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CHAPTER
31
CHAPTER
THIRTY ONE
THE
SEED OF THE WOMAN
And
the LORD God said unto the serpent, “Because thou hast
done this--------I will put enmity between thee and
the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
(Genesis
chapter 3, verses 14-15).
The
‘seed’ from the woman, which is to ‘bruise’ the head
of the serpent (some translations use ‘crush’ instead
of ‘bruise’ at this point), is singular; it speaks of
a particular seed. The Complete Jewish Bible uses the
word ‘descendant’ in place of ‘seed’.
God
speaks the above words to the serpent (the devil) and
to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The serpent had
tempted Eve to disobey God, and she had given in to
the temptation; Adam did likewise. The human race had
chosen evil over good; the devil rather than God. Within
almost no time at all the earth would be filled with
violence and murder. Nature also came under the curse;
wicked people could not be allowed to remain in a natural
paradise, living the easy life, being rewarded for their
sins. So thorns, thistles and weeds grew up everywhere;
deserts and barren places came into being; animals turned
on each other and also on mankind; pestilences, plagues,
diseases, droughts, famines, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes
and tidal waves all appeared and began to increase.
Adam and Eve, who were created perfect in form and without
blemish, no doubt the most beautiful humans who have
ever lived, eventually fell victim to the ravages of
time. But this took a comparatively long time in relation
to today’s lifespans---Adam lived to be 930, his son,
Seth, to 912, even Noah lived to be 750. In part, these
long spans were surely due to the physical perfection
and magnificent health in which God had created Adam
and Eve, as well as the wonderful, and, initially, disease
and hazard free environment He had made for them. But
all this was to change. Their once perfect bodies wrinkled
and crinkled and degenerated down to death. Man had
chosen his own way, and that is always an evil way,
that is the devil’s way. God will not permit evil to
luxuriate at ease, in comfort and plenty for too long;
suffering must follow sin, death will follow sin, and
‘There is no rest for the wicked,’ says the Lord---not
even after death!
In
this third chapter of Genesis we first hear of the devil
and of his powerful influence over man. And now, thousands
of years after the above event, the devil is still powerful,
and, by and large, man still prefers his own way, the
devil’s way, to God’s.
But
our Creator is a God who gives hope; a God of good news.
He didn’t leave our first parents in despair---He foretold
of the devil’s eventual downfall; and with the devil’s
demise would come the end of all wickedness. And the
very good news was like a seed of the Gospel: God said
a particular descendant of Adam and Eve would be the
one to defeat the serpent, the one to crush his head.
Only God could defeat the devil, and the promised ‘seed’
was no other than the very Son of God---Jesus Christ.
So, even at the very beginning of the Bible, at the
beginning of man, we hear of the genesis of the Gospel.
God
is always in control, always able to bring the best
from the worst. He tells the earth’s first couple, a
guilt-ridden, despairing and trembling man and his wife,
that the devil’s end is in sight, it is a sure thing.
And He tells them one of their own offspring will bring
it to pass---evil will be defeated, the curse of sin
and death will be vanquished; God’s Man, the Seed of
Eve, will perform it.
Adam
and Eve believed the promise, and attempted to bring
up their children in the fear of God, looking forward
to the one ‘seed’ who might possibly be the Saviour
of mankind. Their first son, Cain, despised God; their
second son, Abel, worshipped Him. Cain murdered his
younger brother, and was cast out of the land of his
parents. It was from their third son, Seth, that the
godly line would lead to Jesus Christ.
Adam
and Eve could not know who would be the promised ‘seed’,
or when He would appear, but they believed God, and
so did other godly people down through the ages, none
more so than God’s prophets. During Moses’ time God
even caused a pagan practitioner of divination, Balaam,
to see vaguely down the corridors of time to the Saviour
who would come:
“I
see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A
star will come out of Jacob; a sceptre will rise out
of Israel.”
(Numbers
chapter 24, verse 17).
Some
4,000 years after God’s promise to Adam and Eve,
the One who, throughout the intervening millennia, had
been only partially perceived in visions, dreams, revelations
and oracles was born of a woman; the Seed who would
crush Satan’s head came into the world as a Man. He
entered human history as a Human, and made it HIS-story.
He came to break the devil’s stranglehold on humanity,
and to set His people free:
The
reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s
work.
(1
John chapter 3, verse 8).
He
came to destroy the devil’s work, and He will come again
to destroy the devil himself:
And
the devil------was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur-----.
(Revelation
chapter 20, verse 10).
With
this Seed of the woman, sin, wickedness, disease, death
and the devil are all defeated. Without this Seed from
Eve, mankind is bound in unbreakable fetters to all
the above. Without Him there would be no hope, no victory;
in fact, there would be no history, no geography, no
earth, no mankind, no creation---such is the Seed promised,
in grace and mercy, to the sinful progenitors of all
mankind.
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