Adam-The Original Man (Part B)

When you become a Christian, God's plan to expand your development cannot happen without love. That's why He says if you just got all this noise, I don't want to hear it. You're a loud playing sound in my head. If I have scripture knowledge, if I do miraculous things, but if I don't have love, if I give my body to be burned as a martyr, but I don't have love, that separates us from the martyrs of false religions.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now here's Pastor Rick with his study called Adam, the Original Man, in Ezekiel chapter 28. 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 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. And so God, conflict was not new to him, he had dealt with this already with Satan. Where did Satan land? Here, on earth, I believe that Satan was incensed at the creation of man. Viewed him as a competitor. And that is when Jesus says in Luke chapter 10, verse 1, verse 18, And he said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

Where to? Garden of Eden, eventually. Corruption landed and flourishes in creation to this day. And this kind of perspective helps me understand my role in the present time, the role of saints and aunts before me, and the role that we will assume in glory because of what is going on right now. And so we now return to Adam and this great distinction that makes him different and why, why human beings are incredibly different, not even a little bit, incredibly different. You know, they put a paintbrush on an elephant's trunk and he does, you know, art. And they're so impressed with themselves. And there's more, there's more dumbness they do with elephants I'm not going to go into.

Not appropriate. And then they pat themselves off the back and they go down to the cafe and like they've accomplished something. As though, see, elephants are like us. Because animals have different levels of intelligence does not mean they're rivals to us. Yes, they have feelings. Animals can grieve. But this is instinctive. It will pass. Won't be like, I mean, they can grieve to death for sure.

But there's a short period of time. And you know, you won't hear of a dog writing ode to Rex. You know, it just, you won't see a cat lying out in the sun. Now a cat can sit there and irritate a dog if he knows it can't be gotten. Or he'll sit out in the sun and just soak up the rays. But he cannot appreciate, man, you look at that tree line. Is that not the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? I wish I had an iPhone. I'd get a picture and I'd text it to someone.

And yet you have people. One of our brothers here is, I'm trying to block this out of my head but I can't so you're going to get it too. One of our brothers here deals with people who are on the far side of the moon. They really think animals need psychics, massages, in a mental way too, psychologists, pet psychologists.

Had I known this, getting out of high school, that's the direction I would have gone in. Milk them from every scent. Sure, sit that pooch right down. Well here's the problem, owner. The dog thinks you're too ugly for him. We laugh at this but Satan is not joking.

He's taking them out. And they spend big dollars on things that just aren't right because they're not right. It's tragic. It's like, Lord, why do you have to make some sins comical? It really puts us in a bind because we can't laugh at it but you almost can't help.

I used to have a drill instructor in boot camp that would tell jokes so if you laughed he'd punish you. It's just like, he was evil. Alright, back to this. God put himself into Adam. He filled the original man with the only God. And he's still doing it.

He still does this. He's a God that does not change. And so when it came to man, God put what was in himself into man in a personal way.

He breathed into his nostrils. He put his spirit into man. There's no other creature that we read about this happening with. Animals were formed by God without the breath of God. Genesis 2 in contrast to Genesis 2.7 in contrast with Genesis 2.19 makes that clear. Man was filled with God but after the fall, he began to be filled with sin. And to this day, you know that sin is displacement. When it pours in us, it pushes out righteousness. And so there's this constant struggle. That's why the church seeks to open her doors to combat this. And it is very disappointing to have, you know, to pour the word of God into people and still see some of them get taken out nonetheless. And so how did God treat Adam when he created him?

With that background. And again, Genesis 2.19 if you will. This was going to be the text tonight but it didn't carry the whole story I thought. But this is a very important part. It says, out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast from the field, every bird of the air and brought them to Adam.

Okay. Just like he brings Eve to Adam, he brought the work assignment to Adam to see what he would call them. Not for God's sake but for our sake of understanding how God works with us and how we develop in his presence.

And then it says in whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So God is just enjoying this. It's like he gives his son a new toy or a new tool or something.

Or, you know, teaching him how to shoot and just enjoying the whole thing. We have that illustrated for us in Genesis. Joseph, his bow of bow strength held by the mighty hand of God. And so God is there holding the lad as he stretches the bow.

And then the time comes when he just lets the lad do it himself because the lad is now strong enough. This was an intelligent man, Adam. He was not created. He was created with language. He was created with intelligence. He was not a caveman. He was mature yet not expanded.

There was still more to happen to him. Unlike again the animals who function off of instinct, man was created a triune composition. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 23, Paul giving a blessing, he says, benediction that is, he says, Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. Sanctify you, all of you. Well what is me, all of me? Your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So the body, the soul, and the spirit.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, all of you. And so he gave man a body to make him earth conscious or creation conscious. We're not disembodied beings looking for swine to inhabit so we can derive some satisfaction, some sense of fulfillment. In this life we have a body to make contact with creation. Genesis chapter 2 verse 15 I think illustrates this. Then the Lord took Adam the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and to keep it.

