The Life You Never Knew, Part 1

Colin Smith: For Adam, he loved God, and he never had to work at that. You see, we sometimes say, well, I ought to pray, and we ought to come to worship. But for Adam, there was no ought about it. It was in him, it just flowed from him. It came out of his very nature. Can you imagine how wonderful therefore this life was?
Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I'm Steve Hiller. Glad you've joined us as today we begin a new series called The Inside Story of Human Life. And today, we're talking about the life you never knew and how Adam and Eve, our first parents, didn't even have to work at loving God.
Colin Smith: Yes, that's right. They were made in a way in which they were completely upright. And the Bible states this in Ecclesiastes in chapter 7 and verse 29. It's a fascinating statement. God made man upright. Literally, God made Adam, Adam upright. But men have gone in search of many schemes. And what that tells us is that human life as we experience it is very different from life as Adam experienced it. There is a human life that none of us have ever known, and it was a very rich life, and it was a very wonderful life, and it went terribly wrong.
Steve Hiller: Well, there are times when, I think as believers in Christ, we do feel that love for God, and there are times where we struggle to feel that love. Obviously, sin entered the picture and that impacts that and affects that. For the person who says, I want to love God more, but I'm struggling to do so, how do you engage in that struggle?
Colin Smith: Well, you see, I think the first thing is to have a really good understanding of the problem. And because we don't often talk in church world about the subject of sin, I mean, original sin. I mean, that's hardly the most attractive kind of a title, is it? That doesn't look very promising. It's actually surprisingly helpful. The first thing about getting better is knowing what's wrong with you. Before you ever get a prescription, you need a diagnosis. We want to rush on to prescription all the time without ever getting a diagnosis. And this series is about diagnosis. It's about understanding the human condition. It's understanding me and therefore understanding my battles, and therefore understanding how the grace of God operates in human life.
Steve Hiller: Well, the series is called The Inside Story of Human Life, and today we begin a message, The Life You Never Knew. If you can, join us in Ecclesiastes chapter 7. Here's Pastor Colin.
Colin Smith: Now, last week was the Chicago Triathlon, an extraordinary event with about 4,000 participants. Fascinating race. The Triathlon is one event, but it comes in three very different looking stages: the run, the bike, and the swim. And this series is a little bit like the Triathlon. It is one series, but it will come in three quite different parts. We're going to begin by looking at the inside story of human life, asking the question, why is the world as it is? Then later in the fall, we're going to move on in the second stage, as it were, of the Triathlon, to look at the inside story of the Christian life. What does it mean to be a Christian? How can I do this well? What should I expect by way of experience in the Christian life? And then the plan is that in the new year, we'll take up stage three of the Triathlon, and that will be the inside story of your future life, because your life will not always be as it is right now. Ahead of every person, there is a future that the Bible makes clear will either be one of eternal misery or it will be of eternal joy. And we're going to look at that in the new year. So, this is an extended series that we begin in these three parts today. Now, we begin then in the first stage of the Triathlon, as it were, looking at the inside story of human life. The question that is before us here, why is the world as it is today? And don't you feel that as you look at the news even this week with regards to Somalia, and the agony of children and adults starving and dying, and food has been given, but it has been commandeered by the most brutal and evil malicious? And you look at this and you say, now, why does this happen? It seems time and time and time again when there is the greatest human need, we see the outbreak of the greatest human evil. Why is the world as it is? So, in just seven days, next Sunday, we will be here. It will be the 10th anniversary of September the 11th. And if 11 years ago, Hollywood had produced a movie that depicted the events that took place on that day, we would all have gone to see it on a Friday night, and some of us would have, and we would have wowed at the special effects, and we would have gone out for something to eat afterwards. We would have said, wow, that was an extraordinary movie, but, of course, nothing like that could ever happen in real life. We would have said. What is your explanation of evil? You cannot live in this world without one. Whatever a person believes, whatever their philosophy of life, whatever their cultural background, you cannot live in this world without some thoughts about why the world is as it is. What is your explanation of evil? And explanations are all around us. People will tell you it is social, or it is educational, or it is economic. But we all know that great evil is committed by the rich as well as by the poor. We all know that evil bursts out in multiple ways as much under capitalism as it does under communism. And we all know that some of the most wicked atrocities that have ever happened in the history of the human race have been conceived by the most brilliant of human minds. Or let's bring this why question down to perhaps a closer and more personal level. Why do families break up? Why does that happen? Why would it be that time and again, people whose love for each other was so strong that they came to make vows to each other and pledge their lives to each other, came to a place where they felt they could no longer abide to live under the same roof? What could possibly cause that to happen? Why is the world as it is today? Now, would you open your Bible, please, at the book of Ecclesiastes and chapter 7 and verse 29? Psalms, Proverbs, and then Ecclesiastes. