LBCF Ch 23-25 explained

But I wrote the chapter 23, Lawful Oaths and Vows. Oh, by the way, we'll probably have maybe three more classes looking at the schedule because some of these chapters we're gonna go through very, very quickly.

And then what we'll do is we're gonna go through the church constitution. Just in one week, we'll go through the church constitution, the church covenant, and that's important because that's what you're gonna be vowing to, when you take the church covenant.

But that'll be the end of the class. So, all right. So today we're up to chapter 23, Lawful Oaths and Vows. Chapter 23, paragraph one. A lawful oath is a part of religious worship wherein the person swearing in truth, righteousness, and judgment, solemnly calls God to witness what he swears and to judge him according to the truth or falseness thereof.

Lawful Oaths, Vows, and Reverent Speech

This is somewhat of an important chapter because there are certain branches of Christianity where they believe that it's wrong to swear at all to anything. And they go to the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, don't, you know, let your yes be yes, your no be no.

They're taking that portion out of context. What Jesus is doing in that portion of scripture is correcting the error of the Pharisees where they would just make up certain oaths and vows and as a loophole to try to get away with not following through on their vow.

All right.

But the scripture clearly shows that it is lawful to take vows. What we are cautioned against taking is frivolous vows. And especially if you make a vow to God, that is a binding vow. You know, you don't ever want to renege on a vow that you make to God.

All right.

So notice what it says, the person is swearing in truth and righteousness and judgment and solemnly calling God to witness what he swears and to judge him. So basically, even when you go into court and you're gonna testify in court and they ask you to raise your right hand and swear, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.

And I don't know if they still do because I mean, I've been out of the court system for a long time now, but it used to be, so help you God. That's a lawful oath. And Christians should take that oath because if you're gonna swear, you're gonna swear in front of Almighty God that God is your witness.

And so that's what this paragraph is all about. Then paragraph two, all right. The name of God only is that by which men ought to swear and therein is to be used with all holy fear and reverence. Therefore, to swear vainly or rashly by that glorious and dreadful name or to swear at all by any other thing is sinful and to be abhorred yet as in a matter of wait and moment or confirmation of truth and ending all strife, an oath is warranted by the word of God.

So a lawful oath being imposed by lawful authority in such matters ought to be taken. All right, now, one of the things about this chapter or this paragraph is that it's telling us we shouldn't swear by anything else.

You see it all the time. I swear by the life of my children or I swear on my mother's grave, you know, thing. Those are not lawful oaths biblically. When an oath, it's also warning against frivolous oaths.

Don't swear before God for something frivolous, okay? In other words, it's a solemn oath that you're taking and therefore it should only be taken in the name of God and only for something that rises to the standard where an oath is necessary, such as sworn testimony, when you're signing a legal document and you're swearing that that is in fact your signature and that everything in it is true.

All right, so that's the essence of it. Don't swear frivolously and if it is something serious, you only have to swear and you can only swear in the name of God.

Questions?

Paragraph three. Whosoever takes an oath warranted by the word of God or duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act and there into a vouch nothing but what he knows to be true or by rash, false and vain oaths the Lord has provoked and for them this land mourns.

Okay, again, basically showing you should never enter into a vow frivolously and before you take an oath or a vow, make sure that you know what you're doing and that you know what you're saying is the truth, all right?

There's nothing wrong even, now again, I testified literally hundreds of times in court because most homicides go to court. Very few people plead guilty to murder, all right? So my time in the witness stand was extensive and there's nothing wrong, you know, because when you swear to tell the truth, you got to make sure it's true.

On occasion, the defense attorney would ask a question that I wasn't sure of and I would, at that point, I would always say, you know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure of what happened at that point. I can check and find out for you if you'd like, but as I sit here today, I don't know.

There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, a jury who's watching, this guy's pretty truthful, you know? He's not just saying yes to everything and if he doesn't know, he's gonna say he don't know, all right, but it's more than just trying to convince the jury, it's you don't swear before God if you don't really know that the thing you're swearing to is the truth, okay, and that's the whole purpose of this chapter, I mean, this paragraph.

I always say chapter when I mean paragraph. Have you noticed how many times I do that? I know you did. Okay, paragraph four, an oath is to be taken in plain and common sense of the words without equivocation or mental reservation, right?

Again, this is directly to contradict what the Pharisees used to do. They would swear by the altar of God or by the gold on the altar and come up with all kinds of mechanisms to try it so that they could weasel out of the oath if they didn't like it.

And the oath should be in plain language. Do you swear, you know, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, so nothing but the truth, so help you God. That's plain, simple. That's a prime example of a lawful oath.

