He Will Crush The Serpent's Head

Vispera and Adan were two young kids playing together in the park. It was a beautiful park with trails, lush grass, verdant trees, and plenty of wildlife. Vispera and Adan's father let them wander off on their own to explore.

While they were by themselves, a stranger approached Vispera and Adan. He was very sharp looking and spoke eloquently, except for a slight lisp. He was very pleasant. He introduced himself as Mr. Vibora. He told the kids he worked for a candy company. He was going through the park giving free samples of chocolate covered fruit candies to all the kids. They were the first ones he had seen in the park.

Vispera and Adan whispered together. They knew they shouldn't be talking to a stranger. And they especially shouldn't be accepting candy from him. But it was too enticing. They accepted the chocolate candy and quickly shoved it into their mouths.

They were still chewing when their father called out to them, trying to find them in the park. But they hid from him. The candy was delicious. But their guilt was devastating.

When their father found them, he could see the guilt written on their faces. Having chocolate lips made it easy, too. He could see they were uncomfortable. They were holding their bellies. They began complaining about stomach cramps. He felt their foreheads. They each had a fever. He felt their hands. They were clammy.

He calmly asked them, "What did you do?" But he was a parent. He knew what they had done. They told him everything about Mr. Vibora and the chocolate candies. The dad figured out that the stranger had laced the candies with some kind of poison.

The father quickly hunted down Mr. Vibora, and like a good, protective father, he grabbed him by his suitcoat, lifted him off the ground, and pinned him to a tree. You could see the fear flicker in Mr. Vibora's eyes.

The father's voice boomed with righteous anger, "I know what you did to my children. I'm a physician. I'll save their lives. But your life is forfeit. I promise you that! I'm not going to do anything to you now. I'm going to take my children out of the park to counteract the poison you gave them."

"But when my oldest son, their older brother gets home from his military service overseas, he'll be coming for you. I guarantee that. When he gets home, he'll find you. I have no qualms telling you confidently, he will crush your head."

That's my modern retelling of Adam, Eve, and Satan, or in Spanish, Adan, Vispera, and Vibora for viper.

The story begins in a park, in a garden -- the Garden of Eden. The Father of creation, God Almighty discovers what the lisping serpent had done to his children. So, he breaks into the world and announces the very first gospel promise. Without this promise there would be no Lent and no Easter. There would only be death and damnation. But the seeds of our salvation were first planted in the Garden of Eden. The Father makes the promise that his older, only-begotten Son will come one day to crush the serpent's head. Those seeds of salvation begin to blossom in the arid desert. Those seeds bloom on the rocky hill of Golgotha. They bear fruit as the sun rises upon the dark grave on Easter Sunday.

This promise completely reverses what had just taken place. Satan had tainted his words with the poison of unbelief by tempting Adam and Eve to sin. The unbelief is within his words, "Did God really say" (Genesis 3:1)? The children no longer believed their heavenly Father's words. They ate the forbidden fruit. The poison of the forbidden fruit didn't just infect Adam and Eve. It affected their billions of children throughout the ages.

That's what St. Paul means when he writes to the Romans, "Just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, so also death spread to all people because all sinned" (Romans 5:12). All of humanity is born in Adam's sin. That's why we call our sinful nature our "Old Adam." Because of Adam's sin, all people are sinners. They have inherited their first father's sin. Because of Adam's sin, all will receive God's temporal and eternal judgment upon sin. All people became liable to physical death, as well as eternal death.

The poison was effective. The children didn't turn to God for mercy. They didn't look to him for a second chance. They ran for cover and tried to hide from God.

The Devil's food produced hostility within them. In other words, the opposite of peace. The man said, "The woman you gave to be with me -- she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it." The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate" (Genesis 3:12-13). They shook their fists at each other. They shook their fists at Satan. They even shook their fists at God. They were quick to blame God for their circumstances. They were willing to throw others under the bus if it would save their own skin. This ended up costing the skin of innocent animals to cover their nakedness. "The Lord God made clothing of animal skins for Adam and for his wife and clothed them" (Genesis 3:21).

What had seemed like such an inviting friendliness from Satan was now unmasked as a malicious trick to destroy them. In great irony they had become unwitting allies of this serpent who hated them and wanted them doomed like himself. Inside and out, they now felt the permeating, damning hatred that a holy God has for what they had become.

Can being enemies ever be a good thing? Normally my answer would be "No." We teach our children it's not good to not fight with other people. We tell our kids, "Say you're sorry," and, "Be nice and make up with each other."

