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[0:00] For the next three Sunday nights, I'm going to preach on one word. It's going to be a doctrinal series. For the last few months, there's been lots of time to read.

[0:11] And this sermon comes to you courtesy of B.B. Warfield and John Murray and John Fesco and I have added jokes and stories in.

[0:22] And the reason that I want to preach on this one word is because I think this one word in many ways summarises the whole teaching of the Bible. The word is this, imputation. Imputation. I'm going to look at it from three angles.

[0:40] Tonight we're going to see the imputation of Adam's sin to us. And then next week, we're going to look at the imputation of our sin and our guilt to the Lord Jesus.

[0:52] And then in the third week, God willing, we'll look at the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us. I think this is the DNA of Christianity.

[1:05] Understand imputation and you will understand the Christian religion. Reject it and you reject Christianity. And so what does this word that we very rarely use, imputation, mean?

[1:17] You'll find the word impute in the authorised version, the King James version of the Bible. It's there in 14 different verses. But the idea is found throughout the Bible.

[1:30] There's a little cluster of those words in Romans chapter 4. And we're going to look at various different passages. You can turn to them or you can just listen. Romans chapter 4 and from the 21st verse to the end of the chapter.

[1:43] Paul is talking about Father Abraham. About Abraham trusting in God. He says this, Fully convinced that God was able to do what he promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness.

[1:56] But the words, it was counted to him, were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead our Lord Jesus.

[2:08] Who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. So in the ESV, it's translated the underlying Greek word with the English phrase, to credit someone.

[2:20] Because that's exactly what impute means. Abraham believed what God had told him. He trusted in God's promises. And that faith of his was credited to him, to Abraham, as righteousness.

[2:36] God regarded Abraham as righteous. God put Abraham in the category of the righteous. God accepted Abraham as righteous. And all those phrases tell us what imputation means.

[2:50] And such transactions take place throughout Christian history. Whenever people trust in the Lord Jesus for salvation, there's an identical change of status that occurs in the same way that it occurred in Abraham.

[3:03] In other words, Abraham's being credited with divine righteousness was not a one-off in Christian history. As if it was something that only happened to the super-Christian.

[3:16] Accrediting to Abraham righteousness was not something special that only happens to very gifted people. Think of Jacob. Jacob alone had a vision, didn't he, of a staircase to heaven.

[3:30] Samson alone had colossal strength. David displayed remarkable prowess with a sling. But that hasn't been given to all men and women.

[3:40] But this act of imputing God, imputing righteousness to Abraham, is recorded in the Bible as a pattern for all who will receive the Holy Spirit by faith.

[3:53] And so become children of Abraham. In other words, for everyone who believes in the Saviour, from the weakest lamb in the flock of Christ, when anyone at all places their trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, however wretched life they've lived, however fine and thin the thread of their faith might be, that looking away from themselves to the Lord Jesus is counted to them as righteousness.

[4:27] Righteousness is imputed to all who believe in the Lord Jesus. No one can begin to understand the coming of the Lord Jesus into the world until they grasp the meaning of this word imputation.

[4:41] Because it's the heart of the Gospel. So Psalm 32, which we read earlier, let me read it to you in the AV. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

[4:53] Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not. Does not count iniquity. The psalmist says that's a happy person.

[5:05] His sin has been credited not to him, but to the Lamb of God. And this man immediately has his status changed before God.

[5:19] Let me illustrate it from the Bible. From the letter of Paul to Philemon. The story of the book is Onesimus, there's a slave, he's run away from his master, and then he'd become a Christian.

[5:32] In fact, he'd made such progress, Onesimus, that he was allowed to help the Apostle Paul. And Paul, when he found this out, he urged Onesimus, you've got to go back to your master.

[5:44] And so Philemon took with him a letter from the Apostle Paul, which Paul specifically wrote to Onesimus' master. And in this little note, Paul says this. He says, So if you consider me your partner, receive him as he would receive me.

[6:00] If he's wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. Charge anything Onesimus owes you to my account.

[6:12] Paul is saying, I assume the responsibility for all and any wrongs he's done, I will make satisfaction for them. In other words, Philemon was to regard Onesimus, his runaway slave, like the Apostle Paul.

[6:29] That's imputation. Reckon this slave's debt to Paul's account. I will repay him. I will repay you what he owes you, says Paul. It's the language of imputation.

[6:42] We impute something else. We impute to someone else, and then it is his. And he is dealt with accordingly. It is his responsibility alone.

