Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
Okay. We'll go ahead and get started. Sorry for the I know that you did. I know that you did. I'm happy I caught it in time. It's good to see you guys tonight. I want to make sure that we're utilizing this equipment correctly, and I'm not very tech savvy, and so I'm thankful for Brother Rick.
That's right. I know how to break computers. I don't know how to fix it. Tonight, we are going to be in Chapter 4 of the 1689 going through creation. Get this guy pulled up. As we open up there and get ready for tonight, would anybody like to volunteer to pray us in for the evening for our topical Bible study on creation tonight?
Any takers? Patty, please do. Thank you. Thank you, Patty. Well, I'm really excited to be going through Chapter 4 with you guys, and especially to be talking on creation. The last semester of my seminary, this is actually a chapter that I was able to write a little paper for, was on the exposition of Chapter 4.
I'm really excited and I'm just really excited to go through this chapter. Last week, we finished up in Chapter 3, in our chapter of God's decree and just looking how God's sovereignty works, and we walked away from that chapter saying we can't ever comprehend it.
That was what one of the main things I think we got. But ultimately, we know that God is sovereign. He's decreed all things, everything that comes to pass, comes to pass immutably because it's God's will for it to come to pass that way.
If you notice, there's going to be a lot of probably reiteration in Chapter 5, from when we were in from Chapter 3. Why is that? Well, Chapter 5 is divine providence. It's going to see some of the maybe the more intimate ways of how God's decree plays out within history.
Why would you think, I know that we started in paragraph 1, we got through paragraph 1 last week on God's creation. Why do you think the confessions between the Savoy Declaration and the Westminster Confession and the 1689, why do you think that they've placed creation between God's decree and God's providence?
That's, I think, pretty important for us when we consider that. Maybe even more importantly, turn to the back of the confession, the very last chapter is the last judgment. This would be what's known as bookends.
This book was put together with order and things in mind when it did that. Why is it that it starts off with decree, then goes to creation, then providence, and at the end of this book, it ends with the last judgment?
Why do you guys think that would be the case? I don't know whose hands to pick because we're all throwing them up all at once. I know. Sorry, my fault. It would be my conjecture that I think the reason that they put this here is another emphasis in saying we didn't come about, creation didn't come about, what's around us didn't come about out of random occurrence, such as what the atheists would put forth of a Big Bang Theory, that creation is tied directly to the active decree of God.
That's why it would find its place right here. Those things are all tied together. So the decree of God, creation itself is tied together to God's decree. The providence is God's holding together of that plan.
It would be an okay way to define that quickly for us tonight, is the God's seeing to the plan being done. And so creation finds its place right there. And then the reason that the last chapter in this confession, again, my conjecture from this, is again, all these chapters that it talks about, all the way until the second coming of Christ, is still within God's purposeful, sovereign, decreative hand.
His providence is being seen in those things. Creation has a purpose in it. It's not just random. That's what I would argue why this chapter is in there. It's not chapter 20, it's not chapter 10, it's chapter four.
It's an important spot right here in our confession, in this confession for us tonight.
At the time of creation, God all knows, God beyond comprehension, knowing everything. That's bold. That's amazing. Anyway, he created this fantastic. We live in a position that's so special, so unique, so perfect for what it was intended to be,.
Everything.
And we, as humans, have destroyed a lot of it.
Yeah.
And it's amazing, the more we know, the more we know we don't know. And we continue on in our ways of discovering, discovering this incredible creation that is God's creation. And it's amazing. As our human knowledge increases and increases, I would think it would bring more appreciation of humans to God.
I'm overwhelmed every time I think about it. What is this creation? And it's so marvelous.
It is. It absolutely is. Well, for tonight, I'm going to read for us the three paragraphs tonight. I know we already discussed last week from paragraph one, but we'll read paragraph one to three for tonight.
We might get to chapter five later, but let's go ahead and read paragraph one through three. It says in here, in the beginning, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was pleased to create or make the world and all things in it, both visible and invisible in a six day period.
And all was very good. He did this to manifest the glory of his eternal power,.
Wisdom, and goodness.
Some of the, obviously Genesis is going to be the biggest place where this is drawing from the wording that this is being put forth. Was there anything, before we look at paragraph two and paragraph three, is there anything that we remember talking about last week towards the end of last week's Bible study on that paragraph?
Yeah, we did talk about.
