Christ - The Promised Seed

Because of our sin problem, we need a promise of grace from God. We need a substitute -- someone who is qualified to take upon Himself God's just punishment for our sins and reconcile us to Himself. The good news is that God is not only perfectly just but He loves us and has promised us a way out of our sin dilemma. The only thing he requires is that we believe and trust Him for our salvation. We must believe in the One, His Son, whom He has sent to be our substitute.

After Adam and Eve sinned, God delivered the judgment upon them and the serpent that Satan used to tempt Eve. As God spoke to Satan through the serpent, He said:

So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 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.”

So God said that one day the serpent (Satan) would strike His (Christ's) heal. In other words, Jesus would be wounded or crucified. But Christ would crush, or destroy, the work of Satan. "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work." (1 John 3:8b)

About 2,000 years later, Abraham was called by God from among all the nations of the world and was given the following promise:

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)

The promise was passed down through Abraham's son, Isaac, and his grandson, Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel. Jacob had 12 sons, from which comes the 12 tribes of Israel. God chose to use the line of Jacob's son, Judah, through which Christ would come. Near the end of his life, Jacob gave each of his sons specific prophetic blessings. To Judah, he said "The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his." (Genesis 49:10)

Moses who lived about 1,500 years before Christ was born prophesied about the One who was to come. "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him." (Deuteronomy 18:15)

King David, who lived about 1,000 years before Christ, was promised a royal line of descendents leading up to the promised Messiah (Christ). God said to David,

"The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son..." (2 Samuel 7:11b-14a)

Not only did God foretell from which line of descendents the promised Christ would be born, he proved it by giving Christ's genealogical record. (See Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38).

In an earlier blog (see Proven Pinpoint Prophetic Accuracy on 8/29), I detailed the exact fulfillment of the time that Daniel had prophecied there would be 69 sevens (69 x 7 years) from the King's decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes. There can be no mistake that Jesus Christ is the promised One pictured all throughout the Old Testament.

The Old Testament also prophecies numerous specific details of the life of Jesus hundreds of years before He was born. For example, the prophet Micah said He would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:1-5), and Isaiah prophecied that He would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14). Both of these came true just as prophecied.

The Festivals of the Lord given Israel represent the work of Christ in redemptive history, and the Sacrifices reflect the various aspects of Christ's substitutionary atonement and sacrifice for us on the cross. And much more could be said about the many ways the Old Testament points forward to Christ, and the New Testament reveals Christ.

God gives us more than enough evidence to know that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. The proof is in the Sriptures. If we ignore Christ, we do so at the peril of our own souls. Faith in Jesus is the only way for sinners to be forgiven of their sin and reconciled unto God. In the next blog, I intend to explain the nature of the work of Jesus that makes salvation possible.