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.