Advent – Week 1 – Misery and hope
Today is the first week of Advent, a period of four Sundays before Christmas Day. It started me thinking about Christmas and when the good news of Jesus’ birth was first announced. Sure, it was announced to Mary and the Shepherds and various others, but it was first announced way back in Genesis 3:15.
Genesis chapter 3 is often remembered as the chapter which describes “The Fall,” of man into sin. This is somewhat an unfortunate choice of words for it sounds as though man fell into sin accidentally when in fact it was a deliberate choice to be disobedient.
Nevertheless, Genesis chapter 3 is also where the first mention of the gospel is announced. Our troubles began when Adam and Eve sinned, but our eternal hope also begins when God announced that the broken relationship between God and man which was caused by sin would be healed. In fact, the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures is basically a story where God unfolds his plan of restoration by bringing about the birth of the One who would crush the serpent’s head.
And He does so by using sinful human beings to highlight that One better than Abraham, better than Isaac, better than Jacob, better than Joseph, better than Moses, better than David, better than the Prophets, and better than the Old Testament priests had to be born.
This One, none other than Jesus Christ, who was fully God while at the same time fully man, was born, nurtured, and filled by the Holy Spirit, became the perfect sacrifice. He was full of truth and grace and had no sin of his own, thus making Him the only fitting human being to be the perfect sacrifice. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us by imputing our sin onto him and we by faith receive His righteousness.
His heel was bruised by the serpent when he died on the cross, but the serpent’s head was crushed in defeat when Jesus rose victoriously from the dead! That, in a nutshell, is Genesis 3:15 explained and that is the gospel, Christmas and Easter all tied up in one.
The world doesn’t find it all that difficult to just speak about Christmas. It’s vacation time, it is party time, and it is family time. It’s a time when for twenty-four hours we can allow the brokenness of this world to take a back-seat and we can just have some fun and not think about the troubles we see all around. However, I venture to say, that for Christians it is difficult to only speak about Christmas and not Easter. We know that Christmas and Easter go together. One without the other would have no real meaning.
Having said that, it is still good to celebrate the birth of our Saviour. Let’s start preparing for that in the coming weeks, spreading the good news of Genesis 3:15 to all the world. JZ.