Creeds and Confessions #1 - Why Creeds and Confessions?

Redeemer Bible Fellowship

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January 9, 2024

00:00: So let's turn to God's Word, 2 Timothy chapter 1, reading from verse 13, and we're going to read into chapter 2 verse 2.
00:13: So 2 Timothy chapter 1 from verse 13 through to chapter 2 verse 2 just to open up our time this morning.
00:23: So 2 Timothy chapter 1 from verse 13, God's Word says, Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
00:35: Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. You know that all those in the province of Asia have deserted me, including
00:43: Phagellus and Homogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Anesophorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains.
00:54: On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he diligently searched for me and found me. May the
00:59: Lord grant that he may obtain mercy from him on that day. You know how very well, you know very well how much he ministered at Ephesus.
01:10: You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
01:28: Let's pray and then we'll jump into our Sunday school lesson for this morning. So let's pray together. Well, Heavenly Father, we thank you for another opportunity to gather on the
01:38: Lord's day to enjoy fellowship together and to enjoy the means of grace and to even receive instruction from your word.
01:47: And we ask that as we engage in this lesson together and we think about one of the ways in which we fulfill the commands of verses 13 and 14 that we just read, we ask that you would help us that we would devote the time to these things that are worthy of them, that you would help us to grapple with the implications of these things.
02:11: And above all, this would not just be knowledge that we file away, but it would help us in our pursuit of joy in Jesus.
02:18: It's in his name that we pray and for his sake. Amen. All right, well, as you can see on the screens in front of you, this is going to be a series of lessons that we'll do kind of periodically, we won't do this three weeks in a row.
02:39: And I've given, I originally didn't give this a title, the series a title, I decided to because I thought it would be helpful.
02:46: And so as you can see, I've given it the title being a creedal and confessional church.
02:52: Notice I didn't say becoming a creedal and confessional church, for the simple fact, every church, every church you go to in some way, shape or form is creedal and confessional.
03:03: The minute they say we believe this, congratulations, you are creedal. The minute you say we hold to this, congratulations, you're confessional.
03:11: So the question is, how do you be creedal and confessional in a way that is biblically consistent?
03:18: Well, that's what we're going to be thinking about in the next three lessons. And of course, this is part one, as you can see from the handout there, as we think about why creeds and confessions.
03:32: So why do we need creeds and confessions? That's what we're going to give time and attention to this morning.
03:40: As we get started, let me start with kind of an opening question and we'll pass the mic around for this.
03:48: How do you know what you believe is true? How do you know that what you believe is true?
03:58: If someone were to ask you, okay, you say you believe this, this, this, this, and this. How do you know that what you believe is true?
04:09: Who wants to start us off with that question? Eddie, would you mind passing the mic around for me? Thank you. There we go.
04:42: Well, one way would be that I've actually seen it with my own eyes.
04:47: Okay. So if I see it, then it's true. Anyone agree, disagree with that statement?
04:59: Okay. I'll come back to that one. That's an interesting one for sure. Okay. Because I see it, it must be true.
05:08: Okay. Anyone else? If the Bible confirms it, if it's in God's word.
05:15: Okay. So if the Bible confirms it, which of course none of us would disagree, let's camp on that one for a second.
05:20: What if somebody says, okay, but you say the Bible says this, and I say the Bible says this. You both holding to the right authority, which is the
05:30: Bible, but who has more weight in that moment? Think about that question because it's going to become very important for our lesson this morning.
05:41: But real quick, anyone else? How do you know what you believe is true? One way is to see if it's something that's been held by the church throughout the church's life, like from the very beginning.
05:59: Is this something that the first Christians believed was truth? Okay. That's an interesting point to raise and will definitely prove itself relevant in the context of today's study.
06:13: Anyone else? How do you know that what you believe is true? I mean, it's kind of obvious, but your church.
06:31: Okay. How do you know what your church believes is true? The church before them.
06:40: You know the question I'm going to ask next, right? Yeah. And you know what I'm going to say. Yeah. Well, I have us open up with that question of how do we know what we believe is true?
06:53: Because none of the answers that have been given are in and of themselves wrong.
06:59: So yes, if you're an eyewitness to something, provided you're telling the truth, of course, then yeah, we can trust that.
07:11: And of course, we want to say that the Bible, which is God's word, is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice.
07:22: But as I said, the challenge becomes, well, how do we know what the Bible teaches? We know what the
07:30: Bible says because we all have the Bible and we can all read it. But moving from what it says to what it teaches, oh, let me put this in, what we believe it teaches.
07:41: I mean, the Bible does teach in and of itself, but what we believe it teaches, there are a few more steps that go in there.
