1689 London Baptist Confession (part 38)

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And here's the thing, if you start down this road of equating
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Martin Luther King and his temporal achievements, and Martin Luther, who had a lot of flaws by the way, especially when we think of him temporally and in terms of his
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Jewish comments and other things that he said, what are we ultimately saying?
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That somehow the gospel and social justice are on the same plane.
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As I said last week, here's the key when we think about social justice. Do we value, or should we value, the idea of the brotherhood of man or the equality of man, you know, all men are created equal, should we value that?
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The answer is yes, because all men are created in God's image. The question though is that a gospel issue, and when you call it a gospel issue, what you're saying is it is essential to the gospel.
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And I argued last week, and I think this is right, I'm sure it's right, that the gospel is not about horizontal reconciliation.
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That is to say, it's not about primarily reconciling us one to another.
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It's about reconciling us to whom? To God, right?
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We, before Christ, before God saves us, we stand condemned, without hope.
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And after the fact that we get reconciled to God, as we're no longer enemies but friends with God, something else happens, which is, you know,
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Galatians 3 .28, the idea we're neither Jew nor Gentile, we're neither male nor female, we're all one in Christ.
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In other words, we're equal at the foot of the cross. So the vertical reconciliation precedes horizontal reconciliation.
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Now is racism a sin? Yes. Is it wrong to look on somebody else and say, well, because they have a different pigment of skin, they are less than me?
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That is wrong. It is sinful. Should it be called a sin? Yes. So should, you know, can
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I give you a long list of sins that should be called out? Here's the problem. The problem is when you say,
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Martin Luther King is a good brother, as this preacher did, what you are then saying, assuming that you're not talking about him in some kind of social justice racial sense, if you say that he's a good brother, you're essentially saying what he believed about the gospel doesn't matter.
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He didn't believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. He didn't believe in a lot of things that the
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Bible says. So we're just going to wallpaper over that, and we're going to somehow elevate him to sainthood on the basis of what he did socially.
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There's a real problem, you know, because I compare this to ultimately some form of Protestant purgatory, right?
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The idea of the Roman Catholic Church is you die, you can't know that you're going to heaven because most people don't go directly to heaven, according to the
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Roman Catholic Church. You go to purgatory where your sins are purged, and then eventually you get to go to heaven.
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Well, it seems like we have a Protestant purgatory where it doesn't matter what you believe during the course of your life. If you did enough good during your life, then after you die, after a certain period of time, then you get elevated to this stature of, you know, sainthood or good brother or whatever.
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And what this does is it ultimately obscures what the gospel is and what it isn't.
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And if you say that Martin Luther King Jr., for all the good he may have done during the course of his life, you say that his theological peccadilloes, which weren't peccadilloes at all, they were major problems, if you say that those don't matter, and what he did during the course of his life is what mattered, then what you're ultimately saying is the cross doesn't matter.
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The message of the gospel doesn't matter. What matters is living a good life, which is antithetical to the gospel.
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So Pastor Mike was just showing me before we started here that he tweeted something about this whole thing and has like,
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I don't know, a lot more comments than he would normally get on anything that he tweets, because this is just, it is literally dividing so many evangelicals right now, because we're really seeing, most of you probably haven't, how many of you studied the history of the
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Christian church during the 20th century? Probably not too many. A few. It's interesting because there were divisions after divisions, especially if you go down to the
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Presbyterian church, and by the way, I think they're heading for another split, but if you look at a lot of the denominations, they split over and over again, and you know why they split?
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Why do you suppose they split? Usually over the social gospel.
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One wing of a denomination would want to get involved in more social activity, and the other wing would say, well, wait a minute, we're going to get involved in that stuff and we're going to lose our focus on scripture, we're going to lose our focus on the
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Bible, we're going to lose our focus on the gospel. We can't do that.
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And the other side would just say, well, that's fine, we're going to go marching our own way. So we would see things like PCUSA divide,
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Presbyterian Church in the United States of America divide and become PCUSA and PCA, Presbyterian Church in America, the
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Presbyterian Church in America being the more conservative side.
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But guess what? PCA is starting to go liberal too. This is what the Presbyterians do because, well, never mind.
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This is the history of the church. Denominations form, denominations split, and they generally split because the gospel for some people comes in second place.
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It's interesting that that's happening in a group called the Gospel Coalition. They get together allegedly over the gospel and then not so much.
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Yes, Pastor Rob. It's exactly right.
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The gospel comes in second place because ultimately the Bible comes in second place.
