1689 London Baptist Confession (part 12)

Our Father in heaven, Lord, we bless you this morning, praise you, thank you for all that you do for us, all that you provide, even as we think about all the hubbub and the excitement of a solar eclipse tomorrow.

It's amazing how fantastic you are, that all these things that we just marvel at are really nothing for you to do.

You do them all, you sustain all of life, the universe, gravity, everything that we see and feel and touch and sense is all because of you and your power.

And Father, what an awesome God you are. Lord, as we look to your word this morning, what it says about providence,

I just pray that you bless our time and remind us what a good and gracious God you are, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, so we talked last week, let me see what we talked about.

Man being an image bearer is one of the topics we talked about and we just, we're just to now chapter, let me see if I can remember what it is, if it's chapter five, maybe

I should cheat and look, chapter five of the 1689, we're on providence, things will start going faster.

How many chapters are there? And I started getting worried about this last night. You know, how many chapters are there?

Oh, now I'm in the Baptist catechism. If we look at the catechism, then it can take forever. 32, but like, you know, 32 of the last judgment, right?

It's two paragraphs. That's easy. We'll pick up the pace a little bit here, but we've got the big things going on now.

Doctor of providence is tied to what doctor that we've already talked about.

What's that? Sovereignty, right? Also known as,

I mean, the way I think we presented it was God's decree. What's the difference between God's decree or sovereignty or his, let's see, what's for ordination and providence.

It's the difference between God's decree and providence. And I almost gave it away because I wanted to say some explanatory words, but I didn't.

And I'm very pleased with that difference between God's decree and providence. Anybody at all.

Okay. I'll give you a hint. Time has something to do with it. Okay. Scott Goddard, the scholar. Yeah.

I mean, I think, I think if I edited the word order a little bit, I would really like that. Basically it is

God's and action, not inaction. It's important that we put the either and not the his inaction of his decree is his providence, right?

What he declared from the beginning and now brings about to take or come to pass in time.

That's his providence. So look at it this way.

His decree is the blueprint. He lays it all out. And then his providence is building that blueprint, essentially making everything come to pass.

So there we go. So Waldron says the doctrine of providence as unfolded closely related to the decree.

Then he says the decree takes place in attorney. Providence takes place in history.

Okay. Okay. If we talk about the decree or the foreknowledge, we could call it the first cause.

Why would we call it the first cause? Because God caused it gold star for Brad, all things come to pass immutably or infallibly because that's

God's decree. There's nothing that befalls any by chance or without the providence of God.

Now the word chance does ever occur in the Bible. If you have the authorized version, the

King James, you know, what are we to make a, for example,

Jonah, what, what happens when they're trying to, the sailors on the boat are trying to figure out what's going on in the boat.

They cast lots and luckily, right? Who winds up the loser or the winner who wins the lottery?

It's Jonah, right? So was that chance? Was it random chance?

No. Um, Walder notes that the, the word chance, the whole idea chance derives from verbs, which means simply to encounter or to occur and thus come to mean an unexpected meeting or occurrence and event, which was not humanly planned.

So, you know, if the Bible says by chance or it's so happened or something like that, from a human perspective, it was a random occurrence from God's perspective.

There are no random occurrences, not even the lottery, which I understand, uh, $650 million or something like that when it comes up on Wednesday.

And if you win, don't tell me because first thing I'll say is thank you for confessing your sin. Okay. Sorry.

Uh, okay. So chance is coincidence. Was there a question, Brad? Okay. Now, if God has ordained everything, if he is for ordained, everything ordained, everything before the foundation of the world, and now he's bringing about in time, that's his provenance.

Well then what is the argument against that? What's our logical response to that?

What is our, you know, our fleshly response to that? I mean, in one of my, yeah,

Barry. Okay.

Am I accountable for what I do? Yeah. That's basically where we're going. I mean, the, uh, you know, to put it in really base terms and to really engage the young people by that,

I mean, people in their thirties, as the famous theologian Bart Simpson once said, can't win.

