Dennis Tuuri

# Genesis 3:14-15 Sermon Transcript
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Genesis the 3rd chapter. I’m going to read all 20 verses although we’re going to focus on verses 14 and 15. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” And the serpent said unto the woman, “You shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, “Where art thou? Where art thou?” And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee, that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest me with me? She gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. 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. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Let us pray. Father, we pray that your Holy Spirit would do his work now and illuminate this text for understanding. We thank you, Lord God, that you have promised us that this word is written upon our hearts by that Spirit who comes to teach us things of the Savior here pronounced and proclaimed at the very beginning of history his salvific work.

Help us then, Father, to understand this text that we might apply it in our lives and most of all that we might praise you for it. In Christ’s name we ask. Amen.

Please be seated. Yes. The children may be dismissed to go to their nursery—young ones, three and under, I believe.

I am on a list serve. I think that’s what they call it. Some fellas, including Jim B. Jordan and some others, send out regularly emails to one another and I’m on that group. So you post things to it and everybody gets it who is on this list. And right now, I have about 500 unsorted messages in the inbox for that particular list serve that I haven’t read. But one of the threads, a series of email messages, caught my attention this last week or two because the word “yahoo” and Jim Jordan was in the title and I wondered if it might not be what I thought it was. And indeed it was.

Several years ago at our family camp, Jim B. Jordan preached through the book of Romans for us. And those of you who were there will remember that at one point he was talking about what the gospel is. And he said the gospel is not the message of justification by faith. That was in the Old Testament. The coming of the Savior meant a change in the world. It meant that all the bad things going on were going to be put to an end now and a new creation was being ushered forth through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so he said the gospel message is “yahoo.” Essentially, it is good news because Christ reigns from the throne and we should rejoice in that. And he let out an earsplitting yahoo.

So on this particular thread, Jim has now made those tapes from our family camp available for sale through his ministry and one of the fellas had been reading—listening to his tapes as he was walking down the road—and was now threatening a lawsuit because when Jim yelled “yahoo,” he almost fell over and hurt himself supposedly.

Now just kidding around, of course. Well, I bring all this up because this is a yahoo text for us. This is a text of great joy, of great rejoicing, that we should say at least in our hearts if not with our mouths. Yahoo to the Lord Jesus Christ for what he accomplishes.

We’ve come now to the last sermon I’ll give on this particular section of the book of Genesis. This section dealing with God’s poetic justice meted out to the serpent, to the woman, and to the man. And this kind of puts it all together in context. So what we want to talk about today—my sermon is going to be on the antithesis, or we could say it’s on the warfare between the two seeds. The two seed warfare or the antithesis.

Now a little bit of introduction to that term. There was a guy I told Jeff Con at the ball park Friday night that I was going to talk on Hegelian dialectical materialism in ninety degree heat on Sunday and keep all of your attention. We’ll see how it goes.

Hegel was a guy, a philosopher. He talked about an antithesis. This is a hundred years or so ago, but what he meant by it is not what we want to talk about today. So I want to explain it a little bit. Hegel kind of bought into this idea that there’s this antithesis in the created order that stems from all eternity. And it’s forever. And what happens is a thesis gets put forward—an idea, a mode of being, actually—and then an antithesis rises up to it and both are partially true.

He said the end result of this thesis and then an antithesis is synthesis, bringing together two different views, both of which have an element of truth. So to Hegel, the antithesis is partly true and partly false, just like the thesis. Okay? And what we want to do is move through these things to synthesis. That’s not what I’m talking about. That is radically unchristian, as I shall talk about in just a minute.

And some men, particularly Dutch theologians, saw the anti-Christian nature of this and began to use the term antithesis in the right way. Now I’m going to talk about the antithesis. It’s a new term for the church in the last 100 or so years. But the basic truth of this goes back to the early church fathers. Augustine wrote about the city of God versus the city of man—the tension, the warfare between the two seeds.

It’s not a new concept. It’s just a new term, but it’s a good term. What we’re going to say here is that from this text—God’s sentence on the serpent—God has built in an antithesis, a hatred between the two seeds. Okay? Now, it’s not that both are partly true. It’s that one is right and one is wrong. One is good, one is evil. One group of men submit to God and his rule and the other reject God and his rule.

