Midweek Advent 1 (2022)

Gen 3:17-21

Greetings my Brothers and SIsters in Christ, it is a joy to have you here tonight as we prepare for the coming of Christmas, and we are going to be looking at what the Scriptures tell us about the End of this World. Now before we get into this further, we want to be able to answer, why, why does the world have to end?

When God finished creation on the 6th Day, He didn’t said that it was only good, but it was very good. In our lessons today, we hear about the creation of Man, and how God fashioned him. The Scriptures tell us that when God fashioned us, He didn’t just speak us into being, but rather fashioned us from the dust of the ground. To give us life, he breathed into man’s nostrils and we went from inanimate dirt and lifeless clay and became a living creature.

When God created the sun, the moon, the stars, and all things, he spoke, but here in Genesis 2, we see that he formed mankind specially amongst all creation. He created us for a perhaps for he saw there was no man to work the earth and so He made us to work the earth. We were also given His Divine and Holy Image that it is to say that we were innocent, holy, and pure as God is in our creation, there was no evil or corruption inside of man, this is why GOd looked at everything and saw that it was very good.

Now when God makes Eve, she is fashioned from Adam’s side as a helpmeet for him. She is flesh of flesh, and bone of bone, woman is of the same substance as Adam is, but she is different in vocation, but she is the same flesh and bone that Adam is made of.

These parts you must keep in mind in order to understand the curse that comes upon Adam and Eve, and what all happens when God pronounces his judgment on Adam.

There are parts of this that we of course familiar with, the most well known part being, that you are dust and to dust you shall return, we hear this regularly at funerals, death is our end because of Adam’s sin, and the same earth from which mankind was taken, we will one day return to. That is part of the curse that has come upon Adam, and it affected not just Adam, but Eve as well for she was of His flesh.

Did you notice what else is under a curse? It’s not just Adam, but the ground as well. Now we don’t catch this in the english, but ground is called the adamah, Adam is named from the earth that He formed, and when He was corrupted the Earth was corrupted as well.

All that God had made which that was very Good is suddenly corrupted by the sin of Adam. Now God is the source of all goodness, He is Holy and Righteous, this brings us to answer the question, of why the world must end. It has been corrupted and is not as the it should be.

It is easy for us to understand how sin has afflicted mankind, and we are used to it. Death has reigned over us since the time of Adam. It affected the entire world, and that just as man must be reduced to dust, that the world must be brought to an end. Peter says in his second epistle that even the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved. For Christ to bring an end to the corruption of sin that has infected all of creation through Adam, it must be all brought once again to nothing.

This is the magnitude of sin and how awful it was when Adam rejected God and corrupted the world, but we should not lose heart. For the same one through whom all things were made good, is the one who can make them good again. That is why God sent Christ into the world for our sake.

The only one who could accomplish the redemption of Creation and make all things good again is the very same thing by which all things were made good to begin with. It was by the Word that God created all things, and it was by the breath, the spirit of God that He gave life to mankind.

So the one who could make all things good again was that same Word who became flesh for our sake, who was anointed with the Holy Spirit, and gave us the Holy Spirit through Holy Baptism, and by His Word. So what the Word of God Made Flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord, did, is go down into the dust of death and buried in the earth for the sake of Mankind.

That is why we are so overjoyed at His Advent, that He came to us in Bethlehem, and why we look forward to the day that He comes again. For We can look at this world and see that it is not as it should be, the natural disasters, the famines, the floods, and then you look at the evils that man has perpetrated on their fellow man, but Jesus has come to make all things new.

This world must end, but that doesn’t mean that we are left without a home, or a place to call our own. Rather when Christ comes again in glory to take all those who belong to Him to be with Him, it will be in a place that is not plagued by the curse of Adam, but will have received the blessings that Christ won for us on Calvary.

This means we will no longer have to worry about suffering, pain, death, all the natural disasters that afflict us in this life, but we will be able to remain in God’s eternal Kingdom forever. That is a day to look forward to.

Now people often wonder how does this help me in everyday life? Well it takes a bit of the surprise out of the problems in this world and the decay that it goes through. Helps us focus on what is to come, we aren’t surprised that this world is full of tragedy and sorrows, it has been told to us in Holy Scripture, but we also have the comfort of knowing that this isn’t all there is, there is somethign better that does await us. We know that God keeps His promises for just a few verses before Adam’s curse, God promised to send a Savior, and so when Jesus promises to come again, we do not have to fear, but can lift up our head, and remember that this world is temporary.

So my brothers and sisters in Christ, that is why our series for Advent is about the End of this World, and to understand why this is a good thing, we must understand why it has to end. The creation has been corrupted, but when Christ comes He will make all things New. That is why we look forward to His Advent when finally all of the problems that belong to this world pass away, and we will with Him forever in paradise. I look forward to continuing this series with you as we learn about what has been promised through Jesus Christ Our Lord, In his name. Amen.