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Sometimes the best way to understand something is to take a step back and look at it from a distance. I had a Bible college instructor who always taught us to look at things from the "panoramic view." That meant that sometimes the only way to understand something in God's Word is to see the big picture. Tonight's message is a panoramic view of our relationship with God. I want us to step back from our individual troubles and trials and look at the big picture for a little while. The devil sometimes gets Christians discouraged by getting them focused on the small things. They get so focused on the small things in their life and their worry magnifies the problem until they think it is something huge when in the grand scheme of things, the panoramic view, it shouldn't be that discouraging. "To magnify" means to make something appear larger than it really is. Psalms 34 is a scripture that we often quote and sing but may not realize exactly what it means:

The Psalmist compelled us to "magnify" the Lord! To exalt or lift up His name! That means more than just saying "I praise you Jesus" but refers to believing that the Lord is greater than any problem that I have! It means believing that His name is stronger than any weakness that I am facing! And it says to "magnify the Lord" not our problems! You cannot magnify your problems and magnify the Lord at the same time! Too many people have a problem or a disagreement with someone and instead of taking it to God, they brood on it, worry about it, and talk and think on it continually. They are magnifying it. Then when someone says "well, God can take care of that," they do not have faith because they have magnified their problem in their eyes until it is bigger than God.

In verse 4, the psalmist went on to say that "I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from ALL my FEARS!" When you choose to magnify the Lord instead of your problem, then the Lord will hear you and deliver you from ALL of your worries! Christians should be some of the most content people on the face of the earth! Not because we do not have troubles, but if I am placing my trust in the Lord and magnifying Him, then why should I worry?

Living for God is not hard or complicated. Trying to figure out every answer to every little trial and tribulation is complex. The key to making it is to ALWAYS look at things from the "panoramic view." I'm not saying that we shouldn't allow God to deal with the small things. But that we should keep the larger view in mind at all times in our life.

I've told the story of the man and woman who had been married for over 45 years in our home church where I grew up. They were some of the first people to get the Holy Ghost in that area and the man was known for being a mighty prayer warrior. In fact he had prayed for two hours almost every day since the day that he had gotten the Holy Ghost! This couple, now elderly and in their late 70s were a main reason why the church was there.

I'll never forget the day that the man came panic stricken to talk to my dad one morning. My dad and I were working on the house and my dad could tell that something was wrong when the man came up. The man began to tell how that morning, he hadn't been feeling well and was sitting eating breakfast when a roach came out from under the fridge and the wife said "kill that roach." The man who was sort of weak that morning had waved his hand and said "ah, let him live today." The wife had promptly packed up her stuff and left the man after 40+ years of marriage because he hadn't killed a roach! When that man died about 10 years later, his wife had never come back to him. Obviously, by letting one small thing upset their relationship, she was not keeping the bigger picture in mind! She let one small thing upset and effect a lifetime of love and commitment! That's the danger of allowing yourself to magnify one small area of your life and not remembering the grander scheme of things.

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To view the bigger picture of man's relationship with God, we must start at the beginning with a man named Adam! All of here can trace our roots back to Adam some way. He was the first living creature with a soul and spirit. Adam was created to be the ruler of the earth. He was created a mature human being with all of the power and knowledge that he needed to rule this world and it's kingdoms. God created Adam in His very image and it was not until Adam's sin that things went wrong. I want you to realize the reason why God did not just let Adam and his descendants die in their sin. I want you to realize the reason that God has spent the last 6,000 years revealing Himself to mankind. When Adam sinned, he was someone who was made in the very image of God who now bore sin. Even though he was a sinner and God cannot sin, he still looked like the physical image of God! Every time God looked down from heaven to earth and saw Adam on the earth, it reminded Him of what God would have felt like had He been in Adam's shoes! So God said "I made Adam to be similar to me, and now I cannot leave him helpless!" "I must provide a way that he can come back to a relationship with me!" Why does God rejoice so much when a sinner repents? Because it is something that is a part of Him returning to Him! Why does God hate sin so much and despise the wicked actions of man? Because they who are created in the image of God are choosing to do things that God finds repulsive! God sees Himself in us! The very way that we look reminds God of whose image that we were created to match!

