Chapter 1
Hope
Our Need – Genesis 3:6–11,15,21–24
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
One step—a first step outside—away from home. No exciting adventure on the horizon, the only light there not to guide but rather to warn and impede any return. Draped in their new, less–than–fashionable furs, Adam and Eve took their first steps out of the home God had created for them and walked with them in. Now they walked away from the Garden of Eden and into the outside world. Still a world God had created, but a world now fractured, disrupted, broken, by Adam and Eve’s rebellion and independence.
It is difficult to imagine what Adam and Eve would have felt; a variety of thoughts and emotions are plausible. The Bible does not, as it does for Cain in the subsequent story (Genesis 4:13–14), give us any indication of their reaction to their pronounced and enacted punishment. Not only had they been given the curses of pain in childbirth, tension in their relationship, and a survival fraught with difficulty, now in God’s terrible grace they were being driven from the home, their place of provision.
There is also—again unlike the story of Cain to follow—no assurance of any protection in their new and unknown life. They had never before known the need for protection. Gone likewise are the fruits and vegetables on which they could freely eat whenever their stomachs or their tastebuds demanded food. Behind them, the place of purpose, security, comfort. Before them, an unknown world.
Adam and Eve are the exemplars of many things. The first humans to commune with each other and with God, they initially knew nothing of what we experience as day–to–day life, just was we know nothing of what it was like for them before they bit into the fruit that would change their life . . . but not for the better. They were the first to experience the need for hope.
The bite that separated a chunk of the fruit from the whole introduced sin into the world. The bite that the serpent tempted Eve into taking separated the humans from God, from each other, and from the world intended to be the place where they reigned as God’s representatives. All relationships shattered. Our universal experience is now marked by that brokenness. The separation from where we belong, those we belong with, and the one to whom we belong defined their lives and defines ours.
God, however, had not left them hopeless. One phrase from the cursed day stands out more than any of the others, as horrific as God’s utterances were. The phrase that will turn the machine of humanity forward: “He will crush your head.”
It was a phrase that God spoke to the snake, the personification of what has torn human experience apart from its God–created intentions. God told the snake that the woman whom he had deceived would bear a child who would crush the snake’s head. The offspring would obliterate not only the snake, but by extension, all that the snake had caused. With a fateful step, Eve’s child would bridge the gaps of the curse and reunite God and humanity, humans to one another, and humans to the place God created for us to live.
“He will crush your head.” He will destroy the destroyer. He will remove the sin that disrupts, distorts, and divides. This is the phrase Adam and Eve held tightly to as they walked away from Eden. In the days to come, they would need no reminders of the curses. The curses were their daily experience. But the promise—that was the one intangible, the one phrase that they would have needed to repeat to themselves as they labored with and against each other. It was the phrase that gave them hope as the reality of the curses sank deeper into the human experience.
We all want hope that good is coming.
God’s Provision – Matthew 1:18–24
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
It’s fascinating—and a little terrifying—that the hope of the world hung on a dream. Dreams can be powerful and vivid, but dreams that change the course of a life and the course of human history? Those are rare dreams indeed.
Joseph was to be the husband of Mary. Mary had been visited by an angel (not in a dream) and been told that she would give birth to a very special son. The problem was that it was not going to be Joseph’s son. This child would be the result of divine intervention and overshadowing. Mary would be pregnant before she and Joseph consummated their marriage.
Mary’s experience of pregnancy outside of marriage is worthy of reflection. God asked her to endure something that had significant ramifications (and many of them unpleasant) for Mary’s life. But Mary’s obedience set the stage for Joseph’s dream and his own test of obedience.
It seems that Mary decided not to tell Joseph of her angelic visit and impending motherhood—she was “found to be pregnant” (matthew 1:18). As Joseph contemplated Mary’s apparent infidelity and his course of action, he, fortunately, slept on it. And in the night, he was given his own angelic vision encouraging him to stay with Mary. The son she is pregnant with is the result of the work of God. Joseph is to claim the child as his own by naming the child.
Joseph, as is already stated in the account, proves himself righteous and takes Mary as his wife.
But it is the name the angel commands Joseph to give the child—a name not even told to Mary—that binds this story together.
“Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (v. 21).
Hope has a name!
Oh, what hope is carried in those few small words. That name for that child is the remedy to sin’s curse. It is the foot that will finally crush serpent’s head. The snake who, so many generations ago, lied and seduced people away from their creator will finally be destroyed. The separation that has existed between people, God, and creation as the result of the snake’s sly words will be closed with the salvation from sins that this infant will bring.
The hope that Adam and Eve carried out of Eden, the hope of a savior who would demolish the root and consequences of the sin that plagued humanity, was now carried in the womb of young girl. And when he was born, Joseph would name that hope with a most fitting name: Jesus.
The sins of Adam and Eve awoke in them a need for hope; our own sins have fostered that need for hope, kept it alive and well. Jesus is the hope we need. He offers salvation from our sins and one day will bring the final and full restoration that our hope longs for. One day all separations will be restored. We will be reunited with God, we will live in peace and harmony with one another, and life will no longer be a fight for survival.
The hope of restoration is the hope that Jesus brings.
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