November 27: Messianic Longing: Old Time
♫ Music:
WEEK ONE INTRODUCTION
TITLE: MESSIANIC LONGING: OLD TIME
November 27 - December 5
“And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” ( 2 Peter 1:19–21).
“Ancient of Days” is the perfect moniker for the creator God who initiated time in Genesis, Chapter 1. We believe that “he who hung the earth upon the waters” has always existed. He is “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2) and the “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 21:6). “Old time” refers to time prior to or “before Christ,” BC, a term no longer in common use, while AD, “anno Domini,” is translated “in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This international dating system was used for centuries, counting years starting with the birth of Christ as AD and all dates prior to Christ’s birth as BC.
Old time religion was the faith of the Jewish patriarchs, kings, and prophets. These forefathers under the direction of the Holy Spirit penned the story of God’s redemptive plan. They told how God established a covenant with the Israelites, his chosen people, after he had freed them from Egyptian slavery. This Old Testament laid out in the Torah contained the Ten Commandments; hundreds of specific moral, religious, and civic laws; as well as promises and warnings. The most striking promise was that one day God would send his Son, the Messiah, to establish a New Covenant—once and for all abolishing animal sacrifices for sin. He became “sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Advent is an extended meditation on both the first and second coming of Christ. Christ’s first Advent abolished “old time” forever. The period between the birth of Jesus and his second great appearing is referred to as the “last days” because no further redemptive work is necessary. As Old Testament saints longed for their promised Messiah to come, believers who are alive today yearn for the second coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Day 1 - Sunday, November 27
Title: THE PROPHECY OF MOSES
Scripture: Genesis 3:13-16
"And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
Poetry & Poet:
“Once by the Pacific”
by Robert Frost
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.
THE PROPHECY OF MOSES
When my daughter turned in the medical paperwork required for her college admission, it was rejected. Why? Because she had signed it herself and, as she was a minor, it needed her parent’s signature.
Now, I wasn’t there for the conversation, so I can’t give it to you with word-for-word accuracy, but I understand it went something like this:
But I’m turning eighteen tomorrow, she said to the staff member.
Well, the staff member reasoned, then there are two things you can do. Either you can take it back to your parents and have them sign it today. Or…you can just turn it in tomorrow.
Being a sensible young woman, my daughter waited the one day, and then, as a newly minted adult, turned in her own paperwork under her own signature.
But it struck me then, what a difference a day makes!
Today we begin the journey of Advent, a season when we remember the long wait for the first arrival of the promised Messiah.
Think of it: one day, Jesus Christ had not yet been born. Then, the next day, he had!
What a difference a day makes.
Today, the Lord Jesus has not yet returned in glory. But there will come a day—a real, true, honest-to-goodness, in-our-own-actual-physical-world day—when he will return.
And our eyes shall behold him, and not another’s.
In the time before his arrival, the people of God had hope, but they had not beheld the fulfilment of God’s first, most ancient promise of the Messiah with their own eyes. God promised that the Seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head, but until the Lord Jesus came, the part of our Scripture reading that held sway over the earth was the part about the sorrow and the curse, the thistles and the thorns—the art by Chris Koelle that accompanies this devotion depicts it well.
No human being since Eden had any choice about bearing the weight of the curse—we all walked under it, our heads bowed down with its weight.
No human being since Eden had any chance to undo the curse.
But Jesus was different.
Jesus, the descendant of Adam and the Son of almighty God, chose to wear the thorns and thistles of Adam’s curse as a crown—a crown that wrapped around his bloody head, and yet…and yet it was not his head that was brought down in defeat.
Yes, what was death to us was death to him as well—but only because he willed it to be so.
And what was death to him did not stay that way—death had its final way with every other human being since the Garden—but not with him. (If our enemy had known how it would turn out, in fact, they “would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8).)
Death came into the world in the Garden.
But even on that day in the Garden, someone greater than death was on the way.
Even in the Garden, in that dark and bitter day, there wasn’t just a curse—there was a promise. The days would be long. They would be full of sorrow—sorrow greatly multiplied. In Frost’s words, “a night of dark intent / Was coming, and not only a night, an age. / Someone had better be prepared for rage.”
Someone was. Someone with shoulders broad enough to bear all the hate and the rage and the sin of all the ages—all the ages that had been, and all the centuries still to be.
Adam had failed, but the second Adam would not.
Eve had failed, but her Seed would not.
Even in that day, even in the curse that undid us all, God gave us a promise.
Another Day will come, another Adam will arise.
Thanks be to God.
Prayer:
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in thy well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
–– From the Book of Common Prayer.
Jessica Snell
Biola Class of 2003
Writer and Editor
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork #1;
Madonna and Child with St. Anne (detail)
Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio
1605–1606
Oil on canvas
292 x 211 cm
Galleria Borghese
Rome, Italy
The Madonna and Child with St. Anne is one of the mature religious works of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio which was painted for the altar of the Archconfraternity of the Papal Grooms in the Basilica of Saint Peter and now hangs in Galleria Borghese in Rome. While not his most successful composition, it is an atypical representation of the Virgin for its time and would have been shocking to some contemporary viewers. The allegory of the painting is simple—the Virgin with the aid of her son, whom she holds, tramples on a serpent, the emblem of evil or original sin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_and_Child_with_St._Anne_%28Dei_Palafrenieri%29
About the Artist #1:
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) was an Italian Baroque painter whose influence and fame spanned far beyond his short career. He was trained in Milan and joined the art scene in Rome with his first two commissions in 1600, after which he never lacked patronage. Despite his wild personal life and death at age thirty-eight, the influence of his work can be seen in the works of other important artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Bernini, and Rembrandt. Direct followers of Caravaggio's style were called "Caravaggisti" or "Caravaggesque.” His distinctive style is characterized by a realistic observation of the human state, realistic depictions of emotional responses, and the use of tenebrism, or intensely dramatic lighting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/crvg/hd_crvg.htm
Artwork & Artist #2
Life Away from the Garden
Digital illustration
Chris Koelle
About the Artist #2:
Chris Koelle is an American illustrator, printmaker, and designer. Koelle has created artwork and illustrations for dozens of books, graphic novels, and award-winning documentaries, including the Oscar-nominated Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, as well as numerous album-cover designs. Illustrated books include John Piper’s JOB, The History of Redemption, and Bike Snob. His latest illustrated tour de force, The Book of Revelation graphic novel, was published by Zondervan. He lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with his wife, Annie, and their two children.
