The Importance of Doctrinal Confession

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Amen.
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If you will remain standing and take out your Bible.
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We're going to turn to 1 Timothy 3 and verse 16.
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1 Timothy 3.16 is our passage for the morning.
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And it begins, Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness.
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He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that now as I seek to teach this morning, I pray that you would keep me from error.
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As I know that I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error, and for the sake of my conscience and the sake of your name and the sake of your people, I pray that you would protect me and protect them.
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I pray also, Lord, that as I teach, that that word would be mixed with faith, and that you would encourage those who are in Christ to grow deeper in their faith, and those who have not yet come to Christ, that you might open their heart today to believe.
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Take out from within them the heart of stone, and replace it with the heart of flesh that is a believing heart, that is a heart that loves you.
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And Father, all of these are only things that you can do.
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I pray that your Spirit is the ultimate teacher today, and would apply the truths that are preached to the hearts of your people.
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In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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You may be seated.
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Well, I want to welcome everyone back to our study of the history of the Protestant Reformation, and some may wonder why we are studying the Protestant Reformation, and the reason is that this is the 500th anniversary of the year that Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg, launching the Protestant Reformation.
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Certainly there were those who came before him who were significant, certainly there were those who came after him who played pivotal roles, but it is well understood historically that the watershed moment of the Reformation was October the 31st, 15 and 17.
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And over the past few weeks we have examined several important moments that came out of that.
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Medieval period leading up to the Renaissance, leading up to the Protestant Reformation, and we have looked at many people.
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We have seen the life and legacy of Luther himself.
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We've looked at Calvin in Geneva.
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We've looked at Zwingli in Zurich.
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We've discussed the spread of the Anabaptists, who were some orthodox in their faith and some radical, and making radical departures from the faith.
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And last week in our study, which went quite long as I remember, a little longer than a normal message, we looked at the controversy between the Calvinists and the Armenians in what was known as the Synod of Dort, which would be not only one of, but probably the most important Protestant gathering of leadership in the history of Protestantism.
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And since the beginning of our study, I have noted that we are pushing to a goal.
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Because all that I have preached so far in the last three or four months has been preliminary.
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Because my desire has really not been to lay a foundation of history, as much as it is to preach through a confession of faith.
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Because as we're going to see today, confessions of faith have marked God's people down through the history of the church.
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They have been important in the lives of God's people.
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And I have chosen as my confession to preach from the one that I feel, Well, you know, I hate that.
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I don't like when people say, I feel.
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I think.
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That's a whole other sermon.
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But we always say, I feel.
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I think this.
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I believe this.
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It's not a feeling.
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It's not emotional.
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It's intellectual.
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And I think that the confession that most can be identified with our teachings here at Sovereign Grace is the 1646 First London Baptist Confession of Faith.
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And some might wonder why that confession would be chosen because we're not technically Baptists.
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If you walked in this morning, you'll notice it said Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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It didn't say Sovereign Grace Baptist Church.
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We hold no affiliation with the Southern Baptist, the American Baptist, the Independent Baptist, or any other Baptist body.
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Yet, though we are not Baptists by denomination, I hope to show as we study through the confession that we are in line with the historic Baptist church, both by doctrine and by practice.
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You don't have to be part of the SBC or any of the other Baptist institutions to be in line with what is taught historically as Baptists.
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But before we get to the confession itself, I want to address an important question.
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And so today is one last session on introduction to the confession, but today we'll be introducing the confession itself.
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And next week we're going to go right into it.
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Because I want to address a question that some of you may have.
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I know that it's in the minds of several people outside of our church, maybe not about our church, but I've heard this before.
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I've heard people ask the question, well, are doctrinal confessions really something the church should care about? Are doctrinal confessions really something the church should worry about? I mean, we have the Bible.
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We have 39 books of the Old Testament.
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We have 27 books of the New Testament.
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We have the writings of Moses.
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We have the writings of Peter.
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We have the writings of Paul.
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We have the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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Why should we concern ourselves with doctrinal confessions? And I also know that not only is there that question, but there are also those who believe that doctrinal creeds and confessions are negative and not positive and should be rejected.
