Let it be clearly understood that I believe that Adam was the first man. The Bible says so. I don't understand it. I can't explain it. But because the Bible says it, I believe it. How many of you believe it? Let's see. How many of you believe the Bible is the word of God? How many of you believe that Moses actually walked on dry land through the Red Sea? How many of you believe Jonah really swallowed the whale? Raise your hands. Well, actually, the whale was, you see. God created this man. The Bible says he made him a full -grown man. And he created him in the image of Almighty God. We've got some problems with our portable PA. Is this on? Put this one on. I turn this one off. That sound better? Good. Now, we do not lessen the fact that he was a real man when I also say that he was a type of man as well. Now, he was the spirit of man. He was the symbol of all manhood as well as being an individual man. I do not lessen the personality and the individuality of Charlie Johnson when I say that he is the spirit of the Oiler football team. But he is also a person. In other words, while he was the first man, he was a type of man. And I mean simply that if you and I had have been there, he did what you would have done. He did what I would have done. He did what all men would have done. Our God gave him some things. The benevolent nature of Almighty God to the first man, Adam, is revealed in the beneficial way which he treated Adam in the Garden of Eden. Four things the Bible tells us that God gave to Adam. Number one, he gave him a perfect condition. I said last week that it must have been an amazing thing to see how Adam felt the first time he brought Eve, Eve was brought to him. I don't know what he would have said. Tonight I'm going to preach on the subject. And God created woman. I want you to be here. I want to hear what I have to say about that myself. Well, somebody said God created woman and rested, and since then, nobody's rested. But the Bible tells us that God created this man, a full -grown man, and gave him several things. Number one, he gave him a perfect condition. What a beautiful atmosphere it was for him to live in. Imagine the beauty, the birds, the animals. It was probably 72 perfect degrees in the Garden of Eden. They tell us that that is the perfect temperature. Now, they know that at the North Pole and at the South Pole, they have found animals whose stomachs contain tropical plants. They have found beautiful flowering plants that are tropical in nature, indicating that at one time, probably before the Pleistocene age, the entire world was an equatorial paradise. God gave man one command. He said, dress the garden. Take care of the garden. That's all that he had to do. He gave him one prohibition. He said, do not eat of the tree, of the fruit, of the knowledge of good and evil. For on the day that ye eat, ye shall die. God medies every provision. They tell us that man needs food, clothing, and shelter. He had food. He had herbs. He had beautiful plants. All of the needs of his life were met. God clothed him in his own glory. The Bible says that they were unclothed, but they were not aware of the fact of their nakedness. The reason was they were clothed in the glory of Almighty God. And I wonder if more men and women today who were clothed with the glory of God, who were covered by the righteousness of God, would not be interested in, would not need to see so much nudity and nakedness. Now, the Bible tells us that he also gave him a beautiful covering. The stars, the atmosphere, the heavens above were the place that God created this man. He had the world's most perfect air conditioning. Now, the Bible tells us that when God made man in the midst of all of this perfection, he met another need. He met his need for knowledge. He knew all things. Once man knew everything. When the first man was absolutely in perfect relationship to God, he did not have to ask how, or why, or when, or what. He knew all things. Man distanced from God by sin has become the victim of partial knowledge. But once he knew everything, God met another need. The Bible says God met his spiritual need. He was in total relationship with God. God, cut off the grill, the very first man. He walked and talked with the king. Now, the Bible tells us that in the midst of this perfect condition, something awful and awesome happened. Man disobeyed God and man sinned. Our world today is religiously divided between two camps, the evangelism camp and the social work camp. I don't like that. I don't think we need to be divided. I think a denomination can give concern and compassion to the total need of all mankind. But I want to remind us as Southern Baptists, before we go off down a tear, giving only concern, as many denominations are doing, to the social needs of men at the ignoring of the soul of man that the Bible tells us that once man was given a perfect condition. Man can never be saved by his social environment. That theory was blown to bits thousands of years ago in the Garden of Eden. God gave man a paradise. He gave him perfect conditions and he blew the whole thing. He ruined his chances. And when man sinned, the first thing God did was not to improve his social conditions. God slew a lamb. It is consistent in human nature to want to solve problems by attacking the problem itself. But the Bible says that God in the wilderness, for example, they were all being bitten by snakes. Now, it would have been us today. We would have had a convention and organized a society for the extermination of reptiles. But they didn't do that. God raised the standard. He raised the solution in the midst of the pollution and said, look at that. And while Baptists are becoming more and more, thank God it's about time, concerned with the social needs of men, let us not forget that man will never be saved by his social environment. God gave him a perfect condition and he changed it. He blew it. He spoiled the whole thing. And when God set in motion