London Baptist Confession Ch 4,5,7

Well, we are continuing our series in the London Baptist Confession of Faith, assuming my trusty digital device here and my notes get us through it. I have it all memorized, so we're okay. I'm just kidding. I said that to Marcia earlier. I do know that someone, I think Jim asked me this week which chapters we were going to be covering, and I did ask Hosanna in the Future. I sent her the notes so that she will be able to, in the bulletin for the week, say which section of the confession we'll be covering so that if you wanted to read ahead in the confession, you could do that. So I just want you to know that instead of it just saying part 1, part 2, part 3, or whatever, it'll give you the chapter.

So tonight we're going to cover— this afternoon we're going to cover chapters 4, 5, and 7. We're going to skip 6 on purpose. That's the section on sin. And not because we're skipping sin, but because that section deserves a message all its own. And then also 7, I'm not going to cover probably as deeply as I could. It's a section on covenants. That is a little bit controversial. It's not actually controversial, but it is in the sense that the differing views on chapter 7 have very much affect people like us to the point where someone has recently left our church because of that doctrine. And that's okay. As long as it's— they're trying to be biblical. But I will cover that, but I'm not going to cover it probably— well, maybe it'll be to your satisfaction. I don't know. I don't know how much you care about it, but I will talk about that when we get there.

But the stuff that's very clear in this part of the confession, the things that are very clear in creation and providence, we're going to cover either— we're going to cover them in depth but very fast. So you need to buckle up. We have a lot to cover. You've heard Answers in Genesis say that if you lose the first 11 if you lose the first 2 chapters of Genesis, you lose the whole Bible, right? I appreciate the sentiment. I actually think there's more other passages. For example, I think if you lose Romans 9, you lose the other passages that deal with sovereignty and things. But there is something to say about the idea that if you get creation wrong, it's very possible for a lot of your theology to fall, right?

So if you don't think that we're created, if you don't think that we're in the image of God, if you think those things are up for debate or dispute, then it could be very well you don't hold to some fundamental doctrines of the faith. Well, the Baptist Confession is very, very clear on those things. It's very clear on the biblical understanding of creation and providence, and that's what we're gonna cover this evening. There are some people who believe that God created, but then that he left it alone. Maybe you've heard this before, the blind watchmaker idea. Deists and others think those kind of things, that God revved everything up, started a machine, and just let go. Of that machine and let it start unwinding. And that's the idea, and he doesn't have his hands in creation.

We're going to see the Baptists very much don't hold to that. They hold to God being very active in creation, in providence. And we're also going to be covering some of our favorite kind of things, like whether it was 6 literal days and things like that. What did the Baptists historically believe about those things? So I hope you're ready, because like I said, I'm going to go fast. The, the interesting thing is, is if you were to just read the Confession it's very digestible. Like, the confession itself, even in the old language— you can get a modern language version, helpful— but in the old language version, it's not hard to understand. So if I'm too fast or you feel like, you know, I'm not really covering things in depth or whatever, or to the degree that you might like, just read through the confession. I think you'll be satisfied by it. I think it's very helpful and sufficient itself.

So let's pray and we'll get going and talk about creation from the London Baptist Confession. Father, There's so much that could be said in these subjects, creation, providence, and even covenants. There's a lot going on, and I would just ask, Father, that we not get so caught up or maybe move too fast that we don't digest the things and really think about the fact that you created all things, that we handle that at least sufficiently for an evening and give us thought and pause, that we honor you as the Creator. That we never ever make the mistake of thinking that your hands are not in every part of creation, or that your sovereign or your providence is not at work. We want to get that right so that we give you all the glory and credit, and we trust you. And so, Father, now as we talk about these subjects, would you help anchor us in them? Most of them are things that we probably know, but they're also things that we might take for granted and let slip. So would you anchor us in your truths? In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, Chapter 4 in the Lund Baptist Confession is of creation. It's about creation. And you see in your notes, if you— well, I don't know if you have notes. By the way, I have those notes if you want them. Thanks to Jim, I have them all in one document. So if you would like all of the outline to my sermon series, email me and I'll just reply to that email and give it to you. So it's all of them. It's all 30-whatever messages in outline form like they used to come in the sermon. The reason I didn't give it to you is because I'm not really I'm not a stickler for the outline, even though I do stick to it in my preaching. I don't follow it like the outline is necessary. But if you had the confession in front of you, this would be the section on creation. And my notes, you don't see them, but my notes say, "As a matter of fact, the Bible is true about creation."

Now, the section on creation starts with, "In the beginning." Does that sound familiar to you? That's how the confession starts. But it also talks about the 6 days. And yes, Sam, sidereal days. He likes throwing that around. To his friends. This becomes a little bit important. I'll talk a little more about it in a second, about the 6 days. But for now, I do want you to see that the plain rendering of Genesis is what our confession holds. It holds it at face value. It holds the creation story at face value. It says that it pleased God. That's very important. And some of the passages that would be associated with these things are that God did it according to his decree, after the counsel of his own will, that kind of language. He works everything to do his good pleasure. He works in you, the Philippians, but also everything to do his good pleasure. So that idea of 'in the beginning God created' is right there in the Confession so that it's reflecting Scripture.

It tells us the purpose of creation, uh, this section does. It says it's the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness. So the Confession tells us that creation's purpose is to show God's power, wisdom, and goodness, and that it's glorious. So what is the purpose of creation? What is the, the chief end of man according to the Catechism? To glorify God. So God did not create for fun. He did not create so that He could just dismiss His creation. He didn't create something so that it might be destroyed. He created for His glory. Now, we know what happened with sin, but for now, we want to make sure that we understand He created with glory in mind, and He created everything good.