Ages to growth. And the interesting thing is that we're going off the idea of the history of creation.
So that wasn't in their mind,.
But when we look at it through modern eyes and the way that it progresses, that could be evolution.
Right.
Yep.
Right. So there's no need for a God. And also, I think the pagan mythologies of things like the Roman or Greek gods, they would create, destroy, and then some of the first creations become like demigods or whatever.
And so those, so it still addresses, today it's not like not relevant.
But the truth of scripture, I mean, what they hold out of scripture combat the same things that we have today.
So the things that we have today, even though they were completely different, but the teachings are the same.
So there was still argumentation back then of a different account than what the Bible has. It's not the, maybe the narrative that's taught today from secular individuals, but this confession has worded things in such a way that it's still able to combat against those false teachings.
And why, in my opinion, the reason it can combat about those things is because these verses or these paragraphs in here, these wordings are coming directly from the word of God.
In fact, the very beginning of this, the paragraph one where it says in the beginning, so this is one of the areas that the 1689 has added additional wording for us over the West Minister and Savoy. Not that the Savoy or West Minister had done something wrong when they did it.
It just was lacking a little bit. And so the Baptist thought necessary to put this in here, but that very first phrase in paragraph one in the beginning is added here for us comparatively to the West Minister.
And so this is important for us because that language is seen in John 1, 1, right? In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Nothing came into being with apart from him.
I'm probably butchering that quotation of verse two right there, I apologize. But another important thing that I would say in this text that in this paragraph here is that even the references to Genesis chapter one, right?
It's not to Genesis chapter two. The reason I bring this up is in the next paragraph, we're going to see it addressing the unique creation of man within creation itself. And so paragraph one, just like chapter one in Genesis does for us is it's teaching to us that God's creation, everything that has come about, it is exhaustively created by God.
And then paragraph two and chapter two of Genesis two is telling us what inside that exhaustive creation of God, there's this unique being that God has created. It's the image bearer here in his creation.
So we'll see some of that here in a little bit. I know last week we talked about how the historical view of things is that God created in six days, right? Or that he created in a very short amount of time, which is combating today's views within the Christendom and with outside of Christianity too, the teaching that God is not involved with creation and is not involved with what's around us, or that God used the means of evolution to bring about what we're in right now.
That's unbiblical and it's unconfessional in this paragraph, right? I see Don smiling, right? I know that Don.
When the scientists come in and they try to inject things that they find, the idea that there's evolution from one species into another is totally false. There is no evolution from one species to another.
There's evolution within a species. You get modifications that adapt into the environment, but not evolution from one species to another.
It just doesn't happen. It happens in the world.
Creatures are unique to that, whatever they are. A worm can't become a snake, or a bird can't become a reptile, and vice versa. It cannot happen because of the chemical, the genetic material makeup. It can't happen.
Right, and that would go along with, so turn to Genesis 1 with me. We'll be in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 today just jumping around in those chapters here, talking topically on creation. And what you're referring to right there is that in God creating animals, that he created animal kinds, right?
So that's why today we can have multiple types of dogs, but dogs can't go and breed with a lion, right?
That they can breed with inside the group of, or the kind of dogs,.
And cats can breed within the kinds of cats, and worms can breed with inside the, I don't know how worms breed, but they can breed within the kinds of worm, right? That's how creation has been set up, right?
So when we look here at chapter one, verse one, it says, in the beginning was God,.
Or in, sorry, I'm quoting from John one.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the surfaces of the water.
Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God was, saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. We know how this story continues to go, that as the days progress, there's more and more creation that God puts forth.
When we come down to verse 25, God made the beast of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created, and male and female he created them. Great, wonderful text for us, right? So that's exactly what Don was just getting at. Let me just read this paragraph one again, just to remind us of this, that in the beginning, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so we see right in the beginning of that verse that the Spirit was hovering over the waters.
When we go to John chapter one, and you're more than welcome to go there if you'd like with me, but John chapter one, it says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God, all things came into being through him, and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. So we can look at this, and we could infer from a multitude of texts that all three persons of the Trinity were active in some way or another within creation, right?
That's abundant to us when we look at this text, and that's what this confession's saying, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it was, he was pleased to create or make the world and all things in it,.
Both visible and invisible,.
In a six-day period, all very good. He did this to manifest his glory and of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness. Yes, Jonathan, what are you thinking?
One, four, three, five, Genesis one.
