Genesis Study, Creation, First Adam
Mike Doyle · Oct 8, 2006
Identification (2006-07), No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492604344727

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, now this is a really hard question. Why did God create? Why did he do it? Why does God do anything? God created, like he does everything else, to bring glory to himself. Now, that's a little egocentric, isn't it? Why isn't that egocentric? Well, he doesn't have an ego like we would define the ego.

So now, did you guys look up Genesis chapter one, verse twenty one, twenty four, twenty five? And the question I asked you was, what does after its own kind of me? So Genesis one, twenty one, somebody go ahead and read it. And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind, and it was so. Verse 25 says the same thing. So what does after their kind mean?

Well, they produce only their kind. I mean, dogs produce dogs, underdogs. That's right. Cows produce underdogs. Yeah, there aren't flying pigs, right? Right. There just aren't. And so these verses not only debunk evolution, but there's a real important principle here. That God creates creatures that have the capacity to reproduce, they can only reproduce after their own kind. They can't reproduce after something they're not. Now, that's true in the physical realm of things. You think it's true in the spiritual realm of things? Yeah. So, every living creature God has made reproduces after their own kind if they have the capacity to reproduce. Now, angels don't have that capacity. Do they? They can't. They weren't given that power to do, to reproduce.

But every creature that has that power reproduces after its own kind. Now, did God create after his own kind? Understand what I mean by that? In other words, if God is creating, creates a man, is it after his kind? In his image, does that mean the same thing? It's not a physical image. It's not necessarily a physical image, but if you study the first Adam, the first thing God did was make him head of a race, which gave him a position of authority, which is something God has. He gave him a personality. God is a personality or a person. Adam is a person, right? He gave him an intellect.

What is an intellect? What does an intellect do? thinks it's able to accumulate information, study its environment and absorb. Now that's different than God's intellect. Our intellect thinks sequentially. We can think one thing at a time or maybe have an influence of something else in our minds. But when we're working on something else, we go from one to two to three to four. Right. But we do have intellect and God has intellect. What makes God's intellect different?

Number one, he doesn't think sequentially. He has all knowledge in play all the time, right now. So he doesn't think, oh, I'll think this, and then I'll think this. He doesn't think like that. His mind is all knowing right now. But he gave us intellect. He gave us the ability to know things. That's God-likeness. He also gave us emotions. Does God have emotions? Sure he does. And this is the most important aspect of it.

He gave us a will. What is a will? If you've got a will, what is it? What does it do? Ability to choose. Now, would God create a creature that had will, like angels and human beings, that they could use that freedom of will to will against and circumvent God's purpose? What do you think? Did I phrase the question correctly? Did God create your will or my will or Adam's will or Lucifer's will so that their exercising their will against God would subvert his purposes? would change the course of his purpose, would somehow be able to stop what he has in mind. No, he wouldn't. So to that extent, this issue of free will is your will isn't free. Will is influenced by emotion, by your intellect, by the environment you're in. So it can be moved in different directions.

When Eve was tempted, right? Satan came after her so that she would exercise her will towards herself, excluding God. She was certainly free to do that. But once she sinned, once Adam sinned, now she had this thing, she had a propensity to sin from then on. And we come into the world under what principle with the propensity to sin? Like begets like. See that? Well, you and I have a propensity to sin because our father Adam had it. Does that make sense?

Will sometimes is a hard thing to spend much time on because, you know, we Americans think we have free will. How free is it? The non-believer has free will to choose between this sin or that sin. That's as free as it gets, right? He cannot choose life without the Spirit of God coming to him and influencing him to exercise faith in what he knows. But you know what's interesting? God does not subvert the nonbeliever's will.

When he draws a nonbeliever to Christ, he does it in such a way that from that person's perspective, He sees his position as separated from God. He sees his sin. And he sees the Lord Jesus as a Savior. And he's drawn by God. And from where he sits, he made the decision. But what really happened? The Lord Jesus said, no one comes to me unless the Father draw him. He was drawn. And he made the decision as best he understood, not knowing that it was God who was working the whole time.

Now, the other thing with this mind, emotion, will, personality, intellect, what does that allow us to do with God? When you've got all of those faculties in play and God has created us in such a way that we're after his likeness and to that degree, what does that allow us to do? It allowed God and man to have fellowship.

They could interact with each other. You see, The birds are flying around. What do they care? They can't interact with God in the sense that Adam could. Adam could walk with the Lord in the cool of the evening. They could interchange. And Adam had the capacity to fellowship with God under the environment where God was sovereign and man was subject. And man was subject to God's will.

