Systematic Theology (part 37)

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Systematic Theology (part 38)

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Thank you, Lord, for your word. We pray this morning as we look at it that you'd encourage us. We pray that you would encourage us and teach us how to proceed in growing in Christ.
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We pray that we may become more like Him. We confess that we are not in our behavior, but we rejoice that we are in our position and place before you,
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Father. So it's in Christ's name we pray this morning. We ask your blessing upon the time, the illumination of the word by your
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Spirit who inspired it. Amen. Okay, we left this at Romans chapter 5.
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Let's go back and recap since we've been not together now for three weeks about what we're talking about in the first place.
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We have been talking about progressive sanctification. That is the end of sanctification that says, for all of my life from the time
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I come to Christ until the time I stand before Christ, when John says, when we see
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Him, we shall be as He is. In that interval of time, I am learning here to look like what
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God says I am. And the answer to all of this, to learn to do that,
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I think the answer is that you do something. You remember we said there are two ends of this whole deal.
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There is the I do nothing end, God does everything end. There is the
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I do everything end by my own grit and determination and sort of on my own to learn how to become like Christ.
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You know, we are always asking people that need to do something to do something.
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One of the cries that always comes from the electorate in the case of the United States as they talk about Congress is, we need
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Congress to do something. We need them to work together to do something.
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Guess what? Sometimes it would be better if the Congress did nothing. All right?
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So just to say do something is not the right answer.
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The answer is do something that will move you toward the goal that you are looking for.
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Just to do something is sometimes the wrong thing. So to do something, let
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God do it all, is not the right thing. To do something, I do it all by my own determination and grit to become more
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Christ -like, that's not the right do something either. And so what we have concluded, what
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I have concluded, I don't know whether you've all concluded this, but what I have concluded is that the do something that needs to be done is that matter of the
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Romans 10 principle, with the heart man believes and is justified, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
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With your mouth you confess and are saved. With the mouth confession is made unto justification, that's with the heart man believes and is justified.
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And so when the man believes and is justified, his confession is
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Jesus is Lord, okay? When the man believes and is justified, his continuing confession unto sanctification is
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Jesus is Lord, and all of the things that are prescribed here in the
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Word that need to be rehearsed by us as we grow in Him. And then finally when we stand in His presence, we will confess with all of the universe,
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Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. John Gill aptly said, all of the
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Christian life is a confession. We looked at the matter of do something, you know
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I've been thinking about this this week too regarding what do you do about justification?
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I understand that because we believe in election and because we believe in limited atonement and the other parts of the tulip patch, okay,
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I understand that there is a tendency on the part of some of us who would call ourselves
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Calvinist to do nothing about inviting pagans to come to Christ.
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And I think that is a great mistake and I've been thinking about that this week, so let me just take a little parenthesis here and just talk about that for a minute.
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Because in our sanctification we're going to do something, that is we are going to confess Christ. In our justification we do something, that is we confess
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Christ, but because we have election rattling around in the back of our heads, we have a tendency not to say to unbelievers, who sit before us, you need to do something.
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We kind of, you know the hyper -Calvinist, you know what a hyper -Calvinist is? The hyper -Calvinist says in response to what do
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I do, he says wait. You know when we represented New Tribes Mission down in North Carolina, where we lived on the buckle of the
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Bible belt, Charlotte, within a 40 mile radius of our house, and we were 2400 churches.
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Most of them, what's what I mean when I say the buckle of the Bible belt, most of them by what they advertised probably had some notion about the
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Word of God. Even the Methodists, the United Methodists even, if you looked at their signs, you looked at their advertising and all of that, it had reflected the
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Scriptures in many of those cases, which was interesting to me having been in New England, where that's not the case.
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Okay, anyway, there are a group down there called the Primitive Baptists, right?
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Now the Primitive Baptists are far more Calvinistic than Bethlehem Bible Church. In fact, here's what they believe about election, that only
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God knows who the elect are. And you can, you can say
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Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, but you still don't know whether or not you're saved.
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You will not know whether you're saved until the moment after you die. And that is the only time that you will know whether or not you were one of the elect.
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And I say that's a fearful and unscriptural, I might add, way to live.
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In any case, Hyper -Calvinism does not answer the question, what must
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I do to be saved? You remember, you remember the Philippian jailer? The Philippian jailer said to Paul and Silas, sirs, what must
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I do to be saved? And they didn't say, wait, God may grant you faith.
