Delivered at Richmond Dale United Methodist Church, Richmond Dale Ohio, 24 Dec. 2015
And the Soul felt its worth Sermon Notes
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Primary Text
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Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the
heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping
thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
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The Fall
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Genesis 3:6 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.
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The Curse
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Genesis 3:17-19
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.”
Savvy listeners will notice that this is only the curse laid upon
Adam, and that is correct: There were additional curses laid upon Eve and
upon the serpent. But the Hebrew word
"Adam" isn't a name... it means "Mankind." The curse laid upon Adam is the curse laid
upon us all.
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So what happens
next?
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Well, the rest of
the Bible happens next. Cain and Abel,
Noah, Abraham and Lot, Isaac and Essau, Jacob and Leah and Rachel, and then
slavery in Egypt. Moses comes along
and God, through Moses, frees the people, and brings them to the foot of the
mountain. God gives them the
"Torah," which translates as "Law," but more accurately
translates as "Teaching."
And of these teachings, God sets up ten of them as categories, under
which all of the other commandments will fall. We find them in Exodus chapter 20, and they
are:
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The Ten
Commandments
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2 “I am the Lord your
God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no
other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image ...You shall not
bow down to them or serve them
7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother,
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet
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The division in
the commandments
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it's easy to get
hung up on the rules... do this, don't do that... and to miss the bigger
picture here. The ten commandments are
broken into two sections: Those dealing with our relationship to God, and
those dealing with our relationships with each other. You see?
The first four are about God... You shall have no other gods, you
shall not create idols, you shall not take His name in vain, you shall
remember the Sabbath. The last six are
about how we deal with each other... things like "Don't kill each other,"
or "don't steal," or "honor your parents." But why?
It's easy enough to see why God wants us to honor Him, but why is He concerned about us? Why is God worried about how we treat each other? After all, six out of the ten are about how we treat our fellow humans.
After Exodus, we
have Leviticus, which is a nearly endless list of rules. There's even a section in Leviticus, from
about chapter 19 to about chapter 26, where it repeats the rules it just gave in the
previous chapters, so we get to read them a second time. Rules.
Rules. Rules. Don't do
this. Do that. If this happens, then do that. If that doesn't happen, do this. And all the while, God reminds us, again
and again, that we are to honor Him, and respect each other.
Chapter 6 of the
book of Numbers gives us the most beautiful blessing, right in the middle of
a set of rules and laws. Chapter 6 of
Deuteronomy gives us the First, and Greatest, commandment: You shall love the
Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
There it is
again... Love God. Love people.
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Cont
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So now, I know
what you're thinking. Who preaches a
Christmas message out of the Old Testament? Why did we invite this guy
back?
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Image of God
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You see, it's all
one story. From beginning to end, Old
Testament and New, it's all the story of God trying to teach us to love Him
and to love each other.
And all through the Old Testament, we fail. Everywhere we turn, we stumble.
King David had a
son named "Ish-Ba'al..." his name means "Man of
Baal." There goes the
"Having no other gods before me."
At the foot of
Sinai, the Hebrew people built the golden calf. So much for Graven Images.
Jeremiah 7
talks about detestable practices in the temple, which is called by His name,
and how those things defile it.
In fact, through
the Old Testament, we are repeatedly told how people failed to keep the
Laws. We read of lies, of murder, of
adultery, of theft, of covetousness.
We see the nation of Israel turn their backs on the Lord, again and
again. We see Jeremiah weep bitter
tears over how far the people have fallen.
Today we look at our own world, and we realize we're no better.
our society idolizes
and worships celebrities. We complain
about the sermon going a few minutes too long, but we cheer when our favorite
sporting event goes into overtime.
Sometimes we're so busy doing things that we forget to honor God by
coming to His house once a week.
And that's just how we treat The Lord. We're way worse to each other. We divide over sports teams, we divide over politics, we divide over foreign affairs, some of us divide over who is wearing the right shoes. And we're killing each other. In America alone, there have been 58 million abortions since Roe v. Wade. As a society, we, like ancient Israel, fail miserably to love God and to love our neighbor. |
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What are we worth?
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What are we worth? Did you ever go into a retail store and see something on the shelf that nobody would buy?
Maybe it's a toy
that some child played with, broke, and put back hoping no one would
notice. Maybe it's a book with stained
pages. Maybe it's a dress with a tear.
