The Second Adam

We had a lot of announcements. I have a lot of what I want to cover today. This is one of those sermons where we're going to be going through a large amount of information. But as we prepare for the Passover and the Spring Holy Days, it's very important that we focus in on a number of things. Next week we'll be talking about the Holy Days. Of course, the Holy Days themselves, those special Holy Days, the High Holy Days, plus the Sabbath in the middle, we'll be talking about the Spring Holy Days and the meeting of these days for us.

Let's go to Revelation 5. This is where we'll start here today. Revelation chapter 5. The Apostle John here is having a vision of the end time and a vision of what's going on in heaven. There's a lot of symbolism and so forth in this vision that he's having. But verse 1 of Revelation chapter 5. And I saw on the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.

Now this is God sitting on the throne. This is God the Father. Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loosen seals? And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or look at it. So God says, Who can open this scroll?

Now this is all being played out for John's benefit. The angel picks it up and he says, There's nobody. None of the angels can open it. And none of the human beings can open it. And John is so overwhelmed with this, he says in verse 5, So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll or to look at it. But one of the elders, this is one of the angelic beings that was there, said to me, Do not weep.

Behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, The root of David has prevailed to open the scroll and loose its seven seals. We have the lion of the tribe of Judah. Now notice in verse 6, And I looked to behold in the midst of the throne, The four living creatures, and in the midst of the outer stood a lamb, As though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, Which the seven spirits of God set out unto all the earth, That he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who settled the throne.

Now when you read the rest of this chapter, what you see is that it's obvious that this is Jesus Christ. And the rest of this has songs that the angels sing to him, because he is worthy to open the scroll. And here, Jesus is revealed as the lion of Judah and the lamb of God.

Why is he revealed as those two things? And what does that have to do with Passover? Because him being the lamb of Judah, or the lion of Judah, and the lamb of God, the lion of Judah is a symbol of kingship. That very phrase, the lion of Judah, is a symbol of kingship. So he's a king and a lamb. Now what's that have to do with the Passover that's coming up? The Passover presents us with a problem. It presents all humanity with a problem. Let's go to Genesis 1.26. You think, well, Genesis 1 is a strange place to start if we're going to talk about the Passover.

Well, if we're going to understand lion of Judah, lamb of God, we're going to have to understand something that happens here in Genesis. Genesis 1 in verse 26. We know this passage, but I want to zero in on one word here.

Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God creates human beings. But notice the word. He says, Let them have dominion. Dominion means control. It means rulership.

He said, Let them have rulership over the earth. The earth was ours. Ours to take care of, ours to work with, ours to experiment with. This was given to human beings to have dominion over. Now, the word dominion here is very important. Human beings have dominion over the earth.

But when we read through Genesis 2 and 3, we know the story that we know what happened.

Adam and Eve were given dominion over the garden. It just started there. He said, Now, you have to take care of it. You have to keep it. You have to name all the animals. In other words, Adam and Eve were in charge of the garden. They were actually, they had their descendants in charge of the entire earth. They had dominion. But Satan comes along, convinced them to turn against God, and God kicked them out of Eden. Something happened there that was very, very important. Now, this is a whole sermon in itself, but we can summarize this very quickly. When Adam and Eve removed themselves from being under God's dominion, God's rule over them, they gave up their dominion. And it says in the New Testament, Satan is the God of this world. At that point, Satan became the God of this world, and he had dominion. God didn't give him the dominion. He stole it from God's children to whom he had given them it. He stole it from us because, well, our ancestors and we have let him do it. You and I have let him do it, too. We let him rule in our lives too often. So we were under God's dominion, and under God's dominion we had dominion. We had freedom. Now, when you have rulership, you have to start about freedom. We had freedom. We had dominion. We had... it was ours. Satan took it, and for all these thousands of years we have lived under Satan's dominion. And there were three things that happened because of this problem. One, we're under Satan's dominion. Two, we now experience sin, and sin corrupts our nature, corrupts who we are, and it kills us. So we're now under Satan's dominion. We're under sin. We commit sin, and we die. And there is nothing you and I can do of ourselves to overthrow Satan, get rid of sin, or not die. Here's the problem. We're trapped. We don't have dominion anymore. See, our dominion only worked as long as we were under God's dominion. When we walked away from God's dominion, now we're under Satan's dominion. We've lost our freedom. We've lost our control. We lost our rulership. And we all experience sin. We all become sinners, and we all die. And those three things, we're in bondage. We're absolutely slave to those three things. So there's the problem. The Holy Days outlined God's way of solving the problem. God has a solution to the problem. It's a solution so brilliant and so different than anything you and I would come up with. Absolutely different than anything that we would come up with. So what I want to look at is the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God, and how God, through Christ, as the Passover, is giving us the solution to these three problems. The dominion of Satan, dominion of sin, and the dominion of death. We can't get out of it. We're in bondage to it.

