Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 8 | Date: February 25, 2018 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

There are not too many churches that sing like RBC. Get good songs like that, singing wonderful truths like that—what a blessing this morning. If you would take your Bibles to Psalm, turn to Psalm 8. Psalm 8. And then when you have that, keep a marker there, keep your finger there just briefly, and turn to Genesis chapter 1. Genesis chapter 1. You are familiar, I’m sure, with the creation account of Genesis chapter 1, and the account of the six days of creation, and then the seventh, chapter 2, in which God rested. We’re going to look at some of the events on day six, verses 26 through 28.

Genesis 1:26–28:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. 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.” So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

And now Psalm 8:

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and infants you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, crowned him with glory and honor. You’ve given him dominion over the works of your hands and have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, what a blessing it has been to be here this morning already to sing these wonderful songs, breathtaking in their depth, their greatness, marvelous in the message of the gospel of Christ. We’ve sung from our hearts praise to our Redeemer, praise to our God to whom salvation belongs, praise to the triune God who has accomplished our salvation and who will bring it to completion when Jesus returns. What great truths, what a great blessing to be able to sing them and to know that you have made these great blessings a reality in our own experience. And now as we turn our attention again to your word, we pray that you would open our hearts and minds, help us to understand that we may glorify and revel in the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, amen.

The Subject Of The New Adam

Looking again at the subject of the new Adam, this is part three. Eddie Johnston is back with us today and he’s already giving me a hard time. Part three—how many Adams are there? Well, hopefully we will finish it up today.

As we have seen, God created Adam with a high position as something of a vice-regent, as king over the earth, the crown of God’s creation, and intended in the image of God to reflect God’s rule over the earth. That is what is stated in the creation account, Genesis 1, verses 26 and following. That’s the function that Adam was to fill. He is to rule in God’s place—Adam and Eve—as God’s vice-regents over his created world. And so Adam and Eve are created with a high dignity.

We saw in Genesis chapter 3 that Adam, who is called God’s son, was God’s unfaithful son. Genesis chapter 3—he failed, rebelled against God, sinned against him. And we saw then in the following chapters of Genesis, and then through the rest of history, of course, that there’s this unraveling of sin since Adam. And reading carefully through the narrative in Genesis, you get the idea that Adam was something of a head—not just a first bad example, but someone in whom all of humanity has fallen and become sinful. And in fact, the Apostle Paul picks it up in just that way in Romans chapter 5, when he tells us that by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, so that death passed on all men because all sinned. That is in Adam. And the consequence of his sin has fallen to all of humanity because of his rebellion against God. And so humanity was treated in Adam as our representative head, and humanity in Adam has become sinful and fallen.

Well, it would seem then, reading through the story, that humanity was doomed from the start. Adam failed, and with him all of humanity has fallen and become sinful. And then we saw that early on in the narrative, there are hints of a new Adam. In fact, there are several of those kinds of hints that we bump into along the way in the Old Testament story, even way back as far as Noah, who is something of a new beginning, the head of a new creation. We find it with Abraham, who again is a new beginning, the one eventually in whom all the families of the earth will be blessed. Israel is something of a new Adam, God’s representative in the world, representative of the nations. But of course, Israel, God’s son, was God’s unfaithful son again, and failed and rebelled against God over and over again. We saw that David is something of an Adam figure, the appointed head of God’s people. The Davidic kings are presented for us as the head of God’s people, something of a new Adam figure.

And then we saw that all of that, as so many of the themes that we have traced out through the Bible, all of that is given to us in anticipation of the new Adam who is to come. Anticipations of Christ. If you have any doubt about that, Paul confirms it explicitly for us in Romans chapter 5 and verse 14, as we saw two weeks ago, where Paul refers to Adam as the type, the shadow, the figure, the picture of the one who was to come.

The New And Better Adam

And so Jesus is portrayed for us then in the New Testament as the new and better Adam. Some of the ways that Jesus is presented to us as the new Adam are rather subtle. We saw some of those in the Gospels. “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ” reads exactly like the old Genesis chapter 5 and verse 1, “the book of the generations of Adam.” Subtle little hints like that—particularly we see it in the temptation account of Jesus where he goes up against the serpent with a threefold temptation, only this Adam, going up against the serpent and his temptation, this Adam is successful and triumphs over the tempter. We find Jesus as the Son of Man, Jesus binding the strong man, all of this kind of language. Jesus as the obedient son, the faithful son, who has come to do the will of the Father and always doing the things that please the Father. All these kinds of hints are dropped in the Gospels to present Jesus as the new and better Adam.