And this becomes really important, and I know I talk about these things quite a bit, but I am going to emphasize some things that I talk about a lot. But right now, Darwin was wrong. Nietzsche was wrong. They believe in the will to power, the survival of the fittest, and those such things. No, nature is glorious and it's good, and God intended it to be that way. And incidentally, it is still that way. Though it's fallen, the creation itself did not become evil. It just became broken, okay, because of the curse. And it's important to see that we still see goodness in nature, don't we? We still see animals caring for their young. We still see love and and plant life and everything still functioning even though it's fallen and even though it's broken. Uh, the Romans tells us that man can still see the power of the Godhead at work in creation. So it's broken, but it's not completely lost.

The confession does not defend 6 literal days. Do you know what that means if the confession doesn't defend 6 literal days? That it assumed the Bible is telling the truth when it said 6 literal days. It didn't feel the need to defend it. Did you know that The 1689 Confession was long before Charles Darwin. So what we're saying about that is leading up to the Confession, it was simply assumed for 3,000+ years that the 6 literal day account in Genesis was to be taken literally. Everybody understood it that way. You know who really understood it? You want to know the person whose opinion of the 6 literal days you should care most about is? Jesus. Because when Jesus talked about creation and the Sabbath, he treats creation week literally. So Jesus doesn't speak about it proverbially. He doesn't say one day is millions of years. He doesn't speak in any of that kind of uniformitarian language. Jesus uses the creation week literally. And if Jesus thinks of it literally, so do we.

So it's really important that until the uniformitarian idea, the people that Peter warned us would come, right, who would say, "Oh, where's the sign of his coming?" who would say that creation is what it is, and it could have evolved or anything else. Those people were wrong. And the Baptists have always believed and taken Scripture at face value, that when the Bible says 6 days, it means 6 days. And there are Baptists in our day that call themselves Baptists that say they don't believe that or don't have to believe that. But I will tell you that some things happened after— so in the 19th century, we don't have time to go into this in depth, but in the 19th century, Liberalism reared its ugly head. The church responded with fundamentalism, pushed back at liberalism to try to get things back to Scripture. And when they did that, during that time Darwin was kind of doing his thing and having his influence everywhere. And so people kind of felt themselves enlightened and smart. And so they started thinking that that issue—science, evolution, that thought, idea—wasn't a crucial issue to fight.

So when you read people of that day, they didn't see it as the threat that you and I do now, that we see in these years since they said we came from apes and saw the damage from it. They didn't see that as a threat in their day. So you won't read a lot of people talking about it. You won't see people sympathetic to the evolutionists, but you also won't hear them fight against it. And that's because at that time they didn't see what was coming on the horizon. So if you're ever wondering why B.B. Warfield or these good teachers didn't talk about it or take a strong stance, that's what's going on. But let me just tell you, all biblical people have always held 6 literal days. Okay? It was accepted as truth the way it was written in Genesis.

Now, the second paragraph in Chapter 4 is about anthropology and that the pinnacle of creation is man. I emphasize this. I said it this morning, but I'm going to emphasize it again, that man is not an animal. Man is not like animals. We have to be careful because we can adopt the thinking of evolutionists and say we're just an animal, or we're just a mammal, or we're just a primate. We're not. We're not just that. We were created in the image of God. We are the pinnacle of creation. The Confession talks about our constitution. Incidentally, there are a couple of views, maybe you've never heard these, dichotomist or trichotomist, on whether you believe that man is 3 parts or 2 parts. So the dichotomist says there's only an invisible part and a visible part. And the trichotomist says there's a visible part, but there are 2 invisible parts, the soul and the spirit, that are separate. There are people in this church that hold to trichotomy. I don't, I'm a dichotomist, but those are things that people can disagree on and you're not a false teacher if you hold one or the other. But the confession doesn't refer to either in any sort of dogmatic way.

Man is the best part of creation. Oh, by the way, the confession says that man is immortal, created immortal. We just talked about in Sunday school in annihilationism that they believe in conditionalism that that people are not born immortal, they are not born with immortality, they have to be given immortality. And so we see in our confession that it says we are born with an immortal soul, that we have that by nature. It's not something that's given to us later. So an annihilationist who believes that we can be extinguished and not live forever and we don't have an immortal soul, they can't be a Baptist according to the confession. Okay, the confession says you can't be a Baptist and hold that. We know this, that the Bible makes it clear in Genesis 2 that God formed man from the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Jesus talks about not fearing those who can kill the body, but the one that can kill the soul. By the way, they would use that to say that God can kill the soul. That's not what the text means, but that's the way they would say that.

This body that God gave us is fit for an eternal purpose. The language of the Confession is that it's fit unto that life for which God, to God for which they were created. That's a thought I wish we could camp on. I wish I could just stop there and encourage you that your messed up, broken body that's falling apart right now— I know it doesn't seem like you would probably want this old thing in heaven with you, but the, but the initial goal and the creation in the beginning— God gave us a body that was fit to be with him forever. So when you say fitness, usually you think of exercise equipment, right? Well, fit in this case means capable of being in the presence of God and able to do whatever it takes to glorify Him. So these bodies that are breaking down are not fit in their current state, but the one that was created in the garden was fit and will be fit again in Christ. So we'll be ready for heaven one day and we won't be falling apart.

We have our identity in the image that images God. When you say image as a verb, we don't usually use the word image as a verb, but you can. We image God. We reflect God. That's the idea, right? And the confession talks about that. It also talks about our original integrity, that we used to be whole. Um, uh, the, the Ecclesiastes says, truly this only I have found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. We were made upright, we were made whole, and we weren't falling apart until the, the fall. Um, we were good reflectors of his glory. Now this is the most valuable thing I think I can say on that front, and we will talk more about sin in the next session, but I do want to put it in your, in your front pocket for later, and that is that sin is abnormal. I've said this for years, and I hope you've adopted it. Sin is abnormal. What does normal mean? Normal means according to a norm. Everybody got that? According to a norm. And God is the norm. God is the normative being. God is the standard. God is the ultimate thing, right?

