The Plan Part 2

In the last column, I went back about a year before Jesus was crucified. Where He told His disciples that He was going to Jerusalem to suffer, die, and be raised the third day again. This time I want to even go farther back to help us to understand that this was God's plan from the very beginning of His creation of mankind. Time and space will not allow me to cover many places in the Old Testament that foreshadow what will happen, but I want to cover at least two.

Genesis 3:15 is my starting point and the very first mention of what God’s plan was. God says to the serpent after the first sin occurred, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel." Sin had just entered into the human race, and God had warned that sin would cause death. Physical death results in a separation of the spirit from the body. The spiritual equivalent to that is sin separates those who commit sin from God, which is all of us. In His love for us, God had committed to do something about it, and here He says that He will deal with it through the seed of the woman. First off, there is said to be an adversarial relationship between the serpent and the woman. We believe that the serpent was a real animal but was under the power of Satan. Thus it is between the serpent and the woman and greater between the woman and Satan. It is also passed down through the decedents, her seed. There will come a time when a decedent of the woman will bruise Satan's head while he will be bruised on his heal. A significant blow to the head will be fatal. That is in contrast to the blow to the heel of the seed of the woman. Looking back makes it easier to understand. Jesus, the seed of the woman, would one day deliver the fatal blow to Satan. At the same time, He would be hurt but ultimately survive. As we celebrate in a few weeks, he did die but came back to life three days later. Genesis 3:15 start to lay out the plan of God to bring salvation even when sin had already separated us from God. He had a plan to restore our relationship with Him.

About seven hundred years before Jesus was born, Isaiah, the prophet, wrote some words about this plan as well. Isaiah 53 lays out quite a bit concerning what would happen. There is a great deal here that I'm not covering, but see if this description fits the recorded crucifixion of Jesus. Isaiah 53:4-6, "Surely our griefs He bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Chasten for our well-being which fell upon Him, and by His scourging, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him." It was really hard for those of this time, looking ahead, to understand this, but easier for us as we look back at the historical event and the explanation for it given in the New Testament. This is the seed of the woman to bear our sorrows and our sins, taking them to himself and suffer the consequences that should have been the consequences for our sin.

This was God’s plan that was established, even before creation. It was brought to its defining moment when Jesus died on the cross. Taking our sin upon Himself, dying for our sin, taking the penalty for our sin, not His. Then rose again the third day, conquering death. I pray that you would be open to exploring the full impact of this grand plan.

Pastor Lynn Rettig

Musselshell Community Bible Church