Bible Guys Classics: Romans 5 Part 2

Today. Man, I'm excited.

I don't know about you, but today's a big one

because we're actually talking about Adam's apples.

No, no, Kyle, we're not talking about Adams apples. We're

talking about how Adam ate the fruit, which, by the way,

we don't know what it was, Adam aple, and and

how that is connected to Jesus as the second Adam.

So yeah, that's that's the topic. So hey, he's Kyle

and I'm Chris, and today we are the Bible. Guys.

All right, guys, I'm excited about today because you know,

over the last few months we've actually been getting into

the Babylon some Babylon b articles, which is sat want to.

Make sure news news.

This is important news. We've got a special one today.

And let me just throw this in.

I always say this. These are one of my favorite

segments because it is really sophisticated humor and because I

live in church world. It's whoever writes this, uh lives

in church world.

Yeah, and you'll like just want because this story is

actually based in Akron, Ohio.

So oh that's great.

It's like forty minutes before I grew up.

Yeah, so we're gonna read this and uh, and it's

actually fitting because you know, we encourage people to get

into Bible reading plans, you know, encourage people to read

the Bible in a year. And so the title of

today's article is local man crushing Bible in a year

plan after switching to Jesus' storybook Bible.

All right, this is Akron, Ohio.

Ever since changing over to the Jesus Storybook Bible, local

man Dan Smith has been totally dominating his Bible in

a year plan. Three chapters of Genesis, no problem, he says,

watch me knock this out in thirty seconds. This new

Bible is incredible. After never making the two week mark

in previous attempts to read the Bible in a year,

mister Smith has thus far remained right on schedule. Then,

he says this, My five year old niece was kind

enough to loan me her copy to get started, and

it's been a total game changer, said mister Smith. Honestly,

I've never un to stoo. The stories so well my

entire life. Plus the pictures are so good they really

keep me going. Mister Smith has proudly posted his reading

schedule on the refrigerator and cross each day off once

he's finished, I'm really proud of him. Sticky to this,

said Missus Smith. Some days the readings are an entire page.

I've had aspirations to do one of those plans, but honestly,

I'm not sure I'm ready to take on the Jesus

Storybook Bible in just one year. I'll probably start with

this is cheesy, she's saying. I'll probably start with Baby's

Hug a Bible and see how that goes.

Yeah.

At publishing time, mister Smith had gotten so engrossed in

one of the Old Testa stories that he accidentally read

three weeks ahead of schedule.

It was so funny. So this is fun This is

funny because the Jesus Storybook Bible is a book made

for kids. Yeah.

So, actually, I want to give a plug to this.

I want something funny. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah,

that's why this article is not fundy to me. Okay,

I was literally trying to figure out why is this funny? Yes,

and it's because you have to that are article is

only funny if you already know what the Jesus so to.

Give a plug for the daily because I do think

we have obviously a lot of parents who watch this.

If you have kids, let's say, under the age of ten,

great Bible to have, and even for adults. And here's

the thing that's really cool about the storybook Bible is

it is like one page at a time telling the

stories from the Old Testament all the way through the

New Testament. But I think that's really cool about it

that you like a lot. I think actually is for one,

the illustrations and it are incredible. But then also the

way all the stories wrap up is it connects to Jesus.

So even thousands of years before Jesus, the way that

each story ends, so Esther, Tom David, all these crucial figures,

it points to Jesus and sort of redeeming act that

Jesus was to bring about. But I can understand now

because you haven't read it, that you're.

Like, what, I wasn't even laughing at the.

Jesus storybook Bible.

Okay, well yeah, so you really have to be immersed in.

Church culturch culture.

Yes, yeah, but again I would just throw a little

plug out there for parents make sure to get that

it's actually a very very good Bible.

Yeah, well, that's cool.

You could read through it in a year and probably

a week.

So yeah, and you said, I love how you said, Chris,

I think you'd really like it.

I think you would great illustrations, pictures, the story is written.

Dude, I'm a huge fan. Where was you at? I'm

a huge fan?

Man.

That's great. Well, hey, today we're going to transition from

there by saying this that, uh, we would love for

you to interact with us on YouTube like comment and subscribe.

If you're already receiving emails of our podcast, the chances

are that means you've already subscribed, right, so you're you're

receiving those emails. But if you're not receiving emails, that

means that you probably try to find us every week

you have to go to you know, your you know whatever.

Cast or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but if you actually subscribe directly with

us the.

Bible guys dot com.

It will then it'll come from us to you, which

we would love.

You go on that website, you hit subscribe, and next thing,

you know, will be some of you daily emails.

It's great.

