1689 London Baptist Confession Of Faith (part 3)

Father in heaven Lord, we just praise you this morning for your goodness for your kindness for the love that you have showered upon your people how we

Like sheep have gone astray, but you by your sovereign love have rescued us have

Given us new hearts new desires new wills Father you have transformed us so that we might love you and father as we're here today to learn about you to learn about your word

And even to look at what? men 300 and some odd years ago wrote about You and your word father.

We just praise you for them praise you for the truth that remains and Has been preserved by you

Lord bless each one here. We pray in Jesus name. Amen So we're talking about the holy scriptures the first section of the 1689 1689

Baptist Confession of Faith, and I guess Bob Muto talked to Phil Johnson last night and Phil said, you know, why isn't

Steve here today? And Bob said well, he's teaching the 1689 and Phil said if I was teaching a 1689,

I wouldn't be here either So, I don't know what that means. I Wouldn't I wouldn't venture a guess on that Huh, but we were talking about the 1689 and I think we've gotten down to We talked about all men being without excuse and we're talking about the difference between General revelation and specific revelation and that is to say salvific revelation

What does it take for someone to be saved and we noted last week, you know under Romans 1

That Mankind generally speaking can look around and they see that there is a God In fact,

I was running last night one of my friends Who's kind of a big shot in California politics?

He's a conservative, but he also happens to be Jewish and he wrote last night Something to the effect of you know without God even murder

Even murder that there's no right or wrong to it Okay natural revelation

That is to say the order of things and the and the power of God being on full display and God's law in our hearts.

We have a conscience. We know that certain things are wrong like murder to actually commit a murder you have to You have to sear your conscience.

You have to ignore your conscience. You have to scar it so that it doesn't overwhelm you

He even understands that this unbeliever does But Romans 1 says that mankind looks at all this information and what do they do with it?

They suppress the truth in love in Righteous inquiry no, you know in scientific in search of scientific information

No, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness Because that which can be seen that which can be known about God They don't really they don't like that they don't want to think of a judge

They don't want to think of a judgment So they suppress that truth and unrighteousness so they can justify their own sin and as wrong one goes on you know, we see the devolution of mankind from one stage of Iniquity to the next to the next as God gives them over God gives them over God gives them over The light of nature that is to say general revelation is not sufficient to save Nobody can come to know

Christ by just looking at General revelation you need specific revelation

Waldron noted that the message of salvation must be written must be written down.

Why? So the message of the Apostles the message of Christ might be preserved so that it's there from generation to generation

And he also noted in Hebrews 1 1 that we must have scripture because God no longer communicates with us the way he used to Hebrews 1 1, you know my own

Unauthorized version would be this. This is how God used to talk to us He used to use prophets.

He's used dreams. He still used a lot of methods, but now how does he speak to us? Through the

Lord Jesus Christ and through his word okay, so Waldron says and and again, we have to keep in mind that the 1689 parts of it are

In keeping with the Reformation so they are going to be against Rome, they're gonna be written against Roman Catholic theology

So Waldron says this he says both the Catholics with their infallible Pope and Church And some of the radical performer

Performers, they were really radical these performers Radical reformers with their claim to present revelations from the

Spirit Denied or downgraded the necessity of the scriptures What does that mean?

how would The infallible Pope the infallible Church, how would that downgrade the importance of scriptures?

Okay, they're adding to what's already been written Okay, they're kind of the source for interpreting it, right?

How else I mean, well, go ahead Erickson, yeah, I mean it's kind of like a shortcut, right?

The Bible takes so much work. In fact, there were times where the Roman Catholic Church Chained the

Bible to you know, the the pulpit why because they didn't want people studying it You know if people studied it independently, they knew what was gonna happen

They knew that people would come to their own interpretation and it wouldn't agree with the church And so they would split from the church and they were right

Why do the hard work of exegeting the scriptures of doing your own study if you could just go to the church or the

Pope and have it all told to you? And as we've talked about on many occasions ultimately what happens is the

Pope and the church their opinions their teaching Supersede the Bible so you wind up with doctrines that were never that directly

Contradict scripture like Mary never sinned or you know, you can pray to the

Saints and all these kind of things But further Waldron wrote about the radical

Reformers with their claim to present revelations from the Spirit and He says they denied or downgraded the necessity of scriptures and I thought that's especially on point today, right?