Don't try. Right. In other words, you look at the decree of God and you go, well, I can't change anything.

I guess I don't have to do anything or I'm not responsible for anything. There's nothing we can do.

Why even try? That's fatalism, right? Yes, it is.

Thank you. Uh, but it's also, there's also another argument against it, which is this that says, well, that whole idea squashes what my free will, right?

It takes it away. It makes me a robot means I am nothing. I'm unimportant.

So what do you say to those kinds of things? What you say is stop thinking unbiblically.

The assertion of the confession is that by the same providences, he I'll say it as it's read here, or as, as it's written, order them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily freely or contingency contingently.

What does that mean? It means that God uses secondary causes free and contingent events in order to produce a predetermined result.

Okay. Now he gives some examples and these are helpful. How does one side win a war on the other side, lose a war?

I mean, history books are written about them. We can understand it from, you know, why, why did Japan lose the second world war?

Well, I can tell you because they didn't have near the production that the United States had. And that was a losing battle from the beginning.

Why did the Confederates lose the civil war? Well, it wasn't because the North was right and the South was wrong, even though that's true.

But the fact is the North had 22 million people. The South had 9 million people. The North had all the factories that had all the artillery and how all the manpower and therefore the union one that's from a human perspective, from the divine perspective, the war was over before it began.

It was predetermined. Nevertheless, if you think, well, victory is mine,

I don't have to do anything. I don't need to, you know, load my weapons or whatever you'll lose.

He talks about the random shot of the Syrian bowman, which was the means of bringing about the predetermined death of Ahab.

Ruth was a gift of the Lord to Boaz, but she met him by coincidence, by chance.

Understanding that God controls the world through means should keep us from three things.

And dare I say that there are people even in our church who study or who struggle with these three issues.

Number one, a miserable anxiety. I mean, you could just say anxiety. Some people might not think it's miserable and anxiety and complaining about life.

He says everything is under the control of the or everything is under the control of the living God. If you believe that it will keep you from anxiety and complaining, which make your lifestyle miserable.

Will it? The fact that you know that God is sovereign, does it stop you from complaining?

It should, right? It should make you kind of think at the very least, when you start feeling the complaint coming out of your mouth, it should make you want to go because I know ultimately what am

I doing? I'm complaining against God.

Second thing he talks about is that it should keep you from is fatalism, which is what we were just talking about.

And he says, what difference does the use of means make? And then he says all the difference in the world because God has ordained the means.

He has ordained the means. And finally, a presumption should keep us from the sin of presumption.

Do not presume that you will see the results and outcome without using the means. Do not expect, and this is classic, right?

Do not expect that God will save your loved ones unless you pray for them. And this gets back to two things, sovereignty or decree, but also providence.

In the sovereignty of God, people are chosen for salvation before the foundation of the world.

How does that work itself out in time? God uses means, right?

He uses prayer. He uses somebody who goes and evangelizes. And that person that was foreordained from before the foundation of the world to come to faith then comes to faith in time.

And this is, do not expect to be safe unless you take precautions.

You like to ride your motorcycle? Well, good for you. You say, God's sovereign. I don't need to worry about a helmet.

You know, he's determined everything. That's right. He's also determined to use secondary methods, including your stupidity to accomplish his end.

So don't be stupid. Okay.

Yes. Very agency, meaning choices or yes.

Yes. So secondary causes, primary causes, God secondary causes can be men and their choices could be animals, could be any number of things, but yeah, they're secondary things that God, God brings about to bring about his, his own purpose.

Do you have another question? No. And of course we need to understand this part.

And that's why I underlined it in my outline. God is not a slave of the means which he ordained.

God is not a slave of the means he ordained, meaning he is not, he he's not stuck with the way things are.

He's, he won't vary from his plan, but consider these statements from Waldron.

God has worked without means, without means. And what we're talking about basically, well, what we're talking about are going to be miracles.

For example, um, Jesus born of a Virgin that's

God working without means the virgin birth of Christ was accomplished with no father, no human father.