Yep, it's great. So today we're talking about Romans chapter five. Uh,

we're completing the second half of the chapter and in

this particular case, we're not talking about Adam's apple, which,

by the way, I think it's interesting how a medical

term is called Adam's apple and it's really based out

of biblical stories that Adam took a bite of the apple, which,

by the way, it's always bothered me that you know

it wasn't an apple, right, What did you not know

that it actually says it actually says they ate.

Of the fruit.

Yeah, So for all we know, we're gonna get to heaven,

it's going to be the magical fruit that is unknown. Oh,

it could be like it's not a peach, it's not

a pair, it's like a orange, prickly, hairy who knows

something it could be. It could be something that we

don't even know of. But it said of the fruit, yeah,

didn't say apple. Yeah. So anyway, I just think that's interesting.

So if you do disagree with Chris posting the coms kidding,

you mean the Bible, Chris, it.

Was a literal apple eating. However, many thousand years ago. Okay,

here we go. Let's get into verse twelve.

Right here, it says when Adam sinned, Sin entered the world,

Adam sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for

everyone sinned. Yes, people sinned even before the law was given,

but it was not counted a sin because there was

not yet any law to break. Still, everyone died from

the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even

those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God

as Adam did. Now, Adam is a symbol, a representation

of Christ, who has yet to come. But there is

a great difference between adam sin and God's gracious gift.

For the sin of this one man, Adam brought death

to many. But even greater is God's wonderful grace and

his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man,

Jesus Christ. And the result of God's gracious gift is

very different from the result of that one man sin.

For Adam sin led to condemnation, but God's free gift

leads to our being made right with God, even though

we are guilty of many sins. For the sin of

this one man, Adam caused death to rule over many.

But even greater is God's wonderful grace and his gift

of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in

triumph over sin and death. Through this one man, Jesus Christ. Yes,

Adam's one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but christ one

act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and

a new life to everyone. So you see Paul's repeating

himself a bunch here. He's trying to make sure we

get the point here. Because one person disobeyed God, many

became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many

will be made righteous. God's law was given so that

all people could see how sinful they were, and I

love that it was given so people could see how

sinful they were. But as people sin more and more,

God's wonderful grace became more abundant. So just a sin

ruled over all people and brought them to death. Now

God's wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with

God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

So again there's a lot of redundancies here, but I

think it's for emphasis, right.

I mean, Paul's saying this to emphasize these very important truths.

Yeah, and we do the same thing when we talk today.

Yep.

So if I were to say, you know, to you man,

you kill it, I mean you just crushed it. You slated, dude.

I'm telling you, it was so unbelievable. You were incredible. Right,

it's the same thing. So and actually, you know, it

may seem redundant at times, but actually the nuances in

his wording actually bring about just a slightly different aspect

in some cases. Let's start at the beginning, because it's

this idea that Adam is the uh, he's the second atom, right,

Jesus is the second atom. I love that. And by

the way, he's referred to later on in some of

Paul's writings as the second atom. And I think that

that is so unbelievably cool. A lot of people don't

realize that Jesus is called the second atom, and Paul's

making the contrast. But let's keep in mind though, too.

Let's remember the big picture, the reason why Paul is

talking about Adam in this case, he'd already talked about Abraham, right,

he'd already talked about the Law, he'd already talked about Jesus,

and so he's piecing all of this together. Well, the

purpose of this is basically, he's here's what he's saying.

He's saying, I mean, did you ever wonder he doesn't

explain himself, but we know what this means. He says, still,

everyone died from the time of Adam to the time

of Moses, even those who do not disobey in explicit

commandment of God as Adam did. So he doesn't unpack that,

like why did he say, let's talk about all the

human beings that died from Abraham to Moses. And it's because,

remember we're talking about the law, and the law was

given through Moses. So here's what he's saying. He's saying,

humanity started with Adam, and then Adam sinned, and then

everybody became sinners. And he says, now, if you're so

hype about the law and how you have to obey

the law to get to heaven, he's saying, what happened

to all the people who died before the law? That's

what he's saying. He's saying, there are literally thousands, if

not hundreds of thousands, who knows of people who died

between that timeline and what happened to them, And that's

what he's saying. And so he's saying that you know,

they're looking for to you know, what Jesus is going

to bring, but everybody is given sin through Adam, and

everybody's given righteousness through Jesus. And he says, just as

one act brought this, one act brought that, just as

one person led to this, one person leads to that.

I think it's really cool.

Yeah, And one of the things I always think of

whenever I think of when I'm explaining, like even the

Gospel to other people, I always think of, like, we're

a picture of like a bridge, right, us being imperfect sinners.

I think a lot of people, even those we aren't Christians,

can wrap their head around the fact that they've missed

the mark here and there. Right, So we're imperfect, we

have a perfect God. And then this in this story

we have we have the example of Adam and Jesus,

Jesus being the bridge, and it's so important to have

the bridge like that link there or else we're we're

kind of hopeless. Have you ever been like I'm sure

you probably visited, like I know your your daughter actually

lives in the west side of Florida, But have you

ever been a saying Abelt Island by any chance? Okay,

so it's beautiful, like gulf side, beautiful island over there,

and my life and I were just there actually in August,

just a few months back for our anniversary.