07:48: So both Eddie and Brad picked up on the church component to this, but again, there's a right way to view that and a wrong way to view that.
07:59: So the Church of Rome essentially says that we are the custodians of the truth, therefore what we say, sacred tradition, is equal to the scripture.
08:13: That's a wrong way to view the church's role. But there is an element to which we say that as God's people, we want to ask, what have all of God's people believed and what have all of God's people confessed about the truth?
08:26: And so that's what we're thinking about as we think about this subject of why creeds and confessions. So real quick, just on the top of your hand out there, you can see the series of lessons that we're going to go through.
08:38: So today we're looking at why creeds and confessions. Our next study will be on February the 11th,
08:47: February the 11th, and we're going to look at how creeds and confessions work in the life of a church.
08:54: And then finally, all the way in March, March 31st, we'll have a lesson where we're going to look at our own church's confession, the
09:01: New Hampshire Confession of Faith. And really my aim with this series of lessons is for us to think more intentionally about our confession as a church and the place it should hold within our church.
09:16: Like I said, every church has a confession, ours just happens to be a written one. But we want to be clear on the place that it holds and the value that it holds for us as a church.
09:29: And so that's what we're going to consider in the time that's before us this morning.
09:35: So with that in mind, point number one there in your study guide for this morning, let's start by defining our terms. When we talk about creeds and confessions,
09:45: I think it's important for us to define those things. Oftentimes, especially in our sort of theological tradition, these words kind of just get smushed together to kind of mean the same thing.
09:56: And actually they're a little bit different. So in your handout that you see,
10:01: I put a little sentence that says a creed defines blank and a confession defines blank.
10:07: Let's fill that in. So a creed defines who Christians believe in.
10:14: And a confession defines what Christians believe in. Let's go back to that first one.
10:21: A creed defines who Christians believe in. And then a confession defines what
10:32: Christians believe in. Easy way to think about that. Creeds who, confessions what.
10:40: So once again, a creed defines who Christians believe in. A confession defines what
10:48: Christians believe in. One writer,
10:53: Dr. Donald Fairburn puts it like this. He says, quote, creeds are not meant as comprehensive statements of the faith.
11:02: They're instead pledges of allegiance to the three persons of the Trinity. Say the following two sentences out loud and listen to the difference.
11:10: I believe in God, the father, the almighty, and I believe there is one
11:16: God. He goes on, do you hear the difference? The second is a confessional statement, an assertion that answers a what question.
11:29: So in this case, what do we believe about ultimate reality? Well, we believe that there is one
11:34: God, but the first is a creedal statement. An assertion of allegiance to the one true
11:43: God who has created everything that exists. So do you see the difference there that's being worked out?
11:50: A creed tells us, or is a statement of who we believe in. A confession functions to explain in more detail what it is we believe.
12:08: And so that's why we typically talk about creeds and confessions, because they function in different ways.
12:15: One is a statement of who we believe in, and the other is a statement of what we believe in.
12:25: So that's the big distinction there between creeds and confessions. So a creed is a typically shorter statement that explains who we believe in, and the fact that we believe in this one, and a confession explains in more detail what it is we believe that the
12:45: Bible teaches, including what it teaches about the one that we believe in. So that's the important distinction that we want to make here, and I'm going to presuppose that distinction for the rest of this series of lessons.
12:59: So that's us defining our terms. Unfortunately, not all Christians agree about the importance of creeds and confessions.
13:07: There are whole movements that reject any sort of creedalism or confessionalism.
13:12: So for a few moments, since we are people of our time, we might want to ask the question, point number two there, why might some
13:20: Christians reject creeds and confessions? Why might some
13:27: Christians reject creeds and confessions? In fact, before I give you the reasons
13:33: I have in front of me, let's open it up to the room. Why do you think some people might feel iffy on the one hand, or outright reject on the other hand, creeds and confessions?
13:50: So I guess I'll just start real quick. You know, over the years
13:56: I've heard before, being creedal and confessional, it's like that creeds can bind you in an unhealthy kind of way, like it becoming another law added to the
14:09: Bible. Okay. That's one reason I've heard. Okay, that's one. I agree. I've heard that one too. Actually, we will address that.
14:15: So, yep, that's one that you hear often that, you know, they bind the conscience. Okay. Anyone else?
14:23: Why might some people reject creeds and confessions? A little bit similar to what
14:32: Eddie mentioned, but in addition to that, people reject creeds and confessions because they're not actually directly from the
14:43: Bible. Okay. So they don't want to use any kind of other statement other than what the
14:51: Bible itself says. All right. Which, that's another reason I've heard often, and actually it's the first reason that I'm going to give, so top marks for that one.
