1689 Session #6

All right, welcome. It's seven o 'clock. I'm just gonna go ahead and get started here. So glad y 'all could make it. If you guys don't have a confession. We don't have any for you. So You can go to a nice handy website though.

It's called the 1689 confession .com if you don't have a confession readily available for you right now. If you were to have a little bit of grace for me today, I've been under the weather. I'm feeling great.

So.

Yeah.

Anyway, let's Jump into prayer and let's tackle these chapters together. Lord in heaven you are glorious and we are worms. We are lowly and.

Unredeemable.

Yet you are the only one who could and you did and not just partially. Not just mostly not after all that we've can that we can do but you fully Justify us. Well, we thank you so much for the blood of Christ.

And we feel sorrow just in and knowing that that's what had to be paid. But we praise you Lord for this free gift that you give to your elect. But we ask that you would be with our ears tonight that we would Understand well Lord, I ask that you would gift me with teaching tonight father.

That you carry my words through that you would Carry my voice with minimal coughing Lord. I thank you for this congregation. I ask that you'd bless them and all that they do that. They would be like the man and someone planted between streams of water.

Who bears fruit in season? Whose leaf never withers? They meditate on your law day and night and they take pleasure in it Lord and that you would Prosper them and what all they do according to your will in Jesus name.

Amen. All right. Let's jump in it chapter 11 of.

Justification.

Give you some time to flip over there. So we hit paragraph 1. This one can be summarized pretty easily. God saves those that are elect and not by simply Replacing their wickedness With newfound righteousness in them But by first forgiving their sins He then accepts us and our works as righteous unto himself Because we're covered in the blood of Jesus.

The only reason he sees them as righteous is because that blood covers both us and our good works unto the Lord. And this is all the free gift of God for his children. Paragraph 2. If we put an equation to it our justification rests on saving faith Upon Jesus and his righteousness.

That said the other components of grace are acted upon in our life. Repentance adoption perseverance. Sanctification. The works that accompany these graces are demonstrated because of faith in Christ.

Not to earn Christ's favor. I'm gonna tackle some of the head of your terms at the end of this So that we can divide some things out a little bit. We're gonna jump into paragraph 3 theological term here.

Caution alert penal substitutionary atonement.

It's a.

Legal penal for another substitutionary. Reconciliation. Is what you can place an atonement there? This means that Christ took the full weight of any sin we have do or will commit and Drink that cup to the dregs all the way.

There is nothing left of Unrighteousness in the sight of God for the believers. Justification. Why must this be done? Because our God is holy and Perfectly just the wages of sin must be paid. They can't be unpaid they must be paid and God himself bore them so we could be reconciled to him.

It must be clear that no believer Elect or not has anything to offer God for him to save them. We have nothing to offer. God has mercy on whom he has mercy and wrath on whom he has wrath. I quote Paul here in Romans 9 and Paul quotes Moses Paragraph 4.

God had his covenant of redemption grace and works established in eternity past. Yet someone is not justified personally until the Holy Spirit applies Christ saving faith to them. Okay, so we're gonna jump into some of this.

This is probably gonna be a little bit of my longest commentary in the night. Let's start here with Calvinism. We believe in the doctrines of Calvin is Calvinism, which you largely hear summarized in tulip.

Right. This is a helpful tool for us to understand. Hey, these are the doctrines of Calvinism. Keep in mind this is this is more modern than you might think you're not going to find tulip back in the 1500s 1600s 1700s.

You find it as soon as the 19th century. It's a teaching tool. It's helpful. So many of us know what they stand for but I'll go ahead and go through them. T and tulip. Total depravity. You have nothing to offer God.

You're totally depraved. You are not the worst you could be be. That's not what that means. Total depravity doesn't mean that you are the absolute most abhorrent thing that there is. Total depravity means you are totally depraved from righteousness in God.

