Modern March | a Christian blog

Posted: 28 Nov 2010 09:39 AM PST

This series of posts, appearing on every Sunday of Advent, originally appeared on my old blog. – Bryan

ADVENT & ANTICIPATION

Scripture: Genesis 3:15; Galatians 4:4-5.

"I will cause hostility between you and the woman—between your offspring and her offspring; he shall crush your head, and you shall crush his heel."

"When the intended time had fully passed, God sent his Son—born of a woman, subject to the law—in order to redeem those who are under the law and so that we might receive the benefits of being adopted as his children."

Today marks the first Sunday of the Advent season, the time of the year where we reflect on the meaning of the incarnation and the birth of Jesus Christ. It is much more than simply the birthday of a religious figure—Advent sums up the entire Biblical narrative in the birth of the long-awaited Messiah and looks forward to the day when the Messiah returns to bring history to its intended goal and end. Advent spans from creation (even, perhaps, we can say before creation. See Ephesians 1) to the culmination of history, and is centered around the the idea of anticipation of the coming Messiah.

And no one knows that anticipation better than Adam and Eve. Of all the people who have ever lived, they alone knew the full cost of the Fall, having experienced life in Eden's shalom. They alone knew what it meant to have an unfractured relationship with God himself and all of creation. And while we continue to feel the effects of the Fall in our everyday lives, all we have known is the fractured reality of sin. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, knew what it was like prior to the fall, and had to live the rest of their lives with an experiential knowledge of what they lost in their sin. So imagine the anticipation they felt when they overheard God tell the serpent that he would be destroyed by one of Eve's sons, bringing back the world they once knew and rescuing all from the curse they had brought.

Imagine the hope, the joy, as Eve gave birth to Cain. Would he be the one? Or maybe it would be his brother, Abel? Time would ultimately show that it would be neither who fulfilled God's promise. Can you imagine the sorrow, not only over the death of one son and the exile of another, but at the realization that God's promise would go unfulfilled? Image the crushed hope, the wandering faith, and the doubt. Then imagine it all over again with the birth of Seth. Would they ever get back to Eden?

The Fall led to the Great Exile—not captivity in Egypt, or even Babylon, but to sin and death and Exile from the Garden. The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is our great Exodus, bringin us back, not just to Eden but to a Greater Eden—the New Creation.

Imagine, Adam and Eve's anticipation for the skull-crushing seed to come.

We now live in the tension of incarnation and consummation. By that I mean that the skull-crusher has come, and yet we are not back in Eden. In the powerlessness of the cross, Jesus overcome the power of Satan, sin, and death, crushing the skull of the serpent, and brought the New Creation into the present. However, it is just a taste of the New Creation, the fullness of which we will experience when the Messiah returns to put all things right. We see Satan prowling around now, but one day we will see the reality of his destruction. Like Adam and Eve, we anticipate the coming of the Messiah. We long to return to Eden, to a restoration of all things that is far more glorious than we can imagine.

Filed under: Scripture Lessons, Series