God has worked above means meaning beyond the natural.

Uh, he specifies the conception of Isaac, Abraham and Sarah are well past childbearing years and Isaac comes along.

Uh, God has worked against means against normal means and he cites, and this is good, right?

I mean, when Moses sees the burning bush is a burning bush, a miracle in and of itself.

Yes, because it's not consumed, right? How does the bush burn and not get consumed?

And the answer is it couldn't. How does iron float or swim? How's it possible that, uh,

Daniel and his friends are in the lions or in, well, in the, in the furnace and don't get consumed by the fire.

These are all God working against ordinary means. These are miraculous acts of God.

Now, what would you say being students of the 1689 London confession of faith, what would you say is the primary focus of the care of God?

What does he care more for than anything else? Okay.

His glory, his son, these are good answers.

Let me get a little more specific. What do you suppose the focus of his providential care is his elect excellent answer.

His elect his chosen ones. Uh, Waldron says who, if anyone joy enjoys

God's special care, is it the famous, the great, the political leaders, Israel?

No, it is the church. Uh, this is an often veiled, but comforting fact.

Uh, he says, you know, where's the chosen place in the world? Is it Jerusalem?

Is it the temple? Is it Rome? Is it the Vatican? Is it Mecca? No, it is where the church is.

Um, God has a special care for his church. Now I'm going to move on because he does a couple of things, um, that are very, very similar.

In fact, I'd say they're just different words to say the same thing. How many of you are familiar with the term of covenant of works?

Covenant of works. Anybody have any idea what it means?

Okay. The old Testament law. Okay. I, now

I think to be specific, I mean, I, I get what you're saying, but I think you're probably referring to the mosaic covenant, right?

Uh, the covenant of Sinai, but it is definitely a covenant.

It is definitely law. Yep. The covenant between God and Adam.

If I had any money, I'd give it to you. Um, that, well, okay.

I do have a few dollars. Um, no, that's right. In fact, it's called the covenant of works or the other name that is known, uh, here is the

Adamic administration. In other words, uh, the administration that God established with Adam.

And these two topics are closely related to one another. And then there's another one, the doctor of sin, which we probably won't get to until next week.

Um, but the authors of the confession 1689 drew upon three other confessions when they wrote it.

There's the first London Baptist confession of faith. There's the Savoy declaration and the mentioning that because he does, but they all, they all have different ideas, basically this covenant of works.

And that's where the whole Adamic administration also comes from.

But the Puritans together with other reformed theologians enshrined these chapters of Genesis two and three

Genesis two and three into the theological formulation, the covenant of works.

Um, and it's John Murray, later theologian who, who calls them the Adamic administration, because he's not sure that it's a covenant.

But if you hear me say Adamic administration, you could substitute covenant works because they're synonymous for the most part.

The goal of the Adamic administration was to bring Adam to a higher existence than that, which in which he was created.

What do you hear? Or what do you think? The goal of the Adamic administration, the covenant of works was to bring

Adam to a higher level of existence than that, which in or that, which in which he existed or he was created.

What do you think of what could be better than the garden of Eden?

Is there anything better than the garden of Eden? Heaven.

I was, I was calling Fenway. Yes. Heaven.

Thank you, Brad. Now, does this, you know, does that degrade as a cast dispersion against the garden of Eden?

If we say that there's something better, and I don't think it, it does. Let's look at Genesis two 17.

In fact, we'll go back to 16. And this is, this is at the root. Well, in fact,

I'm going to back up to 15 because we'll get to all of it. The whole idea of this covenant here, the

Lord God took the man that's Adam and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.

Okay. Those are his, that's what he's to do. And the

Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden and verse 17, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

And of course we know that he does what he eats of that fruit. And does he die spiritually?

So there's a separation from God. In fact, I had a, I think

I mentioned it. My friend asked me, we still have an ongoing conversation via email. You know, why didn't

God just forgive him right then? Adam, right then, why, you know, why send Jesus? And, um, you know, it's a good conversation to have, but that's, that's the idea there.