[6:54] Money can be taken from his bank account and not ours. I give my debit card to Ali, and I give her my PIN number, and so she can go to the bank, and she can take from my account.

[7:10] It's imputation. And Paul is asking Philemon to take back Onesimus, the thief, and treat him as he would treat Paul. He's saying, it's the same as if Paul knocked on the door.

[7:28] The slave owner opens the door, he sees Onesimus. It's like it's Paul being here. Wonderful, welcome, sit down, kill the fatted calf. And so in the gospel, the good news of God is that Christ has come and taken responsibility for our guilt and our sin.

[7:44] He's been punished for the wrongs we've done because our sin has been imputed to him. Through Christ's righteousness being imputed to us, we are received and blessed by God as if we were Christ himself.

[7:58] We wear tonight the robes of Christ's perfection. He's paid all the wrongs we've committed. He's fulfilled all the righteousness that God's demands.

[8:09] And so I'm saying to you that without this concept of imputation, there can be no gospel. Because the story of the Bible is structured by these three great acts of imputation.

[8:24] If you read right through the Bible, you meet with these divine works that change our status, the whole good news of the Christian religion. So number one, Adam's first sin is imputed to us.

[8:40] Number two, the sins of saved people are imputed to Christ. And number three, righteousness is imputed to all who are saved. This idea of imputation really helps us.

[8:53] It helps us to understand why am I a sinner? Why was it necessary for the Son of God to come and save me? How can I get to heaven? And so let me say it again, if you don't understand imputation, you don't understand the good news of God.

[9:08] You still haven't seen why you're a sinner, why you need to appropriate the blood of Jesus Christ and why you can't get to heaven on your own. And you can only get there clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.

[9:20] Three points. Number one, Adam was created upright by God. Adam was created upright by God.

[9:31] All the human race is descended from its first parents, Adam and Eve. Adam was made of the dust of the earth and Eve was made from Adam's rib.

[9:43] They were placed in the Garden of Eden to fill and subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing. They were put under probation. The terms were focused.

[9:55] There was expected a constant obedience to one particular simple commandment. They could eat from all the fruit of the garden, but they were not allowed to take from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[10:09] And God said, for in the day that you take and eat from that tree, you will surely die. The command was simple and the peril was made spectacularly clear.

[10:20] They were being challenged as to whether their futures were going to consist of obeying what God said or obeying their own hunches. It's a challenge you face today and in the future.

[10:35] Whether you think these next few weeks or years are going to be ones in which you say, well, I think I'll just do this. I'll be okay. I'll feel good about it. God can ask from me nothing more.

[10:48] Or will you say tonight, my future is going to be believing and doing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if your future is going to be lurching from one hunch to another, one of your own choices to another of your choices, that is the way of death.

[11:05] Adam was the first man. He was the representative man. He was the federal head of humanity. He was my father and yours.

[11:19] I've told you before, I went to my friend's youth group and there was a very eccentric minister called Jeff Cox who was there. And I went to my friend's church and I was a little bit nervous going to the youth group and Jeff Cox said to me in front of everyone, he said, well, who are you?

[11:35] I said, I'm Paul Levy. And he said, I know your father. And I said, no, do you? He said, what's your father's name? And I said, it's Alan. And he said, no, it's Adam.

[11:47] And I said, no, it's Alan. And he said, no, it's Adam. I said, it is Alan. He went, it is Adam. And then taught me the theological point that all our father is Adam.

[11:59] I could have battered him. You know? All of us, our father is Adam. Adam, he is the federal head. I was in him.

[12:12] That's what I was. I was in him and so were all of you. And when Adam defied God and ate the forbidden fruit, then all mankind, you and me, we also fell. Death came upon Adam and so death has come upon us.

[12:27] The shorter catechism tells us the covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself but for his posterity, all mankind, descending from him, by ordinary generation, sinned in him, fell with him in his first transgression.

[12:41] And the consequence of that is the next question, question 17, that the fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery. And then the catechism asks, well, what is that state?

[12:55] And it answers like this, summarizing the teaching of the Bible, he says, the state of our fallenness consists in this. Number one, the guilt of Adam's first sin. Number two, the lack of original righteousness.

[13:06] We're no longer righteous. And number three, the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together, number four, with actual transgressions which proceed from it.

[13:18] It's what we call the fall. The fall is not a very good title, I think. Paving stones in Ealing are one of my bug beds.

[13:30] I was walking along Greenford Avenue not long ago, and I tripped over a paving stone. I was walking pretty quickly, and so I fell. It was highly embarrassing, isn't it?

