A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series

It was J. K. Rowling who said, “There is always room for a story that can transport us to another place.” There is power in stories. And I am excited to be able to kick this series off today called ‘Six Men & Six Women.’ I remember when I first began to fall in love with learning about Biblical characters. As an early Christian I was so ignorant about the Bible that I had no idea about many of the characters in Scripture. In fact as a new Christian, at the ripe old age of about 19, my buddy who led me to the Lord gave me cartoon videos of Daniel and the lion’s den, Noah’s ark, and so on and so forth. And I would watch these little cartoons and learn about the characters.

But as far as a preacher goes, someone gave me some cassette tapes by Chuck Swindoll teaching on Nehemiah, and I heard this preacher teach biography in a way that captivated me. And then Swindoll came out with a biographical series, and I started cutting my teeth on David, Esther and Joseph. And he came out with the story of Moses and other different biographies that he had written. And then my first semester at Dallas Theological Seminary was Chuck Swindoll’s last semester as president there. And after he spoke in chapel one day, I went up to him and I told him how much his biographical series had meant to me.

There is power in stories. And that is what I want us to get in this series, to see how powerful it can be for us to learn about different life stories. In fact I have established for this series five goals that I want to share with you. So if you are here and you are thinking about coming back and hearing this series, if you are checking out Life Fellowship, here is what I would want you to be able to know that I am going to strive to accomplish with this series. First of all, I would hope that we will be familiar with these Biblical characters in a manner that helps us to look back to them throughout various phases of our lives.

You and I are going to meet different circumstances along this trajectory we call life. And there are certain characters in the Bible that we need to meet and become familiar with, and to hear how their story relates to our story. In fact, by learning the Bible you will find, as I have found, that there are some characters that you will resonate more with during different seasons of your life than with others. Not only that, there are certain characters that you will identify with just at large, probably at any given time.

Secondly, my goal is that we will appreciate what God wants to say to us through these peoples’ stories in the Bible and through our own stories. What is it that God is saying about these characters, and what is it that He wants to say in our own stories in listening closely to them?

A third goal for this series is that a DNA would set in at Life Fellowship for the passion of listening to and sharing stories. It is my goal that we would be a culture of story tellers, that we would value narrative, and that we would value biographies. That

Page 1 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series we would value where God is at work in the stories of the lives of those in our church. And that we would look to tell those stories. And that we would strive to do a better job of capturing and sharing these stories.

A fourth goal of this series would be that we will be motivated to figure out our own story, and then be inspired to share it. I want to help you think carefully about God’s story in your life. Where is God at work in your life? What is it that God is up to in your life? What is He trying to communicate with you? What is it that He wants you to know? And by understanding what it is that He is up to in your life can help you. And not only that, but it will help you to share your story, to be aware of how to narrate what God is doing through the script of your life.

And the fifth goal of this series is that we will obtain a post series tool for detecting and developing what God is doing in our lives, so it will be available to help us and we can better grasp what God is seeking to narrate through our lives. And so that you can create a tool that you can utilize, like maybe online. It will help you figure out and detect what God is doing in your life. So there it is – a fivefold purpose of this series that we want to help you to see.

Now let’s meet the cast. We are kicking off with Adam, the first human to ever live. I thought that was apropos and quite fitting to start with him. Then we are going to look at Deborah who was a judge. We are going to look at Mary Magdalene and her character. Who was this person known as Mary Magdalene? We are going to study Nehemiah. We are going to do a biographical sketch on Mary, the mother of Jesus. We would be remiss to not look at her life that I think is undermined, or not featured enough in Protestant circles, and we are going to look at this great lady, Mary. We are going to study David and Esther. We are going to look at Philip. Did you know that Philip is the only person in the Scriptures called ‘The Evangelist?’ We are going to look at Daniel. We are going to talk about the unknown woman on Mother’s Day because the unknown woman is the noble wife of Proverbs 31. We are going to look at Moses and we are going to look at Ruth. And after this series, these six men and six women, hopefully you will be able to draw strength from their lives.

And I will say this, whether we are studying a man, like today it is Adam, and you are a female, there is a lot we can learn from him. And whether we are studying a female, like Deborah next week, there is a lot we can learn from her. So this is going to be a series that is action packed with 12 different actors that will be a part of this series, and this is the cast. We are going to learn about their lives, and we are going to look at their strengths, and we are going to see the foils that they meet. And we are going to see the struggles that they had. We are going to find that we are challenged by areas where we can grow because of the way they lived. But we are also going to find that we are

Page 2 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series comforted because misery loves company. And we are going to see that these people were jacked up just like us.

