It truly is finished. The battle is over even though we look at the world around us and we see the battle raging. Yet Christ has gained the victory.
And the victory was gained at Calvary where He paid the penalty for your and my sin. He paid the penalty for the whole world’s sin if men will but accept the gift of salvation. This morning we’re going to be taking a look at this battle, where it began and how it was completed.
As we continue our study through the book of Romans. So if you have your Bibles with you this morning and you would turn with me to Romans. And we want to continue our study from where we left off last week.
And we find ourselves in Romans, where we’re going to be looking this morning. At the first Adam and the second Adam that came to gain victory for us. Let’s just open your Bibles and turn with me.
Romans 5:12-21
12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:
21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let’s just bow and pray.
Dear Heavenly Father as we come before you this morning. Help us to realize the great battle that we are in. For the hearts and souls of men. Your son went to the cross 2000 years ago. And as he shed his blood at Calvary. He was shedding the blood for our sins. And paying he who was without sin became sin on our behalf. That when we would call upon the name of Jesus. And receive the gift of salvation that is found through the grace that is found in him. That the penalty will have been paid. And we shall be new creatures in Christ forgiven of our sin. That we may walk with boldness as your children. Even in the midst of a world which is still controlled and tainted by sin. Lord help us to see the hour in which we live. Help us not to be fearful of it. But also help us to realize the great privilege we have. In seeing all these events transpire in our world. And see the full outcome of rebellion. But also the full outcome of grace. And Lord I pray that you would just help us to be aware. And to be used by you to proclaim the gospel message. And to share the grace that is found in Jesus Christ our Lord. That you have extended to all who will believe. Lord may people turn to you. And realize that you are the solution. Not the things of this world. Not the spiritual realms of hell. Not men who can never save. But you who redeemed us. And purchased us back out of darkness into your marvelous light. Speak to us this morning through your word we pray in Jesus name. Amen.
The Apostle Paul in this portion of the book of Romans that we just read.
Really shows what the problem is. And what the solution is. It’s interesting this lesson that we had this morning in the adult Sunday school class.
We were looking at the time of Deborah and Barak. And the fact that there was a woman by the name of Jael And Jael was faced with a choice. Jael was the wife of Heber.
Heber was a Kenite. The Kenites had a treaty with the army that was attacking Israel. The Kenites also were friends of Israel.
The general that was leading the attack against Israel. As God was defeating his army. Led to the tent of Jael The wife of Heber of the Kenites.
Who they had a treaty with. She was faced with a choice. What do I do with this man? Who not only is coming to destroy the people of God.
But also coming against the God of the people of Israel. He came there seeking asylum. And he told her to watch at the curtain of her tent.
And when anyone came to awaken him. So that he could flee. She had a choice.
Do I let the enemy of God. Escape. With my help.
Or do I defend the people of God. That God has called me to defend. She made the right choice.
And it was interesting. God had foretold what would happen. Because Barak who was the general of the Israelite soldiers.
Would not go into battle. Without Deborah the prophetess going with him. And so Deborah had said.
I will go with you. God will give you the victory. But you won’t be the one that is given the credit for the victory.
A woman will be. Jael was that woman. Jael. took a tent peg.
And while Sisera the enemy’s general was sleeping. She drove the tent peg through his temple. Killing him.
Choices. The end of that lesson. Asked us to make choices.
And how did that lesson impact the choices we would make. As you look at the world today. The world is filled with choices.
Your daily life is filled with choices. Choices to believe in the way that Adam rebelled against God. Or choices to believe in what Jesus Christ did for us at Christ.
At the cross. That we could have forgiveness of sins. And the rebellion could cease.
And the choice is ours. As one looks around the world today and picks up the headlines. You are seeing a lot of people are making the wrong choice.
And I want you to understand that as Christians. It is going to be harder and harder for you to make the right choice. If you were a Christian in France today.
What choices would you be making? There are young people. But they are not only young people. You also see that there are 20 to 30 year old men.
Mostly. They are destroying Paris. Rioting in France.
They say it is for better student conditions. But really they will not burn down Muslim buildings. But they are destroying every Jewish building and synagogue they come across.
This is a spiritual battle that is going on in our world right now. And it has its roots back at the Garden of Eden. And the wrong choice that Adam made.
They are also encouraging that Britain will do the same thing. Similar things have begun to be done in Belgium. Although not to the extent that they are in France.
And likewise in Germany. The Muslims are encouraging people to rise up and rebel there as well. As in Sweden.
As in many other European countries. In our nation. Choices are being made.