And all of that that is rather subtle in some of the places and subtle reflections of that theme, you might wonder: are they really hints of that theme or is this our imagination? But you begin to realize at some point, one, there are too many of them to be coincidence. And then two, there are places in the New Testament where Paul makes that connection explicit. So we are warranted to see it. We see it in Romans chapter 5, where explicitly Paul says that Adam was a type of Jesus Christ, picked up again in 1 Corinthians 15, and so on.

And so in the gospel accounts, when we read of Jesus’ life and his faithfulness and obedience all the way to death, we have something of a redo of Adam, where he succeeds where Adam failed, and where Adam brought us ruin, Jesus has come to bring redemption. He is the new Adam, the obedient son who defeats the tempter and wins salvation for his people.

Well, that was something of an overview two weeks, three weeks ago. Last time—well, two weeks ago—then we looked at Romans chapter 5, where Paul deals with this in terms of justification. There he—excuse me—there Paul takes up the subject of justification and condemnation, and he points out that as in Adam all die, our representative head Adam disobeyed, brought death, and brought condemnation. But now we have a new Adam, a new representative head, and he didn’t disobey; he obeyed. And in his obedience all the way to his death, he brought life and brought justification. So we have Adam and the new Adam: disobedience and obedience, death and life, condemnation and justification, all accomplished for us by the new Adam. In the first Adam, we are lost. In the second Adam, we are redeemed. And that principle which ruined us by virtue of our union with Adam is the same principle by which we are redeemed. And so that was ground for the song that we sang last week, “See the new and better Adam come to save the hell-bound man.”

Well, then last time we looked at 1 Corinthians chapter 15, where Paul takes up again this Adam Christology, but here he deals with it not as much in terms of justification, but in terms of the resurrection. In Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. You remember the issue, the pointed issue and concern in Corinth at the time, was the question of the resurrection. Will there be a resurrection of the dead? That was the point at issue in Acts 22 that we read this morning. When Paul started that little fight between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, when he says, “I’m here to talk about… because of the resurrection of the dead,” and suddenly within their own camps, they’re arguing, “There will be a resurrection,” “No, there won’t be.” The Sadducees did not believe it, the Pharisees did, and Paul stood in the middle, of course.

And what made his message so radical was that he was not simply arguing that there will be a resurrection. The one side saying there will be, the other side saying there will not be a resurrection of the dead—Paul is saying, “Look guys, I got news for you, it’s already happened.” Jesus has been raised from the dead, and he has been raised into the age to come. That long-experienced, final, end-time resurrection has already happened in Jesus. He has passed into that.

And Paul now takes that up in 1 Corinthians 15, and his whole argument hinges on that: that we will be raised from the dead precisely because Jesus is the second or the last Adam. Just as in Adam, we were brought—first Adam—we were brought to death, so now in the new Adam, we’re brought to resurrection and life. And I mentioned last time that the Bible story of resurrection—I thought of taking one whole Sunday morning dealing with that, the Bible story of resurrection, running it through from the beginning to the end. I think we’ve done it enough here with 1 Corinthians 15 to make you see that the story of the resurrection in the Bible is not that there’s death and one day there’ll be resurrection. It’s threaded through Jesus. There’s death in Adam; there’s resurrection in Jesus; and joined to him, we will be raised as well with him. It is because of our union with Christ that we too will be raised. He has been raised; we will be raised as well.

So Jesus was our corporate head in his death. He took our cause to himself. He was born under the law, worked out a perfect righteousness under the law, was obedient all the way to death. And in his death, in his life, he took us as it were on his shoulders, riding piggyback on his back. And he took us through death, through the judgment, through the condemnation, and he was our corporate head in resurrection as well. Just as he was raised from the dead, so he takes us with him—Christ the firstfruits, and afterwards those who are his at his coming. As Paul argues, Jesus is the firstfruits, the first sampling of a full harvest of resurrection to come. All those that belong to him will be raised with him.

And so it actually fits a song I was telling Ian this morning beforehand. It’s a song we’ll be singing soon at Easter time, Wesley’s Hymns: “So are we now where Christ has led, following our exalted head.” That’s Adam Christology. That’s 1 Corinthians 15 that we saw last time—that Christ has led the way and taken us with him in both his death and his resurrection. So we have again these two contrasting representative heads: Adam and Christ, the last Adam. In Adam, the first, all die. In Adam, the second, all are made alive.