We are going to start today with the first man, Adam. In Acts Chapter 17 and verse 26 we learn this: “And God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.” Now when it comes to Adam, a lot of questions ensue. For example, was he a historical figure, a literal figure, or just a figurative figure, a metaphorical figure.

And if you are a non-believer, outside of maybe the Jewish Christian or Islamic belief system, then you would be tempted for sure to say that Adam is a mythical figure. But the faiths like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, they will take Adam as a historical figure. Now within Christianity you will have people who will have different viewpoints as it relates to Adam. For example, you will have some who would describe themselves as theistic evolutionists. And theistic evolutionists would say that evolution and God are complimentary.

And what they would end up doing is they would look at the science of evolution and they would say that mankind did evolve. And then with Adam, it is not that Adam was the first man, so to speak, they think there would have been other people that existed before Adam, but that Adam was the first one with the divine imprint. It would be like when you see Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and you see that Adam is lifeless, that he just lies lingering in a kind of limp state.

And as we see this image of Adam and Eve coming up on the screen, we can see this is Michelangelo’s work, and that here Adam is being portrayed as lifeless. So what is it depicting? God is reaching out because we know that God created man in His image. So Adam would have been the first ‘image bearer’ of God according to theistic evolutionists. They believe that Adam was the first man that reflected God’s image.

Other Christians, young and old earth people, would say that the first individual was Adam. That he was the first man and he was the image bearer of God. Now how long ago was Adam created? It was probably six to ten thousand years ago depending on what you do with the genealogical gap. At the same token, you could be an ‘old earther’ believing that God created the heavens and the earth earlier, and that Adam was not created until about six to ten thousand years ago. Others would say the whole heavens and the earth and Adam were created six to ten thousand years ago.

But this is not the purpose of this study. You can go through that on your own. But here is what I would say. Don’t read one or two books and think you have this whole thing figured out. And just in the same way, don’t read the ‘Left Behind’ series and think you have figured out the whole way God is going to wrap this world up.

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William Lane Craig is someone whom I am deeply indebted to, as I have studied and cut my teeth on his books. He got his PhD writing on the cosmological argument that says this: “The more I read Genesis Chapters 1 and 2, the more I scratch my head.” There are different types of interpretations that people will use. Is it a framework hypothesis? Is it a Day-age? Is it a gap? Is it progressive creationism? I mean some people are willing to read one book and decide that is the way it was. And they haven’t studied all the views. There is so much involved.

So what is the purpose of Genesis Chapters 1 and 2? Well it is to tell us that God created the heavens and the earth, that He created mankind in His image, and that He created us to steward this universe that we live in. Those are the threefold principles. And I am there. ‘God, you are the creator. You created mankind in your image. And we are to be stewards.’ But there are so many details that are there that we have to be careful. I have found that the longer I have studied, the slower I am to jump to a doctrinal position.

Early on I just wanted to know what each of my different positions were. And I would read a position paper and go, ‘That’s me. I’m in.’ And then I would read another position paper and it would blow up that first view. And it helps me to realize that we are to love Jesus, we are to know Jesus, we are to be passionate about Him, and then we are to enjoy the journey of learning.

Now Adam, was he a historical or figurative figure? I had a special guest on my program at the ‘One Minute Apologist,’ and this guest was Dr. John Sanford an Ivy League professor at Cornell. He is a geneticist, and I believe he can answer this better than I can. Have a listen.

‘Welcome to the One Minute Apologist. We interview the world’s leading apologists to provide credible answers to curious questions. How could there be good evidence for a literal or historical Adam and Eve?’ “That is really a good question to me. There was no video camera running during that time. How do we know that they existed? And it is really interesting because the evidence that they existed is you and me. It is the people in the world today. We look at the genetic structure of the human population as it exists today, and it speaks to us of a literal Adam and Eve. It is really, really exciting.”

“Now all of us have a tiny chromosome in our body called a mitochondrial chromosome and we only get it from our mother. It is not passed on through the father. And so it is acknowledged by all geneticists that everybody on this planet got their mitochondrial chromosome from a single woman, and tongue in cheek, they call her Mitochondrial Eve.”

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“But she is exactly what you would expect from the Biblical Eve, the mother of us all. And so basically we all have nearly identical mitochondrial, and the few mutations that we have that differ from Eve’s sequence are so few in number that they could arise in a relatively recent past. So you can just Google Mitochondrial Eve and look at the Wikipedia link, and you will see that this is described. The only discordance between a Biblical Eve and the evolutionary Eve is the exact dating. And I don’t have time to go into it, but basically their dating method is wrong. There is a simpler dating method that gives you an early date. So Mitochondrial Eve is awesome. And it totally points to the Scriptural Eve.”