We are created in the image of God. He is normal. So normal for us was what Adam was. That was normal. And when Adam sinned, he became abnormal. So don't ever forget that, that our sinfulness is not normal. We should never ever think it's normal to be sinful. It's not. It's abnormal to be sinful. We failed. We fell in the garden, and because of that, sin became a problem. But before that, we were normal. You know who the ultimate Norm is with a capital N? Not Norm as in Norman, the name. Norm as in normal. That is Jesus. He is the image of the invisible God. Colossians says that. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. So Jesus is the ultimate Norm. So he is the perfect man. He's the perfect human. Who has no flaws, who did not fail, who is normal. Jesus is the normal one. And you say, "Wait, are you saying Jesus is average or common?" No, I'm saying He's the norm. He's the standard. He's the best. He's the ultimate. He's the target. He's the goal. He's the measuring stick. He is the ultimate man, and He is the image of God. So it's important to see that, that it's by Him that we get reconciled to the Lord because He's the image of God.

Third paragraph in chapter 4 is about the cultural mandate. Now, it doesn't use those words. That's words that you hear in schools and things like that. Now, if I were to ask you, are you cultured? How would you answer that question? I already told you this morning I'm a recovering janitor, so I'm not all that cultured. What does cultured mean? If I asked you, are you cultured? Then what if I said, "What if you only used the first 4 letters of that word?" Hmm. No one ever thinks of that, do they? Everybody is doing the— they're spelling it in their head. C-U-L-T— "Hey, I'm not in a cult." Like, you can see everybody come into it. Okay. What does cult have to do with culture, have to do with cultivate? They're all related. And the cultural mandate was from God to Adam to cultivate the earth. And the idea was to manage, to mold, to use, to steward, to build, to exercise dominion over, so that man has that special relationship with God's creation that he has dominion over it. And that's the cultural mandate, is he is supposed to be cultivating and being fruitful.

So God is saying to man in a very special and unique way, you and I have communion together. I made you not just— again, not randomly, not for no reason, but for a reason. I made you to have fellowship with me. I made you to glorify me. And now I'm going to put you in a garden. And in that garden, I want you to cultivate it and cult— and be cultured and build that garden in a way that shows your love for me and manages the things I gave you so that you glorify me with what I give you. And of course, we know the story. That purpose of communion and glorifying relationship was broken because Adam and Eve fell. So when they fell, that cultural mandate got interrupted. But that didn't mean it went away. So the cultural mandate is still alive and well. We're supposed to be exercising dominion. And by that, I don't mean what the dominion theologians say, meaning there are people right now in the dominion world, dominion theology, that think we're supposed to be trying to essentially conquer our nation, for example, for the gospel. Like we're supposed to get in every form of office. We're supposed to do everything we can to have influence and get dominion over the world. Particularly in politics and in government.

Now it doesn't mean I don't think Christians shouldn't be in government. We need more God-honoring people in government, right? That could only help if there were actual believers in government. But the idea is the dominion mandate of Scripture is not telling us to overthrow our government for the Lord. It's telling us that we have to manage the things that he has given us to glorify him. We're going to talk about communion in a bit because our communion was broken. With the Lord in the garden. They had fellowship, unhindered fellowship. Adam and Eve could walk right up to the face of the Lord with no fear because they had no sin. There was nothing to be ashamed of, but obviously they fell. So we broke it, uh, and we are in trouble, and God fixes it in Christ.

Now we get to the fun part, which is something our church loves a whole bunch, and that's the subject of providence. This is in chapter 5, and we're moving pretty good. You're only going to be here for, you know, until about 9:30 tonight. I'm just kidding. Providence is another interesting word. I asked you what the first 4 letters of culture spelled. It spelled cult. By the way, a cult cultivates a following. That's why. It gardens for a following, if you understand that, for its own little group. The same works for the word providence. If you just take off the NCE at the end of it and put an O, you get the word pro-video. So what is pro? Well, that means before. And what is video? To see. So the simple dictionary understanding of providence is to see ahead of time. But when God sees ahead of time, He plans ahead of time. So God is sovereign. He's in total control. And now we see that He decreed everything, He planned everything, and providence is God carrying out His sovereign decree. That's the main idea is that He is acting in a way— I saw one great thing, prudent anticipation. Prudent anticipation, meaning God knows what's going to happen. He anticipates it because He plans it, but He does that prudently. So he has a good plan. His plan is thoughtful and well worked out.

I'm going to read directly from the Confession. Listen to this really great overview from the Confession. I mean, it says— I'm sitting here trying to find creative ways to say it when the Confession says it beautifully. So let me just read from the Confession. God, the good Creator of all things, in his infinite power and wisdom doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures and things, from the greatest even to the least. By his most wise and holy providence, to the end for which they were created, according unto his infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, infinite goodness, and mercy. Man, that's pretty good. It says it all. Now there's a whole bunch in there that we could zero in on.

A really great passage if you ever want to look at that is Isaiah 40. Just a couple of things there. It says He will feed His flock like a shepherd. He's measured out the waters in the hollow of His hand, right? That means all of the water of the world can fit right here in the little palm of His hand. You know, like if you hold a couple of teaspoons there in your hand, God holds all the water ever there, you know. That's how strong He is. He weighed the mountains on scales. He's in total control over the entire creation. Now usually those things get questioned when there's trouble, right? Like most people aren't thinking of His providence until something really bad happens and they question God. Why are bad things happening? That's very often the case. But He controls His creation. Psalm 47:8 says, "God reigns over the nation. God sits on His holy throne." So the idea is, if you didn't know the distinction between the two, sovereignty is God's absolute rule. He's the absolute authority. He's the boss. That's what sovereignty is. God is King. Providence is that King carrying out His will in His kingdom. It's Him making His plan happen. Providence is God carrying out His sovereign decree. They're not the same. Providence and sovereignty are not the same. They're not synonyms. They're related, but they're not the same. Sovereignty is His authority. Think of a crown. Think of the King. Think of the eternal ruler. And providence is His plan. His plan being carried out. The sovereign ruler made a plan, and providence is Him carrying it out.