Two views of the world, two teams warring on the face of history. Eschatology then—the fact that one side’s going to lose and has lost definitively in Jesus Christ—is the framework for all of history. History has to be understood in light of what we’re talking about here in this text: that God has said there’ll be perpetual warfare between the two seeds, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

Okay? That’s what your life is about. When you go out tomorrow, you go out to a world that has an antithesis now judicially placed in it between the two humanities, Christians and non-Christians. That’s what we’re going to talk about today—the antithesis.

Not Hegel’s antithesis. God’s antithesis. Where the antithesis is not eternal. That’s the first point I want to make.

**First point I want to make is the antithesis demonstrates God’s absolute sovereignty over both serpents.**

Now look at the scene here. The text tells us that God is going to put this antithesis, this hatred or enmity between the two serpents. Now look at the way it reads. Look at verses 14 and 15. We’re talking about a creature here. Yes, it may be a dragon. Might have been a big snake. I don’t know what form it took. Could have been a dragon, really could have been. I don’t know though for sure. But it was a creature. It was an animal. We know that because God says, “Because you did this, you are cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field.” See, he’s in a group of creatures. The horses, the bugs, the birds—it’s in that group. See, this serpent is a real creature. And God says that in terms of this antithesis, he has sovereignty over snakes. And to this day, 6,000 years later, snakes and women don’t get along.

And to this day, 6,000 years later, snakes crawl on the ground. Might have been a dragon at first, but it crawls on the ground now is what he says is going to happen to it. He says, “On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.” Now God is sovereign over that serpent.

But recognize this. When we began this series talking about the serpent, we said that the New Testament clearly identifies this serpent with Satan, the devil. Okay? So this serpent is being used by another serpent. God is sovereign over both serpents. In this scene, just like in scene two of this narrative where Adam got his wife, everybody’s passive. Well, in this scene when God pronounces judgment, everybody’s passive. Nobody’s talking now. Just God. Man is passive. He’s overruled by the sovereignty of God. The serpent is passive. God is sovereign. And the devil Satan inhabiting this creature is also passive, dominated completely and definitively by God.

Now, it may seem like an obvious point, but it’s a real important point, don’t you think?

Now the text tells us that it’s not just snakes. “On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between that serpent and that woman, that snake and Eve. And I’ll put enmity between thy seed”—here the word is plural—”all the ones that come forth from that serpent, all snakes, and the woman’s seed, all men. There’ll be warfare between it. It shall bruise thy head. Thou shalt bruise his head.” Notice the change now. It’s singular. You see the seed of the woman, singular. As the text moves to conclusion of the announcement to the serpent, the seed of the woman, singular, will crush the head of the serpent himself, identified in this text.

So this text talks about snakes. It talks about men, and we’ll see that in just a minute, who follow one serpent or the other. And it talks about the devil and the Lord Jesus Christ. And God has no problem dealing with the devil in this text. Do you notice there’s no struggle going on between God and Satan here? Satan is speechless. He is sitting there receiving whatever God gives him.

Now I know this is obvious stuff to many of us, but boy, we need to remind ourselves of this. We can so often think that what this antithesis is all about is you’ve got this warfare going on between Christ and the devil. And somehow it’s taken 6,000 years for Christ to get a little upper hand on what that devil is doing. That is not the message, folks.

The message is Jesus, God, who comes here to the serpent, puts him right down. If you think of a hand arm wrestling analogy, there’s no contest, okay? He is absolutely sovereign over the snake, of course, but also over the greater serpent, Satan. And what he says is that in that sovereignty, he’s going to manifest the victory through the seed of the woman. The very people that the serpent had tried to enlist in his battle, Satan, against God. God was now going to take those very people and from that line of the woman, ultimately the virgin birth of Mary, he was going to bring forward the singular seed that would crush the head of the serpent.

But it’s not as if he couldn’t have done it immediately. God decided in his wisdom and omniscience to have this process go on the way it does. But don’t think that it’s a struggle.

**The second point we want to make: First point is that in this antithesis, God is absolutely sovereign over both serpents. The second point is that the antithesis is not in eternity like Hegel said it was. This is real important.**

We don’t believe in the yin and the yang, the good force and the bad force, the dark side and the light side and Star Wars terminology, whatever the words they use. See, that says that in the universe there’s built-in these principles. This antithesis goes throughout eternity. But God, when he made everything, said it was all very good.