“The same story is happening on the male side. And that is all men have Y chromosomes, which they receive from their fathers, and all male humanity traces back to a single man, and again, tongue in cheek, the evolutionists call him Y-chromosomal Adam. But he has all the attributes that we would expect of the typical Adam, except that they would use a different dating method that is flawed, which leads them to think that Adam lived long ago. But there is new evidence that points to a recent Adam as well.”

“So just one more point on this issue, for over ten years it has been contested Y- chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve were not partners; they did not have children together. They weren’t married because using their dating methods they have like a hundred thousand year gap between them. It is hard to have children if you live a hundred thousand years apart. So the interesting thing is if you go to Y-chromosomal Adam on Wikipedia you will read about that they say the dating methods have changed, and now they lived in the same dating period. So that argument is now gone, dead.”

So, Mom, from the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for my mitochondrial chromosome. If you want to learn more, I have several other interviews with Dr. Sanford. You can just go to You Tube and my ‘One Minute Apologist’ channel and you can listen to me interview Dr. Sanford on different questions as it relates to this age dating, and how they go about doing that. I have also had Fuzale Rana on my ‘One Minute Apologist’ program as well. He wrote the book, ‘Who Was Adam.’ And I talk to him about some of this stuff also.

As it relates to Adam and Eve, what it is interesting about the Mitochondrial Eve and the Y-chromosomal Adam is seeing that they would have existed in the same time frame. I think that is healthy, because before you would have some people saying that wasn’t the case, but now you can say, ‘No, that is the case.’ You would have others who would say that this earth was seeded, because there was originally about ten thousand pairs of individuals, or what have you. But our Christian worldview doesn’t make room for that. And what is great about our Christian worldview is to see the genetic detail that is involved today whereby we can see that humanity would have been traced back to the

Page 5 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series original pair – Adam and Eve. And I think that can be really exciting for us as Christians in particular as we look at the study of Adam.

Now at the outset before we kind of get into some of the details of Adam, I really felt it was important to address what I did here because even if we are not paying attention to what is going on in the world of genetics, I think we need to be aware and just to have a little bit of exposure, because when we talk about Adam many people will just laugh at you when you talk about this. And honestly, just reading the story, at first blush, it does seem kind of goofy, how this could happen. And there are lots of things that we can feel that way about. There are things that are hard for us to relate to in the Scriptures. But I believe we can give a thoughtful, intelligent answer to these things that don’t make sense to us from the milieu that we live in when we think back on the worldview that is there.

I mean obviously we are not going to relate to everything like manna falling from Heaven, or different things like that, because there are different things going on categorically compared to our times. We have to know how we can explain that. If we say, ‘Oh that just seems perfectly normal,’ well, that would seem odd to me because that is not our culture today. But we can’t let the framework from which we live in blind us from what the story is of Scripture and what God is trying to tell us.

So is Adam figurative or is he a historical literal? As Christians there is no room to say that he is figurative, so we would say he is historical. How long ago? I would say probably about six to ten thousand years ago, in that time frame. There are different viewpoints on that, of course, and you can study through those on your own. You can wrestle through with some of the different arguments people have come up with.

But Adam and Eve are an interesting study. And we do not want to say that Adam was a figurative individual. If so, then guess what ends up happening? If Adam was not a literal person, then you don’t have a literal Fall; you have a figurative Fall. And then if you have a figurative Fall, then the whole Messianic hope throughout the Scriptures is just hope for something that was not literal. It would be all this hope for something that is figurative.

And so I believe that we don’t want to do that. We are looking to a literal Adam that lived and who is our first character to learn about. And there are things that we can learn about him, probably not as much as we would like, so it will be interesting in Heaven to learn all the details about him. But now we have some outlining to do. What can I share with you by means of a sketch? Suppose we were about to sit down and we are going to sketch out the movie of Adam and Eve. There would be some key points that we would want to include in the narration about Adam in this movie.

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And first of all we would see in Genesis Chapter 1 and verses 26 and 27 this: “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.” Now the name Adam means ‘man.’ But the word can be used of humankind, as is the case in Genesis Chapter 1 and verses 26 and 27. But then in Genesis Chapter 2 we see the specific creation of a particular human, namely Adam, who was the first human. And so Adam is created in Genesis Chapter 2 and verses 7 and 8. And he is created in the image of God. Now what does it mean for Adam to be created in the image of God? It means that he is created as a personal being, because he is created in God’s image. God is personal and we are personal.

