Sermon -- Advent Vespers, Week 1 (December 3, 2025)

PROPHECIES PINPOINT THE MESSIAH.

He Is The Seed Of The Woman.

GENESIS 3:14-15.

In the name + of Jesus.

    Immediately after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, Moses recorded this event: “The man was intimate with Eve, his wife.  She conceived and gave birth to Cain.  She said, ‘I have gotten a man with the LORD’” (Genesis 4:1).  Some have translated that a little differently and, I believe, more accurately.  Eve declared, “I have gotten a man, the LORD.”  It seems that Eve took God’s first promise of a Savior to heart.  And it seems that Eve was so eager for the Lord to fulfill his promise that she concluded the first son to be born to her was the Savior that God had promised. 

     Who could fault Eve for her enthusiasm?  She had been deceived by the serpent and was the first one to chomp down on the fruit that God had expressly forbidden, the fruit that brought death with it.  Who knows how long she beat herself up for that?  Adam had been no help, either.  Not only did Adam fail to protect his wife, not only did Adam fail to refute the words of the serpent, not only did Adam stand by silently and join his wife in their foolish rebellion, Adam also blamed Eve for everything that went wrong.  So, Eve was a victim of deception and of betrayal.  Who could blame her for hoping that the son born to her would be the one to reconcile them to the Lord, to reconcile her and her husband again, and to restore a fallen world back to a perfect Paradise?

     Of course, you know the rest of the story.  Cain did not end up being the one to save mankind.  Cain ended up being the first one to murder one of mankind.  The devil is a murderer (John 8:44), and Cain proved to be one of his pawns.  Still, at the moment Cain was born, Adam and Eve had high hopes for him. 

      When a child is born, it is a moment of unlimited potential.  What will this child become?  How much will this child accomplish in life?  Could he be another Mozart?  Another da Vinci?  Another Tiger Woods?  Could Cain be the Savior God had promised?  Eve seemed to think so.  And even if Cain had been the Messiah, how could Adam and Eve know?  He was just a baby boy.

     Once again, you know the rest of the story.  You know the promised Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth, born of a woman centuries after Eve.  You have better and more complete information than Adam and Eve had.  Still, with all this information, many still reject Jesus as the promised Savior.  So, why are we so convinced?  This is why we will consider the prophecies God had made.  These prophecies pinpoint the Messiah so that we can have full confidence that Jesus is the one God has promised.  This evening, we will consider carefully that very first promise God had made.  This prophecy will not pinpoint the Messiah just yet, but it will point us in the right direction. 

     The first promise came right after the first sin.  God came to see Adam and Eve, but they ran for cover.  They were consumed with guilt and fear.  They wanted nothing to do with God, convinced that facing God would mean facing their damnation.  Even though God called out to them as one friend looking for another, Adam and Eve were afraid.  God had not changed, but they had.  When Adam and Eve would not come clean about their sin, God asked them point-blank what they had done.  Both finally admitted wrong-doing, but both said it was someone else’s fault.  There was no true confession, no heartfelt repentance, and no appeal for mercy.  Their fear of being damned was valid, and they did not help themselves.

     St. Paul described the depth of the sinful condition in a few of his letters.  To the Ephesians Paul wrote, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1).  The dead cannot do anything to improve their situation; so also, sinners cannot change what they are.  To the Romans Paul wrote, “The mind-set of the sinful flesh is hostile to God, since it does not submit to God’s law, and in fact, it cannot” (Romans 8:7).  Sinners are not neutral toward God.  There is hostility.  There is a stubborn refusal to obey God’s commands and to admit our sins against them—and not only to admit them, but to stop them.  The sinner cannot suddenly flip, going from dead to alive, going from hostility toward God to loving God, going from wickedness to holiness.  If the sinful condition is to change, God must be the one to change it.

     That is what happened in the Garden of Eden.  Adam and Eve did not ask for mercy; God extended it.  Adam and Eve did not plead for a deliverer; God promised one.  God acted to rectify, to redeem, and to reconcile.  So, to the serpent, that is, to Satan, who seduced the man and the woman into rebellion, “The LORD God said…: Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all the livestock, and more than every wild animal.  You shall crawl on your belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.  I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.  He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel” (Genesis 3:14-15). 

