A New Hope

Oh dear  - you will recall form our last blog post ''The Fall and the Adamic Covenant (third stage of our journey)'' that Adam's disobedience had very serious consequences not only for him but also his descendants. 

But, despite things looking very bleak for Adam's descendants, embedded within the severe Adamic Covenant (which replaced the idyllic Edenic Covenant God first had with Adam ) God placed a new hope.

Genesis 3: 14 & 15;  ''And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this,  thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.  And I will put enmity between thy seed and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it [he] shall bruise the head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.''

Genesis 3: 15 has long been recognised as the first messianic prophecy in the Bible.  It reveals three essential truths:

• Satan is the enemy of the human race; explaining why God put enmity [related to the word enemy] between thee [Satan] and the woman
• There would be spritual warfare between thy seed (Satan's people) and her seed (God's people) and
• The representative seed of the woman (that is a human being - Christ) would deliver the deathblow to Satan' but in so doing would be bruised himself.

It [or ''He''] shall bruise [literally ''crush''] thy head, but thou shalt bruise his heel refers to Christ bruising on the cross, which led to the eventual crushing of Satan and his kingdom.

At the end of our journey - which is still a long, long way off - we will see how Jesus and the Holy Spirit realise this New Hope in such a momentous way that no-one in antiquity could ever have imagined!!

Why the title of this week's blog post  - A New Hope?   Well there is talk of a new Star Wars film to be made.   

The Star Wars Saga has a vaguely familiar ring to it:

• it has as the basis to the plot the story of good versus evil, 
• people can exercise their free will and decide which side they should join (the light side or the dark side),
• people choose to sacrifice their life to enable others to live because of their dedication to the 'cause'; and
• a person, no matter how bad they are (or have been), has the chance to choose good over evil and the ultimate reward of redemption.

The Star Wars Saga has much to commend it despite being man made.

Just a short post this week and no post next week but - God willing- normal weekly service to recommence from Sunday 3rd March.