TPW 67 The Westminster Confession Part 01 - Systematic Theology is Vital

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I've been preaching on this for quite some time, so I've got a lot of material on it, but it's kind of nice just to have a more informal way to just sort of talk about the importance of the great doctrines that God has shown to us in His Holy Word and how foundational they are to all of life.

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Everything that God has spoken to us in Scripture is important and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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And so, I'm excited to do this series, and obviously, chapter one of the

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Westminster Confession is of Holy Scripture, and before we look at that,

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I wanted to discuss the importance first of systematic theology.

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Systematic theology. Systematic theology is simply the logical study of each doctrine of Scripture categorically and by topic.

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It's basically Bible verses arranged topically. Every human being, no matter how much they say, oh,

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I'm just not into theology, I don't do that systematic theology, I just read the Bible, in fact, recently had a conversation with a fellow, a very nice Christian man who's a teacher at a local kind of independent

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Bible church here in the area, who actually used the phrase, we have no creed but Christ, we don't believe in confessions and catechisms and things like that.

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And I asked him a couple questions, I said, well, do you guys believe in the doctrine of the

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Trinity, that God is, you know, three persons, oh yeah, we believe that, and I proceeded to ask him a series of other questions, do you believe in the substitutionary atonement, yeah, do you believe in the virgin birth of Christ, yes, do you believe in the personality and deity of the

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Holy Spirit, yes, do you believe that we're saved by faith in Jesus Christ and not by our good works, oh yeah, of course, of course, of course, basically getting him to tell me what his creed was, without him really knowing that that's what he was doing, and pointed out that that's really all that creeds and confessions and catechisms are, it's simply short summaries of what we believe about God, about grace, man, revelation, sin, salvation, eschatology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, pneumatology, all those different headings, and every single person who is a

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Christian does systematic theology, not all do it well. And that's one of our goals as Christians, is to be consistent, and to be biblical in the way that we think, and to be clear in the way that we think.

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So systematic theology is as unavoidable to being a Christian as breathing is to talking.

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If you are a Christian, you're a Christian because of what you believe, what you have assented to, what you believe to be true, and whatever it is that you believe to be true, that's your theology, that's what you believe, and it will have a certain fit to it, it will have a certain consistency to it, and God created our minds to want consistency in the way that we think, and we tend to eschew contradictions and things like that, in fact the scriptures themselves tell us to eschew and to discard people who contradict one another, who contradict themselves.

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If someone consistently contradicts themselves, it can only be because they're lying, because if you affirm

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A to be true, and then affirm not A to be true, that is not consistent, and one of those statements has to be false, or they can both be false, but they cannot both be true.

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And so it's very, very important that we understand the systematic nature of the

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Christian faith. We believe that because God has revealed these things to us, that there is a systematic monopoly on what is true.

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God has monopolized what is true, and it's key and it's critical that everybody understand and get that very, very, very important point.

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I have a great quotation here I'd like to read, if I can find it, from A. A. Hodge on the issue of systematic theology, written by A.

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A. Hodge in his book on the Atonement, and he said this, quote, Let it be remembered that systematic theology has its essence simply in clear thinking and clear speaking on the subject of that religion which is revealed in the scriptures.

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A man can outgrow systematic theology, therefore, either by ceasing to be clear -headed or by ceasing to be religious and in no other way.

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Do you hear what he's saying? A person can only outgrow systematic theology by ceasing to be religious, meaning by ceasing to have any interest in God, in Christ, and the truth.

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So if people are not interested in systematic theology, it can only be because they have no interest in God, he says, or because they've ceased to be clear -headed.

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And he finishes with, I suppose, some escape in their haste by both ways at once, by ceasing to be religious and ceasing to be clear -headed at the same time.

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And Hodge is exactly correct. I still remember years ago, I used to get this journal called Reformation and Revival, and it was put out by a fellow named

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John Armstrong. And John Armstrong was one of the signatories of the,

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I'm pretty sure, the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document, or one of the documents that came after that. And I remember reading in one of the old issues of Reformation and Revival, in that journal that he published, his attack on systematic theology.

