Lent: Death in Adam, Life in Christ | Student Pastor: Sam Rapp

Oh, Jacket Sunday.

Here we are.

16-year-olds got a jacket on, so we're going.

Well, uh, if I haven't met you, my name is Sam.

I'm the student pastor here.

So, as Russ was mentioning, we have a fourth and fifth grade thing.

I'm over that.

I'm over the sixth through twelfth graders.

Um, it's been a joy to serve here coming up on three years all of a sudden.

Um, it's been wonderful.

Not 16.

Uh, yes, I'm 25, shockingly.

Um well, growing up, I always noticed that one of my eyes was clearer than the other.

I don't know if anybody else can relate to that.

Um, I noticed when I was like five, six, seven-ish, as I was laying in bed perusing through Juni B.

Jones, as one does.

The B stands for Beatrice, but I just like B, and that's all.

I would read with both eyes, right?

And then I would close my left eye, and I would read Juni B.

Jones, be crystal clear, crystal clear.

And then I'd be like, man, my left eye's kind of funky.

So let's close my right eye this time.

I'm gonna read with my left eye, and it was all of a sudden just unbelievably blurry.

So I did wear glasses for a few months in elementary school.

It didn't really help much.

Um I don't think I took the test right.

Um so then I went 10 more years of school with a blurry eye, didn't fix it.

And then I was like, man, okay, senior year of high school, maybe it's time.

Uh maybe it's time.

So I'm look let's let's track in with glasses.

So I go to the doctor, you know, do the whole which picture is clearer thing.

They both are equally blurry.

Uh, and then he says, You have a lazy eye.

It's unfixable.

So I thought, make my day.

But he said, we can get you a prescription that'll help it.

It won't, it won't fix it.

Like you're stuck with this a little bit, but it will help.

It'll help.

So he gives me the glasses, my mom and I drive down Cobb Parkway, go up, you know, north towards Ackworth, and we get the glasses, we we step outside, I put them on.

It was like the world was unlocked.

I look up at the trees, and there's leaves, not just green blobs, there's leaves on the tree.

I didn't know you were allowed to see this well.

So let's let's shift gears here.

If you were to ask a hundred people, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, what they thought the Bible was about, I think you'd get about a hundred different answers.

Some would be negative, right?

Saying that the Bible is perhaps bigoted, homophobic, anti-Semitic, hateful text.

Some would be positive, perhaps saying the Bible has good moral teachings, and that Jesus was a great prophet, and that his lessons and all these different things he taught us give us good moral things to take away, but there are some hard things I disagree with, so I'll just take those out, take the good morality, and then move on.

That's kind of like what Thomas Jefferson did, for example.

But here's my answer, and here's what I think Paul's answer is from our passage.

That from Genesis to Revelation, there is one story.

And it is here summarized in Romans 12 through 14.

And here's my argument for us today: that if you understand the Bible through the lens that it is actually written, it'll be unlocked for you.

That as we see here in Romans 5, that the whole Bible is summarized in this simple passage, death in Adam, life in Christ.

The Bible will be unlocked for you because the thing is, if the Bible is just simply a bunch of good moral teachings and stories, then Christianity would be a life of trying to be pretty good, avoiding certain things, doing the right things, so that maybe when you stand before the throne of God one day, maybe he'll let you in.

But if the Bible is what it says it is, if it is God's revealed world, word showing us the redemptive story of Jesus, then life can actually be full of true, genuine joy with a full assurance that Jesus' blood is sufficient for you.

Now, here's the whole story of the Bible: Genesis to Revelation, proven on the cross, life in Adam, or sorry, death in Adam, life in Jesus.

Now, each year here at Redeemer, just like Sam mentioned, we pause from the series we have been doing, which for us has been Acts, and we step into the six weeks leading up to Easter with what the church has historically called Lent.

Now, Lent most simply marks the 40-day period leading from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday and then into Easter.

So for many of us, maybe we were raised in churches that didn't really talk about Lent much, so this is kind of a new word.

For other of us, maybe Lent has some baggage.

Maybe when you think of the word Lent, you remember how when you were in second grade you didn't give up that one thing and felt like you were less of a Christian than your friend.

