Pt. 5 LBCF Chapter 1: The Holy Scriptures

We're finished with the introduction to the Confession, so we're starting with Chapter 1 of the Confession tonight, which is of the Holy Scriptures. Chapter 1 has 10 paragraphs, and as I mentioned to you in the introduction, usually the first paragraph of each chapter is somewhat of an introduction to the rest of the chapter.

In this particular case, and we also talked about why Chapter 1 is of the Scriptures, because that's our epistemology. Everything that we know about God, everything that we know comes from the Holy Scriptures, so that's why it's the first paragraph.

Paragraph 1 talks about the necessity of the Scriptures, or the indispensability of the Scriptures, if you want to use some fancier terms. Paragraphs 2 and 3 talk about the identity, and we'll go through each of these paragraphs in a little bit more detail.

Paragraphs 4 and 5, it's authority. Paragraph 6, it's sufficiency. Paragraph 7, it's clarity. Paragraph 8, it's availability. Paragraph 9 and 10, it's finality. That's the structure of Chapter 1. Now each section of the Confession is followed by Scripture proofs, and that's right from the originals, from the authors of the Confession.

They put in the Scripture references based on a chapter. Now in my slide presentation, I have intentionally omitted the Scripture proofs, not that they're not important, but my purpose here is not to prove the doctrine that's elucidated in the Scriptures, but merely to elucidate what the doctrine says.

So in other words, I'm not here to defend the doctrine that's contained in our Confession, because we're a 1689 church, we've accepted it. My purpose is just to make sure that you understand what that doctrine is.

Does that make sense? That's why I've not put the Scripture references up. So Paragraph 1, it's necessity, is a large paragraph. I've broken it up. I'm not going to read it now. We'll read it as we go through, but this is the first part of Paragraph 1, and this is the second part.

So you can see it's rather lengthy. I couldn't even put it all on one slide. So we'll go through it, Paragraph 1. This is the opening of it. Now let's read this. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, 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.

That's a mouthful. There's a lot in there. All right? So let's break it down. Basically what the confession is saying is natural revelation is insufficient for salvation. You can walk out of your house in the morning and look at nature, and you know there's a God.

Anybody who walks out and looks at this and says, this is all random chance, is a fool. So everybody knows that there is a God, but that natural revelation in and of itself will never lead you to salvation.

It doesn't have the information to do that. Therefore, redemptive revelation is necessary. Again, that gets back to, notice what the title is? The necessity of the Scripture. Why are the Scriptures necessary?

Because without them, salvation is impossible. Okay? So therefore, it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in diverse manners to reveal Himself and to declare that His will unto the church. Before the canon of Scripture was complete, God revealed His will in other ways, all right?

And we know that throughout, especially through the history of the Old Testament, and then even during the Apostolic Age, dreams, visions, God used all different ways. Remember the very beginning of Hebrews, Hebrews 1 talks about, you know, that God revealed Himself in diverse ways and manners unto the fathers through the prophets, okay?

But 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 and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing, which makes the holy Scriptures to be most necessary.

Notice the wording indicating that the inscripturated word is better. One of the things, this is ironic, because one of the things that we hear from naysayers in our age is, well, you know, if I was around when God was revealing Himself in those ways, then I would believe.

But according to the Scriptures, because remember, all of this is backed up by the Scriptures. According to the Scriptures, all right, the Scriptures are the better revelation, because they contain everything that is necessary for life and godliness, which we'll get to in a few moments.

So notice the way, and afterward, for the better preserving. Peter talks about that in his first epistle, that we have the prophetic word made more sure. He's talking about the Scriptures, okay? So again, remember, this whole first paragraph is talking about the necessity of Scripture, all right, which makes the holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.

Did the framers of our confession leave any doubt as to about continuing revelation? This paragraph speaks specifically against any continuing revelation, and the Scripture knows of no such thing as sub-canonical revelation.

If it's revelation from God, it's revelation from God, and what we're looking at, the framers of our confession made it crystal clear that God's revealing of His will unto His people being now, any of those former ways being ceased.

Paragraph two deals with the identity of Scripture, and this is kind of a simple one. Under the name of holy Scripture, or the word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these, and it lists all the Old Testament books, which are the same books, the same 39 books that are found in our translations of the Bible.

The New Testament, the same 27 books that we have in our Bible, this is what we have, this is what the framers of our confession said, okay, all of which are given by the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.