So God had come in flesh. A virgin conceived by the Holy Ghost and brought forth a child which was to be called the Son of God and whose name was Jesus. I know that all of this is probably very familiar to you, but the panoramic view begins to take shape when we read our first text:

In writing to the church in Corinth, Paul called Jesus Christ the "last Adam." Jesus Christ was the result again of God forming someone in His image, only this time it was not another created being that had come to set things right, but the "Lord from heaven!" It was "God manifest in flesh" come to fix everything that the first Adam had messed up! It follows then that if Jesus Christ was the last Adam, then there are some similarities between the first and the last. It also follows that if Jesus Christ came to undo the mess of the first Adam that there are some differences. Before we contrast the two, let's look at their similarities:

Luke's genealogies traces the family tree of man back to Adam and ends with thus:

Adam is called the "son of God!" As far as I can find, the only two men that ever lived who did not have a fleshly biological father was Adam and Jesus Christ! Both were called the son of God! Not only that, both were created directly by a miracle of God.

Both were placed upon the earth to rule and were placed into dominion over every living thing. The first Adam actually had the power given to him by God to be over the entire garden of Eden. Jesus Christ is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings and is the ruler of everyone that allows themselves to live in the "garden" of the blessings of God!

Both the first Adam and the last Adam were the very image of God. In fact we find from Romans that Adam was actually created to look like Jesus Christ and not vice versa:

The first Adam is associated with the sixth day for it was on that day of creation that he breathed his first breath and became a living soul. Jesus Christ, the last Adam, is associated with the sixth dispensation of God which is the dispensation of Grace because it is in that dispensation that He breathed the Holy Ghost into man and restored the relationship with God that Adam had lost!

When Adam was placed in the garden, the scriptures say that God brought "every living creature" for him to name. The interesting point about this is that up until that time in scripture, Adam was simply referred to as "the man that God had formed." Adam named "every living creature" including himself! The first Adam named himself! When the angel came to Mary and told her that the holy thing which was forming in her belly was the Son of God, the angel commanded for her to "call His name Jesus." That angel was relaying a message from on God Almighty, the same God who it was that was coming in flesh. The second Adam, like the first, named Himself!

The name "Adam" literally means "red earth." The name "Jesus" literally means "Jehovah is become Salvation." How exactly did Jehovah God become salvation? By shedding His blood at Calvary which, as it flowed, caused the earth to become red! The last Adam literally fulfilled the meaning of the first Adam by doing what the first Adam could not do!

The parallels get even more striking as we get to the creation of Eve. Adam was not complete without a woman at his side and so God caused a deep sleep to come upon him, formed the woman out of his side, and then woke him up. Ephesians chapter 5 and Revelation chapters 21 and 22 refer to the Apostolic church as the "bride of Christ." The Church is the woman that makes Jesus complete. How was that church formed? By the last Adam's deep sleep of death at Calvary and when the Roman soldier pierced His side, out flowed blood and water the two very things that make one part of the Apostolic church! After the bride was formed out of His side, Jesus Christ "awoke" out of the grave and is alive today! The second Adam got his wife exactly like the first Adam did!

Eve was created to be a "helper" to Adam and they were to become "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). The church was also created to be a helper of Jesus Christ's kingdom and we are to be the "body of Christ."

Eve was not created at the same time Adam was formed but was created at a later "second birth." Just like Adam, she was created pure and sinless. The second Adam was created sinless and pure and his wife, the church, was also created through a "second birth" at which the Christian stands pure and sinless! In John chapter 3, when Jesus told Nicodemus "ye must be born again," it was the second Adam talking about His future bride! Jesus went on to say "except a man be born of the water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." If you want to rule the kingdom with the last Adam, you must be "born again." We must never lose the emphasis of the "second birth;" being born again of the water and the Spirit is very important!