You are you are Not worthy to be in his sight nor does he owe you salvation? You have nothing to offer to a holy God for your salvation. Unconditional election. This is where many people are going to disagree with us, but unconditional election is the probably one of the harder ones for people to pick up on whenever.

Some people label themselves three-point Calvinist in typical Southern Baptists about three-point Calvinist. God chooses before the foundation of the world whom he will save not based on foreseen faith or works.

But solely on his mercy and will and we can go back to Paul and Romans 9. Quoting Moses when he said Esau in the womb. I hated but Jacob I loved.

Right.

Nothing to offer there he established before the foundation of the earth.

The.

Next one we have here is limited atonement. This means that Christ's atonement is only for the elect. It's not for the whole world. It's not for every person who won't believe in Christ. It is limited to the elect and I Think in practicality Southern Baptists would agree with this one because in practicality they're gonna they're not Unitarians.

Obviously, right probably most of us have Southern Baptist background. My church definitely wasn't Unitarian or not Unitarian Universalist. Definitely not Universalist. We're all pastly to heaven so this one they agree with in Practicality, but they might disagree foundationally.

Because they would say well Anyone can believe in in Jesus, right? Then we jump over to Irresistible grace. This is where people are gonna have a difference of opinion with us in the Baptist circles. The Holy Spirit effectually calls and regenerates the elect.

Overcoming their resistance so they willingly come to Christ. Okay, so if God wants you he will have you. There's no questions. Lastly perseverance of the Saints. This is where a lot of our minion brothers are gonna disagree with us.

And this means that God will uphold you and keep you until the end of the earth. When you're in glory, and this is again rebuffed in Romans 9. It's amazing how much of this passage you can just go right back to Romans 9 and it'll make things clear for you now this is.

These are some of the Calvinist doctrines that we put it in modern day. But this is not how our forefathers went through it our forefathers Had a different accompanying Doctrine, it's a. It's got a fancy word Ordo salutis.

We'll jump into this a little bit later but they saw the Salvation process by different terms. But many of them mean the same thing. So we'll we'll walk through some of that it's a it's got a little bit of a different purpose here, okay.

So I'm gonna go on a little bit of a Calvinist Tangent and bear with me here many of you are here because we're Calvinist. Calvinist is a core doctrine of the Reformed Church. But we need to be patient with our brothers who are not.

If you're Calvinist to your core on salvation, you need to be Calvinist to your core on your theology. What did you do to gain this theology? What did you do to have this insight on the oracles of God?

Are you standing on the shoulders of giants who did the work for you? I know I am. Are we the greatest of them? I? Think very highly of you. But I know we're not. So let us be patient. With our brothers who are Methodist.

With our brothers who are of Southern Baptist. With our brothers who are Pentecostal. With our brothers who are assembly Of God, we need to be patient With them and endure with them and have these conversations in love and not be utterly divisive about it.

I don't know if you guys ever get into hyped up reformed conversations amongst each other. But we're just like yeah, and can you believe the Methodist golly just are a bunch of Armenians. It's just is this helpful at the end of the day.

Is this helping usher in the kingdom of God? Or are we just creating more circles around it. Don't get me wrong. I'm all about a little bit of fun. But how far do we take it? Do we take it to looking at our brotherly neighbors in?

Disdain are we having a generous compassionate charitable heart with them? Listen if suffering is long suffering and the Lord carries us through that and He cares about holiness and sanctification more than we do we need to trust that he's doing the same thing in our brothers.

And there's gonna be plenty of opportunities for those discussion.

Whether.

Ladies are having tea or the guys are getting cigars or playing golf or whatnot these conversations can come up. They can be had in in good faith you know so and. Your brothers are not subjects.

To.

YouTube shorts got your moments suck. So be careful with them. They can they can tax relationships. That's just a warning for us. Who are deep in this doctrine? Paragraph 5 the believer in Christ may never fall from justification.

But they marry they may tarry stiff-necked and Sin, they may wander in God's fatherly displeasure with them. They may also lose the beautiful countenance of God's light in their lives until they repent.

