1689 London Baptist Confession (part 62)

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Father in Heaven, Lord, we come before you this morning thankful that we have a place to meet, thankful that we are not suffering governmental persecution as the saints are in so many nations, even seeing the man from India beheaded this week.
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We know of the persecution in China, Africa, so many places around the world your saints are being hunted down and treated like animals and Father we would pray for them today that they would remain bold and Lord that you would just grant them safety that there would be a relenting of the persecution.
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Father, keep us mindful of the great blessings that are ours and in being able to gather together and being able to be open about our faith.
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Lord bless each one here as we look to what your word says about marriage, about what it says concerning the church.
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Lord bless each one here we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Well, we were talking about marriage last week, some of the things that we commonly talk about.
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I mean you'll hear it every Sunday morning from the pulpit. How many times does Pastor Mike talk about, for example, polygamy?
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We hear it all the time. Okay, we don't talk about things like that. Some of the finer, finer points of the
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Bible and we're going to speak about a few more of those today, but we left off last week.
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Well, we talked a little bit about children, about why people don't want children these days and it really is depressing.
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I saw even something this morning, this woman chanting, my body, my choice, my body, my choice and proudly announcing that she'd had two abortions and I think who does that?
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Who does that? Who thinks that way? Well, sinful people who are in rebellion against God, I guess, think that way.
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We mentioned also the idea that the Roman Catholic Church believed and still practices this to some extent today, that celibacy is better than being married.
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I don't know about you, but I think it was Bob Muto a few weeks ago who said it's not good for man to be alone and I agree with that.
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Celibacy better than marriage. Why would they teach that? Why would they believe that?
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Distorting the word. Okay, asceticism. So there's this idea that suffering does what?
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Brings you closer to God and so if that's true and it can be true, like we were, you know, even when
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I was praying, I was talking about the persecution that the saints are undergoing around the world, which has a tendency, you know, which makes you more holy, a lack of persecution or persecution.
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For the most part, believe it or not, it's persecution because now you're really focused on the fact that you could actually die, you know, so bad things are happening to people around you.
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They're getting hauled off to prison and so every day, for example, in China, you have to ask yourself, do
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I really believe what I believe? Am I really ready to give up everything for what
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I believe? And so I think that does happen. And so in an ascetic,
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I don't know if that's a word or not, but in that sort of mindset, this self -deprivation, the more
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I give up, the holier I am. So instead of being persecuted, I'm just going to kind of self -persecute if I could.
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And it really is set up a series of extra biblical laws that at least give me the appearance of godliness.
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So celibacy would be one of those things. I mean, we don't talk a lot positively about the
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Roman Catholic Church. Some people from time to time will like to quote Mother Teresa. One of the reasons
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I don't like to quote Mother Teresa was she was a big fan of asceticism, self -deprivation, to the point where, you know, everybody talks about her ministry in Calcutta.
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What people don't talk about is that she withheld pain -relieving drugs from people.
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Why? Because suffering is next to godliness.
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Suffering brings you closer to God. Suffering is a good thing. So why would you give people pain -relieving drugs?
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Withhold them, because that way they'll be closer to God. But celibacy is not
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God's plan. There's a real practical reason why the Roman Catholic Church preaches or talks about celibacy.
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I mean, a priest, single, why? So that,
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I mean, that started about 1000 or 1030 or so AD, because now without heirs, without a family, when the priest died, everything he had went back to the church, a priest, a cardinal, whatever.
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All of his belongings would go back to the church, which made the church quite wealthy. And plus, if he doesn't have a family in the first place, you could pay him less the whole deal.
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It was good for them all the way around. Not so good for men, maybe not so good for the church as a whole.
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We talked about the fact that they don't even think that sex within a marriage is good, unless the ultimate goal is to have children.
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So really a very low view of that. So overall, we're talking about marriage, we're talking about the reasons for marriage, and one of them is to avoid sin.
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It's one of the reasons the confession lays out for people to get married. Let's look at Ephesians 5 verse 3.