You know it is interesting. Today our nation was founded upon Christian Biblical principles. And we were told by the founders of our nation.
Our nation would only last as long as moral men and women were making right choices in our country. Based upon this book and God’s principles and truth. The minute we abandon the right choices.
Our nation would fail. I am sad to say that as you look at what is happening in our nation today. You are beginning to see the failure.
The failure that was spoken of and really told would occur if we failed to make the Bible the foundation of our land. Today there are over 4,000 mosques in America. It wasn’t that many years ago there were 1,000.
You’ve got two cities. Frisco, Texas and Plano, Texas. Where the Muslims want to take over and implement Sharia law.
Dearborn, Michigan. Sharia law has been implemented. You have a Senate candidate running in Michigan.
Who desires that Israel be wiped off the map. He identifies with the Muslim Brotherhood. And even though he will deny it and his campaign stops.
This is what his track record says and this is what he has spoken in other places. How can this be? How could Adam, who would walk with God, made the choice he made. I was listening to someone this last week and they were saying, Why did Satan come to Eve and not Adam? And where was Adam? And he made a very valid point.
If you go back and look at the creation record. You will see that when Adam was given the instructions of obeying God. Eve wasn’t there.
She hadn’t been created yet. And Adam was also created to be her head or her covering or her protection. Where was Adam? He was to be protecting her from the lie.
He was to be protecting her from the deception. I believe Adam was there. But he didn’t say anything.
And it’s interesting that as Satan came to Eve. The thing that he told her was partial truth. Just like Satan tells all his lies.
He sprinkles an element of truth in them. But an element of truth covered by a lie is a lie. If you turn with me to Genesis chapter 3. It says, Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And he said unto 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 every fruit 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 ye touch it, lest you die.
Now I want you to see two things. Number one, what Satan said. Satan, aren’t you supposed to be able to eat of all the fruit of all the trees of the garden? He knew that there had been prohibitions put upon the tree of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil to man by God.
Man could eat of any other tree but that tree. And it’s interesting to see her response, which she gives, which should have been given by her husband Adam. And she adds to the word of God in her response.
Satan takes away from the word of God in tempting her, and she adds to the word of God in coming back. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit 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 ye touch it.
Go back and look at what God said. He said nothing about touching. As a matter of fact, they were to be there to take care of all the plants, including that one, but they were not to eat of it.
He said nothing about touching. We live in a world where Satan comes with the same tactics. He comes and he tells you things that will appear to be true, but he leaves things out.
Or he twists and contorts them. And the sad thing is, many Christians do not look at the book of Romans and see the depth of the battle, where it is, and that it’s between the first Adam and the second Adam and which one are we going to believe. And so churches will take, and they will take the answer that God gives to Satan’s problem of sin, and they’ll add to it.
Or they’ll change it. Just like Eve did. Let’s take a look at what God is saying in chapter 5, beginning at verse 12.
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for that all have sin.
What is the problem that we have in our world today? Can it be solved by politics? Can it be solved by armies? Can it be solved by philosophers? That’s our problem. Sin entered into the world by one man, and by one man rebellion and the consequences of rebellion, death.
The problem that you have in France is not a student issue, it’s not even a control or political issue, it’s a sin issue. The problem you have in U.S. politicians that will lie to get elected, will do dirty tricks to deceive people, is not a political issue, it’s a sin issue. Today we have a politician in Alaska who was caught with her political pain along with the Democrat national political campaign, scouring Alaska to find another man who had the same name as her opponent, because they have rank choice voting similar to what we had in Fargo before it was thrown out, and in rank choice voting you don’t have to win the first vote, you just have to get on the second ballot.
The existing senator is up for re-election. Instead of arguing on what her stand was on issues, her campaign sought somebody with the same name so people would be confused and vote for the wrong guy, and if she didn’t win the first time through rank choice voting, she’d be on the second ballot and could win that way. What is that? That’s lies and deceit.
Where do I find that? The first Adam or the second Adam? Right now, many are confused with our president. Our president has done many good and wonderful things, but he’s also done some things that are very, if you know biblical prophecy, are very confusing. Because it’s like he’s setting up the stage for the Antichrist.
And it’s confusing. But if I look here, when I see things like that, who’s at the foundation of it? The first Adam or the second Adam? We need to understand, we live in a world that is not our home. There used to be a song, it would be, this world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.
My home is laid up somewhere beyond the blue. Now what happened is a lot of people took that song, and there’s truth to it, because we are just passing through this world, it’s not our permanent home. But they took that to mean that we had no, nothing to do with this world.