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And I quit subscribing to it after that. I knew there was something really wrong with what he was saying, and I kind of discovered later, it's because you can only stop doing systematic theology by ceasing to be religious, by ceasing to have any real interest in the things of God.

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So why is this so important? And why is it that, we would argue, every Christian, the person who screams the loudest against creeds and confessions, usually will be the most closed -minded, and the most dogmatic, and the most enslaved to their system of theology.

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And the reason they're so enslaved to it is, they don't even realize they're enslaved to it. They don't even see how much of a grip it has on them.

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And so it's very important that we own our own systems, that we understand that we are consistent in the way we think, and we need to try as best as we can to take what we believe to the bar of the

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Word of God, and to be sure that it fits with what Scripture teaches us. So the introductory episode of the

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Protestant Witness here, in introducing the Westminster Confession, is going to be on the importance of systematic theology.

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The gateway to the heart of man is the mind of man. That which we do not understand in our minds cannot animate our hearts and our hands into action.

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Psalm 45, verse 1, says, My heart is overflowing with a good theme. Now why is it that our hearts can overflow with something only if it's understood in our minds?

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Only if we affirm it to be true can it stir our hearts. My heart is overflowing with a good theme.

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Themes are things that we know, are things that we come to understand. In Romans chapter 1, you can see that man is, by nature, a worshiping creature.

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He either worships God according to a true knowledge of God, or he will exchange that truth for a lie and worship and serve created things.

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The problem is, what men think they know is wrong, apart from divine revelation.

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Throughout Scripture, we find this antithesis between the knowledge of those who know God and the knowledge of those who worship idols.

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Paul said to the church in Thessalonica, in 1 Thessalonians 1, 9, For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true

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God. And then later on, Paul said to the Athenians, as he was trying to evangelize them in Acts chapter 17,

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Acts 17, 23, For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription,

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To the unknown God, therefore the one whom you worship without knowing him

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I proclaim to you. You hear what he's saying? I'm going to give you propositions and things that are true in the place of your ignorance.

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You don't know this God, and so I am going to proclaim him to you and tell you what he's really like.

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And you just gotta love the way Paul, phrase by phrase, piece by piece, dismantles their worldview.

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Every single phrase in the next two verses of Acts 17 is a direct undercutting of everything that these

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Athenian people would have believed. In verse 24, he says, God who made the world and everything in it, since he is

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Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Pretty gutsy statement, given that he's surrounded by some of the most magnificent works of architecture and temples to false gods ever created by human beings in the history of the world.

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He stands up there and says the one true God, he doesn't dwell in these places. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything.

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Since he gives life and breath to all, gives all to all life and breath and all things. These people would bring food offerings to these temples and lay them down on the ground as if the gods needed food to be sustained.

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And Paul's point to them is no, no, no, the God of heaven and earth doesn't need anything. He doesn't need your food. He doesn't need you guys to take care of him.

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He's the one who takes care of you. He's the one who feeds you. Did you all eat today? It's because the God of heaven and earth fed you.

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God gave you a harvest. God gave you food. God gave you meat. God gave you plants and berries and nuts to eat.

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All those things are gifts of God to you. You don't feed him. And so it's an amazing thing.

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And then he goes on from there to preach the gospel and to call them to repentance from their ignorance and to the truth and from their sin to Christ.

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He summarizes in Acts 17, 29. Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising.

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Paul would later tell the church at Corinth not to worry about eating food sacrificed to idols. Listen to how he does this in 1

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Corinthians 8 -4. Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no other

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God but one. When God has his showdown with the false gods through the prophet Isaiah, listen to how

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God differentiates himself from the idols. Listen, Isaiah 41 -21. Present your case, says the

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Lord. Bring forth your strong reasons, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring forth and show us what will happen.

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Let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them and know the latter end of them. Or declare to us the things to come.

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Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods. Yes, do good or do evil, that we may be dismayed and see it together.

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The true God is different from false gods of men because he can predict the future perfectly, because he is the determiner of the future, and he is able to tell us what took place in the past and also why it took place.

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That's what he's saying in verse 22. Let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them and know the latter end of them.