Now we have to be careful when we talk about personal to not think as fleshly. God is spirit; the Scripture teaches us this in I John. God is not corporeal, that is to say He is not bound up in flesh; He is incorporeal, He is spirit. As it relates to Adam, he is personal. So Adam was created in God’s image because God is personal. God has eternally existed as one God reflected in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is what distinguishes us in our worldview so much from Islam. Islam would believe in Allah, the one god who is singular in personage. But we believe in a triune God, one God revealed in three persons. God has eternally existed in triune community. We are created for community. We are meant to exist inter-personally with one another.

What else does it mean to be created in God’s image, to be made in His imago dei? The fact is that God is a volitional being, and we are volitional beings. God is an emotional being, and we are emotional beings. Now some, in certain philosophical fields, would say that God does not emote, but we don’t have time to get into that.

God is a rational being, and we are rational beings. God is a moral being and we are moral beings. So these would be some of the features of what it means to be created in the image of God. So Adam, and again his name means man, was created by God. And he was created in a context in the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden was probably destroyed in the Flood. We learn about some of the different rivers that exist there in the creation story, and only a few of those exist today, like the Tigris and the Euphrates there in Mesopotamia.

And the word Mesopotamia comes from two words, meaning the land between two rivers. And the two rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates, and in between is the land - Mesopotamia. And Adam had a job to do in the Garden of Eden. He was a gardener and he tilled the ground. So he was created in God’s image with a purpose. We see in Genesis Chapter 2 that he named the different animals. Why did he do that? He was showing his role as a steward of God’s creation. He was called to steward God’s creation and he showed forth his creative ability in naming the animals. He was showing his authority, his leadership.

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But something happened. Adam would experience a profound amount of loneliness because he noticed that he did not have a counterpart for himself. The zebra may have been looking good, but not that good. Right? Adam needed a counterpart for himself. There were male and female of all creation, except Adam did not have a counterpart. And so God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Now this is the first place in the Scriptures where God said something was not good. In Genesis Chapter 1 verse 31, God said after He had created everything, “It is very good.”

So God created and He said, “It is good. It is good. It is good.” And He comes to this moment where man doesn’t have a counterpart and He says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Adam was experiencing loneliness and a sense of incompleteness, so God would then create Eve and bring her to Adam. We get the picture of a father bringing his daughter to the groom when we read how God brings Eve to Adam. And the two would become one flesh.

Adam was also created with lots of freedoms and only one boundary. It is not the way we tend to think of God. We tend to think of God with us having very little freedoms and lots of boundaries. But that is not the way it was. God created Adam in His image in a perfect context with many freedoms and only one boundary. But that one boundary began to disturb Adam, and he began to get discontented. And the freedoms weren’t enough. And that is the way we are. We always want what we can’t have. And that was the story of Adam and Eve.

So that is what is going on here. Adam has all these freedoms and what is the one boundary? ‘Do not eat of this one tree that represents the knowledge of good and evil.’ Adam is given this one boundary, but then what happens in Genesis Chapter 3 is the serpent comes, the tempter, and tempts Adam and Eve. And as a result, the Fall happens. The Fall refers basically to the fallen state of Adam and Eve, who had been perfectly reflecting the imago dei, the image of God, until they yielded to temptation and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Then their nature was distorted, and they could no longer depict, from a perfect place, God’s image.

So the image wasn’t erased, but it was corrupted and defaced. And what ends up happening then is we read that this Fall happened, and this image is defaced after Adam and Eve had been created to live in this perfect place. And after the Fall happened, everyone that was born from Adam and Eve were born with a fallen nature We were not born from Adam and Eve in a perfect state; rather Adam and Eve had a fallen nature and we were born with a fallen nature as well. Adam represents us.

Maybe you think that seems unrealistic. Why did we inherit what Adam did? It is because we would have done the same thing. Adam represents us in a fallen way and

Page 8 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series in the same way Jesus represents us on our behalf for righteousness. Adam pictures what the heart will do. It is prone to wander.

So Adam named the animals, he was a gardener in a beautiful Garden and he experienced loneliness. And in that temptation moment, Eve is beguiled by the serpent when he says, ‘You are not going to die if you eat of that.’ And out of curiosity, Eve eats the forbidden fruit. And listen to what the Bible says in Genesis Chapter 3 and verse 6, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

Adam was there with her, passively standing by. And Adam was also obviously intrigued. He didn’t say, ‘No Eve, God spoke to me about this. We have all the freedoms in the world, but we are to avoid this one boundary. We need to be careful here. We need to live God’s way.’ Adam didn’t protect her, and I think it was because he was intrigued by the dialogue of Eve and the serpent. I think he was succumbed by it all. You can almost see Adam and Eve wondering what would really happen if they ate the fruit. ‘Is God holding out on us?’