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7 and verse 29. And as you're turning there, let me remind you that the entire book of Ecclesiastes is really an exploration of the question that is before us today. It was written by King Solomon, the son of David. Solomon had fabulous wealth and power. And at the beginning of his reign, he walked with God, and God gave him great wisdom. But then he made a different choice. You can read in the Old Testament the story of how money, sex, and power took possession of his heart, and this man began to live at a distance from God. He changed the trajectory of his life. He began to live on impulse. And he pushed every boundary of life. And the book of Ecclesiastes comes out of that experience. He tells us what he found. And in summary, this is this, that the more he pursued money and sex and power, the emptier his life became. And out of that experience, he writes the book of Ecclesiastes, and he speaks therefore about how he has found so much emptiness, so much vanity. And then at certain points, he comes in the book to give us a conclusion that is like a kind of fixed point, that he says, well, this is one thing I know for sure. And the verse that is before us today, if you're not familiar with it, it's well worth underlining. It's a great verse to use in conversations with others and should be familiar to you. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 and verse 29, he's giving us a firm conclusion that has come from the exploration of the extremities of life. And he says, this only I have found. So now he's going to give us his conclusion. Ecclesiastes 7:29. This only I have found. God made mankind upright. But men have gone in search of many schemes. Great verse to get into your memory, and your mind, and into your heart. This only I have found. God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes. Now, the word that is translated mankind here is the word Adam, or as we would pronounce it, Adam. God, Solomon is saying, God made Adam upright. But men have gone in search of many schemes. So, you see that this verse is making a contrast between Adam as he was created by God and men, as Solomon observed the world in which he lived, or as we observe the world in which we live today. It's a contrast that's being made. Now, he says, God made Adam upright. What does it mean to be upright? What that means is very simply that Adam was right and good in himself. That is how God made him. Doing what was good, doing what was right, just came naturally to Adam. It was his instinct. He had a bent towards what was good and what was right. It was simply what he wanted to do. So, think of what that means. For Adam, he loved God, and he never had to work at that. See, we sometimes say, well, I ought to pray, and we ought to come to worship. But for Adam, there was no ought about it. It was in him. It just flowed from him. It came out of his very nature. Can you imagine how wonderful therefore this life was? God gave to this man a wife, Eve, and she was made upright too. Think of this. Ladies, the one woman in all the world who never had to correct her husband. And guys, don't you envy Adam, the one guy in all the world who never had to work at trying to understand his wife? The perfection of this relationship made upright, instinctively.
Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called The Life You Never Knew. Now, we have to pause here, but stay with us. We'll get back to the message in just a moment. We're able to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching each day because of your financial generosity, and as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Lincoln's Daily Devotional. Colin, what is one thing that you'd like people to take away from this book?
Colin Smith: Well, you know, that opening the Bible is really very, very simple. I think some people have the idea, oh, I don't have time for studying the Bible, and it's all very difficult and all very complicated. Actually, it's beautifully simple. And Lincoln's Devotional is really a good place to begin. What this book does is it gives us a verse for every day of the year. Just a verse. Sometimes it's two verses from the Bible, but it's very, very short. The idea is that you try and take in a simple and wonderful truth or promise from the word of God, and then just carry it in your heart and in your mind to be able to draw strength from it, to draw comfort and hope from it. And each month in this devotional is organized around a theme of part of the experience of a believer's life. So, one month, you'll be looking at the temptations that a Christian faces. Another month, you'll be reading verses from the Bible about the sorrows that a Christian will experience. Another month, you'll be reading about the joys, and of course, you'll end up reading about the glorious hope and the great future that lies ahead of every believer. Very simple. A verse from the Old King James version of the Bible, and a short poem or a verse of a hymn that just reflects on it added, and that's there for you every day for a year. It's a great place to get started, or if you get bogged down, it's a great way to be refreshed.
Steve Hiller: Well, we want to send you a copy of Lincoln's Daily Devotional as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. You can give online at openthebible.org, or when you call 1-877-673-6365. That might be easier to remember as 1-877-OPEN-365. And again, the website is openthebible.org. Let's go back to the message. Again, here is Pastor Colin.
