1689 London Baptist Confession (part 44)

Bethlehem Bible Church iconBethlehem Bible Church

0 views

0 comments

00:01
Our Father in heaven, what a great God you are. As we look at on your creation, just amazed to think of all the detail, all the craft and all the goodness that went into this creation that you have put us, made us stewards of, put us in charge of.
00:29
Father, we praise you this morning as we consider the work of your hands, as we think about the great power that not only created everything out of nothing, but sustains it without losing any power whatsoever.
00:49
You are infinite and infinitely powerful and Lord, we praise you for those things.
00:55
We thank you that you are not only powerful and all -sustaining, but that you condescend even to your sinful creation, the creation that rebelled against you and plunged itself into sin and yet you condescended to redeem a people for yourself and one day you have promised to redeem all of creation by recreating it.
01:29
Father, we praise you. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the gospel.
01:36
We thank you for the power of the gospel. We thank you that through the words of your scripture and by the power of the third person of the
01:46
Trinity, the Holy Spirit, you draw us to yourself, you cause us to be born again and you grant us salvation full and free.
01:55
Father, as we look to your word, as we look to the men who have tried to draw from it the truths that are contained in the 1689 confession,
02:11
Father, we pray that you would bless our time, strengthen us in our faith, cause us to be amazed anew at your grace and your mercy.
02:20
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, good morning. We've been going through a section on the law and this morning hopefully we'll get to a section on the gospel, which is interesting not just because it's the gospel but because it doesn't actually exist in the
02:42
Westminster Confession of Faith but the Baptists put it in there and I think it's a good thing to introduce there.
02:50
So we were talking about the law last week. We were in Galatians 4 and Galatians 5 and just talking about how the
02:59
Galatian church, the Galatian heresy as it were, was this. They were saved through the preaching of the word.
03:08
They heard the Apostle Paul preach the gospel. But then if you recall, they weren't satisfied with that or there were other people that had kind of infiltrated the church and had introduced this idea that you had to add the law to the gospel.
03:28
You had to obey the Old Testament law. It was good to be a Christian but it was better to be what?
03:35
Kind of a Jewish Christian, you know. I guess we could, if we want to put it in German terms, we could say uber -Christian.
03:43
They were the uber -mensch, you know, of the New Testament because it wasn't just by grace they were saved or maybe they were just saved by grace but you had to then live by the law.
03:55
You know, Christians were resubmitting themselves, as it were, to the law.
04:01
Let's go to Galatians 5 verses 1 to 12 just to kind of set us up for where we left off last week.
04:10
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
04:18
Don't go back to the law, he says. Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision,
04:26
Christ will be of no advantage to you. Again, not saying there's anything wrong with being circumcised but saying if you accept the idea of circumcision as having spiritual benefit,
04:38
Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.
04:48
You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace.
04:55
For through the Spirit by faith we ourselves eagerly await for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ, in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love.
05:11
You were running well. You were doing well in your Christian walk. Who has hindered you from obeying the truth?
05:19
This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
05:27
I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty whoever he is.
05:35
But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed.
05:43
I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. If being circumcised is good, then why don't they just go for the whole kit and caboodle, so to speak.
05:58
Here was his point. His point was somebody was trying to convince them that even
06:04
Paul was, you know, preaching this idea of Old Testament rules,
06:10
Old Testament law being necessary to Christianity. And he wants them to understand that that's not
06:16
Christianity. Don't submit yourselves to that yoke of slavery. Don't go back to the law.
06:21
The law is not, it's not salvific.
06:31
We'll see where we leave off. We left off here. If we insist that under the covenant, or that we are under the covenant, the
06:37
Old Testament covenant of Mosaic law, we are falling into the Judaizing heresy. It is a kind of legalism, and we have, in effect, denied the perfection of the work of Christ.
06:47
We're trying to add to it. Yes, you know, Christ's death is good, but we also need to obey.
06:54
We need to have some merit of our own. And this really is, it's a constant theme of church history.
07:02
You can go through many church movements, and even today, there's a movement afoot among some evangelicals to deny this truth.
07:14
That Jesus Christ, yes, he went to the cross. This is what we call the passive obedience of Christ.