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There are people who call themselves anti-confessional and anti-credal.
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In fact, there's an entire church movement which was began on the foundation of the repudiation of all creeds and confessions.
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That is the Restoration Movement.
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It was begun in the mid-19th century under the leadership of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell.
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And they held to the belief that denominational names, creeds, and ecclesiastical confessions divided the church and they should be renounced.
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We should all simply go by the title of Christian or Disciples of Christ.
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And one of the slogans that arose out of that movement was this.
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No creed but Christ.
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No book but the Bible.
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No law but love.
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No name but the divine.
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And here's the irony.
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That's a creed.
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Hear it again.
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No creed but Christ.
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No book but the Bible.
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No law but love.
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No name but the divine.
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That's a creed.
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But let me add something.
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That's a meaningless creed.
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Because I would ask the question, which Christ? You say, no creed but Christ.
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Which one? The Christ of the Mormons? Who believe that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, the physical descendant of Elohim, who lived on another planet which surrounds a star called Kolob? Is that the Christ? Or how about the Christ of the Jehovah Witness who is not God in the flesh but is in fact Himself a created being who is the incarnation of Michael the archangel? Is that the Christ? Or how about the Oneness Pentecostals who deny the Trinity but to believe Jesus the Father, Jesus the Son, and Jesus the Spirit.
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All three are Jesus.
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Which Christ is it? Or how about this, what Bible? They say no book but the Bible.
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Well the Bible of the Catholics contain the Apocrypha.
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Does your Bible have Maccabees in it? Or how about Bell and the Dragon? Is that in your Bible? It's in the Catholic Bible.
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You may wonder why.
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And this sermon is certainly not an attempt to try to answer that question.
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But when you say no book but the Bible, you understand the 1611 King James Bible included the Apocrypha, books that your Bible does not.
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That's, by the way, a good argument against King James-onlyism.
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Because all the King James-onlyists I know don't use the Apocrypha.
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How about this, what love? They say no law but love.
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Well what love? Is it the squishy love of liberalism that has no holy standard upon which it rests? It's a love without truth, which is no love at all.
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Or how about this, when they say no name but the divine, which divine name? Allah? Baal? Jehovah? You see, apart from meaningful definitions, their creed is meaningless.
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And yet it's still a creed.
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The purpose, historically, of establishing appropriate creeds and confessions is that they allow us to define our terms and solidify our positions on what the Bible teaches.
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For instance, the Bible does not use the word Trinity.
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In fact, the Jehovah Witness, when he comes to your door, always twofold, when they come to your door, will always say, Well, the Bible doesn't use the word Trinity.
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I always say, Well, the Bible doesn't use the word Jehovah either.
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But that's not something you really want to get into.
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Because Jehovah is a Germanic adulteration of the Tetragrammaton.
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It is not in the Bible.
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It's in the King James, but it's not in the Bible.
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When we talk about the original languages, Yahweh is a more appropriate way of saying the divine name, not Jehovah.
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But again, that's not the argument you should have with Jehovah Witnesses.
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I'm just saying the word Trinity is not in the Bible.
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And yet the teaching that God is one, and that there are three persons who are called God, and those three persons are eternal and distinct and yet equal, is taught in the Bible.
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And that is the doctrine of the Trinity.
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The creeds are intended to solidify doctrines like the Trinity, to help us to understand what the Bible teaches as a whole.
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Not one verse ripped apart from its context and placed all by itself over here, wherein whole denominations are created on one, two, and three verses.
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But doctrinal confessions are intended to explain the Scripture as a whole and help us to understand it.
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And we know this, and in case you're wondering, we know that there is no doctrinal confession that one, supersedes the Bible, and two, is perfect.
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No doctrinal confession supersedes the Bible.
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Every doctrinal confession is laid at the foot of the Bible and has to be borne out with Scripture.
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There is not one doctrinal confession that doesn't have something in it that needs to be at least examined thoroughly.
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Even the one we're using.
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There are going to be parts where I say, now here they say this, but I think it would be clearer if we were to say this.
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You understand? You say, well why use them then? Well, the Scripture is our foundation.
