Article 4 - The Fall

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:00
It's up to not only what we believe, but how we live our lives.
00:03
So again, I wanted to preface that.
00:10
I get a heavenly note to go with me, too, right? That's great.
00:14
All right, so let's do this.
00:16
Let's open up with a word of prayer, and then we'll get to it.
00:20
Our Father in God, again, we thank you for our ability to come before you, Lord.
00:25
And we realize if it were not for Christ, Lord, none of us, none of us would ever even have the desire of heart to seek you out.
00:36
And yet we do, Lord, because of our Savior, and because of the work of the Holy Spirit within us, we pray, Lord, you bless us tonight.
00:44
Bless our thoughts.
00:45
Bless our minds.
00:45
But Lord, bless our lives.
00:47
May we not just study for study's sake.
00:50
May we not just look at doctrine as if we are amassing knowledge.
00:55
But may it be something that works in us in the intricacies of our own heart and our lives, Lord, that we might demonstrate that you have truly called us out of darkness and brought us into that marvelous light, the light of Christ.
01:09
So be with us tonight.
01:11
And may we grow in the grace and knowledge of the Son of God who so loved us that he gave himself for us.
01:15
Amen.
01:20
Every time I speak, I get a little music.
01:24
Great.
01:26
All right, so my task is to look at Article 4, which is the fall.
01:34
And then Brother Keith is going to speak on Article 5, which is providence.
01:38
Again, two major topics.
01:41
And what I'm going to ask us to do is we're going to read the confession, Article 4, on the fall.
01:46
And if you remember last week, I referenced the fact that the appendix, which was written by Benjamin Cox, was added onto the confession in order to give clarity and remove any confusion that perhaps wasn't already stated in the original article.
02:03
So what I'd like to do, if you look at the article, at the end of the scriptural references that they give, it's a C appendix on page 33, which is another statement that supports the article on the fall.
02:19
And I would ask that we'll read both.
02:21
So we're going to read both of them.
02:23
So first, let me read to you Article 4, the fall.
02:28
In the beginning, God made all things very good, created man after his own image, filled with all meat for suitable perfection in nature and free from all sin.
02:41
But long he abode not in this honor, Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to seduce first Eve, then by seducing Adam, then by her seducing Adam, who, without any compulsion in eating the forbidden fruit, transgressed the command of God and fell, whereby death came upon all his posterity, who now are conceived in sin and by nature the children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and other miseries in this world and forever, unless the Lord Jesus Christ set them free.
03:21
Now, go to page 33.
03:24
And let us just read the appendix as it was added by Benjamin Cox to give a little more clarity to that statement.
03:37
And it's number three, the evil nature of man.
03:41
And this is what he added to it.
03:43
Although all the power of the creature to act be from the creator, and there is a providence of God always extended to every creature and to every action of the creature, yet we judge that the final corruption of the creature and the sinfulness of the creature's actions is from the creature and not from God.
04:05
And that is a great sin to say that God is the author of sin.
04:10
And he gives some references.
04:12
As touching that place which is here objected against us, visually, Amos 3.6, shall there be evil in the city, et cetera, we conceive that it is either to be rendered according to the last translation in the margin, shall there be evil in a city and shall not the Lord do somewhat.
04:29
Or else, that is to be understood only in the evil of punishment and not in the evil of sin.
04:37
OK.
04:38
And I'm going to make a couple of remarks as we look through some scriptures from both the article itself and from the appendix, because I think there are a number of things that need to be said.
04:49
So let me say it to you this way.
04:51
As we consider the fall, it's beyond dispute that the fall of man is the greatest tragedy of any creature.
05:06
There's no way around that.
05:08
The greatest tragedy to ever take place in God's created world was the sin and the fall of man.
05:16
And not only that, but one of the reasons why I asked us to read, and I believe they added the appendix, where it specifically says that God is not the author of sin, is to help us understand what the brothers are saying in their statement.
05:38
And it's this.
05:42
If God could be chargeable for sin, if that were true, then man becomes the victim.
05:53
And there is no way that that is the biblical stance.
05:58
Man could never be thought of as the victim in his sin, but rather man is to be thought as what? The crimp, right, the sinner, the criminal.
06:08
And I think one of the reasons why Benjamin Cox added that, and you had brought that up, that that verse wasn't used in James the previous week.
06:15
But the reality is this.
06:17
If we don't have that understanding firmly in our minds, then man becomes a victim of God's action.
06:27
And therefore, that renders the whole Bible inconsistent, if man is not actually to be chargeable for a sin.
06:36
And certainly, there's that text.
06:38
And he quotes it.
06:39
And I'll just read it to you.
06:39
You don't have to turn to it.
06:40
It's James 1.
06:41
We almost all of us know it by heart.
