All right, so last week we got through most of chapter four of the Westminster Confession of Faith. We did paragraph one, and then we did paragraph two, but we just didn't get to just a couple of little snippets in paragraph two. So we're just gonna finish out that today. We're gonna finish out chapter four of creation in our confession, and then next week, God willing, we'll be able to move on to Providence. Providence is chapter five. But tonight, I'm just gonna read chapter two to us one more time, and then we'll just go over the remaining parts. All right, this is chapter four, paragraph two. After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after his own image, having the law of God written in their hearts and power to fulfill it, and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change. Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God and had dominion over the creatures. So like I said, we went through most of that, but before we moved on to Providence, I just wanted to touch on primarily what it means to have the law of God written in their heart, because we didn't get to that last week and we got to most other aspects of paragraph two. The divines do remind us here though that God made man with the law written in their hearts. So even though we don't have a record of God saying to Adam things like, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not make and bow down to idols, et cetera, even though as far as we can tell, God never verbally said those things to Adam, Adam still knew that these things were God's law. He still knew that things like murder and adultery were wrong. He knew within his heart what God's unchanging moral law was. And he knew that to break this unchanging moral law would be a great sin. Sometimes, and I've heard even pastors talk about the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, like there was only one thing that Adam had to obey. He could do whatever he wanted, And he only had to obey one command, not to eat of the fruit of a particular tree, just one law. If he obeyed that one law, he could have remained in paradise forever. There would have been no curse. There would have been no death, but that's not true. If Adam had never eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for instance, but he had killed his wife and children, do you really think he still could have remained in God's sinless paradise? Do you really think there'd be no curse if Adam just killed Eve Well, of course, we all instinctively know, no, I think that would have been wrong. I don't think it would have been right for Adam to do that. He would have been kicked out, kicked out for murder, kicked out for any sin, any violation of God's eternal moral law would have resulted in Adam and Eve being ejected from the garden. All men everywhere are always bound to keep the moral law of God, which is written in their hearts. However, though we instinctively all can affirm, and rightly so, that Adam had to obey God's moral law, the question does come up, well, how do we know that he knew the law? It's interesting because us instinctively affirming this testifies to the fact that Adam knew the law, but we'll get a little deeper here. Is having to obey the law sufficient proof that Adam knew the law? It's a good question because today in our society, in our culture, you are required to obey the laws of the United States government and of the government of North Carolina. You have to obey all federal and state laws that are applicable to you, whether you know they exist or not. Doesn't matter if you know anything about these laws. And if you get caught breaking a law and you try to tell the cop or the judge, well, I didn't know what I was doing was illegal. Depending on the situation, there may be some degree of mercy, but they will also tell you very clearly that ignorance of the law is no excuse. You're still guilty. You're liable regardless of your level of knowledge. But God does not operate exactly in that way. There is some theological truth in that maxim. that ignorance of the law is no excuse. But God's justice is not a cold heartless system that's designed to trap you. He doesn't have volumes and volumes of minutiae of law that no one could ever figure out if they had five legal scholars that walked with them throughout their whole life, which is what we've got in our American legal system. It's just a absolute mess. That's why whenever anyone gets audited, they almost always get found out that, oh, they didn't pay all their taxes exactly right. Because the code is so complex that no one could figure it out. That's not how God has designed his universe. That's not how he's revealed his character. It's not the same way. We see that God holds men accountable for the sins they committed against the law that they know. We're judged regarding the sins we committed against the law we know. And God has revealed his moral law to Adam within his heart. Now, I haven't proven that by scripture yet. I've just appealed to conscience and reason here, but we are gonna get to some Bible passages in just a minute. But let's grant for a moment that God revealed to Adam at least the basics of his unchanging moral law. The next question we might ask is, okay, but does God continue to reveal that same moral law to us in that same way? Does it make sense that Adam in his uncorrupted state and with an uncorrupted mind, a heart that had not been deceived and fallen and had not chosen sin, when he still had this wonderful fellowship with God in the garden, it would make sense that God would put into Adam a law that he could