So again, the first two paragraphs, kind of simple, just identifying what Scripture is, but there's a couple of important points here. Paragraph two defines the canon of Scripture in a positive way. What I mean by that is, this is what Scripture is, these 66 books divided 39 and 27.

That's what Scripture is. That's what I mean by defining Scripture in a positive way. It breaks down the books of both the Old and the New Testament. We have a clear delineation in that way. And then it lists the books that are considered to be holy Scripture, which means what?

If a piece of literature is not on this list, it's not to be considered holy Scripture. So again, notice the identity of Scripture. The framers of our confession did not leave it up to guesswork or supposition as to what Scripture is and what it isn't.

So that's paragraph two. Now paragraph three oh, wait a minute, I didn't piece of literature is not to be considered Scripture, its identity. The last sentence is important. All of which are given by the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.

So important, I almost overlooked it. What do we mean? That one sentence gives us the source of Scripture. What's the source of Scripture? God. All Scripture is inspired by God. All Scripture is God-breathed, 2 Timothy 3 .16.

And a major purpose. What's one of the major purposes of Scripture? It's our rule for faith and life. It tells you how one is saved, what is expected of someone who has been saved, tells you what happens to somebody who is not saved.

So it's the rule for all of faith and life. Now paragraph three still is under its identity. Now look at what it says. The books commonly called apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of Scripture, and therefore are of no authority to the church of God nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than any other human writing.

You could say that this is still under the identity of Scripture, but it's a negative description. Remember the other paragraph two is positive. This is what Scripture is. Now what they're telling us, this is not Scripture.

So if there is any book, whether it's in the apocrypha that's in the Roman Catholic canon or any other apocryphal book, if it's not specifically on that list that I gave you earlier, it's not to be considered as Scripture.

Now notice, does that mean that the apocrypha is useless? No, I have a book of the apocrypha sitting on my bookshelf, and believe it or not, it's not on my heresy shelf either. It can be very useful, but no more useful than any other human writing.

I also have the works of Shakespeare. I have the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yes, I'm a big Sherlock Holmes fan. I have the works of Josephus and Philo. These are important historical works, but they just don't rise to the level of Scripture.

But it's not that they're useless. They're important works. Same thing with the apocrypha. There's some good stuff in the apocrypha. You want to understand a little bit more about modern Judaism. How about Hanukkah?

You want to find out about Hanukkah. Where do you find Hanukkah? First Maccabees. There's a very short book called Bell and the Dragon. I love that little book. The historical context for it is extremely important and very useful.

Read it if you get some time. Remember, it's not Scripture, but it gives us some good historical insight. This is a negative description, but it doesn't mean that the apocrypha have no use. Just don't call it Scripture.

Tells us what is not Scripture. This paragraph directly refutes the Roman Catholic doctrine of Scripture, canon of Scripture, because they include the apocrypha in their canon. Now, why don't we include the apocrypha?

The apocryphal books were not included in the Hebrew canon of Scripture. It was never accepted by the early Jews that this was, in fact, Scripture. They were historical writings. Therefore, they were not considered to be Scripture by most scholars of the early church.

Anybody know when did the Roman Catholic Church finally include and ratify that the apocrypha were Scripture? You're pretty close. 1546 at the Council of Trent. What's the significance for us as Reformed Christians of the Council of Trent?

Yeah. This is when, it's sometimes called a counter-reformation, all right? So, the apocryphal books were added to the canon, Roman Catholic canon of Scripture, in response to the Reformed doctrine of Sola Scriptura, all right?

But not until 1546. Now, those books have been floating around, all right? But they weren't even considered canonical by the Roman Catholic Church until 1546 at the Council of Trent. Paragraph four talks about the authority of Scripture, all right?

The authority of the 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, therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God.

Couple of things here, because I don't think I can include it later on. Notice this, received. That word is, that was chosen with great care by the writers of the Confession, and I'll tell you why in just a minute.

This paragraph states the objective reason the Bible is authoritative, okay? It does not depend upon man or a church for its authority. Now that's a direct contradiction to the doctrine of the church in Rome.

If you talk to a Roman Catholic apologist or somebody, or a theologian, what they will tell you is the Scripture is authoritative because the church determines what the canon of Scripture is. Notice what our forefathers said.

The authority of Scriptures depends not upon the testimony of any man, who do they have in mind? The Pope, or church. What church? Roman Catholic Church, all right? But wholly upon God, therefore it is to be received.

Notice, we don't grant the Bible authority, we receive it as authoritative because the source is God. And the wording is very, very clear that when the early church councils were talking about the canon of Scripture, and deciding which books should be included in the canon, that's the wording they used.

