07 - Clement of Rome Part 2

If you're visiting with us, or just joining us, or listening by a sermon audio, we are in a study of church history, which is going much, much more slowly than I expected it would, but I hope you don't mind that too much.

Wednesday night, when I spoke here, I mentioned that I had just had an encounter that, once again, illustrated the importance of church history.

I actually sent the link to Pastor Fry. I think he sent me an email that he was halfway through, so he may have actually listened to my debate with the black

Hebrew Israelite gentleman. And did anyone else? I know

Sean's heard it. Anybody else? Round two is Wednesday. Round two is

Wednesday. Today, I will tell you that on Tuesday, Vocab Malone will be joining me on the dividing line for about two hours to give us a whole bird's eye overview of the whole movement.

Vocab has received death threats for having helped to arrange the encounter last week.

So if you imagine, so if they're angry enough to death threats at Vocab for arranging it, you can sort of imagine how much they like meat.

So your prayers for that would be appreciated. This time around, it will be formal.

Time limits, equal time, and three topics. For some reason, and I have a feeling

I know why, they want to discuss Ignatius. Here's my prediction. Want to hear my prediction?

We're putting it on sermon audio. Here's our prediction. They ran across the Jehovah's Witness Unitarian stuff on the internet that misrepresents

Ignatius by quoting from the pseudo -Ignatian epistles. Now, we haven't gotten to Ignatius. We're in Clement right now.

We're going to do the Didache, then we get to Ignatius. So he's just down the road. We're going to be reading all this stuff in just a matter of, well, it would normally be a matter of weeks, but I'm gone almost all of July.

So sometime in August, we'll get to Ignatius. Ignatius was Bishop of Antioch. He's martyred 107, 108, so he's extremely early.

And his writings are filled with clear, unambiguous references to the deity of Christ.

One of his texts, one of his statements is one of the highest statements of, well, here, in his epistle to Polycarp, await him that is above every season, the eternal, the invisible, who became visible for our sake, the impalpable, the impassable, who suffered for our sake, who endured in all ways for our sake.

Now, remember, this is 108. This isn't 325. This isn't Council of Nicaea. This is 108.

And then in his, specifically in his, here we go, in his epistle to the

Ephesians, there are a number of, in section 18, for our

God, Jesus the Christ was conceived in the womb by Mary when God appeared in the likeness of men, number 19.

And here we go. This is probably one of the highest statements of Christology I know of prior to Nicaea.

And it's within 20 years of the death of the last apostle.

There is only one physician of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate,

God in man, true life in death, son of Mary and son of God, first passable and then impassable,

Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, if that's not the two natures, one person, deity of Christ, humanity of Christ, the whole nine yards.

And it's no later than 108 AD. So for some reason, the

GOCC has contacted me and said, we want to discuss Ignatius. The only possible thing I can think of is, well, they put out a 3 and 1⁄2 hour damage control video just yesterday, given what happened last

Wednesday. So I think they just put Google on hyperdrive and dragged up these

Unitarian articles. Back in the late 1990s, the Watchtower Society put out an entire watchtower, grossly misrepresenting

Ignatius. And the way they did it was by ignoring the genuine epistles and only quoting from the pseudo -Ignatian epistles, which are later writings.

People would, if they wanted to add authority to something they were saying, they would attribute what they were writing to someone who was famous in their day.

And Ignatius was well known as a martyr in the early years. And so the

Watchtower put out an entire thing just grossly misrepresenting Ignatius. And I was teaching at Grand Canyon at the time.

I was a scholar in residence over there. And so I wrote a fairly lengthy article documenting the historical dishonesty of the

Watchtower Society. And I've offered to send that to the GLCC so they can read it before Wednesday.

But they haven't taken me up on that offer yet. But anyway, so that's going to be

Wednesday. It may go late enough that it may be difficult for me to be here. But we'll see how all of that happens.

But again, it illustrates the vital importance of church history, knowing I didn't expect it.

But the Didache came up. Ignatius came up, the very stuff that we're going to be dealing with here in church history.

Now, I went and turned my page. So I think this is where we were.

Yes, OK. I'm going to pick up the pace a little bit here. I want to get through Clement.

We're looking at this epistle. Again, the name Clement does not appear in the epistle.

That is a traditional name attached to it. If there was a Clement involved, he may have just simply been the secretary for the elders at the church at Rome.