15:01: Anyone else? Why might some Christians reject creeds and confessions? I think one thing
15:06: I've heard before is like, it's kind of like putting God in a box. Okay. If you say like this about God or about what we believe, it's kind of like, yeah, like making
15:18: God smaller than he is, I guess. Okay. I think part of it might also be because they've heard in the past churches that hold to things that are not true.
15:34: Yep. There are people out there who don't believe the right thing. And so why would we want to?
15:40: Yeah, I can see why somebody would say that for that reason, to be sure. I think if we think specifically about our cultural context here in the
15:51: Rogue Valley, I think we can agree confessionalism is not the norm. It's not that there aren't any other confessional churches.
15:58: There are. But by and large, this is not the norm to the culture in which we find ourselves.
16:05: And so it might be helpful for us, as we're on the outset thinking about creeds and confessions, to clear away some of the misconceptions that might be out there.
16:15: For a moment, that means we do have to start with a negative, which is not always a great place to start, but it might be helpful for us to clear away some of those misconceptions before we can get to the more positive and edifying part,
16:28: I believe, of why having creeds and confessions in the life of a local church is helpful.
16:34: Now, thankfully, I don't have to do this on my own. Lots of people have been thinking about this for quite some time.
16:41: There was a popular Presbyterian theologian called Samuel Miller. You talk to any old school
16:47: Presbyterian, they love Samuel Miller because of just how helpful he was to the Presbyterian movement, especially here in the
16:54: US. And in the 1860s, I believe, Miller wrote a more or less an essay that he called
17:04: On the Utility, utility just means the usefulness, On the Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions.
17:14: And it was essentially a defense of a classical confessional position, writing in a context where people were arguing against it.
17:25: And he lists a number of objections, I believe it's in the second, towards the end of his essay.
17:31: He lists a number of the objections that exist. Oh, by the way, you can download this for free from monogism .com.
17:36: They have it as an e -book that you can download to your device of choice. And towards the end of that essay, it's almost a book.
17:44: He lists a number of objections to creeds and confessions, some of which we've said in this room and are thus still applicable today.
17:51: And so I'm going to borrow from Samuel Miller for just a moment on some of these objections that Christians may raise to creeds and confessions and hopefully give some succinct answers.
18:03: So first of all, Miller notes that the objection some people give is we have the
18:09: Bible or we have the Holy Spirit. We don't need other men's words.
18:16: The objection here is very simple, that the Bible is God's word and man's word isn't God's word. Therefore, we do not need the words of men to define what
18:23: God has said. Before I give my answer, how might you answer that if someone came to you and said, well, we don't need creeds and confessions because we have the
18:32: Bible. How would you answer that? OK, so Brad just said, well, why do you help us?
18:43: Which is actually my go to response on that one. But let's extend that for a moment.
18:49: Why do you listen to anybody who teaches the Bible? Because let's think about this.
18:56: Let me let me start off with my answer to begin with. If you listen to a preacher and the people
19:02: I've encountered over the years who say this tend to be people who also don't have local church affiliation to begin with.
19:10: That's a whole other conversation. But they have preachers they like to listen to.
19:16: They've got teachers that they will listen to and they will respect. So my question is, unless your preacher gets up on a
19:22: Sunday or whenever it is he preaches or whenever he turns on his camera in this day and age. And he just comes and just starts reading texts.
19:31: So my Bible is over in 2nd Timothy 2. You, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
19:41: Thank you for listening. Sit down. Unless he's doing that, the minute he says something saying, this is what this passage means or this is what
19:52: I think about this passage. We can all agree those are no longer God's words in those moments. Those are his words. Now, the preaching moment,
20:00: I do agree with our reformed tradition that in the faithful preaching of God's word, that can be considered
20:07: God's word. But we're not saying it's God's word in the inspired sense. We're simply saying that because it's a faithful representation of what
20:14: God has said, it's God's word. But the argument that says, well, because we have the
20:19: Bible, we don't need other men's words falls flat. If you are willing to listen to other men, just happens to be men you agree with.
20:29: More than that, that answer rejects the reality that the
20:37: Bible itself says that God gives to the church men who are capable of teaching the church.
20:47: So let's start this real quick. Ephesians chapter four. We spent some time in this passage in the month of October.
20:56: So hopefully it's somewhat fresh in your minds, but Ephesians chapter four. So Ephesians chapter four in verse 11.
21:13: Again, pay attention to how Paul puts this. He says, and he himself, he himself being the risen and ascended
21:22: Christ. And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.
21:33: One of the many gifts that the risen and ascended Christ gives to his people is the gift of men who are capable to teach.
