A Reading From The Book Of Jeremiah 20:7-13A Reading From The Book Of Psalms 69: 1-18A Reading From The Book Of Romans 5:15-19The Holy Gospel Of Our Lord Jesus Christ According To Matthew 10:16-33Sermon by Rev Dr Pastor JimmyIn 1845, history tells us of a lost expedition. British explorer Sir John Franklin led an expedition to discover the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic. And history will look to him as a hero for all of the discoveries that he made during those explorations. But in those explorations, some significant things happened. We know that the ships were well built. We know that the crew was experienced because of all that they had put into preparing for this expedition. We know that they carried enough supplies for them to last and to live for years as they were going through this expedition. But something happened in the middle of that expedition, and every one of those 140-plus crew members died, including Sir John Franklin himself. They crashed on King William Island in Canada. Something had gone terribly wrong through this exploration. Historians still debate what the main cause was, but what they know to be sure is that somehow they had gotten off course. Somehow they had lost their bearings in trying to navigate through the Canadian Arctic. And that's an important lesson for all of us. If your bearings are off even slightly, every step in the wrong direction takes you farther and farther away from safety. The problem is not merely that you're moving. The problem is that you're moving confidently in the wrong direction. A few degrees off today becomes hundreds of miles tomorrow. Now, the same thing is true for us spiritually in our lives. We have an opportunity to make some adjustments today, but in order for us to make those adjustments, to get ourselves back on track, we need a compass. And in using that compass, we need a true north, a fixed point that doesn't move. Paul, in his letter to the Romans in chapter 5, tells us that Jesus is that fixed point. It's no surprise that everything in history leads up to him and then flows from him. We know that scripture says that he is the beginning and the end, that everything flows from him. And so what we know to be sure in this moment, in us understanding what it means to follow the better Adam, is for us to understand why that even is needed. What does the text tell us? It says that Adam turned humanity away from its fixed point. Turned humanity away from its fixed point, and it offers us one of the clearest explanations of the human condition. We talk about discipleship and instruction and catechism a lot in our church, and we do that with our students, and we are doing that with our members who are wanting to go deeper into discipleship and wanting to be received or confirmed before when the bishop comes in August. Catechism is important because it trains us. And the very first question that you learn when you are in the process of discipleship is what is the human condition? What is the human condition? Paul doesn't begin in describing our personal sins, although we are all sinful and in need of a savior. That's what the human condition points to. He doesn't start with our personal sins. He begins with Adam's. Verse 19 of Romans 5, he says, For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. Adam was humanity's representative. You know the word Adam isn't like a name that God picked because he thought it was cool and he wanted to start with the letter A because, you know, he wanted to be original. It wasn't as if there was like a list of baby names that were important when you were creating the world that you would find at Crackle Barrel, and God went through and said, this is the most popular name when you were born. Right. That's not what happened with Adam. The word Adam means mankind, humanity. And there's a play on words when you read it in the Hebrew scriptures. Ha adamah. And it means mankind of the ground. And we know it was made from the dust of the earth. But that name Adam stands for humanity, mankind. It doesn't mean a cool name, bro. Like it's actually showing us that Adam is a representative for humanity, that he was the representative for humanity. And what happened when he rebelled? That compass needle that points us to where we need to go of the human race, all of humanity, because he's the representative for all of humanity. When he rebelled, that compass that points us to where we need to go swung away from God. It swung away from God. And so instead of them looking toward God, what do we see that sin caused humanity to do? To hide from God. To hide from God. To turn away from God. To leave where God was because of their fear and their shame. Everything became disoriented. You ever been disoriented? Time or two, right? In those moments, it's hard to get your bearings, right? It's hard to know where is straight, where is left and right. And we get all disoriented. And in that, things begin to get out of order. They begin to become disordered. What follows in the story of the human race, after this representative of the human race rebels, and everything gets disoriented, sin follows. Sin entered the world, and as a result of sin, death entered the world. That's why we can confidently say that even though there are people who make examples and try to explain things, death entered the world when Adam rebelled against God. Sin and death were a consequence of the fall. Alienation followed. Broken relationships followed. Not only with God, but with each other. What do we see happening shortly after the fall? Not only were they separated from God, but now their relationships with each other began to sever. And we're still trying to fix that today. Every Sunday we gather, and we ask the Holy Spirit to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts. And then we remind ourselves of what the law summarizes. That we are to love the Lord with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind. And to love our neighbors as ourselves. Why do we say that every week? Because we're still working on it. Yeah, but I want you to say something new. Well, let's figure this out first. Say something different. No. Because we still need help here. We still need help with our relationship with Jesus. We still need help with our relationship with each other. Alright? So we're still working on it. We're still trying to fix things through the Holy Spirit. He's still trying to repair and to rebuild what sin has broken. Creation is broken. Things don't happen the way that they should. Hearts have been broken. Our affections have become disordered. We love things we shouldn't love. We pursue things that we were never created or destined to pursue. Because our hearts are, as Prophet Jeremiah said, desperately wicked. And deceitful above all else. Everyone in this room, whether you're a father, or whether you're a mother, or whether you're someone of influence. To another person, a mentor, a brother, sister, aunt, uncle, coach. Every one of us, in some way, shape, or form, knows what it feels like to hand something down to someone else. That blessing of hearing someone say, when I die, this is going to be yours. I'm going to hand these things down to you. Sometimes it's a skill, right? You have a skill, and so you teach someone else that skill. And then that skill continues to live on through them. Sometimes it's a family trait. You have these characteristics, the things that are just specific to your family. And so you pass down those family traits. In some cases, it's debt that you pass down from family to family. And that's not necessarily a good thing, but it is a reality sometimes. What do we know about Adam? As the representative of humanity, what did he pass down to all of us? A spiritual inheritance that none of us asked for, but all of us possessed. Thanks, Adam. We all possess the same nature. We have this disposition toward getting off track. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that all we like sheep have gone astray. Pull a sheep out of the ditch, and what happens? Sometimes they jump right back into the ditch. We are prone to wonder, right? Prone to leave the God that we love. That's the human condition, and that's what Adam has passed down to us. And this is important. For you and I, if we aren't fixed on that point, that doesn't move, if we aren't fixed on Christ, which is what we hear in Scripture, fixing our eyes on Him, right? The author and finisher of our faith. The pioneer and the perfecter of our faith. If our eyes aren't fixed on Him, then we are governed by our bent compass. And that compass is often manipulated and affected by environment. We need a compass, something that guides us, but in that, we have to also look for that fixed point. What is a bent compass? It's a heart that naturally points away from God. He's given us a heart, but what did the prophet Ezekiel prophesy? I want to take that heart of stone, and I want to give you a heart of flesh. It can be molded, it can be shaped. Proverbs teaches us to guard our hearts above all else, because out of it flows the wellspring of life. A heart that naturally points away from God. This explains why humanity can be brilliant and broken at the same time. Like Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite. Also created the Nobel Peace Prize. To try to correct some of the damage that had occurred because of that invention. There's a paradox at work. We can be brilliant and broken. We can look at humanity and society and say, Man, this is brilliant! That person is broken. That's why music can be so influential in our lives. We can hear it and say, Man, that's such a moving song. It's such a moving lyric. But then also go, What? That person is broken. Their life is a wreck. But they're brilliant! We've got