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Ephesians 5 verse 3. Just as an aside, I was talking to an eyeglass person about robots, and there's this idea that robots are going to take over all these jobs and nobody's going to have any jobs.
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All the truck drivers, McDonald's workers, everybody in the service job is going to be out of a job.
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And I looked at him and I said, let me see if I get this straight. So in the future, I'll come in to my optometrist and a robot will examine my eyes.
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I'm okay with that for the most part. Here's the problem. When the robot says,
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Steve, those glasses look great on you. I don't think I'm going to believe that. Or this shirt and this tie are awesome on you.
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I'm not going for that. So I think there's always going to be a place for the human factor. And I was just thinking about that because I thought maybe
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I need a robot reader in here. So I could just say, who would read
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Ephesians 5 verse 3? I will read that, Steve. Okay, thank you. That'd be lovely.
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Maybe we should have Alexa in here. We need more spies. Would somebody read
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Ephesians 5 verse 3, please? Now that's a high standard, right?
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Sexual immorality, all impurity, covetousness, not even named among you, right? It should even be known as something that occurs within the church.
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That word sexual immorality. Somebody like Pastor Bob can tell us what that is, what that word is.
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It is cornea, which is typically fornication.
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But what? Yeah, it can include other things, certainly. I mean, it's any kind of moral uncleanness.
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But it's become kind of accepted in some circles,
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Christian circles, quote, unquote. I'm just kind of surprised that there are a lot of Roman Catholic priests who even when a couple is living together, they'll still do the service.
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And I found that very intriguing. Well, they went through the counseling program. Okay, well, what does that mean?
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So you guys are living together? Yes. Okay, next. So it's not even supposed to be named, let alone approved of in some manner by the church.
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But people will argue, well, hasn't morality changed since the Bible was written? We don't live anymore like they did.
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Well, yeah, morality has changed. God's standard hasn't changed.
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I think maybe the worst excuse I've heard for living together, and I mean, it's it,
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Jen and I were talking about this the other day, it's become like she was talking about some celebrity who said that, you know, they, this couple, they bought a house together.
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And it seemed to them that the next logical step was to get married. And I'm like, I don't know, that's it.
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Call me old fashioned, but it doesn't seem like the next logical step. I mean, it'd be the next logical step if you've been planning it for a while and you bought the house and the wedding is already planned.
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And, you know, you're living separately and all that, but next logical step. The worst excuse
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I think I've heard for living together is we're saving money for our wedding.
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You've already had your wedding. You just want a celebration to kind of call it that because you're already living like you're married.
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So how is the church to view such things? Let's look at 1 Corinthians 5 verses 9 to 13.
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If we're not to even have sexual immorality named in the church, if we're not to be known as a place that tolerates sexual immorality.
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1 Corinthians 5 verses 9 to 13. Now who's had an extraordinary amount of caffeine this morning and could really read like, what is that, five verses?
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Just charged up, ready to go. I guess it would only be me.
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All right. The apostle Paul writes this. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.
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Not at all. Meaning the sexually immoral of this world. In other words, unbelievers. That's okay.
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Go ahead and associate with them or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters.
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Since then, you would need to go out of the world. In other words, if you're not going to associate with anybody who's involved in any of these sins, then you're going to have to be
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Roman Catholic and go to some sanctuary where nobody talks and you don't interact with anyone.
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But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother, a
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Christian, a professing believer. If he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one.
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People say, well, what do we do if somebody's put out of the church and we're to treat them as an unbeliever?
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Well, not to even eat with such a one. What do you do? You just evangelize them.
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You don't have fellowship with them. Verse 12, for what have I to do with judging outsiders?
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Right. They're all sinners. All sin is equal. And we evangelize unbelievers. That's what we do.
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Then he says, is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge those who profess
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Christ, but don't live lives commensurate with their profession?
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God judges those outside. And he says, purge the evil person from among you.
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So how is the view to or how's the judgment church to view these things? How's the church to deal with sexually immoral people that aren't to be named in the church?
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Well, you're to purge the evil person, the sinful person, the unrepentant person from the church.