Trying to equivocate or make the words convoluted so you can weasel out of it is not permissible, okay? Paragraph five, a vow which is not to be made to any creature but to God alone is to be made and performed with all religious care and faithfulness but popish monastical vows of perpetual single life, professed poverty and regular obedience are so far from being degrees of higher perfection that they are superstitious and sinful snares in which no Christian may entangle himself.

The Sinfulness of Frivolous and Monastic Vows

Obviously, this is a paragraph that is mitigating against the Roman Catholic doctrines that of monasticism, you know, hiding themselves away, going into a monastery, all right, separating themselves completely from the world and then taking vows of poverty or giving up all the worldly possessions, you know, and then having nothing.

These are all man-made rules and regulations that developed over the Middle Ages in the history of the church. And the confession of faith, the founders and writers of our confession say these are not biblical.

And if you don't have biblical warrant for it, then it should not be done, especially to an oath. I mean, if somebody wants to give up certain things, you have the liberty of conscience to do that but you should be careful about taking an oath for that.

All right, for example, let's say somebody struggled with alcohol abuse, okay? They come to Christ and they say, I'm, you know, I'm not gonna wrestle with this anymore. I'm gonna give up drinking any alcoholic beverage, all right?

The Christian has the liberty of conscience to do that but don't make a vow, okay? Because it's a matter of conscience. It's not a sinful thing, all right, to have a drink. It's a sinful thing to get drunk, all right?

And so many people make vows and it's not always the smartest thing to do, all right? You can just make it your determination and pray for God's health, okay? So, and that's because it's adding to the scripture, all right, and that's exactly what the Roman Catholic did, taking singleness, all right, poverty, and then doing other things, religious activities, and they have to take vows to do that.

For example, you know, some of them that take vows of silence, all right? It's not in scripture, it's unwarranted and it's foolish to take a vow to that end. All right, so that's chapter 23, talking about vows.

Any questions on chapter 23?

Yes.

Some of the people are saying that you can't take a vow, you have to get married and make a vow. So to me, it's like.

No, a vow is an oath, what's the difference? We're going to do, we're going to get to, I don't know if we'll get to marriage today, but we'll talk about that because remember this too, and this is something that people don't understand.

If you just look at this part of the confession, all vows must be made in the name of God, all right? So when you're vowing in your marriage covenant, okay? It's not just, you're not just vowing to the person, you're making the vow to God.

And therefore to violate the marriage covenant is a violation of God's law and an oath that you've made to God, which is very serious. This is why we take divorce so seriously, okay? All right, let me just pause here and set up the next.

The Civil Magistrate, Romans 13, and the Christian's Duty to Government

Okay, we come now to chapter 24 of the civil magistrate. All right, and again, this is another portion of the confession, which makes a lot of common sense, but you do have people, here we go. It's being stubborn today, I don't know why, but you do have people in your Christian community who don't believe that we owe any obedience to the civil magistrate, they separate themselves, they won't become civil magistrates.

And let me, in fact, let me just say this, when we talk about the civil magistrate, we're not merely talking about judges. The civil magistrate is a generic term for government officials, all right? Just so that we understand that.

So paragraph one of chapter 24, God, the Supreme Lord and King of all the world has ordained civil magistrates to be under him over the people for his own glory and the public good. And to this end has armed them with the power of the sword for defense and encouragement of them that do good and for the punishment of evildoers.

That obviously is just a paraphrase of Romans chapter 13. Romans chapter 13 makes it very clear that the civil magistrate is appointed by God, all governments are appointed by God, even the evil ones, God has allowed to come into existence for his own purpose, right?

And we owe obedience to them to the extent that we're not being disobedient to God. Remember, there's the apostles, they tried to obey the civil magistrates in every way they can. Remember, Jesus even paid taxes, all right?

Up to and unless they ask us to do something that goes against scripture. That's where we draw the line. Obedience to the civil magistrate is not unconditional. It's conditional upon the fact that they are not asking us to do something that would violate scripture or violate our conscience.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

Actually, yes. And I say that not frivolously, okay? Because that's a question that comes up.

What's that?

Yeah, this is a question that has come up in my ministry numerous times. And I'm not prepared to argue for it right now, but I do believe if you go through the history books and you see what the colonists did, how they weighed things out, and even committing a large portion of it to prayer and searching the scriptures, I believe that they had the right to form their own government.

I do, okay? But again, they didn't do, it was not frivolous what they did. I mean, they really studied, they searched the scriptures.

And again, I'm not saying.

