Why We Need Confession of Faith (Part 2)

Okay, this is week 4 of What is a Reformed Baptist? And what we have been discussing last week, and now this week, is a confession of faith.

And last time what happened is I gave you reasons why it's foolish to reject a confession of faith.

And tonight is going to be from the positive of why we should have a confession of faith.

But let me start with a quote from Tom Hicks. It's a pretty strong quote, so I want you to think about it, and then

I'm going to read a couple of verses. He writes, the Bible requires the church to confess the faith with human words about the

Word of God. I'll read that again. I'm sorry, I don't have a handout tonight. The Bible requires the church to confess the faith with human words about the

Word of God. That's strong language. The Bible requires the church to confess the faith. Requires.

Okay, a couple of places I want. I think we answered that already, actually last week, but we'll answer it again this week.

Romans, if you want to turn there real quick. Romans chapter 10. This is a verse that you all know, but maybe you've never thought about it in this way.

Romans chapter 10, verse nine.

Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised

Him from the dead, you will be saved. Now let me ask you guys a question. Do you think that that verse means that all you need to confess about Jesus with your mouth is that He is

Lord? That's the first question. Is that, do you think it's all it's saying is just say these words verbatim and that's all it means?

Or do you think there are truths about Jesus that we should confess in His Lordship?

Like is it the biblical Jesus? Is it just any Jesus? You understand what

I'm saying? Do you think that it's just Jesus is Lord or that's kind of a summary statement of the fact that the pinnacle of the confession is

Jesus is Lord? Okay, I'll answer it. Maybe I'm being confusing. Yeah, it's the pinnacle.

Our whole statement, our whole confession is a big confession that Jesus is

Lord. Does that make sense? So what I'm saying is that we are, as part of what it means to be a

Christian, we make a confession with our mouth that Jesus is Lord. And this entails not just siding off Bible verses but explaining or confessing to the biblical teaching about who

Jesus is. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense, okay? Here's another example, 2

Timothy 2 .2. Hopefully this one will maybe be more clear for you.

2 Timothy 2 .2, so listen to this. 2 Timothy 2 .2, and what you have heard from me, so Paul to Timothy, 2

Timothy 2 .2. What you, that is Timothy, what you, Timothy, have heard from me,

Paul. Now what had Timothy heard from Paul? The gospel, okay, what else?

Teaching about Christ. Had he, remember, part of the teaching, the full counsel of the word of God, Acts chapter 20?

Okay, so let me ask you this. He says, do you think that Paul just quoted Bible verses to Timothy?

No, he's giving him teaching. So it says, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

So there's four generations here. Paul teaches Timothy. Timothy teaches who?

Faithful men, and the faithful men teach who? Others, future generations.

Four generations of teaching. Not four generations of just citing the

Bible. But four generations of what? Teaching about the

Bible. Does that make sense? So I would argue that the Bible, I would agree with Tom Hicks' statement, the

Bible requires the church to confess of faith with human words about the word of God. So it's not enough for the church to just say, we believe the

Bible. The church must say, this is what we believe about the Bible.

Some of that's a little bit of a review, but it's kind of getting into this. Any questions or comments about that?

Because again, I hear statements like this. We don't need man's words.

We need God's word. Now, first and foremost, what do I want to say to that?

Amen. Amen. What do we need? We need the word of God, right?

I don't want to hear man's words. I want to hear God's word. Amen. I believe that.

Baptist to the bone, right? And we should all believe that. But you understand that God has gifted the church, and not just this church, but even for centuries, with teachers who teach us what the word of God says, what it means, how it applies.

And so we're not putting man's word above God's word. Furthermore, anytime that you stand in the pulpit, and I said this last time, and you preach, and you say words that are your own words that are not written down words, you're giving man's words.

But it's okay to have man's words insofar as they are what? Accurately depicting what the

Scriptures teach. That's why we can take the Scriptures, we can set them over the confession of faith, and we can judge the confession of faith by what?

By the Bible. You understand? So don't get it twisted. Everybody knows that the confession of faith is not above the

Bible. Surely you know that. But we're also saying this. The confession of faith is not on the same line as the

Bible. Does that make sense? So it's not confession of faith over Bible. It's not confession of faith and Bible equal weights and measures.

It's what? Scripture as our highest authority. Underneath that would be our confession in the sense that it explains what the

Bible teaches. I hope that makes sense. That's the argument that we're making. I know, even from last week, that there are churches in town and that there are people around that would say things like, you guys need a confession, we've got the

Bible. Well, how would you answer that? How would you respond to that? You're like, yeah, yeah, that's right.

