In eternity past before time began and before anything was created, God foreordained His only begotten Son, to Redeem us.
God in His foreknowledge knows everything that is to happen so He gave us the only provision we would ever need to have hope: His Son, the Word of God.
Now, after God had completed the creation of the heavens and filled the earth with life, He made Adam and Eve, saying, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion” and so they were created in God’s image, perfect and without a sinful nature.
But it didn’t take long before Eve was deceived and enticed by Satan to sin against God.
She saw that the fruit was pleasing to the eyes and would be good to eat to satisfy her hunger but most importantly, in pride, she would become like God, knowing Good and Evil.
God did not give us these things to dishonor him. He gave us eyes to see his wonderful creation and to love and worship him for it. He gave us flesh so that thorough it, we might enjoy the food he gave us giving thanks to him each day for it. God gave us a sense of pride that we might only boast in what He has done for us.
However, in one bite, she corrupted her eyes, her flesh and took pride in herself instead of God. Adam also ate when Eve brought of the fruit to him and both their eyes were opened.
Thus was born sin through the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Because we have Adams nature, we are all born with this corrupted nature because of the sin born of these things and we can become enslaved to them throughout our lives.
Now, God knew what had happened and He gave them the punishment for disobeying Him. He denied them access to the tree of Life by removing them from the Garden in Eden and without it they would eventually die.
He also sentenced Satan when He said to the serpent, “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”
In this, God was saying there would be a blood feud between Satan and his followers and the sons of men who followed after God.
But eventually, one seed would come forth from the women which would destroy the works of Satan and only receive a wound in return. That one seed would be God’s only begotten Son in the flesh, Jesus Christ.
This was the first mention of the Good News of redemption and restoration: One would be born of the woman’s seed to destroy Satan’s power over us which is our separation from God because of sin. God would provide another way to himself by His Son.
Now, before God made Adam and Eve leave Eden, He made them clothing from the skins of animals He had killed – shedding their blood in the process so as to cover their sinful nakedness.
So we see in this that God is instituting by example what would become a reminder to Himself of what He would need to do in order to redeem us from our sins: A blood sacrifice and death.
This was understood by Adam and Eve for we see Abel sacrificing the flesh and blood of sheep on an altar as a burnt offering for his own sins and it was pleasing to God – not because of what Abel sacrificed but because he had done it in faith and hope.
This was not the case for Cain as God had no respect for Cain’s offering and because of this, Cain killed his brother Abel.
This is the first occurrence of the enmity God put between Satan and the seed of the woman. You see, Cain was of Satan and Abel was of the line of the righteous seed.
Adam and Eve have another son named Seth and Eve said, “For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.”
Do you see the hope she had in God’s words that in her seed one would come to redeem them?
Eve was right as it was in Seth’s son Enosh that men began worshipping and walking with God in his ways. It was through this line of seed that our Lord Jesus Christ would be born.
Now, after the flood, Noah’s son Shem continued the walk with God and through his seed, Abraham was born several hundred years later.
In Abraham, God found a faithful man and he separated him from his family and made a covenant with him that his seed would bring forth one who would be a blessing to all nations.
Now, the rest of the Old Testament is the unfolding revelation of God as He fulfills His promises to a people called Israel and prepares them for the coming of His Son who would redeem them. Each year, they found atonement for their sins by the sacrificing of the flesh and blood of animals as a burnt offering upon an altar.
There are many prophesies concerning the seed of promise and as we go through the books of the Old Testament, we find more and more details about him.
In Isaiah, we learn that this seed will be a suffering servant acquainted with grief and sorrow, rejected of men. He would redeem his people by taking the sin of everyone upon himself and die a cursed death but it would not be able to hold him as he would be resurrected back to life.
As promised, God forms His Son into the likeness of sinful flesh through the seed of a young woman who had known no man and He is then revealed in the Gospels as the Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Our Savior brought us a message repentance and redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life to those that believed in Him.