The Greatness And Majesty Of God

And now one more time to this theme here in Psalm 8. As so often in the Psalms, verse 1 sets the tone of praise. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” It ends with that, verse 9: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” That’s the theme of the psalm: the greatness and the majesty of God, and it’s proclaimed everywhere.

Now, he has in this psalm not just a general idea of praise, but as so often in the psalms, he has a particular aspect of praise in mind. And in this psalm, he has a specific angle that is fascinating that’s taken up again later in the New Testament that we’ll see. Actually, there’s two aspects of it here. One, God’s greatness in contrast to us: “I behold the moons, the stars, which you have ordained, all this great created order. What is man that you are mindful of him?” God’s greatness in contrast to us. But then also he takes up the theme of God’s goodness or kindness in making us what we are. That is, there’s something of the greatness of humanity taken up in this psalm as well, and he’s praising God for that.

So let’s see how he does it. Verse 1, God’s glory is declared in the very structure of the created order. “How majestic is your name in all the earth.” Verse 2, “Out of the mouth of babes and infants you have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger.” That is, although the earth and heavens are filled with praise, there are enemies, but for God, that’s not really a big problem because he’s able to answer it from even the weakest of sources, even the mouth of babes and nursing infants.

Now, you’ll remember in verse 2, I’m sure that rings a bell. You see that crop up in the New Testament, don’t you, in the Gospels? You remember the triumphal entry. When Jesus is making his way into Jerusalem, the people are cheering and hailing him as the Davidic king, shouting, “Hosanna, salvation.” This is the one who will accomplish it. And the leaders of Jerusalem are not too happy with it, you remember, and they bring Jesus in and they bring this up. “These people are shouting Hosannas to you. How can you allow that kind of thing?” You remember how Jesus answers. He answers by quoting Psalm 8, verse 2: “Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have established…” and then he quotes it as praise. “How can you allow this kind of praise?” And Jesus says, “Well, haven’t you read? Psalm 8 says so. Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants you’ve established praise.” That is to say, all of these who are praising me give the praises of children. That is, they out of their childlike utter dependence and helplessness proclaim me as their only hope and their utter dependence upon me.

Well, already then, we know from reading the New Testament that we’re clued in to read this psalm as somehow anticipating Jesus. It’s a messianic psalm in some sense. Now verse 3: “When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars which you’ve set in place…” The universe is a theater of praise. Picking up on verse 1, the whole universe is a theater of praise to God. But then verse 4 as well: “When I look at the heavens, see all of this that you’ve created, the vastness of it, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you visit him?”

Now the point here is not simply, “God, you are so big and we are so small.” Although that’s involved here, certainly entailed in it. But more precisely, his point has to do with divine favor. Notice how he expands on it beginning in verse 5. “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him, yet you have made him a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honor.” Where’d he get that? Genesis 1, right? He’s reflecting on Genesis 1 in the creation account. “You’ve given him dominion over the works of your hands. You’ve put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and all the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whoever passes along the paths of the sea.”

He’s reflecting on Genesis 1:26–28 that we’ve read earlier. And he’s saying, “God, you are so big and we are so small, but you are so good. You are so kind to make us what we are.” This created world is so vast. It’s so intricate. It is so amazing. And yet you’ve made us king over it all. You’ve made us to rule over the fish, the birds, the creeping things on the earth, and everything that is—you’ve made us kings over the earth. It’s what we call the creation mandate in Genesis 1:26–28, where God has created man to reflect his rule and to exercise dominion over the entire created order. And so the psalmist here is simply reflecting on that—that God has been so kind in making us the glorious creatures that we are, just a little lower than the angels. As glorious as the angels are, as ministering servants in heaven in the presence of God, he has made us just a little lower than that. And that is the great dignity and glory of humanity, made in God’s image to rule over the earth.

Now, some curious questions arise in this psalm, and I haven’t just imagined these. You’ll see that these are the questions that are picked up in the New Testament. Verse 6: “You’ve given him dominion over the works of your hands and have put all things under his feet.” He’s reflecting on Adam’s creation. “You put everything under his feet.” How’d that work out for Adam? That raises a question, doesn’t it? He rebelled, he failed, and so that raises another question: Do we, in fact, see all things put in subjection to man? Trick question alert. Are all things put under his feet?

