Sermons

Psalm 29 is a rich expression of the psalmist’s yearning to see the glory of God recognized, first in heaven, and then on earth.  He recognizes the Lord’s greatness in His power and characterizes that power by His thunderous voice, a force that can carry destructive power.   When He brings storms into our lives that shake us, how do we react?  What kind of God do we worship? 

John the Baptist came to preach good news.  It began and ended with a call to repentance which leads to forgiveness. He warned the Jews of his day to beware a smug contentment with law keeping or ancestry as their hope for acceptance by God.  By resting in such false assurance they would be among the ones purged by God, that is, when “the axe is laid to the root of the trees”.  God’s message through John is the same for us today.  We, too, are warned to examine our own hearts and live a repenting life.

The ministry of John the Baptist was short but eventful.  He came to herald the coming of the Messiah, God’s greatest saving act.  He came, preaching in the desert, in the desert of Israel’s existence as it labored under the rule of wealthy and powerful Rome, and under the empty faith of its spiritual leaders.  He preached in the area east of the Jordan, a site that marked both unfaithfulness in Israel’s history as well as renewal.  John’s message of repentance appealed to those looking for God’s forgiveness of sins.   His timely appearance shows yet again that when God’s people are under duress and their hopes bleak, God intervenes powerfully.

Adam and Eve’s sin was to place themselves in place of God by ignoring His commands. But God cannot comingle with sin.  As sinful beings they could not be in the presence of God, in Eden where He resided, to have fellowship with them, where they could fulfill their calling for worship and work in His presence.  God rightly cast them out of His presence. Whereas they sought freedom from His law, they earned freedom from His presence and therefore His blessing as well.  Their loss of friendship and fellowship with God was a high price to pay.  They learned, as we sadly often do ourselves, that freedom without blessing is slavery.  God would maintain a relationship with man but at a distance.  Only when the Messiah would come would that separation be restored.  

Adam’s sin brought shame upon himself and his wife.   It also brought God’s judgment.  Our text today describes two responses that serve to close out this chapter in human history.   Adam, now living under the curse of misery in his life, also believes in God’s promise of a redeemer, and names his wife Eve accordingly.  By her childbearing, future generations will come, including the man Jesus who would take on sin, shame, and nakedness in our place.  And God, having observed Adam’s meager attempt to cover his own nakedness with fig leaves, intervenes to provide adequate clothing.  By this we learn that God is able and willing to cover our shame.  How do we then respond?  Is our behavior evidence of our faith?  

In this text we hear the tragic words of God’s judgment on Adam for his sin.  Adam will live under sentence of death. The life that remains to him will be stricken with misery as he strives to till the soil for food.  He will struggle in all the endeavors of his life without a sense of joy that his labor fulfills his God-given calling to have dominion over the earth.  This verdict will follow him and pass to all his descendants.  What purpose then does he, or anyone, have?   Christ Jesus will come, as one made of dust, living in the same misery as man, taking onto Himself the ultimate misery, death on the cross.  By this He takes on mankind’s penalty of death to begin the restoration of man’s joy and purpose.

Sin produces pain.  It destroys joy.  It grabs our attention from its proper focus on our Creator.  When Adam and Eve sinned, God punished them, announcing the suffering that would follow.  In this text, Eve learns that her role as helper to her husband and as child bearer will be afflicted with pain.  Eve’s pain would not just be physical but spiritual, and the whole race would bear the weight of her punishment.  But God did not curse the woman as He had done the serpent.  Her hope, and ours, would be grounded in another childbirth.  Born of a woman, Jesus would bear the sorrow and pain of the world, and by His victory over Satan, enable mothers and wives, and their husbands, to live a life of repentance and forgiveness.  

When Adam and Eve committed the first sin known to the human race, the outlook for them or any descendants was hopeless.  They had chosen to believe Satan ‘s lie that they would not die if they sinned.  When God confronted them, they already bore the guilt and shame and fear that sin brings.  Was there a future for them?  What of God’s command to be fruitful and multiply?  But God’s first words to them declared that His creation would continue. This news was the first expression of the gospel in scripture.  Satan would be defeated, Eve would have offspring, and her offspring in the person of Jesus and His church would be victorious forever.  Through this gospel humanity has always had hope.

Satan, the serpent in the garden, established himself as the archenemy of God and man when he tempted our first parents to believe him instead of their Creator.  This set into motion their destruction and that of all God’s creation.  But God intervened.  His first act of rescue was by the power of His word.  He cursed the serpent, stripped him of his beauty, caused him to crawl on the ground, and condemned him to ultimate death.  This began the path toward Satan’s end, sealed at Christ’s crucifixion.  Satan’s certain and final defeat is our hope as we learn that, through our trust in Christ, we can have the power to resist the devil and he will flee from us.  

In this text we continue to gain insight into the effects of sin.  Guilt and the alienation that follows are the fruits of sin.  Both are revealed by Adam and Eve as they try to hide from God or cover their nakedness or shift the blame, just as all mankind will do after them.  But God does not strike them dead as He would be justified to do.  In His mercy He gives them, and us as well, room to repent.

First shame, then fear.  These effects of sin were known first in the human race by Adam and Eve when they chose their own desire over the wisdom of their creator.  Their fear drove them away from God, but God continued to pursue them, as He had done all along.  This God can pursue us as well in our sin when He seeks to trade our right fear of Him as judge for our right fear of Him as Savior.  

What is shame?  When did it first appear in human history?  The text describes the consequences of that deadly sequence in the story of Adam and Eve which brought it about, temptation, enticement, disbelief, grasping, consequence.  When Adam and Eve sinned, their eyes were opened to their failure.   When they tried to cover their shame, even that was a failure.  We too try to deal with our shame in different ways, and also fail.   Our only hope is the One who took our shame on Himself to save us.

The Hebrews who returned from exile in Babylon went about rebuilding their homes but neglected the house of God.  God sent the prophet Haggai to call them to account.  In this the text the prophet conveys to the people key truths about God’s holiness and calls them to examine their own.   What they learn about God’s word and His ways through this time of resettling can apply to us today. 

Why do we sin? Why do we do evil things? Our text answers with a description of the first rebellion against God and His Word.  This historical account is significant not only because it tells of the tragic first sin in a pristine world, but because it reveals to us the nature of the evil desires in our own hearts, which only a miracle—a new heart–can rectify.

Does God communicate with man?   The Psalmist in our text declares that He does by way of three servants: the created order which displays the glory of God, the written word of God which tells us the truth, and the life of a forgiven sinner.

The trees of the garden in Eden were a mark of God‘s generosity to our first parents Adam and Eve.  But doubt in God’s goodness was instilled in the mind of Eve when the serpent deceived her by questioning the veracity of God‘s word and the integrity of His motives.  In this text we get a glimpse into the nature of Satan’s temptation that continues to plague the human soul to our day.