understand just inside of him, in his heart. But what about after the fall of man, we might ask? Is it still like that or has it changed significantly and substantially? Well, just like the image of God remained with us, though in a dimmer and more muted way, so the law of God continues to remain with us even in our fallen state. An understanding of God's law, in fact, might even be part of the image of God. I don't know, it could be. We can't know for certain in a scientific technical type of way, what exactly all the image of God entails. In our fallen state, we just have, if God hasn't revealed it clearly in his word, sometimes we have to just. put forward what we think is reasonable and say, but I'm not certain. And I think with the image of God, part of that is the case. We don't know exactly in all its details what it means to have the image of God, but just like the image has remained with us and scripture is clear about that, so the law has remained with us even after the fall. It continues to be written on the hearts of all men today. Now, the first place I want to draw our attention to is Genesis 4. Genesis 4, this is a bit implicit in its proof that we have the law. It's not as clear as the proof text that the divines will point us to in just a little bit, but I think it's helpful for us to understand. So I want us to work through this here. God is continually writing his law in the hearts of men. Genesis 4 beginning in verse 3. In the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why is your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Now Cain talked with Abel his brother and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? He said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond, you shall be on the earth. So here we see the first murder ever. Godless, unrighteous Cain has killed godly and righteous Abel. But we also see some details that testify to the fact that even in sinful, cursed, reprobate man, man that will never trust in the Lord, and in fact will be cast in the lake of fire on the great day of judgment, even within the hearts of men like that, God has revealed his law. First, we see that Cain and Abel had a knowledge that they should worship God. They knew that they should worship God. And this is not only a knowledge that they should worship Him in some type of generic, vague sense. They knew they should worship Him in a certain way, with certain offerings, at a certain time, and with a certain heart posture. Sounds a lot like the first table of the Ten Commandments when we think about it. Commandments one through four, which are summarized in the command to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. But Cain disobeyed the internal witness of God's law. He did not worship God in an acceptable way. So God graciously reminded him of what is required. He gently rebuked and he warned Cain, don't give in to sin. Cain, of course, as we read, didn't heed God's word and instead he killed his brother. Not only did Cain kill his brother, but he also dishonored his parents by killing one of their children and bringing disgrace on the name of his father and mother. He also coveted the delight and acceptance that God had for Abel and his offering. He didn't speak righteously about Abel and so on and so forth. That sounds a lot like Cain was breaking the second table of the 10 commandments, commandments five through 10. which is summarized in the command to love your neighbor as yourself. He's just, like James says, he's breaking all of the law here and he knew it and he just chose to break it. We can see here in the way that God talks to Cain, both after he brings a displeasing offering and after he murders his brother, that God fully expects Cain should know how to obey him. Reading between the lines, it's almost as if we could see God saying, Cain, why are you doing these things? You know right from wrong. You know what you're supposed to do. Cain knew it was a sin to murder, even though there had never been a murder before. Cain, as far as the act is concerned, we could almost think that he like invented this thing called murder, but no, it had been invented long before. It was in seabed form in his heart, which he got from Adam when he committed that first sin in the garden. He also knew it was a sin to worship God falsely. He knew it was a sin to covet. He knew all these things. And so God punished Cain for violating the law that he knew he was bound to obey. Cain knew he was bound to obey it. But someone might object still and say, like I said, this is implicit, but I think it's helpful. It's right here near the creation. Clear example in real life of someone sinning in these egregious ways. But someone might object and say, well, Adam could have told Cain all about God's law. He could have taught Cain and Abel what's right and what's wrong. The law didn't have to be written on his heart for him to know about it. I'm not denying that that could have happened. That Adam could have taught Cain the commands of the Lord. But then the question would still go back to how did Adam know God's law? We have no record of God revealing his law in the way that he reveals it later to his people Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai. There's something different happening there. We have no record of God giving tablets of stone or anything like that. There's just nothing in the Genesis account. So how did Adam know God's law? And if the law of God isn't present in the heart of the unregenerate man, how, we might ask, Would Adam have retained this knowledge of God's law in his cursed state? And what would motivate such a fallen man to teach God's law faithfully to his children? I think it's implicit that Cain must have had the law written on his heart. We can see that from God's interaction with him. But if the implicit evidence of God's law being written on the hearts of all men is not enough to convince us, then the apostle Paul is here to help us out. To show where in the Bible they are getting their theology, the divine site Romans 2, 14 and 15. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves. which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness in their thoughts, the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another. So Paul is clear that even those people who do not have access to the written law of God, who do not have the law of Moses, who do not have the Bible, who are strangers to the covenant, who don't have the promises and the sacraments and things like that, even they have a law written in their hearts. And therefore their conscience bears witness to them that they are either obeying or disobeying God. The uncontacted lost man in the middle of the Amazon rainforest knows that it is wrong to murder people. He knows that. And he knows that there is a personal, powerful, eternal God that has decreed this and that deserves his worship. When Paul says there in Romans 2 that a man's conscience can excuse him, he doesn't mean that your conscience can excuse your sin away. That God's given you a conscience that says, oh, don't worry about that sin, you'll be fine. And it doesn't mean that it can excuse you in the sense that it'll make you righteous before God, before his throne, that he'll take away the punishment for your sin. That's not what Paul means. What he means is that your conscience doesn't only make you feel terrible when you do wrong things, though it certainly does that, but it also affirms you when you do right things. You feel good when you do right things. Obedience brings blessing. When you obey, when you walk in the good and pleasant path that God has laid out for you, you are blessed. Obedience is the pathway to happiness and blessing. The problem is that since we have these fallen cursed hearts, and since the image of God within us has been dimmed and distorted, And since our ability to reason and to feel and discern right from wrong has been diminished, the conscience is no longer a sufficient guide or an infallible source for moral authority. We can harden our hearts, the scripture says. We can be given over by God to evil and deceitful desires. We can sear our consciences. So we no longer have that clear witness sometimes within us saying very clearly, don't do that. We suppress that truth. That's what Romans 1 says, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Unbelievers seek to silence their conscience. They seek to shut their ears out to the truth of God. The light has shined in the world, but people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. It's so clear from the Bible that this is the case, but even in our own lives, we can testify to this. that when we're in a habit of pursuing sin, we almost try to just shut off those channels that tell us not to do something. We don't wanna hear the voice telling us, no, you shouldn't do this. Or we make excuses. We think, well, I'll pray about it. with that's scare quotes there. I'll pray about it. And you know, if I feel, if I have a peace about it, I'll go forward. First of all, you're not getting that peace from the Lord. And second of all, you don't need to pray about obeying God or not. You just obey. There's no need to pray about that. But we make up all these strange ways to kind of try to suppress that truth and unrighteousness and unbelievers do it with every aspect of their lives. We may slip into seasons of that, but an unbeliever who doesn't have that new heart, that's just their whole life is suppressing the truth. That's why you see them running to things so quickly like alcohol and drugs to kind of numb that voice within them. Shut it out. I've heard people say that. They say, I just couldn't, I couldn't get away from something inside me telling me I was doing the wrong thing. So I just kept, I kept putting things in my body to help me forget so I wouldn't hear that voice. The only infallible, inerrant, fully authoritative and perfect revelation of God and his standard of righteousness that we have with us today is the Bible. So we don't rely on the conscience alone to determine what's right and wrong. We rely first and foremost on the word of God. And then of course we do, we do still have the blessing of conscience. And in addition to conscience, we also have our brothers and sisters in the faith, both in our local communities here and in the great tradition of the church, the record that they've left for us through their thoughts. That all helps us navigate these ethical waters that we are wading through in this life. Now, another thing we might ask at this point is this though, if the law, so we've established the law of God, the Bible tells us, and I think our reason tells us, the law of God's written on everyone's heart. The next question is though, if the law is already written on all the hearts of all men everywhere, then why is the law being written on our hearts part of the promise of the new covenant in Christ's blood? Why do we need that again? Don't we all have the law written on our hearts? Why then do we want the law written on our hearts again? What's going on here? The answer is that in the new covenant, the law is written on our hearts in such a way that we are actually given new hearts. Our