That's one of your favorites,
isn't it? Yeah. As it is mine. Let's see God's
face again in prayer. Lord, this is a hour of need
for us. We need to worship. We need to
focus on our Savior. and his redemption, his great
work of reconciliation. This is when we fix our attention
on the bloody death and the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus, and we think
about the grace of God. Grace that chose us. Grace that bought us. Grace that
has quickened us. Grace that keeps us. Grace that
will someday glorify us. We thank you Lord for the grace
that you gave us in Christ Jesus even before you made this world. Now as we open the Scriptures,
O Spirit of grace, would you be with us? Would you take the things of
the Lord Jesus and open them up to us poor sinful people? Oh, how much we need the Lord. I pray that you'll manifest yourself
to us in a gracious way. Be merciful, O God, and we shall
endeavor to magnify your great name. For Jesus' sake I ask these
things. Amen. Let's open the scriptures back
to that portion of scripture Ron read to us a little bit ago. And last Lord's Day, I began
to speak about these trees of the garden, specifically two
of them, because only two of them are mentioned by name. They're in the midst of the garden.
there was this wonderful, blessed paradise. And this wonderful,
blessed paradise was in a garden, and that was called Eden. Eden means that which is delightful
and beautiful and special. And then there was the rest of
the earth, and of course it had not been ruined by man's wickedness,
and so everything was beautiful. So there is the picture that
I'd like for you to kind of remember. There is first of all the paradise. I would liken this, for those
of you who have studied about the tabernacle in the wilderness. I would liken this beautiful
paradise to being the holy of holies. That's where God dwelt. And then I would liken Eden's,
the entire garden of Eden, that to be the holy place. And then
the rest of the earth to be like the outer portion of the Old
Testament tabernacle. And so we're going to go into
the innermost room, as it were, the innermost chamber that is
the Holy of Holies. And it's most unusual in this
portion of scripture because this, which is the holiest of
holy rooms, that is the paradise, there is God. But that which
is amazing is there's a man in there with him. There's a man
who fellowships with him. There's a man who communes with
him. Moreover, God gives to that man
a wife. The scripture calls her a helpmate.
Eve is the name that Adam gives her a little bit later. So there
in this holy of holies, there in this beautiful paradise of
God, which is of course a picture of heaven, You remember when
our Lord Jesus was dying upon the cross of Calvary, one of
the thieves believed on him by the grace of God, and our Lord
said, verily, today you'll be with me in paradise. The man
had said to the Savior, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And the Savior said, verily I
say unto you, today you'll be with me in paradise. You'll be
with me in the holy of holies. You will be with me in heaven's
everlasting glory. You will be with me in the very
presence of God. And so here in Genesis, the second
chapter, we find Adam and Eve in the very presence of God. That's amazing. God who is immaculate
in his absolute holiness. God who is glorious. God who made all of the earth,
who made all of Eden, who made this paradise. God who made the
man, God who would make the woman. He dwells with them, they abide
together in communion. It's marvelous. And indeed, that
is a picture of the way it's gonna be for those of us who
believe, and for the way it is for those who believed and who
died in the Lord Jesus, that's the way it is with them right
now. They're in the very presence of God. They're in the paradise
of God. They enjoy fellowship with, they
enjoy communion with that one who is the thrice holy one. That's amazing. And so as we look into Genesis
the second chapter, I want you to remember that, that little
picture I've tried to portray to you, to paint to you. There,
Adam and Eve, they dwell in the very paradise of God, likened
to the holy of holies. And then there is the holy place. That's all of Eden's garden.