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It reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a man who went from being, it was odd to me, he went from being a
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Lutheran to being a Mormon. And then
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I was talking to him one day in the gym and he said, isn't it great that we have a prophet today in Salt Lake City who can tell us what
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God's saying? And of course I'd come out of the Mormon church and I said, isn't it great that we have a
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God who sits on his throne and is able to control all things, including maintaining his word, keeping it safe from all attacks, even as people try to not just explain it away or decry it or say that science or whatever, but literally over the centuries have tried to burn it, have tried to imprison it, have tried to keep people from having it in their own language.
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Whatever they've tried to do, change it, alter it to keep people from having the revelation of God.
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And yet God's word prevails. Well, how is this possible? Because God is powerful enough to do that.
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So it's not a matter of we need a man to tell us what the Bible says. We have the
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Bible. We have it ourselves. Any other thoughts or comments?
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This is just really, it's a fascinating thing to watch. We're at a really interesting time. For the church writ large, where we're going to see a camp over on this side that says that they know better than the
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Bible does. And I don't want to be standing in that camp. There is certainly work to be done concerning racial reconciliation.
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The question is, what's the priority? The priority always has to be the gospel. Because guess what?
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Let's say the United States was 330 million people who all believed the
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Bible. What would the country look like? I dare say,
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I think there would be some differences in how we treat one another. And I think all these issues, well, what about crime and what about gun control and what about the gangs, instantly, overnight, gone, right?
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Of course, that's not going to happen. I mean,
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I say, of course, it's not going to happen. It certainly doesn't appear to be happening. But that's the issue.
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I mean, let's put it another way. Let's suppose we could do away with racism tomorrow. Let's say the
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United States, every single person in here said, you know what? I see the light now.
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I am no longer going to be a racist. I'm no longer going to act on my racial prejudice. I'm going to treat everyone equally.
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How does that change their eternal destiny? It doesn't, right?
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I can be anti -racism all I want and still go to hell because I need to believe on the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, there are a lot of churches that are getting involved in different activities, right, in different social issues that are getting engaged with a committee and stuff like that.
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But ultimately, you know, here's what happens. I mean, is it wrong to feed the poor, to help different people, and to do all these things?
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No. But if the church loses its focus, if it becomes a social weapon, as it were, instead of a place where people come to get equipped to learn how to evangelize, to preach the gospel to the lost, then the church has completely lost its mission.
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We don't have a great commission to, you know, for the Lord Jesus Christ to go out and stomp out racial inequality, to stomp out economic inequality, to stomp out homelessness or hunger or any of these other things.
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We have a commission from the Lord Jesus Christ to make disciples. There was a story that came out this week where one of these more famous, well,
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I'd say he's a second or third tier preacher, accused somebody who'd been a missionary for, like, 15, 20 years in Papua New Guinea, teaching people, translating the word into their language and all this.
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Now, these people were of a different skin tone than he is, but he's not woke because he's spending his time on the gospel instead of, you know, social issues, this whole concept of woke.
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Yeah, it really is a mystery to me. There are so many things that seem good to a man, but their way is the end, you know, is death.
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The issue is always every single person we run into has a soul. That soul is eternal.
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And one day, every single person is going to have to stand before God and give an answer for what they did with the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And their answer cannot be, I was woke. That's not going to work.
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I have to believe in the life, death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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I have to be trusting in him alone. None of these other things are going to save me.
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They don't change me. They don't cause me to be regenerated. We're in a very,
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I think, unique time in the church's history, and in part it's because of social media, but we're really, you know, at a dividing point,
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I think. Other thoughts or questions? Yeah. I mean, only the gospel can change lives, can change hearts.
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You know, it's one thing, it's like with your kids. How many of you have kids? Can you get them to do the right thing?
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Sometimes, right? Sometimes you can get them to do the right thing. Are they doing it?
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Let me ask you this way. Are they doing the right thing from the heart? Sometimes.
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How do you know? Okay, maybe.
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Or maybe it's because they want a new scooter, right? And they're like, you know, I bet
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I could squeeze dad for that scooter if I do, blah, blah, blah, blah. The truth is we don't know, right?
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We don't know if they're doing the right thing for the right reasons. A redeemed heart can do the right thing for the right reasons.
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And the right reason is ultimately what? Glorifying God. I want to glorify
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God. Again, if we push this social justice agenda, might people do the right thing?
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The answer is yes. Are they going to do it from the heart? To get to Charlie's point, the answer is no.
