Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 1 Week 2
Mike Doyle · Jan 15, 2017
Which Side of the Cross, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926545403800

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

So we are in the identification truths and we are in lesson one. How far did we get? I think we got to maybe question four. Am I right about that? Okay. So we were talking about God creating after its own kind. Do you remember what that meant? This seems like kind of weird stuff, but as we go forward it will really make a lot more sense, so stick with me for a while. Creating or reproducing after its own kind, what does that really mean? Dogs make dogs. Dogs are dogs. Dogs procreate dogs. Cats procreate cats.

So God said, Let's make man in our own image and after our own likeness. So let's talk about God saying, I want to make man like me in my image, in my likeness. So let's talk about what God is. What is He? Essentially, He's a spirit. So, I'm looking in the room here and you guys are all made after the image and likeness of God. You seem to have physical properties. Is that what he was after? What do you think? Maybe go ahead a little easier.

If God is essentially a spirit, which is John 4.24, therefore man, who is similar to God, possesses a spirit. I've always looked at man this way, that man's essential identity is spiritual. And he has a soul and he lives in a body.

But the essential identity is spiritual. It's not solely spiritual. So when Adam sinned, his essential identity got changed. A lot of times, I think most believers, until they understand the spiritual aspect of who they are, think of themselves as soulish. In other words, well, I'm a personality, which we are, but I'm a mind, emotion, and will, and that's my essential identity. No, it's not. I think it's spiritual. I think our essential identity is spiritual. Because we were made after the image and likeness of God.

Man resembles God in certain respects, Genesis 1.26, without being equal to him. Isaiah 40, 25, if you want to write down those verses. Man's likeness to God is what truly distinguishes him from all the rest of creation. What also makes us unique is our likeness to God.

Man is a personal being with the power to think, feel, and decide. He has the ability to make moral choices and the capacity for spiritual growth and spiritual decline. In the beginning man loved God and he wasn't a holy creature, he was an innocent creature in the beginning. So Adam's likeness to God is not necessarily physical although the Lord Jesus Christ is the prototype of a human being, right? I mean when God created Adam, Christ was already in place in God's mind in terms of his physicalness. But the most important aspect of this is God is a person, therefore we're persons. Sounds a little, maybe a little, not confusing, but a little complicated, but it really isn't.

We're persons. I know Phil personally. He knows me personally. I can tell Phil is different from any other man I've ever met. He's certainly different from Courtney. And Phil knows me as a person. And so I could describe Phil to somebody who knew Phil and they'd say, oh yeah, I know that person, Phil. Describe his characteristics. Well, God is a person. And one of the things that we do is we're learning the person of God as manifested in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But that in place, Let's talk about, how would you describe biologically the principle of reproduction? Remember what a principle was? What's a principle? How something functions. It functions the same way every time. It doesn't vary. It's the same every time. You know, you drop something and it hits the floor. The principle of gravity functions the same way every time.

You may be able to circumvent gravity and make it... I'm working on this experiment for the kids on levitation with magnets in the top, and it'll look like gravity, but as soon as the magnets stop spinning, it goes to the ground. It's kind of weird. We won't do it today because I haven't got the top. I can't find the top.

So there are principles that work the same way every time. Do you think those principles that are physical, function in the spiritual realm the same way? Are there spiritual principles that function the same way every time? What do you think? Have you ever had that thought? That they don't vary? That they do the same thing every single time?

So the principle of reproduction is that a dog, when he recreates or reproduces himself, he reproduces just like him. He reproduces and that's a principle. I know there's evolutionists around, they try to change the principles, but you can't change the principles. They're just that way. In biology there's a sexual or asexual process by which organisms generate new individuals of the same kind. They procreate. It's called the fixed law of progeny. And you can mess with it a little bit and try to manipulate it like GMOs and stuff like that, but a corncob is a corncob. So when you think about that, what was God or who was God's blueprint for creating man?

Look at Hebrews 1.3.

And somebody else look up Colossians 1.15 probably through 18.

