Confession Of Faith

Well, good evening. Oh no, we have to do better than that. Good evening. Oh right, it is good to be here. I uh just finished a trip or left here and ended up in Atlanta and preaching that for a couple of days, and then in Houston for a couple more days, and Detroit for a couple of days. Back to Houston. Then the Charlotte finished in Charlotte, flew to London, left on a Monday, got there Tuesday, preached one place Tuesday night, one place, Wednesday night, the conference Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning, Sunday night. Left on Monday, got here on Tuesday, and the movers arrived yesterday. Yes. So we talked about this a long time before this sudden move came up, and I had already had this sort of on the dam, was thinking about it, and when Bridget saw it, to be honest, with all the things that were happening, I'd kind of put it away in the back of my mind. And she said, why would you schedule this during this time? I said I didn't. I scheduled it and then this time. So pray for us, But this is actually a very nice break in the middle of having boxes all over the house and shifting from one place to another. Listen, I love the sixteen eighty nine. I love Confessionalism in general, but I love our confession. And just to give you a little background and kind of why, I was asked to do this at our church in Houston that we planted in two thousand and six, and when I came here from for the last three years, we had made a ten week course on the sixteen eighty nine a prerequisite for entering our membership course. Yeah, so you had to do a ten week course on the sixteen eighty nine before you could enter the new member's course. And I taught this course, this ten week course three times a year. So I've done this a number of times and have really grown to love the Confession more and more as I've done this. The reason that we started doing that was we had our these small groups out meeting the evenings, and at one point I led a small group through Sam Waldron's book, A Modern Exposition of the sixteen eighty nine. And after leading the first group of people through that, I don't remember how many families we had in that small group, say five or six families in that group that met, they said everybody in the church ought to go through this, everybody. So a few months later let it again and this group after going through the concision, Ah, everybody in the church. Everybody should go through this. So, being the great leader that I am, went back to my fellow elders and I say, you know what, maybe everybody should go through this, and we did. So I'm very excited that all the groups are now going to be going through the confession. Before we go through it, let me just give you an example of one of the things that I face on a regular basis. You know, ACU is a confessional school, and so people who come and teach ADCU subscribe to our confession. And here's a gentleman. People have often asked, you know about the delay was starting the seminary, and part of that is we have to have enough theology faculty to teach at the undergraduate and the graduate level, and our theology faculty has to fully subscribe to the sixteen eighty nine. And here's a letter that I got from one gentleman who is willing to come to Zambia, willing to come and be a part of our work. Here. I'm a graduate of very prominent Baptist seminary in the US, and currently serve as an elder at a church on the East Coast in the US. That church holds to the New Hampshire Confession, which is a cousin of the sixteen eighty nine I could subscribe to at least ninety five percent of the Second London Confession, but there are a few issues to which I would take exception. Those areas are detailed below. Problem number one, Chapter twenty two, paragraph seven and eight. Problem number two, Chapter twenty six, paragraph four, Problem number three, Chapter thirty, paragraph three, Problem number four, Chapter twenty six, paragraph nine, Problem number five, Chapter twenty six, paragraph ten, and the final problem, chapter thirty, paragraph three. Other than that, though he's with us right, it's like I love you. But if I could just take that right hand off, and maybe the left knee, and perhaps six ribs from this side, and maybe an ear over it, yes, yes, I'll take you. See, our confession works together as a whole, and it's very important for us to understand that sixteen eighty nine federalism is not just a sort of haphazard collection of ideas, but it is actually a confession that is built to hold and work together, and that's what I want us to look at on this evening. How the Confession is meant to build, how the Confession is meant to hold together and to be taken as a whole. When we think about our confession, we have to put it in an historical context, and that historical context is seventeenth century Baptist life. And when we read the Confession, we have to read it in the context of seventeenth century Baptist life. We have to read the words that they choose to use in light of the fact that they were written by seventeenth century Baptist We have to understand the historical context and the historical setting in order for us to be able to appreciate the Confession and to appreciate what the Confession is trying to communicate. There are a number of ways that we can read the Bible, and there are a number of ways that people do read the Bible. Jim Renahan, who is probably, I would argue, the foremost authority living authority on the Second London Baptist Confession. Doctor Renahan has taught for many years at the Institute for Reform Baptist Studies, which was housed that Westminster seminary in Escondido in this San Diego area that is a Presbyterian seminary. But within that Presbyterian seminary there was this Institute for Reform Baptist Studies, and students could go to Westminster study at IRBs and get a Westminster degree but basically having studied sixteen eighty nine instead of Second London in their framework more than just the confessional courses. But that is now moving and there will be a standalone Reform Baptist seminary in Dallas. Well. Doctor Renahan was the bulwark for IRBs, and he been talking about the Confession, talks about the number of ways that we can read scripture. One way that we can read scripture is we can read scripture historically, and reading scripture historically is going to the text, trying to understand what happened and when it happened, trying to put things in historical order, maybe even looking at the overall plan of redemption. But that's that's one way that we can approach the scriptures. And you can approach the scriptures this way as a