Well, yes and no. We’ve been able to subdue the world in many kinds of respects. We’ve been able to tame wild beasts, and we’ve been able to grasp the resources of the world and make things, and we build buildings, and we build computers, and we do all of this with God’s created order, putting the resources together, and we’ve done a great job in many respects of having dominion over the earth. But you remember how James picks up this theme? It’s a really fascinating statement. I’ll let you think a second. Remember how he picks this up, explicitly picks it up? We’ve been able to tame all manner of wild beasts and everything, but you can’t even tame your own tongue. And there’s that theme that’s come up. Have we really put all things under subjection to it? How are we doing at exercising this rule? Commissioned by God to reflect his rule over all the world—are we doing it all and are we doing it well? Are we reflecting his righteousness in it all? Those questions come up. And that raises then another question: Will God’s created purpose for man with regard to his kingly rule ever be realized? Will God’s purpose for man with regard to his kingly rule ever be realized? And then it raises another question in verse 4: Just how mindful is God of humanity now that humanity is fallen and sinful?

So on the one hand, we can glory in the greatness of God’s creation. He has made us what he has made us, just a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor. On the other hand, we have to say, we’ve really not done it all. We’ve not done it well. Will it ever happen? And already you know it’s going to take us to Jesus.

But We See Jesus

Look at Hebrews chapter 2. Lest you think that I am being imaginative in this, I want you to see that these are the questions that the writer to the Hebrews brings up in Hebrews chapter 2. Beginning with verse 5, I’ll read verses 5 to 10.

Now it is not to angels that God subjected the world to come. (Now again, this is a reflection on the greatness of humanity theme. He’s made us kings over the created order. Angels may be a higher order of created beings, but he’s not given it to angels to rule over the world.) Now it is not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere…

(You notice how the New Testament writers do that? They don’t have chapters and verses quite the same way we do. They get this long scroll, so they often refer to it as, “it’s been testified somewhere.” We would say, in Psalm 8 verse 4, it says, but he says, “it’s been testified somewhere.”)

“What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels. You’ve crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

And now he reflects on that.

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made a little lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

Now in verses 5 and following here, 5 through 8, obviously he’s reflecting on Psalm 8, verses 4 to 6, and also Genesis 1. But Psalm 8 is in view, speaking of the dominion mandate and the high status of humanity in God’s created order. Verse 5, you’ll notice a tacit acknowledgment of Adam’s failure. “Now it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come.” Notice that. God subjected the world to come. In Genesis chapter 1, he subjected the world to him, period. But given Adam’s failure, it hasn’t happened yet. And that’s what he says then in verse 8. It’s not yet happened. And so, verse 5, it’s not to angels that God has subjected the world to come. He subjected the world to come to a human ruler.

And so here he speaks of Adam’s failure, but he says eventually that rule will happen. In fact, over the whole created order, including angels. There’s an interesting remark in that regard in 1 Corinthians chapter 6: “Don’t you know that you’ll judge angels?” Yeah, fascinating concept. We’re made a little lower than the angels, judging over angels. But all this is to come. Humanity’s role as God’s kingly rule over the world will come about.

In verse 9, we’ve not yet seen this happen, but—strong adversities, strong contrasts—but we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus. Now, I like the way that King James translated it. I don’t remember how the NIV translated it, but I like the strong contrast preserved from the original. “But we see Jesus,” and then moving on with that. But here it reserves Jesus’ name in the middle of the verse, but I don’t think it’s just quite as strong of a contrast. But it still makes the point. We see him—who? Jesus—who for a little while was made lower than the angels. And here, notice the language again: “crowned with glory and honor,” “the suffering of death,” and so on.

So here we have language of Psalm 8 picked up: “made a little lower than the angels,” “crowned with glory and honor,” only here it’s Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor. So again, he’s taking up the Adam-king-of-creation theme through Psalm 8, and saying even though it’s not Adam named explicitly, we have a new Adam who has come to stand as representative and to take up the rule.

Now, notice the question he raises in verses 7 and 8. “You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You’ve crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside of his control.” That is, he used to rule over everything. “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” So the question is raised: it hasn’t happened yet; how will this great exalted status of humanity ever be regained? Answer: verse 9, Jesus succeeds where Adam failed. That is to say, as we’ve seen in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Jesus comes, undoes what Adam did, and leads us now into resurrection and life. That this fallen, disordered world will one day be restored under the headship of a new man, Jesus. And that is why then this passage is so strong on the idea of the incarnation.