06:44
It says, let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God.
06:48
For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone.
06:54
But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.
06:58
Then when desires has conceived, it gives birth to sin.
07:03
And sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.
07:07
So again, even as when we're talking, when Brother Key was talking, they hadn't used that verse, they are going to use that verse actually straight through the confession.
07:16
But the reality is whenever you think about the fall, the place we need to start is always to understand God is not the author of sin.
07:26
Because if we don't get that right, and as I will show you shortly, if we do not understand what happened to man when he fell, then I do not believe we can fully understand the gospel.
07:41
I really don't.
07:42
I certainly know you can't understand reform thinking.
07:46
You cannot understand the doctrines of grace if you do not understand what took place in the garden.
07:52
To me, it's like getting in a car and put your foot on the gas and going as fast as you can, but you're going in the wrong direction.
08:02
Because what happens if you put your foot on the gas and you're going in the wrong direction? No matter how far you go, no matter how fast you go, you're never going to get where you ought to be.
08:10
You're just going to get frog lost.
08:12
And so I say to you, unless we truly understand the fall and what is chargeable to man, then we are never going to fully come.
08:24
And we'll deal with this when we come to the atonement of Christ.
08:28
If you really, and I don't really understand man's condition, then the atonement really becomes very, very cloudy at best.
08:39
And we need to understand it.
08:42
And I'll just put it this way.
08:44
As we think about the tulip, right? Total depravity, unconditional election, and the whole thing.
08:50
There's a reason why it starts with a T.
08:54
Because if you and I do not understand the depravity of man, we're never going to understand anything else.
09:01
It is the fountain from which all other truths come.
09:05
And that's why, if you think about it, this article is put so far up in the beginning of the confession, and it's something that you and I need to consider.
09:15
So, yeah, two key words, two statements I want to pull out of this.
09:20
The first one's in the confession, and I want you to just look at it with me, where it says, Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to seduce first Eve, then by her seducing Adam, and then it says this, who without any compulsion.
09:38
That is absolutely important, isn't it? That it wasn't as if Adam was misguided, caught off guard, deceived, or anything.
09:50
Adam knew exactly what he was doing.
09:52
He might not have understood the ramifications, but it was without compulsion.
09:57
Adam considered what was presented to him, and Adam fell.
10:02
He disobeyed.
10:04
So that's an important understanding in any thought of the fall, is that, again, God not being the author of sin, God not being chargeable with sin, that man fell without any compulsion except his own will, which, we could spend a whole lot of time on that, which then becomes what? Corrupted.
10:27
And it's certainly, as it says, it's passed on to his posterity.
10:33
The other one I wanted to ask us to thank you, the other thought is in the appendix where it says very clearly that the sinfulness of the creature's actions is from the creature and not from God.
10:54
Again, those two need to go together, right? Adam sinned without any compulsion.
10:59
The fall was a deliberate act, and that God is not the one who forced Adam to fall.
11:10
And we're not talking about God's sovereign hand in his providence, because Brother Keith will deal with that, and think about God rules over everything.
11:19
We all agree to that, right? We're not talking about that.
11:22
We're talking about what took place in the fall, and so it's important for us to understand those two thoughts, Adam without any compulsion, and at the same time, God not being the chargeable author of sin.
11:33
And then there's a whole bunch of verses, and we won't have time to go through them, but I'll ask you to think about a couple of them.
11:37
I'm just gonna read them, because I kind of wrote them down so we wouldn't have to thumb through.
11:42
In Habakkuk chapter one, it says this of God.
11:45
It says, you are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and you cannot look on wickedness.
11:54
So again, God cannot be the chargeable author of sin, because God's of purer eyes than to look on sin.
12:00
Now it doesn't mean that God doesn't see the sinfulness of man as it's perpetrated, but at the same time, God in his being is being the holy, holy, holy God of heaven and earth.
12:13
God takes, there's no pleasure in God's of too pure of eyes to behold evil.
12:19
So again, other ways in which we can demonstrate that God is not the chargeable author and that man is, if you will, the sinner, or as I will say, to emphasize it, the criminal in this situation.
12:39
And a great many of the issues that come from the fall of man have to be understood from that standpoint.
12:51
Because if you, again, it is absolutely the place where all thought has to begin.
13:00
And perhaps the, one of the worst ways in which it's misconstrued is this.
13:07
When we consider the fall, and we can read many scriptures to prove that, but when we consider the fall, people struggle with the fact that Adam was stood in the place as our representative.
13:24
And it's so essential because again, even the scriptures deal with that, Paul deals with that.
13:28
And we're going to look at a section of Romans, just that one section I'll ask you to turn to.
