The Covenant of Works

Okay, so Revelation 20. So on your outline, I've put the verses. Again, that's not because I don't want you to look in your Bible, it just makes our time easier. Plus, if you take the sheet home, you know, I put some quotes on there.

So hopefully, if you're one of those people that really likes the Sunday morning blanks, where you can fill in blanks, well, I didn't do that. I just try to make it as simple as possible. So what we're doing in this class is we're trying to understand the big picture of the Bible.

The illustration I gave before is you can be in a forest and you can look so close at one tree, like we're doing on Sunday mornings, right? We're looking at the Ephesian tree, right? We're just stuck right here.

And we're looking at one little verse, and then one, then a half a verse, and then this. Okay, well, that's a real focused, narrow view, and that's okay. But what we're doing in this Wednesday night class is we're backing up and we're saying, okay, how does all this fit together?

We're not going to talk about it tonight, but hypothetically, how does the book of Ephesians really fit in with the rest of the Bible? We want to know how the Bible fits together. And so we've called this class Baptist Covenant Theology, because the Bible fits together by way of covenants.

Now, Revelation 21 .3, I gave this to you last week, but I'll start here again, because this is the end goal. In Revelation 21 .3, it says,. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. That's where we're headed. And that has always been God's goal, to dwell with his people, a people who encompass the whole earth.

And so that's what's happening as we get into this text that we will tonight and begin to talk about the covenant of works. We described last week the garden setting. Today, we need to establish the covenant works proper, if you will.

So we set up the scenery last week, and today we are going to look at the proper formulation definition of the covenant of works. Now, I don't have my beautiful drawing out here, but I said last week that you could call it different names.

Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me if you call it covenant works or not. I think that's the best. I like that the best, as you'll see tonight. Why? But you have to understand the concept. There's a covenantal relationship going on here.

And so let's reread our text. We're going to stay mostly here. Genesis 2, verse 15 -17. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.

For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. So what I want to do for just a moment here is establish on your sheet there, establish the covenant of works. So let me give you a few defenses.

Number one, you see in the text, and we addressed this last week, that God's covenantal name is used. What is that name? What is God's name? Yahweh. So the Jehovah's Witness, they try to pull like a big deal, like there's a secret, there's a cover-up, you didn't ever know God's real name.

Well, yes, we know God's name. And by the way, I think Jehovah is a poor translation, but we can get to that later. I do think it's pronounced better Yahweh. But the point is, this is God's covenantal name.

It's not used in Genesis 1, but it is used in Genesis 2. I think that is to clue the reader in that something different is happening. Then I have a few other texts, and I'll just read them from the sheet to save a little bit of time.

Isaiah 24, 5, and 6. The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants, for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt.

Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left. Now, there's different considerations of what this text is talking about. Some talk about the Noahic covenant, but it appears to me that it would fall in line with this covenant works.

By the way, spoiler alert, it's broken in Adam, right? You understand that. We're going to get to that. But I believe Isaiah may be alluding to that there in Isaiah 24, 5, and 6. Hosea 6, 7, I think, is even more concrete.

It says, but like Adam, they transgressed the covenant. There they dealt faithlessly with me. Now, some people say that you understand that the word Adam, Adam, it can just mean man. So maybe it should just read, but like man, they transgressed the covenant.

But what would that mean? What covenant is being referred to? Or some people say it's referring to, Adam is referring to a place. But again, that's sketchy on the evidence. I think the most obvious and plain reading of Hosea 6, 7 is to say Adam had a covenant in which he broke.

Now, there's some New Testament examples we need to read. Romans 5, 18 and 19. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

Whereas by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. Pause. Who's that talking about? There's two different people you see, right?

Being talking about one man trespass condemnation, one man righteousness justification, one man disobedience sinners, one man obedience righteous. Who are these two people? Yeah. Adam, yeah. Adam and Christ, the first Adam and the last Adam.

And then finally, 1 Corinthians 15, 21 and 22. For as by a man came death, by a man has also come the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Now you can read these and read them in their context and you should do that.

But clearly, both of these passages, Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, we're talking about two different, I'm going to use the word representatives or more theologically, you know, heavy, if you will, two federal heads.