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They said, you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
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And they hadn't even taught him anything about the Lord Jesus Christ at that point, because it goes on to say in that passage, you can look at it in Acts, it says, then they spoke the word of the
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Lord to him and explained to him about the resurrection of Jesus and justification by faith and all of those things that we know about.
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Their answer wasn't, wait, okay? When in Acts chapter 2, when
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Peter preaches to the people who 50 days earlier, some of them had been present and probably cheering for the crucifixion of Jesus, it finally gets down to the punchline of Peter's sermon, which says, this
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Jesus whom you crucified, God has made both
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Lord and Christ. And then the commentary of the scripture is this, isn't it? They were cut to the heart, they were cut to the heart and said, what shall we do?
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And Peter didn't say, wait, maybe God will grant you faith and then we'll see whether or not you're part of the elect.
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He said to them, you repent and be baptized in the name, actually the preposition is ice, into the name of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. So he told them what they must do. They must change their minds about Christ, they must change their minds about their sin and they could be saved.
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And then they were to give outward testimony of that by being baptized into Christ.
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So his answer was not wait, okay? When the Ethiopian eunuch, when
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Philip encountered the Ethiopian eunuch and explained the gospel to him from Isaiah 53, the
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Ethiopian finally says, hey, here's water, what keeps me from being baptized? And some manuscripts, many manuscripts say if you believe with all your heart, then you can be baptized.
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And the Ethiopian was baptized. Philip didn't say, well, now we're going to wait and see if God grants you faith.
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God had granted him faith. Those questions, those expressions, those expressions are the confession and birth pangs of the new birth.
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Now you say, well, what's all that about? We're not hyper -Calvinists. We don't say wait. I remember, and I probably have told you this already, but I'm an old guy.
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So I get to say all kinds of things over and over again. You know, Judy and I only own one DVD now because every night that we watch it, it's brand new.
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And so the, so I'll just tell you this. On the 300th anniversary of Jonathan Edwards' birth, he and Thomas was speaking to the
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New England Reform Fellowship. And here was the burden of his message. When you are standing before a group of people among whom there may be unbelievers, you probably will not say like the hyper -Calvinists, well, we'll just wait and see if God grants you faith.
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And by the way, the modern missionary movement starts in response to hyper -Calvinism, doesn't it?
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William Carey, for example, was told by the hyper -Calvinists of his time, Mr. Carey, if God wants to save the heathen, he will do so, and without your help.
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Okay, now that's hyper -Calvinism. Carey's response to that was to honk off to India and establish
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Baptist churches in India even back in the 1700s. Okay, so you say, why are you belaboring this?
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I'm belaboring this because there is something to do, and it is about that confession. And I do not shrink from saying to people, you need to confess
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Jesus as Lord. No, will you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised
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Him from the dead? If you will, you will be saved. There is something to do for the unbeliever.
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He doesn't sit by passively waiting to see whether or not he's part of the elect.
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Just as there is something to do in our own sanctification, and it is the confession of Christ.
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In both cases, it is the confession of Christ. And so I do not shrink to invite people to confess
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Jesus as Lord. A very practical application of that became part of my ministry, and it happened right here at Bethlehem Baptist Church, okay, many years ago.
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There was a day in the history of this church when we were having 35 or 40 people in church.
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We started out with about 20. We were having 35 or 40 people in church. We were having about 80 kids in Awana.
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And we were up there at what is the old Baptist Church in West Boylston. It's now the Masonic Lodge.
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It was the Masonic Lodge then too, and let me tell you what, that's an interesting thing.
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There's nobody that has to patrol the halls here to make sure that the Awana kids are not getting into the swords and top hats and all that stuff that goes on.
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But that was a problem up there, and we were having 80 kids or so. The whole church was the
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Awana staff, all right? That's what we did, Awana. And there were a couple of kids in that Awana group.
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And their father waited, they were, the family's background was
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Catholic, about par for the course in New England. Their father waited outside for the first year that those kids were in Awana.
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Their father waited outside in the parking lot when Awana was over. Out they went, and I see them get in the car or the truck, and off they would go.
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And then the next year, the dad would get to the
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Awana time, about in time for council time. And you guys that do council time in Awana, you need to understand that this may spread much further than just the kids that you are talking to.