Christian or as a non Christian, you know, as a new believer. I was a student at a secular university in the US. When God called me to preach, I never heard the Gospel. Again, I've told you this before till my first year in university, and you know, I am following the Lord, and you know, have this call to preach and want to begin to study. So I take courses at the secular secular university that I was attending, and I took a course on the Gospel of Mark from a professor, doctor Verner Kilbert. Doctor Kilbert was considered one of the foremost authorities in the world on the Gospel of Mark. I mean, this man knew the Gospel of Mark like the back of his hand. He knew the Gospel of Mark inside and out. I mean he just you know, you would say something about a section in Mark and he would go, yes, that's this verse that verse, and you know, you know this Greek manuscript has this reading of it, and this Greek manuscript has that. I mean, he's that level of knowledge of the Gospel of Mark. The man was not a Christian. He was not a Christian. That he was an expert and reading the Gospel of Mark from an historical perspective, right, So you can do that as a believer. Or an believer. Secondly, you can read the Bible from an ethical perspective. That's reading the Bible not for what happened and when, not trying to get it in its historical context. But you can read the Bible trying to find out what's right and what's wrong, what is expected of me, what is required of me. That's an ethical reading of the text. And there are a lot of people who read the scriptures that way, Christians and non Christians. There are a lot of people who think they're Christians who read the scriptures this way. In fact, one of the marks of a false professor is that they only read the scriptures this way. As an ethical text, there you have to tick the right boxes. Salvation is about ticking the right boxes. And so I've got to find out where the boxes are really I've also got to find out where the loopholes are. Amen, how much ungodliness can I enjoy and still tick the box? Okay, that is the way you can read the scriptures. And again, believer, non believing, you could read the scripture this way. As believers, you can read the scriptures this way. A third way is a theological framework. We read the Bible theologically, and our goal is to understand what it is that God says about himself and about us being made in His image. What is God saying about nays of reading appropriate? All three ways of reading are appropriate, but this third way informs the other. So your theological understanding of who God is is going to inform your historical reading of the text. Amen Kelber would have one understanding of the history of the Bible, I would have another, all right, because of a theological framework, your theological framework is also going to understand your ethical reading of the text. Right, So when we're going to the Bible and trying to understand what it's teaching us from an ethical perspective, our theological framework is going to inform that. When we talk about confessions, we are talking about reading the Bible from a theological framework. We are trying to ascertain what the Bible is saying about God and about us. We're trying to bring all these things together from the totality of scripture so that we understand the most important things that God says about himself and about us. Now, when we talk about confessions, there are some wonderful benefits to confessions. They unite believers they distinguish Protestants from Rome. They distinguish Protestants from one another. Confessions have origins actually in the New Testament and their essential disciple making tools. So let's look at these before we move into it. When we talk about the New Testament and confessions and the New Testament being confessional, it's important to understand that there are confessional statements in New Testament, these statements that sort of give rise to and give us the idea that it's important to confess certain things. And verse second Timothy two two, what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses in trust the faithful men who will be able to teach others. Also what you've heard from me in the presence of faithful witnesses earlier on. He kind of clarifies that Second Timothy one thirteen fourteen follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good, deposit and trusted to you. So Paul is not saying to Timothy, you need to remember and hold in your mind or even to an equal degree, everything that you've ever heard from me. That wasn't the case. There was a pattern of sound words, there was a foundation, there was a basis, there was a root, if you will, and confessionalism is about this root. People say, well, I believe the Bible. Looks the Bible is a big book. Amen. And there are people all over the place who say that Jehovah's witnesses said they believe the Bible. Mormons said they believe the Bible. Right, even Muslims will say that they believe the Bible theyf read and interpreted appropriately. So saying that you believe the Bible doesn't really get us anywhere. Okay, we've got to be a little more specific than that. What do you even mean when you say Bible? So if I start listing off the apocrypha, are you going to, well, you know, let's go to Maccabees. Oh wait a minute, No, I don't know Macabees. I'm not Well, you said the Bible, Well, no, I don't believe that's Bible. Ah, guess what you're waxing confessional now, because now you're saying, here's what I mean when I say Bible. Do you follow me? So I know that there are a lot of us out there who want to just be able to say, you know, the Bible, no confession, but the Bible. Bible's really big, and heretics believe it right. Heretics will grab that Bible and point different verses and rip them out of context. So that's not enough. We got to beat the Roman Catholics have have apocryphal books in their Bible. Are we going to say that's Bible? No, So confessionally, we've got to be clear there no creed but Christ. Amen. Now you just let the Mormons in and the Jehovah's witnesses in our only creed is Christ. Because a Mormon could say amen to that. Jehovah's witness could say amen to that. Huh. Somebody who's involved in the most cultic versions of Seven day Adventism could say amen to that. No Creed but Christ. Well then you have to go, well no, because they believe in a different Jesus than we do. Really, now you're waxing confessional again because now you're saying, when I say Jesus, what I mean is dot dot do you see? So? I mean people like to sound pious, you know, as though they're above it all. No Creed but Christ, you simpletons might need confessions, but not me. I have Jesus really saying Jesus as Jehovah's witnesses. No, my Jesus dot dot dot. You just got confessional. You said no creed with Christ. If you really believe that, then I would say, okay, how about the Jehovah's witnesses, and you would go, no creed with Christ because that's your only creed. You can't give me another answer. You see the problem. We've got to be more specific than that. All right, tewod teventy three fourteen. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. There are a number of places where we have short credal statements. Let this mind being you, which was also in Christ, Jesus right, And what we have following is a short creedle statement, and many of the early creeds and confessions are based on these creedle statements. Now, when we talk about confessions, let me give you a little brief history of confessions. We just came out of a couple of days ago. Reformation Day right, five hundredth Reformation Day or did you have Halloween right? Reformation Day October thirty first, fifteen seventeen, five hundred years ago. That was fifteen seventeen. The Augsburg Confession, which is the Lutheran Confession, was written in fifteen thirty and that's just thirteen years later that we get the Augsburg Confession. Now here's where it gets a little tricky. The Augsburg Confession is a Lutheran confession. Lutheranism is not reformed. So the Augsburg Confession, it is not a reformed confession, even though Luther was credited it was starting the Reformation. You'll understand it tomorrow. Now we'll talk about that when we get into our confession. Lutheran doctrine and reform doctrine not the same on a number of accounts, but Protestantism comes out of this same stream. So the Augsburg Confession is important in that regard. The Belgian Confession fifteen sixty one, the thirty nine articles. Anybody know whose confession that is? Nope, Anglicans. Church of England. Okay, Church of England is so far gone it's not even funny. Some of the greatest heretics in the church today are Church of England. If you read the thirty nine articles, you'll ask yourself how they even got in. They're embarrassed by the thirty nine articles, Okay, because they don't hold to that Orthodox Confession that was fifteen seventy one. The Canons of the Senate of Dort that was sixteen nineteen. So now we're entering the seventeenth century. The First London Baptist Confession sixteen forty four, the Westminster Confession of Faith sixteen forty six. Here's what that's important. That's important because oftentimes, because the sixteen eighty nine is written along the same pattern as the Westminster Confession, a lot of people assume that the sixteen eighty nine is just a copy of Westminster with some Baptist ideas added to it. But Westminster Confession, what year sixteen forty six? Right, first London Confession what year sixteen forty four? Folks, there was a Reformed Baptist confession before there was a Presbyterian confession. Huh ours cam first? All right, now the sixteen eighty nine, Well, let me move on. After the Westminster you have the Savoyd Declaration of Faith and Order. That's sixteen eighty five. Savoy is the confession of the Congregationalist Puritans. Okay, Chief among them is John Owen. Now, the Savoy Declaration was patterned after the Westminster Confession, and the sixteen eighty nine was patterned after Savoy following Westminster. There's a reason for that. This was not about copying each other. At this point. What is happening is reformed doctrine is sort of it's being not sort of, it's being synthesized. All right. You see where we come down this historical corridor. There are also a couple of things happening there. There's violent and I mean violent persecution of Protestants, especially in England. They don't call it bloody Mary for nothing, right, but there's violent persecution in England if you're one group, another group, so on and so forth, depending on who's on the throne. So for Westminster sixteen forty six, Savoy sixteen eighty five and Second London sixteen eighty nine, to all be written based on the same outline is actually an idea of showing a united front among Reformed Protestants. It also made it easier to see the areas where the groups differed, where they did not agree, because they were written along the same format, So you didn't have to go well over here they had that in this part of the confession, and over here they had that. No, it was written on the same format, so that there could be this kind of clarity, and also in the development of the presentation of theology itself. This format. If you look at this format and you look at the way systematic theologies are written, modern systematic theologies they follow this similar format. So what are the sources of our confession? You just kind of heard one the first London Baptist Confession of sixteen forty four, two, the Westminster Confession sixteen forty six forty seven, three, the Savoid Declaration of Faith and Order of sixteen eighty five, and four the labors of Elder William Collins and other contributors to the sixteen seventy seven General Meeting. So sometimes you'll see on our confession sixteen seventy seven slash eighty nine, this process started at that general meeting in sixteen seventy seven and ultimately comes to fruition and is accepted in a general meeting in sixteen eighty nine. Okay, but it's not the Confession of sixteen seventy seven. It's a confession of sixteen eighty nine and It's important to note that because the Saboid Declaration was very influential, the Congregational Puritans were very were very influential. John Owen was very influential. Interestingly enough, John Owen. Some of the strongest arguments for pedal baptism that you're going to find are arguments from John Owen. But John Owen, for cradle baptism, I'm sorry for John Owen was a paidal Baptist. Those Congregational Puritans, they were paid o Baptists. They baptized infants. But theologically, I mean, John Owen is running in that direction, but he doesn't get there. The Baptists are there. The Baptists were there since sixteen oh nine. That was the first Baptist church was an Amsterdam sixteen oh nine. So when there was a disagreement, it was usually tracking with Savoy as opposed to tracking with Westminster. So those are the sources of our confession. Here's what that does not mean. That does not mean that basically our confession was just a compiling of these things. Understand what's happening since fifteen thirty. Even before fifteen thirty, we have the earliest creeds of the church, right the Apostles creed, the Nicene creed, the creed of Chalcedon. We