Verse 14: So Jesus has come to undo what was done by the first Adam. Now, to get this, we really have to look back to the context of Hebrews chapter 1. And I want you just to glance through it. I’ll assume you’re somewhat familiar to it, so we won’t take time to expound it at length, but just glance back and see the point that he’s making in Hebrews 1. And here in Hebrews 1, he starts out with a bang. And that is to extol the glories and the full deity of Jesus. Now keep that in mind. He’s extolling the full deity and the glory of Jesus.

So verse 1, verses 1 to 3, he’s God’s final and climactic self-revelation. God has spoken in time past in various kinds of ways, but now he’s spoken by no less than his own Son. Verse 3, he explains somewhat who Jesus is, who the significance of this Jesus is. He’s God’s very self-expression, the brightness of his glory, the one who makes God visible. Verse 4, he’s superior to angels, glorious as angels are. He’s superior to them. Verses 5 and 6, he’s given a higher name than angels. He’s called the Son. It’s not the angels that are called his son, but he is Son in a unique sense. The angels are created beings. They’re even glorious, but they’re not the Son of God. Verse 6, the angels are… and so we are commanded to worship Jesus. So as glorious as angels are, they’re far inferior. They are to worship the Son of God. Verses 7 and 8, angels are created beings, created to be God’s servants. But Christ, by contrast, he possesses the throne of God. He himself is the creator. He’s called God. He’s called righteous. He’s called immutable. He’s called unchanging. And all of this, he’s called God. He’s called Lord. All of this in chapter 1 brings us to worship Christ as the God who’s deserving of all praise.

Then you come to chapter 2, and it’s about the incarnation. He’s a man. And you can just almost hear the conversation going on in the first century. “Jesus is God. He’s higher than the angels. He’s the Son of God. He’s received worship.” And somebody’s going to say, “But wait, he’s a man.” And the answer is, chapter 2, “Yeah, there’s gospel in those woods. Let me tell you about it.” He’s man, all right, but he’s God become man, and that’s the flow of thought, chapters 1 and 2.

Now, notice the expression in verse 9 of chapter 2. “We see him who for a little while was made a little lower than the angels.” Remember that language, Psalm 8? This is the great dignity of humanity. We’ve been made just a little lower than the angels. Exalted humanity, king of creation. But in verse 9, it’s Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels. And here the language is not that of exaltation, but of condescension. That which is our highest dignity and glory is that to which the Son of God stooped in order to accomplish our redemption. And then notice the language in verse 9: not only made a little lower than the angels, but “crowned with glory and honor.” You remember that from Psalm 8 as well. Reflecting on Genesis chapter 1, we were crowned with glory and honor, given this great dignity to reign in God’s place over the earth. But now Jesus is crowned with glory and honor. What does that mean? Well, notice how he explains it. “Crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.” And here we’re introduced to that big theme in the Bible where Jesus has come, condescended to be one of us in order to accomplish in our place the redemption as our mediator. And having successfully accomplished that work, God has made him Lord and established him as universal king. Crowned with glory and honor, again the terms of condescension and humiliation for the Son of God.

So we have again the new Adam, the new leader, the new representative head. Now verse 10: “For it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things consist (that is, he’s the creator), in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Now notice the word in my translation—it’s translated, in the ESV, as “the founder of their salvation.” If you have the King James Version, it’s translated “the captain of their salvation.” If you have the NIV, it’s translated “the pioneer of their salvation.” This is—you can tell just by comparing English translations that the translators are not sure exactly how precisely to render this word. There are words like that that we just don’t have an exact equivalent. And this is one of those kinds of words. It speaks of a champion, it speaks of a leader, but it speaks of one who goes first as the head of a group to open up the way. It’s used in military context sometimes, and that’s why the King James translates it with the military language of the captain of our salvation. It’s used in that kind of a context sometimes.

So you might picture a military officer who’s leading a unit through the thick of battle. It comes to a strategic moment in the battle, and in order to win the day, they have to secure this position up on the hill. And it just seems impossible. And finally, the captain or the officer there with the unit tells the rest of the unit, “You stay here, you wait for my signal.” And he alone goes up ahead, sneaks around, secures the moment, gives the signal, and all the rest of the unit comes up and they’ve won the day. That’s the archegos—the leader, the pioneer. I like that translation in the NIV, the pioneer of our salvation. He’s the one that’s gone ahead, gone before, and led the way for the rest of us. And so Christ then is the pioneer, the founder, or the leader of our salvation. He’s gone ahead of us. He’s blazed the trail. He’s done the work. He’s finished it, secured the moment, opened the way, and we follow him there. Founder of our salvation.