No, no, we have the Bible. The confession is simply articulating what we believe the Bible teaches.

The Bible is our highest authority and we're not hiding what we believe, right? You wanna know what we believe?

You wanna join the church? You guys have joined the church since we've adopted confession.

You can verify this or if you've been, you know, I've been in talks. We've been in talks with Sam, been in talks with Miss Robin.

One of the things we hand you is what? Confession of faith. Read this, understand this. This is what we believe.

So anyway, let me give you some reasons now. Last week was negative, what you're saying when you rejected confession of faith.

But here's some positive reasons on why we need to embrace a confession of faith. Number one, we have a conviction.

These are all gonna start with a C, so there you go. Number one, we have a conviction. Robert Paul Martin says this, an unwillingness to define with precision the faith that it professes to believe is a symptom that something is desperately wrong with a church and its leadership.

Okay, read it again. An unwillingness to define with precision the faith that it professes to believe is a symptom that something is desperately wrong with a church and its leadership.

Okay, so for example, if we said to you, what do you believe about God and you're a church? And you said, we believe

God is great. Okay, anything else? Nope, God is great. Right, okay, is

God great? Amen, but there's a lot of things about God that we ought to understand and confess with our mouths besides just the fact that He is great.

We are convictional about these things. So we're not just looking down at the ground and kicking our foot and saying, oh shucks,

I guess, you know, you guys believe in the Trinity? Oh man, I guess we believe that here.

I was like, that's not what we're talking about. It's the duty of every local church to have conviction, to boldly proclaim this is what the

Bible says. I'll read, this is a great quote from B .H. Carroll.

It's a little long, but listen to this. A church with a little creed is a church with a little life.

The more divine doctrines a church can agree on, the greater its power and the wider its usefulness.

The fewer its articles of faith, the fewer its bonds of union and compactness. The modern cry, less creed and more liberty, is a degeneration from the vertebrate to the jellyfish.

Man, I messed that quote up, didn't I? I'm gonna read it again. Less creed and more liberty is a degeneration from the vertebrate to the jellyfish and means less unity and less morality and it means more heresy.

Definitive truth does not create heresy. It only exposes and corrects. Shut off the creed and the

Christian work would fill up with heresy, unsuspected and uncorrected, but nonetheless deadly.

So what he's saying is, B .H. Carroll, Baptist, because we have a conviction, we ought to confess deep truth together, all right?

Questions, comments? I'm gonna press on. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, amen.

That's a very good illustration. Let's turn to Matthew 28. So number one, we have a conviction.

Number two, second reason why we have a confession of faith, we have a commission. Number one, we have a conviction.

Number two, we have a commission. Matthew 28, let me try to explain it this way. Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20.

I almost don't need to read it because you know this passage so well, but of course we will read it and we will examine it and we will learn from it.

Matthew 28, 18 through 20. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. As you know, the number one, the verb there in verse 19 is make disciples.

You can't see it so readily in your English translation, but just know everything's revolving around make disciples.

Okay? Make disciples of all nations. By the way, that means you can't make nations into disciples.

You understand that? What are you doing? You're making disciples out of, from among all nations.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So that's part of disciple making.

But another part of disciple making is verse 20. Doing what? Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you and behold,

I'm with you always to the end of the age. So we're supposed to teach, follow my logic for a minute.

We're supposed to teach everything that Jesus commanded us or taught, right?

Amen? Okay, so let's go to Matthew 7. You believe this is true? Well then, let's look at Matthew 7.

Again, follow the logic. Let me set up the structure here and see if you can follow.

Matthew 7, verse one. Judge not that you be not judged.

Is this something that we tell everyone or do we tell people what this means or do we tell people what this says and explain what it means?

Huh? Yeah, we tell people what it means. We tell people what it says and we what? We explain what it means.

So for example, if we see someone in the store and they say to me,

I'm about to rob this store. We say, no, you can't rob this store. And they say, judge not, lest ye be judged.

What do you say? You got me. You got me. You're right, rob the store.

However, by the way, this is used all the time like that. I use an extreme example so you would agree with me, but it's used all the time like that.

Hey, you know what? I don't think that you should get divorced. Hey, you know what? I don't think that you should be a transgender person.

Hey, you know what? Homosexuality is sin. Hey, you know what? You shouldn't be living with that person outside of marriage.

And you know what you're gonna hear? Judge not, judge not, judge not.