In the Latin, it's recipimus, okay, for you Latin scholars. It was recipimus, which means that we receive this, not we authorize it, okay? Which comes later in Roman Catholic doctrine, all right? So why did they receive it?

Because it is the word of God. The authority of Scripture rests solely upon God, not upon the church, not upon the Roman Catholic Church, not upon Hope Reform Baptist Church, all right? But solely on God.

God is the author of Scripture, all right? And as the confession says, God is truth. That's why it's the word of truth. Everything contained in the Scripture is true because God is truth. He can never act apart from his own nature.

Therefore, Scripture ought to be received, and I used that same word intentionally, ought to be received because it is the word of God. Paragraph five, talking about its authority, this is still under its authority, but different paragraph.

We went from four to five, all right? We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of doctrine, the majesty of style, consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which to give glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies, all right?

That's a lot of arguments. Let's break them down. Remember, this paragraph is still on the authority of Scripture, but it's more subjective, all right? Paragraph four told us who is the author of Scripture, and the fact that God alone mandates what Scripture is.

He alone can do that, but how does that apply to us? How do we receive the word of God? How are we to treat the word of God? Paragraph five talks about us as individuals. What should the word of God mean to us?

How do we accept it as authoritative? Is that clear? I looked at some confused faces, but in some you have confused faces all the time. In other words, the first one is objective. The Bible is the objective authoritative word of God.

That's what paragraph four says. Paragraph five starts talking about, okay, why do I need to receive? Why should I receive it as being the authoritative word of God? Two different subjects. It lists the various influences that can have an effect on your acceptance of the holy Scripture, all right?

So let's look at some of the factors why you should accept the word of God, the Bible as the word of God, as per our confession. First, the testimony of the church. And this is going back, you know, talking about the church going all the way back to New Testament times.

We find that there is a commonality, how the church came to accept what is the canon of Scripture. And for the most part, it's a remarkable story. If you ever look at the canonization of the Bible and you find out the unanimity that occurred, there were some discrepancies, you know, in fact, like Martin Luther, you know, 1 ,500 years later, said, I don't think James belongs in the canon, all right?

Martin had his own issues anyway, so. I love Martin Luther, but, you know, you kind of take some of the things he says with a grain of salt. But the testimony of the church, the fact that there is almost unanimity in the canon of Scripture should have an impact on us.

If all of the church for centuries and millennia accepts these as Scripture, then that's a compelling reason, don't you think, that we should accept it? The heaviness of the matter. When you read through the Scriptures and you see the heavenly doctrines that are in there, have you ever done this?

Sit down and read the Scriptures and read the portion and say, if I were God, I would not have done it that way, right? Come on, I'm not the only one. But then you look through and you say, wow, but His way is so much better, you know?

But if I were God and I was going to send my son to earth, I would have chose to have him go into a carpenter's family and be born in a stable and to be outcast and have to flee to Egypt to avoid being killed.

I'd have the heavens open, I'd have the trumpets and the white horsemen and golden staircase, I'd make it an escalator so he wouldn't even have to walk down. I mean, just think of how would anybody remember the Emperor Haile Selassie?

Remember how he used to be introduced? And now the grand exalted, the emperor of Ethiopia, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the grand and he'd come out, he was a little guy, he was about this big. And he came out and he had more pomp and circumstance.

There was a guy who understood royalty, all right? But what did God do? The heaviness of the matter. You see the complete opposite of how man would do things and how God would do things. By the way, I've repented of ever thinking that if I were God, I've had to repent that numerous times.

The efficacy of the doctrine, doctrine's true. Over and over again, the Bible has been proven to be absolutely true, right? The Bible has never been proven to be wrong. But even archaeology, everything winds up proving that the Bible is 100 true.

The majesty of the style, you just look at how all of the Bible works together and it's just simply amazing. All of these things, look at the consent of all the parts, the consistency of inside a scripture, 66 books written over 3 ,000 years by how many different authors and it's all agreement with one another.

These are all excellent reasons. The scope of the whole, what other document just gives complete glory to God in every single way? The full discovery it makes of man's way to salvation, that should make you cry.

Without the Bible, you'd be lost. It shows, it opens the way to salvation, to sinners like you and me. And then they sum it up, many other incomparable excellencies and perfections. These are all fantastic reasons to accept the scriptures.

But all those evidences of that the Bible is word of God are not the final reason for assurance. I got you, didn't I? What does the confession say? Look at the last clause. Yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with our word, the word in our hearts.