That's the language that is used. It just means representative. Okay. Everyone is either in Adam or in Christ and in Adam all have died and in Christ we are made alive. Now, lastly, I'll just mention this, that our own confession addresses this.

So each one of these, you can go and look up and you can look up the references yourself. But I just want to, there's some debate sometimes like, does the Baptist confession teach a covenant of works?

Well, I would say unequivocally, yes. And I will show you that tonight. But right now, we're just trying to establish that there is a covenant of work. So let me just read these real quick. Now, this isn't scripture, but this is articulating what the Bible teaches.

So let me walk through this and then I'll ask you if you have any questions or comments. Okay. So in chapter six, paragraph one, the confession says, God created humanity upright and perfect. Remember Ecclesiastes 7, 29.

He gave them a righteous law that would have led to life if they had kept it, but threatened death if they broke it. That is the covenant of works. We'll see that tonight. Chapter seven, paragraph one.

Though rational creatures are responsible to obey God as their creator, the distance between God and these creatures is so great that they could never have attained the reward of life except by God's voluntary.

He has been pleased to express this through a covenant framework. Okay. What that's saying is all Adam owed God obedience. God did not owe Adam a reward. I'll explain that later. So just hold that thought.

I have an illustration for you. Okay. You're going to be so excited. All right. Chapter 19, paragraph one. God gave Adam a law of comprehensive obedience written in his heart and a specific precept not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

By these, God obligated him and all his descendants to personal, total, exact, and perpetual obedience. God promised life if Adam fulfilled it, and threatened death if he broke it. And he gave Adam the power and ability to keep it.

And then 20, paragraph one. Because the covenant of works was broken by sin and was unable to confer life, God was pleased to proclaim the promise of Christ, the seed of the woman, as the means of calling the elect and producing in them faith and repentance.

In this promise, the gospel in its substance was revealed and made effectual for the conversion and salvation of sinners. Now here's what I think probably. You're probably some of you. Now, not all of you, but there are probably some of you that are like, look, we came in here for a glass of water, and you opened up the fire hydrant, and it's just, this is a lot we're trying to process.

That's okay. I'm giving you a lot of information. At this point, we're going to slow down in just a second. We're going to get to the text, which is most important. I'm trying to give you an overview here that this is what the Bible teaches, that there is a covenantal relationship between Adam and God, whereby God requires from Adam perfect obedience.

If he obeys, he gets life. If he disobeys, he gets a death. And what we see in the scriptures is that Adam is not only representing himself, but who? All humanity. Okay? Now you say to yourself, that's not fair.

A couple of things. One, it also works with Jesus, right? So if you say that's not fair, then it's not fair about Jesus either. Two, I was reading one, I don't remember which brother it was, maybe A .W. Pink, or somebody was saying, if we could choose, if we could vote who we would want to represent us in the garden, let's say we all were in the garden together, and we could pick one person to represent us, we would have picked Adam.

Like, there couldn't be a better representative than Adam. He was the best representative, okay? God made the best representative for us. So let me give you a few definitions. The covenant of works was an agreement between God and the human race, as represented in Adam, in which God promised eternal salvation upon condition of obedience, and threatened death upon disobedience.

Richard Barcelos, he's modern-day Reformed Baptist, he said the covenant of works is that divinely sanctioned commitment or relationship God imposed upon Adam in the Garden of Eden. Adam was a sinless representative of mankind, and an image-bearing son of God.

The covenant God made with him was for the bettering of man's state, conditioned upon Adam's obedience, with a penalty for disobedience. And then lastly, Philip Griffiths, in his state of original innocence, God chose to test Adam's obedience by the imposition of a single precept.

Why God chose this particular method lies outside of his revelation to us. The important point to grasp is that God was testing Adam's faithfulness, and presenting him with the possibility of eternal life for both himself and his posterity on the condition of his obedience.

All right. Now, here is what we are going to do. We are going to now—I was reading the wrong outline—we are going to now dive into the text, okay? So if you're confused a little bit, if you're like, man, this is a lot, that's okay.