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And as I said, I do not shrink from saying you need to come to Christ. You need to receive
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Jesus. You need to confess Jesus as Lord. And believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead in order to be saved.
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Which I'm sure I did in council time back in those days. Anyway, this dad came in, and then he, and for the whole year, that whole year of Awana, he would come in about council time.
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And he would stand in the back, listening to what was going on in council time.
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And what I would say to the kids, I was the commander in those days. I know it's hard to feature that, but I was the commander and the game guy and several other things in that deal.
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Anyway, one Sunday, when we were having church, when we were about to have church, here comes this dad and his wife and the kids into the service of Bethlehem Baptist Church and sat down in the back pew, and there they were.
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Now, this man is a man of few words, and so he didn't say much.
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And it was kind of high goodbye for a lot of Sundays. And that family would come in, they'd sit down, and they'd go.
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Now, if you know anything about that building, and some of you will remember that building, you know that when you walk out the front door of that building, then there's a bunch of steps that go down like that.
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And this one Sunday, I walked out on those steps, and at the bottom of those steps was this man who had not said much to me or to anybody at Bethlehem up to that time.
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And he was standing down at the steps, and he pointed up at me, and he said, Pastor Bob, I want to see you.
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And my first thought was, what happened in Awana last Wednesday night, okay?
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And I said, okay, well, we can make a time to do it. How about this afternoon, he said? I said, okay, three o 'clock.
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And so I went to his house, and we sat there, and I walked in, and I thought, well, what's this gonna be?
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What happened in Awana? I'm still thinking, what happened in Awana Wednesday night with these kids?
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And he says to me, as I sit down on the couch, he looked at me and he said,
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I want to be baptized. I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
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We have a few things that we need to talk about before we talk about I want to be baptized, and so I'm sitting there thinking, well, okay, now where do we go with this conversation?
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And then he said to me, I have been pouring over this Gospel of John. I had been preaching through,
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I was preaching through the Gospel of John. As Pastor Steve could tell you, it takes more than a year to get through the
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Gospel of John, and that's where I was in those days. And this man said, I have been pouring over the
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Gospel of John, and I want to be baptized. I have been reading the
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Gospel of John, and I believe I want to be baptized.
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I sat there and I thought, you know what? I think that's how this is supposed to work. This is what happens when the
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Holy Spirit moves in on somebody and they confess Christ, okay, that comes from the
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Holy Spirit. And at that point, at that point
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I thought, you know what? We need to always be talking to people that might be unbelievers about what they need to do to come to Christ, and not just say to them, and not look at them.
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We wouldn't say this to them, but we would look at them and think, well,
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I don't know whether they're elect or not elect, and so I don't want to get too pushy here about all of that.
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Now, I don't want to be misunderstood. I am not Charles Finney, okay? You know, the eloquence of the speaker, that's what does it.
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That was Finney's position. No, no, no. But it is to answer the question, sirs, what must
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I do to be saved? You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.
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And I will tell you all the details after that, okay? That man, by the way, and I think it would not embarrass him if I told you this, that man was
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Chuck Strong, and that's how he came to Christ, and that's how his family came to Christ.
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And so we must not shrink. It has been my custom when I preach on Sundays on a regular basis, when you get to the gospel, that'll be about every other page of the
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Bible, right? Okay, when you get to the gospel, you stop right there. You don't say, at the end of the service, raise your hand, your bustle weight, all that stuff.
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Okay, no, you just say right there, if you need to believe, you're here, and you're not a believer, and you need to believe, you need to believe now.
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You need to confess Christ as Savior. You need to believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead. If you do believe, you tell
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God that now. While I go on, you sit there, and you tell God that now. He knows what you're thinking.
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And then you can say that, and later, you can confess that publicly in the waters of baptism.
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It's okay. And then I go on with the message, whatever it is. I'm sure that happened many times as Chuck and his family sat in the back at Bethlehem Baptist Church until finally we have that interview that starts out,
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I want to be baptized. Okay? So I do not shrink from that.
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There is something to do, and there is something to say. And I'll let this parenthesis go with this.
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Lewis Perry Chaffer in his systematic theology, talk about radical. Chaffer was a Presbyterian dispensationalist.
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For you theologians, you'll understand why that's radical, all right? Chaffer said this, the doctrine of election is for the blessing of the saints.
