1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word as we continue our Lenten Midweek Series is taken from Genesis 3:14-15, it’s entitled, “Good News of a Savior Who Conquers Evil,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. While World War I was being fought, it was sometimes called “the war to end all wars.” We can appreciate how that would have been an appealing dream. But it wasn’t long before people learned that that dream wouldn’t be coming true. As that war was followed by another after another right down to today. But, in this evening’s Scripture readings, our Lord gives us the good news of the real “war to end all wars.” This week’s Good News from the beginning is that that war has been fought—and the outcome is certain, because the victory has already been won. Jesus has won the victory over all our enemies for us.
3. The war began in heaven, when one of the angels God had created good and holy wasn’t content to remain in the condition God had given him. He rose up in rebellion against God—and as a result, he and his fellow rebels were cast out of heaven. The war between good and evil had begun. The fallen angel who had led that rebellion, known as Satan, then expanded the war to another front by bringing it to earth. Up to that time, everything in this creation had been “very good.” Adam and Eve—the first of mankind—had been at peace with each other. They had enjoyed the perfect peace of fellowship with God. But evil could not stand to see such love and peace, so Satan invaded God’s good creation.
4. Concealing himself in the form of a serpent, Satan came to the garden and took aim directly at Adam and Eve’s relationship with the Lord. Through his subtle questions and lies, he invited them to question whether they could believe what God had said to them and question God’s love for them. He led them to believe that God was not caring for them but was holding them back. If they were to eat of the one tree of which God told them not to eat, the serpent said, they would not die as God had warned. Instead, they would then be just like God themselves.
5. As soon as the woman and her husband who was with her followed Satan their battle with the devil was already lost. And as they ate of the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened, and they saw that this was no longer the paradise they had known. The peace there had been between Adam and Eve and between God and mankind was no more. The war that had begun in heaven had come to earth. God’s good creation, by our sin, had been turned into a battlefield.
6. At this point, it might have appeared that the tide of the whole war between good and evil had turned. But Satan had little time to savor the moment before his celebration was cut short. Having confronted Adam and Eve with their sin, the Lord turned to Satan and addressed him. The Lord’s first words were directed to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life” (Gen 3:14).
7. Though spoken to the serpent that Satan had used, those words were a message to Satan himself. From that time on, the low status of a serpent would serve as a depiction of the low status of Satan, and the picture of a serpent eating dust would serve as a preview of the defeat of Satan. Next, the Lord spoke more specifically about Satan’s defeat. The Lord said to Satan: “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” (Gen 3:15). Here the Lord promises the coming Christ and his victory over Satan. In the Bible, we see three phases in God’s gracious work that culminate in this victory.
8. First, God would put enmity between Satan and the woman. Satan had led Eve away from the Lord, but the Lord would graciously draw her back to his side. In this way, the Lord would begin his work of reversing the damage Satan had done. In the second phase of the conflict described by the Lord, he would put enmity between Satan’s offspring and the woman’s offspring. All these offspring would be descended from Eve. Some, in their opposition to the Lord, would actually bear more resemblance to Satan, and so they could be described as his offspring. Others would share Eve’s faith and so would be her offspring not only by descent but in a spiritual sense as well. Satan’s offspring (all unbelievers) would oppose the faithful offspring of Eve (all believers) but the Lord would at all times preserve on earth a faithful remnant of believers.
9. And from that faithful remnant would come one specific Offspring in whom the third and final phase of conflict would come to fulfillment. That one specific Offspring of the woman would engage Satan directly in battle. He would crush Satan’s head, and Satan would strike his heel. Though it would come at a painful cost, that promised Offspring—would be victorious. Satan would go down in defeat. And the war would be over.
10. As the Lord promised this war would go, so it has gone. First, the Lord did establish enmity between Satan and Eve by drawing her to faith. That faith shines through in the fourth chapter of Genesis, as Eve gives birth to her firstborn son and glorifies God for that gift, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” (Gen. 4:1). Martin Luther pointed out that those words from Eve could also be translated, “I have gotten a man—the Lord,” so that she might have been expressing hope that her first son would already be the promised Savior.
11. If that was Eve’s hope for her first son, she would be disappointed. Instead, in that son, Cain, we see the beginning of the second stage of conflict foretold by the Lord. As Cain killed his brother Abel, the conflict between Satan’s offspring and Eve’s offspring was clearly underway. Finally, the third and climactic phase of conflict foretold by the Lord also came to fulfillment. One who was born of a woman went head-to-head in battle against Satan.
12. This promised One was Jesus Christ—true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary. This promised Son came to redeem us—to set us free from the powers of sin, death, and devil. In John’s first epistle, he puts it this way: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8). How did he destroy the devil’s work? By redeeming us with his holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death, Jesus secured our freedom. By paying for our sins in full and reconciling us to the Father, Jesus took away the devil’s right to lay any claim on us. He destroyed the devil’s power. In the words of our Epistle reading, Jesus came and shared in our humanity “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb 2:14–15).
13. As the Lord had said would happen, that victory did come at a tremendous cost to our Redeemer, as that serpent Satan struck him a cruel and deadly blow. But in his death, Jesus, the promised Seed, defeated Satan by saving all of us from him. He crushed the serpent’s head. He proclaimed that victory to the defeated powers of darkness in his descent to hell, and he publicly demonstrated that victory in his victorious resurrection from the dead.
14. That does raise some questions. If Jesus has won the victory over the devil for us, why do we still see the influence of the devil in this world, and why does God call on us in Scripture still to be sober-minded and watchful, resisting the devil who prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Pet 5:8–9)? Why does it feel like the war is not over? Why does it often feel like we’re not faring so well in the battles we face daily in our lives?
15. To understand this, it can help to consider an example from another war. In World War II, when the allies were victorious on D-Day and had successfully landed a massive army back on the European continent, the outcome of the war in Europe was certain. The decisive blow had been dealt. The Allied army would push toward the enemy German homeland. But the war in Europe didn’t actually come to its completion until eleven months later, on V-E Day. The enemy fought tooth and nail until the end. In a similar way, in his death and resurrection, Christ has already dealt Satan the fatal blow that guarantees the outcome of the war. But the war won’t come to its final completion until Judgment Day, when Christ’s victory will be complete. We now live in the gap between the “already” and the “not yet”—the period when the decisive battle has already been won but the fighting is not yet over. Satan and his forces will fight until the bitter end. As we wait, we do so with full assurance of the final result. Though life can feel like a battle as we continue struggling against the devil, the world, and our sinful nature, we know how it ends. We know that, in the end, we win because Christ has won the victory for us, and he shares his victory with us. By God’s grace, through faith in Christ Jesus, victory is ours.
16. Looking back to World War II, we are reminded that World War I didn’t live up to its billing as “the war to end all wars.” But looking back to the victory Christ won for us on the cross, we see the good news that Christ has overcome all our enemies in the true “war to end all wars”—and that because of him, a life without war isn’t just a dream. It’s an assured reality that we will one day experience—all because of the victorious Christ. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57). Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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