Buyer’s Remore – NO! Go!

Posted on Jun 3, 2023 in General |

 
Holy Trinity
Genesis 1: 1 to 2:4
Acts 2: 14a, 22 – 36
Matthew 28: 16 – 20
 
Have you ever had “buyer’s remorse?”  Maybe you bought something that promised to meet your needs but was faulty, insufficient or cost too much?  It seemed so good and yet turned out so bad.  Then you wondered how you can get yourself out of such a mess.  Maybe you:

– took it back and the store or owner refused to take it back or refund your money. 

– threatened to take them to court to get free of the nightmare.

–  just gave up because there was just no remedy and you had to live with it.

 

Our Scripture readings start at the beginning of creation.  The one who created all things gives us a wonderful and awesome report of His work.  God created the heavens and earth, creatures of the land, sea and air out of nothing. He spoke and it came into existence. 
 

 Suddenly, God reveals a conversation within the Godhead, “ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And 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.” (Genesis 1:26).

– God speaks and it is: God the Father as creator[1], God the Son through whom all things were made (John 1:3), and the Holy Spirit whom is the Lord and giver of life.

– He completes creation by blessing man with fruitfulness, dominion and communion and announces it is “very good.”( Genesis 1:28-31)
– Heaven on earth – God walks with Adam in the cool of the day.
 

We only read a little further in Genesis 3 and read that tragedy stuck man and all creation. 

– Man had everything.
    • Formed in the image of God, Adam and Eve were blessed with work that was neither tiring nor burdensome.
    • Yet in the very midst of the Garden of Eden Adam’s unbelief and rebellion resulted in bondage to sin, death and devil.
    • Adam’s sin was foolishness: having been created in the image of God he was tempted with something that already existed:  “you will be like God.” (Genesis 3:5)  There was nothing to gain and everything to lose. 
    • In unbelief Adam plunged all of us into the “kingdom of the devil.”[2]

– Something so appealing turned out to be devastatingly deadly. 

  • There was no way for Adam to “get a refund.”
  • He couldn’t appeal to God because He had rebelled against the one he needed to plead his case before.
  • There was nothing Adam could do but “live with it.” You and I have to live with it also because we can’t turn in our corrupt human nature for a righteous one. We all declared sinful because of it.  No choice left but to live with “it.”
 

Yet, God assures us that His intention, counsel, and will is unified.  St Paul tells us in Ephesians 1 that He chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless.(Ephesians 1:4-10)  God saves us with His Word, placing His name on us as the pastor states, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28: 19)[3] 

 

Original sin still corrupts our human nature as attested to by Isaiah and Paul.  We are men of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips (Isaiah 6:5) and we do the things we know we should not do and not doing the things we know we should do. (Romans 7:18-20)  God graciously calls us to confession, repentance and absolution because we are both sinner and saint.  He calls us to daily remember both our baptism by which He put to death our fallen nature and raised us up as the new creature in Christ.  Also to remember daily the Lord’s Supper in which we have forgiveness of sins, life, strengthens and protects the new creature and protections against the ever present attacks and temptations of the devil.[4]

 

You and I may have “buyer’s remorse” and want someone else to make it right when we purchase a faulty product or unwise purchase.  However, God does not operate like that.  He loved us when we were still sinner. (Romans 5:8) 

  • He is the God that was, is and will be. He is the God who created man in His image and said it was “very good.”
  • He is the God that did not discard Adam or you and me because we proved to be utterly corrupted by Original Sin and our actual sin.
  • He is the Father that sent His Son to do what you and I were totally incapable of doing.
  • He is the Son who saved you and me through His bitter suffering and death on the cross to satisfy the wages of our sin.
  • He is the Holy Spirit that works through the preached word and sacraments of God to create, strengthen and preserve faith.
  • He is the God that declares you and me righteous and His children because of Christ Jesus.
  • He is one God in three persons.
  • He is the God that sends you and me out into a fallen and dying world with the Words of Life that those crushed by sin and spiritually dead would arise as a new creation in Christ and join us in His house and at His table in eternal, true, and abundant fellowship forever and ever.
 

All glory, laud and honor to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit now and forever.  Amen

 

 

[1] The Three Universal or Ecumenical Creeds

[2] Apology of the Augsburg Confession Article VII. 16.  The Kingdom of God (the children of God) and the kingdom of the devil (the children of the devil)

[3] LSB p.270

[4] LC V.26-27

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