Dr. M.J. du Plessis Gereformeerde Kerk Bellville Datum: 30 Maart 2003 (oggenddiens).

REFORMED CHURCH, BELLVILLE: SUNDAY 21 APRIL 2002: EVENING SERVICE

Our help is in the Name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
Beloved, grace and peace be to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit.
AMEN.

Psalm of praise: 146:1,4,6.

Prayer

Psalm 19:4

Scripture reading: Psalm 51

Text: Catechism Sunday 3 ; Psalm 51:10 (in some versions, verse 12)

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

What is the source of the stream of miseries that nowadays flood over all of mankind?

You could answer this question in various ways.

Firstly, you could pretend that this is a matter of dogma, and reply with facts as if it were a matter touching mankind in general. Something like this, for instance: "If someone makes mistakes, he must simply pay for it."
Or you may argue that it is a question which one can only answer on the basis of faith and from the Word of God.

Something we often hear today is: "The state of affairs in our land is due to the punishment of the Lord for the sins of the people living here."
Then each will think that it is due to the sins of some other group, and thereby distance themselves from the essence of the matter.

The third possibility is that we realize that this matter is a very personal one, because it does not concern what happened to Adam or anyone else - it concerns me, myself. Then we will go to the Bible and see where we ourselves have come from and what is happening to us in this wholly sinful dispensation and its ruinous consequences.

Let us consider the following three matters:

1.    The creation of man
2.    The fall of man
3.    My spiritual regeneration (or rebirth)

1.    The creation of man

The first question to occur to you may well be that you wonder whether there is perhaps not some inherent fault or weakness which could have led to sin and everything which proceeded from that. Did the Lord not perhaps include a built-in weakness in man when He created us?

To this the Bible replies: No. Man was created perfect, and with an exalted degree of dignity and worth, because he was created after the image of God Himself.
Man's first contact was also not with the devil or any other evil power.

Man was in direct communion with God Himself.
We forget that the Lord was, in the beginning, the only One whom man could talk with.

Man was also not simply "there", like the animals, when the Lord gave the command, to carry on with his life from that point on.

The Lord made him with a kingly image. He had to represent the kingly dominion of God over the created world.
It is written in Genesis 1:28 that the Lord blessed man, and then commanded him to subdue the earth and everything on it and then to rule over it. He was to act as God's steward over the created world.

It is, furthermore, clear from the passage that the Lord placed all creation at man's disposal so that man could serve the Lord to the full extent of his capabilities. That is why the work Adam did was at first without any hardship and also a source of pleasure to him.

It also appears from the revelation of the Lord that man is the only created being on the earth bearing His image. This is just to underline yet further that man was created as an exalted being and very well made, because he was created to live literally from, through and for God (cf. i.a. Rom.11:36). A being such as this does not have any innate characteristic predisposing him to fall into sin and then to attempt to justify himself by claiming that there was a weakness in his make-up that caused this.

2. The fall of man

Our two ancestors shortly afterwards let themselves be deceived by the devil.

That was a terrible misdeed which had a very great consequence for all of us who were born subsequently.
We were at once plunged into perdition and became enemies of God. We cut our ties with God.

It may sound strange to you now for me to say that we were separated from God, but where else are you when God has cursed the earth because of you and has driven you out of your comfortable dwelling place with Him?

What happened to annoy God so deeply with mankind?

The two people disobeyed and defied God.
That is probably putting it rather mildly, because today we would use a different term to describe that kind of action: They were in revolt against God.

All sins and miseries which appear later in our history proceed from this one radical sin.

From this unfaithfulness was born complete degeneracy.
Nor did it take many years for the consequences of this revolution to become obvious, for the two people were immediately very deeply unhappy.
They also suffered directly from feelings of guilt, and each tried to place the burden of guilt upon the other - while both were fully guilty.

This fall into sin was binding upon every person born subsequently, and that is why we are today in such a wretched state.

The situation has become so dire that sin is inherited from one generation to the next.
For that reason the Lord punishes the iniquities of those who hate Him up to the third and fourth generation.
That was fortunately not the last word said about the matter, because the Lord immediately after this affirmed His lovingkindness towards those who love Him, not only for three or four generations, but for a thousand.

