Advent Week 2: Fall

As we've entered this Advent season, four Sundays leading up to Christmas, but Advent its own thing, as we said last week, begins in darkness, and there's a recognition of what's going on.

But what we've done is we've called this the story of Christmas from Genesis to Revelation.

And wasn't that great?

This morning we had a reading from Genesis and a reading from Revelation.

From the first book in the Bible, the Genesis, the beginning, if you will, all the way to the last book in the Bible, the 66th book called Revelation.

And the story of Christmas indeed runs all of that way.

We've said there are four words that probably summarize the overall meta-narrative or grand overarching storyline of the Bible: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

And so we would take each one of those and show how the Christmas story, the incarnation of God becoming one of us, intersects in some way with each of those grand narratives.

Today we'll look at the fall, and I'm sure a lot of you are actually going, what in the world?

How are you going to connect that to the Christmas time with the sweet little baby Jesus?

You know, and the cattle lowing and the sweet singing and all that sort of thing.

And how's that going to work?

Well, it's very important, actually, it's a very significant part of the storyline.

We want to acknowledge as we begin Advent, we want to acknowledge, and as we're kind of halfway through, acknowledge the darkness.

Darkness is how Advent begins.

The world was empty and void when God did the creation event, and so there was darkness, and he spoke into it, and the first thing he spoke into being was light.

And then we learned in John chapter 1 last week that Jesus is the light of the world coming into a world that's covered in another kind of darkness, a spiritual darkness, and that he's come to bring us the light of God's love.

John 1 · chapter mention

Many non-believers, people who don't even believe in the existence of God, will even admit that something, though, is wrong in the world and with humanity, that we seem to have a capacity for depravity that we don't seem to be able to fix on our own.

Theologians call the event where this began the fall.

Sometimes around here at the village chapel, we call it the jump.

Because the fall sounds like something happened too.

Whoops, I tripped up, I fell.

The jump sounds like I had some uh some role in the whole thing, some choice in the whole thing, that I actually made a choice myself.

And um both analogies are fun.

I'm not I'm not trying to replace one or or or one up the other analogy.

I'm just simply trying to help us understand what happened back there in Genesis 3 and why we needed Christ to come in the first place.

Eugene Peterson says, when it when it when it's sort of obvious that we all know something's wrong, he says, we know the spiritual atmosphere in which we live erodes faith, dissipates hope, and corrupts love.

But it's hard to put our finger on what is wrong.

So the world is filled with acrimony, it's filled with anger, it's filled with violence, it's filled with all kinds of people who take, take, take.

People who overpower or oppress others.

It's 30 million people caught up in human trafficking.

Something's wrong in the world.

What is it?

Um, and I think it's one of the most obvious aspects of the world that lead us to these kinds of questions that people have been asking for a long time.

What's gone wrong with the world?

Why all the anger, violence, chaos, confusion, and malice?

Can we distinguish right from wrong?

Do we have any moral obligation to do what is right and refrain from doing what is wrong?

If all morality is relative, why do I have any moral obligation to anyone?

I should just take what I want.

I should just do what I want.

Um we learned last week that, uh in the last couple weeks, actually, that there are no secrets, there's no sins that remain secret that have no impact on other people.

If they impact us, they will impact those we say we love, those that we are in relationship with.

And these are great questions.

And I think that the Bible begins to help us uh get to a place of understanding some meaningful answers to these kinds of questions.

As we look backwards in time to the first Advent or the coming of Christ, and this is typically what happens at Advent, you look backwards to reflect upon his first appearing, Christ's first appearing, and forwards to anticipate his second coming when he intends to set things right.

And we're looking forward, very much looking forward to that.

The promise of the future when it comes to Christ and his return is to set things right in this broken world.

How he's gonna do that, what the process looks like, I don't have a lot of information on that.

I just am, I'm given a promise that he intends to do that.

And as I look backwards, what helps me is I'm confident in him because he's the one that rose from the dead.