Well if he didn't have a body he couldn't do that. And he gave man a soul to make him self conscious. Now not self conscious in a sinful way where Satan becoming full of himself or you know self accusatory.

You know there are those that are just laden with guilt and they're accusing themselves inside but on the outside they accuse everybody else to get some relief. And that's not the idea so that he was self conscious in the sense that he could interact with other men. That he could think. That he could exhibit qualities that weren't found in other beings as intelligent as him. And of course when a fallen man has a body, a fallen man has a soul, but a fallen man does not have a quickened spirit, a spirit that is alive. And so God can treat man as an intelligent being because of this soul. And yet how many Christians who's spirits are alive are notorious for being thoughtless? Or you know in the end did you think that out? How many Christians, people that love, say they love the Lord, don't want to learn about God.

Don't want to sit under his word. They just want to sing. They just want to pray. They just want to feel.

They just want to be excited. But don't let them have to have any down time where they have to be by themselves with nothing electronic and think and meditate and consider. There's so much growth in meditation.

I try to when I prepare for a study after I do all my research and outlining and writing and thoughts, I just go by myself and just sit outside even in the cold. I wrap up and I just get alone and read the chapters or the verses that I'm going over and there's so much fruit in that. At least I think so. He gave man a spirit to make him God conscious. A soul makes him self or man conscious. A spirit allows him to be God conscious.

He can interact. He can talk with God. But this allows man to be in harmony and friendship with God. Without the spirit alive, the soul can be in harmony and friendship with men but not God.

When the soul comes to life, it gets very selective about who it can be in harmony with and who it cannot be. Genesis chapter 2 verse 8. The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there he put man whom he had formed. And out of the ground, verse 9, the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Pleasant to sight. A dog thinks a tree is pleasant to sight when he's got to go.

To a dog, they're all toiletries. Let that one sink in. It's instinctive. He's not watering the tree.

He doesn't care if it dies or not. We do. And so, you know, you want to say these to some people. Do you know why the dog just did that in here? Because you're dumb enough to bring them in.

That's why. That's why they're all out dogs in church. They're unpredictable. You never know who they're going to bite or what they're going to leave behind.

So you've got some choices and they're not pleasant. And this, you know, the bringing of the pets to bless, I mean, what has happened? God created man for harmony and friendship. And there was a greater purpose behind this complex mental exercise of naming the animals. And he doesn't just, you know, and that's a this and that's a that.

There's more to it. God had in mind, Adam was to discover that every animal that he named had a companion parable to him. Not to Adam, to the other animal he named. So when he named this as a goat, this is a she goat. This is a donkey. This is a jack. This is it.

Well, that might not be technically true, but this is a donkey and this is a she donkey. And then after a while, he might be saying, I'm tired. After a while, he might be saying, well, who do I have? And that might be at the moment that God said, ah, you see, expand this.

It's not good for you to be alone, Adam. Man was created to be friends with God. And he was created to function and be friends with creation.

But is that it? God said no. Man was to develop. Genesis 2, verse 20. So Adam gave names to all the cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field.

But for Adam, there was found no helper comparable to him. The Lord God put him to sleep to deal with this. Now, God is going to bring the bride to Adam. When we get to Colossians, we'll read about the bond of love. These things have worked their way into our marriage ceremony. I believe that the marriage ceremony is a covenant moment. It is sacred before God. It is a serious time.

There's not supposed to be Frisbee throwing anywhere in the building at that time. All eyes and ears should be open to the vows. Now, the two that are giving the vows are probably not listening.

They're just repeating whatever I said. But they're just like, five minutes, baby, you're going to be my wife. Hee-haw! And she's got, got him. So, and there's nothing wrong with that. Unless you're going to do something sinister, I mean, then that's wrong. But I mean, there's nothing wrong with this dynamic between the man and the woman when it is virtuous, when it is chase and righteousness. So, so the marriage is a very sacred thing and we must treat it that way. And the vows must be said. We want the married couples who've been married to hear them yet again.

To come under the weight of having no other till death do us part. And the whole church needs to be quiet when that is happening. Except the men, the men and the woman who are speaking them.

And when that's not taking place, look what happens to a society. They're now coming up with a new term, a specification, something about a different sex marriage, as though there's another choice. And this is more the brainwashing going on. There's no, there's only one kind of marriage between a man and a woman.

Anything other than that is perverted. God developed now Adam. God created Adam.

Mature but not complete in this sense. Every animal had its mate. Adam alone was alone of all of God's created beings when it came to one being like him. There were equals in the Godhead. There were equals in the field, in the sky, in the waters. But there was none equal to him. And men and women, we are equal in value.

We are distinct in calling. And the world despises this. And they are drunk with folly trying to undo it. And they despise us for sticking by our convictions.

And again, why was Paul, why was Jesus, why was Paul and Peter and John, why were they persecuted? Because they stuck by what they said they believed. Even when it was not what everybody else believed. And so, man was right in the middle between creator and creatures and God was going to do something about it. Plan for expansion was love.

