PROPHECIES PINPOINT THE
MESSIAH.
He Is The Seed
Of The Woman.
GENESIS 3:14-15.
In
the name + of Jesus.
Immediately after Adam and Eve were expelled
from the Garden of Eden, Moses recorded this event: “The man was intimate
with Eve, his wife. She conceived and
gave birth to Cain. She said, ‘I have
gotten a man with the LORD’” (Genesis 4:1). Some have translated
that a little differently and, I believe, more accurately. Eve declared, “I have gotten a man, the LORD.” It seems that Eve
took God’s first promise of a Savior to heart.
And it seems that Eve was so eager for the Lord to fulfill his promise that
she concluded the first son to be born to her was the Savior that God had
promised.
Who could fault Eve for her enthusiasm? She had been deceived by the serpent and was the
first one to chomp down on the fruit that God had expressly forbidden, the
fruit that brought death with it. Who knows
how long she beat herself up for that?
Adam had been no help, either.
Not only did Adam fail to protect his wife, not only did Adam fail to
refute the words of the serpent, not only did Adam stand by silently and join
his wife in their foolish rebellion, Adam also blamed Eve for everything that
went wrong. So, Eve was a victim of
deception and of betrayal. Who could
blame her for hoping that the son born to her would be the one to reconcile
them to the Lord, to reconcile her and her husband again, and to restore a
fallen world back to a perfect Paradise?
Of course, you know the rest of the
story. Cain did not end up being the one
to save mankind. Cain ended up being the
first one to murder one of mankind. The
devil is a murderer (John 8:44), and Cain proved to be one of his pawns. Still, at the moment Cain was born, Adam and
Eve had high hopes for him.
When a child is born, it is a moment of unlimited
potential. What will this child become? How much will this child accomplish in
life? Could he be another Mozart? Another da Vinci? Another Tiger Woods? Could Cain be the Savior God had promised? Eve seemed to think so. And even if Cain had been the Messiah, how
could Adam and Eve know? He was just a
baby boy.
Once again, you know the rest of the
story. You know the promised Messiah is
Jesus of Nazareth, born of a woman centuries after Eve. You have better and more complete information
than Adam and Eve had. Still, with all
this information, many still reject Jesus as the promised Savior. So, why are we so convinced? This is why we will consider the prophecies
God had made. These prophecies pinpoint the
Messiah so that we can have full confidence that Jesus is the one God has
promised. This evening, we will consider
carefully that very first promise God had made.
This prophecy will not pinpoint the Messiah just yet, but it will point
us in the right direction.
The first promise came right after the
first sin. God came to see Adam and Eve,
but they ran for cover. They were consumed
with guilt and fear. They wanted nothing
to do with God, convinced that facing God would mean facing their
damnation. Even though God called out to
them as one friend looking for another, Adam and Eve were afraid. God had not changed, but they had. When Adam and Eve would not come clean about
their sin, God asked them point-blank what they had done. Both finally admitted wrong-doing, but both
said it was someone else’s fault. There
was no true confession, no heartfelt repentance, and no appeal for mercy. Their fear of being damned was valid, and
they did not help themselves.
St. Paul described the depth of the sinful
condition in a few of his letters. To
the Ephesians Paul wrote, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins” (Ephesians
2:1). The dead cannot do anything to
improve their situation; so also, sinners cannot change what they are. To the Romans Paul wrote, “The mind-set of
the sinful flesh is hostile to God, since it does not submit to God’s law, and
in fact, it cannot” (Romans 8:7). Sinners
are not neutral toward God. There is
hostility. There is a stubborn refusal to
obey God’s commands and to admit our sins against them—and not only to admit
them, but to stop them. The sinner
cannot suddenly flip, going from dead to alive, going from hostility toward God
to loving God, going from wickedness to holiness. If the sinful condition is to change, God must
be the one to change it.
That is what happened in the Garden of
Eden. Adam and Eve did not ask for
mercy; God extended it. Adam and Eve did
not plead for a deliverer; God promised one.
God acted to rectify, to redeem, and to reconcile. So, to the serpent, that is, to Satan, who
seduced the man and the woman into rebellion, “The LORD God
said…: Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all the livestock, and
more than every wild animal. You shall
crawl on your belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. I will put hostility between you and the
woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush
his heel” (Genesis 3:14-15).