have all of these creeds, and these creeds become more robust, and these creeds build upon each other. As they become more robust, and as new heresies raise their heads, the creeds sort of expand in order to speak to the particular heresies of the day. Well, when you read these confessions, what each of these confessions is doing is reaching back to that credle herid that all Christians hold in common. Okay, so nobody was trying to invent the wheel, nor did anyone need to. All of these groups were trying to do the same thing, basically, say, here is what we believe the scriptures to teach, and here is the historical line that we come from. This is not new We did not make this up. This goes from the Bible to us through faithful men throughout Church history. Amen. That's very important, especially today, because the spirit of the age is the spirit of contemporaneity. It's just a fancy word that means newer, must be better. Right, That's what I was just I told us just back in the States, and my phone, my screen had cracked and it was bad, and I went to you know, a place to get it fixed, and it was gonna be so expensive to get it fixed. I was like, ah, you know, I got a trip coming up. I'll just go back, you know, and I'll get it fixed when i'm there. And they got bad last few days. Pieces started to crumble off, like it's so bad. But I waited, I held out. I got there, I got my screen fixed, and you know, you walk into the Apple Store and right now it's just I mean, in one other store on the malls in London, there was a line outside the Apple store. Apple store is fulling the inside of the line outside the Apple store. Why because there's a new iPhone. In fact, there's two. There's iPhone eight, an iPhone X, and everybody's rushing in to get the newest and the latest. And if you were to stand in line and ask them, well, what exactly does the new iPhone have that the old one doesn't, they look at you and exact, what are you talking about? It's the new one? Yeah, but you know what exactly are the improvements that were made in this one that would justify you spending the amount of money that you're about to spend to go buy a new one. What it's the new one. Where have you been? It's newer, it must be better. Well, the people who are going to be in these groups studying this material are going to be people who live in that world. Amen. And if you live in the world of newer is better. And somebody says, let's open the sixteen eighty nine, ha ha, that could be a little difficult to grasp. All right, all right, let's move ahead here for the sake of for the sake of time, let's look at confessions and disciple making. And this is an important idea. This comes from the preamble to our confession. This is what they said. Remember this is sixteen eighty nine. And verily, there is one spring and cause of the decay of religion in our day which we cannot but touch upon and earnestly urge a redress of. And that is the neglective worship of the neglecti of the worship of God in families by those whom the charge and conduct of them is commanded. May not the gross ignorance and instability of many, with the profaneness of others be justly charged upon their parents and masters who have not trained them up in the way wherein they ought to walk when they were young, but have neglected those frequent and solemn commandments which the Lord hath laid upon them, so to catechize and instruct them that their tender years might be seasoned with the knowledge of the truth of God as revealed in the scriptures. This is an important discipleship tool. When we talk about discipleship, we're usually not thinking about confessions. Give people an assurance of salvation, Teach them to have a quiet time, show them how to evangelize, show them how to discover their spiritual gifts, send them on their way. Right, and we say discipleship achieved, and they know little or nothing. From a theological perspective, Confessions standardize the content of discipleship. It's number one. They standardize the content of disciple. Ample What do people need to know? What do people need to know? We our Baptists forefathers believed that the confession was a concise answer to that question. And we say, ah, that's not concise. Yes it is, Yes it is. Have you seen a systematic sing I wish it brought Brikoff's systematic theology in here. Right. Confessions are very concise compared to that, all right, And it also fills in the gaps. It fills in the gaps. There are things that we just would not teach, that we would not talk about were it not for our confessions. I'll give you an example. It's a little risky here. You know. They say lawyers are not supposed to ask questions in court lest they know the answer. Well, I'm not in court, so I don't know the answer. But if we were to say together the Order Salutists or the Order of Salvation, right, what will we say? For most of us it would be starts with the jay justification and then huh and be looking at the confession. What we say We will say signification and anyways say glorification. Right. I mean, you hear somebody talk about salvation, the Order Salutists, that's what you're going to hear. Justification, signification, glorification, justification, signification, glorification. You read the confession, it's justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification. We've just completely lost the doctrine of adoption, which is incredibly important. Right. Justification says I've been declared righteous. Certification says God's making me righteous. Glorification says, one day, I'm going to be completely righteous. Right, that's good. I have been forgiven from the penalty of sin. Right, I am being cleansed from the presence and power of sin. One day I will be delivered completely from sin. That's awesome, that's good stuff. But guess what adoption says. I have been declared righteous. I have been made God's child as much as Jesus as God's child because I'm found in him. I'm being conformed to the image of Christ, because I've been adopted into the family of God as his son or daughter. And I will be glorified because God is going to save his child whom he adopted. Now, how many times do we talk to people who are struggling with their salvation, struggling with believing God loves them? Right? What's missing the doctrine of adoption. And even if you've been rooted and grounded in josification, sanctification, glorifying, even if you've been rooted and grounded in that, and you never think about the doctrine of adoption. If you have the confession as your guide, you won't be able to get away from it, right, you won't be able to escape it it'll be right there and you'll go, ah, I