Page 6 - 2018 AdventDevo-Flip book

First Sunday of Advent
The Impossible Truths of Christmas:
Prophesied of Old

Scripture: Genesis 3: 1-5, John 1: 1-4

Although some of us are last minute Christmas shoppers, most of us
begin preparing for Christmas long before December 25 -- because
Christmas is a major big deal. And because Christmas is a major big
deal, did you know that God began preparing for Christmas from the
very beginning?

The Scripture passage is the story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in
the Garden. This story describes the core tragedy of being human: alt-
hough we were created as the crown of God’s creation and endowed with
unique gifts and abilities, and living in the closest possible relationship
with God, nonetheless we turned our back on all of it in order to exercise
our shadow abilities of disobedience, selfishness, rebellion, and pride.

The main thrust of Genesis 3 is to draw us into re-experiencing the dy-
namics of our original sinfulness. But, surprisingly, in God’s curse on the
snake, we hear the very first Biblical word about Christmas. God says to
the snake:

“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.”

From the earliest days of the church, this verse, Genesis 3:15, has been
called the protevangelium, that is, the “first gospel”. And that’s because
the church heard in this verse the very first prophecy of the appearance
of God’s unique offspring—the Son of God, Jesus Christ—who will set us
free from the power of sin we so eagerly fell prey to at the beginning.
This offspring, though suffering powerfully under the wound of evil on
the cross, delivered the crushing and saving blow to evil through the res-
urrection.