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“Unlikely Heroes of the Faith: Eve” Genesis 3:1-4:1 *Click for Audio* Pastor Kevin Vogts Trinity Lutheran Church Paola, Kansas Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost—October 11, 2015 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. This morning we begin a new fall sermon series for October and November on “Unlikely Heroes of the Faith.” Maybe sometimes you don’t feel or act like what we think a “saint” should be, a hero of the faith. It may surprise you to learn that the great saints of old often felt that way too. We begin today “in the beginning,” in Genesis, with today’s Old Testament Reading and the story of Eve. Eve is an UNLIKELY hero of the faith for two reasons. First of all, because Eve is the first SINNER recorded in the Bible. Like the mythological Pandora, who opened her box and brought misery and suffering into the world, Eve really did, by her rebellion and sin against God, bring every kind of misery and suffering into our world. As Paul says in 2nd Corinthians, “the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness.” And in 1st Timothy he says, “[Eve] being deceived, fell into transgression.” Eve’s transgression wasn’t just bad news for her. Like the mythical Pandora’s box, Eve’s transgression really did have cosmological, universal, devastating consequences, for us all. For, as Paul explains in Romans, “In this way death came to all men, because all sinned. . . Consequently, the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men. . .” This infection of sin was spread from Eve first to her husband Adam: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” And from Adam and Eve, this infection of sin has been passed down to us all, what we call original or inherited sin. Genesis tells us that originally, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.” This does not mean that human beings are created with a PHYSICAL resemblance to God. For, as Jesus said, “God is a spirit.” So, the image of God does not mean a physical likeness, but rather that humanity was originally created with a SPIRITUAL likeness to God, holy and sinless, like God himself. But, because of the fall into sin by our first parents, we all lost this spiritual likeness, we all lost the image of God. A few chapters later, Genesis says, “When God created humankind, he made them in the image of God. . . [Adam] became the father of a son in his OWN image, according to his OWN likeness.” Like a fabulous inheritance squandered by an ancestor, so that instead you inherit only debts, the image of God, which humanity was intended to have, has been lost, forfeited by our first ancestors. So, instead of being born in the image of God, holy and sinless, Adam’s descendants are born “in his OWN image, according to his OWN likeness.” Like a hereditary disease, that sin is passed down to us all; we are all now born in the image of sinful man. As David says in Psalm 51, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” So, Eve was the first sinner, who by her rebellion and sin against God, brought every kind of misery and suffering into our world, and sin and death to us all. How then can Eve be considered a hero of the faith? Another reason Eve seems an unlikely hero of the CHRISTIAN faith is that all this took place in the era we call “B.C.”, many thousands of years “Before Christ.” So, how can Eve be a hero of the CHRISTIAN faith? From a sociological perspective, Christianity is a relatively new religion. We are now in the year 2015 A.D., meaning “Anno Domini,” the “Year of the Lord,” approximately 2,015 years since Jesus’ birth. But, it is hard to conceive that when Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with the baby Jesus some 2,000 years ago, many of the pyramids and great temples of ancient Egypt were at that time already 3,000 years old. Confucianism and Buddhism, were already nearly 500 years old when Jesus was born, as was the temple to the goddess Athena on the Acropolis in Athens. That is why the men of Athens ask Paul at the Acropolis, “May we know what this NEW teaching is that you are presenting?” From a sociological perspective, that’s what Christianity is, a NEW teaching, a relatively new religion. But, actually, Christianity is the oldest religion in the world. Because, Christianity didn’t just come into existence in 1 A.D. or 33 A.D. The beginning of Christianity is recorded in today’s Old Testament Reading, and all the faithful throughout the Old Testament era were actually Christians, believers in Christ, beginning with Eve. How can that be? How could they be believers in Christ in the centuries B.C., “Before Christ”? Paul says in Galatians that “[God] announced the Gospel in advance” to them. Speaking about the people of the Old Testament, today’s Epistle Reading from the book of Hebrews puts it this way: “For we also have had the Gospel preached to us, JUST AS THEY DID.” The beginning of Christianity is when God announces the Gospel for the first time immediately after the fall into sin, by declaring to Satan: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.” Theologians call that verse, in Latin, the Proto Evangelium, the “first Gospel.” Because, it is the first time in the Bible when God proclaims the Good News that one of Eve’s descendants will be much more than just a man. He will be the God-man, the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ, who will CRUSH and defeat Satan. Although that is very bad news for Satan, for Adam and Eve, and you and me, and all of sinful humanity, it is THE Good News, the Gospel. Martin Luther says of this verse: “These words addressed to Satan are really spoken for the benefit of Adam and Eve, that they may hear this judgment on Satan and be comforted by the realization that God is not their enemy, but the enemy of that one who inflicted so severe a wound on humanity. Here grace and mercy begin to shine forth, here the Father reveals His heart; not a father who is angry, but one who points to a deliverance and promises victory against the enemy that deceived and conquered humankind. Forgiveness of sins and full reception into grace are here proclaimed to Adam and Eve. Their guilt has been forgiven; they have been won back from death and already been set free from hell, because the Seed of the woman will be the God-man, who will come and destroy sin, death, hell, and all the devil’s power.” The fact that Eve herself understands and believes the promise this way is revealed in the next chapter, the last verse of today’s Old Testament Reading. When she gives birth to her firstborn, Cain, Eve declares, “I have gotten a man—the Lord!” The Lord promised Eve that one of her descendants would be the God-man, and she believes this promise. So, when her first child is born, she thinks the promise has already been fulfilled, she thinks HE is the promised Seed, the God-man. And so she exclaims, in faith, “I have gotten a man—the Lord!” Luther comments: “In her great desire and longing, Eve hoped that her son was the Seed, the Man Jehovah. This prompted her to exclaim: ‘I have gotten a man—the Lord!’ by which she meant to say: ‘This is undoubtedly THE Man, the Lord, the Seed of woman, of whom God spoke.’ Her extreme trust in the promise causes Eve to reach a hasty conclusion, and she believes that her first son is the one about whom the Lord had given His promise. ‘This child is surely God Himself, who will crush the serpent, as God assured us.’ But, poor Mother Eve was mistaken in her assumption.” Scripture says that “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day,” and it would be many centuries, many millennia, before the promise would finally be fulfilled. As Paul says in Galatians, “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.” Luther adds: “The unusual feature in this passage is that this Child is called ‘Seed of a woman.’ For otherwise the word ‘seed’ regularly refers to the seed of a man, or a father. The solution must ultimately be that this Seed is a true natural son of the woman, derived from the woman, however, not in the normal way but through a special act of God, so that he is the Seed only of a woman and not of a man. Thus this is the first passage in which the mother of this Child is described as a virgin, who will become a mother solely through her own seed and without the cooperation of a man.” As Luther indicates, the phrase “HER Seed” is a puzzling paradox in the Hebrew language and way of thinking, and the explanation is that this first prophecy of the coming of Christ also is a prophecy of his virgin birth. He will be the “Seed of a woman” ONLY, miraculously born, of a virgin. As Mary says to the angel, “How can this be, since I have not known a man?” and the angel replies, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” The Proto Evangelium, the first promise of the Savior given back in the Garden of Eden, was fulfilled by the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When it says that Satan will “bruise” his heel, that is a prophecy of his suffering and death. It means that, like a person crushing a snake underfoot and in the process getting bit, in the process of crushing Satan the Messiah himself will be wounded. As Isaiah says, “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.” “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed.” We get a glimpse into this ancient enmity when Jesus casts out a demon and the demon cries out, “Let us alone! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” That is exactly why the Seed of the woman came, as John writes, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” “He will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.” The enmity between Satan and the promised Savior came to a climax in his passion, as he was whipped, beaten, mocked, stripped, and forced to carry his cross to Calvary, where he was crucified, dead and buried. When Jesus cried out from the cross “It is finished” and gave up his spirit, Satan thought he had finally won the ancient battle that began back in the Garden. He thought that instead of being crushed, HE had crushed the God-man. But, on the third day Christ rose from the dead, triumphant from the grave. His resurrection is God’s declaration that he accepts his Son’s sacrifice as payment for all your sins. He crushed Satan for you, he overcame sin and death for you, he made all things right again between you and God, he earned for you complete forgiveness for every sin and a place for you in heaven. There is an ancient Christian prayer which puts it this way: “By the Tree of the Cross, he gave salvation unto mankind, that whence death arose, thence life also might rise again, and that he who by a tree once overcame, might likewise by a Tree be overcome.” How could Eve be a hero of the CHRISTIAN faith in the years “Before Christ”? Because “B.C.” refers not to the promise, but to the FULFILLMENT of the promise, the birth of Christ. Like Eve, God’s people in the Old Testament trusted the promise, looked forward in faith to the promised Savior’s coming, and they were saved the very same way we are, through faith in Christ. They looked FORWARD in faith over the centuries to the promised Savior who WOULD come; we look BACKWARD over the centuries in faith to the promised Savior who HAS come. As Luther says: “Christ is promised for the first time soon after the fall. This promise of God sustained Adam and Eve and all the faithful of the Old Testament. They believed in it, and by this faith they were saved. The fathers, from Adam on, preached and inculcated this Gospel, through which they acknowledged the promised Seed of the woman and believed in him. And so they were sustained through faith in Christ just as we are; they were true Christians like ourselves.” The word “saint” literally means “holy one.” We often have the mistaken notion that a “saint” is an inherently holy person. But, because we are now all born in the image of Adam rather than the image of God, there is no such thing as an inherently holy human. Only the God-man, the promised Seed of Eve, is inherently perfect and holy. As John says in his First Epistle, “He appeared to take away our sins, and in him is no sin.” Paul explains in 2nd Corinthians, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” You are a “holy one,” a true “saint” in the sight of God, because his own Son took all your sins upon himself, and in place of your sins you are credited with Christ’s perfect holiness. There’s bumper sticker that puts it this way, “I’m Not Perfect, But Forgiven.” That’s really what means to be a “saint.” To trust in Christ and receive the forgiveness he earned for you. Because she is the first sinner recorded in the Bible, it would seem Eve is an unlikely hero of the faith. But, she was not only the first sinner, she is also the first SAINT, the first person in the Bible to profess faith in Christ her Savior, when she exclaims, “I have gotten a man—the Lord!” Amen. Return to Top \| Return to Sermons \| Home \| Email Church Office