This covenant, this is what you are to do.

And this is essentially what you're not to do. Uh, and there are consequences for not doing this or for doing, for violating the commandment take of this tree and you will die.

Um, so he asked this question, he says, to what purpose would the special arrangements have been made? The conditions here, if there was no goal in mind, if there was no higher goal in mind, in other words, just stay here forever, work, tend the garden.

Um, and, and that's it. This is just going to be your existence.

He says, if there were such a goal in mind, it seems to impugn the divine character to conclude that the goal was purely negative.

In other words, here, Adam, here's the deal. You get to stay in the garden of Eden until the day that you finally succumb to temptation and eat of that tree, and then you're going to die.

And that's going to be it. That's that's all negative. That's not a good deal, right?

Do this. And then, you know, as long as you do it fine, you can stay here. But the day you stop doing, or you do what

I don't want you to do, then you're dead. Let's look at, uh,

Genesis two, nine for a moment. And out of the ground, the

Lord made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the site and is good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So here are these two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the middle of garden.

Now let's look at Genesis three, three. In fact, let's read, uh, let's read a little bit more.

Let's read Genesis three here until they, they fall. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the

Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And of course that's not what he said. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the tree or of the tree of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die.

Well, that's not true, right? That's not what he said, but we can see that, um, there may be something positive to this tree just by the way the serpent goes on and explains it.

Verse four, the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil, right?

Why would you call a tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, unless there were something, you know, to it.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

So there's the fall of Adam and Eve.

Uh, Waldron says this, he says, enables us to, uh, infer a positive goal. In other words, that there had, that there was something more than just living in the garden and tending to it.

That goal would have been the eternal life, which the tree of life was able to confer Genesis three 22.

So let's look at three 22. Then the

Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and also take of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden. So what should we, or what can we infer from that?

Follow the sequence of events. They eat of the tree of what is it?

Knowledge of good and evil. So now they, they have more. I think fair to say that it says their eyes were open and it didn't just mean their physical eyes.

They understood more. Now they understand the value of this tree of life. And God says we have to get them out of the garden of Eden.

We Royal, we have to get him out of the garden of Eden because if they eat of the tree of life, then what happens?

They live forever and they can't live forever. They have to die.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work at the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man.

Again, the idea of a covenant enables us to infer this positive goal. That goal would have been eternal life, which the tree of life was able to confer.

Some have thought that Adam was already eating the tree of life previous to the fall.

And then there are some objections that I'm going to skip over because it's too academic for words here.

If after the fall, Walter notes, Adam would have lived forever. If he ate of the tree of life, as it seems from Genesis three, 22 to 24 there, certainly we must conclude that he had eaten of it before.

Uh, or if he had eaten of it before the fall, he would have lived forever. It is clear, however, that it was possible for him to sin and thus die before the fall and that therefore he had not eaten of this tree of life.

Hmm. Okay. So now we come to the analogy between Adam and Christ.

What Adam was supposed to do and didn't, he failed to do.

He's the first, that's why we call him, he's the first Adam. And then there's the second Adam. Uh, there is none.

Walden says there's none before Adam. He's the first man, correct? There is none between, uh,

Christ. There's none between, there's no one in comparison to Jesus until he comes along.

There's nobody with, let's put it this way. What, what is unique? And I say this fairly often, but I'm going to say it a little differently here.

What is unique about Adam and Jesus? What's different about them than any of us in this room?

One brought sin and one brought salvation. Yes. But I'm talking about something they both have in common.

Yes. They both had free will. They were the first of their kind.

Okay. But they were perfect. Okay. Sinless until Adam sin.

And thus they had free will, which is the point. And why is that important? Why is it important that they had free will?

They could choose to obey God. When we come into this world, we don't have free will.

So therefore it is impossible for us to be, not only are we not God and not able, or, you know, and not the father of all of mankind.

