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Please turn with me in your Bibles
to First Chronicles chapter 1. We will begin reading in verse
1. First Chronicles chapter 1, beginning
in verse 1. Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Canaan, Mahaliel,
Jared, Hinnok, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Sham, Ham, and Japheth. The sons of Japheth, Gomer, and
Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshach, and Tiras,
And the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, and Riphoth, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan, Elisha,
and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. The sons of Ham, Cush, and Mitzrayim,
Put, and Canaan. and the sons of Cush, Sheba and
Havala, and Sabta and Ra'ama and Sabtecha, and the sons of
Ra'ama, Sheba and Dedan. And Cush begat Nimrod. He began
to be mighty upon the earth And Mitraim beget Ludim and Animim,
And Lehabim and Naphtahim, And Pathrusim and Kasluhim, Of whom
came the Philistines, And Kaphtarim. And Canaan begat Zidon his firstborn,
and Heth, The Jebusite also, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite,
And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, And the Arvidite,
and the Zemorite, and the Hamathite, the sons of Shem, Elam and Ashur,
and Arphaxad and Lud, and Aram and Uz, and Hul and Gether and
Meshach. And Arphaxad begat Shelah, and
Shelah begat Eber. and unto Eber were born two sons. The name of the one was Peleg,
because in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's
name was Joktan. And Jokdom begot Elmodad, and
Sheleth, and Hazarmeth, and Jerah, Haduram also, and Uzal, and Diklah,
and Ebal, and Abimuel, and Sheba, and Uphir, and Havalah, and Jobob. All these were the sons of Jokdom. Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber,
Peleg, Reu, Sereg, Nahor, Terah, Abram. The same is Abraham. Last time we were together we
were looking at some of the grand scheme things that the
Chronicler is trying to accomplish in his use of genealogies. And now today we come to Chronicles
1.1, Word 1. Adam is the first name and we
are going to try to capture something of what this would have been
like for the original readers. The chronicler is beginning his
narrative with the genealogy and he begins his genealogy with
the first man. In this way he is providing the
broadest and richest possible context for the coming narrative. We won't do this with all of
the names but of course as soon as the name Adam is evoked This
is rich in significance and Adam is massively important both historically
and doctrinally. And so I wanted to take up the
name Adam. This could easily have become
a series in its own right. I'm not going to do that. I'm
just going to try to touch upon some things that I think would
have been readily evident to the initial readers, some of
the things that would have been evoked in them. And we're going
to do this by looking at three doctrines. First of all, As it is presented here in Chronicles,
Adam is treated as a real historical person. This is obvious. I wish that it did not need to
be said. During my sojourn in higher education,
higher theological education, I know that it needs to be said. If I could take you back to my
undergraduate experience, There was a period of time when we
were reading and studying Paul Tillich, and in the midst of
this, his treatment of the Genesis narrative came up. Paul Tillich,
for those of you that don't know him, was a liberal theologian
and as such he did not believe that modern contemporary man
could really read the scriptures and believe them on face value. So full of miracles and spirits, angels
and devils, heaven and hell and all these kinds of things. He
thought that modern man could not believe these things anymore.