So Hebrews 1.3 says, and he is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature. Who is he talking about? He is talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and he says that the Lord Jesus Christ is the radiance of God's glory and he's the exact representation of God's nature. So the blueprint is who for man? The Lord Jesus Christ. That's the blueprint.

But when God created Adam, he did not create a divine being. He created a man that was like him. Colossians 1.15 says, And he, Christ, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

So not only he wasn't the firstborn in the sense that he was the first on the scene, he's firstborn in the sense that he has the priority. He's the number one guy. For by him all things were created. both in the heavens and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, dominions, or rulers, or authorities, all things have been created by him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself might come to have the first place in everything.

So that's who the Lord Jesus Christ is in terms of the blueprint. Now, I'm going to add one more character here, our friend Adam. So we've got God the Father, we've got the Lord Jesus Christ, and now let's talk about Adam. When God created Adam, tell me about before he fell, tell me about what his makeup was.

What was he like? He was like God in what respect? He's innocent. But God's not innocent. Is he? No, I don't think so. What about Adam that God created him to be like God? He was created with a spirit. Remember God formed his body through the dust of the ground, something he'd already created, and then he breathed into him the breath of life, plural. and Adam became a living soul. So he's spiritually alive, he's soulishly alive, and he's got a body that he functions. And so the thing I think that makes Adam interesting is that one, he's got personhood, and he's got human characteristics that are like the Lord Jesus. And one of the most important things that he has is that he has authority. The Lord Jesus Christ, as we've just read, has authority. Adam, when he was created, had authority over the creation, didn't he? God put him in charge, so much so that he was given the responsibility of naming animals.

So I want to use a term here that Adam is a representative man, like the Lord Jesus is a representative man. crank in the idea of the reproduction now. If Adam is going to reproduce, what's he going to reproduce like? What's going to be like him? That all of his offspring are going to be just like him, right? Because of the principle of reproduction.

So God creates Eve out of Adam, and Adam says, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she was taken from man. So now we've got two creatures before sin that are capable now of reproducing like themselves. So Adam's likeness to God, in question 7, Adam's likeness to God There's a spirit that is kept in living union with God, has never one moment infringed the laws of divine union and crossover to take counsel with other influences by his own soul, etc. So Adam's got a will, he can make decisions, right? And oh, by the way, his will is free. Ours isn't. And we'll talk about that in a minute, why it isn't. He could love. Adam could love because God's a lover. And God wanted Adam to be a lover so he could love him back. He has an appreciation for things like the truth. He really likes truth. He's faithful. He likes justice. He has the power to reflect.

God reflected in his creation. Every day he sat back and he said, well, this is good. He was reflecting on what he did. Adam could do the same thing. He could taste things. He could compare. He could admire things. God said, My creation is good. He was aware of the fact that he could know things. In other words, he had a self-awareness, Adam had, like God has. He could have pleasure in knowing things. He had the power to impart knowledge to others. Adam had that. He had the power to plan future learning and future events. God said, this is your garden. You take care of it. I'm not giving you the rule book. You decide.

He had the power to discover efficiency and final cause. He could enjoy the pleasures of that discovery. He had an imagination. And he had the capacity to know his Creator and Lord of all. Because he walked with him in the cool of the evening. He had that capacity to know him. He could distinguish... Well, let me ask you this. Could he distinguish right from wrong before he fell?

There was no wrong. There was no wrong. Was there right? Why did he hide? But that's after he sinned. This is before he sinned. So there wasn't any wrong, there wasn't any sin, so there wasn't any comparison. So I don't even think he knew what right was. He just did what God laid out for him. Willingly. And he didn't have a sin nature? No, he didn't. He didn't have a sin nature. His environment was well ordered. It was perfectly balanced.

And Adam had integrity about all of that. Now that's Adam. And in that capacity, if Adam were allowed to reproduce at that point, or if he did reproduce at that point, he would reproduce a person just like that, wouldn't he? He'd have the same characteristics as Adam had. But now we come to a very interesting event, which I know all of you think that if you were Adam, you wouldn't have sinned. Yes, you would have. You know why? Because you're just like him. We're just like him. That principle of reproduction is in all of us.