So let's start with the first solution, the defeat of Satan.

It's interesting, in Genesis 3.15, back in the story where we've started here, it says that God would send the seed of the woman to conquer Satan. A human being would conquer Satan, and yet there has been no naturally born human being that has the power to do that.

So God predicted, right at the very beginning, a human being will do this. A human being will do this. Now, it's real important to understand something here.

When we talk about Satan taking dominion over the earth and becoming the God in this world, that didn't do away with God's kingdom. It didn't do away with God's dominion. It didn't do away with God's power.

God was still God. In other words, Satan only was allowed to rule because God allowed him to rule. Understand that. We look through the Scripture. Satan has to go to God to get permission to do things. That's what your world, but you can only go so far. And God constantly intervenes with human history to make sure Satan doesn't win. God has intervened in our lives to make sure that Satan doesn't win. And we also know that there's a point in time when the Scripture says God says Christ back to do what? To remove Satan. To remove him. So God didn't stop being God. God's kingdom didn't go away. But on this little globe where humanity had been given dominion, we lost it. We lost it because we gave it up. And God could take it back any time. What's so interesting about this? God didn't lose his dominion. The earth is still His, even though Satan hasn't for a while. Who was it that lost their dominion? Us. We're the ones who lost it. Not God. God's still God. What I find interesting is God could have taken it back any time He wanted. But it's we who lost it.

So God had a plan to do something unbelievable that has to do with breaking Satan's dominion. Isaiah 9. And this is central to the messianic prophecy throughout the Old Testament.

Sometimes I think people have wrestled with the idea, well, God's kingdom sort of is created when Christ comes back. No, God's kingdoms are restored on this earth when Christ comes back. God's kingdom exists. The whole universe is God's kingdom. This is God's kingdom. It's just He's let Satan have it for a while. God never lost His dominion. We did. And in this brilliance of God, we lost it. So guess what He does? Verse 6 of Isaiah 9, one of the most quoted messianic prophecies in the entire Bible. For unto us a child is born, a physical being unto us the Son is given, that the government will be upon his shoulder. Oh, here we have a human being which receives dominion, takes control of the earth again, receives again the rulership of the earth. But notice it says, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. This child is also God. This is just an ignorable child, just like in Genesis 3.15, that's not some normal child. But it is a human being who is also God. God never lost His dominion. We did. One of the reasons Jesus Christ came as the Lion of Judah was to become King, and as a human being, conquer Satan. The children lost the kingdom, so Jesus came to be one of the children. We'll read that in a minute. And He didn't even tell us why He became one of the children. There's numerous reasons, but this is one of them. Okay, children, I have to get your dominion back. God can remove Satan, God can remove Satan, and He did it because we are His children, and the Word became flesh to bring us back. To give us our dominion back, He became like us. I find this interesting because God could have just said, Satan, you're not the God of the world anymore, but He beat Him with a human being. He beat Him with it. Now, the Word had to become flesh. So, I mean, this isn't just any human being, but He still beat Him with a human being. This shows you the link between God and human beings as His family, as His children. It's a remarkable concept. He says, of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end. Upon the throne of David, there we have David, we have the Lion of Judah, and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with the judgment and justice. From that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. So, He didn't just take it back like He could have. Instead, He put it in place, a plan in which He said, My son in heaven will become like you. Satan will be defeated by someone in the flesh, because the children in the flesh, they took their dominion, that He stole it from. But it's even explained more in Hebrews 2. Look at Hebrews 2. I notice a sort of a big concept.

