Hear the word of the Lord from Romans, chapter 5. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, or sin was indeed in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass, where if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. Whereas by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. Now, the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus ends the reading of one of the most theological and frankly difficult passages in the Bible, and that's why I'm going to take a break from Romans for a while.
In his great, just excellent book, what's so amazing about grace. Philip Yancy talks about a family, and they grew up in Chicago and in the kind of tenement poor housing, and he tells a story of Daisy. When Daisy was a young girl, her father was a very mean drunk. He would abuse her and the entire family. She would sometimes be cowering in a corner watching her father abuse her mom or the other siblings. And one day, the father came home and announced to everyone that he wanted his wife out of the house by noon, and her children gathered around her and clung to her scourge and cried for her not to go, but he would have no mercy and he forced her out of the house, and she left, and Daisy would never see her again, though some of the children would eventually go to live with her. It was Daisy's job to take care of her dad in his older years, and then finally, she moved out, and her dad bottomed out and wandered into a Salvation Army one night for a free meal, but before he could get the free meal, he had to listen to a sermon, and when this preacher asked who wants to come and give their life to Christ, he stumbled up to the front, and to everybody's amazement. He actually was converted, and his life was different after that point. And slowly, but surely, he went and visited every one of his children and asked their forgiveness,
and he received the forgiveness from every one of his children except one. Daisy wouldn't hear of it, and she never saw him another day, even though he died, and her sister's house just down the road, she never laid eyes on him again for the rest of his life. When Daisy had children of her own, she vowed that she would be different from her father, and she never drank a drink, a drop of alcohol, and yet this bitterness, this hardness, was very much in her, and as her children grew up and got older and became teenagers, she would just lay on the couch and scream at them and put an ice pack on her head and she'd yell at them to be quiet.
Her daughter Margaret took that yelling, and Daisy would say, I don't even know why you're here. Why don't you just leave? So one day Margaret left. Margaret would come to her mom and apologize for the things she had done wrong, and Daisy's answer would always be, you are not really sorry. If you were really sorry, you would have never done this in the first place.
Margaret received no forgiveness, and she was unable to give any forgiveness when she grew up and had her own children, her oldest son was named Michael, and Margaret would hear her own mother's voice in her voice as she would yell at her children, and Michael, as he grew up, became a rebellious teenager, and Margaret would look at him and say, I don't understand why the Lord has punished me by giving me a son like you, even though she never mischurched a single Sunday. She would use the Bible to beat her children up, and she would tell her son that I wish God would give me relief by just taking you away. Phillipianci knew Margaret and would say to her, you really don't mean that you wish your own son was dead, and Margaret just wouldn't respond. Phillip would say, what about the parable, the prodigal son, and the father, so graciously welcomed his son, and forgave his son, and she said, the point of that parable is that we're all free, have free will. And my son should repent of his sins just like the prodigal son did of his. Her son received no grace and gave no grace. He grew up, moved out to Hawaii, was married three times, and was on the phone with Phillipianci one night talking, he mentioned having seen Sue and Sue was his third wife, and Phillip said, oh, I didn't realize that you and Sue were still together, and he said, oh, we're not still together, we're going through the divorce. I hope to never see her again. The exact same words that were his mother's last words to him. I hope I never see you again. Generation after generation of bitterness and ungrace, like a spiritual defect encoded in the family DNA, mercilessness, bitterness, it's passed on in an unbroken chain. It is almost an absolute rule, and you know it. The trajectory of your life has been set for you by representatives, by other people that you did not choose. The trajectory of your life has been set, and unless something enormous happens, unless something radical happens, that trajectory that was set by people that you don't know and you didn't pick will determine your destiny. You know that politically, right? Most of us are the political children of George Washington. George Washington spent the winter in Valley Forge and decided to cross the Delaware on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve, pardon my history, bluff, wonder, and surprised the British soldiers when they were celebrating and wanted decisive victory. And as a result of his decisive victory, we have grown up in democracy and freedom and things that we did, nothing to earn, we did not whisper in his ear, hey, let's cross the Delaware. We had nothing to do with it, but it has set the course for our lives. In 1919, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned from Germany to Russia and led a different kind of revolution. And as he led the Bolshevik Revolution, he took away all the free property and the free press and all those things away from the people of Russia and set a course for that