The Beza Briefing - The First Adam

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the

Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Avendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. Mike Avendroth here, feeling pretty good today. It�s January 4th, 2022, and this show should air

January 6th, 2022. So welcome, January 6th. Probably all kinds of things in the news on January 6th, but I don�t want to really talk about that.

Thank you for praying. I feel pretty good. Usually tired, but feeling good. Got some kind of frog in my throat.

I think it�s unrelated, irrespective, it has nothing to do with me being sick, and the doctor said my lungs are slowly getting better.

I try to work out and all that stuff. He said, �Well, that�s good for your body, but your lungs just, it just takes time.�

So they found some inch -long abscess or something and they said, �That�s probably just some COVID thing.

Let�s have another CAT scan in a month, and if you have any sharp pains or fever, then come in.� But so far, no sharp pains, no fever.

Today on No Compromise Radio, I want to pick up something that I�ve neglected in the past, and I have good reason.

Part of the reason is I�m just scatterbrained. The other part of the reason is I was fairly sick for quite some time, and I have in front of me a book that I�d like you to get sometime, and it is called

The Christian Faith by Theodore Beza. And you can pick this up.

Mine is published by, it said printing in Crawford, England. I think you can get other ones.

But it�s a short little systematic theology written by Theodore Beza, and it�s important for you to read. I�m reading now a summary of The Christian Faith by Louis Burkoff.

That�d be another one that�s excellent. I just read a little section every day. Today I read the section on creation, which talks about the pitfalls of evolution, talks a little bit about days and how many days, and is it a literal day?

Is it not? It talks about the creation of angels and what they do. Pretty good section about angels, actually, that reminded me

I probably should just do a whole show on what angels do, who they are. I was encouraged when

I read that. But today is not Burkoff. Today is Theodore Beza, and so far we�ve been doing some briefings with Beza, and we have covered the

Trinity, and now we are into not God the Father. We did that as well.

Christ the Son. The way this is set up is, it�s set up with a numbering system. It�s the third chapter, and then it�s the sixth paragraph, so that would be 3 -6.

If it�s the fourth chapter and the second paragraph, that�d be 4 -2. But today we�re in chapter 3,

I want to say verse 7, section 7, talking about Jesus, Christ the

Son of God. What I�m going to do is I�m going to read a little section. I hope you�re encouraged by it.

I hope you�re challenged by it. I hope you believe it. I hope you go get the book, and then I�ll just talk a little bit about the issue.

We�ll see what I�m going to say. My son said to me today, �What are you going to talk about when you go into the studio and record some shows ?�

I said, �Well, that would be very interesting.� For me, lots of times it�s, �Can you talk cogently, coherently, for 25 minutes and keep people�s attention ?�

There�s something to be said for keeping attention. That�s why I try to teach my preaching students not to preach for 65 minutes, 68 minutes, 70 minutes, 58 minutes.

Stop. Stop that. I don�t know where that comes from, but it�s rarely good.

I�ve met many people that can preach on Sundays, week after week, 60 minutes.

I mean, they can, but I don�t know what the congregation is thinking. If you go to a Sunday night, maybe you preach longer because the elect have shown up.

If you�re at a conference, and you�re asked to speak for 75 minutes, okay, I get all that. Beza, Christian Faith, Jesus Christ, the

Son of God, 3 .7. Why it was necessary that the first man be created pure.

What Beza�s going to do as we think about the last Adam, and we�re going to have to think about the first Adam, and what the public man,

Adam, in the garden did or didn�t do, and then what the last public man, the federal head, the covenant head, what

Jesus did and didn�t do. So, as Adam didn�t obey, and he sinned, Jesus didn�t sin, but he obeyed, and there�s a correlation there.

There�s a type -anti -type, and we want to make sure we understand that. In order to execute this decree, it was necessary that God create man good and pure.

God, being good, can do nothing which is not good. Moreover, if man had been created wicked,

God would not have had a just reason to punish the wickedness of which he would have been the author and creator.

Isn�t that very important? It is very, very crucial for Christian theology.

Now, if I was going to think about what kids might say, God don�t make no junk, right?

