So let's be turning our Bible
to Genesis chapter 2 this morning. Genesis chapter 2, and we'll
be reading here in just a minute. Now what I'm going to try to
speak on this morning is this subject. What happened in the
garden? What happened in the garden? As Brother Roy is reading from
Romans chapter five, he read, by one man, sin entered into
the world and death by sin. And so death passed upon all
men for all have sinned. by one man sin entered into the
world. Now, let us read Genesis chapter
two, verses 15 through 17. And the Lord took the man and
put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord commanded the man
saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day
that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Have you ever thought about all
of the misery and all of the destruction and all of the death
that followed the sin of Adam, our first father. If you look
back to World War II, the millions, just in one war, the millions
and millions of people that died, the suffering. We think about
the suffering. There's an image that I've seen
so many times, and it was during the Vietnam War, and it's this
little girl. She's running up the street.
She's about four years old, naked. And you can see the bombs behind
her blowing, and she's got napalm on her body. She's burnt, and
she's running down the street screaming. A little innocent
baby girl. What happened in the garden? that such terrible, terrible
things happen. But not only do we have the death
and destruction in this life, but there are men who live in
this life, and then they die, and then they are eternally separated
from God. What happened in the garden? What was so terrible in that
garden? What happened that was so atrocious
that such terrible things happen in our lives and around us and
in eternity? Before Adam sinned, he had everything. He had authority over the whole
garden. Do you know that the Lord, I
often think how Adam had reign over the earth. The Lord made
all the earth and all these wonderful, beautiful, what a place that
must have been. The Lord made the animals. But
then he took Adam, his beloved Adam, and said, I want you to
name all these animals. You call them what you want to.
You think almost as if a father who go gets his child an animal,
and what are you going to name it? Well, that's what the Lord
had done to Adam, wasn't it? He said, OK, Adam, all these
animals, you come before them, and you name them what you want
to. You have dominion over them. Adam had dominion over the whole
earth. He had rain over the whole earth. And not only that, but in the
evenings, it says that the Lord come down into the garden. And
I believe that this was our Lord Jesus Christ himself incarnate. The Lord Jesus Christ himself
would come down with Adam and they'd walk through the garden.
And I can imagine Adam telling the Lord about that beautiful
garden, about his day. They walked side by side in the
cool of the day. But there was one law. There was one law. Don't eat
the fruit of this one tree. You see, this tree represented
God's authority. If Adam does not eat of that
tree, then he is acknowledging that God has a right to be God. Now he has everything in that
garden except the right to be God. He has dominion over the
earth. Adam has dominion over the earth. But he does not have the right
to be God. The punishment for the sin is
death. And you know that death, when
we think of death, death is not annihilation. Death is separation. When a man dies, his soul is
separated from his body. We take Tony's body and go lay
it in the grave. They don't say you took Tony
and laid him in the grave. They took Tony's body and laid
him in the grave. Why do they take Tony's body?
Because Tony's not there. Tony's soul has been separated
from that body and has gone to judgment to meet God. Well, in spiritual death, spiritual
death is not the ceasing to exist spiritually. We read in the scripture
of spiritual death and we hear men speaking of spiritual death,
but spiritual death is not to cease existing being a spiritual
person. It is separation. Spiritual death
is complete separation from God. God is light, and to be separated,
or to be dead spiritually, is to be in darkness. So when we
read of this death, and we read of this punishment, and we read
of the consequences of the garden, let's not forget what death is. Well, what happened in the garden? Can we come up with an analogy?
And I thought about this. You know, in my backyard, I've
got a raised garden. And I've got three different
things. I've got cucumbers planted there,
and some okra, and about five different types of tomato plants. And, okay, it's my garden. And so let's say I take my girls
up to that garden, and I tell them, it's now your garden. You can take the fruit of this
little garden that I've planted, and you can eat it. You can give
it to the neighbors. I'll take you down to the farmer's
market, and you can sell it and make you some money. But this
one tomato plant here is my Mr. Stripey. It's the only one I
got. You can't have it. And if you do, you'll die. That's absurd. Is it not? Is it not? So you see, the crime
that I speak of in my garden does not, the punishment that
I speak of in my garden doesn't meet the crime that they have
committed. Something happened in the garden. Something dramatic Something
dramatic happened. Well, let's look at this account. Let's read, beginning in Genesis
chapter 3, verse 1. Now the serpent was more subtle,
that means cunning and crafty, than any beast of the field which
the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, yea,
hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the tree of the
trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of
it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent
said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. For God knoweth
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant
to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. She
took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her
husband with her, and he did eat. There are three things that the
serpent said to the woman. First, ye shall not surely die,
She was telling, the serpent was telling the woman that God
is a liar. She was telling the woman that
you cannot trust God and that God is not truth. That is exactly
what she was telling the woman. And she believed it. And secondly,
The serpent says in verse five, your eyes will be opened and
you shall be as gods. Now, I looked up that word there,
as gods, and I don't know why the translators translated it
like they did, because that as gods is the same word used at
the first of the verse where it says God. So when it says
your eyes will be open and you shall be as God's, it's saying
your eyes will be open and you shall be as God, as God himself,
knowing good and evil. You will be like God. You will
know what God knows. You will be able to trust yourself. You see, God said you would die. You'll not die. See, you can't
trust God. You will eat of this fruit and
your eyes will be opened and you'll see and you will be able
to trust yourself. You will have a free will. Knowing God, good and evil, and
the ability to choose between good and evil is free will, is
it not? If we were to define it, if we
were to define it, would that not be how we would define it? Let me read to you Jeremiah 4,
22. For my people is foolish. They
have not known me. They are silly, soddish children. And they have none understanding. They are wise to do evil, but
to do good they have no knowledge. What happened in the garden?