And if, as every single one of the New Testament preachments in the book of Acts reflect upon the resurrection of Jesus, which we celebrate at Easter time, and it doesn't just mean that, oh, the circle of life keeps coming around.

No, it means he actually defeated death.

And when we walk behind the case on tomorrow, we know it's not the final word.

See?

Because we have confidence that we're trusting in a God who can, though we have tears and our tears are real, though all of that is true, he can reverse even the power and uh of death itself.

So we look back to reflect on what Christ has done, how he's achieved so many wonderful things.

We look forward to his arrival here at Advent time.

And there's a response that the Lord is looking for from each and every one of us as we pause in our church calendar and our lots of different ways that different streams of the church do this, but as we pause to reflect back and anticipate forward, there's a response that God is looking for, and we'll see that even in the text that was read for us just a moment ago.

Fleming Rutledge is one of my favorite living theologians.

She says, Advent offers an unparalleled opportunity to take a fearless inventory of the darkness in our world and in our hearts, into which the true light will come.

So our scripture reading from Genesis today described what's arguably the most significant epic fail of all time, when the humans that God created and was in perfect fellowship with fell, and that's why the theologians call it the fall.

Um, and that it describes it in some detail there, which I think we can learn from.

If you have a Bible with you, look at Genesis chapter 3, or if you have your phone with you, dial up one of the online Bibles, if you will.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

But I just, for instance, there's a lot of firsts here.

I mean, Genesis is the book of beginnings, so there are a lot of firsts there, and we've gone through the the just touching base last week a little bit as we as we looked at generally at the creation event, and and we we notice that the book of Genesis doesn't explain how God created everything with great detail.

It just declares that God created everything.

So it's not an explanation of the process necessarily, as it is a declaration of the designer, the creator, the origin of all things.

Here in chapter three, which is fascinating to me, look at look at all of these firsts.

And I'm not going to throw it up on a screen because I don't have a slide big enough for this, right?

But watch all these firsts.

First question in the Bible is verse 1.

It's the the serpent saying to the woman, Did God actually say?

And so the first question in the entire Bible is a question about the word of God and the credibility of the word of God.

Did God actually say that?

Is what the serpent says.

The first instance of contradicting God is in verse 4, where the serpent says, You will not surely die.

You know?

The first temptation toward power and knowledge is in verse 5.

Look at that.

For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.

You'll be like God.

That sounds like some of the promises that are on the horizon in our world today as well.

Look inside yourself.

You are your own God.

You know, and I would suggest to you that all along as we read our Bibles, what it continues to teach us is that there's a real difference between us and God.

We're on the creature side of the equation.

We're not the creator.

We can't bear the weight of being the creator.

And yet we constantly are trying to drift over to the other side of the line and take control ourselves.

The first temptation towards power and knowledge, verse 5, the first instance of lust of the eyes and being ruled by desires in verse 6, when she saw that the tree was good for food.

It was a delight to her eyes, and the tree was desirable to make one wise.

She took from it and ate it, and she gave it to her husband with her, and he ate as well.

And so desire starts to take over after the lust of the eyes are incited in this particular case.

And that same kind of thing continues to happen.

It's the first instance, though, of lust of the eyes and being ruled by desire.

The first instance of pulling someone else into our sin is when she takes and gives it to her husband.

And he eats it as well.

And that could easily have gone the other way.

It's not a statement on men or women.

It's just it could have easily gone the other way as well.

That's all I'm saying.

The first instance of loss of innocence and freedom is verse 7.

The eyes of both of them were open and they knew they were naked.

And they sewed fig leaves together and they made themselves loin coverings.

Here's the first instance in the Bible of the loss of innocence and the loss of freedom.

What freedom did they lose?

That innocent, beautiful freedom to just be completely themselves with one another.

Lost there because now they feel like they've got to cover themselves.

Now they feel like they've got to hide some aspect of who they are.

The first instance of guilt and shame is in verse 7 as well.

The first instance of separation from God is in verse 8.

They heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

And we've been trying to hide from God ever since.

A lot of us.

Over and over and over again.

Because of our guilt and shame.

