1689 London Baptist Confession (part 40)

We're going through the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and we come to Section 27, as you well know, because you've been reading it faithfully week by week.

Anyway, we're in Section 27, the Law of God. And we're going to start this morning talking about Creation Ordinances.

What might a Creation Ordinance be? I know,

I know, it's early. When you get up at 6 o 'clock in the morning, it's tough.

Creation Ordinance. Let's break it down. Creation. In the garden, you know, at the very beginning.

And then an ordinance, a rule, a law, right? Let's see what the Confession of Faith says.

God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart.

Does that sound familiar to you? A law written in his heart, Romans 2.

And a particular precept or rule of not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

By which he bound him, and listen, here's the important part. We know that he had to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

By which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience.

Promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it. And endued him with the power and ability to keep it.

Now when you hear that language, basically of cursing and blessing, what do you think?

God puts before you a cursing and a blessing. And he says, choose, right?

And what is that? There are blessings for obedience.

There are cursings or punishment for disobedience. That is called a covenant.

Covenant. Very good, class. Tough crowd.

Earlier, a few weeks ago, we looked at the covenant of works and the covenant of grace briefly. Why is it...

Well, let's back up. Let's make it a little more basic. How do we know that we are responsible for what

Adam did in the Garden of Eden? How do we know that? People say, well, that's not fair, right?

Is it fair? It's just as fair as Jesus taking our sin.

I mean, the question of fairness, when people start throwing that around, forget about it. Anthony, were you going to say something?

I saw you like wave a finger or something. I don't know. What's that?

We would have eaten the apple. I probably would have made applesauce. That's how... I mean, I would have just... Whatever the fruit of the tree of...

Yes, Larry. Okay.

Adam was God's chosen representative for us. You know, it's like the patriots make a draft pick.

And everybody's, you know, upset with the draft pick. Well, we can be as upset as we want, but would we have chosen better than Bill Belichick?

I think so. But we would not have chosen better. We would not have chosen better than God.

God chose our perfect representative, and Adam fell. All right.

We were in Adam. I'm not going to go down the Hebrew's road, but let's put it this way.

We are just as guilty as Adam for his choice. You know, and anybody who has a problem with that should probably say, well, then

I also don't want to be... I don't want to receive Christ's righteousness. I don't want to receive

Adam's guilt, and I don't want to receive Christ's righteousness. And if you say that, then you are like a heretic.

Oh, sorry. You don't want that. We want to be...

Not necessarily we want to be in Adam, but we want to be in Christ, and it's the same principle.

In fact, I mean, we've gone over this a number of times, but let's look at Romans 5 for a moment. And we'll start at verse 12.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men.

This is the curse, right? Adam would have, could have lived forever if he had not sinned, but he did sin.

And because he sinned and therefore was bound to die, then it spread to all men.

We couldn't have Adam die and then other people not die. He was our representative.

We were in Adam. And it says so right here in verse 12 again. And so death spread to all men because all sinned, all of us in Adam.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one to come.

Well, who was he a type of? Who was he the antecedent of? Well, the

Lord Jesus Christ. Moving on to verse 15.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, again,

Adam, we all died through his sin, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man.

Jesus Christ abounded for many. So we are either in Adam or in Christ. We're either in his sin or in Christ's righteousness and experiencing the forgiveness of God.

So Adam was commanded to obey God and he failed.

R .C. Sproul wrote this on his website, Ligonier .org. Where Adam failed to gain the blessedness of the tree of life,

Christ wins that blessedness by his obedience. He perfectly obeyed the law. Which blessedness he provides for those who put their trust in him.

In this work of fulfilling the covenant for us in our stead, theology speaks of the active obedience of Christ.

That is, Christ's redeeming work includes not only his death, but his life. His life of perfect obedience becomes the sole ground of our justification.

How can we be declared righteous? We are righteous because his righteousness is imputed to us.

So it's not a myth, it's not a fable, it's not a fiction. It is a transfer of righteousness from the

Lord Jesus Christ to us. It is his perfect righteousness gained via his perfect obedience that is imputed to all who put their trust in him.

Therefore, Christ's work of active obedience is absolutely essential to the justification of anyone.

Without Christ's active obedience to the covenant of works, there is no reason for imputation.

There is no ground for justification. If we take away the covenant of works, we take away the active obedience of Jesus.

In other words, there's no reason for his obedience, his perfection to have accomplished anything.

If we take away the active obedience of Jesus, we take away the imputation of his righteousness to us.

If we take away the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, we take away justification by faith alone.

If we take away justification by faith alone, we take away the gospel and we are left in our sins.

