Job's confession is expressed so that each part is more surprising and remarkable than the last. We have already noted, first, Job's strong belief in a personal, vindicating God; and second, Job's faith in the coming incarnation of his divine Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, in the third place and amazingly, we see Job's faith in his own bodily resurrection: 

There was a purpose to all of Job's suffering, of course. This is what the story's opening and epilogue are all about. I call it the meaning of history, namely, that God and his ways are good even if they do not seem good to us, even if they involve us in much suffering, and that believers prove the truth of this by how they accept what God sends.

The only power Satan has is power that has been granted to him by God. You can never frustrate the counsels of God. You can only accomplish what you accomplish by working within God’s purposes. You may be trying to oppose God, but, nevertheless, you’re going to be carrying out his purposes. Satan got our first parents to sin, and there was a judgment. But what Satan did not see is that God is also gracious and chose to be gracious with our first parents, as he had not chosen to be gracious with Satan. So in carrying out his hatred against the Son of God, Satan actually accomplished God’s purpose in the atonement.

What God has said here in Genesis 3 is that he is giving a divinely established struggle between the woman and her descendants and Satan. We are terribly depraved, but we don’t automatically assume that Satan is right. That is a blessing that results from the warfare that goes on. We have a fallen spirit within, and that is why we are in dreadful danger all the time of being drawn after Satan—because that within us inclines in his direction. But, you see, it isn’t wholehearted, and there is a struggle involved even when we sin as sinners. When we sin, we want to be happy in it, but we find that we can’t be. That is because this is still a moral universe, and God has set up the antagonism.

Our focus this week is on Christmas, and I want to begin by saying that if the birth of Christ is the center of the Word of God, together with his death and resurrection, then we should expect to find it everywhere throughout the Bible. Now we do find it in Revelation 12, but we also find it as early as Genesis 3. As I say, we should expect to find it throughout the Bible. And yet, when we turn to Genesis 3 to find the prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ there, it is, nevertheless, surprising because this is not a pleasant scene.