So when you're thinking of things like Him taking care of your family, giving you opportunities, giving you health, giving you food, when those are— those are things that you would definitely call providence, right? Those are— that God by His sovereign hand providentially gave you those things. And I can't even tell you how often I refer to providence, even unbelievers. People will use the word coincidence, and I'll almost always be the annoying friend that says, well, I I tend not to use that word. I would rather use the word providence because we think everything is at the hand of the Lord, you know. And I often talk about my what the worlds in our family, you know, our family what the worlds where when you might say, "What in the world?" The other night we were watching this video that a friend of mine did and it had this really crazy-shaped guitar in the video. And it was just funny and didn't seem real and we were all laughing about it, especially Seth. He found it hilarious. And so we're talking about this crazy-shaped guitar, right? Really odd-shaped, like really— it was even called the Scorpion. It kind of looked like a scorpion, right? Well, the very next day, randomly, coincidentally, I saw another picture of a crazy-shaped guitar that was like that one. And I had never seen that shape ever before or anything like it before. So I texted that to the family and I said, "What in the world?" You know, like this is the way our family operates to say that God is involved in everything.

Now that is a silly thing. To think God had something to do with, or is it? So I'm not saying God planned in his eternal purpose to do something meaningful and that weird-shaped guitar is going to change the world. No, I'm just saying the unbeliever sees God in nothing, the believer sees God in everything. That our family got an interesting laugh out of that and we all noticed that God's in control. That that wasn't an accident that I happened to see that weird-shaped guitar the day after we were talking about weird-shaped guitars. These things happen in our family all the time. I could tell you some of the craziest things. Remember Borneo? That crazy— never talked about that place in the world, and then we saw it the next day after we heard about it the first time. Like some crazy things like that where I actually just think God is essentially saying, "I'm here, and you're paying attention, and you know that I'm here." So providence works like that. Something really important happens in the paragraphs 2 to 7, something really important. Now this comes into play especially in the doctrinal areas about the sovereignty of God. We're talking about Calvinism and the doctrines of God's sovereignty and what he's in control of and is he in control of everything and those kind of things.

Because it says there in paragraph 2, "He ordereth them all," all things means, "to fall out according to the nature of second causes." And then it's qualified in paragraph 3 when it says, "He maketh use of means, yet is free to work without." That's Old English to say this. In God's providence, He uses secondary causes, but He doesn't have to. So God can do a miracle. God can stop the sun in the sky if He wants, right? God can raise somebody from the dead if He wants. God can use whatever means He sees fit to do His will. But the main thing in providence is to acknowledge that those means, those secondary means, that, you know, we talk about that all the time. If A had not happened, then B wouldn't have happened, and if B wouldn't have happened, things would have been really bad, right? So the idea there in that scenario is that God providentially ordained A and B. He didn't just ordain the result. He doesn't just ordain the ends. He also ordains the means. So it's important for us to be aware of that and careful because what we might think is, well, God's not involved in those kind of details. He doesn't care about all that kind of details.

I heard a fighter say that once, like, God doesn't care about people. Fighting and mixed martial arts. Like, he said that, by the way, as a Roman Catholic, as though God had nothing to do with it. So he didn't see God as that intimately involved in His creation. But we are supposed to recognize that all those things that fall into place, that— I always say that God twisted the whole universe to bring me to salvation because I became friends with the person I shouldn't have been friends with. I was not raised in a Christian home. I ended up at a church that was not a— what you would call an exciting church at all. To hear the gospel for the first time, like all those things. It's like God had this big conspiracy to win me to the Lord. But the point of this part of the confession is to recognize that he doesn't need those means, but he uses those means. And I would even encourage you to make sure you understand you in that, that you are a cause, that God is using you for something. You are a means to God's end. Don't just think, I'm gonna stand by and see what God does. No, you're supposed to be involved. You're supposed to be getting your hands dirty in ministry and sharing the gospel and witnessing and praying for people and serving people so that God will use you, one of those second causes.

We know from the Proverbs, "The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord." Even when you roll a dice, every single move is from the Lord. There's nothing out of His control. There's nothing left to chance. There's no such thing as chance, by the way. Chance is not a thing. Chance has no power. One of the things it says in paragraph 4 is that God controls sin. I have a saying here, and I was bragging with Pearl. I said, look at this, what I wrote here. And she made me feel pretty good because she said, who said that? As though it wasn't me. Maybe she knew it was me, or she was just trying to make me feel good. But I'm— and I have this in my notes, that in an attempt to exonerate God from evil, we often relieve him of his sovereignty. In other words, the thought that God might be involved in evil bothers us enough, so we will say something like, God has nothing to do with evil. Evil, you know, He doesn't— He's not involved in it in any way. He doesn't have anything to do with it. He's not in charge of it. Evil is something that's happening because people don't love Him and don't obey Him. And so He's kind of hands-off as though He's not in control. So you might say that you trying to keep God so distant from evil, you might actually be relieving Him or taking away His sovereignty. Because God is sovereign over evil.

Listen to what the Confession says. "His determinate counsel extendeth itself even to the first fall and all other sinful actions, both of angels and men, and not by bare permission." Did you hear that? Not by a bare permission. In other words, God isn't just allowing it. It's not just that God is taking His hands off and saying, "I can't control that," or, "I won't stop it." It's literally saying he's in control over evil. It doesn't mean he causes evil. It just means he's sovereign over evil. It means he ordains all things that come to pass. So we've got to be careful because you might think you're doing God a favor by saying, "Well, he has nothing to do with evil." Are you saying he's not in control of it? Are you saying he can't stop it? Are you saying it's outside of his sovereignty? You have to be careful here. So the confession makes it really clear that he is not just giving permission. To the devil, though He does give the devil permission. He's also orchestrating everything, including the fall.