[13:42] I kind of fell by accident. When I ring home, and my mum says to me, your dad has had a fall. I kind of, my heart goes out in pity.

[13:58] I don't know if you've ever seen an old person fall in public. It's really, it kind of makes me angsty, even thinking about it, doesn't it? You feel enormous pity seeing an old person fall.

[14:11] But the fall of Adam is not like that. It's not accidental. It was deliberately done. It was a jump. It was a jump, not a fall.

[14:22] R.C. Sproul illustrates it in this way. He says, suppose God said to a man, I want you to trim these bushes by three o'clock this afternoon. But be careful, there's a large open pit at the edge of the garden.

[14:34] If you fall into that pit, you won't be able to get yourself out. So whatever you do, stay away from that pit. Sproul goes on, suppose that as soon as God left the garden, the man ran over and jumped in the pit.

[14:47] At three o'clock, God returned to find the bushes untrimmed. He called for the gardener and he heard a faint cry from the edge of the garden. He walked to the edge of the pit and saw the gardener helplessly flailing around on the bottom of the pit.

[15:00] He turned to the gardener and said, why haven't you trimmed the bushes I told you to trim? The gardener responds in anger, how would you expect me to trim these bushes when I'm trapped in this pit? If you hadn't left this empty pit here, I would not be in this predicament.

[15:15] Adam jumped into the pit. And in Adam, we all jumped into the pit. God did not throw us into the pit.

[15:28] Adam was clearly warned about the pit. God told him to stay away. The consequences that Adam experienced from being in the pit were a direct punishment for jumping into it.

[15:41] And so it is with original sin. Original sin is both the consequence of Adam's sin and it's the punishment of Adam's sin. We are born sinners because in Adam all fell.

[15:57] And I'm saying that the word fall is a euphemism. It's a kind of rose-tinted view of the matter. The word fall suggests an accident of sorts. Adam's sin was not an accident.

[16:08] It was not Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. He didn't simply slip into sin or trip into it. He jumped into it with both feet. And we jumped headlong into it with him.

[16:23] God didn't push us. He didn't trick us. He gave us adequate and fair warning. The fault is ours and only ours. It is not that Adam ate sour grapes and our teeth are set on edge.

[16:38] The biblical teaching is that in Adam we all ate the sour grapes. And that's why our teeth are set on edge. Adam lost paradise and the life of God.

[16:50] He gained the harsh world of thorns and thistles and pain east of Eden. But the end of this unfortunate episode didn't come when Adam breathed his last.

[17:04] That groaning world would have been a bad enough end for them but Adam and Eve were the root of mankind. And so now a sinful bias immediately began to be conveyed to their children.

[17:21] Their firstborn child murdered his brother. There's a trickle down effect that generation after generation sin and death came along not missing a single generation.

[17:33] Here is the evolution of death. The evolution of sin. The evolutionary view of life says you can go back as far as you can with humanity.

[17:46] Go back as far as you can the evolutionist says and human beings were just as sinful as we are. thus as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end.

[18:00] That is the despair of an evolutionary viewpoint. Billy Joel sang didn't he we didn't start the fire it was always burning since the world's been turning. We didn't start the fire no we didn't light it but we tried to fight it.

[18:14] No says the Bible. Sin came into the world after the world was made. Our first parents were made sinless in Eden.

[18:26] It was their rebellion against God that opened the door for crime and lawlessness and self to come in and pollute the human race. And now we are all held guilty before God.

[18:38] All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All of us are dying men and women. there will be no escape from death.

[18:50] Not for a single person in the whole planet. One or two might live to 120. There might be better diets, better treatment, better drugs so that people live longer but there will be no avoidance of death whatsoever.

[19:05] In Adam sinned, in Adam sin we all fell. That's why we need the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we must have the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died.

[19:21] We need his shed blood of atonement because of Adam's first sin. We lack our own righteousness. We have many actual sins when we enter the world but we have been shaped by Adam's iniquity.

[19:40] we've been slit open to sinning, if I can put it like that, before one actual transgression has taken place. Adam said, David said, didn't he, in sin did my mother conceive me.

[19:58] Number two, point number two, they're not very friendly these points but Adam was constituted our federal head. Adam was constituted our federal head. Let me try and explain that.

[20:09] why are we guilty in Adam? Why does God categorise us as sinners? The answer lies in the way that God made the human race at the beginning.

