Chapter 4 of Creation. I'll be trying to stick to the notes. I do want to finish in one Sunday school message. There's only three paragraphs. But the Baptist Catechism question is, how does God execute his decrees? Answer, God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence. So if you're wondering why we move from God's decree to God's creation, it's because there's a logical sort of outflowing, that God decrees certain things. He decrees redemption, but redemption requires a context. And so he creates all things according to his decree, and out of this he's going to now begin to work in creation and providence, how he's going to bring about his decrees. It requires heavens and an earth and people and all the things that happen. And so if you're wondering, why didn't we move to election or why didn't we move to some other topic? That's my stab at why we move from God's decree to God's creation. Okay, and so Renahan says, and there's going to be application to this, of course, The presence of this chapter immediately after one on God's decree speaks of the fundamental importance of the doctrine of creation. It is the first means by which God brings his eternal plan to realization in time and space. Okay, and so we're going to see creation is actually very important. We are physical beings. Christ came to redeem us, not only forgive us our sins, but we see there's a real physical component to our redemption. We're longing, not like the Gnostics or the Epicureans, just to be rid of this body, but it says in 2 Corinthians 5, we're longing to put on different clothing. And if you read 2 Corinthians 5, it talks about this hope of the new creation. And Jesus, he didn't just sort of rise spiritually, like the liberals say. His resurrection is in your heart. No, he physically rose from the dead. And we're longing, says 2 Peter, for a new heavens and a new earth wherein righteousness dwells. Romans 8 says we're groaning. Actually, it says all of creation is groaning. It's waiting. for the fullness of the adoption of the sons of God, for that glorious return of Christ and everything restored. to the way it once was. And actually, I would argue, not only to the way it once was, but actually to a better state. We're not just going back to the first garden. Actually, when you see in the new heavens and new earth, that itself is an entire garden of Eden. It's a new mountain, a new temple, a new city, a new everything. And so, your heart is longing for that. And so, let us not downplay the significance of creation. That's why when we participate in the Lord's table, there's bread and wine. Jesus wasn't a spirit, like some heretics say. No, he actually came in flesh and blood, it says in Hebrews 2. So I know all those aren't in the notes, but there's a lot of scripture that talks about the beauty of God's creation, but also the purpose. Okay, redemption is a picture of new creation. Okay, and so creation is very, very important. So I have in the notes, having a right understanding of the biblical doctrine is no small matter. As Earl Blackburn reminds us, I'm not gonna read the quote, but he goes on to say, right, if your children are going to university, if you're trying to witness to so many people, they just really don't care where they came from or where they're going or what is the meaning of life, or at least they give that front. And when I was in university, even as an unbeliever, the doctrine of evolution, it was basically just assumed to be truth. And when I was converted, most of the conversations I had sharing the gospel with people were with a lot of atheists, and they were sort of incredulous that I could believe that God created all things, right? We're going to get into a fancy word, ex nihilo, right? He spoke all things. out of nothing. It says in Hebrews 11, by faith we understand that the things that are came from things that aren't. We can see in Romans 4 that the God who spoke into existence, whether it's Isaac or whether it's the first creation, that's a miracle. And we should be grounded in this beautiful doctrine, because actually, we know what Romans 1 says, we know that everyone knows there's a God. And when you get people sort of alone, and they're not trying to show off in front of their friends, they have achings and yearnings, and, I don't want to be cheesy, but a God-sized hole in their heart. They know that they're not evolved monkeys, they know that. We know what Romans 1 says, and we can talk about the beauty of creation, and we can talk about where all things are going, that we're not sort of in this cul-de-sac of futility, right? Like in Hinduism, there's, well, hopefully I'll come back a little better, and there's just sort of this meaning, vanity of vanities, as, you know, the Koheleth and everything just returns. No, there's a beginning and there's an end. And God is working out his eternal wise counsel with a beginning with an end. And so you can actually use this not only to encourage yourself and to live rightly, but also in your evangelism. Paragraph one. Let me just read it. The doctrine of creation. Paragraph one. In the beginning, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit was pleased to create or make the world and all things in it both visible and invisible in a six-day period and