First Sunday of Advent 2020

 The First Advent

Why God Entered Humanity through Jesus

Today we celebrate the first of four weeks of Advent – the season observed in many churches as a time commemorating the First Coming of our Messiah.

Why did God enter humanity through the virgin’s womb 2000 years ago? One reason is to offer us an abundant life – a life overflowing with joy in the Holy Spirit. But before we look at that reason, we need a little backstory into the origin of salvation history. For that, let’s turn to Genesis 3. You will remember how Satan, in the form of the serpent, deceived Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, and then Adam joined her in that sin.

Listen, if you don’t know this, you NEED to know this: The devil is not ambivalent to us. He is our cruelest, most vile, supremely evil and mortal enemy. And he has only one goal: to destroy us. Jesus tells us this in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”

Which brings us back to one of the reasons for the first Advent. Jesus Himself tells us, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10)

But that begs the question: “How did God provide us the means for an abundant life, a life overflowing with freedom and hope and love and confidence and joy in the Holy Spirit?

Let me suggest five ways in which God made it possible for us to have an abundant life.

Number one: To provide us an opportunity for an abundant life, God sent His Son, Jesus, into the world to reconcile sinners with their Holy Creator. Scripture tells us that before Christ, we were “by nature children of wrath” and we were “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” You’ll find all that in Ephesians chapter two.

Nevertheless, also God tells us: “For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in [Christ], and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross . . ..” (Colossians 1:19-20)

Our need for reconciliation dates to the Garden when our first parents sinned. That’s why we need a new heart. A new birth. Here is what God tells us through the prophet Ezekiel: “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

And you will remember what the Lord Jesus said to the Jewish theologian Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3 

Some of you may remember the words of this hymn: “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. O precious is the flow That makes me white as snow, No other fount I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Do you remember the first time you realized ALL of your sins were wiped from God’s memory? I’ve often quoted from Psalm 103 and Micah 7, but here is Isaiah 43:25  “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

So, the first way God made for us to have an abundant life in Jesus’ first Advent, is that He came to offer us reconciliation with the Father. But as with any offer, we can accept the gift or reject the gift. I hope you have accepted the offer – and will continue to do so from the Father’s hand.

The second way Jesus’ First Advent offers us an abundant life is that He came to expose the deceptions of the devil before they trap us in lifestyles of sin. Satan knows that a lifestyle of sin makes us enemies of God. James tells us in the fourth chapter of his epistle, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Deception has been Satan’s strategy since the Garden. Do you remember what he said to Eve? “The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5)

Did you catch that? You will be like God. He tempted our first mother with the promise of being in control of her own kingdom, to live her way, for her purposes, according to her will – and not need to be submissive to the will of God. It’s called the lust for power – power over our circumstances and over others.

In that brief conversation with Eve, he persuaded her to question God’s love for her. “You surely won’t die” he lied. “Go ahead and take the fruit. It’s pretty isn’t it? It holds the promise of satisfying your hunger, doesn’t it?  God doesn’t want you to have it. Why do you think that is, except He is holding you back from what you deserve?”

So Eve, being fully deceived, took the fruit, and then gave it to Adam. And if you know the story, they DID die. Their sin severed their special and intimate relationship with God. The branch was broken off from the vine. It’s what happened to all of us when we willfully rebelled against God. Here is a portion of John 15 in which Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. . . . Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. . . If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. (15:1-6)

May God help us always to be alert to the enemy’s subterfuge.

Number three: Jesus came in His first advent to teach us how to walk the path of eternal life instead of the path that leads to everlasting destruction.

The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7 is the quintessential example of that demonstration. “Blessed are the gentle . . .“Blessed are the merciful . . .Blessed are the pure in heart, “Blessed are the peacemakers . . . . Give in secret. Pray in secret. Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. No one can serve two masters. Stop worrying about what you will eat and what you will wear. Seek first the Kingdom of God.  Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you."

God knows we need a supernatural Counselor to guide us, to teach us. Jesus tells us in John 16:13, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” And where do we find eternal, inerrant, and timeless truth that leads to eternal life? Only and exclusively in the Word of the eternal God.

God has given the world His instruction book, and His Holy Spirit to guide those who want to walk in truth.

An abundant life. Here is the fourth way Jesus’ First Advent leads us to an abundant life: The Father offers everyone the privilege to become His child through faith in the atoning and bloody sacrifice Jesus made for us on Calvary’s cross. But His offer is ONLY to those who want to be God’s children.

Don’t be deceived by those who tell us everyone is God’s child. That is a devilish lie. Yes, all men and women are created in God’s image, but only those who come to Him through faith in Messiah Jesus can be adopted into God’s family. 

Here is Scripture’s unbending declaration of the matter: “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:11-12).

And number five, Jesus’ first advent offers us an abundant life because He came to defeat death.

Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, death has haunted humanity at every corner and in every shadow. But here’s what the Holy Spirit tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:

“Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

So, why did Jesus leave glory itself to become a human baby who grew to be a man who then offered Himself to die a torturous death on a cross?  Why did Jesus do that? 

To reiterate, Jesus came to us the first time to:

1. Reconcile us again with the Father

2. Shine His light on the devil’s continual deceptions

3. Demonstrate for us how to live a life set apart for God

4. Make us children of God

5. Defeat death

Let me close now with the wonderful words of this 19th century hymn by Phillip Bliss:

Hallelujah, What a Savior

Man of Sorrows! what a name For the Son of God, who came, Ruined sinners to reclaim. Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned He stood; Sealed my pardon with His blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Guilty, vile, and helpless we; Spotless Lamb of God was He; “Full atonement!” can it be? Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Lifted up was He to die; “It is finished!” was His cry; Now in Heav’n exalted high. Hallelujah! What a Savior!

When He comes, our glorious King, All His ransomed home to bring, then anew His song we’ll sing: Hallelujah! What a Savior!

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