Federal Headship (Part 3)

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 Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike Abendroth here.

It is real time, the middle of April in New England, and it is freezing cold.

There's a winter warning last night, a winter weather advisory for some of the foothills, whatever they call it, some of the mountain, mountainy areas, mountainer.

That didn't sound right. That wasn't bad. That's like transubstantiation. That's just made up.

Speaking of made up, it's interesting that we get some insight into life and to death just through like cartoons.

J .M. Barrie's book, Peter Pan, said through Peter, Peter Pan said this, to die will be an awfully big adventure.

Isn't that true? That is so true. It's going to be a big adventure to those who have been forgiven based on the work of another, their federal head,

Christ Jesus. And I think it's going to be a big shock instead of an adventure. There'll be no adventure in hell.

That's for sure. Pretty amazing to think that 95 million people die every year.

Ed Donnelly says that means every second three human beings enter heaven or hell.

Within the next hour, 11 ,000 men, women, and children will have gone forever to a place of everlasting joy or a place of everlasting pain.

And I think Donnelly's right. Even with a name like Savior, Jesus Christ, Savior, God, the triune

God, Savior, he saves from, yes, his own wrath, that's true, sin, yes, evil world system, ourselves.

But certainly in that word Savior, we should realize that when we say the word Savior, saving people out of hell.

And so today on No Compromise Radio, we want to rejoice that we as Christian people, for those of us who have placed our faith in Christ Jesus, who've been granted saving faith and responded with assent, have responded with belief, have assented with a willful belief, we want to praise

God that God has so ordered the universe that we have a Savior, Jesus Christ, the last

Adam. So today's part three, I believe. I think I got the numbers wrong before. Today's part three in federal headship.

Adam was a federal head, and Christ Jesus was a federal head, a greater federal head.

And so if you have your Bibles, you might want to turn to Romans chapter five. Certainly when Adam and Eve were there in the garden, the fruit was not representative of celibacy broken.

That is to say fruit was really, the forbidden fruit was the sex act in the middle ages people.

They liked to teach that. They liked it because it went well with their flawed idea of celibacy as the highest good for man and for women.

Work well in the middle ages for the churches there. Now, some people think that that fruit was actually a grape.

We don't know what kind of fruit it was. Lots of people think it's apple, but there's a good case that it's not the apple.

And so you have the grape. And so what happens with the grape? If it sits around long enough, then people get drunk.

And so people think that was maybe what happened with the fall. I don't think that's the issue at all. I think the issue in the garden was, do you believe

God? Do you trust him? Do you have enough faith? Is your faith in the right object?

And they did not believe. Are you going to be dependent upon God and obey his word or not?

Adam was a federal head and he was put in the garden on probation. We don't know how long that probation would have been.

Maybe he had to do that for 70 years and obey. Maybe it would have been on into perpetuity.

Maybe it was just a week, but Adam sinned nonetheless. Because in God's plan, the last

Adam, Christ Jesus, was already ordained. It all had to happen. Adam was responsible, of course, but it had to happen.

And God decided that instead of placing you on probation when you were born, and then me,

I had to be on probation when I was born. No, Adam was going to be the federal representative.

By the way, if we had to be placed on probation when we were born, would God have waited till what?

We were one day old, two days old, toddler, a teenager.

Thankfully for Adam, he had everything going for him. He had his right mind.

His mind wasn't affected by sin. He was an adult. He had perfect environment.

I root for Adam. I like God's arrangement. I especially like God's arrangement knowing that, especially in light of our discussion on hell earlier in the show, that there's going to be a representative redeemer to come.

And so I like it that God had Adam as a human. Yes, he was only a day old, but he was in essence like he was 30 years old in terms of his awareness.

He wasn't, I mean, he was able to name things and walk and talk, et cetera. Excuse me,

G .S. Bishop said, his last name's Bishop. The race must either have stood in full grown man with a full orbed intellect or stood as babies, each entering his probation in the twilight of self -consciousness, each deciding his destiny before his eyes were half open to what it all meant.

How much more better would that have been? How much more just? But could it not have been some other way?

There was no other way. It was either the baby or it was the perfect, well -equipped, all -calculating man, the man who saw and comprehended everything.

That man was Adam. Bishop goes on to declare,

G .C., excuse me, G .S. Bishop, had we been present, had we and all the human race been brought into existence at once, and had

God proposed to us that we should choose one who would be our representative, that he might enter into covenant with him on our behalf, should not we, with one voice, have chosen our first parent for this responsible office?

Should we not have said, he's a perfect man and bears the image and likeness of God.

If anyone is to stand for us, let this man, Adam, stand.

Bishop goes on to say, since the angels which stood for themselves fell, why should we wish to stand for ourselves?

And if it be reasonable that one stands for us, why should we complain when

God has chosen the same person for the office that we should have chosen, had been we in existence and capable of choosing ourselves?