I am who I am in self -esteem, and I�m made this way. Or if it was homosexuality,

I was born this way. And of course, if we want to, if someone said, well, they�re born a homosexual,

I think there�s some theological nuance that I want to give, but at the end of the day, I could say, well,

I was born a fornicator, right? And that doesn�t get me off the hook, unless God made someone homosexual and God made someone a fornicator.

Because if he made me to fornicate, then it would be on him. If fornication is sin, and it is, and I�m made a fornicator,

I�m made a sinner, then I just do what sinners do. I just do what fornicators do.

But Ecclesiastes, and of course here, that�s what Base is pulling from.

God makes man, he made Adam, not a deceiver, not a liar, not someone with unbelief, not someone with lawlessness, but he made

Adam upright. And while Adam had the capabilities to sin, and did, because he was not in a glorified state, he was not made initially as a sinner, right?

So if God makes you a sinner, then you sinners do everything that sinners do, i .e.

sin. And you�re going to have to have the first man created pure, otherwise why would

God punish? If he makes a robot to do robot things, then why would the robot get punished for doing roboty things?

Or if you�re an England robot. 3 .8. It was necessary that man lose his purity.

It was also necessary, of course, that man be created good, yet in such a manner that he be mutable, changeable, however, and fall, by his own fault, from the state of goodness.

For if sin had not thus entered into the world, God would not have found such a great occasion to magnify his mercy,

Romans 11 .32, in saving those whom he has predestined to salvation, nor such a great reason to manifest his justice in condemning those whom he has predestined to his wrath, in order to punish them for their sins.

Now, these are my words, Mike Abenroth�s words. So God creates man upright, but he also creates him, them,

Adam and Eve, mutable. And you can look at Augustine�s little fourfold state and all that stuff.

Able to sin, not able to sin, not able to unbe able to sin, you know, all that. I don�t have it in front of me, and I�ll blame my

COVID fog. But Adam was able to sin. Let�s just say, here�s what

I want to say. Adam theoretically obeys

God. What God tells him not to do, he doesn�t do. What God tells him to do, he does.

And he acts righteously. He obeys the law. The positive aspect of the law,

Adam upholds. Who would we be praising now? To whom would our praise belong?

It wouldn�t belong with the Lord Jesus, because he wouldn�t need to come. It�d be with Adam. And Adam had to fail the probationary period.

And while created good, he�s still mutable, and by his own fault,

Bezos says, he falls. And good thing, because if he didn�t fall, then how does

God show his justice? And how does God show his mercy?

Interesting to work through. 3 .9. How God created man good. The Lord, therefore, at the time which seemed good to him to execute his eternal purpose, created man, male and female, in his likeness and image, that is to say, in righteousness and true holiness.

Reinforcing the fact from Genesis 1, Ecclesiastes 7, and Ephesians 4 .24, that in fact

God creates man upright. That�s key to this. That�s a linchpin in this whole theological system.

3 .10. How man, including all his posterity, made himself liable to the first and second death.

Now Beza writes, man, being created thus, voluntarily and without any constraint, wasn�t

God making him, tempting him, driving him, enticing him, whipping him, allied himself to the devil by sin.

He thus made himself liable to the first and second death, real death and spiritual death, including all his posterity.

Why? Because he was a public man. He was a representative. He was a federal covenantal head.

Because God wanted him to be that, including all his posterity, and in consequence, he has also made himself and all his liable to everything which leads to one or the other of these two deaths.

Now, when you think about imputation and you think about Adam�s sin, first sin imputed to everyone�s account, except, of course, for the sinless

Lord Jesus, that�s how we talk about the fall.

Adam�s sin imputed to our account. Then we say this, consequently,

Adam became a sinner. We want to make sure we have the federal head�s initial sin and the imputation of that sin from him to us down before we just quick rush to, we�re all sinners.

There�s reason why we�re all sinners. You can look at Romans 5, 12 and following for that.

First death, die, physical death, and then there�s the death of deaths, not in the death of Christ, but the death of death, that is, the death of deaths, the worst death of all.

As I would say, we might say the Lord of Lords to emphasize what kind of Lord it is. The death of deaths, that is, spiritual death or the second death.