This is akin to what saying God told me

I have a word The Spirit is saying to me this is still going on today and They were right

Waldron writes that you know the divines here that the writers of 1689 and the

Westminster Confession of Faith They were right in the sense that if you say those things if you believe those things then you are downgrading this the necessity of scriptures

What do you need the Bible for if you can if God is still speaking to you the same way he always has

In fact, I was reading This week somebody sent me Sometimes I get

Counseling via Facebook from people. I don't really know they just want to ask questions

And one man is at a really bad church, and he knows it's a bad church. I don't need to go into all of his situation

But he sent me some of the writing of this pastor at their church

And I'm reading it And it basically sounded like the male version of Jesus calling

You know, it's Jesus talking and this man writing it down and put it out as a book and it was more like, you know

Dude you're just the best. I just like hanging out with you, you know, and I'm like I'm reading this and I'm like does anybody really think this sounds like Jesus?

Does this sound any and but if you read those kind of affirmations of yourself? Then scripture is maybe not so necessary So anyway all that to say that all this

God told me You know, I have a word whatever that ultimately downplays the need for scriptures

Because they can actually supersede scripture Okay, so the message of salvation must be preserved

The message of salvation must be preserved Walden writes this the salvation of men depends on their being in possession of a trustworthy record of redemptive revelation a trustworthy record of redemptive revelation

He says certainty about the exact content of the divine revelation was the purpose of the scriptures

Now let's think about that and really it plays into What he said before to about words from the

Spirit and whatnot downgrading the Spirit How do new religions or how do cults get started?

typically speaking Somebody has a revelation and what does that revelation?

How does it start? something like What's being taught is wrong

What the Bible says is wrong? Islam Islam what happens

Allegedly, I like that word an angel comes to Muhammad and tells him what?

the Old Testament and the New Testament have been Corrupted it's been changed.

Let me give you the straight skinny. Let me give you the scoop Thus starts a religion with 1 .6

billion adherents Mormonism starts with what an angel appearing to Joseph Smith allegedly, you know leading him to the golden plates then the father and the son two physical beings

Problematic to say the least Appear to him and tell him what that the other religions are wrong.

Here's the truth. This is how You know, it starts with a private revelation almost always and Waldron says

Certainty about the exact content of the divine revelation was the purpose of the scriptures We need to know that we can trust the

Bible. We need to know that we can rely on it He says the Apostles wrote letters

For the better publication of the truth they taught think about it whether It was their human intent or not when they sent these letters.

Certainly they wanted the truth to go out. They wanted it to be read Excuse me

But it also did what what was the other benefit of them writing these letters to the churches? physical copy instead of the word right just their oral teaching so that these

Physical copies of these letters could be preserved till today. I remember I probably told this story before it doesn't matter though you know being in the gym back in my old line of work and there was a gentleman who had converted from Lutheranism to Mormonism He was in the gym and he's going he knew

I was an ex -mormon. He said isn't it great that we have You know a prophet today who could tell us what

God's saying, you know, and it's right in line with this, right? Isn't it great that we have new revelation kind of thing and I said what's great is that we have a sovereign

God Who preserves his word he brought about the exact circumstances, you know the literally the weather the language the universal

Use of Greek. Thank you very much You know because of Alexander the

Great's how it went throughout the Roman Empire So that you know letters written from one place to another could be read they could be preserved.

We think of even the the the dearth of humidity if You know the

Apostles and Jesus had lived in New England The the Bible would have been doomed because of the humidity and everything it would just would not have worked

It needed to be in a desert it was God did everything sovereignly all the circumstances to preserve his word

Walden writes this he says if God's sovereign purpose is to save men via the redemptive revelation he has given and if this redemptive revelation must be in scripture rated that is to say put into writing and preserved for us

Must be inscripturated to be preserved in a fallen world Then it may also be assumed that this same sovereign redemptive purpose will ensure that these scriptures being immediately inspired of God will also by Rb by his singular care and provenance kept pure in all ages

What he's saying is we don't have to worry about them being adulterated or Changed people have done that.

I mean there are certain scribal errors and not to get too deep into the weeds, but It it really is wonderful that we have numerous copies and so we can now compare them and you know with It is interesting.