Well, we sang some interesting songs this morning. I chose them specifically to try and emphasize this message. We started out by singing, Glorious things of thee are spoken.
Zion, city of our God. Today, Israel is disparaged, ridiculed, and the world says Israel is the problem. Anybody who claims to be a Zionist, well guess what we sang? It’s part of that song, coming back to Zion.
What is Zion? Zion is the mountain of God. Zion is Mount Zion in Israel where the temple shall stand, where Jesus shall come and rule and reign again during the millennial kingdom, where during the new heavens and the new earth, there shall come a new Jerusalem down upon the new Mount Zion. But we’re not supposed to be those who would want to do anything with Zion.
That’s the problem. First Adam or second Adam? Where is those words coming from, the first Adam or the second Adam? Then you come to the church and you have people say, God’s done with Israel. We have spent just about the last six, eight months going through maybe more than that, over a year, looking at prophecy both in the Sunday services, the Wednesday night services, the Sunday afternoon services.
We’ve gone through the major prophets. We’re currently going through Zechariah. And all these people say and prophesied with God’s words on their mouths, He is not done with Israel.
And when He’s done with Israel, the end will have come. And judgment will come to the earth. When you’ve got churches that are done with Israel, first Adam or second Adam? What choices are they making? Who’s influencing their choices? And who has added to the Word of God or taken away from it to try and deceive people? For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed when there was no law.
Now what does he mean by that? We talked about it a little bit last week. Can these people that aren’t Christians, and if you go to Europe today, which was once founded upon Christian principle. The Reformation came out of Europe.
The Bible being made available to everyone came out of Europe. Great Bible teachers, evangelists, and men of God have come out of Europe. But if you go to Europe today and go to London today, you will see that most of the great church facilities that housed like Spurgeon who spoke to thousands on Sundays are either shut down, turned into mosques, or have hardly anybody attending.
What happened? Did the people of Europe believe the first Adam or the second Adam? Did they follow the ways of the first Adam or the second Adam? It’s interesting. He said that sin is imputed now because the law came, so that as we talked last week, when you violate a law, it’s a transgression because the law is there and you know what you should have done. Sin is based upon rebellion to God and His character, and a disbelief in who He is, that He is my Creator and that I am accountable to Him and I want to do my own thing.
And I may think in my mind I am not violating, I haven’t killed anybody. Maybe I think I haven’t stolen anything. But what did Jesus say? Sin is a heart problem, not an outward action.
It manifests in the outward acts of our life. When you do not love your husband or wife properly and you say things that are cutting and insulting and degrading to them, where does that start? The words that you share, does it start with thoughts in your mind and your heart? I don’t know about you, but when I have gotten upset with my wife and said things I wish I could take back because I should have never said them, where did it start in my mind? That’s why God gave to us a moral compass.
Got a drunk off the street who was dressed miserably and horribly living a horrible life in total rebellion against everything God stands for and you brought him in and you got him so he no longer was addicted to alcohol. You got him bathed and cleaned and shaved and and haircut so that he looked clean and sharp. You bought him a three-piece suit.
Would he be a changed man? The answer is no. Because unless his heart had changed he was the same man. He just got a new set of clothes and a haircut and a bath and got off an addiction.
You see that’s why politics will never solve the problem. That’s why money will never solve the problem. That’s why education will never solve the problem because they’re all leaning and basing their decisions on the first atom.
When I was in college, as I’ve shared with you before, I had a double major in humanism, sociology, and psychology. As part of my sociology degree I was asked to write kind of a mini thesis my senior year and I picked to study the treatment of alcoholism at the State Hospital in North Dakota and whether people that went in there came out any better after they’d gone through the treatment. What I found is there really wasn’t much improvement and the conclusion I wrote which I don’t know what my social teacher thought of it but I said you know what I see missing from this program? God.
These people are never told they’re sinners. These people are never told how they can be set free from sin through the blood of Jesus. That’s what’s missing from that program because the program based on the first atom.
I can do it. I can do it. I don’t need God.
I don’t need to listen to God instead of the second atom. I’m helpless without your grace and mercy. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression who is the figure of him that was to come but not as the offense so also is the free gift for if through the offense of one many be dead much more the grace of God and the gift of grace which is by one man Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many.
People say well why should I be held accountable because what Adam did because Adam introduced rebellion and each one of us is a descendant of Adam. Each one of us did not have to be taught how to sin. We inherited it from him.