The first Adam was then commissioned to be fruitful by having children produced by a relationship with his wife. Jesus, the last Adam also desires to have children (sons and daughters) by a relationship with his wife, the church. How do we win people to God? How do we see sons and daughters of God born in the church? By having an intimate relationship with our husband! Your winning somebody to God is dependent upon your personal relationship with God! You'll never procreate spiritually without developing your relationship with God! Soul winning is actually simple, just draw closer to God in every area of your life and the world cannot help but notice!

The age of Adam's death is given in scripture, but the age at Eve's death is not given. Likewise, we know the age of Jesus Christ at his death, but we do not exactly know the date of when the dispensation of the Church, Grace, will end. It is not found in scripture! We must win people while there is still time!

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This panoramic view of our relationship with God would not be complete unless I pointed out some of the contrasts of the first Adam and the second Adam. The most obvious difference was that Jesus Christ did not sin. Had He sinned, He would not have been the Last Adam!

The first Adam disobeyed the command of God and partook of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil and the consequence was that it brought a spiritual and a physical death upon all humanity. By contrast, the last Adam, Jesus Christ, obeyed the command of God and partook of the tree of Calvary and the consequence was that it brought a spiritual life and an eternal physical life to humanity!

Adam lived and "reigned" 930 years on the earth and then died. Jesus will reign upon the earth for 1,000 years (930 + 70) and then live on forever.

The six consequences of the sin of the first Adam corresponds with the blessings brought about from the obedience of the second Adam.

1. Loss of innocence. When Adam sinned the first thing lost was innocence. "They knew that they were naked." But Jesus Christ restores innocence. By contrast today, people in sin want to take more of their clothes off. But when a person is born again, they want to keep more of their clothes on! Not only that, but living for Jesus Christ can restore the innocence and sensitivity that was lost by sin! God can make us pure again by the work of the second Adam!

2. Continued enmity (hatred) between the seed of the woman and the devil. God told Eve that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. The church still hates the devil and now God uses the spiritual seed of the woman, the church, to crush the head of the serpent Satan. The devil does not like you when you are baptized in Jesus' name and receive His Spirit! There is a hatred there! That is another reason why we cannot continue to sin after we come to Jesus, for the devil will make sure that the sin brings twice as much harm to our lives than it would ordinarily cause!

3. The cursing of the ground and the hard labor of man - the first Adam was doomed to work hard to receive any crop from the ground. By contrast, Jesus came and did the hard labor on Calvary to work the ground of men's hearts and prepare the world to receive a spiritual harvest. Only now, the wife must reap the harvest!

4. The hard labor of childbirth. Eve, the first Adam's wife, would only bring forth children with hard labor and pain. But people being "born again" is not meant to be a hard process in the church today. Receiving the Holy Ghost is only made difficult by the effect of sin, doubt, or false teaching.

God said that with the spiritual births, birth would be instant! Travail in seeking the Holy Ghost comes from either our own doubts or false teaching! Receiving the Holy Ghost should be easy to do and not hard labor!

5. The wife's submission to her husband. As part of her judgment, the woman would be emotionally dependent upon her husband. This is no longer a curse for the true Apostolic church is willingly in submission to Jesus Christ!

6. Separation from God. - Adam tried to cover his sins by hiding from the presence of God. Jesus Christ made a way for mankind's sins to be covered by "ascending to the Father." The first Adam took on sin and it caused his relationship with God to be destroyed! The second Adam took on sin at Calvary and it caused our relationship with God to be renewed! There is no excuse for man not to have a close relationship with God today: the second Adam has come!

The last point is probably the most important contrast of all. Adam lost access to the tree of life, but Jesus Christ has the tree of life planted in His paradise.

The only way that you can live forever, is to follow the steps of the Last Adam!

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The entire book of Romans is hard for people to understand because it presents the story of God and our salvation by focusing on the big picture! Our second text is probably the one scripture of the entire Bible that views things through the panoramic view.