Now we're slowing down, and let's think about this. I want you to think what is happening in this text. So verse 15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

Now let me say this and remind you of this up front. Adam owed obedience to God. Why? Yeah, very good. He owed obedience to God because God is God and Adam is not. But God does not owe Adam a reward. Let me give you this.

If my child comes up to me, I say to my boys, clean your room. This is a great illustration. If my boys say to me, if you're waiting for it, if my boys come to me and say, dad, we cleaned our room, like you said, well, oh, that's great.

You owe us ice cream. Do I owe them ice cream for cleaning their room? Do I owe them ice cream? No. Why? It is their duty to obey their dad. It is their duty to clean their room. I don't owe them a reward for doing what they're supposed to do, right?

Maybe there's some parenting tips in there about allowances and stuff too, but just, you know, that can be for another day. But I will say this. If I promised them ice cream for cleaning their room, then I have obligated myself, not because I owe them, but because out of the goodness of my heart, I say, this is what you're supposed to do.

You're supposed to do it anyway. But if you do this, I will reward you ice cream. And they clean the room and then I give them what? Ice cream. Because I'm a good dad, or maybe also because I wanted ice cream, really.

And that's the way that you work as parents sometimes, you know? So pro tip, if you don't and didn't, you can do that kind of stuff. Adam owes God obedience. God does not owe Adam anything. And yet, this is what we're saying is the covenant works.

God, in his kindness and condescension, covenants with Adam, that Adam receives, Adam obeys, and he holds out life. So let's walk through that together. First, I'm really frustrated that I couldn't make this last point alliterate, but I just couldn't.

So number one, the parties. So every covenant, you can't have a covenant with yourself. A covenant has to have parties. So who are the parties of the covenant? Verse 16, Yahweh Elohim commanded the man, Adam.

There they are, right? So we can check that box. However, we need to understand Adam's representation here. A .W. Pink writes this, the whole human race was placed on probation or trial in Eden. Adam acted not for himself alone, but he transacted for all who were to spring from him.

Now we've already seen that in Romans 5. We've already seen that in 1 Corinthians 15. In Adam, all die, and those things. But I can prove it to you from this text. I can prove it to you without having to go to the New Testament, okay?

Now you have to know Hebrew, but it's really not as complicated as it might sound. Now maybe if you have, the King James may translate it different. I don't know. But in verse 16, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, and in verse 17, you shall not eat, and you shall surely die.

Is that singular or plural? Is you there singular or plural? Meaning, we use the word you that way, right? So if I say, if I'm pointing at Colton and I say, you go get me a coffee, I'm talking to him.

But if I look at all of you and I say, you will get out on time tonight, which is maybe not true, but I'm talking, I'm using you in the plural. In the redneck vernacular, we say you and y 'all. Now here's the question.

In verse 16, is you singular or plural? It's singular. It's singular. Wrong. Trump me. It's singular. But let's go to chapter 3. In chapter 3, this is where the serpent approaches Eve, and he says in verse 1, he said to the woman, did God actually say you?

Now that's plural. Did God actually say y 'all shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, and now she's going to use the word you in the plural.

You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. You, in verse 3 of Genesis 3, is in the plural. So here's a little argument I'm making, and that is, who did God give this command to, Adam or Eve?

Well, he gave it to Adam, right? I mean, like here, Eve doesn't exist yet at this point in the narrative, but you're right. But he did give it to both Adam and Eve, but he gives it first to Adam as the what?

As the federal head, as the representative, right? So Adam understood this command, not just for himself, but also what? For his wife, and by extension, because remember, where did Eve come from? Out of the dust of the ground too?

God made Adam over here out of the dust of the ground, and Eve out of the dust of the ground? No, he made Eve out of Adam, right? And then every single person is going to be the offspring eventually, right?

You know, I mean, they make fun of us in Arkansas for marrying our cousins, but you know what? Everybody marries their cousin, right? If you go back far enough, right? Adam and Eve, right? Oh, and we all go back even closer to that with Noah.

You really shouldn't marry your cousin. That's just a joke. This is going to be recorded, so. All right, so the idea is the parties are God and Adam, but Adam as the federal head of humanity. So everything's riding on Adam.

We all succeed or fall in Adam. We are in the garden right now in, you know, right now in Genesis 2, and we are on trial. So that's the party. Secondly, consider the provision in verse 16. The Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat.