nation, a course of no freedom, a course of economic, whether it be no economic stimulus. Of course, it would lead them to the tyrannies of Stalin and the leaders that would come after him. And the people living today are still in Russia are still very much under that shadow, even though they did nothing to choose it. You know that we have these representatives who make decisions for us and somehow because we are associated with them, they affect us. And that's what God is talking about here, that is the way he deals with us, he deals with his people through representatives. And this text teaches us that we have one of two primary representatives. Now, let me throw out a few long words. This is what theologians call federal theology, right? Federalism, we have a head, we have a representative. It's also called covenant theology because God deals with these representatives through covenants. And the two primary ones are Adam, the first man who was the like the one who was to come and Jesus, the second man, the second Adam. With the Adam God created God entered into a covenant of works, a covenant of life, or he would reward him with life upon the condition of perfect obedience. With Jesus God entered into a covenant of grace, where upon the condition of his obedience, all who are in him would be delivered out of their sin and misery and into a life of redemption and grace and eternal life. And just as God has always dealt with his people through these representatives, these are the two primary ones. There are other places in the Bible where God deals with representatives. You see it all through the Bible. And Deuteronomy 7, God is talking to Israel and he says, look, don't get cocky. Yes, I've brought you out of Egypt. Yes, I've crushed Egypt for you. And that's going to make you kind of cocky. And you're going to think, we're special. But you need to ask yourself, why are we special? Is it because we were the biggest nation? No, you were the smallest. Is it because we were the most obedient nation? No, you were stiff-necked and rebellious. He loves that phrase. Then why has God brought you out of Egypt? Because of the promise I made to your father, Abraham, 800 years ago. God deals with these promises, with these representatives, and the children of these representatives, or see the blessings that they did nothing to earn. And the ultimate first representative was Adam. God created Adam innocent and free. All Adam had to do to be righteous, to always do the right thing. All Adam had to do to always be happy was do what come naturally to him. Just like a bird flies south for the winter, Adam was designed to do right. And God gave him one law, one law. Obey me about this tree, the tree of good and evil. If you obey me about this tree, that will remind you that you live under me. You live under me. And you were happy that Adam didn't want to live under God. Eve saw that this tree was desirable, it was desirable to be like God. And so they both ate and they sinned. And in doing that, they established their independence away from God. They declared independence. Now they wanted to be independent of his rules, right? They didn't really want all the things that came with that. They didn't want, they didn't really think that, think it out, right? They didn't think, okay, if I'm independent of God, God is the only source of life. Therefore, I'll be independent of life, which means I'll have death. God is the source of every good and perfect gift. He's the source of freedom. Therefore, being independent of him leads to slavery. It's kind of like running away from home. You remember when you're like six, seven years old, you boys all especially. You all had a day when you ran away from home. I was talking to one of my kids about it. And he ran away, you know, it was pretty obvious that he was running away. And we weren't too worried about it. And so he went out, he actually got to the very furthest edge of our neighborhood. There's, we're on the walking trail. The walking trail comes under the underpass. And that's kind of the limits. And he came back and I realized he was back that night. And I said, so I thought you were running away. And he said, yeah, but I got hungry. And you know, I wanted to run away from home, but I didn't want to run away from lunch. You know, so I came back and you know, he realized that running away from me was also running away from like food, shelter, and love. And so you know, you don't want to lose it all. And but Adam didn't make that he wasn't that smart. He wasn't as smart as a six year old. And he established his independence. And therefore everybody who's descended from him by ordinary generation, everybody who's a descendant of Adam, send in him. He was our representative. He was the perfect representative. He did what we would have done. And when he sent, we send. And when he fell, we fell. And when he underwent the punishment of death, death is reigned. And as a result of that, our natural state is one of sin rebellion of saying, I will decide for myself what is right or wrong. I will decide for myself who I am and what I am. And how's that working out for you? Whenever you've hardened your heart and you said, I'm going to decide for myself. How's that working? Flannery O'Connor says, the difference between a Christian writer and a non-Christian writer is very simple. The non-Christian writer finds freedom in getting as far away from God as possible. And the Christian writer finds freedom in submitting to his rules. And that's true. We realize that that what we thought was going to bring us freedom is brought as slavery and sickness and death and hardship and heartbreak after heartbreak. And that is what the West-Mister Confession describes is our estate of sin and misery. That's the Adam's covenant. The covenant we were born into, the covenant of getting what we