For others, even, Lent might be an incredibly sacred season for you, where you feel the eyes of your heart enlightened and pushed towards the cross of Christ, where his righteousness given to you and your sin taken upon him.

On Sunday nights with Redeemer Students, we've been studying the last seven words from Jesus on the cross.

The first night we looked at the cosmic forgiveness of Christ to sinners, where Jesus cried out, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

The second night we saw the incredible assurance from Jesus to this man who was a lifelong sinner.

Jesus said, Today you will be with me in paradise.

Then the third night, we saw one of the most stunning words of compassion in all of the scriptures, as Jesus in his dying breaths looks down at his mother, likely weeping, and says, Woman, behold your son.

So for the next six weeks, leading into Good Friday and into Easter, that's exactly what we're going to be doing together.

We're going to be beholding the Son of God in all of his splendor and glory.

So before we dive into our passage, let's pray one more time together.

Father, we confess that you are Lord.

Father, that you uphold the universe by the word of your power.

Father, you have stepped into time.

You have sent your son to take on flesh, to be born as a baby, to grow and then reveal the fullness of yourself to us.

And so, Father, I pray that as we unpack your word, Father, by your spirit and for your glory, you would open our eyes to see the beauty of your son this morning.

Pray that we would see that all of our religious striving is empty apart from the cross, and all of our sin from the past and in the future is forgiven fully by the blood of the Son.

And we pray, Father, that your Spirit will be in this room and would uh do the work of illuminating your word to us.

We ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So let's read our passage together one more time.

Romans 5, 12 through 14.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

So here we have Paul writing to the Christians in Rome.

In this book, Romans, is a book attempting, where Paul is attempting to give the gospel as clearly as he possibly can to these believers.

And this passage that we just read is argued by many to be the logical, theological focal point for Paul.

If you want to know what Paul believes, you need only look at Romans 5, 12 through 14.

This is all that Paul believes, and this is everything, everything that comes after Paul is ultimately rooted in this focal point: death in Adam, life in Christ.

Paul is making some cosmic claims here.

He's not just saying that sometimes people do selfish things because of Adam.

He's saying there is now, across all continents of the world, across all generations, across all peoples, a bent.

And this bent, Paul is arguing, is not towards God and towards life.

This bent from birth given to us by our father Adam is towards sin.

How did this happen?

It's certainly not hard to see.

Who in here has a toddler or kid age two to six?

You raise your hand.

Who has a toddler, kid age two to six?

Did you teach them to say no?

Did you teach them to say mine?

It's their natural bent.

They were born wanting what's theirs.

So we see it.

Now, how did this happen?

Let's look at Genesis 2 together.

So Genesis 2, 15 through 17.

The Lord God took the man, Adam, and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

And in the Hebrew, that literally says, You shall die, die.

You're gonna die.

God did not create Adam with moral perfection.

God created Adam with a moral neutrality.

Adam was not perfect, he was innocent.

Innocent until proven guilty.

Here, Adam stands, himself and God in the garden.

Eve is not there yet.

So at this point, when this covenant is given, it falls on Adam alone to fulfill this.

So this is the initiation of what has been called the covenant of works.

And this is what the covenant of works says: don't eat of the tree and you live, eat of the tree and you die.

And this is righteousness earned based on obedience or disobedience.

It's very simple.

This is the covenant that Adam was given.

The rest of humanity stands on this.

Stands on whether or not Adam would obey or disobey.

So Adam receives the covenant of works, God creates Eve, and then chapter three comes.

Serpent shows up, he shows up, and this isn't any normal serpent.

He talks.

So the serpent tempts Eve.

He makes the tree look really good, really desirable.

The one tree that she's not allowed to eat, he makes it look really good.

But he does what Satan always does, which is make God's word seem limiting on what we really want.

Make God's word seem really limiting on what we really truly want.

Rather than inviting us into true joy and true life, which is what the word of God actually does.

So Eve eats.

Every time.

Dad gummit, she does, doesn't she?

She takes the fruit she eats.

But if you ever want to know what the heart of God is towards sinners, you need only look into Genesis 3.

So Adam and Eve both eat, and in true marriage form, Adam blames Eve.

