“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel”. Genesis 3:15
Theologians get quite excited about this obscure verse because it is actually the first reference in the Bible indicating that God will send a Saviour. “He will crush your head” finds its fulfilment in 1 John 3:8 “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work”. In other words the woman’s offspring would eventually bring a Saviour into the world.
After this initial prophecy, we find many more prophecies throughout the Old Testament that become clearer and more specific. We are told which race, which family, and which tribe the Saviour would be born into. We are told place of birth, type of ministry, type of death and about His resurrection. Yet when Jesus came many people missed Him. The Pharisees who knew their Scriptures so well did not even recognise Him.
The Pharisees were so locked into their preconceived ideas of the Messiah that they wouldn’t even consider it could be Jesus. Are we so locked into our own ideas about Jesus that if He did something unexpected we wouldn’t recognise Him either?
God will not be stopped by our finite minds, lack of understanding or preconceived ideas. If we miss what God is doing it will be our loss. As we consider all God’s foretelling, let us be open to Him who comes to us in unexpected ways.
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