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Because they want to just be seen as being virtuous. They want to send that signal that they're virtuous.
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It doesn't indicate anything about the true state of their heart. People can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and they do it all the time.
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You know, widows and orphans, religion undefiled, pure religion, well, because they're the most destitute and the most, especially in that time, they would have been the most desperate in society without anybody to protect them or anything like that.
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So, I mean, you could do ministry to widows and orphans with the wrong attitude, right? And what happens on Judgment Day?
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It's wood, hay, and stuffle. It goes up in a big ball of flames. Charlie, we see the
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YMCA as a gym with a swimming pool. That's what we see it as. Come on, let's just be honest. Yeah, I mean, the idea that, you know, it started, let's take care of their physical needs because if we don't take care of their physical needs, they won't be able to hear the gospel.
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You know, James does say, you know, be warm, be filled.
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We don't want to be, you know, those sorts of people. But on the other hand, if our focus, it really is about priorities, you know, and the gospel always has to be first.
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So, all right, moving on. So we've been talking about assurance, gospel assurance, assurance of our faith that we can know what we know, what we know.
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We talked about it not just being conjecture grounded upon a fallible hope, but an infallible assurance of faith founded on the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the gospel.
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And really, I mean, I'll give away the ending before we get there. But ultimately, this gets back to what
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I was just saying a moment ago. If you think about it this way, how can I know that I'm saved?
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I can know that I'm saved because the Bible reveals what it means to be saved.
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And I believe in the Bible because I trust the author of the
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Bible. He, who set everything in motion,
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I mean, not to get back to Brian Bartlett and his cosmic spinning model that he posted on Facebook, you know, of our solar system going throughout the universe.
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But when you look at that and you think, God did all this by just saying, let there be, and there it was.
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If you can't trust that God to do what he says and to keep his promises, then you have nothing at all.
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It all comes down to, do you take God at his word? Is what he says true?
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And the answer, of course, is yes. And last week we went through 2 Peter chapter 1 verses,
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I think it was 1 to maybe 11. And we talked about how it was very similar ultimately to, in other words, the grounding of our faith, what we were to work on for our own assurance, the things that we should see produced in our life, very similar to the fruits of the spirit in Galatians 5.
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Let me just go over those real quickly. In 2
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Peter chapter 1 verses 5 to 9, for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self -control and self -control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.
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For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, in ministry service and service to the body. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he is cleansed from his former sins.
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Here's a good clue that you're saved. You're no longer the same person. You don't have the same affections.
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You don't have the same attitudes. Your life has been changed not because of some self -improvement program, not because you went to 12 steps and made a bunch of resolutions, but because God, the same
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God who created the universe, is at work in you and is transforming you. You are changed not by your own power, but by the power of God.
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Peter wants us to be fruitful in the Christian life, to have confidence in the knowledge that the Holy Spirit dwells within us.
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If we are sure that we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that goes a long way toward helping us become productive in manifesting the fruit of the
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Spirit. That's R .C. writing, and basically the idea is this. If we know that we're saved, then we act on it.
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And we ought to see more and more of that fruit. A lot of times, what are the things that keep us from being productive, that keep us from ministering, that keep us from serving the body of Christ?
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What are the things that stop us from doing that? Selfish pursuits is one.
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Fear. Let me ask you this. Selfish pursuits and fear, what are those?
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Pride, which is? Sin. Thank you. I just wanted to get the three -letter word there.
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Selfish pursuits. I'm being sinful. Fear. What am I afraid of? I'm afraid of man, which is sin.
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These are sinful things. They might be real, but they're sinful. I was telling somebody the other day,
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I used to be super afraid to stand up in front of big groups of people. Not that there's any danger of that in Sunday school.
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Sorry. Sorry. But the
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Lord has worked things out in my life through circumstances
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I don't need to go through right now. But without medication, I can get up in front of large groups of people.
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Allegedly. A little caffeine doesn't really count, does it? I don't think so. What else keeps us from serving or ministering as we want or as we should?
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Ignorance. And if ignorance is bliss, some people are really happy.
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Ignorance. How about this one? Laziness. You think that's a reason that people don't?
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Yeah, sloth. How about a sense of unworthiness?
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I'm not worthy to do that. And that's what this is getting to. He says, if you're seeing the fruit in your life, then you are encouraged to do this.
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If you're not seeing the fruit, then you feel like, I can't do anything. And you become consumed ultimately with yourself.
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The reason that you're not serving is because you're consumed with trying to alter and trying to change your life.
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When a lot of times, the way to alter and change your life is to stop worrying about yourself and start serving others.
