Son of God
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Big idea:
The first human (adam) represented the human race and chose sin and death for us. The second adam, Christ Jesus, represented the human race and gave us life.
Introduction to The Story
Introduction to The Story
This year we’re going to be focusing a lot of attention on discipleship. The basic requirement of a disciple of Jesus is to follow Him. Revelation 14:1-6 describes a group of people who follow Jesus wherever He goes. They are His disciples, and you can be one of those people. Our goal this year is to cultivate a culture of nurturing disciples of Jesus. Check out the newsletter for a few ideas on how we’re going to pursue that.
One of the key parts of this discipleship journey is to spend time in God’s Word. That’s why I’ve designed a year-long series of sermons that take us through the bible. I’m calling it, “The Story.” Each sermon will explore the story of one of Jesus’ ancestors, until we get to Jesus himself. You can trace the line from Adam to Jesus in the last part of Luke 3.
Along with this sermon series, I’d like you to read through the Bible with me. If you’ve got another devotional journey you’re on, that’s fine, but if you’re not regularly spending time in the Bible or you’re nearing the end of your last devotional plan, then why not join me as we read through the Bible this year?
There are three different Bible reading plans at the welcome desk in the lobby. One is a book-by-book plan that goes from Genesis to Revelation. The other is a Chronological plan that tells the stories in the order they happened rather than the order they were collected in the Bible. The third plan is a simplified plan that focuses on the major stories of the Bible with only 160 or so readings. Choose the last plan if reading the whole Bible feels overwhelming, or if you’d like to read through the Bible with your kids but want to skip some of the tedious details.
As you read through the Bible you’re likely to have questions; maybe even a few doubts. You may run across something that seems contradictory to something you already read. Keep a notebook nearby and write down your questions, then join me on Wednesday evenings at 6 pm for a Bible Q&A. You’ll be able to ask any question you have about the Bible, the church, or Christian life. You don’t even have to be reading the same section of the Bible as everyone else, just bring your questions and we’ll explore the Bible’s answers together.
Now lets dive into our first story. We’ll begin at the very beginning of Jesus’ family tree with Adam, the son of God.
Illustration: Representative Government
Illustration: Representative Government
Governments have long had representatives of the people who stand before a king, or a body of government to express the needs, desires, and troubles of the people. Not all governments have cared very much about that representation.
One of the issues that led to the political separation of the United States from British rule was that our people were seeing trade laws passed and taxes levied on them with no representation in the halls of power. Taxation without representation was one of influences that led to the structure of our representative government. Theoretically, there is no part of our country that is left without representation in our government — except for the District of Columbia and a few islands, but that’s another story for another time.
The United States government has two legislative bodies that work together to make laws for our country: the Senate and the House of Representatives. More than any other body in government, the House of Representatives is designed to represent the people of the nation. The entire country is divided into hundreds of congressional districts. Each district gets to vote for their own representative.
While the process is flawed, the goal is that through your representative your voice is heard in the highest seats of power in our nation, and your vote is cast for every law that our country considers.
Some would suggest that the ideal government would be where we each represent ourselves—a total democracy; one in which each person would get an equal vote on every issue and law, and no law would pass without unanimous agreement. But even a child can recognize that you’ll never get everyone to agree on everything. And the logistical nightmare of getting everyone in the nation vote on every single issue that comes us would make a total democracy a completely impossible.
So, instead, we find people who share much of our philosophy on life, and who hopefully have integrity and the skills of diplomacy, and we ask them to represent us. You tell your representative what you want, and they do their best to try to make your voice heard in their proposals and their votes.
You are in the legislature through your representative. You are making laws and sharing your philosophy of government through your representative.
The First Man
The First Man
Let’s turn to the first words of the Bible in Genesis 1 and discover that the Bible begins with a representative government of sorts.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
God is the authority—the governmental head of our world. He is the Creator.
The next verses describe what must have been an incredible scene as day after day God spoke and stuff that had never existed before came into being. “Let there be...” was all God needed to say and suddenly stars and light and planets and dirt and air and plants and animals appeared. And then, on the 6th day, God knelt down on the dirt he had created, gathered it together and designed the form of a human and then breathed into it His own breath of life.
Genesis 2:7 (NIV)
and the man became a living being.
That word, “Man” is important for us to stop and consider.