However, that does not mean that he wanted to jettison or simply
get rid of the scriptures. He attempted to rehabilitate
them, and he did this through the ancient method of allegorizing. There came a time in the ancient
Greco-Roman world where the Greeks and the Romans no longer believed
their ancient myths to be literally true. They no longer believed
in you know, a real Zeus on Mount
Olympus doing this and that thing. So to save the ancient myths,
they allegorized them and treated them as allegories that were
teaching moral lessons, life lessons, and so on. As Christianity began to spread
into that same environment, there were some Christians who had
already been trained in the allegorizing of the Greco-Romans, who then
applied those things to the Christian scriptures. They applied them
to the Bible. This is famously associated with
Alexandria, Egypt, which in the early ages of the church was
probably the church's first great think tank. And if there's a
single person with which this is associated, The most famous
of the names would be Origin. Tillich ends up adopting this
same method and analyzing the Genesis account using this lens. So, for example, he would look
at Adam and he would say, well, look here. Adam in Hebrew just
means man, and so you might take Adam here as representative of
every man, every person. Eventually we all face temptation
And we all face a fall. And so for Tillich, there's no
historical value or importance to the narrative. What is important
here is the spiritual lesson. But it's interesting that he
treats the narrative as an allegory. Interestingly enough, if we take
the texts on face value, they will allow no such thing. And
here we see yet another benefit of genealogy, especially as we
wrestle with the modern world and modern theology. I think
it can go without saying that here the Chronicler treats Adam
like a real historical person. You get a consecutive genealogy
from Adam to his own day. That's compelling, right? And
so as a modern person, we can look at the Chronicler and we
can say, in as much as we believe him to be inspired by the Holy
Spirit, we are sure that this record is true. Or we can look
at it and say, he is clearly asserting a genealogy that runs
from Adam to his own time, but being a sophisticated man, I
can no longer believe or accept these things. But there's no
honesty in taking a position that pretends like the chronicler
is saying something else, as if he were allowing the fact
that Adam were not a real historical person. And the Chronicler draws
very directly upon Moses. Moses does the same thing. By consecutive genealogy, he
traces the line of Adam down to his own day. And this demonstrates
authorial intent, doesn't it? It is clear that both Moses and
the Chronicler are intending to write real and true history. So this is really Tillich's dilemma,
where it really should have been. You either believe the author
and what he is communicating, or you don't. But it's really
not fair to interpret Genesis or Chronicles as allegory when
the author is writing history. Far from being a fair interpretation,
if we are treating history as allegory, what are we doing but
misinterpreting it? So we need to be very careful
when we interpret, when we exegete, what we're trying to get to is
authorial intention, and neither Moses nor the Chronicler intended
to write allegory. So the problem with Tillich ultimately
is that there is a there's a lack of honesty and facing up to the
issues and I just use him as an exemplar of a great many others. So that's my first doctrine,
rather simple and rather straightforward. Adam is a real historical person. That is the doctrine of the chronicler. That's the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit. That is true. My second doctrine is somewhat
wide-ranging. Adam is massively important historically
and theologically, and I'm not going to attempt an extended
theological excursus. I just mean to be evocative,
as it would have been for the original readers, hopefully you
are already well grounded in these doctrinal truths. If not,
I have treated them elsewhere and you can certainly read about
them elsewhere. But with respect to his historical
importance, He was the first man and as such the the fountainhead
for the race of human beings to follow and to catch something
of his importance to humanity even to the present day. He is
portrayed in the scripture as one of two great federal or covenant
heads or representatives. Turn with me in your Bibles to
1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 beginning
in verse 45. I want you to note well Paul's
rhetoric here, and I think you'll catch the sense of the great
importance that is being placed on Adam. And so it is written,
the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made
a quickening spirit. So I want you to note here that
Adam is called the first Adam, and our blessed Jesus is called
the last Adam. This is to treat them as if there
were no one after, right? So there's the first Adam and
the last Adam. There's no Adam to be expected
afterwards, right? So first and last, no one after. Now we go on with verse 46. Albeit
that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and
afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth,
earthy. The second man is the Lord from
heaven. So here we get not first and
last, but first and second. So if you compare the rhetoric
in verses 45 and 47, You get first and last as if
there were no one after, and first and second as if there
were no one in between. I'm going to speak a bit hyperbolically
here, so don't overpress it, but I want to express the point
strongly. It is almost as if there are
only two significant people, the first Adam and the second
and last Adam, right? No one afterward and no one in
between, first and second, first and last. All the rest of us
are only significant in that we are related to the one or
to the other. So hopefully this is an illustration
of the massive importance of that first atom. And if you know
the name John Murray, you might want to Read Murray on Romans
5, what he says about Romans 5 is equally true with respect
to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, that these two texts are probably the most comprehensive
rubrics of biblical theology that you will find anywhere,
and they deal with the comparing and contrasting of Adam and Christ
as the two great federal heads. Adam represented us in the covenant
of works. He fell and he brought ruin upon
us all. Our Lord Jesus Christ represented
all that would believe in the covenant of grace, and he represents
them through righteousness unto eternal life and salvation. So the comparing and contrasting
of the two heads, and it's well said that we are either related
to the one or to the other. We are related to the first unto
ruin, or we are related to the second and last unto life and
salvation. But everybody is related to one
or the other, and there is no third or middle way. Just a little more on Adam and
the Covenant of Works. It is called the Covenant of
Works because it was based upon Adam's obedience. So what was
required of Adam in the Covenant was perfect personal and perpetual
obedience. And much of this would be illustrated
and tried in the positive commandment not to eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. If Adam should obey during this
period of time, he and his posterity, because he's acting for them,
would enter into eternal and blessed life. But should he fail, they would
die. And what is threatened there
is a comprehensive death. Obviously, the dissolution of
the body, the death of the soul, not that the soul goes away,
but that it becomes insensible to God and the things of God.