In other words, it's a matter of faith. You will never believe it until God does a work of regeneration in your heart, gives you the gift of faith. Don't ever think that you've reasoned yourself into the kingdom of God, okay?

Weren't these men moved by the Holy Spirit even, you know, not canonically, but the way they put this confession together. Paragraph six is its sufficiency. The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, for man's salvation, faith life is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the Spirit or traditions of men.

Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, government of the church, common to human actions and societies which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence according to the general rules of the word which are always to be observed.

All right, now what is this saying? This section is also in contradiction to the traditions of Rome because what do they say? Oh, yes, the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but it has to be interpreted or laid out or embellished upon by what?

Councils and the Pope, right? The word of God alone is not sufficient, they say. You need the traditions. You need the magisterium. You need the Pope. But it's also in contradiction to the new revelation of many charismatic churches because remember what it said, neither the traditions of a church or new revelation, nothing can be added to the scripture.

Again, the paragraph also makes clear that everything we need for life and godliness is contained in the scriptures. This is one of the reasons why we take a very strong stance here against modern psychological counseling, okay, because even those who call themselves Christian counselors, all right, for the most part are using modern psychology as opposed to the word of God.

And if the word of God contains everything we need for life and godliness, then the answer to any problems that you're going through is found in the scriptures. And just, I know we went through a whole series on biblical counseling.

We just finished that not too long ago, but let me just refresh your memory. Remember, there is no such discipline as Christian counseling, as Christian psychology. I mean, there's no such thing as Christian psychology.

There are Christians who are psychologists, but there is no field of study of Christian psychology. What they've done is they've taken secular psychology and they have tried to embellish it with scripture.

But according to our confession and the Bible itself, that everything you need to know about life and godliness is contained in the scripture. It also acknowledges the necessity for the work of the Holy Spirit to understand the scriptures.

Sometimes we try to explain things to people who are unregenerate and you wonder why they don't get it. It's because apart from illumination of the Holy Spirit, you're not going to get it. You can understand certain things, all right?

In fact, let me see if, not everything is explained explicitly. This is important. Just because it's all in the scriptures doesn't mean that it's all equally clear. The apostle Peter writes in his epistle, he says, some of the things Paul wrote are hard to understand.

Now if Peter thought they were hard to understand, and he was with Christ for three and a half years, he had an equivalent of a doctoral degree, you know, right from the master. And if he says, you know, Paul's a hard guy to understand.

Who do we think we are if we think we can just understand everything, all right? Some things must be reasoned out under the guidance of scripture. And the confession uses this language, the light of nature and Christian prudence.

In other words, some things are not even addressed explicitly, they're inferred, or implied, we inferred, they imply, okay? But even here, the general rules of the word are to be observed. So there are certain things, well, let me just give you an example.

How many hymns should we sing in our worship service? Huh? Three? Do I hear four? Huh? As many as we want. How many is that? All right. All right. You get my point? It's not laid out. There's no part of scripture that says, thou shalt sing three hymns in the worship service.

So how do we come up with it? The elders of the church reasoned through, and they come up with using the light of nature, Christian prudence, and the general guidelines. We must sing. In fact, if you're having a worship service and you're not singing, you're in violation of the scriptures, because we're told that we should be singing.

We must be singing praises to God. But how many? These are things that the eldership of the church can work out. All right? Same thing with how many times do we read scripture? All the elements are there, but there is a certain amount of flexibility in what order you do them in and how many.

Okay? Does that make sense? Okay? Okay. Paragraph seven talks about clarity. Do you know what the doctrine of clarity of scripture is called? Yeah, perspiscuity of scripture. Why do they use a word like that?

You know? It's perspiscuity to mean clearness. That's like, why is the word abbreviation so long? You think about that? Yeah. I mean, but anyway, so we're just calling it the clarity of scripture. All right?

All things in scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all, yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and open in some place of scripture or other that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of ordinary means may attain to a sufficient understanding of them.

All right? Now, this again is very important. Confession acknowledges not everything in the Bible is clear to everyone. Okay? We know that, especially if you're a new believer. You read some of those things, you say, what in the world is that saying?

All right? However, the essentials for salvation are understandable by everyone, learned and unlearned alike. Can anyone say that you read the Gospel of John that you don't understand that you must be born again?

All right? And then Christ even explains what that means. The Bible is crystal clear. Anybody, a child, can read the scriptures and say, I have to repent of my sin, I have... Wow. I guess it's not that clear because we have people teaching today, you don't have to repent.

