1689 2nd LBCF Intro & Chapter 1

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Okay, why don't we begin with a word of prayer, okay?

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Father, once again, we bow before you and we thank you and we praise you for all the blessings you've given to us and your

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Son. We pray, Father, that as we look through this confession of faith, that you would open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts, that we would see, hear, and understand what you have to say to us through your

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Word, and that, Father, that we would come to understand the doctrines that you have given to us in your

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Word and the importance of them. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so if you look up onto the screen, that's our logo, and what we're going to be doing is going through the

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Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is in 1689,

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London Baptist Confession of Faith, okay? Now what to expect in this, today's going to be an introduction and perhaps we'll get as far as looking at Chapter 1, all right?

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I always like to begin with what's the purpose of the class, and the purpose of this class is several -fold.

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One, to review the criteria for membership in Hope Reform Baptist Church. This is important because not only for me to find out, you know, where you guys are at spiritually, but for you to know what is it exactly that we believe, because, again, our doctrine being reformed is a little bit different than some of the other evangelical churches out there, and we don't want somebody coming into membership under false pretenses.

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We want you to know exactly what it is that we teach, okay? So in order to do that, we're going to review the 1689

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London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is the doctrinal standard of this church, and that's something that's absolutely crucial, all right?

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And what we're going to do is we're going to go through chapter by chapter to ensure that you understand, not all the little intricacies, because quite frankly, seminary courses are taught on our confession, and some of the doctrine goes really deep.

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We're not saying that you have to understand everything. We just want you to be able to understand what's the general teaching of each chapter.

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So, and we're going to go through the chapters not completely and fully.

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In fact, the way that it's set up is that, well, there's 32 chapters, okay, and the way that it's set up is the first paragraph of each chapter gives the general essence of what the doctrine is, and then the subsequent ones get into more detail.

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So some of them that go into great doctrinal depth, we're not going to go through that. We're just going to give you the general doctrine, okay?

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Now this is important because a candidate for membership must agree in sum and substance to all of the chapters.

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You don't have to agree with every little thing, all right? But in sum and substance, all right, you have to agree in order to become a member of the church.

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And then what we're going to do also in the class is to review our constitution. The constitution, well,

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I should say this, neither the confession nor our constitution are inspired documents.

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I mean, that's obvious. I mean, only scripture binds our conscience, but the confession is an absummary of what we believe are the important doctrines of scripture.

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And the constitution is just practicalities, you know, how do we handle certain situations?

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What is our church government? And, you know, and those type of things. That's important. Another thing about, so it's church government, all right, church practices, all right, discipline, what are we, what's our view on church discipline, et cetera, all right?

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And then the third purpose of the class is to review our covenant of membership. Now, that's actually included in our constitution, but I'm sure you've been here when we have brought in new members and you notice how when we bring in new members, we ask them to stand and then all the other members of the church and we recite the church covenant together.

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That covenant is purely biblical. Everything that's in it has been taken straight from scripture.

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So we're not asking people to make vows that are apart from what the scripture teaches, but this is what the scripture teaches concerning, you know, the church body.

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How do we relate to one another? What are our obligations to one another? And so we will review that because before we ask you to stand and recite the covenant and bow together and take this covenant together, again, we want you to make sure that you understand fully, you know, what it is that you're getting into, all right, because we do take church membership very, very seriously.

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That's why we hold a class such as this, and this class will go on for actually a couple of months. We're not going to take one day for each chapter, there's 32 chapters, that would be 32 weeks.

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We're not doing that. Some of the chapters will take a whole week. Sometimes we'll go through four or five chapters in one session because they're not as extensive as some of the others.

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Okay. Does everybody understand? Any questions so far? No? Miguel, are you hearing me okay?

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You're breaking up. I can't understand that. No, we're going to, you're going to have to just listen then because you're breaking up.

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I can't make out what you're saying, okay? Okay. Okay.

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All right. Good. All right. So, the covenant is a series of vows that we take as a church to God and to each other.

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Okay. The first thing that we're going to do in the class is to go through the London Baptist Confession of Faith.

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As I mentioned before, there are 32 chapters. The first paragraph introduces the topic, all right, and the subsequent paragraphs expand on the various aspects of the main topic, all right?

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And then scripture proofs are given at the end of each paragraph so that you realize that the paragraph, the confession itself, is based upon the scriptures, okay?

