Advent: December 1st
Ever wondered why Matthew starts out the Christmas story with the genealogy of Jesus? You may not be aware of the fact that the Bible spoke many things about Jesus and his coming thousands of years before he was born to Mary. In fact, the first clue to what God was planning is located in Genesis right after the fall of mankind into sin. As God gives out the consequences to Adam, Eve, and the Serpent He includes this proclamation; God says, “I will put enmity between you(the serpent) and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
How good of God, that in the difficulty of receiving the due, and proper, punishment for their sins, He also leaves Adam and Eve with a glimmer of hope. Here, a line is drawn between the serpent and his offspring and the woman and hers. God lets them know that while Satan seems to have gotten his desired result from tempting Eve in the garden, the ultimate battle is yet to come. For while the Serpent may have seemed to upending God’s good purpose and design in that moment, God’s pronouncement shows He has a good and sovereign plan. God states that there will be enmity, that is hostility, between the offspring of the serpent and the woman’s. That, the woman’s offspring will one day deliver a crushing death blow to the head of the serpent’s offspring and by doing so bruise his own heel.
Friends, you may not realize it but Christmas and Easter and inseparably linked. The offspring of the serpent is Satan, who came upon Judas before the crucifixion of Jesus in like manner as he did the Serpent in the garden. The woman’s offspring is Jesus who is God in-the-flesh. Jesus is the one who delivers the final death blow with his sacrifice on the cross. God bruised His own heel, His only begotten son, Jesus, on the cross to forever crush the enemy of our souls and procure for us that which we could never achieve on our own-Salvation.
Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. The God-man who would see God’s plan of restoration to the end. In fact, the way we label time shows this very thing. BC marks the years before Christ’s birth, counting down in descending order to the birth of the Savior. This means the year 5 BC came before the year 4 BC. When we reference dates after Jesus’s birth we label it AD which is short for “Anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi,” or In the year of our Lord Jesus Christ. This means the time after Christ had come which is why it is popularly referred to as “After death”, alluding to the sacrifice of Jesus.
To live in the year of our Lord, is to live in the time of history after Jesus’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, when the Holy Spirit is available to all. It is a time when the church waits expectantly for the second coming of Christ, and continues her work of bringing the gospel(good news) to the nations. It is a period of time when God’s patience is shown so that all might believe.
May the Lord in His mercy draw you closer to Him this advent season!
I leave you with one of my favorite art sketches called, “Mary Comforts Eve.” This artwork was created in 2003 by Grace Remington, a sister from the Cistercian Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa.
Note the expressions of each of these women, the snake and its representation, and the fruit that both of them bear. I hope it will bless you as much as it has me!
Mary Comforts Eve by Sister Grace