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Tell us what's happened in the past and why it happened. Only the God of heaven and earth can do that. Only the one true

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God is able to do that. God's omniscience is essential for us to understand and affirm if we are to know the true and living

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God. God knows everything. He knows everything about the past, the present, and the future because he is the architect and is the one who determines all things that come to pass.

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This is why the concept of open theism is not Christianity. Open theism is a term that's used to describe really what turns out to be a finite

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God version, a perversion of Christianity. Open theism is the idea that the future free actions of free creatures like humans are unknown to God, and therefore the future is not known to God, and not exhaustively.

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God does not know the future, and hence instead of the future being settled and determined, the future is open.

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That's why it's called open theism. And that is not a true position. That's not even classical theism at all.

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It's out of bounds completely. Open theism denies that God knows the future free actions of man. By robbing

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God of omniscience, that important propositional truth about him, God knows everything. They have a false

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God. In our day of tolerance and relativism, most will look at this kind of doctrinal precision as a hair -splitting waste of time.

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And yet the scriptures are so very clear that we must first have a right knowledge of God in our heads before we can serve and love him.

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When the door -to -door cults come to our doors, why do we not recognize them as Christians? It is not because they don't pray.

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They do. It is not because they don't claim to know and love God. They do claim to know and love God. It is not because they don't have religious experiences.

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They do have religious experiences. We say that they are not Christians, and we don't recognize them as Christians, because the propositional truths which they affirm to be true are, in fact, false.

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Second Corinthians 11 .4, Paul wrote, For if he who comes preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit, which you have not received, or a different gospel, which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it.

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And then later on, in Second Corinthians 11 .13, he describes the people who preach false Jesuses, false gospels, and false spirits.

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He says, Such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.

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And no wonder, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.

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Sadly, there are lots and lots and lots of Jesuses and gospels and spirits running around in the world.

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I mentioned this in the last episode on the deity of Christ, and that fella who holds to some form of Unitarianism.

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The word Jesus, God, spirits, eternal life, salvation, none of those words actually mean anything unless they're defined biblically.

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The late Dr. Walter Martin told that story I mentioned in the other video, where that woman stood up and said,

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I believe in Jesus Christ as my savior, and Walter Martin said, Which Jesus are you talking about?

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The Jesus of the Mormons, who is one God among many gods, like you believe, or the Jesus of the Jehovah's Witnesses, who's really the

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Archangel Michael, etc, etc? One prevalent false Jesus at the time of the writing of the

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New Testament was a Jesus who was not really physical. He did not have a real human body. That's a false Jesus.

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That is a Jesus that is another Jesus that is different from the true Jesus. The Apostle John denounced this teaching in the most forceful terms.

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He said in 2 John 1, 7, For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.

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This is a deceiver and an antichrist. 1 John 4, 2 -3.

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By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world.

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There are also lots of false gospels out there today as well, as there have been from the beginning.

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There's the gospel of Roman Catholicism, which says that God will give you grace to give you a spiritual kick in the pants to start doing some good works.

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Those good works viewed by God through the lens of grace are meritorious in God's sight, and as long as you don't do anything really bad, you might have to spend a little time in purgatory, but you'll eventually end up in heaven.

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That is a false gospel. There's the gospel of the cults. Do works with the help of grace and you'll be saved.

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There's the gospel of what's called the federal vision. Faith in the phrase justification by faith really means justification by faithful obedience to the law.

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So they will affirm that they believe in justification by faith alone, but they redefine faith as faithfulness or faithful obedience to the law, and thus they end up in the same place as Rome, the cults, and all of man's religions.

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The need for discernment today is greater than it's ever been. Now that we have the internet and anyone with a connection and a keyboard can air their opinions and gain followers, we are faced with a veritable tsunami of heresy and false teaching.

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Although we live in a culture that detests even the idea of absolute truth, the scriptures by their very nature as God breathed present

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God's own word to us over against the ideas and worldviews of sinful, rebellious men. The antithesis between truth and error, right and wrong,

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God's word and man's word will always be an absolute antithesis. Genesis 315, enmity

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I will put between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

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This antithesis expresses itself first and foremost as a battle of truth claims, a battle of ideas.

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This is why Paul describes the warfare in which we engage in to be a war of arguments.