“Unlikely Heroes of the Faith: Eve”
Genesis 3:1-4:1

Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost—October 11, 2015

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning we begin a new fall sermon series for October and November on “Unlikely Heroes of the Faith.” Maybe sometimes you don’t feel or act like what we think a “saint” should be, a hero of the faith. It may surprise you to learn that the great saints of old often felt that way too.

We begin today “in the beginning,” in Genesis, with today’s Old Testament Reading and the story of Eve. Eve is an UNLIKELY hero of the faith for two reasons. First of all, because Eve is the first SINNER recorded in the Bible. Like the mythological Pandora, who opened her box and brought misery and suffering into the world, Eve really did, by her rebellion and sin against God, bring every kind of misery and suffering into our world. As Paul says in 2nd Corinthians, “the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness.” And in 1st Timothy he says, “[Eve] being deceived, fell into transgression.”

Eve’s transgression wasn’t just bad news for her. Like the mythical Pandora’s box, Eve’s transgression really did have cosmological, universal, devastating consequences, for us all. For, as Paul explains in Romans, “In this way death came to all men, because all sinned. . . Consequently, the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men. . .”

This infection of sin was spread from Eve first to her husband Adam: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” And from Adam and Eve, this infection of sin has been passed down to us all, what we call original or inherited sin.

Genesis tells us that originally, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.” This does not mean that human beings are created with a PHYSICAL resemblance to God. For, as Jesus said, “God is a spirit.” So, the image of God does not mean a physical likeness, but rather that humanity was originally created with a SPIRITUAL likeness to God, holy and sinless, like God himself.

But, because of the fall into sin by our first parents, we all lost this spiritual likeness, we all lost the image of God. A few chapters later, Genesis says, “When God created humankind, he made them in the image of God. . . [Adam] became the father of a son in his OWN image, according to his OWN likeness.”