The antithesis is not some kind of metaphysical essence. It’s not some sort of essence built into the universe. The antithesis is ethical. Man and creature, the creature of the serpent and the angelic being of Satan and man ethically rebel against God. That’s what the antithesis is all about—between those that ethically rebel and those who ethically submit. So this is not, please, as I said, don’t think that ultimately it’s tough for Jesus to conquer Satan. It is not a hard thing. Okay? It’s not as if there’s a big struggle going on.

The antithesis is not in eternity. It’s ethical. It’s real important. It’s also important to notice that the antithesis also has to do with knowledge. How we understand things is an ethical fact. We either submit to true truth, to the truth of whatever is around us as God defines it in this word, or we suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. That’s talking about knowledge, intellect.

So the antithesis that’s built in between the two kinds of people, between the two seeds, is not ultimately in eternity. It’s going to be resolved, and it’s an antithesis that is ethical—has to do with one’s actions, submission or disobedience to God—and it’s an antithesis that is intellectual. What you think about things, as your mind is transformed by the word of God, is completely different than what you thought about things before you were a Christian, or it should be. And it is completely different with people that are not Christians. Every bit of knowledge they have, they want to deny the truth of God in that knowledge.

So this warfare is intellectual. See, the early church fathers said that spiritual warfare is against the philosophies of the day that are spun by people that weren’t Christians, or are not Christians.

Now I’m talking about people. I do this. You might think I made a little jump here to talk about the two seeds relative to humans. But let me read you a few verses here.

Psalm 72:9: “Those who dwell in the wilderness will bow before him, and his enemies will lick the dust.” Talking about people licking dust, the curse upon the serpent and his seed. Another verse, Isaiah 49:23: “Kings shall be your foster fathers and their queens your nursing mothers. They shall bow down to you with their faces to the earth and lick up the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord, for they shall not be ashamed who wait for me.” God’s human enemies lick the dust, of our feet, ultimately, is what the scriptures say.

Micah 7:17: “They shall lick the dust like a serpent. How much more obvious can it be? They shall crawl from their holes like snakes of the earth. They shall be afraid of the Lord our God and shall fear because of you.” God’s enemies are the serpents. The two seeds means two different humanities—not just the snakes and the people and Satan and Christ, but two different humanities that God says will war throughout created history, not to no end, to the end that one will be conquered and the other will be victorious.

Isaiah 65:25: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall still be the serpent’s food.” You see, dust lickers, belly crawlers, are people. “Eat my dust” is an expression that God tells his enemies who are people and who are those who are in rebellion to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that means everybody outside of Christ. The antithesis means there’s no neutral people out there.

You’re on one team or you’re on the other team. You’re either for Jesus Christ or you’re against Jesus Christ. And those—it’s not just in terms of your relationship to Christ, but if you’re against Christ, you’re against his people. And if you’re for Christ, you’re for his people and against his opponents, as Psalm 149 tells us.

**The antithesis exists not in eternity but rather in terms of history.**

**Third, the antithesis, this warfare, is being judicially imposed by God.**

You hear? It’s not some kind of natural result of what happened in the garden. It is a judicial declaration by God. This is the way he wants it. And now if he wants it that way, it is inevitable in history. Man doesn’t like it. Satan says, “We don’t want antithesis. Satan says pluralism is what we all want to do. Satan says, ‘Let’s all just—can’t we all just get along?’ Christian, you can get along with us too as long as you don’t call us non-Christians. As long as you don’t think you’re better somehow or your word is better than our word or your thoughts are better than our thoughts. As long as you’ll get along with us, I’m okay. You’re okay.” That’s demonic language that seeks to thwart the warfare between the two seeds in history.

But God has said it. You know, there’s only two places in the Bible where God, as I believe, where God announces a judicial curse personally. Lots of them throughout the Bible in terms of men pronouncing the curses of God or prophets or judicial officers. But here, only here and in Genesis 4:1, where God speaks to Cain, God does it himself. Well, that tells us that it’s certain. It’s certain that serpent, those snakes, will not develop legs a thousand years from now. Yahoo! God said it. It’s certain. It’s coming to pass. It is inevitable in history.

We don’t have to worry about it. And we cannot try to ignore it. Men do that. There’s lots of reasons why you can’t ignore the antithesis. Or if you do, it’s to your own harm.

