Know the Real Majesty, Tragedy, & Comedy of Your Human Life
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Dear Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
We have the character, and the setting, but now the plot, the action of the story of God, or your life and mine, history of this universe and world! This is the action and direction both before and after the great problem and conflict of this story. You may be ware of the Greeks grappling with the deep question s of life, and two types of story - tragedy and comedy. Shakespeare also divided his plays this way: Tragedy not just sad, but problem causes down fall of even the best yet flawed heroes, so tragedy most simply is a serious story with a sad ending. Comedy is not so much a funny story, as it is a more humorous story, usually more ordinary setting, with a happy ending, like a fairy tale. Shakespeare's greatest and most refined attempt of comedy - his last play - The Tempest… Stories told with gods and human and the world all in same circle, no distinct Creator above and beyond. but helpful categories. that have been applied to how the Revelation of God -to us - need to understand the tragedy of humankind, and the comedy how the happy ending, how solved in the Gospel. But unlike Shakespeare and the Greeks, the Biblical view point is not content to just be descriptive of tragedy in our world, or the happy ending that put a smile on our face. The tragedy is actually much deeper, and the comedy the solution much more wonderful. And there is much more movement from in the plot and part of that is because of the third category - where the Bible begins and ends even more fully - and that is majesty! Starting next Sunday night article 15-26 about great fall and how God in Christ by the Spirit at work redeeming it. Article 27-36 how we live as the church and what happens with the church to get to the. But this article 14 and the last article 37 are about the majesty of the beginning and even great majesty of the end. That give the action and estimation the plot of the whole story that the Bible begins and then ends with!
And so we are looking at not who is God, what is He like, nor what is this creation but now what happens with this God, what is He up to in Creation and what is His plan! What is man’s place in it!?
Key Truth: God must deliver us from the tragedy of death and the curse, by restoring us to His image, so we can live in His presence.
We can see the imprint of this majesty that we were initially created in, but needed to be confirmed in and now some how move to and even beyond in the very beginning.
A. We were Created for Majesty
Here too, just like creation of the universe ex nihilo by pure Word of God, like providence that supreme sovereign God upholds every creature and event, working out his plan, as Father! Here too we have an article of faith, that the creation of humanity was immediate and direct and in some ways very different than the rest of creation. We can prove that and some what similar for all living mammals including humans, we can analyze and make logical deductions about the amino acids, and matter we are made of. And the Bible says - ye mere creature, made from the dust of the earth. But Genesis is careful, even poetic in describing how different humanity is from the rest of creation.
Have you ever noticed: that in all the other creating of the first five days, we read “God said … and it was so.” But now we read that God actually formed Adam. Genesis 2:7
then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Do you understand that God formed you in the way he didn’t the marvelous animals of this planet. So that we can only say: Isaiah 64:8
But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
The majesty of God’s project is that we were made for a covenant bond with the Potter of our lives. But most incredibly the living and invisible God, breathes life int o us so that we have a living soul: Gen 2:7
then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
And here is the height of our glory in the creation: Genesis 1:26-27
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.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
We were made in the image of the invisible God And this alone is when God says, this creation is very good! The majesty of humanity and where this whole story is heading as you and I, set up on this earth a co-regents, agents of God reflecting God - that we would image and reflect the Persons, Character, of God and shape the creation so that His gracious, overflowing goodness rule - establish and grow and flourish in this world! And our Belgic confession from Scripture defines what imaging God is all about. Anticipating that we would fall from that task, that even being saved it would be difficult to regain this, it defines being made in the image of God with NT Scriptures.
The action at the core of the story of the world, is God re-making People in His Image. That’s were real majesty lies. Ephesians 4:24
and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Look at how Colossians 3:10 describes that image:
and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
This is how solid confessions summarize what being made in the image of God is all about - there is a goodness, a righteousness, a holiness, and knowledge of God and goodness - and what does that all add up to: God ... made and formed him in his image and likeness - good, just, and holy; able by his own will to conform in all things to the will of God. Belgic Confession Article 14 More broadly the image of God is about all humans even after the Fall being able to think, to be religious, to have moral agency, the ability to freely choose according to their nature, volition. We can never stop having that image of God, and we don’t stop being human because of the fall either.