There are consequences of sin.

But.

Who Lord has he has till the end? I'll revisit what I did last time. In church discipline we deal with what people do. Not with what we can't see. Invisible visible church idea here. There may be a believer who's acting like an unbeliever.

And repentance is still needed and you can't tolerate that in the midst of fellowship. You have to protect the body.

So it's up to the.

Witnesses congregation and them to handle those accordingly. We can't decipher the invisible visible church. We can try we can look at fruit, but even that is very limited. Our spiritual eyes are not that pure.

So.

If you ever have a child who you saw that I Know they came to faith. I saw that I heard their confession and. They're tearing along in sin. Do not lose hope and pray a lot. Pray a lot and you just might see a beautiful repentance and see God's face shine upon them again.

Adoption

We're gonna jump into adoption. One paragraph long long chapter. The believer is not only forgiven of their sins by the Lord. But God provides abundant grace to adopt the believer and to his family with all the blessings therein.

He gives us the Holy Spirit to sanctify and help us. He hears our prayers as sons and daughters of God. He gives us discipline as any loving father would do. He hears our cries for help for protection For provision.

Our father never cast us out of the family.

Romans 9.

After our mortal lives end he gives us eternal communion and inheritable promises. Being co-heirs with Christ. Let's pause on this idea of adoption. Walk through it with me. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us enemies of God, right.

Rarely will someone die for a righteous person and even a good man. It's still hard to be like do I want to die for them? But enemies of God the ones who detest him the ones who blaspheme him the ones who care not for him.

They want all the fruit and none of the Creator. He died for them and not only did he do that. But then he makes us Adopted into his family that is astounding mercy and grace. Abundantly we are now in the family of God and this is what every unwanted child wants.

Every child who's not adopted. They want a family. It's the biggest desire of their hearts. You can give them everything else in the world that they could ever want and it would come nothing close to desiring a family.

If you didn't have your own family you'd yearn for that you desire that above all other things. So rest in the great favor of God that he has shown you to adopt you as a child. Yet a father's love disciplines us which brings me to my next chapter of Sanctification.

Sanctification and the Ongoing Battle With the Flesh

Chapter 13. Lord does not fail to sanctify us after he saves us. Our sinful nature is dead. But we still contend with the flesh. Paul tells us that our sinful nature is dead in Romans 8 or 7 that when we die with Christ we die to that.

But we still contend with flesh yet he will sanctify us more and more and be strengthened in the Spirit and Weakened in the flesh. Think about your lives reflect. Has God done a sanctifying work in you sins that you battled with now on the Far edges of your mind like who was that man?

I Know I have that Pornography was big. Who is that man gone? I? Didn't want to leave my home. Who is that man? This guy who just wants to waste away on video games and reading history. Who's that man?

He's gone. That flesh will start to fail. But there is a while that there's tumultuous storms, and it just feels like you will never win. But God is faithful. He is the one in charge of your sanctification.

He's the one who will deliver you. So you can go through all these boundaries that you want to go through and some of them are going to be helpful. But they aren't going to deliver you. You best pray to your Almighty God for that deliverance.

Because he will surely save he will surely deliver you from that tumultuous storm.

And.

Sanctify you. Paragraph two. God will surely sanctify you, but you will always remain with corruption in this life. The spirit and the flesh will always be at battle within you. Not to dampen what I just said.

But it will stay. It will weaken. But it will stay. I had to read paragraph three verbatim. It's just way too good. Way too good. I'm too dumb to make it better. In which war. Although the remaining corruption for a time may much prevail.

Yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying spirit of Christ the regenerate part does overcome and. So the Saints grow in grace perfecting holiness in the fear of God pressing after a heavenly life.

In evangelical obedience to all the commands which Christ as head and king and his word has prescribed to them. God will overcome that He will do not a despair. Okay, we're gonna jump into saving faith.