07:20
That he went to the cross, and he submitted to the Father's will passively, right? He didn't resist.
07:26
He was put on the cross. He didn't remove himself from the cross. He passively obeyed, died for our sins, and was raised on the third day.
07:35
That's the passive obedience of Christ. The active obedience is what? His conformity to the law.
07:47
He perfectly obeyed the law. What we were commanded to do, what we should have done, and in fact, what we ought to do now, even the things we're commanded to do now, you know, the two great commandments, love the
07:58
Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. We fail to do those things constantly, fairly constantly.
08:08
But Jesus perfectly obeyed every jot and tittle of the law. So that's his active obedience.
08:15
But there's a movement afoot in evangelicalism that says that obedience, his perfect obedience to law has no value for you.
08:24
What's the problem with that? If we don't get Jesus' perfect obedience imputed to us, then what?
08:35
What's that? We have to work it on our own. Why? Because we need perfection. We need righteousness to enter into heaven.
08:42
It's not enough to be at neutral with God. It's not enough to just have your sins forgiven.
08:48
That's good. But you need righteousness. You do need righteousness to get into heaven, right?
08:54
Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not see heaven. So where do you get that righteousness?
09:02
There are only two answers. One is Jesus Christ, his perfection imputed to you.
09:08
And the other one is solo bootstraps up. Get it done.
09:15
Obey the law. Submit yourself to the law. Let's have some righteousness of our own. And so that idea that Jesus' perfection is not imputed to believers, the problem with it is it ultimately leaves you really close to heaven, but not quite there.
09:33
You know, it was like I watched the highlights of this basketball. Now, the ladies will just have to bear with me for a minute.
09:41
This basketball game the other day, and this guy, I think he's 6 '10", 6 '11", JaVale McGee, and he gets the ball.
09:46
He's like standing next to the basket. And he jumps up to dunk, and he gets blocked by the basket.
09:53
And I'm like, I don't even understand that. He's all alone, you know? It's just like, bonk. Well, that's us, right?
10:00
We need that little last couple of inches to get over the rim and dunk the ball to get into heaven.
10:07
We can't do that on our own. We can't do it. If we could do it, then if we could obtain the righteousness to get into heaven on our own, then why would
10:19
Jesus have to come and live a perfect life for 30 -plus years? He wouldn't need to.
10:24
He could just show up on Friday, submit, die, and we'd be good to go.
10:30
We need not only forgiveness for sins, we need his righteousness. And that's the point of this whole exercise here.
10:39
There's a desire in us to justify ourselves, to become righteous in and of ourselves.
10:50
So, and that's where legalism, I think, comes in. Legalism, let's define it a little bit.
10:58
Okay, what is legalism? I've practically been talking about it for two or three minutes here.
11:06
What is legalism? And that's the important part, right, is the second part.
11:17
There are certain things you have to do. Now, we can say that, and that's fine, right, because we've already said.
11:23
You have to obey or you have to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
11:30
Those things are true, right? There's no getting around that and all the implications that flow from those two commandments.
11:37
But it's the second part that Carol said. It's in order to be pleasing to God or in order to obtain righteousness that is pleasing to God in order that we can get into heaven.
11:49
Once we cross that kind of boundary, and it's easy to do. I mean, if you think about it, if you think about your prayer life, if you think about your scripture -reading life, if you think, is it good to read scripture, is it good to pray, is it good to evangelize?
12:06
The answer to all these questions is yes. Is it good to attend church? But once we get in the mindset of,
12:13
I'm doing these things so that God will love me more, so that God will be pleased with me more, so that I may attain a higher level of righteousness, then we've crossed into territory that we ought not to get into.
12:33
We want to do these things, yes, because they please the Lord. Yes, because they're right to do. Yes, because they help us to grow.
12:40
But not because they raise us to a higher level of righteousness, because nothing can raise us to a higher level of righteousness.
12:50
Yes, Brad? OK, good question.
12:57
What about rewards in heaven? And this is something that I kind of struggle with.
13:02
I'll be honest with you. What about rewards in heaven? They are promised, right?
13:13
But the hymn writer has it right, too, when he talks about casting down our golden crowns, right?