That's right, that's right. But the point is, the logic I'm making is that Jesus did not expect us to go around and only quote

Bible verses to people. But to what? Explain what those mean.

So this is my argument. In part of what it means to fulfill the

Great Commission means that we ought to explain the scriptures to people.

And part of the way that a church is faithful in its explanation of the scriptures to people, drum roll, is what?

A confession of faith. So a confession of faith is a integral tool to helping us fill the

Great Commission. It sets forth what we believe the gospel is. This is what the gospel is, okay?

This is who Jesus is. Did you know at Goat Fest this year, I just had this as an idea, I'm always trying to think of different things, different things to pass out.

I get tired of maybe riding tracks, I'm like, I'm just saying the same thing. So I had an idea. This year,

I'm just, one of the things is, I took chapter eight of the confession is on who is

Christ, Christ the mediator, and I printed it on front and back, I'm just gonna hand it out to people. Do you know that on that, in chapter eight of our confession,

Christ the mediator, it tells people who we believe Jesus is. Is this the Great Commission or not?

Am I working toward being obedient to the

Great Commission by passing out this thing this way? Yes, yeah.

Okay, so it's an assistance to, now you could say, well, you could pass out the gospel of John, amen, that's right.

And I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with people doing that. But this is just a concise explanation of, when we say

Jesus, what do we mean? Does that make sense? If we take the Great Commission seriously, then we'll put down in writing what we believe the

Bible teaches so that we can do what? Teach that to others. I hope that makes sense.

Number three. All right, so we have a conviction, we have a commission. Number three, this should,

Baptist should like this one. We have a contention. And this comes from Jude, chapter, well, there's only one chapter in Jude, so all the chapters of Jude.

Verse three, you are familiar with this. Jude, chapter one, verse three.

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.

So think of it this way. If the commission is to teach positively, okay,

Alex likes football, so I'm gonna use this illustration. The commission is like the church on offense.

We're trying to score points. We're trying to kick field goals. We're trying to score touchdowns, okay?

So the confession of faith helps us offensively. You got it? The contention is the church on the defense.

It helps us stop others from scoring, okay?

So I'm gonna use something like, you know that, what's that sport where they kick a ball, they just kick the round ball around?

That's it, soccer. Okay, yes, there's a goalie. So contention is like the goalie.

The idea is we are defending the faith. Now, if positively, a confession of faith helps us to positively tell the truths of Christ, so too does a confession of faith help us to defend the truth of Christ over error.

Not long ago, this was not long ago. I mean, maybe like two to three years ago, there was this saying that was going around.

I saw it like on Instagram and hashtags and stuff. It said love over verses.

Love over verses. Now, what is that trying to say? Well, what that's trying to say is, get your

Bible verses out of here and just love people. Well, that's a complete warped and misunderstanding.

It's trying to chip away at our foundation. It says you need to look past what God says in His Word, ignore biblical definitions, and just embrace a 21st century standard.

But here is where a good confession of faith comes in and helps us to protect the truth. It helps us to say, you're not gonna score, right?

No, sir. It helps us say, here is the faith once delivered that we are contending for.

And the reason is, because you've got to kind of put these lessons together. So if you're just listening to tonight, maybe it's a little bit confusing, but our confession of faith stands in a long line of godly men.

It doesn't only go back to the 17th century. It goes all the way back to the truths confessed from the very first century, from the biblical truths into the

Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Creed of Chalcedon, the Athanasian Creed, all these things all over the years in history of Christianity, they find a connection point and a foundation point with our confession of faith.

Does it make sense? So it helps us to stand, to contend for the faith. So the faith, someone, you know, what is the faith?

It's what the Bible teaches. Well, that's true, but a lot of people say weird things about what the

Bible teaches. So a confession of faith essentially says, here's what we mean. Here's what the Bible teaches.

Here is the faith that we hold to. Okay? All right, so we've got a conviction.

Why have a confession of faith? We have a conviction, we have a commission, we have a contention. Next, just building on what we've talked about.

We have a commemoration. I hope that this is going to happen.

I'm in talks with Nathaniel about it. He's done the hard work of finding us a rock.

And then we've got to take some more things in place. So we'll see if this happens. But in 1

Samuel 7, 12, it says this, then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mitzpah and Shinn and called its name

Ebenezer. For he said, till now, the Lord has helped us. You know the song we sing, come thou found, here

I raise my Ebenezer. What is that talking about? By the way, it has nothing to do with Christmas. As much as I would like it to have to do with Ebenezer Scrooge, it has nothing to do with him, okay?