This does not, however, remove the enormous consequences of the Fall - not only in respect of mankind, but in respect of the entire creation.

Now that the earth was accursed, the Flood came.
In our own time the writing is very clearly on the wall:

cyclones, droughts, deserts spreading relentlessly, the poisoning of nature, pollution which is threatening systematically to destroy the whole world...
Then there are things such as AIDS and other diseases born of sin and disseminated largely through further sin.
And add to this all the warfare and hatred and political scandals and debacles.

Who could ever calculate the eventual depth and breadth of the extent of all these terrible things? That is the source of all the miseries suffered by mankind and the world.

3. My spiritual regeneration (or rebirth)

By Adam's rebellion I have become separated from God, in the sense that the Lord no longer comes Himself in the cool of the evening to talk with me. Furthermore, I can no longer do good works as man was able to do before the Fall. Now I must experience illness and die - which did not happen before the Fall.

We read in Psalm 51:5 (verse 7 in some versions) that we are conceived and born in sin. In one translation it is formulated as follows:

I was already guilty when I was born, laden with sin when my mother became pregnant. (New Afr. Bible, 1983).

Now we are incapable in ourselves of achieving anything good.

We enjoy sinning, and there are many occasions when we derive much pleasure from freely indulging in sin.
Our spiritual competence and even our physical abilities are frequently very confused when it comes to judging between right and wrong from the Lord's perspective.

But the Lord nevertheless holds us in His hand. He did not even chase Adam and Eve away from Him. True, He did punish them and banish them from Paradise, but that was only to demonstrate His Fatherly wrath at what His disobedient children had done.

Because the Lord immediately went back to Eve and promised her that a Redeemer would be born of her descendants.
The very same Satan, who had exulted in having alienated mankind from God and from each other, would in time to come be defeated and destroyed by a Man.
This Person, God told Eve, would be born of her.

Although the Lord punished us severely, and although He cursed the earth because of us, we will not all be lost eternally.

That is why spiritual regeneration (or rebirth) is necessary.
Regeneration begins withh our believing in the Redeemer Who has atoned for our sins before God.
This process we usually refer to as repentance and subsequent conversion.

But then a number of other things happen to us and also in us. The Redeemer and God the Father poured out on earth the Holy Spirit after His ascension, so that the Holy Spirit could accomplish man's regeneration.

He enables us to understand and believe that we have been re-created in Christ to be as the Lord wants us to be.
That means that He renews us inwardly to be as Adam and Eve were before their rebellion.

Stated in other words: We must flee from sin, because it is possible for us to do so in Christ. But then we must also demonstrate in our lives a true and sincere repentance of the wrongful things we have done, whereby we have sinned against God.

The point of grace is this: Viewed from our side, we have rebelled against God. But viewed from His side, He still loves us.

He Himself redeemed us in Jesus Christ.
He requires of us only faith.
And, naturally, with faith also repentance and conversion.

Let us now see what our confession says of these matters in Catechism Sunday 3:

LORD'S DAY III

6.       question. Did God, then, create man so wicked and perverse?

          answer.    By no means; but God created man good¹, and after His own image², that is, in true righteousness and holiness, that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love Him, and live with Him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify Him³.

      1. Gen. 1:31            2. Gen. 1:26,27    3. Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; 2 Cor. 3:18

7.       question. Whence, then, comes this depraved nature of man?

          answer.    From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise¹, whereby our nature became so corrupt that we all are conceived and born in sin².

      1. Gen. 3; Rom. 5:12,18,19               2. Ps. 51:5; Gen. 5:3

8.       question. But are we so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good, and inclined to all evil?

          answer.    Yes, indeed¹; unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God².

      1. Gen. 8:21; 6:5; Job 14:4; 15:14,16,35; John 3:6; Isa. 53:6
      2. John 3:3,5; 1 Cor. 12:3; 2 Cor. 3:5.

AMEN.

Closing prayer.

Closing Psalm 138:1

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

AMEN.

Rev. Dr. M.J. du Plessis
Reformed Church, Bellville.
21 April 2002
Scripture quoted from NASB.