But it shows us the link between us and God in terms of we are created as His children. He intended us to have the earth. Now, Satan didn't sneak in and do it. He knew Satan was there. He knew what Satan would do. And that's why from the very beginning, as soon as human beings sinned, what was put in motion was this plan.

That's why it says Jesus was slain from the foundation of the earth. The moment they followed Satan, this was put in motion, which was the Word was going to come down here and become us, like us, in order to conquer Satan the way Adam and Eve should have conquered Satan. Look what it says in Hebrews 2, verse 9.

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God might taste death for everyone. So, he tastes death for everyone. We're going to get into that in a minute. For it was fitting for him for whom all are all things, and by whom are all things, and bringing many sons to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren.

He is not ashamed to call them brethren. But Jesus Christ sitting at the throne of God right now, doing the work of the 11 in your life, because he works throughout the days of the 11 in bread, part of the thing in pictures is the fact that he delevens us. As he delevens our lives, he's doing this work with his for his brothers and sisters. That's how much God wanted to help us understand this family relationship. That Jesus Christ became like us so that he's not ashamed to say, oh yeah, that's my brothers and sisters, us in this carnal state, still struggling, still physical, are his brothers and sisters. He took this on to be like us so that we can become like him. And he had to defeat Satan the way Adam was supposed to do it, and Adam didn't do it. So the family gets the land back. It's like an old cowboy movie, right? But the family comes in, the money-grubbing land grabbers come in and grab the ranch, take over the ranch. And the family's just destitute and thrown out into the desert, and then John Wayne shows up and takes the land back. Well, that's sort of the story here.

My brothers showed up to take the land back to give us our dominion. He says, that's why he says here, verse 12, saying, I will declare my name to, your name to my brethren in the midst of the assembly. I will sing praises to you. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, here am I and the children who God has given me. It's all quotes from the Old Testament. But notice now, verse 14. Inasmuch that as the children have partaken a flesh of blood, okay, that's us, he himself, in the whole context here of Jesus Christ, he himself likewise shared in the same. He can call us brethren because he became like us to throw the guy who grabbed our land out. And when I say land, that always means, you know, the earth. I mean, the whole place that we're supposed to have in God's kingdom as his family. He says, he himself likewise shared in the same that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil. He did this to destroy the devil.

See, we know we're going to talk about sin. We talk a lot about sin at the Passover time. But he also came to do this. This is why Passover and Atonement are really tied together. You notice in the Holy Days, Passover and Atonement are really tied together. Came to conquer sin. He came to also throw out the author of sin and to bring us back into our original dominion, our original state as the children of God.

So he did this. Notice he became like the children for taking a flesh and blood so that he could destroy the power of Satan. This is the first step in the solution to the problem.

And release those who fear of death for all their lifetime subject to bondage. To release us from bondage. One of the great messages of the Passover and Days of Unleavened bread is what? Bondage. Remember I said the three things is Satan, sin and death. Two of them are mentioned right here. He came to destroy Satan and to conquer death. So we see that the first solution to the problem is that Jesus Christ, once our dominion was stolen, and we've lived under this tyrannical abuse of being all these years, that he would send his son to conquer Satan. Which he could have done by not coming. This is for us. God could remove Satan any time he wanted. The reason he did it this way was for us. For us to connect.

It's for us to connect. And so that's why he did it. So now we have the second problem, which is sin. Okay, 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Are you with me with this? Okay, most of you. Okay. Because we don't think of this. We don't think of Jesus Christ becoming like us to get us back where we're supposed to be and to get rid of the one who took us where we are. Yeah, that's why he came. He came to do what Adam was supposed to do and could not do. But then he's not exactly just, he's like us and then he's flesh and blood, but he also was God. He came with all that character and all that knowledge and all that understanding.

1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15. Let's start in verse 1.

Paul says, Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel, which I preached to you, which also you received, and which you withstand, by which also you are saved. If you hold fast that word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. Now this is very important because he tells them, you lose this, your whole belief could be in vain. The word if is very important. If you do this, if you don't do this, you can lose it. It can be absolutely in vain. For I delivered you first of all that which I also received. I delivered you first of all is a very interesting phrase. It's translated in some translations of first importance. In other words, he says to them, okay, we're talking about the gospel and I want to tell you what I gave you. This was the first part of the gospel. It's not all of it, but this is where I started. This is the first part of it. A first importance. The whole gospel message only makes sense if you understand this. So let's start with this. He says, for I delivered you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. That he was buried, that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures, and he was seen by Cephas and then by the 12th.

