Genesis
3:15 “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.”
I
read a short heart-warming article on the greatest promise of God that I’d like
to share with you today.
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. 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 faith—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 doubted God, ate from the forbidden tree and fell into sin, God would
have been entirely justified 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.
2 Peter
3:9 “The Lord is not slow in keeping his
promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you,
not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
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.
Blessings
in the promises of God.
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