What Can One Man Do? Series

[Grateful Appreciation to Skip Heitzig of Calvary Church Albuquerque. His teaching on Romans 5 really impacted my own.]

Good morning! Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 5.

If you’ve spent any time around Glynwood, you’ve noticed that we always start a sermon with “Please you’re your Bibles to…”

There’s a reason we do that. If we aren’t talking about God’s word, we have nothing to talk about as a church. If I am not talking about God’s Word, I literally have no other area of expertise. So when we gather on Sunday mornings, we are going to base all of our conversations on this book.

I also want you to know that when I am preparing to preach on a Sunday morning, there are a lot of commentaries and studies I use to help me present what a particular passage is saying. And so, if I’ve drawn extensively from one work or sermon or commentary, I want to let you know that.

And today, I want to let you know that I’ve really benefitted from the work of a Bible teacher named Skip Heitzig with this particular sermon. Skip is the teaching pastor at Calvary Church Albuquerque. He is a verse by verse expositional preacher, and if you are ever just looking for a sermon series to listen to on a long road trip, you should bookmark Skip’s YouTube channel.

So I want to be clear that I am borrowing a lot from Skip’s outline of this passage this morning.

Now, let me begin by asking you a very simple question:

How much good can be accomplished by one person?

In his lifetime, Thomas Edison patented over one thousand inventions. He invented the first record player, the incandescent light bulb, and an early version of a motion-picture camera.

One person really can change the world. There’s an African proverb that says, “If you don’t think one person can make a difference, think of the difference one person makes to a hungry mosquito.”

Of course, it goes the other way, too. One person can do a lot of good, but one person can also do a lot of evil.

How many of you know the name Mary Mallon? Probably none of you. But you may know her by her nickname: Typhoid Mary. Mary Mallon worked as a cook for eight different wealthy families in New York in the early 1900’s. But unbeknownst at the time, Mary was a carrier of the bacteria that causes typhus, or typhoid fever. By the time she was identified as the source, over 3,000 New Yorkers had contracted typhoid fever from Mary herself or from people she had infected.

Remember the African proverb? If you think one person can’t make a difference, imagine the difference one man makes to a hungry mosquito. But imagine the difference one hungry mosquito carrying malaria can make on an entire village!

So one person can invent things and help people. But another person can destroy what they have invented. One person can light a match, cause a fire to burn, destroy homes, ruin lives. Another person can put out the fire, save homes, rescue lives. And that is the thrust of the passage we're about to read.

In Romans 5, Paul talks about the difference two men made on the entire human race. One man was Adam. Like Typhoid Mary, the actions Adam took infected the entire human race.

The other man was Jesus, and the actions He took are able to redeem the entire human race.

You should know that this passage is considered one of the most difficult passages to understand of all of Paul’s writings. So this morning I want to do my best to put the cookies on the bottom shelf and make this as simple as possible.

I want to give you some signposts that are going to help you understand the point of the passage. Here they are:

In verses 12-21, the word "one" appears 11 times. One man, one sin, one trespass, one wrong choice. And that opened the door for corruption.

But then we have one man, one sacrifice, one right choice that opened the door to salvation. So both Adam and Christ represent one man that did something that impacted the entire human race.

Second signpost: There is another word, "reign," That word appears five times.

Paul acknowledges these two men, Adam and Christ, both reign over a kingdom-- Adam reigning over the kingdom of death, Jesus reigning over the kingdom of life. Condemnation flows from the stream of Adam. Salvation, justification flows from the stream of Christ.

One more signpost: It’s the phrase "much more." Much more is used five times. So if you lose track of everything else, remember that the point of the passage is that we have gained much more in Christ than we ever lost from Adam.