
to put their heads
into the shoulder
of dad,
right?
For dad to get
down on his knees,
open arms,
and in tears
to have the little
one say,
I lied.
And you say what?
You say,
come here.
And you put
a tearful shoulder
on,
a head on the shoulder
and you say,
we will fix this,
we will reconcile,
we will bring justice,
but I want you to know
that I do not love you less
because of the bad
things you do.
Right?
And you got to understand
that in the beginning
of human history,
when we broke the world,
God the Father
came in thunder,
perhaps,
yeah,
as a judge,
yes.
Guilty?
Do we have guilt?
Yes, we do.
We feel that.
But he came into the garden,
he got on his knee
and he said,
where are you?
Come out from hiding,
put your tearful head
on my shoulder
and I will bring you home.
That's what's happening here
in the beginning
of world history.
Now friends,
you can hide
from yourself,
the truth about yourself
from yourself,
you can hide
from each other,
but you can't hide
from God.
And when we try
to hide from God,
the truth about
what's going on
in our lives,
we hide it from God.
Have you ever played
hide and go seek
with a toddler?
You know,
they can be standing
in the middle
of the living room
and you say,
now you go hide
and what do they do?
They put their hands,
if you're only listening
to this,
I just put my hands
on my eyes.
They put their hands
on their eyes
as if they've hidden
because they think,
if you can't,
if I can't see you,
you can't see me.
And if I think,
and my heart says,
if I can't see God
right now,
God can't see me.
And we hide from God
and it doesn't work
and it doesn't need
to work
because God
is on his knee
with open arms
saying,
come home,
come back to me.
A tender father
is the God
that made you.
So how can you hide?
Let me run through
these really quickly
and we have to move on.
Number one,
we learn here
that you can hide
from God today
by convincing yourself
that there is no such thing
as sin at all.
So here,
we learn,
well,
in the next passage,
God comes to Cain
after he murders
his brother
and says,
where are you,
where's your brother?
And Cain says,
am I my brother's keeper?
And then,
I've come from
the southern U.S.
and in the southern U.S.,
we have a way of saying that.
We say,
I ain't done nothing.
That's what he's saying.
And he's saying,
look,
there's nothing wrong with me.
I am morally upright.
Or perhaps even
you intellectually,
you use your brain,
to try to convince your heart
that there's no such thing
as sin at all.
That it's just a construct.
A traditionalist idea.
A puritanical idea.
That there is no such thing
as sin.
And yet,
your heart,
the heart knows
what the heart knows.
The heart knows
that that is not true.
That sin is the concept
that makes most sense
of this world,
in fact.
And so you can,
modern person,
you can be hiding
from God
by trying to tell yourself
by way of
quote-unquote
science
that there's no such thing
as sin.
Or you can hide
from God
secondly,
by doing what Adam
does here
in verse 11,
by blame shifting.
And so,
God comes to Adam
and says,
where are you?
Who told you
that you were naked?
And Adam says,
she did it.
She gave it to me.
It's not my fault.
But it's not really,
we looked at this
a couple weeks ago,
but it's not really
a blame shift at Eve.
Instead,
what does he say?
The woman you made
made me do it.
And you see who
he's actually blaming there?
You can hide from God
by actually turning things around
and blaming God.
That's what Adam does.
The woman you made
made me do it.
And if you wouldn't
have created me like this,
if you wouldn't have
given me these circumstances,
you can hide from God
by blame shifting
and anger
at God himself.
And God is saying
in this moment,
all he's saying
in these questions
to Adam and to every single
one of us today is,
where are you?
Where is your heart?
Will you come out
and just,
what does he want?
He wants confession of sin,
sorrow and tears,
repentance,
and to put your tearful
head in his shoulder
and to come home again.
That's all.
That's all God's
looking for here.
Time does not allow us
to explore all the ways
that we can be hiding
from God today.
But if you'll let me,
I just want to,
and you have to let me,
right?