Because our hearts turned against him, turned away from him.

We doubted his word.

We went our own way.

We tried to become our own little g gods.

And it manifests itself in myriad numbers of ways.

But but the idea is our relationship with him is broken.

This is this separation.

Verse 8 talks about the first question of God is in the Bible.

It's right here, verse 9.

Look.

And the Lord God said to the man, called to him and said to him, Where are you?

And I would suggest to you that he's asking that same question today.

Where are you?

And you go, Well, I'm at the village trap.

No, that's not what he's really asking.

What he's really saying, and remember, all of God's questions are rhetorical.

Because God already knows the answer.

He knows where they are.

It's not like he displayed.

Where did those humans go?

Hey, where are I see there's a giraffe, there's the artvark, there's a roach, whatever.

Where's the man?

Where's the woman?

He hasn't lost anybody.

He knows right where they are.

He wants them to consider where they are.

And especially where they are in relationship to him.

And I would suggest to you today that he's asking that question right now of me.

Where am I?

Where are you in relationship with God?

And so I think that's a great question.

The first instance of fear in the Bible is verse 10.

I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

I was afraid.

Well, the Bible does teach that we're supposed to fear the Lord, that's true.

But it's fear in the sense of respect, awe, reverence, uh sort of fealty before him.

We are his subjects, okay?

But that's not cowering and afraid and want to hide from.

It's a different kind of fear.

Completely.

And yet here the man and the woman are hiding from God.

There's separation because of their sin and they're separated from God.

And he says, Where are you?

And there comes this fear.

Second question of God is in verse 11.

The second and third question of God, who told you you were naked?

Where'd you get that information?

Where did you get that idea from?

Again, rhetorical question.

Did you actually consider where you got that from?

And have you eaten from the tree of which I command?

He connected that right there.

See that?

He connected that.

That's the one thing he said, don't do.

And aren't look, are we not all this way?

If I were to say right now, don't look out that window, some of you would look out that window, wouldn't you?

That's just our tendency, our proclivity.

That's the way we, I mean, all of us grew up doing that.

And all you parents that are sitting here, right, you know right well that the most provable doctrine of the entire Christian faith is the doctrine of original sin.

That we will do what we are told not to do.

We're drawn to it, like a moth to the flame.

Don't tell me don't, and I my rebel just wants two, you know?

And so does yours.

And that's what happened here.

And we've inherited that from our first parents so long ago.

The second question of God there in verse 11 is haven't you have you eaten from the the tree which I commanded you not to eat?

The third question is there, have you eaten of that tree?

And then the answer here, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate.

This is the first instance of passing the buck in the Bible.

Man, if we perfected that.

I mean, she look at watch what happens.

She even copy, she said, she kind of learned from what her husband did.

The Lord said to the woman, What is this you've done?

She said, Well, the serpent that you may deceived me.

Adam's is worse, though.

It's kind of a double sort of blame shift.

It's the woman, and then he's talking to God, that you.

Oh.

You know, have you ever done something or thought something and thought to yourself, God is just about to reduce me to a cinder right now for what I just did?

Or yeah, I mean, that's God to, I mean, did that even occur to him, to Adam right there, that I'm about to be smoked?

I have just blamed God for what I did.

I have just blamed the woman, but actually, the worst thing is to blame God for what I did.

And again, we do that in myriad different ways here in our own day and time as well, outside of the Garden of Eden.

We've learned from our first parents over and over again how to blame shift, how to pass the buck.

It's always somebody else's fault.

It's never my fault.

And if I get caught, it's it's it's the shame, the the problem is that I got caught, not that what I did was intrinsically wrong.

We just don't think that way anymore.

And it's because we've just been programmed over and over again that it's never our fault or that we should try to skirt any ownership whatsoever, any moral significance whatsoever.

So you have the first instance of passing the buck, and the second, and the on and on it goes, and we've gotten really good at all of that.

Who was the serpent?

Was it Satan here in Genesis 3?

Um, there's certainly a connection between what we read or what we heard read in Revelation called the dragon, the ancient serpent, Satan, the devil direct connection.