13:20
I mean, everything we do, if we think to ourselves this way, and I know this isn't what you're saying, but if we think to ourselves this way,
13:27
I am doing this so that I can earn rewards in heaven.
13:36
I don't know if that's the right motivation or not. You know, I think the rewards in heaven come, by the way, do we obey, do we perform good deeds on our own strength or by the strength of the
13:51
Holy Spirit? By the strength of the
13:57
Holy Spirit, because if we're doing it on our own strength, then what? They're probably not good deeds, right?
14:06
You know, can you do good things with a less than good motivation?
14:12
I do them all the time. And my wife lovingly likes to say, well, that just burned up, right?
14:21
We just turned that good deed into wood, hay, and stubble. Good job. I've got a magic power that I can turn good deeds into wood, hay, and stubble.
14:29
Yeah, that's also true. Excellent point concerning legalism. Legalism can not only be because we're trying to, in our own minds, please the
14:39
Lord by the good things that we do, make him either get more righteousness for ourselves or attain a higher standing for ourselves.
14:48
But it can also be a matter of appearing, and this is probably an even more prevalent motivation for people, you know, to appear more righteous among our peers, you know, to have that righteousness that exceeds our neighbors.
15:05
So that, yeah, that would be another motivation for legalism. Good point. So the opposite of legalism is license.
15:19
License to sin. License to kill. No. License to sin. Licentiousness.
15:28
Antinomianism. That is to say, being against the law. If one group is for the law, the legalists, the other group against the law are the antinomians.
15:37
So if you do something, or if you abstain from something, because you think you're gaining favor, that's a sinful attitude.
15:47
But if, on the other hand, you indulge in something because you think you have the freedom and the grace and the license to do something, that can be antinomian.
15:59
So, I mean, on both ends, there can be a sinful attitude about it. What's an example of being antinomian or licentious?
16:09
What's something that's common among Christians or professing Christians? It's very common.
16:21
I was just reading, I just had a friend, I have, you know, the internet is kind of bizarre because I wind up counseling people that I've never met face to face.
16:32
But one man sent me this note here recently, and he said that some friends of his were in a premarital class at this really big evangelical church in the
16:41
Midwest. And out of this church, they had a premarital class.
16:49
And in that class, there was only one couple. And I guess, you know, because there are so many thousands of people in this church,
16:55
I would guess there were a number of couples. There was only one couple in the class that wasn't either living together or actively engaged in sexual relations.
17:06
Because, you know, that's just what people do. And that is licentiousness.
17:12
That is being against the law. That's saying, well, I see what the New Testament says, you know, about not being fornicators and fornicators not inheriting the kingdom of heaven.
17:23
But, you know, it's all under the blood. It's all good.
17:29
I'll just lend you the microphone. Where is the boundary, right?
17:36
It's a good question. Where do we cross the line from trying to be obedient into legalism?
17:43
And I really think it's a matter of the heart, right? It's a matter of your motivation.
17:49
We're talking about rewards, you know. Why would you get rewarded for just obeying God in the first place?
17:58
Because he loves us. But it's kind of like God rewarding God's faithfulness, right, through us.
18:05
But that's the key, because it's through us. Because we couldn't do it on our own anyway.
18:14
So what is the line? I think it really ultimately is a matter of the heart.
18:20
And I've talked about this quite a bit, and I'll get to you in a second, Brad. I think that people want to know, and there are a number of issues like this, they want to know what the boundaries are, because they want to make sure that they're in the boundaries, right?
18:35
And I think to some extent, that's fine. But there are some things that we can't easily draw boundaries around, right?
18:43
Is it okay to do X, Y, or Z? You know, if somebody says, well, is it okay to go to a
18:50
Patriots game on, you know, Sunday at noon? You know, and they say, pastor, what do you think about that?
18:59
What am I going to say? Yes, by all means, go enjoy the fellowship of the Patriots.
19:04
I mean, why would I say that, right? But on the other hand, if I say no, that's sin, then what?
19:11
I'm a legalist, right? So either way, I lose. I'm either, right? Pastor, what do you think?
