LOOK AHEAD: Episode 1
Message Recap
If this is your first time tuning in to our podcast, I’m so glad you did! My name is Shawn Burgs and I’m the lead pastor of this Church Movement, called Movement Church. I get the honor each week of just opening up the scriptures and looking at how great our God is and how He loved us really well. He sent his Son to live the life that we couldn’t live, died the death that we owed, paid the penalty we couldn’t pay, conquered the enemy of death we couldn’t conquer, and freely gave us salvation by grace, through faith, in Him alone—the glory of God.
We make much of Jesus because we believe Jesus changes everything.
Many followers of the Lord Jesus Christ take the same approach to Advent—it’s an unpleasant season of waiting that we want to get through as quickly as possible. In other words, we want to arrive at the awaiting Christmas celebration. But Advent is a powerful season for believers, a time when we rehearse a common story of God’s people: waiting on him to fulfill his promises and learning to trust him in our waiting. In this four-week Advent sermon series, “A Look Ahead”, we will discuss four different examples of looking ahead and waiting in the story of God’s people.
A Look Ahead Objectives:–– to think of and decide about the future:
In the process, we’ll consider how to trust that God is still in control.
Trusting God’s (1) promises and (2) His work for recovery, renovation, reclamation, refurbishment, revitalization, and redemption in our times of waiting.
What is Advent?
Advent is a powerful season because we remind ourselves that this waiting process is an integral and defining aspect of God’s people: trusting in a promise that is not yet fulfilled or not completely fulfilled and learning how to wait well in the meantime.
During this time, we remember and participate with God’s people in our long history of waiting—and that waiting has been a part of the story from the beginning. The creation account, the beginning of the story that was repeatedly told to the Jewish people to remind them of who God is and how they became his people, begins our history of waiting.
This week’s scripture is Genesis 3:8-15. Let’s take a look:
“8 When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the Man and his Wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God. 9 God called to the Man: “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid.” 11 God said, “Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from?” 12 The Man said, “The Woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it.” God said to the Woman, “What is this that you’ve done?” 13 “The serpent seduced me,” she said, “and I ate.” 14-15 God told the serpent: “Because you’ve done this, you’re cursed, cursed beyond all cattle and wild animals, Cursed to slink on your belly and eat dirt all your life. I’m declaring war between you and the Woman, between your offspring and hers. He’ll wound your head, you’ll wound his heel.”
In the reading for this week, we pick up after Adam and Eve have sinned, as they now are hiding from God (v. 8). When he seeks them out, we hear their excuses (v. 10, 12–13) and God’s response to the entrance of sin and brokenness into the world. Before we hear the curses for Adam and Eve, we hear the curse given to the serpent that deceived them (v. 14), and our first hint of hope (v. 15). Many interpreters agree that verse 15 is the very first biblical promise of salvation—something many call the “protoevangelium” or “first gospel.”
While God’s people waited for salvation for a long time, God gave them hope from the very beginning.
Here’s the big Idea of the message: God’s people have been called to wait and trust God since the beginning of the story.
Verse 15 proclaims that God’s people will finally triumph over the serpent. The ‘seed of the woman’ is a collective noun, indicating corporate victory. Therefore, we can trust God when we are asked to wait on him. God has a plan when we don’t know which way to go.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” - Jeremiah 29:11
Releasing control draws us into a deeper place of trust. What matters to us, matters even more to God. God’s promises endure through even the toughest trials. God is with us, always. However, if left to ourselves, we cannot win this war. No, it took Jesus, Eve’s seed par excellence, to deliver the crushing blow (Col. 2:15), and if we are in Him, we share in and extend His victory (Matt. 28:19; Rev. 20:4).
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