And I always— I'll remind you that the worst thing of all time, the worst event in history, the worst sin ever committed, the worst evil ever perpetrated ever in the history of earth was the death of Christ. There has been no more evil act, not even in the garden. That wasn't as evil. If you're measuring evil, the most evil thing that ever happened was the death of Christ. And that Acts describes as him, that's Jesus, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God. Peter tells the Jews, "You have taken by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death." Later when the guys are preaching, I always tell the story in Acts chapter 4, they were preaching in Jesus' name, they got arrested, they were told to stop, and they let them go, the Sanhedrin let them go, and they went back and they had their prayer meeting in Acts chapter 4, and in that prayer meeting They pray to the Lord, all of this happened by your hand, including Pilate, including Herod, including the death of Christ. So if you're ever going to cry unfair or you don't like the idea that God is sovereign over evil, be careful because you might say that he didn't plan the death of his own son and something was out of his control when the Bible clearly says he planned and purposed even the death of his son. He's the lamb slain when? Yeah, that didn't have to do with Herod or Pilate. That was God's plan. So we want to be careful to say, "No, no, God would have nothing to do with the death of His Son." No, we want God to be in charge of that. We want that because it's good. It means that God is in control of the solution to the death of His Son by raising Him from the dead. He's in control of the solution to our sin problem. Be careful. We can get in trouble there thinking, "I don't want to put any of that evil near God." God is fine. He doesn't need our help, okay? He's in charge of it. He's sovereign over it. He doesn't cause it.

God is not the author of evil. There is no author of evil. I say it over and over again. You know there's no cold molecules, right? Everybody understands that. There are no cold molecules. Cold is what happens when there's no heat, okay? There is heat. Heat is measurable. Heat is dissipation, entropy, right? There is thermodynamics. The heat is a thing. Light is a thing. But darkness is not a thing. There are no darkness molecules. Darkness is what you call that thing left after light is gone.

Sin doesn't have molecules. Sin is not a stuff that is created. Sin is what you call that thing that happens when righteousness is not done or God's commandments are disobeyed. So you label the disobedience sin, but you don't create sin. It's not a stuff. It's not a stuff, okay? I mean, it can be a stuff in the proverbial literary sense, but I want to make sure we're clear. That you don't— this takes care of the God is the author of sin question.

When you realize that Satan, when he fell, the result was sin. Adam, when he fell, the result was sin. There was no author of sin. Nobody authored or creates sin. Okay? So it's important so that when people question God or you're trying to get God's hands off of evil, be careful. Because again, you might be losing His sovereignty. He ordains our trials. Our trials are not an accident. They're not things— we talk so much about things befalling us, happening to us. We try so hard to use the language of God allowed it.

Did you ever— I always use my daughter because she's the one who said it so articulately and eloquently— that did you ever notice that in the Joseph story, it doesn't say God used it for good? You guys meant it for evil, but God used it for good. That's not what the text says. What does the text say? God meant it for good. It was God's plan that this would happen, that Joseph would be sold into slavery, that God would raise him up, that God would use him to bring aid to the people of Israel.

So that's really important. Do all things happen to work for good, or does God purpose all things to work for good? These are really important things. That includes the evil things, okay? That includes the, the, the difficult things of the world. In fact, God ordains not only those kind of things by His decree, He also ordains the hardening of the wicked. Do you remember the story of Pharaoh? I have a bunch of verses here as an example.

And Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go." So does Pharaoh sound like a guy who is open-minded and being a seeker? Was he being a seeker? Was he seeking the Lord or not seeking the Lord? Okay, neither. He wasn't— he was hard-hearted. He was not seeking the Lord. But what I mean is he wasn't neutral. Everybody got that?

And then the text later, Exodus 7, says, "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart and multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt." So wait, which is it? That Pharaoh didn't want anything to do with the Lord, or the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart? They're both true. They're both true. The Lord hardened a willing heart. Got it?

And then it keeps going in chapter 8. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, this is the finger of God. But Pharaoh's heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, just as the Lord said. Now this is the part where people chime in and say, well, how— what else could he do? Pharaoh would have listened to the Lord if only God hadn't hardened his heart. Esau would have turned to the Lord if God didn't hate him. These are the kind of things that people say. They don't say those words, but you can hear it in the tone of voice in conversations, you know, the idea that Pharaoh was a hapless victim. Poor Pharaoh. I mean, poor Pharaoh didn't have a chance because God shut the lights off and turned his heart hard.

Remember this next passage from Exodus 9. This to me, if you ever have that conversation with people, remember what happened with Pharaoh because listen carefully. Pharaoh's going to talk now. Pharaoh says, "He sent for Moses and called Aaron and said to them, 'I have sinned this time. The Lord is righteous, and my people and I are wicked.'" Who does Pharaoh blame for Pharaoh's sin? He doesn't blame God for hardening his heart. How come Pharaoh isn't saying, "Well, I would have done what's right, but you stopped me from doing what's right." No, he hardened his own heart. Keep that in mind.

There isn't a contradiction in the Bible. When the Bible says God is in control of all things, including the hearts of men, it doesn't mean God overrides unwilling hearts and ruins them and takes them— I say it this way because it's— we're in a safe space right now. Please don't just repeat this flippantly outside of a church context. Be careful because people go through things. They go through very difficult things. And you don't want to, like, puff out your chest as some tough theologian. Be sensitive where people are at.