I mean, we may we should do a class on this sometime just talking about the Bible and how you can look at the different copies and by using logic reasoning and just sometimes the sheer number of things and everything else they look at the

Text and if there's a variance if there's a change in words They can basically figure out which one is the right word, you know, sometimes it's by context and other things

But it's it's pretty interesting how they do all this And again, none of this would be possible without the the large number of manuscripts that have been preserved throughout the centuries

So it's important that that message of salvation be preserved and now we have it and it's printed in multiple translations seems like there's a translation coming out like Every year or so.

There's the new one. In fact, I have a copy in my office the Christian Standard version you know because English Standard Version isn't enough and All the versions that came before that aren't enough.

We have to keep coming out with new versions Anyway, it's being preserved The next section of 1689 still doing dealing with scripture just talks about the the 66 books and we're gonna

Not spend much time on that because it just lists them So I'm just gonna read this under the name of Holy Scripture or the

Word of God written are Now contained all the books of the Old and New Testaments Which are these and then there's a chart of the 66 books, which we couldn't somehow.

I mean I got in my Copy, but it doesn't turn out really well here and I don't need to read them 66 books those are

The ones that belong in Scripture and again, you know I'll just say a word about canonization.

That is to say which books are in Scripture What does Rome say about how we got the

Bible? How we got the 66 books. I know

Barry knows this the church determined the church decided the

Roman Catholic Church Decided which 66 books belonged in the Bible true or false survey said and They all had to meet a certain standard that's that's what the word canon means, you know

We hear the word canon. We think we're gonna load those books into a canon No Canon with one end and it means measurement or rule at each one of the books

I Mean, there was a lot of discussion about a lot of debate over it. And if you study the history of it There was a pretty consistent

Series of books Luther didn't like James. There were a few other issues, but these 66 books

Met the test they stood the test of time now The next part of 1689 is why

I brought up that canonization thing Because it says this the books commonly called apocrypha, which means what?

It doesn't mean false, but they are false. I Like the enthusiasm Oh false Hidden hidden is what it means

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

No authority to the Church of God nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of other than or use of than other human writings in other words

You know if you want to if you want to cite the apocrypha for something knock yourself out But you could equally cite

Mark Twain you could equally cite George Harrison, and I'd rather cite

George Harrison than Mark Twain probably most of the time but The apocrypha just are not

Scripture and he gives a couple of reasons why Let's turn to Luke 24 27 and would somebody read that please

Luke 24 27, okay And here's the point the point is that Jesus is going to explain about himself

Well, nothing in the apocrypha helps explain about Jesus. He goes to Moses and the prophets in other words the five books of Moses first five books of the

Old Testament and the prophets and Interpreting them all the scriptures will never see hint, you never see the apocrypha referred to as Scripture and we'll get back to what the

Bible says about the apocrypha, which is nothing, but we'll get back to that in a minute to talk about how the

Reformers felt about the apocrypha Because there's this theory out there by the

Roman Catholics that the Reformers removed the apocrypha from the Bible which is not true

The Belgic Confession says this we distinguish those sacred books The Protestant Canon and the apocryphal and then they list the books of the apocrypha

I Always like my favorite book anybody know what my favorite title is in the apocrypha

Bell the dragon wins. It's just I just go that's awesome. What a great name for a book.

I Can't tell you what's in it, but it's a great name for a book It goes on to say all of which the church may read and take instruction from so far as they agree with the

Canonical books listen, you could say that about anything right? You can read anything. You can read the LA Times I don't know why the

LA Times the Boston Club Globe and As long as it reads or as long as I get agrees with the

Bible you'd go home. Well, that's a good that's the best article I've read the Boston Globe in a long time

He goes on to say but they are far from having such power and efficacy That we may from their testimony confirm any point of faith of the

Christian religion Much less may they be used to detract from the authority of the other that is to say the sacred books in other words if they conflict with the

Bible forget the apocrypha the apocrypha is It may have some historical facts.