First of all, to get rid of the antithesis is impossible because man is made in God’s image. He knows the truth of this matter. He may suppress it, but he knows the truth of the warfare between the two kinds of humanity.

Second, as I said, God has imposed this warfare. And if God says those two seeds are going to fight, then you best believe they’re going to fight.

Third, man is an image bearer of God. He moves, in terms, whether fallen or restored in Christ, he moves in terms of dominion and conquest. He’ll either do it righteously or unrighteously. But the fact that he is an image bearer, in terms of dominion, a lord of the earth, means that both seeds will move in terms of dominion and conquest. And therefore this warfare is inevitable that God has produced in the world.

Fourth, the godly—you folks—are reborn in the Lord Jesus Christ for the purpose, for the express purpose, of waging war against the ungodly seed. That’s your calling. God will shortly crush Satan under your feet.

Turn to Romans 16:18-20. I’m sure you’re familiar with this passage, but it’s a good passage to remind ourselves of. Romans 16:18—”Those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly.” See, that serpent, he serves his own belly. He’s going to eat dust. He’s going to try to eat man. Man returns to the dust. The serpent tries to devour you—very important point.

And these: “so this warfare goes on because the serpent’s trying to devour man. Their god is their own belly. By smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple.” That’s how they eat you up. Smooth words and flattering speech.

“For your obedience has become known to all. Satan doesn’t like that. When you’re obedient, he’s going to try to come after you, and he’s going to use the agency of men possessed by him. I’m not talking, you know, demon possession the way you might think of it, but Satan possesses the fallen humanity to attack the seed of the woman. Christians, that’s what he does.

Your obedience has become known to all. Therefore, I am glad on your behalf, but I want you to be wise in what is good and simple concerning evil.” We’re supposed to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. And all too often, Christians are as wise as doves. They think it’s just they think it’s best just to get along with everybody and to try to find the good in whatever you come across in life and whatever whoever you talk to today or tomorrow at work, try to find the good in that person, try to ignore this antithesis.

So some people teach, and a lot of Christians believe today, they’re as wise as doves and as a result they become as harmless as serpents. They’re doing his work. Because God has said you’re going to do one work or the other. The Bible says, “Be wise in what’s good and simple concerning evil.”

“And the God of peace”—not hopefully—”The God of peace is God’s order in the world. And in his desire to produce and to manifest his order in the world, he has decided, Christian, to use you. The God of peace will crush Satan.” That crush is that word in Genesis. Satan will crush, attack, jump out at the heel of man. But the heel of men will crush the head of Satan. You can walk around limping—crushed heel, that’s okay. Crushed head, you’re done for. God wins. Satan loses. Jesus crushes his head.

And we, dear ones in the Lord, are head-crushers for the Lord Jesus Christ.

So you can’t ignore the antithesis. It’s inevitable because God has said. That’s the very reason he’s caused you to be born again in the Lord Jesus Christ—to stomp on Satan’s head. You said, “Where is he?” He’s right out there. He’s right outside. He’s in this culture. He’s in the people that populate this culture with ideas that are hateful and demonic and warring against the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is any idea that is in contradiction to this word. You want to stomp that out, don’t you? I do. The Bible says, not only should you want to, but he says you’re going to do it. Yahoo. That’s your job. That’s your enabling. That’s your calling from God to war in this warfare. Not to get along, but to war.

Now I know, by the way, that this warfare goes on in our own hearts. And I could have taken this same text and talked legitimately about the warfare in our own souls between the sin in us and the righteousness in us. But understand—see, that’s the way to dodge the antithesis in the culture round about us. I’m not saying everybody talks that way, wants to dodge it. It’s true. But man, you, we never hear. Very rarely do we hear through the Christian church today this other side of it—that the warfare doesn’t perpetually go on in the heart of the Christian. It goes on in the culture.

God calls you and says your identity in Christ is to go out and crush the head of the serpent. He enables you to do it—to crush the false humanity who rebel against the Lord Jesus Christ.

**The antithesis, it’s inevitable in history.**

You go from one end of the Bible to the other. I told Jeff I was going to do that too—we’re going to do a Bible survey going through every book of the Bible and showing how the warfare works its way out. Well, I’m just kind of a joke that night, but it is true nonetheless.