These are the words written by the Apostle John that reveal the message of hope in what God has in store for us through His Son:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.“
When we proclaimed that “Jesus Christ is Lord” and believed in our hearts that God raised His Son from the dead, we were saved.
To believe, it first takes faith in God and in what He has already done.
So, what does scripture say faith is?
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the confidence of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen.“
How do we get this confidence and assurance?
It is written that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.”
That is why it’s so important to study God’s word, come to bible studies and Sunday School. It is in doing these things that we strengthen each other’s faith.
So the confidence and assurance we have which generates faith is in the belief that God has fulfilled his promises from the Old Testament as the Promised Seed of the woman was revealed.
We can read about that Seed in the four gospels and the blessings and promises he brought with him and then learn how to live a life pleasing to God in the Epistles written by the Apostles.
But, we are not saved by faith alone as this confidence called faith is in things hoped for.
The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans:
Romans 8:24-25 “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man sees, why does he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.“
When we hear about what God has already done, we believe Him in faith but for those things promised but not yet seen requires hope.
But we need faith and belief first to have a saving hope.
The Apostle Paul says as much to the Romans:
Romans 15:4 “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope”.
In this verse we see that in learning Gods word we obtain faith and then that faith brings comfort or confidence giving way to patient hope.
We can think of hope as the future tense of faith so when that which is promised comes to pass, it will turn into faith!
But, who do we have our hope in – what do we hope for?
Colossians 1:26-27 “Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
Our body is the cup in which dwells the living water of the Spirit of Christ so that we will have hope in the promise of a glorified body.
In Romans 8, Paul explains what this means:
This is the promise which we hope for and our faith gives us confidence that just as God fulfilled His promises in the Old Testament and in the Gospels, He now assures us that He will perform this future promise as well through a new covenant in a secret that was hidden from the ages past and generations before us.
Thanks be to God that we are not alone in our hope so that we might give up waiting for the promise to come.
We have the Spirit of God in us that speaks the words of our Lord to help transform our lives, renewing us day by day and deepening our faith and belief so that our hope is sustained.
Now, our Lord asks that we follow him in hope to the end of our lives so that when he comes back, we might stand before him holy, blameless and above reproach.
How do we know this is true?
Colossians 1:22-23 “In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;“
Paul tells the Philippians why we can have confidence that we can follow Jesus through to the end: Our hope is assured by faith.
Philippians 1:6 “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:”
Paul is saying that by faith, Christ is in us working to make us holy, blameless and above reproach. This process is called sanctification.
And if the Lord does not return before we die, The Apostle Paul shows us how we can learn a lesson from a seed in his letter to the Corinthians.
You see, someone had convinced the Corinthians to expect the Lord to return while they were still alive but over time some of the believers died so they began to doubt Paul’s message of salvation by faith and hope.
So Paul writes to them about how we are raised from the dead and with what body so that they will continue in the hope he brought them.
Paul explains that our body is like a seed and it can’t bring forth a new body unless it is first sown in the ground. And like the seeds we sow, that which arises out of the ground is not that body which was planted but that body which God gives it as it pleases him.
This seed of ours, that is our body, will be sown in corruption and raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. We were born with an earthly body but we shall be given a heavenly spiritual body.
This body, our cup, in which Christ lives is for the Hope of Glory.
Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, we were all at one time separated from you and lost in our sins, living our own way and while we were still like this, you sent the Lord Jesus Christ, your only Begotten Son to save us. Our sin was so great that our debt could only be paid by him shedding his own blood on a cross and dying for us but you did not leave him in his grave to see corruption and in the space of three days, you raised him up alive with a glorified spiritual body as the firstfruits of the resurrection. And by doing this, you have ensured that our faith is not in vain and we can live in joyful hope in the promise of glory when you will raise up our bodies and give them immortal spiritual bodies like our Lords, never to die again. Amen