We are left as the miserable sons of Adam who can only look forward to feeling the full measure of God's curse upon us for our own disobedience.

We absolutely need Christ to fulfill that covenant of works. Now, let's talk briefly about the new covenant.

The covenant of grace does not annihilate the covenant of works, but rather God agrees to save us on the basis of someone else's fulfillment of works rather than our own.

In other words, that covenant is not like the other one. It's on the basis of Christ's righteousness, and it's not on our own righteousness.

Let's look at Luke 22, verses 18 through 20. And if somebody would read that, please, while I gulp down some water.

Luke 22, verses 18 to 20. I'm sure it's not. Thank you very much.

Anybody else have a comment they'd like to make on that? Hebrews 1, okay.

I mean, I'm sure it's not, but I'm not really prepared to fully discuss that here this morning.

Hebrews 1 and what verse is it, Cindy? Okay, that's all right. It's probably somewhere in Hebrews.

So while we're backgrounding that in our little dual processing system, I mean,

I would look and see if there are any cross -references there, but I don't know right off the top of my head.

So, Janet. Okay, which is what Pastor Bob, I think, was talking about earlier.

Yeah. Okay, well, let me read the verses, and then we'll talk about the practical thing.

7 through 10. It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior.

In the one case, tithes are received by... That one? Okay. In the one case, tithes are received by mortal men, but in the other case, by one of whom it is testified that he lives.

One might even say that Levi himself, who received tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when

Melchizedek met him. In other words, he, by proxy, even though he wasn't alive yet, paid tithes through Abraham.

So, that's the point there. So, it is the same principle.

The guilt of Adam. I'm just going to have to look that up. We'll just pass on it for now, and I'll just make a note.

Okay, 1 Corinthians 15, 21. Larry knew that right off the top of his head.

Oh, okay. Or his wife knew that. Would you read that, please? Okay.

And 45 too? Is that what you said? Okay. So, read 22 as well, and then verse 45, would you?

So, we see that kind of contrast between Adam and Jesus. What they did.

What they're responsible for. And I'm sure there are other places as well.

Okay. Luke 22, which is where we were going. Luke 22, verses 18 and 20.

Did somebody stay there? Yeah, go ahead, Mark. Okay, and that's what we'll celebrate later today, the inauguration of the new covenant.

It's not like the old one. It is a new one. And it is predicated upon the death of the

Lord Jesus Christ, his sacrificial death. We see it right there. The new covenant in my blood.

Not in his red fluid flowing out of his body, but actually in his death.

Hebrews 8, verses 12 and 13 says this. I'll just read it. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away because it's fulfilled by the

Lord Jesus Christ. Let's go back to Romans 5. And we're going to see again that we are either in Adam or we are in Christ.

Romans 5 .19, Romans 5 .19. So through Adam's disobedience, the world is plunged into ruin.

And through Christ's obedience, many are redeemed. Not everyone, but many.

R .C. says this. He says in the covenant of creation announced to Adam, God set up an arrangement with the entire human race.

This is vitally important in our own day because controversies rage in the political arena about the relationship between church and state.

We understand the difference between the institutions. They do not have the same role. He's going to go on to explain that.

And basically what he's saying is with Adam, he made a deal. He established certain principles.

And these principles are still viable today. And then he says there have been times when the government has tried to usurp the role of the church and other times when the church has tried to usurp the role of the state.

Can you think of times when the government has tried to usurp the role of the church?

Social safety net, okay? Yeah, take care of widows and orphans.

You know, it's a really interesting book. I think it's called the, what is it called?

The Cross of Hitler or something like that or The Swastika and the Cross by Erwin Lutzer.

And he just talks about how those who were faithful and wanted to follow the

Bible were punished and what the

Nazis did was basically to seize control of much of the church and its teachings.

And it's a pretty interesting read how they did that. But when we think about the church becoming the state, can you think of any examples of that?

Yeah, it's been repeated many times.

But I think especially of the Roman Catholic Church from about the 12th century to the 14th century was the most feared power on the face of the globe.

When the Pope said, Your Highness, we disagree with you, the kings were like, oh.

Because they knew that anything could happen. The church could do just about anything it wanted to.

And that went on for hundreds of years where the church was really a vital global power, the church, nominal

Christian church. It happened here. You mean in Massachusetts?

You mean in Massachusetts? Godless Massachusetts? And that was just last week.

Three weeks ago. I mean, there was, you know, in the early going, for example,

I think they've recently repealed most of these, but all the arcane alcohol laws.

