It's a joy to be able to be with you on this Lord's Day, to be able to speak to you about subjects that are near and dear to my heart, and I suspect to all of ours, which are the covenants that God gives unto us in and through our salvation. And in the Sunday school hour, we looked at the covenant of redemption, which is the eternal covenant among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to bring about our salvation. And so now what we want to do is we want to look at what theologians have historically called the covenant of works, which is the covenant that God makes with Adam prior to the entrance of sin and death into the world. And so to that end, I'd ask you if you would please open your Bibles to Romans chapter five. to Romans chapter five, and our sermon text for this morning's message comes to us from Romans chapter five, beginning in verse 12, and then we'll read just two verses through verse 14. So let's give attention to the reading of God's word. Romans chapter five, beginning in verse 12. Hear now the word of God. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. For sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come." May God add his blessing to this reading of his holy and inspired word. Let's bow together in a brief word of prayer. Let's pray. Father God, we give you thanks that you have given us your word and that you feed us with truth, the truth of the gospel. We pray that you would give us ears to hear, that you would produce the fruit of holiness and righteousness in us through the power of your spirit. We pray and ask all of these things in Christ's name. Amen. I think it's fair to say that in our own culture and especially within our own nation, we have a society that, as one conservative radio host once described, is that it is marked by rugged individualism. We like the idea that we are individuals and that we are responsible for ourselves. Moreover, not only are we responsible for ourselves, but We don't want to bear responsibility for the actions of anyone else. And so this is an idea that is very prominent within our communities, within our state, within our nation, and indeed we can say within all of Western culture. And yet at the same time, what the Bible gives us is it gives us something very different when it says that, yes, we are responsible for our own individual actions, but at the same time, it tells us that we are bound one to another and that sometimes the actions of one person can adversely affect many, many other people. Think, for example, in Joshua chapter 7, where Achan takes and he steals some of the treasure that God had forbidden the Israelites from taking. And what happens is that Achan takes this forbidden treasure, and then what ensues is that the entire invasion of the Promised Land comes to a screeching halt. all because of the actions of one single individual. And not only did Achan bring the invasion and the conquest of the land to a halt, but once it was discovered that he was the perpetrator of this great sin, in addition to his own suffering for his sin, his entire family was held accountable as the earth swallows them up, as their houses collapsed upon them, including his oxen and his donkeys. They were all put to death, all because of the sin of one man. This rubs against the grain of our individualism, the idea that I'm responsible for me and you have to be responsible for you. We see this as well in the book of First Chronicles, chapter 21, when King David takes his census of the Israelite army. And this is something that God had specifically forbidden him from doing. And when he takes the census, what is it that God tells him? He says that you are going to be punished and you can pick and what the punishment that he ends up picking ends up costing tens of thousands of Israelite lives, all because David, David sinned. Thousands of Israel suffered because of his sinful action. I think once again, This shows that it's not just our own sins that play a role in how we have to live our lives, but sometimes there's a pattern where somebody else's sin can have an impact upon our lives. In other words, this is what we would call the relationship between the actions of the one as they overflow in consequences to the many. The relationship between the one and the many. And where this idea of the connection between the one and the many, the one sinful act of the one, as it overflows and it impacts the lives of the many, it grows out of the covenantal soil of the scriptures. in that in this particular case, as we're looking here at Romans chapter five, verses 12 through 14, we see this idea that God ordained that one man, Adam, would represent all human beings. This is what lies at the heart of what theologians call the covenant of works, that God establishes Adam as the lone representative for all human beings. Conversely, what we'll also see in connection with this passage is that for the salvation of God's people, God has chosen one man, what the Bible calls, or who the Bible calls, the last Adam, to represent all of his people. And so what Paul has been doing here, especially in the book of Romans, is ever since Romans chapter