But I'll just rattle off
a few more
that may be true
of us right now.
Some of us have
old sins,
sins from our past,
where we are saying
right now in our hearts,
I could never be forgiven
for that.
I am too far gone.
And that is hiding
from God in regret.
You can hide from God
in regret,
never coming to him
because you feel like
you're too far gone.
And some of us
are hiding,
instead of that,
we're hiding
in new sins,
new patterns of sin
that we're currently
walking in.
And we're like
toddlers covering our eyes
pretending that God
doesn't know that.
And we're not,
we're hiding behind trees
not yet willing
to come out
and confess
in tears
over what we're up to
right now in our lives.
And some of us
might be hiding
and I think this is
probably the most
dangerous place to be
hiding in distraction,
hiding in,
from God
in the normal,
normalcy of life,
just getting on with it
and therefore
never actually
coming to the Lord,
never taking
Christianity seriously,
never taking the claim
that your heart,
that check engine light
is on in your heart
and you say,
I know there's
something wrong,
but you're never willing
to take the step
of coming to the Lord,
hiding by normalcy,
hiding by distraction.
And some of us
maybe are struggling
with hiding
in a fear of vulnerability,
hiding inside stoicism
where you're not willing
to let your heart
be as broken
as it should be
over your sins.
And so you're hiding
from being vulnerable.
You know that you would
have to become like Isaiah
in Isaiah 6
when he says,
before the Lord,
woe is me,
I am a person
of unclean lips.
And you're afraid
of vulnerability,
hiding in stoicism
from the Lord.
Or you could be hiding
a fear of commitment.
What would this cost me?
This is what Simon
was preaching about
last week.
You could be hiding
from God,
hiding from God
in philosophy,
thinking,
if I can't work out
every jot and tittle
of the claims
of Christianity
and make sure I know
beyond all shadow
of a doubt
I'm not willing
to step towards God
before the Lord,
hiding in philosophy.
You can be hiding
today as a Christian
in your doctrine,
you can know
a lot about God
but never come to Him,
never come to Him
in prayer.
Right?
And there's a wonderful
moment in Flannery O'Connor,
one of her stories,
about a character
named Hazel Motes.
And she writes
this about him.
He learned that
the best way
to stay away
from Jesus
was just to avoid sin.
You can be hiding
within your decency
and your goodness
and your religion
but let me say
that this applies
not only to everybody
in this room
that's not standing
on the platform
but to every person
who comes and stands
right here too.
And, you know,
a good preacher
can hide behind
a microphone.
A talented speaker
can hide behind
a microphone
and be an absentee dad,
an absentee husband,
can be a prayerless minister,
a thousand ways
we could be hiding
from the Lord today.
And I just want to say
where are you?
God is saying to you
right now on his knee
where are you?
Come home.
Come and confess your sins
and repent
and reconcile
and God is ready
to receive you.
God is speaking
to you today.
He's a tender father.
Now,
what does God do here
secondly and finally?
Look,
our great problem
is we hide from God.
The great solution
is Genesis 3.15.
Finally,
and here's what happens.
We learn here
about the seed.
So in verse 14,
the curse of the serpent
is total.
There is no hope
for Satan.
But when you come
to verse 15,
notice that
what God says,
I will put enmity
between the offspring
of the woman
and the offspring
of the serpent.
Notice that
that is not
a direct curse
aimed at Adam and Eve
or humanity.
Not at all.
What is going on here?
Some modern commentators
since the 19th century
have come to this moment
and said,
this is an ancient mythology
that helps explain
or simply gives a myth
for the reasons
why human beings
hate snakes.
Why snakes and humans
have never done well together.
And look,
that is in the commentary
sometimes.
And let me say
that that is so superficial,
so facile,
so silly
of an interpretation.
And that is the kind
of interpretation
you come to
when you deny
that God is the ultimate
author of scripture.
You have to say
something like that.
But that is not at all
what we get here.