And then there's the earth that's like with the tabernacle, the
area, the outer court of the tabernacle. This is a delightful place that
God put Adam. And it is noteworthy that he
prepared, God prepared this paradise to have man join him in that
paradise. And then to have the woman join
him in that paradise. And of course, throughout the
garden, just beautiful things throughout paradise. And then
throughout the garden, there were wonderful things, beautiful
things. As you read precious minerals,
vast pleasantries, all manner of fruit, all kinds of trees,
the flowers. Can you even imagine the beauty
of the, all the flowers of paradise. It was just everything in it
that was gorgeous. And there were all kinds of trees,
the myrtle tree, I'm sure, the palm trees and so forth and so
on, but only two trees are specifically named. One was the tree of life. The other was the tree of knowledge
of good and evil. Now, last Lord's Day, I addressed,
for a little bit, concerning, I spoke to you concerning the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, and I want to say a few
other things about this specific tree. It was the only tree of
the garden to which God attached a penalty for disobeying his
law, his word, his command. It was in the middle of the garden. Every day, and I don't know how
many days Adam and Eve lived before they fell. It's amazing
how expositors, and I read I don't know, as many as I could get
my hands on as I usually do concerning those who comment on the word
of God. And many of them say they fell
on the very first day of their origin, of their creation. And
I don't know that, the scripture doesn't say that. We'll just,
where the scripture is silent, we must be silent. I'll just
say that they must have walked by the both of these trees many
times Every day and for every how many days it was that they
existed in the garden, in the paradise before they fell into
sin. And of one of those trees, God
said, now, don't eat of the fruit of it. It was always a reminder
then, and it is noteworthy to me that God put it in the midst
of the garden. He put it in the middle of the
garden so that it would always be before them. It must always
have their attention. And God has attached a commandment
concerning this particular tree, the tree of knowledge of good
and evil. And here's the commandment, thou
shalt not eat of it. And as I've already said, this
was a symbolic of, a picture of the authority of God, the
sovereign rule and reign of God. Adam, yes, you're the man. I've given you all the trees
of the garden to enjoy. And of course, Adam will go on
and he will name, God will bring all of the animals before him.
This is the intelligence of Adam. the way God made him, God would
bring all of the animals before him. And the Lord would say to
Adam, what do you want to name that one? It's a marvelous thing. This is a man with tremendous
intellect. unfallen man. I mean, they say
we only use a small portion of the brain anyway. And that what
they say, I don't know what the percentage is. Some of us don't
use very much of it at all, I suppose. But the unfallen man, he would
have had 100% of his mental faculties and intelligence. And God said, I have made you
great. but I'm greater than you are. I'm the master. I'm the governor. I give you one rule to keep,
one only, that tree right there in the middle of the garden.
Yes, the one you walk by every day. Don't you eat of the fruit
of that tree. This is my will of command. And here's the penalty attached
to it. In the day ye thereof, you'll
surely die. This is a picture, of course,
of the covenant of works. In verses 16 and 17, the Lord
God, he commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden,
thou mayest freely eat freely. And I must pause right there
because when I read of that word freely, it means without a cause,
without a cost, and reminds me of the grace of God that comes
to us freely. We read in Romans chapter 3 and
verse 24, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus. Why does God justify us? Is it
because of something we've done? Is it because of some work that
we've endeavored to do? Some good desire we had? No,
we're justified. We're declared to be righteous
before God, and we're declared to be righteous by God, not because
of anything we've ever done, but only by His grace through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Oh, I love this word freely.
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. And I say
to all of you, of the gospel of our Lord Jesus, you may freely
eat. You may come to the gospel of
the Lord Jesus as a needy sinner and freely believe. And God saves
freely without a reason in you. Well, why would He show mercy
to me? Well, there's nothing in you
to bring forth the love or the grace or the salvation of God. He saves men freely without a
cause. Our Lord Jesus said that they
hated him without a cause. And the word there is literally
freely. They hated me without a cause.
