Something horrendous has occurred in history. Genesis 3 records the devastation of God’s creation. That which God made beautiful, perfect, and peaceful, was devastated by a lie. What lie? Hear verse 4: "You will be like God". There is a bit more to the lie, but that says it all. The Evil One sought to inspire man to replace worship and utter sustaining dependence upon the Holy God of Heaven with a self-absorbed dependence upon himself. You see, Satan doesn’t need to get man to worship him, he only has to get man to worship his own self. And man has been doing that ever since.
But God set in motion the Divine Will to destroy that lie in verse 15. "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He will bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel." This is the Divine prophecy of the coming of God’s Seed, Jesus Christ, through the physical birth process. And in that birth would be the demise of Satan’s authority, his destruction, and most importantly, the lie.
But from that day, Satan has hated woman with an unholy passion. He has sought to destroy her and everything that makes her that most beautiful creation of God. He especially targets her "motherhood". History can be written as a record of Satan’s wrath against woman, from a conqueror’s rape of a nation’s women, the killing of her babies, to the atrocities of Hitler in his pursuit of a "super race". Today, his venom is seen in his glorification of abortion to the lie of "a woman’s choice". If abortion is so glorious, where is the joy, where is the warmth, where are the "oohs and ahs" of God-designed motherhood. Where is the sense of well being and purpose that is the beautiful fruit of motherhood. Why don’t we give abortion showers like we do baby showers? The lie of "choice" is only a smoke screen covering a host of real difficulties that the Evil One does not want mankind to address. Ultimately, "choice" isn’t about a woman’s good, it is about money. It is too profitable a slavery to be faced truly and honestly. We need a William Wilberforce to once again address society with loving passion, to cut through the fog of our greed and lust and come to the just conclusion that it is women that suffer, and that for the rest of their lives, by this "choice". Their bodies are the altars to man’s greed and lust!
But his hatred is seen in so many other ways. It is seen in the authoritarian husband who thinks woman exists to be "barefoot and pregnant". It is seen in world religions that subjugate women, make them second-class citizens. When woman is reduced to a "temple prostitute" or a mere object for the male to use as he sees fit, you are seeing the triumph of Satan’s hatred of woman. And such tactics are not limited to religion. Our vaunted secular society has turned the subjection of woman into a science. Our supposed sexual liberation is nothing more than the laughter of the Evil One. No longer can a beautiful woman walk down a street freely. She has become the object of lust as she is "mentally" undressed by the millions of "Playboy advocates" in her path. Woman is used to sell products countless times every day. That is prostitution. Society is not content to plaster the "F" word every where. We must add "mother" to it. Do I need to go on? No, the hatred of woman is attached to society as inseparably as breath is to life!
The Seed, God’s solution
Remember Genesis 3:15? The woman’s Seed would bruise Satan’s head, and Satan would bruise His heel. Which is fatal? I am now battling plantar fascaitas. This is the inflammation of the tissue and ligaments of the heel. Trust me, it is very painful and annoying. But it is not fatal! But if my head is crushed, I’m dead. Do you get the point? God’s Seed is the Head Crusher. Satan wants to stop the Head Crusher from destroying him. The Bible is the history of the coming and the victory of the Head Crusher. And of course, women play an integral part of this history. All the way through the Old Testament, the record brings the lives of women before us. Have you ever heard of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachael, Ruth, Esther, [whole books are about Ruth and Esther], Rahab, and Mary to name a few. Yes, they lived in a patriarchal society. God called Abraham out of the Ur of the Chaldees, a patriarchal land, into the promised land, but for some reason, God chose to take a long time to take the patriarchal Ur of the Chaldees out of Abraham and his descendants. But throughout, God established protections for women. "You shall not commit adultery." "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife."(Exodus 20:14 & 17) This was for God’s glory, but also for the protection of woman. In Exodus 22:22, God commanded Israel, "You shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child." In Deuteronomy 10:18, Moses declares that the God of Israel "executes judgement of the fatherless and the widows, and loves the stranger." In other words, Israel’s God is the Champion of the powerless, the helpless.