forgot this. Okay, See, when you're making disciple. That's just one example. So if I'm supposedly discipling someone and I'm not using a guide, let alone a confession as a guide, I'm not using a God. How many things like that am I going to skip over? How many things like that am I going to neglect in this process of discipleship, discipling my children, raising my children? How many things are we going to neglect and raising our children? There are so many things where we're raising children that are just right there in our faces. Amen, Especially when you got nine of them just right there in your face, and you spend so much time just responding to the things that are right there in your face. If you don't have some kind of guide, the next thing you know, they're grown and gone. And there are dozens of things that you just never got to because of the tyranny of the urgent. Right. How much more is that true with people that we don't have living with us for two decades, where they just happen to be relations of ours at church for however long you're with us until we get moved along or they get moved along or whatever. How much more likely are we to just have serious gaps? Right? Okay, but there are still a lot of people who have a problem with confessions. Listen to this from Sam Waldron. In modern exposition, sadly, we live in a non cred even an anti credle age marked by existential relativism, anti authoritarianism, and historical isolationism. Historical isolationism is the idea that all we know is our own period in history. Right, this is the greatest time that there ever was, No time before ever mattered, no time after matters. Many professing Christians regard creeds and confessions as men made traditions, the precepts of men, mere religious opinion. That's that's what people think, and we've got to deal with that. We've got to be aware of that. We got to know where it comes from. One place that comes from is the idea of mysticism. Mysticism. Listen to this from Charles Hodge. A mystic is one who claims to see or know what is hidden from other men, whether this knowledge be attained by immediate intuition or by inward revelation. In most cases, these methods were assumed to be identical as intuition was held to be the immediate vision of God and of divine things. Hence the wide sense of the word mystic Are those who claim to be under the immediate guidance of God or the Spirit? Do we know anybody like that? Is there anybody like that on television? How many Christians have been under the sway of this mysticism. Let's move forward and look at this from John Piper. It's not enough to say that God's revelation in Scripture comes to us in human language. It comes in the language of particular humans in particular times and places. There are no distinctively divine language conventions. That is, when God spake through men, he did not always use the same language, or the same style or the same vocabulary. Rather, all the evidence points to the fact that God always availed himself of language and style and vocabulary and particular usages of individual biblical writers. Even in the prophetic speech speeches where God is directly quoted, there are language traits that distinguish one author from another. Quietism? What is quietism? See if you recognize this. The quietest Christian is one who doesn't make any decisions because the Holy spirit makes them for us. Such a person is also likely to construct a dosetic hermeneutic of scripture. The human characteristics of the Biblical documents are ignored. Historical biblical theological contexts are regarded as irrelevant. If a text speaks to me in whatever way, the careful exegesis of it is dismissed as intellectualism. I got a word from the Lord, and then we rip a scripture out of context the word said to me, And then somebody who knows the Bible comes back and says, well, actually, what that text means is Ah, you just trying to put God in a box. Anybody know that person? All right, let's move forward. Why are confessions legitimate? Number one? They are useful means of public affirmation and defensive truth. A useful means of public affirmation and defense of truth. What do we believe? What do we mean? Our confessions are helpful in this regard. I have met a lot of Jehovah's witnesses. I've been here, I mean a lot of Jehov's witnesses, and I find it useful and helpful to go back through essions and creeds, earliest documents in Christianity basically demonstrating what you believe has been refuted by Christians since Christians began to refute heresy. Right, that's important. That's important. Not everybody responds to that the same way, but it's important. Secondly, confessions serve as public standards for fellowship and discipline, public standard for fellowship and discipline. Someone sins, who decides what a sin is? Well, the Bible decides what a sin is. Amen. We don't just get to all of a sudden invent new sins. We have a confessional framework, we have a standard. Right. They serve as a concise standard by which to evaluate ministers of the word. How do we evaluate ministers of the word. Somebody stands up here and says something that is not in line with the truth. Right, someone else has a problem with it. What do we do? The one with the most education wins, the oldest one wins, the biggest one wins, the one who speaks the loudest wins, or our confessional standard settles that. Amen, and confessions contribute to a sense of historical continuity. We are a part of something, and we didn't just make up. We're a part of something that's been around since the Bible. All right, in the time that we have left, let's look at the outline of the confession. But I want to put it in categories. First, the first six chapters of the confession give us a biblical foundation, or give us a theological foundation for a biblical worldview, a theological foundation for a biblical worldview. That's chapters one through six. Okay, chapter one of the Holy Scriptures. And chapter one is amazing. When chapter one is long, right, Chapter one is long. To find a chapter that long, you got to go all the way to twenty six on the Church. I mean, chapter one is long. But if you can use somebody to listen that to that, or if you can just sort of pick pieces out of that, and as we go through this together, it's important to look at chapter one for a number of reasons. Because when people are opposed to the idea of confessions, one of the things we said was what what no confession? But what the Bible? Right? Well, chapter one on not confessions, on the Bible, and it's awesome And the first thing that we do in our confession. Because people believe