Well, God is good to us. God is gracious to us. God is
forgiving to us and toward us of all of our sins. And God makes
us righteous through the Lord Jesus Christ, his righteousness
being imputed to us. And he does all of this freely. Isn't that wonderful? That's
freely. Man, I can get in on that. I
am in on it. And so may you if you come to
the Lord Jesus Christ. But here, this is a picture of
the covenant of works. The gist of the covenant is this,
and you know what a covenant is, it's an agreement between
two or more parties. And on this occasion, it is a
covenant between God and man. And it's in verse 17, 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. And God is the one who lays down
the stipulation. And the gist of it is this, Adam,
obey me and live. No problem. Well, wherein does the obedience
lie? Just in one point, that's all,
just one. of the fruit of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. Leave it alone. You got all these other fruit
trees around here. They had the tree of life. My suspicion is that they ate
of the fruit of the tree of life every day because that tree was
unique Amongst all the trees of the garden, the tree of life
was most unique because it conveyed life and it always sustained
life. And my suspicion is that they
ate of that tree every single day and that's what kept them
alive. So I don't think they needed
to eat because that would seem to be a defect in man. Was there
a defect in our Lord Jesus? He had to eat. Wasn't anything
wrong with him. But my suspicion is that they
ate of this tree of life every day. This is the tree that sustained
their life. The picture of our Lord Jesus
and his substitutionary death upon the cross of Calvary. He's
the one who died on a tree. He hung on a tree. Cursed is
everyone that hangeth on a tree. There is no curse attached to
someone being stoned to death. There was no curse attached to
somebody having a millstone put around their neck and cast into
the midst of the ocean. There's no curse attached to
that. The only curse attached to a means of death was when
a man was hanged on a tree or on a cross and God said, cursed
is that man. And that's the death that the
Lord Jesus died. He wasn't stoned. They didn't
put a millstone around his neck. That's not a death of being accursed. that death, which means the curse
of God, is being hanged on a tree. Among the Roman people, a Roman
free citizen, they could not be hanged on a tree. They couldn't
be crucified. If they did something worthy
of death, they'll be executed another way, but not by being
hanged on a tree because that's a sign of a curse. The only Roman
who could be hung on a tree had to be a servant or a slave. And
our Lord Jesus, he was accursed by man, moreover, accursed by
God. Why? Because he bore our sins
in his own body on the tree. And therefore he had to be nailed
to the cross. That one who is the tree of life
himself. So I think that Adam and Eve
ate of this tree of life every day. But of this other tree, they
must not eat of it. They must not eat of it. They're
prohibited from it. And there is attached a very
severe penalty. In the day ye eat thereof, you
will surely die. And we know that when Adam ate,
he and Eve began to die physically, they immediately died spiritually,
and but for the grace of God, they would have died eternally. Now, concerning the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, this one law given by God to them,
don't eat of the fruit of it, indicates to us obedience to
the law. Obedience to this command means
life. You say, preacher, what do I
have to do in order to get life, to be righteous before God? Well,
if you wanna do something, I'll give you something. Look with
me in Deuteronomy chapter six. All right, you wanna do something.
And you see, man by nature wants to do something. Even after Adam
and Eve fell, they wanted to do something. They wanted to
cover up their nakedness. They wanted to cover up their
shameful state. So if you say to me, pastor,
Jim, What must I do? If I wanna be righteous before
God and I wanna do something, I've just got to do something
to be righteous. What do I have to do? Well, I'll
read the scripture to you. These are the words of Moses
to Israel. Look at verse 17. Are you there? Deuteronomy chapter
six and verse 17. ye shall diligently keep the
commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies, and
his statutes, which he hath commanded thee. And thou shalt do that
which is right." If you wanna do something to be righteous,
now he's giving you the instructions. Thou shalt do that which is right
and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with
thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land,
which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to cast out all thine
enemies before thee, as the Lord hath spoken. And when thy son
asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies,
and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded
you? Then shall you say unto thy son,
We were Pharaoh's bondmen, in Egypt, and the Lord brought us
out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and
wonders great and sore upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his
household before our eyes. And he brought us out from thence
that he might bring us in to give us the land which he's swearing
to our fathers. Verse 24, and the Lord commanded
us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our
good always that he might preserve us alive, to keep us alive as
it is this day. You want life? Everlasting life by your labors? Read verse 25. And it shall be
