Please turn with me to Genesis chapter 2. We will be reading Genesis chapter 2, verse 5, through Genesis chapter 3, verse 24. Genesis chapter 2, beginning at verse 5. Hear the word of God. When no bush of the field was yet in the land, And no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land. And there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of light, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. There it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havala where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bedlam and Onits stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Kush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the Garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden." And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened And you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go and thus you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman. and between your offspring and her offspring, and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have heathen of the tree of which I commanded you, If you shall not eat of it, curse it at the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, and for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed a cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life." Here ends this sober reading from God's Word. May He bless that. reading to our hearts and to our minds. This week, Pastor Martin is going to be teaching us from God's Word, and he's going to be asking the question, what happened when Jesus died? This question, of course, is impregnated with so much hope and so much joy as we gather in anticipation of worship and as we grow in grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. But before we can have Pastor Martin teach us about what happened when Jesus died, there is a preliminary question that needs to be asked. I want you to consider how the question that I will pose to you and the answers that I will give to you are not going to be encouraging answers. They're not going to be joyful answers, and they may not even be enjoyable for you to listen to, but they need to be answered nonetheless. Now, the answers that I will give you with the help of God's Word, they need to be received by us soberly and even painfully as the truth of the whole human condition and the backdrop of the question that Pastor Martin will ask throughout this week. So this evening, as we begin our conference, we're going to look at the second half of Genesis 2.17. Which reads, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Hang on that phrase. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. The question we need to ask is what happened when Adam died? Before we can even ask what happened when Jesus died, we need to know what happened when Adam died. Now, the reason we have to ask this question first is because without a proper understanding of Adam and his life and his death, the life of Jesus is meaningless. It means very little that Jesus died on a cross without understanding that Adam died in a garden. Allow me to give you, this evening, seven aspects of the death of Adam. Now, those of you that are in my congregation are probably gasping at the thought of the seven-point sermon. We need to work our way through this. And with the Lord's help, we will be able to. Now, the first consequence that occurred when Adam died is that he brought death upon an entire race. He brought death upon an entire race. When Adam died, he died. Now, that may seem like a silly statement to you, it may seem obvious, and it is obvious, but have you considered this fact that Adam died? Adam was not intended to die. Adam was designed to live in fellowship with God and to live in communion with God in this garden paradise as he worked his way through the cultivation of a people. And he was to live in fellowship with God for eternity. And God gave him this command to not eat of this tree. And He also gave a command to eat up the rest of the trees and to enjoy life fully in the garden. And when Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that process of physical death began. came into a world that was perfect, a world that was not intended to see death. When Adam died, he died. You see, when this first sin entered into God's sinless kingdom, the beginning of the process of death came upon our father, Adam. It's as if the clock started to tick, and the process of decay came upon Adam. And because of this, you will die, and I will die. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see these gray hairs starting to develop, and I see the hair that ends up in the shower and isn't really here anymore, and I see these wrinkles that start around my eyes, and I think, it's going so fast. I'm only in my mid-thirties, and I'm aging. I remember when I was a little kid, and my dad was my age, and I thought he was so old. And that process of death comes upon all of us. Time goes quickly, and as time goes, and as that process of death is happening, we have to understand that it is because of Adam's sin that we die. Because of the disobedience of one, death came upon an entire race. There's more to death than just physical death. The second aspect of what happened when Adam died is that he made guilty all of his natural descendants. He made guilty all of his natural descendants. You see, we come into this world, and we come with original sin, and we come with this rebellion that is handed down from our father, Adam. And that guilt that originally belonged to Adam, that guilt is given to you, and it's given to me. In Adam, guilt is ours. Now, when I say guilt, I don't mean the feeling of guilt. I don't mean like, oh, I feel guilty about something. I mean the verdict of guilt. The legal declaration from God that you are guilty before Him. Guilt as a verdict. It's a judgment. upon our entire race. It's as if God is saying to Adam, and all who would come from Adam, God would say, I declare you guilty. We have to grasp that before we can talk about Christ. The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 6, says, by this sin Adam and Eve fell from their original righteousness and communion with God and became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of their soul and body. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed and the same death and corrupted nature conveyed all posterity descending from them by ordinary generation." So, what that means is, if you are born in the line of Adam ordinarily, and that leaves room for something. I'll let Pastor Martin tell you what it leaves room for. If you are born in that line of Adam you come with what is called imputed guilt, a guilt that's been placed upon you. And what that means for you and me is that we are not merely sinners by nature, but it means that we come into this world guilty, and we come into this world opposed to God, and opposed to the things of God. In Adam, We are God's enemies. You might say, well, you know, Pastor Eshelman, that seems a little rough. Enemies of God? Romans 5 says we are enemies of God if we are an Adam. as Reverend Martin teaches us about what happened when Jesus died. I want you to think back on this. I want you to think back on how this is a little bit uncomfortable, and you don't know me, and I'm coming and I'm telling you all this nasty stuff about us. But it's the condition in which we live, guilty before God, standing guilty, stained with sin, because of this imputed guilt from Adam's death. When Adam died, he made guilty all his natural descendants. In the third place, we see that when Adam died, he failed at keeping covenant. He failed at keeping covenant You know, these early pages of the scriptures that we read together, it's this beautiful picture of this garden that God sets up where everything is beautiful and wonderful. And there's this tree called the knowledge, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And there's a command connected to that tree, a command not to eat. And that tree is connected to what we call the covenant of works. The covenant of works. You see, in all of God's relationships with man, He is required to have a covenant as He is in relationship with man. And you ask, why? Why does God need to be in covenant. Adam is perfectly sinless. Why does God need a covenant? Why can't God just say, I have made you and here are the responsibilities? Why is there a commitment made between God and Adam? Again, the Confession of Faith, 7.1 is helpful. It says the distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable preachers do owe obedience, unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward by but some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He has been pleased to express by way of covenant. Let's say that God is so holy And man, as a created being, as a created being, he's responsible for being obedient to God. But in the covenant, it's not just obedience. There is a commitment of what our confession calls the fruition or the blessedness. And in that relationship, God condescends and He enters into covenant with Adam. And for Adam in the garden, that was a covenant of works. Adam was required to have perfect and personal obedience to the law that was written on his heart and the way that that obedience was expressed within that tree. If Adam picked from that tree and ate from that tree, it was as if we are able to look into Adam's heart and to see where he stands before God. And Adam did that. He picked and he ate. And there was this time of testing, this testing of covenantal obedience. And Adam is in this time of testing where if he was able to secure the keeping of that word in God's Word in Eve, He would secure eternal life for Himself and for His posterity. He would have made this perfect race of mankind living in eternal blessedness. God says, Adam, do this and live. But Eve saw the fruit. She said, this is good to look at. This is nice to the touch. And it's able to make me wise, and she took, and she ate, and she gave to her husband also, and he eats. And that covenant of works is broken. Friends, this is not just the story of our primitive parents' disobedience. This is the story of you. story of me. Hosea 6, 7 says, all like Adam have broken the covenant. See, Adam is our federal head. He's the one that represents us before God in the covenant of works. And Adam became a covenant breaker. His moniker became disobedience. He was no longer in covenant with God, which broke our covenant with God. Adam failed at keeping covenant. This brings us to our fourth aspect of what happened when Adam died. Adam destroyed communion with God and with man. He destroyed communion with God and with man. When Adam died because of the eating of this fruit, he feared God and he hid from God. And it's such a contrast. God and between Adam. Adam fears God, and as God is in the garden, he hides. He and his wife hide. What do you think that original relationship was like? Walking with God in the pool of the day. God condescending. to be in relationship with God. What do you think those conversations were like as they talked? God condescended in a perfect relationship, and He expressed love and fellowship to Adam. And it would have been sweet communion And it would have been a reflection of all of God's holiness and perfection as Adam lived in this perfect and joyful communion with God. And then there's this relationship with his wife. God says, look around the animal kingdom, Adam, find something suitable for yourself. Looking around, lots of great stuff here. Nothing for me. So God brings a sleep over Adam, and He creates this woman from a rib. And Adam awakes from this supernatural surgery, and he just breaks out into this poetic expression, doesn't he? Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, I will call this woman, because she was taken from man. that he loves his wife. It's a perfect society, and this relationship with God is perfect, and this relationship with his wife is perfect. And all of that changed when Adam died. When Adam died, he turned from God out of shame, and out of fear, and he did. He didn't want that relationship to continue. He knew God was there, and he feared, and he did, because he did not want that relationship to continue. And Genesis 3, 9 records some of the most haunting words in all of Scripture. God calling out, Adam, where are you? Friends, let that echo from your soul, understanding the creation account and understanding this relationship that was built. Adam, where are you? The God of the universe condescending to man the one with whom he had a perfect relationship, only to find that that communion with God had been destroyed. And that perfect relationship with his wife suffered as well. It's so shakily Because their nakedness was a shame to them. And they felt sickly to cover themselves of the guilt. Works righteousness. The first attempt at works righteousness. The perfect love. Adam as the first poet. This romantic relationship. now marked by fear and shame as they stood naked. And we see that this destroyed the community in which Adam lives, because as Adam reacts to God, as God confronts Adam, what does he do? Every husband in this room has followed in the footsteps of Adam. It was that woman that you gave me. Responsibility taken from himself and placed upon his wife as that relationship is destroyed between Adam and Eve. That which was once dancing over his life in poetic expression becomes blame and critique and even