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By the way, R .C. talks about how some churches believe that at conversion, a person begins a process by which he eventually becomes
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God, that he is deified. If you've ever been in a church like that, the correct thing to do is leave.
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I was in a church like that, right? The LDS Church teaches that eventually you can become a
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God, which is pretty bizarre. But he says that because Peter talks about, and I think it must be like in verse one or the other.
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Oh, yeah, there it is. In chapter 1 of 2
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Peter, in verse 4, it says, "...so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature."
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So this idea of becoming, you know, it's always problematic and probably you're on the road to a cult, cultism, if one verse is sort of taken in isolation and overblown.
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You know, for example, I think it's 1 Corinthians 15, 28, 29, something like that, where it talks about baptism for the dead.
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How many of you have been baptized for the dead? I see that's one of us. Baptism for the dead, yeah.
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So when you take a verse like that and you make a doctrine out of it and you practice it, I think you probably have some problems.
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Sproul goes on to say that the way in which we partake in the Holy Spirit here is the idea, the
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Spirit's work, changing us in regeneration, dwelling in us for our sanctification.
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This does not make us God, but God is in us.
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In that sense, we are partaking in the divine nature. We are participating in the divine work in the sense that He is working in us.
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But it doesn't make us God. Let's look at Ephesians 4.
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Ephesians 4, verses 11 to 14. Ephesians 4, verses 11 to 14. And if somebody would read that, please.
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We're talking about assurance of salvation. We're talking about our sanctification.
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And here we're going to see the ultimate or one of the ultimate reasons for it.
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Ultimately, we want to be conformed into the image of Christ. But Ephesians 4, verses 11 to 14, we're going to see another reason for that.
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Would somebody read that, please? Ephesians 4, 11 to 14. Thank you. Now, people say,
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I don't like theology. I don't like to study theology. May I suggest to you this?
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If I said to them, well, then you're content with being a theological lightweight, that wouldn't be very kind.
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Would it? Probably not. But look at what this says.
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And you tell me, I mean, it's kind of a crass characterization of it, right? But look at verse 14. So that we may no longer.
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Well, what does that imply? As uninformed, as non -theological people, as babies in Christ, we are children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.
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Some new doctrine comes into the church. And who is the most susceptible? Is Pastor Mike going, oh,
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I really like this wave of new doctrine. No.
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Why? What's good about new doctrine?
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It's new. It's improved. Is there anything good about new doctrine?
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It goes away. It's correct. New is not good. New is only good at the grocery store, at the department store.
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Do they even have department stores anymore? Fewer and fewer. By every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes, does that sound like something you want to be blown around by?
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I can hardly wait for the next deceitful scheme to come along. Who says that?
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Who thinks like that? Well, how do you get anchored? How do you become steadfast and immovable?
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It's right here. We have been gifted this by Jesus Christ. He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers, what?
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To equip the saints, to equip believers for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
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This is what we do. We want you to be steadfast, immovable, so that when these new waves, these schemes of deceitful people come along, you're not deceived by them.
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You're not moved by them. They have no impact on you. Here's the picture.
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It's basically this. You can put a baby on the beach in the ocean, and when the waves come in, what's going to happen?
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Eventually, that wave is going to carry the baby out. You put an adult there, and unless the waves are really big, it's not going to be moved.
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So don't be a baby. That might be a sermon. Don't be a baby.
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The more you know, the less likely you are to be deceived. A friend of mine, a guy
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I used to work with, he was a sergeant and a lieutenant, served in Vietnam. He posted on Facebook this week.
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He said, warning, if you get a call from some people who say they're from Apple and they ask to take over your computer, don't let them do it.
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I was like, Ed, you let them take over your computer? Yes, he did, and they did a number on it.
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He's not very technologically savvy. And here's the point of Paul in Ephesians.
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Be theologically savvy. Be equipped. Be smart.
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Be mature, we could say. Sproul goes on to say, spiritual strength and maturity give us the ability to deal with the world, our flesh, and the devil, the schemes of the devil.
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And he says, particularly, particularly the latter.
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We generally think of Satan's work as being a tempter, and that's true, right? When we think of the temptations of Christ, well, who was tempting him?
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It was Satan. He says, however, his strongest efforts are made as the accuser.
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He constantly reminds us of our sinfulness. And you say, well, Satan does that?
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Who else does that? Who else reminds us of our sinfulness? The Holy Spirit.
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Now, that's weird, isn't it? What's the difference between the Holy Spirit and Satan?