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At the end of each session, I'll have a slide such as this to ask you if you have any questions.

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Any questions so far? I do. Membership transfer from one denomination to another.

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Where does that consist of? Well, it would depend. We would do that if there was somebody coming from another church that holds to the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith, if the standards are the same. Now, with you, were you members down in West Sayville?

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Yes, we were. Okay. We would accept most of what you believe, because they would ...

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What was their confession of faith? Was it the Heidelberg or Westminster? Westminster. They did use the

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Westminster. The Westminster and the London Baptist Confession are verbatim in probably 80 to 90 % of the chapters.

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So, a lot of what we're going to be going through is going to be similar. We will then ...

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I will talk to the pastor of that church before we come in, before we would transfer any membership.

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But because there are some major differences, one in church government, two in how we view the sacraments, including baptism, and even our view of the

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Lord's Supper is a little bit different, not much. All right? So, those differences would necessitate that you sit through the class.

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I've even done this for other people coming from Reformed Baptist churches, just to make sure. Okay? But again, if you're familiar with the

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Westminster, you're going to see that in most cases, this is virtually verbatim. What the founders or the writers of the confession did was they were in agreement with the

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Westminster standards on most of the areas of doctrine, but where they disagreed, they wanted to write anew.

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So, they said, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. So, they just took whole chapters and just republished it as the

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London Baptist Confession. Okay? Okay. So, today we will begin with chapter one, and we should be able to get through most of chapter one.

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All right? I'm not going to read necessarily every section, but the opening paragraph is necessary, and I want to read it to you so that we can get the essence of what it is.

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Now, it's interesting. Notice that the first chapter in the confession is on the

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Holy Scriptures, and there's a reason for that. In fact, let me say this as well. There's a logic and a cogency to how the confession was put together.

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There's a progression. Why is chapter one the very beginning?

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In fact, let me throw that out as a question. Does anybody have an idea as to why the first chapter of our confession of faith would be the

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Scriptures instead of justification or the doctrine of God? Why do you think the writers of the confession, why do you think they chose to put the this chapter as number one on Scriptures?

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Absolutely, because it's our foundation. It's the Scripture that teaches us all the other doctrines, and they also want to put forward the fact that the confession, while it's important, is not what we lean on.

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The confession leads us to the Scriptures, and it's only the Scriptures that can bind our conscience.

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If you find that you come into disagreement with a part of the confession, and you believe that it violates a tenet of Scripture, we always go back to the

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Scripture. It's not the confession. Confession is a useful tool, but it's not something that you can use to bind your conscience.

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All right, so let me just read this opening paragraph. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.

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Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will, which is necessary unto salvation.

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Therefore, it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in divers manners to reveal Himself and to declare that His will unto

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His church and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, the malice of Satan, and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing, which makes the

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Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing His will unto

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His people being now ceased. All right, that's a mouthful.

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It's a lot. All right, but what it's basically saying is that the

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Scriptures that we have today, that is our infallible rule. God has, in years gone by, in the old covenant era,

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He spoke to people in different ways. Burning bush, you know, He spoke in a cloud, you know, the various ways that God spoke in dreams to people.

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But with the coming of the new covenant, the better covenant, and we're going to actually be talking about this a little bit in our sermon this morning, the essence and the importance of the new covenant.

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With the coming of the new covenant, all of those former ways have ceased. And now

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God speaks to us only through His word, which by His Holy Spirit, He had the

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And in fact, if you've ever gone through a class or a teaching, we've had

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James White here, we've had Tony Costa here, where they have given us some apologetic as to the reliability even of our translations.

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And it's truly an amazing story to see how God has preserved the Scriptures for us. So that's the essence of this first paragraph, the opening paragraph, pointing us back to the

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Holy Scriptures, that alone. And that's crucial. And any questions that you might have on that opening paragraph?

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No? Okay. Now, following that, we have Scripture proofs.

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So what I would suggest, do you guys have a copy of the 1689? Does everybody have a copy?

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Okay. All of the Scripture proofs, what they do is just point back that everything that was written in that paragraph can be found in Scripture.

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So again, it's not some scholarly debate that's going on and they took the best minds and came up with this idea.

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No, it's all they did was take these thoughts from the Scripture itself.

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Okay. So, and I'm going to list these, but again, we're not going to take the time to go through each one.

