Sermon Text Advent 1: JESUS, THE SEED OF JESSE’S TREE

JESUS, THE SEED OF JESSE’S TREE

There is one story, one narrative, that ties the entire Bible together; it is the history of our salvation.
1. Our Advent midweek series is called Jesse Tree
  1. Jesse was the father of King David and he appears in the genealogies of Jesus given in both Matthew 1:1–17 and Luke 3:23–38.
  1. We are all familiar with family trees, the Tree of Jesse is a depiction of the ancestors of Christ, beginning with Jesse and is believed to be the original use of the family tree in genealogy.
  1. It was inspired by the genealogy of the Messiah given in Isa 11:2, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.”
  1. And if you follow the unfolding narrative of Scripture, you’ll realize that it’s really one big genealogy tracing the events in the lineage of One person – Jesus.
1. But to understand the end of a story, we have to go back to the beginning.
  1. The story of salvation does not begin at Bethlehem with the incarnation; though everything in time before leads to the incarnation and everything afterward flows from that point.
  1. When you look at all of the trees in nature, we know that even the largest of them began as a small seed.
1. And that’s how the Biblical story of salvation begins, as well, with a seed, the seed of a woman promised at the beginning of creation.
  1. With the words “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” (Genesis 1:1), our Lord spoke creation into existence and the history of the universe begins.
  1. And at the close of each day after God saw all that He had made, He called it “good.”
  1. But the crown of creation came on the sixth day when as Genesis reports, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them,” (Genesis 1:27)
  1. At that point He declared the whole creation “very good” meaning perfect and complete.
1. Creation, including the human race, did not happen by accident or by chance but by the intentional act of almighty God.
  1. And for the man and the woman, God planted a garden we know as Eden.
  1. There, our first parents lived a life of harmony and peace with nature, with each other, and with the One who had created them.
  1. Sin and its ugly consequences were unknown in this world.
  1. But it wasn’t to last to last.
We know the story: the serpent tempted the woman; her husband stood by and watched; and then with her ate of the fruit of the one tree that was forbidden to them.
1. Yet their initial sin was not in the physical eating but rather choosing to listen to the serpent and reject the Creator’s loving word.
  1. A seed of doubt caused an act that would close the gates of Eden to all humanity, “Why would God forbid us from eating from this one tree? Maybe He’s keeping something good from us!”
  1. And so, they ate, and the consequences of their disobedience have marked the entirety of human history: brokenness and sin, hate and war, despair and hopelessness, sickness and death.
  1. Our shared experience in life bears witness to the ravages of sin and the result of what happened in the Garden of Eden.
  1. But what did the Creator do to those who sinned against Him? Reject them? Stand idly by as His creation was destroyed?
1. That is not the nature of our God. He is love itself, and that love reached out to Adam and Eve and all of their descendants.
  1. He could not destroy or abandon His creation.
  1. In love He had created them, and in love He would provide a way of salvation.
  1. And it was a salvation only He could accomplish through the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8 KJV)
  1. Just as creation was no accident but the purposeful working of God so our salvation was no accident either, it is God’s purposeful working in Christ.
1. Sin brought with it death as the Lord warned.
  1. Though Adam and Eve and all the subsequent generations have borne the curse our sin has earned, our loving Creator did not desert us.
  1. In the midst of declaring the creation, its people and the serpent cursed in Genesis 3 the Lord planted a seed of promise.
  1. The Lord God said to the serpent, “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.” (Genesis 3:15)
1. The word for “offspring” is also the word for “seed.”
  1. When we think of “offspring” we often think of plural, when we live to see our offspring we might be thinking of multiple generations.
  1. But the word here is singular, not plural, there would be one seed, one offspring, that would defeat the serpent – “He will bruise your head…”
  1. And further that seed would not be the seed of the man and the woman, as every subsequent human birth would be.
  1. No, this Seed is the Seed of the woman—a miraculous and divine conception.
In love, God remembered His promise through every generation of fallen humanity.
1. Through those generations, the Seed that was promised in Eden would remain present though hidden to human eyes.
  1. In the fullness of time, in the womb of a daughter of Eve, the Virgin Mary, that promised Seed would grow.
  1. From her womb would come the Creator joined to His creation in the God-Man, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer.
1. All that was lost in Adam was restored in the Seed of the woman.
  1. He is the Christ, the Messiah, the Lamb of God, the one perfect sacrifice whose blood reverses the curse of the fall and brings grace and forgiveness to the whole human race.
  1. As Paul said in our lesson from Rom 5 tonight, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” (Rom 5:19)
  1. This is the new Adam, who bears the sin of the old Adam and every human being and carries it all to a cross.
  1. From the tree of Eden would come death to all humanity, but from the tree of Calvary would come life to all humanity.
1. This is the Christ of Easter by whose death and resurrection creation has been redeemed and all things in heaven and on earth are united through Him. (Eph 1:10)
  1. This is the Lamb into whom we were baptized to share in His death and resurrection.
  1. This is the Lamb whose body and blood have sustained us at the altar.
  1. This is Jesus, the Seed of Jesse’s tree, and through Him, the Eden that was lost has been restored for us who through faith will inherit it for eternity.