The Fall - Promise of a Savior

If you have re Bibles with you, open them to Genesis chapter three. And this fits with what we're talking about on this evening. Genesis chapter three. If you remember, our series in the evening is the way we think, and tonight we're talking about the way we think about sin, and sin has far more implications than we assume, even down to the frailty of our bodies and sickness and disease that is part of the curse because of sin. So as we look at this, what we want to do is I want to look at not only Genesis three, and we looked at part of Genesis three already when we saw the fall itself. Today we want to look at the implications of the fall. So I want to look at several key passages of scripture. Just to give you a heads up, We're going to look at Romans chapter five. We're gonna look at Ephesians chapter two, and then we'll look at Romans chapter three. These are the key passages that relate to sin and the fall. And we're gonna be reading from our confession from the second London Baptist Confession from chapter six about the fall. So again a lot of material to cover tonight. But the goal here is to turn our thinking toward the scriptures as it relates to sin, because we don't think biblically as it relates to sin. We really don't think that man has a sin problem. If we're honest, we believe that there are certain people who are sinners. You know, Adolf Hitler was a sinner, and you know, you know, maybe you know some horrible like eighty imane type people and things of this nature. But the lady who lives across the street, the nice old lady, you know, that's not a sinner. Okay, a young person is not a sinner. There are a lot of people who believe that babies aren't sinners, right, that's because they don't have kids. Amen, born in sin, shaped in iniquity. I've frequently said God makes them small so they don't kill us, and he makes them cute so we don't kill them, and so sin we're born with that. Look at this Genesis chapter three, beginning verse thirteen. We see the consequences of it as God issues the curse first to the serpent. Now, even before we get there, I want you to understand the big picture of sin. So God creates the world and everything in it. And then he creates Adam, who is who is his vice regent. God is the creator and lord of all. He creates man in his image, and man is his vice regent, and he tells man to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over everything. He creates woman, who is man's co vice regent. Now the husband is the head of the wife, but they are equal, and we've already discussed this when we looked at marriage. And then he creates everything else, all of the other creatures who are under man, and man is to have dominion over all of the creatures. And so we have God and Man and the woman and all of the creatures. Now, what happens in the fall. The serpent creature deceives the woman, who then tempts the man, and they eat so that they can be like God. In other words, it is a complete reversal of the created order. And ultimately that's what sin is about. Sin is about reversing the created order. Any time we are reversing the created order in terms of our actions, in terms of our beliefs, what is idolatry. Idolatry is reversing the created order. We take the creature that God has created, and we worship the creature as though the creature is God. Okay, it is about reversing the created order. God says that something is good, or God says that something is evil, and we declare the exact opposite. We are reversing the created order. God says not to do something, and we delight in doing it. We're reversing the created order. So ultimately, this is what we see in sin now the response to it. Genesis three fourteen, the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, above all the beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and you sh eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring or seed and her offspring or seed. He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel. And so here we see in Genesis three point fifteen a couple of things. Number one, we see the curse of the serpent and that there is a consequence for what he has done. But number two, we see that the consequence for what he has done is going to play out within the context of the life of man, within the context of the life of human beings, within the context of the life of Adam and Eve and of their descendants. There is one who is going to come from the woman, who is going to crush the head of the snake. We learn also in the next chapter that the seed of the serpent is actually born of woman as well, because the seed of the serpent is Cain, seed of the woman being able. We know this because one John three twelve tells us do not be like Cain, who was of the evil one. And so this whole thing is going to be played out within the context of the human family. This whole thing is going to be played out not with angelic hosts and angelic beings, not with some sort of cosmic battle. This is going to be played out in life, in the world and through human beings. Yes, there are spiritual realities behind every aspect of this, but it's going to be played out among humans. We also see the mercy of God in this. Remember they were not to eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the day that you eat of it, surely you will die. Now, there's something very interesting that happens here when God curses the serpent. He says that the serpent's head is going to be crushed by the seat of the woman. In essence, he says to Eve through this, you don't die today. She's going to have children, which means that she doesn't die today. That is the mercy of God. Because God could have wiped out Adam and he right there and just started over. But he didn't do that. That's not the way redemption was to play out. And again, if we look at the big picture, and I've said this before, I need to repeat it again. If we look at the big picture or the big story that explains what we believe that the grand narrative, if you will, it is creation, fall, redemption, and then restoration or consummation. Okay, Now, creation happens in the first two chapters, the fall happens by chapter three, and everything from then to the end is redemption until we get to the last book where we see consummation or restoration. And so now we're in redemption. We're looking at the picture of redemption. How is what is wrong going to be made right? And the first thing is God is going to deal with the serpent. He is going to undo what has been done through the seat of the woman. Verse sixteen. To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and child bearing, and pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Now I'm going to say something about this, but before I do, let's read the next part of this because it will explain what I'm going to say. And Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife. No, man, this is not because he had a conversation with her. This means because he was influenced by her towards sin. Amen. So next time you get into an argument with your wife and she says you just don't listen to me, you don't get to say. See, that's what Adam did. And that's no. No. Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you, in pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Notice that there's pain here for the woman. That's pain and childbearing. For the man. That's pain in eating of from the fruit of the ground, thorns and thistles, it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shual eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of the ground you were taken for your dust, and to the dust you shall return. Now, remember God creates man, and what does he say. He says, be fruitful, multiply subdue the earth. Now watch what happens in the curse. First to the woman, you're going to have pain in being fruitful and multiplying. Okay, again, this doesn't mean that all women are here for is to bear children. There are some people who look at this and that's what they see women, you know, child bearing. That's all they know. Be fruitful, multiply subdue the earth. This is why we're here. This is the cultural mandate. The mandate has not changed. The mandate is still be fruitful, multiply subdue the earth. So to the woman, he says you are going to have pain and being fruitful and multiplying. And to the man, he says, you are going to have pain in subduing the earth. Again, the mandate has not changed. Work is not a curse. Our attitude toward work that's the curse. Amen, we work because God work. We already dealt with that in the issue of work. But here is where our attitude toward our work changes, and here is where the fruit of our work changes. Here is where the labor comes. So the fall affects every aspect of who we are and everything that we're commanded to do. Let's look at our confession as it relates to these again. Second London Baptist Confession, Chapter six. Let's look at these all of the paragraphs here. There's five paragraphs here in this chapter of the confession, Paragraph number one. Although God created man upright and perfect, and gave him a righteous law which had been unto life, had he kept it and threatened death upon the breach thereof yet He did not long abide in this honor. Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to seduce Eve, then by her seducing Adam, who without any compulsion, did wilfully transgress the law of their creation and the command given unto them in eating the forbidden fruit, which God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory. Even the fall God purposed to order to his own glory. The fall did not surprise God, and redemption was not God trying to figure out what to do now. That is why Christ is referred to as the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world, God making provision for fallen man before the fall occurs. God's not surprised by this, not at all. There are a lot of questions that come, well, why is the tree there? Well, why does God allow the fall? Well, why didn't God do this? Well? Why didn't God do that? The text doesn't answer those questions. God is God. He's not running for God. Amen. He's going to be election in the UK on Thursday. God's not on the ballot. He's never been on the ballot. Amen, He's God. So why didn't God do God? God did everything, and he did everything rightly. He did everything to maximize his glory. Creation exists to maximize the glory of God. The fall happened and it maximizes the glory of God. So if you won't answer why, why did Dot to maximize his glory? That's why there is nothing that could have been done better than it was done. There is no one that could have represented us better than Adam represented us. He was the perfect example man paragraph two. Our first parents, by this sin fell from that original righteousness and communion with God. We saw that last time we looked at chapter three. All of a sudden, they're hiding from God. Their communion with God is affected, and we in them. Whereby death came upon all, all becoming dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. This is another important thing to see. Does not affect part of man, it affects all of man. Now we refer to this in theological terms as total depravity. It's probably better referred to as radical depravity. You know, you know the tulip, right, But yeah, you take the two out and the tea out and put an R and you've got problem. But anyway, radical depravity, total depravity doesn't mean that man is as depraved as he could be. By the mercy of God and through common grace, man is not depraved as he could be. Every once in a while, something happens, you know, we see these attacks last night in London and other attacks that have happened around around the world. Other horrible things that human beings do to each other. One of the things that this reminds us of is that man is not as bad as he could be. Amen. Those don't have to be news headlines. They can be the normal way of life, that could be all day, every day, but it's not. Those things happen and they're surprising to us, and they're only surprising to us because of common grace and the mercy of God. Total depravity doesn't mean that man is as bad as he can be. He's not. Total depravity means that every aspect of your person is affected by the fall. Your mind, your will, your emotions, everything is affected by the fall. There is no aspect of your person that is untouched by sin. There is no aspect of your person that doesn't need to be redeemed. This is important because oftentimes when we think about our redemption and we think about our salvation, what we think is this, my mind is okay, my will is okay, my emotions are okay. I just sometimes make bad decison and I've done bad things in my life, so I need to be forgiven for those bad things in my life and then go on living and thinking just like I have my whole life. No, no, sanctification needs to take place in every aspect of who you are. Your mind is not okay, your will is not okay, Your emotions are not okay. They are affected by sin. Every aspect of you is affected by sin. This is what is meant by total depravity paragraph three. They being the root, and by God's appointment, standing in the room instead of all mankind. The guilt of the sin was imputed and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation, being now conceived in sin and by nature children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord set them free. Here's where we need to look at a couple of passages of scripture. If you have your Bibles again, let's turn first to Romans chapter five. Get Romans five and beginning in verse twelve, Romans five twelve. Therefore, just as sin, sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death's spread to all men because all sinned. Let's stop there and look at that first before we go on. Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin. We saw that in the curse, you're gonna return to the dust. So physical death comes into the world because of sin, and death spread to all men because all sinned. How did we all sin? We all sin in Atom. Adam was our federal head We've talked about this before. We are under the federal headship of the first Atom. He represented all of us. And it is though he declared war against God. And because we are under his federal headship, all of us are at war with God. And all of us who proceed from ordinary generation are born with these effects of the fall in us. Every human being born of ordinary generation is born fallen in every aspect of their person, every human being Verse thirteen. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reign from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Atom, who was a type of the one who was to come. Who's that one? That one is Christ, That one is Christ, who is referred to as the last Atom. Sin is imputed to us because of the First Atom's sin. Righteousness is imputed to us because of the Last atoms righteousness. This is important for us to understand. Look at the next passage, and let's look at Ephesians chapter two. Ephesians chapter two. And so we're all sinners, But what does that even mean? Ephesians chapter two, beginning at verse one, And you were dead, and the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, And were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind, by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. You see we again, I say earlier, we think that we think that the wrath of God right when we think about hell, most people think Hell is occupied by maybe I don't know, ten to eleven people who throughout the history of mankind have actually been sinful enough to be sins to hell. But they don't believe that that nice old lady across the street would ever go to Hell, because they do not understand the reality of sin. The extent of the fall and the nature of sin, which makes us all enemies of God and puts us under his wrath, every last one in thought, in word, and indeed. You can only understand the consequences of sin when you understand the holiness of God. When you understand that in God there is no shadow of turning, When you understand that in God there is perfection. When you understand that God cannot tolerate sin at all, in word or in thought or indeed, and when you understand that by our very nature, when we come into this world, we have a sin problem that needs to be dealt with, every one of us. We don't come into the world with the righteousness of God saying, okay, here's a threshold. If you are ever as sinful as Adolf Hitler, then I've got something for you. No, you come into this world born of ordinary generation. You come into this world under the federal headship of the first Atom, and you come into this world an enemy of God who needs to be redeemed. Well, what if you what if? What if you just do good things? Here's the problem. There is no good in you. Look at the next passage, go back to Romans and look at Romans Chapter three, begin eave verse nine. What then, are we Jews any better off? No, not at all, For we have already charged that all both Jews and Gentiles are undersinned. As it is written, no one is righteous, no not one. No one understand, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one, folks, No one does good, not even one. In order for something that you do to be good, it has to be the right thing, done the right way for the right reason. And the only right reason is the glory of the God who created you. But because every aspect of who you are is tainted by sin because of the fall, you don't even have it in you to know or to desire to do the right thing the right way. So how can you do good to save yourself? No one does good, no, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and their path are ruin and misery. And the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. That's the human condition. That's the nice old lady across the street. That's every human being born of ordinary generation. That's us. That's sin. That's what the Fall has done to every one of us. And that's what we don't want to believe. What we want to believe is that there are extraordinary sinners, and that God's wrath is reserved for people who rise to the level of extraordinary sinners. Here's what you need to know. Every human being born of ordinary generation is an extraordinary sinner. Here's what you need to know. The same thing that caused those so called extraordinary sinners to rise to that extraordinary sin abides in you. And it is only the grace and mercy of God that has kept you from expressing it to that degree. But it's as real in you as it is in them. It's just real in every human being as it was in them. Back to our confession, Chapter four. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil, proceed all actual transgressions. You sin because you're a sinner. You don't become a sinner because you sin. You sin because you're a sinner. You sin because it's your nature. You know the story, and it exists in so many cultures. People don't even know where it came from. You know, the story of the scorpion and the frog. You know. And all of a sudden, you know, the water is rising high and they've got to get across the river. And the scorpion says to the frog, they just skip this, Give me a ride. You can swim across. Just give me a ride. We'll both get across. And the frog says, no, man, you ah, you get on my back. You're gonna sting me. He says, no, why did I do that? I need to get across the river just like you. So he convinces the frog and he gets on his back, and this frog is swimming across the river, and all of a sudden, he feels the sting in his back, and the frog says to the scorpion, why would you do that? Now we're both going to die. And the scorpion says, I can't help it. It's just my nature. That's you and me. We sin because it's our nature to sin. This is important, This is important as we raise our children. This has tremendous implications even for the way we raise our children. Why do our children do what we do? Do they do what they do because they lack information? In which case all we have to do is just give them more information. No, you give them more information. They should become more sophisticated sinners. This has tremendous implications for education. How do people need to be educated? Do we need to educate human beings as though they are basically good? Or do we need to take into consideration that they are fallen and need to be redeemed. What we've decided for the last you know, one