Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A #16-20

[00:00:03] Well, this evening, as we continue our survey of Christian doctrine, we come now to thinking about the effects of sin in the world. [00:00:18] Not just in the time of Adam and Eve, but in our own day. [00:00:25] We've thought about how God made us about God, how God established us in knowledge and righteousness and holiness. We've thought about the commands that he gave to us, the covenant that he made. But tonight we reflect on man's fall. [00:00:46] We talked last time when we were together about this, about the nature of sin and what it is. Tonight we think about its effect on us and our world, which is, of course, a reminder not only of the things that have fallen upon us all, but the situation that we've been rescued out of by our Lord and Savior. So in your bulletins, there is a series of questions drawn from our shorter Catechism. Let's begin by reading these together. [00:01:18] I'll read the questions and then let's read the answers together. [00:01:24] First, did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression? [00:01:30] The covenant being made with Adam not only for himself, but for his posterity. All mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression. [00:01:50] Into what estate did the fall bring mankind? [00:01:54] The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery, wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereunto man fell. [00:02:06] The sinfulness of that estate whereunto man fell consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it. [00:02:31] What is the misery of that estate whereunto man fell? [00:02:35] All mankind, by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and the pains of hell forever did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery. [00:02:59] God, having out of his mere good pleasure all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer. [00:03:21] Amen indeed. Praise God. [00:03:24] These are precious truths. [00:03:28] They are truths which have so much explaining power for. For so much, indeed everything in our lives. [00:03:40] These truths explain so many things that so many people live day to day, asking, why? [00:03:51] Why? Why are things like this? Why is my life like this? And these answer questions and answers drawn right from the Scriptures, give the answer to the question, why do we Suffer the way that we do? Why am I the way that I am? Why are things so hard, so difficult? And why do I have so much joy now that I have been redeemed? [00:04:18] Why is my life so different now that I know Jesus, the one in whom I've believed? [00:04:26] These questions and answers form the basis for so much else in Scripture, in rather in doctrine derived from Scripture and other things that we'll consider later on, very fundamental, foundational things. So you want to make sure that you understand them, at least in a general sense, and even better if you can, in more particular ways. And I hope to help with that this evening. [00:04:58] So the first question that we consider here is this first question. Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression? In other words, did the sin that Adam commit have a fall just for him, or did it affect us all? And the answer is, of course it affected us all. If you would please turn in your Bibles to Romans, chapter five. [00:05:25] I have a couple verses we'll read there. We'll spend a good amount of time in this passage as well as some others. [00:05:33] Now, these truths are so spread out, not in a scattered way, but in an ever present way throughout the Scriptures that we could spend all evening flipping through our Bibles and we'd have to race a lot to get to all the various passages that would be important and would be really valuable to hear for the sake of time. We won't do that. I'd encourage you to look up the scripture references that you find in places where the catechism is published. Also, we are going to spend some time in a few passages and we'll see these from these places. But know that they're multiplied in many, many others. [00:06:23] So first take a look at Romans 5:12. [00:06:29] Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. [00:06:43] Now, that's an incomplete sentence, right? That you expect more? We won't finish it for now, but just hear what is said at the beginning part of this sentence. Sin came into the world through one man. We've discussed that, right? Adam in his fall, in his disobedience to God's command, and death came into the world through that sin and death, Paul says, spread to all men. [00:07:14] And then notice what he says. He doesn't say because Adam sinned, which is true. He just told us that Adam sinned. But he says because all sinned. [00:07:27] It's a striking thing, right? It's not exactly what you'd expect you almost expect him to say, death came through, or sin came through one man. Death spread to all people because of the one who sinned. We know it's because of the one who sinned. Paul just said that. But he adds something else here. He says, all sinned. [00:07:50] How is that possible? [00:07:53] How is it that all mankind sinned in Adam's first transgression? In the way in which he broke on this Covenant? [00:08:10] In verse 17? [00:08:12] We see a parallel to this in verse 17 of chapter 5. So it says, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man. This is the doctrine that is taught here. And through the one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, not just in him, but in all. [00:08:34] The reason for the connection between us and Adam