Crown of Life

As I continue my series of messages in Genesis, my focus today will be on the sixth day of creation, and specifically the creation of Man. But first, I need to start this message with a reference to a scene in Mark’s gospel:

(Mark 12:18-23) “Some Sadducees – who say that there is no resurrection – came to Jesus and began questioning Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves behind a wife and leaves no child, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. There were seven brothers; and the first took a wife, and died leaving no children. The second one married her, and died leaving behind no children; and the third likewise; and so all seven left no children. Last of all the woman died also. In the resurrection, when they rise again, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her.” 

And now, please pay attention to the Lord’s response (verse 24): “Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?” 

As I cite this text, I realize some might already be wondering what it at all to do with the message of Genesis and the creation of Adam and Eve. Please. Give me a few moments. I hope it will become clear.

The problem the Sadducees had was the same problem so many theologians and those in pews and pulpits across the globe have, and that is: When God tells us in His inerrant word does things that do not fit with our intellectual expectations, then God's word must be re-interpreted.

And with that thought at the forefront of our minds, we now turn to today’s text. I can’t quote the entire section because of our limited time here. I apologize for that because I am forced by those time constraints to omit a LOT of God's Holy Word – AND to omit what I’d want to say about this section of God's word. So, I very much urge you to read and meditate on those first chapters of Genesis later today. So, here, then, is today’s text. I read only part of Genesis 1:26 through 1:31 -

(Genesis 1:26-31)  “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them . . . God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Moving now into chapter two, Moses gives us more detail about Man’s creation. I start in 2:7 and will read portions through to verse through to verse 25 –

(Genesis 2:7-25) “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. . . .  The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him . . . So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man and brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Just as the Sadducees rejected – to their undoing – the idea of the miraculous works of God, so do many intellectuals (and those who parrot them) scoff today at the supernatural work of God. And they do so to their undoing.

What many of them like to do with these two chapters of Genesis – indeed, with all of the supernatural works of God, and we haven’t even gotten into the third chapter when the Serpent talks with Eve – what they like to do with things they don’t want to accept is find reasons that fit with their worldview and reject the supernatural.

For them, Adam and Eve were not literal and historical people. They are simply allegories to explain Man’s appearance on earth. To believe in a literal and historical Adam and Eve is simply unscientific, and therefore irrational.

Christian! Be careful. St Paul infallibly warned the Christians at Colossae – and his words stand as a warning for us even in 2024: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.” (Colossians 2:8-9).

If Adam and Eve were not real people, then St Luke was lying when he traced the lineage of the Savior all the way back to them (Luke 3:23-38).

If Adam and Eve were not real people as described for us by Moses, then what could St. Paul have meant when he wrote: “For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life”? (1 Corinthians 15:22).

We’ll find in chapter three that sin and death entered into the world through Adam’s sin. St Paul tells us: “Through one person sin entered the world, and through sin death.” (Romans 5:12) But the scriptures also tell us that Christ CONQUERED sin and death for all who are ‘IN Christ.

This simple, basic truth IS the very foundation of the gospel message. Remove a literal Adam and Eve from history and the foundation irreparably crumbles. As the psalmist warned: (Psalm 11:3) “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do”?

Christian, be careful. If Adam and Eve are mere allegories – fictional stories invented to make a moral point – if they were inventions of Moses, can we be certain that Jesus’ resurrection is not also an allegory, a story invented to illustrate life’s triumph over death? And perhaps even MORE germane to these questions is this one: If Adam and Eve did not exist as special and unique creations of God, then perhaps He who is called “God” is also not historical but is only another ancient and superstitious-laden allegory.

I know I am spending a lot of time on this point – as I have spent in the last two messages – but I believe God has embedded a critical principle in these first several chapters of Genesis – not only of the Creation Days, but of the talking serpent in chapter three, and Noah’s global flood in chapter 6.

And that principle is this: When people – regardless of their educational degrees and reputations – when people disagree with God and teach others to doubt His inerrant and infallible word – God always has the last word and always proves to be correct.

So, please, be careful. If we start to doubt the veracity of God's word about ANYTHING, then we have slipped onto that broad path that leads to destruction. Satan will have successfully deluded us – as he deluded Eve into doubting God's word – we will find ourselves WITHOUT an anchor – the ONLY anchor God has provided us to protect us from the swells of life and of false philosophies whose currents WILL pull us further and further out into treacherous waters.

Listen. You know the Bible well enough to know that we can be very religious – and still go to hell. We can receive the Sacraments every day – and still go to hell. We can be kind to our neighbors – and still go to hell. We can be leaders and teachers in our churches – and still go to hell.

The Lord Jesus said as much: (Luke 13:24ff) “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’; and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; Depart from Me, all you evildoers.”