Like a fabulous inheritance squandered by an ancestor, so that instead you inherit only debts, the image of God, which humanity was intended to have, has been lost, forfeited by our first ancestors. So, instead of being born in the image of God, holy and sinless, Adam’s descendants are born “in his OWN image, according to his OWN likeness.” Like a hereditary disease, that sin is passed down to us all; we are all now born in the image of sinful man. As David says in Psalm 51, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

So, Eve was the first sinner, who by her rebellion and sin against God, brought every kind of misery and suffering into our world, and sin and death to us all. How then can Eve be considered a hero of the faith?

Another reason Eve seems an unlikely hero of the CHRISTIAN faith is that all this took place in the era we call “B.C.”, many thousands of years “Before Christ.” So, how can Eve be a hero of the CHRISTIAN faith?

From a sociological perspective, Christianity is a relatively new religion. We are now in the year 2015 A.D., meaning “Anno Domini,” the “Year of the Lord,” approximately 2,015 years since Jesus’ birth. But, it is hard to conceive that when Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with the baby Jesus some 2,000 years ago, many of the pyramids and great temples of ancient Egypt were at that time already 3,000 years old. Confucianism and Buddhism, were already nearly 500 years old when Jesus was born, as was the temple to the goddess Athena on the Acropolis in Athens. That is why the men of Athens ask Paul at the Acropolis, “May we know what this NEW teaching is that you are presenting?”

From a sociological perspective, that’s what Christianity is, a NEW teaching, a relatively new religion. But, actually, Christianity is the oldest religion in the world. Because, Christianity didn’t just come into existence in 1 A.D. or 33 A.D. The beginning of Christianity is recorded in today’s Old Testament Reading, and all the faithful throughout the Old Testament era were actually Christians, believers in Christ, beginning with Eve.

How can that be? How could they be believers in Christ in the centuries B.C., “Before Christ”? Paul says in Galatians that “[God] announced the Gospel in advance” to them. Speaking about the people of the Old Testament, today’s Epistle Reading from the book of Hebrews puts it this way: “For we also have had the Gospel preached to us, JUST AS THEY DID.”

The beginning of Christianity is when God announces the Gospel for the first time immediately after the fall into sin, by declaring to Satan: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.”

Theologians call that verse, in Latin, the Proto Evangelium, the “first Gospel.” Because, it is the first time in the Bible when God proclaims the Good News that one of Eve’s descendants will be much more than just a man. He will be the God-man, the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ, who will CRUSH and defeat Satan. Although that is very bad news for Satan, for Adam and Eve, and you and me, and all of sinful humanity, it is THE Good News, the Gospel.

Martin Luther says of this verse: “These words addressed to Satan are really spoken for the benefit of Adam and Eve, that they may hear this judgment on Satan and be comforted by the realization that God is not their enemy, but the enemy of that one who inflicted so severe a wound on humanity. Here grace and mercy begin to shine forth, here the Father reveals His heart; not a father who is angry, but one who points to a deliverance and promises victory against the enemy that deceived and conquered humankind. Forgiveness of sins and full reception into grace are here proclaimed to Adam and Eve. Their guilt has been forgiven; they have been won back from death and already been set free from hell, because the Seed of the woman will be the God-man, who will come and destroy sin, death, hell, and all the devil’s power.”

The fact that Eve herself understands and believes the promise this way is revealed in the next chapter, the last verse of today’s Old Testament Reading. When she gives birth to her firstborn, Cain, Eve declares, “I have gotten a man—the Lord!”

The Lord promised Eve that one of her descendants would be the God-man, and she believes this promise. So, when her first child is born, she thinks the promise has already been fulfilled, she thinks HE is the promised Seed, the God-man. And so she exclaims, in faith, “I have gotten a man—the Lord!”

Luther comments: “In her great desire and longing, Eve hoped that her son was the Seed, the Man Jehovah. This prompted her to exclaim: ‘I have gotten a man—the Lord!’ by which she meant to say: ‘This is undoubtedly THE Man, the Lord, the Seed of woman, of whom God spoke.’ Her extreme trust in the promise causes Eve to reach a hasty conclusion, and she believes that her first son is the one about whom the Lord had given His promise. ‘This child is surely God Himself, who will crush the serpent, as God assured us.’ But, poor Mother Eve was mistaken in her assumption.”

Scripture says that “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day,” and it would be many centuries, many millennia, before the promise would finally be fulfilled. As Paul says in Galatians, “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.”