21:42: And sometimes I'm going to argue a lot of the time. Actually, those men are going to use their own words to fulfill that function.
21:52: So if you say, well, we have the Bible or in more modern parts, especially with the rise of the charismatic movement, well, we have the
21:59: Holy Spirit. Well, the reality is. Even people who say that still have somebody who teaches unless you're going to reject all human teachers whatsoever.
22:09: And there are Christians who have tried to say that inconsistently, I might argue, unless you're going to go down to that extreme.
22:15: We all have people who are teaching us. The question is who's teaching us and can they be trusted?
22:24: So that's how you answer that objection that we have the Bible or the Holy Spirit. We don't need other men's words. Another objection that comes up, which we've already brought up, is that creeds bind the conscience of the individual.
22:37: So Miller phrases the objection like this. And he's speaking as the objector in this moment.
22:44: What right has any church or body of churches to impose a creed on me or dictate to me what
22:52: I shall believe? To attempt any such dictation is tyranny. To submit to it is to surrender the right of private judgment.
23:03: So you have people who, in fact, there are whole denominations that are founded on this principle. So if you're familiar with, for example, the
23:10: Churches of Christ and their sort of affiliated cousin, the
23:18: Christian Church, also known as the Disciples of Christ. Both of these sets of churches are not just non -credal.
23:27: They are anti -credal. And when you hear their arguments, as I did this week just in preparation for this study, they all boil down to, well,
23:35: God has given the Christian a free conscience. Which, by the way, as Reformed people, we believe. In fact, one of the other confessions, 1689, copying the
23:45: Westminster, says exactly that. That God alone is Lord of the conscience. So none of us deny that.
23:50: But their argument goes, if God has made us free beings with a conscience of our own, then a body cannot tell us what we can believe.
24:00: Only individual local churches can, of their own volition, believe what they choose to believe.
24:09: Well, here's how I answer that one. First of all, nobody forces anybody to believe a creed or confession by force.
24:17: So have there been moments in church history where folks have attempted to enforce the faith by the sword?
24:29: Unfortunately, yes. Completely unbiblical. That's not how the church functions.
24:39: But have there been people who have tried to do that? Yes. In healthy, Bible -believing churches, is that how we make people believe?
24:46: Whether it's by force of the state or by force of the leadership? That's another way that happens.
24:53: No. Governments can't make you believe. And we who have the office of teaching in the local church, we can't employ violence or aggression to make you believe.
25:05: Far from it. And yes, creeds and confessions, we believe, do have authority.
25:14: You've just got to be careful about what kind of authority. You see, there are two types of authority in the church.
25:22: There is magisterial authority and ministerial authority.
25:28: Let me explain that distinction for us. Magisterial authority is the authority to rule and to essentially govern or to be the head of something.
25:43: In the church, only one person has that authority. Anybody want to tell me who that is?
25:49: The Lord Jesus. The Bible refers to him multiple times as the head of the church.
25:55: So if he's the head of the church, he alone has magisterial authority.
26:05: But as a result of that authority, as a result of his headship, he delegates a measure of authority to the church, which is ministerial authority.
26:17: So he gives to the church a measure of authority in his name to serve his people well.
26:26: And one of the ways in which the church, I would argue, manifests that authority is by putting together statements of what we believe as God's people, reflective of God's word.
26:41: So in a sense, we're not trying to bind your conscience, but a creed and a confession in the life of a church does have some kind of authority, just not coercive authority.
26:52: When I use that term, you know what I mean when I say that? Like, I can't make you believe this if you're not persuaded by scripture and by the work of the
27:02: Holy Spirit. So no, we're not actually trying to bind the individual's conscience. Oh, Eddie, can you make sure folks get the handout if they haven't?
27:14: We're not trying to bind or stifle people's consciences. Far from it. That kind of leads to a third objection, which is related to this one, which is that creeds and confessions stifle any free discovery.
27:28: In other words, if you say, OK, well, our church has a confession. Then you're saying.
27:37: I can't come to any other conclusions. I can't study anything else.
27:44: I can only just believe this. Well, a few thoughts.
27:51: First of all, creeds and confessions don't cover everything. That's going to be a point I'll make in our next lesson in February.
27:59: Because they're not designed to. They're designed to cover specific things. Things of what we would consider first and secondary importance.
28:10: But more than that, there's a very big difference between how, and we'll talk about this in our final lesson in more detail, how a individual in a local church holds to the church's confession and how those who teach hold to the church's confession.
28:28: Those function in different ways. Again, we'll say more about this in March, but let me give you a short version now, since it covers this objection.