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Paragraph two, under the name of the Holy Scripture or the Word of God written are now contained all the books of the

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Old and New Testament, which are these. And again, this is important. In fact, before I go any further, let me say this.

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One of the things that I want you to notice and I want you to see is that this document was written, as was the

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Westminster standards, very much in opposition to what the teaching of the

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Roman Catholic Church was specifically at that time. Okay. And we know that the

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Roman Catholic Church has a different view as to what books are contained in the Scripture. And we'll get to that in a little bit, but notice how it's written.

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The Word of God written are now contained the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these. And so the only books that we have the

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Old Testament, we had those 39 books. Okay. And then we have these 27 books of the

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New Testament. So a total of 66 books. That's what we hold to be the

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Word of God. All right. Okay. And of course, all are given by the inspiration of God and to be the rule of faith and life.

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Okay. And of course, our main text. If you were here last week, you heard

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Dr. Costa preach on 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 and the importance of that verse teaching us what

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Scripture is. Okay. Paragraph 3. And this paragraph you can see is directly in contradiction to the church in Rome.

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All right. The books commonly called the Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of the

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Scripture, and therefore have no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.

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In other words, is everybody familiar with what we call the

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Apocrypha? Does everybody know what that is? Yeah, there were a whole series of writings, some of which were actually discovered at Qumran, you know, they found manuscripts of it, but there's a lot of manuscripts that were found, that have been found from the same time period that Scripture, but it was not, never deemed to be

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Scripture. It was never purported to be Scripture. The addition of what we call the

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Apocrypha, and actually even what the Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church holds to be the Apocrypha, there are still other

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Apocrypha books that they don't even consider to be Scripture.

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A lot of these things were written, some of them are false, but some of them are excellent history books.

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For example, everybody knows about the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

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It occurs right around Christmas time. How did the

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Jews wind up celebrating Hanukkah? It's not in the Bible. So how do we know where that came from?

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It's actually from one of the Apocrypha books. It's from 1st Maccabees. Okay. And, you know, there's a whole story behind the celebration of Hanukkah.

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And the problem is, so the problem isn't that the books are completely false, it's just that they're not inspired.

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Okay, like our history books. All right. We have history books. We want to find out what happened in 1512 in England.

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How do we find out? Well, the Bible's not going to tell us, but we have history books. But we also know that history books can be written with a bias.

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And that's so anytime you go to one of the Apocrypha books, in fact, I have on my bookshelf,

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I have a book just of the Apocrypha, because it's important information in there, but it's just not

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Scripture. Does everybody follow that? Yeah. Okay.

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And then here's our, the Scripture references for that as well. Okay. Paragraph four, the authority of the

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Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed depends not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God, who is truth itself, the author thereof.

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Therefore, it is to be received because it is the word of God. This, again, is something that was put in the confession to contradict the teaching of Rome.

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The church in Rome teaches that those 66 books, which actually they would add to that, those books are

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Scripture because we say they are. Okay. And we say, no, no man gives authority to the

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Scripture. These books, and notice the way it is, these are to be received because it is the word of God.

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Okay. And there's a whole process that the church councils move through, how to determine how do we know if this is the word of God or where it's not the word of God.

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Okay. And there's your Scripture proofs for that as well.

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Paragraph five, this is, well, let me read some of this as well.

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We do have some time. It says, we may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the

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Holy Scriptures and the heaviness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of its style.

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And it gives a whole list of things like that. All right. But the bottom line is, while that's all important and we can give an apologetic, why do

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I believe that this is the word of God? Why do I take this and revere this and say that I'm going to base my life and my godliness on that book?

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While all of that is important that we can do it in a scholarly fashion. The main reason that I believe it's the word of God is because the work that the

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Holy Spirit has done in my heart. When he saved me, he regenerated my heart and he gives me the ability by faith to accept that this is in fact the word of God.

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So I don't believe it because of all the external proofs as important as they are because they are good for debate.

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When you're witnessing to somebody, you want to convince them. I mean, if this book wasn't so consistent, if there were errors in it, then how could you say it was the word of God?

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All right. So those facts are important. But the main thing is it's the work of the

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Holy Spirit. That's one of this, the church that holds to the doctrines of grace.

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OK, God saving us, giving us his Holy Spirit. And that spirit of God testifies to our spirit that we are in fact children of God.