Have you ever had this thought? What would perfect free will be? If your will was perfectly functioning, what would it be doing? God's will. Yeah, you'd be doing God's will all the time. God created us in such a way that total freedom is to do His will. And it is to the benefit of me.

We were talking about that this week, Vern and I, about will and Roger. And how in eternity, everybody in this room As opposed to the angels that have their wills locked, you know, they had a sort of a window of opportunity to whatever their test was. But once the test was over, like all the fallen angels, their wills are locked, you know, and the elect angels, their wills are locked. But how about believers?

We arrived at the conclusion that our wills aren't locked. We are so free. to behold the glory of the Lord for all eternity, that we willfully do that every second for all eternity. It isn't that we're locked in because God turned a crank on us. It's that we willfully do His will of ourselves and we will never turn away from that or think anything other than that. I think that's really cool. Because that shows not only the freedom, But the absolute magnitude of the Lord Jesus Christ, beholding his glory.

Now, what other aspects of man did man get from God? By the way, these attributes I've just talked about, what would you say they are properties of? Properties of your soul, maybe? Mind, emotion, will? What other aspects did man get from God? He got a spirit. So God is essentially a spirit, is he not? And so in order for us to be similar to God, we must possess spirit, which we do, we have. And it lives forever. So men can resemble God in certain respects without being equal to him. Understand what I mean by that? We can have properties and capacities similar to God and be like him without being equal to him. Now, if everybody in this room has likenesses to God, what does that give you in terms of all other creatures?

It gives you a step up. And what's interesting is that Hebrews talks about that Christ was made a little lower than the angels. The first chapter, he's made a little lower than the angels. But then because of his work, he's exalted above them. So you as believers have been exalted above angels. I mean, like it or not, you're going to judge them. And they are very powerful, incredible spiritual creatures.

But the position you have as a son of God and being in Christ puts you in a place where you actually judge angels. And angels observe and watch especially the body of Christ function and they learn so much about God by just observing us. Because angels don't have souls. And this love thing that goes on between God and us is observable by them and they learn a lot about God's character just by watching us.

If you think about it, here we are. In sinful bodies with sin natures living in a fallen planet. Kind of like a virus in the universe. And God's grace and mercy has come towards us. And we've responded. And we function by faith. And angels must look at us and think, how is that happening? What they observe is this thing, grace. So, grace is something that we all continually grow with and in. And angels learn it too as they watch us. We're personal beings. We have the power to think, to feel and to decide. We can make moral choices and we have the capacity for spiritual growth and we also have the capacity for spiritual decline.

In the beginning, man loved God. But since Adam became a vegetarian, liked fruit. How much of this likeness to God was damaged by Adam's fall when they disobeyed God? That goes to the question of what makes us like God. It's personhood that makes us like God.

And there's where the damage took place. Our personhood was damaged by being recipients of a sin nature. You can't think God's thoughts after him. You're separated from the source of spiritual life. Your spirit is dead to God. Your soul, although it still retains its ability to do things like think and make decisions and have emotions and that kind of thing, it's totally controlled by this thing called the sin nature. Totally. Not just a little bit. Totally.

So any relationship to God from personhood goes away. Because there isn't anything spiritual going on. God is essentially a spirit and a person. And we're persons infected with sin nature. What does a non-believer have in terms of relationship with God? Nothing. In Romans chapter 1, God does hold man responsible for doing two things.

He says, look, I've revealed myself to you in my creation. And I've revealed myself to you in your conscience. You know that I exist and you're without excuse. And so I require two things from you. I require that you be thankful and that you honor me as God.

But that doesn't save anybody. And so if they don't, if you read the rest of chapter one and two, The downward fall is, boy, it's like on a greased chute. I mean, even the worshiping goes from birds to animals to demons, you know, to crawling creatures. I mean, it just it deteriorates so fast. The morality goes from proper to just in like three verses. So there isn't anything left over. after Adam's fall that would maintain the same image and likeness of God. So every human being that shows up on the planet has got an image and likeness to who? Adam. And what did Adam get? He got sin nature, which is the nature of his closest and dearest friend, Satan.

Now how would you describe the principle of reproduction? Yeah, after its own kind. I'm harping on that a little bit because several weeks down the road when we begin to talk about identification with Christ, after its own kind is a very big principle. And it doesn't change. One of the reasons that identification is such an important thing for a believer is that once a person believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and the identification principles or truths are true of him, this same principle is there. that there's a reproduction of after its own kind. Now, who was the blueprint when God created man? He just messed around with a little dirt. Not too bad. Two ears would look good. Ten toes, not bad. Maybe ten's good. Four and a half fingers. No, five.

