Paradise Re-Given

The Gospel Reading from Mark 3

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, the third chapter.

Then Jesus went home and the crowd gathered again so that he could not even eat. And when his family heard of it they went out to seize him for they were saying he's out of his mind. And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying he's possessed by Beelzebul and by the prince of the demons he casts out demons.

And he called men to him and said to them in parables, how can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself that house will not be able to stand.

And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided he cannot stand but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.

Truly I say to you all sins will be forgiven the children of man. And whatever blasphemies they utter but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.

For they had said he has an unclean spirit. And his mother and his brothers came and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.

And he answered them, who are my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him he said, here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God he is my brother and sister and mother.

This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Alright so we all know that something's wrong with the world. Have you ever noticed that? And no one has ever been able to solve the problem. In fact the people have tried valiantly to solve the problem that exists in our world.

They've all failed miserably. Let me give you an example of one of the most spectacular failures in all of human history as it comes to solving the world's problem. Photographers tried this. There's a book, a photo book.

Years and years ago when I worked in the corporate world I managed sales people. And one of my sales people, her name was Adriana. And she was a spectacular professional sales woman. And well, with that kind of skill we knew she was going to eventually get picked off.

And she was. Some headhunter founder. And she took a job working for somebody else's corporate team. Bummer for us. And so she gave her notice. And we were having a going away party and I was her manager.

And she, at her going away party, gave me a gift. Because she knew I liked to tinker with photography. And she gave me a gift. And the gift is called The Family of Man. It's a photo book put out years and years ago which actually began as a photography art exhibit.

And you can see it in different places around the world. And it had such notable names as Edward Steichen and Henri Cartier-Bresson who provided photography for it. The photography is great. The photography is spectacular.

But the premise behind the book and behind the art exhibit is something to this effect. The world has wars and people treat each other unkindly. And there's all this violence in the world. If we could just all appreciate the fact that we're all the same.

You know? We all get married. We fall in love. We have children. Those children grow up. They fall in love. They get old and they die. And so these are wonderful photographs taken of people around the world in that kind of setting.

And the basic idea is if we just all recognize how much we are all alike. You know? The family of man. Then maybe just maybe wars and stuff would end. And of course I'm always into bad marketing ideas.

And it's the final photograph which is just on this one. Because here's the thing. I'll show it to you. There's a photograph here of these two children. They're in the shadows and they're walking into the light as if somehow now that we know that we're all the family of man we can walk out of the darkness of violence into the light of love and the world will be a happy place and we can all sing it's a small world after.

Anyway. The photography is great though. But here's the thing. The photographers have failed us. They have not solved the world's problems. So don't look to photographers. But have you also noticed that our pop music stars and our movie stars?

They've failed us too. Most spectacular failure of all time is who? John Lennon. Imagine. I can't even sing that song. It drives me nuts. And of course the Beatles anthem. All you need is love. Well if love is all we need why is it that we can't seem to solve our problem?

And then have you noticed that the politicians have also failed us too? On a scale of like 1 to 10 1 being absolute, abject, miserable incompetence 10 being the most spectacular thing ever. How would you grade our politicians in how they handled the COVID pandemic?

A 1. Okay. A 2. Alright. Do I hear 3? Is there a 3 out there? A 4? No. No 4s. Negative 2. Okay. You get the idea. So our photographers are incompetent. Musicians and movie stars are incompetent. And our politicians are incompetent at solving the world's problem.

Oh boy. We're in trouble. Right? And that's kind of the issue. And so as we consider our Old Testament text today and its implications and kind of flesh out the theme a little bit we are again confronted with the problem that we all have.

And that is that we have fallen, truly fallen into sin. And as a result of it, as God said that the day that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of that tree, the tree of the knowledge and good of evil, they died spiritually.

And have you noticed that good and evil seems to be the thing that are mixed together in this life? Don't get used to it when you have something good happen because the next day something bad will follow it.

It just seems that the two come together in, well, weird quantities. But you'll note that these terrible words. Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And this is after they had eaten of the tree they were told by God not to eat of. And they didn't listen to God's voice. They listened to the voice of the serpent and to their own hearts. And the man and his wife, they hid themselves in the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

And the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And we know the answer to that question. But consider, if you would, the absolute tragedy that we see here. And that is that Adam and Eve in their fall into sin, their immediate response to when the presence of God shows up is that they have to run and hide.

They are naked and now terribly afraid. But just before we read this in Genesis chapter 3, in Genesis chapter 2 we get again this wonderful beautiful picture of just how loving, kind, caring, and providing God is.

It is absolutely appropriate that we would refer to God as God our Father because that is what we see going on in this text. Have you ever been to a wedding? And well, everybody goes to weddings at one time or another and there you see the bride decked out just looking spectacular.

And always and again when everybody stands up when the bride comes in, my heart just kind of catches right here and I can't help but have a little bit of a tear in my eye. Especially if it's like one of my daughters.

But that's a whole different story, right? But the point is this, is that that's a moment that we've all that we've all kind of witnessed. But have you ever witnessed when the groom sees the bride for the first time in her wedding dress?