28:36: First of all, as a member, if you are just an individual member who's part of a church. And we say this to all the people who come into membership here, that we're not necessarily saying you have to agree with everything in the confession to become a member of a church.
28:52: My pastor back in London used to say about our church's statement of faith, which is a very extensive one.
28:59: That this used to call it the what we teach document, and that was very important that they chose that name.
29:04: That is what we teach, not necessarily what you should believe. Because you might not believe it when you come here.
29:12: Or you might not know whether you should believe it or not. You see, to become a member of a church,
29:18: I argue, the requirements should not be any greater than to become, well, excuse me, to be a believer.
29:26: So do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you believe in his gospel? Do you believe the essential truths of the faith?
29:32: And are you willing to become part of this body? Now, we may tell you up front, and I know
29:40: I've done this because I used to do all the membership interviews at one point. I'll tell you up front, this is our church's confession.
29:46: This is the teaching position we're coming from. You don't necessarily have to agree to it, but you do have to agree to submit to it as it's being taught in the church.
29:58: So, for example, if someone came to our church, and they were Pedo -Baptists, they believe in baptizing infants.
30:07: Could they be a member at Redeemer? They could. They have to recognize that we are not
30:13: Pedo -Baptists, but if they say, you know what, we love, we're in so much agreement on so much else, and we love the preaching of God's word, we love the people, and we want to become, great, wonderful.
30:26: That doesn't stop them from coming to their conclusion. Or, let's use a better example, let's say somebody who's already here comes to Pedo -Baptist conclusions.
30:36: Are we going to say, well, you're a Pedo -Baptist, now you need to get out? Well, no, because as long as you're willing to, if you say, well,
30:46: I still love this church, and I still want to be a part of it, great, wonderful, we'll have you. Because we're not trying to stifle your right to free discovery or to come to different conclusions.
30:54: We're simply saying, as a member, know where we're coming from.
31:02: So, for members, it functions one way. I would argue from scripture, leaders are bound to a much more strict subscription to the confession.
31:10: So, somebody now says, okay, I want to go through our older process here. Okay, great, well, part of that is you're going to need to read our confession, know what it says, and you're going to have to come to a place where you can say,
31:20: I agree with the system of teaching that this confession puts forward. And I'm not going to teach contrary to it.
31:27: But that's for a leader. That's not the standard held for everybody. So, far from stifling free discovery or free consideration of the truth, actually, if you think properly about how a confession is supposed to function, or how a creed is supposed to function, it doesn't stifle that at all.
31:48: The final objection that gets raised is that creeds and confessions destroy Christian unity. So, this is the, again,
31:53: I mentioned the Churches of Christ, this is one of their big arguments. You know, you folks who are in the denominations, the
32:02: Presbyterian believes this, and the Methodist believes this, and the Baptist believes this. And none of you agree.
32:08: In fact, all of you say they're not Christians. That's why you need to get rid of all these creeds and just believe the
32:14: Bible, as interpreted by the Churches of Christ, of course. But actually,
32:21: I'm going to argue that creeds and confessions in a local church don't destroy Christian unity, they actually guard it.
32:31: And they guard it in two ways. Internally, it guards unity because there's a mutually understood standard of teaching.
32:41: So, if you come to Redeemer, if you ask, well, what do you guys believe? I can point you to our website and say, oh, by the way, there's a statement on our website called the
32:50: New Hampshire Confession of Faith, and it explains, from a teaching perspective, what we believe here at Redeemer. That's mutually understood.
32:58: Again, that's not mutually agreed, necessarily, but it is mutually understood.
33:06: But, not just internally, but in terms of our relationship to other local churches, think about this.
33:12: One of the great benefits of creeds and confessions is they help us to know where and how we can cooperate with other
33:19: Christians without crossing lines and creating confusion. So, I'll give you an example.
33:25: Every time that our friends in Medford, over at Cornerstone Christian Church, have their
33:30: Cornerstone lectures, I advertise it. I tell our folks, we should go. A number of us went last time, it was great.
33:38: We can cooperate in that ministry endeavor without saying, okay, if you go, then you have to become a member of Cornerstone.
33:47: Well, no. We know where our differences are, so we probably couldn't be members at Cornerstone, especially their
33:57: Dutch Reformed. They have a very strict view of membership, and you basically have to believe what the confession says.
34:05: As a baptistic church, per se, we have a slightly more flexible view of that than most.
34:13: But, that doesn't stop me having, on a personal level, a good relationship with Pastor Quentin over there. It doesn't stop me when they have events saying, hey, this is good for our valley, you should all go.
34:23: Or, when I taught at the gospel mission, lots of people go and speak at the gospel mission.
