Adam-The Original Man (Part A)

Jesus setting this imperfection before us, there in the upper room, the Last Supper with the disciples. He is functioning as though there's no cross ahead of Him.

He's dining, He's eating, He's worrying about them. Total poise, total control. God's perfection. It was in the creation of man. In spite of what God knew man would do because God saw beyond that as Jesus saw beyond the crucifixion. Let's open our Bibles to Genesis chapter 2. Our biography concerns itself with Adam, the original man. Our text is Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 and there we read, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Man became a living soul or living being. Well, we are going to talk about Adam before the fall, and to each character so far in this series from my end, I've been strangely drawn to them.

They had remained dominant in my thought as I searched, Well, Lord, who are we going to talk about? And it's the character that remained dominant. You would think with as many people that there are in the Bible that it would be very easy, and it would be if this were just a lecture on characters, but we certainly want the Lord's leading because only He knows how to make it count. Now, we cannot simply say about Adam that he is the first man and that he is the first to disobey God. He's not the first sinner.

Amongst human beings, that belongs to Eve. In creation, as far as we know, Satan is the first sinner. But there is information and application enough about this man to do a series on. Now, he is complexed because of what has been caused by him and what continues to happen because of him and his role in creation. Because, see, that then turns our attention to God, where it belongs. And in all of these character studies, God is preeminent. He is the one we're most concerned with. We're concerned with how He is working, approving, or disapproving of the behavior of whatever character it is under scrutiny.

And so, again, tonight's attention is not on the fall. It is on what God intended him to be, and in that, we learn more about God and how we're supposed to behave because God is unchanging, and He still has intentions for us, for a role for us to fulfill in this creation. But first, I want to talk about God's intention for this original man, God's plan for him. And then we'll talk about, hopefully, how God treated Adam, which is significant, how God developed Adam, and finally, how God has delivered to us from the life of this character in Scripture. Before the fall, Adam was created sheer perfection. I mean, we're told in Genesis chapter 1 verse 31, at the end of the sixth day, then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.

So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Genesis chapter 1 verse 26, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Now, image there in that verse 26. The image is that permanent foundation as a rational and moral responsible being. That is the image of God. God is moral.

He is rational. This separates man from the animal kingdom, where they are driven by instinct, but we have another activity taking place in us as human beings. Albeit, or in spite of the fact that we are fallen, they are fragments enough to still link us to Genesis 1, 26. And when we are born again, Genesis 1, 26 loops around and begins again. We are then again being made into the image of God, which is, as we know, Christ Jesus the Son. Now, the likeness is spiritual accord with the will of God, which was lost at the fall, to be like-minded. Paul encourages the Christians of the first century to be like-minded with each other, and of course, like-minded with God. And so we, man, was made in the image and likeness of God. Now, can you go, are there tributaries and other applications to this?

Absolutely. It's vast, it's very deep, and it's very wide, sort of like space. And so, Adam, the man, created in the image of God, narrowing it down for tonight's purposes in the way that I just mentioned to you as being a rational and intelligent human being, able to perceive, to forecast, to make plans, without instinct, because his intellect was designed that way. An animal, a bird, you know, or a spider. A spider's not taught how to spin a web. It doesn't, you know, sit back and say, well, I wonder what kind of a girder I'm going to need to bear the load of, say, oh, I don't know, a horn beetle or something.

It's instinctive, but a human being begins to say, oh, I'm going to need a live load to be carried on that roof so it can handle rain and snow and the equipment that's up there, and so we're drastically different. And of course, those who are caught up in evolution, they know nothing of this because they reject it. They've decided already, this is my God, you will never take it from me, and I don't care that evolution has brought nothing to humankind. It has contributed nothing to the human experience. It ultimately cost the host everything, the eternal soul. Not in every case.

There will be some people who are wrong about evolution, but they write enough about God. You say, how can that be? I don't know. The information did not get to them, but I do know that will be the case. I do not say that is always the case. Those are exceptions, the deep and far reach of God, and certainly is not an encouragement to go down that path. When evolution did first make it to mainstream America, the Western civilization, I should say, the Western civilization, the church was reeling, not knowing what to do with it. But there were those deep, committed Christians that said, I don't care what you found out in your theory. I know what I found out in my Bible. That's it. And that's wonderful because many others got tripped up and they tried to find a way to blend it and make it happen, the gap theory and all this other stuff that is, I think, easy to prove wrong.