Everyone's looking at the bride. Next time you're at a wedding, turn around quick. Take a look at the groom. I've seen guys almost buckle when they see their bride for the first time like this. And in this context, consider then just the absolute wonderfulness of God.

There's God. He's created the heavens and the earth, all the animals, and well, it says in Genesis 2 .18, then the Lord God said, it's not good that man should be alone. And it's not. We cannot thrive alone.

It is not good that he's alone. I will make a helper fit for him. Kind of his physical counterpart, his physical opposite. The Hebrew's a little hard to pull into the English here, but think of jigsaw puzzles.

Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

And so you can see here, Adam names all of the animals, all the beasts of the field, every creature and critter, he gives them a name. But it's as if God is parading them all in front of him just to kind of build the anticipation because the hope is there that as he's naming the animals, he'll finally see his counterpart.

Because these animals whom he's naming, he's seeing that they have already been created, male and female, and that they come in pairs. And so, well, he hasn't been paired up yet. So the man called every living creature, and whatever he called it, that was its name.

He gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the heavens, every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. Not one. And you can just kind of see the, hmm, hmm. Still haven't found what I'm looking for.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. Now, a little bit of a note here. We're going to hear this in one of our cross-references in the sermon.

When you think of Adam, think of Jesus. The scriptures explicitly say that Adam is a type and shadow of Christ, and that Christ is the fulfillment of his type. So the Lord God took one of his ribs, closed up its place with flesh.

The rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. Think marriage. Think, this is the first time that Adam is laying eyes on his wife. And God is the one who's the matchmaker here.

He's made the perfect counterpart for Adam. Like a father, he's chosen a wife for his son, because scripture says that Adam is the son of God. Read the generations of Jesus, and you'll see that Adam is referred to as the son of God.

And so like a loving, doting, caring, kind father who wants his son's needs to be met, he makes this woman, and Adam, this at last! You hear it? This at last, this is it! I've been looking for you. This at last is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called Eshah. For she was taken from Esh. Beautiful picture. Beautiful picture. Consider again the loving kindness of God. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed. The church fathers, when you read them on this particular passage, they like to point out the fact that the reason why Adam and Eve were not afraid or ashamed when they were naked is because they were created in the very image of God.

Being made in the image of God, there's nothing to be ashamed of, even if you're not wearing any clothes. But you'll note that since the fall, the first thing that Adam and Eve realized after they bit into that forbidden fruit, they realized that they were naked.

And you'll note that being naked is one of those things that's really awkward, even for all of us, descendants of Adam and Eve. If you don't believe me, just remember the last time somebody walked in on you while you were in the bathroom and you didn't have all your clothes on, and tell me how that experience went, okay?

It's very, very uncomfortable and sadly memorable. It's like, it's hard to burn these things out of your head. But you get the idea then. But here's the thing. So what has befallen us is that we have now fallen into sin and, well, what's broken in us can't be repaired.

Not by art, not by politics, not by music, not by well-meaning people. There's only one solution, and the solution requires us to look to Christ. And I found it fascinating as I was preparing this sermon, that as I was looking for the cross references and putting the story together and the themes of this text together, that in the New Testament, the New Testament never mentions Adam without quickly pointing to Christ.

It's as if the New Testament says, don't think of Adam without thinking about Jesus. Don't think of Adam without thinking about Jesus, because when you can see how Jesus fulfills the type and shadow of Adam, you can see that there's something good that is for us.

Because if you think about it, what is the implications of what our first parents have done? They lived in a perfect world without sin, without toil, without death, without pain. It was paradise. That's how Eden is described.

And they squandered all of that to take a bite of a piece of fruit that has then plunged us into all the misery that we experience now. And is it not true that we all in some sense yearn for that paradise?

Isn't that the impetus, the thought, and the thinking behind we've got to solve the world's problems. We have to solve the problem of poverty, of suffering, and all this other kind of stuff. But the reality is, it's beyond us to fix.

So Romans 5 says this, therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and that's the problem, sin. And through that one man death through sin. And so death is now spread to all men because all have sinned.

You, me, everybody. Sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned. Death itself reigned from Adam to Moses even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.

And he was the type of the one who was to come. What is it that reigns in this world according to this text? Death. And it comes for us all. But then in contradistinction to this, it goes on to say this, but the free gift the free gift of God, oh isn't that like God?

The same God who gifted Adam with such a beautiful gift as his wife Eve. The same God now gifts us gifts us with forgiveness of our sins. You see the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through one man's trespass how much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many?

You see the free gift is not like the result of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. But the free gift following many trespasses has brought justification. For if because of the one man's trespass death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ?

And so you'll note that here in contradistinction to death reigning over all humanity, we who have been forgiven united with Christ in his death and resurrection. There's a new reality for us. One that hints at and gives us hope.

Hope of a different outcome than the death that this life promises us. Death reigns presently, but now for us Christians grace and mercy reign because of Christ. Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, and that's true for all of us, so one act of righteousness now leads to justification in life for all men.