Instead,
what does God do?
Understand that
when God comes to Adam and Eve
and Adam and Eve
hide from God,
they are in that moment
on team serpent.
They are hiding from God.
They refuse to come out.
They are fighting
for team serpent.
They are on team devil.
And they never change that
in that moment.
Not at all.
And what does God do
in verse 15?
It's God who then comes
and says,
I, God,
will put enmity
between you and the serpent.
In other words,
it's saying that
God is the one
who comes and drives
the wedge
between evil and humanity.
God is the one
who comes and says,
you refuse to come to me
so I will come
and save you.
I will come and rescue you
despite yourself.
I will get you off
team serpent
despite your desires.
And so here's how
he does it.
He says,
I,
will put enmity
between the seed
of the woman
and the seed
of the serpent.
The seed
of the woman
will crush,
bruise the head
of the serpent
and the serpent
shall bruise the heel
of the offspring
of the woman.
Now,
Sinclair Ferguson
says that
the rest of the Old Testament
is a footnote
to Genesis 315.
And that's exactly right.
You see,
what we call here,
this is called,
often called seed theology
and the reason for that
is the word offspring here
is literally the Hebrew word
seed.
And in this promise,
the seed of the woman
will come and crush
the seed of the serpent
is a,
a little,
a literal
and metaphorical seed
in the sense that
in the very promise
of Genesis 315,
you have the seed
that will unfold
the rest of the story
of the Bible.
And at the same time,
you have seed
being referred to
in a singular masculine noun,
a boy,
a male son,
a child.
That's what's being
talked about here.
You know that,
I'm told this
by the people
who know these things,
that a seed
contains a plant
already fully encased
within it.
So the DNA
of an entire oak tree
is already contained
in the seed
when it's sown.
And so all that needs
to happen
is water and soil
and it will bud up
into the full tree.
And in this moment,
Genesis 315,
you have the seed
of the entire story
of the Bible
and you have the seed
at the very same time
of redemption itself.
All encased
in this one word,
seed.
It's right here.
And what does it say?
And Jonathan Gibson
points this out.
He says this,
number one,
let me give you
six things it says
in 90 seconds.
Number one,
this is what we learn.
Whoever this offspring
is,
this seed is,
he would be a son
because the word offspring,
the offspring of Eve
is used in the singular
masculine,
a child.
And as the seed
begins to unfold
this idea,
we come to places
like Isaiah 714
that says,
the virgin shall conceive
and bear a son.
We learn that the seed
is unfolding there.
Number two,
there is no mention
of a father here,
not at all.
In an age
where genealogies
were always written
according to the male,
the male heir,
the men.
Here,
we're being told
something very uncommon
in the ancient Near East.
Look for mothers
and their sons.
Read the Bible
with an eye
to mothers
and their sons.
And so when you flip
to Matthew chapter one,
very unusual
for the Greco-Roman culture.
In Matthew chapter one,
there's a genealogy
and there are five women,
five mothers in it.
Very unusual.
Number three,
we learn whoever
this young man is,
this boy,
this child,
he would represent many
when he came.
How do we know that?
Because this word seed
is like the word fish.
All right?
So in English,
fish is both singular
and plural
at the same time.
And in Hebrew,
the word seed
is singular and plural
at the same time.
So when you look
at a fishbowl,
there might be one fish
and you say,
there's a fish.
And you look at a fishbowl
and there's ten
and you say,
there are the fish.
Singular,
but plural.
And the word seed
is like that.
And so in this,
the seed is also
the offspring,
the seed of the seed,
the many.
That whoever this one is
would also represent many.
Number four,
he will be a warrior.
So notice the order.
It says,
he will come and crush
the head of the serpent
while the serpent
bruises his heel.
And you see the order of that.
The order of that's so important.
Whoever this child is,
he will come on the hunt
to crush the serpent.
He will be hunting.
And number six,
something about us.
And that's this.