Colin Smith: Now, the word upright, of course, indicates that from the very beginning of time, there was something called right against which Adam could be measured. You remember, of course, that the 10 Commandments were only given much later in the course of the Bible story. And so, that raises the question, how then did Adam know what was right? And the answer is simply this, that God wrote what is good and what is right on Adam's heart. He knew it by instinct. He was made upright. That's what our verse is saying. Thomas Boston, who writes so helpfully on this, says, Adam did not have the law written on tablets of stone, but it was written on his mind, and a knowledge of it was created within him. He says, God impressed it, that is, what is good and right, God impressed it upon his soul and made him a law to himself. Friends, that is a very striking phrase. What that is saying is simply this, because he was made upright, Adam didn't need a code of laws. He didn't need the 10 Commandments, for the 10 Commandments were already written in his heart. You could say to Adam, just do what comes to you by instinct, and the instinct within him was to do what is good and what is right. By the way, that's why even after the fall in Romans chapter 2 and 15, there are still some remnants of the instinct of what is good and right, and even in the fallen world, we call that conscience, you see. That's the remnants of what was there in Adam. But in Adam, it was unsullied by any sin in the garden. It was instinctive. He was a law to himself. He didn't need 10 Commandments. They were in his heart. By the way, doesn't that just show you the radical effects of sin in the world? Can you imagine what would happen in America today if we said, you know, from a week on Tuesday, the president said, from a week on Tuesday, we're going to end all legislation. There'll be no more legislation. We just want all you guys, all Americans, because we're all good at heart. We want all Americans to do what comes from your heart. Just, you know, there'll be no tax laws. Just give what you feel and know in your heart is the right thing to give to the government because we all know that certain things need to be done for the good of all and so forth. You just begin to think about it, and you realize what it means to live in a sinful world. And you realize that the reason that we live in a world where legislation goes on and on and on and on and on is that human governments have this ongoing and ultimately impossible task of trying to contain the sinful impulse that is now in the human heart, you see. It's how far we are from Eden. But Adam didn't need the law. The knowledge of what was good and right is in him. He was a law to himself. He loved God and he loved his neighbor by instinct. It was completely natural. That was his glorious freedom. But while Adam's righteousness, with which he was created, his uprightness was natural. That's the first thing to know about it. The second thing that you must remember about it was that it was also changeable. It was natural and it was changeable. Doing what is good and right was instinctive to Adam, but it was not inevitable for Adam. Adam's righteousness was natural, but it was also changeable. Which does get us to the question, why did God ever allow the possibility of sin? I mean, if Adam and Eve had remained upright, the whole human race would be born in paradise. And we'd be living in a world of harmony in which no external laws were needed, and in which it was natural for all to love God and natural for all to love each other. We would be in paradise. God made man righteous. So, why did he allow even the possibility of sin? And the answer to that, of course, is that God made man upright, but he also made him free. And for Adam, that meant that freedom always means that there is another choice. And for Adam, that meant that while he was made with this natural bent, this natural inclination towards what is good and what is right, he was not a robot. God made him a thinking and a willing and a feeling being, just as you are, and gave to him real choices and therefore real consequences. And God said to Adam, you remember Genesis 2:17, you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And of course, being upright, Adam would have known that by instinct. But God, as a kind father, speaks this word of protection to his created son. And face to face says, Adam, don't go there. And you know the story that the serpent came to Eve and said, you can be as God, and Eve was upright, and she loved God, but she chose against the inclination of her heart. You say, how is that possible? Have you never done that? And Adam joined her in this wretched choice, and all the blessings of paradise were lost. Outside of the garden, Adam experienced frustration in his work every day. Eve experienced pain in bearing her children. The kids were born outside paradise. Paradise was the life that they had never known, and paradise is the life that you and I never knew either. And it cannot be created in this world. It cannot, it cannot, it cannot. And you know the story that before long, the first human family, just four people, began to fracture. Isn't this incredible that after the fall, very soon it becomes obvious that four people can't live together? And there's Adam and there's Eve and there's two boys, and guess what? The two boys are fighting, and the one kills the other. And from there, the story of human history flows out. A fractured family. And God outside. And the fellowship broken. And the friendship severed. A hostility between man and God. God made Adam upright. But men, so we're now talking about the whole history of the human race since the fall, but men have gone in search of many schemes.
Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith in a message entitled The Life You Never Knew, part of a series The Inside Story of Human Life. Well, we do have to pause today's teaching right here, but we'll continue this message next time. Well, Colin, as we talked about at the beginning of the broadcast, we're in a series on sin, and for a lot of people, they're like, I don't know that I want to hear that much about sin. And then today's message so far has been all about the problem of sin and Adam and Eve and original sin, and they're going, okay, is there hope? Is there help? What do I do with that?
Colin Smith: Give me the application.
Steve Hiller: Right.
Colin Smith: Well, actually, there are profoundly practical applications. Here's the first. Stop blaming God. We live in a culture where whenever something goes wrong, the instinct is very often to blame God. Why has God done this? Why is the world in this way and so forth and so on? The doctrine of sin takes me out of blaming God. God created the world good. It is a human issue that the world has been spoiled by sin. So, that's going to change my whole perspective of God. That's going to liberate me from a place where I'm blaming him and bring me into a place where there's the possibility of loving him. And then it's going to bring me to a place of confessing. You know, if I go through life thinking that I'm basically good and that the world's basically right. Everything's God's fault and I'm justifying myself. But when I grasp really the doctrine of human sin, I'm going to say, you know, wait a minute, I am a sinner. Here's what I found, Steve. Once a person identifies one single sin, one real one, I see pride. For example. Identify one and you'll begin to see there's a whole mass of them, a whole mass of them. And so, you begin to stop blaming God. You begin to see your own need to confess, and then at that point, you begin to see the relevance of Jesus Christ. There is one righteous one, only one righteous one, in all of the history of the world. He is the son of God, and I need to put my trust in him.
Steve Hiller: And what Pastor Colin has been talking about is really what we're going to be spending our next broadcast taking a look at. Just, what does it mean for us to be sinners and how can we be right with God when we have this indwelling sin nature? And so I hope that you'll make it a point to tune in for our next broadcast. If you know that you can't be listening to every message, you can always order the series on CD. It's called The Inside Story of Human Life. Ask about that when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or you'll find ordering information online at openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.
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