Genesis one, four. Look at that.
So, God is light, why was there darkness, and why did God have to separate the day?
That's a great question.
And is that darkness associated with Satan? If it is, was Satan's fall before the creation? Or is that like something, nothing related?
You're asking a multi-tiered question right there. So, so, maybe.
Maybe.
I'll turn it over to Rick. Rick, you can come up here and answer that question. How I would answer it, right, is that Jesus, the word that's described in John one, is eternal, just like the Father, Son, or just like the Father and Spirit are, because he is the Son, right?
And so, the Son, when it says that the light was created, it's not speaking about the light that Jesus is. It's not speaking about the word being created in that text. So I think that that's where you're coming from that first question there.
When we look at the light and darkness, there's a lot of conjecture in thinking on what that means.
Was that the Son?
Was that, ultimately, Rick, what would you say that that is? How would you say, what's the light and darkness there in verse four that you would think of? Because it says later on, I think it says on another day that it creates the, we called one the light of the day, so I would most likely point out that that was the Son.
So the light that it's talking about, it's gotta be the light that, how God is light. So that's not, so in the beginning, we guess God is light, but when the reason God said let there be light, that's when, okay, now he's putting that part of physics into play.
And so, at this point, in Revelation, it's talking about the use of the light to create the light, which is not the case. It's the inverse Son, and we're gonna use it as a source of light. And so I think that's what's going on here.
Now, okay, God interacts with the space, he's the light source right now, but there's light, and he's putting the laws of physics, and then, well, where's God? If God is omnipresent, there's gonna be light, and wherever there must be, there's shadow.
So now he's, okay, I'm gonna have,.
If you brought the storm, have my source of light,.
Like a punchbox, and I was,.
I don't know if that's how it is, but that's what goes on in my mind,.
But I'm not sure exactly how it is.
But the Son is creating light.
As far as maybe like your third, or fourth, or fifth question in there, as far as Satan goes, this, go ahead, yeah.
Some of those words were formless,.
Something like that.
Yeah, he created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless, yeah.
He created the laws of light, exactly, as far as he's talking about,.
What he said, he created those physical laws.
That were gonna govern the formless,.
Maybe, thing he just created,.
And then to add on top of that, finished the rest of the sentence,.
The earth was formless and void, darkness is over the surface. Surface of what is formless?
Good question.
Well, just think of like a blob of clay, that's what forms something. You've got a blob of clay, and it's formless. And then you start shaping it into something. So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Either the earth, or the heavens, but it's all stuff, but from the formless, it's mindless, it's evil.
Savvy?
Like it?
It's one of those things, like the way I would look at it, too, is like we're talking about all of creation, right? What did all of creation look like before it was even done in the first day of being created?
I don't know either, right? So I think that's a fair analogy that Rick just employed. Imagine taking that clump of clay and just dropping it on the table, and it's right there, and now you gotta start scooping it up and make it into your pot and your spoons and all that kind of stuff, right?
Verse 14, then God said that there'd be light from the heavens by the day of the night.
When we got starved.
Let them be for signs and seasons, for days and years, for fifteen, and let them be for light and for events that the heavens give light on earth. So it was, and we shall. Verse 15, then God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.
And the stars all soared. The sun and the moon aren't made until later on, but the sun was the source of light. So as we die, we begin to move.
So we're not cold.
Well, then wouldn't he then be physical? If he created earth before he created sun and moon, wouldn't he be then the physical light like you were talking about before?
So he's the source of the light, yeah, but he's not like, oh, there's the sun, but there's no sun yet, so let's die. Let's be, okay, we can come to that.
He knew he was gonna make nuclear fusion, but he knew how to do it. God knew how to do it. So he made the sun.
And so my mind even takes me for like in 1 Timothy, it says that God dwells in an inapproachable light that no man can see or has seen, right? And so whatever that light is, it's not like the light of the sun that's been created.
It's far superior, right? Because you can look at the sun, it's gonna hurt your eyes after a couple of seconds, but the light that God is talking about, which I think is probably what's going on here in the very first couple of verses, like Rick is saying, is this light that you and I will never see.
It's the glory to great threats. I don't know. That's where my mind is going to.
When he stopped with somatic, this was written for all time.
If you're gonna say this to a caveman, which in fact that those early.
What are they gonna know? Was it God made a light?
Okay, yeah, yeah.
They don't know anything about what we're talking. Somatic.