A common condemnation of Israel’s leaders in the prophets is "they follow after rewards (wealth) and do not judge the fatherless, neither do they plead the cause of the widow." God even established the law of the "kinsman redeemer" as a protection for the woman whose husband died, leaving her destitute. The beautiful book of Ruth is all about that protection. It is a hint of, a preface to, the ultimate "Kinsman Redeemer", the Seed of God, Jesus Christ who came to redeem all who were "widowed", isolated, separated from our Creator God by the death that came upon all human kind in the Garden. (Romans 5:12)
And that brings us to the birth of Jesus, the Seed, "the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Matthew 1 is a rather dry patriarchal list of the genealogy of Jesus, but verse 5 is most intriguing: "Salmon begat Boaz by Rahab. Boaz begat Obed by Ruth, Obed begat Jesse (the father of David the King). The intriguing point is not just that two women enter the list, but that the two women mentioned were "strangers", that is Gentiles, non Israelites! And horror of horrors, Rahab had been a prostitute in Jericho before she was liberated prior to its destruction!
Two of the most helpless and hopeless women in ancient society were brought by God into the genealogy of the Seed that was to bring ultimate help, ultimate hope, to women throughout the earth. And then there is, "Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ" (vs16). She is the "blessed among women" according to the Angel in Luke 1:28. And I think we can say that she was the "blessed for women." For from her, by God’s Holy Spirit (vs 35), came the Head Crusher, Jesus Christ. From her came the liberator of woman. This, my friends, is the reason that Jesus had a host of women that followed Him wherever He went. This is why they were always "ministering" to Him. This is why one woman poured an expensive bottle of perfume on his feet. (John 12:3)
Never mind that the sensual commentators of our debauched age cannot conceive of such a pure sacrificial love that has no sexual lust in it. The deceived leaders of the blind all fall into the ditch of their own perverted desires. No, the ministry of these dear women, most all were former prostitutes and "bleeders" (Matthew 9:20), grew out of their recognition that this was no ordinary man. They saw no lust in His eyes. There was no hidden agenda in His concern. All they saw was "hope"--hope for the day when the Lie would be gone, and truth, beauty, value would once again rule in God’s creation.
There is an interesting prophecy in Joel 2:27. This is the prophecy of the coming of God’s Spirit at Pentecost, an event recorded in Acts 2. There is a portion that says: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophecy." "And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days." In the temple of Jesus’ day, there existed the court of the women. They were not allowed to enter into the more "holy" courts of the building. But here, God is prophesying of a time when men and women would be totally together in the worship of their God, as "one" in the ministry to their Creator. Something crucial is seen in Acts 1:12-14, after the Lord Jesus has gone up into Heaven. The disciples return to the upper room. Now observe verse 14: "Then all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with His brothers." This is a profound beginning to the liberation of woman from the wrath of Satan and her return to her equal status in the worship of her creator. In Galatians 3:28, the Apostle Paul, that supposed male chauvinist, declares that in the New Covenant of God, "there is neither Jew or Greek (gentile), there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus." No, not all earthly distinctions are obliterated. God’s system of order and protection remain in place. Yes, in Ephesians 5:22, wives are exhorted to "submit to your husbands, as to the Lord." But don’t ignore that this comes after all of God’s people have been exhorted to "submit to one another in the fear of God" (Vs 21). And don’t ignore the fact that husbands are called to die for their wives in verse 25! They are required to love their wives just like Christ loved His church and "gave Himself for her." You see, sacrifice and submission are to be the personality of all the people of God, whether male or female. Even "leadership" is defined by Christ as servitude and slavery (Mark 10:35-45). But before our God, because of the Seed, male and female are "one" in the temple of the Lord, the dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:21-22).
And so you see, Jesus Christ holds the key to all that women want, all they really desire. Fallen humanity has distorted and redefined those wants and needs, to the degradation and servitude of woman for the prosperity and ego of the few. But Jesus Christ restores woman to the value she rightly deserves in God’s creation. He alone can assure her of the love, security, and worth that she longs for. He alone restores all things to the design of the Creator where we each serve the other in liberty and freedom to the glory and praise of our God.
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