But let me say something. People always do what they want, and they always end up where they want. Always. There is nobody in hell that wants to be in heaven, and there is nobody in heaven that wants to be in hell. God always gives people what they want. Always. It's very important to know that, because some people want to say that, well, there's people on their way to hell, and if only God would stop them from going, If only God would— somebody could change their mind. No, don't you understand? If they hated him in life, they hate him in death. If they crucified him in life, they want him dead in death.

I don't know why that's so hard. I think maybe because we think we love people more than God does, like our love is better or bigger than God's. No, he hates the workers of iniquity. He rejects those who reject him. Be careful to try to talk people into heaven who don't want to go there. That's very dangerous. We need to be careful. Show some respect for the gospel. Show some respect for what God actually did to save sinners. Because we might be saying, "He didn't do enough. He didn't do enough because people are still rejecting Jesus. So if God had only done a little bit more." Ah, I think we need to be careful.

This is one of my favorite things. I remember in school when we were translating Ephesians, and remember that I worked on translating Ephesians when I get to the last section, okay? Because I'm going to have to throw some Ephesians workout at you. But I love this part in paragraph 7 in chapter 5. It said, "God doesn't just act in providence. He's not just ordaining things, but He specifically acts for the benefit of His people." God is specifically acting for the benefit of His people.

And the reason I like this is I remember when we were translating Ephesians, and I'll read the verse in a second. That one of my professors said. He said he believes this, and I like the idea of it, so I don't know if it's true, but I like the idea. And that is that any good thing that ever happens to you as a Christian comes through the gospel. So you are not an object merely of God's common grace. You're an object of his special grace.

The reason that comes into play— and I'll read the verse here, and then I'll read the confession and what it says— Paul says this about Jesus. And he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things. And then there's an interesting phrase, and it is directly translated in Ephesians 1:22, to the church. Why does it say to the church? To the church. He made God— Christ to be head over all things, right? He made him to be— put everything under his feet and gave him to be the head over all things. And then it says to the church.

And I'll go with my professor and say that's because he gives us everything, every good thing that we have. Jesus did all that. Jesus paid for our sins, not just so that we can only have a future in heaven, but that any good thing we have on earth that God is allowing by his providence, or God ordaining by his providence, or God directing right in our direction by his providence, are God saying, "My Son paid for that for you. That's why that food tastes good." Yeah, it's a fallen world. Yeah, you're probably a little overweight. Yeah, you probably need to watch your cholesterol. All that's true. But all of that, those good things in your family and the good weather and all those good things that come, they come through the cross. And instead of that belittling the cross, to me it magnifies the cross.

Because remember, creation fell when Adam and Eve fell. The whole creation fell, not just humans. The dirt got spoiled. So I love this idea. So let me read to you from the Confession. It says, as the providence of God doth in general reach to all creatures, so after a more special manner it taketh care of his church and disposeth of all things to the good thereof. So the confession sounds like my professor, that God does what he does with everything for the good of the church. So if your car runs well, the Lord did that for you by the gospel. If your food was good this afternoon or this evening, the Lord did that for you through Jesus. He loves you and he let you have those things through his Son. So the idea is that Jesus does all that.

We're skipping chapter 6. I told you that we're going to handle that in a message by itself. Now into Chapter 7, controversy. I should have Pearl come up and play dramatic chords, dun dun dun, on the piano, because I'm going to get controversial. There is a lot of debate over Chapter 7, not over Chapter 7 in the confession, over the doctrine that Chapter 7 states.

I will remind you that the London Baptist Confession of 1689 is pretty much a direct copy of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Sometimes whole chapters are copied with no change at all, not a single word changed. The proof texts are the same. Chapter 7 is one where there is change. And there's things left out. There's whole paragraphs changed. Okay? Here's why. The Westminster Confession of Faith comes out of Presbyterianism. You all know this. I think you know that, right? That the Westminster Confession is Presbyterian in its core values. And Presbyterians, as a rule, the Reformed Church or Presbyterian churches specifically, are covenantal in their theology.

If this is news to you, I'm sorry, and if it's old to you, I'm sorry. But just so we're clear on what that means, in covenant theology— and first, right there, I gotta already stop and define covenant theology. Covenant theology doesn't mean that there are covenants. Both sides of the debate believe in covenants. Got it? We are not non-covenantalists. Okay? We believe in covenants. But the difference between us us, whatever we are. I haven't said what we are yet. And most Reformed people, and I say most because almost all people that would label themselves Reformed, and I don't, just so you know, you've heard me say this before, I don't use the label Reformed because some people mean Reformed just to mean Calvinistic. If that's all it meant, then I am Reformed. But a lot of people mean Reformed to mean covenantal in their theology and what I'm about to define for you. Okay, Presbyterians, Reformed, people who hold to the Heidelberg Catechisms and other catechisms, okay?

So here's the difference in the two, and it's really simple. So don't get lost. Don't get in the weeds here. We are different, and we're different in a pretty serious way, maybe even a fundamental way. And the difference are these. In the covenantal Reformed world, the quick summary of covenant theology is that they believe in 3 covenants. 3, only 3, okay? And those 3, one of them is the one I mentioned a little while back that happened before creation. 2. One of those is the covenant of redemption, the intra-Trinitarian covenant, the covenant with the triune God to plan all things. That's one of the covenants, okay? That's not the one that happens on earth. That's the one that only happens in the Godhead.

The other 2, one of them is the covenant of works. And they would see the garden as the covenant of works. Got it? The idea of needing to work to maintain the relationship between God. And then they would say the only other covenant is the covenant of grace. And I want to emphasize it so that you hear me saying this, the covenant, singular covenant of grace. They don't believe in multiple covenants of grace. They believe in one covenant of grace. And that covenant of grace manifests itself differently over the ages so that Abraham's covenant is the covenant of grace, and so is the new covenant in Jesus, the covenant of grace. They are the same thing at different times.