You have all these examples of women crushing the head of serpents. Jael driving that tent peg through Sisera’s temple. A certain woman unidentified in the book of Judges who uses a millstone—a productivity work, a grinding, daily, vocational sort of tool—to crush the head of the wicked seed. The wicked seed, Abimelech, possessed by the serpent. Esther rises up and through her, secondary means, God crushes the head of the ones who would wipe out every Jew in history during the time of Esther as queen in the time of the captivity. Mary finally comes along and we’re going to sing her Magnificat at Communion today. This warfare goes on and women are given victory in that warfare, and those women are pictures of the church of Jesus Christ.

The warfare goes on. All we got to do is go up a couple of verses to see this two seed, the antithesis being played out in the history of men, right? We get a son, we get Cain. We get another son, we get Abel. And one son kills the other son, possessed by that serpent who wants to kill the seed of the woman. That mouth reaches out and kills Abel. But God isn’t thwarted. He brings along Seth, a replacement for Abel, because Abel is always going to win. The greater Abel, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the conqueror in this warfare. But the warfare is played out.

Seth comes along as the replacement, a good guy. But nearly all of his seed apostatizes. The sons of God intermarry with the daughters of men. What does that mean? Well, it means the godly line intermarries with the ungodly line. You’ve got two seeds. I don’t think it’s got to do with angels coming down from heaven. I think it’s talking about the fact that when you people do, if you don’t marry Christians, boys and girls, you’re intermarrying with that godless seed and you’re bringing about apostasy in the Christian church.

So the serpent attacks the Sethites by causing them to apostatize. What does God do? Well, he makes an ark and he saves the seed in the context of that ark. And history goes on.

Abram comes along. Abram’s wife is nearly raped on two different occasions as the serpent tries to reach out to the woman and to her seed and to pervert that seed line that God has caused to come to pass. The antithesis is played out in every portion of the scriptures.

Rebecca, same thing, same problem goes on. Esau and Jacob, Esau is wicked. Jacob is righteous. Even Jacob’s father, you know, tries to do the wrong thing with him and pervert the justice due to him as the chosen of God. This warfare goes on between those two seeds. Don’t, you know, I just encourage you, don’t speak bad about Jacob. Now, he was a man that was in the midst of this kind of warfare between these two seeds. And God gave him victory and he did it through very interesting ways. But this warfare goes on and on.

Children of Israel go down to Egypt. Down in Egypt, what happens? Well, Pharaoh tries to kill off all the children. The Nile runs red with the blood of the ones who are drowned there, the children, the seed of God. As the serpent reaches out to try to attack that seed. And what does God do? He delivers them. He crushes the head of Pharaoh. Pharaoh kills Pharaoh’s firstborn. He wipes out the posterity of the wicked seed through the Passover, which we’re going to participate in at Communion this afternoon. Victory for the chosen seed. Warfare and victory as culture moves ahead. Context of the land, David gets to be king. But there’s that wicked king Saul. There’s Satan working through the agency of men again, trying to strike out and kill David.

The whole of Saul’s whole monarchy at one point in time becomes Satan’s machinery to try to get David. But God says, “No way. He’s my chosen. He’s my beloved. He’s going to be the one to carry on this seed for me.” And God protects David from all that. The warfare goes on and on through the Old Testament, then on into the New Testament.

What does Satan do when Jesus is born? Just before Jesus—well, actually, after Jesus is born—well, Satan attacks again through Herod, just like he did in Egypt. Israel’s become Egypt. And Herod strikes out and kills all those children under the age of two so that Jesus would be killed. He strikes out at the seed. The warfare goes on from the beginning of the Bible to the end.

What’s going on at the end of the Bible? You’ve got the beast with the fatal head wound, the crushed head, still having some demonic life left in him to attack the church. What goes on in the book of Acts? Even after Christ has been raised up from the dead, Satan thinks he’s got him. He causes one of his own to apostatize. He goes into the heart of Judas. He attacks the seed, Jesus Christ, through Judas. He kills him with crucifixion. So he thinks. But God has brought victory to pass through that crucifixion, through this warfare. God will always be triumphant.