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It must never be discussed. It must never be discussed in the presence of unbelievers.
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It is for the edification of the saints, which translated means this. If you think you're standing, if you are speaking to a group in which there are unbelievers, you talk to those unbelievers like your eternal destiny rests on what you do with Jesus Christ.
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Will you confess Jesus as Lord? That's what your eternal destiny rests upon.
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So, now we get back to the 300th anniversary of Jonathan Edwards' birthday, and I'm sitting there in the
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New England Reform Fellowship, a bunch of pastors. And Ian Murray, of all people, is saying to them, men, when you give the gospel, do not let the fact that you believe in election and limited atonement and all of that, do not let that make you pull your punch and not invite people to receive
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Jesus. There is something to do and people need to be told what to do to express
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Christ, and to express their belief in Christ, and to reach out and receive
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Christ. That needs to happen. And you know what that something is?
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It is to confess Jesus as Lord. How are they going to continue? They are going to confess
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Jesus as Lord. That's how they're going to continue and do all of that.
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Okay, now, I'm going to continue at Romans chapter 5, beginning at verse 12, but we have to pick it up since we haven't been together for three weeks.
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In the end of chapter 4, Paul has observed, has he not, that the words, his faith is counted to him as righteousness.
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Those words to Abraham, about Abraham, were not for just Abraham, but it was counted for us.
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It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised Jesus from the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
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Righteousness will be counted to us if we believe. Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
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You must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me give you this illustration, by the way, before I go on, because I noted over there with the
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Philippian jailer, Paul didn't even give him the details of salvation until after he had said, you must believe.
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Okay? This illustration is not mine, but it is the greatest illustration of this whole deal on election that I know.
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The unbeliever stands before a door. That door is closed.
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Over that door, it says, whosoever will may come. And the believer, from his point of view, the believer says,
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I'm coming. I'm going to trust Christ. And he walks through that door and the door slams shut behind him.
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And when he turns and looks at that door from the inside, it says over the header of the door, it says, chosen from the foundation of the world.
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Now, how that all fits together, we will not know until we get to glory. In fact, when we get to glory, we may not understand how it all fits together.
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But it has to do with how people are saved. And it has to do with how we proceed with our sanctification once we are saved.
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So, Abraham believed God. It was credited to him as righteousness. I believe
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God. It's credited to me as righteousness. You believe God. It's credited to you as righteousness.
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All of that was not just for Abraham. It was for us too. Therefore, having been...that's
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a better translation, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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Lord Jesus Christ. That's where chapter 5 starts. And then last time we were together, we talked about the next 11 verses, which are all fodder for confession, which are all fodder for things to be rehearsed about us, including we have peace with God, including we have obtained access into the presence of Father through faith.
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We stand in grace. All of that is our confession. And I guess I might ask you this Sunday, what has your confession been this past week?
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That's the question for all of us. Have you had doubts this last week?
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Have you been rehearsing in your mind or with your mouth your doubts about whether or not all of this is true?
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That isn't what you need to confess. You need to confess the truth of the Scripture. We need to have our minds transformed, and they need to be renewed by the confession of the truth, by the rehearsal.
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Can I say it that way? The rehearsal of the truth of the Scriptures, and it needs to be done with our mouth.
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If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.
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So then we get down to verse 12. We also rejoice at verse 11,
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Paul says, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation.
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Therefore, because we have received reconciliation, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because of all sin.
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Now Paul's going to get into some big ideas here. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given.
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You know, we start out with Adam, right? But the law is not given until Moses. So we've gone through all of the patriarchs, excuse me, all of the patriarchs and all of that, and the law is not given until Moses.
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But sin was in the world, Paul says, before the law was given.
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But sin is not counted where there is no law. You say, oh, well, that's great.
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Sin is not counted where there is no law. So if there's no law, then sin is not counted against you.
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The question is, who is not counting sin? Well, first of all, people don't count sin unless there is something to define and to demonstrate sin.
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For example, if we go out here on the road and drive 80 miles an hour up Route 110 here, we will probably see at some point some blue lights in the rearview mirror and all of that, and there will be a gendarme stopping us and asking us why we are going 80 miles an hour on Route 110.
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And we say, because I thought I would do that, and it seemed safe to me to do it, and so that's why
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I was driving 80 miles an hour. Now what's that guy going to say? He's going to say, do you see that sign that says 45 or whatever it says on Route 110?
