How the Confessions strengthen our faith in times of fear

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So, this one comes from Stuart, and his question is this, would be interested to hear how confessionalism strengthens us in the middle of this pandemic, which for me, and I'm sure others, has brought up much unbelief and doubt that was present, but not stirred up in the heart until trouble came.

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So, that's a great question, Stuart, and actually yesterday, the podcast that we three recorded, we talk about this a little bit, but a great source of comfort that all three of us found actually came from the confession that our church uses, which is the 1689

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London Baptist Confession. Chapter five talks about divine providence, and in paragraph one of chapter five,

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I won't read it per se, but it talks about the infinite power and wisdom of God that He upholds and directs and governs all things and all creatures, but specifically,

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I think what we found in paragraph three was particularly helpful when the framers of this confession, when they write, in His ordinary providence,

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God makes use of means, though He is free to work apart from them, beyond them, and contrary to them at His pleasure.

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And so, as we think about the global pandemic that has really brought the world to its collective knees, it's difficult, and being guys that rely heavily on the ordinary means of grace that God uses, the preaching of the word, the words visible at baptism and the

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Lord's table to kind of strengthen, create, establish our faith, it's painful for us as pastors to not be able to gather with our people.

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And yet, we also understand that, Justin coined this probably yesterday, where we are in extraordinary times,

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God will also give us extraordinary grace. And so, we rest in those things.

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And so, you have confessionalism kind of at a paper level, but you also have confessionalism kind of at a 30 ,000 -foot level, that the truths that we have constantly harped on in this podcast, that we find rest in Christ outside of ourselves, that what

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God has given us in Christ, in the gospel, perfect righteousness imputed to us through no effort or merit on our own, those things even remain true in the midst of a pandemic.

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So, even when things are going well, when you are able to attend the gathered worship with the saints, that you are able to have the word of God preached over you, you see the gospel in the table.

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Even when you quote -unquote feel good and you're able to function in your everyday life in a normal sense, those things are true.

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But even now, when we're kind of sheltered in place, when it's very easy to be discouraged, to feel lonely, to feel isolated, and to feel socially distant from people, those objective truths of the imputed righteousness of Christ to your account, they're still there.

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They didn't go anywhere. I just think of places in Scripture like Psalm 13, where the psalmist cries out to God.

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He asks God for help and for faith, but he recounts the faithfulness of the Lord in the past.

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And this is something that I shared with my church last Sunday over Facebook Live, that we rest in the truths that God is not distant, that Jesus is not distant from sin and death, but rather He was crucified.

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He was buried with sin and death, and He rose again, defeated them both. And so, I mean, just to encourage you,

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I mean, I don't know where you specifically are, but just to encourage you that the truths that you fight to believe that God is for you in Christ, that He has from eternity past, chose you to be

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His own, those truths are still there in a time of pandemic. I don't know if a couple of you guys want to jump in on that topic as well.

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I'll jump in really quick, Jimmy. I think to be confessional, it might help to state this clearly, to be confessional certainly does mean that we hold to a confession of faith.

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And for all of us, it's a confession of faith out of the era of the Reformation or the era that flowed out of the

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Reformation in the case of like the 1689 or the Westminster Confession, for example. But it also means that we are confessing, right?

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We are saying together, believing together. We are looking to doctrines and truths from Scripture that we are to rest in and trust, and so two words that we often use on Theocast to describe the confessional perspective are that it is an objective perspective.

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It is an outside of us reality. So as Jimmy just alluded to, we're looking to Christ who is outside of us.

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We're looking to God who is outside of us. We're looking to these great truths and promises of God that exist outside of us in our experience.

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And then also the other thing is that to be confessional is to believe in and hold to declarative realities, meaning that they're done, they're finished.

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And so when we're looking to things and trusting in things that are outside of us and that are completed, they're finished and they're not in jeopardy, those things transcend all circumstances and they transcend all of our emotional volatility.

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It matters not how I'm feeling today or how I'm processing the COVID -19 pandemic today, the truths of God remain.

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And as Jimmy just said, the righteousness of Christ for me remains. The atoning, satisfying work of Christ for me remains.

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My safety in Christ, my standing before God, all of those things are rock solid because they're objective outside of me and they're declarative, they're done.

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And so that's how a confessional perspective gives us rock under our feet. As we sing in the hymn, when all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay, well, that's a confessional perspective that we are looking to those things.

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In particular, we're looking to God and Christ Jesus for us in the midst of all kinds of storms and things that are swirling.