And that is what the tempter, the evil one, always wants to make you think, that God is holding out on you. That you are missing out on something good. And he will always kind of show you the so-called short termed pleasures of falling into sin, but he will never show you the long term consequences. ‘Oh if I could just do this, the short term pleasures are coming my way.’ And he will never show you the long term consequences of our actions.

And then as a result, in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 6, we learn that Adam and Eve experienced profound shame for rejecting God’s word. This first family becomes dysfunctional and they blame each other. Adam says, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” And then later their first son, Cain, kills his brother Abel. So we learn about the profound dysfunction this first family experienced.

Heather and I sometimes think that we are a dysfunctional family. Do you all think sometimes that you have a dysfunctional family? If you don’t you need to know that you are because we are all descendants of Adam. The family that doesn’t think they are dysfunctional doesn’t have a sense of how dark shadow is. The person who doesn’t think that they are a dysfunctional person doesn’t realize that they have a fallen nature. And if they think they are perfectly functioning in life then that is a real problem. Take heed when you think you are strong.

So you can just see what Adam went through, and the consequences that were a result of his disobedience. He is booted out of the Garden, he has to toil and work hard.

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He has family conflicts. And then he would die at the ripe old age of 930 years. You can see that in Genesis Chapter 5 and verse 5. Now maybe you are thinking, ‘Bobby, I don’t get this. It just seems weird.’ And I know it does seem weird. It seems very odd that someone would live to be 930 years old. But I don’t think it is a big deal. If you were talking to a non-Christian and they think it seems odd, I think it is okay to say, ‘I get why that seems weird. People don’t live that long now.’ So you can say that seems weird, and still believe it was true.

What helps me to understand that is keeping in mind that when Adam and Eve were created and then disobeyed, the earth was cursed as a result of the Fall. In Romans Chapter 8 and verse 22 it says, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” So you have all kinds of things beginning to fall apart with the Fall. The second law of thermodynamics is kicked in. Things are beginning to deteriorate; we are running out of usable energy and all kinds of things are going awry.

So maybe you are wondering if since Adam lifespans have started to shorten, and by and large that is correct. But what about Methuselah who lived to be 969 years? He was the oldest person that we know of who ever lived. I would say that it is true that Methuselah did live longer, but by and large we see the lifespan beginning to shorten. And then after the Flood the lifespan was basically limited to 120 years, with a few exceptions here and there. And after the Flood that obviously caused a whole set of other catastrophes that would take place. There had been no rain before the Flood so water would come up from the firmament. And some people would contend that there was sort of a canopy that would protect the earth from UV rays. And then after the Flood all of a sudden there would be more exposure and that would have helped to limit people’s lifespans. That gets out of my paygrade right there; that is not an area that I have personally taken on to study, but it is fascinating. And it you are an ecologist, or a biologist, or a botanist, this might be very interesting for you to dig into.

So this is a little sketch then of Adam. And the question that some might ask is, ‘Well, did Adam have a belly button?’ And I would think that of course he didn’t have a belly button because what is the purpose of a belly button? He didn’t need that, so what difference would that question make. It is not a big deal. We have to learn not to get caught up with silly questions like that.

Others might want to kind of discuss the whole idea of how old did Adam look when he was created. Was he created as a little baby or how old was he? Well, he probably looked like a young man when he was created; but honestly we can’t know for sure. So I don’t want to go around and be bulldog certain about some of those questions. We just aren’t given that information, but I lean toward him looking like an adult.

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And then some people want to know how long was it before the Fall took place? We don’t have that answer either. My best conclusion after thinking about it is that they had Cain and Abel, and then after Cain killed Abel, in replacement of Abel they had Seth. And how old was Adam when he had Seth? He was 130 years old. So I suppose if the Fall already happened by the time Adam was 130 years old, and if Cain has now killed Abel, that means Cain and Abel had to be pretty grown up before Seth was born. So let’s just kind of take a stab in the dark and say maybe this happened when Cain and Abel were about 20. And if that speculation is right, then Adam would have been about 110 years old when he had Cain and Abel. So we could conclude that the Fall had happened by at least that point.

And so now I am calculating that we have gone from Adam dying at 930 years down to about 110 years of age, so Adam would be living for at least about 820 years in a post-Fall state. And then I am kind of at a loss of what to do with those other years. If you can help me on that I would be wide open to the conversation. I would guess that Adam probably fell pretty quickly. How long did it take him to name all the animals for crying out loud? And then how long before Eve was created? These are things that we just can’t be sure about.