hearts are transformed. We're given new hearts that are righteous in Christ who has fulfilled the law for us. In the new covenant, we have hearts that can understand the law with greater clarity than those outside of God's saving grace. And in the new covenant, we have hearts that not only can understand God's law, but that also can obey God's law. Not perfectly, but truly. The law written on the heart of the unbeliever, it testifies to the righteousness of God, but it doesn't give him the righteousness of God. And it doesn't give him any ability to obey. The law can't save anyone. The law written on the heart of the unbeliever is in a way similar to the law being written on tablets of stone. The heart of someone who has not been born again is, the Bible tells us, a heart of stone. And this law on stony hearts does not come with the grace necessary to obey it. But when you have a new heart and the law of God is written on it, then you can actually do things that are pleasing to God. The unbeliever, even though his conscience can excuse him in the sense that it affirms when he's doing good things, the unbeliever cannot do anything eternally pleasing to God. They can be nice to others. We all know unbelievers that are generally nice people, but they can do nothing that is regarded as righteous before God's throne. All our righteousness, even on our best days, is just like filthy rags before the throne of God. The only thing that's righteous before God is if you've been washed in the blood of Christ. If Christ's righteousness is covering you and given to you, then you're righteous before God. If the heart of Christ within you, if your new man does obedient things, that won't even justify you before God, but it is regarded as good, true obedience, not pretend self-righteous obedience. This doesn't mean unbelievers are always as bad as they could be. We know there's a scale of unrighteousness essentially. but there will be no one in hell who has deeds of eternal righteousness to their account. All unrighteousness on their part. The law written on their hearts doesn't give them that ability to obey. And then the last thing I want us to just briefly touch on tonight is why the law being written on the hearts of all men is such a powerful apologetic for the biblical view of creation. why the law being written on our hearts is actually a great argument against the lies of evolution. If we are right, if the Christians are right about the law being written on everyone's hearts, then that means that everyone everywhere knows that adultery is wrong, for instance. But if the godless evolutionists are right, then adultery could conceivably be regarded as a virtue. Because if you never controlled your desires, then perhaps you would have more children. And if you're a strong and powerful man, then what could fit better the evolutionist cause than having more children, creating more strong and more powerful men. If the covenant of marriage was not held in honor, then perhaps there would be no odd men or odd women left out. Polygamy and fornication could be used to advance the species. The same could be said about all the 10 commandments in a sense, the same could be said about murder, of course. Weed out the weak and the disabled among our population. Kill those who have disabilities. That way they won't pass them on to the next generation. That way you're just working right in harmony with natural selection, speeding along the process of evolution just bit by bit. This is the exact argument that people have made. This is the exact argument that eugenicists make. This is what the Malthusians have made. This is what the Nazis made. They all said, well, evolution is telling us this. that the undesirable and less than fit will be weeded out. Why don't we speed that process along and weed them out ourselves and create this superhuman, powerful race? But this is the devil's logic. This is wicked, this is demonic, and it won't even produce the desired results that people want. We all know, everyone knows Heinrich Himmler, who designed the concentration camps, knew that adultery and murder were wrong. And we can see this, that every culture that's ever existed has laws against things like murder and adultery. Even cultures totally untouched by the word of God in Christian civilization. These laws might be dim reflections of the true law. They might allow polygamy, or they might allow a lot of exceptions for killing others, but there are no cultures that I've ever encountered or read where killing and marital relations are left up to a complete laissez-faire free-for-all. Everyone knows we gotta put some, something's wrong with our people here. We have to put some standards in place. And I think we all somehow just agreed that, you know, these, I don't know, 10 things might be wrong, just something like that. Regardless of what the clueless Darwinian atheists will say, we know that society can only flourish when godly laws are championed and obeyed, not when we give over to the logical ends of evolution. Evolutionary theory has no place for these unchanging and binding moral laws that call for things like self-sacrifice and self-denial and self-control. Their system's broken. But I think this is a perfect apologetic for why the Christian biblical account of creation is true, because we have this law written on our hearts that everyone at the end of the day knows is the case. So we'll stop there on creation. And I think we've covered it now for tonight. Next week, God willing, we'll move on to providence. But what questions do you have about the law being written on people's