     Prophecies pinpoint the Messiah.  The first prophecy proclaimed that God would send a Messiah.  And while we do not have a lot of detail, we do have some information to focus our attention.  At first, it seems that God was simply drawing a divide between unbelievers and believers, as St. John noted, “The dragon was angry about what had happened to the woman (that is, the Church), and he went away to make war against the rest of her children—those who keep the commandments of God and who hold on to the testimony about Jesus” (Revelation 12:17).  So, there is animosity between Satan and the children of God.

     But God’s first prophecy focuses on one particular child.  After speaking of the seed of the woman, the Lord says, “He will crush your head” (Genesis 3:15).  In other words, there is a specific Seed who will come from the woman, and this Seed is a “He.”  If we are looking for the Messiah to come, he will be a male child.  While this allows for only half of the world’s population to qualify as potentially being the Messiah, it does limit our focus.  And the Bible tells us why.  St. Paul wrote, “Just as through the disobedience of one man the many became sinners, so also through the obedience of one man the many will become righteous” (Romans 5:19).  And again: “Since death came by a man, the resurrection of the dead also is going to come by a man.  For as in Adam they all die, so also in Christ they all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).  Just as a man brought sin and death to all mankind, so righteousness and life for all mankind must also come through a man.  He who is the Seed of the Woman will accomplish this by destroying the serpent.  For, when you crush a serpent’s head, you have rendered it powerless, and it no longer presents a threat to anyone.

     Of course, there would be a cost.  All sin bears a cost.  Just ask Adam and Eve who ran for cover.  They didn’t do anything that we would consider a felony.  They ate food.  But what they did was violate God’s command.  That is always the problem with sin.  Many today will argue that they do not sin because their deeds don’t hurt anyone.  The couple that shares a bed outside of marriage can do so in secret.  If no one knows, no one can get hurt.  People who gossip can keep their stories to their inner circle.  No one is the wiser.  But God sees and knows.  He sees that his word is being ignored.  He knows that the person’s heart is devoted to itself.  He judges accordingly.

     All sin comes at a cost.  But the Messiah was sent to bear the cost for all people.  To the serpent, the Lord said, “He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel” (Genesis 3:15).  Oh yes, there is a cost to sin.  It will cost the Messiah his life.  For, when a viper strikes, the blow is lethal.  To deliver mankind from sin, the Messiah must die.  That is what the Lord had told Adam is the consequence for sin: “You will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17).  So, the Messiah had to suffer that judgment and pay the price.  Prophecies pinpoint the Messiah.  Although Adam and Eve could not have named him, they did know what he would do.  And they knew that this would set them free from sin and death.  Who could fault Eve for being so eager to see it fulfilled?

     There is one more part of this first prophecy that deserves our attention.  Whether it was obvious to Adam and Eve I don’t know.  Perhaps it was obvious only after Isaiah foretold it.  Already at the first promise, the Lord prophesied the virgin birth.  The Lord had promised the Messiah would be the Seed of the Woman.  Women do not have seeds; men have seeds which fertilize the egg in a woman.  This is what impregnates her.  But God prophesied that the Messiah would be born of a woman, but not from a man.  And you know the rest of the story: “He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary” (Apostles’ Creed).  Jesus is exactly whom the Lord said he would be.  Prophecies pinpoint the Messiah.

     Eve could not detect who the Messiah was from the first promise.  Her hope that it was Cain was wrong.  She was not alone in her ignorance.  By his first prophecy of the Savior, the Lord vexed Satan.  For, Satan had just as much information about who the Messiah would be.  He would be a male child born of a woman.  But who?  Where would he come from?  When would he be born?  Satan may have raged and plotted and hoped to destroy him.  But that’s hard to do if you don’t know who he is.  To be sure, Satan tried to thwart God’s promise throughout the Old Testament.  Think of Satan coaxing Pharaoh into killing all the Hebrew baby boys.  Or think of Satan coaxing Herod to kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem.  The devil surely hates babies.  But just as the Lord was moved by his own compassion to promise a Savior, so the Lord also acted to preserve his promise and thwart Satan’s efforts.

     Prophecies pinpoint the Messiah.  Our Lord promised to deliver all mankind from the venom of sin and horrors of death.  That promise was fulfilled by a man, and only one man has fulfilled all that God has promised.  Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah.  He is the Seed of the Woman.  He is the virgin-born baby who crushes the serpent’s head.  He is the man who dies for the sins of the world.  He is the one who reconciles God and mankind.  And Eve rejoices because of him.

In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.