The key thing to remember here is that there is no monarchical episcopate.

There is no one bishop in the city of Rome at the beginning of the second century. That does not develop until about 140

AD. And why is that important? Well, it's very important in regards to Rome's claims about the papacy and that Peter had established it this way.

The church has always understood Matthew 16 to mean that on this rock I will build my church, and so on and so forth.

Runs into the rather inconvenient reality of history itself when it comes to that.

But what we're doing is we're scanning through some statements in the epistle, just looking for possible insights that we can gain into the theology that would be prevalent in the

Church of Rome at this time. One of the things that's good about this particular edition, the light, this is the older edition, but it's still quite good,

Lightfoot and Harmer, is that they will italicize citations from both the

Old and New Testaments. So it's neat to be able to see how much of the canon was available at this particular point in time to these individuals.

Because remember, and I'm sort of laying a foundation for what we're going to see later on, one of the things

I really hope that all of you gain out of this study over time is a solid biblical theological understanding of the canon.

And if you gain that, you will have something that, in my opinion, 99 % of those who profess the name of Christ in the world do not have.

I cannot think, even when it comes to the Trinity, I get the feeling there's more understanding by a larger percentage of people in what calls itself

Christendom of the Trinity than there is the subject of the canon. And part of it,

I think, well, it's a combination of things, but part of it is in many churches there is a fundamental fear of A, either boring people to death,

OK, yeah, I get it, or B, driving them away by discussing things that are just too tough.

And so I mentioned last week the EFS controversy going on within evangelicalism today, the eternal functional subordination of the sun being promoted by people like Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem being opposed by most of the reformed folks.

And I discussed on the dividing line Robert Raymond's view on that,

Calvin's view, et cetera, et cetera. It's a big area of controversy. No two ways about it. Why is it so new?

Well, because discussing the relationship of divine persons within the Godhead is not really something that's normally done in a lot of churches on a

Sunday morning. It should be. It should be a delight of ours to consider the highest reaches of God's revelation, things like that.

But let's just face it, there's a mindset that says, well, you know, you need to make sure that everyone feels comfortable.

Well, I believe Christianity should call people up to a higher level rather than dumbing itself down to the least common denominator.

And if we have the spirit of God and we're talking about the truth of God, that we can trust the spirit of God to cause the people of God to love the truth of God and to study the truth of God.

All right, that's my thank you very much to that, amen. We're Reformed Baptists, we only amen once.

I think that's your, I think you only have three for this year. And so you only have two left. So I'm trying to keep track of it.

You already used one, too. OK, I only got one left, all right. That's a bummer. Anyway, so just some of my thoughts along those lines.

This material, I think, is extremely important. And the issue of the canon, that's what I was getting to, is absolutely essential.

It's one of the main things that unbelievers use to attack our young people in university. They bring up books that some

Christian at some time in the past thought was scripture, and you don't today, and you've never read it, so therefore, you can't say anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

My hope is that when we finish this study, especially the earlier period, because that's pretty much where we'll cover most of the issue of the canon,

I mean, I suppose, in one sense, we don't really get to the end of the discussion until April of 1546.

Anybody know why April of 1546? Nobody knows what

April of 1546, you will by the end of this class. Council of Trent, well,

Council of Trent met for many years. Councils back then, members, life moved a little slower back then.

You didn't have CNN, and MP3, and the net, and all the rest of that stuff. But the session that promulgated its decisions in April of 1546 gave the first dogmatic definition of the canon for the

Roman Catholic Church, which included the apocryphal books. And so I suppose, especially when it comes to the apocrypha, and I'm trying to find a black

Hebrew Israelite who will defend their odd acceptance of the apocrypha.

Not really sure why they would do that, given that the Jews never accepted the apocrypha.

But hey, they also think King James is a black man. So it's pretty wild.

But I would like to have a conversation with someone, maybe someone representing some of the larger groups on that issue.

I have debated the issue of the apocrypha before. I don't know if you've ever seen any of the debates we did on that. We'll get into all that.

But the point being this, that looking at Clement, we can sort of get an idea of, at this early date, which could be 95, 100, around that area, what are the scriptures were available to them?

How well they know the Gospels. There's entire scholarly works on, can we determine whether he had

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John? How much of each one? Paul's epistles are quoted. Yeah, that's true.

Justin, later on, doesn't have them. But it took time for these books to be distributed and to circulate.