all very good. He did this to manifest the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness." That is a packed statement. And so I just love If you're reading the Westminster or the Savoy, the in the beginning is sort of the second part of the sentence. So the Baptists actually moved in the beginning to the very front. And I think they're just trying to say, yeah, we want to show everyone, we too are trying to be biblical. Bible trivia, does anyone know how the Bible starts? in the beginning God, in the beginning God created. And so the confession just says, yeah, we're just believing what the Bible says. Now, it says if Rod was here, he's loving life in the Philippines right now. I'm pretty sure it's a little bit warmer. Just probably take the minus where we are and put a plus, and that's probably what they're experiencing right now. Anyways. He would say Elohim, right, in the beginning, right, that's Hebrew, Barashit, and then Barah Elohim, right, God created. But it doesn't say God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit created. But this is where we're working through now chapter two. Who is God? Well, we know as we work from Genesis to Revelation that the true and the living God is the Trinity. He's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And so we're not sort of, okay, we move past chapter two. No, when we use the word God, We understand who God is. He's three persons, one being, one essence, three subsistences. And so you're going to see throughout the scripture that creation is attributed to God. But we know that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so there's lots of scriptures there. But go to Hebrews 1. I'm just picking that one. Yeah, we'll go to Hebrews 1 and then John 1. Because we're gonna say like, wait, wait, wait, is salvation God the Father, or God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit? Who raises Jesus from the dead? The Bible says the Father does, the Spirit does in Romans 1. Jesus in John 10 says, who raised it? And that's why you need to know that God is triune. Who creates? Does the Spirit create? He hovers over all things. He gives breath, it says in Psalm 105. Or does the Son create? John 1 says, that's what the Father created. God created, and God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are wonderful, so I love Hebrews chapter one. And it reminds us of the deity and supremacy of Christ. Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers in prophets. That's how you translate. In these last days, he has spoken to us in son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. So you see here now, God the father created through God the son, right? Do you see those prepositions? Whom he appointed the heir of all things, comma, through. through whom he also created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and we're going to see in chapter 5 in Providence, Christ is upholding the universe by his powerful word, or the word of his power. Okay, and then it talks about his redemption. Or go back to John chapter 1. Very important, you guys have probably heard this a thousand times, but that's okay. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God, or with God, and the Word was God. He was, in the beginning, with God. All things were made through him. All things. This is a good verse to use with Jehovah's Witnesses. Did Jesus create himself? Oh, no, no, no. So what does all mean? Right, if Jesus was created, how are All things made through him. It's very illogical. You can take him to scripture, but they'll say, no, Jesus is the first of God's creation. And then after that, God created all things through him. That's just not what the text says. Not Hebrews 1, not John 1. It doesn't say, Jesus was created, and then after that, all things were made through him. No, all things were made through him. Meaning what? Well, meaning what John said in the very previous verse. Jesus is God. Anyways. All things were made through him. Hey, that's exactly what Hebrews says. And without him was not anything made that was made. Okay, and so we see here this picture in the beginning. We have this triune God, and there is a speaking, right? God said. That's important, because in John 1, Jesus called the word. He's the logos, and so we see somehow that creation comes about by God speaking. But then there's a spirit who's also hovering and you start to see the in-workings of the triunity of God, even in creation, right? Our conversion is a picture of creation. Yes, brother. When we were talking there, I was just thinking about what Jesus said to his disciples. John 10 verse 18. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. Because Jesus is God. Yes, right, and that's the thing, it's like Jesus, right, and Jesus isn't having kind of, you know, a moment where he's forgetting. Oh no, no, whoops, whoops, I shouldn't have said that. It's God who's gonna raise me. And yet Paul says, right, Jesus is raised by the spirit of holiness in Romans 1. So that's the beauty of it. Who created? Was it the Father, the Son, the Spirit? God created, right? And as we saw in chapter two, you know, there's sort of, Yeah, they call them divine properties, I'm not gonna get into that, but there's things often that we need to sort of distinguish in the Trinity. The Father didn't die on the cross, okay, neither did the Holy Spirit. Jesus, right, God the Son, who incarnated, he died on the cross, and yet we can still attribute redemption to all persons of the Trinity. And so we would say that likely here, what I'm getting at is the Father speaking through the Word, By the Spirit. And this is complex, I get it. But this is actually how you are born again. This is 2 Corinthians 4 language, 4-6. And God who said, or God who spoke, let there be light, he has shone into our hearts. And so this is what happened, right Gary, when you were converted? God spoke, right, and the word came from God. Oh, that sounds like John 1. And the spirit takes that word and he brings about life. He breathes into you life. Paul's taking the language of creation, Genesis 1, and he's applying it to redemption, 2 Corinthians 4. So it's wonderful. So creation is important. The physical creation, but also the spiritual creation, and it's the triune God. who is the author of it, okay? So it says here, he was pleased to create. So I'm not gonna go through my notes meticulously, but he wasn't obligated to. And I put in the notes a very good book, I know we went through it years ago, by Michael Reeves called Delighting in the Trinity, and he was sort of comparing the true and the living God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, versus Allah, the fake demon God of the Muslims. And Allah is alone, and he's solitary. He needs some companions. He's also a dictator. I'm so glad I can say this in Canada and not have my head cut off. If you say this outside, you'd be dead for quote unquote blasphemy. But Allah is a false god. He's lonely, he needs us. He's like Jerry Maguire. That's how old I am, I know that movie. And Allah is saying to us, I need you, with tears coming down his face. He needs to be worshiped. Why did God create you, Theo? He was pleased to. Why did He save me? He was pleased to. Why does God do anything? Well, we saw that in chapter 2. Out of the good pleasure of His will, Ephesians 1. And so, right, God isn't like, well, you know, I need to sort of tank up on my worship and feeling a little bit low. No, He doesn't need to do anything. He's God. And yet because he's good, as we read in Delighting in the Trinity, out of his love, God is love, right? And Edwards says that love always flows, right? And it's like a full cup, it overflows and spills out in creation. That's what happens. God is so contented in himself. And the overflow of that joy and blessedness within the triunity of God brings about creation. Isn't that wonderful? What a picture that is. Or if you know C.S. Lewis, it's on the notes, he likened creation to a dance. Or if you've read the Chronicles of Narnia. Has anyone read the first one, the magician and his nephew? And they go back. They're transported to, as it were, the beginning. Do you remember what happens? It's a song. Isn't that wonderful? Again, he's not being literal, but it's just a beautiful picture. It's so much more pretty than this just naked, ugly, it's false, but evolution. Billions of years and cold and molecules somehow appearing and the goo that we came out of and then sort of coming out of Neanderthal. No, this is beautiful because God is beautiful, okay? He was pleased to create, and that Hebrew word bara means to create out of nothing. He made the world and all things in it both visible and invisible. Does anyone know where that comes from? That's from Colossians chapter 1. We went through it a couple years ago. And again, there's Jesus as the mediator. of creation, and he created Lucifer. He created all things, even in the invisible. And, goes the argument of Colossians 1, he's ruler over all things. He's creator of all things, ruler of all things. Triune God, right? And he didn't make a mistake because of the decree. He knew what he was doing when he created angels who he knew would fall, and they would then oppose, and then they would actually bring about the crucifixion through sinful men to the glory of Christ and his redemption, but Jesus He's the mediator, and through him God created all things, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, both visible, invisible, in a six-day period, and all very good. Remember that. That's going to get into the application. But everything was not like, meh. No, it's very good. And that goes again to God's character. He's perfect in wisdom. He's perfect in beauty. This is a display, says Romans 1, of him. And the heavens are to declare, says Psalm 19, tell forth, the Hebrew says, sefer, his glory, okay? So Waldron helpfully, he probably should have been an engineer. I can always just see an engineer mind working. But he just says, you know, here's a five-point sort of unpacking of the paragraph. When creation? In the beginning. The author of creation? The Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The purpose of creation? For the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness. I like that. The extent of the creation of the world and all things therein, whether visible, invisible, the duration? Six days, okay? And so God creates not only space, he creates time as well. Right? In the beginning, I've actually quoted this, Christina got me onto this fellow, his name's Michael Card, and he has