the machinery of heaven to solving the social dilemma of man, the Bible says he shed the blood of a lamb. He slew a lamb. He made atonement for man's sin. Because the Bible says out of the heart proceed the issues of life. Why is there poverty? Because selfish people refuse to share for one reason. Why are there wars? Because greedy men with hearts of greed and self run roughshod over the lives of other men. Dwight, General Douglas MacArthur was right when he said of China, send us a thousand missionaries or you'll send us 100 ,000 troops. Well, it was wrong. We had to send 500 ,000 troops and we're still sending. We're still paying. We're still bleeding. We're still dying. Because men's hearts were not turned to the living God. Why are there problems of crime in the street? Why is there racism? The old time religion makes me love everybody. And it is only when there is an absence of the love of God through Christ in hearts that men find it impossible to get along with other men. Jesus Christ was a member of the most persecuted, impoverished minority group that ever lived. Jesus was so poor he didn't have a place to lay his head. He was so impoverished that he said the foxes have hoes, the birds have nests, but I, the son of man, don't even have a place to sleep. He had to work a miracle and take money from the mouth of a fish to be able to pay his taxes. Now what did this man, Jesus Christ, when discussing food, clothing, and shelter, the social need of mankind, who was himself a member, a leader of the most impoverished, persecuted minority race the world has ever seen, have to say on the problem of social matters, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added unto you. I repeat, it is about time that Baptists began to be involved with and concerned with the social needs of men. But let it never be at the negligence of the area from which come the heart of the problems, the human soul, which is desperately wicked above all things, saith the word of God, who can know it. Secondly, not only did God give Adam a perfect condition, but the Bible says that he gave him a prohibitive command, a prohibitive command. He said you can do what you want to, you can go where you will, but there is one thing you cannot do. You cannot eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You see, until this time, man only had a knowledge of good. Hot off of the griddle, the first man in absolute perfect relationship with God, he only knew goodness. But the Bible says that there was the knowledge of evil obtainable. And God said, don't touch that tree. I don't want you to know about evil. I don't want you to know that Satan fell from heaven. I don't want you to know that there's pride and selfishness in the world. I want you to walk with me. I've created you for better things. You're a child of a king and a child of God. But the Bible says he disobeyed. Now, many people have speculated as to why God ever gave him the choice. The Bible says thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And yet it appears that God tempted man. Not so. If I give my boys, my little boys, a bicycle, I am running the risk that they will use that bicycle, those roller skates, whatever it is, wrongly, and fall down and skin their knees and hurt themselves. But also, I am doing it not because I want to hurt them, but because I am enhancing the possibility and the capability for their happiness. For if they learn to use it wisely and correctly, they'll be happier than they would if they didn't have the skates of the bicycle. When my daughter becomes 16, she'll learn to drive and one day have a car. And she wants it now. But she's 15 going on 21 and wants it now. Now, like all of us. But one of these days, not because I hate her, but because I love her and I want to increase her potential for her happiness, I'll give her the car. But I'm also running the innate risk that she will use it wrongly and hurt herself. Now, why do I give her the car? I would be less loving if I withheld it from her. But I am aware of the built -in risks. Now, the Bible says that God was aware of the built -in risk. He knew that man might use the freedom of choice wrongly. You see, this is what made man above the animal. The animal could not reason, but man could reason. He could make a choice. And this made him in the image of Almighty God. But he chose wrongly. But I believe that if God had it to do again, I believe if we had it to do again, that we would all still want to be created in God's image with the freedom of knowledge and emotion interacting to produce will and choice and free moral agency in the human heart. God made us above the animals by giving us the power to choose. I'm glad I'm not a robot. I'm glad I don't have to serve God. And I don't have to. None of us do. But I want you to know that I just can't wait for Sunday. Either to sing, either to preach, either to be in God's house and read word and talk to him and be with his people than anything else in all of the world. Now, if I had not sinned, that's why the angels. The Bible says there's presence rejoicing in the presence of the angel. It doesn't say the angels rejoice, but the saints rejoice in their presence. You see, the angels don't know what it means to be lost. They've never been, they've never sinned. The angels in heaven, they don't know what it means to be lost, so they can't be saved. You and I know what it means to be lost. Thank God in loving kindness, Jesus came. My soul and mercy to reclaim. And from the depths of sin and shame, through grace, he lifted me. With sinking from sinking sand, he lifted me. With tender hand, he lifted me. Oh, praise his name, he lifted me. Yes, we have the freedom of choice. Yes, we have exercised it wrongly. Yes, that's what makes us men. But thank God, in spite of the prohibitive command, God has made provision when the dignity of man and the free choice of man leaves man to go astray and use that choice unwisely. Thirdly, the Bible