We have Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Everything in this garden is great.

It is exactly is it should be

except there is this one tree that they are told by God not to eat from

because it is dangerous and it will kill them.

So that is it, just avoid this fruit tree and we are fine?

Right, it seems pretty simple.

But in this garden there is a snake.

It starts telling a different story.

It says that if you eat of this tree it is not going to kill you.

In fact, it is going to make you become like God.

Adam and Eve believe the snake and they eat the fruit.

Because of this, the goodness of the garden is tragically lost.

Evil and death enters into God's good world.

Now, why is there a talking snake in the garden?

I mean, this thing is a problem.

Yeah, it is very strange.

Even more strange is the fact that the Bible doesn't say why or how this thing even got there.

It simply presents the snake as this creature

who is in rebellion against God and wants to get other people

to doubt God's goodness and lead them on a path towards death.

So whatever this snake is,

it is the source of evil that pervades our world and our lives even still today

But there is some hope because right here in the story,

God makes this really interesting promise to Adam and Eve.

That someone is going to come in the future, a son of Eve,

This guy is going to crush the serpent's head and destroy evil at its source.

However, during this battle, the serpent is going to bite this guy's heal.

So it is like mutual destruction?

Yes. It is a strange but beautiful promise.

It is just left hanging there until the next key moment in the story...

...when God singles out this guy named Abraham

and says that through his family goodness and blessing

is going to be restored back to all of the nations in the world

As we follow this family we get to one of Abraham's great-grandsons, this guy named Judah.

He receives a promise that a king is going to come from his line

and that the whole world is going to follow this king,

and he is going to bring peace and harmony

and there will be lots of food and wine and milk and vineyards.

It is going to be awesome!

The first king that we meet from the line of Judah is a guy named King David

He is a hero.

Maybe he is the Snake Crusher.

But it turns out that David is infected with the same evil as the rest of humanity.

He never crushes the snake.

Just the opposite.

However, God makes a promise to David that this king is going to eventually come from his line.

But as you go on in the story

one by one, each generation of his sons are total disappointments.

They give in to the snake.

They choose evil.

They go after money and sex and power and following other gods.

Things get so bad that they run the nation of Israel right into the ground

and the big bad empire of Babylon destroys them.

So now there are no more kings to even fulfill this promise.

So seems like the whole plan is lost.

But during these dark days there is these crazy group of guys called prophets.

They kept talking about this coming king

and reminding us of the promise that he will come, he will defeat evil and restore the garden.

Now one specific prophet, Isaiah,

tells us more about why this king is bitten.

Isaiah says that the promised king receives this wound

because of humanity's evil, and that it kills him.

But then, all of a sudden, he comes back.

Isaiah says that is because he suffered this wound that he can now become a source of healing to other people.

But the Old Testament ends and the snake crushing king

that everyone has been talking about never shows up.

This is why when the New Testament begins it introduces us to Jesus of Nazareth,

not as some random guy, but as someone who comes to fulfill these specific ancient promises.

Yeah, we learn that he is from the line of David, Judah, and Abraham.

He goes around Israel announcing that the goodness of God's kingdom is here, now.

He begins confronting the affects of evil on people by healing them, by forgiving them of their sins and evil

Many people are now believing that this is in fact the promised king.

Jesus began telling his closest followers

that he was going to become king and bring peace

by taking the full effect if humanity's evil into himself.

That fatal snake bite wound.

Exactly. So, it seems like the serpent wins.

This story actually would be a tragedy except for what happens next.

Jesus rises from the dead.

And now Jesus has the power over evil and death for himself.

So the rest of the New Testament is then making this claim

the Jesus' power over evil and death has now become available

to us to begin confronting the effects evil in our own lives.

Even still, death and evil are a real problem in our world all around us.

So the story of the Bible ends by describing this future day

when Jesus comes back and he finishes the job.

He destroys the snake once and for all,

and he restores the goodness of the garden here on earth.