Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A #13-15

[00:00:00] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have given to us your word that speaks so wonderfully, so clearly, so beautifully, so forcefully, and that that word is useful to us for everything that we need in this life and the life to come. We thank you for the Incarnation of our Lord and the way that this brings to an end the promise or the problem rather of our sin and his in our Incarnation, in his ministry, and ultimately in his death, resurrection and ascension, we have hope, hope that that which was undone and made rotten, that which infects us and brings curse upon all the world would be healed and made right and that we would be able to look forward to a world without curse, a world that is only and always a blessings forevermore. Coming from your throne. We ask Lord, that you would help us to hear your word this evening to consider a sin and its effects in our lives, that we might flee from it unto Christ. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:01:19] Well, if you would like to read along with me, you can turn in your Bibles to Genesis Chapter three. [00:01:30] We're reading this portion of Scripture tonight as we consider the fall of mankind in the sin of Adam and his wife Eve. [00:01:48] And we'll consider some of it this time and then a few more questions doctrines around this issue next week, Lord willing. [00:02:02] There are some questions in your bulletin that we will consider in particular tonight, but let's begin with the Scriptures, Genesis 3. [00:02:16] Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. [00:02:22] He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it unless you die. [00:02:43] But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. [00:02:54] So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. [00:03:14] Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made for themselves loincloths, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. [00:03:40] But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? [00:03:58] The man said, the woman whom you gave to me to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. [00:04:16] The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. [00:04:24] On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. [00:04:38] To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you and to Adam. He said, 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. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. [00:05:19] The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them. [00:05:32] Then the Lord God said, behold, man has become like one of us. Knowing in knowing good and evil now lest he should reach out his hand and also take from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever. [00:05:43] Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he planted the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life. [00:06:02] May God bless His word to us. [00:06:08] If you would please take your bulletins and you'll find a series of questions under the evening worship on that page on the inside of your bulletins. [00:06:20] Let's read the questions and the answers together. I'll read the questions. If you would please read the answer. [00:06:26] And we won't read the verses here. I might read them later, but they're there for your reference as well. All right. The first question. [00:06:36] Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created? Let's answer together. [00:06:42] Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created by sinning against God. [00:06:52] What is sin? [00:06:54] Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. [00:07:01] What was the sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created? The sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created was there eating the forbidden fruit. [00:07:18] So here we have a record of the history of mankind. What happened in this time of the world. [00:07:28] The Lord God created Adam and Eve, created mankind in knowledge and righteousness and holiness. But they did not continue in that state. Is how we would say it today, in this a position. [00:07:44] Why not? Well, as we read in the Scriptures and as the catechism reflects, they sinned against God. What is sin? [00:07:53] Notice the two parts to this answer. Sin is any want of conformity unto. In other words, some lack in meeting the standard. The bar is here and it's not met. God says, do this, and it's not done, or transgression of the law of God. Where God says, do this and the opposite is done. [00:08:15] Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. [00:08:22] Now, authors and commentators, Christians, as they have reflected on this passage, have seen, and we'll think about this some this evening. All kinds of ways in which Adam and Eve sinned. Sins of pride, rebellion, all kinds of things. But there was a very specific transgression, a very specific thing that they did that the catechism gets after here. The specific sin that they in whereby our first parents fell was the eating of the forbidden fruit. [00:08:58] I want to think about this with you this evening. I want to think with you about the nature of sin, the nature of this tempter of Satan who tempted Adam and Eve toward this sin. And I want to think with you about the ways in which Christ saves us from our sin and rescues us out of this miserable state and out from under this curse. [00:09:25] First of all, let's think about the serpent. [00:09:28] What happens with this serpent here? This serpent, of course, is not just a snake or some sort of reptile. It