Who's the prototype? If you look at Hebrews chapter one, which is a terrific verse in terms of the Lord Jesus Christ in this connection between like begets like from God to a man and the prototype man is the Lord Jesus Christ. And Hebrews one says three and he is he being the Lord Jesus Christ. is the radiance of his glory, God's glory, and the exact representation of his nature. The Lord Jesus Christ, as a man, is exactly the representation of God.

Exactly. To the last nth degree. He's exactly like God. So, in John, chapter 1, Christ is called the Word of God, the Logos of God. The second person of the Trinity is the person of the Trinity that expresses to creation exactly what God is like. Exactly what he's like. The person of the Lord Jesus Christ is the human being that exactly and precisely expresses who God is.

Because we're like Christ. So we're here. Christ is like God, then where are we separated from him? Let's go back and start with Adam. Adam is created in the image and likeness of God, but the prototype man is not Adam, it's Christ. Now, Adam isn't exactly like the resurrected Christ, but he's a human being with the properties of a human being, a soul and spirit and a body. Adam sins, and his likeness to God disappears, because he has no connection with God spiritually anymore.

He can still think, he can still make decisions, but they're always going to be against God. And he's going to die because he's going to suffer the consequences of his disobedience. Now, it didn't frustrate God's plan. That's why I started out by saying, would God create a creature with a will that would frustrate his purposes and his goal? Answer, no, he wouldn't. But he would give us will so that we would choose him and with the ability to choose against him.

And the Lord Jesus Christ is the man. He shows up on the planet to do the Father's will only. And so Christ being the, I keep using the word prototype man, he's the model under which all men are created after. Now, here's the difference between Adam and Christ. Christ is, in fact, God himself in the flesh. He's 100% God and 100% man.

And our likeness to him, the ultimate likeness, is because we as believers have a position in Christ. Non-believers don't. So from a position condition, and we're going to talk next week a lot about position and condition. Positionally, because believers are in Christ, they're the exact express image of Christ and the exact presentation of God's glory in a man because of your position in Christ. Doesn't mean your condition shows it, but positionally you have it.

So before Adam sinned, then the difference between him and Christ would have been, he's got this will to choose for or against God, where Christ doesn't have that. He's only going to... Oh, but Christ has a will. Certainly does. Has a human will. Well, that's the whole point. Would he go against himself? Right. No, he wouldn't, yeah. And what's interesting about Adam was is that he, when Lucifer came to test him, and it's interesting, God sets up this scenario where he gives Adam a single law, just one law.

Other than that, he said, you know, the creation's yours, you have dominion over it, you're the boss, you cultivate it, you take care of it, you know. You make the decisions, you get the, name the animals. You get to decide about all this stuff. But we got this tree called the knowledge of good and evil, and I don't want you to eat of it. And if you do, if you disobey me, there's going to be consequences. The consequences are that you're going to die. You're going to be separated from me and my likeness, and you're going to die physically. And because he was given dominion over the whole creation, the whole creation died when Adam died.

Okay, now, What's the difference between Adam and Christ? Several. Adam was made for the earth because his body was formed from the dust of the earth. And Corinthians says that Adam is of the earth, earthy. Where's Christ from? He's from heaven. So he's a different kind of a man. He's a heavenly man. Adam was made a living soul. Christ is a life-giving spirit. So those that are in Christ, Because of this like-beget-like principle, what do you get from him? You get spiritual life. You get soulish life, earthly life from Adam, from your parents. In fact, you also get a sin nature from them.

Colossians 1.15 says about the Lord Jesus is that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

By him all things were created, both in heaven and the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, dominions, or rulers, or authorities. All things have been created by him and for him. He's before all things, and in him all things hold together. He's also the head of the body, the church.

He's the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, or from the dead, so that he himself might come to have the first place in everything. That's who the Lord Jesus is. Now, we've got two men. that are really, really important for our discussions of identification. What are their names? Adam and Christ. They are the only two men that you ought to ever be concerned about. Why? Why those two guys? They're both what we would call representative men or federal men, federal heads of a race.

Every human being that has ever come on this planet came from Adam, right? And because of this principle of like begets like, you get whatever Adam your father has. You get a physical body, you get a soul, you get a spirit, and you get a sin nature. And the reason you get it is because you come from Adam. No wonder that the Lord Jesus Christ, when he comes here, who was his father? God was his father, the spirit of God was his father, so he breaks the link. You see that? His mother can be Mary, but who passes down the sin gene? The father does, because he's the federal head. He's the head of the race. So the issue being, it doesn't really come down to your actions. It really comes down to who's your head. Who's your federal head?