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How is it possible that Satan wants me to be aware of my sin, and the Holy Spirit wants me to be aware of my sin?
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Condemnation versus conviction, right? Holy Spirit wants me to be aware of my sin so that I'll stop sinning.
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Satan wants me to be aware of my sin so that I'll stop trying, stop serving, stop believing, if possible, right?
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He wants me to stop trusting in Christ. I can't possibly be saved.
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Look at what a horrible human being I am, which I probably say to myself three or four times a day. This is how we think.
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It's easy to feel this way. Sproul says the one time
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Satan is not absolutely, not completely deceitful is when he holds up our sin before us and tells us that we are really sinners.
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But when he twists the truth and tells us we are not in Christ, or that God couldn't possibly love us, that we do not have any security, that we are not believers at all in light of our sinfulness, that's false.
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He's gone too far. He's trying to deceive us. Our sanctification and our service to the body, if we really absorb these accusations and believe them, they just stop.
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Sproul says if we are going to serve Christ, we had better know how we are saved, what the grounds of our salvation are, who our
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Savior is, and where our confidence rests, or else Satan will have a field day with us.
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Then he goes on to say that Satan often would accuse
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Luther. Luther had a very active conscience as it was.
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But Luther would say to him, get away from me, I'm baptized.
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And you say, wait a minute, was Luther trusting in his baptism? No. It was just shorthand to him of everything that it included, that he loved the
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Lord Jesus Christ, that he was trusting in the promise of God, that he was resting upon the promises that were his, the righteousness of Christ.
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He knew that his own righteousness was not enough and that Jesus Christ was all he could have or could ever require.
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Theology matters. Theology matters. Let's look at Romans 8, verses 11 to 16.
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Romans 8, 11 to 16. We'll probably close here.
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If somebody would read Romans 8, 11 to 16, please. So how does the
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Holy Spirit bear witness to our spirit that we belong to him? Sproul answers it this way.
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He says he does it through the Bible. I was listening to somebody recently who was encouraging people to go through the book of 1
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John. 1 John is a series of tests. And here's the issue.
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Some people call 1 John, by the way, the book of assurance. In other words, if you read it, you pass these tests, and you say, well, then
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I believe I belong to God. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.
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The truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, there are these different things. So if I do this, then
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I'm not saved. If I do this, I am saved. So it's a book of assurance. But I also say it's the book of unassurance.
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If you see things like we know that we love God if we love the brothers, if we love being with other
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Christians. Well, what if I don't love being with other Christians? I think the answer is you should be concerned.
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I don't go to church because I don't like all those fake Christians there. I want to say, well, thank you for sparing us from another fake
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Christian. Right. We are to love the brothers.
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All these things are true. The spirit testifies to us by his word. We are encouraged when we read it, when we see the truths about God, when we see the truths about ourselves, even as convicting as some of those truths may be.
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It still tells us these things are true. And I thank God that they're true. If I if I'm reading scripture and I'm going,
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I don't know if I believe that. That's problematic. The spirit works through the word of God to affirm to us that we belong to him.
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The word is infallible. The Bible is infallible. And the spirit's testimony is infallible.
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Sproul says that combination, that one, two punch of word and spirit is what pulls us out of the depths of doubt.
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If we kept reading Romans eight and we just kept thinking to ourselves, if we just kept going on, what we see, we'd see that nothing can separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus.
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There's nothing in all of creation that can do that. That is encouraging to us.
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We read that and we just think, I don't feel sometimes that these things are true.
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But I know whom I have believed. And I know that he is able to keep his promise.
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He will keep his promise. He is faithful. He is the object of my faith, not me.
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That's the key to understanding our salvation. It's also the key to faithful service.
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It's not trusting in myself or looking at my goodness or thinking, I have this or I or me, me, me or anything.
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It's about trusting God. It's about trusting the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to do what he has promised to do.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for its reliability, its infallibility, its inerrancy, all the things that are true of it because you have preserved it.
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You have kept it. You have granted it to us that we might even have it in a multitude, really an embarrassment of varieties and languages and everything, that we might know you and that we might also trust you, that we might read the eyewitness accounts that you have preserved for us throughout these centuries, going back to Moses, Job, and really back to the beginning by your spirit, faithfully keeping these things for us, that we might understand where the world came from, why sin entered the world, the effects of sin, and how you have overcome sin, death, hell, and granted us salvation, full and free, by the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
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Father, we praise you for that. We trust you entirely, and we pray for each one here this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.