is because Adam was not just some guy that God commanded something to do to. He was a representative of the whole human race. When God made a covenant with him, it was not just with him, but with all his posterity. [00:08:58] We have similar things in our own daily lives. We have people who represent us in government, in work, in our families, that the things that they do have an effect on us all, right? The things that they do have an effect on us all. If we have representatives who work together and pass a law, that law has an effect not just on those who pass the law, but on those whom they represented, right? [00:09:31] If in your family, let's say, kids, maybe let's say one of your parents all of a sudden gets a lot of money, right? That's going to affect not just that one parent, but both parents and indeed the whole family. [00:09:52] There are ways in which we are affected by other people, not just in general, but especially when there are these covenant relationships involved. When. When someone has been chosen and selected to be a representative of others. [00:10:09] This is how we are in Adam. [00:10:13] He is our. We are connected to him in two ways, then we're connected to him in this legal way. He's a legal representative for us. This is how God made him and established a relationship with him. And then he's also the natural Father from which we have all come. [00:10:34] Which is why, the way the catechism puts it, it says all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression. [00:10:48] So why does the catechism say descending from him by ordinary generation? [00:10:55] It says it because it's intending to exclude one person. [00:11:01] There's one person who is not ordinarily generated in all of human history. And that, of course, was Jesus. [00:11:11] Jesus did descend from Adam, but not by ordinary generation. His generation was quite extraordinary. Even among a number of other miraculous births of women giving birth out of barren wombs. Mary gave birth to Jesus out of a virgin womb. And the Scriptures tell us explicitly that she conceived a child as the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. [00:11:42] Amazing, amazing thing. [00:11:46] This means that while Jesus is our representative, much like Adam was our representative, he stands as a federal legal head that represents his people. [00:11:59] He did not receive that same corruption that we all received. And this is really good news. Can you guess why? [00:12:09] Right. It's good news because we need a Savior who is capable of fulfilling the law that Adam failed to fulfill. We need a Savior who can represent us and save us and not. And not fall as Adam did. And so even here in the beginning, in this question about Adam's representation of us, we have a hope introduced. We have a reminder that someone is coming that's introduced in the last question to bring us into an estate of salvation, a Redeemer, another one who would come. [00:12:51] So God established this relationship with Adam. And because Adam sinned, all fell in him, and all are guil. [00:13:01] We receive not just the guilt or we are accountable not just for our own actions and the things that we do, but we are accountable for that first sin into which we fell. It's sort of like if a nation were to go to war. If the government decides we are going to war, then we are at war. Whether or not you raised your hand and said, I vote that we declare a state of war. We are a part of that. And Adam, unfortunately, chose to go to war with God. [00:13:37] He went to war with God, and it was a losing war from the very beginning. [00:13:45] He immediately fell into an estate of sin and misery. [00:13:52] Those are the two words that you're going to want to memorize when you think about the nature of the fall. Under sin and under misery come a whole bunch of things which are listed in the next two questions. But it's those things that explain so much of our lives and the way that things are. [00:14:14] Let's think about some of those first. Look again at Romans chapter 5. When we think about sin in Romans 5 again, this is verse 19. Now. For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, the many were made sinners. Adam's disobedience is imputed to us. [00:14:42] We were made sinners even before we made any actual transgressions, committed any trans. Actual transgressions on our own. [00:14:53] If you go to Romans, chapter 6, verse 23, we read this. For the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. There is something that we are owed now because of what has been imputed to us. [00:15:12] This imputed guilt, this guilt that we have because of original sin, it comes with something else. Look at Romans chapter three. Now, like I said, we're going to try and stay in the same media area. In Romans 3, verses 10 and 11, as it is written, no one is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. [00:15:42] This. [00:15:44] This sin that began in us as something that was imputed to us and that we were guilty for is. Has another aspect to it. And that is, it becomes inherent in us. It is part of our nature. There's a brokenness in the system of the body and the soul that makes up a human person. [00:16:09] Sin has these effects and it's described in a number of different ways, and it affects every part of us. [00:16:16] Perhaps you've heard of the doctrine of total depravity. This is what I'm referring to when it says it affects every part of us. It's total. It's holistic. The doctrine of total depravity doesn't teach that we are as sinful as we can possibly be because certainly we see