So we stayed for a couple of days.

When we were down there in Santa bal Island, beautiful, dude,

like it just like like paradise, not quite Hawaii, but

it has that like just just beautiful, lot a lot

to look at, sceneries, amazing all that stuff.

By the way, nothing's quite like what right, yeah.

So so but still at least you're facing that same

way with the with the sunset, sunrise, all that stuff.

My wife and I was beautiful, like loved our time there.

Well.

Then the next month that hurricane I can remember the

name of hurricane whatever it was that came through there

there September. So hurricane hits and going to Santa bal Island.

The only way you can get onto Santa Island and

exit or enter Sanda Islands through these massive bridges. So

one is in Naples, kind of around Naples area. One

the top of it's in Saint Petersburg or no, Saint Thomas,

Saint Thomas and is you know, the hurricane hit Saint

Thomas and and and did some damage there. And so

it's pretty wild because like we I, me and Chris

and I have pictures of us like cross and videos

of us crossing over the bridge because it's just beautiful.

I mean, you're surrounded by blue water and it's just amazing.

And the crazy thing is when that hurricane, it actually

knocked down the bridge on both sides, Like so people

that owned homes, if you were somebody who was commuting

in and out of work, there was no access over

to your location. They had to take boats and it

was just it's crazy. But it just made me think

about like when I saw that, and you know, I

just thought about the fact that like that bridge is

literally the link to that place, and all of a sudden,

as soon as you remove that link, you don't have

access to that paradise. Really, it just made me feel

for those people. But also when I think about our faith,

Jesus is that link. He is that bridge between us

and God and therefore there's no condemnation in Christ. And

we see this story this bridge of Adam, who is

who had sin in his life, and it's kind of,

you know, took humanity going backwards. Ever since then, we're

we're kind of moving east of Eden, is what they say, right,

Like from the beginning of time humanity with Adam sin

we've been moving, you know, outside of Eden, and then

Jesus comes to essentially right those wrongs. He essentially becomes

the bridge between Adam or he's making that bridge and

also giving us a bridge between us and God.

So anyways, I.

Just love this, and I think if you are somebod

who shares your faith or you're thinking about sharing your faith,

think about that that bridge illustration.

Yeah, and so let's remember that, Paul. What he's trying

to do is he's trying to take all of the

Jewish readers and listeners, readers of his letter right, listeners

of the reading of it, trying to get all of

their Bible knowledge. And he's trying to say, do you

understand that my theology is supported by the scriptures that

you love, and it's supported by the stories that you

know and the characters that you revere, And do you

understand that Jesus Christ aligns with every single Old Testament character.

He aligns with Moses, he has his part with the Law,

he has his part with Abraham's Promise, he has his

part with King David and the Dividic Covenant. He has

his part with every single part of humanity, and not

only that, but even our righteousness and how we respond

to God through all of those phases and what that

means for us right now. So he's bringing all of

that together, and I love how when he talks about

how the law was given to show us of our

sin verse twenty.

You're talking about, yeah, verse twenty, for.

The law was given so that all the people can

see how sinful they were. And it's so interesting because

here we are twenty twenty three, and if you ask

somebody how to get to heaven, people just don't know

about the Bible. All they really know about the Bible is, well,

I just know that there's a bunch of thou shouts

and notts in the Bible, right and if we obey,

then you know, God is pleased. And when we disobey

or rebel or willfully sin, God is not pleased. So

when you say how do you get to heaven? People say, well,

I try my very best to be a good person.

I've tried really hard to obey the ten commandments. I

remember I saw a message one time by Francis Chan

and since then I've quoted it like at least a

dozen times where he says, it's so funny how people

hold up the Ten Commandments as like the highest bar

and they said, oh, the ten Commandments, you know, like

never mind the six hundred thirteen precepts, right, the ten

Commandments that were written on the stone. If I just

keep the ten Commandments, he says. He says, the Ten

Commandments are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. He's like,

think about it. He's like, try not to kill anybody today.

And he's like, don't do that. Don't take things that

aren't that don't belong to you, right, you know, don't.

Sleep neighbors, don't sleep.

With your neighbor's wife. Can you can you try not

to do that today?

If you could?

And he says, he says, so he goes. Instead of

the Ten Commandments being super high, he said, God has

given them as super low and they're the lowest bar, right,

he says, and somehow humanity has managed to slither underneath them,

to show ourselves into everybody else that we're not good enough.