Great logic. Why do you care that God chose Adam? If you would have been around, you would have chosen

Adam. And so why are we mad that God chose who we would have chosen?

Say, well, I wouldn't have chosen Adam. I would have chosen for myself. Well, we're not talking about being dumb here.

That would have been very dumb. Charles Simeon of Cambridge was writing about this subject regarding each human being.

Ask, ask each human being, do you want to stand for yourself or you would rather have Adam stand for you? He said, every thinking person would answer,

Adam. Yes, he had full faculties and he was undoubtedly smarter than we are.

We in our day and age in 2013, we are smarter as a society collectively, but we,

I believe, are individually dumber. Why? Because the fall is having its effect.

Super smart people back before the fall, Adam and Eve. And then I still think very, very smart after the fall, although there was some chink in the armor, but year after year, after year, after generation, after generation, although our collective knowledge increases, how do you build a bridge?

How do you get to the moon? Individually, we're not as smart. He's got a perfect companion.

He's got a perfect environment. James Montgomery Boyce said this, after all,

Adam faced only one temptation and that was a mere trifle. He was not to eat of one tree.

Besides, he was as yet unfallen. He did not have a sinful nature.

For our part, we are weak, sinful, and ignorant, and we live in a world filled with all kinds of temptations.

Was it not merciful of God to judge us in Adam? Was God not gracious in that choice?

Well, we know the answer. And aren't you glad, in one sense,

Adam didn't succeed? What would happen if Adam did succeed? Let's say it was 70 years ago.

So just go for 70 years without sinning. That's the probationary period, and whatever you do will be credited to everyone else because you're,

Adam, a federal head and you're a representative. And so let's just say it was 70 years. If Adam would have made it, can you imagine the praise that would have been going to Adam?

You imagine his self -congratulation? Well, maybe that would break it there, but how about Eve's praise, our praise?

We want to reserve our praise and our boasting and our exaltation for the

Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we want to do. Pink said, had

God kept Adam from sinning, all his race would have been eternally happy. But in that case, Adam would have been their savior and benefactor, and all his seed would have gloried in him, ascribing their everlasting blessedness to his obedience.

But such an honor was far too much for any finite creature to bear. Only the

Lord from heaven was worthy of it. Isn't that good? Aren't you glad God works by federal representation?

When was the last time you prayed? Lord, thank you for working via federal covenantal representation.

Hosea 6, 7 says this, talking about Israel, God complaining of Israel, but they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant.

There have they dealt treacherously against me. T -H -E -R -E, transgressed the covenant like Adam.

Thomas Goodwin, Moses tells us the history of Adam's fall. That's in Genesis. And Paul explains the mystery and consequences thereof.

And that's exactly what we have in Romans 5, verses 12 through 21.

Well, what's the proof of the assertion in verse 12? We're all sinned. Well, we have the consequences of Adam's sin, which would be death to all mankind, verses 13 and 14.

Death is the result of sin. And so how did people, or why did people die in between Adam and Moses?

So here is how the apostle wants you to think. First, let me read verse 13.

For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Yet, verse 14, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who is to come.

So between Adam and Moses, no law of Moses. Before Moses was born, there wasn't a

Mosaic law. People did sin, though, between Adam and Moses, and you can just read

Genesis to find that out pretty quickly. Jacob and all kinds of people sinned in the

Old Testament between Adam and Moses. And when they did sin, what were they sinning against?

Well, we know what they were not guilty of breaking, and that was direct revelation from God. There'd been nothing given by God to them of what they could not do, what they should not do, what they must be doing.

Yet, you can read Genesis chapter five, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died.

You can read about Enoch. He didn't die, but everybody else, Methuselah died,

Abraham died, Sarah died, Joseph died,

Pharaoh died. And so we have the whole book of Genesis, no

Mosaic law. Mosaic law doesn't come along until chapter 20 of Exodus.

How did people die between Genesis chapter three and Exodus 19, when there was no direct revelation from God that said, thou shall or thou shall not?

Well, Paul wants you to draw this conclusion in Romans chapter five. There was an earlier law that was broken.

Adam broke the law, and all these people got credit for it. The people who died in between, including babies, they died because of sin.

You know something about people when they die that they've been affected by sin, either credited to their account, it's their own natural sin, but sin, the wages of sin, is death.

And so how can you impute or charge people with violating

Moses, the law, before there's Moses? And the answer has to be the conclusion

Paul wants you to come to. Adam broke the law, sinning by imputation.

If Paul, as Lewis Johnson said, only meant in verse 12 that death passed upon all men because of their many individual transgressions, then no explanation would be necessary.

But the extraordinary statement that all die because of Adam's sin does require explanation.

The statement of verse 13 is intended to show that the sin referred to in the clause for all sinned in verse 12 is not sin against the

Mosaic law. All violations of the Decalogue must be excluded when one looks for the sin that brought death in the world.

