First Advent – The Twelve Days of Advent

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Matthew 1:21

The word advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “coming.” Christians typically celebrate the First Advent of Jesus Christ annually from about November 30^th to December 25^th.

One theologian defines Christian Advent as, “The season of the ecclesiastical year when the church prepares to celebrate the birth or coming (adventus) of Jesus Christ . . . and engages in self-examination in expectation of his second coming in glory to judge the living and the dead.”[1] This is such a formidable definition because it captures the inextricable relationship between Christ’s first and second coming. The Twelve Days of Advent exists to help people reflect and project; we hope your reflections on the meaning and events of Christ’s first advent will provoke joyful, hopeful worship at the many projections of His second advent.

The theme of “the advent of Christ” runs throughout the Bible: In the Old Testament, the writers, from Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15) to David (Psalm 2:6-9) to Isaiah (Isaiah 53), point Israel to the hope of the Messiah’s first advent. And in the New Testament, the writers, from Paul to Peter to John, point the Church to the hope of Christ’s second advent. Today, we will examine how some Old Testament writers pointed the children of Israel to the first advent of the Messiah. Next time together, we will examine how some New Testament writers pointed the Church to the second advent of Christ.

The First Advent

Let’s go back to the definition of advent and this time we will only focus on the first part of that definition. The Christian Advent is: “the season of the ecclesiastical year when the church prepares to celebrate the birth or coming (adventus) of Jesus Christ.”[2] Although we often tend to associate the first advent strictly with the birth of Jesus, in a broader theological sense, the phrase “first advent” refers “to the coming of Jesus Christ to earth to provide salvation through his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension.”[3] Therefore, the call for Christians to prepare themselves for the celebration of the first advent of Christ encompasses more than just reflecting on the appearance of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger (Luke 2:7). It is a call to prayerfully reflect not just on the Baby’s birth, but on the purpose for the Baby’s birth, which is to glorify God by saving his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21).

The Protoevangelium

The first promise of Jesus in the Bible is in Genesis 3:15. Here, Adam and Eve, who may still have the taste of forbidden fruit upon their palates, listen to God pronounce his judgment upon the deceptive serpent. The Lord God says to the serpent, “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” (Genesis 3:15). The pronoun “he” in this verse shows us that God had one person in mind who will ultimately defeat the serpent and the evil kingdom he represents. The unfolding of Scripture reveals that “one person” to be Jesus. For this reason, “Some Bible scholars have called Genesis 3:15 the protoevangelium [meaning] “the first gospel”, because it is the earliest prophecy promising a future deliverer.”[4] This observation of Jesus as deliverer begs two questions: 1) who needs deliverance, and 2) what do they need deliverance from? Thankfully, the context of Genesis 3 answers both questions: 1) mankind needs deliverance, and 2) mankind needs deliverance from sin’s penalty. Genesis 3:15 begins to unveil the purpose for the first advent of Christ by communicating that Jesus came to defeat evil in the deliverance of his people from the penalty of their sins.

The Suffering Servant

Now, we have seen that the purpose of Jesus’ first advent was primarily to deal with sin. To determine how Jesus dealt with sin, we turn to the Prophet Isaiah. The book of Isaiah contains multiple prophecies regarding the first advent of the Messiah, including both his physical appearing and his virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14; 53:2). However, it is in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, a passage that is often referred to as “The Suffering Servant,” that we begin to see how Jesus dealt with sin. In Isaiah 53:5-6, the prophet describes Jesus, saying, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one— to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” In this text we see that men sheepishly wander away from their Maker in the depravity of their sin. In response, God ordains that his Son bear the penalty for their sin: death. Christ’s offering to the sinner of perfect righteousness and substitutionary death is how he dealt with sin.

Like Isaiah, several other prophets throughout the Old Testament foretold details about the first advent of the Messiah. For example, Micah prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). Hosea and Jeremiah prophesied about the opposition against Jesus at his birth (Hosea 11:1; cf. and Jeremiah 31:15; cf. Matthew 2:18). From the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis, to the last book, Malachi, the voices of its authors point their audience to the hope of the first advent of their Messiah – Jesus (Genesis 3:15; Malachi 3:1-4; 4:1-6).

Today, we have looked at the first mentions of Jesus in Genesis and how we see, even in the Garden of Eden, that His first advent was primarily to deal with sin. We also examined the Prophet Isaiah who teaches how Jesus dealt with sin during his first advent. Hopefully, these scriptures have been a display that we cannot separate the manger from the cross; Jesus was born to die, so that those who are dead in sin may live for eternity.

Now that we have a good understanding that the purpose of the first advent was primarily to deal with sin, next time we will examine the purpose of Jesus’ second advent!

[1] Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology Second Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 27.

[2] Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 27.

[3] J. Daniel Hays, J. Scott Duvall, and C. Marvin Pate, An A-to-Z Guide to Biblical Prophecy and the End Times, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 16.

[4] John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Biblical Truth (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2017), 251.

In December 2017, my wife and I were new parents to a one-year-old boy and a one-month-old girl. We committed to the Lord and each other to raise these two children for the glory of God, no matter the cost or circumstance. When the holiday season came around that year, I found myself perplexed regarding the fulfillment of my oath to my God and my wife. Red and green were everywhere: lights on houses, bulbs on trees, inflatables in front yards. Once, we took our children on a neighborhood walk in their strollers, and we found ourselves in the shadow of a 30-foot Santa Claus – no exaggeration. Of course, this is normative for the neighborhood, but what about inside the Christian home? What about inside the church? Should we utilize pagan practices to usher in the celebration of the Savior’s incarnation? Especially for a Savior who died to rescue his people from their pagan practices! In short order, I examined the scripture, the history of Christmas, and decided that “as for me and my house,” we would point ourselves and our children to the birth of Christ in December.

Then, I silently surveyed the practices of many people around me during the holidays while genuflecting on my own traditions. I became deeply convinced that the people of God around me who were married, single, with kids, without kids, young, old, college student, retired, etc., including myself, struggled to focus on the meaning and implications of the incarnation for two primary reasons: 1) the culture we live in largely pressures us into the rat race of consumeristic gift giving and receiving to the point that it usurps our affections away from Christ, and 2) we have ample practice celebrating the holidays according to the culture and don’t really know a different way to celebrate the season.

At this point, I knew I needed to do something for God’s glory to point the Bride of Christ back to celebrating the historical ecclesiastical calendar in the observance of the first advent. In June 2020, I began studying, reading, listening, writing, and talking to anybody who would listen about the first advent of Christ. During this time, I observed the connection between how the Prophets pointed Israel to the first coming of the Messiah with how the Apostles pointed the Church to the second coming of the Messiah. This observation led me on a journey that uncovered the connections between the first and second advent of Jesus. I committed to sharing these connections with as many Christ-followers as possible. And, in September 2021, I finished recording the final episode of what has come to be called: The Twelve Days of Advent.

Starting December 2^nd thru December 24^th, a new episode, 5-10 minutes each, will be released every other day. You can access each episode wherever podcasts are available. My vision is to glorify God by providing his people with a tool to help them start a new tradition in their lives, homes, families, and churches; a tradition that reflects on the meaning and events surrounding the first advent of Christ and projects the hope found in the second advent of the Savior.

Special thanks to my wife for patiently listening and affording me time to work on this endeavor.

God is faithful,

John Fry