An Ancient Promise Kept

Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation was the fulfillment of an ancient promise by God. Now ancient is an interesting term, at least in its usage. Children can use it to describe some-thing from their parents’ growing up years – IOW 30 or so years before, thus to them 30 years in the past is ancient. Now we’ve all done this so I’m not picking on our current crop of children.

Ancient can also mean when our grandparents or great grandparents were growing up – which for some of us would mean in the 1800s. This past 4th of July, we celebrated our nation’s 244th birthday – that’s a long time ago. Denise & I have done some research with Ancestory.com & have traced the Wall family back to the late 1300s in England. 1300’s – that’s ancient. As we think about the birth of Christ today, we’re talking about ~2000 years ago. That’s so far back, it’s kind of hard to even fathom it – 2000 years b/c just 1000 years, the year 1020 seems forever ago – but 2000 years!!!

But try to go back to the Garden of Eden days. Numerous creationists argue that our world/universe is somewhere around 6000 years old which seems to fit with the biblical narrative & was the position I took when we studied Genesis a few years ago. If 2000 years ago is hard to fathom, try wrapping your mind around 6000 years ago. It’s almost like once you get pass 1000 years, everything is just a blur.

But 6000 or so years ago, God created the heavens & the earth & in that creation, He planted a special garden in Eden. The climax of all His creating was the creation of 2 individuals, a man & a woman, created in His image for the purpose of knowing & having a relationship with Him. It was beautiful & very good! It just didn’t last long b/c those 2 disobeyed God’s 1 prohibition, thought they knew better, thought God was somehow depriving them of something good they deserved – and through their disobedience brought sin into this world & into their hearts & thus brought upon them-selves God’s judgment against sin & sinners. And tragedy upon tragedies, it didn’t just impact them, but literally every single person who has been born since them – billions & billions & billions of people.

God is serious about sin & being holy & righteous, is serious about holding sinners accountable for their sins against Him – which is a completely right & just thing to do. But God is also immensely merciful, more so than we can comprehend. And so on that very day when Adam/Eve stood guilty before Him as sinners, while judgment was pronounced, He also issued a glorious, hope-filled, merciful promise – that 1 day in the future, 1 would come that would make right what had been made wrong by Adam/Eve. One would come that would deal with sin that had now become part of man's nature & would make it possible for mankind to once again walk with & have a relationship with a holy, righteous & perfect God.

Speaking to the serpent, but in reality to Satan who had used the serpent as his instrument of tempta- tion, God declared & made this promise: (Gen 3:15): “And I will put enmity b/w you & the woman, & b/w your seed & her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, & you shall bruise him on the heel." In future years & centuries, God would get more specific about this promise, but it was originally given on that day in the Garden of Eden.

It was a promise made by God, who always keeps & fulfills His promises. And this specific promise was fulfilled 4000 years later through the birth, death, & resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And on this Sunday before Christmas, we gather to celebrate God keeping that ancient promise when God the Son came & was born as the God-man which began His journey toward the cross where sin, death & hell would be defeated - 4000 years after it was promised. And now for us in 2020, we live in the light of a 6000-year-old promise. But wait, I technically misspoke – for this promise is actually & more accurately much, much more ancient than 6000 years – for it goes back before that. Let me show it to you. Strange as it may seem, we need to look to the NT, not the OT or Genesis to see this. Turn to Ephesian 1.

-1:3-4: Blessed be the God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.