19:16
And I'm like, I'm not going to answer that question, Brad. And I think that's a good point. You know, whether we're talking about alcohol, whether we're talking about dancing, whether we're talking about other things.
19:24
Again, we get back to intent. If you tell me, you know, pastor, I want to go out dancing, what do you think? I might ask you some questions like this.
19:33
Well, what's the overall environment of this thing? Is this going to be believers or unbelievers?
19:38
You know, are they going to be doing, you know, some dances that I'd rather not even describe? You know,
19:45
I mean, it doesn't take long. You get on YouTube and you're just like, I need to turn this off now because they're that bad.
19:54
So I, you know, I and I think a lot of things, it's not, it's not so much. Let me draw the lines for you.
20:01
It's just like, OK, let me just imagine I'm in that scenario. What is that doing to my mind?
20:08
What is that doing, you know, to me spiritually? What is it doing for me? And if the answer is it's not doing anything for me and it's not doing anything against me, well, then it, you know, might be morally neutral.
20:20
But I think in a lot of cases, people are looking for an excuse to be involved in things that they might not necessarily want other people to view them being involved in,
20:29
Charlie. Well, I think, I think it can be both, right? If we say, you know, as a church, here's our policy.
20:37
You can only date those people that we interview and approve for you to date.
20:45
Now, personally, I think that would be great, because, you know, because I don't have enough things to do.
20:55
So I actually wouldn't mind it. I like to scare some boys and girls off, you know, quite frankly, because I, you know, that's what
21:01
I did for my kids. I like to do it for other kids too. It's a ministry.
21:14
I don't remember where I was going here, because I got so distracted. Oh, yeah, the thing is that the situation you just mentioned,
21:23
Charlie, is interesting, because I was just reading an abstract for a new book that's coming out yesterday. And basically, the woman who wrote this book is suggesting that the idea of walling yourself off from people of the opposite sex who are believers is sinful, right?
21:47
So, you know, your wife ought to have good friendships in which she spends some amount of effort, you know, as long as they're brothers in Christ.
22:03
And I read that, and I just thought, I don't want to be a legalist, right?
22:11
And I'm reading this, and she's like, oh, you're a legalist if you say, you know, if you do the Pence rules.
22:17
And I'm like, okay, well, she can have her opinion, but I don't really share it, you know, because she's basing her theological arguments on a lot of,
22:31
I would suggest, they're kind of Garden of Eden arguments, you know.
22:38
Well, men and women were both created good, all that kind of stuff, you know. But here's the point.
22:44
The point is, I think, when people try to establish, let's say, in the case of this author, she's trying to expand the lines, right?
22:55
And yet she's trying to keep a spiritual edge on it by saying, well, these would be your brothers in Christ, or if you're a man, these would be your sisters in Christ, so why shouldn't you have more of a familial relationship with them?
23:10
And I think there's truth in that. I don't think there's as much truth as she wants there to be.
23:15
In other words, I can't go where she goes, because I think the idea, you know, for the sake of argument, you know, the idea of me saying, hey,
23:25
Cindy, let's grab lunch this week. I don't think that's a good idea, right? I think this is, you know, just really unwise territory.
23:40
Whether it's sinful or not, I think it's very unwise. And why would I expend energy on a relationship outside of my marriage when my wife says, or when the
23:51
Bible says, and also my wife says, you know,
23:56
I'm to be the husband of one woman, right? I'm to, she's to get my affection.
24:03
I'm to be a one man, woman. So I, or a one, sorry.
24:10
I just, I just crossed into the gender wars here. Oh, a one, a one woman, man, right?
24:19
Yeah, I'm listening to and going, who is that guy? So yeah, yeah.
24:26
Check the tape on that. So the laws, the rules, you know, antinomian legalism.
24:33
We've been talking about this, you know, the balance of life. And ultimately it comes down to motivation. Why are we motivated to do what we do?
24:40
Let's look at Psalm 51, 17, and get a little insight from the psalmist.
24:47
And it's important, you know, neither Jesus nor his apostles ever taught anything other than joyful obedience to God in light of salvation.
24:59
That's what we do. It's not slavish obedience to the law. It's not grudging obedience to law.
