“Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.”
These are the iconic opening lines to the iconic Christmas story by Charles Dickens. Ever year as a tradition growing up, my family would watch Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. As my wife and I started our own family, we started a similar tradition of watching the Muppet’s Christmas Carol. This story came at a time when Christmas was becoming commercialized and losing it’s meaning. One one side was the religious nature of Christmas, with Christmas mass and other religious actives surrounding the holiday. On the other side was the stores full of things to buy, and much like it is today, it was more about receiving than giving. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens tries to take hold of both sides, and bring them together. The gift of Jesus by God the Father so that the bondage of sin would be broken and by which humanity could now enter into a right relationship with God and their fellow man, was coupled with the idea that the things we do here on earth carry with us into eternity.
Most of us know the story. Ebenezer is a tight fisted financer, who doesn’t care for anyone. He is then visited by his old partner Jacob Marley who was dead, and yet appears to him with chains. Chains of greed and avarice that were forged by the evil actions he performed in his life. But an unknown entity, who is hinted at, but never mentioned outright, has granted Scrooge an opportunity to change, and so he would be visited by the three spirits of Christmas, past, present, and future. And in the end, his life is changed for the better. Leading to these words at the closing of the story, “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”
As I pondered this story, it was brought to my mind that there are three parts to the Advent of Christ. When we talk about Christmas, we’re talking about God coming down from heaven to take on human flesh and walk with his creation, this is Advent, or arrival. But Jesus’ first Advent is more than just a lone moment in history. There’s actually three parts of Advent that we usually do not talk about during Christmas. Like the three spirits of Dickens’ story, there are three parts that make up Advent, the past, the moment of, and the future.
So starting today, we are going to look at four fulfillments of the Christmas story and with each fulfillment, the past, present and future of those fulfillments. So if you would, open you Bibles with me to the first book of the Bible, Genesis chapter 3, and let’s read together verse 15.
Genesis 3:15 reads, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
This verse is considered the first prophecy of the good news of Jesus. Humanity just fell from their perfect position. In what we just read, they are finding out how this fall will work out. In this verse, God first speaks to the serpent who deceived the woman Eve into rebelling against God’s command to not eat the fruit of a specific tree. Yet in the very cruse that God places on the serpent, he interjects a ray of hope. The serpent, who is the fallen angel Satan, will crawl on his belly, a sign that he too has fallen from his place of creation. Then serpent and the offspring of the woman will have a enmity or hostility towards one another. This serpent will bruise him, or as the word carries with it, try to make him unsuitable for God. But the offspring will fight back and and make the serpent unsuitable.
And it’s this word offspring which is so important in the word of God, because this word begins to connect and provide a path for us to follow that moves us through to the first Advent. The Hebrew word zera (zeh’-rah) occurs 230 times in the Old Testament connecting the offspring of the women throughout the history of Israel. It connects it to Noah in Genesis 9:9, where God states, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you…” Then a few chapters later God speaks these words to Abraham in Genesis 12:7b, “…To your offspring I will give this land.” If we continue to follow this word and this offspring of Eve, we find the path again in Ruth 4:12, where we read, “may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.” The linage that this offspring leads to is King David. This is the prophetic word that sets the stage for the Christmas event.
We can follow this path to Jesus, who asked the question of the religious leaders in Mark 12:35b, “Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David?” He asked this because the scholars, the theologians, and the average person on the street, understood that the Savior would come through the line of King David, because you could trace the offspring of Eve through that lineage. Because Jesus was from this Davidic line, Paul writes in 2 Timothy 2:8, “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel…” But it’s not just to David that Jesus is connected to, Paul points the Church back to that offspring of Eve. In Galatians 3:16 we read, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ.” This brings us almost back to where we began. The whole of the Bible seeks to show us that it is Jesus who the offspring that was prophesied about in Genesis 3:15.
It’s why we sing the Christmas hymn that states, “Offspring of a virgin’s womb.” The offspring spoken of, who would crush the serpent’s head, is the offspring that the whole of the Old Testament waits in anticipation for his birth, and whom we know as Jesus of Nazareth.
The enmity, the hostility that Jesus and the serpent have for each other is taken to the cross, where the serpent believes he has won when Jesus’ lifeless and bloody body is taken down and put in a tomb. But it’s Jesus who overcomes when he rises three days later, with victory over not just the serpent, but sin and death as well. The Hebrew writer, writes of this hostility and victory words in second verse of their twelfth chapter, “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (12:2).”
This is the first Advent work of Jesus. It’s the place that we find ourselves in right now. We are living in the present time of the cross or that first Christmas, where we have the opportunity to accept Jesus’ work of overcoming and forgiving our sin, a time that might last for our whole life, or might end any moment. But there is a future fulfillment that the Bible speaks about in the final chapters of Scripture, that will see this hostility come to an end.
As John sees what will happen at the end of human history as we know it, we read his vision in Revelation 20:7-10, “7 And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. 9 And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, 10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
Satan, that serpent of old that sought to deceive and destroy God’s creation, is finally dealt with by the offspring of prophecy. God himself gave hope in the moment of humanity’s rebellion against their Creator, it was God himself who gave himself up for his creation by allowing it to crucify him, and it will be God himself who binds forever the rebel angel who began this whole story.
We await this part of the story, as we await our Lord and Savior Jesus’s return. But until that great day, we must head the words of the Holy Spirit speaking through James, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (4:7).” We resit the devil’s call to follow Eve into deception, and we do this by submitting to God’s authority through his word.
Like Scrooge who had the opportunity to break the chains that were destined for him in eternity, Jesus has broken the chains that hold us, that Satan desires we have bound on us, so that he won’t be bound alone in the lake of fire.
God calls us to see his work through the whole of humanity history; from the moment we first sinned, to the overcoming of sin on the cross, to the final victory of our Lord over Eve’s deceiver in the near future, we are to seek God and be about his work. We must be sharing the Gospel, the good news of God’s great love and sacrifice for those in rebellion against him.
My challenge for you this week is this, God has been working, even in our lowest moments, to bring about his goodness in our lives. We must first accept art work through the cross. We must recognize that we, like Eve have fallen into sin and are in need of the Offspring to save us. We we recognize and accept God’s great mercy of the cross, where sin was dealt with, we can enter into God’s saving work.
Once we accept that saving work, we enter into a right relationship with him, where we not submit to him for the rest of our lives. We then can share his work with others.
So let us share God’s work with the people around us who are hurting this Christmas season. To the check out person who has to deal with ungrateful customers, to the neighbor who’s life is falling apart, let us point them to the Offspring who saves and brings comfort.
Let us be a people who are grafted into the Offspring’s family and call others to that family this Christmas season. Amen.
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