It's talking about, I raise this symbolic stone, this symbolic rock and say,

God has helped me. And what I was talking about with Nathaniel, he's found a huge rock.

Not even he and I could lift it. And we talked about maybe setting it out here at the front of the road, like as our

Ebenezer, it's a big rock, just a reminder of God's faithfulness to our church. But beyond that, my argument is that a healthy confession of faith, when you hold the 1689 in your hands, when you look at it, it is an

Ebenezer. What do I mean by that? It's a rock of remembrance. It is a commemoration.

When you hold that, you say, you know what? This is, for example, oh, this will be funny. If I were to hand you a document and it said, hey guys, this is what

I think we should hold to. And you read the document, the title of the document is this, Quattro's Confession of Faith.

Should you hold to that? No, that's what you call a cult, right?

That's what Joseph Smith did, right? That's the kind of stuff, no. That's an actual cult, okay?

Well, how do we know that our church isn't a cult? Because we look to a confession of faith that stands in a long line, a huge river, a stream of faithful men and women from centuries before.

Does that make sense? So holding to a historical confession of faith says we stand in a long line of godly men and women who have been anchored in the same truth.

By God's grace, our children and our grandchildren and their grandchildren are gonna continue to hold this line as they gird themselves up in truth as we pass down the faith to the generations.

Does it make sense? So, for example, do I think that a single church has the right to come up with its own confession of faith?

Yes, okay, yes, each local church can do that. A local church can sit down and say, this is what we believe.

In fact, in a way, that's kind of what happened with the original, the 1689 when it was written in 1677, in a way.

But I would also caution us and say that it can be dangerous to just come up with your own thing if you're ignoring the history of those who've gone before us.

Does that make sense? So when we look at our confession, we have an ebenezer, we have a commemoration. All right, and then finally, not that we're ending,

I have some more things, but finally on this, we have a congregation and remember back to last week, every church is a pillar and buttress of the truth.

We're not just a bunch of individuals, but we are a body and we're called to a corporate faith. This not dismissing the need for personal faith, so let me say this real quick.

The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is that God created us in his image, that we in Adam and by our own choices have sinned against him, we've broken his law, we've gone our own way and done our own thing and we've worshiped ourselves in the created world over God.

We've sinned, but God was not satisfied to leave all in such a state and so he sent forth his son, as it were, the eternal son of God, to take on human flesh, to be born of the

Virgin Mary, to procure a righteousness for his people, to fulfill all righteousness, to be obedient to the law of God in every way, to die as a substitute, the wrath of God falling upon Jesus in our place, to die on the cross, to rise again from the dead and the gospel comes to each individual and demands a response, individual response, which is what?

To repent and put your faith in Christ. An individual response is necessary, but this personal response, this personal faith is not a privatized faith.

You confess what the church confesses because the church confesses the truth. Does that make sense?

So these are positive reasons, positive reasons that we have a confession of faith.

The first is we have a conviction. The second is we have a commission.

Or yeah, third, we have a contention. Fourth, we have a commemoration. Fifth, we have a congregation.

Now, in having a confession of faith, it was like, the whole series is what does it mean to be a

Reformed Baptist? Well, a Reformed Baptist is confessional. We have a confession that we hold to. It is the

Second London Baptist Confession. Now, let me give you two ditches to avoid. So you go in this ditch, you're wrong.

You go in that ditch, you're wrong. You don't wanna be in the ditch. You wanna be where? On the road. Ain't that right, Brayden?

You don't wanna be in the ditch. Recently, he went in the ditch. But I hit a mountain once, so it's hard to be too hard on him.

Okay, here's the two ditches. Number one, what I'm gonna call hyper -confessionalism. This is when a church treats a confession of faith either by word or practice as on par with the

Bible. Hyper -confessionalism. So a confession of faith is under the Bible's authority, and it is to serve the

Bible. We cannot have that on par or above the Scriptures, okay?

So we reject hyper -confessionalism. But another ditch, on the other side of the road, is we reject nominal -confessionalism.

That is, the word nominal just means name, okay? So this is when a church has a confession, but nobody knows what it is.

It's like, oh yeah, I think our pastors say, what do you guys believe down at the church?

What do you guys believe down at Providence? And if you say, well, you just have to ask our pastors. Well, I don't like that.

I mean, we're happy. Brother Jacob and myself are happy to answer any question, and there is a responsibility.

We should know what our church believes. This should be, we should know it better than any.

