The Promise Of Christmas

The Promise Of Christmas

CCCAG 12-18-23

Scripture: Genesis 3:15

About 3 years ago, I was in an elevator with my 3rd semester nursing instructor. This particular instructor saw it as her mission to fail as many people as possible. In fact, we started our nursing class with about 70 students, and only graduated 23- most of which had failed one of her classes. It was obvious she now had her sights on failing me, and was looking for anyway she could to fail me at one of the three classes I was taking with her that semester. All nursing school classes demand at least an 81% to pass instead of the usual 70% for the rest of college so there isn’t much of a margin of error.

As we rode down in the elevator, she was looking through her grade book and gleefully telling me there was no way I could pass Complex Health Alterations- I would need to get a 97% on the final exam to raise my average enough to pass, and no one had ever scored more than a 92 on one of her exams, so I might as well get it in my head that I’m yet one more paramedic that couldn’t handle nursing school and flunked out. As the elevator door opened, she looked back and said, “Maybe you should just give up- you don’t have what it takes to be a nurse.”

It was a real punch in the gut, and I drove home from Marshfield with her words echoing in my head- I have failed, and I might as well give up.

I am going to have to face my family, my church, and my coworkers as a failure.

Failure…..that word kept echoing in my heart, mind, and soul.

Think about a time for a moment that you had not gotten the grade, or mess up a job, or failed in your relationship. All of us have had to deal with failure of one form or another.

Relating that to our scripture this morning-

The first failure ever experienced by anyone was Adam and Eve.

Imagine how they felt. They were the first to ever fail.

They didn’t even have a frame of reference to deal with this idea. There was no mental chip to process this situation.

They trusted the words of the serpent, and the serpent was now laughing at their failure.

They were being led out of paradise by God Himself- thrown out from the most perfect existence ever known.

The weight of their failure had to be crushing them.

God in His mercy gave them a promise that foretold of a person who would make everything right someday.

That’s where we pick it up this morning. He speaks first to the serpent, and then to them.

-Scripture- Genesis 3:14-15

14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock

and all wild animals!

You will crawl on your belly

and you will eat dust

all the days of your life.

15 And I will put enmity

between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will crush your head,

and you will strike his heel.”

Prayer

Today I want to talk about the promise of Christmas. The promise that God will someday make all things right again.

The promise we just read is called the protoevangelium- the big theological word that means the first mention in the bible of the Gospel. Genesis 3:15 is the first prophecy of John 3:16.

It’s the promise even when we fail God, we can be assured that HE has already made a way to bring us back.

Christmas is the ultimate proof of that. The coming of the Son of God in human form was the fulfillment of what was promised by God in the Garden of Eden.

That was a promise for every human that has ever lived.

But what does this mean for us personally?

But what about when we do fail?

How do we come back from that?

How do we experience the joy of the LORD when we are being crushed by the weight of guilt and failure?

Let’s explore that today by looking at the darkness of failure.

We are going to explore this by looking at one of the darkest times in one of the bible’s most famous men- King David.

Undoubtedly, his biggest failure was when he committed adultery with the wife of one of his mighty men, Uriah. You read about this in 2 Samuel 11.

Let me tell the story

One night David was standing out on the porch of his palace and saw a young woman bathing on her rooftop. This woman was named Bathsheba. Now some may think that her bathing outside was her being lascivious or an exhibitionist.