Chapter 3, verse 11, and again, this is Mike Abendroth. We�re going through Theodore Baez�s The Christian Faith, a little mini -systematic theology.

It is only about 111 pages long or so, and I�m just reading the section now on Jesus Christ, the

Son of God, and we�re seeing a parallel between Adam�s Adam in the garden and Adam, the

Lord Jesus. 311, the way which leads to the first death, the corruption of nature, accompanied by a thousand other defects which spring from the sin of Adam, through hereditary transmission, subjects every man to the first death.

This is the separation of the soul from the body and the putrefaction of the body.

Isn�t it interesting how he says, �Corruption of nature accompanied by a thousand other defects.�

Don�t we see that in the world? The corruption of nature and all the ways it is corrupted, and whether it�s

DNA corrupted or it�s our immune system corrupted or some bad bug, bad cancer gets in there or whatever it might be, a thousand other defects.

I think it was Thomas Watson who said, �There are as many ways to die as there are pores in your skin.�

That�s a lot. Oh, brother. And here, once Adam sinned, the consequences of him being now a sinner just permeated everything.

It just affected everything, right? It affects emotions. It affects the will, the conscience, the mind, intellect, everything.

It is what we say whole depravity. When I say total depravity, what

I mean by that is not that men and women could be as bad as they could be.

Some are very bad. But as they say, Hitler even was nice to his dog until he shot him.

But whole, W -H -O -L -E, that is to say, all of man�s faculties, all of man�s reasonings, all of man�s emotions, feelings, conscience, body, the whole of man is affected by the fall.

And that�s bad. And that�s affected his body.

And he�s going to need a different body to live forever, either in the presence of God in eternal bliss or in the presence of God in eternal hell.

312. The first death cannot be eternal. The first death cannot be eternal, for if it were so, the body at least would escape eternal death, which consists of perpetual pain and punishment.

Similarly, it would never enjoy eternal happiness. By this means, the eternal decree of God concerning the manifestation of his mercy and justice would be annihilated.

And so we�re thankful that Jesus Christ, the resurrection and life, has destroyed death and our bodies, right?

And you think of 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13 and following. How do you encourage one another with these words?

It�s by talking about the Lord Jesus is going to come and the dead in Christ are going to rise first and our bodies are going to be changed, right?

We think of 1 Corinthians 15. Our temporal mortal bodies that have been affected by cancer and lung disease and COVID and all these things.

Now I don�t hear so well. I don�t see so well. I don�t taste so well. I remember the days when actually coffee worked.

What if that was the eternal? What if this was an eternal? We would not think that�s good.

That�s why the first death cannot be eternal. I mean, just think of the consequences of that and the ramifications long -term.

3 .13, the way which leads to the second death. Beza writes, �The internal corruption of the whole man, no faculty accepted, is what we call original sin.�

See, this is the whole, W -H -O -L -E. �It makes every man from the first moment of his conception a child of wrath, and in consequence subject to the second and eternal death.�

He�s not saying they�re not subject to the first death, but this is even more grave. How grave?

Very grave. �For to say it in a word, this corruption, Beza states, makes us truly incapable and even enemies of all good, and enslaves us totally to sin.

This is why St. Augustine said, conformably to Scripture, that human nature has been deprived of its liberty since the will of man was conquered by the corruption to which it yielded.�

What a sad, pitiable state that is for Adam and for all of us. I mean, could there be anything just more grotesque, more regrets to just go back in time and undo what you�ve done, but knowing that it�s impossible?

That is very, very sobering. �Human nature has been deprived of its liberty since the will of man was conquered by the corruption to which it yielded.�

Oh, this makes me want to groan. Oh. Beza concludes in 313, �Elsewhere, he says, that man by misuse of his free will lost both of it and himself.

Elsewhere again, men, he says, strive to find what there is of good in their will, but I do not know how they will be able to find it.�

That�s brilliant. That�s why I want you to read Beza. We�re talking about free will. Okay, we run around looking for what good�s in our will, and they don�t even know how to find it.

You�ve lost your ring in the sand, and what do you do? You just start digging.