For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. So the law then came to increase trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And so you'll note then that Adam and Eve having been plunged into sin and plunging us into sin in the process, that at the tail end there of Genesis chapter three we read these words in verse 21, and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin, and He clothed them.

And you just have to ask the question, did God literally kill some beasts to clothe Adam and Eve? And the answer really, yeah. Something had to die in their place so that they can live, and that something that died, well its skin then was given to them to cover their nakedness and their shame and their guilt.

But you see that's a hint at what Christ does for us. Although it is true we too are naked just like Adam and Eve, and we're naked in our sin and experience that same shame, we know that Christ is the one who has died for us.

And scripture describes us as being clothed in garments of righteousness. Isaiah describes it this way. In chapter 61 he says, I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh. My soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with garments of salvation.

He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels. And here if you start to connect some of the themes of scripture, remember Adam is a type of the one to come, and that's Christ.

Jesus is the second Adam. He is the first to rise, first born of the new creation. And who is Christ's bride? We are. We are. And so you can see here, despite our nakedness, our shame, covered in dirt, that scripture describes Christ's love for His bride as having washed away her sins with the washing of water and the word.

And here it describes that what Christ does for us, He takes His bride and He adorns her with jewels, with righteousness and garments of salvation, covering our nakedness. It's a beautiful picture when you consider it.

And again, what would we expect? Would we expect anything less than the God who is so amazing? The one that revealed in the early chapters of Genesis? The one who cared for Adam so much that He gave her such a great gift?

And in the same way then, God gifts His son with His bride by preparing her. And you'll note that the bride of Christ, like Adam, was formed out of the side of Christ. While Christ hung dead on the cross, the Roman sword pierced His side, and out flowed water and blood.

And it is that water and blood that is used to create, to wash, and regenerate us, make us the bride of Christ. When you see the connection, it's absolutely stunning and beautiful. So in this reality then, we consider the words of the Apostle Paul, who explains to us that we now are to walk in newness of life according to the reality that we believe by faith, but it's also true.

Ephesians 4 says, I say this and I testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They're darkened in their understanding. They're alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.

And that is the result of Adam and Eve's sin. That's the impact it's had on all of their descendants. They've become callous, they've given themselves up to sensuality, they're greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

But that's not the way that you learn Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and you were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus. So therefore, listen to the words, put off your old self. Your old self, the one you inherited for Adam, put it off.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, take off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. And be renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new self which is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

And so it's true we inherited a sinful nature from Adam and Eve, but because we are in Christ and we have been generated, there is a new self. We've already got the bits, the beginning bits of what we will be in the new creation presently now.

Now, it coexists in our bodies with a sinful nature but you can see the themes if you work it out. And so because of this then, we are to be of good cheer also as we yearn for, what? What we yearn for is to be no longer naked but clothed and look forward to receiving back from Christ the paradise that we lost because he is re-giving it to us.

2 Corinthians chapter 5 verses 1 -10 which is the epistle text for next week puts it this way. We know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house that is not made with hands.

It's eternal, it's in the heavens. For in this tent we groan longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. And is that not true of all of us? You know, I keep pointing it out and I will continue to point it out.

I look worse today than I did two weeks ago. A month ago, a year ago. And it's not getting any better. Barb and I now that the warm weather has come back, we decided we would go on walks in the evening.

And the first week was a little bit sketchy. We got about 55 minutes into the walk and Barb's all, how much longer are we going to go? I'm thinking, come on granny, you can make it, you can make it. She used to walk 6 -7 miles a day at a clip that nobody can keep up with but not so anymore.

Yeah, but why? Because, well, her earthly tent like my earthly tent is wearing out. That's like your earthly tent is wearing out. And so you'll note then that in these, in this concept, then we are, well, we're longing for something different.

Cross-reference this with Romans 8. Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time, they're not worth comparing with the glory that's going to be revealed to us. For the creation now currently waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

And that revealing takes place on the day of the resurrection. For the creation itself has been subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. So that the creation itself will finally be set free from its bondage to corruption and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves. We who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons and the redemption of our bodies.

For in this hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, but who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And so you can see then the idea that right now, forgiven, sinners is what we are.

Our sins have been taken care of by Christ who bore our sins in his body on the tree. He died and rose again and ascended into heaven. And because of all of this, we have hope. And the whisper that is among us is that hope is that we will finally, finally no longer be naked.

Paul, coming back to 2 Corinthians 5, says,. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. If indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent we groan, being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would finally be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee. So then we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord and we walk by faith and not by sight.

Yes, we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether at home or away, we make it our aim to please Christ. And it's true, we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ and each one of us may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

So brothers and sisters, it's true, we've fallen into sin and we have been found before God naked and ashamed. But Christ has come and he has bled and died in our place because of his great love for his bride, which is you.

And he has now washed away our sin and clothed us with his righteousness. And we presently await for the wedding feast, that day when we will finally see him face to face and be given a new world, a new world without end, a world without tears, pain, suffering or any kind of evil.

He is that good that he would give us again what we squandered, even though we do not deserve it because of his great mercy and love for us. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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