This is just because we're called to be the pastors. But you should know what we believe, too.

And the confession of faith shouldn't just be stuffed back on a back corner of our website. Have you ever been on a church website, and it's taken you forever to figure out what they believe?

I mean, I have. So hopefully, your guys are gonna go to ours tonight and be like, it took us forever.

I hope not. I hope ours is up front. But it's like, what do y 'all believe? Or they may have a confession, and it's just these general statements.

But the point is, it's not, we don't just have a confession in name, but we also, in practice, we know what it means.

We interact with it. We read it. We talk about it. So we avoid these two ditches.

Now, we'll talk about, this is, Pastor Jacob is my position, and then we'll have some discussion.

At our church, it is okay to have disagreements over portions of the confession of faith.

Did you know that? It's okay. Pastor Jacob and myself hold to the confession.

We believe that we should be protectors of it, insofar as it teaches the scriptures and those sorts of things.

But if you say, I don't have,

I don't understand chapter three, which is a beautiful chapter, on God's decree, and how he's sovereign over everything, and his decree of election and reprobation.

You say, I don't understand all that, and it's difficult, and I'm not sure even if I agree. Am I okay?

Yes, you're okay. Insofar as what? You can't be disruptive about it.

You can't be disunifying about it. You can't, every time a passage comes up, you know, be the heckler, you know, or bring rotten tomatoes to the church, and chunk them, or whatever.

Like, you can't do that. We have to be unified. But here's the example. My daughter, my middle daughter, has professed faith in Christ.

We're gonna baptize her, Lord willing, October 5th. Do I believe that in order for her to be baptized, that she must be a second

London Baptist Confession scholar? No, I don't. But I do believe that she needs to not be contentious, and she needs to be humble, and willing to be taught, and to grow, and to know that as your pastors teach, that you're willing to listen, and you're willing to learn.

Does that make sense? In the life of the church, I believe the confession teaches this, there is liberty of conscience on certain issues.

So, we understand certain people are gonna look at things differently. Some are gonna need to grow.

Some need to be taught better. Some need to mature. Some need to repent. But what we're doing at this church is saying, up front, here's the second

London Baptist Confession of faith. In total, this is what we believe. This is how our elders are gonna teach.

If you desire to be divisive over issues, or you just can't accept this teaching, it's just gonna make you run out or whatever, well then,

Providence Baptist Church would not be the place for you. Now, that's not us trying to be mean. That's just us trying to say, look, we have a standard.

We've drawn a line in the sand, as it were, and this is where we're gonna stand. And we're not gonna budge, insofar as we're convinced by the

Word of God. As Luther said, here we stand, I can do no other. So we can have disagreement, but we can't continue being contentious.

That would probably mean you should find a church more in line with what you believe, right?

Does that make sense? So it's one thing to disagree and be willing to learn, or to disagree and be willing to strive for unity.

It's one thing to be like that, and it's a different thing to just continually wanna sow division.

Does that make sense? Now, I don't have anybody, no one here fits that, right? I don't know of anyone. I know of not a single person here that wants to sow division.

But it's helpful to review these things and remember these things, that this is what it means to be confessional, all right?

So, I've said this a lot, but I'm gonna say this and then remind us of this, and then we can stop recording, we'll have time for a question.

But the strategy of churches over the last 50 years has been let's be as big tent as possible.

So much so that if you don't, I don't, I was gonna say 90%. I have no idea of the percentage.

But the large majority, this was one reason I was like committed to keeping Baptists in our name. But the large majority of church plants over the years have taken

Baptists out of their name. Now, some have done it, not necessarily for wrong reasons, right? I'm not saying they've done it, every church.

But a lot of them have done it, why? Because they don't want the stigma of what it means to be

Baptist. They wanna try to make everything as big tent as possible. Let's include as many people in here as we can.

But what happens is, that sounds noble, right? But what happens is you have a bunch of people together, they're not even on the same page.

I promise you that I believe this is certainly true.

That a small church that is on the same page doctrinally is more of a weapon in the hands of the

Lord than some large church that no one even knows what they believe. So we're just committed to these things.

It's not because we want division, we don't wanna be brash. It's just that we know Christ is worthy of a church that will be a pillar and buttress of the truth, that loves

His truth, that will stand for the truth, and that we know the only antidote, the only hope, the only thing that will turn our communities, our homes, our nation is the truth.

And you're not going to give people the truth if you water it down and keep it hidden.

So that concludes. Alex, we can stop, and we can have a few minutes. Wow, seven minutes.