a song, In the Beginning Was the Beginning. So what was God doing before the beginning? Being God. What? Isn't that boring? You don't know God then. Right? We need time, we need space, and this is again where we have to just humble ourselves and realize God is not like us. Like, what? No time? Like, is that boring? Like, what's he doing? delighting in himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just like when we're brought into the age to come fully, we're not gonna be like, oh man, like, oh, gotta get home. No, we'll experience more of that eternality and we'll be like, oh, this is why it doesn't really matter what time it is. Anyways, let's go to chapter two. Because I do want to get to paragraph two. I do want to get into application. There's lots of notes. I literally skipped over five pages of notes. But I give those to you to show you that this is biblically warranted. Everything they said, right? Hopefully you can hear a lot of scripture. For those of us, you know, who, oh yeah, that smells like John 1, and that's for sure Colossians 1, and oh, that's Ephesians 1, to the praise of the glory of his grace. This is not just some pope telling, write this down, this is what I think. This is how we understand scripture. This is what scripture teaches and this is how we ought to believe and how we ought to live in light of that. So, paragraph two. We move from the creation of all things to specifically the creation of man. After God made all the other creatures, he created humanity. He made them male and female with rational and immortal souls, thereby making them suited to that life lived unto God for which they're created. That might be my favorite sentence in all three paragraphs. There's such a purpose. God created us not only physically, but he gave us rational minds and souls. He's given us the building blocks that we might live with him forever and worship him. That's my paraphrase of that line. Thereby making them suited. Isn't that wonderful? He made us suitable for worship. We can worship him this morning, Because that's how he's created us. That's what John says to the Samaritan in John 4. Did I say John? Jesus says it to the Samaritan in John 4. The Father's looking for worshipers. But he's made us able to worship. Now, unfortunately, because of sin, that worship's been distorted, right? It's been depraved, broken. But it hasn't been eradicated, right? That's the image of God. That He's given us, He's stamped us with His image, and we're able to worship Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And again, sin is in the way, but your heart is groaning for the day when sin is totally done away with. And you have a new resurrection body that is incorruptible, 1 Corinthians 15. This perishable, I love it, it must, not should, it must put on imperishability. It's wonderful. No more perishing. It's the same Greek word in Ephesians 6, that all who love the Lord with imperishability, and sin can still, as it were, get in the way, but your heart's longing for when Jesus returns and we're given those new bodies and we can love him with imperishability. Not like, ah, I love you, and then somehow be attracted to something, you know, in an idolatrous, or some kind of sin that thwarts. And that's why it's my favorite, because it makes me long for heaven, the new heavens and the new earth. That yes, we can worship God yet, like truly, but right now not perfectly. But he's made us suitable, and he's prepared for us a body. Right, it's not gonna be like, oh, you're gonna be like eight foot 10 and you're gonna have like wings. No, it'll probably be just like the way we are now, but without sin. And the minds he's given us, right, and the ability to read, all those things will finally be freed from sin. So I love that, he created humanity and he made them male and female. We're both image bearers. Okay? And God has made us suited to that life lived unto God, right? God gave Adam and Eve in the garden everything they needed. They were suited to worship Him. They were made in the image of God, being endowed with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. Again, your minds should be screaming, that smells like Ephesians 4.24 and Colossians 3.10. Because it is. They had the law of God written in their hearts. That's Romans 1. Romans 2. and the power to fulfill it, they could have. They could have lived with God. That gives us great hope. It's not a pie-in-the-sky kind of pipe dream, okay? They had the power to fulfill it. Even so, they could still transgress the law because they were left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change, okay? Let's unpack that. So, Renehan asks, why was man the crowning glory of creation? Now, this is practical. Because you can meet so... We'll see if we can finish. You can meet so many people who are going to be angry at you. I was talking with someone yesterday. We went to Fort McLeod for the parade, and it was your sister Sonia's birthday yesterday, Nathan, so I hope you remembered to wish her happy birthday. And so they have seven kids, and then Hetty has eight kids, and Greg has six kids. And I said, well, it is nice, six, seven, eight, but I said, what you guys need to do is seven, eight, nine. But where am I going with this? If God enables us to, Having children