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Well, you're 40 miles an hour over that, and so you get the ticket. Probably you get more than the ticket if you're 40 miles an hour over a 45 mile an hour thing.
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And so he says, oh, well, I didn't really know. Oh, well, the sign was there, and so you should have known because the sign was there.
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And then we have this thing about ignorance of the law is no excuse. But if there is no law, then the ignorance just goes on kind of unbridled.
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So people don't count sin where there is nothing to define it. That's a problem that we have in our culture today, isn't it?
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Everything is okay. I'm okay. You're okay. Everything's okay. Therefore, nothing is wrong.
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Nothing is not okay. And if you say something is not okay, then I will have to scurry to my safe place, get out crayons,
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Play -Doh, and all of that stuff, and see if I can just maintain somehow or other.
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See how ridiculous that is? No, Paul says here, sin is not counted.
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Sin is not counted where there's no law. Men don't count sin. Yet, here's how we know that sin was in the world from the time of Adam until we get to Moses.
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Yet, death reigned from Adam to Moses, death, physical death. People kept going to funerals from Adam to Moses, okay?
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Death reigned. That's how we know that sin is in the world. So here's the thing that we need to know.
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Sin causes funerals. Sin causes physical death.
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That's how physical death entered the world for all to see because of sin.
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So Paul says, even if you don't know the details, even if there is no definition of what sin is, death reigns, and so you know that there's sin because death reigns.
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I notice now that funeral directors are not having funerals any longer.
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We are having celebrations of life. Think about that.
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We go to a place where there is a body laid out in a casket, and we are having a celebration of life.
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No, we are having a recognition of death. Oh yeah, I get it. We rehearse all of the great things that went on during that person's life, and I don't even have anything against that.
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But I don't look at death as celebration of life, and neither does
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God, and neither does anybody who's going to be there. You know the famous Woody Allen quote, right?
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I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens. So death is this great intruder.
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And there was no law by which people measured the sin, but there was death, which was the ultimate measure of sin.
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So death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.
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You say, wait a minute, what was the difference between all of those people from Adam to Moses who transgressed and died, and yet their transgression was not like the transgression of Adam?
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The transgression of Adam was the transgression of a direct command of God. And it's important for us to understand that.
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The way that the world looks at the account of the fall of man is, hey look, it shouldn't be any big deal.
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After all, they only ate of the fruit of a tree, right? You know, I could understand if Adam was slapping
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Eve around and abusing her and all of that, then that would be a big deal, and God ought to really call that sin.
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But this was only a piece of fruit, no big deal. It was a big deal.
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And here's why it was a big deal. This is a sermon series, but I'll make it just a comment, all right?
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It was a big deal because when Adam and Eve, not
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Eve and Adam, we're not going there, the woman you gave me, now it's not her fault. You were standing there, you big dummy, while she did that, and you didn't say one word to her to keep her from doing that, all right?
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So we're not going there. When Adam and Eve ate of that fruit, it was an assault on God Himself.
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Why? Because He had given them the Word. Now God Himself is characterized as the
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Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
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Word was God. We have already heard from Pastor Mike in his study of the book of Hebrews that the whole universe is held together and sustained by what?
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By the Word of God. The creation sprang into being by what?
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The Word of God. So when God gives somebody the Word, don't eat of that fruit, of that tree, you understand why it is not just going against a command, here's words, and here's
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God, and here's meat. No, no. The words and God are inseparable, and so the transgression against that specific
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Word was an assault on God Himself. That's what they did.
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But all the rest of the people, including Cain, who murdered his brother, all of the rest of the people went on sinning their heads off, but they did not sin in direct transgression of a specific command.
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And that wouldn't happen until the law of Moses came down the road. So their sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the
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One who was to come. Now Adam is here called a type of Christ. See, Adam was a type of Christ.
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Adam was a big transgressor.
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Adam was a, he screwed up, big time. How could he be a type of Christ? I ran across this, and I'll just share it with you quickly, without comment.
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It's a list of the features and parallels and differences between Adam and Christ.
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This comes from a list assembled by Mark Driscoll in his series on Ephesians and from Watchman Nee's classic book,
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The Glorious Church. Listen to these things. These are parallels and differences between Adam and Christ, but they are all similarities.