You and I stand between the two Adams. There is the first Adam that brought death and there is the second Adam that brought life. Our first text said that the first Adam is earthy and flesh, and the Last Adam was spiritual and life. All of living for God can be simplified to two points: I am standing between the first Adam and the second Adam. Who am I walking toward? Are my day to day choices walking after the flesh and it's desires and thus toward the first Adam and his sin, or am I getting closer and closer to Jesus Christ and thus eternal life?! Are we walking after the flesh or the Spirit? One sure fire way to tell which direction that you are walking is by asking yourself whether or not you are feeling "condemned." The scripture states that only those that are choosing to walk after the flesh feel condemnation, but that walking toward the Spirit causes you to have "no condemnation!" When you walk toward the second Adam, Jesus Christ, you will be set free from the law of sin and death that the first Adam caused!

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I close with this: the choice is simple really! It only becomes complicated when we try to justify and excuse our sin. If something is causing me to think, act, or desire toward the first Adam, then it is a detriment to me and is the cause of condemnation in my life. I something is causing me to think, act, or desire pure and holy things, then it is leading toward the second Adam, Jesus Christ and is the cause of anointing and freedom in my life!

Many of you have noticed the entire scripture echo the theme of the second beating the first. Jesus said it like this:

Cain was older and Abel was younger, Abel pleased God and Cain did not. The last was really first when it came to the things of God. We see this with Esau and Jacob. We see this with Jacob's wives, Leah, the first was unloved, and Rachel the second was beloved. In Genesis chapter 38, you may have noticed in your Bible reading that when Judah's twin children were born, one son, Zarah put his hand out of the womb and before he could draw it back the midwife put a scarlet thread upon his wrist. Then the other brother, Pharez was actually the second one to push forth from the womb. Jesus came from the lineage of Pharez and not Zarah. When Joseph brought his two sons to Jacob in order to receive their blessing, Jacob blessed the younger greater than the eldest on purpose! The last became the first. Moses was the second child and yet he became the leader of Israel. The second king of Israel, King David and not Saul was the man after God's own heart. King David's first son by Bathsheba was killed because of their sin. His second son through her that had been the wife of Uriah was Solomon who became the wisest and richest man of his time! Elijah's seven miracles were topped by his second's Elisha's 14 miracles. When the kingdom divided, 10 tribes went to the north and only 2 tribes went to the south. God destroyed completely the bigger 10 tribes first and the second group, the two tribes of Judah remained. Elizabeth got pregnant first with John the Baptist and then Mary got pregant with Jesus. The last was clearly the foremost!

Jesus said that we must be "born again," the second birth definitely has better eternal effects than the first birth! Jesus taught that we must take on His name in baptism! Our second naming certainly has more inheritance with it than when you first were christened at your first birth. Jesus' first coming was to a lowly stable and manger, but His second coming will be with a shout and a trump and all of His glory! One day the first heaven and the first earth will pass away and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. I guarantee that if you make it in the Rapture of the church, you will definitely enjoy the second earth better than the first! Jehovah was the first personal name of God, and Jesus was the second. There is much more power in the name of Jesus! The law, the Old Covenant, came to teach us about our sins, but Grace, the New Covenant, came to wash away our sins! The first confounding of tongues at the tower of Babel caused men to separate into confusion. The second confounding of tongues at the Day of Pentecost causes men to unite in harmony and love for one another!

I could go on and on with examples throughout the scriptures. But it is clear that God wanted to illustrate a principle to us that the second or last is always better than the first! Why? Because the second Adam is much greater than the first Adam! As we get up each morning and have to stand between the two Adams and choose whether or not to walk after the flesh or the Spirit, remember, it's no contest as far as God is concerned: Walking toward the second Adam has much greater benefits than walking toward the first Adam! I'm going to choose to walk after the Spirit! I'll choose to get closer to Jesus Christ! Thank the Lord for the Last Adam!