21st February 2025

21st February 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Genesis 2:17, ch3 and Hebrews 2:14-18)


Message (Alan Burke)


Maybe you have watched the film Braveheart, that moment in the film where William Wallace portrayed by Mel Gibson gives a stirring speech to the assembled armies, saying that “…you have come to fight as free men and free men you are, what will you do with that freedom, will you fight”. And then… “They may take our lives but they may never take our freedom.” People talk a lot about freedom, the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants. Freedom is the condition of being free, and I am free to walk round Crossgar running a key down the side of every car I fancy leaving a big scratch. 


The truth is though man, humanity, people, the human race what ever way you want to put it, the truth is that none of us are born free, you may be thinking but isn’t this a free country, we are all free if we wanted to go jump on car roofs, there would be consequences of course but we are free, aren’t we? No we are not free biblically speaking. Each and everyone of us, whether we like to accept the truth are not are born as slaves to sin, we from the moment of conception were sinners (see amongst others Rom 6-8, also Jesus words Jn. 8:34 and 1 Jn 1:10). 


But there was a time in human history where people could be described in the truest sense as being free, having true freedom and that was our first parents Adam and Eve. The one thing that God asked for was obedience (Gen 2:17). God here entered into a covenant of life with Adam also known as the covenant of works, basically if Adam obeyed he would live. The covenant obligations for Adam was simply not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For when he would eat of it he would surely die. The death that God spoke of here was a warning to Adam that the consequence was that of physical as well as spiritual and eternal. 


They were free, not like William Wallace shouting freedom in the film, in reality we don’t know if the real William Wallace said anything of the sort, it not the freedom I have to walk round Crossgar running a key down the side of every car I fancy leaving a big scratch, because the truth is that because of what happened, none of us are free we are slaves to sin. Whereas Adam and Eve were completely free to choose, to either to obey or disobey, God gave our first parents Adam and Eve the ability to choose with absolute freedom of will, God invited man to accept his word, It was not thrust upon him. 


They had the liberty, the freedom to follow the path of obedience that led to life, or the path of disobedience that led to death, they were truly free, they could not be forced to obedience or disobedience, this was the condition that they were made by God and the Devil could not force them do to what he wanted them to do, he could only tempt them. He could only speak to them to persuade them tot do what he wanted them to do out of their own desire. Adam disobeyed, he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (3:6) and death came. First spiritual death which we see in Genesis 3:8-10 for Adam that day died spiritually, hiding himself from God, no longer was their relationship, their was alienation, strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Eph 2:12). Adam and Eve had become the living dead. The relationship now ruined, had brought alienation, no longer could man enter the presence of God. While Adam and Eve were still physically alive death would come (3:19), he would return to the dust of the ground. 


In once sense it seems utterly hopeless, our first parents left the entire creation in a mess, the fall had come, if we look at the world around us, or even examine ourselves in an honest light, all the injustice, pain, suffering, sin, and evil can be traced back to this single moment in history. This single moment when God's creation was transformed from being "very good" to being utterly ruined. But in the midst of all of this, God preached the gospel to the Devil there in the garden of one who would come to crush his head, while he would only bruise his heal (Gen 3:15). There was hope even though we became the living dead, a hope in the one who would come. Hebrews 2 reminds us  “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil”. (Heb 2:14). Thanks be to our gracious God for the salvation he has brought.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q13 Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created?
Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God.
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