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Marriage is given to satisfy the God -given desires men and women experience. We're designed that way to have those desires and we're given marriage so that we can fulfill those desires in a way that is not sinful.
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Let's look at first Corinthians chapter seven verses eight and nine. First Corinthians chapter seven verses eight and nine to the unmarried and the widows.
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I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. Paul was an aesthetic, no, he wasn't.
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He's just saying, I, you know, I no longer need to do these things. And if you're unmarried or a widow and you can stay single, good.
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But look at verse nine. But if they cannot exercise self -control, they should marry for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
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He's saying, listen, if you still have these desires, that's okay. Get married.
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We're, we're, I think I was talking with Charlie last week. You know, why is it that we have so many young men that are not maturing properly?
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And in part, I think it's because what Charlie was saying is it's too, it's too easy in the world for men to fulfill their desires without getting married.
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So they have no need therefore to prove themselves professionally or to mature personally, because who cares?
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They don't have to really deal with a wife. They can go out and do whatever they want. And so we have this kind of emotionally,
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I'll just say, well, I don't want to say that this emotionally devolved generation and really kind of a, it's pervasive in our society now, because if you can live sort of a
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Peter Pan lifestyle and get away with it, then you do it. And for too many, it's too easy to do that.
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But the biblical picture is if you have these desires, the right way is to go for a young man to go and win a wife.
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And to do that, he has to be able to provide for her and do all these kinds of things and, and to love her sacrificially.
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And he cannot do that if he's, you know, bent on living his life.
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And I don't know why it's always mom's basement with the Xbox, but basically that's it.
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Thoughts or comments about that before we move on to the next part, seeing no objections.
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The confession says this, it is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who are with judgment to give their consent.
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Now, when you hear that as lawful for all sorts of people to marry, keeping in mind what we talked about last week, that in order to get married, you have to be single in order to get married, you know, at least to another believer, you have to be a believer in order to get married.
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You have to have always been the gender that you currently are. I don't know how else to say that these days.
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You know, gender, by the way, just in case anybody was confused, is not, what do you call it?
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A continuum. It's pretty much male or female.
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In case there was any confusion. It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry.
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What do you think that means? Station in life?
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Yeah. I think certainly there were issues, especially back then, even now, you know, in terms of class, who can marry a royal?
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Who can marry, you know, can you marry somebody above your class, so to speak? I think that's true.
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But I think even more importantly, especially these days, there's no mention of race here.
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Right? There's no restrictions there. Why? Because it's lawful for all sorts of people to marry, regardless of race.
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Race is no barrier, so -called race, ethnicity, no barrier to marriage.
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And the second part there, it's kind of interesting, because it says, who are able with judgment to give their consent?
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People say, well, what about the age of consent? You know, in some states, it's 16.
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I think in some states, is it as low as 14? That makes me kind of want to scratch my hands or something.
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14 seems young. 14 seems young when you have a life expectancy of about 120, is what
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I'm going to say. You know, 14 is young.
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But the idea here isn't so much to set an age, it's to say that they have the capacity to understand what they're entering into.
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Why would you want, you know, for example, when we baptize somebody, we want to make sure that they understand all the implications of getting baptized.
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The first time I was baptized was at the age of 8 in the Mormon church.
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And there is absolutely no way I understood all the implications of that. I didn't even understand all the doctrines of the church, or even most of them.
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And the only reason I was making a profession of faith is because that's where I was all the time, was in the church. But when you give consent to be married, that is a vow for life.
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So you need to understand what you're getting into. And so if there's some form of either mental deficiency or emotional deficiency or something like that, those people should not be getting married.
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The confession goes on to say, yet it is the duty of Christians to marry in the Lord. And therefore, such as profess the true religion should not marry with infidels or idolaters, neither should such as are godly be unequally yoked by marrying such as are wicked in their life or maintain, and you want to write this down, damnable heresy.
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What's the overall idea? Marry a
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Christian, right? I mean, what are the exceptions here? You know, when they say it is the duty of Christians to marry in the
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Lord, in other words, you're a Christian, you ought to marry another Christian, such as profess the true religion.
