A DAM WAS THE LEADER of the human family. His sins affected all others. We’re looking at three biblical gardens. Last week was the Garden of Eden. We’re moving from Paradise lost. To paradise found.
To get there, we go through the garden of Gethsemane.
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THE HUMAN FAMILY has its roots in Adam and Eve. Although they fell short, God still came back to them. God had a plan for the human family. A plan of reconciling the world.
That plan was revealed in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Life was distorted in what Adam and Eve did, but Jesus Christ reversed our sin by giving us new life through resurrection.
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PAUL MAINTAINS that we can’t escape sin since we are connected to Adam (“sin came into the world through one man”).
We are also each our own Adam or Eve, very willingly turning away from God (“because all have sinned”).
Thus, we are responsible for our sinning, even if we are not able to stop it.
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WE MUST BE WILLING to admit that we have sinned and fallen short of being the person God would have us be. As Paul confesses openly:
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
(Romans 7:15).
Sin — doing those things we hate — is part of who we are. It is not that some people sin while others do not. All our lives are marked by sin. There is no vaccination. We cannot work hard to avoid sinning.
We do sin. We will sin. It’s just a matter of how and when. Because we’re the descendants of Eve and Adam, we stand before our God, our creator, judged guilty and condemned.
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THE SOURCE OF SIN and death traces back to the very first person. Sin entered through one man — Adam.
The result of sin entering the world through Adam is death. No one, by force of will, or exercise, or healthy eating is able to stave off the death that holds dominion over us.
The death and resurrection of Christ is needed to fix death.
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THANKS BE TO GOD our lives are not hopeless.
Sin and death came into the world through the trespass of one man, but it was through the grace of one man that we have been given the gift of new life.
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have been pardoned, our sins have been forgiven, and we have been made righteous as we stand before God.
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IN EDEN, GOD CREATES the first human being, who then serves as the representative for all humanity. Then when Jesus comes, he is the representative human being, a sort of second Adam.
It was in the Garden of Gethsemane that the battle between God and sin/death is won. Some folks have compared Adam and Christ — offered contrasts between Eden and Gethsemane.
God reverses things or flips things; how Jesus redeems the past.
Whereas Adam faced temptation and chose disbelief and disobedience, Jesus, the second Adam, faced an even greater temptation and chose trust and obedience.
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THE RESULTS OF THE ACTS in the first garden brought shame, death, and alienation.
In the second garden, the Son of Man embraced the shame of the cross and tasted death in order to reconcile God and Man.
Those given life in Eden selfishly threw it away while the One who is life willingly laid his life down into order to give it back.