Paragraph one. We can fully presume that the Lord has saved us and that it was the Lord's doing. We may presume. The Catholics may not but we may. That is their dogma. They may not presume but we may.

Paul tells us I don't know how you read through Romans. It can stay a Catholic.

But they do or.

Maybe they don't. Our salvation typically is wrought by the ministry of the Word.

But not always.

Other factors play into this assurance of our faith. We spoke about this at my last teaching. The assurances that we have in our faith. The administration of your baptism the Lord's Supper and prayer all contribute to your assurance.

They all act as Ebeneezer's for you. Especially baptism. It's an Ebeneezer for you. And it's a glorious thing it's meant to bolster. It's to give you assurance and There's a myriad of other spiritual disciplines.

You can practice given in the word fasting study of Scripture.

Memorization.

Praying. There's a myriad of spiritual disciplines that you can engage in That give you assurance of faith and our good offerings into the Lord.

Paragraph two.

By saving faith you will read scripture and This should be what you know best of all things that you read because it contains the promises the attributes and threats of God and If we have fear of God, we will surely know his word.

We must know this better than any other literature that we read. The believer will immediately be able to relate to what Christ has done in accepting receiving and resting in him alone for salvation sanctification and eternal life as fulfilled in the covenant of grace and the covenant of redemption and the covenant of works.

Paragraph three. Saving faith is different for the believer than faith that Unbelievers or deluded believers. It's different. It will carry the believer through the trials and testings in life. Which Christ will deliver the believer to attain assurance in their faith and Christ will deliver the believer To the end as he authors and finishes our faith.

Faith is not equal. The faith of an unbeliever means nothing and the faith of a deluded believer. Right, we're talking about false believers here that deluded faith Doesn't save them either. We don't get to come up with our own generic faith and They might be deluded for a while.

They might be vessels of wrath or maybe God saves them. So here I'm gonna walk us through some of that highbrow stuff that I was talking about earlier on. What? Our forefathers Taught us the process of salvation looks like The Ordo salutis framework.

Don't remember that word doesn't matter. Election. God from eternity elects some to salvation in Christ. Some Ephesians tells you this to effectual calling, right. The Spirit applies Christ work Drawing the elect inwardly.

Granting them new hearts and the gift of faith. Then we have justification. At the moment of faith God legally declares the sinner righteous. This is the imputation of Christ righteousness.

Not.

Infusion they may sound like they don't mean very different terms, but imputation means that Christ righteousness has Blanketed us. That that is our only Righteousness we have no righteousness to pair with it to infuse with it.

We have none. We have nothing to accompany good works besides Christ blood. So our good works are covered in Christ's blood. It's not seen good to God because well Christ does a little bit and we do a little bit Unacceptable and we don't see that you won't see it in Romans.

Faith is the instrument keep this in mind the instrument but Christ obedience and death are the grounds. Right the instrument of salvation is faith, but that is only done because of what Christ has done.

It is the grounds right. Then we get it to adoption which we talked about a second ago it flows directly from justification. Those declared righteous are received as God's children. So that's the fourth point.

The fifth point is sanctification. Which we I think we just went over. Distinct from justification. God progressively makes believers. Holy then lastly we get to Perseverance and glorification. God ensures his justified children will endure and be glorified in the end.

You see all the overlap with tulip here. You see why tulip is kind of a teaching tool for this kind of as Old as it sounds it's really not that old. But tulip kind of makes it a little bit more palatable.

But this is it's kind of like using a study Bible or a Bible a translation that you understand really well and Kind of more of an academic Bible something that's a little bit more true to the intention and the word itself.

Not something that's easy to gleam. So you can use them both you can use either or. Really? It doesn't really matter for you.

But I.

Wanted to deliver this to you so that you know the framework that Second London Baptist Confession is working through. That's why these terms are matching up in the confession and the terms from tulip or not.

You don't see irresistible grace into it and in the Second London Baptist Confession Now they'll use irresistible and they'll use grace later on but they're not pairing those words to give that Same contextual layout of what we mean by going through tulip.