As though, and that's trivial.
Yeah, it is, it is. It can definitely be.
It's active, it's scientifically active, but it's not a scientific.
And there's poetic language to be used.
But it doesn't mean that,.
Oh, it doesn't really happen.
But again, it's for all time, like John was saying. And then also for now, it's not just for intelligence, for anybody.
But we know that they'll be at God's name.
And before there was anything else, he was, before there was any other light source, he was the light. Stars and suns, he was.
And then as far as your question goes about Satan and whatnot. Completely different question.
Yeah, it's nothing.
Not in this text right there.
I'll throw that in there.
I'll throw that in there. It just, it falls.
Or no, the way that,.
It's my generation, the way that I read the text is that, hey, there was, God was the light before the sun and the moon. Okay, when that happened, there was darkness. Now, I associate darkness with saying the sin.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay that happened before.
The creation, why was there darkness if there essentially wasn't? No, I don't want to say.
That why was there darkness? Immediately what I would say is creation, Satan didn't exist before creation, okay? Because in John 1, verse 3, that we just read, is Satan a created being? Did he come from God's, part of God's creation?
Yes, and it says that Jesus was involved with creating all things, and then when we look in Genesis, it says that the creation of all things happened here in Genesis 1. So I would say, I don't know exactly in this if verse 1, in the heavens and the earth, maybe the heavens is speaking about all that is in the heavenly realm, so all angelic beings were created on that day, or if that was a different thing, I don't know.
There's gonna be a lot of speculation in regard to that stuff. However, I would say Satan did not exist eternally before creation.
Took place.
It's very incomprehensible. It's very incomprehensible. It's challenging, no doubt, right?
And that definition is the absence of God. God enlightens. God gives you clarity. Jesus is the light of the world. That doesn't mean he has illumination optical, it means he illuminates us. Jesus reveals.
Don, thank you. The question somewhat answered there? Love it. Thank you, Don. Appreciate you. I love it. So let's go to paragraph 2 in the Confession now. Let's look at what goes on here. I am going to read paragraph 2, and I want, let me first mention of this real fast.
So paragraph 2 in the 1689 is split up into paragraph 2 and 3. In the Westminster and in the Savoy, there's only paragraph 2. However, paragraph 2 in the Savoy and Westminster includes paragraph 3. So there's a splitting, an additional adding of a paragraph here, and when we look at this, my argumentation for why the founders of this document, why they did that, is because the Baptists have a particular view on the law that was written on the heart of Adam and Eve, and they had a particular view of the covenant that took place there in the garden.
And so we'll probably talk about that today. So let's read paragraph 2 to just know, if you ever get your hands on a Westminster or on a Savoy, you would open this up and say, why is there not three paragraphs?
Because paragraph 3 and 2 are combined in those things. And I think, I think that's why the Baptists did this, is like what I said. So let's read paragraph 2 here. It says, after God had made all other creatures, he created humanity.
He made them male and female with rational and immortal souls, thereby making them suited to that life lived unto God for which they were created. They were made in the image of God, being endowed with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness.
They had the law of God written in their hearts, and the power to fulfill it. Even so, they could still transgress the law because they were left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change.
A lot to take in on that text, on that paragraph. So again, I really like how this confession, both in all three of those documents and in the one that we have before us, I like what they have done here, right?
They give the general scope that God's created all things, and now narrows in on man as being this unique creation of God. And that's exactly what happens in Scripture. Chapter 1 of Genesis, it talks about how man was created, but it also talks about everything being created, right?
And the reason I bring this up is, I remember talking with LDS, my LDS, just to be upfront, my LDS parents. They would say, this is a clear contradiction in Scripture, because in chapter 1, man is created, and in chapter 2, it says man is created.
That's a contradiction. You can't have man created twice in that text. And the issue with this is what's known as a recapulation. God is revealed to Moses when Moses is writing this down. The way that he's writing it down is in the form of recapulations.
He gives the general brushstroke, saying this is how God created all these things in these days. Now let's focus in on, in chapter 2, the creation of mankind, this creature that Christ will someday die for.
Let's focus in on this in this chapter 2. And so there is no contradiction here of why in chapter 1, it records that God created male and female, and then in chapter 2, it talks about God creating man, and then putting him to sleep, and taking from him this rib, and making it into woman, Eve.