Now, may surely is not in the Hebrew. The verse is a strange Hebrew construct, but basically it says to eat eating. In other words, it sounds funny, but the emphasis here is on God's kindness. Eat, Adam.

Now, Satan limits that, right? Remember Satan's like, you can't eat any tree, but whereas the actual provision here is eat, Adam. Eat. Eat freely. Eat what you want. It's full of God's goodness. There's one stipulation.

We'll get to that in just a minute, but the point is, you may freely eat. There's abundant kindness. God is not being restrictive or mean or tyrannical here. Eat freely of every tree of the garden, except how many?

Just one. So that's the prohibition. So this is the prohibition in the covenant, verse 17. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.

You may not do this one thing, Adam. That is, you are not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And it's not that. It's not that inside that fruit is some sort of substance by which it's going to give Adam knowledge.

It's that for Adam to disobey this command is to exercise whose authority? His authority over God's authority. It's hard for us to understand because you don't have any examples like that around today, right?

You don't have any examples of people saying, I'm an authority. Is there any examples you can think of? Well, of course there are. Yeah. Well, yeah. There's lots of examples. I can be whatever gender I want.

I can, I can be a cat if I want, you know, like weird, whatever I want to do. But here's the idea. Adam, now this is, now we're going to get into technical language. So listen, God gives Adam what we call a positive law.

And what that means is hypothetically, God could have said to him, okay, there's nothing sinful about eating from a tree, right? You can't eat from trees today because God, no, no, there's nothing sinful about eating from a tree in and of itself.

God could have said to Adam, don't put your toe in the water. Could have hypothetically, right? The idea here is it's a positive law attached to this covenant. We'll talk about that more in just a minute.

Okay. Now, fourthly, so the parties, the provision, the prohibition, the penalty, there's a penalty for breaking this covenant, verse 17, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

Now the word, now, do you notice, look in your Bible and just see it for yourself. Do you notice that in verse 16, you may surely eat and in verse 17, you shall surely die. Surely, surely. Yeah. I was waiting on that.

Don't call me surely yet, but both of these verbs are in the same construct. So the idea is you may really eat, Adam, really eat. You may really, really eat. Same with this word. You will really what?

You will really die. Physically, spiritually, relationally, right? There's product, you know, there's so many things that we can talk about, but there's multiple factors, but you will really die. So there is a positive law here, but it's bound to the moral law.

So I'm going to give you the quick illustration in the New Testament so you can think. There is nothing moral or immoral about being dunked in water. There's nothing spiritual about being dunked in water, except baptism is in and of itself, but baptism is a positive law of the new covenant.

So even though it's not immoral or moral in and of itself to be dunked or not dunked, whatever, in and of itself it's not, but to refuse baptism is immoral. Why? Because it's against what God has commanded.

It's to set ourselves up as God instead of the true God. So back to the garden. God could have just hypothetically said to Adam, love me perfectly, but instead what he says, do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

In other words, the entirety of the moral law rests in this command. That is, in order for Adam to display loving the Lord, his God, with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving his neighbor as himself, in order for Adam to demonstrate this love to God, he is to not eat.

Okay? Pascal Denault notes, or maybe you say Denault actually, it's French, D-E-N-A-U-L-T. I think it's Denault. Anyway, the covenant of works demanded perfect obedience to the moral law. Again, it's not immoral to eat from the tree in and of itself, but it is immoral to eat from a tree that God says don't eat.

So to disobey God is to not love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, nor is it loving one's neighbor. So there's a probationary time frame. We don't have an idea how long that is, but you just need to know that the weight of the moral law rests in this precept, including punishment for disobedience.

John Bunyan writes, the law given before by the Lord to Adam and his posterity is the same with that afterwards given on Mount Sinai. Or Vilmus Abrekel writes, Adam had, as far as a content is concerned, the law of the Ten Commandments.

In other words, God could have just given Adam the Ten Commandments, but instead it gives him this positive prohibition that flows out of the moral law. So essentially to Adam, the command is this. Do this and you will live.

Disobey and you will die. There's a penalty for breaking the covenant. So fifthly, the promise. So what happens? So here's the question. It doesn't specifically say life. So what happens if Adam doesn't eat of this tree?