is Satan himself, being, we could say, clothed in the form of a serpent taking on the body, much like when Jesus cast out demons and they asked to go into a herd of pigs, right? They indwelt these animals. And something similar to that is happening here. [00:10:01] We know this is Satan for a number of reasons. The scripture refers to him in many other places and to this moment in particular. [00:10:12] And it refers to him as a serpent or as a dragon, as one who sought to undo and bring hardship into the world. [00:10:22] Also, the things that he does here are mentioned in various places, as, for example, the father of lies and a liar, a murderer who was from the beginning. These kinds of things. [00:10:35] And what does Satan do? [00:10:37] Well, he comes into the garden. He is called a characteristic is named here. He is crafty, and he brings doubt. [00:10:46] He said to the woman these famous words, did God actually say he brings doubt into her mind. He asks her to think a question that she ought not to think, to doubt the word of God. [00:11:03] In addition to bringing this kind of doubt, he adds. [00:11:10] He adds, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say. He adds. The woman says to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit, eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it, lest you die. [00:11:28] She adds here this neither shall you touch it. Which isn't something God initially said. Satan doesn't contradict this or have any problem with this. The Satan is one who masquerades as an angel of light. He likes to take the truth even as he did when he tempted Jesus. Start with something that sounds reasonable and is very close. And then he twists it and he changes it just enough to get us off course. And it doesn't take very much notice what else he does. [00:12:01] He pretends a kind of knowledge. The serpent says to the woman, you will not surely die, which is of course a lie. [00:12:10] And then he says, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened. You will be like God, knowing good and evil. [00:12:21] He suggests that there's something behind what God has told her, behind the command that God has given to them that they really need to know about. He offers to them a knowledge that's outside the knowledge that God has given them and says there's actually something more important that you need to realize. Sure, God may have said this or that, but that's only because there's something else. And this happens all the time throughout the course of human history. People coming and saying there's a deeper truth or a Higher truth or a more subtle truth. And you need to figure that out. God's only given you the surface of these things he doesn't want you to know, which is even worse. He doesn't want you to know these deeper things. And then Satan adds, of course, which I will tell you. [00:13:14] And these deeper things often offer to us another path, another way. God says, do this and you shall live. Do this and you shall die. And then Satan and those like him, liars like him, come along and they say, well, perhaps, but couldn't it be this other way? [00:13:37] This is a very important reminder. When we think about the commands of God, we think about the teachings of Scripture. There is going to be a temptation sometimes to kind of get behind them, to figure out what the deeper thing is or the hidden thing is. And it's not to say that we can't go deeper in some things. Sometimes our level of understanding is very surfacey and there is more to it. But that's a different thing than saying God is not revealing it and someone else has that knowledge. [00:14:12] There's this core aspect of obedience, which is to obey what is said. [00:14:18] And this is one reason various theologians have said or suggested why God gives this particular command. [00:14:26] To show that it's obedience to God and our relationship to him and righteousness and all these things is not dependent on some sort of natural system that's outside of God that we have to figure out. And really, it's all dependent on that, but it's just dependent on him. What he says is what he says. What he says is what's determinative. What he says is what goes. [00:14:55] Sometimes people want to relate sin to all kinds of other things than to God. [00:15:02] Sin is transgressing his law. Sin is doing the things he has said not to do. [00:15:09] People want to define sin in all kinds of other ways. They want to say sin is material things, like physical things, like our bodies or the world, and to make good things, spiritual and evil things, physical. [00:15:22] That's not what the Scripture says, and that's a big problem. [00:15:27] For one, God made the world, and he made it very good. Also, if we separate sin and we say that sin is just physical things or something like that, it is to attribute to God to make him the author of sin. There's other problems as well. [00:15:43] Here we see sin defined properly. Sin is always in relationship to God. [00:15:52] There's another error that this helps us to recognize, another one that we're prone to slip into, and that's thinking about sin as merely a social issue between human Beings. [00:16:05] Sin is just when I make other people upset. Sin is when people are mad at me. Sinner is when I hurt someone or don't do something. Well, but again, sin is not primarily defined by our relationship to other people, although that's included. But it's primarily defined by our relationship to God. Sin is ultimately against him. And that's important because we can find ourselves in situations where we're making nobody mad. Everybody's