The First Sermon Ever Preached About Jesus
Genesis 3:15 "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."
Look up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and you will see one of the most famous depictions of the Fall in Western art. Michelangelo painted it between 1509 and 1510. A muscular tree of knowledge runs down the center of the panel, dividing the temptation on the left from the expulsion on the right. And coiled around the tree, between the two scenes, is the serpent, painted by Michelangelo with a strange and arresting choice: not the simple snake of children's Bibles, but a serpent with a human upper body, gesturing toward Eve as she reaches for the fruit.
Generations of art historians have debated why Michelangelo painted it that way. Some have pointed to medieval iconographic tradition. Some have suggested he was thinking of the moment in Genesis 3 when the serpent stops being merely a snake and becomes the personal enemy of the human race. What is unmistakable is that the painter wanted us to feel the personhood of the evil curling around that tree. This wasn’t a generic temptation. It was a war.
And Michelangelo painted the war on the same wall as its outcome.
Read Genesis 3:15 slowly. After Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit, after they’ve hidden behind fig leaves, after God has come walking in the cool of the day and called Adam by name, God turns to the serpent and announces a sentence that contains, hidden inside it, the entire gospel of the Bible. "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."
Theologians have a Latin name for this verse: the protoevangelium, the first gospel. Genesis 3:15 is the first sermon ever preached about Jesus, and the preacher was God Himself, on the third page of the Bible, three verses after the first human sin in history. We’ve been so trained to read the gospel forward from the manger that we miss how early in the Book it was already shining. The gospel is older than the curse. The gospel arrives before Eve has even heard her own sentence.
Notice who God is talking to. He isn’t addressing Adam first. He isn’t addressing Eve first. He’s addressing the serpent. And inside that address, He makes a promise about a coming offspring who will crush the serpent's head. This means the very first ears in human history to hear the gospel were not human ears at all. They were the ears of the man and woman standing nearby, eavesdropping on God's promise to their enemy.
Eve heard the gospel before she heard her own punishment. Before God said one word to her about pain in childbirth or sorrow in marriage, He had already promised her a son who would defeat the one who had ruined her. That’s the kind of God we have. He gets ahead of bad news with good news. He cannot let the curse have the final word, even in the moment He is pronouncing it.
Track the offspring across the rest of the Old Testament and you’ll see God protecting the line of this promised seed. Through Seth. Through Noah. Through Abraham, to whom God says, "in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen 22:18). Through David, to whom God promises an offspring whose throne will never end (2 Sam 7:12-13). Through Mary, the daughter of Eve, in whose womb the offspring of the woman finally took up residence. Through the cross, where the heel was bruised, and the tomb, where the head was crushed. Paul is so confident this is what was happening in Genesis 3:15 that he writes to the Romans, "the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet" (Rom 16:20). The promise on page three is still unfolding on the last page.
What this means for our Bibles is wonderful. The gospel isn’t a New Testament invention bolted onto an Old Testament religion of law. The gospel is the spine of the whole Book. From the first sin onward, God has been telling one story: a Son will come, the serpent will be crushed, the bride will be saved, the curse will be reversed! Every page of the Old Testament is, in some way, this promise being kept.
Today: Open your Bible to Genesis 3:14-15 and read it aloud. Slowly. Hear it not as a curse but as a covenant. Eve was listening over God's shoulder, and the first words she heard about her future were words of mercy. So are yours. Sit with that for a few minutes.
Prayer: "Father, thank You that the gospel is older than the curse and louder than our shame. I worship You for a Son who was promised in the garden, protected through generations, and given for me at the cross. Tune my ears today to the mercy You have been preaching from the very first page. In Jesus' name, Amen."
-PK