I am sure that you all know the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty. I think you can all say it with me.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
So what was Humpty Dumpty? Everybody knows that he is an egg. But why? There is no reference to an egg in the rhyme.
It is because of Lewis Carroll's classic book Through the Looking-Glass published in 1871 as a sequel to his book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the book, Alice meets many sets of extremely unusual characters, one of which happens to be a human-like egg that goes by the name of Humpty Dumpty.
Since the original nursery rhyme was created over 50 years before Through the Looking-Glass, it could not have been the egg that was the inspiration behind it. Not only was Humpty not an egg, but according to many historians, he was likely a military cannon that fell off the wall and broke to pieces in 1648 during the English civil war.
An early version of the rhyme goes this way:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
Threescore men and threescore more,
Cannot place Humpty dumpty as he was before.
“Well,” you ask, “why are you talking about a silly nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty in a sermon about such a serious topic?”
It is because we are Humpty Dumpty! We, from Adam to today, have all had a great fall. And nothing on earth can put us back together with God – except our Lord Jesus Christ!