But, and here is the big deal about majesty: but more narrowly imaging God is about that real knowing God, real holiness and happiness, that righteousness and justice - and it meant we were able to conform our own will with God’s will. Picture your life as a little canoe paddling in some direction, able to know and actually get into the current of God’s will in the ocean, and still paddling, swept into that and doing that flying - When Humans live day to day in God’s will, when they paddle with Him - eternal blessedness to praise and glory of God -
Our desires and ambition pure and upright and effective - This is how article 12 described it - God created this whole creation so it would serve man. But that is why so many abuse the creation, why they use this stuff selfish and hoard it, don’t steward it and really come up with creative and wonderful ways to make it shine and benefit themselves and others but just consume it. Article 12 says the whole creation serve man, that man might serve God! We need an upright heart, mind able to know spiritual things, a will upright and determined , we need affections that are pure - and that part of the image of God in us we lost in the fall.
But my point with majesty here is that the grandeur of humanity is as Augustine says, before the Fall we were able to sin; but also able not to sin - live perfectly reflecting God and as His covenant partner.
And that is the second thing we must understand about the majesty in which God created us:
B. Humans who fully bear the image of God are active covenant partners
Here you must see that God didn’t create a perfect world to stay the same forever and ever. Though the creation was perfect, God made it so that it would be heading places, and if we can speak that way to even greater and better perfection, confirmed perfection of willing and loving covenant partners.
That freedom, not just a free will, but the ability to freely choose to sin, or not to sin, to lovingly choose to partner with God, that was the height of humanity’s majesty.
This is what is meant by Adam transgressing the commandment of life. Hosea 6:7
But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.
Adam was to move from a period of probation where he had integrity of righteousness, into a new state of confirmation in righteousness, when by His obedience and choice, tested and repeated, we would attain not only life with God in the garden, but life with God forever, eternal life. Adam was able to keep that commandment that would give him ultimate eternal life, and would move the whole creation to a future fulness of glory. God equipped Adam to fulfill the task of imitating God - in order to enter His eternal Sabbath rest - Adam was to lead the whole human race in triumphant procession into confirmation of righteousness.
This is what the Bible calls Covenant God made with Adam in Hosea. Covenant agreement with the condition being Adam’s confirmed obedience not eat. And so as we will see the tragedy isn’t just that Ada,m committed a boo boo morally, that’s not the heart o f it. The tragedy is that as our profession f faith put it- he was separating Himself from God, from God who was His true life. He was saying I don’t want your future, or the future of this creation, I won’t be your covenant partner! It wasn’t that he didn’t have knowledge of God or the setup, But when he was in honour, he didn’t understand it, in the sense that He willfully chose to value being His own Master more than living with God as His Master and Provider.
So Eve was tempted, but Adam not tempted, acting as federal covenant head, Adam willfully broke this covenant of life - willfully wanting to take the place of God. This is the covenant of works, because it depended on Adams’ obedience, but is is also the covenant of life because his obedience would have brought eternal life!
We see therefore that God ordained not that law to be a stumbling-block in Adam’s way, but rather to be a staff to stay him from falling . . . He teacheth him what to do, that he may escape death and live in felicity and perfect happiness . . . He shewed him the tree as a sacrament or sign of that which he enjoined him by the giving of the law; to wit, that the tree might be a token to put him in memory that he ought to obey the Lord alone. 13
If Adam had confirmed his obedience not only would he have been given from the tree of life, but listen he had only received the breath e of physical life from God so far, and would have been given the breath of eternal life with the tree. That other kind of spiritual eternal life Adam would have earned. But listen carefully the covenant of works is not possible to be fulfilled by you or me any more, and yet God still makes a way for us to get not only the majesty Adam and Eve had in the beginning, but beyond it to the confirmed righteousness, to the spiritual and eternal life. But it will have to be by another fulfilling this covenant of works, and life that Adam was was in.