13:33
But unless we not only understand that man sinned without any compulsion, God is not the chargeable author of sin, and that Adam stood in our stead as our federal head, then we can get easily lost in the woods, especially in the day we live because we're still under the consequences of what he did.
13:58
And if there's no other place to look at to get a clear explanation of that, let me just ask you if you could, or if you would, turn to Romans chapter five.
14:07
Because there it is.
14:08
I mean, it's as clear as a language could be.
14:12
And yet, it's amazing how many people cannot grasp in the fall of man that Adam stood in our stead.
14:23
And as you're turning there, listen, if we cannot understand that Adam stood in our stead when we fell, how will we ever understand that Christ stood in our stead when he atoned for the fall? You see, the two go together.
14:38
And it's certainly brought out in Romans chapter five, verse 12.
14:42
I'll try to read it.
14:44
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned.
14:54
Why? Because Adam was the representative, the federal head.
14:57
That's why.
14:59
For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law.
15:03
Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come.
15:17
Now, again, if we cannot grasp that, and I don't know how you can understand what he then says in verse 15 on.
15:24
But the free gift is not like the offense.
15:26
For if by one man's offense, many died, and that would be any and all that are in Adam, okay? If we do not understand that, if by one man's offense, many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ abounded to many.
15:48
And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned for the judgment which came upon one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification.
16:00
For if by one man's offense, death reigned through the one, again, we were in Adam, right? You can't get away from that.
16:11
And we've already said that Adam sinned without compulsion.
16:15
And God didn't, God's not the chargeable author of it.
16:18
So if we're in him and he sinned, and we're his posterity, it's passed to us.
16:25
And then he says, for if by one man's offense, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.
16:38
Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men.
16:44
See how many times that Paul uses that reality of the headship of Adam and how we need to understand that in that sense, we were in him.
16:56
And that if we don't understand it, again, I say to you, I don't know how you would understand what it says in verse 18.
17:04
Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation, even so through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men resulting in justification of life.
17:16
For if by one man's, again, one man, one man's disobedience, many were made sinners.
17:21
So also by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous.
17:26
Moreover, the law ended that the offense may abound but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more so that as sin reigned to death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
17:38
And we don't have time, but if you were to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and I'll read it to you, 1 Corinthians 15, 46, it says this, and here's my point.
17:49
In many, many ways, there's only been two men that have ever lived.
17:56
Now, that doesn't mean that we're not alive.
17:57
It doesn't mean that many other men and women, but from a, in a certain aspect of it, really, there's only been two men.
18:07
And Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 15.
18:10
He said, the first man was of the earth, made of dust, and the second man was the Lord of glory.
18:17
So you see, one of the reasons why we need a Savior, and not just any Savior, one of the reasons why it had to be the God man who was sinless, holy, harmless, is because there is no other man who could have removed what has already been stamped on his heart being a descendant of Adam.
18:45
Make sense? And certainly, Brother Mike brought this up as far as the message on the atonement.
18:50
The priest had to go in every year, why? Because he was a sinner, that's why.
18:54
Because he was a result of Adam's sin.
18:58
And so again, I say to you, when we look further down through the confession and they start talking about the work of Christ, unless we get these things, unless you really understand the fall, you're really gonna struggle with Christ, why Christ came, what he did, what he accomplished.
19:15
And I will say this, perhaps the hardest of the tulip to understand is the atonement.
19:25
That's what most people, you ever hear somebody say he's a four-point Calvinist? I've even heard people say they're a six-point Calvinist.
19:35
But if you don't understand the fall, you're never gonna understand limited atonement or particular redemption.
19:45
Because you'll get lost in the woods where it talks about Jesus paying for the sins of the whole world, and then you'll be, I'm way off topic.
19:55
I can't help it.
19:56
But you'll never be able to understand what that means because you'll take it as universalism and it can't be understood as universalism because you're either in Adam or you're in Christ, right? So if you're in Christ and he atones for your sins, your sins are forgiven.
20:13
If you're still in Adam and Christ didn't atone for your sins, well then you're gonna die with Adam because Adam fell and he fell without any compulsion.
20:21
So we need to think about these things as we go along.
20:27
In Ecclesiastes 7, and again, it's Ecclesiastes 7.29, it says this.
20:32
It says, truly this only I have found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.
20:44
Or in other translations it says, they have sought out many inventions.
20:48
It's Ecclesiastes 7.29, you can look it up on your own.
20:50
But again, to substantiate the truth that man having come out of Adam is a sinner.
21:01
And certainly the verse that many people will go to is Psalm 51, right? When David says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.
21:15
Now some will try to twist that and talk about Bathsheba and all those other crazy things, but that's not what it's saying.
21:22
We are, because of the fall of Adam, and because we are in Adam in that sense, we are exactly that.
21:32
We were made upright and we have sought out many schemes.
