Much to the delight of many youth across the country, the Higher Things conference season is fast approaching. This is always an exciting time for church youth groups who have been fundraising all year for these trips as every conference provides wonderful opportunities to learn and grow. The plenary speakers expound on the conference theme, breakout speakers present on a variety of topics, the multitude of services provide a theological foundation grounded in the liturgy, great hymns, and sermons to meditate on, and yes, there will be some time for fun and games as well. Another aspect of conferences that I especially love is learning the conference hymn. If you were not aware that Higher Things has a specific hymn chosen to fit the theme of each conference, now you know! This year the hymn is “In the Shattered Bliss of Eden” (LSB 572) which ties in with the conference theme – “Sanctified.” The text of this hymn covers the entire story of our salvation from the fall into sin, through the Old Testament sacrificial covenant, onto Jesus’ death and the New Testament sacramental covenant given to us in the present day.
In the shattered bliss of Eden dawned the day of sacrifice, as our primal parents shuddered – Sin had caused this dreadful price! Faith embarked with this discernment: Only God can cover sin, as He took their leafy garments and He clothed their shame with skin. –LSB 572, Verse 1
In Genesis chapter 3 when Adam and Eve took that fateful bite of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the wonderful paradise that God created for them was gone. They achieved what they were promised by the serpent: to know the difference between good and evil just like God, yet with this newly acquired knowledge came the realization that what they had just done was evil. They broke God’s law, and immediately their sin and shame were visible. As they desperately tried to hide themselves from God with fig leaves, God came to them, showed them their sin, and gave them both a curse – the punishment for sin – and offered them a promise, that their sin would eventually be crushed by the seed of Eve.
The scene that followed is highlighted in this first stanza of the hymn: God took an animal and killed it in order to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve. What a shock this must have been to our first parents. This was Eden! Nothing had ever died, or withered, or been sick, or been killed before. God’s warning to Adam in Genesis 2 where He said Adam would die in the day he ate of the tree in the garden was visibly carried out in front of Adam. Adam would eventually die, and all creation took on his curse and would die with him. God killed this first animal to cover the sin of Adam and Eve, and what a horrible price it must have seemed at the time. They could not have foreseen the thousands of animals that would be sacrificed to cover the sins of Children of Israel nor the painful, terrible sacrifice of Jesus Christ – the seed of the woman sent to crush the serpent’s head. Instead, what they saw and learned on that day was that God alone could cover their sin and that all their attempts to cover up what they had done were futile. Sin came at a price, and that price was death.
