Life and Death After The Fall 2
Zoomerang: Returning to the Value of Life • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
Lesson Two: The Beauty of God’s Life and the Ugliness of Death
Pleasantville Movie Premise
Disobedience, going against the grain created color and beauty to world
A person unhappy in her marriage?
The happiest, most filled life the person can do is to divorce because that is what makes them feel good
A women who is petrified of having a baby after finding out she is pregnant
The standard is what makes this person happy, and right now the baby stands in the way
A person does not like the category that his or her sex at birth puts them in?
When you are tempted to sin, what is dominant in your mind in the temptation?
If it is to do what feels good in the moment, you are believing this lie of what true life is
Since the fall of man, life and death has been turned on its head: life is according to your standard
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
What is evil?
25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
Evil is, not doing what God has commanded (obedience) but doing what is right in your own eyes
What is right in our own eyes? Is it just sometimes contrary to God’s law?
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Overall Recap
Life is given by God both physically and spiritually
Spiritually, to obey God a(from the heart, i.e. not legalism)
Death came upon Adam and his descendants when he disobeyed
And with the result that all mankind are dead spiritually in which they follow their desires that are contrary to obedience to God
The Bible paints such death as being enslaved to sin, disobedience, death
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Death is what Paul says the Christian needs to come out of here: forced obedience to passions, presenting members to sin, sin having dominion over us
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
Instead of the law arousing us to life, it arouses our flesh who is enslaved to sin to sin, and produces death
Physical death is just a graphic picture of spiritual death
What is is like to live enslaved to your own passions and sin?
Go get a couple of Greg’s dead hogs and keep them as pets in your house: you soon won’t be able to stand it and have to get rid of it
And that, by the way, is exactly how God’s judgement on sin is
And someone is dead when they prefer the smell of dead hog rather than the smell of fresh air in their home
Thus, to the one in Adam, life and death spiritually becomes flipped: what is true life is death to them, what is true death is life to them
They are enslaved to their contrary desires that is for disobedience, that is for death
of course Satan sets it up as life though, he is truly the father of lies
And so it produces death on all fronts (physically and spiritually)
Physical death follows the reality of spiritual death
Hard marriage: If spiritually dead you will be inclined to give the marriage the death penalty for a deceptive happiness—instead of knowing what God commands and doing it
Unplanned pregnancy—if you don’t start with God’s commands against murder you will be more inclined to death
Falling birthrates in western world: turns out when pleasure is god and the aim having kids is put on the back burner
Dead relationships (friends, parent-children) When two people are following their own passions and desires, death results in relationships
SO the answer is to deny the flesh of death, and keep the law of God in obedience for life
Above was antinomianism,
8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
But legalism is just as bad
Taking God’s standard and trying to achieve life by doing it
God is a God of revelation
And man has used his special revelation in bad ways
As God revealed himself to Israel in the Old Testament, he revealed more fully his law
how to obey him
1 Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 2 Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.
4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.
And what happened is some people with the knowledge of God’s law, decided that life is found in working to keep that law
There’s a sense in which it makes sense
If life is found in obedience to God
And if he has made his law known in special revelation
We should take that law, and try our best to keep it to enjoy life
Why is that bad?
Because our heart is dead in Adam
9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” 14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 in their paths are ruin and misery, 17 and the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
God’s law given to people with a living heart (spiritually) produces life
God’s law given to people with a heart of stone produces more condemnation and death
So, we must look at our main statement against and add to it
Life is obedience to God’s command....from the heart (desires, pleasures)
How does one obey God’s commands....from the heart?
Example of living in righteousness as opposed to death and disobedience
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Life in the new way of the Spirit as opposed to the death of the old way of law
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
Bear fruit for God is opposite to bear fruit for death, thus the former is life
The law aroused the flesh for death and the Spirit arouses us to life
Life is obedience from the heart (desires)
We still obey even when we desire sin with the hope that God changes hearts