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We saw La Scriptura, the foundation of the Protestant movement, was that the Bible alone is the sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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And the creeds and confessions are subservient to Scripture.
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Why use them then? Because they help us to understand what we believe about what the Bible says.
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They help us to understand what brings us together as a body.
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For instance, this church confesses baptism for believers only.
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But that confession is not unilateral throughout all of Christendom.
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And so our confession of faith as a church allows us to say, this is who we are.
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This is our conviction.
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We believe it's right or we wouldn't do it.
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And this is where we stand.
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Now will this divide us from other Christians? Possibly.
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I still love people who disagree with me on baptism, and don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a heresy of the highest order.
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I don't think it's heresy necessarily at all.
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I believe it's wrong.
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But I think that when we get to heresy, we're talking about something that's damnable.
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And I don't think that in any way it's damnable.
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But the point is, before we get to the confession at hand, we need to understand that all confessions and all creeds are subject to Scripture.
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So when we're going through the confession, I'm using it more or less like a skeleton, an outline, from which we're going to go to the Bible and see what the Bible teaches about these subjects, and is the confession right, and is what it's saying correct.
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But before we get too far today, I do want to mention to you that I think the Bible contains confessions of faith.
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Not fully expressive confessions, such as is found in maybe, say, the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, which are short creedal statements, or long confessions like the 1689 or the 1644, or those confessions of faith.
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But the Bible does contain passages that I believe were used historically as confessions of faith.
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For instance, I'll give you one that we read this morning.
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We were in 1 Timothy 3.16.
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Notice how it is written.
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In some of your Bibles it may even be blocked off as it were a subsection of the text.
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And it says, Great indeed we what? In the EESV, confess.
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And what are we confessing? The mystery of godliness.
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That He, that is Jesus, was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
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Now I don't know how many of you grew up in a confessional church or in a creedal church.
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Some of you may have grown up Lutherans or Presbyterians.
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How many of you ever grew up in a church where you used the Apostles' Creed? Or maybe the Nicene Creed as part of worship? We've done that here at times as a teaching tool.
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Doesn't that sound very much the same? It's statement after statement after statement, given almost as it were in bullet statements, to tell us something about Jesus.
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He was manifested in the flesh, seen by angels.
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You know, all these things, bang, bang, bang.
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Down the line, vindicated by the Spirit, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in the glory.
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And I believe that these passages were used by the early church in that way.
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Another passage that you might look to in the Old Covenant, the Old Covenant, which is in the Old Testament, would be the Shema of Israel.
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The Shema of Israel is still used today by Orthodox Jews.
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What's the Shema? Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord, and you shall worship the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength.
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You ever heard that? That's Deuteronomy chapter 6, starting at verse 4.
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And that's a confession of faith.
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That is actually the confession of faith of ancient Israel.
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Some might even say the Torah, I'm sorry, not the Torah, the Decalogue of the Torah, the Ten Commandments, is a statement of faith.
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Or the Trihagion of Isaiah.
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Isaiah says that when he saw the Lord seated on his throne, what did he hear the angels say? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, and the whole earth is filled with his glory.
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But then we come to the New Testament.
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We find the Apostle Peter.
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We still use this in this church to this day.
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When somebody says they want to join the church, what do I ask them to say? Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that you've received him as your Savior by repentance and faith? Isn't that what I asked you, Mike, when you joined the church? And everybody else who's joined the church, you know where that comes from? That didn't come from me.
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That came from Peter.
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Because when Jesus asked, who do the people say I am? And the people were saying that he was, some say John the Baptist reincarnated, some say Elijah reincarnated, some say one of the prophets.
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And Jesus said, but who do you say that I am? You're the Christ, the Son of the living God.
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And what did Jesus say to Peter? Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not give this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
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That's called the good confession.
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It's the best confession in history.
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And there are others.
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When Thomas saw Jesus Christ, he declared, my Lord and my God.
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Earlier this morning, Brother Dale read from Philippians 2.
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And I not only believe Philippians 2, 5-11 is a confessional statement.
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I believe it was a song.
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That's why it's called the Carmen Christi.