There is an evangelist. I was raised, been raised in
church all my life. And there is an evangelist that
frequents this area from Middle Tennessee. He's been up here
30, 40 years. He comes up here every year from
Middle Tennessee. Fundamental, independent, missionary, Baptist,
considered solid. I heard him say, we are not graveyard
dead. We have the ability to accept
or reject God. Adam died. Yes, he died. But
he's not graveyard dead. You see this lie of free will,
this lie started in the garden. And it is the same lie that's
being preached in the serpent's churches even to this day. We have power, we have more power
than God. That is really what they're saying. Now look at me at verse six. And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit
thereof and did eat, and gave it unto her husband with her,
and he did eat. What was it that was so desirable
to this woman? She found that by taking this
fruit, that she could dethrone God. She believed that she could
dethrone God, and it was desirable. Disobedience was better than
obedience. And she took that fruit, and
when she put it to her mouth, it was just like her saying,
we will not have this man reign over us. We will not have this
man reign over us. That's what happened in the garden. Is that also not happened in
the cross? Where did that heart, that wicked
heart that cried out Crucify Him, crucify Him, away with Him,
away with Him. We will not have this man reign
over us. Where did that come from? It
come from right here in this garden. It has been said, and honestly,
I didn't go through all of the commandments, but it's been said
that every one of the 10 commandments were broken right there in the
garden, every single one of them. The Ten Commandments did not
come until probably about 3,500 years after this event. And if
we had more time, we would go back in the Romans and we could
see, we could look, that the reason that the Ten Commandments
was given, the very reason that they were given, was to illuminate
what happened in the garden, to show us what happened in the
garden. But let's look at a few of these
commandments. Thou shalt not have no other
gods before me. And did they not, our first parents,
place themselves above God in the garden? Thou shalt not take
the name of the Lord thy God in vain. They blasphemed by taking
the names lightly. That's what blasphemy is. Honor
thy father and mother. They dishonored their father. Thou shalt not kill. A man can't
kill God. He can't in his heart. They despised
or murdered God in their heart. Thou shalt not steal. They tried
to steal God's authority when they took of the fruit. Thou
shalt not bear a false witness. They called God a liar. They
did not believe God to be true. They did not believe that they
would die. Thou shalt not covet. They wanted for themselves what
only belonged to God. What a terrible, terrible sin
that occurred in the garden. Well, what does this have to
do with us? We weren't there. Why am I caught up in all of
this mess? Well, we are. We were there. We are guilty in Adam, but also
we are guilty like Adam. Turn back with me where we read
this morning to Romans chapter five. And let's look at verse 18. And
boy, I wish that I could, this chapter here, Romans chapter
five, is a wonderful chapter. And I wish first I had the ability
to go through it like it needs to be gone through. But this
chapter, it just helped me so much. And this is exactly what
we're getting ready to speak here. Look at verse 18. As by
the offense of one, speaking of Adam, judgment came upon all
men to condemnation. When Adam transgressed, condemnation
came upon the whole race, not just upon Adam. It came upon
the whole race of Adam. Well, that doesn't seem fair. How could I be implied in that? Well, you see, I was in my father
who was here this morning, and my father was in his father. And if you follow this all the
way back, we were all in Adam. We were in Adam. And when Adam
sinned and Adam fell, we fell with him. And so when condemnation
passed upon Adam, it also passed upon us. Death. They had their first child. and
he died, there was death. Well, look at Romans 5.19, as
by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. We were disobedient
with Adam, in Adam, but we are also guilty like Adam. Romans 3.23, all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. Every time that we sin, every
transgression, every transgression, every sin, it is nothing but
a repeat of the transgression in the garden. It is yet another
rebellion. Every sin that we commit, every
sin, Why do we sin? Well, we are in bondage to a
sinful nature. But you see, from a good tree,
you will get a good tree. And from a bad tree, from the
fruit of a bad tree, you'll get nothing but a bad tree. And we
come from Adam. Our Lord said, either make the
tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt
and his fruit corrupt. So we produce bad fruit because
we came from a bad tree. Well, there is yet good news. Turn with me to Galatians chapter
two. And this is where I wanted to
begin the message, and this is where I wanted to bring the message
from this morning. And as I go back, and I, anyway,
I ended up in Genesis. But there is a sentence of death
that came from the garden. The day you eat thereof, you
shall surely die. God has to carry out that judgment. We must die. That, for God to be just, he
must punish sin. He must. So what a dilemma. What a terrible condition. Now, do you remember? Do you
remember the penalty for sin there in the garden. Now read
with me verse 20. I am crucified with Christ. I am executed with Christ. I am put to death with Christ. Here is the penalty of sin being
fulfilled in Christ. Christ has taken that death. And just like I was in Adam when
he fell, I am now in the Lord Jesus Christ when he is crucified. I am crucified with Christ and
because Christ has been crucified and I'm hidden in him, God's
wrath and God's anger is gone. That terrible sentence in the
garden, that terrible sentence, God has justly executed his own
son because I was in him. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless,
I live. I'm alive. I was killed with
Christ, but I'm alive. Yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me. And the life which I now live,
I live in the flesh. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me
and gave himself for me. Now in closing, I want to read
four more verses. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter
one. Reading a beginning at verse
two, grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from
the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heaven, in heavenly places, according as he has chosen
us in him before the foundation of the world. that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love. Before Adam ever
fell, did you know that the Lord had already given a people, a
chosen people to his son? And when, before Adam ever fell,
he already had a remedy for those people having predestinate us,
verse five, unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
himself, according to the good pleasure of his own will, to
the praise and glory of his grace, whereas he, and I love this,
hath made us accepted. He hath made us accepted in the
beloved. Amen.