Who'd you come from? Where did you come from? You either came from Adam or you came from Christ. You only have two choices. You see that? So you can come from Adam and be very religious, but you still got Adam as your father. You see that you can be born again and come from Christ and function corruptedly, but you're still from Christ. So God made Adam this representative or federal head of the entire human race, all of it. That way, the personhood and the human characteristics of Adam would be instilled in his whole race. through the inherited oneness of nature.

Genesis 2.23, when Eve was created and he looked at Eve, what did he say about her? This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Eve is taken out of man. So when Adam and Eve produce an offspring, what do they get?

They get somebody just like them, exactly like them. So in what respect was Adam's likeness to God? Personhood. So he had volition, he could love, he had faithfulness. Was Adam holy? Does it ever say that Adam was holy? What's it say about him? It's a living soul. What makes Adam innocent? We look at innocence as kind of being not quite with it. If you're innocent, you've been sheltered. What does innocence mean?

It actually means that. It is. It's like you're not you don't you don't have the full picture, you know. And so don't you find it interesting that it is not being exposed to evilness? That's right. Now, when Adam is faced with this, this issue of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Right. It's interesting that here's the contrast set up now, this knowledge of good and evil. Now, we'd all say.

Adam didn't know what evil was, right? Did that make him innocent? Adam not knowing what evil was, did that make him innocent? Yeah, it did. Did Adam know what good was? He was able to fellowship with the pre-incarnate Christ, so he knew what good was. That was normal.

So would you say that maybe he knew what holiness was? He knew the characteristics of God, but he did not know evil for sure. And he didn't know good. And the thing about that, he didn't know the contrast. He was innocent and naive about good and evil. You see that? And he didn't have any emotion or intellectual processes about, I wonder what evil is, study evil, study good, and I see the differences. He had none of that because he didn't have to. What did he need to study good and evil for? There wasn't any evil around. It's all good. It's all good.

And so God names, puts a moniker on the tree in the garden that he's not supposed to eat. And he calls it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which says to me that Adam didn't have that knowledge. Right. So when when Adam disobeys God and he eats it, he all of a sudden has lots of knowledge about good and evil, doesn't he? And it's because he entered into evil. And now there's the contrast.

Now, what's interesting about that from an identification standpoint is that there was another tree in the garden. What was that other tree? Tree of life. And the tree of life, the Lord Jesus Christ identified himself as the tree of life in the gospels. He said, I'm the tree of life.

So if another reason why understanding what identification truths are critical in a believer's spiritual growth is to understand that it starts in Genesis with those two trees, because I dare say most Christians are led to Christ based on a good and evil principle.

Are they not? You're evil. You want to be good. Believe in Christ. Right? Or your life is terrible, Christ is a good aspirin for you, make a commitment. The whole premise of Christianity is presented on this good and evil principle. You see that? That you're evil, you want to be good, become a Christian. So what happens in the mentality? Now that I am a Christian, I'm going to take this little journey from the evil branches to the good ones. And that's what Christianity is, is living in those good branches. Isn't that the way we think? Is that Christianity? What's the deal? The real deal is that you climb down the tree, walk across the garden, and you get put up in the tree of life. And in the tree of life, there isn't that contrast between good and evil. There's only God and there's only His holiness and His righteousness. And there isn't any contrast. The Lord Jesus said there's none good but the Father. Nobody except Him. So the reason identification is really important, I think, for us to grow spiritually is to get off of this idea that spiritual growth is a goodness as opposed to evil. And to understand that what spiritual growth is, is life.

It's Christ himself. You see that? Okay. After man fell, what was God's opinion of it? Genesis 6, 5. Did I give you verses last week? Good. Somebody read Genesis 6, 5. I mean, you talk about a verse that condemns you. That God's looking around over the earth, and all he sees is wickedness in man, and that it's great. It just isn't happenstance. It's great. And I love this.

Every intent and every thought in his heart is only evil continually. Boy, that eliminates the good and evil contrast, doesn't it? That every intent and thought of the heart of man is only evil continually. I've had people come to me and we'll be talking about a mutual friend says a good guy is moving towards salvation. And I said, well, if every intent of his heart is evil only continually, how can you say that? Well, he's a good guy. No, he's not. No, he's not.

So God looks at man in Genesis 6.5 and every man from that perspective. So there isn't any sort of warm, fuzzy feeling in terms of, well, some guys are good, some guys are less good, some guys are more good. No, this is a description of what God's opinion is about every single man on the earth. So that's a good place to start from.