is a good thing. It's a wonderful thing. But the world is going to kind of look down their nose at you. And that's because they've made creation almost into a god. And we need to say, no, this is good. Mountains aren't the image of God or deer. I thought that would wake Justice up. He's like, I already got my quota. Say that next fall, and then I'll get excited. But all these things, and think about it. The world gets angry, but we need to say, when we're making decisions, when I'm making decisions, money decisions, remember who's made in the image of God. People are, right? Animals are great. Things of this world are not necessarily wrong. But this is practical. We have a high view, not only of creation, but of the image of God. And man, and when I say man, Adam, I'm talking about male and female. I'm not just saying males. I'm saying humanity. And they're the crowning glory. It's a wonderful picture. We saw it actually in Psalm 103. God crowns Adam in Psalm 103 with steadfast love and justice. Because God intended in a special way to reflect his greatest glory in humanity. So the heavens are declaring the glory of God. Psalm 19, I get it. But humanity in a special way. The very purpose for their reasonable and immortal souls was to make them suitable for a life of bringing glory to God. And then so I put it in, right away my mind goes to the Westminster, short of catechism, and it's good to ask your kids this, but it's good to ask yourself this. Matt's not here, but I just imagine him waking up in the morning, pumping himself up on Monday to go to work. What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Okay? And that's wonderful. That's why we're here, and that's why God made us in His image. With regards to the image of God, the confession draws heavily from Paul's words in Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3, where it says that Actually, go there. I remember Rod taught this months and months and months ago, and some of us may have forgotten this. This is actually something John Owen, it's like one of his specialties, actually. He loves this sort of, this idea of, this aspect of redemption. Because when we understand how God created us, we're gonna understand our sanctification. This is so incredibly practical. Right, so Joseph, as God is sanctifying you, what does your sanctification look like? You looking more like Jesus, who is the true man. Let me show you this. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk. in the futility of their minds. This is verse 17. So their minds have been broken by sin. This goes back to Genesis chapter 3. God made us suitable, rational, but sin is irrational. Sin is insanity, just so you know that. Sin has just so corrupted. Until Jesus returns, no human being is perfectly rational. Think of when you sin. I was going to say, think of when someone else sins. When you sin, that's insanity in light of the truth of who God is and the devastation it brings to you and your loved ones. And so Paul is talking to these Christians, a majority of which are Gentile converts, right, they're in Christ, but he says, don't walk the way you used to, in the futility of your mind. They have been darkened, it's a perfect tense, in their understanding, having been alienated from the life of God. So they were made suitable, but sin has alienated. That's what death is, alienation, separation, because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. And so our sanctification actually is a transformation of the inward man. The heart, Paul prayed for in Ephesians 3, by the way. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality. This is insanity. greedy to practice every kind of impurity, but that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that, or if indeed literally, you have heard about him, or literally you have heard him, about's not in the Greek, and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus here, is to put off your old man. I don't like how the ESV says self. Naughty, naughty. This is Adam language. God created Adam upright. He created Adam with knowledge and righteousness and holiness. But sin has begun to corrupt those things. And so Paul says, put that old Adam off and put on the new Adam. Not the new self. Put on the new Adam. So what does Ryan's sanctification look like? Putting off the old Adam. Putting off the old Ryan. my greed, my frustration, my lack of patience, all those things gone and put on Christ. So this old man belongs to your former manner of life and is being corrupted through deceitful desires. God created us with desires, but sin deceives. And here it is, verse 23, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new man created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Colossians 3 says basically the same thing. So this is what your sanctification looks like. So if you have a wrong view of creation, you'll probably have a wrong view of sanctification. So I think it's important that we're looking at it in chapter 4. of the paragraph, okay? So, that God created us this way, with rational mortal souls, and we have the ability to worship God. However, sin has broken that, which is why Christ came into the world, it says in 1 John, to deal with sin. the Greek word, luo, to loose us. It's like this bondage. He came to