The Hebrew word for man is adam (אָדָם), which is another way of saying, “human.” While this word can mean “male human,” in many places, and especially in this original context it just means “human.” At the time God created the first human there weren’t any females to compare with; there was just the one. We call him “Adam” but if the original human had the name Adam it was just because he was the first of us all. Every person in this world could technically be called “adam” in Hebrew, because we’re all human.
The Hebrew word for “man” or “mankind” is used 585 times in the Old Testament, but only 10 times is it used to name a person. Every other time it’s just talking about humans in general.
What I’m telling you is extremely important. Adam is the first adam, the first human. And as the first human he had the dignified responsibility of standing before God as the representative for all humanity. There was no other human on earth, and yet all humanity existed in Adam at the moment he took his first breath.
If the first human had continued to live without rebellion, then he would have continued to represent all of humanity even to this day.
Son of God
Son of God
The first man was not born from a woman, he was fashioned by the creator’s own hands. And because of that he was the son of God. Not the son of a woman—the son of God.
You may be most familiar with this phrase, “son of God,” in reference to Jesus. We’re going to get there soon, but I want to make sure you understand why we call Jesus the “son of God,” and it starts with the story of the first human, Adam.
Turn to Luke chapter 3 and we’re going to read verse 38. The last part of this chapter tells the family tree of Jesus and it ends with Adam. Let’s read it:
the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
“The son of God” is a special phrase.
Notice what God said when He created Adam:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
In creating the first man God made a representative that went both directions. Adam was a representative of humanity before God, and a representative of God before humanity.
There are two examples in the Old Testament of this intermediary role of a son of God:
In Genesis 6 the Bible says that the “sons of God” saw the “daughters of men” and thought they were beautiful, so they married them. In this situation the phrase, “sons of God,” is used to describe the children of godly humans who ended up marrying ungodly people. Eventually these unions led to the terrible human condition that led to the flood—the thoughts of humanity’s hearts were only evil continually. No one followed God except Moses and his family. The sons of God had failed to honor God, and instead abandoned God for idolatry and the worship of self. In this case the “sons of God” didn’t fulfill their role as representatives of the Creator.
In Job 1:6 we’re told about a council meeting where the “sons of God” came to present themselves to the Lord, and Satan also came. Like Adam who represented the human race there seems to have been a council of representatives from all the created beings. Because Adam surrendered his will to Satan, Satan thought of himself as the new representative of the human race and so he showed up at this meeting of the representative sons of God.
Unfortunately, the first man failed in his role as the representative of God, and he failed in his role as the representative of humanity. Notice that in 1 Timothy Paul hints that Adam’s choice to eat from the tree was not out of ignorance or deception:
For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
Eve might have been tricked by Satan, but Adam wasn’t. Adam knew exactly what Hew as doing. He CHOSE to disobey and turn the whole course of humanity towards submission to Satan instead of God. If only you and I could have called out to Adam from the future, “DON’T DO IT, ADAM! You’re representing us and we don’t want you to vote that way.” But that’s not how time works. Our choices impact our children and our grandchildren long before they have a choice in the matter and long after we are gone. And that’s what happened with Adam; his choice has impacted all of humanity for all time.
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.
Adam’s disobedience made us all subjects of sin. Thanks a lot Adam!
But look at the second half of that verse: there’s another man, another Adam, another representative of the human race, and this is one that actually did obey and through His obedience we can be made righteous.
Remember, we’re talking about representatives. This verse isn’t talking about just another human, but a representative human.
How is it that there could be another representative? In a very physical sense, we were all “in” Adam when he sinned. We were inside Adam because it was through Adam’s sperm that every one of us came into existence.
We don’t get to vote on our representative. We were born as Adam’s children. His legacy is passed down to us whether we like it or not. So how do we get another representative? How is there another Adam?
It’s all in that phrase, “son of God.” Look at the story of Jesus’ conception in Luke 1:35:
And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
Can you see it?
Remember, Adam wasn’t born of a woman, he was fashioned by God’s own hands. And so Luke calls him the son of God. And the angel says that Jesus, while born of a woman and fully in the line of humanity with every one of us, was also conceived by the Holy Spirit and therefore also the “son of God.” John tells us that Jesus was not only “conceived by the spirit” but He was also with the Father before anything was created and that Jesus himself created everything in the universe:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Remember, Adam held two representative roles: the representative of God to all of humanity as He was created in God’s image, and the representative of humanity before God as he was the source of all humanity to come after him. He failed to represent both God and humanity which led to sin and death being passed down to all of us.
