God's Promise to Eve
"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (v. 15).
The book of Haggai closes with a promise to Zerubbabel that his house would be exalted over all others, that his family would be a seal or signet that confirms and consummates all of the Lord's promises (Hag. 2:20ï¾–23). Ultimately we see that this is a prophecy of Jesus Christ, in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen (2 Cor. 1:20). We will now take a break from our study of the prophetic books for two days in order to consider some of the promises of the Lord related to the Messiah. Dr. R.C. Sproul will assist us in our study as we look at two lectures from his teaching series Promises.
As human beings, we are accustomed to seeing other people break their promises to us. We have also broken many of our own promises to others. But as we all know, the Lord never breaks His vows. When He makes a promise, He always keeps it (Heb. 6:13ï¾–20). The trouble is that although we know this with our minds, we find it difficult at times to believe Him with our hearts. We sometimes doubt that God will come through for us because He has often taken what seems like an extraordinarily long amount of time to bring His Word to pass. This is the true test of faithï¾—to wait for the fulfillment of a divine promise. However, when we wonder if the Lord will ever fulfill His promises, we find strength for our faith in God's Word and the record of how He has kept His pledge to His people throughout the ages.
The account of our Savior's birth, in particular, is encouraging to our faith. If ever there was a promise that our Father seemed slow to fulfill, it was the first advent of the Messiah. Sometimes we forget that the first promise of the Messiah's coming was not given to Isaiah, David, Moses, or even Noah. Instead, the Lord gave it at the beginning of history itself, right after the fall of Adam and Eve into sin.
In today's passage we find the protoevangel, the "first gospel." After our first parents ate from the forbidden tree and fell into sin, God would have been entirely just to separate Himself from them forever and subject them only to His wrath. But that is not what happened; rather, the Lord promised to solve the problem of sin, death, and Satan. He promised that a descendant of Eve would deliver a crushing blow to the Evil One.
God never told Eve how long it would be before the Messiah's birth. All she knew was that it would be in the future. Still, she was called to trust the Lord at His word. We must likewise believe God even if we never see the consummation of His promises in this life.?
Coram Deo
When the Lord seems slow in acting, we find it extremely difficult not to think that He has somehow forgotten us. However, God is not bound by our timing, and He always answers us when the time is right, not before or after. The Lord allowed thousands of years to pass between His word to Eve and the birth of Christ, but He still kept His promise. He will keep His promises to us as we wait patiently for Him to move in the time that He has determined is best.