says that God gave man a profound curse. He says, in the day you eat thereof, ye shall surely die. Now the matter of life and death is all wound in in the scriptures. You remember that Adam was tempted by Satan and said, eat of this tree, eat of the fruit that I offer you and you shall live. Now the word Lucifer means light bearer or one who shines. He was lied to by Satan. He said, come on and eat of this tree and you'll live. But the truth of the matter is, he was already alive and did not. and when he ate and when he sinned, he became dead. There are a lot of people in this world who, trying to find life, have only found death. Many a man with his life wrecked and ruined by sin in the gutter of society will remember those days when he was in Sunday school, when he was in church, when he was bound by the disciplines of religion, when he served God, whether he wanted to or not, maybe his parents made him, but he only now realizes that only then he was really alive. And Satan said, follow me and really live, but he died. Satan promises life, but gives death. God warns of death to those who already have life. He gave him a profound curse. He said, eat thereof, and in the knowledge of sin, you shall die. Life came through righteousness. Death came through sin. Now the Bible tells us that he died. He died physically. The wages of sin is death, physical death. I don't believe that Adam would have ever died if he hadn't have sinned. I don't believe that man would have ever physically perished had he not sinned. Then there was a mental death. Man became the victim of partial knowledge. But the ultimate, the crux of the wages of sin, is spiritual death. God made man in his image for fellowship and relationship with him. But man's sin was separated from God and became lost. The wages of sin is death, spiritually lost, spiritually void of a vital relationship with a living God. And many of you today who wander pell -mell through life, you're just a walking, living, breathing zombie. In reality, walking, living, breathing dead men, without God, without the resurrection power of Christ in your life, you're breathing, you're physically alive, you're biologically mobile, but you're dead. Man, spiritually, you're a living soul. We say that man has a soul. We would be more correct to say man is a soul that has a body. The real you, the man that lives in the body, that's what has relationship with God. And the result of the profound curse of man breaking the prohibitive commandment in the perfect condition was sin. Sin, over and over, God goes to the heart of the problem. Sin, the wages of sin is death. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The word sin literally means missing the mark. Now, I've read so many times about this verse that says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And I've tried to rationalize what that means. I used to believe that it meant that all have sinned and come short of the glorious life that God has for man. But not so. God's Shekinah glory, God's radiant presence, God's beauty, God's perfection, God's illumination is in his holiness. Man, in his perfect state, touched by God, in the image of God, God also shone with a Shekinah righteousness that was the glory of God's presence. Now, it was because of this that man could not see the nakedness of each other. He was blinded by the glory of God that exuded from the entire being of his partner, Adam and Eve, one to the other. Now, for man to sin means that all have come short of the glory of God. It means that we have missed, we have eradicated, we have destroyed, we have removed the glory of God in our lives. So man is reduced to an animal. Man is little more than a walking, living, breathing, biological creation until he has lifted by the grace of God the relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The wages of sin was death, the removal of the life -giving presence of God in the heart and being of human beings. Now, the fourth and last word is this. God also gave him a prophetic cross. There is the cross preached, first foreshadowed, first mentioned here in the book of Genesis. Prophetically, God looks ahead and reminds us that life was to come through death. Look with me once again in the text that Ben has read just a moment ago. It says in the ninth verse, And out of the ground made the Lord, and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil apparently there were all kinds of trees around the garden now it appears that man was not created but he in the garden of eden but outside and then placed in the garden another picture of faith many persons today are trying to find their garden of paradise but they can't be created into it they have to be placed into it by god but in the midst of all of the trees there were two trees there was sin there was the tree of unrighteousness there was the tree of the awareness of evil and wrong but thank god not far away there was the tree of life and in every heart today where there is sin the bible says grace did much more about there's room at the cross for you there's room at the cross for me though millions have come there's still room for one there's room at the cross for you for you see the tree the life on the one hand the tree of death on the other hand the tree of life were side by side equidistant equally available for men just so today we have now seen that it was through a tree that men find life not by a plant not through some other means of biology not in the lord's supper table not in water not in some church ordinance but life was to come through a tree jesus said if i be lifted up i will draw all men under myself on a hill far away stood an old rugged cross the emblem of suffering and shame that cross is the emblem of life the tree on which jesus christ was crucified in all probability a dogwood tree produced the drops of blood that fell from his side that nourished the human soul that men dead in sin could find life through faith in the shed