25:05
I mean, just, I mean, you know, what does, what does it say about giving? What does the new Testament teach about giving? God loves a grudging giver.
25:15
God loves somebody who doesn't think about it. God, no, God loves a joyful giver.
25:22
So Psalm 51, 17. Would somebody read that please? So appropriate. Thank you. So appropriate.
25:27
Even as we think about the Lord's table today, you know, when we approach the
25:34
Lord's table, we ought to be thinking about Christ, what he's done for us and what we've done to cause that to be necessary.
25:43
We ought to come just amazed and in awe of the grace of God and a broken and contrite heart, broken over our sin, sorry about it, constantly seeking repentance, forgiveness, and yet having that joy as well.
26:04
R .C. Sproul said this, he said, we are walking that tightrope as it were between our continuity with the people of God under the
26:09
Old Testament and the discontinuity with them that comes from being in the new covenant. So we understand that salvation was always by faith, but we're no longer under the
26:21
Old Testament law, but we can't, we've talked about how the third use of the law, that those things that represent the image of God, most of the 10 commandments, as a matter of fact, his characteristics, we can't ignore those things.
26:40
Those things are still true and they're for the most part, repeated in the New Testament. So has there ever been a way of salvation other than by faith alone?
26:53
The answer is no. And this is something that people argue about. And I think we've talked about it a little bit, but have the works of any mere mortal ever contributed to salvation?
27:08
Is there anything that any person can do other than the
27:13
Lord Jesus Christ that contributed to their salvation? And where does that come into particular focus?
27:24
I'll give you a hint. It's before Christ, right? With the Old Testament saints. Were they saved in some measure or were they even sanctified?
27:32
People will argue that Old Testament saints were sanctified by some other means other than the
27:40
Holy Spirit. Well, what's the problem with that? Why do we need
27:48
Jesus? Why do we need the help of God? If we could do it on our own, well, then why don't we?
27:56
And why aren't we commanded to? So getting back to talking about the law and talking about the confession.
28:08
The law of God is of great use to believers. And this is from the confession in discovering also the sinful pollutions.
28:15
We're talking about the law and what it shows us. Discovering also the sinful pollutions of their natures, hearts, and lives.
28:22
So as examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of humiliation for and hatred against sin together with a clear sight of the need they have of Christ and the perfection of his obedience.
28:44
According to Calvin, the law functions as a mirror. It shows us our sinfulness.
28:51
By using it this way, we will come to further conviction of humiliation for and hatred against sin.
28:58
Well, not only does it show us our sin and the places where we're falling short, but it's also helpful for discovering the will of God.
29:06
R .C. says this. He says, you know what? He says, I've been teaching theology my whole life. The number one question that people ask me is about what?
29:15
How do I know what God wants for my life? What is his will for my life?
29:21
And what does R .C. say to them? What did he say? He can no longer say that.
29:31
God's will for your life is your sanctification. It's your sanctification.
29:39
How do we, how do you know that? Because Paul said it.
29:46
God's will for your life is your sanctification. Then R .C. says, if you want to know what that looks like, what your sanctification looks like, you're going to have to meditate on his law day and night.
29:57
His will is for you to obey him. Is that true or not?
30:03
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. This is always true.
30:10
Back to the confession of faith. Neither are the aforementioned uses of law contrary to the grace of the gospel, but do sweetly comply with it.
30:19
Like my wife sweetly complies with my wishes. Did she say amen?
30:26
Okay. We think of the law as a bad thing typically.
30:32
When we hear the law, I mean, we don't love to hear that word law.
30:38
We love to hear grace. But the Christian loves God, loves his word and his law and sees that grace and law are not incompatible.
30:47
Grace complies with the law and the law complies with grace. And just so the confession says in a manner that is sweet.
30:56
And the more we grow in grace, the more we love God's law. We have tasted the Lord and found that he is good and we love the sweetness of his law.
31:04
Do we love the law of God? Well, why should we love the law of God? Because in it, we discover our frailty.
31:12
We're driven to the cross again, but we also see the majesty and the goodness and the grace of God in it.
31:22
The confession goes on and says, the spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully, which the will of God revealed in the law requireth to be done.
31:41
When R .C., I mean, we already talked about this.