The covenant of work,life - promised eternal life based on obedience, and it threatened death, curse, eternal punishment if we don’t keep it. But God made another way - the covenant of grace shows us fulfilment in Christ of the righteousness that the law requires and the restoration in us of that righteousness by Christ’s Spirit. It promises eternal freely not to people who obey perfectly, but because of Christ to the who believe in and on Him. - Olivienus Commentary
My point here is that reason God entered into a covenant with Adam was to get His covenant partners to confirmed righteousness, to get you an me to eternal life. And Adam in sinning says, not what I want. Augustine said of our creation that Humanity's created as a kind of mean or average between the animals and the angels, between the bestial and the angelic. And the movement that God wants, the direction with Adama and Eve is that if they remain in subjection, obedience, in covenant partnership to their Creator as their rightful Lord, keeping His will - they could pass into the company of angels and obtain with out death - blessed and endless immortality. And we need to know the majesty of our position and God’s intent for the direction of our lives, and taking creation and every part of our lives in that direction, if we are to understand that tragedy and the salvation that God works after that tragedy.
Much of our world culture says we are a children of nature and not the children of God. They say our destiny is just the product of natural forces, There is nothing to mark our coming and going, our existence is just about seeking our comfort and status. There is no real meaning to life. It is no wonder that many live pessimistic and cynical lives, with much anxiety and depression. We must be clear that our dignity and our destiny, our majesty can only be found in our covenant relationship with God!
C. Our Tragedy isn’t Just Sin & Physical Death - But the Curse of God & Spiritual Separation
While the next article will deal with the consequences of original sin, here we must see the bad news of the fall, into order to see the gospel of sin. Some naively believe in the goodness of our fallen humanity. But the TV, news, our movies actually in portraying what people actually do confirm the Bible’s prognosis of the human problem.
It is much worse than just our own particular little sins, whether serious or seemingly trivial. It is much more serious than life on earth for each of us only lasts a short number of years and then its over. The problem the tragedy of every human life is at the root of our lives, not just a couple bad fruits. It is what has happens to our human nature - it is has become under God’s curse on sin and our choice to live without him - guilty, and worse corrupted in every part.
For sure, none of us as bad as we could be, and common grace and those small vestiges of God’s image in us, means never as bad as we could become, but at the root is a corruption in everyone of us, forfeiting those original gifts , there is a blindness of mind, horrible darkness, vanity, and perverseness of judgment. That’s why we come wicked, rebellious stubborn in our heart and will and impure in our passions!
We become the opposite of truly holy and happy, of having righteousness and holiness. We have become slaves to sin, that dominion to Satan, instead of God and His Will is the heart of the problem .
The tragedy is we can no longer chose for God sand his will and live for his glory. The loss ability to turn to God , doesn't mean incapable of relatively good things, but incapable of truly good things unto God. We actively and knowledgeably reject God, and listen more to the devil’s will than God. Yes, we still have a free will and God coerces no one, but our free will always choosing according to its nature, fallen nature, its out of wack affections
This is what Calvinism means by total depravity - every part of our nature tainted and twisted by sin, God’s image the specific part, shattered and besmeared. Isaiah 59:2
but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
There is corruption in every part of our nature: Romans 3:10-18 bodily and spiritual death, darkness of our understanding.
The tragedy is we no longer have a nature that can freely choose God , or His gospel, his will, His word, like Adam was in the garden! That is gone, gone gone.
Remember what the greatest majesty of being made in God’s image was about - that relationships of living as a covenant partner with God. What is the greatest tragedy that sin brings about? Listen to how RCA Janssen, Allan puts it: “Sin” is an article of faith. It is not about immorality as such, about not being good. In includes that, but by itself it would be about morality. Sin is about our relation—or rather refusal to live in the relation—with God.
Look at how the now fallen nature of humanity looks Ephesians 2:1-2
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
That’s what the fall has done to us!
So does the Bible describe the whole human race, unless in Christ?