It is plain that what Paul wants is to say that men die not for personal sins, but for Adam's one sin, end quote.

By the way, that was a little teaser there from S. Lewis Johnson's Romans commentary that I'm adapting right now.

I have the intellectual property rights from the family, and we are gonna put that out. It's going to be

Zondervan, a Zondervan production, and that should be, oh, it's due in November, and so it'll be out next year.

It's exciting. Big section. I'm making sure we have the big section on Romans chapter five. Why? Because I can.

It's exciting. 85 ,000 words. I think maybe 65 ,000 should be in Romans chapter five, verses 12 to 21, and we'll just fill in the rest.

The rest can be divided into bad news and good news. And maybe if I had a certain kind of sanctification paradigm, then

I would just say everything. We don't need six and seven and eight. 12, 13, 14, 15, because we can just go back to three.

You can just put an arrow after 521. Go back to 321. Go back to 321.

Go back to 321. For those of you that know what I'm talking about, I better be on my best behavior.

Mike Abendroth here, No Compromise Radio. You can go to No Compromise 90. That's our YouTube channel.

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See how that works? Okay. There's a glimmer of hope in Romans 5 .14.

It says, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.

The transgression of Adam was simple. Here, don't eat this. A direct command from God. Plain, clear, singular, don't do that.

Direct revelation from God. They didn't have, between Adam then and Moses, let's go to Joseph, for instance, he didn't have a direct revelation from God in regards to a law system, whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

So we have a little glimmer of hope. Adam's ahead of his race as a representative, and so Christ is as well.

John Murray says, for nothing evinces the sin of all and the death of all in the sin of Adam more than the death of infants.

How could death reign from Adam until Moses if there's no law being violated? Answer, federal headship of Adam, because of Adam, because God chose

Adam. And here's what we're after. The same way people are lost, they are saved by the work of another.

Thomas Goodwin, all men are hanging on Adam's girdle. Federal headship is under attack these days.

Genesis is under attack. Should be not very surprising to us. Federal headship, in other words,

Romans chapter five, verses 12 through 14, isn't new. It isn't novel. It isn't some brand new idea.

Federal headship, I could say it this way, it's just the way God works. It's the way of the world.

It's the way governments work. You go to Germany and Boone something, I don't know, B -U -N -D -E something means federal government or maybe it means government.

We have a federal government here in the United States. Paul goes on in verses 15 through 19 to say, you know what, it's just not better.

I mean, it's just not something that's the way God does it. It's better. Christ Jesus is better than Adam.

And he says that in verses 15 through 19. Two times you're going to read, it's not like in verses 15, it's not like verse 16.

And we're glad, we're glad there's differences between Adam and the Lord Jesus.

And you're going to see, we've got a transgression on one hand through Adam and you've got a gift from Christ Jesus.

So basically, as one man says, we've got differences here between guilt and grace.

Adam one, guilt, last Adam, grace. We don't want to say the second

Adam or the hundredth Adam or the one thousandth Adam, speaking of Jesus Christ, because maybe there's somebody else.

Maybe there's the third Adam that comes along. Maybe it's the 11th Adam. Maybe it's one

Adam 12. Maybe it's the hundredth and first Adam, airborne division, easy company,

Ardennes Forest. Maybe, maybe it's a thousand and one Adam.

No, it's the last Adam. There are no other Adams. This is it. Aren't you glad? And there's a bunch of contrasts here.

Yes, saved by the work of another, but there are some wonderful contrasts. One man called blessed contrasts.

I almost pronounced that like Jonathan Gershwin, what a blessed contrast. But the free gift, verse 15, is not like the trespass.

For if many died through one man's trespass, see all the singular stuff, one man's trespass, much more having the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man,

Jesus Christ, abounded for many. Christ did much more for his people.

There's abounding grace. There's free grace. There's the free gift by the grace.

And Jesus Christ, that one man, he abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result, verse 16, of that one man's sin.

For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

Oh, isn't that good? Condemnation, Adam, justification,

Christ, Jesus. For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned, verse 17, 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,

Jesus Christ? Remember chapter five, verse one? Through. How can you get these blessings? Through someone. How can you be justified based on the work of another?

How can someone be a representative? And so Paul, in chapter five, verses 12 through 21, talks about that.

Through one man, Adam, death. Through one man, Jesus, life, abundance of grace, free gift of righteousness reigning in life through the one man,

Jesus Christ. Christ's actions as the last Adam are greater than that of the first Adam.

Jesus doesn't bring sin and death. He brings grace and righteousness, a free gift of righteousness, abundance of grace.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification life for all men.

We'll have to talk about that next time on No Compromise Radio. Glad that you're listening. Glad that you're digging into federal representation.

And you need to get John Murray's little booklet on imputation of Adam's sin, or imputation of sin, or imputation, something like that.

Small little booklet. Top five books that have rocked my world for all time. John Murray, imputation.

My name's Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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