There's some husbands in here that wouldn't have gone well for you.

Wouldn't have been some extra words in Genesis 3 here.

There's some wives in here that would not have taken that well.

But what was the covenant that God gives Adam?

You eat, you die.

So you have to believe that Adam and Eve at this point thought they were about to be struck dead.

They didn't necessarily fully realize it was a spiritual death that was coming.

They surely thought it was a physical death, too.

But what does God do?

Genesis 3, 14 and 15.

The Lord God said to who?

The serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

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.

Rather than striking Adam and Eve dead here, God promises to bring life.

Genesis 3.15 is called by many the first gospel.

God is promising to send someone to come defeat and crush the head of the serpent.

This person will certainly crush his head, but like we see in the passage, his head will be bruised, meaning the crucifixion.

The pain by which the wounded victor crushes the head of Satan will come through the form of the crucifixion.

But what we see is a cosmic stain from the disobedience of Adam, but a promise of a cosmic restoration from God.

This is the initiation of the covenant of grace, where God promises that our righteousness is not based on our moral and perfect law keeping, but in the one-way love of God towards sinners through the blood of Christ.

The covenant of grace is the reality for the rest of time.

The covenant of works is done away with forever.

So back in Romans 5, Paul continues.

He says, Death spread to all men because all sinned.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

So we have to ask, does that mean that with no law people are innocent?

Because that certainly is what that passage looks like.

Now, Bruss, a few weeks ago, talked about a very smart-sounding word, hermeneutics.

I'm sure you used it this week.

This word is talking about the way in which we understand the Bible.

So one of the most important things to do with hermeneutics is take a confusing passage, perhaps like this one, and read it in light of what has already been made clear.

So, in other words, again, you read the confusing passages in light of the clearer ones, not vice versa.

So here in verse 13, we have something that certainly is kind of confusing.

So we need to take a step back to Romans 2.

So Romans 2, 12 and 15.

This hopefully will help us understand what Paul's saying here.

Paul explains, for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law.

And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

They, the Gentiles, aka you and me, unless you're Jewish, show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

Here's what he's saying.

With or without the law, whether a person knows it or not, they are still born under the curse of sin and death.

He says the law is written on their hearts.

People by nature have a sort of moral compass, don't they?

I mean, look into the secular world.

How do they know that murder is bad?

Because they are created in the image of God and therefore are created with a moral compass of some sort, with God's law on their hearts.

So then the question is: are people innocent apart from the law?

Well, no.

Then the worst thing a Christian could do is tell someone who's never heard the gospel about the gospel.

But this cosmic stain is not the final word.

Let's look at verse 14.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

So Paul brings an idea into this passage that we haven't heard yet in the book of Romans.

He uses the word type.

Here's another big word to use in your life this week: typology.

So typology means this correspondence between events, people, and institutions, and their future escalated version in Christ.

In other words, how does this Old Testament example lead us to Jesus?

Typology is the reason we don't read the Old Testament and simply get moral lessons from it.

It's the reason we read Genesis to Malachi and see how the Old Testament is perfectly fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus in every single verse.

Example, Jesus is the better David.

So we don't read David and Goliath and give a sermon called Dare to Be a David, where I give you a bunch of moral lessons and empower you to try to defeat your giants.

What we would say is that Jesus is the better David, whereby Jesus has conquered the final Goliath, which is sin and death and the serpent.

Jesus is the better Moses, the one who stood between God and man and pleaded for their forgiveness, splitting the sea of God's judgment and inviting God's people to walk through to freedom to the other side, to the promised land, the New Jerusalem.

That's how typology affects the way we read the Old Testament.

That's why now we can look at Leviticus and see how it points to Jesus being the great high priest, the atoning Lamb.

So let me prove this to you.

Luke 24, 27.

Jesus has already died, he's risen again, and Luke writes this.

And beginning with Moses, the law, and all the prophets, Jesus interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

That would have been an awesome sermon.

We love the Sermon on the Mount.

This would have been gas.

Luke, whatever she would have written down, man.

But here's what Jesus is saying everything points to me.

Genesis to Malachi, Jesus.

Leviticus, Jesus, judges, Jesus.

It's all about Jesus.