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That's how we have assurance of salvation. All right. Not by anything external, but by what he has done in our heart.

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And that's what this paragraph is saying. That's the same reason how we have the assurance that the

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Bible itself is in fact the word of God. OK. Does that make sense to everybody?

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Yeah. OK. And then there's more scripture proofs.

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Paragraph six. The essence of this paragraph is what we would hold to as we are.

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We are a church that is called a cessationist. All right.

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That means that some of the gifts that were given to the church in the apostolic era have ceased.

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All right. Specifically new revelation. And we specifically hold to, we believe that by 70

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AD when Jerusalem was destroyed, that the whole canon of scripture was complete.

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God's revelation to man is now full and he has revealed to us everything that we need to know about life and godliness is contained in the word of God.

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I'm sure you've heard of churches where somebody would come over and say, I have a word for you and they put their hand on you and they say, the

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Lord has told me and you are to do X, Y and Z. All right.

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And they say it with authority as though God has told him this.

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This paragraph is refuting that saying. It's not the way it works. In this era, since God has given us everything that we need to know in the book, there's no new revelation.

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That's why we say we are cessationists, only in the sense of new revelation. Not that God is not still working in his creation.

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We believe that God can heal people, that he can do all kinds of miracles still.

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That's up to him, but it's not up to us to say that we can, we can somehow work miracles, you know, as an individual.

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We have people who call themselves faith healers and whatnot. Bible says, you know, there's a process.

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If somebody's sick, what do you do? Call for the elders, anoint them with oil, pray for them. The prayer is what will raise the man up.

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All right. Not, not anything that's no miracle worker. All right.

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We believe that those gifts were gifts given to the apostles to authenticate their word.

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Remember, just as Jesus said, if you don't believe me because of what I tell you, believe me because of what

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I do. All right. Clearly, Jesus demonstrated that he was the son of God because he had control over nature, over mankind, over sin, over Satan, over the demons.

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He transferred that power to his first apostles. But now with the completion of the canon, revelation is ceased.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. I've always been convinced with that.

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I've always struggled as far as speaking in tongues. Actually, I don't speak in tongues. Yeah. I don't, you know, prophesy, but I've seen people that have and it's very convincing.

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Oh, it does. I mean, like my mother -in -law, for instance, every now and then, you know, she'll, even after, would have no strength out of breath.

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Yeah. And it's not new revelation, but, you know, it's just, you know, what we already have written.

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Okay. And I've seen other people speak in tongues. Then what's the purpose for it? Yeah. I mean, I don't argue with you.

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I'm just saying. Yeah. But see, that's the question. The question here too is, and I'll take just a little bit of time on this.

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What is tongues to begin with? And you have to go, where's the first place in the scripture that's where we have this whole idea of tongues?

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The day of Pentecost. Right. What was the miracle of tongues? The apostles were preaching in languages that they hadn't learned.

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So it's known languages that they just had never been schooled in or trained in.

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That's what the miracle was. What's the purpose for tongues? It was a sign of destruction for the

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Jews because they had rejected the Christ and that the gospel is now going to the

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Gentiles. It's like a reversal of the Tower of Babel. Okay. So now the gospel is being preached in virtually every language of everybody who was there in Jerusalem.

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And that's the demonstration. So now when the canon of scripture is complete and the people are sent out, what's the purpose?

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The sign that the gospel is now going to the Gentiles is no longer needed because the new covenant is in full force.

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And so today we have people talking in tongues as though it's some sort of special language.

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But there's no mention of that in scripture whatsoever. I know it's not necessary.

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I believe that. But do you believe that people do have that gift within themselves?

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No. No. No. Yeah, I mean,

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I don't know. Yeah. I'm just saying I've seen people. I think they're misguided. I mean, they've done it in an orderly way, according to what

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Paul said, in a church setting. Yep. There's been times where people have interpreted and have it.

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But I mean, some of these southern black women at a Pentecostal church I attended once.

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I mean, it seemed very convincing. Well, there can be. I've seen non -believers do very convincing things from emotion.

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And that's what we have to guard ourselves against is the fact that are we doing something out of pure emotion and desire?

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OK, especially when you're told. And here's where the danger really comes in. In a lot of these churches, they're told that if you don't have this, you may not be saved.

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And if you are saved, you're only like a second -class citizen. You don't have the full gospel.

