Death and Life: Fall (March 12, 2025)

Listen to the sermon here.

Texts:   Psalm 38

Genesis 3

Romans 5:12–21

John 3:14–21

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text that serves as foundation for our sermon for this evening is our Old Testament reading, especially these words of God, “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” (Genesis 3:15).

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,

This Lent we are looking at the theme of death and life. From the moment of our baptism, the entirety of the Christian life is that of death and life. Everything that we do, everything that we are as Christians, finds its root in death and in life. Last week, as we looked at our readings for Ash Wednesday, we looked at fasting and how fasting is putting to death the needs and the desires and the wants of the body to live before God, to commit oneself fully to living before God. Tonight, we’re going to take a step backwards though. We're going to take a step backwards to almost the very beginning. We're going take a step backwards to the Garden of Eden. For it is in the fall that death first came into our world. Tonight in our readings we learn that just as all have been committed to death through one man's sin, so likewise through the life of Christ, all have life.

Let us pray: Almighty God our Heavenly Father, You gave Your command to Your servant Adam, a command to serve and worship you. And yet he disobeyed eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thus bringing sin and death into the world. Yet even then You promised to him and to all of his offspring the promised seed of Eve, who would defeat Satan and defeat death once and for all. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer, that we may always have the sure and certain confidence that since You gave Your Son into death for us, lifted high upon the tree, it is through His death and His resurrection that we have life everlasting. It is through His name that we pray. Amen.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, in six days, God made everything that was made. And each and every thing that He makes, He says, “It is good.” The God of Life created everything good, perfect, holy. The God of life created everything to be as He is. And yet, one day Adam and Eve are in the Garden at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—the one tree that God had commanded them not to eat the fruit of. God named two special trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And of the Tree of Life, they were given that they could eat freely of. But of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were commanded not to eat.

As selfish human beings living this side of the fall, we can easily think, “Why would God give something to His people that they weren't supposed to eat the fruit of?” Because the tree of was to be for them a place of worship. It was to be for them a place where they could go and remember that God was greater than they were, and to come and worship Him and to serve Him. How could a tree do that? Well, because it was always that reminder that there was something that they did not know. There was something that God knew that they didn't.

What was that? Well, how did God create everything? He created everything good. Adam and Eve knew no evil. Adam and Eve knew nothing but God's goodness. Adam and knew nothing but God's loving mercy. The knowledge of evil was kept from man. Why? Because whereas God can know evil and yet does not act on it because he is holy, good, perfect, and righteous, as man, if we know evil, we're going to act on it. As man, if we know evil, then that's going to be exactly what we want to do. We all know this. If you have a little two-year-old and you tell that two-year-old, “Don't touch the stove because it's hot and it's going to burn you”, what's the only thing that two-year-old wants to do? Touch the stove. Until at last they finally touch it and get burned. As man, if we know evil, we're going to act on it.

And that's precisely what happens. Satan comes to Adam and Eve. Satan tempts them. “Did God actually say?” God did not say they couldn't eat of every tree in in the garden. There's only one. Then Satan's great deception. He says, “You will not surely die”. Satan knew that God was merciful. He knew that God would not immediately kill Adam and Eve for their disobedience. He knew God's mercy. And so he deceived them. “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). Satan's temptation. They knew the best part of that. They knew God. They knew good. They had no need to know evil. And yet Satan tempts them and yet they fall. And as soon as they fall, death enters into the world. Immediately they take fig leaves and they sew them together to hide their makings. A fig leaf cut off from the tree cannot grow. Immediately death enters into God's good creation.

That death that entered into God's good creation in the garden continues to affect each and every one of us. That death that entered into mankind, entered into life, entered into this world, it affects everything that we do. From the moment that we are conceived in our mother's womb, we are marching towards death. From the moment of conception, the only thing that is certain is that we will die. Some might be sooner or later. But no matter what, we will die. And so, we need salvation from death.

Fast forward several thousand years as Israel is traveling in the wilderness. They've grumbled against God, and so God sends fiery serpents in the wilderness to bite them, to kill them. They cry out to God. They repent. But God does not take away the fiery serpents. Remember the story? What does God do instead? He tells Moses to cast a bronze serpent and lift it high up on a pole so that whoever would look to the pole would live.

We need salvation from death. We need a source of life. And that comes as it was promised in our Old Testament reading. “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” (Genesis 3:15). Life came from the promised seed of Eve, who would come into this sinful flesh. The very Son of God through whom everything was made and without whom was not anything made that was made. The Son of God entered into our sin-filled life perfect, without spot, without blemish. He took on our mortal flesh and lived the perfect life that we cannot live. And then He was lifted up on the tree, bearing not his own sins, but bearing your sins, my sins. He was lifted up and hung there. He lifted up and died there. God Himself, the God of life, dying for sinful man. The God of life, dying for you and for me. Death could not hold him. On the third day God raised him from the dead never to die again.

And now whoever looks on the Son of God in faith, high and lifted up, there is our tree of life. There is our source of life. There is our hope for everlasting life. That's how great God's love is. Even in the midst of very first death, as death entered into the world, God gave the promise of life. And He sealed it not with giving them leaves for clothes, but by taking and slaughtering a couple lambs so that they could have skins for clothes.

God still comes and He gives you life. He still comes and gives you abundant life. He gives life both in the here and the now, and also life eternal. God killed the Lamb of God so that you would be clothed from your sins and have new life. Through Christ's death and resurrection, you now have life. Death no longer has dominion over you. You now have life, for Christ has swallowed up your death in His victory. That is why, when the scripture talks about the death of Christians in the Bible, as we see in St. Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, it says, we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who are asleep. When Lazarus dies, Jesus says he is sleeping. When the Christian dies in faith, they are not dead, but merely asleep. This is also why we call where we bury our dead cemeteries. It comes from the German word for dormitory, a place where you sleep. Yes, death entered into the world through Adam's sin, yet through Christ's righteousness all who look on Him in faith have the promise of eternal life.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, even in the midst of death, even as you see the power of death in your own bodies, rejoice! For you know that death has no dominion over you. The power of the fall is gone. You are now new in Christ Jesus. Rejoice in that. Rejoice in the life that He has won for you each and every day, dying to your own sinful flesh and desires and living to walk before God in holiness and righteousness all the days of your life until at last we are, with all those who have gone before us in the faith, raised from the death and get to live in the newness of life forevermore. Amen.

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.