super happy with us and they're glad for what we are doing and maybe even encouraging, encouraging us in those things. And yet, nevertheless, the thing we're doing is a sin against the Lord. [00:16:48] Well, sin brings with it a couple things. It brings with it guilt, the feelings of guilt. But more than the feelings. Guilt as liability for judgment. [00:17:00] Guilt as kind of legal term which says, you deserve punishment. [00:17:07] Sometimes we deserve punishment even if we don't feel guilty. Our hearts can be hard. We can be stubborn, right? These kinds of things. We're not always sensitive to the guilt that we have, and sometimes we are. [00:17:21] But that's a significant part of what sin brings about. Another is pollution. It not only makes us liable for judgment, but it also affects our hearts. It pollutes us in such a way that the way Jesus says is that out of our hearts, out of the evil hearts, come evil things like a tree bearing bad fruit. Sin has this pernicious thing of an ongoing. Creating an ongoing problem. [00:17:54] Well, this is sin. [00:17:57] And this is what happened when Adam and Eve gave into the temptations and lies of the evil one. [00:18:05] What can we say about Satan as a serpent? [00:18:11] I want to mention some things that John Aerosmith, a Puritan commentator, says about this. Why is Satan. [00:18:24] Why is the serpent here and Satan in this form, cursed in this way? What's the connection? And what connections do we see between these two? And this is helpful. [00:18:35] He suggests five things which I'll go through briefly. [00:18:39] The first is that this serpent figure was his disguise. And he quotes another theologian, a medieval theologian, who uses this example of a thief coming into a monastery, putting on the robes of a monk, right? And then coming in and doing bad things in these garments. And then when the monk, quote, unquote, is caught, there is this kind of. Even though it's known he's not a monk, and in some ways, maybe even to shame him for wearing this robe, he's cursed. You know, you monk. Right. Which we all know who he is, but it's a way of pointing out his disguise. And it is, in fact what he did do. He disguised himself in this way Another reason we see connections between Satan and the serpent is his character. [00:19:32] He is cunning. These are good reminders of who Satan is and who our enemy is. He is cunning. Crafty is how chapter three, verse one, puts it. In Matthew 10, verse 16, Jesus says to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. Serpents are sometimes characterized as wise, as cunning, as crafty. And Satan is this way. We need to be aware of this. And this is what Adam and Eve experienced. They didn't bump into this sort of foolish figure. [00:20:05] No, they encountered a real enemy, even as we do in our lives. And we need to be aware that he is that way. [00:20:16] Another way of thinking about his character, in addition to being crafty cunning, is that he is also vigilant. [00:20:26] John Aerosmith points out that it's often dragons, serpent figures that are garters of treasure that will be in a cave, right, in mythology and these kinds of things for thousands of years, right? Being vigilant, careful to do this thing. And perhaps snakes and serpents are this way as well. With regard to Satan in particular, Revelation 12, verse 4 pictures Satan as waiting, waiting for the woman to give birth to the child. Waiting therefore to devour the promised one. [00:21:06] Ephesians 6 says that Satan makes schemes. 2 Corinthians 2 talks about stratagems. [00:21:15] He's an enemy, and we need to be aware of this. He's wise, he's crafty, he's cunning, he's vigilant. He does not just get tired and move on. [00:21:25] We need to be aware of this. [00:21:28] A second reason that Satan. [00:21:33] Another third connection between Satan and serpents here comes from Psalm 104, verse 4. And they sharpened their serpent. Sorry, speaking of enemies, they sharpened tongues as serpents. The venom of asps was on their lips, namely, he's venomous, right? He bites and it causes pain and death. Another possible aspect of this is the imperceptibility of snake bites. [00:22:06] Proverbs 23 compares a snake bite to alcohol, right? That. Oh, it's so red, and it reddens there in the cups, but as it goes down, it stings, right? There's this sort of surprise to it, like you don't think it's going to happen, and then all of a sudden it does. [00:22:27] There's a way that it can kind of sneak up on you in a way. And the last thing John Aerosmith mentions is the deplorable and downtrodden condition of serpents who lick and eat the dust. [00:22:43] Psalm 44:25 says, Our life has been cast into the dust. And our stomach clings to the earth. [00:22:51] Micah, in an act of judgment, says, they shall lick the dust like the serpent. [00:22:57] There's this way in which the serpent here, and specifically in the curse, is made, is shown to be low, shown to be deplorable, though cunning, though crafty, though powerful in some ways, ultimately a thing that creeps on the ground, and a thing, as the Scriptures say, that the Lord will ultimately destroy, bruising his head. [00:23:24] In Revelation, when we read about that great dragon seeking to destroy the. The woman and the Son that she gives birth to, it doesn't happen. It doesn't work. [00:23:38] And that's what happens here as well. The Lord comes into the midst of this situation and he exposes their sin in this remarkable. This is the first thing he does in this remarkable moment, right? They expected to come to this great knowledge of good and evil. And then in verse seven, we