That all of the founding fathers were believers, but most of them at least held to the authority of scripture. Even if they weren't believers per se, all right? They still accepted the scriptures, which is something that we have a tough time understanding now.

You know?

I mean, even if you look at Thomas Jefferson, have you ever gone into, who's here, anybody been to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D .C.? I hardly recommend it because now here, I hold no illusions that Jefferson was a believer, you know, a true believer in Christ.

But he certainly held to the authority of scripture for a guide to living and whatnot. If you go into Jefferson Memorial and stand in there and look at all the inscriptions of Jefferson around, it's something, something to see, you know?

And that was part of the foundation of our government,.

All right?

Not perfect, but pretty doggone good, all right? So again, in fact, one of the most important things that we can look at this, notice that the government has given the power of the sword. That means they had the power of life and death for certain crimes.

Something the church was never granted. That's something that we need to understand. In the Middle Ages, when the church was putting people to death, they were clearly acting outside of scriptural warrant.

Only the government, after due process, is given that ability by scripture, not only for defense, but also to punishment of the evildoers, okay? So yes, this is one of the portions that we would say even supports the death penalty.

The government has the right to do that. It's not murder, okay? Paragraph two, it is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate when called there unto. In the management whereof, as they ought especially to maintain justice and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each kingdom and commonwealth.

So for that end, they may lawfully now, under the New Testament, wage war upon just and necessary occasions. There's a lot in that one little paragraph, okay? One, clearly, Christians can take positions as the magistrate.

Now, that would include any governmental office, police officers, military service. All of that is acceptable. And in fact, if we understand the scriptures right, you would want all of your governing officials and all of your military men to be believers in Jesus Christ, because they are the ones who truly understand what justice is, who are being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

And those are the ones that you would want to be your judges, okay? So these sects of Christianity that say, oh no, we Christians can't go into government service, or they can't go into politics, because politics is a dirty business.

No, we're supposed to sanctify by joining in and electing our officials as godly men and women. Why do we have ungodly officials? Because we put them there. Notice it's not like this is some dictatorship where we have no say.

No, we have a say in who we elect, okay? We're just not doing it right, okay? And notice also, it does give, this is the justification for what we would call the just war, all right? And that's a whole other topic, but it's fine for our military men and women to engage in a just war.

They are not violating any scripture by taking a life in battle, okay? Remember too, this confession was drawn up in England, all right, back in 1689. All right, so it's not particularly looking at our form of government, but it still is very applicable.

Civil magistrates being set up by God for the end of the earth were said, subjection in all lawful things commanded by them ought to be yielded by us in the Lord, not only for wrath, but for conscience sake, and we ought to make supplications and prayers for kings and all that have an authority that under them we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

All right, there again, we're looking back at Romans 13. We are in subjection to the governing authorities as long as what they're commanding us is lawful, okay? And they're yielded to us, not just because we're afraid of punishment, but for conscience sake.

In other words, we should be obeying the government officials, not because, let me put it this way. You're driving down in the Long Island Expressway, all right, and the speed limit there is 55 for most of the way.

We should be doing the speed limit, not because we're afraid of getting a summons, all right, but because it's the right thing to do because the government has set that up. Even if you don't agree with it, all right?

So now I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I drive 55 on the expressway all the time, but if you do, you get run over. But there are, I mean, look, there are certain leeways that we know that we have anyway.

I can tell you this flat out. If you're doing 65 miles an hour on the expressway, there's not a cop on Suffolk County or Nassau County that's gonna pull you over for speeding, you know? So anyway, and then it continues that we ought to pray for those in leadership.

This is one of the reasons why every Sunday morning and every Tuesday evening when we have public prayer services that we pray for our governing officials. We're commanded to pray for our governing officials.

For the main reason, well, two main reasons. One, that they would rule well, and two, that we can live quiet and peaceable lives. And that's specific. If you look at 1 Peter 2 and 1 Timothy 2, you'll see that those are mandates of scriptures that we must be praying for our governing officials.

I don't care if you like them, you don't like them. When Barack Obama was president for those eight years, we prayed for him consistently in this church. I disagreed with 99 of his policies, but I'm still praying for him.

I prayed that the Lord would save him, and we pray that the Lord would use him to rule well, even though we disagree with him. All right, does that make sense? Okay, any questions? I told you some of these were gonna be simpler and non-controversial topics.

So what we're gonna do this morning, we're gonna do one more section, one more chapter. I'm calling chapters paragraphs. I just can't get that right. All right, and then we'll call that a day because the next chapter after that is of the church, which is a lengthy chapter.