All right? But no, but just reading the scriptures in their general normal sense of the word, you can understand how to be saved. All right? For these matters, ordinary means are sufficient, but this section also implies the necessity for teachers of the word.

We understand Paul says that pastors, teachers, evangelists, these are gifts to the church. You need people who study deeper, who go back to the original language, which we'll get to in just a minute, and study so that they can understand how the scriptures mean and then explain that to the congregation.

That's one of the purposes of preaching, studies like this as well. Paragraph eight is its availability. The Old Testament in Hebrew, which was the native language of the people of God of old, and the New Testament in Greek, which at the time of writing it was most generally known to the nations, being immediately inspired by God and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic.

So as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal to them. What this is basically saying is the original manuscripts, which they refer to as the autographa, the original autographs, are those which are inspired, all right?

And they're written in the original languages. Now we don't have any of those, but we have copies of many copies. In fact, the number of manuscripts we have is staggering so that we know that we have almost in complete the original scriptures, all right?

But they're in the original languages. And when there's any matter of controversy, you have to go back to those. Because you can't use translations. Because every translation is somewhat subjective. And depending upon your viewpoint, there's always a little bias into how a translation is done.

And that's why you see certain translations translate certain things in certain ways. But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God who have a right unto an interest in the scriptures and are commanded in the fear of God to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation into which they come.

That the word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner and through patience and comfort the scriptures may have hope. This is the reason why we have English translations and why we strive to translate the Bible into every language into which the word of God comes.

That's why we're so thrilled with the missionaries, the Gabellos that we support in Papua New Guinea as they are translating the scriptures into the Ngave language. In fact, they had to give the Ngave their own written language.

And then they translated the scriptures into that language. But in matters of controversy, you have to go back to the original languages because that's what's authoritative. Got to be careful of translations.

The original languages were Hebrew and Greek because those were the common languages at the time. And those documents, those were the ones that were immediately inspired by God. And God has preserved them through the ages.

The amount of manuscripts that we have is staggering. Do you realize how many people have ever studied Plato in college? Just a couple. Do you know what the experts really think? How much of Plato do we really know?

They think that our manuscripts are only about 50 accurate because we have so few. I think there's like a couple dozen scraps of manuscripts. And yet everybody quotes Plato like it's authoritative. You don't even know if he said those things.

It might have been some monk in the mid -15th century that decided to, I don't like what Plato said. I'm going to put this in there. But the scriptures are so well authenticated that when we quote what Peter said, what Paul said, what John said, we know that that's what they said.

Okay? These are the source of appeal to controversies. All men are commanded to read and search the scriptures. And since all men do not read those languages, the scriptures should be translated into all common languages.

And so it's acceptable for us to use these translations for study and worship. For the average churchgoer, the average Christian, using a translation is absolutely acceptable. And you should because not everybody can study Hebrew and Greek.

But for those who are teaching, if you're just relying, if anybody is just relying on the modern translations, you're missing. And this is why pastors need to take care. And using Greek and Hebrew helps.

And Greek and Hebrew commentaries, you know, to let you know what some of the original words, because sometimes words change meanings as well. You know? And by using these, they provide comfort and hope.

All right. Paragraphs 9 and 10, its finality, the infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself. And therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture, which is not manifold but one, it must be searched by other places that speak more clearly.

All right? What this is saying is the proper method of biblical interpretation, scripture interprets scripture. If a point of doctrine seems unclear, then a search is made through scripture to find a place that speaks more clearly on the subject.

All right? We've actually done studies here on Wednesday evening on how to interpret the Bible. And that's one of the things that if you have a portion of scripture that seems unclear or obscure, go to a place where it's teaching very clearly on it.

And that determines what the other scripture means. Paragraph 10, the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined and all decrees of counsel, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, private spirits are to be examined and in whose sentence we are to rest can be no other but the holy scripture delivered by the spirit into which scripture so delivered our faith is finally resolved.

That says it all, doesn't it? Look at the finality. If it disagrees with scripture, it's wrong. It's that simple. Everything else is subject to the scriptures. Doesn't matter how learned it, I don't care.

Your favorite Bible teacher, everybody's got a favorite Bible teacher, you know, one of your go-to, all right? If he disagrees with scripture, he's wrong. It's that simple. Here's the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura, the Bible alone.

And while church councils, ancient writers, and even contemporary commentaries are helpful and useful, the scriptures are final authority in all matters of faith and doctrine. That's that. Questions? Comments?