There's no contradiction there. This all took place on that day, like it says in chapter 1, but this is just highlighting and going into depth more on that particular creation of God.
Yep. Yep.
I appreciate you bringing that point up, because that's important in the Confession. The Confession, in those days, they weren't dealing with transgenderism, right? That wasn't going on rampantly like we see today.
So what Don is doing for us, and what he's talking about, is in chapter 2, it's very clear that God, in chapter 1, it's very clear that God made man, and he made woman, right? And so these things are implicit for us, that we need to remember that part of God's plan, part of God's creation, includes both of these male and female within it, and we cannot confuse those two types, or we cannot confuse...and when I talk about confuse, I mean, there's schools that have cat litter boxes in them right now, because not only can you claim to be a man, even though you were not born with male genitalia, but you can claim to be a cat and go and poop in the back of a classroom in the middle of class in a litter box.
Shaking heads, right? Like, that is ridiculous. That is being turned over to a debase, reprobate mind. Rick, it looked like you were gonna say something on that.
All those are contrary to God's creative order, or even nation's borders. We're not going to do anything about immigration. We're all who go different to all. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Predestined.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is.
There's almost that desire of, I need to get along with everybody. Yeah, let's just, we can, like, you can think of that bumper sticker, coexist, and the cross is there at the end, right? Coexist. We can all coexist together.
It's like, no, like, that's not how this works, right? So, yeah, I completely agree with you on that. So, here in this, in all three of these documents, like we've talked about, what's put forth for us here in paragraph two, specifically paragraph two and paragraph three, is a rudimentary definition of what the image of God is.
And I really appreciate this. So, he created humanity. He made them male and female, and he made them with rational and immoral souls, thereby making them suited to that life lived unto God for which they were created.
So, I would just pause there and make mention of this. The LDS would do something like this. They would say, before the fall, they could never procreate, right? And the reason that they would say that is because after they partake in the fruit, they says that their eyes were open, right?
And so, they would say, well, that's obviously sexual desire. Before that, they had the mind like children. They would never think that, never do that. The fall had to take place. Therefore, the sin, it wasn't really that bad of a sin.
It was actually a fall forward, not a fall backwards. It was a fall forwards. It needed to happen for sex to take place. That's the LDS teaching of this, right? The issue, what this confession has said in this, and what I think scripture even tells for us, that it would be ridiculous to think that God created male and female and said, all right, you do this command of mine, but you really won't ever be able to do that command, right?
Which is to be fruitful and multiply, right? So, when we look at this, the command of God to tend the garden or to have dominion over the animals or to multiply and procreation, these things were created to them and they were able to fulfill those things.
They had the ability to fulfill those things. It's not like God told them, hey, I want you to hammer this nail into this wood, but you don't have a hand and you don't have a hammer to do that with. It's not like God created them and commanded them something that they could not do.
He created them and commanded them to do something that they had the possibility of being able to do. They had the ability to be able to do those things. Again, we believe that all of the fall and Christ and redemption, that was always God's plan A.
It's not like that was a plan B after the fall, but they had that ability to do that. So, that's one thing in here that you would that I would encourage you to look at in this. Another thing to take notice of is that here in the next sentence, it says, they were made in the image of God.
And I would pause here and say that right before this, what we would see is that they were given a purpose. So, part of being an image bearer, I would argue, is having a purpose in life, having a purpose in God's plan as part of being this image bearer.
And it says that they were made in the image of God, being endowed with knowledge. So, we are separated from animals and the nature outside of us, all this other creation of God's, because we have a unique knowledge, right?
We have the ability to learn and teach and to gain and to lose. Sounds good. Thank you. All those kind of things. So, we have knowledge. So, that's what this confession is putting forth as part of the image of God.
It would also be righteousness, right? So, there in the garden, Adam and Eve were able to walk with God there. They were able to be in His presence. And so, because of that, they had true holiness. They hadn't ever sinned yet.
And so, that's part of the image of God. One quote that I'd like to read to us tonight is Sam Waldron. He's one of my favorite pastors and teachers on multiple things. But in this text, he says, regarding the image of God, because there's a thought that since the fall has taken place, we are no longer the image of God, that we've lost that.
And that would come from Genesis chapter 5, that when Adam procreates with Eve and they have Seth, it says that Seth was after the image of Adam. It no longer refers to the image of God. It now refers to the image of man.
And so, some people would say that the image of God was lost. And I would discourage anybody from doing that. I think everybody is an image bearer of God. However, that being said, let me read this real fast.