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It's a pretty amazing way of describing it, but Paul actually says that the war we're in is a war of arguments.

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Listen, 2 Corinthians 10, 4, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

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Early on in my ministry, I preached a sermon called Tried and Proved Faith in which

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I preached from three very important texts of scripture, Galatians 1, 6 -9, Galatians 2, 11 -21 and Acts 15, 1 -14.

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What these texts of scripture set down for us is a principle we must follow, namely false teaching must be opposed, denounced and refuted so the church can benefit from a clearer knowledge of scripture and be protected from the same false teachings in the future.

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Anytime you hear tendencies among professing Christians to disparage creeds and confessions and or catechisms, you need to beware.

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Beware. All they're going to end up doing is this, repeating all the errors of the past and reinventing a few new errors, maybe.

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Reinventing some old errors and new garb. And if we reject the victories of Christ's church over errors in the past, we are defenseless against those same errors into the future.

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In his excellent summary on the Westminster Confession of Faith, the great A .A. Hodge said this, quote, while however the scriptures are from God, the understanding of them belongs to the part of men.

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Men must interpret to the best of their ability each particular part of scripture separately and then combine all that the scriptures teach upon every subject into a consistent whole and then adjust their teachings upon different subjects in mutual consistency as parts of a harmonious system.

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Every student of the Bible must do this and all make it obvious that they do it by the terms they use in their prayers and religious discourse.

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That's why I kept asking that guy questions. What do you believe about this? What do you believe about that? And he would say, I believe, I believe,

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I believe. He was giving me his confession. He was giving me his creed and he didn't realize it. Whether they admit or deny the propriety of human creeds and confessions, they still do it.

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If they, says Hodge, if they refuse the assistance afforded by the statements of doctrine slowly elaborated and defined by the church, they must make out their own creed by their own unaided wisdom.

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The real question is not as often pretended between the word of God and the creed of man, but between the tried and proved faith of the collective body of God's people and the private judgment and the unassisted wisdom of the repudiator of creeds, end quote.

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That was very well stated. I love A .A. Hodge. I recently did a series on the, uh, the lordship salvation controversy.

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I know that Tim and Carlos have addressed this as well. I mentioned in that series that there has been a departure from systematic theology in the past few decades that has brought about a tremendous harm to the church.

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We must be systematic in the way we do theology. We can't help but be systematic. God's truth will never contradict itself.

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It is always a consistent whole in all that it addresses. And yet contradictions are what

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Paul warned Timothy to reject. He said in first Timothy six 20, Oh, Timothy guard, what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

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And the word contradictions that's used there in first Timothy six 20 is the Greek word on T thesis antithesis people who say one thing on one page and contradicted on the next page, we are to avoid them and see what they're saying as profane and idle babblings and contradictions.

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Have you ever heard someone like that? Uh, someone who can say a lot of things without actually saying anything, who speaks a lot, says a lot about God, theology, the

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Bible, the Christian faith, and yet they contradict themselves constantly. We are to avoid such people because to contradict yourself is to engage in lying.

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Excuse me. Just enjoying some coffee, my afternoon coffee. Now one might ask if systematic theology is so important, why didn't

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God just give us a systematic theology textbook? Why was the Bible given to us in such a, an occasional format?

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The reason for this is simple. God gave his word to his people in the form that would be most beneficial to them at the time they received it.

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God spoke clearly to his people and he expected them to understand him. And now that we have all of God's written revelation in scripture, we must study the whole book, which is fairly big and try to make sure that every doctrine and every category of theology is able to take into account what

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God said to all of his people and his local churches in all their various historical situations. There is a coherent system of truth which can easily be detected by reading the whole

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Bible. We can see a very clear doctrine of the church, a very clear doctrine of God, a very clear doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ, a clear doctrine of the

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Holy Spirit, a clear doctrine of God's purposes and decrees, a clear doctrine of eschatology, a clear doctrine of the sacraments, a clear doctrine of marriage, a clear doctrine of justification, a clear doctrine of regeneration and sanctification, adoption, etc.,

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assurance. And we all recognize that these doctrines and teachings are addressed in more than one place in scripture.