Because, again, that's the way that things were back then. So getting back to Clement here real quickly, in section 21, let us rather give offense to foolish and senseless men who exalt themselves and boast in the arrogance of their words than to God.

Let us fear the Lord Jesus Christ, whose blood was given for us. Let us reverence our rulers. Let us honor our elders.

Let us instruct our young men in the lesson of the fear of God. Let us guide our women toward that which is good.

Let them show forth their lovely disposition of purity. Let them prove their sincere affection of gentleness. Let them make manifest the moderation of their tongues through their silence.

Let them show their love, not in factious preferences, but without partiality towards all them that fear God and holiness.

Let our children be partakers of the instruction which is in Christ. Let them learn how lowliness of mind prevails with God, what power chaste love hath with God, how the fear of Him is good and great, and save with all them that walk therein a pure mind with holiness.

For He is the searcher out of the intents and desires whose breath is in us. And when He listeth,

He shall take it away." Excellent. Obviously, it's well known that the

Christians were known by the pagan peoples as a very pure, moral, and holy people.

They stood out. We know that in this day, for example, it was very common to expose children, especially young girls.

If you did not want to have a daughter, then instead of going down to the ancient equivalent of Planned Parenthood, the ancient equivalent of Planned Parenthood was to expose your children, which means you just simply put them outside at night.

There were plenty of dogs roaming the streets of Rome, and there wouldn't be anything left in the morning. The Christians became known as those who would, after dark, go out and sweep through the streets and pick up the babies and adopt them as their own.

Even though they were poor people, and it made it all more difficult to feed, and so on and so forth, that's what the Christians did. So here you have a description of what is being recommended by the church at Rome to the church at Corinth.

Therefore, let our faith, as section 27, let our faith in him be kindled within us. Let us understand that all things are nigh unto him.

By a word of his majesty, he compacted the universe, and by a word, he can destroy it.

There is a clear belief, not only in monotheism, but in the fact that God is the creator of all things, that all things continue to exist solely at his will, that he can bring judgment when he chooses to do so.

This is, of course, over against much of the theology of the Roman Empire this time. Remember, you have limited finite gods.

You have all the various forms of philosophy we touched on earlier. But here you have a very vivid monotheism and a sovereignty of God over his universe.

You have a quotation in section 28 of Psalm 139, one of our favorites, with the commentary, where then shall one depart, or where shall one flee from him that embraces the universe?

Very good question. The next section, let us therefore approach him in holiness of soul, lifting up pure and undefiled hands unto him, with love towards our gentle and compassionate father, who made us an elect portion unto himself.

Now, what were we noting earlier? The term election and elect is all over the letter of the

Romans to the Corinthians, which makes sense, given that they received the letter to the

Romans, which has Romans 9 in it. And Romans 9 seems to still have been believed, at least at this point in time, by those in the church there at Rome.

Section 32, if any man will consider them one by one in sincerity, he shall understand the magnificence of the gifts that are given by him.

For of Jacob are all the priests and Levites who minister unto the altar of God. Of him is the Lord Jesus as according to the flesh.

Of him are kings and rulers and governors in the line of Judah. Yea, and the rest of his tribes are held in no small honor, seeing that God promised, saying, thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven.

They all, therefore, were glorified and magnified. Listen to this. Not through themselves, not through themselves or their own works or the righteous doing which they wrought, but through his will.

And so we, having been called through his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works which we wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the

Almighty God justified all men that have been from the beginning, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. That's in the text, so I get an extra one for this month. Just so you, if you're counting. OK, all right.

That's justification by grace alone through faith alone at the beginning of the second century, written ironically by the church at Rome.

Here is the church at Rome of antiquity saying something that would be anathematized by the church of Rome 1 ,400 years later, the

Council of Trent. And today, I have a feeling that the bishop of Rome would go, well, hey, if that's your truth.

Frankie's just so fluffy and warm and ooey and undefinable.

But I'm going to read that again. Listen to the terminology that's used here. They all were glorified and magnified, not through themselves or their own works or the righteous doing which they wrought, but through his will.

And so we, having been called through his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart.

Please note that. In holiness of heart. Because you see, Rome's argument today is we are justified by faith.

And the works that we do that add to our justification or are necessary for our justification are done in love.

See, that's how they keep the door open for the entire sacramental system is that faith working through love.