[20:21] God was in an utterly unique relationship with Adam. Unlike all the other creatures, Adam was made in the image and likeness of God. He's distinct. As you look in the mirror, you see your own image and you see your own likeness looking back at you.

[20:37] And so God would look at Adam in the garden and there was his own perfect moral likeness. Looking back at him without blemish, there was no distortion of God in Adam at all.

[20:53] And more than that, between God and Adam there was a special relationship. This man and his creator were in a covenant union and they were joined together. They were one, it was like a marriage.

[21:06] marriage. When a man is married to his wife, he doesn't say to her, I don't say to my wife, where are you going on holidays this year? She doesn't say, well I'm off to the Bavarian beer festival.

[21:21] And I say, well I've actually decided to go to South Wales or I'm not going on holiday and buy a car. You're one, you go to the same place. A married couple are not two individuals anymore.

[21:32] the two have become one flesh. Their life and their plans are in tandem. And so God and Adam were in covenant. They are one and they walked together and they planned their days with one another in mind.

[21:49] And the blessings enjoyed in those first days and weeks should have been enjoyed forever. Of God walking with Adam in the cool of the day. But that unity was put under a test during this probationary period and Adam failed the test.

[22:07] That is the fall, that is the jumping into the forbidden pit. Adam defied his God. He was persuaded that if he disobeyed God and he did it his own way, he'd have more than what God was offering him.

[22:24] Symptom teaching today, isn't it? Many people think, and maybe you think, if I give up on God I'll be better off. Young people tragically often think that in churches, don't they? They think, if I don't have all these restrictions which a life with God brings, I'll be happier, I'll have more freedom.

[22:44] The devil encouraged Adam and Eve, didn't he? He said, you won't die, as the Lord says. That's a myth. Take the forbidden fruit from the tree. Nothing will happen to you except new knowledge and self-confidence that you will be able to take on God.

[23:02] You'll be as wise as him if not wiser. And so Adam jumped and he lost everything. He lost all he had with no possibility under heaven of getting it back.

[23:16] He was driven out of the garden to never return. He began to die and there was no way he could prevent that from happening. And when Adam was doing all of that, you and I were in him.

[23:30] I was in him. Adam was not acting on his own. He was a public person. He was the representative of the human race. The principle of representation runs right through the Bible.

[23:45] You can call it the principle of covenant headship. It's just the same religion. You're familiar with this. You know this. Don't think this is too hard to understand. You elected a representative to parliament. You send them to London.

[23:57] You elect a member of the European parliament and you give them a mandate to speak and make decisions on your behalf. Don't pretend this is difficult to understand. It's their official function.

[24:07] So when the prime minister gets up and he declares war, it's not simply the decision of an individual, is it? It is the decision of a head of state and immediately your tax money is used to support the troops in their war.

[24:22] And so too, Adam stands before God as the public representative of ourselves and the whole human race. And when God speaks to him, God is addressing a public person.

[24:38] There were three men hanging on crosses outside of Jerusalem. Two of them are utterly anonymous. We don't know their name. but one of them was a public individual.

[24:52] The last Adam was in the center. And the last Adam who we know his name was not an anonymous private person suffering punishment.

[25:06] We know his name. It is Jesus of Nazareth. Those words are written above his head on a placard. He was hanging there as a public person. And so it was with the first Adam in the Garden of Eden.

[25:20] He thought and decided and acted on behalf of the human race. And what he did was going to affect me and you and we are all in union with Adam. As we read everything that happened in the Garden.

[25:38] During lockdown, do you remember those days of lockdown, ministers all over the country suddenly went from preaching to a congregation of this to preaching to a screen, preaching to a video. And we got lots of feedback which I really enjoyed.

[25:52] That was very, very helpful I can assure you. But the problem was you'd preach on a Saturday and you just couldn't get it right. And so you'd say, can I have another go at that? And it didn't work.

[26:03] And then do you know what you'd have to do? You'd have to sit with your family on Sunday and watch yourself. And you knew it was coming. You knew it was coming. And so you'd find out why is my hand like that?

[26:14] Don't put your hand up, Paul. Don't put your hand up. And I'd find all my crazy little mannerisms of stepping back and forth and going to the side. And then I'd look at Chris Roberts and I'd see him doing exactly the same as I was doing.

[26:29] But you'd watch the video of yourself and you'd say, don't do it, don't say it like that. Why are you saying isn't it at the end of every sentence? And we come to Adam and Eve, it's the same thing.

[26:46] We read Genesis 3, you see the serpent coming to Adam and Eve and you find yourself reading it, you say, don't listen to him, don't pay attention, do what God has told you, stick to God, Adam, don't break that covenant.