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And therefore, as we seek to understand all that is said about each doctrine from the various parts of the word of God, we will always try to bring them together into a coherent whole.

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God expects us to do that. If our interpretations of scripture on a specific doctrine lead to internal contradictions about that doctrine, we are sinning against God.

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Or we're sinning against God if we do that. It is insulting to God to believe that he has revealed contradictions to us about anything.

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The fact is, logically, from two contradictory premises, you can prove anything you want.

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More than any of God's people who have ever lived in history, we have no excuse for having bad theology today.

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Perhaps the worst of the federal vision heretics was a man named Peter Lightheart. Years ago,

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I read his book called Against Christianity. It is a brazen attack on the gospel of Jesus Christ and on the theology of scripture.

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On page 43 and 44, Lightheart wrote this, quote, and when

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Paul's various statements on, say, justification, are removed from the epistolary and ecclesiastical context and organized into a calm and systematic and erudite doctrine, he put that in quotes, they become something different from what

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Paul taught, end quote. That is a direct attack on creeds and confessions.

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He says you can't, form cannot be stripped away without changing content. That's nonsense. That is total nonsense.

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He says form can't be stripped away without changing content. In other words, we cannot and we must not do systematic theology, lest we change what

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Paul taught us. Lightheart continues, quote, theology tells us that God is eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

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The Bible tells us that God relents because he is God, that God is shrewd with the shrewd, that he rejoices over us with shouting, and that he is an eternal whirlwind of triune communion and love.

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You see what he's doing? He's purposely quoting from question four of the Shorter Catechism and then pretending that what the

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Bible tells us about God contradicts it. John Robbins wrote concerning this, quote,

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Lightheart is not attempting to correct the confession on a single point. He is asserting that no systematic, calm, organized doctrine can be biblical.

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Lightheart relentlessly attacks systematic theology as unbiblical and untrue, end quote.

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I'd like to walk you through a brief experiment, a brief exercise to demonstrate how wrong

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Lightheart is on this point. If you look at Ephesians chapter two, verses eight through 10, listen to it.

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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, lest anyone should boast.

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For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

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Now you could take that text of scripture and ask the question, question, how are we saved? Answer, we are saved by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

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Question two, if we aren't saved by works, does this mean a saved person can continue to live in sin? Answer, no, we are the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus on two good works, which

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God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And I would have footnotes under the answer to question one to Ephesians two, eight through nine, and the footnote to the answer to question two,

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Ephesians two, 10. Now I'd like to ask a simple question. Have I changed the content of Ephesians two, eight through 10 by doing this?

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Because the form has been changed from the epistolary ecclesiastical context and has been changed into a calm and systematic catechism, have

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I in any way altered the meaning of the Bible? No. And what Lightheart is claiming is false.

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The fact is, reading Lightheart, he is every bit as systematic in his own anti -Christian theology as anyone else

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I've ever read. Again, it's not a question of whether or not you will be systematic in the way you do theology.

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It is only a question of how consistent and faithful to the text of all of Scripture you will be in doing it.

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You cannot avoid doing systematic theology. I was baited into a

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Facebook discussion long ago. I have no social media accounts. I have no social media accounts and my intention is to go to my grave without ever having one again because they are a waste of time and they're a pain.

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I'm turning my phone off right now. One of my goals too is to never have a phone either.

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Maybe have a flip phone and only family members and a few other people know the number, but that phone is the devil incarnate.

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I'm so sick of electronic stuff. I just really am. So anyway, where was

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I? I was baited into a Facebook discussion with one of the signatories of a joint federal vision statement on a friend's

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Facebook page. And I got a private message asking, hey, want to come argue with some federal vision guys?

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I was not interested, but I went ahead and did it anyway. I was a glutton for punishment back then. And once again, the mishandling of scripture because of their hatred of systematic theology was on full display.

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And again, I just want to emphasize that it's a big deal. It's a real big deal that people fight against systematic theology because if you don't have systematic theology, you're not going to have the truth.

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You're not going to have a consistent understanding of what God has revealed to man.

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Listen to Hodge again. He said, a man can outgrow systematic theology, therefore either by ceasing to be clear headed or by ceasing to be religious and in no other way.