break that and loose us from sin because it keeps us from worshiping God and living the way we should with rationality. The most rational thing in all the world is what? To believe there's a triune God who created us and is worthy of worship. The most rational thing to do on the Lord's day is to worship God. The most irrational thing is to live for yourself. And that's the battle, because sin, which is why we have to keep renewing our minds, remembering the gospel, the gospel's the most rational message in the world, and we need to remind ourselves of it, okay? And so we have knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, but sin has corrupted it. And so what do we need to do? That's being purified by God the Holy Spirit, or the spirit of holiness, okay? And that's what your sanctification looks like. Right? You could translate that knowledge and righteousness of the truth. That's the Greek. And so Eli, Levi, sorry. If you're reading your NET, it would say righteousness and holiness which comes from the truth. So I think there is true righteousness and holiness in the garden. But how is that restored? Sanctify them. What does John say? Jesus saying, John, sanctify them by thy, by your truth. Word is truth. And Paul is saying, you learned Jesus, now remember Him. And I think that's how we're sanctified. We're created by God's Word, sustained by God's Word, sanctified by God's Word. Wonderful, isn't it? It says they had the law of God written on their hearts, and we've seen this in Romans. This is great for evangelism. We're going to see it this morning. The law written on the heart is good, but when a law outside comes, it actually is even better because now they can't suppress it. It reveals. So know that everyone has God's law written on their hearts, which is why all people live with guilt, which is why there's religion anywhere you go in the world. Right, who was I, oh, I listened to a MacArthur sermon last night on the passage about to preach, and he was talking about, you know, in India, when they go to the Ganges, probably the dirtiest river in all the world, right? I remember watching dispatches from the front, and these poor, deceived Hindus, they go, and they're filling up these dirty containers, and not only are they pouring this water over them, you know what they're doing with it? They're drinking it. Why? Because they're trying to wash away their sin. Well, why would they do that? Because they have guilt. Why? Because they have the law of God written on their heart. So yes, we can pity them, but we should also go and preach to them, because they need the gospel. Cleansing is available, but it's not by works. It's not by law. It's not by things like circumcision. It's by faith in the gospel. Anyways, that's Romans. Okay, and so we, right, so, Go back, you know, to the confession. I know we're quickly flying through this, but when you're like, what does it say about creation? I forgot all that Ryan said. That's okay. That's why you can either go on your phone or we bought, you know, physical copies. This is very succinct. So before I quickly read paragraph three and then close, Dave is here, Dave Unruh, and he was saying, oh, you know, he's doing this and this, and he's like, do you have any good books on faith? And the old Ryan, right, I started, like, oh, this book, this book, this book, this book, this book. And then I was going to text him, like, just go and read The Confession. But before I could do that, he said, oh, I went to The Confession, and actually, it was a pretty good starting point. And I don't need to read this systematic book, and then that systematic book, and I've got this book on faith, I got that book on faith. Now, those are good, but in a pinch, It's helpful. I find myself just saying, well, what does the confession say? Again, it's not infallible, right? Chapter one, scripture's our authority. But insofar, right, as this matches scripture, this is actually pretty succinct, right? You can read Grudem, or you can read Frame, or Tiretan, and all those guys, but that takes hours. Trust me. Look at my footnotes. It takes hours. And all those hours of study is basically saying, this is a really, really succinct, sort of overview of what the doctrine of creation says, okay? So, they had the power to fulfill it, they could have, they could have lived righteously. However, they could transgress the law, and unfortunately, they did, okay? And so I have a quote in there by Augustine with a whole bunch of Latin, and what we're longing for, because I know when I was a new Christian, I asked the question often to myself, Well, what if we sin in heaven? Is that just me? Am I weird? Has anyone ever thought about that? Like, what if it's just like Adam and Eve? What if we sin in heaven? You're like, no, Ryan, that is a really dumb question. Well, the thing is, we can't sin in heaven. And this is according to God's decree, right? And so there's all the, Augustine said, right, in the beginning, man, right, so Adam and Eve, they had the ability to sin and the ability not to sin. Okay, it's that word picator in there. Okay, and then after sin, our nature is changed. And so now we cannot not sin. Right? We know that everyone sins. We cannot not sin. However, when we become Christians, now we can live righteously