If there was any ever anybody that should have known about the consequences of sin it should have been when you read in the Old Testament the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Adam. They would have been alive and they could have spoken to this one that God created and they could have heard from his lips what had happened and why they were cast out of the Garden of Eden and why they could no longer walk in the intimate fellowship that they had at that moment. Can you imagine every day Jesus walking with you, talking to you, directing you, yet the first generation, the first sons of Adam.
You have murder occurring, the first grandsons of Adam. You have polygamy occurring and it goes on and on until you get to the time of Nimrod at the Tower of Babel after the flood when God judged because sin had become so wicked. And Nimrod is establishing the new order after Adam.
I shall be God and not after the Messiah. It all comes to choices. Later on in Romans Paul talks about choices.
He says that you need to present the choice to people which Adam they’re going to follow. And you need to present the choice of following the second Adam and introducing who he is and why he came to undo the works of the first Adam by his blood at Calvary to pay the penalty for our sin and our transgressions that we could live and walk once again with him in intimacy. I want to just share something with you about walking in intimacy with the Lord.
You know the amazing thing that God did after Jesus went to the cross, he died, was buried and rose again from the dead. He’s with his disciples and he’s preparing to go back to heaven and he tells them as they are troubled that number one, he’s going to prepare a place for them. He’s not forgotten about them.
He is not abandoning them. He has paid the penalty so that they can come with him one day. But then he says an amazing thing.
He says I’m going to send another onto you, a comforter who shall indwell you and empower you. And most Christians today don’t understand that. What Adam had before he sinned in walking intimately with Jesus, we have after the cross because Jesus sent his Holy Spirit to indwell us in us that we can walk intimately day by day with him and we have him there to be our guide and to help us to make right choices.
His disciples did not fully comprehend what Jesus had said until the Spirit came upon them in the upper room. And then they would boldly stand, those who had been fearful, so fearful that after Jesus had died and rose from the dead, they knew that he rose from the dead, but it says they were still hiding in fear. And then he appeared and he said that he gave them his Spirit and all of a sudden they walked out in the power of God and did amazing things.
Not in their strength, but because God was walking with them. Okay, let’s tie this all together because I’ve kind of gone down a lot of rabbit trails this morning, but I want you to understand something. We live in a world that is the full consequences of the first Adam, of yielding to Satan’s temptation.
It tells us why the world is the way it is. Adam was to be not only the umbrella for his wife Eve, her protector, he was to be the one that was to be the caretaker of the whole earth. And when he didn’t even take the responsibility to look out for his own wife and denied the responsibility of rejecting when she laid the temptation before him, it says that he gave up that authority to the one that had deceived Eve.
And it says that Satan became the prince of the power of the air at that time. God allowed it. God could have not allowed it because God’s greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.
He’s greater than Satan and one day he will bind and cast Satan into the lake of fire eternally. But he let Satan become the authority over this earth in the sense that he is the prince of the power of the air. And men would have to make a choice which king or prince they would follow.
Would they follow the deceiver, the liar, the murderer or would they follow the giver of life? So when you pick up the newspaper the next time or turn on your smartphone to listen to the news or wherever you get your news from and you begin to see rioters in France, murders in Gaza, Hezbollah digging more tunnels to attack and planning a second raid on Israel, who’s behind it? When Iran says death to America, death to Israel, who’s behind it? And realize those people need Jesus just as much as the politicians in America that are willing to lie and cheat and do whatever it takes to get elected and have power. Because the prince of the power of this air only knows how to rule one way. Through wickedness, cruelty, lies, deception and death.
Jesus has come with his grace and mercy that he can overcome the rebellion of the first Adam. That he who is without sin became sin for us that we can make right choices and follow God on a day-to-day basis and be witnesses of his grace and his mercy as we make right choices in this world and that we are a witness to those that need to hear the gospel message. The book of Romans is written to the Roman Christians as they face a culture not unlike ours.
I shared that before. In a situation not unlike ours, what does Paul tell them to do? The most important thing they need to do is live for Jesus. The most important thing they need to do is live for Jesus.
And that comes with every choice you make. So tomorrow and the next week and the week ahead, begin to examine your choices. Are my choices for Christ or the prince of the power of this world? And do I desire to honor him or desire the things that this prince of power of this world lays out before me that lead to two places, death and judgment.
Death and judgment. Let’s just close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would just help us to look to the grace of God, to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That we realize that he came to redeem us, to set us free from our sin. That we could be new creatures in Christ. And that we could make a difference in the lives of people, not just for five years, for ten years, but for eternity.
Go with us now. Help us to take advantage of the responsibilities that you give to us and help us to make wise choices. Choices based on your word and based on your character.
This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.