Baby books. I still remember mine. Being the 6th kid, there just weren’t as many photos of me as a baby. I still remember how it fascinated me to see pictures of a little baby and to think that he became me.
That’s something we’d like to have some fun with these next weeks – your baby pictures. We’d like to use your family’s baby pictures. So, would you please email them into the office in the next week or 2? If you can’t Email them, then go ahead and let us scan them and we’ll get them back to you. We need to know who they belong to so we can get them back to you. We also want to be able to put them up so that other people can take a guess at who they are. OK? Baby pictures!
Why do that? Because on Sunday mornings here for the next weeks up to Christmas, we’re going to be looking at the very earliest views we have of Jesus. OT “Baby Pictures” of Jesus. You may have seen them before but simply not recognized them.
Remember “Where’s Waldo”? There were these books, and there’d be hundreds of people in a picture, and hidden away somewhere in the picture was this guy with a red and white striped shirt – Waldo. That’s kind of what we’re going to do with the OT. There are a lot of people and stories and words there. But if you look closely enough, you’ll see Jesus is there. God had this all thought through before we ever came to be. It’s one story, running through the whole Bible.
We live on this side of the cross. So, when we look back, it’s a lot like looking at a baby book to see the very earliest pictures we have of Jesus. That way, we get to know Him better. We’ll consider sides of Him we haven’t realized before. So, we can learn a lot more about Jesus. But that’s where too many people stop.
See, you could learn a lot more about someone. You can look them up on the internet, stalk them on Facebook, and even do background checks. You can learn all kinds of things about people. But that’s different than knowing a person. In fact, it’s kind of creepy!
Many of you are thinking, “OK, I’d like to know more about Jesus.”
I’m not satisfied with that. I have a loftier goal over these next weeks. I want to see you move from knowing about Jesus to knowing Jesus. That’s my very honest and open agenda for November 13 to December 25th.
If Jesus had a baby book, the very first picture would be from Genesis, the first book in the Bible. Jesus was there at creation, because He’s God. John tells us that all things were made by Him. So, in 1:2, when the HS is there, moving over the surface of the waters, and when God says, “Let there be light!” Jesus is equally there.
Have you ever thought about it – when God says in 1:26 “Let us make man in our image…” Who’s He talking to? Jesus is there, at the beginning of time-space history. Jesus is God. He wants us to know that.
John starts his gospel with this most simple and most complex of truths: In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Jesus is God. He always has been. The Christmas story is simply about the time in human history when God emptied Himself and put on human flesh and lived among us. Jesus didn’t suddenly start to exist. He just moved into our neighborhood a little over 2,000 years ago.
So, before we get to a manger in Bethlehem, we need to begin at the beginning…
Garden of Eden. Perfect world. Adam and Eve are living in perfect innocence and in fellowship with God. All is good, very good, according to how God describes it – for 2 chapters. 1,189 chapters in the Bible, and it takes less than 3 to blow it! Genesis 3, Satan, in the form of a snake approaches Eve and convinces her to eat from the one tree that God had said to leave alone. Adam does it too. God had told them, “In the day you eat from it you will surely die.”
Parents, here’s a tip. When you lay down a rule, with a punishment, that’s what you do. You give it to your children for the sake of motivating them. You spell it out. And, if it’s broken, you follow through. That idea came from the way God deals with mankind.
You and I understand how we tend to want to learn things on our own. That’s how you discover that the paint really was wet and that an alarm really would sound.
Adam and Eve discover some things. They discover how it feels to disobey. They discover what it’s like to have a newfound understanding of good and evil. They discover they are naked – just like the Emperor’s New Clothes – and they discover what shame feels like. They discover how that feels in front of God. They discover how it feels to distance themselves from God. They also discover that you can’t hide from God.
I don’t know how long it took before Adam and Eve sinned. I only know that once they did, it changed everything – Eve’s situation, Adam’s situation, and all of creation.
When God asked him what he had done, Adam blamed Eve and then blamed God for giving him Eve. Eve blamed the devil for deceiving her.