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I believe this part of Philippians is something that not only, I don't think Paul wrote this outside of a historical context.
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I believe he wrote this in a historical context where this was already understood.
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And the people were already confessing this truth.
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In fact, there are some scholars who believe that it was actually known verbally by the people of God, which is why he uses it as an example.
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That here we have a song of Christ.
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And by the way, songs are confessional.
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Songs have confessional value because they speak to the truth of what we're saying about God and who God is.
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They have a catechistic value because you're able to remember music even more than you would remember something that you memorized without some type of a melodic foundation.
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So the church has forever used creeds and confessions as a way to teach the truth and have people remember the truth and to have people stand upon the truth.
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And certainly the Bible is meant to be believed and it is meant to be confessed.
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The entire Bible is meant to be believed and meant to be confessed.
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But there are certain passages that all of us would likely agree lend themselves to confessional nature.
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And that's why they have historically been seen as passages that people memorize, internalize, and use to build their faith upon.
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Now during the time of the Reformation, getting back to our subject at hand, during the time of the Reformation, confessions of faith were very important because they helped to identify the Reformers against the Roman Catholics with what they believed and more importantly what they didn't believe.
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For instance, if you go to a Roman Catholic and you say, I believe in justification by faith.
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A Roman Catholic who knows anything about Roman Catholic theology will say, I agree.
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If you go to a Roman Catholic and say, I believe in justification by grace through faith.
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Any Roman Catholic who knows anything about Roman Catholic theology, has ever read the Council of Trent, has ever read the Second Vatican, would say, I agree.
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But when you say, I believe in justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, you have just by virtue of the Council of Trent brought upon yourself an anathema.
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That means a curse from God.
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Because the Council of Trent says, anyone who says that they are justified by faith alone, let him be under the curse of the church, under the curse of God.
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You see why one little word in a confession can make a world of difference? And why confession is important? Because I can't hold hands with Roman Catholics and bend down and worship the Pope.
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Oh, but they would say, we don't worship the Pope.
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Why not? He is, in fact, Christ on earth.
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He stands, as it were, the Vicar of Christ.
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He who stands in the place of Him who is Christ.
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And in the history of the Reformed Church, there have been many great confessions.
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As I said, I really had to look through the confessions to decide which one to use.
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There's the Belgic Confession, which was beautiful.
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And if you've never read it, I encourage your reading of it.
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The Belgic Confession is awesome.
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There are parts that deal with infant baptism that I felt would be just a little hard for us to get through.
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And so I decided not to use it.
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But I will say this, the Belgic Confession was part of what brought about last week's sermon the argument between the Calvinists and the Armenians.
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Because the Armenians didn't believe what the Belgic Confession said about God's sovereignty and election and things like predestination.
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And so the Belgic Confession has a historical place where it was the point of contention.
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But as I said, I'm going to focus my attention a little later in history.
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In the mid-1600s, moving from where we last looked, which was in Switzerland, over to London, to the First London Confession of Faith, which was first penned in 1644 and it was redrafted in 1646, simply making some minor corrections and changes and some adding of certain words.
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So the second one in 1646 is not a completely new or redrafted, it's simply a revision of the first.
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It's called the First London Baptist Confession of Faith and it was given to us in the 17th century, mid-1600s.
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And some of you probably have heard, and I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but some of you have probably heard of the 1689 London Baptist Confession.
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But what a lot of people don't realize is that is not the first Baptist Confession.
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That's the second.
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In fact, it's referred to as the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith because it comes some 40 years after the first.
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And if you are a Reformed Baptist, if that's how you identify yourself, in general, I don't know anyone here who is, but if a person is in a Reformed Baptist church, they hold to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
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And a lot of people would say, well, Pastor Keith, you're so close to that, why not use that for the foundation of the study? Well, the 1689 is a masterpiece of Christian literature, but it's also a carbon copy.
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It was taken from the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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If you read the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, what you're reading is a reiteration of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was drafted in England for the purpose of unifying the Anglican church.
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It was used by the Presbyterians as well, and it was used by other churches, but it was primarily the foundational doctrine of the Anglican church.