Stitches a line all the way between Genesis and Revelation, right?

That there's a strategic enemy of our souls.

And the Bible's actually pretty clear about the existence of the devil.

He appears 34 times by the term devil in the New Testament, and it means slanderer or false accuser.

The name Satan appears almost 50 times throughout the Bible, and it means adversary.

He's also called the father of lies in John chapter 8 and in Revelation 12 that we heard earlier.

John 8 · chapter mention

He's called the accuser of the brethren.

In other words, those who have placed their faith and hope and confidence in God through Christ, they have an accuser, someone who's always accusing.

It goes all the way back to the book of Genesis.

And what the what the enemy of your faith wants is he wants first to tempt you and entice you and get you to sin, and then he wants to have his cake and eat it too, and then heap guilt on you.

And say it's all you're you're just horrible.

What a wretch.

God will never love you.

God will never forgive you.

This is the 80 millionth time you've done that.

You know?

And so he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

What's the solution?

What do we do?

How do we how do we get out of this kind of predicament?

And I would suggest the Bible teaches us that we can't really do this on our own.

But it is interesting that in our Bibles, which talk pretty freely and openly about this creature, the enemy of our souls, the father of lies and his minions, who are more like fallen angels.

There's no there's no uh opposite to God.

You know, we've seen in the cartoons the the little angel and the little devil on the shoulder, and they're each trying to get us to do something, and and uh and they're like sort of equal powers whispering into our ear.

There's not that's not the way the Bible presents the devil.

He's not an equal to God on the dark side.

Um no, that the the and and and I love C.S.

Lewis's uh screw tape letters.

If you've never read it, you've got to get it and read it.

But in the introduction, he talks a little bit about how how uh if he were Satan, what he'd really like for you to do is disbelieve in his existence altogether, or to simply um go further than you should in believing in him, to start thinking there's a devil under every rock.

And it's always the devil's fault, you know, never yours.

And and the ultimate thing he wants is for you to think of him as some something in red tights with a with a pitchfork and and uh and a little tail.

So that you think he's a cartoon character, and then he's got you right where he wants you.

You don't believe in him, he can have all the mischief he wants with you.

Um and you don't even you don't believe he exists.

But this is interesting about the Bible.

The Bible records the devil as speaking just three different times, and we heard one of them read this morning, Genesis chapter 3, where the devil basically slanders God before humanity.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The second time that the devil is recorded speaking in the entire Bible, the second of three, is in the book of Job, where the devil slanders humanity before God.

Okay?

Consider your servant Job.

And then the third time we have the recorded words of Satan or the devil in the Bible, is when he actually confronts the God man, Jesus Christ, in Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

And Jesus resists, rebukes, and rebuffs Satan completely.

And that's the last word, except for the beautiful story we heard read in chapter 12 of Revelation, and when all of time in history is wrapped up, and the great Satan, the great dragon is actually cast down or defeated by the Lord Himself.

So there's a huge connection between the coming of Christ into a fallen world and Christ who comes, and the answer to the fall is someone who can stand.

You see?

And that's Christ.

He stands, and he takes temptation to its the fullest degree.

None of us have experienced temptation the way Christ Jesus experienced temptation.

How can I say that?

Why?

I mean, he didn't he never lived during the time when the person in front of you just cut you off and you want to just yell at them and scream at them in anger.

No, but anger has existed for a long time, folks, okay?

And there's always some way or means.

So the temptation to all of those things, he endured all of that.

And what we're told in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 is that the one who knew no sin became sin for us on the cross.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

He took our sin with him, so that we might become the righteousness or that we might have the righteousness of God in Christ.

That's the beautiful thing about the Christian faith, right?

And so the one who could stand temptation, all temptations, right?

And stand without falling actually knows temptation at a greater level than I do.

Why?

Because I've fallen.

I caved.

And you did too, whether you know it and admit it or not.

That's why we're called sinners here.

And by the way, if you thought you were coming to a perfect church, you did not.

We are a church full of sinners, and we are repenting and we are we are receiving grace in abundance.