It may even have some truth in there, but you might as well be reading Fairy tales

John Calvin said this Out of the second book of Maccabees They meaning the

Catholics will prove purgatory and the worship of Saints out of Tobit's I think it's

Tobit's Satisfactions exorcisms and whatnot. I love the whatnot from Ecclesiasticus They will borrow not a little

From whence could they better draw their dregs? I mean this sounds like Luther not

Calvin. I Am NOT one of those however who would entirely

Disapprove notice that language. I'm not one of those who would entirely disapprove

Of the reading of those books, but in giving them an authority which they never possessed What end was sought but just to have the use of spurious paints in?

recoloring their errors It's like all they want is just some some paint to cover up the the obvious biblical errors

They have so they they refer to the apocrypha Now this comes from Carm .org

it's a Christian apologetics ministry online reasons why the apocrypha does not belong in the

Bible Number one rejection by Jesus and the Apostles and this is where we're getting back to The Bible and the things that Jesus said or didn't say about the

Apocrypha first of all, it's important to note that the apocrypha is never quoted by Jesus or by the

Apostles In other words, it never appears in the New Testament never appears in the Old Testament as being approvingly quoted

In fact Jesus implicitly that is to say he didn't Explicitly he didn't outright reject the apocrypha, but he implicitly did so by referring to the entire canon of Scripture this way

And this is from Luke 11 51 He says from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah Who was killed between the altar and the house of God?

Yes, I tell you it will be charged against this generation Abel being the first believer to be killed and Zechariah being the last recorded martyr of the

Old Testament and So he's saying from from first blood to last blood in the

Old Testament It shall be charged against you. He's not including the Apocrypha which was written during that 400 silent 400 years of silence of biblical silence

They go on karma does to note that in the Hebrew Canon the first book was Genesis and the last book was

Chronicles so when we see from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah the way that all the

Old Testament was put together by the Jews. That would be from the beginning to the end basically there's

And there's nothing in between and so that the apocrypha wouldn't qualify The Jewish canon

Has all the same Information as we do, but they don't have 39 books.

They arrange them differently. So there are only 24 books All the 12 minor prophets are all put together.

They're just called the prophets See Therefore Jesus implicitly rejected the apocryphal scripture secondly rejection by the

Jewish community The oracles of God were given to the

Jews that's from Romans 3 2 and the Jews rejected the Old Testament apocrypha as part of Revelation Jesus had many disputes with the

Jews, especially Jewish leadership, but he never disputed with them regarding the extents of the canon of Scripture Historically Philo never courted the apocryphal scripture

Josephus never Actually Josephus explicitly rejected the apocrypha list of the

Hebrew canon be 22 books basically No, no one in the

Jewish community ever acknowledged Apocrypha scripture also rejected.

This is interesting by the Roman Catholic Church Until they needed it I'll get there in a sec that the

Catholic Church has not always accepted the apocrypha the apocrypha was not officially accepted by the Catholic Church until Council Council Trent after the

Reformation started so this is over a millennium and a half after the books were written and was a counter a response to the

Reformation Jerome the great biblical scholar and translator of the Latin Vulgate's rejected the apocrypha

Along with Origins rule of Jerusalem and Athanasius the apocryphal books were placed in Bibles before the

Council of Trent and After but they were placed in a separate section because they were not Granted equal authority.

In fact, what is Rome? How does Rome referred to the apocrypha? They call them?

Yeah, deuterocanon deuterocanonical. In other words, they say here are the canonical books and Here are the secondary, you know canon so they don't even really hold them to be at the same level

Yeah, do they? That's bad, which leads us right into this next section because the apocrypha contains false teaching

I mean, we would never say, you know, the Bible has false teaching in it. It may cite false teachers.

It may quote, you know erroneous things or but it makes it clear that It's not right if it does it, you know, you know what

I'm saying? Makes it clear that it's citing somebody who should not be followed Some of the false teachings the command to use magic how about this one forgiveness of sins by almsgivings

Which sounds a lot like Indulgences or even this one offering the same kind of line of thinking offering of money for the sins of the dead

And finally so that was number four of the apocrypha contains false teachings number five the apocrypha is not prophetic if Jesus said

You know all of Scripture speaks of me right and Then the apocrypha doesn't speak of Jesus.

Then what would we conclude? That if the

Lord knows what he's talking about And he says that all of Scripture speaks of me and the apocrypha doesn't the apocrypha is therefore not

Scripture Fact karm says here the apocryphal apocryphal books do not share many of the characteristics of the canonical books.