Nicky Gumbel says: “The man blamed the woman, the woman blamed the serpent, and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on.” The next time you’re in a bad spot because of your bad choices, don’t blame someone else…especially God!
You’ve heard “everything happens for a reason.” Maybe you’ve even said that. It’s true. Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes the reason is you made a bad choice!
Adam and Eve both made a bad choice. They chose self over obedience. They chose to believe Satan’s lie over what God had said. Now, death is a part of life on earth. That’s how it happened. It was that quick. In the amount of time it takes to bite off a piece of fruit, death was eaten into the no-longer-perfect garden. And in the amount of time it takes to sew a fig leaf bikini, God shows up with the cure. Actually, the cure was put together before that. It starts in this first picture of Jesus where God tells Satan:
Genesis 3:15 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."
Pause for a moment. Did you see Jesus there? The woman is Eve. Her “offspring” is mankind (3:20), and through mankind, a baby who will be born one day in Bethlehem, the son of a young woman named Mary. His name is Jesus. This verse is about Jesus and what He’s going to do for humanity.
One of the things that’s exciting about this verse is that the whole plan of God’s story is spelled out this early in the Bible! Just as soon as we read about the fall of man, we read about the cure that God is sending! And what that means for us isn’t instantly clear…but it will be.
The whole point I want to get across today:
Jesus can say to you, “I’ve got this!”
I’ve got this! I love to hear those words. It’s what the hero says as he stays behind to fight off the bad guys: I’ve got this! It’s what the player says to the coach as he sends him into the game and says, “Can you do it?” “Ya, Coach, I’ve got this!”
You take the worst life has to dish out, no matter what’s ahead, Jesus can say to you, “I’ve got this!”
In fact, why don’t you think of the thing in life that’s your biggest challenge right now? Would you do that? Think of the thing in your life today that’s on the top of the list of things that are pushing in on you. I want you to be able to picture Jesus saying to you, “I’ve got this!” by the time we’re done here.
(Enemies! I’ve got this!)
Most of us don’t use the word “enmity.” It comes from a root word that simply means enemy.
God told Satan, you and the woman are going to be enemies. There’s going to be a long-standing family feud between yours and hers. Enmity. Even the name “Satan” means adversary or accuser.
I’m not sure how that changed after Adam and Eve sinned. I know it changed somehow. Think about it, if Satan had seemed like an enemy to Eve before, she would have just run away from him instead of standing and having a conversation about horticulture and recipes for fruit strudel.
God said “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between her offspring and your offspring.” Something about the negative effects of Satan against mankind became amplified. In some way, lines of battle were drawn up that day that will continue until the end of time.
Here’s what I get from this: Satan is not our friend.
You hear that and say, “Boy, I’m glad I came today!” Well, OK, thank me later. God saw fit to tell us about this in Gen. 3:15. Enmity. It’s as if God was branding Satan our enemy so we’d “get it.” You didn’t do anything to make him your enemy. You didn’t need to! This one has made himself your enemy from the start. He instigated mankind’s fall and has remained in that business of ruining people ever since. He hides the fact that he’s not really on your side. He even disguises himself like an angel of light. So God draws these lines. Satan is the enemy.
Remember that. When Satan incites you to turn your back on God, it’s not because he’s trying to help your life be better. And every person who has fallen for that lie, starting with Eve, will tell you it doesn’t work. So Peter warns us…
1 Peter 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour
Why can’t we all just get along? Simple - Because there’s such a thing as good and evil in the world, and those two can’t be reconciled. Let’s not be shocked that there’s worldwide conflict between right and wrong, between good and evil. Jesus said that we’d be hated if we chose to side with Him. Scary, huh?
But I want to remind you that Jesus has got this! Let’s make sure we’re on the right side.
(Bruises! I’ve got this!)
Let’s look at it again…
Genesis 3:15
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."
The word “crush” and “strike” is actually the same word each time, though translators have tried to help us make a distinction because of how it’s used: it means strike or bruise. But one is on the head and another is on the heel. Here’s where we can begin to see how this isn’t just about all of mankind.