So if those if these words seem like they're Corresponding with the confession a little bit better. It's because they did this is what they use. They didn't use tulip at the time. It's a great helping tool.

You should definitely use it. Use it with your kids use it with your wife. Use it to teach. It's really easy way to help people understand what we what we believe. All right done with that sidetrack. Now where was that.

I Think I just finished.

Sanctification.

Repentance Unto Life and Salvation

We'll jump into 15. Repentance unto life and salvation. Paragraph 1. There are elect to have tarried in life and sin for many years, but God surely saves them. See the overlap there. Paragraph 2. There are men and women who will indulge in grievous sins sins so Reprehensible that they would only reveal them to a few and trusted Sins, so well practiced so manicured That I couldn't even speak them from up here.

There are sins that are so abhorrable so deplorable. So so practice to refine to get good at and they're so hard to say. The things that Paul speaks about we can't even talk about them. They're so dark.

And even those people can repent if God calls them they can repent. He can surely save them and his gift of repentance and they will be adopted into the family of God. Paragraph 3. The mind of any believer who repents of sin will look back on the heinous crimes against God and man that they have committed and by the good work of the spirit that believer will pray for pardon and strength to endure and remain steadfast in sanctification offered by a holy God.

Paragraph 4. Cliffhanger. Every believer is to repent of their own particular sins to the Lord. It's not just this whitewashing of Oh Lord forgive my general sins you name it. Name that disgusting sin to the Lord and grieve for it and beg for pardon for it and No one else repents for you.

No one can repent for your sins corporately. You can pray like Job did Lord forgive my children if they have sinned against you and note that the Lord hears you but You can't repent for them. If we could would we ever have church discipline.

If we could want wouldn't the masses.

Come to Christ.

During our entire lives on this earth. We'll have sins. We must repent of as continued grace that the Lord offers us. You may think oh, I repented. Then when I became a Christian, but the believer needs to be repenting every day.

Need to be self-examining. Ourselves like Psalm 139. Lord highlight the things in me the grievous things in me that offend you. It's that's part of the the model prayer that Jesus leaves us with. We repent to the Lord and we forgive those who've trespassed against us.

It is a model for a reason. This is our prayer if we never repent. Do we not get? Bolstered up with pride. Isn't pride the most dangerous because how subtle it is and how creeping it is affects everywhere.

Everywhere any sin. Can have root and pride. Well not gonna apologize to my wife. And I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna go to the garage You that day after day after day, and you become estranged. I'm not gonna repent.

I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not gonna repent to the Lord for Me not speaking gently to my wife. Being harsh. Or wives. I'm not gonna repent. I'm complained to him, but that's because he did it. He's just become estranged and then adultery creams creeps in.

See how pride is just so subtle and it affects everything. Needs to be purged and repentance is a great way to do that. Paragraph for every believer is to repent of their own particular sins to our God.

I just did that paragraph five. No sin is too small to repent of because it all offends a perfectly holy God. Which deserves our damnation? Yet there is no sin too large that our merciful God hasn't covered with the blood of Christ.

That we can't be forgiven of. For those who are repentant in Christ. I can't believe I haven't coughed while up here a little bit. Do we feel like we had a. I know we're not gonna remember it all but those steps of salvation.

You're gonna hear them so much through the confession, especially in these chapters dealing with salvation. It's good to become acquainted with them. So we talked about a couple of I'm just gonna remind you the names of them.

Election.

Effectual calling. Justification which there's two by the way. There's initial justification and final justification. Final justification precedes us going to glory with the Lord. This is the final judgment.

Adoption.

Sanctification. Perseverance and glorification These are terms that you're gonna see used in your confession. It's good to become acquainted with them to help you kind of understand what they mean when they say.

Because It can all just look like a bit of dogma and it's not all fun to read. Kind of fun to read but It can be hard to read. It's hard for me. So get yourselves a little bit acquainted with them. There'll be a test.