He starts out by saying, look, he died for our sins. So we only came to conquer Satan. Now Satan has been defeated not only by God, but by a human being because the dominion was originally given the human beings. Now Jesus had to die for our sins. God's law has not been done away with. Because if it's been done away with, there was no need for Jesus' sacrifice. And there's no need for us to do the Passover anything. The only reason that we do the Passover is because we realize that we are sinners. And if we are sinners, we have broken the law of God. If the law of God is even the greatest of the Protestant leaders back in the 1400s and 1500s or 1500s, even they said, except for Martin Luther, the law can't be done away with because if it's done away with, there's no need for Christ. But that's been perverted over the years and lost.

There is no need for this. He died for our sins. Not just the people who lived before, but our sins now. That means there still has to be a definition of sin. So law still exists. So he died for our sins. The law of God requires that when you become corrupted by sin, you forfeit your life. We don't like to think that. Why was it that bad? I didn't murder anybody. You know, I wasn't a drug dealer. Oh, yeah, maybe I told a few fibs once in a while. See, if we only look at sin that way, we miss the point. When you and I have become corrupted by sin, we forfeit our lives before God. And there's something in the world today that gets people to go, no, God loves me. That's not true. Yes, it is. Corrupted the way we are. We're unfit for eternal life. We're unfit. We would just turn eternity into an insane asylum. Look what we've done on earth. Can you imagine having all the power of a spirit being and being insane like we are? We'd turn it into an insane asylum. We're unfit for that. So sin had to be dealt with. And the first thing that has to be dealt with is, okay, you've got to die. And that's just any physical death. That means eternal death.

So he came to die for our sins. He came to remedy that problem. But you know, and this is where the days of ill and bread really bring this out. His death is only part of the answer. His death is only part of the answer. Let's go here to verse 14 in the same chapter. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 14. Let's go to verse 13. Get the point where part of the argument that Paul is giving here. But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. You know, on Passover, we celebrate his death because that's what it says. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. We commemorate his death. But we don't keep him dead. You and I worship God and he resurrect in Christ, don't we?

We don't keep him dead. He says, yes, and we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that he has raised up Christ, whom he did not raise up, as in fact the dead did not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. Now really listen to this verse 17. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. His death wasn't enough. It's his resurrection and what God is doing through him now in our lives. It isn't just being forgiven. That's why it's such a falsehood to say, say the sinner's prayer and boom, you receive an immediate salvation. That's not true. We don't just accept his death. It's his resurrection and him living in us through God's Spirit.

That has to happen. And persevered he's amazing. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile because you're still in your sins. His death wasn't enough because it never was intended to be enough. It wasn't just because if he died to stay dead, guess what that means? We're going to die and stay dead. That's what it means.

That all those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished, which is the point he makes. Those who have died in Christ, they're just dead. They're never coming back. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable, because if Christ hasn't been resurrected and we believe this, this is really a big joke because there's nothing for us. There's no future for us.

Salvation is the process by which God restores us to our dominion, our place in His family. This is where the Days of Unleavened Bread come into this, and we talk about ancient Israel coming out of Egypt. They were in bondage. They could not get themselves out of the grips of Pharaoh. They could not release themselves from slavery, and they could not save themselves from the death that they were facing. Pharaoh is a type of Satan. Egypt is a type of sin. Their bondage which led to death was a type of the death that we all face. God opened the Red Sea. They went through.

He conquered Pharaoh, Satan. The blood of the lamb was placed on the doorpost, their substitute. They went through the Red Sea, a type of their baptism. That's why we specify baptism as so important in order to take the passive.

And then they had to go to the Promised Land. That's the point we forget. After Satan's defeated, after we are forgiven of our sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, after we're baptized, we still have to do the traveling to the Promised Land. We still have to go there. And this is where the pillar of fire, the pillar of smoke gets Christ leading us, the Church, to our promise. He's doing that work. It's all tied into the Days of the Love of the Brand. All tied into the Days of the Love of the Brand. That's how God does it.

