February 15: THE GREATEST OF ALL EXPECTATIONS (part 1)

And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel. Genesis 3:15

And thus, we have the very first prophecy of the coming Messiah. The LORD God is directly addressing the deceiver, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world (Revelation 12:9).

We do not know how long our first parents enjoyed uninterrupted time with the LORD and with each other before the serpent gained Eve’s attention. When the deceiver succeeded in influencing her to eat fruit from the one reserved tree, the utter tragedy that it would lead to was beyond human imagination. Neither this tree nor its fruit was poison. God created man as a free moral agent, therefore God’s law was written upon the conscience. His explicit command to refrain from eating of that one tree served as a simple test of loyalty and obedience.

One might wonder why the first mention in the written Word of the Savior to come is overheard by Adam and Eve, rather than being spoken directly to them. It was the LORD’s purpose to announce the sure judgement of the father of lies (John 8:44; see also Matthew 25:41) directly to him, and within earshot of the humans who had sinned. The prophetic language of Genesis 3:15 is not only the announcement of the great deceiver’s sure judgement to come, but also the promise of a Deliverer as two necessarily related facets of salvation. It is the Deliverer alone who would bruise—literally crush—the head of the serpent.

The enmity that the LORD placed between [the serpent] and the woman was an unusually precious gift. Have you ever been given a gift that you did not appreciate until much later? It is the LORD’s intention that there be an instinctive aversion toward the deceptive tactics employed by His enemy. Not only was enmity to exist between Satan and Eve, but also between the people who adopted and perpetuated his deceptive ways and those who desire to live by God’s word.

The promised Deliverer, referred to as her Seed, is the Lord Jesus. His preeminence is set forth in the singular, as it is He who came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). When Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, he capitalized upon and encouraged their faithful obedience by God’s grace, for the Good News of Jesus Christ was much more than facts to be believed; it was a life to be lived. The letter of the law, apart from God’s Spirit, was searched for “loopholes”. But the spirit of the law captured and conveyed the intended, and much broader, objectives of character transformation. Paul magnanimously included the true followers of Jesus in His victory over Satan, with these closing words of encouragement as they continued in the battles waged against them by the enemy:

For your obedience has become known to all. Therefore I am glad on your behalf; but I want you to be wise in what is good, and simple concerning evil. And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. Romans 16:19-20

To be continued…