Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2165
“And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. Upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life: and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” Genesis 3:14,15.
SOME master in Israel who wanted to help the memories of his hearers has said that the three things to be preached above everything else are the three R’s—Ruin, Redemption and Regeneration. He spoke wisely and well. How will men seek salvation if they do not feel their ruin? Where is there salvation except in the atoning blood? What is salvation but being created anew unto holiness? It is a noteworthy fact that, in Holy Scripture there are three third chapters which deal with these things in the fullest manner. The third of Genesis reveals Ruin. The third of Romans teaches Redemption. The third of John sets forth Regeneration.
Will our young friends be so good as to read those chapters through with care, at home? It is also worthy of mention that not only do each of these chapters teach its own R, but that it also teaches the other two R’s. In this third of Genesis we have not only Ruin, but we have the Redeemer in “the Seed of the woman,” and we have Regeneration in the expression, “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” God’s regenerating power creates a hatred of evil in the chosen seed. The same you will find in the other chapters, for the third of Romans contains a fearful description of the sin and ruin of men. And in the third of John, after you have read, “You must be born again,” not far from it you find it written, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but have eternal life.” Believe any of these great Truths of God and the rest follow as a necessary consequence.
May we be helped this morning to learn something with regard to Ruin, Redemption and Regeneration from the passage now before us! I pray you, never regard that story of the serpent as a fable. It is said, nowadays, that it is a mere allegory. Yet there is nothing in the Book to mark where history ends and parable begins—it all runs on as actual history and as Bishop Horsley forcibly remarks, “If any part of this narrative is allegorical, no part is naked matter of fact.” It seems to me that if there was only an allegorical serpent, there was an allegorical Paradise, with allegorical rivers and allegorical trees. And the men and women were both allegorical and the chapter which speaks of their creation is an allegory. And the only thing that exists is an allegorical Heaven and an allegorical earth. If the Book of Genesis is an allegory, it is an allegory all through—and you have an allegorical Abraham—with allegorical circumcision.
Then you would have an allegorical Jacob and an allegorical Judah—and it is not unfair to push the theory onward and impute to Judah allegorical descendants called Jews. But if you borrow any money from this race, you will not find them allegorical when you have to pay! It is idle to call the narrative of the Fall a mere allegory—one had better say at once that he does not believe the Bible. There is something sane about that declaration, although it is folly. But to say, “Oh, yes, it is a venerable volume and worthy to be studied, but it is padded out with many an allegory,” is to say something which confutes itself if you come to look into it.
The Bible is intended to be real history and it contains some portions which, by the consent of everybody, are real history. But Moses could not be an historian and yet set mere fables before us as a part of his story. To write a jumble of allegory and of fact causes a man to lose the character of a reliable historian and we had better repudiate him at once. There was a real serpent, as there was a real Paradise. There was a real Adam and Eve who stood at the head of our race,
and they really sinned and our race is really fallen. Believe this. When Satan, “that old serpent, the Devil and Satan”—as the Apocalypse calls him—determined to tempt Eve in order that he might destroy the race in which God evidently took much delight, he could not appear to the woman as a spirit.
Spirits are not to be discerned by the eye since a pure spirit is a thing which none of the outward senses of human beings can apprehend. An immaterial spirit must be invisible and therefore he must embody himself in some way or other before he can be seen. That Satan has power to enter into living bodies is clear, for he did so upon a very large scale with regard to men in the days of Christ. He and his legions were even compelled to enter into the bodies of swine rather than be cast into the deep. Being compelled to have an embodiment, the master evil spirit perceived the serpent to be at that time among the most subtle of all creatures—and therefore he entered into the serpent as feeling that he would be most at home in that animal.