The Hope of Reconciliation
Advent 2023 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when 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, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to have absolute no hope in life?
No hope for the present
No hope for the future?
You know, as often as I have read this story, I still wonder what Adam and Eve must have been feeling at the end of this chapter.
I mean, you look back at the end of chapter 2 and things seem so…right
So good, so pure
Like the brightest of spring days after a refreshing rain
But at the end of chapter 3 it’s like a giant cup of coffee has been spilled over it
It’s the giant stain of sin and judgement
It’s like everything has come crashing down around Adam and Eve.
Like the curtain has fallen before the play has even started
It seems like Adam and Eve have made a mess of things, and the situation looks hopeless.
You know, We live in a world so desperate for hope on so many levels.
Every day you can read the news headlines and get the sense, that, yes, we need hope
We have wars, and poverty, and broken relationships, and
There are so many men and women and children who are desperate for hope.
Any kind of hope
Well, this is the first Sunday of Advent
And for this Advent season I want to focus on Hope
Because as ugly as the situation seems for Adam and Eve, and as ugly and hopeless as the situation is for millions of men and women today
Out of the darkness shines a glimmer of hope
Actually, it is a great, overpowering beam of hope
Because God isn’t done with His people. His plan has not been thwarted.
He will continue to work and there is great hope
So, for the next few weeks, I want to focus on hope
And today I want to point us toward the hope of reconciliation
The Hope of Reconciliation
In our passage today, Adam and Eve listen to the serpent. And even though they had clearly heard what God had forbidden them to do,
They were persuaded by the serpent that it would be OK to try it.
God didn’t really know what He was talking about, did He?
And it didn’t take much persuading for Adam and Eve to fall to this temptation
And the moment they stretched out their hands and took the fruit, and put it to their lips and bit down on it
The moment that happened, their relationship with their Creator was broken
This close, intimate friendship that they had with their God who had made them and loved them with perfect love and who had commissioned them to bear His image and spread His glory in the world
That relationship was broken
And in a human sense, it was broken beyond repair.
I mean, we are talking about an omnipotent and Holy God, perfectly sinless and unspotted
In whose presence sin has no place
How was it possible that weak and broken people could ever again find themselves back in a right relationship with their God?
Adam and Eve needed to be reconciled back to God
And thus, the story of the Bible begins
And the story of the Bible is God’s plan to reconcile fallen mankind back to Himself.
RECONCILIATION: The act of reestablishing friendly relations after a disagreement or enmity
I’m sure that all of us at some point in our lives have found ourselves in a disagreement with someone
And have needed to reconcile with that person
That is, come back into a right relationship with that person
As we make our way through the Old Testament, it doesn’t take too long for this story to become clear to us
And in this story, we read of a people who, although they want to be right with God, who want to be reconciled to him
After God had rescued His people from captivity in Egypt and led them through the wilderness
through a time of disciplining for 40 years,
And Joshua led the people into the Promised Land and they conquered it and got ready to disperse and settle in the land
And, yes, things had been rough in the wilderness, but it seems like the people were at a good place. It seems like they are ready to be faithful to God and walk closely with Him
But, just in case, before the people disperse into the land, Joshua gathers them together one last time and together they renew their covenant to be faithful to God
And in Joshua, chapter 24, Joshua reminds them of what God had done for them
And then he says
Joshua 24:14–16 “14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods,”
But Joshua decides to test them and mess with them.
He says in verse 19, “You are not able to serve the LORD. basically, “You are not able to stay faithful to Him. He is a jealous God and you are going to forsake Him and serve other Gods and you are going to experience His punishment”
But the people say, “No! We WILL serve the Lord. We WILL be faithful to Him”
And Joshua says, “You are your own witnesses today. You have chosen the LORD, to be faithful to Him”.
And they renewed their covenant with the LORD, to put away any foreign gods that they had and be faithful only to Him.
And then the people disperse throughout the land
Almost a picture of Adam and Eve back in the garden. A place given to them by their God
But with a condition. A condition that they stay faithful to Him
And the book of Joshua closes
And it seems like things are good
And then you go over a couple of pages to the book of Judges and you find in chapter 2
That immediately after the death of Joshua. Immediately
There arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, or the word that He had done for Israel
And it says that they abandoned the Lord
They went after other gods.