Now, I am not a noted drinker. I do love me some

NyQuil, but I think one year we were looking to get some beer to soak the turkey in it.

I don't know. I don't understand all that stuff. I just do what I'm told. We're going to soak the turkey in beer.

Okay, so go to the liquor store. And I'm like, you mean you can't go to the grocery store? No, you have to go to the...

And I'm like, what kind of state is this anyway? I mean, in California, you just go...

I mean, you can go to a bookstore and buy alcohol, and here it was all these specialized alcohol stores, and I didn't really get it.

But that all goes back to what? The Puritans. There are all kinds of rules and laws and everything that go back to the

Puritans. I think, was it the official or the semi -official?

You know, why do you have a congregational church in every town? That sounds like preferring one religion over another.

See? Yeah, maybe. Oh, sad times.

The state paid the pastor? Sweet. 20 quarts of wood, nice.

All right, well, anyway. So you get the point. Yeah, the point was, you know, there have been different times in our history where, you know, different things happen.

Now, let's talk... Yeah, that's a nice recovery. So let's talk about a serious issue here for a moment.

Abortion. And this ties back into creation ordinances. Unbelievers get upset if the church protests the concept of abortion on demand.

And what do they say? What's that? Right to choose.

Right to choose. But I mean, more fundamentally, what it says we're talking about, we're forcing our morality on them.

You know, we want to take the rules of the church, whatever the church means, and impose it on everyone.

R .C. says this, but when religious groups say to the state that there ought to be a law against abortion, we are not asking the state to be the church.

We're asking the state to be the state. We are reminding civil government of its

God -given responsibility to protect and defend human life. God gives a sword to the civil magistrate, which is found in Romans 13.

Thank you. Not to fight wars of aggression, but to defend human life.

When the government abdicates its responsibility to protect human life, then the church is right to call upon the government to be the government.

The sanctity of human life is not only a Christian issue, it is a human issue. It is rooted and grounded, not in the law of the

New Testament, not in the Ten Commandments, but where? We talked about this Friday night at Bible study.

Too bad you weren't there. Let's open our Bibles to Genesis 2. And I'm going to start reading in verse 5.

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the

Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground, then the

Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Here's the picture. God takes a lump of dirt, a lump of clay, forms it into the shape of the man.

Is that shape a man? Why not?

He doesn't have the nephesh. He doesn't have the breath of life. When God puts that breath of life into him, what makes man different?

If we could look through all of the creation account, what makes man different from every other created being?

It is exactly that. It's that breath of life. It is what we would call, what? The soul.

So we can love our dogs. We can think they're really smart and this and that and the other thing, but here's the thing. That dog, and this pains me to say this, and I know it pains

Charlie too, has no soul, which means what? It's not an eternal being. Mostly not an eternal being.

They feel eternal, but they're not. Every human life bears that image, and no other creature does.

So in abortion, it is the ending of a human life.

That baby has the breath of life. It has a soul. It is sacred.

It is above all other life. I mentioned Friday night. It's pitiful, and they do this all during the holiday season and everything else, to see these commercials where they show these dogs that are chained up and abused and made to fight and all these other things, horrible things, and if you just send $20 a month, you can spare all these dogs.

I bet they get a lot of money, and I love dogs, but I just think, what if they were to say, we're going here and we're going to save these babies and this is what we're going to do, and we're going to provide homes for them, well, people would be outraged because there's a right to choose and you're imposing your values on us, but if it's dogs, oh, that's great.

If it's cats, if it's some little gopher that lives in the desert or whatever it is, those are fine, but don't talk to us about human beings.

And that comes back to this. If you have an unbiblical worldview, if you think that all life is equal, if you don't know what the

Bible says or you want to choose to ignore what the Bible says, then you missed the whole point.

Human life is more important than other life. God gave mankind dominion.

He didn't give squirrels dominion. Platypi are not image bearers.

As cute as they are. I saw somebody has one as a pet. Well, that's fine. There's something special about people, and it goes back to the creation ordinance and the fact that God says, let us create man in our image.

We are image bearers. Now, let's talk about another social issue that's become quite pertinent these days, marriage.

R .C. says, In our day, we've seen the collapse of one of the older institutions in human history, namely marriage.

In fact, I can't think of an older institution. Let me think for a minute. There isn't one, right?

Marriage was instituted not by King Henry VIII, I could resist that.

It was instituted by God from the very beginning. He ordained it for Adam and Eve, the first human family.

And today, many people despise this institution and elect instead for cohabitation without marriage.

Even some who profess Christ. What are some of the reasons people give for, you know, they're professing believers, but they don't want to get married and they shack up instead.