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And I suppose some escape in their haste by both ways at once. And that's exactly right. Okay.

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The hatred of systematic theology in that little Facebook discussion, this individual was openly mocking the idea, just mocking the idea that Jesus's act of obedience to the law is imputed to believers.

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And I cited Romans 4, 6, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom

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God imputes righteousness apart from works. He responded by saying that the previous verse says that faith is accounted for righteousness.

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Romans 4, 5, but to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.

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I explained that we are told that faith is accounted for righteousness because faith is the instrumental cause of our justification before God.

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Faith in Jesus Christ is that by which we lay hold of Jesus Christ. And because faith is the sole instrument of our justification, it is appropriate in this context to say that in that phrase in verse five, it's nothing wrong with that.

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Faith is accounted for righteousness because of its close association with being the instrumental cause of our justification.

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It's perfectly fine to say that. And this guy had a fit. He had a fit accusing me of reading my theology into the text.

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And he told me that when it says his faith is accounted for righteousness, that his faith means his whole righteous response to God.

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So when Paul says we're justified by faith apart from works, what that really means is we're justified by our whole righteous response to God apart from works.

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Does that make any sense? No. I pointed out that there are scores of passages which teach that we're justified by faith apart from works, apart from deeds of righteousness we have done, apart from the law, not by works, etc.

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Faith is not our whole righteous response to God. Faith is simply receiving and resting upon Christ in his righteousness.

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That's all it is. Then I asked him, sir, do you recognize that our understanding of justification needs to be able to take into account all that the scriptures teach on the subject and more than just one phrase of one verse?

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And his answer was no. He was so childish.

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I was just shocked how childish he was. It was frightening and sad to see.

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Remarkably, the Westminster Confession addressed and rejected the very error this fellow and the entire federal vision makes on this point.

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Westminster Confession 11 .1. Those whom God affectionately calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, 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.

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Now listen to the next phrase, nor by imputing faith itself, which is what that guy said, the act of believing or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness.

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That's a shot at Arminianism. And of course, the federal vision guys just kind of resurrected that old heresy.

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But by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting upon him and his righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves.

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It is the gift of God. And they're referring to Ephesians 2, 8 through 10 again.

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Now, why did the Westminster theologians anticipate and reject errors like that?

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Because they're not new. What those guys were saying in that Facebook discussion on the federal vision silliness is nothing new.

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The Arminians had said the same thing a long time ago. God accepts my faith as my righteousness.

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That's what they taught. Or in the federal visionist case, faith is my whole righteous response to God. That, of course, destroys entirely the biblical concept of faith.

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What are the Arminians and the federal visionists desperately need? They need a course in systematic theology. This would prevent them from erecting entire edifices of theology into single phrases like his faith is accounted for righteousness.

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Can't you look at that verse or that phrase in its fuller context of Romans 4, 1 through 8? Wouldn't that be helpful instead of erecting a mountain of theology upon it and saying, see, faith is our whole response to God.

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So by our works, by our obedience, we're justified, which makes no sense at all, because then you have Paul saying, don't you see we're justified by obedience apart from obedience?

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And so it's shocking. Okay, what about the

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Jehovah's Witnesses? I've been visited many times by them since I moved to Tennessee. How many times have you heard this quoted?

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John 14, 8. Jesus said, my father is greater than I. See, Jesus can't be equal with God.

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He said the Father is greater than I. And we try to point out that this is not talking about being greater in his being or essence, but only in station and position with regard to the economy of salvation.

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The father did not humble himself and become incarnate. The spirit did not humble himself to become incarnate.

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God, the son, did. So in that sense, yes, the father is greater than him because the son humbled himself.

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Jesus was willingly subject to the will of the father in order to do his will in the redemption of his people. And then we might point out the hundreds of other passages which clearly set forth in systematic fashion the full deity of the person of Christ and the fuller doctrine of the

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Trinity. And then they say, yeah, but Jesus said, my father is greater than I. And we try to point out again what the rest of scripture says.

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And they keep saying the same thing. What do Jehovah's Witnesses need? Of course, in systematic theology. And my friends,

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I want to shout from the rooftops to everyone that's listening to this. You have to catechize your children.