three, verse 20, all the way up to Romans chapter five, verse 11, he's been dealing with matters that would lead us to think that the only thing we have to worry about is what we as individuals ourselves do. And so that, yes, we have to place our personal faith in God so that we can be saved. But what Paul emphasizes here, especially in Romans 5, verses 12 through 14, is that we do not stand alone. Someone represents us. We either have Adam, who represents us in the covenant of works, or conversely, We either have Adam or we have Jesus Christ. We either ally ourselves with the fallen kingdom of Adam, or we ally ourselves by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, with the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this is what Paul is doing here, is he's unpacking for us, in Romans chapter five, the terrible consequences of the broken covenant of works. When God made his covenant with Adam, when he says in Genesis 1.28, be fruitful and multiply, fill all the earth and subdue it. And when he says in Genesis 2.16 and 17, you may eat from any tree of the garden, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you may not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. When God makes that covenant with Adam and he binds him to himself in this covenantal agreement, he tells us in no uncertain terms what are the absolutely disastrous and destructive effects of Adam breaking that covenant. And as we read these verses, we might walk away thinking that all that Paul has done in these verses is tell us what terrible death and destruction Adam has brought upon us, but what he also holds out as he holds out the prospects of salvation, and not only salvation, but even eternal life through Jesus Christ. And so what we wanna do is first we wanna take a look at what Paul has to say about death in Adam. how death comes to us all. Secondly, we wanna see what he has to say about the life that comes to us through Jesus Christ, the last Adam. And then third and finally, we wanna unpack what Paul here explains as it relates to covenant theology, especially what we would call federal headship, that Adam is our federal representative in creation, but that Jesus Christ is our federal or covenant representative for salvation. So death in Adam, life in Christ, and then third and finally, federal headship. So let's give some thought here to what Paul has to say about death in Adam, in that I suspect that one of the questions that comes up for us as Paul unfolds the truths of the gospel in the book of Romans is how can he be so sure, as he says in Romans 3.23, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God? That's a pretty bold statement to make, that every single human being has fallen short of God's glory, and that every single human being is guilty of sin. Why is it that no one has escaped the clutches of sin? Well, this is what Paul explains here in verse 12. just as sin came into the world through one man, and death spread, I'm sorry, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. So he says, yep, every single human being is guilty of sin. Why? Because Adam sinned. Now, how is it possible that the sin of one man, Adam, overflows to such an extent and in such a way that all of us are responsible for his actions. How can I be personally held accountable for Adam's sin when I wasn't present in the garden, let alone when I wasn't even born? How's that possible? You know, it brings to mind an event from my own life that when I was a child, I was probably about 10 years old, my brother was about eight years old, And my mom came to us and she said, you know, somebody, there were only three of us in the house, my mom, me and my brother, my dad was at work, somebody sprayed my perfume. And I didn't know what she was talking about. And I said, you know, I didn't spray it. And my brother said, well, I didn't spray it. And my mom said, well, I know I didn't spray it. There's only three of us in here. Somebody sprayed the perfume. Have you ever had this happen? There's a ghost in your house, especially if you have children. Nobody knows who did things. And so my mom said, I'm gonna ask you again, who sprayed the perfume? And I said, truthfully, I didn't know, I didn't spray it. My brother's like, well, I didn't spray it either. And so now, mom started getting angry. You ever see this, where your mom, when you're growing up as a kid, smoke started to come out of her ears? You know, and you could see little fire flames in her eyes. Because now it's not a question of who sprayed the perfume, it's somebody's lying. And that's the one that would really get my mom upset. She said, I'm gonna ask one more time, and I wanna know who did this. And if you come forward now, there won't be any consequences. But if you tell me a lie, there's gonna be consequences. And I said, truthfully, I didn't spray it. And my brother said, I didn't spray it. Man, mom, whenever it was time to receive a spanking, it was like the Tasmanian devil. She'd get spinning up and spanking us. And I started crying, my brother starts crying. And through the flood of tears, my brother said, I sprayed it. I was like, I can't