It says here, Sam Waldron says, concerning the image of God, that after the fall, mankind is a very distorted image of God, a very inaccurate replica. The image, therefore, needs to be renewed in the redemption of men.
It is through the fall of Adam that the image has now been twisted, broken, and distorted, as it now bears a very poor image of God. It is through Christ, in the heart of new covenant members, that man can be renewed to this image of God through the Spirit.
So, when you look at the things that this confession lays out as part of the image of God, which is knowledge, righteousness, the true holiness, the law of God that was written on the hearts of Adam and Eve, what are all the things that we saw in the book of Hebrews when we were looking at what the new covenant member has?
They have the law written on their hearts. They're in relationship. They know God. There's knowledge. Their sins have been taken away and their iniquities are remembered no more. There's righteousness that is imputed to them.
These things, the image of God, what's being put forth here is that the image of God, when we fell, those things were removed or twisted or broken. We're now renewed of those things in Christ. Oh, bud.
I know. I know. I'm not... Oh, thank you, bud. There we go, bud. Here. I know. There you go. Immediately. Immediately. Thanks, Nehemiah, getting me to feel great already this evening. God created man and woman.
That's a great example of that right there, right? Thank you, Christine. So part of this as well is that they had the law of God written on their hearts. So the idea of this is that the law that's spoken of in here is what I would refer to as the transcendent law.
There in the garden, Adam knew that it would be wrong of him to pick up a stone and kill Eve, right? Where does it say that in Scripture? Well, it doesn't necessarily say that in Scripture, but I think that would be a pretty easy to understand thing.
Here's Adam. He went to sleep, and there was no woman. Wakes up, his side's hurting a little bit, and now there's this woman next to him, right? He sees all this creation around him. He's in communion with God.
He knows that part of having dominion and being fruitful and multiplying and subduing the earth is going to be with this help meat that God has given her. He knows intimately that it would be wrong for him to hurt his closest neighbor, which is Eve, his wife, and to kill her.
That would be wrong of him to do, right? He knows that intimately. So that's part of what I would put forth as the transcendent law, which is the Ten Commandments, that Adam knew he had a duty to God, and he also knew that he had a duty to his neighbor, Eve, right?
He knew those things intimately. Now, when we look at positive law, so that would be called transcendent law. The positive law would come about in the next paragraph. Follow me down to the next paragraph.
It says, in addition to the law written in their hearts, they received a command not to eat of the tree of Eden, who were happy in their communion with God and had dominion over the creature. So if God had not told Adam, think about this for a moment, if God had not told Adam to not, if he'd never said anything about not eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, would Adam intimately know, I can't eat of that tree?
No, because that was something that had to be told to him, right? So this law of not eating of the tree was positive in how it was given to Adam. It wasn't an inherent part of creation. It wasn't an inherent part of the image bearing of Adam as knowing I can't kill Eve, right?
I know that intimately just because of how nature is and the creation. I know that as an image bearer. However, Adam had to be told particularly, eat of all 99 of these other trees, but don't eat of this one.
That had to be told to him to do that. This is what's known, and this is, again, why I think this paragraph two and paragraph three is split into two different paragraphs for us in this confession, is because it's teaching to us Reformed Baptist theology that's saying that this law that was given to Adam, this one that was there in the garden, this positive law of not eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it was actually a covenant of works, okay?
A lot of Presbyterians would look at this and they would say it was a covenant of grace that was enacted there in the garden, and the issue I take with that is what's the definition of grace? Unmerited favor, meaning that it's outside of my doings, and the promise, so look with me in Genesis chapter two, it says in verse 16 and on, it says, and Yahweh God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the garden you may surely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it, for in that day you will eat from it, you will surely die.
Then Yahweh God said, it is not good for a man to be alone, so he always ended up creating a woman there, but in verse 17, what was the reward for Adam if he had not eaten of that? Life, right? Living, he didn't die, but what is the curse if he does eat of it?
Death, right? So this is positive law, this is his required obedience is what would maintain that life and communion with God there in the garden. Does Adam ultimately complete those things? No, he eats of it, and thus we're in the state we're in today, in a fallen state.