Prophecies pinpoint the Messiah. The first prophecy proclaimed that God would
send a Messiah. And while we do not have
a lot of detail, we do have some information to focus our attention. At first, it seems that God was simply
drawing a divide between unbelievers and believers, as St. John noted, “The
dragon was angry about what had happened to the woman (that is, the Church),
and he went away to make war against the rest of her children—those who keep
the commandments of God and who hold on to the testimony about Jesus”
(Revelation 12:17). So, there is
animosity between Satan and the children of God.
But God’s first prophecy focuses on one
particular child. After speaking of the seed
of the woman, the Lord says, “He will crush your head” (Genesis 3:15). In other words, there is a specific Seed
who will come from the woman, and this Seed is a “He.” If we are looking for the Messiah to come, he
will be a male child. While this allows
for only half of the world’s population to qualify as potentially being the
Messiah, it does limit our focus. And
the Bible tells us why. St. Paul wrote, “Just
as through the disobedience of one man the many became sinners, so also through
the obedience of one man the many will become righteous” (Romans 5:19). And again: “Since death came by a man,
the resurrection of the dead also is going to come by a man. For as in Adam they all die, so also in
Christ they all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). Just as a man brought sin and death to all
mankind, so righteousness and life for all mankind must also come through a
man. He who is the Seed of the Woman
will accomplish this by destroying the serpent.
For, when you crush a serpent’s head, you have rendered it powerless,
and it no longer presents a threat to anyone.
Of course, there would be a cost. All sin bears a cost. Just ask Adam and Eve who ran for cover. They didn’t do anything that we would
consider a felony. They ate food. But what they did was violate God’s command. That is always the problem with sin. Many today will argue that they do not sin
because their deeds don’t hurt anyone.
The couple that shares a bed outside of marriage can do so in secret. If no one knows, no one can get hurt. People who gossip can keep their stories to
their inner circle. No one is the wiser. But God sees and knows. He sees that his word is being ignored. He knows that the person’s heart is devoted
to itself. He judges accordingly.
All sin comes at a cost. But the Messiah was sent to bear the cost for
all people. To the serpent, the Lord said,
“He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel” (Genesis 3:15). Oh yes, there is a cost to sin. It will cost the Messiah his life. For, when a viper strikes, the blow is lethal. To deliver mankind from sin, the Messiah must
die. That is what the Lord had told Adam
is the consequence for sin: “You will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17). So, the Messiah had to suffer that judgment
and pay the price. Prophecies pinpoint
the Messiah. Although Adam and Eve could
not have named him, they did know what he would do. And they knew that this would set them free
from sin and death. Who could fault Eve
for being so eager to see it fulfilled?
There is one more part of this first
prophecy that deserves our attention.
Whether it was obvious to Adam and Eve I don’t know. Perhaps it was obvious only after Isaiah
foretold it. Already at the first
promise, the Lord prophesied the virgin birth.
The Lord had promised the Messiah would be the Seed of the Woman. Women do not have seeds; men have seeds which
fertilize the egg in a woman. This is
what impregnates her. But God prophesied
that the Messiah would be born of a woman, but not from a man. And you know the rest of the story: “He
was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary” (Apostles’
Creed). Jesus is exactly whom the
Lord said he would be. Prophecies pinpoint
the Messiah.
Eve could not detect who the Messiah was
from the first promise. Her hope that it
was Cain was wrong. She was not alone in
her ignorance. By his first prophecy of
the Savior, the Lord vexed Satan. For,
Satan had just as much information about who the Messiah would be. He would be a male child born of a
woman. But who? Where would he come from? When would he be born? Satan may have raged and plotted and hoped to
destroy him. But that’s hard to do if
you don’t know who he is. To be sure, Satan
tried to thwart God’s promise throughout the Old Testament. Think of Satan coaxing Pharaoh into killing
all the Hebrew baby boys. Or think of Satan
coaxing Herod to kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem. The devil surely hates babies. But just as the Lord was moved by his own
compassion to promise a Savior, so the Lord also acted to preserve his promise and
thwart Satan’s efforts.
Prophecies pinpoint the Messiah. Our Lord promised to deliver all mankind from
the venom of sin and horrors of death.
That promise was fulfilled by a man, and only one man has fulfilled all
that God has promised. Jesus of Nazareth
is the Messiah. He is the Seed of the Woman. He is the virgin-born baby who crushes the serpent’s
head. He is the man who dies for the sins
of the world. He is the one who reconciles
God and mankind. And Eve rejoices because
of him.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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