I just think that that is an incredible perspective, because,

after all, it's not. Francis Shanner says that it's the Bible,

because you know, Paul says it right here that the

law was given not so that you will understand how

good you are or that you can attain it obtain it. Right.

And by the way, we didn't even mention the verse yesterday,

but it says the easiest way to not have to

break the law is for no law to be given,

is right. You know when I saw that verse, you

know what I actually thought, I'm going to quote a

Bible verse to the next cop that pulls me over. Right, Yeah, hey,

the easiest way to have to break the laws for

if there was no law, that wouldn't have broken. Yeah,

you know, why did you put that sign up here

that says go thirty five miles.

That's true.

It's true in the schools well, and it makes you

think even I think even as parenting, when you think

about like the rules like you can align you could

line up so many rules at your household to where

like it's impossible to ever be innocent right as a

child or in life. You know, you go to a

workplace and they can have all that you show up

at this time, you dress this way, whatever, and it's

like it just feels like it's a futile effort because

you'll never And I think that's what is like. The

law is there to remind you how far away from

perfect you are.

You know. It's like you want to be perfect. No,

you're not even close.

And then even the way he follows up, it's like,

this is the good news of it, right, So, hey,

bad news, you'll never line up. The good news is,

but as people have said, more and more, God's wonderful

grace becomes more and more abundant. So as you get

further and further away, that just means his grace is

stronger and stronger, which is a really beautiful contrast right

there too.

So I told this like a year ago, but I'm

gonna I'm gonna quick reference it again. One time, my

father in law came in from Ohio and he brought

this big old bobcat thing, you know, and he scraped

my lawn and we planted new lawn, and he threw

down some seeds and some hay grass, thanks man. And

it turns out that the hay had like a grassy

weed in it.

Yeah.

So there was all these weeds that came up and

they were so different than my grass. My grass was

like dark green and small. And these weeds were like lime,

fluorescent green, and they were like three times as tall,

and it was awful. And so I went in to

the store, to the you know, the green store, and

I said, I need a and I pulled both. I

pulled them and I said, here, look at these, and

I said, I need a weed killer. Now. I went

in thinking that I would be walking out with a

weed killer. And so if the weeds are our sin, right,

and the law is the weed killer, right, I went

in there thinking like, hey, just give me, give me

something to eradicate the unwanted weeds in my grass. He says, listen,

that's a grassy weed. So anything I give you to

kill the weed will kill your grass, he said. So

you have two choices. Either start over and scrape everything

else and replant, he said, Or take this fertilizer and

throw it down and make your grass grow taller and

the weeds will grow twice as quick. And what it's

going to do is this fertilizer is going to make

the weeds pronounced, and they're going to be twice as tall.

And when they get to these twice as tall, then

you can grab them and pull them by the root,

he says, and then that way you get the whole thing. Well,

I was on my hands and knees for three days.

Wow.

They were like, let me think, let me add up

how many weeds there were. Let me carry the two

There were ten million weeds.

Pulled my hand. Wow, that's impressive.

But my point is this is I just remember thinking,

as I was on my hands and knees for three days,

I was thinking, this is the law. People actually think that,

you know, the law is gonna scort, schurtsquirt eradicate all

the unwanted weed sins in my life. But actually the

law is not a weed killer. It's a fertilizer. It's

a fertilizer. It pronounces our sin, It makes them, it

makes them exposing, it spotlights the sin. That's what the

law is meant to do. And so Paul is building

his theological case and he's saying, like, you understand that

not only did Jesus give us righteousness and but the

law never saved us. And then he basically ties it

all the way back to Adam and he says, Adam

said it in motion. There's the problem. Jesus, by one man,

has set the solution. It's poetry, is what it is.

Dude. That's good.

That's a really good uh illustration there for that. So honestly,

I think that's a great way. I mean, that's a

great takeaway that for that episode. Just thinking about the

fact that when we look at our sin and we

look at our lives, we look at the mistakes we've made,

we look at all those things. The fact that Jesus

came and he filled the place, he filled the void

that Adam had, and that's ultimately it's all about Jesus.

It's about him. It's about him paying the price for

our sins and our mistakes.

Yeah, I would just say to our listeners if you

want to take something away when it comes to the

bad things in your life, all the sins that you

want to eliminate, it's not about trying harder. It's not

about like, oh, I need to obey, I need to obey.

I need to be better, I need to be better.

It's not about that. It's about saying I don't have

the power to be perfect. So therefore I'm going to

pray to the one. I'm going to lean on God

and ask him to give me the strength and the

supernatural ability to change my heart, to change my desire,

to change my actions, to change everything the course of

my life. And so it is actually not you know,

trying harder, it's actually surrendering.

That's good, you know, it's a great takeaway.

Yep. So that's a good place end. And we will

see you hopefully tomorrow on the Bible.

Guys, see tomorrow