And ultimately, if this is not remedied, eternal death. Once the covenant was broken,
the covenant did not go away or evaporate, but it continued
to make a twofold demand. It continued to demand perfect
obedience. which as you well know we cannot
render, and it continued to demand the death of the sinner, a death
that we cannot bear. That helps us to understand why
the Eternal Son of God, when He took to Himself human flesh,
did what He did. In our nature, He met the double
demand of this broken covenant. so that we might be ushered into
life. He satisfied all of its requirements
so that the blessings of it might come to us full and free, simply
by resting our case upon Him by fee. So the Lord Jesus Christ
came at the end of time, and He obeyed perfectly, rendering
that debt which we owed as far as positive obedience to the
law. But because we were sinners,
He also died the death that was due to our sins. He bore the
punishment and paid the penalty in our place. And so now having
fulfilled perfectly the just requirement of the covenant of
works, by resting our case upon what He has done already, We
are ushered into eternal life and blessedness. Just rest their
case upon Him and what He has done. And in that way, much of
revealed, much of salvific revelation is drawn
together, isn't it? But we have to remember, so I
have looked at positive and negative elements, the good and the bad
of that, but we need to remember the impact of Adam's representation
because it's with us all the time. We are born with his guilt
imputed to us. So even before we commit our
first actual sin, the guilt of Adam rests upon us. And then
his corruption, his inclination to sin, and the threatened death
is conveyed to us. So his impact has been decidedly
negative and fleeing from this relation to a new relation with
Jesus Christ is necessary to escape from the wrath to come. And so with these things in view,
no sooner is Adam evoked than the lamentable consequences for
us of his fall are brought into view and we are reminded as The legal material in the Bible
always reminds us that we are in need of the Savior. And as we view our guilt in Adam
and the guilt of our own sins and our inability to render a
perfect righteousness today, much less make up for what has
passed, we see the necessity of resting our case upon Christ,
the perfect covenant keeper, the only righteous one, and the
only one whose merits can represent us unto eternal life. So let us remember our Jesus
and believe upon him. Now we turn our attention to
a third doctrine and we begin to look forward to where the
genealogy is headed and we see Adam and Eve as the root of the
church in the world. And I should say that the evidence
of Genesis is that Adam and Eve appear to have believed that
first preaching of the Gospel in Genesis 3.15. But to understand
Genesis 3.15, look with me first at Genesis 1.28. So we return to the beginning
of our Bibles, Genesis chapter one, beginning in verse 28. And
God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply
and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the
fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth. Here in this great
blessing upon mankind, God is establishing a particular kind
of relationship with man. Man is being made God's vicegerent. Probably a more modern word would
be viceregent. So God is the high king of heaven
and he's not abdicating that throne, but man is being placed
over the lower creation. So he's over the lower creation,
but nevertheless he is still subordinate to God. You might say that he is a vassal
ruler of a certain kind. But in his fall, man sinned and
rebelled against his great king, rebelled against the Most High,
and allied himself in a very real way to the evil one, joined
the rebellion as it were. In that very first preaching
of the gospel, we see that our gracious God does not allow that
alliance or that relationship of enmity to continue. between Adam and the devil, between
Eve and the devil, but rather he's going to interject an enmity. So look with me at Genesis 3.15,
and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy
seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel. Now, when we read enmity, that
normally has a very negative connotation. It's opposition,
hostility. But I want you to notice God
himself is saying that he's going to interject this. Basically,
the woman by her sin had allied herself to the devil. But God
says he's not going to allow that to stand. He's going to
interject. an enmity. He's going to break
the alliance. So we might even think of this
maybe somewhat paradoxically as a redemptive enmity between
Eve and the serpent. God is going to break the alliance.