So what happens to Adam when he sins? Well, let's back up a minute. God said to Adam, he gave him one law, one rule. He said, you know, don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right? And Adam said, okay. But God said, if you do, in dying you will surely die. Do you think Adam understood what he was saying to him? I think he did. I think he did. I think he was an extremely intelligent creature. He knew that death, what does death mean?

Separation. It means you will be separated from the source of life and other things. But I don't think Adam, it doesn't appear like Adam paid a lot of attention to it because he was managing the garden and hanging out with Eve. So he sins. What changes with Adam's makeup? First thing is, is he died to God. He got separated from God.

Now, we just finished up a whole year on talking about position and condition, and he died positionally to God. Let's review, let's define position and condition. What's a position? Our position is in the heavenlies with God and we can't be separated from that. Right. A position is a pronouncement by God of a fact about us or about Adam that is true about us, whether we agree with it or not, whether we experience it or not, but because God said it's so, it's so. So when God says for us believers that we are seated in Christ in heaven, that's a positional truth, whether we experience it or not, know it or not, enjoy it or not, it's true of us because it's from God's perspective.

Well, when Adam sinned, he died positionally to God. That's an absolute truth. He was separated spiritually from God. It culminated in, over time, a spiritual separation and then a physical separation. He died physically. See, nothing died until Adam sinned. There was no death. Because there didn't need to be death. There wasn't any consequence of sin.

Romans 5.12 says that by one man's sin entered the world. So these evolutionists that tell you that humanity is created over the top of a bunch of dead dinosaurs is idiocy. Nobody dies, nothing dies until Adam sins. Nothing. And the reason every creature dies is why. When Adam sinned, why did the whole creation fall? Because Adam was the charge of it. He had dominion over it. And so when he died, his whole creation died.

So things started to die. Animals, plants, everything. They started to die. So Adam's position when he sinned became manifested in his condition. He began to die experientially. Everybody thinks Adam lived, what, 900 years or something? That's a long time. But he fully experienced the inevitable outcome of his position of death when he died conditionally, physically. As the head of the human race, he took all of humanity into the position of death.

1 Corinthians 15.22 says, In Adam, all die. All are separated. Back to the principle of reproduction. Now Adam can reproduce. He could reproduce before, but now he did. So what did he reproduce?

When Cain comes along, what is Cain like? Is Cain this wonderful creature like God created Adam before the fall? What is he? He's just like his father. and mother. He's just exactly like them. He's dead to God. He now has this sin nature. He has a propensity to sin. He's going to die. He's born spiritually separated positionally from God. He's now living in a fallen earth.

Like begets like. Right? So now we're starting on this expansion of humanity on the earth that all of us are going to be just like our father Adam. And there isn't any getting around it because of this principle of reproduction. The principle works the same way every time.

So Ephesians 2.3, by nature we are the children of wrath. So you say, well then the reason that I'm in such trouble is because of Adam. I didn't bargain for this. Really? We'll talk more about that in a minute.

Adam became flesh in body, soul, and spirit. Hence, the race bond of Adam is fleshly. It is not that the natural man has flesh or is in a condition of flesh. He is flesh. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. So what's that mean? Adam is now flesh. I have my own opinion about this. I'd be interested to see what you think. When it says that that which is born of the flesh is flesh, what does that mean? Somebody's got to have an opinion about this. What's that? It's a sinful state. That's pretty good. It's a sinful state.

How would you, what would you describe flesh as? If I said you've got flesh, your stomach hurts as part of your flesh, would you be thinking only physical, body? What would you think? Come on. You'd be thinking your body, flesh. You'd be thinking, that's how you would think, but when it says that that we're born of the flesh, that means that we're only physical.

Man became this thing flesh. I'll read this back to you. Adam became flesh in body, soul, and spirit, all three. Hence, a race spawned from Adam that is fleshly. It is not the natural man has flesh. The natural man is the man from Adam. We could do a TV series, The Man from Adam. That the natural man has flesh, or is in the condition of flesh, but he is flesh.