And this is what our church disagrees with. We do not agree with that. Now, here's why we don't agree with it. Do you want to know why I don't believe there is a covenant of grace in the terms of covenant theology? Because the Bible doesn't say it. That's why I don't believe it. The Bible doesn't say there is a covenant of grace that manifests itself differently over time. And you say, well, then why do they believe it? Because their tradition and the hermeneutic of their tradition interprets the Scripture based on their tradition. They didn't get the covenant of grace out of Scripture because it's not there. They get the covenants, the idea that God is manifesting himself to people over time in different ways, and they're all by grace. So they draw the conclusion.

And by the way, that's a hermeneutic. That is an interpretive principle of Reformed people to interpret Scripture with that idea. So they don't get it out of Scripture. They take it to Scripture and interpret everything by it so that Abraham's circumcision is infant baptism in modern times. So they're applying the tradition and reading back into Scripture.

Now I have to tell you something. This is really important that you hear me say this. The one thing I do not call myself— I just told you I don't call myself Reformed. I do not call myself covenantal in that way. I also don't call myself dispensational. Did you know that? Or dispensationalist. I am dispensational-leaning, but I am not a dispensationalist. So if we have a spectrum, and on one side you have Presbyterians, Reformed Church of the United States, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, all the Presbyterians who hold to, say, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Confession of Faith. If you have those people over there, and then way over here you have Scofield and Darby and all the strong dispensationalists over here, right? If those are your two extremes, covenantal— oh, and by the way, the dispensationalists, they go the other way, pretty extreme, to believe not only are there more than one covenant, but the covenants almost don't interact with each other, that they slice the Bible like a a loaf of bread so that there's no overlap in the covenants.

So that there's the dispensation of innocence, the dispensation of Moses, right? And so they slice those in a way to— like I had a friend tell me one time, I would name him right now, but there's a lot of people in this room who know his name. I don't want to throw him under the bus. But he was a pastor in the association that we're a part of. And I told him something that Leviticus said. And he said, why are you reading Leviticus? And I said, what are you talking about? He goes, it doesn't have anything to do with us. So in other words, all that Old Testament law, he was so dispensational that he was saying that the Law of Moses and the words to Israel had nothing to do with the church. So he didn't use it in any way to talk about the heart of God, to find any application for our lives or anything like that. He drew such hard lines that he was telling me, why am I even reading Leviticus except to teach Old Testament history?

So there are people in that— if you have people all the way over here and people all the way over here, I'm not right in the middle. I'm leaning dispensational, right? So I'm closer to that side, but it isn't because I want to be a dispensationalist. This is something that I wish people understood. The reason I am a part of our church and our association isn't because— well, I mean, there is something in me that hopes there's going to be a rapture before the tribulation. I am hoping that, and I do believe the Bible affords that and allows that. But I am telling you, I'm not what I am because I want to be. It's the hermeneutic. It's the interpretation of Scripture, the literal grammatical understanding of Scripture.

For example, how many years was it determined for Israel to be in captivity? How many? 70. How do— where do we get that number? And then who interprets that number? Daniel. When Daniel interprets Jeremiah's number, does he interpret the number literally? Yes. Okay. So Daniel interprets Jeremiah literally, right? Well, if you are amillennial in your eschatology, you do not interpret the times of Daniel after He mentions that prophecy literally. You interpret Jeremiah's 70 years liberally, but not the other 70 weeks liberally. That is bad hermeneutics to me. You can't go literal and then figurative in the same text.

Or the millennium that we believe in, the literal 1,000-year reign of Christ in Revelation 19 and 20. Do you know that if you are amillennial in your eschatology, and you're covenantal in your eschatology, and you hold to that view of the end times, that they believe that the 1,000 years mentioned in Revelation 20 is just a figurative number for a very large amount of years. Do you all understand that? That it— that's what— that when it says 1,000 years, that what John is trying to say there is a lot of years. Now let me ask you something. Is 2,000 years more than 1,000 years? So would God use a hyperbolic number of 1,000 and then wait 2,000 to accomplish his purposes? Does that make sense? Or could it be that that 1,000 years is a literal 1,000 years like all the other numbers in the Bible?

So it's a hermeneutical issue. It isn't— it isn't— most of my friends are Reformed guys. All of my teachers were. I went to a Reformed seminary. 100% of my professors don't agree with my hermeneutic. But I was raised under a guy named Heinrich, and we hold to the literal interpretation of Scripture. And unless you're gonna tell me Scripture says it, So this is the point where I come to the Confession and I say there's good stuff in it, and this is a spot where I think they could have done more change to the Westminster to get it more accurately, even to say less. They could have said less here. But I will read a few thoughts there from it because it is important.

They do talk about the fall. They do talk about the covenants. They do talk about things like that. But the one thing they don't do accurately, in my opinion, is they use the singular language. Of covenant instead of plural covenants. And I believe all the covenants were real bona fide covenants. In fact, just to— I'm sorry to— ah, I feel like I'm criticizing. I don't want to criticize. I'm in my class in seminary, my last Greek class. I'd taken all the Greek they had to offer. I took all the classes. That was my major was New Testament and then Greek. So here I am in my last class, and we are translating the book of Ephesians. Okay? We're translating the book of Ephesians, and we're in chapter 2. 2 of Ephesians, right?

And we come to this text that you all know really well, because it comes right after the "by grace you're saved" text in Ephesians 2:8, right? And then 2:8-9, and then 2:10 tells us we're created for good works that God prepared beforehand. And then you go into verse 11. Listen carefully to the wording. "Therefore remember that you"— that's the Gentiles in the flesh, right? The people of Ephesus, okay, everybody? That's who he's talking to. "The Gentiles in the flesh who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands. Who calls the circumcision circumcision? Who calls it that? Jews do, right? So you are Gentiles, and they call you uncircumcised because you're just a Gentile, right? So that's what he's saying.