34:33: We may not always agree on every single thing, but there is enough agreement as God's people that actually, we can cooperate together in that parachurch ministry, essentially.
34:43: And so, creeds and confessions, if they are rightly used, again, they don't destroy
34:51: Christian unity. They help Christian unity. Well, that's all negative.
34:58: Let's get to the positives. Point number three there in the handout. Why should we have creeds and confessions?
35:06: So, if we've tried our best to answer some of those objections, and if you have any other ones, come see me and we'll do our best.
35:14: But, once we've answered those objections, positively, why should we have creeds and confessions?
35:23: Well, a few thoughts. First of all, creeds and confessions offer simple summaries of the faith.
35:31: Creeds and confessions offer simple summaries of the faith. Now, some may argue, define simple, because some of them are multi -page documents.
35:48: They're not single pages that you can put in a file somewhere. But, for a moment, we need to kind of acknowledge that as a general culture, our definition of what simplicity is, isn't always the right one.
36:06: We think simplicity often is an absence of any sort of complexity.
36:15: So, if it requires, I'll never forget, I can't remember who it was who said it, but someone was doing a debate on a university campus, and they kept getting cut off, and the person who was speaking at this campus said,
36:28: Ma 'am, sometimes I have thoughts that require more than one sentence. One, that's hilarious, but two, sometimes, to explain things in a simple way, you might need a few more words.
36:47: But, I would argue our confessions are simple summaries for two reasons. Number one, they deal, like I said, with the main and central truths of Christian faith and doctrine.
37:00: So, if you read many of our confessions, we use an example that Christians like to argue about.
37:08: Matters relating to the end. Technical term, eschatology. The confessions don't take a stance, necessarily, and our creeds don't take a stance beyond the fact that Jesus is going to return, and that he's going to return physically.
37:22: Now, that doesn't mean a local church's leadership can't say, okay, we have a position on this.
37:28: But, we have to be honest and say, while we take this position, the confession doesn't require that, which means we can't require that of you, necessarily.
37:40: They keep us all focused on what is most important. As the phrase goes, they keep the main thing, the main thing, which is the main thing.
37:51: But, they're also helpful because they provide theological stability to a local church. By their simplicity, they do provide a measure of stability.
38:00: We all, like I said, know where we're coming from. Even where we may disagree, we still know, okay, this is where the church is coming from.
38:08: So, creeds and confessions offer simple summaries of the faith. But, secondly, they're also an extension of the church's teaching ministry.
38:17: So, we talked about this just a few moments ago from Ephesians 4. But, commenting on that,
38:24: Carl Truman, who's written an excellent book called The Creedal Imperative, and I hear that, actually, he's going to have an extended version of this book come out this year with a new title, which
38:33: I can't remember. But, in The Creedal Imperative, Carl Truman says this, A confession describes the message which the church is to preach, and it limits the church's power to what is contained in that document.
38:49: So, again, I can't come here and say, well, I hold this view on this issue. I can teach that by the very fact that I can say, but our confession is intentionally very open on that subject.
39:04: Again, key phrase here, go back for a second, the church's teaching ministry.
39:10: We're thinking corporately as a body, not necessarily the individual leadership of the church. A confession functions as an extension of that church's teaching ministry.
39:24: And since they are church documents and not individual documents, Truman goes on, These documents have been adopted by those who have been called to hold office in Christ's church, and that carries huge weight in and of itself.
39:38: The default position should be one of trust and obedience towards them. No, this does not mean that, unlike the
39:45: Bereans, we should not search the scriptures to see if the things they claim are so. But this is where it gets interesting, he says,
39:52: But it does mean that we should be less confident of our judgment, and I'd insert a word there, individual judgment, and more inclined to trust the church.
40:05: So this is where the answers that Eddie and Brad gave earlier kind of dovetail into our lesson this morning.
40:13: Because if we rightly understand the place of creeds and confessions, we're saying that, we're essentially rejecting, and this is one of Carl Truman's points in his book,
40:24: The Creedal Imperative, we are rejecting the sort of hyper -modern understanding that says,
40:30: The only ground for truth is what I believe to be true. And we're saying that actually, we want to believe what all of God's people have said to be true.
40:42: And yes, this is kind of a hard sell in our age where we value individual opinions and thus individual faith.
40:49: But I do think you can make a biblical case for this. So let's look at a few passages super quickly,
40:55: I've only got 10 more minutes, so I want to be respectful of the time. 1 Timothy chapter 3, let's start there.
41:02: So 1 Timothy 3, which was, excuse me, our text from last Sunday. Remember what
41:08: Paul said there, 1 Timothy chapter 3? So in 1
41:17: Timothy 3 verse 15, remember what he called the church? He said that, you know, I've written so that you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living
41:25: God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. That's a ministry that's given to the church.
