This year during the season of Advent through Christmas and New Year’s Eve we will be looking at some of the Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming Messiah, including the promise to Adam and Eve, to Abraham, to David as well as His birth place, His travel to Egypt, and finding the New Testament passages that confirm their fulfillment in our Savior, Christ Jesus.
Today we begin at the beginning, at the very first Gospel promise. As Moses, by inspiration of God writes in Genesis, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God created all things in six days and rested on the seventh day blessing the seventh day as a day of rest and giving us our seven day week. When God created all things He created all things perfect and holy. And yet, being omniscient, God knew what was going to happen before it happened, that is He knew that Adam and Eve would sin and yet, because of His great love for us He created anyway.
God created all things perfect and holy. He created a man and woman and placed them in the perfect Garden He created just for them and He gave them only one rule, perhaps as a response of faith, a way to respond to all that He had given them and that rule was to not eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden, the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Of course, most of us do know the tragic history of Adam and Eve. Tempted by the devil, Satan himself, taking the form of a serpent Eve believed the lies of Satan, the father of lies, doubted God’s Word and ate of the fruit. And she gave some to her husband who also ate and with that disobedience, sin enter the world and with sin came a curse.
God’s threat of punishment for eating the forbidden fruit was death, meaning physical death, that is their bodies would begin to die and eventually would die, but even more it meant hell. And again, even before He began creating, God knew this would happen. So, as punishment for Adam and Eve, the world was cursed such that there would be pain in childbearing, there would be sweat and thorns in work. There would be enmity between Satan and humanity. But, because of His great love for His creation, God immediately stepped in to provide a solution. God promised a Savior, a Redeemer from sin, a Christ. One who would be obedient. One who would suffer the punishment for their sin. One who would suffer hell for them. And this promise of a Christ is the beginning of the Christian Church.
The price for sin was death, thus God’s promise was that the Savior would die. He would die a physical death and the worst death of all, death on the cross, the complete death of hell, and He would die a physical death, His body would die. And yet He would rise again, and Satan would be completely defeated.
In his epistle to the Galatians Paul tells us of God’s perfect timing. Paul says it was the fullness of time. Indeed, it was at just the right time in all of history, the Christ was born. All the events of history had reached the point determined by God according to His great counsel of love for His creation that He set for the execution of the events which would bring rescue for His people.
Paul tells us that Jesus was the son of God making Him truly God. We know that He was born of a woman making Him truly human. As God He was the Law-giver, but as a man He yielded to be born under and subject to the Law. Indeed, Jesus is God. He was born and subjected Himself to the Law, that is to perfect obedience, which was God’s demand from the beginning.
As true God, Jesus was born in perfection. He was able to be perfectly obedient. He fulfilled all the promises, all the prophesies concerning the Messiah, the Christ. He was tempted beyond what we might imagine and He never sinned. He was perfectly obedient and then He took our disobedience, our sin upon Himself. He who knew no sin became sin for us in order to pay the price for our sin.
In his Gospel, Luke describes the birth of Jesus. Mary and Joseph were from the kingly line of the great King, David and so they were compelled to return to their hometown of Bethlehem for the birth of their first born child. While they were in Bethlehem, because of all the relatives that had come into town to be registered, Luke tells us there was no room in the upper room or guest room which is why he tells us that when Jesus was born He was laid in a manger, a trough for animals, which also abided in the main part of the house.
Thus, Luke gives us the historic account that our great Prophet, Priest and King, our Savior and Redeemer was not born in a castle, even though He was from Royal David’s kingly line. He was born lowly, rather in obscurity, in the small town of Bethlehem and His first bed was an animal feeding trough and His first clothes were rags.
Jesus was true God, born in human flesh, born of the people of Israel and yet, even though He was born among His own people, His own people later failed to recognize Him. To one familiar with the history of the Children of Israel the fact that theirs was a history of rebellion and rescue by God, it would make sense that being under Roman rule, that rather than the people looking for a spiritual Savior, a Savior from sin, they were again hoping for a social-political Savior, thus many did not recognize nor accept Jesus as the Savior. At the same time, there were many who did continue to look for a Savior from sin.
Jesus came to fulfill, not an earthly promise of social-political relief, but a heavenly promise of forgiveness of sins and heaven. In order to fulfill God’s promise made in Genesis, in the Garden of Eden, the Savior had to be a human, the offspring of a woman. He also had to be divine, God in order to be born in perfection, since all mankind after the fall is conceived and born in sin. Only God can be perfect and only God’s Son could be conceived and born without sin. Also, only God can defeat the devil, bruising or crushing his head while having His heel be bruised or crushed. In other words, a mortal wound for God, a fatal wound for Satan.
What does this mean? God’s love is seen in His foreknowledge, knowing all that would happen. Knowing that Adam and Eve would sin. Knowing that He would have to curse the world because of the sin of Adam and Eve and His threat to do so. Knowing that He would have to take care of their sin, paying the price for their sin, because they could not. Knowing that He would have to suffer the punishment of hell, which He originally had created for Satan and not humankind. Knowing all that He would have to do in order to save His people, His creation, God created. No greater love can be seen in His creation and in His promise to redeem, to buy back His creation.
God’s love is seen in His substitutionary acts for us, in our place. Greater love can no one have than this that a person will lay down His life for another and that is exactly what our God in Jesus has done for us. Our omnipotent, all powerful God, created all things out of nothing. He has given all things to us to use in service to Him in His kingdom. Because we cannot be the people He desires, commands and demands us to be He lived the life demanded of us for us in our place as our substitute. Thus, we have a loving creator God who not only commands and demands, but accomplishes that for us.
God’s love is seen in His providing a way to give us all the gifts and blessings He has to give and that is through His means of grace. Through the Word of God as well as His Word working though Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution and His Holy Supper our Lord gives us all the good gifts and blessings He has to give, faith, forgiveness, life and salvation. Indeed, as we celebrate the Word made flesh in the person of Jesus we rejoice that He is the power in His means of grace giving to us and lavishing us with all His good gifts and blessings.
It is fitting that we begin the Church Year with Advent a time and season to prepare our hearts and mind to celebrate once again what a great, loving, gift giving God we have. In order to prepare it is fitting to be reminded of the necessity of all these events that we celebrate, God’s foreknowledge, His creation, the fall into sin and God’s promise to send a Savior, a Redeemer. It is fitting to be reminded of their fulfillment in the One, God in flesh, born of a woman who came into the world to fulfill all the demands of God which Adam and Eve, all of Israel and all we cannot do. Thus it is fitting to recall God’s promises and His fulfillment as reminders of His great love for us. And it is fitting that we rejoice and say, to God be the glory for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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