Remember what Jesus said to the religious scholars of His day: “Is this not the reason you are mistaken,” Jesus said to the highly educated leaders of His day, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?” 

Christian, please. Take God seriously. Take His word seriously. For millennia scholars and those in the pews have tried to dilute God's truth – and yet here we are millennia later and God's word remains our firm foundation while the bones of those ‘scholars’ have turned to dust.

Okay, let’s turn again to today’s text and focus on God's instruction to Adam, whom Luke calls God's ‘son’ in his genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:38).

It’s important to remember God's relationship with Adam because Scripture ALSO calls those who are in Christ His son and daughter. St Paul is only one of the writers of New Testament scripture to call us God's children: (Galatians 3:26) “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

And Romans 8:15-16 - For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.”

And the point of this ‘sonship’? It’s this: God gave Adam ONE commandment. In all the wealth of comfort and blessings in that Garden, Adam had to obey only one commandment. And look what he has wrought on himself and on humanity all these millennia later.

Now consider what happens to us AND to others when WE disobey God's simple commandments to us: Love the Lord with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and to love others as ourselves.

But we are not done yet. I want us to focus on yet one more relationship that God confers on the Christian – a relationship He did not even confer on Adam and Eve.

Not only are we sons and daughters of God through faith in Jesus, but we are ALSO given by the Father to Jesus in a marriage relationship. Listen to St Paul in his letter to the Christians at Corinth: (2 Corinthians 11:2-3) “For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”

I want to focus the remainder of this message on the truth of our spiritual marital relationship with Jesus, for Holy Writ repeats the message throughout both testaments in allegorical form – comparing a human husband-wife relationship with the spiritual relationship of the Church with Jesus the Bridegroom. Perhaps one of the more well-known passages that speak to this relationship is in Ephesian 5. You can look at that text later on if you like.

But listen to what God said to faithless and adulteress Israel who went astray from Him. Speaking to the nation just prior to their Babylonian captivity in the 7th century BC, God said: (Ezekiel 6:9, NRSV) "Those of you who escape shall remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I was crushed by their wanton heart that turned away from me, and their wanton eyes that turned after their idols."

Listen now to James in the New Testament: (James 4:4) – “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

Christian: YOU are the Bride of Christ. YOU are betrothed to Christ. And greater than the love of ANY human husband is our Savior’s love for YOU His bride. And so it is good to ask ourselves this question: Why do husbands stay faithful to their wives? Why do wives stay faithful to their husbands? We all know the answer. It’s because they love their spouse and would never do anything that would devastate their beloved.

Likewise, Christians strive to avoid a sinning – NOT because we’re afraid of judgment, although that certainly is a valid reason to keep from sin. But the PRIMARY reason – at least it SHOULD be the primary reason we want to avoid sin is because we don’t want to hurt our beloved God and Redeemer.

But if you’re human like me, you know how impossible it is to always avoid sin, whether in thought, word, or in action. A sinless life is just not part of our spiritual DNA that’s been passed on to us from Adam and Eve. We’d be more successful changing the color of our eyes or the color of our skin simply by wishing hard enough.

Until we really understand that we desperately need the Holy Spirit to change our mind and our will, we will continue a dizzying and disappointing roller coaster ride of ups and downs.

It should be no surprise then that even the great St Paul confessed this to the Christians at Rome: (7:18-20) “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.”

Nor should it surprise anyone that long after Paul wrote those words to the Christians at Rome, he wrote this to the Christians at Philippi after reciting for them his religious resume: (Philippians 3:8-10):

“I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”

Oh, we have GOT to hear this: Even Paul struggled with his sin nature. And he did so until he died. As he told Timothy (2 Timothy 4:7) “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

Do not expect any easy methods to grow in our love for and in our obedience to Christ. There aren’t any. There have never been any. So, Christian, what is the counsel of Scripture? Keep doing as Paul and EVERY other faithful Christian has done through the millennia, day after day after day: Follow the TEDIOUS process of daily guarding our hearts against temptations to sin. Being diligently alert day by day to what we permit our eyes to gaze at, our ears to hear, and our tongues to say. It means being quick to repent when we stumble – repent to God and ALSO to the one against whom we have sinned. And then, day by day, get up and continue on that narrow road that leads to eternal life.

Adam and Eve passed on their sin nature to every person on this planet today. But when we were ‘born again’ we each became a new creation. The Holy Spirit entered our lives and became for us an omnipotent resident architect, working in us that we may live lives worthy of the Lord, to please him in every way, and to grow in our knowledge of – and our faithfulness – to our God.

Hang in there, my brothers and sisters. Our battles will soon be over. And what St Paul said to Timothy, he says also to you and me: In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”