And he says that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. You were not a part of Israel. And strangers— listen carefully— from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Why did Paul use an S? Why is it plural if there's only one? Did Jeremiah say there would be another manifestation of the covenant we had in Abraham, or did Jeremiah say there would be a new covenant? Did Hebrews interpret Jeremiah as saying there was going to be another full manifestation of the Old Testament, or did he say new and better covenant? With better promises. A new and better thing is not the same thing as the old thing. These are hermeneutical principles, folks. I'm not saying this out of opinion. These are words from Scripture.

That word covenant is plural. And in my Ephesians translation class, my professor— I love him dearly, Professor West. I love him. You would all love him, too, by the way. You would think that Heinrich had a long-lost brother if you met Professor West. Very— these guys are cut from the same cloth. Professor West in front of class, we're translating that passage I just read to you. And he says, "And we have to admit as we come to covenants that it's plural. And this is a problem for people with our theology." He didn't know I didn't have his theology. Like, not a problem for me because I don't believe in one covenant. I believe in multiple covenants. The Davidic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, right? I believe in all of those as bona fide individual covenants.

So I say that to you because my professor said, "We all have to agree this is a problem for those of us who hold to a singular covenant." And I was in my head like, "Mmm, gotcha." It's not a problem for me because I believe in multiple covenants, that Israel had multiple covenants. The one thing that Confession gets right is that depravity requires grace, and that they do get that part right. In other words, Set aside the fact that the New Covenant is separate than the Old Covenant, the one thing that is clear in the confession and we all hold to is that we need grace because of our depravity and that grace is found in Christ.

So I'll give you the language here of— it says covenant singular, but I'll read it. Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace. I'll say that's the New Covenant if you want me to say that, wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring them faith— yeah, requiring of them faith in him. So I want to make sure we're clear there, that we agree even with our Westminster brothers that to be right with God, you need to have faith in Christ, okay? So we agree and we're brothers in that regard.

I do want to make one note. I'm not trying to overstay my welcome when it comes to these things, but there are no proof texts for the covenant of grace language. In the confessions, either of them, Westminster or Baptist, that I see that are adequate. In other words, there isn't a verse that says covenant of grace. So they state it, but they don't have proof texts. But they do have proof texts for the curse, for the Holy Spirit making us willing, and other things. So the one thing we all agree on, covenant people and non-covenant people, we all agree that the new covenant is by grace, that nobody is made right with God by anything other than the grace of God.

It says it is founded that in the eternal covenant transaction that was between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect, and it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all prosperity of the fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality. So we all agree that in the solas of the Reformation, we not agree— may not agree on the how the covenants are carried out, but we definitely agree on the solas that it's by faith alone and Christ alone to the glory of God alone. I think that's it. That gets us caught up. We could probably go into communion time now.

But I will say, though it does hurt sometimes to have the discussions because like I told you, someone just even recently left our church because they've become more covenantal in their thinking than our church is. Incidentally, I don't think people need to leave our church over that. I don't. I think, in fact, you're probably not going to find a more sympathetic dispensational-leaning guy than me. Because all my professors hold to that, and I love them dearly. And there are views that are more toward the middle— progressive dispensationalism, progressive covenantalism. There's views that are more in the middle. And our church is in an association that requires us to say we believe in that dispensational theology. So that is for our association, but that doesn't mean every member has to agree with us on every single point of that.

The one thing that I would say is if you have trouble holding to the more dispensational idea of Rapture, tribulation, those things, second coming, the way it unfolds, the way we say it unfolds. The thing you have to do is not sow discord or cause division in a church. That's what you have to do is not cause trouble with it. But I will tell you that people have been here for years that don't hold to those things. And I've already told you that I'm not all the way what a lot of our pastors are. I'm leaning back this way because I do see some parallels between Jesus and Israel, for example, that Israel failed, that we're out of Egypt, I brought my son. There's a reason that passage gets used that way, but I don't think it means Jesus is Israel, and I also don't think the church replaces Israel. So I have trouble with those doctrines, right? But I am somewhere leaning that direction.

And the truth is, I told you already, I want there to be a rapture. I want it. Okay? I love the idea of a rapture. And so I'm absolutely biased toward the rapture. I want that to be true, and I like the idea of it. I think that's what harpazo can mean and might mean, the caught up, right, with him in the air. And I'm going to go ahead and hope that that's true. And you can try to convince me otherwise if you want. But someone asked me a little while back if I wanted to go hear their presentation on these things. Do— you know, in other words, would you want— would you like to hear me try to convince you from my 237-slide slideshow? And by the way, that's a literal number. I'm not saying that to exaggerate. And I said, well, I went to a school that believes what you're talking about for 7 years. With the professors I respect and admire dearly, and they didn't convince me. Do you think you're going to be able to do it? So I'm not covenantal in my theology. I can't. I just struggle. I'm telling you, it's how you interpret Scripture that gets me.

All right, let's pray and we'll go into our communion time here. Father, we'd ask that we above all things would try and be biblical. And Father, I think you know my heart, and I hope I haven't given false impression. I do believe our Reformed brothers want to obey Scripture. I do believe they think that they are being sola scriptura. I have never met any strong, true students that don't hold to those things. I think they want to, and all I would ask, Father, is that where we can find unity, we would, and that where we have things that seem pretty clear, we don't compromise never compromise if they're clear from Scripture, and that we would have grace with our brothers because those are indeed our brothers. We are trying to spread the gospel of Christ in this world. So on the other things, thank you for creating. Thank you for being in total control, not just sovereign, but working things out by your providence. And thank you for the reminder that in the garden we had communion with you, and that'll help us even now think about our communion that we have in Christ. In Jesus' name, amen.