Amazing Prophecies from the Bible
A Monthly
Feature to Build Our Faith
In this month’s article, I would like to focus on one of the Bible’s amazing prophecies related to the Christmas Story. At the heart of Christmas story is the story of the Virgin Birth. The Virgin Birth is what sets Biblical Christianity apart from all other faiths. No other religion in the world teaches or believes that their Leader is born of a virgin without sin. Without the Virgin Birth, the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ falls apart. The reason for this truth is simple. If Jesus is born of a human father, then our Lord is not Lord, but just another human being affected by Original Sin. If Jesus is tainted with Original Sin, then He is unable to pay the penalty for our sin. Something sinful cannot redeem or atone for something sinful. Only a sinless Savior, born of a virgin, can make the necessary offering for our redemption.
Since the Virgin Birth is the central story in the Bible about the nature of our Lord and his ministry for us, it is critical that the Lord would give some important prophecies in the Old Testament to prepare us for this important event. In this month’s article, we are going to look at the first promise of salvation in the Old Testament and see how the Lord used this promise/prophecy to help establish the story of the Virgin Birth in the New Testament.
The first promise of redemption that is given in the Old Testament is found in Genesis 3:15. This verse follows the sin of Adam and Eve and is a judgment by the Lord on the serpent. The Lord tells the serpent,
“And I will put enmity between
you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he will crush your head
and you will strike his heel.”
This first promise of redemption tells us that a battle will start between the woman and her seed and the serpent and his seed. This conflict will culminate with “seed of the woman” crushing the head of the serpent and the serpent striking his heel. What an amazing prophecy regarding the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and His defeat of the serpent/devil through the Cross. Our Lord crushed the head of the serpent/devil through the Cross as the Apostle Paul tells us in Colossians 2:15.
The heart of this prophecy from Genesis 3:15 is the fact that redemption would be accomplished through the “seed of the woman”. The problem with this idea is that women DO NOT have seed. The Hebrew word used in this verse references male sperm, semen or agricultural seed. The word leaves us with a problem in that it speaks of offspring or “seed” without any mention of a man being involved. The question that begs to be asked at this point is this, “How can a woman have a child or offspring without the seed of a man?” This mystery would lay hidden for thousands of years until the Lord fulfilled this amazing prophecy in the Virgin Birth of our Lord. The Virgin Birth was the only birth in history that came from a woman alone and her seed. Simply amazing!!!
Ultimately then, Eve was a picture of another future woman who would be used to bring spiritual life to the world. The Virgin Mary became a fulfillment of how the Lord would bring redemption to the world through a woman, outside the “seed” or sin of Adam. Hence the Lord used two women to teach His story of redeeming love. One woman was the vehicle by which sin came to the human race, as Eve disobeyed the Lord and passed the sin to her husband Adam. In a similar way, Mary became the channel by which redemption for sin came to the world and was passed on to her husband Joseph and the rest of the world.
As we sit back on this “roughly” 2007th year since the Virgin Birth, we must all be simply amazed that this Christmas story was so carefully thought out. The prophecy of Genesis 3:15 is a wonderful proof of a Lord Who works all purposes for His glory and our good. The story of the Virgin Birth is true and the redemption it brings with it as well. The Virgin birth is a carefully crafted love story of immense historical scope. Our Lord connects both Eve and Mary in an astonishing way throughout the course of redemption history through this amazing prophecy in Genesis 3:15.
I hope and pray that everyone
stands in awe of our Lord this Christmas as we celebrate His amazing prophecy
coming to pass in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
Christ is born in