Welcome to another week on Things Unseen.

Earlier in the year we spent a week thinking about the way Genesis chapter 3 verse 15

is like a spine that holds the whole book of the Bible together.

Or perhaps we could say it is like a seed from which a massive tree eventually grows.

And I want to develop that idea this week in a slightly different way.

We often look back to Genesis 315, God's promise that there would be ongoing hostility

between the seed of Eve and the seed of the serpent

until eventually the seed of Eve, Jesus Christ, would crush the head of the serpent,

although having his own heel crushed in the process.

And we call that the first announcement of the Gospel, the Proto-Evangelion.

But you probably know that theologians and Bible students through the ages have also of the Gospel, the Proto-Evangelion.

But you probably know that theologians and Bible students through the ages have also looked

back to Genesis 315 as expressing a new covenant that God was making.

Although it isn't explicitly stated, except perhaps in a single reference in Hosea 6 verse 7, it seems clear that

God's original relationship with Adam and Eve was covenantal.

That is, it involved a bond made by God with them, in which he promised the rich blessings

of life in fellowship with him as they lived in harmony with him, but inevitably profound loss

and alienation and death if they turned against his purposes. And what Josea 6 verse 7 says

about God's people is that like Adam, they transgressed the covenant.

So in His wonderful love, God made a first covenant in which he promised life.

But that covenant has been broken.

And as Paul says in Romans 5, sin and death have come into the world and come in turn to each

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