hear. Then the eyes of both were open, and they knew that they were naked. [00:24:02] Not exactly what they were hoping for, not exactly what Satan was tempting them with. They knew that they were naked, and they sewed themselves fig leaves and made themselves loincloths. But what the Scriptures tell us is they needed to be covered by the Lord. They needed his provision, his protection, His. His salvation. And that's what God provides. [00:24:25] He gives them this curse. But embedded in the curse is also a promise of a future, the promise of a blessing which comes in a son of Adam and Eve, and that's Jesus. [00:24:38] When Jesus comes into the world, he comes into a world that is cursed. If you ever wonder why the world is the way it is, you could remember that it's cursed. It's a cursed world. Things don't work as they ought. There's pain, sorrow, sorrow, suffering of all kinds. But Jesus came into this world and he knew no sin, and yet he took the sins of the world on himself. [00:25:00] He came into this world and he was bruised, he was crucified, even he was put to death. But he rose victorious over death itself. And he took away the work and the tools and the weapons of Satan. [00:25:19] In these original sins, we see several things. [00:25:24] We see Adam's failure to rule, to protect and to guard. [00:25:30] He. She doesn't sometimes hear this story. And you get the sense that Eve sort of has this conversation with Satan. And then she comes up to Adam and she's like, here's some fruit. And he, like, barely looks at it. He says, oh, no, what have I done right? This is not the case. He's right there with her. The Scriptures say in verse Six, all that they are having a conversation with Satan. [00:25:52] He is talking to them, to her specifically, but they're all there together. [00:25:59] And he does nothing. [00:26:01] He stands there. He listens as well as her. He lets her take. He eats along with her. [00:26:07] This is a complete failure. It's a sin of pride. [00:26:11] They refuse to listen to the word of God, obey the word of God. They choose to hear the words of Satan and see themselves is wiser than God. [00:26:21] Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it this way. They sought to go behind God's word, to get behind it. [00:26:29] And that's what we often do in our sin. [00:26:32] They decided that instead of God determining what was right, it would be man. [00:26:39] Well, in all of these things, I know, we see our own sins. [00:26:43] We see the ways in which we doubt God. The. The ways in which we seek to kind of get behind him or find a more powerful or more authoritative source than him, and ways in which we exchange ourselves and the positions that we've been put in for his. [00:27:01] And none of this is right. [00:27:05] Next time we are together and think about these passages, we'll think about the aspects of the curse and the misery that this all brings us into. But tonight I want you to think about the Lord who saves us from all of this. [00:27:21] And this. I'll end with this. In verse 20, the scriptures say the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all the living. [00:27:32] I like to think about this as the first confession of faith. [00:27:36] Why do we think about it as a confession of faith? [00:27:39] Because they've just been cursed to die. [00:27:43] And Adam says he names him his wife. He calls her Eve. He calls her the mother of the living. [00:27:52] Why does he do that? He does it because what the Lord has just said. Because the Lord has promised that despite these things, despite the curse that has come into the world, there is going to be a son who will crush the head of the serpent, who will bruise him, who will destroy him, and who will eventually cast him into a lake of fire where he will never threaten us again, never make us fear again, and never bother us again. [00:28:25] The work of Satan is real, and it can be scary. Unless, of course, you know the Son. [00:28:33] Unless of course, you know the salvation that he brings through his work on the cross. Jesus takes care of sin, death, and the devil once and for all. You need not fear him and certainly don't listen to him. Let's pray. [00:28:49] Our Heavenly Father, we ask that you would help us to discern the voice of our shepherd from the voice of adversary. [00:29:00] We ask that you would help us to be watchful, to be vigilant ourselves, and even crafty and cunning, not in sin, but against escaping his devices. [00:29:13] And let us do so, Lord, not in our own wisdom or in our own strength or in our power because of the sin that we are so prone to falling into. Lord, we need you to keep us on the path. We need you to keep us in your way. [00:29:32] It is through your protection that the mouths of lions are shut. It is through your protection that the enemies of the Lord have been routed. It is through your protection that your saints have gone through the fire and not been burned. And it is through your protection given to us in Christ, our great victor, our great King, who did not give in to the threats and temptations of the evil one, but conquered him instead. It is through him that we know we will have victory forever in the resurrection from the dead and life everlasting. [00:30:10] Please help us to be on guard, to be watchful, to beware and to fight the good fight in the strength of Jesus. Help us to throw aside every weight of sin which clings so closely and look always to the author and perfecter of our faith, the last Adam, Jesus Christ our Lord. We thank you for the salvation that we have in him, and we pray these things in his name. Amen.