That's the crack in the door. So you don't have to say faith alone. But here, in the words of the ancient

Roman church, not through works which we have wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the almighty

God justified all men that have been from the beginning to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. That's sort of important stuff.

No tways about it. Very next section, section 33, for by his exceeding great might, he established the heavens.

And in his incomprehensible wisdom, he set them in order. Once again, I only emphasize these because of the fact.

For us, it's an obvious given. If you're a Christian, you believe in the creator who created all things, so on and so forth.

But again, that's because you and I are accustomed to this. You need to realize that this would be considered an extremely unpopular and, in fact, offensive belief in the context in which these words were originally taken.

The Romans took Christian belief as an affront to the public good.

You're creating schism. You're creating friction. You're offending people. What the oil that keeps the

Roman empire moving along is the fact that you can have your gods, and they can have their gods, and everybody just gets to worship their gods.

But just don't say that your god's the only god. And don't say that their god's not god.

That's where the issue comes in. And we're experiencing the paganization of our culture.

Our culture is becoming pagan. And the same pressure that was put upon Christians back then is being put upon us now.

Don't say that offensive stuff. Don't say that stuff where Jesus said marriage is this. We've decided that marriage is bigger than that.

Well, actually, marriage is much lesser than that. But we've decided to redefine that. And so you're being offensive.

And there are many, many, many, many people, most of whom are elected to public office in the state of California, who really want to see the force of law used to first bankrupt us and then imprison us.

If you're following the stuff that's going on in California, they tried and failed.

But every law in California, every wacky communist nut job law that has been passed in California originally came up and was defeated.

But they just keep bringing it up until it's the drip, drip, drip that breaks through the rock. And two bills were introduced this past session.

Didn't get through, but give them time. One was to make it illegal for anyone to record any conversation with any official of Planned Parenthood, because we know how that turned out.

And so that kind of stuff, doing research or investigative reporting, no, no, no, no, no, not when it comes to those high priests of the

Temple of Mulloch. We will defend Mulloch with the force of law.

And then the other one, this is really great, was an attempt to make it legal to sue climate change deniers.

So if you don't happen to buy the orthodoxy of man -caused climate change, and you don't want to talk about global warming anymore, because that doesn't really work because there's more ice down there.

But anyway, let's not get into all of that. Remember, Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for saying that by last year, there would be no ice left anywhere near the poles.

But that tells you something about the Nobel Prize. But be that as it may, the idea was to make it possible to sue corporations.

Now, if you can sue a corporation, eventually you can sue a person. And once you've got that in place, then you start suing people for believing in a creator god, for believing that homosexuality is destructive to human flourishing, that lights are going out in the middle of the discussion here.

I'm not sure exactly why. I have a feeling somebody at the back back there, someone in the back might want to look in there and see if someone's playing with the lights or something like that.

No, wait a minute, that doesn't control our lights. No, climate change. There's climate change right there. Where's Ray when you need him?

So I wonder if we've lost, really?

Just one bank of lights like that? Oh, cool. All righty, well, if anyone smells smoke, let me know,

OK? If it's before I smell it. But anyway, so this kind of stuff's happening.

And what we believe is offensive to people. And it's offensive to a nation that is not just sticking its fingers in its ears so as to not hear

God's truth, but is screaming as loudly as possible to try to drown that out as well.

So I mentioned that in passing. Section 35, what then, think ye, are the things preparing for them to patiently await him?

The creator and father of the ages, the all -holy one himself, knows their number and their beauty. Again, one creator, father of all the ages, all -holy, very high view, monotheism, the fact there is only one true

God. Then another lengthy quotation from scripture.

This is the way, section 36, dearly beloved, wherein we found our salvation. Even Jesus Christ, the high priest of our offerings, the guardian and helper of our weakness.

I don't know, it sounds to me like maybe the book of Hebrews had made it to Rome by this particular point in time in the use of that particular language in regards to describing

Jesus as the high priest of our offerings. And then again, section 38, let us consider, brethren, of what matter we were made, who and what manner of beings we are, when we came into the world, and from what a sepulcher and what darkness he that molded and created us brought us into his world, having prepared his benefits aforehand ere ever we were born.

There is an eternal purpose that God has. And he is accomplishing that eternal purpose, including that purpose within our lives.

Then there is a discussion, there's a fairly lengthy discussion, because why was this letter written? Remember, the church at Corinth had kicked out their elders.

