An Introduction to Catechisms

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth. Glad you're watching. Wednesday shows,

Mario behind the scenes. And we talk about things that I wanna talk about.

Basically, No Compromise used to be kind of a discernment ministry. Discernment, that's why we had lots of followers.

And then we talk about Jesus now, the one who never compromised. That's how kind of we've rescued the ministry name.

Played around with Duplex Gratia as a name. For a while, I mean, if Pat can do Latin with the pactum.

My brother, by the way, you should watch the pactum with Pat and Mike, Mike Grimes. But whenever I hear

Pat and Mike, it's Mike Ebendroth and Pat Ebenroth. That's the way it should go. So today on the show,

I want to talk about catechism. Now, when I say the word catechism, you probably are going to say, oh yes,

Roman Catholic catechism. You're going to say, at least here in New England, where there's 80 % of the people who would identify if they were to say, this is what

I am religiously speaking, they would say, I'm a Roman Catholic, I'm Catholic. And so what is a catechism?

What kind of catechism should you read? Are catechisms good for evangelicals? Today is going to be very simple.

I'm going to talk about the Heidelberg Catechism. I have my little Heidelberg Catechism here right next to this book.

You should buy this one first, then this. King, How the Sovereignty of God Changes Everything.

You can get that on Amazon. And if you want to order bulk orders, you can always do that as well too, 40 % off, 10 copies or more.

This little booklet called the Heidelberg Catechism is what I want to talk about specifically today.

When you think of the Heidelberg Catechism, maybe you think, oh, our Scott Clark, he's got the Heidel blog.

He's got the Heidel cast. I've met his Heidel dog.

I have ridden in the Heidel Jeep. And so there's all kinds of Heidel things.

And so this is a discussion on the Heidelberg Catechism. And the word catechism essentially means to instruct.

So it could be religious instruction. It could be secular instruction. Most of the time when we have the word catechism today though, it tends to be

Roman Catholic catechism or Heidelberg catechism. That's typically what we're talking about.

And if you think about the word catechism, it comes from even the

Greek word in Luke chapter one, verse four. Luke is writing to Theophilus that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

That's that word catechism. So catechism just means to teach an instruction, how to go about it.

And it's usually with questions and answers. So there's a question and then there's an answer.

And so today I'd like to talk about number one, catechisms in general and then number two, the

Heidelberg Catechism. So my goal is for you to learn about catechisms and learn therefore more about the

Lord Jesus. Looking online, I found some reasons why catechisms are important.

And so in my own words, I'll tell you why I think that's true. Let me give you one reason why

I think they're important. How do you get your arms around the Bible? 66 books from Genesis to Revelation, a lot of data, so many verses.

This is a big book and the proverbial, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time type of thing.

What do you do? There's three different languages with the Bible, Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic.

There are 40 authors or so written over 1500 years.

It's more Eastern than Western, all cultural differences. How do

I get my arm around it? Most of you probably would read a systematic theology.

Most of you would probably read a summary of the Christian faith. Maybe you would read a statement of faith.

Maybe if you read a confession, that helps you. And just like a systematic theology helps you get your arms around the

Bible, so too does a catechism. A catechism or a confession, 1689

Westminster, Belgium confession, Heidelberg catechism. You take the

Bible and you start putting it into categories and you start taking truths that are really expansive and you're putting them into summaries and into concise statements so that you can teach them.

Think about it, if catechism means to teach or to instruct, how do you instruct someone? Simply, clearly, in a summary fashion and that's exactly what they do.

Obviously, we're not trying to replace scripture. If somehow you watch the show and you think it is catechisms and confessions and then scripture or catechisms and confessions and scripture.

Actually, the confessions we have would say God's word trumps sola scriptura, right?

Final authority. God's word is the only thing that's God breathed, inspired 2

Timothy 3. God's word is the ultimate authority. God's word transforms.

God's word is inerrant and these catechisms and confessions are not any of those things, but they're good summaries, good helpers and they can take a lot of information and organize it well.