In the ancient Near East,
sorry,
I should say,
A and E.
Adam and Eve
is what I meant to say.
Adam and Eve,
as soon as they deserve judgment,
as soon as we see them
on Team Satan,
God comes in
with Genesis 3.15
and drives the wedge,
plants the promise.
And this is called
the Proto-Evangelion,
the first gospel.
That's just a Greek
for saying first gospel.
And let me say two things to you.
Number one,
if you want to read the Bible rightly,
if you want to read the Bible
for all it's worth,
you've got to see
Genesis 3.15
for all it's worth.
Here we have
the opening
of the full story,
the flower of redemption
in this very moment.
But number two,
more importantly,
if you today come
as we all do
in guilt and shame,
covering your eyes
like a toddler from God,
hiding from God
in any way,
shape, or form,
you've got to look here
and see that
in Genesis 2.17
God said,
if you eat of the tree
of the knowledge
of good and evil,
you shall die, die.
That's what it says in Hebrew.
And as one commentator puts it,
Adam and Eve
in this moment
live three times,
four times,
ten times as long
as any of us
could ever imagine.
They don't get
what they deserve.
They get hope.
They get promise.
They get a tender father
inviting them home.
We have never gotten
what we deserve.
Never, none of us.
If you're breathing today,
we've never gotten
what we deserve.
And still even more,
we have a tender father
coming today
and saying,
come home
through the seed
of the woman.
Who is the seed?
Who is the seed
of the woman?
In the second century,
Justin Martyr
and Irenaeus,
two of the early church fathers,
they said that
this promise
is the promise,
the promise of Eve
and her boy
is the promise
fulfilled
in Mary
and her boy.
And you can go
to places
like Galatians 4.4
where Paul says,
when the fullness
of time had come,
God sent his son
born of woman.
What is Paul quoting
from?
Genesis 3.15,
the son
born of woman.
And I have lists here
of passages
from the New Testament
speaking of the one
born of woman.
And the moment
that Jesus Christ
hung on the cross,
Jesus Christ suffered
at the hand
of an ancient foe,
the serpent.
The serpent came
and bit his heel.
The poison ran
through his body.
He bore our sin,
our injustice,
our shame,
our guilt
in that moment.
And it crushed him.
But you've got to understand
that this is saying
at the very same time
the son of God came,
Jesus Christ,
and in that moment
the shock,
the scandal of the gospel
is that he was stomping
upon the head
of the serpent.
All evil.
He came on the hunt.
He first came on the hunt
for the serpent
and secondly,
in that moment
he came on the hunt
seeking you,
drawing you,
come out from hiding,
come and put your
teary eyes
in the shoulder
of the father
through the son
by the spirit
this morning.
The first Adam
blamed his wife
and he blamed God.
The second Adam
took the blame.
And so,
as we close,
don't forget
that at the moment
of the cross
there was Mother Mary.
Mary,
sometimes as Protestants
we forget.
There was Mother Mary
standing there
looking up
at her son.
There she was.
Mary,
the new Eve
with her eyes
gazing upon her son
and her savior,
Jesus Christ
hanging upon the cross.
The seed of the woman
right there
in that moment.
And that means
that just like Mary
looked at him today,
you've got to look at him.
Don't hide.
Look, friends,
whatever's going on,
do not hide your heart
from God today.
He's telling you
by the power
of the cross
come out
from behind that tree.
Be repentant,
tearfully repentant.
Put your head
in the shoulder
of the Father
through the power
of the Son
and come home.
Come home today
as we come to the table
of our Lord.
Let's pray.
Father,
we thank you
for the proto-euangelion,
the first gospel.
and we ask,
Lord,
that you would bring
sinners home today.
We thank you
for a tender Father,
a Father full of mercy
and so we ask,
Lord,
we ask,
Lord,
right now
that you would show up
and give us your mercy
as we come to the table.
We pray this
in Jesus' name.
Amen.