And there was basically a rebellion going on. And so there's a fair amount of discussion about orderliness in the church.

And so one of the things that you're going to, hopefully by reviewing some of these things, we will encounter all sorts of stuff in the writings of the people before us of things that we would disagree with.

And as I said last week, part of one of the things that we want to develop is an ability to appreciate what people say, even when we have disagreements with them.

Think more deeply about what are proper areas of disagreement and what are the proper lines of fellowship.

For example, very clearly, we, even by the chosen use of our name, have a distinction from our

Presbyterian brothers when it comes specifically to church government and to baptism.

The proper objects of baptism, the meaning of baptism, and the application of our shared covenantal theology.

And yet, we consider those differences important enough that we don't simply sweep them under the rug and we fellowship in different churches.

And yet, we do not evangelize individuals thinking that they are not heirs of eternal life.

And so there are issues that, because of their nature, I mean church government, it's sort of hard to have a church with multiple theories of church government in it.

It's hard to have a church we have multiple theories of baptism in it. There are some churches that try it. It's a little interesting.

But these things divide us in our formal church fellowship.

But I have preached in many a Presbyterian church. I have preached from the pulpit of many a

Presbyterian church. Some of those Presbyterian church might say, I exhorted and didn't preach. But the vast majority of them would say, no, that was preaching.

And was given the hand of fellowship to do so. They recognized me as a fellow Christian. They recognized the giving of gifts into my life to be able to open the word of God, and vice versa.

I'll be preaching in a

PCA church, an OPC church, and a former Calvary Chapel church during my trip up to Colorado.

I'm going up to Colorado, down into Mexico, over to Salt Lake City, back to Colorado, and then back down here.

Actually, if you draw it out, it looks like an arrow heading northeast. I'm not trying to draw on the map, but that's sort of what it's going to look like.

But there you've got churches with different backgrounds. But they want me to speak and to minister there.

Because when I debated Bill Shishko, the pastor of the Franklin Square Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Long Island a number of years ago on baptism,

I think it was a Thursday night. On the Wednesday night, he had me preach in his church on justification by faith, because we're brothers.

So reading church history forces us to likewise think through a number of issues.

The added difference that sometimes is difficult for people is to ask yourself the question, what do

I know that they didn't?

What do I know that they might have known, in comparison to what do

I know that they could not have known? And what did they know that I don't know?

And sometimes you can't fully answer those questions, but you have to at least think through them. For example, when we look at Justin Martyr, a lot of things

Justin Martyr says, I wouldn't have said it that way. But he didn't seem to have Paul. So how much of an impact would that have?

And for me anyways, clarifying the central issues is so important.

Obviously, I stand on those things. I defend those things. And yet, at the same time, having taught church history now for,

I started in, wow, it's been almost 20 years. That was the first class

I taught when I graduated. No, it's been over 20 years. It's been 20, yeah, 1990. So it's been 26 years since I, I'll stop it.

Some of the young guys are going, I wish I was four hours born. Yeah, that's OK. Everyone is smiling, trying not to smile.

I know what's going on there. It has forced me to really try to be consistent and certainly to recognize that sometimes it's really easy for us to become so caught up in the controversies of our day that we think that everybody in the past was just as focused upon the things that we're focused upon.

In reality, they're focused upon a lot of things that you and I hardly even give a thought to. And they look at us like we're the shallow ones because we weren't necessarily thinking through the things that they were thinking through.

So that's something to keep in mind as well as we look at these things. So again, there's a quick statement at the end of section 43, to the end that the name of the true and only

God might be glorified. I keep emphasizing monotheistic statements, partly also because one of the dialogues

I'm doing up in Salt Lake City is with a very sharp Mormon. And of course, they are not monotheists.

Section 45, be contentious, brethren, and jealous about the things that pertain unto salvation.

That pertain unto salvation. There is much exhortation to not being contentious about the things that should not divide us.

But when it comes to that which is vital, then you have to stand for those things.

You have searched the scriptures, which are true, which were given through the Holy Ghost. And you know that nothing unrighteous or counterfeit is written in them.

Pretty high view of scripture, even at this early period of time as well. Then the church at Rome tells

Church of Corinth, section 46, your division has perverted many. It has brought many to despair, many to doubting, and all of us to sorrow.

There is strong terminology in saying that what has happened in your church is having impacts outside.

