Sermon Tone Analysis

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 143

Scripture Reading: Advent 1

The first candle, which is purple, symbolizes hope.

It is sometimes called the “Prophecy Candle” in remembrance of the prophets, especially Isaiah, who foretold the birth of Christ.

It represents the expectation felt in anticipation of the coming Messiah.

Thus this morning our thought is hope.

For it was into a hopeless world that our savior was born.

Those who would put hope in their own goodness will learn that no one is righteous, no not one (Psalm 14:1-3).

Then there are those who would place their hope in other gods.

They will find that they are in the end worthless idols (Psalm 97:7).

Even those who would trust in the Law of God will find that they are still left without hope because as Paul writes in Romans 7:10 that “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.”

So then what hope was there.

The hope that God would send a Messiah!

The hope that God would be the one to save, in fact, in proclaiming the blessed truth of the Birth of our Savior Matthew quotes Isaiah and tells us that his name is Immanuel which means “God With us” (Matthew 1:23).

When the angels proclaim the birth of Jesus to the Shepherds their message is one of hope in a hopeless world as they say In Luke 2:11: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

But as we remember advent let us remember that he is our hope.

As The Heidelberg catechism asks: What is our only hope in life and death?

A: That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.

May the hope of Christ be with you as we live in the light of this, the first advent candle!

Sermon

Good Morning Church!

I was glad when they said to me let us go and worship in the house of the Lord!

Well this Sunday, as you might have noticed by the lighting of our candle earlier today, marks the first Sunday in advent.

advent is the time set aside traditionally, and I would say rightfully so, as a time to remember and think and ponder and even prepare our hearts for Christmas, or the arrival of our savior.

A lot of movies ad things you will read and see around this time focus heavily on “what is the meaning of Christmas” or “what is the true Christmas spirit”?

I was at Hobby Lobby just yesterday buying the advent candles (and you might be thinking, that's cutting it close, and you would be right…) but I was there and there was a pillow that had the Grinch's face on it, and it said “maybe Christmas, he thought doesn't come from a store” which is just super ironic that a store was selling that… but i digress.

Because while those thoughts are good, and have some good thoughts behind them, we should note, to say it in a cute phrase, even thought I usually hate cute sayings “Jesus is the reason for the season”

But for the last over 1000 years, and almost 1800 years according to some sources, we have set aside this portion of the year to think about and remember the incarnation of our savior.

And so as I was contemplating in my heart i was struggle to know what to do for our advent series this year.

What is an appropriate and timely thought for this year?

How can we use this time to prepare our hearts to remember and reflect on the coming of our savior I was encouraged by a passage that we just read two weeks ago.

We preached on the confession of Peter.

And in that passage we noted that Jesus asked the disciples in Matthew 16:15

And so for the next four weeks I would like to give us four detailed ways that we could answer that.

Four thoughts that I believe will help our spirit.

The way peter answers is : You are the christ the son of the Living God.

And that is a loaded and theologically big statement.

There is a lot going on there, and how we fully understand that is important.

It is also i would argue, not the only way that we could answer that question.

And so we will be spending the next four weeks finding different answers in Scripture to that question.

Different ways that we can resp pond to “who do you say that I am”?.

Because if you were to come up to me and say OK David, who is Jesus?

Maybe I would respond with he is the Christ the son of the living God.

Or I would say is the the Messiah, he is the son of Man, that was his favorite phrase to call himself.

Son of David.

He is savior, Lord, King of Kings, we could go on and on.

He is so many things, but as we go through advent I have selected four different ways that Scripture answers this question, that I pray will be helpful and useful to your and your souls.

The fist one is, and you know, sometimes you make plans and then think: what in the world have I gotten myself into, and that would be this Sunday, we are tackling a huge and broadly theological topic that is difficult to get a full grasp on, but i selected it because i think it is important, but one of the ways that we could answer this question is by saying that he is the Second, or last, Adam.

THE SECOND ADAM

Christ is the second Adam.

This was in fact one of Paul's Go to illustrations and explanations of Who Jesus was.

He mentions is a couple of times, the one that we will be looking at is 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 45-49.

That will be our passage for today.

But because we are, and for this whole series, we will be taking chunks of Scripture and wont have the benefit of a lot of time in the context, before we read this I would like to give us some context.

What is Paul writing about and what is he thinking about?

Well chapter 15 is the next to the last chapter of 1st Corinthians.

so he is getting to the end of his writing and his thoughts to this church.

and up to this point there has been a lot going on with what this church is getting wrong.

They have some wrong thoughts and actions, they have some wrong theology.

hey have been taught many wrong things, not by Paul, but others.

And one of the thoughts that seems to be taking hold of them are thoughts pertaining to the Resurrection, and in particular the thought that there would be no bodily Resurrection.

We don’t know EXACTLY what the controversy was but it was probably something like: the resurrection makes no sense.

What is this thought that you will get a new body?

The church had fallen prey to some Gnostic type thoughts that the Body was inherently bad and sinful and evil, and therefore death was a freedom from this physical plane and we can become pure spirit and in dong so become like God.

SO Paul is talking about how we will be raised.

And in fact we will get a new and glorified Physical body.

So he is dealing with Resurrection thoughts and the differences between the body now and the body then, trig to maintain that yes it will be different, but not like that.

SO n thinking through the resurrection ad what is going to happen and correct some wrongs the church has he wrote the following:

These are the words of the Lord for us this morning.

Before we tackle this extraordinarily difficult passage lets begin with a word of prayer

Dear Lord we thank you for today, another day that you have made that we may rejoice and be glad in it.

We thank you for your goodness and grace, your kindness and mercy towards us.

We thank you that you have called us, that you have saved us and you have made us your own.

Thank you that we who call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord find in him a perfect savior.

That we can now be identified with his righteousness and goodness, in our lives.

That as you see us you no longer see our own striving and might but instead the precious and perfect work of our savior.

Thank you for sending him, may we be found in him.

In Jesu name we pray.

Amen

So as we read there are two Adams.

There s a first and then a second or last Adam noted in this passage.

and would like to get out of the way the sort of hardest stuff first, then we can wrestle through the meat o this passage.

The best way, in my opinion, to understand all this is through what is called “federal headship”.

I don't want to get into what all that means, you can write it down, look it up, that is a highly technical theological term that seeks to answer the “how” of something we all agree on.

WE all agree that Adam sinned and now all people are sinners.

and we all agree Christ worked and we are hid in him, but the hard part is “how exactly does that work”.

So yes we are identified with these, but how does that happen

so by way of example suppose tomorrow the United states of America declares war on someone.

Lets suppose war is declared.

WE can and probably would say “we are at war”.

But wait a second.

I never declared war, no individual person declared war.

Instead Congress and the president THEY declared war.

But because they are over us on a civil level, what they declared what they do is representative of us.

So when we talk about headship we are saying that here are people who are above us.

and there are people in history that what they have doe and who they are becomes Representative for us.

And so it s important for us to understand how we have two Adams.

So before we dive into Jesus as the second Adam, we have to deal with the fist one.

And so, you might NOT be asking, who is the first Adam?

well the answer is fairly obvious, it is ADAM