that confessions are problematic because they undermine the Bible as the soul authority for faith in practice. I'm going that's interesting. You believe that the Bible is the sole authority for faith in practice, for all matters of faith in practice? Yes, what verse in the Bible says that? Huh, well, yeah, we mean verse I mean, of course there's a verse that says that. Wait a minute, because almost all of the confessions say that, but there's not a verse that says that. Do you see. So what our confession does is our confession sort of collects those things that the Bible says about itself, right, and states that in ways that can be clarified and understood and agreed upon between us. All Right, at the end, we'll look at some of these because this is important and helpful. But that's where we start. We start with what do we mean when we say scripture secondly of God the Holy Trinity. Well, there we go again. That word's not in the Bible, right, but it is necessarily contained by the way. That's a confessional statement. Things that are necessarily contained, things that when you read the Bible. You see now what we have to do when it comes to theology. The Bible brings us narrative, right, it brings us a narrative. It brings us letters, it brings us history, it brings us these prophetic statements. But the Bible, for the most part, is not just giving us theological constructs. There are some places where we have those. You read the Book of Romans, and he's giving you justification and sanctification, and we have these words there, right, But sometimes we need to have words in order to explain those things that the Bible just presents. Trinity is an example of that. Or Triune the Triune God is an example of that. We don't have that word in scripture, but in the English language, there's not a better one to describe what the Bible presents that. This is, yes, okay, so what's the Bible. The Bible's where we know God. Okay, so we just determine that number one, number two, who's God, because that's principally what the Bible is telling us, right number three, God's decree, huge, huge chapter. And there's a reason that this is important. Let me give you another principle. This is a principle that I get from rent a hand. We have to read the Confession horizontally as well as vertically. In other words, it's not just chapter one leads us to chapter two, leads us to chapter three. So let me give you an example. When somebody wants to talk about free will chapter nine, you can either jump into a discussion about free will, which usually starts with our anthropology or our man, what we believe about man? Right, And this person is going to say that they believe this about man, and they're going to say that they believe this about God. Right. God wouldn't do this. God wouldn't do that. God did this, God did so on and so forth. Right, that's what happens when you start a discussion with someone about free will. But if you arizonly have to go first to God's decree and then remember that by the time you get to free will, things change. You know what, do we have the companies of the Confession? You guys? Did you guys bring your copies of the Confession? I'm gonna take that as a no. All right, let me read this on God's decree the paragraph one, Chapter three, God has decreed in himself from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to pass. Yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin, nor have fellowship with any therein, Nor is violence offered to the will of the creature. Nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established in which appears His wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree. Well, if that's true, whenever I start talking about man's free will, I have to talk about it in the context of a worldview that understands God's decree. Okay. And this is the problem that we run into when we try to talk about issues in isolation. This is also the problem we run into when we get a letter like the one the brother said, I mean ninety five percent agreement with your confession except here, here, here, here, here, here, right. Well, if you read the confession horizontally, each one of them. And I wrote him back, and I said, brother, thank you so much for your willingness, and so on and so forth, and I said, you know, basically, based on the objections that you have, he basically fell into one of two categories, either a dispensationalist right who liked the language of the six eighty nine or New Covenant theology, which is very sinister and very popular, especially at the seminary that he came from. I said, based on your objections, you're more likely in the New Covenant camp, which is opposed to sixteen eighty nine federalism and cannot fully subscribe to it. And ultimately he just said, yeah, you're probably right. What if he'd come, What if he had come, what if he'd start teaching in the theology department. I it's just a little disagreement here. Ay, it's just a little deer disagreement there. And all of a sudden, you know, when you're reading the Confession horizontally, we've got somebody teaching in this area over here, something that denies boom boom, boom boom. It's hugely problematic. But when we don't think about the Confession rightly, we don't get that. We just think it's a collection of statements. Right. I like this one, I don't like that one. But you have to read it horizontally. This all works together. So for of creation, five, divine providence six, the fall of man of sin, and the punishment thereof those are the foundations, the theological foundations of a biblical worldview, and it's in the first six chapters of the Confession. It's very important to understand that that's how those work. The second section a biblical view of salvation. For worldview thinking, that's chapter seven to ten, God's covenant, Christ the mediator, free will, effectual calling. Okay, this gives you the premise. This gives you God's response to what we just saw in chapter six, the fall of man sin, the punishment thereof. What is the answer to that? How does that get fixed? Well, God has a covenant, He gives us a mediator. That mediator has something to do with our free will, which actually is not free and effectual calling, which is the only way that fallen man can be saved. Right next, we get the order salutis, and that's in chapters eleven to fourteen. Eleven to fourteen linked inexorably to those chapters that came before it and those chapters that come after it. When we read the Confession horizontally, right all the way back to God's decree. All right, So when we read, for example, on justification, chapter eleven, paragraph one, those