Seeing God As He Really Is #7: The Two Adams

Seeing God As He Really Is 7 The Two Adams teaches that there were two Adams, and that every believer lives after one or the other. The pastor shows that Jesus, the last Adam, came not only to die for sin but to repair everything the first Adam did, starting with His baptism of repentance in the Jordan. He traces water baptism back to Adam, to Moses and to Pentecost, and ends with Jesus mistaken for a gardener outside the empty tomb. It follows Seeing God As He Really Is #5: Connection — God’s Hugs and Kisses.

Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps you can take this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was posted on May 5, 2026, as the seventh part of the series Seeing God As He Really Is. It runs about 56 minutes and ends with a prayer of repentance and commitment. The pastor opens by restating the theme of the series: how we perceive God will affect literally everything in our lives, including whether we step out to do His plan at all.

He then introduces the subject of the day. There were two Adams, he says, not one, and believers need to understand both. The first brought sin, lack, sickness and death into the world. The second, Jesus Christ, came to undo all of it, and seeing Him that way builds confidence that He will finish what He started in us.

Seeing God and the Faith That Follows

The pastor says that if you do not see God as a giver who will fulfill what He promised, you will not even be willing to step out into His plan. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good of the land (Isaiah 1:19–20). The foundation verses for the series are John 3:16–17, God so loved the world, and John 21:20, where Peter sees the disciple whom Jesus loved following.

That second verse, he says, describes a two-way love. He compares it to a schoolyard crush: it is one thing to like someone, but it changes everything when you learn they like you too. John saw Jesus as He really was, while others were held back by tradition and what they had heard. In John 14:21 Jesus says that whoever keeps His commandments loves Him and will be loved by the Father, and He will manifest Himself to him.

When we see God as the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2) and the lifter of our head, we stop counting pennies. The pastor says that after forty years the church has never had a large crowd, yet it has built facilities, clinics, radio stations and a television station in other countries. Thankfulness keeps our eyes on Him, and if we are raised with Christ, we set our minds on things above (Colossians 3:1–2).

Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God, and whoever comes to Him must believe that He is. The pastor teaches that this means believing how God exactly is: good, loving, the one who chose us and gave us His Spirit. Without love, faith becomes unproductive and full of excuses about money, education or family background. Faith works through love (Galatians 5:6), and the revelation of God’s love removes the need to earn it.

Seeing God As He Really Is 7: The Two Adams

The pastor turns to John 1:29. John the Baptist, whose baptism was a baptism of repentance, saw Jesus coming and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus never sinned, yet He came to be baptized. The pastor explains that Jesus came to repair the acts of Adam. He hung on a cross that represented the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and He dealt with every part of what the first Adam broke.

Adam was the representative of all mankind, so everyone born into this world is born into his sin. That is why there had to be a second Adam. The pastor says he could teach a twelve-hour seminar on all that Jesus did to repair Adam’s fall, and that seeing Jesus this way makes believers confident that He will complete what He began in them (Philippians 1:6).

In Matthew 3:13–15 John tried to stop Jesus: “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?” Jesus answered, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” The pastor’s reading is that sin required repentance, so the sinless Jesus, standing in for all humanity, was immersed in a baptism of repentance to make the correction.

That is why no one can say the work is unfinished. In Romans 10:6–10 Paul says not to ask who will ascend into heaven or descend into the abyss to bring Christ. Instead, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Jesus did it all, the pastor says; nothing is left for us to fulfill.

Adam From the Dust of the Ground

Next the pastor reads Genesis 2:7: the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. In Genesis 2:15–22, God puts the man in the garden to tend and keep it. Adam is the gardener. God commands him not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and says it is not good for man to be alone.

The pastor points out that through verse 18 the text keeps saying “man.” Then, when God brings the animals to be named, the word Adam appears for the first time. The pastor teaches that the name comes from adamah, which means the dust of the earth, the ground. And the property of dirt is that it produces whatever you put into it. Adam would now be one who could produce life or death.

