Lenten Sermon Series: "Slowly in Type from Age to Age"
Sermon Text: Genesis
3:1-24
Sermon Title:
“Jesus-the Second Adam”
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
You
may have noticed the theme for the midweek Lenten services: “Slowly in Type
from Age to Age” and you might be wondering, “What does this mean?” I stole this little phrase from a hymn that
you may or may not know, O God of God, O
Light of Light. (It’s hymn number 810, if you care to look it up.) Specifically from the second stanza
which begins, “For deep in prophets’ sacred page, And grand in poets’ winged
word, Slowly in type, from age to age The nations saw their coming Lord…”
A
“type” is someone or something in the Old Testament that foreshadows or points
us to a New Testament reality. For
example, Noah and the flood foreshadow baptism.
The sinner is drowned, the good preserved, Noah and his family is kept
safe within an ark, traveling through water, as we are kept in safety in the
ark of the church. The flood is a “type”
of baptism, there are aspects of the historical flood described in Genesis that
foreshadow baptism. And this is along
the lines of what this year’s sermon series is going to do. Throughout the next few Wednesdays, we’re
going to be looking at people in the Old Testament that are “types” of
Christ, that is, they foreshadow or
point us to Jesus. This week, as you
heard in the reading, we’ll take a look at Adam.
So, let’s get to it…
Of
all the proper prefaces that we hear throughout the church year, my favorite is
the proper preface for Holy Week. We,
here, only get to hear this one time out of the year on Maundy Thursday, but
listen to the connection that it makes of the tree of the garden and the tree
of the cross. “It is truly good, right,
and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to You,
holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord,
who accomplished the salvation of mankind by the tree of the cross that, where
death arose, there life also might rise again and that the serpent who overcame
by the tree of the garden might likewise by the tree of the cross be overcome. Therefore with angels and arch angels and all
the company of heaven…”
“The
serpent who overcame by the tree of the garden might likewise by the tree of
the cross be overcome.” God gave a
command to Adam not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil. The serpent deceived and he
ate. The perfect creation that God had
made, in a moment, fell into sin. The
image of God in which God had created man and woman is lost. The perfect human nature is corrupted by the
cancer of original sin. Sin now separates man from God. The everlasting life
that God had created Adam and Eve to live, gives way to death. They would see a
physical death overpower them, their souls would leave their body. So it is with us.
Because
Adam and Eve ate of the tree someone had to die, someone had to pay. They each receive their curse. For Eve, her pain shall increase in
childbirth. For Adam, he must sweat and
labor to bring about food from the earth.
But 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.”
Adam and Eve suffered physical death,
even a spiritual death, but they did not suffer eternal death. Though their bodies, at last, failed them,
the didn’t really die. Paul writes in 1
Corinthians 15, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of
the dead. For as in Adam
all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.“ Through Adam, came death and through the
Second Adam, Jesus, the Messiah, the Seed of Eve, God made Flesh, came life. Sin demands blood. The only blood able to make satisfaction for
our sin, the only life that would appease the Father’s wrath is that of His own
Son.
Adam and Eve, like us recklessly shattered God’s Law, but the Second
Adam kept the Law for them and for you, boring its just sentence. He died, in
their place and yours. He paid the cost they could not bear. He fulfilled the
Law that would have killed us. He hung upon the tree, the Innocent for the
guilty, a ransom worthy of all of humanity's just eternities in Hell. And so,
in Him, in that great, final, and full sacrifice, they found from the good
Creator and Provider, also forgiveness and sonship, a Father and a heavenly paradise
infinitely greater than Eden.
This is yours, O sons of Adam and daughters of Eve; the descendants of
those who fell into sin. Yet, your sin
has been answered for by the Second Adam, who covers you with the adequate
clothing of His own righteousness. Though
the serpent may deal craftily with you, you have one who has crushed his head
by the nails that struck His heel. By
the tree, Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, but by the tree of the
Second Adam, sin and death have been undone.
Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts
and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