21:38
Let me read to you this.
21:40
This is in Job chapter 15, you can look it up on your own.
21:43
Job 15, 14 through 16, I'll read it to you.
21:46
This is what it says.
21:49
What is man that he could be pure and he who is born of a woman that he could be righteous? God puts no trust in his saints and the heavens are not pure in his sight.
22:01
How much less man who is abominable and filthy who drinks iniquity like water.
22:09
Now how many people get mad about that verse? How dare you say that? I didn't say it, God said it.
22:16
I know it's true, because I know myself and I see others too, right? But man drinks iniquity like water.
22:24
It just natural goes flows right down.
22:27
Again, why? Because of the fall.
22:30
Because of, listen, if there was no fall, there's no need for a savior, agree? What need for a savior to atone for sins if there is no fall that has been perpetrated? There's no need for atonement.
22:49
There's no need for any of that.
22:50
And so the point is that, again, I'm trying to stress to us in just these few minutes as I'm gonna close, is that man's depravity is so foundational to a right understanding of the Bible.
23:05
And the fall is something that has been misinterpreted, misused, and therefore when, again, if you're going in the wrong direction, it doesn't matter, all your effort will only get you further away from where you ought to be.
23:25
So when we think about this, when these brothers lay this out concerning the fall, it's foundational.
23:33
It's pivotal to all our other understanding, no matter what anyone else will say.
23:39
I could have quoted Ephesians two, we all know that, right? You have he made alive, who or what? Dead in sin.
23:47
Why were we dead? Because we fell.
23:49
Because of the fall.
23:52
Why do we need to be saved? Because we fell.
23:55
Because we're dead.
23:56
Because of the fall.
23:58
Because Adam, without any compulsion, sinned against God.
24:01
Isn't that why even Paul talked, I don't wanna go down that road, but Paul talks about the woman and the man, and he talks about how women, Adam, I mean, Eve was what? In First Timothy, it talks about Eve was deceived, Adam wasn't, right? Adam knew exactly what he was doing.
24:19
He disobeyed God.
24:20
For a thousand different reasons, perhaps, but he still did it without any compulsion, and God can never be held account for that.
24:28
There's one other scripture I wanna ask us to look at, as I close.
24:33
And to me, it's a scripture that so many people overlook because of all the other very clear scriptures.
24:40
In other words, if you talk about the fall of man and the death of man, remember what God said to Adam? In the day you eat, thereof, what? You shall surely die, or dying, you shall die, right? And so we, many times, we'll go to Ephesians 2, and we'll read, you have to be made alive who are dead in sin and trespasses, and we walked according to the cost of the world, and we were children of disobedience.
25:04
There's a verse in Colossians chapter one that many times is overlooked, and I just wanna close with that verse.
25:10
It's Colossians 1 and verse 21.
25:13
But I'm gonna read it from verse 19, as it speaks about Christ.
25:20
For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness to dwell, speaking of Christ, and by him, Christ, to reconcile all things to himself, by him whether things on earth or in heaven, having made peace through the blood of the cross.
25:37
Look at the verse, verse 21.
25:39
And you who were once alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled.
25:48
You see what's happened in the fall, friends? We became alienated.
25:54
Our sins have separated, and Isaiah's very careful how he words in Isaiah 59.
25:59
Our sins have what? Separated God from us.
26:03
The separation was on God.
26:05
God put them out of the garden, right? The fall caused God to move away from man, only to move back in the redemption that's in Christ.
26:15
But this verse tells us that everyone who is in Adam is born in a way in which he is alienated and enemies in his mind against God, and the reason for it, wicked works.
26:31
Again, not the most pleasant view of man, but it sure is the biblical view.
26:38
Isn't that why Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the things of God to the natural man, and natural man being the one who's outside of Christ, what does it say? The foolishness, and then it goes on, it says, neither can he know them.
26:49
Why can't he know them? Because it's foolishness to him.
26:52
Well, why is it foolishness to him? Because his mind is darkened.
26:54
Well, why is his mind darkened? Because he fell, and he fell without any compulsion.
27:00
You see, again, biblical doctrines are interwoven together, and if you just think that you could take this doctrine and put it on a shelf and never have to use it, and then you go to this doctrine, it's not so.
27:18
The Bible is just one revelation of God straight through.
27:21
So, that's why we chose the confession of faith in 1644.
27:27
There are other confessions that would not take that view, right? Certainly an Arminian wouldn't take that view, right? He would take a totally different view, and to me, he's in the car, he's going the wrong way, and I pray God will let him run out of gas, he'll turn around, come the right way.
27:43
So, just think about that as you think about the fall in Adam, in Christ, okay? That is mine, and now Brother Keith will come and take up the small topic of the providence of God.