They are not prophetic There is no supernatural confirmation of any of the apocryphal works

There is no predictive prophecy there is no new messianic truth revealed in other words, I don't speak of Jesus they are not cited as authoritative by any prophetic book written after them and they even acknowledge in their own writings in the

Apocrypha that there were no prophets in Israel at their time So if there were no prophets then who wrote them?

problematic Okay, so enough about the apocrypha All that to say, you know, you can read it, but it's absolutely useless

Next part of the 1689 dealing with Scripture the authority of Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed dependeth not

Upon the testimony of any man or church, but holy upon God who is truth itself

The author thereof and therefore is to be received because it is the Word of God now

That's another slap at Roman Catholicism, right? Because it says dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church the

Roman Catholic Church says You know without us you wouldn't have the Bible you ever been in a discussion with a

Roman Catholic apologist and they say well You know what without us you wouldn't even have the Bible If you haven't heard that before you haven't engaged with these people because they will say that Robert Yes, they literally mean that And I think they would they would point maybe to the council which one of the councils

They would point to a church council whether it was nice here or one one of them and say well this is when the canon of Scripture was affirmed and finalized but if you actually study the

The canon, you know the history of the canon. It was pretty much set by about 180 something like that.

So I think that's when I'm trying to think of a guy's name He wrote down a list of the books and it was pretty consistent after that Yeah, yeah he well he was part of it he was a heretic but I think he did write down the right books

Okay Thank you doctor good question

But you know as I'm reading it not only do I think about Rome, you know, the church isn't Dependent the church doesn't determine the canon of Scripture.

In fact, we would say that the church Receives or Recognizes what

God has done what God has provided, you know, it was God who? sovereignly orchestrated the canon of Scripture, but it also reminds me of you know, when you when you have the the fine folks knocking at your door representing those cults

Especially Mormonism they want you to read the Book of Mormon and where do they say, you know if you read it and pray about it and you get a a bit of heartburn later a burning in your bosom, then you know that it's

Scripture and That's that's the you know The subjective test they want to put it to but the 1689 says it doesn't depend on the testimony of any man

Or any church but holy upon God who is truth itself When you hear that you think you know

Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth Yeah, and there's a lot of sorry

There's a lot of A comparative study that's done, you know to try to narrow Narrow down the the variances and whatnot, but I mean we're getting into some serious weeds here

What we need to know is that God has preserved his word against many

You know, I mean just sometimes simple scribal errors, you know, how do you copy the

Bible? Well, there are several ways you could do it. One is you're just looking at a copy and writing it down Well after a while you could get tired.

You can make an Spelling mistake a lot of things could happen. I mean look at your typing sometimes I'll get seen a second

Andrew the other thing that would happen is if it was being orally dictated by somebody and multiple scribes were

Writing it down. Well, he could misread it Somebody could mishear it and there could be you know errors along those lines

Andrew Yeah, James White is definitely very good and he did do That that was a teleconference thing wasn't did he yeah.

Yeah. Okay. That's right Yeah, my foggy memory is starting to lift a little bit. Yeah, I remember that Wow Okay, yeah, he's pretty good

Yeah there, you know like somebody He debates different people and I'm like dude as soon as he as soon as he said

Steve Would you like to debate about something? I just go and no, you know What do you want me to write publicly?

You know, I I confess I you know, I surrender, you know No, just the answers.

No Let's talk briefly about The idea of being

God breathed that God is the author. Let's look at 2nd. Timothy 3 16 and 17 very familiar

Verses we have to understand that we do not have

The autographs So which is to say the original copies so when

Textual criticism is done when they're comparing these different copies. The goal is to get as close to the original copies as possible and I think you know,

I I'm certain that they've done a very excellent job of doing that so that we have what we have is thoroughly reliable 2nd

Timothy 3 16 and 17 was somebody read that place. Okay, and really the word the

Greek word I'm looking at is the and they announced us And where it says breathed out, you know breathed out by God that's the idea and you know, it's so much better to see breathed out by God then

Inspired, you know because people talk about that painting inspired me that movie inspired me that song inspired me

Well, that's not the idea This is you know, God breathing out the

Word of God as it were and then using human instruments using human beings to capture through their personality and their education and You know their writing ability exactly what he wanted to be written.