We have to spend one whole week just on the doctrine of the church. Then the last couple of sections, again, are fairly simple. So we can probably blow through those in about one week maybe, maybe two, and then we'll do the Constitution and the Covenant, and the class will be over.

All right, so let's pause here for a moment. Okay, so now we're up to chapter 25 of marriage, and let's move ahead here. All right, so paragraph one. Marriage is to be between one man and one woman. Neither is it lawful for any man to have more than one wife nor any woman to have more than one husband at the same time.

Marriage, Headship, and the Christian Duty to Marry in the Lord

This kind of sets us in opposition to the trend of our country, isn't it? Doesn't it? This is coming, of course, right from Scripture. There's three Scripture references up there. Marriage is between one man and one woman, meant to be for life, and it's not lawful to have more than one wife or more than one husband at the same time.

Pretty simple, pretty basic. All right, paragraph two. Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue and the preventing of uncleanness.

And again, there's a combination of Scriptures from the Old and the New Testament. Again, husband and wife, it's God's design. They both need each other. It's one of the portions of Scripture that's not up there, which you could add to that if you want.

It's 1 Corinthians 11, where it's talking about women and their role in the church and all the same one that actually includes head coverings. All right, but it's talking about the fact that the man is the head of the wife, but there's an admonition, don't forget, though, but all men came from a woman.

So there's a mutuality, even though we believe in the male headship of the home, you know, that's biblical. He's the servant head, not the dictator head of the home. And it's for the increase of mankind and again, for the purpose of having children and again, to prevent promiscuity.

Okay, those are some of the main portions. All right, now we go to paragraph three. All right, and paragraph three, it is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who are able with judgment to give their consent, yet it is the duty of Christians to marry in the Lord.

All right, and therefore such as profess the true religion should not marry with infidels or idolaters, neither should such as are godly be unequally yoked by marrying with such as are wicked in their lives or maintain damnable heresy.

Again, this is pretty simple, pretty basic. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you have no business marrying somebody who's not a believer. It will lead, without question, it will lead to heartache.

All right, because you're never gonna establish that closeness and the oneness that you can have with another believer. All right, so that's what it says, the duty of the Christians to marry in the Lord and therefore such as profess true religion, not to marry infidels, idolaters, nor should such as are godly be unequally yoked.

Pretty simple, all right. Any questions on paragraph three? Yes, I can't answer why, all right, because that would be trying to get into the mind of God, but God permitted by his grace a lot of different types of things that were not best for mankind.

Look at what he, when Israel entered into the land of Canaan look at how many of them adopted idolatrous practices, okay. He didn't wipe them out, he didn't annihilate them. It was his showing his grace and his mercy.

They adopted the cultural standards of the day which was polygamy, all right, and God was just very patient and actually used that to bring about his purpose in having the 12 patriarchs, okay. So I can't answer the question why just other than the fact that in his grace and in his mercy he was very long suffering and patient with them and even accommodated them in some of their, you know, sinful practices, okay.

And in fact, you can even look at it this way, look at between Jacob and Esau, okay. Jacob and Rebekah sinned against Isaac, several times. She conspired against her husband, clearly a violation of scripture, yet it brought about the purposes because it was decreed that the older would serve the younger, all right.

That would have happened even if they had not sinned but they sinned and God still used even their sin to bring about the fact that Jacob would become the patriarch, all right. So the only definitive answer I can give you is that God uses even his sinful actions of people, all right and it just shows his grace and his mercy and quite frankly, I'm glad.

I'm very thankful that God, even in the new covenant is very patient and long suffering with us because I think back, you know, I've been married 54 years and I think back of things that I've done over these years and I say, I am so glad that he is patient with us.

In our sin.

I mean, Ginger and I look back, we say, there were times that we were just downright sinful and yet he used that, you know, in our lives for his purpose and that's the only answer I give. If he used that, their sinfulness of polygamy for his purpose, okay.

Is that acceptable answer? It's the best I can give you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think there's a definitive answer that anybody, I've never heard one, let me put it that way. I've heard theologians try to answer that question and I've never, the best that satisfies me is the one I just gave you, you know, I don't know.

Paragraph four, marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity forbidden in the word, nor can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man or consent of parties as those persons may live together as man and wife.

Marriage Within Biblical Bounds

All that's basically saying, forget the fancy words, what it's saying is that there are certain people who cannot marry because of the closeness of the relationship, okay. In other words, brothers and sisters should not be marrying.

That's pretty much the essence of that paragraph.

Of the confession.

So any questions on marriage? All right, that'll be it for the day then so we'll just close out.