In addition, when it comes to confessions and creeds and catechisms, they're an easy way for us to say, here's the truth we believe and we're going to pass it on to the next generation.

We could just pass on the Bible to the next generation. That's true. But truths in the Bible, truth from the

Bible put in concise forms and catechism. In this particular case, Heidelberg with questions and answers easily passed along, easily taught to children, easily taught to the congregation.

And so we can take this and it's like an easy way to pass the baton. Well, why else should we study catechisms, confessions and creeds?

Here's one. They are super devotional because they're going to talk about the

Lord Jesus. You're going to say to yourself, wow, these truths make me want to worship.

These truths make me want to honor the Lord. These truths make me want to love God and love neighbor because if we're concisely, succinctly in a summarizing form, taking the

Bible's truths and putting them in something that's accessible so that we can teach it or instruct or to catechize, then you're going to say, well, if the

Bible is devotional, practical, et cetera, so too will these truths be. Why should we study and learn and read from catechisms and confessions and creeds?

Let me give you another reason. You don't want to say to yourself, whatever my pastor says, whatever my celebrity pastor says, that's what

I believe. Okay, let's make it even more practical. I've been at the church now for 28 years and who knows how long

I'll be here, another day, another 15 years. I think they'd probably kick me out at about 80,

I guess. Maybe they'll kick me out sooner, who knows. So if I die today, which could happen, who do they pick?

Do they pick somebody that's got the opposite gifts that I have? That's what they do a lot of times, what churches do is a strong pastor in this area, we better pick this over here.

They're weak in administration, we should pick an administrator kind of thing. So what I want them to do is after they think about it and pray about it and search a little bit,

I don't want them to pick somebody that's got my theology, that believes exactly what

I do. I want them to pick somebody who believes in our confession, the London Baptist, Second London Baptist 1689

Confession. We will pick somebody who's confessional. We're not gonna say, well, whatever

Mike believes, we're gonna pick that person, no, no. And how about this? If you're here at the church and you wanna teach something,

I don't want you to say, well, what does Mike think about it? I want you to think, as long as I'm teaching within the bounds of the

London Baptist Confession, I'm fine. I know exactly where we are on all these things. Not what does

Mike teach? Because then Mike's gonna change his mind on something then you have to change your mind too. No, no, the confessions will protect the church from a celebrity pastor.

I don't think I'm a celebrity pastor, but you know celebrity pastors. By the way,

Mario, can you shine my shoes tomorrow? Where's the, I asked for sushi, where is it?

Protecting from a pastor that could change his mind, but how about protection from wolves out there, from theology that's bad.

And if you say, well, you know what? We have the Bible that will protect us. Yes, but the wolves are quoting the

Bible, right? Arius quoted the Bible. All false cults that have anything, many brains at all will quote

Bible verses. When people show up at your door, Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons, they quote the Bible. So how do we all look at the

Bible, but say to ourselves, how can we protect ourselves? So we have statements of faith.

We have confessions, we have creeds. And lots of times, creeds for instance, they were written to protect the church from a certain thing about,

Jesus isn't eternally the son or Jesus isn't eternally God. He's not very God of very God. That Jesus is somehow a created being or something.

And so confessions, creeds, catechisms can really help us.

They can help us. They can help you talk biblically, right?

The word Trinity isn't in the Bible, but now we read things in the confessions and creeds and catechisms.

And they'll help you to say, you know what? I should talk about this topic in ways that other people have that have been time tested.

That's why we use some of these things. Heidelberg, I wanna say 1563. I wanna make sure

I'm correct on that. Yup, Senate of Heidelberg approved final version 1563.

And so you have things like the Westminster Confession of the 1600s or the 1689 for the

Baptist. These things are time tested, connecting us to the ministry of the spirit of God in previous generations, previous centuries, different countries.

I mean, it's fascinating to me if you think Belgic Confession, Canons of Dort, Westminster, New Hampshire Confession.

You've got different continents, different countries, different places around the world. And essentially they're all teaching the same thing.