deserve. But there's another covenant, Paul tells us. There's the covenant of grace that leads to righteousness. There's the fatherhood of Jesus, the headship of Jesus. God sent forth Jesus as the second man. And he says, in verses 15 through 17, if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. He sent forth Jesus as the second Adam. When Adam and Eve sinned, God came to them in the garden and he gave the first prophecy and he said something weird. He said to Eve, you will have a seed who will come after you who will crush the head of Satan. What's weird about that? Did you see it? Did you hear it? Women don't have seed. In the metaphor that we're using here, men produce the seed and women or the fertile ground. You get that. We don't have to go into biology. Okay. So what would it mean? What would it mean to be the seed of Eve? It would have to mean a virgin birth, a seed of a woman who's not a descendant of Adam. Therefore, did not have Adam working on his behalf. Adam was not his representative. He was born without sin and he begins his ministry and has the Holy Spirit come down upon him and at the beginning of his ministry, the Holy Spirit cast him out into the wilderness where he's tempted by Satan and you know what Satan tempted him to do? What did Satan tempt Eve to do? He said to Eve, God doesn't know that if you eat this fruit, you'll be like him. Eve, don't be a human. Be like God. He came to Jesus and said, if you're hungry, turn these stones to bread. What's he asked him to do? Be like God. Don't be a human. Cheat. Use your deity. But Jesus refused to use his deity. He refused to cast himself down from the temple. He refused to take a position of glory. He refused to look like God. Eve and Adam sinned because they wanted to be like God but Jesus was obedient because he refused to be anything but a man and as a man, he was obedient even all the way to the point where he was in another garden and God came to him and said, now you have to obey me about the tree. I want you to go on this tree and die and be cursed by me because Jesus knew the law that cursed was anyone who was hung on a tree and Jesus pled with him. Please don't make me do that. Don't make me undergo your curse. Please, is there any other way? Can you not take this cup away? God said no, obey me. And Jesus said, not my will, but your will be done. And he obeyed God about the tree and he hung on the tree and he took the wrath of God for us. He drank the cup of wrath that we deserve. He died the death that we deserve and his reward for his obedience was life. He was brought back from the dead. He was given life that was abundant and significant and eternal
and that is the life for us. That's the life that Paul talks about in verse 10 where he says, for while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled. Shall we be saved by his life? He brings us life. Everyone who's under him, everyone who has him for a father lives life with freedom and joy. He has Paul to describe it. He says in verse 11, more than that, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We rejoice. I was listening to R.C. Sproul yesterday and he said, the kingdom of God has no place for sour places. The life of a Christian is a life of joy, of celebration, of freedom. We have life. We're not slaves. We're not living unto death. What does that mean? It means that our future is set by representatives we don't even know unless something radical happens to you. Earlier I used the illustration of being a political descendant of either George Washington or Lenin. Sometimes things change, don't they? Sometimes things change just a little bit. In the early 1990s, a girl was born in Siberia. Under the rule of Lenin with no freedom with no parents in an orphanage and two parents who were now in this church went over there and got her and adopted her and her family and brought her to the United States where she would have a life of freedom. That's the radical change that could happen to you. That's the radical change of changing fathers of being taken out from under the covenant with Adam out from under this life of following your instincts and doing what seems right to you and having it break your heart time and again. Sometimes I have to just get away from Facebook because it just makes me sad. Do you know those people who their their life on Facebook has like a three week cycle? Everything's great translated. I have a new boyfriend. I'm really tired. Translated. I'm staying out too late. Everything stinks translated. I lost my boyfriend and the spirals just continue and you really wish you could just go and hug these people and say if you keep going down the same road, you're going to keep getting to the same destination. You're doing what seems right to you. You're doing what seems right to you. I just saw a video of a sweet girl talking about how at the age of of 11 and fifth grade and fifth grade she realized that she could take control of her life and get positive feedback and positive encouragement if she skipped meals and the the eating disorder that started there went all the way with her into college. They can control doing what seemed right, making myself beautiful leading her deeper and deeper into a prison where she could not fail where she could not stomach anybody knowing what was really going on in her life and in college she got a new daddy, a new covenant, a new life, a life that came from doing the opposite of what she would ever want to do, a life that would come from confession and letting people see her. Following your instincts leads to death and following Jesus leads to life. Why don't you see this text and the best way it's a confusing text it is and there's a lot in it that I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of. If any of you want to become a theological heretic and be a universalist which means