believe you finally copped to it. I just got punished for something that I didn't do. You did it. You did it, so I took the punishment for something that I didn't do. And I suspect that's the way we feel about Adam's sin. I wasn't there in the garden. I didn't disobey the command. Why am I being punished with Adam's penalty if I wasn't there, if I didn't do it? This is where we have to remember a couple of things. We have to remember that God chose Adam as our divinely appointed representative. God chose him to act in our place. Now we might object and we might think, well, wait a minute. If God had chosen me, I would have done differently. I can remember we were sitting at the dinner table one day and we would often do our devotions as a family at night after dinner. And we were talking about this very passage of scripture. And my son said, it's not fair. I didn't do the sin. Why didn't God choose somebody else? Why didn't he choose me? And I said, well, that's a perfectly understandable question. but do you realize what you're doing? You're questioning God's wisdom. You're saying, I would have done differently. I wouldn't have sinned. You're questioning God's wisdom, saying, Lord, you picked poorly. You picked the wrong person. I would have done differently. So such thoughts, as common as they may be, they cast a shadow of disrespect upon God's wisdom. So instead of doubting God's choice, we should instead recognize Adam was our federal head, our representative in the covenant that God made with him. And whatever Adam would do, whether good or bad, God would credit his actions, whether good or bad, unto all of his offspring, unto all of us. And we know what Adam did. He didn't act well, he didn't obey, and in fact, the contrary, he sinned. Notice what it says in verses 13 and 14. For sin was indeed in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. So notice how Paul in these two verses, he divides all of history up into three periods of history. He divides it into the period of Adam, and we know that Adam knew the law, God gave him a command. He then, he also talks about death reigning from Adam to Moses. We'll get to that period in a second. But we know that Adam, he has the law. He has the command, don't eat of the tree. We know that Moses, he has the law. God gives the 10 commandments to Moses and to the Israelites. So we know why these people would die with Moses. Why? They've received the law. They disobeyed the law. We know why Adam would die. He received God's commands. He disobeyed God's commands, he dies. So we know why Adam dies. We know why Moses and the Israelites die. What about these people in the middle? They didn't receive any special commands. They didn't receive the law. And yet Paul says, they too were subject to death. How is it that these people in the middle are subject to death? It's because of Adam's sin. God credited Adam's disobedience to all human beings. whether it was to the people after they received the law of Moses or even the people before. Every single human being is subject to the penalty of death. Every single human being carries with us what theologians call original sin, which is we are guilty of sin and God sees us as such. Why? Because of Adam's sin. Adam is our representative. And just like I got punished, because of my brother's actions. The big difference is, is we all get punished because of what Adam has done because God chose him as our representative. And so this means that the long, dark shadow of death hangs over the world all because of the actions, the sinful actions of one person, Adam. Humans once vibrant with life now have the pallor of death coloring their faces. In the words of one 14th century theologian, who was a theologian in the Eastern Church. He says, night and death had been poured out on our human nature, not because of any change in the true light, but because we had turned aside and had no longer any inclination towards the life bearing light. In the last times, however, the giver of eternal light and source of true life has had mercy upon us. In other words, even though because of Adam's sin, death hangs over the world. And so not only do we bear the guilt of original sin, that is Adam's sin credited to us, but we ourselves are also guilty of our own personal sins. We turn away from God. And yet what this theologian says is, nevertheless, the giver of eternal life and the source of true light has had mercy upon us. And we see hints of that in verse 14. Notice what Paul says. He says, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. He says Adam is telling us something about Jesus. Adam is a foreshadow. He's anticipating the person and work of Jesus. So this brings us to our second point. and life in Christ. And that the closing words of verse 14 give us hope that Adam's sinful actions are not the final word. We can think of, I think, Paul's statements here as if they were lines of poetry, lines of poetry that rhyme. The first line of the poem speaks of Adam's disobedience. But the second line of the poem speaks of one like Adam, but not about his disobedience, but about his obedience. The two lines rhyme. The two lines