Bible Passage: Genesis 4:1-2, 6-8, 25-5:5
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: December 19, 2021

Bulletin December 19, 2021

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

I hope what I am about to say is not a “spoiler” for anyone.  But I am sort of hoping that most of you have seen at least one of the many productions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Story.  Remember that scene towards the end where Scrooge is in the cemetery with the Ghost of Christmas Future?  The spectre points to a gravestone he wants Scrooge to look at.  Scrooge resists and protests.  He has a hunch he knows whose name is on the stone.  Finally, he looks and he sees the words “Ebenezer Scrooge.”  His own name!  And then remember what Scrooge says?  He says, “Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”  He didn’t like seeing his name on a gravestone.  He wanted to know if there was a way to get rid of that writing.  Of course, that event is pure fiction.

In our text today, the very real Holy Spirit points us to two gravestones.  The first one belongs to Adam and Eve’s son, Abel.  Cain was his brother.  You remember the sad and tragic story.  We have some of the details in our text.  Abel was a shepherd.  Cain was a farmer.  In the course of time, each of them brought offerings to the Lord.  Abel, we are told, brought fat portions from some of his animals.  The Bible tells us that Abel brought his offerings in faith.  Mom and Dad, Adam and Eve, had told their children about the promise God made in the Garden of Eden after they sinned.  The promised Seed of the Woman who would come to crush the serpent’s head to save sinners.  Abel believed that promise, and in faith he worshiped his gracious God with his offerings!  And the Lord smiled whenever he smelled the smoke from Abel’s altar.

Cain, however, did not believe the promise.  So we might wonder, “So why would he bring an offering then?”  Maybe he was just doing it “for mom and dad.”  Maybe he thought he could “schmooze” God.  Maybe it was just plain hypocrisy.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t faith.  And it wasn’t pleasing to God.  Soon Cain was boiling with anger.  You could see it on his face (Genesis 4:5)!  However, the Lord does a very gracious thing for Cain.  He comes to Cain and he warns him that if he is not careful, sin is going to get the better of him.  Cain chooses to ignore the Lord’s warning.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Sad, tragic history.  Cain invites Abel to take a walk in the field.  Maybe he said, “Hey, I want to show you how the crops are coming in!”  While they are out on “the back 40,” Cain attacks his brother and murders him in cold blood.  And so we have it, the first “gravestone” in the Bible.  “Here lies Abel, beloved son of Adam and Eve.”

But our text goes on today.  It records how Adam and Eve had other children after the death of Abel.  And then it concludes:  Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died. (Genesis 5:5)  First of all, yes, Adam really lived 930 years!  This is not a fairy tale!  We know it’s no fairy tale.  Because in fairy tales everybody lives “happily ever after.”  And in this story he died.  There it is…the second gravestone in Scripture!  “Here lies Adam.  Beloved husband and father.”

At this point you may want to object and say, “What is happening in these early pages of our Bible?  Why the death?  Why the gravestones?”  The answer, in part, is that it shows that the Lord God was deadly earnest about what he had said to Adam about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.  The Lord God had said to Adam, When you eat of it, you will surely die. (Genesis 2:17)  Adam and Eve ate of it.  In the moments after the fall when the Lord came into the Garden and talked to Adam and Eve about what they had done, he reminded Adam about what he had warned, By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:19)  God told Adam he was going to die.

That is why Genesis 4 and 5 read the way they do!  Eight times in Genesis 5 we find these words, he died!  That is why we see the gravestones of Abel and Adam – and the next seven generations after them!  And we can see where this is heading, can’t we?  Death didn’t stop seven generations after Adam.  Death keeps going.  Each generation has to write the same ending to the same sad story, “and he died.”  A steady drum beat through time.  Now getting closer.  Another gravestone in the distance.  Can you see it?  Can you make out the writing on it?  I bet you can.

At this point, like Scrooge, we want to cry out, “Is there any way to sponge away the writing on the stone?”  There is.  To find it we must travel ahead approximately 76 generations after Adam (cf. Luke 3).  There we will find one who broke the mold.  You see, every baby born in all those 76 generations was born like Adam’s sons.  In our text we are told Adam had babies in his own likeness, in his own image (5:3).  That is, they were sinful like dad.  Therefore, they would die, like dad.  But in that 77th generation there is one different than all the others.  This one is conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  Jesus Christ.  Fully God and fully man.  But God in flesh?  Why?  The author of Hebrews spells it out:  Since the children have flesh and blood, he [Jesus] too shared in their humanity, so that by his death, he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15)  God in flesh would die for sins that are ours, beneath a curse of God that is ours, to pay a debt we owe.  And the devil has nothing more to say.

And now, the Holy Spirit takes us out to a graveyard.  And he points us to a gravestone.  Go ahead, look at this one!  It is not scary.  This one isn’t a headstone, though.  This stone had been used to seal and shut a tomb.  But do you see?  This stone has been torn away from the tomb to reveal that it is empty!  Jesus rose!  Death is defeated!  You will live, too.  Jesus has become for us the Resurrection and the Life!  When you go to get a grave, see if you can negotiate to rent it, and not buy it, because you are only going to need it until Jesus comes back!

The writing on the stone has been changed.  The ending is now a happy one.  In fact, it is the THE happy ending every generation wants.  The last line for Abel, and Adam, and you and me – and for all whose hope is in Christ – is not and he died.  The last line for you is “he/she lives.”  Eternally! The end for us is really just the glorious beginning!  And that you can chisel in stone!

Amen.

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