Somebody say amen.

We're receiving grace in abundance and forgiveness, and we are delighting in that joyfully because we're receiving it as a gift.

We're not earning, we're not about balancing out the moral scales.

This is not their Christian faith.

The Christian gospel doesn't have a set of scales as its symbol.

It's not you balance them out and maybe you can appease God.

The symbol of the Christian faith is a cross.

And Jesus, the one who stood and didn't fall, he went to the cross and he took my sin to the cross, he took your sin to the cross, paid the price for it in full, past, present, and future, so that I could trust in him, I could hope in him, I could count on him, put my confidence in him, because he withstood temptation in a way I've not been able to, because I keep falling, and I'll fall again.

But he has come and he has been victorious.

So from Genesis to Revelation, the story of Christmas is there all the way from the beginning to the end.

The fall actually was where we needed where it's so evident and so clear, so obvious in front of us that we needed a Savior, that we needed Christ to come.

I'll draw four points real quick for you if you don't mind.

First, the questions, the curses, and a promise that we see in Genesis 3 and in Revelation 12.

The serpent's questions were designed to undermine God's word and promote unbelief.

So when you look at verses 1 through 5, the serpent is described as among the created beings.

Again, he's not a co-equal to God.

He's not the dark side of God.

He's a created being.

But he's called crafty.

So he's strategic.

He can think.

He's clever.

He knows just when to make your eyes drift over to that something or another he wants you to look at.

And there's something going on that is.

Now, listen, don't make the mistake I've made before thinking that, man, man, the devil, Satan himself must be after me.

No, I got news for you.

Satan himself has got much bigger fish to fry than Jim Thomas, okay?

I got one of his little minions after me, but I don't have the guy.

You know what I mean?

And his minions, these this one-third of the eight uh angels that fell, as we're told, become these little, these little demons that are strategically working on me to try and you to try and derail our faith along the way.

But his questions were designed to undermine God's word and to promote unbelief.

And so what happens is every now and then the thought crosses my mind, did God really say that?

Maybe he didn't.

Does God really, you know?

And the the seed of those kinds of thoughts promote unbelief.

They undermine God's word and my confidence in God's word.

They stir up doubt, resentment, lust, pride, rationalization, and eventually entice the humans, us into disobedience.

And I took all of those terms right there.

Just as I looked at Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

There was doubt sown.

Yeah.

And by the way, doubt's not a sign that it's not sin.

Temptation, being tempted isn't a sin.

Jesus was tempted.

So temptation itself is not a sin.

It's what we do with it, how we respond to it ultimately that matters and determines whether we fall into sin or not.

Resentment, lust, pride, rationalization, all that's there in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

You can see it there.

Second thing that I think we see in Genesis 3, Revelation 12 today is God's questions were designed to cultivate repentance and catalyze belief.

So there's a contrast between the questions of the enemy of your faith and the questions of God in this chapter that we saw in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

God's questions were designed to cultivate repentance and catalyze belief.

Where are you?

Who told you this?

Did you eat from that tree?

And he's trying to open our eyes to see what we need to see so that we might turn back to him.

And I I have to point this out.

God doesn't say, I curse you, Adam, and I curse you, Eve.

He asks questions to them to help them get to think.

But notice that God did not ask one single question of the devil in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And yet he does level curses at him.

God is still asking the question so that we might wake up, that we might be on the alert, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, 12, therefore let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

God wanted Adam and Eve, God wanted all of us by extension to recognize that sin separates us.

We then find ourselves attempting to hide.

We're covered in guilt and shame.

We're all vulnerable to temptation of the mind or the body or the soul.

Those are the three different venues that there's an enemy of our faith, and then we must resist just as we're called to by the power of the Spirit and by the grace of God at work in our lives.

God's answer to the fall is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, who did not fall, but who withstood every temptation and became, He took our sin to the cross then, so that we might find life in Him.

Jesus, the only one who never fell, now bids us come, sinners that we are, broken, bruised, fallen, addicted, distracted, failures that we are, over and over again.