our righteousness If we observe to do all these commandments
before the Lord, our God, as he hath commanded us, here's
what's involved. If you wanna establish a righteousness
of your own, here's exactly what's involved. You must keep all of
God's laws perfectly in your mind, in your dreams, in your
motives, in your words, in your actions, this is what is required. In other words, absolute perfection,
that's what God demands. We say, well, what if I slip
up? Oh, then you're a goner. And you see the thing of it is,
you can't, you say, okay, I'm gonna start doing it right now. What about all those years that
you've lived and all the sins that have been racked up by you
and all of your unrighteousness then? Now see, if you're interested
in saving yourself, in being righteous enough for God to receive
you, then here's what is required of you, because this is the covenant
of works. Be ye perfect and live, but if
you disobey, you die. That's all there is to it. And
the law shows no leniency, the law of God doesn't. The law of
God, you break it, you pay it, you pay for it. It's like going
to some kind of China shop. You break it, you bought it. But you break one of God's laws,
which you have, and I have too, and you break one, you're guilty
of breaking them all. You're in deep trouble. In order for
a man to have a justifying righteousness, A man must keep all the commandments
of God, the letter of the law, as well as the spirit of the
law. You must keep it inwardly and outwardly. There must be
no breach of God's law at all. And this is a covenant that God
entered into with Adam, who stood as our representative. Certainly
on God's part, he would be faithful. There's no question about that.
As long as a man obeyed God, he would live. He would live. As long as the woman obeyed God,
she would live. God's always faithful. He can't
change. The issue was with the man who
was the representative of the human race. And the scripture
is very clear, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh
be justified before in God's sight. What does justified mean,
preacher? Declared righteous, declared
right, declared perfect, forgiven and forgotten of all your sins,
and you have a perfection before God with which he is well pleased. That's what it means to be justified.
And you can't justify yourself. The scripture says, by the deeds
of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. And the scripture says in Titus
chapter one, by not by works of righteousness, which we have
done, but according to his mercy, he had saved us. So this tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, it represents the covenant of works. And when I think of Adam going
into, gets into paradise, into the garden, under this condition
and this penalty, do you not see a picture of another representative
man, even our Lord Jesus Christ? who at his coming into this earth,
his coming into this world as his incarnation, he was made
under God's law. Don't you think of him? Think
of our savior. The scripture says, when the
fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son, made
of a woman, made under the law to redeem them when they were
under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Well, of course, we know the
rest of the story here in Genesis And as you go back to Genesis
3 now, you know how this winds up. You're very much aware of
it. The serpent beguiled Eve, deceived
Eve. Chapter 3, verse 5. The serpent
said to Eve, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
ah, we're once again has put before us this law of God. Don't eat of the fruit of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil. And he says, the serpent
says, now let me tell you why God gave you that rule. Let me
tell you why God said that, because he knows that in the day ye eat
thereof, then your eyes will be opened and ye shall be as
gods, you'll know good and evil. Good and evil. And there was an element, an
element of truth in what he said. You see, before the fall, man
could not know evil because there was no evil on this earth. And so Adam and Eve were, perhaps
this is a good way to put it, in a state of ignorance as to
exactly what evil was. Eve would look at Adam and say,
what's evil? He'd say, I don't know. I don't know. What do you
think it is? I don't know. They didn't know
evil, because they'd never done evil, never meant anything as
evil. There was no evil in paradise. I said there was an element of
truth in what the serpent said, but he left out something very
important. Yes, they would know good, but
they wouldn't have the power to do it. And as for evil, they would know
evil, but they would not have the power to avoid it. You see,
Adam and Eve's effort to elevate themselves, to be as gods, knowing
good and evil, resulted in degrading themselves. And they went from
way up here, all the way to the bottom, just like that, through
Adam's one transgression. Furthermore, his transgression
had a devastating effect upon all of us, upon all of our fathers
and mothers and go all the way back to Adam and Eve. And it
will have a devastating effect upon our children and grandchildren
and great-grandchildren all the way to the end of time. Because
Adam was a representative and when he fell, we all came crashing
down with him. We all became sinful. The scripture says, I quoted
this last week, every imagination of man's heart was only evil
continually. Good and evil. The Lord looked
down from heaven to see if there were any that did good. Psalm
14 says this. And this is God's estimation.