Well, I think it's abundantly clear that Adam will procure life for he and mankind. That is eternal life. Okay. Why do I say that? Well, number one, I believe it's implied here. If you disobey, you will really die.

Well, then what's the implication from the text that if you don't disobey, what happens? You'll really live, right? That's the implication. And if you say, well, I just don't know. Okay. We'll turn over to the next chapter, Genesis 3.

And remember what happens when Adam is banished. So in Genesis 3, verse 22, then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us and knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. In other words, there's not just a tree of knowledge of good and evil. There's also what? A tree of life.

You know, the tree of life appears in other places in scripture. And we're going to look at that later. So God says to Adam, do this and you will live essentially do this and you will live you and your offspring.

Adam, you are in a state now of able not to sin. Now you're also able to sin, but should you pass the test, you will move into a state of not able to sin. But the requirement is what? Personal, perfect, precise, and perpetual obedience.

This is what the law demands. And Thomas Watson, I think it's on your sheet. The moral law requires obedience, but gives no strength. So here it is. Do this. Personal, perfect, perpetual, precise, obedience.

So this is the law over Adam. He's in a perfect state, able not to sin, able to do what the law requires. What we're saying in this is he has no defect. God did not create Adam defective where it's like, ah, no, he was made upright.

The law says, here's what you do. And by God's covenant, his kind covenant, God says, here's what I'll do. If you complete this now, here's what will happen. If you, if you don't hold up your end of the bargain, here's what happens.

But if you do complete it, the implication is you'll live forever physically and spiritually and your offspring. And if you disobey verse 17, if you disobey, you plunge yourself and your offspring in to death.

Rebellion in this kingdom cannot be tolerated. It will be punished. Why? Because God is holy. God is just. So I would say here, it's rather plainly a covenant of works. Sam Rinehan summarizes, Adam was placed in a defined kingdom, appointed as a federal head, given a law of obedience, promised a reward upon fulfillment, and threatened with a curse.

He was in a covenant of works, which governed entrance into a consummated cosmos. Now, why is this called, why do we want to call it a covenant of works? Why do you think? It was dependent on Adam's works, on his obedience or his disobedience.

Okay. Sixthly, there's a pattern. Okay. What is God's pattern in Genesis 1 and in the first part of Genesis 2? Probably the chapter breaks kind of bad. Like probably Genesis 2, 1 through 3 should actually be included in Genesis 1.

That's fine. What's God's pattern of work and rest? Rest, then work, work, rest, work, rest, work, rest. What? God's pattern, by the way, I think this has implications for other things, but in creation, God sets forth a pattern that he is going to work six days, he does, and then he rests.

Now that's obviously he doesn't have to rest, right? He rests as a pattern for us. That's a pattern for Adam. How would Adam follow that pattern? I'm not just talking about physical work. Yes, that's a pattern.

But if you think about this test, if Adam works and completes the work, what does he get to do? Rest. Finish the work and rest. Now, I think that's important for the rest of the Bible, and we'll have to cover that more later, but until Adam entered the promised rest, then he was obligated for personal, perfect, precise, perpetual obedience.

Okay, now one more point. This is the one that bugs me. I just can't find a good, alliterated word that starts with a P. And if I did, it would be too confusing anyway. So the seventh point here is signs, and that is not the Mel Gibson movie.

Most, in case you're like, oh yeah, like Swing Away. What's the guy's name? I don't remember. Swing Away Merrill or whatever his name is. I don't remember. Okay, there are signs to most covenants. Give me some examples.

What are some covenantal signs that you know of? What is the rainbow? It's a sign of what? A covenant with Noah. Of what? What did God promise to do? Not going to flood, destroy the world again by flood.

There is the sign given to Abraham of what? Circumcision. There's the symbol in the New Testament, signs and symbols of baptism and the Lord's Supper. So is there a sign? Does this covenant have a sign with it?

Yes, I believe it does. Verse 9, and out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Now listen to this. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

That is, in the center of the garden were what? Two trees. That when Adam looked at these two trees, what was he to be reminded of? This covenant. When he saw these two trees, here's the tree of life and here's the tree of knowledge good and evil, Adam was reminded of this promise that God had made, this covenant.