You might remember the song, I think it was introduced here first at Gina’s memorial service, a song by Don Carson: “They Came Alone.” You remember the first several stanzas? Track out some of the history of the narrative of Jesus’ resurrection. Women went to the tomb, so discouraged. You have men on the way to Emmaus, they’re so discouraged. And Jesus appears to them and talks, opens the scriptures for them. You have Thomas, who just flat won’t believe this, it’s crazy, comes to faith. And then the last stanza reflects on it all theologically from this standpoint: “Long years have passed and still we fear the face of death. It steals our loved ones, leaving us undone. It mocks our fears, comes to us with icy breath, life’s final terror when our life’s work is done.” But then in the chorus he brings it all together: “But this I know, my Lord has traveled this way before. His body clothed in immortality. The sepulcher’s sting is drawn, the power of sin destroyed. Death has been swallowed up in his mighty victory.”

That’s the teaching here. And our Lord, the second Adam, has come. He has led the way, opened it up, and we follow along behind him. And all of God’s purposes for mankind will be fulfilled through Jesus. He has exhausted the curse in his death. And as our head, he has been raised from the dead, leading us to glory as well. We have then a new leader, a new pioneer, a new hero, a new representative head, and he has accomplished for us redemption in all of its many dimensions: justification, resurrection, life, restoring us to our created glory. Or as we sang last week, “See the new and better Adam come to save the hell-bound man.” Adam the first brings us to ruin. Adam the second brings redemption and restores fallen humanity to our exalted status as rulers over the earth. The actions of the one bring consequences for the many.

And this, by the way—it’s more than we can explore now—but this, just by the way, lies behind the imagery in the New Testament of the language of the old man and the new man. The old man in Adam, the new man in Christ—we are in Christ what God has made us to be. And all of this takes us eventually to the book of Revelation where we are presented for us in the future a new creation, a new humanity consisting in men and women from every tribe and nation under heaven, safe in Jesus, their Redeemer. Humanity restored under its new representative head.

Reflections On The Big Picture

A couple of reflections before I close. One, just in terms of the big picture that we’ve been trying to explore in scripture, you see here the importance of Adam in the Bible story. This, of course, is one of today’s major battlegrounds in theology. I’m not going to get into the doctrine of evolution this morning, but you can see from this the importance of Adam in the Bible story. It is in Adam the race has fallen, and it is that same principle then by which humanity will be redeemed through a new representative head.

Secondly, and more to the point that I’ve been trying to drive in all of this, and that is that this drives us—it rivets our attention to see again the all-importance of Jesus Christ. All of this is given to us to stir up faith and to focus our faith on the only one who can save. Who saves us? How does he save us? What does it mean that he saves us? And all of these themes are given to us through the Bible to show us the new angles and aspects and the ways in which God has saved us and what it means that he has saved us.

And this is one of those great big themes that tells us from the get-go: you have to see you can’t make it on your own. You think that you can approach God without Christ? You are so lost. You in Adam are ruined, you’re lost, you can’t make it. What you need, what you must have, is someone qualified to take up your cause for you. And the whole Bible is written to tell us God has sent his Son for just that purpose. He has succeeded where Adam failed. He was born under the law and accomplished all the righteousness required by the law. Went to the cross, obedient all the way to the cross, bearing our sin, taking our curse, and taking us with him through death and into resurrection and into glory. Jesus coming out of the grave emerges as the one who is the uniquely qualified Redeemer of lost and fallen humanity. That is to say, simply, Jesus is just the Savior you need. He’s all we need. He’s all the righteousness, all the justification, all the life, all that God requires of us, and all of our hope is focused in Him. Or we have no hope at all. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Father, our hearts are so warmed and so stirred to be reminded of Jesus, to see him accomplish for us what you require of us. What a great thing it is to know that we can come to you with confidence precisely because our approach does not depend upon us or anything about us, but because our approach depends upon the Lord Jesus who has taken up our cause for us. How we thank you for sending your Son. Lord Jesus, we praise you for coming to our rescue. Lord, we pray that you would give us, through all of this, a reminder to focus our faith more firmly in him, to glory in him, to glory in the salvation we have in him, and as a result, to serve him more faithfully until he comes. It is in his name we pray, amen.