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That's why Paul here says Adam was a type of Christ. The first Adam turned from the
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Father in the Garden of Eden. Eden. The last Adam, Christ, turned to the Father in the
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Garden of Gethsemane. The first Adam was naked and unashamed in the Garden. The last
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Adam was naked and bore our shame on the cross. The first Adam, the first Adam, sin brought on us thorns.
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The last Adam wore a crown of thorns. The first Adam substituted himself for God. Remember what the appeal of Satan was to Adam and Eve?
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Okay, God's holding out on you guys. He knows if you eat that fruit, you'll be just like him. You'll be just like him.
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The first Adam substituted himself for God. The last Adam was God substituting himself for us.
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The first Adam sinned at a tree. The last Adam bore our sins on a tree. The first Adam died as a sinner.
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The last Adam died for sinners. The first Adam lost the tree of life. The last
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Adam is the tree of life, and we'll celebrate that this morning. The first Adam was the head of the old creation.
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The last Adam is the head of the new creation. The first Adam was created in God's image.
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The last Adam is God's image. The first Adam was to reign over all the earth. The last
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Adam will reign over all the earth forever and ever. The first Adam was the first husband.
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The last Adam will be the ultimate eternal husband of the church. The first Adam was alone and needed a counterpart.
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The last Adam is alone and needs a counterpart, and that counterpart is us, the church.
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The first Adam was seeking a wife. The last Adam is seeking a wife. The first Adam was put to sleep to produce
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Eve. The last Adam was put to death to produce the church. The first Adam came out from the ground.
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The last Adam fell into the ground. The first Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life -giving spirit.
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The first Adam died and returned to the ground. The last Adam died and returned to heaven.
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The first Adam's side was opened. The last Adam's side was pierced. Eve was taken out of the first Adam.
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The church was taken out of the last Adam. Eve was built with the first Adam's rib. The church is being built with the last
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Adam's life. Eve was brought to the first Adam without sin, the church will be presented to the last
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Adam without sin, to which I presume all of God's people say amen.
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Eve was the same as the first Adam in life, nature, and expression. The church is the same as the last
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Adam in life, nature, and expression. The first Adam and Eve became one flesh.
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The last Adam and the church have become one spirit. The assembler of that list says, this list is not,
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I'm sure, exhaustive, sounded pretty exhaustive to me, and it is a comparison and a contrast between Adam, who sinned and brought death into the world, and Jesus, who died and brings life to all who believe in Him.
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Not only brings eternal life when they are justified, but brings a different kind of life here on earth because we are being sanctified.
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He is made perfect forever, Hebrews says, those who are being made perfect.
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That's us. We are being made perfect. And what is the vehicle for that? It is our confession of Christ.
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All of the Christian life is a confession. But the free gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man,
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Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.
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But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.
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One free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if by one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,
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Jesus Christ. Okay, here's the deal. When Adam sinned, we were in Adam.
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Say, wait a minute, I wasn't there. In fact, that's one of the great objections of pagans. Wait a minute.
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Don't blame me for Adam's sin. No, the fact that we were in Adam when he sinned, that we were in Adam when he sinned, simply explains why we sin.
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Okay, because we were there at the trespass, at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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We were there. You say, well, how does that work? Well, it's a biology problem in part, okay? In fact, the writer of the
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Hebrews talks about this, and Pastor Mike, he's getting up there. He's edging up to this, and it's very good.
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Here's what Hebrews says. There was a guy named Melchizedek that came on the scene.
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You can read about him over in Genesis. He was called Priest of God Most High. He came out, and he met
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Abraham, and blessed Abraham, and he shared with Abraham bread and wine. Priest of God Most High.
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Okay, and then the writer of the Hebrews is going to go on to say, that priest, without beginning and without end.
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Now, he really had a beginning and an end because he was a man, but that beginning and end are not recorded in the
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Scriptures at all. So, it looks like he had no beginning and no end.
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Melchizedek is the type of Christ. The writer of the Hebrews will go on to say, Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek.
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He has no beginning and no end, and he is the sufficient priest. He goes on to say that Levi was in Abraham.
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Levi and the Levitical priest, the Levitical priesthood. They were all in Abraham when
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Abraham tithed to Melchizedek, and was blessed by Melchizedek.
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The Levitical priests, who wouldn't come on now for 400 years. The Levitical priests were all there.
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Why? Because they were in Abraham. They would be descendants of Abraham.