But in the case of humanity and the Devil, being enemies isn't a bad thing ... it's a good thing, a God thing, a gift.

God announced a reversal of who was whose enemies. Speaking to the Devil, God said, "I will put hostility between you and the woman" (Genesis 3:15). God would change things. The woman would not be an ally to the Devil anymore. God would create hostility between her and the Devil. Instead of being allies with the Devil and being hostile toward God, the Father took action to claim Adam and Eve back as his children.

This action of God meant that humanity and God would have to be reconciled to each other. God would have to reestablish peace between sinful humans and a holy God. He would make his sinful children his holy friends again. You see, being an enemy of Satan means being a friend of God. This announcement of friendship was not offered to the woman only, but also to her husband and to all their descendants -- that means you and me. God says to the snake, "I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed" (Genesis 3:15).

God does not urge her to do anything to affect the change in relationships. God will do it. He says, "I will put hostility between you and the woman." God administers the antidote of forgiveness to save the life of man and woman and the lives of every man and woman who follow them. The antidote God administers is forgiveness in the promised Savior.

But who would this promised Savior be? We know him as Jesus -- whose very name means, "One who saves" (Luke 1:21). Jesus, the promised Savior, would be the offspring of Eve to overcome all the offspring of the Evil One. Jesus, the eldest Son of the Father and the older brother of Adam and Eve, would take on human flesh in defense of humanity, the people he chose to save as his own.

God says to the serpent, "He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel." Satan who appears so lively upon the tree in the Garden of Eden would be crushed and almost lifeless under the heel of Christ on Golgotha's hill. The only One in the universe powerful enough to do that is God himself. So, the promised Savior would also have to be God. But since God is spirit, he would need a human foot to be struck, and also a human foot for the crushing. God needed feet ... so in his incarnation, the Son of God took on the flesh and bones, the hands, head, and feet of a Man. True man and true God. The promised Savior would be both.

There is no question that Jesus would be able to crush Satan. God's Son is always more powerful than a created angel.

In the process of crushing the serpent and saving humanity, the promised Savior would have to suffer. The serpent would strike his heel. As true man, Jesus would step into our shoes. He would be our substitute. He would take on himself the blame for all sin from the very beginning in that first garden to this very day. He would let the poison of sin infect him from the serpent's fangs sinking deep into his perfect heel. As true God, Jesus is too large and too powerfully innocent for death to keep its hold on him. Through the poison of sin, with the wrath of God the Father, and the willing obedience of the Son, Jesus breathed his last on the cross.

All seemed dark and hopeless. The Ancient Serpent had struck. It seemed as if all was lost.

Until the Son of God breathed again on Sunday morning. Three days of Sabbath rest in the grave was all that was needed to defeat sin, death, and the Devil -- the unholy Trinity. Jesus had crushed the serpent's head. He had defeated death. He had paid for sin. He had won.

Now Jesus' victory over death is our victory over death. St. Paul explains, "Just as one trespass led to a verdict of condemnation for all people, so also one righteous verdict led to life-giving justification for all people. For just as through the disobedience of one man the many became sinners, so also through the obedience of one man the many will become righteous" (Romans 5:18-19). Jesus is the second Adam who undoes everything the first Adam did.

Just as we are credited with Adam's sin, we are also credited with the second Adam's righteousness. These two verses from Romans 5 are a beautiful summary of God's plan of salvation. Adam's sin of eating the forbidden fruit plunged all of creation -- mankind, the animal kingdom, and even nature -- into sin and death. Jesus' act of righteousness of suffering and dying for the sins of Adam's children has brought salvation to mankind. One action by one man (Adam) was countered by one action by one man (Jesus), which had results for all people, who number in the billions.

Jesus broke death's grip not just as God but also as a man. Now, since he is a man like us, he shares his victory from death -- his success in coming back to life -- with you and me and makes it our success. Jesus once said, "Because I live, you also will live" (John 14:19). Death has no more of a grip on people who trust in Jesus than death has on Jesus himself.

God says, "I will put hostility between you and the woman." With these words, Adam and Eve were forgiven by God, reconciled to him, and made God's eternal friends and at the same time Satan's everlasting enemies. God intervened and repaired what was broken. He counteracted the poison from the serpent with the fruit from the Tree of Life, which is Christ's cross. So great is God's love for humanity. So great is his love for you. Jesus fulfilled his Father's promise to send his Son to crush the serpent's head. Amen.