So today on the show, I'm trying to get you to not recoil against creeds, confessions, and catechisms.

I want you to use them as a wonderful supplement to help you to understand the Bible. First certain,

Psalm 119, Psalm 19. It is God's word that trumps everything.

It is God's word that it's the only God breathed thing. But these things are good summaries, good helpers to instruct us.

Do you wanna know the Bible? Then you probably read books about the

Bible written by other people. You probably hear pastors preach sermons, don't you? I mean, this goes back to the whole thing.

I only read the Bible. I never read anything else. And you come across like that's the pious thing to do. Well, in the

Bible that you read is Ephesians chapter four and God gives gifts to the church and he gives us apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors, pastor teachers.

You can decide if it's pastor slash teacher, pastor and teachers, but he gives gifts to the church.

And some of those gifts to the church, he gave in the 1500s and in the 1600s and in the 1700s.

And they wrote things down, not just the pastor that you have. I mean, if you're the person that says, I don't read anything but the

Bible because I don't have time to read other things. And the only time I have to read, I'm gonna devote to the

Bible, fine. I'm not after you, but what I'm after is can we read people that talk about the

Bible? Can you read John Calvin? Can you read Arthur Pink? Can you read if your pastor wrote a book? Yes.

And can you read things that were written in 1563 that has stood the test of time? Absolutely.

You should be reading books about the Bible. And why won't you read something that is designed to instruct you to catechize, to say they're simple, concise, clear summary statements that helped me with devotion and helped me with passing the baton.

I think those would be good. So now in the second part of the show, I wanna talk a little bit specifically about the

Heidelberg Catechism, 1563. Now, when

I think of catechisms and confessions, catechisms and creeds, why

I like the Heidelberg Catechism, not over and above, but in supplement to our 1689

Confession or the Westminster Confession is the first thing that I like about it is it's very worshipful.

It's very devotional. Statements of faith, London Baptist, Westminster, I'm not criticizing them in any way, shape or form.

They tend to be a little more propositional. Statements of fact, very, very clear, but very, very, how would

I say it? Academic maybe. People read the London Baptist Confession, they're like, whoa, a new membership class.

Have you read the confession? Yes, and I was trying to get my arms around it. When it comes to catechisms,

Heidelberg specifically, very, very warm. And so if I go to the very first question, you'll see how warm and devotional this is.

What is your only comfort in life and death? Laying there in your deathbed, that's happened to me before, my almost deathbed, 16 days in the hospital, thinking

I'm gonna die from COVID pneumonia. What do you think about? I need comfort. How would you comfort me?

What is your only comfort in life and death? And so remember catechisms, instructing, question and answer form often.

Here's the answer, that I with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood, fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from the power of the devil.

Listen to this. And so preserves me that without the will of my

Father in heaven, not a hair can fall from my head. Yes, all things must work together for my salvation.

Wherefore by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto

Him. That's amazing truth. That's warm truth. That's a very

Christ -centered truth. Question two, how many things are necessary for you to know that you in this comfort may live and die happily?

I just wanna live a happy life and I like to die in a happy fashion.

Can you die happily? I think you can. What do I need to know? Three things by the way, modeled after the book of Romans.

First is the greatness of my sin and misery, guilt. Second, how I am redeemed from all my sins and miseries.

I almost said ministries, that's grace. Third, how

I'm to be thankful to God for such redemption. Gratitude, guilt, grace and gratitude.

I just wanna have comfort in life and in death. Okay, let's be reminded of the first Adam, the last

Adam and how we live out of gratitude. Very, very warm. What we have in this next section after those first two intro sections is the first part, man's misery.

So the first part is going to be guilt, then it's gonna move into grace and then it's gonna move in to gratitude.

I love the Heidelberg Catechism because it is devotional and warm.

Devotional and warm specifically about who Jesus is. It talks about Jesus's mediatorial work in a way that makes me think that's wonderful.

I'm so thankful for the Lord Jesus. And if I say mediator, you should be thinking three offices.

