From Sampler to Sower

Weekend Teaching Series: You Decide

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 of 10, By the time the Senior High service rolled around, most of the glitches were worked out of the system and everything went pretty smoothly.

Message Summary: This was week three for our You Decide series in which we’ve been answering the questions students ask.  We’ve set up a Poll Everywhere poll to collect the questions and I’m choosing the best to answer at Water’s Edge.

As always, we started by answering some of the goofy questions that have been texted in by our teens.  My favorite was “¿Te gusta comer las galletas y el helado?”  which of course I answered in my very best Spanish.  (Good thing they didn’t ask me something in French, I’d been in trouble.)

Then we picked up with the real questions.  The first was the question I wasn’t able to deal with the week before: Did Adam and Eve go to heaven?

This really is two questions in one: On one hand, there’s the question do Christians go to heaven immediately upon death?  Then there’s the question were Adam and Eve ever reconciled to God?  After determining the intent of the question was the latter we dove in.

The fact is, the Bible doesn’t clearly say.  One thing I find troubling is the fact that when they were confronted about their sin in the garden, they made excuses rather than confessing.  As long as we want to make excuses for our sins rather than confess them, we will never be forgiven.  But, that doesn’t mean they did not come to repentance later on.

There are some indications that Adam and Eve continued to put their trust in God, even after their fall.  Eve names her son, Cain, because she understands that God has helped her give birth (Gen 4:1).  Likewise, after Abel’s murder, they understood that their son Seth was a gift from God.  And the very next verse clarifies that it was during the life of Seth, after the birth of his son Enosh that people began to call on the name of the Lord.  And Adam was still alive at that time according to Genesis (Genesis 4:25-26).

However, most telling is the end of the story of the fall itself.  As God prepares to kick Adam and Eve out of the garden he replaces the fig leaf loin-cloths they had made for themselves.  He gives the new cloaks, made out of animal skins.  It’s easy to read right past that small detail, because we take clothes made out of animal skins for granted.  But within the story of Genesis, that marks the first death to enter the garden.  Blood was spilled for the first time in order to provide a covering for Adam and Eve.

When you add to that the fact that the Hebrew word for atonement literally refers to a covering (though it’s not the same as either of the two words used for clothes in this story) it becomes even more significant.  After sinning, Adam and Eve attempted to provide a covering for themselves, but failed.  However, what they could not do for themselves, God did for them through the death of an animal.  Many scholars see this as symbolic of the first sacrifice.  It points forward to the cross when God would do for all humanity what we could not do for ourselves and provide once and for all an atonement for sin.

Interestingly, Christian tradition has always understood Adam and Eve to have repented, and the Catholic church counts them among the canonized Saints.

The second question we took on was mainly a matter of curiosity: When Mary gave birth, did she experience pain?  The fact is the Bible doesn’t clearly say.  There’s no line in any of two nativity accounts that indicate pain or the lack thereof.

However, it’s an interesting question because traditionally the Roman Catholic church has taught that she didn’t.  Roman Catholic doctrine argues that it was not only Jesus’ conception, but also his birth that was miraculous.  The Catechism that came out of the Council of Trent teaches that in the same way that Jesus was able to come out of the tomb without it being opened, and in the same way that Jesus was able to enter a locked room after his resurrection without the door being opened, so too Jesus entered our world without opening the birth canal of his mother.  Thus Mary was not only a virgin when Jesus was concieved but she remained a virgin after his birth. If this is true, Jesus’ birth would have caused no pain.

That said, it should be noted that the Council of Trent was not an ecumenical council.  We place a great deal of confidence in ecumenical councils, when the Church around the world gathered together to work through issues of the faith.  Out of such councils come the great creeds of Christendom.  The Council of Trent however was convened in the 16th century in response to the Protestant reformation.  The eastern branches of Christianity were excluded as were the Protestant branches.  As such we do not hold the catechism to come out of this council to be authoritative.

Others make an argument based on the cause of pain in childbirth in the first place.  In Genesis 3, we see that birth pains are one of the consequences of the fall.

To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16, NIV)

Some would argue that Mary was exempt from these pains because unlike any other human, Jesus was not born into original sin, and his birth marked the beginning of the end of the tyranny of sin.

On the other hand we have two other passages of scripture which may suggest that Mary did suffer pain.  The first is found in Revelation 12.  In this chapter of the Apocalypse, John describes a vision which reveals the cosmic significance of Christ’s birth.

¹A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. ²She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. ³Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. ⁴His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. ⁵She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. ⁶The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. (Revelation 12:1-6, NIV)

This story clearly says that the woman, clothed in the sun, who gave birth to the Messiah “cried out in pain” during the birth.  However, most scholars understand that the woman portrayed here does not represent Mary, but rather represents the whole of the people of Israel, who had to endure many sufferings before the Messiah was born.

Perhaps more relevant is the account of what happened after Jesus’ birth in Luke 2.

When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2:22-24, NIV)

This verse references not only the time of purification after childbirth, and the sacrifice that was required to complete that purification.  When we go to the book of Leviticus, where this sacrifice is instituted we read these words:

Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. (Leviticus, 12:4, NIV)

Clearly it is the bleeding involved in childbirth that results in ceremonial uncleanness. If Jesus was born miraculously in such a way that no blood was involved, why did Mary have to make a sacrifice for ritual purification?  By this point in history was the sacrifice so customary that Mary did it just because that what every mother does?  Or does this imply there was blood, and therefore pain involved in Jesus birth.

I personally see no reason to believe that Mary did not suffer pain in Jesus’ birth.

Finally we took on a question about the rapture: “When Jesus comes back, will he come back in one place, or in many places at once?”

1Thessalonians 4 certainly depicts him as coming back in bodily form and Christians both resurrected from death and raptured alive going to meet him in the air where he is.  He comes back in one place.  But you need not worry that you will miss it.  In Matthew 24, Jesus deals with the concern that some Christians might not notice when he comes back to earth.  To this possibility Jesus says, “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:26-27, NIV).  We don’t have to worry that we won’t notice Jesus’ return.  He tells us that it will be plain to the whole world.

Noticing he’s back isn’t the issue.

Being ready when he returns is.

Later in the same chapter Jesus goes on to say:

Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:45-51, NIV)

According to Jesus it’s possible for us to become so caught up in our every day lives that we begin to forget that he is returning.  We begin to assume that this life is all there is, and we bear no responsibilities beyond assuring our own enjoyment and comfort.  Rather than remembering we are servants who have been given a trust, we order our lives around our own goals, desires and pleasures.  We forget that either by our own death or Christ’s return, our life will one day end. Such a life earns the master’s condemnation.

We closed by challenging students to live life in light of eternal priorities.

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: Our game Tuesday was pretty simple and straightforward.  The goal was to get students using their cell phones with Poll Everywhere, and to promote a new item our snack bar began selling.  Everyone who managed to get their name texted in in 60 seconds got a coupon for a free pack of “5″ gum from our snack bar.

Worship Set: Mighty to Save, Here I am to Worship, Revelation Song, In Christ Alone

Favorite Moment: It was a great night! Our numbers were down somewhat, but there was great interaction between me and my students during the lesson time.  There was a lot of give and take in the question and answer time that I really enjoyed.  (However, I want my missing teens back! You know who you are!)