/sermon by Mike Enns (Germany)/
- (Greetings) -> to our guests the Americans
- I hope you will get used to this country soon - I know America is very different
-Did you know for example in Wisconcin it is illegal
to be served magarine in restaurants.
->it
may seem weird but humans made many different kinds of weird laws:
- In Sweden you are not allowed to paint your house without a painting
license
- Only electricians are allowed to change light bulbs in Australia
- In Bulgaria apparently you need to have a fire extinguisher in every
car.
- It’s very interesting what humans come up
with.
- the
American declaration of independency has 1,300 words
-> the
European regulations on the sale of a cabbage - 26,911 words
->
The ten commandments by the way had only 179 words
-You could almost say the fewer the words the more
important.
- Do you know these people who say that in the past
everything was better?
-> I don’t
think so……..well but sometimes they are right.
->
There was one place with only one law.
– it had 23 words by the way. If I counted right
Hebrew is not my
best subject.
-
That was the garden of
Eden and the law was -----(slide of
genesis 2, 16-17)
(16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may
freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely
die.”)
-
As you remember we are
doing a sermon serious. The gospel of Genesis and now we reached the garden of
Eden In Genesis Chapter 3
-
We want to read
together the Verses 1-6:………..
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which
the Lord God had
made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of
every tree of the garden’?”
2 And the woman said to the
serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but
of the fruit of the tree which is
in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you
touch it, lest you die.’”4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
-
So all we had were 23
Words of God and we still managed to break it.
->a Break with his commands and a break with him.
->We humans committed the first sin.
-I don’t know what picture you have of the Gospel?
But I know for many the old testament is a different closed of part of history
But isn’t it so much more than that? Isn’t the
reason why Jesus came to us, why he had to die for us. Why we needed his
sinless sacrifice right here? -The
sin which started everything.
It’s the beginning of the working of Jesus Christ
and God’s mercy…
-Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, "Think not that I
am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to
fulfil."
-> fulfil what was set in motion at this
very point.
Because that is what was needed to free us from the
consequences of this sin.
Because we
Humans pulled away so far from God at that day , that he had to reach out to us
by sending Jesus to bring us back.
-The price of that first sin is as heavy as the ones
today. It cost the Life of Jesus Christ
on the Cross
-in our stead he was tortured to death. –Executed as a criminal -humiliated and beaten.
Why was the necessary? Isn’t that question worth
riddling?....
I think the first 3 chapters of Genesis are very
important.
-
Trif talked already
about why we exist and what we gained in God and today is time to see what we
lose in sin.
Read verse
7-24
( Then the eyes of both of them were
opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves
together and made themselves coverings…………..)
-
I don’t know how you feel about this but That doesn’t
sound so good reading it
-
I
don’t think that was worth the effort of eating the fruit.
-
Like
in many sins regret comes later.
-
There
is all that hiding from God and then shifting the blame,…Getting cursed by God.
….Who’s fault was it?
-
Was
it Eves fault was deceived by Satan and who took the first bite?
-
Adam
because he heeded the voice of his wife and did not stop her?
-
Or
of the cunning serpent? Satan? -What
do you think?
The answer is simple. Everybody’s.
Romans 3 verse,23
for
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
It does not matter if you are rich
or poor, strong or weak, old or young, Christian or non-Christian
-
Even
the serpent got cursed for sinning against God.
-
So
now Just as we crawl through sin it has to crawl over the earth.
But how good is it that the gospel
doesn’t end there.
-
Verse24and
all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by
Christ Jesus.
What was started thousands of years
ago.
-even longer ago than we are away
from Jesus was brought to a close by him
-
Or
better to say an open end for us to join.
-
Because
in him we can find redemption
-
Redemption
for this first sin which still haunts humanity as well as the many we add
ourselves.
-
Jesus
Christ took them already to the grave with him 2000 years ago
-
So
it is only on us to accept it.
I know that there might be a great
many things holding us back from accepting
-So I want to remind you that today
we only looked at the starting line and the finishing line of the gospel.
-There is a lot more to be found on
the way.
-A german once said “Der Weg ist das Ziel” Пътуването е целта.
There is a lot of interesting
things to be discovered if you take the time
-So I want to encourage everyone to
read the bible.
-The value is unimaginable
Earlier I asked kind of a stupid
question but I think we need to look at it and draw out the results of our
action taken to learn from them.
I asked: was it worth it?
-That sounds like a bad question.
And it is in many ways but in others not I think.
- There
was a man who loved old books. He met an acquaintance who had just thrown away
a Bible that had been stored in the attic of his ancestral home for
generations.
-"I couldn't read it," the friend explained.
"Somebody named Guten-something had printed it."
-"Gutenberg!" the book lover exclaimed in
horror. "That Bible was one of the first books ever printed. Why, a copy
just sold for over two million dollars!"
- His friend was unimpressed. "Mine wouldn't have
brought a dollar. Some fellow named Martin Luther had scribbled all over it in
German."
Sometimes we have to try hard to
find the value of things.
Well Let’s see what we gained from
this choice Adam and Eve took.
I think this first sin brought us
that day what it still does today.
Or said the other way round we
still lose the same things we lost thousands of years ago in sin.
-
It separates us from
God.
-
It brings us shame -it hides us away from God. Not because he
can’t find us but because we don’t want to be found.
-
Nietsche said God is
dead and we have killed him
-
He calls for Adam not
because he doesn’t know where he is but because he wants him to come to him on
his own.
-
Once more and most of all
the sin brings us death just like God said in chapter 2 verse 17
-
As sad as it is. We
have all tasted this fruit. We are all sinners. And we will all find death.
è Or
so it was supposed to happen
-Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved
through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
The humans, adam and eve
had a choice and they choose to eat the fruit of death and that brought sin
over us till this day.
The Value of it is not in
there action but what we learn from it and if we don’t learn anything from it
would be a tragedy!
-
I always felt it was kind of
unfair. Why do we have to suffer for what they did?....
-
But I realized. They were given a
choice by God.
-
That is why the fruit has been
placed there in the beginning anyway.
-
And just as they do we have the
choice as well.
-
God has placed a fruit of us as
well. A fruit of life and not of death.
And he told us to eat it.
Romans 6,22-23 we read
But now having been set free
from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and
the end, everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
-
Just as adam and eve made choice
to eat the fruit.
-
Everbody today does as well. they don’t just have this choice but they make it.
-
Provided by jesus blood and God’s grace.
-
To eat it…. it is on us. -Amen
---
New Life Church Varna
October 9, 2016