inm God effectually calls. He also freely justifies, not by infusing righteousness into them, as Rome would say, but by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone. Not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness, but by imputing Christ's active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and soul righteousness they're receiving and resting on them and his righteousness by faith, which faith they have, not of themselves. It is the gift of God. This is absolutely important in light of God's decree. Okay, adoption, sanctification, saving faith, all right, these are all important parts of us understanding the order salute us that we've been prepared for in the section prior. Hold on the next section Reform thought and the fruit of righteousness. Reform thought and the fruit of righteousness. This is really about the Christian life. Okay. So if we've just looked at salvation, now we look at what that brings. First, we have chapter twenty of the Gospel, and the extent of the grace thereof Chapter twenty is where we deviate from Westminster. Okay, this is a chapter that was added to the sixteen eighty nine that is not in Westminster. All right, So if you're in, if you're past chapter twenty, you're going to have offset chapter numbers when you're cross referencing with Westminster, if you're trying to see what the differences are, all right. The problem is Westminster doesn't have our chapter twenty okay, of the Gospel and the extent of the grace thereof. Of Christian liberty and the liberty of conscience. This is a quintessential Baptist doctrine, extremely important and not what people generally think. We think, you know, Christian liberty, liberty of conscience, I get to do what I want. That chapter is not about that at all. Of religious worship and the Lord's Day, Chapter twenty two is a huge problem for people who are Calvinistic but not reformed. This is one of the areas where they have to get off. Okay, this is where they push the button, pull the cord, stop the train, right, jump off of it moving if they have to. Okay, This idea of religious worshiping the Lord's Day, this idea that's the Fourth Commandment still has any moral bearing on believers today. This idea of the moral law as such hugely problematic. And if somebody has a problem with this, then usually I'm going, Okay, you say you have a problem with that chapter. Don't you also have a problem with chapter nineteen because chapter nineteen is on the law of God, And they got well, yeah, actually, yeah, of course you do, because one part of the confession is connect did to another part of the confession. By the way, you also have a problem with chapter seven and God's Covenant, and most of them completely missed that. And I've had the experience of talking to people who've said, well, yeah, I might have a problem with chapter nineteen, and I go, but also chapter seven. Oh no, no, I have a problem with chapter seven. We go back to chapter seven and I start reading and they go, yeah, yeah, chapter seven. Yeah, problem with chapter seven because it's connected. Okay, We've got to keep this in mind, and as we're going through this, when we look at a particular chapter, try to figure out and connect it to those those other chapters that matter of lawful oaths and vows, end of marriage. That that's important. We're talking about lawful oaths and vows and marriage. There a number of people, for example, who who have a problem with marriage ceremonies. This chapter on lawful oaths and vows, by the way, and an oath and the vow, there's two different things. And oath is you know, raise your right hand, put your hand on the Bible. Right. You're sworn in at court. At court, you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, number of the truth. I unless you guys say here, but something right, so help you God, I do right. That's an oath, all right. A vow is when you will agree to something by repeating after someone. Marriage ceremony, by the way, is oath and vow. Right, oath and vow. It's do you I do? And repeat after me I so and so on, So take you and so on and so to be my right? Oath and vow? Did we just make that up? Our confession has it right here and right before the chapter on marriage? Wow, because what do you do in marriage? Take oaths and vows? Okay? And hey, yeah they're those people who, yeah, we just know, we just we declare ourselves married. Not so much, all right. Chapters twenty six through thirty gives us reform thought and the People of God, Reform Thought and the people of God. So this is how we live and how we respond to God's salvation in the previous chapters. In chapters twenty to twenty five, now we see what this does for us as the people of God. Twenty six of the Church Long Chapter Very Important, Chapter, Chapter twenty seven, the Communion of Saints. Chapter twenty eight, Baptism in the Lord Supper, twenty nine Baptism thirty Lord Supper, Okay, Baptism and the Lord Supper. The front door and the back door of the church. We come into the church, baptism put out of the church, no Lord Supper right, barred from the table, table fellowship, Lord Supper communion. This is evidence of our continuing in faithfulness with the people of God. Right, and it's the privileges removed from us should that evidence no longer be there. So those chapters and then Reform thought in the Last Things chapter thirty one of the State of Man after Death and the Resurrection of the Dead, and then chapter thirty two of the Last Judgment. When we think about the confession in these categories, and there are few other ways that people have put these together, but when we think about it in these categories. And when we recognize that the Confession is sort of moving like this and covering things in this way, it helps us to look at the Confession, like I said, horizontally, and how all of these things fit together. All right? How you can't have a problem with the Lord's Day in the Sabbath without having a problem with chapter nineteen and chapter seven. You just you can't do it, all right. You disagree with chapter seven, You disagree with chapter nineteen. That's why you can't accept right the chapter on religious worship in the Lord's Day. All right, For the sake of time, That's all I'm going to cover tonight. We have a couple of questions. Chapter one, Paragraph one. The Holy Scriptures is the only sufficient, certain and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men unexcusable, yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore, it pleased the Lord, at suntry times and at diverse manners, to reveal himself and to declare that His will unto his Church, and