[26:59] And then we watch the film of Genesis 3 and he does it. Adam, my father, Adam, my representative, broke the covenant and he pulled me down and he pulled you down and he pulled the whole human race down.

[27:13] He violated the honour of God because God is holy and righteous in everything he does and all he asks from us and I fell too and God imputes to me that guilt.

[27:27] Like the whole of the German nation was held responsible, wasn't it? When the Fuhrer determined to wipe out all the Jews in the gas chambers. It was not the attitude and action of one evil man Hitler but it was the act of a federal head of that country whose machinery of destruction was set into operation to wipe out millions of Jews and paid for by the people.

[27:54] They didn't rise up and resist him but they followed what their head did. all of Germany suffered because of the action of its head. And so too we men and women, boys and girls are held accountable for what our head Adam did as our representative before God.

[28:16] And if you understand if you're still awake, if you're still listening, you protest and you say but I didn't appoint him. I didn't ask him to be my head but God did.

[28:30] There have been men that I've put my hopes in as a preacher and there have been members of parliament, there have been accountants and they've let us down and they let you down even though you chose them and you asked them to do this and we wanted them to do the right thing but they didn't.

[28:54] But God appointed, the loving God made this choice and it was the perfect choice, the very best choice. Believe it or not, you could not have chosen anyone more suitable than Adam.

[29:08] Your choice would have been worse than Adam. The best man let us all down. Point number three, the final point is through Adam the human race is the problem of sin.

[29:20] through Adam the human race is the problem of sin. Do you understand the problem of the human race? Lots of people in churches like this, they assume that God is angry with men and women and boys and girls because they sin.

[29:35] They get drunk, they steal, they kill and they cheat. They profane the name of the Lord. They sleep around and they assume that it is those sins, if those sins could be removed from their lives, all would be well.

[29:52] And so what happens is people get older and their powers wane, their desires weaken a little bit and the opportunities for sin are just a little bit less extensive and they make some resolutions which they keep to turn over a new leaf.

[30:06] There's some moral improvement in their life and they think all is well and they fail to understand this really crucial point. That first of all they are not under condemnation of God because they sin.

[30:20] Does that surprise you? They are under the condemnation of God because they are sinners. In other words they have a status of a fallen rebellious son of Adam and they have the nature that goes with it.

[30:40] It's not that they are good men who have been given a bad name. They are bad men with a bad name. Their nature is alienated from God. Their nature is more than indifference to God.

[30:53] They are at enmity. They are at war with God. They will not have the Lord to rule over them. Their natures by nature they are at odds with God. The apostle puts it like this.

[31:05] He says by nature they are children of wrath. You do not become a child of wrath because you sin.

[31:16] You sin because you are a child of wrath. When a man lies or is unfaithful to his wife that is only a symptom of his depraved nature.

[31:31] Paul describes that nature in the Bible and he concludes that we are dead and trespass to sins. that is telling you there is a coffin in your heart and your dead spirit lies within it.

[31:45] Your physical ears can hear what I have been saying and your brain can follow my logic but your spirit does not respond at all because it is as lifeless as a stone.

[31:58] Why does a child have measles? is it because he has measles spots? No. He has measles spots because he has the illness.

[32:12] The measles spots, they are a symptom of the illness aren't they? And we sin because we're sinners. When a child is unwell, we know it's unwell because its temperature is over 100 degrees.

[32:28] high temperature is the symptom isn't it? It's not the cause. And when you take the child to the doctor, you want the illness to be dealt with.

[32:43] You don't take a child with measles to the doctor and say can you give me some make-up to cover the spots please? You don't say that do you? You expect the virus, the bacteria, the infection that's causing the temperature and the spots to be dealt with.

[32:58] I never had to sit my kids down and say listen today we're going to have a lesson in complaining. I'm going to teach you to answer back. I'm going to show you how to whine.

[33:11] I'm going to show you how to say me, me, me. I'm going to teach you how to be selfish and demand your own way and to be mean to each other. That's what we're going to learn today. I never had to teach myself that.

[33:24] Because we all do that in an expert way, don't we? And you don't need to be taught how to sin. Because sinning comes naturally to us. It comes from our nature.

[33:37] Resistance to God's wise and good ways. That's second nature to us. We need to be taught, don't we? I need to teach my children, I need to teach myself to say please, to say thank you, to say no, you go first.