This is a covenant, and the reason I say it's a covenant, and like what you brought up several weeks ago, Patty, with the covenant of redemption that you mentioned in the book of Hebrews, right? This covenant here, the reason I use the word covenant, that's not said here in Scripture, but when you look at other texts like Genesis 12, 15, 17, several other places, Genesis 9, I think it is, when God has covenants, there's certain language that he uses when he reveals a covenant, and part of the nature of covenants is that it's imposed by God to his image bearers, and there's rewards based off of obedience, and judgments based off of disobedience, and all the covenants.
That's what we see in each one of them, and so what we would see here in this is God is imposing a rule upon Adam. He doesn't ask Adam, hey, which tree would you not like to eat of, and we can make this agreement here, and let's sign a piece of paper together in a treaty that you get these trees, not this tree, right?
No, God says, eat of them all, but you don't eat of this one, right? It's God imposing this upon man, and then not only that, but there's a positive reward if, hey, if you don't eat of this, you get to stay in communion with me, you get to be in the garden, you get to live out all your days here with me, right?
And then if you do eat of it, if you break this law, this positive law, this covenant of works here, you're going to die. You'll surely die that very day. This is covenant of works. That's the difference.
We're going to see this branch off here in future chapters of the major differences between Baptists and Presbyterians, but that's the beginning seed is when we look at this, is this a covenant of grace or is this a covenant of works?
And I would say it's very clear that this is a covenant of works. This is God imposing something on it. What is the covenant of grace? Well, we see it all throughout the book of Hebrews, right? That again, I quoted it to us earlier just a second ago.
This is the covenant that I'll make with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. When I not like the covenant I made with them and their forefathers, when I took them by out of the land of Egypt, for I do not care for them.
But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel, that they will no longer teach each one of his neighbors saying, no, the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest of them.
And it says, for I will be their God and they will be my people. And I will remove their transgressions and their iniquities. I will remember no more. That is the covenant of grace. Again, when we look at that text right there, that covenant of grace, in that text and those words, there's no obedience for you and I to have.
It's still God imposing something. God is the one that's saying, I make this covenant with you, but it's now no longer on your obedience. It's on the finished work of Christ. It's the mediator's obedience that actually earned this for you.
And so that's the covenant of grace. And so we'd see the differences there. Jonathan, you look like.
You have a question. Okay. God pulled out of their knees that they were surely dying. That's.
Spiritually? Or is that physically? Both. Yes. What's that? Yeah. Yep. It's both.
Yep. Great question. So no, but let's think about this for a moment. Okay. So in the garden, they, they, they eat. So they, they break. So part of that law that was written on their hearts, right? That I would contend about is that they know that they had a duty to obey God.
So they broke that law and they also broke that positive law of don't eat of the tree. So they, they violated God. They violated his law through that. They lost life and being in the presence of God. They were kicked out of the garden.
They, they are cast out. And there's a cherub on that. It says this place there so that they can never return back Westward. They they're cast out or back, uh, back Westward. They, they are cast out of the East of the garden, um, physically cast out.
So they are no longer in the presence of God, which is speaking about spiritual death. But when we think about physical going to covenant of works that they're going to have to follow and maintain in the future, but there is something that dies in the garden.
Have you read that part of the scripture yet? Okay. Let's let everybody pause. Let's go to Genesis three. This is, this is perfect for this chapter too. Um, so, so, uh, this is perfect for this, this text, right?
Um, even though this text of chapter four in the confession is not talking about the fall quite yet, we can see what the fall does for us right here. So, so in Genesis three, verse 20, uh, we'll just read verse 20 through 24.
So actually let's go ahead and read the proto-evangelium. We'll read Genesis chapter three, verse 14 and on. It's a little bit lengthier of a text, um, 14 and on. So this is after they've admitted to God that they've sinned.
They said, yep, we did it. It wasn't that clear. It was more or less, Adam said, it was the woman that you gave me in the East as well as the serpent in the garden. And so now God rebukes the serpent and then rebukes the woman and then rebukes the man.
And so it says, and Yahweh God said to the serpent, because you've done this, cursed are you more than any cow and more than any beast, every beast of the field on your belly you will go and thus you will eat all the days of your life.
I will put an enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. Now I want to pause here and remind us, this is another place that the Presbyterian looks at.
They say this, this first telling of the gospel, this is a, this is a covenant of grace. And again, who is God speaking to in this text? Speaking to the serpent. God doesn't make a covenant of grace with a serpent.