Now, how does Adam point us to Christ?

That's our question this morning.

We learned in Genesis 2 that Adam stood as the covenant representative head of humanity.

He's the first man, he's the one from whom every single other human being will come from.

And at the breach of his covenant, remember the covenant of works, all human beings now are born under this curse.

All who are in Adam are in sin.

And in a much more beautiful, powerful way, all who, by placing faith in Christ, are made righteous.

Not because of their covenant lawkeeping, but because of Christ's obedience and one-way love given to us.

In this sense, Christ is the better Adam.

The one who actually was obedient, obedient to the point of death on the cross.

So that we who believe find life and righteousness to him.

This is the one God promised in Genesis 3.

God has promised to bring life out of death.

Now there is a very present reality for all people.

We are all born under the stain of Adam.

And not only is that indwelling sin in our hearts, but we live in a world that constantly reminds us of this stain: sickness, death, school shootings, division, miscarriage.

We don't have to look very far to see what Adam has caused.

But is God some far-off, inactive being?

Watching his world burn and doing nothing about it?

That's not what this book would testify to.

The God of the universe revealed in the Bible didn't just send a way for the curse to be reversed, he actually himself came and took the curse upon himself.

There's no other religion or worldview that teaches you that.

Every other religion or worldview will say, try your best to be good and hopefully God will approve of you.

Christianity says God stepped down in your brokenness and took your stain on himself.

Now maybe you're here this morning and you find yourself grieved.

Maybe life has beat you up.

Maybe with sickness, death, family, work, life, you're just exhausted.

Maybe you're grieved.

Perhaps you can hardly keep your eyelids open.

Maybe you're in here today and the gospel has never seemed enticing to you.

Maybe it seemed dry and cold and far off, and there's been kind of no regard for this God who must be angry with me.

Maybe you thought Christianity was about morality.

But maybe this morning, you're seeing that Jesus is attractive to you for the first time, perhaps.

The invitation to my prayer that I've been praying for all week is that perhaps even this morning you would believe for the first time that Jesus is sufficient for you, that his one-way love for you has stirred within you a desire to have faith in him.

That even in your brokenness, even though you don't have it all together, he still perfectly loves you.

The invitation is to come and believe this morning.

Now maybe you're here this morning and find yourself religiously exhausted.

Maybe you've been taught your whole life that you need to perform.

That if you sin this many times, God will give up on you.

That there's a little asterisk at the end of the Bible with your name that says he or she won't be fully forgiven.

You find yourself still kind of believing in the covenant of works.

That if I mess up X amount of times, I'm done.

Maybe this week you stumbled in some way.

Maybe you drank too much.

Maybe you stumbled again watching pornography.

Maybe you just messed up in a big way this week.

And this morning, you come in this place and wonder, could anyone love me if they knew?

Could God love me if he knew?

So here's the offer for each of us, whatever category you find yourself in, is to behold the Son of God.

To look at Jesus with us this morning.

He took your sin, he took your shame, he took the parts of you that you really wish weren't true about yourself.

And he said, I still love you in that.

Like that's what I died on the cross for you.

That was for those deep, ugly, deep places that you're trying with all your might to hide.

That's where the gospel does the best work.

Church, what we have gained in Jesus is so much better than what we lost in Adam.

This is what the seed, the child of Eve, has given us life and righteousness.

So that's the offering.

That's it.

To collapse once again into the grace and mercy of Jesus and feels love for you.

To run once again into his arms and remember that this love you didn't initiate, and therefore you'll never lose.

Because he is the one who has initiated this one-way love towards you.

So collapse this morning once again.

Let's pray.

Father, the gospel is so rich.

Your word is so alive.

Even as far back as Genesis, Father, we see the promises of the Son.

Father, you always bring life out of death.

As soon as Adam and Eve breached this covenant, you didn't strike them.

You promised life.

And this life has been fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus.

And so, Father, I pray for each of us this morning as we come to this place with whatever doubts, whatever sin, whatever grief, whatever tears we come in this place with, Father, I pray that you would meet us here.

I pray that as we receive the sacrament, perhaps it would be a means of grace for us as never before.

We love you.

Thank you for the cross.

We pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.