You don't live in an island, especially when it comes to the Christian church as a whole. What you have done here has had impact outside of your particular area.

It is shameful, dearly beloved, yes, utterly shameful and unworthy of your conduct in Christ that it should be reported that the very steadfast and ancient church of the

Corinthians, for the sake of one or two persons, makes sedition against its presbyters.

Boy, have we heard of churches dividing over power struggles like that. And I can tell you, if you want to drive a man out of the ministry, the fastest way to do it is through church division.

I mean, a guy can end up with more knife holes in his back faster than any other way than when you have division within the church.

There's no two ways about it. Section 49, there is nothing coarse, nothing arrogant in love.

Love hath no divisions. Love makes no seditions. Love does all things in concord.

In love were all the elect of God made perfect. Without love, nothing is well pleasing to God. In love, the master took us unto himself.

For the love which he had toward us, Jesus Christ our Lord has given his blood for us by the will of God and his flesh for our flesh and his life for our lives.

Now, I'm not going to try to make an ironclad case that this represents a doctrine of particular redemption or limited atonement.

But it clearly has the idea of substitutionary atonement in it.

And I would point out to you that the only logical way of believing in substitutionary atonement is through the means of particular redemption.

Because otherwise, you end up basically with the grounds of universalism. So you have to be careful.

Now, sometimes we do not want to abuse those who came before us.

Unfortunately, I can name names of those who abuse the writings of early church fathers.

Let me get something in your mind right here. I'm not done. I just want to make sure you hear me here. Most of you know, some of you who've been here for years and years and years know that I've dealt with Roman Catholicism back when

I had hair and big glasses. And the

Roman Catholics, before we came along, did a lot of debate. They don't do much of it anymore. But they really very clearly thought that all of church history was theirs.

And that was mainly because most Protestants don't know anything about church history and don't really care too much about one way or the other. And the

Roman Catholic, because of the nature of the commitments that are his, has to find his theology and doctrine in the writings of the early church fathers.

Because that's what he's been told by his councils over and over again, the universal belief of the church, always held, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so there's these lenses that they put on. And so when they look at church history, they're anachronistically seeing things that really weren't there.

They do this a lot with Ignatius and some of the things that Ignatius said about the Eucharist, a beautiful word that's been stolen from us.

We'll talk about that at a later point in time. But they are just desperate to find their theology in the early church fathers.

You should not be desperate to try to see. They have to turn the early church writers into Roman Catholics.

You do not have to turn anybody into a

Reformed Baptist. You can let the early church fathers be exactly who they were.

Because our statement of faith, our understanding, is not that everyone in the past has agreed with every jot and tittle of what we say.

That's not our position. We recognize that there will always be, until the

Lord returns, divisions amongst believing Christians. And if the

Lord wanted it differently, he could have done it differently. But the fact of the matter is, you look at the New Testament, and there were divisions when the apostles were alive.

If there were divisions when the apostles were alive, well, then there's something to be learned by looking at the fact that in the

New Testament, when the apostle Paul warns about coming divisions, when does he do that?

Two specific places. Acts chapter 20, gathers the Ephesian elders together, says, after I go, this is what's going to happen.

Wolves are going to sneak in, not sparing the flock. And when he writes to Timothy, in 2 Timothy chapter 3,

Timothy, men are going to be deceiving and being deceived, growing worse and worse. And you would think, in that context, that there's supposed to be some extra biblical thing.

There's supposed to be some pope. There's supposed to be the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses, a prophet in Salt Lake City, extra books of scripture, whatever.

This is when Paul would say, so Timothy, be looking for this. Elders of the church of Ephesus, be looking for this.

That's not what you get. What do you get? I commit you to God and the word of his testimony, which is able to make you wise and to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

That's what he tells the Ephesian elders. What does he tell Timothy? You, Timothy, remain convinced of what you've learned, even from childhood, the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise and to salvation.

For all scripture is theanoustos. It is sufficient for the man of God to do the things he needs to do in the church.

Now, there are a lot of people who say, but that's not enough. Yes, it is. But that's not going to give us absolute unity.

If you mean lockstep unity, no, it didn't exist in the days of the apostles. It doesn't exist today either. But there is something to be gained by exercising your faith in the sufficiency of what

God has given to us, rather than trying to find something to replace that.

And so the point is this. We do not have to turn the ancient church at Rome into the first reformed

Baptist church of Rome, because it wasn't. They didn't dress like us.