1. Man is but a slave to sin (John 8: 34). 2. [Man] can receive nothing, except it has been given him from heaven (John 3: 27). 3. No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him (John 6: 44). 4. The mind of the flesh is enmity against God (Romans 8: 7) 5. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2: 14). 6. We are not sufficient of ourselves to account anything as of ourselves, but that our sufficiency is of God (2 Corinthians 3: 5). 7. God works in us both to will and to work, for his good pleasure (Philippians 2: 13). 8. Apart from me you can do nothing (John 15: 5).
Now does that sound like fallen men as we born into this world, are in the same position as Adama and Eve, kind of neutrals, able to to obey God’s law and do the will of God in order to save themselves? That was Pelagius and Arminius’ position.but not the Bible’s. We need a regeneration , a new birth, the gift of the Spirit to change and transform our nature to get bcak to that place where we nolonger have to sin. IT’s only by the grace of the Spirit that we are willing and able to return to God.
And that brings us to the glorious gospel, the good news of the comedy of the gospel.
D. Our Comedy is the Gospel by Grace through Faith, and not Works!
We and our neighbors are living in a world where so often - life is seen as a post modern movie like Pulp Fiction - there is no real redemption, there is no right or wrong, not even good and evil, and there is no happy ending. It’s just a story. Its like the original sit com, the Greek comedies at first just poking satirical fun at politicians - light matter that nothing really matters. Endless seasons of trivial shows - may capture the meaningless of human existence but that’s about it.
But isn’t there a huge part of us that loves a Walt Disney ending. Isn’t that one thing that Hollywood got right - happily ever after. Not the way, the solution that brought it about. This world, our neighbors and our friends, our families, we need to be reminded that we live in a universe that not only has meaning and glorious purpose, so glorious devote your llfe to that meaning and the author of it. But that he orchestrates a happily ever after and that is good. But we need to be able too testify how that is in and only through Jesus and the covenant of grace that he confirmed, fulfilled, and offers to us!
And that is why we read from 1 Cor 15. Adam could gotten that eternal life for our human race, could have lived as a covenant partner. B But that route is now closed from us and God has graciously set up another covenant, not by works, but by grace. It’s condition is by faith not works. Faith in the second Adam. How does it work?
Look at Titus 3:5
he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
And the goal isn’t just to save you from physical death, although Christ alone can do that. Nor to merely help you live a moral life. The goal is the majesty that Adam and Eve lived in at the beginning, Christ will live that kind of life on your behalf, he will will win the reward of that life, he will pay the penalty for our failure and then impute not only His record to save us from punishment, but also IMPART His very life and His Spirit upon us now in part; and fully in heaven. Why? So that we can really live as God’s covenant partners in this creation. And look what we’ll experience when the comedy, the fairy tell ending of life in Christ happens: Phil 2:13
for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
And when that happens to you in Christ, you are no longer just a living being, with earthly life like the first Adam. But because the last Adam, Jesus Christ, became a life-giving spirit. Look at the mystery 1 Cor 15:49
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
You understand how Jesus is the image of God eternally, do you understand how He perfectly bore that image in our humanity? 2 Cor 4:4
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Col 1:15
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
Do understand the comedy of the gospel, the only happy ending to your life and mine can be to regain that full image in Christ:
Romans 8:29
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Ephesians 4:24
and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Col 3:10
and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
There are only ultimate two covenants at the bottom of human life, one is the covenant of works , the command of life - that way of relating to God now can only bring death, separation, bondage of free will to a nurture enslaved in sin that taints every thing. And there is the covenant of grace in Jesus Christ, the way of faith in Him that brings us back into fellowship with God through forgiveness and restores our inner nature, our image to shine with His glory. To give back all those gifts we wasted - goodness, righteousness, holiness and real knowing of God and his ways.!
Our testimony to each other and our neighbours - cannot only be to the living God and His character, to his creation and providence, but we need to testify to how God relates to us. We’ve got to show the problems of living guilty, broken and lost in covenant of works and the futility and hopeless ness of that, and we need to show the hope, the comfort , the true freedom of living in the covenant of Grace. This is plot the direction, the action of God in this world.