the Lord's restraint and his gracious holding back so much in the lives of mankind. [00:16:44] But we do see the way it touches every single part of us. [00:16:48] Let's consider that for a moment. Let's consider the brokenness that is the result of sin and misery. [00:16:58] Let's turn to another place, Ephesians, another one of Paul's letters here in the New Testament, it's a little bit further into the Bible after Romans, Ephesians. Let's start in Ephesians, chapter five. [00:17:21] Notice we're going to look at some different terms that describe the corruption, the sin and the misery as well that is in us. Here. Paul describes that state as darkness. For at one time you were in darkness. [00:17:40] We've got to read the second half. But now you are light in the Lord. [00:17:45] Darkness. [00:17:47] You know what darkness is? Darkness often has to do with evil. Darkness has to do with confusion, with blindness, with stumbling, with being lost. A number of things in addition to darkness. Look at verse 12 of that same chapter. For it is shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret. [00:18:13] And 13. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. There's this secretness that happens in addition to the darkness, a kind of hiding, a shame. [00:18:26] We see this in the account of Adam and Eve, right? What happened after they sinned, they hid themselves, they covered themselves, they hid away. They did not gain great understanding and wisdom and righteousness by eating of the tree that they were called, that they were forbidden from. [00:18:46] They became aware of their shame, of their nakedness, of their exposure before the Lord. [00:18:55] Our corruption creates not only this situation of darkness in our hearts, this fear of exposure, and is connected with a sort of separation that we have with God. Instead of intimacy and closeness, the constitution of a person becomes such that we want to get away from him, we want to move away, we want to hide ourselves, a very dangerous thing, because God is light, and in him is life. [00:19:26] So to separate ourselves from him, to remove ourselves from him, is to separate ourselves from the living One and the One who gives us life. [00:19:37] If you turn back to Ephesians chapter two, we see how the Lord overcomes this distance. [00:19:47] In chapter 2, verse 13 says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. [00:20:00] This distance that is created, the separation that's created God, brings together through the work of our second representative, this last Adam Jesus. [00:20:14] If you look just a little bit earlier in the same passage in chapter two, let's actually begin at the beginning of chapter two. [00:20:24] Notice the way that Paul describes the state that we are in in Adam before we were in Christ and you were dead in 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 the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. Right? Paul's addressing this specific group, the Ephesian Christians, the Ephesian, the Church in Ephesus. And he says, you were like this, and that wasn't just you, that was everybody. [00:21:18] That was everyone. [00:21:22] Let's look at some of the ways that sin and misery and the fall affects our lives. [00:21:29] Look at 1 Corinthians 2:14, 1 Corinthians 2:14. Here we see that the nature of the corruption that falls upon man because of his sin, it affects the understanding, the mind, the natural person, one who has fallen in Adam, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. [00:22:19] You see the effect of sin, the effect, the sin and misery that is in us makes us so that we do not accept the Spirit, the things of the Spirit of God, which is the very things that we must accept to have life. [00:22:37] He does not understand them because they are spiritually discerned. He's unable to understand them. That's brokenness. When God speaks and he speaks clearly and he offers life and you go, huh? [00:22:52] I don't get it. I don't want it. I want this garbage. I want this sin. I want this foolishness. [00:23:01] That's brokenness, that's corruption. [00:23:08] Let's consider our emotions. [00:23:11] Psalm 4. 2. [00:23:23] It's not just a thinking thing, it's a feeling thing too. [00:23:29] Psalm 4, verse 2. O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? [00:23:41] It's not just an accidental or a brokenness in our minds and a confusion. It's a brokenness in our hearts that loves and desires to dishonor. The Lord loves vain words, seeks after lies. God speaks truth. And the man who has fallen in Adam turns away from the truth. [00:24:09] Now turn to Isaiah. [00:24:12] Isaiah, chapter 5, verse 20. And if I'm moving too fast, I'm sorry, you can just listen and that's fine. I'll try to speak really Clearly. [00:24:22] Isaiah, chapter 5, verse 20. [00:24:27] Our consciences are. I like to think of them as a faculty of the soul. Just like your sense of smell or hearing or eye. These are faculties by which you perceive things. Your conscience is a faculty by which you perceive moral things, spiritual things. Guess what can also and is also broken in the fall. [00:24:53] Isaiah, chapter 5, verse 20. Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil. Who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, right? This is part of the brokenness in our consciences when we get a disease in our body. I just had Covid, right? I lost for. Thankfully for a very short period of time, my sense of smell. The faculty was broken. It was gone. I stuck my hands in a bunch of hand sanitizer and I couldn't smell it, right? I tried to smell some. It was around Christmas time. Wassail, you know, all that cinnamon and stuff. Nothing, right? There was a brokenness in the faculties of my body because of this physical disease that had occurred, right? [00:25:48] The same thing happens when this spiritual disease that affects both our bodies and our. Our souls as well, it affects our consciences in which we say, we see light and we call it darkness. We see good and we call it evil. We see evil, we say, ah, that looks good. We're Broken, corrupt in our understanding, in our emotions, in our conscience, even in our memory. Look at Psalm 106, Psalm 106. [00:26:27] First verse 13, and then verse 21, Psalm 106, 13. But they soon forgot his works and did not wait for his counsel. [00:26:41] In verse 21, they forgot God, their Savior, who has done great things in Egypt. Have you ever heard of the Old Testament? And sort of banged your head against your hand and said, how could they be forgiving this? Right? God just told them. He just threatened them, he just warned them. He just parted the sea, brought down the wall, conquered the army, brought a great storm. Why are they so quickly building a golden calf, chasing after other gods, setting up their own sacrificial system. [00:27:18] Now you know why. [00:27:20] Our understanding is broken, our emotions are broken, our consciences are broken, and we forget, we so quickly forget the things that God has told us. [00:27:34] And as we saw in Romans 6:23, this affects not only these inward, immaterial things of our soul, but sin affects our bodies as well. The wages of sin is death. Not just spiritual death, spiritual brokenness, but physical as well. [00:27:56] A physical death that begins as soon as we're born and continues all the way to hell itself. [00:28:06] This brokenness is not just sort of like a bad car that's not really working, that you sort of set aside and move on to the next thing. There is an eternality to all of this that the scriptures talk about. [00:28:20] We can't just move on. Your soul is your soul. It's the only one you get. It's the only one you have. And you will have it forever. [00:28:32] Will you have it in heaven, rejoicing and glorifying God all your days, pleasures forevermore at his right hand? Or will you suffer the wages of sin? [00:28:46] Notice what the catechism rightly says. [00:28:50] What is the misery of that estate and where man fell? All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and the pains of hell forever. [00:29:08] The Scriptures talk about the permanency of the lake of fire, which is prepared for the devil and his servants. [00:29:20] Jesus talks about weeping and gnashing of teeth, eternal torment. Why? [00:29:28] Because of sin. Because the wages of sin is death. Because that's exactly what God said would happen. Even if you eat of this fruit, if you disobey, if you wage war against me, you, Adam, will surely die, and all of your posterity in you. [00:29:47] And this is what happened. [00:29:51] And this is why the world is the way it is why there's so much sadness, so much brokenness, so much confusion that this world that is. On the one hand, you can go out and you look and you say, this is amazing. [00:30:08] The design of the world, the beauty of the world, the intricacy, and all the wise ways in which God fit all of these pieces together. [00:30:21] Not just birds and trees and sunsets and saguaros, but relationships and youth and old age and coming and going and planting and harvesting and all of these ways in which the world works and us in it. [00:30:46] It's an amazing place that constantly testifies to his glory and his power, his majesty, his goodness. [00:30:56] And yet at the same time, we see wars and rumors of wars and millions of people dying and plagues and trouble and heartaches and brokenness at the most deep, deep, deep hidden places in our hearts. And then in really, really big ways, blasted across newspapers and radios and all the rest at every single level of life. We see, we sense, we experience and we feel these things that are testified to in scripture. And it's not unique to our time. It's been going on ever since Adam and Eve fell. [00:31:46] After Adam and Eve fell, what did God do? Well, he saved them, for one. He indeed brought, announced, pronounced the curse that would be in the world. But he almost all. He also promised that one would come that would redeem them from all these things. [00:32:06] But what happens? As the history of Genesis is recorded, you see immediately. A murder, jealousy, Cain and Abel, idolatry, unbroken sacrifices, hearts at war with God, with man. We see abuse in families. We see all kinds of trouble and pride and arrogance. And it just grows and grows and grows until you get to just Genesis 6. And God says, enough. [00:32:39] And since the Flood, it doesn't take very many chapters before the end of the world is at hand. [00:32:48] That's how bad it is. And the only reason that we are still here is because God saved Noah and his people through that ark and promised to continue the world so that a savior might come and redeem us all permanently and forever. That's why we're here. [00:33:06] That's why we're here. [00:33:09] This is why this last question is so important. And we'll finish with this. [00:33:14] Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery? He certainly could have, but it was certainly his right. It would have been to his honor and his glory to punish those who were at war with him, to put them to death and set them away forever. [00:33:34] But what did he do? [00:33:37] Out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to