Advent Midweek 1:
“Jesus, the Seed of Jesse’s Tree”[1]
December 2, 2020
Text: Gen. 1:27, 3:1-15; Rom. 5:12-21
Have
you heard of this Advent tradition, the Jesse Tree? It was new to me a number of years ago in my
parish in Michigan, but it has a very old pedigree going back to medieval times. You can use your Christmas tree, or a special
tree, or even a paper tree, and you make ornaments that go along with a series
of Scripture readings that trace the Promise of the Root and Shoot of Jesse,
our Lord Jesus Christ, through all of biblical history. In that way, it is tremendously valuable for
both adults and children. Now, our
Advent devotion books take you through the readings for each day, beginning
yesterday, December 1. Some of the
readings can be a chapter or two long, but I encourage you to do them. It will strengthen your faith and greatly
enrich your understanding. It’s true, I
didn’t buy you the tree to go along with it, but if you want to do the
ornaments and make this a tradition in your family, or even just give it a try,
I can show you how and where you can purchase a kit, or even just print the ornaments
off the internet. But you don’t need all
of that to do the devotions. You really
just need the schedule of readings and your Bible, and maybe our little
devotion book to complement your reading.
Tonight
we begin at the beginning, and go back to the basics. Here we have the planting of the Seed, our
Lord Jesus Christ, really in two senses.
There is the creation of the human race in Adam, which is the planting
of our Lord’s flesh, who would be born of the Virgin Mary. And there is the Promise, which is the
planting of the Seed of the Gospel. Even
as humanity was now fallen into sin and cursed, even as God pronounced the
curse upon the serpent, He spoke this Promise: “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” (Gen. 3:15; ESV). Notice that in both cases (the Seed of humanity,
and the Seed of the Gospel Promise), Jesus is both the Seed planted and the
Firstfruit, the Catalyst and the Product of the fully grown Tree. And as we’ll hear in our upcoming midweek
meditations, He is also the Root of the tree and the Life of the tree. And then think about this saying of our Lord:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat,” a seed, “falls
into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”
(John 12:24). Jesus is the Seed of the
woman… Not the man and the woman, but the woman only, the
Offspring of the Virgin. He is the Fruit
of Mary’s womb. He is the Fruit that
hangs on the Tree of the cross. He falls
into the ground, dead and buried. And the
serpent’s head is crushed. And what
happens? He bears much fruit! He is the Firstfruit, for Jesus Christ is
risen from the dead. And He will raise much
fruit to follow. He raises you. To faith and life in Himself, implanting
Himself within you as you hear the Gospel and eat the fruits of His cross, His
Body and Blood. And on the Last Day,
bodily. For you will be sown into the
ground, a dormant seed, in your death and burial, but He will raise you out
again at the resurrection of all flesh, a living and majestic and fruitful
tree.
Now,
both senses are important, the planting of humanity and the planting of the
Gospel Promise. Jesus was never God’s
Plan B. Man was created for fellowship
with God, communion with Him, as evidenced by His walking with our first
parents in the Garden. And so it was
always God’s plan to come to us in the flesh.
That is why it is the old custom to bow, or even genuflect, at the
words, “And was made man,” in the Nicene Creed.
That is the gracious mystery of our faith, that God wants that level
of communion with us, to be one with us in our very skin. Thus Christ was planted in Adam, to come from
his flesh. Even apart from the Fall, He
would be the Promised Seed.
But
we know what went so drastically wrong in the Garden, in Adam’s Fall into sin,
in Eve’s taking and eating that which was forbidden, and turning and giving to
Adam, who was silently standing by, to take and to eat. And it is not simply that they bit off a
morsel of fruit. It is that they
didn’t believe God’s Word. They
believed the serpent instead. They
called God a liar. They rebelled against
Him, rejected Him as their God… And so they broke fellowship, communion
with Him. That is what makes it all such
a comprehensive devastation. The God who
created man for fellowship with Himself, who deigns to put His own skin in the
game, was rejected by that man, who preferred to go his own way. And that is you, too, in your rebellion and
sin. That is you in your flesh born of
Adam, as a seed of a man and a woman.
We call it original sin.
It is the disease with which you are infected from the moment of
conception in the body of your mother, the condition in which you are
born. And its symptoms, its fruit, are
the actual sins you commit, the bad things you do, the good you fail to
do, and your continued rejection of God’s Commandments, your rebellion against
Him.
Now
everyone born of Adam in the usual way, of a man and a woman, is infected with
this original sin. Which necessarily
means continued enmity with God. And so
there can be no fellowship, no communion between God and any of us sons and
daughters of Adam and Eve. Unless God
does it. Unless God breaks in, breaks
the deadly pattern. And that is what He
does when the Son of God is born into our human flesh. As incomprehensible as it is, He sticks to
the original plan of fellowship in spite of our breaking it off with Him. But to do this, He cannot be born in the
usual manner, of a man and a woman. He
is to be the Seed of the woman, of Eve’s daughter, conceived by the Holy
Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. Without
sin. To save us from sin. And to restore fellowship with God as our new
and greater Adam.
And
it is another of the great mysteries of our faith, how He does it. God, who comes into our flesh, takes our sin
upon Himself. And so He takes sin’s
wages: death and damnation. The serpent
strikes. His fangs are deadly. God dies.
Jesus dies for our sins on the cross.
But that is how He deals the death blow to the serpent. As He finishes His saving work, He pulverizes
the demon’s head. It is a great
surprise, but it is, after all, what He said all along. In dying, He bears much fruit. He rescues us from sin and hell and restores
us to fellowship with the Father. He is
risen from the dead, and He will raise us when He comes again. On that Day we will experience in the flesh
what we now know in the Means of Grace by faith alone. Full communion with our flesh and blood
God.
When
you follow the Jesse Tree readings, you witness the unfolding of that
reality. And when you come to the Altar,
you get just a little foretaste of the fullness yet to come. That is why we call it the Holy
Communion. God, the eternal Son of God,
born of a woman in the fulness of time, was made man for us men, and for our
salvation. What was broken is mended,
what was lost is restored. Let the Seed
take deep root and grow full and strong.
Christ is the Seed and the Firstfruit.
You are the fruit that follows in His train. All of God’s Promises are fulfilled in
Him. In the Name of the Father, and of
the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] The theme and some of the thoughts
for this sermon are taken from Daniel Gard, Jesse Tree (St. Louis:
Concordia, 2020).
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