31:50
When he first got saved, he said his favorite song was where he leads me,
31:55
I will follow. He said, I can now look back and see that there were lots of places where he was leading me. I did not want to go like that.
32:03
He loved the song, but then he didn't love it so much. But he talks about being a child and there was an orchard between his home and the drugstore.
32:15
And he would get sent on errands to the drugstore. He said there was also an adjacent forest with a giant oak tree next to it.
32:22
And he said the oak tree must've been 300 years old. He said the oak had huge gnarled branches and looked like a massive ogre in the dark.
32:32
Who knew what wickedness was hiding in its limbs? I was afraid of that tree. I always wished
32:38
I had a flashlight with me and I would run as fast as I could to get out to the other side. When I reached the street,
32:44
I would let out a sigh of relief and then walk the rest of the way home. And he said when he first read
32:50
Psalm 119, 105 about the word being a lamp to my feet and a light to my path, he said
32:58
I thought what I needed to get through that orchard, about what I needed to get through the orchard was that light.
33:05
He says, so I could have known what kind of things were crawling around on the ground in front of me. Then he says
33:12
God will, or God says his law will show us where he wants us to walk, where he wants us to guide our footsteps, where he wants us to go.
33:21
And this is a wonderful gift that God has given to us in his law. Now people, when they want to know the will of God, what do they really want to know?
33:30
You know, am I supposed to be a missionary to North Korea? Somebody was positing that theory the other day.
33:38
Will it be open up to missionaries? And I'm like, that's going to be a bold person who goes there. You know, does
33:45
God want me to do this? Does he want me to do that? Well, I mean, we've talked about it several times.
33:51
There's what's commanded. There's what's implied. And then if it's neither commanded or implied, and there's nobody who gives you any wisdom that seems, you know, super, as a stop sign to you, then you're free to do what you want.
34:10
If it's not sin, and there's no wisdom against doing what you're doing, you want to do, then go ahead and do it.
34:20
And I think people stumble though on that part, right? Well, it's not sin, okay?
34:26
Is there wisdom against doing what you're doing? Well, yeah, but it's not sin.
34:32
Okay, well, if there's wisdom, then don't do it. So it's not too hard. I could give you some examples, but I don't really think
34:39
I need to. I think we understand that there are things that are not necessarily sinful that are not good ideas.
34:45
Let's talk about the gospel and the extent of the grace thereof.
34:51
That's the hidden section of the London Baptist Confession of Faith. In fact,
34:56
I was going through Sproul's book, and so I got to this section of the thing, and I thought, well, what kind of lame book is this?
35:05
It's defective. It doesn't comment on this. It's because it's not in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Okay, it's actually just in the
35:13
London Baptist Confession of Faith. And it's called Of the
35:18
Gospel and the Extent of the Grace Thereof. And here's why. Dr. Waldron says the
35:23
Congressionalist Puritans wrote it and put it into the Savoy Declaration in 1658.
35:30
And he asked why, what prompted this? And it was apparently a teaching of some at the time that devalued the importance of special revelation for salvation.
35:45
And if we think about the founders of this country, many of them were not
35:52
Christians. They belonged to a different religion, which was deism.
35:58
And the idea of deism kind of negates the idea of special revelation.
36:04
We've talked about Jefferson's translation or his Jefferson's Bible. It's not really a translation.
36:10
But what did he do? He just cut out all the supernatural stuff, right? Which made his Bible a lot easier to carry around, but not really a
36:22
Bible worthy of the idea. But deism is this.
36:28
You know, we talk about the cosmic watchmaker who creates everything and then just sort of observes it.
36:35
He's not intimately involved. He's aloof. He's removed from creation. But when you think about scripture, you think about what impact they wanted to have on Christianity.
36:54
Here's the idea of deism. That human reason is sufficient.
37:01
Natural revelation is sufficient. And they're opposed to supernatural revelation.
37:07
Because with the idea of the enlightenment, with the idea that man was kind of the center of the moral universe, then the idea was that there could be a completely rational basis for the existence of God and for morality.
37:24
We didn't need special revelation anymore. And deists despise the idea that there was one specific way given by God to worship him.