But we don't have the capacity to obey God apart from a regenerating work of the

Holy Spirit. And even then we won't perfectly obey, but we don't have that choice to simply obey

God. And the point of that is nobody else from the time of Adam until Jesus was born, no one else is able to perfectly obey from the beginning to therefore fulfill the

Adamic covenant to do what Adam was supposed to do. Nobody can do that until Jesus is born.

Just trying to skip through some of this academic Adamic stuff.

Walden says that a period of obedience successfully completed by Adam would have secured eternal life for all represented by him.

In other words, if Adam had obeyed, then all in Adam would have lived forever.

The problem is we don't know how long that was. We don't, you know, how long was Adam in the garden? We don't know.

I mean, I tend to think it probably wasn't very long just because that's just my opinion.

We don't really know though. We don't have a record of the days that they're in the garden. Walden says given the perfection and blessedness of Adam's condition as created, he then asked the question what the higher condition could have and what could a higher condition have consisted.

And I think this is important because, you know, getting back to heaven. Listen to this. He says, he's trying to ask what would be higher than Eden.

And he says it could not have consisted in the absence of sin, curse, or death because before the fall,

Adam had all those things. There was no curse. There was no sin. In fact, I often wonder what it would have been like,

I think about things that can't exist, to just be in because there's a canopy of water over the earth.

You're protected from the UV rays and all that kind of stuff. The earth is at a constant temperature from pole to pole and everything's really nice.

There are no seasons. There are no fall. There are no leaf peepers. But this is the world that they were placed into.

And that's what Adam was dealing with. There is no sin, no curse, no death, none of those things.

So what would the higher condition have been? He says it was rather a confirmation in righteousness, freedom from even the possibility of death, right?

What separates heaven from Eden? No possibility of death, no possibility of sin and enlarged and more free communion with God.

So as good as the garden of Eden was, and it was paradise, especially compared to where we are now, heaven is better.

Now getting back to talking about the Adamic covenant, he speaks of,

Waldron does, of a period of probation for Adam. How many of you have been on probation?

Don't raise your hands. What is probation? Probation. Yes.

A time of testing. Okay. I like that. That's really a good answer because when

I think of probation, you know what I think about. I think about somebody getting released from jail on probation and you can get, as we used to say, you can get tossed like a dinner salad by the police or, you know, your probation officer or whomever.

Yeah. A time of testing. A time of testing for Adam, the head of the race centered upon the prohibition of eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil and also the means of bringing

Adam and his race to the goal discussed above the higher level of existence, that is to say heaven.

He says, we don't know how long the time of probation, the time of testing would have lasted, but we know that it would have been temporary.

The goal of probation required this. If the probation had never ended, right?

If that test of Adam had never ended, then he never would have attained the higher level.

He never would have gone to heaven. So it wouldn't have been a time of testing. It would have been his existence.

Murray, with his usual succinctness and precision remarks, probation in the nature of the case must be limited in duration.

A destiny contingent upon an event can never become settled until the event has occurred.

In other words, well, to put it short, bluntly, the fall was foreordained.

It was going to happen. We don't know how long it was going to last, but God knew it was never going to last forever. This conclusion is also required by the analogy of Christ's temporary probation.

How long was Christ tested? Well, his entire life, but essentially about more or less 33 years.

The precise text involved in this probation may be...I'm not going to read your part.

Adam was to obey.

He was to obey God and to do what God said. Why? Because God demanded it. Now he says, why was the tree called the knowledge or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

Knowledge of good and evil designates maturity in the Bible, right? Now we're not going to get into an age of accountability, but if somebody doesn't know their left hand from the right hand, what do we say about them?

Who doesn't know their left hand from the right hand? Children.

And where would we read about that in the Bible? It's an

Old Testament book, Jonah. Let's look at...not

Jonah, but let's look at Deuteronomy 139. Would somebody read that, please? Deuteronomy 139.

Go ahead, Will. Okay. Children have no knowledge of good and evil.

Now eventually they start learning, right? They start learning the difference between what is good and bad.

And that's the idea, the difference between right and left, the difference between right and wrong. But that knowledge designates maturity.

