Heaven and Nature Sing: 5 Days to Reflect During AdventSample

In Genesis 3, God promised that the “seed of a woman” would crush the serpent’s head and turn back the curse. In other words, God promised to work generationally. And while Genesis 4 hints that Eve may have thought her firstborn was the Promised Son, time would prove redemption to be much more expansive and much more enduring than anyone could imagine.

When you read the records of Jesus’s ancestry in Matthew 1 and Luke 3, you’re reading more than a list of names. You’re counting the rings of a family tree that represents the out-working of God’s plan of redemption. A plan that reaches back through the nation of Israel, through the covenants with David, Abraham, and Noah, and all the way to the garden.

But like our personal family histories, the story of redemption is far from seamless. Because over the years of waiting, many generations lost hope. In the waiting and in the longing, they gave up. They turned from God and his promise and turned to idols to live for the present moment. They abandoned God’s ways and forgot the coming Son.

As a result, they suffered judgment. Faithful prophets went silent. The temple was desecrated, and the people scattered. Their homeland became prey for foreign invaders until, in the words of Isaiah 6:11, the “cities lie in ruins without inhabitants, houses are without people, the land is ruined and desolate.”

Describing this work of judgment, Isaiah likens it to a tree cut down: “Look, the Lord God of Armies will chop off the branches with terrifying power, and the tall trees will be cut down, the high trees felled” (Isaiah 10:33). So if the genealogies in Matthew and Luke are rings of the tree of redemption, it’s a tree that has been cut down. It’s the story of generations displaced and a land decimated. Without a family, there is no Promised Son. And without a Promised Son, there is no redemption. It’s a story that seems hopeless.

Almost.

Because while Isaiah prophesied that generations would be cut down like a tree, he also prophesied that a remnant would remain and that “the holy seed is the stump” (Isaiah 6:13). Despite all the loss, all the devastation, God had not abandoned his promise. And while we may be unfaithful to it, He is not. One day a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. . . . On that day the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. The nations will look to him for guidance, and his resting place will be glorious (Isaiah 11:1-2, 10).

The story of Christmas is this: the tree is not dead. A shoot will live and grow. And grow and grow and grow.