So there is a sketch of Adam. Let’s go back to thinking about us sitting down and planning a film to be produced about Adam. We have created some of the key talking points and now we are in a room together. And we need to imagine if Adam could come back and tell his own story what is it that we think that Adam would want to say to us today if he could narrate it? I believe that Adam would share some principles with us.

And I think the first thing that Adam would want to say is this: ‘If I could sin in the Garden of Eden, how much easier will it be for you to sin in Paradise lost?’ Adam had all these freedoms and he had only one boundary that he needed to be very careful of. And he just had to cross that one boundary. And we have this curiosity factor today, don’t we? Adam got bored in the Garden of Eden. He got discontented in the Garden of Eden. And many people think if they could just change their setting then they could live the life they want for Jesus.

Now while it is true that sometimes we need to clean up our setting a little bit. Like I left California and I moved to Arkansas to change my people, places and playthings because of the way that I had partied in California. That is not always the case though. Sometimes people become separatists and they think, ‘I can’t go into this environment.’ And they become Christian separatists. But the problem is the environment doesn’t change our fallen hearts, our fallen natures. And not only that, we can become separatists but then we can grow in pride even in our separatism because we can start looking down on everyone else. We can start thinking we are better than others. We can start feeling prideful in our moral life as we go through life as separatists. ‘Look

Page 11 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series at all the things that I don’t touch. Look at all the things that I don’t do.’ And then all of a sudden pride begins to build into our life.

So we don’t have an environment problem nearly as much as we have a heart problem, folks. Sure we can have an environment problem, but look here was Adam in the most perfect environment ever, and he still chose to rebel against God. That is something worth considering. And not only was Adam in the most perfect environment ever, but he still struggled with discontentment. He lived in this beautiful Garden of Eden, and I can’t even imagine what this place would have looked like. So we can’t believe the lie that a bigger house will make us content, that a nicer car will make us content, that a bigger bank account will make us content, because Adam lived in the beautiful Garden of Eden and yet he had to have a taste of the forbidden fruit.

Adam might also say, ‘I just want you to know if there was something that I would do in the Garden of Eden - namely sin, it is going to be a lot easier for you to sin in Paradise lost.’ I think he would also want to say to us, ‘Hey folks, don’t lose sight of rejoicing in all of your freedoms at the expense of some necessary boundaries.’ We are a culture that wants to be so free. We don’t want any boundaries. Right? Don’t tell us how to do anything. We want to be our own authority.

But I am going to tell you something. Freedom without boundaries equals slavery. I want to repeat that again and then I will illustrate. Freedom without boundaries equals slavery. ‘I want to be free to drink as much as I want.’ Well then you will become enslaved to alcohol. ‘I want to be free to sleep with as many people as I want.’ Then you will become enslaved to your lust. ‘I want to be free to do whatever I want with my money, spend it anyway I want, and buy everything I want for me, me, me.’ Then you will become selfish.

See we need necessary boundaries in life to tame this beast within us called shadow, our fallen nature. We need some boundaries. In fact being a Christian doesn’t mean you are free to do whatever you want to do; it means you are finally free to do what you ought to do. Now we have the strength to do what we ought to do. See that is freedom when you can say ‘No,’ when you can resist. So don’t lose sight of the freedoms. God is not trying to stomp your fun. The greatest ride you will ever go on in life is going all out with Jesus.

I believe Adam would also want to say to us, ‘Don’t underestimate the deceptiveness of the evil one.’ He is crafty. The serpent got Eve, and Adam was there too, to think that God was holding out on them, that God didn’t want their best. ‘You know God doesn’t really know what He is doing with this boundary.’ And then came the Fall. We have to be careful that we don’t start falling into the theology that God doesn’t know what He is doing, that God doesn’t know what is best, or we will start wanting to

Page 12 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series take a new pathway, to try some new territory. We need to follow the Lord and go His way.

So what falls into place is this whole creation Fall/Redemption/Restoration narrative that we see. God has created, the Fall happens, and then the promise of a redeemer moves toward restoration. And that is our story. I think Adam would also like to say, ‘Think twice before biting into the forbidden fruit and remember that sin has a price tag. Seriously guys, pay attention.’ If I were to point out, by means of observation, the fivefold consequences of sin, I would first say what Adam experienced was his spiritual consequence. He was separated from God. Then there was a relational consequence, causing enmity between God and Adam.

I would say there was an emotional consequence to sin, causing shame to be felt. I would say there was a mental consequence to sin, with Adam becoming paranoid and seeking to hide out from God. And I would also say there was a physical consequence to sin, because Adam was now going to die. God said, “In the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Some people will question you and say, ‘But Adam didn’t die.’ Yes, he did die, he died spiritually that day, and then everything was set in place where he began to die physically.