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And if you were not part of the Anglican church in England, you were considered a nonconformist.
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Baptists have always been nonconformists, but even the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists were considered nonconformists.
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And the nonconformists began to try to bring some unity together.
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But there was that big matzah ball hanging out there of baptism.
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You've got the Westminster Confession, which teaches infant baptism.
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You've got these people over here who identify themselves as Baptists.
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So what do they do? They can't just accept the Westminster Confession because they would be denying their own convictions.
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So they take the Westminster Confession and they draft their own confession based on the Westminster.
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And if you've ever read the two, you know it, I ain't lying.
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Historically, there's no doubt that there's parts where the 1689 read word for word from the Westminster.
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It has its foundation in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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So the 1689 is valuable.
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It's historically important, but it's a Baptist version of a Presbyterian Confession for the purpose of trying to bring unity in a time of historical divide.
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I hope I'm not confusing everybody.
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I hope I haven't lost you yet because this is all important stuff.
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I'm trying to get back to why I'm doing the first Baptist Confession.
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Because the 1689 is basically a carbon copy of the Westminster with the changing of baptism.
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I want to look at the first Baptist Confession because I want to know why they were Baptist to begin with.
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Because that's a huge point.
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You see, the first Baptist Confession was written without the influence of the Westminster Confession.
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In fact, it was written almost at the same time as the Westminster Confession.
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They both came out in the 1640s.
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And it was written for the purpose of demonstrating the doctrinal convictions of the early Baptists in England.
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And by the way, if you've got any Baptist DNA at all, and I went to a Baptist seminary, so I've got a little.
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If you've got any Baptist DNA at all, this should matter to you.
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And even if you ain't got no Baptist DNA, you're here now.
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It ought to matter to you.
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Because the English Baptists were wrongly identified as Anabaptists.
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Remember a few weeks ago I taught about the Anabaptists? What did I say was the primary thing that marked Anabaptist teaching? It was radical.
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It was wildly radical.
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To the point that there were even Anabaptists in Moonster in the 1530s who overtook a city to try to create a theocracy in Moonster and try to set up basically a communal city.
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The leaders said that they had visions of revelation directly from God.
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They justified all kinds of crazy actions because of those visions including the legalization of polygamy.
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One man having taken for himself 16 wives and they tried to establish what they called a new Zion.
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That's in the 1530s.
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Fast forward a hundred years.
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You've got Baptists in England.
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People remember what happened in Germany.
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People remember that Anabaptist radicalism that was in Germany and in Switzerland.
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So they're identifying the London Baptists with the radical Anabaptists.
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In fact there was a tract that was disseminated in London.
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And the tract had a long name.
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Back in this time in history they were not for brevity in any way, shape or form.
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And they had a really, really long name.
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And I'm going to tell you what the name was.
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This is the name of the tract.
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Quote, a warning for England especially for London in the famous history of the frantic Anabaptists and their wild preaching and practices.
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End quote.
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That's the title.
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But hear it again.
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A warning for England.
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A warning against, I'm sorry, especially for London in the famous history and in this sense I think they meant infamous history of the frantic Anabaptists and their wild preaching and practices.
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So you see the detractors from the Baptist movement were writing against them and disseminating literature.
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This was way before Google by the way.
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This was way before if you wanted to down somebody all you had to do was get on Facebook and get a few hundred followers and start a little message board.
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The way they got people's attention was the dissemination of written literature.
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So a group of seven churches English Baptists came together and they put on paper the first Baptist confession of faith.
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And I'd like to read to you this morning the opening statement of that confession of faith.
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This is the opening paragraph.
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A confession of faith of seven congregations or churches of Christ in London which are commonly but unjustly called Anabaptists published for the vindication of the truth and information of the ignorant likewise for the taking off those aspirations which are frequently both in pulpit and print unjustly cast upon them printed in London in the year of our Lord 1646.
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So what do they say? We're writing this as an apologetic for our position.
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By the way remember what an apologetic is not saying I'm sorry it's making a defense.
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The first London Baptist confession is a defense of Baptist theology.
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It's a defense of reformed teaching with a Baptistic view of the sacrament.