What do they say? I'll tell you my favorite one. We're saving up for our wedding.

I mean, there's no excuse for it. It is rebellion against creation, against the law of God established in the creation.

It's easy. Now, some non -Christians, some professing atheists,

I'd say professing atheists because they're not really. I mean, when we say professing

Christians, what are we saying? They say they're Christians. I don't really know because I don't know their heart.

They say they're atheists. I do know. I just want to be polite. There are no atheists.

Everybody knows that there's a God. It just depends on how hard you want to suppress that truth and righteousness.

But anyway, non -Christians, atheists object. They say we reject the Bible. We're not going to be held to what it says.

R .C. says, if the Bible's true, the fact that someone does not believe it does not impact its truthfulness, right?

Truth is truth no matter if anybody believes it or not. Someone may say they don't believe in God, but they're still without excuse when they're standing before their creator at judgment.

R .C. says this. He says, all people, every single person is in a relationship with God, whether they want to be or not.

If God exists, how would it be possible for him not to be in relationship with human beings?

And the answer is it wouldn't be possible. And he does exist. We can demonstrate that from Scripture.

And just as a little caveat for those who may not have heard this before, what happens when you say to somebody, how do you know that God exists?

Or somebody says to me, Steve, how do you know that God exists? And I say, what? I know it in my heart.

No. Wrong. How do I know that God exists? Jesus loves me.

This I know. Bob's favorite song. For the Bible tells me so. I know that God exists because the

Bible tells me he exists. And then, of course, the objector says what? I'm sorry?

How do you know the Bible's true? Because the Bible says it's true. Next question.

That circular reasoning is the answer I was looking for. So what's the answer to that circular reasoning?

Everything is circular reasoning. Oh, no, I'm an independent thinker. I know that God doesn't exist because I've never seen him.

Well, I have news for you. How do you know that you know? Because I know. Oh, OK. So in other words, your circular reasoning begins and ends with you.

My circular reasoning begins and ends with the word of God. It is independent of my thought.

There might be things in the Bible where I just go, I don't know if I can believe that or not. But God said it, it's true, and it's up to me to submit to it.

Circular reasoning is how we do things. But when I say that I submit everything to Scripture, and I believe that God revealed himself, well,

I'm saying I have an independent source, an external source, and it doesn't depend on me.

You can believe, you know, and here's the final thing I'll say about that. Because somebody will say, well, you know, you have your beliefs and I have mine.

True. Mine is based on the Bible. Now, let me ask you this. If there are 7 billion people in the world, and everybody thinks exactly like you do, in other words, it's their own reasoning, their own rationale, and their own understanding of the cosmos that makes it so, isn't it possible that there are 7 billion different interpretations of reality?

Okay? Does that seem reasonable to you? That there are 7 billion versions of the truth, and each independently has to be accepted as the truth.

On the other hand, we can simplify things and say there is a creator who established all things and who has revealed himself here.

So it's 7 billion opinions or it's one opinion. I'll go with one. You can do as you want.

I don't believe God exists. Okay, well, you know, then are you God? Do you have control over life and death?

And do you know what's going to happen after you die? Do you know when you're going to die? Can you determine that? And the answer is no.

What we see, though, are laws that would steer towards some sort of autonomy that would steer towards, in effect, the idea that I should be able to control not only whether or not

I bring a life into the world, but also whether or not I can take my own life. But anyway, we're getting far afield here.

Well, I mean, the biblical principles just kind of cut to the heart of it. The biblical principles actually make life, I would say, civilization possible, right?

I mean, if we don't have the basic understandings of things like do unto others as you would have them do unto you and thou shalt not kill and all these other fundamental principles, then we have no civilization.

And if you really want to, it's fascinating, if you want to understand the difference between Western civilization as a culture with all its flaws and its sinfulness because mankind perverts even what is good, right?

It's interesting to look at how Eastern civilization and other civilizations are so much different, those that were not really based on biblical principles.

For example, I think it's fascinating to even think about this. How did we win

World War II? And this is just going to get crazy off -topic, but I just want to say this for a minute.

You know, we won World War II because we mass -produced things and eventually just kind of flooded the

Germans with equipment and manpower and everything else. But also

I would argue that Americans, I don't know if you know this, but we're not really – we will die for our country if we have to, but that's kind of like way last resort.

And so they're very – on the battlefield, Americans are noted for their improvisation.

You know, a corporal, a private, almost anybody will come up with something that turns out to be brilliant later on.