37:37
I mean, doesn't that sound like today? Why should there just be one way? Why is
37:43
God so particular? Why did he favor the Jews? Why did he do so many horrible things according to many today in the
37:51
Old Testament? This isn't the God that we love. This isn't the God that we accept.
37:59
Why isn't morality by consensus good enough? Why isn't our best good enough?
38:07
So this is the idea, or these are the ideas deism presented to people.
38:14
The Confession says this, the covenant of works being broken by sin and made unprofitable unto life.
38:20
In other words, it couldn't save anybody. God was pleased to give forth the promise of Christ, the seed of the woman, as the means of calling the elect and be getting in them faith and repentance.
38:35
In this promise, the gospel as to the substance of it was revealed and is there in effectual for the conversion and salvation of sinners.
38:48
So God has made the means of salvation, made known the means of salvation since the fall.
38:55
That's the gist of the early part of it. People have known that there was a means of salvation since Adam and Eve fell.
39:05
Now, some have asserted, mostly dispensationalists, but others have asserted that men must have been saved in some other way than the gospel in the
39:16
Old Testament, especially in the earliest stages. I mean, when you think about it, why would they suggest that?
39:22
Why would they say that there had to be some other means of salvation other than the gospel, from Adam until the time of Christ?
39:33
Because Jesus hadn't been born yet. We didn't have the New Testament. They couldn't know the gospel because they didn't know who
39:40
Jesus was and they didn't have the writings of the New Testament. After all, the gospel was not formulated for many centuries.
39:51
The problem is, if we create multiple ways of salvation, then what do we get?
40:02
Multiple gods or multiple ways to God, so which are both equally bad, right?
40:08
Because now you can be a good Muslim and get to heaven. You can be a good Hindu and get to heaven. You can be a good
40:14
Mormon and get to heaven. You could be a good Jehovah Witness and get to heaven. You can even be a good atheist and get to heaven.
40:22
Because if everybody gets to set their own standard, or if there are multiple ways, I mean, ultimately, this is the way of universalism.
40:30
This is the UU church, you know, down there by across from the YMCA. But it's not true.
40:37
We have the prototype for the gospel in Genesis. Genesis 3, verses 14 and 15. And we'll look at that real quickly.
40:44
And then we'll close. Genesis 3, verses 14 and 15. I'll read them because they are familiar verses.
40:51
The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, because you've deceived
40:56
Adam and Eve. Should I say even Adam? Cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.
41:05
On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. Verse 15.
41:11
And here's what's called the prototype of the gospel. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.
41:22
He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. The offspring here taken literally, if we thought about it, from Eve could be every human being, right?
41:37
But it points to one in particular whom we know to be the Lord Jesus. One commentator said this.
41:44
He said, it is the seed of the woman as comprehended in the redeemer that will deliver the fatal blow to Satan.
41:53
And because Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, he did not inherit the sin nature of Adam. Now, does that necessarily mean that, or does it mean at all that Mary was sinless?
42:08
No, hint, no. Because she had a natural father. It simply means that the sin of Adam is passed to all of mankind by means of natural procreation.
42:22
In other words, every child that comes into being is a descendant of Adam, except for Jesus, because he was supernaturally conceived.
42:33
So we're going to leave it there and we'll continue then next week. Let me close in prayer.
42:40
Father in heaven, we are amazed and astonished by the gospel of Jesus Christ that you would condescend to send your son to die for us.
42:52
Not because of anything that we do or could have done. We see the law, your standard, and we see how we constantly fall short, even of the most basic laws, the two that Jesus reiterated, that summarize the 10 commandments.
43:12
And yet we can't even do those two things, love you as we ought to, and then love our neighbors as ourselves.
43:21
We are regenerate. We love you.
43:27
And yet as your children, we confess that we often fall short of your glory.
43:36
But we thank you that the Lord Jesus Christ never stumbled, never faltered, never failed to obey you perfectly, to love you perfectly, and to love his fellow men and women as he ought to have, as he commanded us to.
43:57
Father, we thank you for the active obedience of Christ. We thank you for the passive obedience of Christ.
44:03
We thank you that his righteousness is imputed to us and that our sinfulness is imputed to him.