But who has the time? Adam, created in the image and likeness of God, is continuous with nature. When he was created, he was brought into the creation, into nature. Now we know nothing of mother nature. There is no mother nature. There's the nature of things that God has designed and the fall and the preservation in spite of the fall. But there's no such thing as mother nature. That just ties back into the deity, the female deity worship as we, with Tammuz, as with Mary, worship in Mariology today. But being continuous with nature, he at the same time was discontinuous with nature.

I couldn't work it out any other way but use those words and let me try to help us all with this. He's continuous with nature in that he shares the sixth day with other creatures. Man was not the only created being on the sixth day.

And he certainly benefited from much, from all that God created in the days before the sixth day, the first five days. Man is made of the dust as are some of the animals. Look with me, we read our text, verse 7 makes it clear, but verse 19 of chapter 2 in Genesis, it says, out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air.

But I'm saying he shared and that he too was made out of the ground. He feeds as, or he was to feed as they were to feed. There were no carnivores in the beginning.

Spiritually there was. There was Satan, the spiritual carnivore. But animals did not, they played with each other nicely. And you know, the lion didn't, you know, trick any of the other animals to eat them. Adam ate what they ate.

And I'm sure there were exceptions. Adam probably says, you know, that's just kind of a bitter root and it's just not my taste. He could eat, you know, there was no poison but plants that are noxious and he could eat poison ivy if there were, as we understand it, back then. The thought of that is icky, but he reproduced with a similar blessing upon him. Be fruitful and multiply. Now again, that doesn't appear in the New Testament.

It doesn't disqualify it, but it takes on different meaning. It develops, not in an evolutionary sense, but in a fulfilling sense. And God's going to, or I should say an expansion thereof. And God's going to do that with Adam. As I mentioned, God created Adam in a mature state.

Though I don't know if I mentioned it tonight or many times in the past, but I have mentioned it somewhere along the line. When God made Adam, he was an adult. The chicken or the egg, which came first? The chicken did.

Who would have sat on the egg? And God created, that's how he did it as he did it with Adam. Adam was not created a child. If you had looked in his teeth, they would have been all matured and in place. The artist seemed to always leave a beard off of Adam and I always find that interesting. Suffice it to say, the man was made a man. He was born that way. Not from a woman, but from the creation of God.

And we'll cover some of the detail in a minute. And so man can be partly studied by the study of nature. To some degree, looking at created things in creation of the creator in spite of the fall, we can gain information about ourselves.

Solomon was notorious for this. But they are half the context of Adam. There's more to him. They are half his context.

They are part, but that doesn't say the whole thing. And this would explain the irrational of those who have become worshipers of nature or their pets or some other created instrument of their pastors. There's this disconnect with God that allows them to get off course and be lost in the storm. And if they don't get right, they just get worse. And you can meet somebody who was a little nutty years ago and you meet them later and they're full blown kooks. And they've just developed, they've turned it into an art.

And they've got a black belt in craziness. And so the distinction is clear that he was to continue with what was made, but yet he was slightly separated from what was created. The distinctness and its contrast. Look at verse 24 of Genesis chapter 1. And there it says, let the earth bring forth. And then in verse 26 of Genesis 1, let us make man in our image.

And so the stress falls on the distinctness as indicated in the contrast. In verse 24, then God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind. And here's the instincts. And God deciding and forming and shaping them, but he's not breathing his own breath into them. He's commanding them into life. And he's allowing the processes of creation and procreation to take place. Some of that belongs to Adam, but Adam is distinct.

Verse 26, then God said, let us make man in our image. And so he's not coming forth from the earth in the identical way that the beast of the earth are coming forth. And so Adam is originally portrayed as in creation and yet over creation. Now if I don't say what is in creation, it seems like I'm deifying Adam.

That is not the case. Genesis chapter 2 verse 19, out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. Verse 28 along with, well I'm not going to read again verse 26, but verse 28, God blessed them and God said to them, this man and woman, and then we get a review in detail of this in chapter 2.

It's not two separate events. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the flesh of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the earth. And so he is portrayed originally as part of creation or in creation and also he is over that which is in creation. And again verse 20 Genesis 2, so Adam gave names to all the cattle, the birds of the air, to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

Well even after the fall, his original trust is active. God said I'm going to give you dominion over created things, but man fell into sin and everything got wacky. And yet righteous man especially still has this charge. Psalm chapter 8 verses 4 through 8. What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels and you have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the sea. Man's relationship to creation is such that he even knows where the passageways are under the sea. We spoke of this when we were going through the Psalms and we spoke of it when we went through Job. James chapter 3, the New Testament must ring in of course, verse 7, every kind of beast and bird of reptile and creature of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. And that's true, man is the boss when it comes down to it.