And not just with them, but there's also going to be an enmity between
the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. And the ultimate
expression is that there will be that one great seed of the
woman that crushes the head of the serpent even while his heel
is wounded. But in Genesis 3.15, and for
our immediate purposes, I think that we see right away God's
own promise and declaration to redeem Mother Eve. He's going to do it by His own
might. He's going to do it by the outstretching of His strong
arm. And He's going to interject this
enmity between her and the serpent. And He's going to recover her
to Himself. There can be very little doubt
that Mother Eve ended up receiving the gospel to the saving of her
soul, and we'll see some additional confirmation of that in a few
moments. Now we won't read all of the
intervening material, but this is actually, we find Genesis
3.15 in the midst of God's judgments upon the parties involved in
the fall. The first judgment falls upon
the serpent here in 3.15. And it is a mercy in and of itself
that our first parents got to hear that first, because the
gospel is contained in it. And they are given hope before
they hear hard things about the harsh realities that are going
to be part of life on fallen planet earth. So you get the
judgment upon the serpent, judgment upon the man, judgment upon the
woman, and then immediately upon the heels of this you get verse
20. And Adam called his wife's name
Eve because she was the mother of all living. For years and years and years,
I have wondered about the placement of this. Context matters, right? Where do you expect this? I almost expect to find this
maybe back in Genesis chapter 1. Just based on the face of
it, God blesses them and says, be fruitful and multiply. And
it's at this point that you might expect Adam to turn to Eve and
say, I will call you Eve because you are the mother of all living. where Eve, we get the English
Eve, comes from Chava in Hebrew, which means to live, thus the
wordplay in the Hebrew. But given its placement, there
are two possible interpretations. It is still possible that Adam
is calling her this because she is going to be the physical progenitor
or mother of the human race. If it's taken in that way, I
think in context the thought would be something like this.
We had been threatened with death But that death, at least physically,
is not going to be executed immediately. Life is going to continue. Things
are going to be hard, but the race is not going to be cut off.
And so then you have Adam declaring her to be the mother of all living. There's a second possible interpretation,
one which I lean towards. I just favorite contextually. It could very well be that Adam
is calling her Eve because she is going to be the mother or
progenitor of not just physical children, but spiritual children
who imitate her faith. We see analogies in this way.
For example, when Paul talks about Abraham being a father,
even of the Gentiles, with respect to faith, he's not there. physical
progenitor, but there is a spiritual affinity. These share a spiritual character,
faith, that is an imitation of Father Abraham. In Eve's case, she would be both.
She's going to be the mother of everybody physically, but
she's not just going to have physical children. Some of those
physical children are going to be her spiritual children as
well. They're not just going to look
like Mama Eve in body. They're going to look like Mama
Eve in soul. And I tend to this for this reason. The last mention of Eve and children
was Genesis 3.15, in which case this becomes something of an
acknowledgment and even profession of faith on the part of Adam. God has just said that he would
establish an enmity between Eve and the serpent, so he's going
to redeem Eve, but that she's also going to have a seed after
her that is going to be likewise redeemed. And so here Adam would
be giving his profession of faith. He is giving his amen to that
very first proclamation of the gospel. declaring his faith. He believes
this to be true. And like I said, just based upon
the immediate context, the last mention of seed was in 315. So
it seems as if that has a has at least a slight advantage
contextually, but I'll leave it to you to weigh those two.
It's not the last bit of evidence. When we come to the next chapter,
we have the beginning of the enmity between the two lines,
the story of Cain and Abel. Look with me at Genesis 4.1. And Adam knew his wife, and she
conceived and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from
the Lord. And she again bare his brother
Abel. Just to look a little bit at
the grammar here, and it tells us much about what Adam and Eve
are thinking, especially if we take it in its plain and ordinary
Hebrew sense. We get the naming of their son
Cain, Kayin in Hebrew, and then we get an explanation as to why
the name Kayin was given. She goes on to say, K'niti, I
have gotten. So K'na is to get. So K'n or K'n means the gotten
one. But what she says she has gotten
is very interesting. So in the Hebrew sentence, in
the direct object position, we get the word ish, man. I have gotten a man. But then,
interestingly enough, we get the explicit direct object marker,
et, and then the divine name, Jehovah. If we were to render
this as plainly as possible in English, it would be something
like this. So this would be like a wooden literal rendering. I
have gotten a man, comma, the Lord. Or, I have gotten a man
who is the Lord. I have gotten a man. That is, I have gotten the Lord.