echo each other, but they ultimately point in different directions. This is why The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 45 calls Jesus the last Adam. He is so much like Adam in so many ways, but he is also so much unlike Adam in so many ways. We can say that Adam foreshadows Jesus. It's like he's a rough sketch. If somebody were to say, I want you to make a rough sketch of a house, and then once you have that rough sketch, then I want you, based upon that rough sketch, I want you to make a perfect drawing as to what you sketched out of that house. Well, Adam, we can say, is like a rough sketch of what Jesus looks like. And this is what Paul means when he says he's a type. He's a foreshadow. He's an anticipation of the one who is to come, of the Lord Jesus. Adam. was supposed to obey God's commands. And through his obedience, he would have secured eternal life. Adam was created in the image of God. We can also say this, Adam was the first prophet, priest, and king. He was the first prophet, priest, and king. God gave him a very brief scripture Don't eat from the tree. So Adam could have said each and every time they gathered for worship, here's the reading of the law of God, don't eat from the tree. And that's it. That was his prophetic function. His priestly function would have been to lead God's people in worship. And his kingly function was to exercise dominion over the creation. These are all ways that we find significant similarities to Jesus. But this is where we can also say there are significant dissimilarities between Jesus and Adam. Jesus is a true and faithful prophet, priest, and king, unlike Adam, who was disobedient. Jesus is the uncreated image of God, not the created image of God. Colossians 115, he, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God. And unlike Adam, Jesus was completely and wholeheartedly obedient to the will of his heavenly Father. What does Paul say in those beautiful words from Philippians chapter two, verses six and following? And that though he was in the form of God, speaking of the Son, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. Who is it that tried to grasp equality with God, but Adam, by grasping the fruit? But he said, no, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Think of this world of contrasts between Adam and Jesus. Adam was in the garden with every single one of his needs met. He could eat from any of the trees of the garden. Jesus, the last Adam, was in a sin-fallen world. He fasted for 40 days, so he was starving. He had the ability to create food simply by giving a command. And yet, because his father said, no, you're to be obedient to my will and you are to fast for 40 days, Jesus was faithful and he denied himself. Not only in those moments when he was there in the wilderness for 40 days, but for every single moment of his life in word, thought and deed. Old Testament scholars say that there are 613 commands in the Old Testament, and Adam only had two. Fill all the earth and don't eat from the tree, and Adam failed. Jesus had 613, and he was perfectly obedient to every single command. This is why at the baptism of Jesus, The father tears open the heavens and he says, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Jesus comes as a better Adam. Jesus comes to fulfill the broken covenant of works that Adam failed to complete. And so this brings us to our third and final point. In Adam, life in Christ, and then third and finally, the federal headship that we have in Christ and in Adam. And that when we think of the two headships, the two Adams that we have, we don't wanna think that we're simply contemplating abstract ideas. The difference of course, between the first and last Adams is between foreshadow and reality or type and anti-type or rough sketch and the real picture. But it's also the difference between heaven in Jesus and hell in Adam. I think on the last day, too many people believe that they will stand as isolated and lone individuals before the throne of judgment. And that they think that they'll only have to give an account for their own sins. They'll say, you know, I try to live a good life. I try to be good. I try to be kind to others. But what we don't realize is that, yes, we'll have to give an account for our actions, but we will also stand with one of two people on the last day. We will either stand with the fallen kingdom of Adam, and we will still be under the covenant of works, or we will stand with the Lord Jesus Christ under his federal headship in a state of salvation. And this is where we have to remember, not even Adam stayed in his own fallen kingdom. Because when God promised to Adam and Eve, Eve, through you and through your seed, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. What does Adam do in response to this promise? He renames his wife. She is no longer woman, but rather in Genesis 3.20, he says, you are Eve, mother of all the living. This was in effect, Adam's profession of faith. He says, I no longer trust in my own ability to secure my salvation and to secure eternal life. I only trust in your promise, oh Lord, in your promise to give us life through the seed