And so, as we keep these days, we think about, wow, I'm forgiven. I'm washed. The blood of the land covers me. Pharaoh has been defeated. But I still have to go on the journey. I'm not to the Promised Land yet. And this journey is not always easy.

But God's already done those other things. The result of this, of course, is what John says in 1 John 3. 1 John chapter 3 verse 2. 2 John says, Beloved, now, this is who we are now. Now we are the children of God. We weren't the children of God. We were wayward children. We were children cut off from Him. But we are now the children of God. And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. We don't know exactly what we're going to be. What's it mean to be a spirit being? I don't know. I can only sort of guess at it. But what's very interesting here, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. As children, we will see our Father and our brother, and we will be like them. We will see God as He is.

So, not only the penalty for sin had to be removed from us. I understand not just the penalty, but also the bondage of it. That's what we're doing on the journey. On this journey, we're having God through His Spirit, through the leadership of Christ, break the bondage of sin. I mean, think about how hard you could get the Israelites out of Egypt. But it was real hard to get Egypt out of the Israelites.

That's where we are. We're the slaves wandering through the desert. God's trying to get the slavery out of us. And we keep wanting to be slaves. We keep trying to be slaves. We keep fighting to be slaves in our minds. And He said, I want to give you dominion. I want to free you from all this. And we keep fighting. He says, verse 3 of the same chapter, Everyone who has this hope, this hope that we are His children and that we will be like Him, everyone who has this hope in Him purifies Himself just as He is pure. We become like Him. The slavery, this bondage, this sin is removed from us day by day as we grow and become pure. 4.

Colossians 1.12. He said, we're covering a lot of things today, but I really want to talk about this before the days of 11 bread coming up. It shows us our relationship with Christ and our relationship with God the Father in this.

Colossians 1.12.

I'm breaking into a sentence here that says, Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be the overtakers of the inheritance of the saints. 3. Our inheritance again. Back to the dominion. Actually, it's the whole universe. God wants to give to us. It's everything. Because He says, I want to give you all things. He didn't give up being ruler over all things. He still has it. He's like, oh boy. Okay, you can follow that God for a while. And then, there'll come a time I'll kick Him out and I'll give you all things. I'll restore you back to your original dominion, your original inheritance. But you're going to have to learn to appreciate it. You're going to have to learn to want it. And you're going to have to learn that this inheritance can't be maintained through greed and anger and hatred. Those things don't work in this inheritance. He says, inheritance of saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of His Son, of His love. But who were He of... I'm sorry. In who we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin. So, He remedied the second problem, sin. And that happens, one, through His death as our substitute, and two, His work in our lives that God is having Him do now. It says, Christ is the head of the church. And I think that's something we have never really explored to the level of what we should.

The head of the church.

He's preparing His bride to marry Him. So, we have the second remedy. First, He came to defeat Satan as a human being. Then He came as a human being to die for our sins, be resurrected. And as this God-being who had now become a human being and returned, is His unique relationship with us to take us out of bondage, to remove sin from us. The third enemy that we face, of course, is death. 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15. We're going back to 1 Corinthians 15. We spent a lot of time there in this sermon.

We left off in verse 19 before. Let's pick it up in verse 20. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 20. 1 Corinthians 15. But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first of those who are dead, asleep, awaiting their resurrection. For since my man came death, now He's taking us right back to Adam. Everything we've been talking about was how Adam failed and Christ succeeded where Adam failed. Now, Paul's going to really bring this into focus. The first man failed, so God sent a second man. But this one was an adorable man.

And He did what Adam was supposed to do, and bring the whole human race back to where it's supposed to be. At least those who want to go. And some people aren't going to want to go. But where it's supposed to go. For since by one man, or by man, I'm sorry, came death, by man came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam, all die.

Even so in Christ, all shall be made alive. But each one in His own order, Christ the first-roots, after those who are Christ in His coming. And then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and all power.

So think about this. He's the first from the dead. Then there's the resurrection and He's coming. Then, of course, we know that there is, according to Revelation, another resurrection at the end of the Millennium. For He must rain till He's put all enemies under His feet. Satan, sin, verse 36, the last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

The last enemy is death. There's coming a time in the future when no one will ever die again.

Those who are the like of fire perish. And those who are left are like Him. They see Him as He is.