[33:53] To appreciate the achievements of others without envy. Every child needs this, in every civilization, every culture of the world. It's not like cultures dominated by Islam or Catholicism or Hinduism or capitalism or Buddhism or things are any better.

[34:10] No, they're not. And so London does not face, what is the problem that London faces and Ealing faces? It's the problem of the human heart, which is deceitful and self centred.

[34:28] There is none righteous, no, not one. And the line of thought in our culture is well actually if we get education better, if we improve housing, if we make ourselves more economically prosperous and we eradicate poverty and ignorance and we educate, well all will be well.

[34:47] We've done that for 100 years, what do we see more of? We see more violence, more family breakdown in our schools, the problem that the world faces is one of the human heart.

[35:02] Why did King David take another man's wife and plot a man's murder? It was not because he didn't come from a happy home. He wasn't a loner.

[35:16] David wasn't an intelligent man, he was not poor, he had health and intelligence, great writing skills, fame and wives, why did he do it? David says this, because behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.

[35:33] David didn't blame the hard line of religious people, he didn't blame his father Jesse, he didn't blame Bathsheba, he didn't blame the temptation of being an absolute monarch, he went back to his father Adam and the depravity that had come upon the whole human race since the fall, which David and every person since and before has displayed from their conception.

[35:56] From the very beginning David was a sinner and then he was put into a circumstance where he was alone, he was walking on the roof of the palace, he saw a woman he lusted after and one thing followed another and the sins followed the power of sin in David's life.

[36:15] And I tell you that is bad news because we are in the sight of God sinners and that is the category which he has set us in. Before we've done anything wrong, in thoughts or word or actions we are sinners before God.

[36:30] None is righteous, no not one. And that will be the end of it. Because 1 Corinthians 15 says, doesn't it, in Adam all die.

[36:42] die. In Adam all die. In Adam all die. But there is one son of Adam who did not die.

[36:56] You can read his genealogy in Luke chapter 3. And it begins with him who was the son of Joseph, the carpenter, and then back and back and back until you trace his family line until you reach the son of Adam who was the son of God.

[37:08] all in between died but Jesus laid down his life for three brief days and he rose again. He took the same nature as us but sinless unfallen nature.

[37:26] He came to be a man born of a woman in our low condition where pain and crucifixion was all too familiar. He became one of us sin accepted. He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh understanding from any other man but uncorrupted and unfallen.

[37:43] That is our nature he took on without our guilt and sin and in that untainted human nature he glorified God. He broke into the stream of fallen humanity but remained apart from all its defilement.

[38:01] He came where Adam stood and he met the same tempter that Adam met but he did not fall. and this great and this glorious fact comes to us that there's been a unique exception.

[38:14] There is one glorious human being one human being who is unlike you and unlike me and that is the only beam of light. This world has seen one person and one alone as free from sin as God himself.

[38:31] Not free from temptation not free from suffering but free from sin. in Adam all die and we are all dead in sins but in Christ shall all be made alive.

[38:45] What do we need? What does a dead man need? What does a dead man need? Does he need better aftershave? A more luxurious coffin? Softer music?

[38:56] More tears shed around him? Larger headstone? No he needs one thing alone doesn't he? What does a dead man need? He needs life. And so do you. In Adam all die.

[39:08] But in Christ and if you are in Christ tonight if anyone is in Christ he's made alive. Chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians deals with federal heads two federal heads.

[39:23] Adam who sinned and brought death into world. All are dead in Adam but that's not the end of the story. Christ has come that we might have life and have it more abundantly. He comes by his spirit.

[39:35] He comes right into that coffin of our spirits and he gives us life. So that we can see who we are tonight. The children of God. Once fallen and rebellious but now adopted into the family of God.

[39:48] And we can see the narrow way and we can see the law of God and we can see the destination the city who's builder and architect is God. And we can see the lovely one the Lord Jesus Christ who will never leave us.

[40:00] And he gives us victory in temptations and he lifts us up when we fall and he does that again and again and he never grows tired of picking us up. Who is a pardoning God like you?

[40:15] And so the question tonight is really simple. It's this. Are you still in Adam or are you in Christ? Because tonight every single one of us must be in one or the other.

[40:30] And I'm saying tonight that if you realise that you are in Adam you must cry out to God for life. That he might take you out of Adam and he might put you in Christ and you cry to him.

[40:47] That he will deliver you from the wrath of God that will fall on all the children of disobedience. And he will deliver you through what Jesus Christ did in your place when God's wrath fell on him.

[41:03] In Adam all die. In Christ all alive. Let's pray.