As the lights go down on another Church Year, Christians find themselves in Jesus parable of the Ten Virgins. We have been cleansed and purified... ...now we wait for the Bridegroom to return... https://soundcloud/tony-pittenger/last-sunday-13 Last Sunday of Church Year.13 24 November, 2013 Adam GCOW 613, 604 (371, 377) 552 1 Corinthians 15:42–58 (ESV) 42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. 50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Jesus said that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. So, who was first? First to look around creation and take it all in, to see massive herds and flocks and schools? First to taste the wonderful fruits God had made, to drink from crystal clear waters? First to know God, to see Him and speak with Him? It was Adam. 52 weeks ago we started our Heroes of the Faith sermon series with Eve. Eve has been called “The Mother of all the Living,” 52 weeks ago I called her “The Mother of all the Dying” because she is the mother of us all and because all of us have been sinful from birth and from the time our mothers conceived us. But Eve is the mother of all who live by faith—all who are spiritually alive. God came to her in her sin, spoke of salvation coming too, being born from a woman like Eve. We began with Eve, it is only fitting that we include—and conclude—with Adam. First of all humans, made from the earth itself, formed and shaped by the hands of God, walking around alive because the very breath of God was breathed into him. If anyone longed for Heaven surely it was Adam! He knew what it was like to be in perfect harmony with God, to speak—face-to-face—with Him, to genuinely run up to the Almighty the way a kid runs to Dad when he’s home from work. Adam knew, Adam remembered that perfection; he also knew that he played the fool in making it all go wrong. He heard God’s command with his own ears. He knew that a serpent claiming to know more about God than God Himself was unnatural and not right. When Cain was consumed by jealousy and pride and anger…how could Adam not have blamed himself? When Abel’s life slipped through his fingers, once strong and vibrant, now limp and lifeless…how could Adam not have blamed himself? First man, first husband, first father, first to excuse his sin, first to hide from God… I want to leave him there for a few minutes. Trembling in the bushes, sad pathetic fig leave covering his nudity when what he really wants to hide is his sin, lets leave him there in the underbrush and turn to the women Jesus showed us… The Ten Virgins. Ten is a nice complete number, but why “virgins”? Does this mean that in the end, virginity is most important of all, that of all Ten Commandments, the Sixth is the most important one and that even marriage is something real Christians will avoid? Obviously not. In fact, God made Adam and Eve and men and women to be husbands and wives and He blessed them with the ability to reproduce and have children and become fathers and mothers…and to not be virgins. These virgin women are shown to us, warnings and representatives for us, not because we need to know everything about their personal life, but because we need to know one thing about them: that they are pure. Pure? How did that happen? Romans 5:12 says sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all have sinned. We’re all sinners, we’re all impure. But the women in Jesus’ story are all pure. How did that change come about? These ladies have been cleansed. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, people with pretty sinful pasts, he said this: you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Before those people in Corinth were Christians they were pretty notorious sinners. But that was before, now God had cleansed them, God washed them in Holy Baptism, now God called them by His own name, forgiven their sins for Jesus’ sake. Which gets us back to “pure,” Jesus made the Christians in Rome and the Christians in Corinth and the ten women pure. He calls the women in His story “virgins” because of what He’s done, not because of what they have-or-haven’t done. Him—not them. His life—not theirs. His behavior—not theirs. People—any people—are clean in God’s eyes because of what Jesus has done. Believe that, cling to that, place your hope in that and we call that “faith”. But therein lies the terrible tragedy of Jesus’ story. These ladies have been cleansed, they’ve been purified, they’ve all been given wedding garments to wear, and they all have personal invitations to the great wedding feast… But five of them…HALF OF THEM…didn’t stay ready. Half of them were foolish, they trifled with what had been prepared for them, took for granted what had been given to them… They’ve got no light, they’re lost in the dark—again; And while they were going to buy, the Bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with Him to the Marriage Feast, and the door was shut. And though they cried out, though they knocked, though they now begged with all their heart and all their soul and all their mind and all their strength; all they heard was the world’s Bridegroom saying: Truly, I say to you, I do not know you. Clean. Pure. Five people who had been washed of their sins, invited to the great victory and wedding feast, five people who had been dressed did not remain ready and that Groom’s coming caught them unawares… Now…where was Adam??? O yes, there in the bushes! Attempting to cover himself, hiding from God… Can you see him, your ancestor? Can you see any family resemblance? We’re his spitting image aren’t we? That’s called original sin; the sin of origin, the sin of our origins. And the wages of sin is death. Spiritual death occurred immediately; you can see this as Adam cowers in the bushes…he’s dead to God. If the world had ended right then, they—Adam and Eve—would have been lost forever. What if God had left him? What if God had treated Adam in the exact same way that Adam had treated God? You don’t want to be with Me? Fine, I don’t want to be with you! What if God treated you the way you have treated Him? Tit for tat? Rejection for rejection? Praise God He didn’t and praise Him—He doesn’t! He called to Adam, came to him, drew him out of the brush, even clothed him. And even as God did this, He told Adam of another man; a Man who would be perfect in Adam’s place, one who would rescue, one who would crush Satan and crush death. 1 Corinthians 15:47 says: The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. Second man… Remember I quoted Jesus when He said the first shall be last and the last shall be first? Well, two verses earlier, in 1 Corinthians 15:45 that same Jesus is called the Last Adam. In full the passage says: The first man Adam became a living being; the Last Adam became a life-giving spirit. The first shall be last. Jesus was first. Before Abraham was, I Am. Only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the Father, By Whom all things were made; Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man Life giving spirit. The First became last, the Last Adam for you. And do you know what else the Bible says, what 1 Corinthians 15 says about Him and about yourselves? For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (:22) We’re almost done, but can’t stop yet; there’s a whole group that we haven’t even talked about yet… …The wise virgins, the five ladies who had been cleansed and purified and made ready for the wedding… they waited. They had the invite, it said He’d come, they simply believed, held on to the light they’d been given, kept what was needed to keep it burning. As the Church Year comes to a close, you sit there with those ten virgins, you’ve been cleansed just like them, invited, called. The surrounding darkness of this final age presses closer, the night wears on, all of us get so very tired, some even close their eyes in that last sleep. We who are left feel more and more alone. Dear Fellow Redeemed, He is coming. He has promised that He is. The Bridegroom of Humanity will come as He promised. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ…in Him…in this coming Bridegroom shall all be made alive. Faith, the oil, the source of the light in the darkness, is given and replenished through His Word and through His Sacraments. Cling to these while you wait. And do not be afraid. If you fall asleep, this Last Adam is a life-giving Spirit. He knows how to wake you refreshed and ready for the New Day. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. Until He comes, until our hearts leap for joy on hearing the shout Here is the Bridegroom, God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—keep your faith shining in the darkness. AMEN. Soli Deo Gloria
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 22:17:27 +0000
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