So if we are to look at the Scriptures, what are some things from Genesis Chapter 3 that we could say since a bit part of the narrative of Adam is this Fall into sin? What is it that we can learn about sin from Adam? Well, I would want to point out a few things. First of all in Chapter 3 and verse 7 we see that sin leads to a loss of innocence. “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” So their eyes were opened, which is to say there was something that God didn’t want Adam and Eve to know, something He wanted them to remain in the dark about, something that He wanted them to remain blinded about. And what was that? Perhaps it was the problem of evil, the whole opportunity to live blinded to the problem of evil. Their eyes were opened and they now knew good and evil. Their eyes were opened and they knew something that they shouldn’t. The ‘uh oh’ effect kicked in. And sin led to this loss of innocence.

And then it led to guilt. Verse 7 continues, “They knew they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Picture that scene. ‘Hey Eve, give me a few leaves here so I can cover myself up. That will fix it.’ What did they want to do? They wanted to fix it because they felt dirty, they felt gross, and they wanted to cover themselves. I remember a friend of mine when we were at a party one night and he drank too much. He was a virgin and he ended up giving his virginity away. And immediately after that in the parking lot he was weeping and he got sick to his stomach about it.

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See Satan never shows us the long term consequences, just the short term pleasures. Adam just took of that short term pleasure, and then his eyes were opened, and he sought to cover himself. Maybe you won’t feel sick about some of these things. That becomes a bigger problem, because we can cover ourselves with leaves and God gets through to us; but if we are not careful we can eventually drench ourselves in cement and we will grow so hard that we become impenetrable. We can end up like Pharaoh with a hardened heart, until God ends up giving us up to our own ways. It takes a special kind of humility to repent.

Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves because they felt ashamed. I don’t know if you remember the great molasses flood in Boston or not, but it took place around 1915. And this big 50 foot tall steel structure that was huge in diameter was filled with molasses, with hot molten syrup. And there were these small cracks in this structure. They would bring people out to examine it, because the syrup was slowly seeping through the cracks. The engineers would come out and all they would do was just paint over those cracks. Out of sight, out of mind, right? And then one day this thing exploded with 30 foot waves of molasses falling down on people smothering them. It destroyed cars and buildings and it became known as the ‘Great Molasses Flood.’

We are kind of like that structure with cracks in us. And what we want to do is just put a Band-Aid on these cracks. We just want to get God off of our minds for a little bit and just cover ourselves with leaves. But we are going to blow up if we don’t look to God. And we need more than patchwork, or glossing over; we need redemption. We need to meet God. We need to get right with Him.

Are you walking around with fig leaves today? Are you walking around with paint trying to cover the cracks in your life? We have to get right with God. And by the way, guilt feels horrific when it hits. It feels like we are being watched by someone. Guilt feels personal. It is the breaking of God’s moral laws. But that feeling, that guilt, that shame we try to cover, it is just God saying, ‘Come to me.’ But instead we run from Him.

Sin leads to isolation and paranoia. Look at Chapter 3 and verse 8. “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the Garden.” Can you picture Adam and Eve hiding? ‘Hey Eve, come over here. I found a good spot where we can hide out from God.’ And that was stupid. Right?

God says in verse 9, “Where are you?” He knows where they are. It is not like God needed a GPS system to track them. It would be like when I played hide and seek with my kids when they were younger. I would tell them to go hide and I would count from ten down to one and say, ‘Ready or not, here I come.” And then I would say,

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‘Where are you?’ And I would hear these little giggles revealing to me where they were hiding. God was asking a provocative question so they would have the opportunity to say, ‘I am right here. I can’t hide from you. I’m guilty.’

What is beautiful about this is God had already warned them what not to do, and yet He pursues them. And if you sense any guilt or shame in your heart it is a sign that you are not calloused. And those feelings are actually an invitation from God to you so you will acknowledge wrong and to turn to Him. But do you know what often happens? The Bible talks about how the evil one will come and try to snag the word of God away. It is like the word of God is falling, and it is penetrating our heart, but the evil one, like birds in the air, will come and snatch the seed away before it has a chance to germinate.

The temptation is, if we are feeling a little bit guilty, or a little bit shook up, to think, ‘I just need to go home and watch a basketball game, or go to a movie,’ And in doing these things we hope to escape this guilty feeling until eventually we can begin to feel okay again. And what we want to do is to sink deeper into our deception instead of coming to terms with it. ‘I am enjoying life this way, God. Don’t mess with my turf.’