We're all in God's name. We're all restored to what we were supposed to be at the very beginning. Notice verse 45. And so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

First Adam was made flesh and failed. The second Adam came from heaven to earth, became flesh and succeeded.

He showed us how this is supposed to work.

He said, okay, I become like you to be your brother to show you how this works. This is all part of the Passover Days of Elhambra.

It all shows the family relationship of what God is doing, a white Satan side-tragnet, and why He did it this way. Because I always used to wonder, why did God send Jesus? Was it easier just to say, okay, everybody, I remove Satan and I forgive all of you? I didn't need the power to do that, but He did it this way. That's because this way is so amazing. It's all about our relationship with Him. It shows you what He thinks and feels about us. And like we said in the sermon end, He doesn't need us. That's what's amazing. He does this because He wants us. He doesn't need any of us. We all die tomorrow. He's still God. Christ still cries.

He does it because He wants us. He says, however, verse 46, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. The second man had the elements that He did not have. What shows us without God's Spirit in us, without God coming into us, we're going to fail. That's why when we talk about being baptized, it's also receiving God's Spirit. Without the receiving of God's Spirit, we will fail, even if we've been baptized. We have to receive God's Spirit.

And that's what Jesus showed us. He came. He had God's Spirit. He was God's Spirit when He came. The Spirit of God was in Him.

And He showed, you do this because of God in you. So He suffered just like we do, but He was from heaven. Verse 48, As was the man of dust, so were those who were made of dust. We're just like Adam in that way. So also those who were made of dust, and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who were heavenly. Oh, we will be like Him.

Human beings resurrected into the spirit realm. So that the first Adam failed, second Adam did not. We're like the first Adam, but we can be like the second Adam.

He conquered death.

He says, verse 49, And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. He had to show us how it worked. He had to show us how God was doing all this, and how it all comes together.

And so when we put all this together, we can find that God, this problem with these three things, seems like unsolvable, and it is for us totally unsolvable. Satan, sin, and death. There are unsolvable problems. The Word became and formed like a man, so he could defeat Satan in the flesh. Take back the dominion of the family that was given to us to begin with.

He comes back to what? To give us our dominion back. Christ comes back to give us our dominion back. Secondly, the Word came in the form of a man named Jesus to take the penalty of sins upon himself, so we can be restored into a relationship with God.

He also has the resurrected Messiah, the resurrected Christ. Does God's work now in restoring us into that relationship and removing, you know, de-leavening us? And three, the Word is Jesus would defeat death by actually experiencing death and being resurrected. You know, the Bible talks about that he learned through his sufferings, or was made perfect through his sufferings. What does that mean? That's a fascinating concept. Obviously, he had no flaws, did he? He had no sin. He had no flaws. He had no character problems. The whole plan was made perfect by him becoming a human being. He was perfected as the perfect sacrifice, the perfect human being to conquer Satan. He was perfected to do the job that he was supposed to do. He had to become a human being to do it.

That's amazing! Because he sure didn't have any flaws. He sure didn't have to do it. Remember, he told the disciples, I could stop this any time I want. I could lay waste to the face of the earth any time I want. But this is how it's done. Because we're supposed to learn how it's done. Through that example, that's what we learn. When Adam and Eve gave up their dominion to Satan, God's kingdom didn't go away. But the human family, the human family, was no longer directly subjected to God's rule. We were under Satan's rule. The world is still under Satan's rule. That's why they'll never find the solution to anything. There's no long-term solution to anything in this world. Every solution will end up in failure.

It's because Satan is the God of this world. But in order then for God to restore it in the way he wanted it restored, so that we're participants in it, we're all part of it, we're his family, he had to send the second Adam. This wasn't created just out of the earth. This is the Son of God who came from heaven and came here and became the second Adam. And as the second Adam, he took back the dominion that's supposed to be ours. And he's going to restore it to us when he returns. He's already defeated Satan. Satan just doesn't know it yet. It's not his reality yet, but it's going to be. He's already defeated him. The second Adam already won. The second Adam defeated sin. The second Adam defeated death. And in that way, he is the Lion of Judah, the king, and he is the Lamb of God, the sacrifice. Just like it says in Revelation chapter 5. He is a spirit being who became a human being, so that humans can become spiritual.