1st MESSIANIC SYMBOL for the Advent Season: Seeds

December 1:  Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel (NKJV)

This seems like a somewhat morbid way to begin the joyful Christmas season.  Talking about enmity and heads being crushed does not fit with our idea of God sending His Son as a baby to demonstrate His love.

At the very beginning of the Bible we read that God created the world. When He was finished He pronounced it “very good.”  The world was perfect, and God and the first man and woman had a perfect relationship.  But God’s enemy did not like seeing God and the man and woman enjoying each other. Satan wanted to spoil the perfect world that God had made.

Satan appeared as a snake and tricked Eve into disobeying God.  Eve then persuaded Adam to disobey, too. This brought sin into the world and separated Adam and Eve from God. God had warned them they would be punished if they disobeyed.

Their disobedience could have been the end of God’s relationship with people.  He could have left us separated from Him with no hope of ever knowing His love.  But even at this darkest point of history, God already had a plan to show His love and to make it possible for us to have eternal life.

In Genesis 3:15 God is talking to the snake–to Satan.  He says that the woman’s descendant will one day crush Satan’s head.  That descendant would be Jesus, who would die on the cross to accept all the punishment for human disobedience.  In His death Satan bruised Jesus’ heel. Jesus suffered and died. When Jesus rose from the dead He defeated Satan’s plan to separate us from God.

We use two seeds to illustrate this verse. The black seed with the snake symbolizes Satan who tempted Adam and Eve to disobey God. The white seed with the cross represents Jesus, who defeated Satan by dying on the cross to take away the punishment for our sins.  Thousands of years before Jesus’ birth God promised to defeat Satan.

All of Adam and Eve’s descendants have followed them in disobeying God.  Only one person has ever obeyed God perfectly—Jesus Christ, God’s Son. Our disobedience separates us from God and we deserve His punishment. But Jesus’ death on the cross paid the penalty for us.  1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Jesus! The name high over all,

In hell, or earth, or sky;

Angels and men before it fall,

And devils fear and fly,

Jesus! The name to sinners dear,

The name to sinners given;

It scatters all their guilty fear,

It turns their hell to heaven,

Jesus! The prisoners’ fetters breaks,

And bruises Satan’s head,

Power into strengthless souls it speaks,

And life into the dead.

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

Thank God that you have been born again into God’s family; and that you are part of His seed.

Ask God to help you to share Himself with others, so that they, too, might be a part of His seed.

O God, who looked on us when we had fallen down into death, and resolved to redeem us by the Advent of your only begotten Son; grant, we beg you, that those who confess his glorious Incarnation may also be admitted to the fellowship of their Redeemer, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Ambrose (339-397)