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Yeah, I remember at that very same church, they had a traveling evangelist. And he was actually helping people to give utterance to God.

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This is how, you know, let it roll off your tongue like this. I mean, so that was sketchy.

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Yeah, I was at a conference once. And the speaker said, when you get saved, it's like buying a new pair of shoes.

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The tongues come with it. All right. That's no lie.

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My wife and I were there together. And again, I think a lot of the people who, quote, speak in tongues, unquote,

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I believe they're very sincere. I don't think it's of the devil. You know, like some people say,

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I don't think that at all. But I think that they're misguided because of some of the poor teaching.

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And again, if you're not giving new revelation, then what is the purpose of the tongues? Because that's what it was supposed to be doing, giving the gospel to people who had never heard it before.

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OK, but this paragraph is what specifically makes it that we are a cessationist church.

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Now, let me say this, too. This is one of those areas that if you disagree, you think and you have what we would call like an open view that you don't do it.

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But you think it could be genuine or at some future time, God may do that.

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That's not a violation that would not prevent you from coming into the church. We have one or two people in the church that have an open view of this.

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They don't practice it. No, that's fine. You know, but this would be one of those areas where you wouldn't necessarily be denied membership because you don't agree that it has absolutely ceased.

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OK, so and again, because especially within reformed churches, there's different teachings on it as well.

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So there's some good reformed Baptist men who have an open view of the gifts. OK, paragraph seven, all things in Scripture are not alike, plain in themselves, nor alike, clear unto all those things which are necessary to be known, believed in, observed for salvation are clearly propounded.

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So I'm not going to finish the rest of that. What it's basically talking about is there's some difficult stuff in the

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Bible. We don't expect you to know it all, not even everything in a confession. But the things that will bring you to the knowledge where you where the

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Holy Spirit will save you, that's clear. I mean, a young child can understand that, you know,

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I need to repent of my sin and then, you know, and pray and ask God to forgive me and then

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I'll be safe. Even a young child can understand that. And that's all that that's.

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And so that's our view of Scripture is that that part of it is perfectly plain and clear.

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And there's the Scripture references for that as well. Paragraph eight talks about original languages.

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All right. The Old Testament written in Hebrew, the New Testament most generally is in Greek.

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There's also Aramaic in some of the Scripture. And it's just talking about.

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That God used the common language to to to speak to his people.

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Hebrew was the popular language in one time, the Old Testament was written. Greek was the commonplace language.

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In fact, the Koine Greek that was used to write the New Testament was the marketplace language. It wasn't even classical

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Greek. And the whole reason is that we can communicate effectively the message of the gospel.

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And that's in fact, is the confession doesn't say this very specifically. But one of the reasons we use more modern translations here is to follow through with with that principle that everybody should be able to understand.

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That's why we don't. And that's why even if you notice that when I preach, I don't get into the languages very much.

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Sometimes if it needs clarification, I'll give you a Greek word here or there. But basically, the common language and in our case,

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American English is what we communicate in. And that's why we use the modern translations that we do.

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OK. There's a proof text for those. Paragraph nine.

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This is the interpretation of Scripture. And this is a this is a very, very important one.

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How do we interpret the Scripture? The Scripture itself interprets Scripture. We can't come with our preconceived ideas and impose those on Scripture.

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But when we have a part where where Scripture is doesn't seem to be clear, we look for other parts of Scripture which are clear.

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All right. Does that make sense to you? Now that we can't come and put our own ideas into the

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Scripture, we have to let the Scripture speak to us. OK. And that's something that happens frequently.

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And then the last paragraph of this first one is the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined.

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All decrees of counsel, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, private spirits are to be examined and whose sentence that we are to rest can be no other but the

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Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit into which Scripture so delivered. Our faith is finally resolved.

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OK. One of the one of the complaints you'll hear from a lot of evangelical churches about those of us who are confessional, they say, oh, you elevate the confession above Scripture.

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No. The confession itself says that the Bible alone is what we use as our source for all of life and godliness.

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All right. And so it is this. The confession is meant to point us to the

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Scriptures, not take us away from the Scriptures. And there's our text for those.

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And that brings us to the end. Any questions regarding our view of the

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Scriptures? That's where we stand. You know, we are we are a biblical church.

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We preach the word. We teach the word. The word is our sole guide for all of life and godliness.

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That's where we stand. That's where we stand.