He calls all of us to come home to him.

And it begins with our acknowledgement of our sinfulness and then the response of repentance and faith.

G.K.

Chesterton, who's one of the guys that uh I've quoted from Orthodoxy numbers of different times, and he's one of the guys that had a big impact on C.S.

Lewis coming to the faith as well.

Um in Orthodoxy, Chesterton says, um, certain new theologians, and of course he's talking around the turn of the century and the early uh uh tens, twenties of the night uh the 20th century, certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.

Some admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams, but they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.

And so that would play itself like this.

We're all basically good.

Come on.

Come on, we're southerners.

We say y'all.

And we even say the plural, all y'all.

We're just we're nice people.

We've turned sin into a two-syllable word, sin.

You know, it's it's got that it's got that old kind of cartoon-like sound to it, so it really doesn't mean anything.

We're not really offending God, we're not breaking God's rules, we're not, we're not breaking God's standards.

And and what I would point out is I think the Bible ends up teaching us really that what happens to us is we separate ourselves from God, there are attending consequences.

And it's really important for us to understand that.

Even in our own lives, after we've been recognized we've been saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus.

But God's curses were designed to expose the consequences of unbelief.

And again, God didn't curse Adam and Eve, but he cursed the serpent, he cursed human experiences that could have been so joyous, like childbearing and uh human relationships.

Uh, you know, you have here too, you could argue, you have here too, the first marital communication breakdown.

That woman you gave me, you know.

And then when the Lord says, What have you done?

And the and the woman uh and and she she responds, she's already told the serpent uh a different version of what God says in Genesis chapter two, which means either Adam didn't communicate it to her right or correctly, or she heard it wrong.

And it could be either one.

I'm not saying which one it is.

I'm not trying to, you know, be all pro-husband or all pro-wife or whatever on this whole thing.

I'm just saying, here what we have, here you can see marital communication breakdown in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And it leads to so much more mischief and so much stuff that goes wrong.

God's curses were designed to expose the consequences of unbelief.

And unbelief is really at the core of all my sin and all your sin.

Unbelief is me saying, you know what?

I don't think God's ways are right here.

I think I'll do this my way.

I know he doesn't.

Look, he's let us eat from all of the fruit, all of the trees in the entire garden.

Why in the world would he not want us to have that tree and the fruit from that tree, you know?

And so you start to question, you start to, and so that's what happens to me.

Unbelief taking root in my heart leads me then to question God, to question whether I can trust him.

Does he have my highest good in mind in this particular moment?

And for all of us, it could be in a moment of great joy or a moment of great suffering.

It could be either or.

The question again gets back to where am I with God?

How am I in relationship with God?

The predicted seed of the woman, though, this is beautiful, because the predicted seed of the woman is going to come and is going to be the one to bruise the serpent on his head.

That's a fatal blow.

And the serpent's told, and you'll bruise him on his heel.

That's that sort of you, when you look at it, you go, Yeah, Jesus, yeah, he got bit.

He was down, but in three days he got back up.

That wasn't the end.

That wasn't the last word.

And I think it's really powerful when you start to see that.

Um, Lewis here says, A creature revolting against the creator is revolting against the source of his own powers, including even his power to revolt.

It's like the scent of a flower trying to destroy the flower.

So God's curses are designed to expose the consequences of unbelief.

We were created in the image of God.

We were created to be in relationship with God.

And sin separates us from God, sin separates us from each other.

Uh pride.

Uh, I want my I don't want to I want to be the center of conversation, I want to be the center of attract uh of attention and all this sort of thing.

And we're all that way.

You're saying, no, I'm not.

I'm I'm never that way.

I'm I'm a I'm a good listen, listen to your conversations just for the next week.

Ask yourself how many times you actually make the conversation about somebody else instead of it all being about you all the time.

You know?

I mean, really, stop.

How many of you know somebody that never asks you anything about it?

Don't raise your hand because you might be.

But it does happen.

And what happens is we're all in our own, we're just self-focused.

