Advent 2023: November 7 - Promise

Tuesday, November 7th: Promise

Read Genesis 3.

Imagine that you had spent hundreds of hours building something or making something.  You put a lot of love and attention into it.  You care about it.  It is yours and you see it as a treasure.
 
Then imagine someone comes in and takes what you have made and just shatters it into pieces.  Maybe a painting is torn apart.  Maybe that deal you made falls through.  That goal you achieved is lost.  Someone you trusted ruins what you had made.

I am sure the first words out of your mouth would not be words to say or write out loud.  In fact, you would probably curse.
 
That is what God does when he comes on the scene in Genesis 3.  He finds that his creation is shattered.  The creation that he had spent a whole week making now reeks of death and decay.  Now what was called, “it was good” is now not good.

Jesus comes to his creation, and he details what will now happen.  Adam finds that the ground is cursed.  Eve discovers that there will be pain for her in childbirth and that the relationship that God built between Adam and Eve will now be hard and complicated.  What is interesting is that God does not curse Adam or Eve themselves.  If he did, we might say that we would be irredeemable.  It is only the ground that is cursed.
 
But God saves his most brutal curse for two other individuals.  In Genesis 3:14-15, God turns to the serpent.  And God tells the serpent that for this deception, the serpent will meet defeat.  He will be forced onto his stomach.  Picture here someone who is beaten in combat lying flat in the dirt with his face in the ground.

God also says that the serpent will be at war with the offspring of Eve.  Offspring here is singular.  Meaning that God is saying there will be One person who will deal with this.  Eve is going to have a child who will “bruise the serpents head.”  God is telling everyone assembled that Eve will have a child who will crush the serpent, that ancient dragon who is called the devil in Revelation.  The Son of Eve will bear the curse and restore what has been lost.
At the same time, the serpent will bruise his heel.  The Son of Eve will be bitten too.  He will suffer for doing this.

So as we look at Jesus, we should see the Son of Eve now come.  He bruises the serpent’s head.  Crushes it.  Deals a death blow.
 
But Jesus also suffers.  As he crushes death and sin and the devil, Jesus suffers and is crucified.  And it looks like the venom of the serpent takes its toll and kills him.

But Jesus Christ rose from the dead.  By his death he put an end to death and the devil’s reign.  Jesus Christ stands triumphant over our foes.  And Jesus did this for us.  To restore us to God.  To remove the curse and set us free.
 
This is why Adam in verse 20 then turns to the woman and names her Eve.  Eve’s name means: The living one.  Because through Eve would come Jesus.  And because of Jesus, Eve truly is the mother of all the living.  Because in Jesus, all are made alive.  (Romans 5).