The gods that the people around them worshipped
And again their relationship is broken with their God
And seemingly never-ending cycle starts
Of the people repenting and declaring their faithfulness to God
And then showing their inability to stay faithful
And falling away and being unfaithful, worshiping other gods
And God punishing them for their unfaithfulness
bringing drought or pestilence to the land
allowing them to be conquered by foreign powers
And the people crying out for mercy
And God coming to them and rescuing them
And then the cycle repeats itself over and over again.
And still today, maybe it’s a cycle that we on some level have been able to identify with
Wanting to stay faithful and finding ourselves unable and our relationship with God feeling broken and damaged beyond repair.
And for the Israelites, this cycle repeats itself until even the kingdom is split apart and the people are at enmity with each other
The southern kingdom of Judah
And the northern kingdom of Israel
until it all seemingly falls apart
And the northern Kingdom is conquered and scattered, never to be heard from again
And the glory of the LORD departs from the temple
And Judah is taken captive into Babylon
It seems like a much longer, drawn out version of the Fall of Adam and Even in the Garden
But again, God is not done with His people.
God had said through His prophet Isaiah:
English Standard Version (Chapter 44)
21 Remember these things, O Jacob,
and Israel, for you are my servant;
I formed you; you are my servant;
O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
22 I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud
and your sins like mist;
return to me, for I have redeemed you.
The story of reconciliation is just getting started
In Genesis 3, God had foretold of the seed of the woman, a descendent of Adam and Eve that would “bruise, or crush, the head of the serpent, the devil, the enemy of God and His people
And that promise is fulfilled in Jesus who came at just the right time
To a people who were desperate to be back in relationship with God
But only this time, God didn’t just extend His offer of reconciliation to the Israelites, he extended it to the whole world!
It was to the Jews and the Gentiles
The old prophet, Simeon, when he saw the Baby Jesus,
He took him up in his arms and blessed God and said
Luke 2:29–32 “29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation 31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
And John says in John 1:11–13 “11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Did you hear that?
Children of God. Is that reconciliation? Is that a relationship restored?
Jesus Himself said this in a famous passage that we know so well:
John 14:6 “6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
What did He say?
Did He say, ‘No one gets to heaven except through me?’
No! (although that is often how we hear this explained. People think that Jesus was telling his disciples how to “get to heaven”, even though I don’t think that they had the same concept of heaven that we do)
He said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”
You see, Jesus had just told His disciples that He is going away.
Thomas had asked Him, Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?
And this is where Jesus says, “Thomas, I AM the way, the truth, and the life”
And then in my own words, Jesus says, “Thomas, what you are wanting to know is the same thing that everyone wants to know. And that is how to get to the Father. How to be reconciled to Him.
Because that is our problem
A broken relationship with The Father!
I AM that way.
At this point in the life of Jesus, He was about to complete the work that He had come to do
By putting an end to the sacrifices that people offered often just to maintain a sort of relationship with God
By making a way for us to be eternally back into a right relationship with our Father
Are you tired of living apart from the Father?
Have you experienced the same sort of cycle that the people of Israel experienced
Of declaring your faithfulness to God,
Of saying, “Yes, I will be faithful to Him”.
yet being frustrated because of your inability to be faithful to Him?
If that is your story,
Then I would point you, and remind all of us of
2 Corinthians 5:14–19 “14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”
Did you hear this?
That God, through Christ has reconciled us to Himself
This is what God has already done
It is a finished work
He has reconciled the world back to Himself
And He no longer counts our sins against us
That means, this cycle of broken relationship with Him is over eternally
What He offers to us today is simply that in faith, we receive what Jesus has already done, and we will be reconciled to our Father.
And if that is what you have done, then you are now an ambassador for Christ
That is, you are His representative
I am an ambassador for Christ, and today I implore you as the following verses say,
2 Corinthians 5:20–21 “20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
So, this ADVENT season, let us rejoice in this great Hope that we have
The Hope of being reconciled to God. And remember, this is a living Hope
Because this is not just a “pie in the sky” kind of hope.
It is grounded on our living LORD and Savior Jesus Christ and the work tha tHe has done and finished!
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