And that's another way of saying we're just we're sinners.

We we want to be the sinner.

See?

And God, God comes along in the person of Jesus incarnate, God, Son of God, and what he does is he shows us that the way to a flourishing life is to give your life away, is to lay your life down for others.

Yeah.

And that's the beauty of the Christian faith is that we have this kind of a God that would enter into our darkness when we really weren't interested, to be honest with you.

And he would break in any way, take a sovereign move, take the initiative, come into our darkness, become one of us, and die on the cross for my sins.

A penalty for my sin.

Um, not his sin, but my sin.

Pretty profound.

Um, fourthly and finally, God's promise foreshadows the glorious gospel of grace.

The promise here is in verse 15.

It's kind of subtle.

It's like, again, um, God says to the serpent, uh, the seed of the woman will bruise your head.

There's a promise there.

It's not just a threat, it's a promise.

This is the way it's gonna happen.

And when we read from when we heard the reading from Revelation, we heard the fulfillment of that promise.

The serpent was cast down.

That was it.

In a final act, you know?

And um it's it's amazing.

God's promise foreshadows the glorious gospel of grace.

This is um this is God saying, uh, it's like his battle cry.

Verse 15 is, if I could put it that way.

Um it it's it's God taking umbrage with the fact that the serpent was messing around with his son and his daughter.

And it's God stepping in and saying, No, no more.

You will not have the final word.

See?

And there's a period of time, I understand the world's fallen, the world's broken.

Um we'll all go through a lot of stuff.

But what the promise is for us is that there's coming that day when he intends to set it all right.

No more death, no more disease, no more sorrow, no more tears.

See?

And so we look back and we reflect upon what God has done.

In creation, yeah.

Even in the fall, when the promise comes in verse 15, God will be victorious, God will step in the way.

God will not only punish the serpent and be victorious over the enemy of our souls, but God Himself, in the person of Jesus, the seed of the woman, he will actually take the curse of death upon himself for me in my place.

And the same thing for you as well.

Because one day we're all going to face, the Bible teaches us, one day we're all gonna have to give an account for our lives to God.

And so when we ask those big questions that we asked earlier, what's going wrong with the world?

Do we have any moral obligation to anyone?

Will we ever give an account for our lives?

The Bible says, yes, we will.

It's real clear.

It's not ambiguous, it's not it, it's not equivocal, it's unequivocal.

And so here we have a certain word in a world full of ambiguity, in a world full of I would call intellectual uh uh confusion and moral bankruptcy.

Here's a certain word.

Here's a sure word.

And God's made it clear to us that he would come in, that he would step in himself.

So, what a great time Advent is for us to take a fearless inventory, as Rutledge said, to actually begin to respond to that question that God asks.

Where are you?

For you to be thinking about that.

Where are you with God?

Where am I with God?

And how might I respond to him in faith and hope believing?

Tim Keller has a book called Hidden Christmas.

It's a very small book, it's really worth a read.

He says the Christmas message is that on those living in the land of deep darkness, light has dawned.

Notice it doesn't say from the light, uh, from the world a light has sprung.

But upon the world a light has dawned.

It has come from outside.

There's light outside of this world.

Jesus has brought that light to save us.

Indeed, he is the light.

He himself is the light.

And so we turn to him in faith and hope, believing.

We turn to him because he's exactly, when you think about it, he's exactly the kind of savior you'd want if you could have one, if you could pick one, if you could design one yourself.

It's the one who would come and rescue you.

That would set out the scales in front of you, but that would actually go to the cross and then burst from the spice tomb, defeating our last and greatest enemy, death itself.

That's the kind of savior I want to believe in.

I hope you do too.

Let's pray, Lord.

Thank you for this passage.

Uh, both these passages, and thank you for all the pages in between, too.

Um so much there to inspire us, so much there for us to see how you've been in pursuit of a people you can call your own.

I pray that you would move on our hearts and our minds, especially during this Advent season, that you would call us out of our darkness, that you would call us to turn toward you, to receive the light of the glorious gospel of grace through faith in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen and amen.