My wife always likes for me to do holiday specific Teachings for church.
So as I pondered the meaning of Christmas I was reminded of 1 verse. It was a promise made by God way back when there were only two people living on this planet. It was made right after Adam and Eve made the horrible decision to disobey God and welcome death, disease & destruction onto the planet.
The promise was made to the one who had deceived his people. This is the promise:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring (seed) and hers (seed); he will crush your head…” Gen 3:15
As you read through the Old Testament, over and over again, you see the devil trying to destroy the promised seed. You see it when Moses was first born when Pharoah had all the Hebrew babies killed. You see it when the prophets were killed. It’s almost like the devil lived in constant fear that the promise would finally be born and crush his head.
Thousands of years later Mary and Joseph are forced to go to Bethlehem. When they arrive after the journey Mary goes into labor and gives birth to “the seed” in a manger.
The Jews were waiting thousands of years for their messiah to come and finally overcome their enemies. They were waiting for the seed to come to crush the head of the serpent.
And instead of a ferocious warrior king showing up with a sword and armor; their warrior king shows up as a little baby in a horse’s trough.
This little baby was the promise finally come!
It doesn’t surprise me that the devil again pulls his same trick trying to destroy the seed by getting Herod to kill all the babies in that area.
But he couldn’t stop the promise.
1 John 3:8 says “the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”
It’s catch phrase around Christmas to say “Jesus is the reason for the season.” I would add to that “Jesus’ reason for the season is to overcome the treason” haha jk
Think about it. The Bible says the entire point of Christmas, when Jesus appeared, was to destroy the works of the devil.
I asked the people in our church “what were some of the works of the devil that Jesus destroyed during his life?”
They said things like:
Unforgiveness
Sickness
Death
Hopelessness
Poverty
Hunger
In Galatians 3:16 Paul speaks of a promise made to Abraham:
“The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,”meaning one person, who is Christ.”
When we say yes to Jesus we become ‘in Christ’ which makes us ‘in the seed’.
We are a part of the promised seed that God said would crush the head of the serpent!
So the works of the devil that Jesus destroyed you are now called destroy.
Every time you come across sickness, hopelessness, poverty etc. you have an opportunity to crush the serpent’s head.
During this Christmas season may you remember you are a part of the seed that will destroy the works of the devil. May the Christmas lights remind you to take steps of risk and heal the sick, feed the hungry and bring hope where there is no hope.
Merry Christmas