of the woman. Now, let's just say for the sake of discussion, what if, what if we could live a perfectly sinful life? Well, we would still be accountable for Adam's sins. and therefore still stand guilty in his presence. Those are the terms of the covenant of works. And so I suspect even here, at this point, the objection would still persist. People would still wanna say, I wasn't in the garden. I didn't authorize Adam to represent me. I would have chosen differently. Well, aside from questioning the wisdom of God, After all, did God make a mistake by not placing you in the garden rather than instead of Adam? I think we often fail to see the flip side of this coin. Remember what Paul says here when he says that Adam was a type of the one who was to come. And it's especially relevant as you read the rest of Romans chapter five, verses 15 through 21, where the apostle Paul says that death came through the disobedience of the one, but life came through the obedience of the one. In other words, I want you to ponder this and think about this. If you reject Adam's representation in the covenant of works, because you want to say, I wasn't there. I didn't authorize him to represent me. If you reject Adam's representation, you have to reject the representation of Jesus because you weren't there either. You did not suffer the penalties of the law. You did not offer your obedience to the law. You were not on the cross, nor did you authorize Jesus to be your representative because the Father has chosen you from before the foundations of the world to place you in Christ. If you reject Adam's representation, you cannot have Christ as your representative either. If we recognize that Adam is our representative unto death, but that conversely, we have this amazing blessing that Jesus Christ, the last Adam, is our divinely appointed representative, and that it is through his suffering and through his righteousness and obedience to the law that he gives us eternal life, then, then we have eternal life through Jesus. We have to accept Adam's representation, for in accepting Adam's representation, we also can accept, by the grace of God, Christ's representation. Deny Adam, and you can have no part in Christ. Adam failed. And what was Adam barred from? He was barred from eating from the tree of life. but it's only through Christ that we once again get access to the tree of life. Revelation 2.7, to the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. It's Christ who gives us the hope and promise of eternal life because he comes and he fulfills the broken covenant of works. Where Adam failed, Jesus is faithful. I think the chief point here of Romans 5, 12 through 14 is that we should abandon all hope of thinking that we can somehow fulfill the law for our salvation. We should abandon all hope that we should somehow be able to do what Adam failed to do. We cannot stand before the divine bar because we're sinners. God holds us accountable for our own sins as well as for the sin of Adam. And because we are in Adam and we're accountable for Adam's first sin, his guilt is credited to us. but it's only Christ's perfect law-keeping and his suffering that fulfills the requirements, not only of the covenant of works, but even of its fracture, even of its being broken, so that we can stand in Christ on the last day, knowing that we have salvation. Only Christ grants us access to the tree of life, so that we can eternally dwell in the presence of our triune God. Contemplate these words from Romans 5, 14. Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come, Jesus Christ. Or in the words of one hymn, all mankind fell in Adam's fall. The hymn says, all mankind fell in Adam's fall, one common sin infects them all. From sire to son, the bane descends and over all the curse impends. Through all man's powers, corruption creeps. and him in dreadful bondage keeps. In guilt he draws his infant breath and reaps its fruit of woe and death. But Christ, the second Adam, came to bear our sin and woe and shame, to be our life, our light, our way, our only hope, our only stay. Praise God. that he has not left us in Adam, but that he has given us Jesus Christ, the faithful and true last Adam, to give unto us eternal life and the forgiveness of our sins. Let's bow together in a word of prayer. Father God, we give you thanks for the salvation that you have given us in Christ. We thank you, O Lord, that he is our faithful covenant head. And unlike Adam, he who was faithless, he who was rebellious, And indeed, he who is disobedient, oh Lord, help us to see our own disobedience in his sin. Help us to recognize that his sin is ours. But may we. Rejoice all the more knowing that the righteousness and the suffering of the Lord Jesus, the last Adam, is ours by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. We rejoice that you have sent one to be faithful to your covenant, to be faithful to your law, and to offer up his obedience so that we might have life and have life eternal. Oh Lord, help us to remember that while all are lost in Adam, We only have life in Christ. We pray and ask all of these things in Christ's precious and holy name. Amen.