That is why God says, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Words matter. The pastor tells of Jerome, a man in the church who felt uncomfortable at a family gathering where the talk was rough, because his commitment to the Lord had changed him. The first thing that changes when we commit to Christ, he says, is the words that come out of our mouth. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for building up (Ephesians 4:29).

He also notes that Paul wrote to the saints and the faithful in Ephesus (Ephesians 1:1). Everyone born again is a saint, he says, but not everyone is faithful, and God is looking for the faithful. Any plot of land, cleared of rocks and sticks and planted with good seed, can become a garden of flowers within months. A believer who treats his life as if it does not matter will go to heaven, but will keep growing weeds.

Baptism and the Life of Repentance

Adam represents all humanity. The pastor mentions watching young children at a dance competition, all innocence, and says that over time things get planted in a life that draw it away from God. Repentance keeps that innocence in our hearts. Adam’s actions brought lack, sickness, corruption and death to the whole world. The pastor recounts that a member of the Sanhedrin once spent three days with a class he was teaching in Israel, spoke of ancient writings about Adam, and took them to a cave where tradition says Adam and Eve lived, a man who carried his guilt all his life.

Romans 5:12–14 says sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and death reigned from Adam to Moses. Adam was a type of Him who was to come. To redeem humanity, the pastor says, Jesus took the sinless human form Adam had before the fall and, as man’s representative, was baptized in repentance to undo what was done. His obedience redeemed the disobedient (Romans 5:19).

Repentance, he insists, is more than changing your mind. He reminds the men raised in the north woods of every time they knew not to drive down a bad logging road and did it anyway. Knowing you should not is not repentance; repentance is turning around and leaving. He then reads from an early Jewish writing describing Adam standing in the upper waters of the Gihon, one of Eden’s rivers, up to his neck and asking God to accept his repentance so that all generations would learn that repentance is real. In the pastor’s reading, water baptism as a sign of repentance began with Adam.

Peter preached the same at Pentecost. After quoting Joel, I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh (Acts 2:16–17), he told the crowd that they had crucified the Lord. They asked what to do, and he answered in Acts 2:38: “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” John the Baptist had likewise told people to bear fruits worthy of repentance (Matthew 3:8). Repentance is action.

The pastor also points to Paul encouraging Timothy in a season of terrible persecution: the word of God is not bound (2 Timothy 2:9), so commit what you have heard to faithful men (2 Timothy 2:2). Baptism declares that we are not just believers who say God exists, but people committed to Christ. The table below gathers the water pictures he draws together.

Moses, whose name means drawn out, was saved from the Nile to become Israel’s deliverer, and Israel followed him through the sea. In 1 Corinthians 10:1–4 Paul says they were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and drank from the spiritual Rock, which was Christ. Jesus later promised living water so that those who drink would never thirst (John 4:14). The pastor announced a water baptism at the church picnic in late June.

The Last Adam, a Life-Giving Spirit

The pastor addresses an early-church error. Some groups taught that God was too holy ever to take on a human body. He says that in the year 451 the Council of Chalcedon affirmed what he calls the hypostatic union: Jesus is fully God and fully man. That mattered because the idea of a God too holy to come near left people thinking they could not even walk into church. Jesus was born of Mary by the power of the Most High overshadowing her (Luke 1:35), and He is the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29).

1 Corinthians 15:39–45 speaks of different kinds of flesh and different kinds of glory, celestial and terrestrial, and then of the resurrection: the body is sown in corruption and raised in incorruption, sown in weakness and raised in power. Jesus was sown on the cross bearing all our sin and raised incorruptible in spirit, soul and body. “The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”

1 Corinthians 15:21–22 says, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” You can live after the first Adam if you want, the pastor says, but it will catch up with you, because whatever a man sows, that he will also reap (Galatians 6:7). The natural comes first, then the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven, and “as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man” (1 Corinthians 15:46–49).

He groups these verses side by side so the two Adams can be read together. Those who commit to Christ become like Him, a life-giving spirit, and their words give life. And if God can turn what the devil meant for harm into good (Genesis 50:20), He can turn our mistakes around through repentance.

