December 5 – The Promise

Are you the kind of person who likes to shake and squeeze the gifts under the Christmas tree, trying to figure out what they are? When you were a child, did you try to discover your mother’s hiding places for gifts so you could sneak a peek at what you would receive on Christmas Day? Some of us are impatient waiters.

Though I don’t know how successful your mother was at hiding gifts from you, I can tell you that God is good at hiding gifts, too.

Yesterday we read how sin and its consequences entered our world. Yet God was not ready to give up on His creation. Though we read in Genesis 3 the judgements pronounced on Adam and Eve for their sin, it is easy to miss a gift hiding within this chapter.

Before God pronounced any judgements on Adam and Eve, He cursed the serpent, Satan, the deceiver.


I will put hostility between you and the woman,
 and between your offspring and her offspring.
 He will bruise your head,
 and you will bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15 WEB)

In these words we find the first prophecy of a great struggle…a struggle between two kingdoms, really. It is the struggle between good and evil. It is a struggle between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. Here it is declared that this struggle will end in Satan’s defeat. One day, a descendant of Eve would come and fatally wound and defeat the serpent. Eve’s heroic descendant would be injured as well in this struggle, but not in a fatal way. He would be victorious.

The identity and timing of this victorious hero was the hidden gift. Centuries later, a baby was born in Bethlehem who would fulfill this prophecy. His name was Emmanuel, God with us. He was indeed born of a woman. But He was God in the flesh. He would indeed be wounded, but he would rise victorious.

What I find so remarkable here is that, before any judgements were proclaimed over Adam and Eve, God defined what the Fall of Man would mean to Himself. From the very first sin of history, God determined that He would pay the price for sin. He would defeat the foe, Satan. And He would substitute His own life for sinful man’s.

Years later the prophet Isaiah would say of Emmanuel:

But he was pierced for our transgressions.
    He was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought our peace was on him;
    and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5 WEB)

God’s hidden gift was this: the Creator Himself would pay the price to redeem His creation, who could not redeem themselves.

Psalm 98:3 (WEB)
He has remembered his loving kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

“By His Wounds,” by Mac Powell, Steven Curtis Chapman, Brian Littrell, Mark Hall from the album Glory Revealed

Scripture references are taken from the World English Bible (WEB), Public Domain.