Good morning. It’s Thursday, January 29th, aka National Puzzle Day.

🥳 Congratulations on starting today with God, and thank you for letting us be a part of it.

📖 Verse Of The Day

— Genesis 3:15

🧠 Devotional

Jesus was first mentioned by name in Matthew 1:1:

“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

But long before that, He was foreshadowed hundreds of times.

And that first time was on the second page of the Bible, in Genesis 3:15:

“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 what’s this saying without needing a theology degree?

God is saying that because Adam and Eve disobeyed Him, there will now be ongoing conflict between good and evil. That conflict will play out through people on both sides. One specific person will come from Eve’s line. He will be wounded in that conflict, but in the end, He will completely defeat evil.

You guessed it. That He was Jesus. And spoiler alert: God was right. This doesn’t just stay a promise. The Bible comes back around and shows it actually happening.

When Jesus is on the cross, Scripture describes the wound Genesis pointed to. Psalm 22:16 captures it: “They pierced my hands and my feet.”

And God basically does a double foreshadow. First He says someone will crush the serpent. Then later He says, by the way, that someone is Me.

Romans 16:20 says: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”

From Genesis to Matthew, Jesus is foreshadowed all through the Bible. Foreshadowing doesn’t have to stay on the page. You can be an example of it in the way you live.