Remember how easy it was in the garden for God to declare this absolute sovereign serpent’s just doing God’s work. That second serpent is God’s secondary means to remind us of this warfare. He cannot do anything against the Lord Jesus Christ even after the resurrection of Christ. Then another Herod tries to kill off the church and he gets eaten up by worms. And then the church gets polluted through bad doctrine as the Judaizers come into the church, trying to crush off and to cut off the seed of the Lord Jesus Christ, the new humanity in him.

From one end of the Bible to the other, this inevitable warfare between the two seeds is ongoing. It’s a fact of life. It’s inevitable. And the fact is that in every instance, God brings deliverance. God has the victory.

**The antithesis means warfare between the seeds plural as we’ve just seen through a survey of the scriptures. But the antithesis also means warfare ultimately and victory by the seed singular.**

The seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman plural fight throughout history. But ultimately the gospel is proclaimed here when he says that the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head while the serpent will crash out at the seat of the woman singular’s foot. The Lord Jesus Christ suffers on our part, but he does so in crushing the head of the serpent.

The antithesis means perpetual warfare between the two seeds plural, but it means victory in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Hebrews 2:14 tells us: “As we were partakers of flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death. That is the devil.” The Lord Jesus Christ has this victory.

And because of that, because the Lord Jesus Christ is victorious, the sixth point is that **the antithesis means victory by the seeds plural as well.**

And as I said, Romans 16:20 says, “Not by way of prayer, not as a hope, not as wishful thinking on some part, not by hope or heart, but as a solemn declaration, we beloved, you and I shall be victorious in the warfare that is perpetual and ongoing between the two seeds because our representative, our Lord, our Savior, in whose image now we have been reborn, the Lord Jesus Christ, because he was victorious on the cross, so you shall be victorious in crushing the serpent under your head. Yahoo! That is good news.

It’s good news if you’ve been oppressed this last week by people at your workplace. It’s good news if you see what’s going on with the government of this country and the false church of this country, the harlot bride as it were, who wants Christianity to be part of a pluralism that doesn’t bother anybody and that tears at your soul and you hate it. Good news is that it isn’t going on perpetually. It’s going to come to an end in terms of each culture just as Seth came along. Just as the ark came along. As surely as David was rescued. Just as Jesus did his work. Just as the church was delivered from all its attacks, so the church today will be delivered. But more than that, we’ll be victorious over all those who seek to war against it. It is good news.

And it’s good news, too, if your sin is warred against you and you come here today despondent because of your own failures in your own heart. God says that Satan will be crushed under your feet, including his influence in your life, believer, beloved of the Lord. That’s good news.

Good news we’ll be victorious just as Joshua everywhere he went where his foot touched the ground he was victorious for God. So where our feet touch the ground, we go as serpent-treaders of the Lord Jesus Christ.

**Finally, the antithesis then must be kept central to our life.**

This is not some secondary doctrine. This is a primary doctrine of who we are and it explains the curse to the woman and the curse to the man.

Our Savior understood this when he came across men who are in opposition to him and opposition to the God of heaven. He had no problem identifying which of the two seeds they belonged with. He called them serpents in Matthew 23:33: “Brood of vipers. How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” Serpents. Brood of vipers. The scriptures tell us that’s what we’re supposed to think. We’re supposed to think Christ’s thoughts.

Yes, when we come across people that are in opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ, we hope they’ll convert. We don’t know if they will or not. But in their fallen state, they are a brood of vipers and they are not there to do you good. They are there to attack you. They’re there to attack your children because they’re being possessed, as it were, in terms of thought and action by the great serpent of old, Satan, who has been crushed definitively by Christ but who’s still roaring, walking the streets seeking whom he may devour. And that’s you. And that’s your children.

You’ve got to protect your wife, men. You’ve got to protect your children. And you’ve got to protect yourself on business trips, walking around, Portland, watching TV when you’re doing your recreation. The serpent is there attacking you, trying to get rid of your Christian influence in the context of the world. And we’ve got to have our glasses on, right? We have to understand this antithesis between the two seeds and that God has said, “You do not want to peacefully coexist with the wicked in the land. You want to crush their heads. You want to preach the gospel. You want to worship God and you want to train children to war a godly war.”

Our Savior told the Pharisees in John 8:44: “You are of your father, the devil. The desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning.” Don’t underestimate what your own enemies in the context of our life are like. They are murderers from the beginning.

First John 3:8: “He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. Understand it. But understand this: ‘For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.’”