www.chriskoelle.com
About the Music:
“Ceremony of Carols” from the album Britten: A Ceremony of Carols
Lyrics: (Old English and Latin)
Balulalow
O my deare hert, young Jesu sweit,
Prepare thy creddil in my spreit,
And I sall rock thee to my hert,
And never mair from thee depart.
But I sall praise thee evermoir
with sangës sweit unto thy gloir;
The knees of my hert sall I bow,
And sing that richt Balulalow!
As Dew in Aprille
I sing of a maiden
That is makèles:
King of all kings
To her son she ches.
He came al so stille
There his moder was,
As dew in Aprille
That falleth on the grass.
He came al so stille.
To his moder’s bour,
As dew in Aprille
That falleth on the flour.
He came al so stille
There his moder lay,
As dew in Aprille
That falleth on the spray.
Moder and mayden
was never none but she;
Well may such a lady
Goddes moder be.
This Little Babe
This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmèd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.
With tears he fights and wins the field,
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns Cold and Need,
And feeble Flesh his warrior’s steed.
His camp is pitchèd in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall;
The crib his trench, haystalks his stakes;
Of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus, as sure his foe to wound,
The angels’ trumps alarum sound.
My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;
Stick to the tents that he hath pight.
Within his crib is surest ward;
This little Babe will be thy guard.
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy;
Then flit not from this heavenly Boy!
Deo Gracias
Deo gracias! Deo gracias!
Adam lay i-bounden, bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winters thought he not too long.
Deo gracias! Deo gracias!
And all was for an appil, an appil that he tok,
As clerkès finden written in their book.
Deo gracias! Deo gracias!
Ne had the appil takè ben, the appil takè ben
Ne haddè never our lady a ben hevenè quene.
Blessèd be the time that appil takè was.
Therefore we moun singen.
Deo gracias!
Recession
Hodie Christus natus est,
Hodie Salvator apparuit,
Hodie in terra canunt angeli,
Laetantur archangeli:
Hodie exsultant justi, dicentes:
Gloria in excelsis Deo.
Alleluia!
About the Performers:
The Choir of St. John’s College from Cambridge, is one of the finest collegiate choirs in the world and is known and loved by millions from its broadcasts, concert tours, and over ninety recordings. Founded in the 1670s, the choir is known for its rich, warm, and distinctive sound, its expressive interpretations, and its ability to sing in a variety of styles. The choir is directed by Andrew Nethsingha, following in a long line of eminent directors of music, recently Dr. George Guest, Dr. Christopher Robinson, and Dr. David Hill. The choir is made up of around twenty choristers and probationers and around fifteen choral scholars who are members of St. John's College. The choir’s primary purpose is to enhance the liturgy and worship and daily services in the College Chapel. The choir is known for its consistent high standards of singing each day in chapel and brings the “St John's Sound” to listeners around the world each week through its weekly webcasts and SJC Live, their webcast archive service. The choir tours internationally several times per year, with recent destinations including the USA, the Far East, and the Netherlands. Their repertoire is extremely varied, spanning over five hundred years of music while also championing contemporary music by commissioning of new works from established and emerging composers.
https://www.sjcchoir.co.uk/about/choir
About the Composer:
Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) was an English composer and conductor. A central figure of twentieth-century British classical music, Britten wrote a wide range of works including opera, vocal compositions, orchestral, and chamber music. A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28, is a choral piece scored for three-part treble chorus, solo voices, and harp. Written for Christmas, it consists of eleven movements, with text from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, edited by Gerald Bullett, and is sung in Middle English. Two of the most popular pieces from the cantata are This Little Babe and Deo Gracias. This Little Babe addresses Christ’s prophetic victory over Satan as recorded in Genesis 3:15. The harp, which accompanies the vocalists throughout the work, is featured alone in the middle interlude, in which it tenderly weaves together themes from other movements, creating a hushed atmosphere of angelic awe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Britten
About the Poetry & Poet:
Robert Lee Frost (1874–1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution.” He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. President John F. Kennedy, at whose inauguration Frost delivered a poem, said of the poet, “He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding.” And famously, “He saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”
https://poets.org/poet/robert-frost
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-frost
About the Devotion Author:
Jessica Snell
Biola Class of 2003
Writer and Editor
Jessica Snell is a writer whose work has appeared in Compelling Science Fiction, Tor.com, Christ and Pop Culture, Focus on the Family, and more. She is also a freelance editor who loves helping other writers polish their books till they shine! In her free time, she gardens, knits, and spends time with her husband and their four children. You can follow her on Twitter at @theJessicaSnell, where she tweets about books, faith, and family. Her website is jessicasnell.com.