Now of course if you meet a grizzly out in the woods and you've got gravy all over yourself, you're done unless you've got some ordinance with you. The logic is inescapable, the doctrine is inescapable. For us, we want to know what the benefit is because I need to know how is Adam beneficial to me as a believer? What purposes does the record of Adam serve to me as a believer and to the unbeliever who may be saved because of the record or condemned by rejecting it? Man, renewed, born again man, resumes the further development and likeness image after the fall. After the fall when we are sinners, then we're born again and then again that process of likeness and image resumes, Colossians chapter 3.

It says, speaking of the Lord, what the Lord has done for us, that we have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. Well, we know from Colossians, Paul has made it clear, we're going through Colossians on Sundays and we know Paul has made it clear that nothing was created that is created that Jesus didn't do. He is the creator. When it was in the beginning, God created from nothing everything we see, Jesus was doing it. He wasn't doing it as Jesus Christ, he was doing it as God's son. Not assume the mantle of Jesus as we know him until he's born of Mary, his name shall be called Jesus. Before that, he was the Christ, the Messiah that would come and Emmanuel, God with us and he has fulfilled and is fulfilling those prophecies. Ephesians chapter 4, 24 continuing with renewed man, regenerated man and his role in these things that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness and that's the link to Genesis 1, 26. And so Adam and Eve were additions to intelligent created beings and they were additions to free will created beings, not on the earth but in creation. You see when you think of creation, we think of our planet and the stars and the outer space but there's also the spiritual realm that is also the created realm and Adam was not God's first creation. We know that.

Job chapter 38 verses 3 and 7, God speaking to Job, Job doesn't know what to do at this time. He doesn't know whether to go fish or write poetry but where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its measurements? Surely you know. That's a rebuke, is it not?

Calling him a know-it-all or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? So there were other created beings with intelligence who could appreciate more than a sunrise. They could appreciate creation. So we read Genesis 1, in the beginning God created and then he put the firmament and the lights and all these other things, the sons of God, the angels were saying, man that is good. You guys that were on duty up in the back part of heaven, you missed it.

Maybe day two you'll get to go down and of course I'm being a little silly with that. But my point is there are other created beings in the universe. Adam and Eve were not God's first perfection. We read from verse 31 of Genesis 1 that God saw that it was very good. After he made man, this is like a masterpiece. Now God knew where this was going but it did not stop him from enjoying and functioning in the moment. You know the Buddhists have a story about a man who achieved enlightenment.

Now, just to make my point, and certainly it's like you find the Lord and you say this is a ridiculous story, but it serves. He's running from a tiger, a hungry tiger, and he jumps off a cliff to get away from being eaten and he grabs hold of a shrub sticking out the cliff and as he's there the tiger's up top of him and the drop below. He's sure death either way. He sees a strawberry, just wild strawberry growing out the side of the cliff and he picks it and eats it and enjoys it. Then he falls to his death and dies. That's the world's view of salvation. That's where they're chasing enlightenment.

Die with a strawberry in your mouth. But Jesus setting this in perfection before us, there in the upper room, the Last Supper with the disciples, he is functioning as though there's no cross ahead of him. He's dining. He's eating.

He's worrying about them. Total poise. Total control. God's perfection. It was in the creation of man in spite of what God knew man would do because God saw beyond that as Jesus saw beyond the crucifixion. Ezekiel 28 verses 14 and 15. This section in Ezekiel 28 speaks of earthly kings but it also speaks of the king of darkness. It says you were the anointed cherub who covers.

I established you. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you. This is why I believe Judas Iscariot, God did not choose a criminal to be amongst the twelve though he knew he would be a criminal. See, God did not cause that.

He knew Judas would fail but he gave him every chance and for a while there Judas was doing it. We've seen this in church. We've seen people for a while there doing Christianity and then apostates, they become. And it's a reality that's inescapable but it doesn't stop the church from functioning. It doesn't stop God from functioning. God presents Satan in scripture as a created being who serves God's purposes to God's glory, to our benefit. He allows him this leash unfortunately from this end of things but he at no time is Satan a threat to God. This is not God's first conflict to come, this Adam and Eve creation. There in Ezekiel 28 he talks about the perfection of Satan who fell because he was full of himself. In Ezekiel 28 17 in the same section speaking of the devil he says, Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. Your face got you in trouble. I cast you to the ground.

I laid you before kings that they might gaze at you. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Pastor Rick is teaching from God's Word each time you tune in.

As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast this teaching is available free of charge at our website. Just visit crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can do so at crossreferenceradio.com or search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app store. That's all for today. Join Pastor Rick next time for more character studies right here on Cross Reference Radio.