This would indicate, just on its plain reading, that Adam
and Eve appear to have some sense of the incarnation. And it would
give some additional indication of why they would name the the
brother Abel. Havel would mean something like
vapor. If we have already gotten the
Messiah in Cain, what's this other one for? He's of comparatively
little value. It ends up being something of
a prophecy of the brevity of Abel's life, comparatively. But
what ends up being really interesting is, if read in its plain and
ordinary sense, they have the doctrine of the incarnation that
the expected seed, Genesis 3.15, or savior, is to be both God
and man. Now the exegetical tradition
on this is divided, and there are some very eminent interpreters
who have taken a different position. You might think of no less than
the illustrious Calvin. He's going to want to take it
very much the way that the King James Bible does. I have gotten
a man from the Lord. So there, the direct object marker
at is not taken in its plain and normal sense, but one of
its subordinate and relatively infrequent uses is evoked here. So you get some sort of translation
like from or some such thing. The reason he takes it in this
unusual sense largely has to do with the fact
that he does not believe, and interpreters that have joined
with him and even followed him in this regard, he cannot see
how Adam and Eve could have understood so much about the Savior, that
he would be both God and man, Jehovah and man, united in a
single person. First of all, I'm not sure that
we should just necessarily make that assumption. The history
is brief. In real life, there could have
been a lot more attending the events that are recording to
us that would have made this plain. But already, some of the
rudiments of the doctrine of the incarnation might be plain
enough in the narrative already. They have been promised a son,
a man as it were, that would bring this deliverance. But then
if you look at the end of Genesis chapter 3 as well, he's also
taught them that they could not cover themselves. So they had
made some attempt to cover themselves, their guilt, their shame. But
this is proven inadequate. Ultimately they need God himself
to cover them and thus the symbolic transaction and having them put
off their self-made garments and covering them instead by
what appears to be sacrifice. But if we take the words at face
value, it does certainly seem that they not only know that
the seed has been promised to us, but they seem to know at
least some of the fundamentals of the doctrine of the incarnation,
and they are living in faith of the coming of Messiah. So
putting all of this evidence together, 315 really seems conclusive
with respect to Mama Eve's salvation, but subsequent passages seem
to be that Adam is affirming and believing the gospel as he
has heard it. So this is the beginning of the
church. This is the beginning of the
belief in the coming of Messiah. And this is 2,000 years before
Abraham, 2,000 years before you would have Hebrews or Jews. And just remember, justifying
much of this is the teaching of our blessed Lord himself.
You can see it in Luke chapter 24, verses 47 and following,
that the scriptures ultimately were always about him. and the
gospel was always for the nations, right? Because ultimately it
wasn't first given to the Jews. It will be laid up with the Jews
for safekeeping through many ages, but it was first given
to the world, to the nations, to mankind as a whole. And although
the Jewish church acted as custodian through the space of 2,000 years,
ultimately it was intended as Abraham's blessing back to the
rest of the world. So by way of application, this
is where it begins. If you are a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ, here in First Chronicles 1.1 is the beginning
of the history of the church. And inasmuch as you are a member
of it, this is your story. This is the history of your people. A people generation after generation
living in the faith of Christ. For 4,000 years living in expectation
of the Christ to come. But for these 2,000 years, no longer living in expectation,
but in the joyful reception of the Christ that has now already
come. But it was always from first
to last the faith of Christ. And we have occasion to give
gratitude for our privileged position, right? For all of those
ages Patriarchs and prophets looked
through the dark glass of prophecy. They saw him and they knew him.
They believed to the saving of the soul. our little children being catechized
could see some things about him with the clarity that they longed
for, that they dreamed about. And you can see that discussed
very clearly in 1 Peter 1 and other places. Jesus' declaration
concerning John that in spite of his greatness with respect
to Old Testament revelation, the least in the kingdom of heaven
would be greater than he, We live in this privileged position
where Christ is, having accomplished his great work, is revealed so
clearly, the accomplishment of the work revealed so clearly,
and the fame of it has spread even to these remote parts of
the world. We have occasion to be a very
grateful people indeed.
The Importance of Adam
Series Chronicles
The massive historical and theological importance of Adam.
| Sermon ID | 6621178535257 |
| Duration | 43:56 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Chronicles 1:1 |
| Language | English |
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