afterward, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh and of the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same holy unto writing, which make it the Holy scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God revealing His will unto people being now ceased. That's the heart of Word of faith theology. That's a dagger right through its heart because it's based on continued revelation, secret knowledge, right to dagger through the heart. Here's the other issue. The Confession was not written to address issues. The Confession was written to give a concise account of what we believe are the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Now. Because of that, the Confession touches on everything that would be essential right now. Having said that, it doesn't mean that we can't then extrapolate from that and make statements about certain things like that could be a jumping off point right as a statement for the health and Wealth and Prosperity Gospel, but also the chapter on Providence, the chapter on God's Decree that helped them with prosperity gospel. And this is the thing that amazed me teaching through the Confession as many times as I did, Right, is obviously you see where there are things that are pointed at the pedal Baptists, a lot of things that are pointed at Rome, so on and so forth. But there are so many times in the Confession you read this and it's like they anticipated these modern movements. Why, because there's nothing new under the sun. This is not the first time we've seen a version of the health and wealth and prosperity gospel. Right, It's a form of gnosticism been dealt with for a long time. So what this does is it deals with the theological basis upon which these heresies is built. And that's what's important. We can then extrapolate and state other things. Right, But because there's nothing new under this none of these heresies is new. They're addressed many times over, many times over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the sixteen eighty nine is not the scriptures, right, sixty eighty nine is not the scriptures. In fact, the first chapter is about the scriptures. Now the Confession, and I would take issue with the idea that God is revealing new things to men today, right, because chapter one, paragraph one, these formal ways of God's revealing as will to as people now haven't been ceased. Right, We don't have that, so we wouldn't operate on that basis. However, And this is the difference between us, for example, and Presbyterians. So our Presbyterian brethren around the world, because they have a Presbyterian form of government, or our Anglican Brethren because they have an Episcopal form of government, they have structures, superstructures above the local church, so those superstructures can add to their confessions. Right. Baptists are congregational. We don't have superstructures above the local church that have authority over the local church. So you might have a group of Baptists who make a statement about a certain theological issue in their context in their area, but the idea that Baptist on the whole would do that would actually not fit. This is why you have, for example, the Philadelphia Confession and New Hampshire Confession, because you know, then in the United States you've got groups of Baptists adopting this right and trying to suit it to their environments. So confession is not infallible the scripture that's what's infallible. But at the same time, we do not have God giving scripture level revelation two men after the scripture, So yeah, yeah, the question isn't things? Can things be edited out of the Confession? And the two examples that you use are the most common ones. The one about the pope being Antichrist. That's an instance where we have to make sure we're not reading seventeenth century Baptists through the eyes of twenty first century Baptists. They're not writing that like the Left Behind series. They're not saying that the pope is the Antichrist in the sense of we're looking for Nicolai, Carpathia and the you know what I mean. They're not dispensationalists like that, that's not what they mean. But when you look at the definition of Antichrist, especially when you look at the fact that the Scripture is always plural, there is no person on earth who better fits that description than whoever holds the office of the Pope, because he puts himself up as alter Christus or another Christ. So we have to make sure that we're not reading left Behind into the Confession as though the guys are writing the Confession trying to say, you know, as we look at you know, look for Nicolai Carpathia or you know, the seven Years of Tribulation, and ah, I think that guy, that's not what they were saying. They're talking about this office and what it means to be Antichrist. Right. The other thing is the statement about elect infants dying in infancy. Infancy, there's nothing wrong with the statement. Didn't need to be in there, right, But there's nothing wrong with the statement. It doesn't even address the other side of the equation. So yeah, there are things like that that are especially uncomfortable to us when we're not used to reading seventeenth century Baptist, right, But when we read it in light of and through the eyes of seventeenth century Baptist, they're far less problematic than they seem at first blush, you know. And by the way, those were my two main objections when I first was introduced to the confession, like, man, this is awesome. Why they have to say that, you know. But again, the more I've gone through this, and the more I've learned about the seventeenth century Baptist and their context, and you know, and and about my own things, you know, reading back into it. Yeah, because all of us when we hear the term Antichrist, we're thinking about the dispensational list and the rapture and the You know that that's not that's not what seventeenth century Baptists we're talking about. Yeah, all right, let me pray for us. Father, We thank you for those who have gone on before us, for those who's whose work has blessed and benefited us greatly. Thank you for footsteps to follow, for giants on whose shoulders we can stand. Grant by your grace that we might never neglect or take this privilege for granted, nor put too much stock in it. For even the authors of our confession made it very clear that yours is the final word. Thank you for the ways in which our confession of faith magnify your word, magnify Christ, magnify your work in saving your people. Grant that it might motivate us to proper, heartfelt, biblical passionate unceasing worship. For we pray this and Christ's name and for his sake. Amen,