Also sin leads to fear. Look at Chapter 3 and verse 10, “I heard the sound of you in the Garden and I was afraid.” Why? “Because I was naked.” Adam was afraid; he was scared. And God was actually coming on a rescue mission. Sin also leads to blame. Look at verses 11 through 13. “He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

So Adam blames his wife, and then she blames the serpent, the evil one. It is always easy to point our finger at someone else because then it can justify our own actions. But when we are going through a cycle of ‘the blames,’ we need to explore the nature of our blames to see if we are the real problem. It is easy to blame, but sometimes we need to look at our hearts. Then in verses 14 through 19, we see that their sin leads to massive consequences. And this brings out an insight - just because we are forgiven doesn’t mean there are not consequences.

And finally I think Adam would want to say this: ‘Don’t hide from God, just don’t do that. Instead, run to Him. God was the only one who could really cover our sins, not fig leaves and not denial.’ See when we do something and we feel guilty, our temptation is to try and find alternatives. We might think we can lower the moral demand and decide that we didn’t do anything really wrong after all. For instance my friend, once he lost his virginity, maybe what he could have done to assuage his guilt was

Page 15 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series to think, ‘I am going to create a different god, a god who is okay with sex outside of marriage. So I will re-create the rules and then I can feel better about my guilt.’

Or another alternative might be to self-inflict ourselves with pain. Some of the people who cut themselves do so because of guilt. Or they may inflict themselves with horrible pain in other ways to just try to distract themselves from guilt. Another alternative is to want to earn God’s approval so they seek to do good works in hopes of earning His approval. Certain Catholic monks will inflict themselves with stripes hoping to earn God’s approval. There was a movie that came out based on the book ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ by Dan Brown, and it portrayed an albino monk flogging himself trying to deal with his guilt.

Another alternative would be when people decide there just isn’t a standard; that guilt is just put on them because they live in a culture that has taught them certain things. And they think they are basically a prisoner of others’ ideas of right and wrong. And they decide not to listen to that. So many people try all these alternatives to try to assuage their guilt.

But God says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” God says, “Come now, let us reason together, though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” So don’t hide from God.

What do we see in verse 21? “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” Something did die that day physically, and it was animals. The blood had to be shed which was a future picture of the second Adam who was to come. He would fulfill what the first Adam didn’t. And that second Adam would come and we would be clothed in His righteousness through His death on the cross for our sins. He would come, bleed, and die for us, because he is a massively forgiving God.

I think Adam was both the most joyful person who ever lived and the most miserable person who ever lived. He was most joyful in the Garden of Eden until sin crept in and then he was the most miserable. Adam had to live, as I have already shared, at least another 800 years after being expelled from the Garden. Whenever Adam would look through his rear view mirror he would remember how he had once been in a perfect state, and I think that would have made him miserable. When we become Christians and we look through our rear view mirrors we look back to an imperfect state but we are progressing toward something more beautiful.

Let me wrap up by reading you a few verses. From the book of Romans in Chapter 5 and verses 18 and 19 says, “Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God,

Page 16 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series and new life for everyone. Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.”

And then in I Corinthians Chapter 15 and verse 22 it says, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” In Adam there was the Fall, and we were born into the Fall. With Jesus Christ and His death, burial and resurrection we can place our faith in Him, we too can be raised up with Him to live forever.

The story of Adam is our story. It is a story that says there is something bent within us that makes us want to go our own way; that makes us want to live independent of God. It is a story that tells us there are consequences. It is a story that tells us we should not be so easily deceived, that we need to follow and honor God’s word. It is a story that tells us we need to chase His heart and walk with Him. It is a story that tells us that in spite of our rebellion we have the great hound of Heaven pursuing us.

And ultimately the second Adam, Jesus Christ, representing humanity came, He fulfilled the Law and He died on our behalf. Instead of taking the forbidden fruit from one tree, Jesus was the fruit that was hung on another tree, and He is what we need today. We can choose like Adam taking the forbidden fruit, or we can accept Jesus Christ who hung on a cross and offered His life as the second Adam. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank you for our first biographical sketch about Adam. I pray that you will help us to turn to you, and if anyone here doesn’t know you, may they realize today that their hearts are prone to wander, and they need to do some deep internalized heart work. May they surrender their lives to you. Help us to love you, honor you and make much of you. If anyone here doesn’t know you as their personal Savior, may they say this in the quietness of their hearts: Thank you Jesus for coming and fulfilling your Father’s will. I want to surrender my life to you today, Jesus, right here and right now. Thank you for dying for my sins. I surrender and turn from my sins by faith in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The preceding transcript was completed using raw audio recordings. As much as possible, it includes the actual words of the message with minor grammatical changes and editorial clarifications to provide context. Hebrew and Greek words are spelled using Google Translator and the actual spelling may be different in some cases.

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