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And it bears mentioning also that this group of seven churches were known as the Particular Baptists.
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How many of you ever heard the term Particular Baptist versus the General Baptist? Particular Baptists remember last week we talked about the divide between Calvinism and Arminianism? The Particular Baptists were the Calvinists.
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The General Baptists were the Arminians.
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It was the Particular Baptists who put pen to paper and wrote their theology down where they could challenge those who would seek to oppress them.
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And that's what this is.
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That's what this whole document is.
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It's 52 statements of faith.
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And we're going to combine some over the next few weeks.
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We're going to be looking at whole sections and we're going to outline it in a certain way where it won't take us a whole year to get through it.
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But that's what it was.
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It was a defense of Baptist theology against those who were accusing them of being radical, unbiblical heretics.
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There's some debate about Particular Baptist history but I want to read to you just a quick quote about how all this came together.
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Quote, It is generally agreed that Particular Baptists began to separate from other dissident and independent congregations in 1633 and began to form their own churches.
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A group of Calvinistic believers who could not agree on infant baptism sought permission to leave their congregationalist churches and form their own congregation.
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This was found agreeable to the church and so the brethren separated on peaceful terms on the 12th of September 1633.
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In 1644 there were seven Particular Baptist churches in London and these formulated together what came to us to be known as the 1644 First Particular Baptist London Confession of Faith which is really long and that's why we shorten it a little.
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So these men identified themselves as Calvinist and Baptist and they made a defense for their faith.
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Now as I said, today is an introduction to the Confession.
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In the weeks to come we're going to dive into it.
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I'm going to print for you the sections of the Confession that we are using but if you want you can go read the whole thing for free online.
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It's absolutely free.
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You can find it several different places.
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We're going to use that outline as I said, like a skeleton to study.
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But as for today, I do want you to take something away from today that is practical because some may hear today's message and say well that was awfully scholastic in nature but it was just a history lesson and not a sermon.
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And I understand that there are those who might make that argument and in response to that I would like to provide you three things to take away from today that I hope will help clarify the intent of today's sermon.
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Number one, confessions are important because doctrine matters.
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That may sound like a simple statement but it is hugely important.
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Confessions of faith are important because doctrine matters.
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As I said earlier, some people believe that confessions of faith are unnecessary.
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Some even think that they're wrong.
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But confessions help us to define what we believe the Bible teaches on foundational Christian doctrine.
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I've heard people say doctrine doesn't matter, just love Jesus.
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And I hate doctrine because doctrine divides.
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And I want to tell you something, I have very, very little respect for both of those statements.
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Not because they're hard to respond to but because they're pure baloney.
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Let me tell you why.
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They say doctrine doesn't matter, just love Jesus.
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I ask again, which Jesus? I had a lady one time come to my office and we were talking about Jesus and I said, because we were talking about doctrine and she was saying how doctrine, it shouldn't be about doctrine, it should be about Jesus.
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And I said, my dear, I said, which Jesus? As soon as you begin to define who He is, you're in the realm of doctrine.
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Tell me about your Jesus without using doctrine.
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Oh, wait.
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You can't.
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Not and speak with any clarity as to who He is.
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If you say Jesus is the God man, you've got a lot to explain.
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That's what we believe about Him.
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But what does that mean? Muslim will tell you God can't be man.
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Because God and man are two separate and absolutely distinct entities and that God cannot become a man.
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In fact, that's the heart of Islamic theology.
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One, cursed is he who says Allah has a son.
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That's part of the Quran.
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But also, the idea that God could enter into His creation is an impossibility.
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So when you talk about Jesus without doctrine, what are you talking about? This is what R.C.
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Sproul says.
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I'm quoting Presbyterian, by the way, for those who might think I have a little grudge against infant baptizers.
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I love R.C.
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Sproul.
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He's my favorite preacher.
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And he says this, A church that never cares about doctrine is a dead church.
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A church that never cares about doctrine is a dead church.
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All right, so we've said confessions are important because doctrine matters.
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That's number one.
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Number two, doctrine matters because theology matters.
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Now that may sound like I'm being redundant, but I'm not.