Let me ask it this way. Would you say that the sin nature and the flesh are the same thing? Yes. What do you think? You have to have flesh. More than physical flesh. It says that man became flesh. Does that mean that all we are is a body? No. I think of the flesh as everything that we are in Adam. That's good. Separation. That's good, Joe. I like that. Come on, Wanda, if you're going to talk, you've got to talk up here. I'm going to get hearing aids next week. You could always move up here. I don't spit on anybody normally.

Anybody know what a bell jar is? Guys that took physics in high school, you know what a bell jar is? It's that big glass thing that they hook the suction pump up and they suck all the air out of it and like you put a marshmallow in there and it just expands. I was always hoping my teacher would put a mouse in there. There's this little machine and the bell jar is kind of like this. And inside the bell jar is air. And when you hook the hose up to it and suck all the air out of it, it becomes a vacuum.

I relate this to man. Man is spirit and he is soul and the bell jar is his body. The spirit before Adam dies controls the soul which animates the body. He is a spiritual man. And he is being controlled by his spirit from God. And he's doing it willfully, because here his will is in his soul. And he's allowing all of this to happen.

Now, Adam sins. What happens to his spirit? It dies. The source of life goes away. Now you've got this big vacuum. What fills the vacuum? the soul fills the vacuum that now has a sin nature and it rushes to fill in all the vacant space and so now you have like way down in here you have a dead spirit and you have a soul that fills all of that space with the sin nature. And we are operating out of our soul, and our soul is emotions, it's mind, and it's will. So everything we do is based on our intellect, which is damaged by the sin nature, our emotions, which we can't trust at all, and a will that isn't free. It's a slave to sin.

So now what happens? A person gets saved. What happens when a person gets saved? His spirit is made alive again, right? And now his spirit is indwelled by the Holy Spirit. So to finish up the example, even though there is still a sin nature in here, The whole person is now dead to this and spiritual growth is the expansion of the Spirit of God to shove the sin nature in the soul back into the spot that it should be so that the spiritual man begins to take over the space in the bell jar. Does that make any sense? I can't think of another way to explain it other than the fact that when a man gets saved he becomes spiritually alive and life begins to flow inside that vacuum again and spiritual life begins to happen. And what spiritual growth is, is really shoving the dead life of the sin nature and the soul to get the soul back in the position where it's under the spirit and to shove the sin nature to a point where it isn't effective anymore.

It's still there but it's not effective. So, question. Yeah. Could you say then that right and wrong, or right and wrong, evil, good and evil, as opposed to truth, spiritual truth, good and evil, sin nature? Is there, if you're spiritually alive, truth is the issue, right? Not good and evil?

Everybody understands the question. It's a really good question. Everybody understand what she's asking? Yeah, I think that's right, Donna, because the tree that Adam ate from was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So we can say that before he ate, he didn't have the knowledge of evil or good. But now he does. But it didn't exist though, right? Well, goodness existed. Evil didn't exist. I don't know what the deal was with whether Satan was on... well, Satan obviously was around by then because he's the one that... so evil is there. But Adam didn't have a comprehension of it. Certainly didn't know what death was.

Now, he's infested with this concept of good and evil, but the good and evil part of it has the almost total influence of the sin nature. So his ability to judge between what's good and what's evil is tainted because he's spiritually dead. And so when the Lord Jesus came, he said, there's none good but the Father. And he condemned all men in Romans chapter 1 by saying, how did he characterize men? All sin. No, all no. They were ungodly.

Isn't that interesting? I think that fits right with being created by God. In order to be saved, you have to be godly, which means you have to have the life that is godly, which is the resurrected life of Christ. Now, the Lord Jesus is truth. So as a believer grows spiritually, he becomes interested in and begins to absorb and believe in the truth, but then he discovers that the truth is really a person. Do you see that? So the issue of good and evil is there, but eventually you begin to leave that comparison and just rest in the truth, who is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And here's how Christ described it. He said when he was on the earth, he didn't do anything of himself. He only did what he saw his father doing. We as believers, as we grow in the Lord Jesus Christ and we behold his glory, then we begin to function the same way. We do and live and function and respond and react as we behold the Lord Jesus. We say, hey, I do what Christ is doing.