This is the first promise of the gospel, right? That at the hill of Golgotha, at the cross, the seed, Jesus will crush the head of the serpent there. That's what this is teaching. It says then to the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and conception.
And in your pain, you will bear children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. Emily, were you in much pain with the birth of Nehemiah? Okay. Then to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you saying you shall not eat from it.
Cursed is the ground because of you in pain, you will eat of it all the days of your life. So time out right there. Notice that Adam brought death, not only to his wife and himself, but cursed is the ground.
So Adam brought not only curse to himself, but he brought it to all creation. So the chapter that we're reading right now, all of it is cursed because of the fall of Adam. It says both thorns and thistles, it shall grow for you and you will eat it.
The plants to filled by the sweat of your face. You will eat bread till you return to the ground because from it, you were taken for you are dust and to dust you will return. So that's God saying, I would say that this is partly God being gracious in the physical punishment of Adam because he's saying, look, you're going to live, but it's going to be a life that is going to be about with pain and suffering and sweat.
And you will die. The dust, the very dust I took you from, you will return there. It's going to be brought. Now the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all the living. Now listen to this though, Jonathan.
So same exact day. So fall is taking place same exact day. Then Yahweh God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and he clothed them. Do you make garments? How do you make garments of skin from a dead animal?
So it doesn't say for us, but picture, this is what it paints for us in this text, right? You've just admitted to God that you've sinned, right? God says the whole ground is cursed. Come here, Adam. The sheep that you named, it doesn't say it was a sheep.
It was most likely a sheep just because of the types that we see all throughout the Old Testament. Come here, Adam. You see the sheep that you just named just momentarily ago, skins them, covers them.
So who suffered the death in that text? The sheep did. Who suffers the death for you and I? Christ does. So even in that, in the garden at the very beginning of the fall, God showed to them, yeah, you deserve death, but there will be a coming lamb that will be sacrificed in your place.
And so even though, yes, they would suffer physical death and it would be prolonged, it's later on. Yeah. So Genesis, I believe it's Genesis. Oh, Genesis 5 is where it talks about the death of Adam, I believe.
But yeah, it says that he lives until the age of 996, I believe. 998? What age is it? 992? 930. Oh, is it? I get those two mixed up all the time. Is it 930? Okay. 930.
What? You were probably reading part of the genealogy there.
Yep. So one of the biggest things that I would try to argue for, and I think that we see this, this, again, this confession is wording things that you might want to say, okay, where does it say that exactly in Genesis, right?
Like the law of God written on their hearts or those kinds of things. I would tell you that this is getting this type of language based off of other texts and specifically in the New Testament, right?
So if Christ renews that which was lost in Adam, and part of that, which is what Christ renews in us as a heart of flesh, you could infer from that kind of texts, all that's all throughout the New Testament, that Adam before the fall had a heart of flesh of some kind.
And it was after the fall that he had a heart of stone. Now he had a nature that was bound to sin. And that's what then carries on throughout his posterity throughout creation. So you and I, when we were born, we had hearts of stone.
God changes our hearts from that to a heart of flesh. He renews in us that image that was distorted at the fall. That's what this is starting to paint for us, right? So it's remarkable things. Is there any, we're at 8 .03 right now.
Is there any words that you guys want to say on this? I could go into depth on my understanding of God's law here in these paragraphs and I love it. And so sometimes I have to be shut up about it, but is there any comments or questions or thoughts that you guys have from these paragraphs?
Nothing? Okay. So next week, be prepared. We will be in chapter five, which I'm assuming is going to be kind of a little bit of a rehash of what was discussed a lot of in chapter three. And so I would expect that we'll get through the entire paragraph next week, which is seven paragraphs.
I think it just uses a lot more wording that we've, like I said, we've already discussed this from chapter three. Yeah. Anybody want to pray us out for the evening? Rick, would you mind praying us out?
Okay. Thank you.
You're going to thank you for the week ahead of us.
Well, thank you guys for by studying tonight. A lot to think about. A lot to think about. Jonathan? No, and that was a good rabbit trail to go. A lot of good stuff. I'm happy that we had Don here and Rick here and Carl here because I'm thankful everyone's here.
So I don't think that's what I'm saying. But I definitely could not have answered the question that Jonathan posed as such eloquently as you guys had done. So thank you guys. I know. I know. Trust me.
I know. Look. She already knows. Shepherd already knows, huh? Well, God bless you guys. Okay. Appreciate you. I got it. Oh, do you?