have everlasting life. And he enters into another covenant, a new covenant, a covenant of grace. [00:33:53] And the purpose of this covenant, the catechism rightly says, is to deliver these people, God's chosen beloved people, out of this estate of sin and misery and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a redeemer. [00:34:13] Let's look at one more verse before we finish this evening. In Hebrews, chapter 2, verses 14 and 16. [00:34:31] Hebrews 2, 14, 16. We hear a little bit here about who our Savior is and what he's done for us. [00:34:43] This one not born of ordinary generation. [00:34:48] Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death, the curse, he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all of those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. [00:35:18] We, in other words, as children of wrath, as sons and daughters of the evil one, were subject to lifelong slavery. As he kept us, as he keeps us in this slavery, through the fear of death. [00:35:38] I won't get into all the ways in which the evil one, our enemy, does this right now, but this is what he does. Through the fear of death, which rightfully belongs to us, he holds us in this slavery. What does Jesus do? [00:35:54] He dies. [00:35:57] He dies, and somehow, through that death, he destroys the one who has the power of death, that is the devil. [00:36:09] This promise back in Genesis that one would come and crush the head of the serpent came our Redeemer. He comes and he delivers us out of lifelong slavery. And he does something in us by His Holy Spirit that is so amazing that we have lots and lots and lots of songs about this. [00:36:31] He causes us to be reborn. John 3. 3. [00:36:38] He says, in fact, it is necessary that we must be reborn in order to enter into the kingdom of God. In light of everything that you see that happens to a human person when they are born into this world, you can hopefully see now why it's necessary to be reborn. We don't need an upgrade, an improvement, a few modifications, a little customization. We need a new birth, something so fundamentally different. [00:37:13] When Jesus says this to Nicodemus, Nicodemus goes, wait a second. [00:37:18] Is someone going to re. Enter his mother's? What are you talking about? [00:37:23] How can one be reborn? This is what happens. And the amazing thing is we are reborn in a way that is parallel with the ways in which we fell, both body and soul. The total depravity that we all have and receive from Adam's fall is paralleled with a total Salvation that touches on every single part of a human being. [00:37:53] His mind, his emotions, his conscience, his memory, his body. [00:37:59] So much so that Jesus says that when he comes again, his children, instead of being sent into everlasting torment and misery because of the death that we all deserve, God's wrath and curse, will instead be resurrected, receiving immortal, glorious bodies like the one Jesus has already received, the flesh and blood that he partook of. This human nature was glorified. [00:38:31] And this for this reason. The Scriptures say, and you know, I'm fond of saying, that the resurrection has already begun. [00:38:39] It's already begun and we are waiting now for the fulfillment of that when the Lord comes again. [00:38:49] Well, it's my pleasure to say that in the coming weeks we get to talk a lot more about who the Redeemer of God's elect is and what this state of salvation is, how the benefits that we receive in this life, the benefits we receive at our death, the benefits we will receive when he comes again. [00:39:12] Glorious truths that the Scriptures we've already begun to see in little places, point to when it shows us the transformation that's happened, like at the end of, or like we saw in Ephesians 2. You once were, but now you are so beloved. Let us learn to meditate on these things that we might understand rightly the world that we're in, and not falsely point to things that aren't really true. [00:39:45] And as we think about those things, let's also learn to love more and more the grace of God, to call it amazing grace, wonderful grace, to think about what it means to abide in Christ, what it means to belong in an estate of salvation, what it means to be under not no longer a covenant of works, but a covenant of grace. [00:40:11] And let all inclinations that the things that are tempting now that sin is sweet and nice and okay, let all those ideas get out of your head, get out of your heart when you see, as we've seen this evening, the effect of sin and all that had to happen in order to save us from it, the blood of Christ shed for us. [00:40:41] Let's learn to despise sin, to hate it, to flee it, to kill it, to destroy it in our lives. Because righteousness and happiness in Christ is worth giving up everything and anything for. Let's pray. [00:41:04] Our Heavenly Father, we praise you for the grace that we have in Jesus. We thank you for the ways in which you saved even Adam and Eve, who first fell into sin, and the salvation that you have brought throughout the whole history of the world, even up to today. Where we see you at work in our own lives. We ask that you would bless us with these truths. That you would give us confidence in the work that you have done. That we might never depend on ourselves and our strength, which is corrupt and broken. But that we might depend on you and your spirit to bring true and everlasting life into our souls and into our bodies. That we might serve and glorify you forever. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.