You don�t know. You don�t even know where to dig, right? You lost it four weeks ago, and the tides have come up and down.

You wish you could think of something like a magnet or metal detector.

�Men, he says, strive to find what there is of good in their will, but I do not know how they would be able to find it.�

It�s impossible. So now our wills are in bondage. You�re either free from sin�s effects, free from God�s sovereignty, free from Satan�s control, free from the enslaving power of the world system.

You�re either free from all those, which you�re not, or you�re enslaved. Bondage of the will.

That�s a key book. Luther writes the Bondage of the Will in contrast to Erasmus�s Freedom of the

Will. And if you mean freedom of the will, that you�re free to choose based on the nature that you have, fine, but free will is used so many times poorly.

I don�t like to use the word free will, because you�re not free from sin, you�re not free from the world, you�re not free from Satan, and you�re certainly not free from God�s will, because the king�s heart is in the hands of the

Lord and he turns it whatever way he wishes. Slaves of sin, Romans 6. Doing the will of Satan, 2

Timothy 2. So is that freedom? Really?

Is that freedom to you? Slavery isn�t freedom. And therefore, when we talk about free will, it�s a vacuous term, really, until you define what you�re saying.

Okay, can a bird with a broken wing be free to fly?

Well, yeah, they�re free to fly, but they can�t do it. And that�s why we need someone to rescue us, not to assist us, not to cooperate with us, but to rescue us.

3 .14, our last one for today on the Beza Briefing. However, we do not deny that men have enough light to render them inexcusable,

Romans 1, which is true. That�s natural revelation. It doesn�t save, it just condemns.

We do not strip them of their natural faculties, for we say that they have been corrupted, not removed.

So they still can think, they can still feel. Thus reason, judgment, and the will, and other things remain.

Men are not pieces of wood. Reminds me of Luther talking about blocks of wood.

Neither do we strip them of free will, Beza pens, provided that one adds that it is, all of it, nothing but darkness and enmity against God.

Provided that, by this word, free will, one does not understand a natural power to think, to desire, and to do either good or evil.

The will is not constrained, yet cannot but continually desire only evil, John 3, Romans 7.

Accordingly, Scripture defines what is good quite differently from human reason. For Scripture, the nature of an unregenerate man, that is to say, of a man who is not restored, and as recreated by grace, is not only damaged, it is also totally corrupted and voluntarily enslaved to sin.

Thus St. Augustine said that the corruption which followed the sin of Adam, and which is the punishment of it, has changed liberty into necessity.

Elsewhere he says that free will, captive to sin such as it is, serves for nothing but to sin.

You�re free to sin all you want. Do you have freedom? Well, in the sense that you�re free to sin, yes. Beza concludes, it sins necessarily, but all the time voluntarily.

Amazing. So for us, as Beza is working through the section, section 3, where he starts with the

Trinity, then he moves to the Father, now he�s talking about the Son, he�s trying to make sure we understand the first man and the last man.

The first Adam and the last Adam. And if you read Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, that will help you as we understand both are federal representatives, right?

You have two senators that represent you, and when they vote something, then essentially you vote that because they�re your representatives.

And he has to make sure that we see this correlation between Adam, and then eventually he�ll drive us toward the three imputations.

The three imputations, Adam�s sin to all of his posterity, except for the

Lord Jesus, remember the Holy Spirit hovering and protecting Mary�s egg in her womb, so there would be no sin, our sin nature for the

Lord Jesus. And then Jesus�s perfect law -keeping to our account, and then our sins to Jesus�s account.

That is, in fact, those are, in fact, the three imputations. They are reckoned, they are accounted, they are imputed, they are forensically declared.

So those are the words that I�ve got for that right now. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is

No Compromise Radio Ministry. If you want to write us or maybe you want a bunch of sexual fidelity books at a pretty discount price,

I have those. And at my son�s request, I�m trying to finish up the book that I started 10 years ago on parenting.

I don�t know if it�ll ever come out. I�ve got probably 20 ,000 words written. I don�t know when it�ll come out.

I�ve learned a lot of things the hard way, and therefore I�m no expert except an expert on what not to do so we can learn from that.

But pray for me if you would on that. Mike Abendroth. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org