hundred years or so is that man is basically good. There's no such thing as sin, and we need to educate people as though they're basically good and ignore such things as sin. It is our nature Paragraph five. The corruption of nature during this life doth remain in those that are regenerated. And although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet doth itself and the rest I'm sorry, and the first motions thereof are truly improperly sin. I'm sorry, Yet both itself and the first motions thereof are truly improperly sin. This gives us as the Romans chapter seven. You see, as believers, what happens is we go from the federal headship of the first atom to the federal headship with the last atom. In the first atom, we are all fallen, and we're enemies of God. But through repentance and faith we come to the last atom and we experience forgiveness, redemption. We're made whole. And every one of these passages. We can go back through these passages. We'll just go back through them in reverse. Let's go back to chapter three of the Book of Romans, which is the last one that we looked at, and let's go down to verse twenty one. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and falls short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption, that is in Christ, Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by his blood. That word propitiation means that his blood satisfies the righteous wrath of God. God pours out his wrath against sin, and he has to, and the blood of Christ is the only thing that satisfies the righteous wrath of God to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who places faith in Jesus. Well, now let's go look at the one we looked at before. The last passage that we looked at was in Ephesians chapter two. Go back to Ephesians chapter two, and we stopped right before verse four. We're children of wrath like the rest of mankind in verse three, verse four. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us with him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness. Toward us in Christ Jesus, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. It has to be that way, because you're a sinner by your very nature. So it has to be by grace. It has to be a free gift. It has to come from outside you, and it has to come from someone who was not born of ordinary generation, which is why the virgin birth matters. Born of a woman in order to fulfill the promise in Genesis three fifteen, born of the Holy Spirit, so that he does not inherit sin from the first atom, and can thereby be righteous and impute righteousness to us. Our theology matters. People. Let's look at the last passage, which was the first one, which is Romans chapter five. We ended at verse fourteen. Let's look at verse fifteen. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through the one man's trespass, much more had the grace of God and the free gift, by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ abounded for many, and the free gift is not like the result of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespass, this has brought justification. For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For us, by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. Isn't it amazing in every one of those key passages that shows us the extent of sin, right after it we see the extent of grace. You cannot understand the grace of the Gospel unless you fully understand the sinfulness of sin. If you believe that man is basically good but he just made a few mistakes, why would Jesus have to die for that? Why if you believe that man is basically good but there's just a few areas that need to be tweaked, and Jesus just needs to come along and help. Then you do not understand the need for repentance. You do not understand that we need to come to the end of ourselves and recognize that there is nothing that we can do to satisfy God's wrath against us. We need to understand that we stand condemned and under the wrath of a holy and righteous God, and we are in desperate need of someone who cannot just fix us, not just help us, but save us, redeem us, and then beyond that change every aspect of who we are. You are not basically good. You do not just need help, and the only reason you believe that is because you're corrupted in your thinking, your mind, your will, and your emotions are corrupted. And the Prince of the power of the Air would love nothing more than for you to believe that you're basically good and just need a little help. But that's not true. What's true is you were born in sin and shaped in iniquity. What's true is you're a sinner by nature, and this is why you behave sinfully. What's true is you deserve the wrath of God. Because you're under the federal headship of the first Hatom. And what's true is your only hope is to acknowledge that, to flee from it, and to flee to the cross, where Christ, through his active obedience, was righteous and can impute righteousness to you, And through his passive obedience accepts in himself, accepts in his flesh, accepts in his body the penalty and the punishment that you owe to God. And I say again, it is this double imputation, my sinfulness imputed to him and his righteousness imputed to me. That is my only hope of standing before God, because then and only then is God just because he has punished sin like a just God must do, and my justifier only then, only then What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus? Nothing nothing. What are you trusting? End? What are you believing about sin? Are you thinking rightly about sin? Because only when you think rightly about sin can you think rightly about redemption. If you believe that you're basically good, then you don't believe that you need to turn and flee and run to Christ. You don't believe that you need to plead with God to save you. But if you view sin rightly, you don't stand before God with arrogance. You stand before God with fear and trembling and with humility. And when He saves you, you stand before him with undying gratitude, because you know from whence you've come. Let's prayer, Oh gracious God, our merciful heavenly Father, we bow before you as a humble and grateful people, humbled as we were reminded of the extent of the fall and the extent of our sin, and grateful as we're reminded of the extent of your mercy, the extent of your kindness, the extent of Christ's gift to us. That Christ died for sin, once for all, the just, for the unjust, in order that He might bring us back to God. Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free for God, the just, the satisfied to look on him and pardon me. Grant by your grace that we might be ever grateful, ever vigilant, and ever ready to proclaim the goodness of this good news to all who so desperately need to hear this, we pray for Christ's sake and in his name. Amen.