as well as sin. And then in the new heavens and the new earth, we cannot sin. That's wonderful. will have sinless bodies, incapable. It's not like it'll be like the garden 2.0 and we'll be thrust out. Anyways, that's in a footnote. Let me just read paragraph three and I think we'll close. It's a short one. This has helped me understand, I have a link here to one of Renahan's sermons on the law, and I think it's the strongest argument against infant baptism, actually. Because the argument of infant baptism is this. Baptism replaces circumcision. And what Renahan is saying here is that there's two kinds of law. There's the natural law, which is written on all humanity's heart. But then positive law is laws that are in addition to that law. And those can change. So he would say natural law doesn't change. Murder's always murder, adultery's always adultery, honoring parents is always, right, that's the natural law of Romans two written on Adam and Eve's heart, and it's still written on every human's heart. So you can go to a pagan, you know, in the Aborigines, you know, the New Hebrides, you know, who was that guy, who was this Scottish, John? Patton, thank you, thank you, Nathan. Right, and he could go there, and he could preach the gospel to them, and he could say, no, what you're doing is wrong. Why? Because natural law's on their hearts. However, when you're reading through the Old Testament, there's different kinds of additional commandments that are concurrent with the covenant. And so if God never said to Adam, don't eat that, don't eat that, he could have eaten it. Eating fruit is not inherently bad. There's no moral law, thou shalt not eat. I can eat fruit now. It's not bad to eat fruit from trees. But what Renahan is saying, the confession picks up on, is that God has the prerogative, or the right, to give commandments in addition to the natural law. And so he would say, this is why, he wouldn't say, but I'm saying he would say, why God almost killed Moses for not circumcising his two children. Why? Because God commanded Abraham to circumcise all of his children. That's not optional. That's a command. And it's just as wicked to break these positive laws as it is to break the moral law. He also said this, don't eat shellfish, or don't glean, or don't glean, but all those commands that you read about. But what Renahan is saying is that those positive laws are tied up with covenants, which is why we don't have to baptize our children, because that's not a positive law. That's why we're free to eat. Peter! Kill man! Eat! And Peter's thinking, no, you commanded that. And what Renehan's saying is these positive laws are tied up in the Mosaic Covenant. But God, having fulfilled that covenant according to Hebrews, He fulfilled them. And we have a new covenant, and there's additional now, new covenant positive laws. like baptize, go into all the world, it's a command of Jesus, not a suggestion, and make disciples. That's a positive law. If I don't make disciples, if we don't baptize, that's sin. I'm not trying to be extra guilt-inducing and stuff. And so you can read the Old Testament and you're like, well, why don't we do what they did? Because those positive laws have been added to the moral law for the people under the Mosaic Covenant, okay? And under the new covenant, there's new laws, right? The law of Christ, there's these positive laws, and that's what he's getting at. And so he would say the 10 commandments, all 10 of them, would be that natural law. But then God has the right to add. So don't eat of the tree, that is a positive law. But it was for Adam only, right? There's no tree of life for us to eat of, and that was for him and he failed. Okay, and so the moral law we break, and he's saying that God can give us positive laws. I got lots of notes. You can read John Owen on it. If you have questions, talk to me. And if we want, we'll start next week with questions. But I think that's good, right? There's the natural law and positive law, and we're law breakers, and we need a Redeemer. Father, we thank you for your kindness to us. We're so thankful. Though created in your image and we fell in and without him, we thank you that you sent us a second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was in his humanity suited to worship you, suited to obey you. He really did obey you. He really did earn righteousness. He really did earn eternal life. because he had the capability of doing that, even as a human. And we're thankful, Lord, that as a human, the God-man earned for us righteousness. And we thank you for grace, that if we believe the gospel, that righteousness is imputed to our count, that we are now qualified for a new heavens and a new earth wherein righteousness dwells. Father, I pray we didn't get into application, but Lord, I pray that we would be good stewards of your creation, we wouldn't abuse it. I pray that, Lord, we'd see each other, we'd see our wives, our husbands, our kids, our neighbors, as image bearers, and Father, we would treat them accordingly. But Lord, we now worship you, albeit imperfectly, longing for the day when we'll worship you truly and perfectly in spirit. and in truth. Help us, though, by your grace to do so even this Lord's Day we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.