He will bruise your head; you will bruise His heel.
A bruise on the heel doesn’t sound too serious, does it?
There’s a running gag in my family that is guaranteed to make them laugh every time. All I have to do is hurt a toe. Barefoot through the house, toe hits the chair leg. Ow!!! Open the refrigerator, 2 liter bottle of pop launches like a torpedo, lid first. Destination: my big toe. Ow!!! Carrying in firewood. Top piece of wood falls off. What protects the concrete from being damaged? My foot! Ow!!! No, it’s not nail polish. I just like to have blue toenails now and then! What makes that so funny? It’s just my foot. I have 9 other toes! For some reason, a smack on your foot just isn’t as serious as the same smack on your head.
“He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” While one of these 2-way bruises sounds worse than the other, one thing is clear: there will be bruises.
This might be just about what happened to Jesus while He was on the earth. I suppose you could call Satan’s attacks against Jesus a “bruise on the heel.” Definitely attacks; not something anyone would want, but not serious injury. Even Jesus’ death on the cross, when you consider He rose from the dead might be called a comparative “bruise on the heel.” You OK, Jesus? And as the stone rolls away from the tomb you hear, “I’ve got this!”
This might also speak about the way that Jesus’ followers will be pushed around by Satan’s people. After all, Jesus considers any attack on His people an attack on Him personally. That would mean that even for those thousands who suffer and die for their faith, it’s still a bruise on the heel. Just like Jesus overcame the grave, they win out in the end. Jesus has got this!
That’s why there’s this other bruise that God tells about – the one on Satan’s head.
(Victory! I’ve got this too!)
Genesis 3:15 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."
It seems like God has wanted us aware, from the very beginning of the book, that in His great story of time/space history, there’s a great victory. Jesus has got this too!
This 1st baby picture of Jesus tells us about Him: yes, He would have enemies. Yes, there would be bruising. But in the end, the blow that Satan would receive would put an end to him. “He will crush your head.”
Christmas isn’t that far away. You’ll be hearing a lot of the Christmas story over the next month. So much of that story reminds us about the first part of these words we looked at today. There were enemies to Jesus right from the start. Herod tried to have Him killed. His family ran away to Egypt. He wasn’t overly-welcomed, in a lot of ways. But Jesus has more than just the bruises from an enemy. He has victory! And the great news is He shares that victory with His people!
Colossians 2:13-15
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
As Paul reached the end of his letter to the Romans, he must have chuckled to himself a little bit. The irony is hard to miss – so is the look back to this first baby picture of Jesus. He writes to the Christians in Rome, who are suffering under an unfriendly government, to a city where ½ the population are slaves, these words…
Romans 16:20a
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
When God’s people are feeling overwhelmed, this is where He points us. Jesus has defeated Satan and we get to share in that victory! Christians in Rome in the 1st century needed to hear that word of encouragement. Maybe you need to hear it today too. Jesus give us a claim in what is really His victory!
Story - March 28, 1990. Michael Jordan scored a career high of 69 points against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Jordan had 18 rebounds, 6 assists and 4 steals. He made 23 of 27 field goal attempts and 21 of 23 foul shots for the ninth-best single-game scoring performance in NBA history. 69 points. His teammate, the Bull’s rookie forward Stacey King who scored one point said, “I'll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score 70 points.”
That’s about how our victory with Jesus may look, but He shares it with us just the same! We get to say, We win in the end!
In Rev 12, there’s a description of some point in earth’s history. There’s a great conflict in heaven…
Revelation 12:9-11
The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: "Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
These people – God’s people who were faithful and who didn’t shrink even from death – they overcame! In other words, We win!
So, what was that most difficult of things that’s facing you in life right now? How is the enemy pressing in on you? How bruised are you today?
From the very first day that mankind messed it up, God has given us the only strategy by which we can win over the enemy. It’s about the offspring of the woman, and His name is Jesus.
Jesus has got this.
You need to make sure you’re on the right side in this. You’ll have a chance today to do just that if you never have. Please be thinking about your need to follow Jesus if you never have made that decision.