Now, contrast that with Genesis 1.31. God creates man and creates his whole universe before Adam's fall. And he looks at it and he says, it's good. I like what I've done. It's really good. It's perfect. You know, so the reason I wanted to contrast these two verses is that man likes to look at himself from his perspective. Right.

The problem is, is that you can't get he can't get an accurate assessment of who he is by looking at it from his perspective. The only way man gets a proper identification or a proper understanding about who he is before he's saved is to look at it from God's perspective.

And God is the one that will tell him. A man can't judge himself because he's in the soup so deep he can't see, you know. I mean, he's in thick soup in a tank with the lid on, no light. And he's swimming around in there, exercising his free will, and he can't see. Right. So in order for man, I think, to be saved, The first thing that's going to happen is the assessment of who he really is must be made clear to him. Well, who knows better than God?

So God makes it clear to him, maybe not in exactly the terms of Genesis 6.5, but he shows him his worth based on the one who can make the most objective assessment of it is God himself. So he learns about He has no goodness in him at all. What does that set up? You would think, well, boy, it would make him really depressed. Yeah, it probably does. But what does it set up for him?

It sets up the fact that when the Spirit of God presents a Savior to him, he knows now the contrast. There's no hope in himself. God has provided a way out in the person of his son. See? So that's why the Spirit of God is the one who goes around and he convicts the world of sin. He's the one who does it.

And he convicts it on the basis of they don't believe in Christ. And so what he does is he compares man to Christ. And they recognize, men recognize, Oh my goodness, I'm in trouble here. There's nothing I can do to change this. And so Christ is presented as the Savior. The contrast has to be there and the assessment of it has to be by God himself through the spirits.

Because we all think we're pretty good, don't we? Because we base our assessment of each other on the vertical, right? All of us think that, you know, we're not perfect. But we're only three or four rungs from the top of the ladder and there's a whole bunch of guys below us, right?

What does God do? He lays the ladder flat. You know, that's what he does. And he says, here you are. And the standard is my son. How are you doing? Not too good. OK, because man realizes that, well, I might have been made in the image and likeness of God, but what did I lose? I lost anything that has anything to do with anything that's God-likeness at all. God makes a pronouncement about me that I'm evil, that I'm fleshly, and I'm flesh only. In Genesis 6, 3 and 5, God says, Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, because man is flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be 120 years." Talking about Adam. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great. So, just to review.

If you understand going in that all children are from their father Adam, through you. That everybody you love on this planet, who isn't a believer, came from Adam. I think it helps give you an understanding of exactly what you're dealing with. That you get away from this, well, some guys are good and some guys aren't. You know, I have a friend who goes to the Arapahoe County Justice Center once a week and he teaches the word of God to these guys.

And he tries to convince them that he's just like them. You know, and they look at him like he's nuts because he can walk out the door. But he tries to explain to them what coming from Adam is like. That he's no different than them in terms of having a sin nature. And that the issue is not whether you're good or bad. The issue is, who's your daddy?

And they understand that. They do. And he's told me that 60 to 70% of the people that are there that he ministers to, he'll ask them, were any of you saved or born again? 60% of them say, yeah. When I was, you know, twelve or when I was eight or, you know, that kind of thing. Well, if you're saved, how come you're here?

You know, and what he's discovered, he understands identification. What he's discovered is, is that the premise on which they live is good and evil. You see that? Not identification. They live on the principle of good and evil. So they view themselves as evil, even though they're saved. And they look at him as being a good guy because he gets to walk out the door at the end of the day. And I think he does a pretty good job of convincing them that in Adam all die. Everybody who comes from Adam is the same.

And the hope for the believer, or the hope for you guys that say that you're born again or saved, is to understand your position in Christ and who you are. And those of you who are not believers to understand that that you're no different than any other human being and to try to get them off this idea of good and evil. It matters who your dad is. That's what matters.

So when Courtney and I were putting this course together, here's what we're trying to do. And because you're all good guys, it makes it really hard for us to pull this off. We're trying to get you so sick of Adam that when we present Christ, you'll really think it's good. And, you know, your sin nature and my sin nature. And this is a good question. When you got saved, did your sin nature get better? No, really, it's not better than it was before. Your question, I think, you know, when you ask that, I think, you know, Christ in our image and that.

John 3.6 says, That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That's what it is. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.

1 Corinthians 15.22, As in Adam all die. So let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. how diligent you are to show us that our position in your Son is the only refuge we have, and that causing us to will and to do of your good pleasure is partly based on the fact that we understand more and more where we came from in Adam. So we thank you, Father, for your mercy and your grace towards us, and we pray in your Son's name. Amen.