And it still is. When you become a Christian, God's plan to expand your development cannot happen without love. That's why he says, if you just got all this noise, I don't want to hear it.

You're a loud clanging sound in my head. If I have scripture knowledge, if I do miraculous things, but if I don't have love, if I give my body to be burned as a martyr, but I don't have love, that separates us from the martyrs of false religions. Those prophets that Elijah had killed on Mount Carmel, they were martyrs. They were zealous for their faith, but they had not agape.

They had not the right love, the right relationship. This is what is supposed to make us different. People were drawn to Calvary Chapel in the early years because of our love. That makes you stop and say, do we still have it? And if we do, we can lose it.

We better guard it. Without love, what are we? We're just like every other religion on earth. This is why the world hates Christianity, especially when Christianity is hypocritical.

I need to speed up and so I'll try, because there are some other points I do want to make out of all this. The greatest resource still in love, in the universe, we would think is darkness. You think about a spaceship.

I think of darkness with a few speckles. But love is the greatest resource in the universe. Love tosses, what does the darkness go when light turns on?

Who cares? It's gone. Colossians chapter 1 verse 13. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love. Love is what was missing with Adam. He had nothing to love like himself.

He had no companion extraordinaire. One of my favorite times with my wife is working outside. She's my companion. I do all the lifting, she does all the criticizing. No, she doesn't. She doesn't.

She gets down there, she works right with me. This is marriage, companionship. Not just going out to dinner, that's fine, it's nice, we've got to eat, we're going to have some wonderful, but there are other things to do. And Eve was created to be Adam's friend, his companion.

That was the primary thing. You do not need, you know, all the other things about a marriage will die. Give it enough time. Accept that companionship.

Accept the memories and the friendship and that's what we must invest in. And incidentally, Eve is never referred to in scripture without Adam. Adam is referred to without her, but she is not referred to without Adam. Maybe there is somebody contemplating adultery, fornication. You see what you're cheapening?

You see what you're taking and you're marring? What God is investing in from the beginning of time as we know it. Sanctified this. He put his blessings on this. He created this.

He said, boy, just go to sleep for a minute. You're going to wake up to a big surprise. And thus, the horror of infidelity and the honor of fidelity. And Satan knows it and he hates that we are sentinels of these things and so he attacks us. He looks for ways to break in.

If we ever had a school as Calvary Chapel, my goal would be to have the girls over here and the boys over there and I don't care if they don't like it or not. Because don't stir up love nor awaken it until it pleases. It's like getting a big bird in the house. How do you get this thing out of here? Okay, well let's finish this up. And so the plan was to place man in an environment where he could exercise the power of choice with a friend. And there you have the body of Christ. He put, he did not, the tree did not come into play until Eve was there. Now Adam and his companion were to stand together in obedience to God against that which God had forbidden and they failed.

And I am convinced that if we were given the same opportunity we would do the same thing. And that's not the end of the story. The lessons that are delivered to us for our benefit, the Genesis record, is not one of these meaningless reality shows. It's not a show of, you know, a scientific project like the evolutionists with their theory after theory and bad idea after another bad idea. It is the unchanging God, the unevolving God. He doesn't change, but within his creation he has things develop. There is evolution in creation, but there is not evolution of the species in creation. There are adaptations within the species, but that does not, you know, a monkey can grow a curly tail versus no tail, I guess.

That's an adaptation perhaps, but that is not a change. He does not then start quacking. Monkeys are dumb enough. I mean, just to look at, and then to have him quacking is just aflak.

I mean, that's just too much. Man's proper behavior is not in a thing to be learned without God's word. Man's proper behavior is not a thing to be carried out contrary to God's word. Man's proper behavior is not a thing to be learned from any learning institution outside of God's word, and this is why so many of our Christians are being destroyed. They're learning about God outside of God's word, and that is doomed from the beginning, and they're learning it by people outside of a relationship with God, and it shows itself everywhere, every day, to every man that man is a sinner. God only has the solutions.

All the other religions of the world have the same solutions, and none of them work. Earn it is their approach as opposed to grace, and so Jesus does for us by birth of grace what Adam should have provided to us by birth of inheritance. Grace is now what is to be transferred from God to us from one generation to the next generation. Women's study, that's their verse, their flag verse.

Each generation passing it on to the next generation. The Bible has another word for that. It's called discipleship, and we've got many people in Christianity attacking the idea of discipleship, reinventing other words to take its place and other concepts and ideas, and they're all wrong. The scripture is a beautiful blend of New and Old Testament in such a way that you can walk away from it strong and mighty in God. And had Adam kept his first estate of sinless perfection, we wouldn't be in this quest for Christian perfection, but we are. 1 Corinthians 15, 22, for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. And I just want to close with this verse. Again, these things are preserved for our Christian perfection. Colossians 3, 10, I read it once tonight. And have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.

And so there is the original man held up beside us in Christ Jesus, fraught with lessons. 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.