And in Genesis, excuse me, Genesis 2, it specifically designates moral or ethical maturity.

And he says, the tree was the instrument intended to bring man out of spiritual babyhood.

We don't normally use that word, to spiritual manhood. For better or for worse, the tree would be the instrument of ethical maturity.

Maturity in evil or maturity in righteousness was the necessary result of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now getting back to the covenant of works or the Adamic administration. These provide us an understanding of God's original goal in creation and especially in the creation of man.

That goal was to bring man into the state of eternal life and unchangeable righteousness.

But to do that, he had to go through a time of testing, he had to fall, and then

God had to reverse the effects of the fall. Just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall live.

Now this in turn provides an understanding of the nature of redemption as the restoration and attainment of the goal of creation through the work of Christ, right?

That's what I just said. Jesus accomplishes what the first Adam failed to accomplish.

This is why the work of Christ is given cosmic significance in the Bible. You know, after Adam falls,

God does not give up on his purpose in creation and pursue a different course in redemption. Why?

Because he had the blueprint from the beginning. He knew what was going to happen. And then in time he brings about his results.

Creation, the earth, and mankind are redeemed in Christ. The result of redemption is a redeemed race and a redeemed earth.

Let's look at Romans 8, 19 -23. Romans 8, 19 -23.

Would somebody read that please? Romans 8, 19 -23. Now there's a very real sense in which the fall of Adam impacted the entire world.

Plants, animals, a lot of things change as a result of the fall.

And we have things now that they wouldn't have had then.

Disease, death, carnivorous animals, all these things change as a result of the fall.

And he says, when Paul's writing there, he's like, all of creation is groaning. Why? Because it's under this curse, under the penalty from the fall of Adam, waiting for redemption, waiting to have the curse reversed.

And as the last Adam, Christ reverses the consequences of Adam's failure and successfully completes the probation.

In other words, he passes the test. He does everything right, thus attaining eternal life for himself and his people.

His one act of obedience can be viewed passively as the atonement for sin and actively as the attainment of righteousness, right?

This is double imputation talk. Our sins placed on Jesus and his righteousness imputed to us.

And that's a result of the successful completion of his testing.

The act of passive obedience of Christ then are not two different acts or division of Christ's work into two parts, but one act of obedience seen from two different perspectives.

The perspective of appeasing for what Adam did, suffering for sin, and the perspective of doing what

Adam failed to do. So if you just put it in the Adamic perspective, what did he do? He suffered for Adam's sin.

He took it on. He took on all our sins. And then he also fulfilled all righteousness, which

Adam failed to do. So he fulfilled the Adamic covenant, as it were.

He obeyed where Adam didn't. He reversed that. Questions about this because we're out of time and we'll talk about sin next week and we'll get to probably the next chapter as well.

Questions about the Adamic covenant? Comments about it?

Bob, let me interrupt you there for a moment because that is an excellent point. If they had eaten of the tree of life after they had fallen, what happens to Adam and Eve?

They live forever in their sin. So what's going to happen to them? What do we call people who live forever in their sin?

Where do they go? Hell. Okay. Sorry, Bob. Exactly. Yeah.

So what Bob said was, you know, what's better? Well, in the Garden of Eden, as we would see, you know, sometimes

God is described as walking with them, you know, in the cool, you know, meeting with Adam and Eve in the garden.

And certainly when it comes to confront them, that's what he's doing. But he says, you know, where are you and that kind of thing.

But in heaven, we're with God all the time, never out of his presence. And so, you know, what's better?

Well, heaven is better. So anyway, we need to close.

So Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the final Adam, undoing not just the sin of our father

Adam, but also all of our sins.

And Lord, we praise you for the plan of salvation, for your foreordination, for your predestination, and then for your providence and carrying these things out even in time.

You are a great God who's sovereign, who uses secondary means. And Father, we praise you that by these secondary means, that is to say, by preaching, by people praying, by preserving your word, you have brought us to yourself.

Lord, what a great plan and what a fantastic, almost beyond our imagining wonder that you have accomplished for your people.