Genesis – Aspirational Adventures

No connection to the post but a cute picture of my dog taken Saturday 13th April 2024 exploring the storm swept beach close to our house

I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel
Genesis 3:15

I have been a follower of Jesus for 32 years now and I’ve never understood this verse until Sunday night a youth group. I’d sort of knowing it was Jesus crushing the serpent’s head and brutally destroying sin – though of course the brutal bit hadn’t occurred to me until Sunday night.

I might be telling you something you already know but if I am humour me. For me this was an awesomely exciting moment.

My lovely vicar friend pointed out to me, as I openly struggled with this verse and slowly gained realisation, that Jesus’s heel was bruised by mankind’s sin which of course the serpent represents here.

I’d often wondered if it had been the serpent/sin having a nip at Jesus as he was on the cross which is why he said some of the things he said. But know it was my sin, your sin, the world’s sin, that was causing the bruising to Jesus. And … now here’s the really exciting bit that I knew anyway …. Jesus took all that sin – mine, yours, the worlds – all those bits where we had missed God’s mark, gone our own way, done hurtful things to others and ourselves. He had taken that. But he was hurt by it.

It was not a blase-this-is-my-role sort of thing. And it wasn’t just the nails and the beatings etc that hurt. It was taking those things that came in through the serpent, thought the deceiver, that have then caused our world to be filled with wars and pollution and greed and selfishness and fear and [add your own because there are so many more]

So Sunday night I went from “that’s an odd verse and I don’t get it” to “oh my I can understand now why we need to memorise this verse”. The Six Beats One Story even suggests the young people colour in the verse to help them remember. Well now I can understand why they suggest that.

And again Sunday’s youth group just showed me that the Bible always has new things to reveal to us!

Adam and Eve Albrecht Durer by Los Angeles County Museum of Art is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

Would you trust that snake?

I’m just back from my visit to my Mum’s and have lots to catch up on but yesterday was youth group night. It has been a while since we’ve done youth group due to people being away and what not. As always it was a breath of fresh air.

We’ve decided to work through a booklet by from the Bible Society by Dai Woolridge called Six Beats One Story. That’s always a challenge for me. I’m a bit of a one for going off on tangents but also can get a bit task orientated and rush through it. Thankfully the vicar I work with is great at slowing me down or stopping the tangents going too far off piste.

Yesterday we were at the beginning – Genesis 1-3 where God makes the world, God makes humans, the serpent tempts the people and people leave the perfect place with God, sin goes wild, Noah and the ark!

In every part of this study there is a spoken word poem to go with it. I think you might be able to listen to “Beat 1” if you click on the link! After telling the tale and reminding us the Genesis 3:15 foreshadows Jesus it finishes with

Where the raucous chant of evil gets hushed

as the seed’s heel gets bruised

but the serpent’s head … gets crushed

There was silence at the end then one of our girls says “that was brutal”as to the serpent having it’s head crushed in this age of David Attenborough, etc and caring for animals. There then followed a great discussion of how we do need to be harsh and brutal in crushing sin in our lives and helping others to do it in theirs. As someone’s son said in the family service previously he doesn’t like it when his dad says No but actually sometimes saying No though harsh helps!

But what got me thinking was how attractive the serpent must have been. Imagine you are living with God, you are fully understanding of what unconditional love truly is, you want for nothing. What would tempt you to turn from that? What would tempt you to do what was asked for you not to do?

I really don’t think some slimy snake [ok yes I know snakes aren’t slimy but I mean so low-life] just popped up one day and say “hey eat that thing you were told not to do”. I don’t think you would just say “yes ok”. I think the serpent deceiver was about chatting with Adam and Eve, whispering things to them, chatting away. Hanging out with them when God wasn’t about. It does say God only walked with man in the cool of the evening. So maybe Mr Cool Snake was hanging around during the day.

Also I think that deceiver did what it is still doing now – told us that actually we didn’t need to wait to ask God whether this was not so much a good/bad idea but whether it was what God had for our lives. The attractive wily deceiver suggested that we knew best, that we could just plough on and do this because it was a good idea. Like I said it doesn’t matter whether it is a good/bad idea but whether it is right for us.

I’ve just had recently a really great thing put to me that sounded perfect for who I am. I did the thing of saying Yes and moving forward with it without checking in with God. All the bodily things that happen to me when I’ve done thing that isn’t right for me started going on so then I took it to God. And of course now I have to slowly slide out of that thing that seemed to good.

Yes there are a lot of really evil, wicked, sinful things that people do that need to be brutally crushed. But I think we also need to brutally crush that tendency inside of each and everyone of us to do things our independent way instead of God’s way.

Sin is missing God’s mark and going our own way and we need to crush that serpent brutally each and every day!