Snakes scare the living daylights out of me. The only snake I can tolerate is one in a glass box in the reptile house of a zoo or a dead one. However, a huge black snake lives in an old oak tree in our front yard. We’re talking at least ten feet long. How do I know this, you might ask? Last fall we had to have the tree trimmed by a tree company. I had previously noticed the occasional rodent skeleton in the pine bed around the oak and wondered how it had gotten there, but quickly dismissed it and went on my way. However, the afternoon following the tree experts’ work was completed, I was admiring the tree through our front door window and saw the massive snake slither through our grass, up the trunk and into a giant hole in one of the limbs! I know some of you snake lovers are thinking. “Black snakes are harmless and are actually quite helpful in keeping yards and homes free from rodent infestation.” While I’m sure you are right, I still prefer to keep my distance!
I’m not the only one who hates snakes, right? The tenuous relationship between humans and snakes goes all the way back to the very beginning and Genesis 3. God had created everything (including snakes) and had given His most precious creations, humans named Adam and Eve, a cultural mandate to fill the earth with more of their own children and to care for the rest of creation as God’s ambassadors or stewards. Into this lovely setting the serpent (another name for snake) known as “the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made, (Gen 3:1) cultivated doubt of God’s goodness in Eve, resulting in her eating the forbidden fruit from the only tree in the entire garden God had said “no” to, then giving some to her husband. Their immediate reaction to their eyes being opened to their nakedness and sin? To cover up their nakedness with fig leaves, to hide from their good Creator and Father God, and when asked what they had done, to blameshift. First, Adam blames his sin on the woman God gave him, thus ultimately placing God responsible for his current condition. In turn, Eve blames her decision to eat the forbidden fruit on the serpent.
God immediately began disciplining His creations who invited sin into the world He had made for them. I never noticed until recently that God starts passing out consequences with the serpent. He was right there with Adam and Eve as they admitted what had happened. I can’t help but wonder what his posture towards God was - was he smiling sinisterly, pleased at how quickly he was able to turn these humans against Yahweh? God looked at the serpent and informed him that he would forever be more cursed than any of the livestock or wild animals. His descendants would crawl on the ground on their bellies from that day on. God would issue consequences to the woman and man in short order, but first a promise - God’s first promise - that would offer hope not only to Adam and Eve, but to generations to come.
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (NIV)
This promise was not to establish the tenuous relationship that most humans and snakes share, although that was a lasting side effect. In his article on the messianic hope of Genesis, Jared M. August proposes that the hope offered to the first humans and their subsequent generations was through God’s promise to accomplish three tasks:
* First, to destroy evil by defeating the serpent who was embodying or at least controlled by God’s enemy, Satan. The Message translation describes God’s placing hostility or enmity between the serpent and the woman as His “declaring war!” between them.
* Second, to restore all of creation to the state it was previously, as God created it, void of all sin.
* Third, to allow God to dwell with His people, He had previously dwelt with Adam and Eve in Eden.
While these themes will be alluded to and developed throughout the rest of Scripture, we see from the very beginning God’s first promise to send an individual, a human from the seed of Adam and offspring of Eve, who will come to restore the world to the way it was in Genesis 1 and 2: very good. This first anticipatory promise of messianic hope is known as the protoevangelium, greek for “first gospel” and will be woven through a chosen family throughout the generations, starting with God, Adam and Seth and including some well-known names from the Old Testament, like Noah, Abraham, Joseph and David as well as some lesser known ancestors of Jesus, like Rehoboam, Hezekiah and Zerrubabel.
For the next 26 days of Advent, we’ll take a deep dive into some of these individuals, chosen by God to be instruments of His greatest promise to restore all things to Himself: God’s Promise Through Generations! I can’t wait to get started and am thrilled that you’re joining me!