I've got the life for it and I behold him. I often wondered, the Lord Jesus was on the planet 33 years, and it would seem like he was separated from his father, but he wasn't. He was in absolute union with him the whole time. Well, you and I, as born-again believers, are in absolute union with the Lord Jesus, vis-à-vis the Holy Spirit, all the time. We have the same capacity.

Anyway, I chased that rabbit far enough. So now we've got a creature who can reproduce who's fallen. He's not like God at all. Well, I shouldn't say that. He can still think. He can still make decisions. He can still feel. He can still do all of those things.

But they're tainted by the influence of the sin nature. And he bases everything he does on good and evil. God doesn't do that. He doesn't base everything he does on good and evil. He's God. He just does. He's life. He's truth. So, how did man assess his fall? What was his estimate of the fall? Did I give you that question? Mike, that's what I was going to say.

From a tracking perspective, that was question one of lesson two. Now you're going to question two of lesson two. You went through all the questions on Lesson 1, now you're on Lesson 2. Oh, did I do 13? Why wasn't Joseph like... No, that's not it either. No. You went through all the ones on Lesson 1, now you're starting on Lesson 2. There's no rest for me. Courtney's on top of it all the time. I was also a little disturbed seeing your sin nature wanting to put a mouse in the bell jar. I didn't hear him, what did he say? OK, so any questions on Lesson 1? None? Yes? No? Oh yeah, there it is.

I got it. But Lesson 2, I changed, what's Question 1 of Lesson 2? It says, what was the result or penalty of Adam's sin and Paul? Yeah, that's the first question of lesson two. So are you tracking with me so far? It seems like we're going slow, but we're really not. We're moving really fast. I always thought from some religion back in my youth that God was lonesome and so he made man. We will make them like we are. Don't ask me where I got that. No, that was Catholic, wasn't it? Or Baptist, or Episcopalian. Do you think God was lonesome? No. He has no need. He doesn't have a need.

There are three persons in the Godhead. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? All three of them are God. All of them had unlimited capacity. And they fully were satisfied with each other. They loved each other. They gave and received love. They gave and received life.

They didn't need to create. There was no motivation to create from that perspective. From a soulish perspective. So why did he do it? Manifest his glory. He created so that he could manifest his glory. It's kind of interesting that God thought, well I'm going to create these creatures that will see my glory and they'll like it.

They'll think I'm really cool. And I'm going to make them so that they appreciate who I am. Not from a selfish, egocentric standpoint, but from a loving, wonderful God. I'm going to share who I am. So I'm going to create these creatures who can share with me what I am. See?

That's why he did it. He wanted Adam and Eve and their progeny to share his glory, to see it and appreciate it, and to love him, to be loved by him, the capacity to love and respond. So it wasn't selfish or need, he just determined that's what he wanted to do. It was his desire to share. Yeah, sure.

Let me give you an example of that. When we become a believer, some of you probably were believers from a little age, but if you became a believer at the age that I did, it isn't long before you're overwhelmed by the grace of God and right away you start thinking, I've got to share this. I've got to tell people about this. This is wonderful. I have this desire to And if you're like me, you became a pain in the neck to a lot of people who didn't want to hear it.

And so God says, look, I know who I am, we know who we are, but let's create. And we can create these creatures who will appreciate, and we can bring them in, and they can enter in and enjoy this wonderfulness of God. God being sovereign, them being subject.

It's perfect. Now, that was originally what he did. Then, Adam sins. Now we're down to the sin part. All of that goes away. There's nothing in Adam now that God can allow to appreciate because he's dead to God. And death is absolute. So, question one, lesson two. What is the result or penalty of Adam's sin?

So Romans 5.12-14, somebody go to there.

1 Corinthians 15.22 and Ephesians 2.3, I think I've already, we've already talked about that. So Adam died positionally to God, didn't he? Culminating in total death. Now what's interesting about Adam, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on position and condition, but he died positionally to God. But not conditionally, how do I know that? How do I know that he didn't die conditionally?