hearts or anything related to the doctrine of creation at all? Because we could have gone down other roads in this chapter that we didn't make it down for sake of time. What questions do you have? Well, no we do need a new heart. Yeah, we need to be regenerated. Yeah, so we need to be regenerated. We need to be transformed. And part of that wonderful gift of God transforming our heart from stone to flesh is that he writes the law on our heart in a way that's clear to understand and is We are also given the law with Christ's righteousness so that before the throne of God, we are regarded as obeying the law completely because we are the righteousness of Christ. And we now have the power to actually in our lives, obey the law. Whereas an unbeliever can't obey the law in any meritorious or eternal sense. He can, you know, not kill people, but before the throne of God, he's still gonna be a murderer. He will still be regarded as a murderer. when the law is actually written on our hearts, that third thing that I mentioned is we actually can not kill people. It won't be perfect, of course. If anyone says he's without sin, he's a liar and the truth of God's not in him. But we can do things that will evidence that our faith was real before the throne of God. They won't make us righteous, that we've done them in our own right, but they will vindicate that we did have that new heart and the law did truly dwell within us and come out of us. So I think it's a multifaceted approach. That might be why it was confusing. I don't think, personally, I don't think there's just one word or one sentence answer to what it means to need and have the new covenant law written on our heart. But I think it's multi-formed, the benefits and what that means is just, it's a big thing. So yeah, the unbeliever having the law, it's dim, there's no power to obey it. And then the believer having the law, it's more clear, and there is power to obey it. the fulfilled righteousness of Christ, who perfectly fulfilled the law for us, according to our account. Yes, Abby? That's right. That's right about a missionary who went to people and they had consciences. And when he preached about Jesus to them, they knew in their heart, ah, this is right. This is what we've been looking for all along. And they trusted in the Lord. So their conscience didn't save them, but it was a gift from God that gave them a category of right and wrong and helped them to recognize when the truth of God had come. Very good. Yes, Benjamin. That's right. Absolutely right. Person who doesn't trust Christ doesn't have any power to do good things, no power to do good things. He can only sin. But if we're in Christ, even though we won't ever be totally free from sin in this life, we can do things that are good through the spirit, not in our flesh, but through the spirit. Anyone else have any further questions, comments, or things about the doctrine of creation or the law of God they'd like to bring up? Well, again, I think it is implicit, so it's not explicit, and I know why you're asking, because you're thinking through the Sabbath question right now, which is good. Let me... You have this habit of asking me questions that requires me to look up the verse to make sure I don't say anything wrong. Okay. So let's see. Chapter four, verse three is where I started reading. It says, and in the process of time, that is a kind of a gloss, which is a smoothing out of something that Translators think it'll make us understand things better, and all the translators of all translations of the Bible do this with different things. That's why it is best if you can read Hebrew and Greek. Problem is, there's so very few people that can read Hebrew and Greek well enough to. benefit I certainly can't but but very clearly a wooden translation this is not a minority report or a marginal reading a wooden translation of that wouldn't say and in the process of time it would say and at the end of days and the only the only thing that I've ever read at the end of days could mean is at the end of the week End of days really could only other mean at the end of time or the end of a particular era of time. And that's clearly not what's happening here. So I think it means that on the Sabbath day, they came to worship God. Also that word Sabbath is very close to the word week in Hebrew. And so it seems like that's the operating thing that they had for marking their time by was a week. And it seems like at the end of the week, that's when they came to worship him. Even the gloss, once again, it's implicit, so I wouldn't build a whole argument on Sabbath keeping from this. But we see implicitly in the process of time, I don't think that just means as they were living life, they kind of felt like, you know what, why don't today we go worship God? There was something within them that said, okay, now's the time to worship. And this is the way we're supposed to do it. This is the external action we're supposed to have. This is the internal disposition of heart we're supposed to have. So that's why I think that that is reflected there. Once again, that is. That's not, you can't make a case from Sabbath keeping just from that verse. But in my mind, it's kind of like infant baptism. There's no single verse that you can make a case from infant baptism for, but you can string together a bunch of things. And I think that could be one of those things that could strengthen an argument for God ordaining certain times where he has revealed to us he wants to be worshiped. Does that make sense? All right, well, if there's no more questions, we will go into prayer requests.