The Hebrew word for the head of the serpent that gets crushed by the Lord Jesus Christ is the word for principle, essence, sum, or summit. It doesn’t just refer to the life of the serpent. It refers to all that he is. It refers to the works of the devil. And the Lord Jesus Christ was manifested for the very purpose that he might destroy the works of the devil. And indeed, he tells us that we are those who would destroy the works of the devil in the context of our life. Yahoo. That’s good news, folks. It’s empowering news for us to know who we are in the Lord Jesus Christ.

History shall indeed see battle and restoration. It involves total warfare, but it also involves total victory. All the works of the devil will be rolled back through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ as he moves in the context of his people. History, as I said at the beginning of the sermon, has an eschatological framework. We’re on the battlefield of a war to the death. That’s what Genesis 3:14 and 15 tells us quite clearly.

But the victory is assured, and it is the Lord’s, and it is ours in the Lord. Both battle and victory are preordained by God, and they shall surely come to pass. We are to fight this warfare. How do we do it?

Psalm 149 told us how to do it. Don’t you love that song we sang this morning? We’re going to sing that some more. I know the tune’s a little different, but see, it says, “Let the praises of God be in your mouth. The high praises of God should come rolling out of your mouths.” It’s talking about worship. It’s talking about what we’re doing today on the Lord’s day. “And a sharp two-edged sword to execute justice on the nations.” God says that as we worship, as we believe this, as we seek the manifestation of the two seed warfare in our day and age and we seek the destruction of Satan’s seed and his works in our lifetime and we seek to crush Satan under our heads, God says we come together and worship him, he causes it to come to pass.

You don’t have to figure out how to go out there with a bunch of machine guns and uzis and claymore mines. That’s not the idea. The idea God says is that’s the way the serpent does it. He does it by force. We do it by praising God. Worship is the primary mechanism that God says by which we conquer and conquerors and are more than conquerors for the Lord Jesus Christ.

We worship and God brings it to pass. God says in Deuteronomy 28, we live lives in conformity to the covenant that we praise God for this Lord’s day and he brings about blessings. It’s not our plan of how to do it. We’re faithful in worshiping God. We’re faithful in taking this worship into all of our week. We’re faithful in taking the covenant seriously in all of our lives and letting our lives be conformed to his gracious law. And God says, “Lo and behold, you’re going to wake up and he’ll have conquered all your enemies because you’ve done what’s right. You’ve attended to what’s correct.”

Turn to Psalm 78 as we move to closing. We need to teach our children that this warfare is real and ongoing and we need to teach them how to fight it.

Psalm 78: “Give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he hath done.” That’s worship again. We praise God for his law. And we bring our children to worship preeminently as the beginning point of enlisting them for the Lord Jesus Christ in his army.

And we do not hide from them the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that we proclaim this day. His works in Egypt. His works relative to the Seth. His works in the ark. His works in the Lord Jesus Christ. His works in David. His works in Israel and Judah. We announce these things to our children because they teach our children that life is war. But it’s war which we shall win by means of praise and covenant keeping.

“He has established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children. Here it is, dads. This is what you’re supposed to teach your kids: that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children. That they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God. God wins on the battlefield. Our children need to know that. They need to know there’s no reason to pull back for fear because God has established his works throughout history. They did not organize an army to bring themselves out of Egypt. God delivered them miraculously and supernaturally. God’s works are there. And our children must be taught those works that they might enter into that warfare confidently, not going to the arm of flesh, but to the arm of the Holy Spirit.”

“To the generation to come. We should make them known to the children that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children, children to children to children, that they might set their hope in God, not forgetting his works, but keeping his commandments, might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright. That’s our generation, men and women. We’re the remnant here, okay? This isn’t turning around anytime soon. I don’t know what God’s plans are. But I’m telling you, we’re in the midst, you and I, dads. We come out of this generation that did not do well, that hearts were not set right with God. And we hope of better things for our children as these men hoped.

“Might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God. The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God. Refuse to walk in his law. And forget his works and his wonders that he had showed them.”

Fathers, are you arming your children for this inevitable battle that is a battlefield unto the death? Are you arming your children with the word of God, with a knowledge of his law, word, and grace word to us in these scriptures? Do your children know why you keep Sabbath? Do your children know why you think this law is serious relative to how marriages should be?