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We are all descendants of Adam. So, when Adam sinned, we were there. And the
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Scriptures look at it that way, and God looks at it that way. And so, for that reason, it's safe to say, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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Why? Because we sinned in Adam, and we died in Adam.
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Now, we're going to be placed into Christ. We're going to get there when we get into chapters 6 and 7, the next couple of weeks.
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We've got to be done with this by the end of January. You can see what the problem is here. Okay? We all sinned in Adam, but we are going to be placed into Christ, the one without beginning, without end.
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The one who is the great high priest by the power of an indestructible life.
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I love that. It's in Hebrews. His life is an indestructible life, and we are placed into him.
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And that is the basis, not only of our justification, but our sanctification, as we will see.
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By the way, since we have tied all of this to confession, I hope you see in the verses that I've just read, all kinds of fodder for rehearsal and confession.
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Okay? A free gift has come to me. It's not like the trespass of Adam. I am free from that.
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I'm out of that. Many died through that trespass. Much more has the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of the one man,
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Jesus Christ, abounded for me. You catch that confession? Let it be a piece of your confession this week as you go on your way.
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Paul is going to conclude now at verse 18, Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
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And I'll add who believe. Okay? Because Paul is going to add that. Okay? That would be a piece of confession for this week, wouldn't it?
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One trespass led to condemnation for all of us. But your act of righteousness, your death on the cross, your burial, your resurrection,
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Lord Jesus, leads to justification and life for me. That's the confession this week.
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For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.
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Because I was there when Adam sinned, Lord, and many were made sinners,
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I was one of the sinners by Adam's disobedience, and then by my own disobedience, and all of the disobediences that have come since then in my own life, but by your one act of righteousness,
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Lord, justification and life for me. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, that is, to make it known.
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But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our
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Lord. Grace reigns through righteousness, through the imputed righteousness of Christ to me, but also grace reigns in an outward, visible way, reigns by the righteousness that is expressed in those who own
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Jesus, and who believe in Him, and that's us. And we are going to confess our way along that road, to looking more like Him day by day, so that the world may see that grace reigns.
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Listen, I don't know if you've seen any of the videos on YouTube of these ISIS executions over in the
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Middle East. And I don't know anything about the theology of those people, in those videos that have been beheaded.
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But I got this from them, that each one of them that was beheaded, because they were
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Christians, or because they claimed to be Christians, you know, we sit down in the seminary and see whether their theology is right and all.
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But I got this, when they knelt down there on that beach, and those
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Muslims beheaded them, not one of them, in that whole video that I saw, and there's more than one video like that, not one of them renounced
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Christ, and embraced something else. And so I say,
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God bless them, and may they encourage us to have that kind of courage. And I got to say, if they say they're
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Christians, and they will submit to death, and not renounce the Lord Jesus Christ, you know what,
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I'll take it. I'll take it. Even though I don't know all about their theology, and the finer points of the theology, you know, whether they're in the middle of the tulip patch, or at the edge, or maybe even
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Armenians, oh no, I don't know anything about that. Okay, all
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I know is that when it came time to lose your head for the name of Jesus, they knelt down and bowed their heads, and were willing to do that.
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Okay, you know what, that's an illustration of grace reigning through the righteousness that leads to eternal life through Jesus Christ our
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Lord. That brings us to chapter 6. Next week,
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I'm going to try to shoot through chapter 6, because we've already looked at it in brief, okay, and get to chapter 7, which is one of the most encouraging and discouraging chapters all at the same time in all of the
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Scriptures. And we'll get there next week, and we'll talk about how it relates to our confession of Christ, and how we are going to let grace reign through the righteousness that is produced in us by the indwelling
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Holy Spirit, because we have come to Christ. Let's pray. Thank You, Lord, that the righteousness that we are dealing with here in our justification, in our sanctification, in our glorification is
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Your righteousness. Thank You, Lord, that even though we were there when Adam and Eve sinned, and that produced in us all kinds of sin, we praise
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You that because of what You did, Your one act of righteousness, Your sacrificial death for us,
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Your burial, Your resurrection, all of that, Lord, is counted to us, and we are now said to be in You, no longer in Adam, in You.
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We praise You for that. We thank You for that. We're encouraged by it. We're challenged by it.
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And we pray that this week our confession may lead us to demonstrate that grace reigns through righteousness that You produce in us.