We've been reflecting together this week on Things Unseen about what's sometimes called

the proto-evangelion, the first promise of the gospel recorded in Genesis 315.

It's a bit like a tightly wound ball of thread that's slowly unwound by God through

the whole of the Old Testament. At times it looks as though the thread has snapped,

but other times it seems to become invisible, but then it reappears again. Yesterday we saw

that Eve seems to have hoped that her firstborn son Cain might be the deliverer, but he

turned out to be a murderer who belonged to the seed of the serpent, not the seed of the woman.

And then as the story of the promised seed continues, generation after generation seems

to end, not in final victory and life, but in death. Remember the drum beat running through

Genesis 5, and he died, and he died, and he died, Adam died, Seth died, Inosh died, Jarad died,

Mathusela died, Lamach died. There's only one missed beat in the description of Inoch

who walked with God, and he was not for God took him. But even if that meant he didn't

die in the same way others did, not even Inoch was the promised conqueror.

But while the godly seed continued, so did the seed of the serpent, and in Genesis 6.5

we come to some of the darkest words in the whole Bible. The Lord saw that the wickedness

of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart

was only evil continually. And then came what Genesis 6 verse 7 calls, the blotting out

of man, the flood. Now it looks as though God's patience has been exhausted, and he's decided

to call time on his promise, and just end it all. Could it be that the words to the serpent

didn't mean salvation, but the mutual destruction of both seeds, even if the serpent's head

was crushed, would the seed of the woman just slowly bleed to death from the heal?

But then despite the drumbeats of he died, we come across another boy who was given an unusual

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