41:36: Flip over to the next book, 2 Timothy, which is where we started this morning. So 2
41:41: Timothy 1, 13 and 14. I'll read the verses in full, but did you catch the couple of phrases that Paul uses?
41:48: So verse 13, he says we ought to hold on to the pattern of sound teaching.
41:56: That word for pattern there speaks to a structure, a form. Some translations actually have it like that.
42:02: The form of sound teaching or sound words. There's not just a amorphous body of beliefs that Christians have.
42:10: Paul could tell Timothy that there is a pattern, there is a structured approach to this sound teaching that you ought to hold to.
42:19: And then look at verse 14, he says, guard the good deposit. I am in the camp of various commentators who would say that the good deposit is the same thing as that pattern of sound teaching.
42:32: That there is a body of truth given to the believer and given to the church, that the church is to God.
42:43: Flip over to the second to last book in your New Testament, the book of Jude. So look at Jude, only one chapter.
42:53: Look at Jude and look at verse three with me. So Jude 3, he says,
43:03: Dear friends, although I was eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all.
43:17: That term delivered literally means it was handed over. It was entrusted to. And no, he doesn't say to the believers, to the saints in the plural.
43:26: Even in Jude's day, he recognized that was a body of teaching. That was to be handed over that had already started to be handed over,
43:36: I should say, from the apostles who received it from Christ and was now being passed on to his generation.
43:44: And one of the ways in which we do this as the body of God's people is we put this body of teaching down on paper, so to speak, in the forms of creeds, confessions and catechisms.
44:00: In fact, there's one reason that beginning next week, we're going to do this. Actually, we're going to do it this week.
44:06: And I honestly just forgot to put it in our slides. So my apologies. We'll start it next month. But one of the things we're going to start doing again is corporate reciting of a creed or a catechism.
44:21: Why? Because in that moment, we are saying together as God's people, this is what we believe.
44:28: Not just me, the individual, but we, God's people, collectively. Third benefit of creeds and confessions, they set a standard for the doctrinal knowledge of a congregation.
44:46: Hold on. Didn't you just say we don't all have to agree to this? Yes. But again, Paul Truman, I think, is super helpful.
44:53: He says this. A church confession not only sets before the congregation a list of doctrinal priorities and demonstrates how these priorities fit together in an overarching framework.
45:04: It also represents an aspirational ideal of what the eldership hopes will be the appropriate level of doctrinal competence for the congregation.
45:18: He goes on. If something is a priority, is of importance, then it should be stated in the confession.
45:25: If it is not in the confession, then it will be very hard to make the case that it is of any importance after all.
45:33: If one does not need to have an opinion on a topic to hold office, then that topic is clearly of highly negotiable significance.
45:48: All that to me, a confession functions in the life of a church to say, this is what we think are the most important things for a believer to believe.
46:01: Which means if it doesn't address it, that doesn't mean it's not important. But what it does mean is it's not of equal importance.
46:11: But sometimes, let's be honest, we can, Christians can struggle with this. All of us can. We all have topics we think are the most important thing in the world.
46:19: And oftentimes, you have to ask yourself, well, what's stopping you from saying that? But if you are able to say, well, actually, there is something external to us and our subjective interpretation of the
46:34: Bible that helps us to categorize and define what is most important or what is least important, then actually, you help the body to know these are the things that are most important.
46:47: So let me use an example from my upbringing. So I grew up in a context where you had people who were very, very good at the finer details of eschatology within the position that they held.
47:05: And so they could break down all of, you know, they could read Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21 at the back of their hands.
47:12: Daniel, they were very versed in Revelation. And they could really break all that stuff down. But I think back to sitting in Sunday school classes with some of those folks as a younger
47:21: Christian. And then hearing them muddle their way through the doctrine of justification or muddle their way through the doctrine of adoption or give totally nonsensical answers when it came to how does the sovereignty of God fit with human freedom.
47:41: And at times you sit there and think, so help me understand this. You can explain
47:47: Ezekiel 38 and 30 and 90 to me in detail. But you can't explain to me how a believer is made right with God properly.
47:56: I began to realize, for what it's worth, I'm premillennial in my understanding of eschatology. I probably would agree with them in large measure on lots of that.
48:05: But I'm sorry if you're really good at eschatology and you screw up the doctrine of justification.
48:13: I think your priorities are in the wrong place. And one of the things that a good confession does in life for church, it tells the church, these are the matters of first importance.
48:24: These are the matters that you should aspire to have a handle on. And that means other things might be important, but you have to recognize they're not of equal importance.