The sermon ends in John 20:11–17. Mary Magdalene weeps outside the empty tomb, turns, sees Jesus and supposes Him to be the gardener. The pastor sees the connection: the first Adam was put in a garden to tend it, and the risen last Adam is mistaken for a gardener. Death could not hold Him. The first Adam, he says, may have lived in shame, but he is now free of condemnation, because God perfected him, and in the same way He perfects us.

Living After the Last Adam This Week

The pastor says the time to act on the Word is right after it is taught. He has no interest in learning how to cope; he wants the One who transformed Adam into a life-giving spirit at work in every area of life. Here are practical steps from the message:

• See God as He really is. Read John 14:21 and thank Him for a two-way love that you do not have to earn.
• Choose life with your words. Like Jerome, let your speech change first, and speak only what builds up.
• Repent as an action. Name the road you know you should not take and turn around, not just change your mind.
• Consider water baptism. Treat it as a public sign that you are committed to Christ and ready for the Spirit’s power.
• Move from saint to faithful. Pray, “I’ve been a saint, but now count me as faithful,” and commit to His Word and His way.
• Plant good seed. Clear out the rocks and weeds of old habits and sow what you want to grow.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 How we see God affects everything
• 1:01 John 3:16 and the disciple whom Jesus loved
• 3:08 John 14:21: He will manifest Himself
• 3:59 Forty years of God’s provision
• 6:06 Hebrews 11:6: believing how God exists
• 7:12 Faith works by love
• 8:25 Behold the Lamb: introducing the two Adams
• 10:52 Matthew 3: fulfilling all righteousness
• 13:01 Romans 10: Jesus did it all
• 14:02 Genesis 2: Adam the gardener
• 16:14 Adam from adamah, the dust of the ground
• 17:22 Choose life: words and commitment
• 18:32 Saints and the faithful
• 19:41 Adam represents all humanity
• 22:33 Romans 5: death reigned from Adam
• 23:49 Repentance is turning around
• 25:21 Adam and the waters of the Gihon
• 29:06 Peter at Pentecost: Acts 2:38
• 34:04 Moses drawn out, and the Red Sea
• 35:33 1 Corinthians 10: baptized into Moses
• 38:00 Fully God and fully man
• 41:47 Sown in corruption, raised in glory
• 44:05 As in Adam all die
• 45:24 The man of dust and the heavenly Man
• 49:15 Mary and the gardener: John 20
• 52:52 Prayer of repentance and commitment

Seeing God As He Really Is Series

This message is part of a teaching series at NTC Ministries. Start from the beginning or go back to the previous message:

• First message: Seeing God As He Really Is #1 — Completing the Love of God
• Previous: Seeing God As He Really Is #5: Connection — God’s Hugs and Kisses
• You are here: Seeing God As He Really Is #7: The Two Adams

Frequently Asked Questions

Why was Jesus baptized if He never sinned?

The pastor teaches that Jesus was baptized not for His own sin but as the representative of all humanity, the last Adam. Sin required repentance, and John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. By being immersed, Jesus began to undo what the first Adam had done, which is why He told John it was fitting to fulfill all righteousness. When He came up from the water, the Spirit descended on Him like a dove.

Is repentance just changing your mind?

No. The pastor says repentance includes a change of thinking, but it is also a change of action. He uses the picture of a driver who knows a logging road is a bad idea and goes down it anyway: knowing better is not repentance. Turning around and leaving is. John the Baptist called it bearing fruit worthy of repentance.

What does it mean that the last Adam is a life-giving spirit?

From 1 Corinthians 15:45, the pastor explains that the first Adam became a living being, but the last Adam, raised incorruptible, became a life-giving spirit. Those who commit their lives to Christ bear His image. In practice, he says, that shows up first in our words, which begin to give life, edify and bless, instead of tearing down.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 — as in Adam all die
• 1 Corinthians 15:39–45 — the last Adam, a life-giving spirit
• Matthew 3:13–15 — to fulfill all righteousness
• John 1:29 — the Lamb of God
• Genesis 2:7 — formed from the dust of the ground
• Romans 5:12–14 — death reigned from Adam
• Acts 2:38 — repent and be baptized
• John 20:11–17 — Jesus supposed to be the gardener

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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