This is what God saw. There's none that doeth good,
no, not one. Now, Adam and Eve, they suddenly
knew evil and they immediately tried to cover it up. How did they know they did evil?
Because when Adam fell, there was something within him that
suddenly woke up. You see, God made man with a
conscience. And up until this time, that
conscience, it was never heard from. There wasn't any need for
the conscience to speak to Adam or to Eve. because they didn't
know anything about evil. But as soon as they did evil,
there awoke within them that conscience that God has given
to all of us. And unless that conscience has
been seared with a hot iron in God's judgment of reprobation,
that conscience, it cries out where there's evil. You see, the only condition under
which the conscience will be absolutely quiet. You say, preacher,
I've got such a guilty conscience. You know why? Evil. That's the reason. I can tell
you right now. It's something you did, something
you said, something you thought, and your conscience screams out,
it's wrong. Now, many times we just kind
of turn the hearing aid of the conscience down and we don't
listen to it. But it's there, because God gave
everybody a conscience. There's only one thing that will
pacify and quiet the conscience, other than the judgment of God.
Now, a person can go on and on and on in willful disobedience
and rebellion against God, he just sears the conscience and
then he don't feel anything anymore. or don't want you to become like
that. But the only good thing that will ever quiet the conscience
is this, perfection. That'll quiet it right down.
Well, where can I find perfection in the Christ of the cross? That's
where you find perfection. That's where you find salvation.
That's where you find acceptance with God. That's where you find
righteousness. And when you look to Jesus Christ
alone, His bloody death, as the substitute for the guilty, that
one who died the just for the unjust to bring us to God. When
you rest your soul's salvation totally in the Lord Jesus Christ,
looking to his righteousness alone, freely imputed to you
for all of your acceptance with God, guess what the conscience
does? It just quiets right down. That's what it does, it quiets
right down. And as long as you're looking
to the Lord Jesus and His work of redemption and
His resurrection for all of your acceptance with God, conscience
is not gonna give you any trouble. And then you get to thinking,
boy, have I done enough good Have
I prayed enough for God to accept me?" Oh, you just woke him up
again. You just woke up your conscience.
And the conscience says, no, you haven't. I'm not saying we
shouldn't pray more. I'm not saying we shouldn't read
our Bible more. We should do these things. We
should walk in paths of righteousness and holiness. We should do those
things. But if you look within seeking
to find a good basis for assurance, your conscience is going to scream
out at you and say, no, you've never done enough. And you look
back to Christ Jesus in the conscience and says, I'll take another nap
now. I'll go back to sleep. And he'll
wake up when you get to looking within again. I want you to look at a scripture
with me in Isaiah chapter seven. Isaiah chapter seven. after Adam's transgression. There never lived on this earth
a good man up until the Lord Jesus came into this world. He was the good man. Isaiah chapter seven, look at
verse 14. We know this is talking about
the Savior, Therefore the Lord himself shall
give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive
and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. What does that mean? God with
us. God with us. Now look at verse
15. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse
the evil and choose the good. There's only been one man who
knew to refuse the evil and choose the good. See, we're the other
way around. We choose the evil and refuse
the good. That's the way we are by nature.