blood of christ the tree the tree it was through a tree that god was foreshadowing that dead men were to come to life oh what a picture of our world today men are clamoring striving working to try to make the world a better place in which to live i submit to you that it is the preeminent responsibility of the church to make better men to live in this world young men and women you will never give your life more perfectly into the will of god more effectively effectively will you invest your heart than to spend it in the work of redeeming the hearts and lives of men from the inside out you say but preacher look at this awful world evangelism is an old hat winning souls to christ we've been through that a thousand years we've tried that before no a thousand times wrong no i say to you when it takes 25 or 30 southern baptists all year long to win one person to christ when 7 000 southern baptist churches a year don't baptize a convert i submit to you that evangelism has not failed it's never been tried it's never been tried our world is in a mess let's make it more perfect but remember once god gave man a perfect condition and he told him how to live in it god disobeyed him and when god would reinstate man and solve the problem he did so by the shedding of the blood the tree of the cross was foreshadowed and there jesus christ was to come and die that god might go to the heart of the problem sin from which the issues of life all proceed he changed the heart of man he changed the life of man man was saved and today it is still through that same vehicle of the cross of christ the tree that grew on calvary for the grapes of his precious blood were shed for the ransom of many that men find life through the tree of life the story is told out on the plains of arizona how a little boy a little indian boy was playing one day and his little sister was bitten by a poisonous snake knowing exactly what to do he went to her side with a little knife made an x over the mark with his mouth he began to suck out the blood he spat it upon the ground the little girl lived the little indian boy had an open sore in his mouth some of that poison got in the sower into his life and his life was given to save hers in the same way jesus christ one day went to the cross and drank of the sin of this world and shed his own blood to provide a ransom for many that we, through the tree of life, might live. But Christ died to provide our salvation. You know, on the weekends in Houston, I see men and women by the hundreds and the thousands leaving town, going out to the country, to the mountains, to the lakes. I like that. I like to do that. I think you ought to be back on Sunday, but I like to do that myself. I think somehow that some of Adam is here in all of us. There's something about all of us, kind of a pull back to nature, a pull back to the country, a pull back to Eden, back away from the smoky cities and the hustle and bustle of the neon lights and the den of society to get back to nature. The ancient pull of Edom back to where he first met God when Adam met the Lord in the cool of the evening is in every one of us. But I remind you that you can seek and you can search and you can look for perfect conditions. You can move from apartment to apartment and job to job and partner to partner. And you can never, by your condition, solve the restlessness inside. The problem is sin. God changes. God forgives. Through the tree of life, the cross, he paid your price. If you've never accepted Christ as your personal Savior, my heart and prayer is this day that you'll open your heart and life and let the Lord Jesus come in. He'll cleanse your sin. He'll start life all over again. Remember, we can't be saved by changing and having a more perfect surrounding. That idea has been ruined a long time ago. You can be changed from the inside through faith in Christ, through a regeneration experience by the shed blood of Jesus applied by faith. You can be a better man. Ah, but more important than that, you can be a new man in Jesus Christ. May we bow our heads and pray together. Every head is bowed and every eye is closed. I'm going to ask that no one will look around and his heads are bowed and eyes are closed and the people are praying. I'd like to ask you a simple and an honest question. How many of you can say, Pastor, I know Christ as my Savior. I've been to the tree. I've experienced the cleansing blood of Christ. I am his child. I've been born again. Thank God. Raise your hand. Not your head. Just your hand. God bless you. Thank you so very much. One last question. How many of you will say, Preacher, I know not the Lord. I've never been saved. I've never received Christ in my heart by faith. I'd like to be a Christian. I'd like for Jesus to come into my life. But I've never really accepted Christ personally. I've never had my sins washed away. I understand that by changing my circumstances and my conditions, I cannot change my heart. Only Christ can do that. And I want him in my life. How many children, how many teenagers, how many mothers and dads would say, I've never been saved. I've never received Christ. Pray for me. I'd like to be a Christian. Would you raise your hands? Raise them up high. God bless you. One, two, three, four, five, six, eight. Thank you. God bless you. You may, Lord. In the balcony, how many up there would raise your hand? Say, pray for me. I need Christ as my Savior. I've never received Jesus. God bless you. One, two, three, four. Thank you. You may, Lord. God bless you. God bless you. Any other person, anywhere else. You didn't raise your hand, but you'll change your mind. You realize you need Christ. You want the Lord. You want to be saved. You want Jesus to forgive your sins. Come into your life and change your heart. Say, pray for me. Slip up your hand. Any other one? God bless you, sir. Someone else? Someone else. God bless you. Our Father, again, we pray for these. Help them to come. In Christ's name. Amen. Amen.