We needed a new representative. No one could step up from the human race because we were all “in” Adam when he disobeyed. So if you can’t get a new original representative from Adam’s children, then you need to go the other direction for a representative—Adam’s father. That’s why what John says about Jesus is so groundbreaking. He says that Jesus was Adam’s creator—the Father of Adam.
Jesus was born a human so that He is fully one of us, but at the same time He’s the Creator who made Adam, and therefore, as one of us, and yet the Father of us all, Jesus can be a second representative of the human race—the second Adam.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
I love how Paul says “the last Adam” when he talks about Jesus as the life-giver. Jesus isn’t just the 2nd Adam as if there might need to be a 3rd or a 4th. Jesus is the last Adam because He succeeded where Adam failed. He obeyed where Adam disobeyed. He brought life to humanity where Adam brought death.
Choosing your Representative
Choosing your Representative
You are born a son or daughter of the first human. There is no escaping your lineage. The first Adam is your default representative and you are doomed because of it. In Adam you rejected God, ate the fruit and were kicked out of the Lord’s presence.
But there is this new representative that promises life. If you could only be in his lineage instead of the first Adam’s then in Him you would have obeyed all of God’s law. In Him you would have paid the penalty for sin. In Him you would be resurrected from the dead, and in Him you would be sitting in the highest seats of power in the universe—next to the throne of God.
Which sounds better to you? Which representative would you rather have? The failed representative who has only given you death, or the one who has the power to give you life?
Of course, we want Jesus to be our representative, but we have this little problem of lineage. We can’t choose who brought us into this world. We are all “sold under sin” before we were even born. How is it then that we can have a choice?
Turn to John 3 and find out.
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Here’s the secret. You need a new birth so that you can be a child of Jesus—the life-giving spirit. And how does that work?
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Let’s break this down. First Jesus points out to Nicodemus that He alone will represent us before the throne of God. That’s what he means when he says “no one ascended to heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” I love how Jesus identifies himself with us—he’s our representative to the government of the universe.
Then, Jesus points out that He is the representative of God when he says, “as moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. But it’s the next phrase that we need to pay attention to, “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” The key is not a physical rebirth to a new father, but a simple transaction of faith.
What are we suppose to believe in?
That God sent “his only son.” That’s an important phrase. The “son of God” is the representative of the human race. Our first representative got us in a world of trouble so, God sent us a new representative, a new son of God. He loved us so much that He started over.
Review and Herald (December 15, 1896: The Importance of Obedience)
Christ, the second Adam, came to a world polluted and marred, to live a life of perfect obedience. ...Christ came to stand on the field of battle in warfare against all the satanic forces. By representing in his life the character of God, he sought to win man back to his allegiance. ...Clothing his divinity with humanity, that he might associate with fallen humanity, he sought to regain for man that which, by disobedience, Adam had lost for himself and for the world. In his own character he displayed to the world the character of God. He pleased not himself, but went about doing good. His whole history, for more than thirty years, was one of pure, disinterested benevolence. By his words, his influence, and his example, he made men feel that it was possible for them to return to their loyalty and be reinstated in God’s favor.
This second and last “Son of God” was lifted up on the cross so that all who turn from Adam and all the sin he introduced and believe in Jesus can be counted as dead to their sins and born again as children of God.
As soon as you acknowledge Him as your savior and recognize Him as your representative head, then His redemption, His adoption of you is completed. Since He’s our Father, His adoption is just getting us back because we are His children by creation. But he’s not going to force your allegiance. He simple lifts Himself up in service and sacrifice and invites you to believe.
In his letter to the Colossians Paul puts our salvation firmly in the hands of our representative:
For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.
Acts 17:28 (ESV)
for
“ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
… “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Appeal
Appeal
The question that you have to ask yourself is: do you believe that Jesus came to be your representative? Do you believe He lived a righteous life and died the death of judgment for sin, and that he was raised from the dead to sit in the throne of the government of the universe? If you do, then you believe the Gospel story, and Jesus promises you that you are now His child and in Him you have life.
Our representatives on earth are always messing things up by dirty dealing. They fail to listen to us or they listen to the vocal minority. They play politics, and they vote for things that we would see as reprehensible. In short, our representatives are sinful humans. But Jesus promises that He has never messed up on a case. And Paul promises this:
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
If you believe in Jesus and rest in Him then your salvation is a done deal. He’s not going to mess this up.
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Please stand with me as we sing a hymn of response:
I will sing of my redeemer, hymn 343