In most other systems, improvisation is frowned upon. And I think there's no clearer example than to look at the

Battle of Stalingrad in World War II where the Soviet soldiers, the

Russians, often had to wait until the first two, three, or four guys died before they got a rifle.

So it was like, you know, all right, you guys are 1A, B, C, and D, and E. What? Well, yeah, 1A gets the rifle.

When he gets killed, 1B, you pick it up, 1C. And that idea is just so foreign to us. We'd be like, wait a minute,

I don't get a rifle? Okay, well, yeah, I'm going to – I'll tell you what. I'll just wait back here and you tell me when you – that's the

American thinking, right? The difference between East and West is just so pronounced in terms of culture, in terms of the value of the individual, right?

Well, where does that idea of the value of the individual come from? Straight out of the Bible. We're image bearers and we believe that.

And it is that belief that separates us from, you know, even though atheists and others don't really hold to that, they would all say

I have value as an individual. Well, why do you have – you know, if you're nothing but a little piece of tissue that grows up into a bigger piece of tissue and you're ultimately disposable and your life means nothing, then what are you doing here?

Right. I mean, if we – was it Washington? Adams, you know, said that we needed a religious people.

Of course, now we have to – well, we're starting to see what happens as Christianity unravels, you know, as more and more as our society becomes outwardly pagan.

We're starting to see what happens to the government because democracy without any personal restraint is a pretty ugly thing.

Right. No, he wasn't thinking Islam and Hinduism and everything else. No, he was specifically thinking about Christianity.

Okay. So where was I? Never mind.

I won't say it. Oh, so Sproul says this. He says, When I say we are all in a covenant relationship with God, you may assume that I'm talking about – or you may assume that I'm talking about a wonderful, loving relationship, right?

I'm in a covenant relationship with God. That means he loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life. He says,

However, covenant relationships can either be positive or negative. In biblical language, people can either be covenant keepers or covenant breakers.

They can be promise keepers or promise breakers. For those of you a little bit older, you remember the promise –

I almost called it the promise breakers movement. The seven promises of a promise breaker.

Sproul is clear that he does not want to establish Christian laws, the law of the land, but he wished that the church had more influence.

And he says, It has been a long time since Christian influence has prevailed, and that is very true.

He says, We cannot use the sword to turn America back into a Christian nation.

So Christians need to be very careful about how they use their electoral power. We must not use the ballot to enforce the distinctives of the

Christian community, if there are any such distinctives these days.

Any thoughts about that before I close? Because we're about to get back to the covenant of works, and I don't want to go there yet.

Yeah, I mean, whether or not people want to admit it, they know that these things are, you know, it's interesting when you, if you read stories about women who are going to abort their babies and either heard the gospel or heard somebody from the outside the building or whatever, and then they change their minds and you go,

Why is that? It's because inside, even though, you know, the law tells them it's legal inside their minds, they know it's wrong.

They inherently instinctively know that what they're doing, they were created to, you know, a mother's first instinct is to protect her baby, not to kill it.

They understand these things are wrong. And so on occasion, they do become convicted of the sinfulness of their sin.

And so they stop it. They stop right there and the baby is saved. I saw a story not too long ago on the news where a woman was reunited.

She was at the abortion clinic, this exact situation. She was at the abortion clinic, heard something from the

Bible, changed her mind, gave the baby up for adoption, and she meets the boy.

He was a young man, like 20 years later. And I thought, I mean, you know, pretty amazing story.

We inherently know that some things are wrong. And when we look around the world today, we go, people are doing a lot of suppressing.

Well, yes, they are. Yes, they are. As I've said on many occasions, if a three -year -old can tell you the difference between a boy and a girl, but somebody with 20 years of education, postgraduate education, can't tell you the difference between the boy and the girl, you know there's a lot of suppressing going on.

And that's the world that we live in. All right, we need to close. Father, thank you for your

Word. Thank you for the men who put together the Westminster Confession of Faith, the

London Baptist Confession of Faith, and for the fact that you have gifted the church for hundreds of years with men who would rightly exposit your

Word, who would systematically put together the ideas contained in the

Bible, that we might study them, that we might mine them, that we might own these concepts for century after century after century.

Father, we pray that you would continue to build your church to continue to grow us in Christ, and to remind us that we are surrounded daily by people who are in a covenant relationship with you, and that covenant is one that they consistently break.

And they, like us, are going to appear before you one day and have to give an account for what they've done with the

Lord Jesus Christ. Father, put that weight on us, knowing that these other image -bearers are hell -bound, and apart from hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ, that's exactly where they're going.

Father, through us, show your mercy to others, we pray in Jesus' name.