You should be thinking of the office of prophet, priest and king. And that's exactly what the

Heidelberg Catechism does. It's a warm devotional way to be instructed about Christian truths that have stood the test of time.

And it's very, very Christ -centered. You have a lot of stuff about how to live a life out of gratitude, but you have more questions that teach you about who

God is in Christ. I like the Heidelberg Catechism for lots of reasons.

I just mentioned guilt, grace, gratitude. It's got a good structure. It's got a good learning way.

Guilt, grace, gratitude, even with those three Gs, clear, memorable. Guilt is gonna talk a lot about what do you think?

Law, God's law, God's character, God's person. So I understand what he requires, how holy he is.

So that's the guilt. The grace part, oh, centered on Christ, centered on the gospel, how we're delivered from our sins and miseries.

And then thankfulness, the Christian life and obedience. So very, very good way to teach law, gospel, gratitude or thankfulness.

I like the Heidelberg Catechism because it's an easy structured way to think about Jesus.

In addition, the way it's set up is 52 days of questions.

Lord's day, 52 days of questions. And so guess what happens?

Over and over and over, you keep teaching it. Sometimes churches would teach through the Heidelberg on Sunday night, reliving these truths week by week by week, 52 days.

So you tie doctrine to worship. You tie what you understand about God to worship, right?

Because it's doctrine that drives doxology. It's who God is that drives how you praise him and worship him.

You know, it's the old joke about our charismatic friends. They're praising God a lot, but sometimes they don't know why they're praising him.

I know, I know. You can say bad things about me too. But the point is you can worship

God more when you know more about him, right? And you want to get to know him better when you're first falling in love.

Before you're married, you think, I just wanna know all about my wife before she was my wife.

I just wanna know all about Kim, what she likes, what she doesn't like, her background, her pastor, this or that, and everything else.

I just wanna get to know her better in a much greater way than what happened with Heidelberg.

How about this? One of the great things about confessions is they bring

Christians together. Oh, this is interesting. How could I have so much camaraderie with my

Pato Baptist friends, my truly Reformed friends? How can that happen? How can

I have so much in common with Reformed Baptist, Particular Baptist, Presbyterian PCA, I almost said

USA, Presbyterian OPCs, United Reformed.

How can this all happen? Presbyterian Church North America. I mean, we just go on and on and on.

NAPARC, kind of the overarching group or association. There's so much union we have.

I mean, if you think about United Reformed Churches, what do they have to undergird? They have what they call three forms of unity, right?

You've got Dort, you've got Heidelberg, and you've got Belgic Confession because it's meant to unify

Christians. And again, what if the unity was based just on what Mike believes? What does

Mike believe? Well, Mike used to believe in eternal subordination of the son when he taught through 1

Corinthians, but then he had to retract because it was heresy and he no longer teaches that.

Well, then now I have to change too based on what Mike... No, no, we're all unified.

One of the things that I love in addition is the application side, the practical side.

Now, lots of people I know, well, you know what? There's not enough application in the sermons.

Okay, I think when people criticize, we should probably work through some of that. But sometimes the application, remember, isn't to do anything, it's to think things, right?

We talked about that even in the last show with Romans 6, verse 11. Like the first practical application, the first command in all of the book of Romans is to just quit doing anything and sit down and just think for a while.

Take a deep, long examination of who Jesus is in the Bible and talk about the implications of you being united to that Jesus and what he's done for you.

A lot of the application that we were yearning for is we just, you know, give me a list of five things to go do and I'll just go do them versus, all right, how does this drive me?

How does this motivate me to do what God requires? Now, let's do a couple of fun things.

And that basically fun things to me is picking a question in the

Heidelberg and then getting you to say, oh, that's just kind of like a little appetizer.

I should probably go pick up the Heidelberg. And by the way, you can get one online for free. You have apps that have

Bible doctrines, Bible confessions, Bible creeds, you can get all that online as well.

How about question 86? Since we are redeemed from our misery by grace through Christ without any merit of ours, why must we do good works?