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And even though I know doctrine and theology can sometimes be used interchangeably, doctrine is what we teach and theology means a right understanding of God.
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And if you don't have a right understanding of God, you can't teach rightly about Him.
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We are to avoid, the Bible says, we are to avoid the doctrines of men.
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Colossians 2.22 We are to avoid the doctrines of devils.
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1 Timothy 4.1 And we are to fully rely on what the Bible calls sound doctrine.
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How do you arrive at sound doctrine? Through the study of the Word of God.
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The systematic understanding of the Word of God.
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You know why so many cult groups go so far to the right or so far to the left? Because they do not take a systematic, holistic approach.
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Holistic meaning fully and completely, not holistic like weird, you know, holistic.
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But a fully and completely holistic approach to Scripture.
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Meaning we understand that the Bible is its own interpreter.
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And when we study Scripture, if I read a passage here that disagrees with the passage over here, guess what? The Bible is not wrong.
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I am.
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And so I seek to harmonize the Scripture and understand what it says.
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And I allow Scripture to interpret itself.
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The only way to arrive at sound doctrine is to study the Bible.
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The Bible says, Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
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And somebody may challenge me at this point and say, but wait a minute.
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You're saying we study the Bible, but just a minute ago you said we should study the Confession.
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But hear me.
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When we study the Confession, we're studying the Scripture because the Confession is just a tool.
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The Confession gives us subjects upon which we go and find out what the Bible says about those subjects.
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We study the Confession to understand doctrine.
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And that's so we understand theology because theology matters.
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Beloved, that's the motto of the church.
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If you've never been here too long or you're a visitor today, what are you about? Theology matters.
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Theology matters.
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And that's the third point.
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Theology matters because God matters.
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Confessions are important because doctrine matters.
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Doctrine matters because theology matters.
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And theology matters because God matters.
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Theology is the study of God Himself.
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It is how we seek to know Him better.
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And one of the things that hurts my heart is when a person cares nothing of whether or not they know God better.
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They would prefer to talk about anything else but God.
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I can get people to talk about anything.
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I can get people to talk about guns.
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I can get people to talk about cars.
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I can get people to talk about cooking.
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And I can get people to talk about sports even though I know nothing about them.
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But then we have times where we get together to talk about God.
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And so few want to be a part of that.
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God matters.
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And because He matters, theology matters.
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And because theology matters, doctrine matters.
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And because doctrine matters, a confession of faith which succinctly and clearly enunciates those doctrines matters.
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I wonder sometimes how much God really matters in our lives.
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For many, it would seem He doesn't matter at all.
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He's like an adornment to life, an ornament that we place upon our Christmas tree of living.
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And He adds somewhat of a filler to life's other baubles and trinkets.
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But I would challenge you today, and this is my challenge, this is the sermonic thesis of the day.
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If you live your life as if God doesn't matter, you may want to consider where your heart is with Him.
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And ask yourself, do you really know Him? Or if He only matters when you need something.
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Or He only matters when you have a problem.
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Or He only matters when you're in the church, but not when you're in your life.
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This is a time to examine your heart.
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God doesn't matter one hour a week.
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God matters always.
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To the person to whom God truly matters, there will be a desire to know Him better, and a desire to make Him known.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the confessions that we find in Your Word, the confession of Peter, the confessions of Paul, the confession of the prophets, and the confessions of Moses.
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And all throughout Scripture we see men of God confessing their faith in God based on the truth of the Word of God.
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And I pray, Lord, that in the weeks to come as we begin to examine the confession of faith, that You would help us to see in it what is valuable, help us to jettison anything that would be untrue, and help us to focus our attention not on the confession, but on the Scripture from which the confession comes.
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And I pray, Lord, if there are those here today who You don't matter to, who are only here maybe because they were brought here by a spouse, maybe they were forced here by a parent, or maybe they're here because they're trying to fulfill some religious obligation, I pray, Lord, that You would matter to them today, that You would open up their heart to see that You do matter.
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And Lord, that they might turn to You in repentance and faith through Your Son, Jesus Christ, in whom is all our hope of eternity.
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Amen.
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Let's stand.