48:36: Because think about it, if everything is of first importance, then nothing is of first importance. Finally, one of my favorite reasons
48:46: I like creeds and confessions, they put present issues in proper perspective. For a long time,
48:53: I used to struggle with the concept of creeds and confessions and where they fit in the church. And part of my own personal disagreement was, honestly,
49:03: I don't feel like they deal with modern issues enough. Now, my view on that started to change for two reasons.
49:13: First of all, actually, it might be a strength that they don't deal with every potential modern problem.
49:21: Because let's be honest, we all like to think the problems of this day and age are the most important. Every generation thinks that about the generation they live in.
49:30: And actually, what creeds and confessions do really well is, again Karl Truman talks about this in his book,
49:36: The Creole Imperative, they relativize the problems of the present. Not that they're not problems, but we recognize this is something we need to deal with today.
49:45: It's not something we're always going to deal with. Now, that doesn't mean that a church's leadership might not decide, for example, we think about the gender confusion in our culture.
49:57: And it may not, just because, well, the confession doesn't deal with it, so I don't need to deal with it. No, it actually might be wise for a church to say, you know what, we're going to teach some of our friends who've done this,
50:08: I'm going to teach some Sunday school lessons on some of these cultural issues. Or, as a leadership, we're going to put together a position paper on these issues.
50:19: That's a good and wonderful thing. But we recognize that that's just because that's an issue that's dealt with today.
50:25: These are not perennial issues of the faith. And like I said,
50:32: I think that's a strength, not a weakness. Because first of all, it means that in the things that we believe are of first importance, we are confessing truths that our brothers and sisters down through the ages have all held together.
50:47: I also think it demonstrates that Christianity is not just a present faith, it's a historic one.
50:54: We are not the first generation of Christians. I've heard people make this joke for years now. Christianity did not begin with Billy Graham.
51:01: As much as we love Billy Graham, bless his memory. No, Christianity is a 2 ,000 -year -old faith.
51:07: Christians have been reflecting on God's Word, sometimes more healthily than others, to be fair.
51:13: But Christians have been thinking about God's Word and thinking about the truth for 2 ,000 years. And, honestly,
51:21: I think we would be foolish to reject their considerations, to reject their thinking on the
51:27: Word of God and what it says, just because, as I heard one person try to argue, you know, we can't really pay attention to the thoughts of those who wrote the creeds and confessions because they didn't live in the age of advancement that we live in.
51:45: My thoughts were many when I heard that statement. But, for me, the big problem
51:50: I have with that is it assumes that the youngest and freshest generation have the best answers, and there are many, many reasons
52:01: I would choose to doubt that statement. But, actually, what creeds and confessions do is they help us to view the relative importance of modern issues to matters that Christians will always be dealing with.
52:20: Well, that's pretty much me done for this first lesson. Allow me to say just a couple of thoughts, and we will wrap it up. In terms of the life of our church, here's my aspiration as the teaching pastor here at Redeemer.
52:34: I would love for Redeemer to be described as a Bible church with a strong confessional lean to it.
52:42: Which I think is what all good churches that are confessional should want to be. That we are first and foremost places that are committed to the
52:49: Bible as God has given it to us. And so we recognize that to best help us understand the
52:55: Bible, we want to see what
53:01: God's people have been saying about this book. And not just see what they say, but to believe together with them.
53:09: And like I said to begin our lesson, this isn't necessarily the norm in our cultural context, but I do think it's a great benefit to us as a church.
53:19: And so, like I said, over the next few lessons we're going to be thinking much more... Today was more of the intellectual heavy lifting part of this.
53:26: My hope in the next couple of lessons is for us to get more practical about us as a body and the place that creeds and confessions play in the life of our body.
53:38: Right, I've got two minutes before I've got to wrap up. So, anybody have any questions, thoughts, stuff that stuck out maybe in the context of the lesson this morning?
53:48: I'm going to give some time for that real quickly before we conclude. If, as is often the case, you find later on you have some questions, again, reach out to me and we can discuss those to be sure.
54:07: But if there aren't any in the room right now, I'll pray and we'll wrap up this lesson. Let's pray together.
54:14: Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time. Thank you that we've been able to think a little more deliberately about our faith and how we communicate that faith and how we hold to it.
54:26: So, Father, I ask that as we, for the next couple of lessons, think about this in a bit more practical detail, pray that you would help us not just to see the importance of this, but to love it, to treasure it in our hearts, to value it as a good part of what it is to be faithful followers of Jesus in this world.
54:49: Father, we pray for our worship gathering in a few moments. Pray that you'd be with us in all that we say and do and all that our hearts desire.