What are those things worth, these things which have violated our societal understanding of what things should be? Those things which are not as we demand them? Those things which have transgressed our limits of acceptability, what are they worth?
And we, as
sinners, who have broken God's Holy law, who have blasphemed Him, who have
chased after other gods, who have not honored His commandments... We who
have, in our hearts, hated other people, who are made in God's image... what
are we worth?
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Intrinsic value
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It's a depressing
picture. It's scary, really, and not
what anyone came to a Christmas Eve service to think about.
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Illustration 1
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$50 To Half Million Dollar Painting
It had hung on the wall of her modest
living room for fifteen years. It pictured the temptation of Eve by the
Devil. Mrs. Rosemary Cattrell, an Edinburgh art teacher, found out the real
value of the painting when she decided to sell it to raise a deposit for a
car. Then she discovered that her painting was by a 16th-century German
artist, Hans Baldung. The painting, once valued at $50, was auctioned for
$537,600.
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Illustration 2
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The Lost
Stradivari Violin
On a wintry day at twilight, a ragged
man entered a little music shop on a side street in London. Under his arm was
an old violin.
“I’m starving,” said he to Mr. Betts,
the owner of the shop. “Do please buy this old violin so I can get something
to eat.”
Mr. Betts offered him a guinea, worth
about five dollars at that time. The man gratefully received it and then
shuffled out into the frigid night.
When Mr. Betts drew a bow across the
strings of the old violin, it produced a rich, mellow tone. How astonished he
was! Lighting a candle, he peered intently into the inside of the instrument.
There he observed the magic name—Antonio Stradivari—and the date, 1704! He
knew instantly that this was the famous Stradivarius that had been missing
for a hundred years. The attics of Europe had been diligently searched for
this missing violin, but in vain.
Subsequently the famous violin changed
hands several times and brought as much as $100,000.
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Sometimes
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Sometimes the
worth of a thing is not what we think it is.
Like the woman who sold her painting or the man who sold his violin,
sometimes we fail to see the intrinsic value in what we sell.
And now, we come a long way back to Genesis, but we will not end there. We see people, created in the image of God, with the hand of God. We see people, each of us, as the precious work of an Almighty and Loving God, who made us in His image and who desires to know and be known by us. We see the painting, created by the master, fresh and new. We see the violin, created by the great craftsman, shiny and clean. And then we see the fall. We see the owners of the painting and of the violin forget what these things are worth, we see them collect dust, we see them dirty and old. And we see Adam and Eve, our own father and mother, disobedient to God. We see sin enter the world, and we look around at ourselves and we forget what we're worth. We hear God pronounce the judgment, that because of what we have done, we will eat the fruit of our labors, and that life will be hard. There will be days of darkness, and days of struggle, and years of pain. And then we see God, who loves us, and who wants us to love Him and each other, step in. God, who desires to know and be known by us.... God, who knows the intrinsic worth of each one of us... God, who sees that our failures, our weaknesses, our imperfections, and our inabilities do not make us less valuable.... God steps in. The cost to redeem us is great, but God comes. The price of our salvation is more than we could imagine, but God steps in and pays it. According to His unfailing love, according to His great mercy, according to His eternal kindness, He sends His own Son, Our Lord, Christ Jesus, to be our purchase price. There, amid the poverty of the stable, amid the humility of the sheep and the cattle, there in the dust and the straw, God steps in. In this child... in this newborn King... we find our value. In this incarnation of Love, we find our worth. My worth. Yours. His. Hers. Even his. And suddenly, the disobedience of Adam, the destruction of sin, the veil of the temple which separates people from God... suddenly, these are all done away with. Suddenly, we are restored to our true, intrinsic worth. Suddenly, God steps in, in the form of a newborn baby.
Long lay the
world, in sin and error pining,
'till He appeared,
and the soul felt its worth!
A THRILL of hope! The weary world REJOICES!
For yonder breaks
a new and GLORIOUS MORN!
Fall on your
knees! Hear the Angel voices! Oh night divine!
Oh night when
Christ was born!
He comes. Tonight, to each of us, He comes. Messiah is born, Christ is come. Let us know Him. Let us find in ourselves and in each other
the Light of Life. Let us see in each
other, and in ourselves, the image of God, in which we are created. Because today, in the city of David, a
Savior is born. He is Christ the Lord.
Amen. |