rage. Community. is destroyed. Communion is destroyed. The fifth aspect of the death of Adam is the image of God was shattered. The image of God was shattered. How many of you, like good little Presbyterians, memorize the Shorter Catechism? Two of you? How did God create man? God created man, male and female, after his own image in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness with dominion over the creatures. We understand that Adam was created in God's image. But how many of you woke up this morning and looked in the mirror and said, what a day it is. I am knowledgeable about the things of God and I'm knowledgeable about the things of this world and I stand righteous and I stand holy and I'm going to have dominion over this day. None of us. You see, when Adam was created in the image of God, it was a reflection of God's moral character and God's perfection in holiness. And it was a reflection of God's work and His creative vocation. And all of these things were included in what it meant to be an image-bearer. And when Adam died, that image was marred. You see, we're still created in God's image, but it's faint. It's marred. Consider the plight of man. Consider reality TV. Is that the image of God? Yes and no. You see, the image was marred. in Adam's death. Calvin said, the image of God denoted the integrity with which Adam was endured when his intellect was clear, his affections subordinated to reason, all his senses duly regulated, and when he truly ascribed all his excellence to the admirable gifts of his Maker. There was no part, even of the body, in which some rays of glory did not shine. Friends, when Adam died, this image was shattered. It's been marred and connected to that image, but worthy of its own aspect. is the sixth aspect of Adam's death. When Adam died, he forfeited the priestly kingdom. He forfeited the priestly kingdom. Remember, there's this vocational aspect to image-bearing. There's this creative aspect, or an ergonomic purpose as an image-bearer, and we understand that in having dominion. Adam was called to have dominion over the land. But for Adam, that dominion was more than just serving as a farmer, or serving as a worker of the land, or some groomsman at a garden. Adam is actually serving as a regent. In the name of God, a priest-king within a society that he was called to cultivate and to have dominion over. You see, in the garden, Adam is a priest, and he's a king. G.K. Beale says, with regard to Adam's royal position, Genesis 127 specifies Adams, who ruled not just over the animals in Eden, but over all the Earth. 128 asserts that he is to subdue the entire Earth, a goal that could not have been completed by staying in the confines of the Garden. He would begin to rule in the sacred space partly by subduing the servant, and then he would continue to fulfill the goal, moving outward and reigning until his rule was extended over the entire earth. This means that there would be a heightened phase of his ruling and a climactic point at which he would fulfill the goal of worldwide dominion. Field goes on to say that if Adam had faithfully executed his kingly and priestly task of defeating the serpent, that evil in the midst of the good creation would have been decisively judged. And from that point forward, Adam and his progeny would have enjoyed endless security from the lethal threat of evil. This security would entail Adam's endless an irreversible, kingly existence. The Prince, Adam, died. The hope of the entire race resting on a kingly priest in the midst of the garden that was called to go out. He died. the hope of the human race in knowledge and righteousness and holiness, serving Yahweh under the reign of Adam, the priest-king. That hope was shattered by the third chapter as he died. This kingdom that was tended to expand throughout the whole earth. It never made it past the garden walls. Adam was expelled. See, God had to protect Adam from the tree of life. So, He expelled Adam from the garden. And he was sent east of Eden to a place where he was not a priest-king. But he would have to wait. He would have to wait for another. Adam died and forfeited the kingdom. And he forfeited all known hope. for God's kingdom being established on earth. And I want you to consider the hopelessness of this condition. The hopelessness of Adam, the priest king, who should have been robed in righteousness and robed in holiness, as he stood guilty before God, robed in fig leaves. as a failed priest-king. Adam died. So what happened when Adam died, he brought death upon an entire race. He made guilty all of his natural descendants. He failed at keeping the covenant of works, he destroyed communion between God and man, he marred the image of God, and he forfeited the priestly kingdom. When Adam died, he failed. Tremendously. But even with this overwhelming hopelessness, none of you feel encouraged. I know that. I don't feel encouraged. Even with this overwhelming hopelessness before us, there is a glimmer of light. sliver of light that penetrates the darkness of Adam's existence. The seventh aspect of the death of Adam is that when Adam died, he began a war between a serpent and a seed. He began a war between a serpent and the seed. To the serpent, Yahweh looks at this serpent, and He cites this curse. He curses the serpent, and what's given in that curse is what we call the Proto-Ewangelion, the first gospel promise. Genesis 3.15, upon Adam's death, a war would begin. And it would be a war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. And it would be a war for your souls. It would be a war for my soul. And it would be a war for God's kingdom. And it would be a war for the restoration of everything that was lost in Adam. God says, I will put enmity between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you will bruise His heel. Friends, in this war between the serpent and the seed, it's the whole story of the Bible. this whole human race that has been lost in Adam, and everything that has been lost in Adam, it would be recovered as we anticipate the story of the seed of the woman, the one who would come and crush the head of the serpent. See, when Adam died and this war began, victory was promised as he began a war for man's soul and God's kingdom. So, as we spend time in the Word this week, asking what happened when Jesus died, which is a wonderful and grace-filled question. We have to understand that it's going to look all the more beautiful against this black backdrop. This is the question. What happened when Adam died? Amen. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, as we close this evening soberly, we do so in anticipation for the seed that will rise and restore that which has been lost in our Father, Adam, Amen.