In other words, could God come around, talk to him? Yeah. After he sinned, he went in the garden and said, Adam, where are you? And talked to him. But he was dead positionally at that point. In other words, he is a positional separation, and positional is the absolute condition, may or may not be. But God still sought him out.

I find it interesting, even in the garden after Adam's sin, who sought out who? God went after Adam. And what was Adam doing? Hiding under a bunch of philodendrons, right? And fearful. and all of the characteristics of a fallen man who's sinful, Adam exhibited right away. I was afraid, so I hid. Gee, where did that come from? And God even said to him, who told you you were naked? Like God didn't know? So he put it on him. He said, who told you you were naked and you had to cover your body?

So God is always the pursuer. So Adam's dead to God, but he's got this natural life, which is he's a child of wrath. So he deserves, as a child of wrath, what that phrase means is that he deserves punishment from God. He deserves the death that God warned him about. He deserves it because he disobeyed God.

Why is that such a big deal? I mean, you know, why is this? Have you ever thought about that one guy takes one bite out of one piece of fruit and the whole entire creation goes in the dumper. Why? Couldn't God say, well, that's not so bad. Cain killed Abel and he didn't kill Cain. But when Adam sinned, the whole thing went down. Why? Ever think about it? Am I the only one that thinks like that? Why did that happen? It doesn't seem like a big sin. Does it? Because we're always cataloging sins from the really bad ones to the really little ones. This seems like a pretty little one. Why is it such a big deal?

God's not holy if what he says doesn't happen. Yeah, God is holy. And I think it's back to the issue that we must be God-like to be saved. We have to be like Him. We have to have His life in order to be saved. That's why none of our efforts to try to be righteous in ourselves ever work, because they're not Godly.

The source is wrong. And sin is sin. There's no good sin or bad sin. No, they're all bad. Yeah. There's this issue of disobeying God. The disobeying comes out of one really interesting thing. You know what it was? He didn't trust him. No faith. His faith was not in God at that point. It was in something else.

It was in Eve or whatever. We're not told why Adam took the fruit. We're told why Eve did. We're not told why Adam did it. Adam, at that point, didn't trust God. So you know, centuries later, somebody writes in the New Testament, without faith, it's impossible to please Him. Oh, wow, you think faith is important? Yeah, the lack of faith really caused the whole creation to fall. That's why it's such a big deal. We didn't trust Him. I think that's true today. If you don't trust Him, you're not going anywhere. Faith is really, really the issue.

When God tells Adam, now look, you named the animals, Adam said, okay. He trusted him. He didn't say, well, I don't know if I can or not. But when it came to this tree and this one rule, and Eve, who is now his wife, He trusted Eve and what she was doing and everything like that and didn't trust God at that point. That's why it's such a big deal. And because Adam had control or had dominion over the creation, whatever he was the boss of goes down with him. So here you are, you're Adam. You've got Eve sitting over here and she says, here, you want a bite?

And you say, well I've read the Old Testament, I wouldn't do that. Would you? If you believe in the principle of like begets like, you would definitely do that. Because you're just like him. You're no better or no worse or no different than Adam. Is that the second bell? Yeah. Okay. If you're confused, see Courtney. Listen to question two next week.

And I would encourage you, this in some respects does seem a little complicated right now, but as we get to the point where we are identified with the Lord Jesus and His death, burial and resurrection, I think it will make more sense to you as we move over there because now as we are positioned in Christ, what is true of Him is now going to be true of us. because of our identity. We're identified.

Before you're saved, you're identified with Adam. What's all true of him is certainly true of you. You can be good, bad, or somewhere in the middle, but you're Adamic. And if you're Adamic, what's the verse say? In Adam all die. All separated from God.

Let's close. Father, how we thank you for your word. How we thank you that you took into consideration all of the issues. in order to carry out the plan that you originally had, that you would have those who appreciated who you were to the point that we can behold the glory of your wonderful son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his precious name. Amen.