Luther adds: “The unusual feature in this passage is that this Child is called ‘Seed of a woman.’ For otherwise the word ‘seed’ regularly refers to the seed of a man, or a father. The solution must ultimately be that this Seed is a true natural son of the woman, derived from the woman, however, not in the normal way but through a special act of God, so that he is the Seed only of a woman and not of a man. Thus this is the first passage in which the mother of this Child is described as a virgin, who will become a mother solely through her own seed and without the cooperation of a man.”

As Luther indicates, the phrase “HER Seed” is a puzzling paradox in the Hebrew language and way of thinking, and the explanation is that this first prophecy of the coming of Christ also is a prophecy of his virgin birth. He will be the “Seed of a woman” ONLY, miraculously born, of a virgin. As Mary says to the angel, “How can this be, since I have not known a man?” and the angel replies, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”

The Proto Evangelium, the first promise of the Savior given back in the Garden of Eden, was fulfilled by the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When it says that Satan will “bruise” his heel, that is a prophecy of his suffering and death. It means that, like a person crushing a snake underfoot and in the process getting bit, in the process of crushing Satan the Messiah himself will be wounded. As Isaiah says, “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.”

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed.” We get a glimpse into this ancient enmity when Jesus casts out a demon and the demon cries out, “Let us alone! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” That is exactly why the Seed of the woman came, as John writes, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”

“He will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.” The enmity between Satan and the promised Savior came to a climax in his passion, as he was whipped, beaten, mocked, stripped, and forced to carry his cross to Calvary, where he was crucified, dead and buried.

When Jesus cried out from the cross “It is finished” and gave up his spirit, Satan thought he had finally won the ancient battle that began back in the Garden. He thought that instead of being crushed, HE had crushed the God-man. But, on the third day Christ rose from the dead, triumphant from the grave.

His resurrection is God’s declaration that he accepts his Son’s sacrifice as payment for all your sins. He crushed Satan for you, he overcame sin and death for you, he made all things right again between you and God, he earned for you complete forgiveness for every sin and a place for you in heaven. There is an ancient Christian prayer which puts it this way: “By the Tree of the Cross, he gave salvation unto mankind, that whence death arose, thence life also might rise again, and that he who by a tree once overcame, might likewise by a Tree be overcome.”

How could Eve be a hero of the CHRISTIAN faith in the years “Before Christ”? Because “B.C.” refers not to the promise, but to the FULFILLMENT of the promise, the birth of Christ. Like Eve, God’s people in the Old Testament trusted the promise, looked forward in faith to the promised Savior’s coming, and they were saved the very same way we are, through faith in Christ. They looked FORWARD in faith over the centuries to the promised Savior who WOULD come; we look BACKWARD over the centuries in faith to the promised Savior who HAS come.

As Luther says: “Christ is promised for the first time soon after the fall. This promise of God sustained Adam and Eve and all the faithful of the Old Testament. They believed in it, and by this faith they were saved. The fathers, from Adam on, preached and inculcated this Gospel, through which they acknowledged the promised Seed of the woman and believed in him. And so they were sustained through faith in Christ just as we are; they were true Christians like ourselves.”

The word “saint” literally means “holy one.” We often have the mistaken notion that a “saint” is an inherently holy person. But, because we are now all born in the image of Adam rather than the image of God, there is no such thing as an inherently holy human. Only the God-man, the promised Seed of Eve, is inherently perfect and holy. As John says in his First Epistle, “He appeared to take away our sins, and in him is no sin.”

Paul explains in 2nd Corinthians, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” You are a “holy one,” a true “saint” in the sight of God, because his own Son took all your sins upon himself, and in place of your sins you are credited with Christ’s perfect holiness. There’s bumper sticker that puts it this way, “I’m Not Perfect, But Forgiven.” That’s really what means to be a “saint.” To trust in Christ and receive the forgiveness he earned for you.

Because she is the first sinner recorded in the Bible, it would seem Eve is an unlikely hero of the faith. But, she was not only the first sinner, she is also the first SAINT, the first person in the Bible to profess faith in Christ her Savior, when she exclaims, “I have gotten a man—the Lord!” Amen.

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