So what do you think the answer would be? What I also like to do is I read the question and I think to myself, how would

I answer that? When the Bible Answer Man used to be on, Walter Martin was the Bible Answer Man when

I was growing up. And there'd be a question to ask, I'd kind of turn off the radio and say, could I answer that question?

So why do good works? Answer, because Christ having redeemed us by His blood, renews us also by His Holy Spirit after His own image, that with our whole life, we may show ourselves thankful to God for His blessing and that He may be glorified through us.

Then also that we ourselves may be assured of our faith by the fruits thereof, and by our godly walk may win others also to Christ.

So guilt, grace, gratitude, great question. In how many things does true repentance consist?

If I were to ask you the question, you would say in two things, the dying of the old man, the quickening of the new.

It goes through Lord's day commandments. One I'm looking for in particular is 114, question 114.

After you know all the commandments, it says in question 114, this is encouraging.

Can those who are converted to God keep these commandments perfectly? Answer, no, but even the holiest men while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience.

Yet so that with earnest purpose, they begin to live not only according to some, but according to all the commandments of God.

In other words, you say, I sure sin a lot, I don't want to, but I sure do. Am I really converted?

Do you know even the holiest of men only have a small beginning of obedience to God? Good, I'm not the only one that struggles with sin.

How about this? Why then does God so strictly enjoin upon us the 10 commandments, if in this life, no one can perfectly keep them?

First, that all our lifelong, we may learn more and more to know our sinful nature. And so more eagerly or earnestly seek forgiveness of sins.

Secondly, that we may continually strive and beg from God the grace of the Holy Spirit. That's why,

Lord's day, question number 116. Why is prayer necessary for Christians?

Dad, why should we pray? Mom, why should we pray? Answer, because in the chief part of it is thankfulness, which

God requires of us. And because God will give grace in the Holy Spirit only to such as earnestly and without ceasingly beg them from Him and render thanks to God.

My name is Mike Ebendroth. Today, we're talking about creeds, confessions, catechisms, so that we can learn more about the

Christian faith and how generally confessions, creeds and catechisms are good and specifically the

Heidelberg. So when I think of the Heidelberg catechism and I think of its purpose,

I think things like teaching truths in a warm way.

When I think about confessions, I think about, are there warm things to confessions? Certainly, but I think it's just more propositional.

I think of catechisms and I say, you know what? Catechisms, probably if I'm going to teach a new believer or children,

I'm gonna do catechisms. Westminster shorter catechism would be good. Heidelberg catechism.

I wouldn't probably sit down at the dinner table with new believers and children and say, let's just start going through the confession.

I mean, I could, but I'm tempted more to do this. I mean, think about the shorter catechism

Westminster. What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Good, wonderful. Heidelberg, what's your only comfort in life and death? And it gives that assurance, that personal assurance.

And so famous opening questions, but even from those two opening questions, you can say, you know what?

Westminster, maybe a little bit more doctrinal, sorry, more propositional and Heidelberg more personal.

So today in the show, we've been talking about truths from the Bible. If I were to show you my confessions and creed app on my phone, it would say something like this.

So this is my plug, Christian creeds and confessions by James Price.

And the price is nice. It's free. You just go to your app store and you can get all these different kinds of confessions and creeds.

Here are some of them, Heidelberg Disputation, Luther's Large Catechism, Geneva Confession of Faith, Geneva Catechism, Scott's Confession of Faith, 39

Articles, Dort, London Baptist Confession, Directory for Public Worship, Savoy Declaration, Keech's Catechism, A Children's Catechism, and more, all for free.

It comes front loaded with the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, et cetera. And then you can just add the other documents.

Easy to do. So when you're reading things like the Heidelberg Catechism, it points you right back to scripture.

One of the things that I didn't mention, and this is the last thing I'll mention, in my book, at the end of every section, my

Heidelberg Catechism, it's got verses to look up. So then all the truths are grounded in these verses.

My name is Mike Ebenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. This is my Heidelcast.

This is my Heidel blog. Does Scott have this copyrighted? See you next time.