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You need to teach them the catechism. You need to teach them the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Give them the well thought out, tried and proved biblical definitions of all the various doctrines of scripture.

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That Westminster Shorter Catechism will sustain the hearts of your children when life caves in on them. Those precious biblical truths are glorious and wonderful.

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B .B. Warfield, the Lion of Princeton and one of the greatest reformed theologians in modern times, memorized that catechism and could recite it in its entirety when he was six years old.

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The fact is, by the time your children are done living at home, they will have a doctrine of the purpose of man, a doctrine of scripture, a doctrine of God, a doctrine of salvation, a doctrine of a church, of baptism, of the

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Lord's Supper, the second coming. It's just a question of whether their understandings of these things will be biblical and consistent or unbiblical and inconsistent or a bit of both.

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Will they be balanced or unbalanced? Will their doctrines be able to take into account all that scripture says on a certain doctrine, or will they be as jaundiced as the federal visionists insist on being?

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Also, I would just encourage fathers especially, and mom, you need to do this, too. You need to read the

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Bible every day to your kids, at least two chapters every single day. It is important for them to hear the word of God read in your voice to them.

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As Deuteronomy says, as Ephesians 6 says, Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6, these things are to be in our hearts and we are to teach them diligently to our children and we are to speak of them when we sit in our house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down and when we rise up.

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Your children are one of the only things you can take to heaven with you, so you need to teach them truth. Now, I just want to give a personal testimony here at the end of this first program.

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Prior to my introduction to the great Reformation creeds, catechisms and confessions, I was really more or less drifting along in my

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Christian life. I was a voracious Bible reader, but I knew very little about church history and theological reflection.

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Because of this, I was very unbalanced in the doctrines I held to. Upon being introduced to the Reformed confessions and catechisms,

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I started studying them. I used to take a three ring binder and everything I printed off the Internet, the Westminster Standards, the

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Belgian Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Canons of Dor, and would sit there and read, look up passages and rejoice for hours on end.

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I would drive to, I would go to the church I went to where I learned nothing and the preaching was terrible and there was no theology or doctrine taught there.

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And then I would take my three ring binder with my Bible and I would go to a local park where I lived in Akron, Ohio, and just sit and read through those confessions and looking up passages and would just sit there and rejoice.

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And it was just glorious. I loved that. That was a wonderful season of my life. I learned so much from the past and from the word of God.

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Finally, yes, finally, I was really learning the Bible from my Christian brethren who had worked long and labored hard over the word of God and hammered through the tough passages to create those great creeds and confessions, which were wonderful summaries of the great doctrines of scripture.

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Everything in my life started changing then. My marriage was better. My prayer life was animated.

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I was more evangelistic because I understood the gospel and how to share it better. Jesus Christ has been building his church and he continues to sanctify its understanding of his truth over the centuries.

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And woe be upon us if we do not learn from the hard work of those who have gone before us.

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And I think that you will see as we go through the confession that it is marvelously devotional and what a glorious treasure trove of truth it is.

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When Peter Lightheart talks about the confession in such a derogatory sense, he's like, you know, you can't take it and put it into a calm and systematic catechism.

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The doctrines of scripture spelled out in our confessions and catechisms are soul stirring and heartwarming.

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To look at, it's not it doesn't become calm and systematic as if it's boring or something.

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The doctrines are consistent. The doctrine of justification is consistent. The doctrine of what faith is, is consistent all the way through scripture.

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All those things, there is a consistency to the way that God has spoken to us. And we are sinning against God if in our minds we hold things to be true that are contradictory or inconsistent with one another.

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So I hope that you'll see that more as we plow through our confession and appreciate you tuning in to the

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Protestant Witness. This is Pastor Patrick Hines, and thanks for watching or listening. This is

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Pastor Patrick Hines of Brittle Heights Presbyterian Church, located at 108 Brittle Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee.

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And you've been listening to the Protestant Witness podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any

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Sunday morning at 11 a .m. sharp, where we open the word of God together, sing his praises and rejoice in the gospel of our risen

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Lord. You can find us on the web at www .brittlewellheightspca .org.

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And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.