Jeff Johnson said it this way, the essence of the covenant of works is the law and the law is central to the kingdom of God. God placed the law in the middle of the garden sanctuary, not written upon two tablets but upon two trees.

As it were, life and death were the names of those two trees as each tree represented both sides of the law. The law promised life as it commands man to do what is good and threatened death as it forbade him to do what is bad.

So it's in essence that's what the law says, do this and you will live. Here it is, but it offers no help, it can offer no aid and equally it is true, it's a double-edged sword if you will. Do this and you'll live, disobey and I've got no hope for you.

You must be punished. So these two trees in the midst of the garden serve as a visible reminder of God's covenant of life and death, of blessing and curse. Now our conclusion tonight is to go back to the end of the book.

Next week we're going to discuss how Adam broke this covenant, how all mankind, I can love it when I have my kids are young because I can use this and I'm not picking on anybody. Sweet Margie is born into a broken covenant.

What covenant? She's broke, she's born into a broken covenant between God and who? This is where this has to land home. We're not just sitting around smoking our theology pipes and pontificating how many angels can stand on the head of a pin and it really has no practical bearing or application for us.

No, we're talking about God's plan of salvation and the first thing we have to understand is all mankind is born in Adam, in a broken relationship with God. So we're going to discuss the fall next week, but what I want to conclude with is that what Adam lost in the garden, Christ won.

Joe Beakey says this, understanding both God's covenant with Adam and the implication of Adam's sin lays the foundation for understanding God's covenant in Christ and the implication of Christ's obedience.

So all men are guilty in Adam, that seems unfair, but God also provided another representative, who? Jesus. By faith, believers are counted righteous. We're counted guilty in Adam and then we stand in and of ourselves, but in Christ, by grace through faith, we're counted righteous because of Christ's work.

Adam lost access to the tree of life. Adam failed and we fell in him, but what has Christ done? He was born under the law. He was born under the requirement of do this and you will live, but he wasn't born under that broken covenant because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.

Adam fell in a beautiful garden. Christ succeeded in a fallen world. Adam fell by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Christ succeeded by tasting death from Calvary's tree. There he bore the sin of covenant breakers.

The Satan came to Adam in the garden and Adam cowered. Satan came to Jesus in the wilderness and Jesus triumphed and then God punished Jesus as our better representative. Adam looked at God and blamed his bride.

Jesus looked at God and said, punish me and not my bride. Our righteous representative and the one who represented us is Christ by taking the punishment of God upon himself. Death remained on Adam and his body and his body's in the ground to this day, but Christ defeated death and rose again from the grave.

And then here's the end of the book. So this just wants to take us just a second. Oh, we got time. Oodles of time. I'm way faster than Pastor Jacob. Here's the end of the book. Those who repent and believe the gospel, who trust Christ, who turn from sin, they are granted what Adam lost.

What is it? Life, specifically life, but it's represented as the same thing that was in the garden, the tree of life. So let's read those real quick and then we'll close. Revelation 2 -7 says, I have to read these just because I'm recording, so it's just easier if I read them.

Revelation 2 -7, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat what? Of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. Okay, now let's go to Revelation 22.

This is the last chapter of the Bible. So the second chapter of the Bible introduces us to the tree of life. And then we see it again in the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22 verse 2. What is heaven going to look like?

I can't tell you everything, but I can tell you this. Through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, what's there? The tree of life. With its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month, the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

And then verse 14. Blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to what? The tree of life, and that they may enter the city by the gates. Brothers and sisters, I hope that you see tonight, we're trying to see the big picture of the Bible.

And we've wrestled with a lot of stuff, and maybe you felt tonight like you're drinking in a lot of stuff. And we'll have, I'm going to stop recording. We'll have a moment for questions if you have any, or comments that you'd like to make.

But I hope you see the importance of getting the beginning right, so that we can understand the rest of the Bible, so that we can understand. I hope tonight you walk away saying, boy, some of that stuff was a lot, but I see all the more beautiful, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and what God has done for us in this true and better Adam, in the last Adam, Jesus Christ.