They had no Trinity hymnal. Shocking as it may be, but they did not have the

Trinity hymnal. And nor did they need to for us to be able to learn from them without having to become imitators of everything that they did.

OK? I think it's an important element to grab hold of. Section 50, this declaration of blessedness was pronounced upon them that have been elected by God through Jesus Christ our

Lord, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. It just, this letter oozes

Paul. It oozes the Book of Romans, which you'd expect it to, given that that's one of the earliest scriptures that they would be quoting.

We have a reference to duly appointed presbyters. We'll probably spend a little time on the form of the early church a little later in time.

Section 58, receive our counsel, and you shall have no occasion of regret. For as God lives, and as the

Lord Jesus Christ lives, and the Holy Spirit, who are the faith and hope of the elect, so surely shall be, who with loveliness of mind and instant gentleness, hath without regret from us performed the ordinances and commandments that are given by God.

Did you catch that phrase? For as God liveth, and the Lord Jesus Christ liveth, and the

Holy Spirit. Now again, is this meant to be some type of creedal

Trinitarian statement? No, but what does it reflect? Something we've taught many, many times before.

In the New Testament, the New Testament is not trying to enunciate a new doctrine of the Trinity. The New Testament is the writings of the fellowship of believers who have experienced the

Trinity. That's why it just comes across in natural ways. The writers can say the

Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, Spirit of the Lord, all within the same sentence and not have any problem because they recognize what the doctrine of the

Trinity is. Peter was an experiential Trinitarian. He had walked with the Son. He'd heard the Father speak on the

Mount of Transfiguration. He's now indwelled by the Holy Spirit. And so this

God, almost always the Father, Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, this use of these

Trinitarian phrases comes natural in the New Testament, comes natural to the church writing to the

Corinthians as well. Section 59, and we will ask with instancy of prayer and supplication that the creator of the universe, again, creator, one

God, may guard intact unto the end the number that he hath numbered of his elect throughout the whole world through his beloved

Son, Jesus Christ, through whom he called us from darkness to light, from ignorance to the full knowledge of the glory of his name.

These folks had good theology. The Church of Rome wasn't in some sort of apostasy at this point in time.

That's high theology. Grace unto us, Lord, that we may set our hope on thy name, which is the primal source of all creation.

Yeah, again, who multiplies the nations upon earth and has chosen out from all men those that love thee through Jesus Christ, thy beloved

Son. This, again, is section 59. More sections on creation.

Jesus Christ called the high priest and guardian of our souls in section 61. And finally, section 64.

Finally, may the all -seeing God and master of spirits and Lord of all flesh who chose the Lord Jesus Christ and us through him for a peculiar people, grant unto every soul that is called after his excellent and holy name, faith, fear, peace, patience, long -suffering, temperance, chastity, and soberness, that they may be well -pleasing unto his name through our high priest and guardian,

Jesus Christ, through whom unto him be glory and majesty, might and honor, both now and forever and ever, amen.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with you all and with all men in all places who have been called by God and through him, through whom be glory and honor, power and greatness and eternal dominion unto him from the ages past and forever and ever, amen.

That is the end of the epistle. It is soaked in sound theology that not once shows the slightest hesitation to affirm the absolute right of God as creator to elect a particular people unto himself.

So it always makes me wonder when I hear people saying, well, nobody believed any of this stuff up until Augustine.

I said, what, have you read Clement? It may not have been what he was addressing, but the very language is just, it's all over the place.

It's just oozing out of it. And if we have ears to hear it, we'll be able to hear that.

So there's Clement. You can find Clement online. And what that is, what it will allow us to do,

Lord willing, next week is to at least get a good running start. Who knows, maybe even get all the way through.

I don't know. Knowing me, probably not, but at least get a running start at the

Didache, the teaching of the 12 apostles, the second of the two documents that could be first century in their origination, extra canonical, but give us a lot of insight into what was going on back then.

All right? Okay, let's go to the word of prayer. Father, we do thank you for this time, this place you've given to us to gather, to consider these things.

May we indeed learn from those who've gone before us. May we not invest in them any type of authority they did not claim for themselves and you did not give to them.

But at the same time, may we be thankful that we do indeed have great witnesses who came before us.

We thank you for your word. We ask that you would bless it now as it's proclaimed to us in the service. We pray in Christ's name.