So that's how we get Scripture and that's why it's reliable because it is inspired by the

Holy Spirit We talk about and I think the 1689 does too about verbal Plenary inspiration verbal verbal plenary inspiration which

Waldron notes is The teaching that the words of the Bible the very words of the

Bible all the words of the Bible Are the products of a direct? Supernatural influence of the

Spirit on the men who were his organs or instruments. It is completely inerrant

Without error no mistakes That is talking about the original

Copies no mistakes whatsoever We believe that every word is

Inspired by God then he goes on to talk about how

Scripture is self -attesting when you say, you know if I say If I testify, you know, this is this is gonna sound like I'm speaking from the

Bible If I if I testify of myself, you know, so I'd say well you're just bragging.

Okay When the Word of God talks about itself It's self -attesting.

It's testifying to its own veracity Waldron says this he says the

Bible never adversely Criticizes itself. In fact, it affirms itself He says the

Bible nowhere asserts of another statement in the Bible that is in error like Peter never says

You know what Paul wrote in? Whatever book and I don't believe that you know, he was off now it does talk about you know, when

Paul goes and confronts Peter and that kind of thing about his behavior about his even some of his

Teaching but his teaching wasn't in Scripture. It was just when he went along with the Judaizers So Scripture attests itself

BB Warfield said this The effort to explain away the

Bible's witness to its plenary inspiration that is to say that it's fully inspired reminds me of a man standing safely in his laboratory and elaborately expounding possibly with the aid of diagrams and mathematical formula, although today it would be some kind of computer generated video

How every stone in an avalanche has a defined pathway and may easily be dodged by one of some presence of mind in other words kind of like Pac -man or kind of like, you know a video game that if you know the pattern you can just kind of dodge and sidestep

I'm not very nimble. So I'm not gonna try that very long he says You know

This is the effort to explain away the Bible's witness He says, you know, it's kind of some people want to treat it like that that you can dodge it he says we may fancy such an elaborate triflers triumph as he would analyze the avalanche into its constituent stones and demonstrate

Stone after stone that its pathway is definite limited and may easily be avoided but Avalanches unfortunately do not come upon us stone by stone one at a time

Courteously leaving us opportunity to withdraw from the pathway of destruction Just so we may explain away a text or two

Which teach plenary inspiration to our own closest or closet satisfaction Dealing with them without reference to its relation to the others

But these texts of ours again, unfortunately do not come upon us in this artificial isolation

Neither are they few in number? There are scores hundreds of them and they come bursting upon us in one solid mass

He concludes explain them away. We should have to explain away the whole New Testament's Scripture Hangs together it works together

It can't be separated out teased out and so that you can explain away the inspiration of Scripture Any questions could we really have to close any thoughts or questions?

Yeah, Anthony They claim people infallibility when he's speaking, you know ex cathedra and it's because He's supposed to be

Christ's vicar that is to say his representative his Direct pipeline more or less on earth

So when he exercises which he doesn't do very often when he sits ex cathedra

I mean if he if he's just speaking out on the stump He they would say well he can make mistakes but if he's sitting

Or if he's teaching in the chair is what ex cathedra means if he's if he's doing that, you know, then he's sitting in the chair of Christ in the place of Christ and he speaks inherently they would climb so You know a lot of the teaching of the

Roman Catholic Church that's in clear contradiction with Scripture comes from such Teachings yeah, was there another thought or question over here?

Okay. Yeah Yeah, go ahead Mm -hmm 18

Yeah, yeah, they will they've forgotten about a good number of things. I mean, it's amazing that You know

Peter Peter was the first Pope but apparently most people didn't know it including you know,

Paul Paul and others Yeah, Peter didn't know it either. You know, I Peter the Pope I mean that would have been a handy thing to have let everybody know.

Yeah, so good point. All right, let's close in prayer father Thank you for your word.

Thank you for your preservation of it. Thank you that you would draw Millions To yourself through your written word and how you've even granted it to us today and just a

Proliferation of Copies and different translations and all these different tools that are available to us online and in print form and just various audio

Different ways that we can and father. What a what a blessing what a privilege Make us better students of your word

That we might love you all the more and that we might be better equipped