But our Lord Jesus, when he came to a certain age, whenever a
child begins to learn morality, doing good and shunning
evil, and that's what it means, butter and honey shall he eat,
until that time, until he knows to refuse the one, to refuse
the evil and choose the good. This is another indication. And
I may just camp here just a little bit and I'll get back on this
tonight, get back kind of on subject tonight. But our Lord
Jesus, when he was born, another evidence of the stoop
of the Savior in His incarnation was that He had to learn. He
had to learn. The Jews say up until the age three. That's when children, they say,
become capable of making choices regarding good and evil. I'm
sure that could be debated, and we won't open that up for debate
here, but we know little infants, they don't have the capacity
to choose good and refuse evil. They don't have that. And the
scripture is saying, and this was typical with Jewish babies,
they ate butter and honey. After all, they lived in the
land of milk and honey. And the babies, the little ones,
the infants and the toddlers, they would feed them butter and
honey. And he would eat those things
until that time, In fact, among the Jews, it was said that before
the baby fed on the mother's milk, that there came a little
bit of butter, a little bit of honey. That's what they grew
up on. But they ate that until such
a time, about three years old. And then the Jews said, that's
when they began to learn about morality, good and evil, right
and wrong. And the amazing thing about our
Lord Jesus Christ, whatever that age was, and I won't debate that
with you, but the amazing thing about our Lord Jesus, he was
born, born of a virgin, yes, so he had no sin, but he grew
up just like every other baby, every other toddler, every other
young person in Israel. and he had to learn to choose
good and refuse evil, which he did, taught by the Spirit of
God. No wonder then that we read in
the New Testament in the book of Luke, that our Lord grew in
stature and in wisdom and in favor, in favor with God and
man. How in the world could he grow
in favor with God? Because he learned to choose
good and reject evil. He's the only one who's ever
done that. But you see, this is what is necessary for him
to be a suitable Savior for you and me. He's made under the law
of God. He's got to know, don't eat of
the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Don't eat of that.
Don't disobey God. And he grew up learning the law
of God and his mental capacities undoubtedly were tremendous. I wouldn't question that at all.
But he learned. Can you comprehend that? God in the flesh learning anything? growing in wisdom, but he has
all the wisdom of God within him. Yes, he does, but he's one
of us. He's not ashamed to call us brethren.
He's made like unto us. And so as one of us, he grew
up. And as a little toddler, ever
how many years old he was, he knew. He'd choose the good
only, always, and reject the evil. They qualified Him as our Savior. For you see, it's like that lamb,
the Passover lamb. It had to be inspected before
it could be killed. Our Lord Jesus had to be inspected
by the law of God. I mean with a magnifying glass. Everything, every little single
detail. You might be thinking to yourself,
I wonder if I've sinned today. Well, let me help you out with
that. More than you know. More than you know. But our blessed Redeemer, he
knew to do good. And he always, he always detested
evil because the word refuse means he detested it. And then you think about how
he took the evil of our transgressions upon him. Our evil charged to his account.
Hmm. Well, Adam and Eve, a conscience
woke up. They knew they were evil, but didn't know what to do about
it. But then they had an idea. I know how we can cover it. We'll cover it ourselves. We'll
make ourselves a fig leaf apron. And that's what men and women
have been doing ever since. We've been in the production
business of fig leaf aprons. That's the kind of aprons most
churches turn out. Fig leaf aprons. What in the
world are you talking about, preacher? That there's something
you've got to do. Now you listen to me, and I'll
quit. In the restoration of Adam and
Eve, God came after them. They didn't go to God. God came
after them. God announced the seed of the
woman was coming, that wouldn't be born of a virgin like we read
there in Isaiah 7. And then the Lord illustrated
what the way of salvation. There stood our parents. Conscience
is screaming in their mind. Guilty, guilty, guilty. We've tried to robe ourselves
in fig leaf aprons and yet the screaming continues. And God
says, I'm gonna rip that off of you. And then he did something. He killed innocent victim and
skinned them. He killed animals and skinned
them and clothed Adam and Eve And that picture is being covered
in the robe of salvation in the garments of righteousness. You see, man left himself. He
goes after that fig leaf apron every time. There's no righteousness to be
found there. There's no safety to be found
there. The only safety is to be found, the only righteousness
is to be found, the only salvation is to be found in the Christ
of the cross. Crucified, buried, risen again,
ascended, reigning over all. That's where righteousness is
found. Now, eat freely of him. Eat freely of the gospel. You
can't eat too much and you can't eat too often. Just come with
an appetite to the Savior and feast on Him. That's what He
said. It's a banquet of mercy. Feast freely. I'll continue this
evening, the Lord willing, at 6.30. Let me close in prayer.