you believe everybody's going to have no matter how they live, here's a great verse for you, right? Verse 18 of chapter 5, therefore is one trespass led to condemnation for all men so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. There it is in the Bible, everybody's justified. Why don't you rip that verse on out of the Bible and make that your entire theology? That'll work for you. That's why we have to read the entire book. The Apostle Paul will tell us as already told us about those who are going to be judged for what they do in the flesh. He's going to tell us again about what happens to people who sin and never repent and will be judged for what they do in the flesh. But if you rip this little verse out, right, you can do that. I'm not even going into that but that's just a little freebie. Don't be a universalist. That's not what that means. There's also this whole section about those who did not send like Adam. What did that mean? Well Adam, how law, don't don't eat from the tree of good and evil. For then for thousands of years there were no more laws given and people sinned even though they didn't have the ability to eat from the tree of knowledge and good and evil and even though there was only one sin, one law. Then when Moses came around, God gave hundreds of laws and there are those who would have read this text, read this letter from Paul and said, wait a minute Paul, I'm not under Adam or under Jesus. I'm under Moses and Paul tells all giving the law does is make you sin more. Now the only purpose of the law was to increase sin. Now you know every time you do it, right, before hand you were just kind of sitting ignorantly. I didn't know it was a sin to eat bats. I didn't know it was a sin to, you know, some reason like really bad examples came to my mind right then. And now I do know that it's a sin to eat bats. And so every time I eat a bat, I'm doing something bad. And that was the whole purpose of the law, Paul says to increase sin. Now you know when you're doing it, doing it. Like you didn't even know that it was a sin to read Southern Living and covet all those homes, did you? It is. See now when you go home and do it, you'll know that you're sinning. It's a worse sin. It's worse because you know it's a sin. Now you're doing it willfully. That's all the law does, Paul says. It increases sin. And he gives us this absolute statement. Life comes through grace. Jesus did it all. Jesus did the whole thing. You relive it every fall. Right? Oklahoma State wins the big ball game. And you come to church the next day. And somebody says, hey, I didn't see the game. How did it came out? And you say, what? We won. Really? I hadn't seen you at practice. I didn't know you were on the field. We, you had nothing to do with it. They did it all. They've been working all their entire lives and never even a single candy bar so they can be in shapes. I can win this football game. And you say, we, yeah, they're my representatives. They did it all for me. And they just let me be their fan. They don't let me go to the game for free, but they let me be their fan for free. That's how Jesus works. He does it all. He does it all. You, you, you add nothing. And he gives it to you freely. Come to, in the final question, I have for you is this, if you're a son of Adam, then we know because your life leads to, to hiding and to shame, to brokenness, to this, this continual fervor of, I want, you're trying the same thing over and over over again. Maybe it's being good. Maybe it's keeping a rule. Maybe it's, um, you know, I don't know, working harder, making more money. I don't know, but you're, you're living the same life over and over. If you are in Jesus, your life is a life of freedom and of beauty and of rejoicing. You want to see what the life of Jesus is like. Read through all of chapter five, uh, verse two through him. We have a pain to access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings. It's a life of rejoicing. It's a life of, of seeing progress over sin. It is a life of honesty. If you're in Jesus and you are in, and you're married, then your life is a life of helping your spouse and being honest without me helping do the dishes. I mean helping your spouse with their sin. You do that too. Okay. But that's easy. You can be an Adam and help your wife with their dishes. Um, if you're in Christ, you'll help your spouse with your sin. You know how you do that through confession. So your, my wife knows that I'm a sinner and I can get hurt to help me with my sin. And she isn't hiding from me. And so she can show me her struggles and I can help her with her sin. That's a marriage that's in Jesus. There's openness and there's honesty and there's life. There's not hiding in shame. My question for you is this, if, if Adam rings death and Jesus brings life, do you have a pulse? Are you carrying on just one more generation of going to church but passing on gracelessness and bitterness to generation after generation? Do you have the pulse of grace? You have the pulse of honesty? Do you have the pulse of freedom? Do you have the pulse of joy? Do you have the pulse of hope? If not, then quit trying to be like Moses. Quit trying to follow Adam and come receive Christ. Come do it. Come today. When we come to the communion table, come to me and pray and just tell me I'm tired of following after Adam. I want to be like Jesus. I want to follow Jesus. I want my team to win. When I was, when I lived in Mississippi, I hated Steve Spurrier. He was the coach of the Florida Gators. Not just despise them. And they went 10 and 1, 11 and 0, 12 and 0 every season and one day I just realized I can be mad all fall or I can be happy. I don't have to hate them. I could cheer for them. And I became a Florida Gators fan. It was a great period of my life. If your side is always losing, change teams,
come follow Jesus.