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Notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say somebody who perfectly agrees with you on every bit of doctrine, but they should not marry with infidels or idolaters.
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And you think, who would do that? Who would marry an idolater or an infidel? How many times have you heard this one?
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Well, he or she is open to the gospel. He or she is interested in the gospel.
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Hear that? I hear that fairly frequently, but typically as what? As kind of a rationale for dating somebody.
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Why would you date someone that you don't intend to marry? You know,
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I would look at this and I would say, this is a pretty good reason not to do what is sometimes referred to as missionary dating.
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I think they may be open to the Lord. What does that really mean? What's the translation of that? I think he or she may be open to the
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Lord. What does it really mean? What's that? They're not believers.
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And I think I can change that person. I could be the greatest evangelist in the world.
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And if I'm dating an unbeliever for however many years, that doesn't mean that person's going to come to Christ.
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What does it mean? If I tell myself, if I convince myself that this unbeliever might come to faith in Christ, what am
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I ultimately going to be doing? Compromising my faith.
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I'm going to be lowering the standard. I'm going to be looking for anything from this person, and I'm also going to be lowering my own standards.
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Why? Because I want to be comfortable with this person because I've set my affections upon them.
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I've decided this is the person that I'm interested in. And so Jesus is out here on the periphery, and I look at him every once in a while, but I'm really focused on this person.
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We could say, not necessarily that I've lost my first love, but I've got a bigger name on another line.
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I've got another priority. Sorry, Lord. You're going to have to hang on for a little while. I want to see if this other person is going to become the person
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I want them to be. It's kind of,
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I mean, when you're removed from it, and that's why I say to people, you know, why am I here? I'm not here to burst people's bubbles.
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But when they come to me, although I like to do that, no, when people come and say, you know, well,
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I'm dating so -and -so, well, is that person a Christian? Maybe. I hope so.
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Could be. They're interested. I don't really, you know, nobody has ever come to me and said, you know,
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I'm interested in this person. They're a wonderful, spiritual, godly person, but I don't really find them attractive.
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But I'd like to find some way to marry them. I've never had that conversation, not even one time.
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I'd like that. I'd like to hear, you know, I'm not really physically attractive to them, but they're such a wonderful human being and a godly saint.
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And, you know, I'd like someday to attain to that level of godliness. So that's the person
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I would like to pursue in marriage. In all my Christian life,
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I've never heard that one time. I do hear, you know, well,
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I think there's room for growth. You know, all kinds of rationale, right? But not that one.
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I wrote this. I said, is he or she a Christian? And then
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I said, should you evaluate that? If you're the single person and you're wanting to date someone else, should you be the one to decide that that person is a
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Christian? And you think to yourself, well, certainly I should be. Okay, and I think there's some truth to that.
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I mean, you have to evaluate it for yourself. But here's what I like to say. You know, you've heard the story or the saying that love is blind, right?
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Well, love is blind. It's also deaf. And it's also dumb. And I don't mean unable to speak,
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I mean dumb. And then I say, but we're here to help, right?
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Why? It's not because I think I know everything or Pastor Mike knows everything or Scott Brown knows everything or Pradeep Tilak knows everything.
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But here's what we do know. We're a little bit older and, but better than anything else, we're detached from the situation.
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When you look at somebody else, you look with the eyes of, I'll just say the eyes of love, you know, the eyes of hope, the eyes of optimism, whatever you want to call it.
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I just call it blinders. You want to believe the absolute best about that person.
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But what you need is somebody who's dispassionate about it, wants your best, but isn't willing to overlook the other person's weaknesses and faults and everything.
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This is what parents are to do, right? I mean, when a young man would come after my daughters and I'd chase him off the lawn with a shotgun.
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Why would, why would some guys get the, the boot and other ones be allowed to pursue?
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You know, why did Jerry and Joey get to marry my daughters? Because as I got to know them and see their faith, listen to them, talk about the
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Lord, watch them pursue their lives and think this could be somebody that could, you know, that could actually not only handle my daughter, which, you know, could be difficult, but, but also, but also love them and lead them in the
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Lord, right? But the person involved doesn't always see the weaknesses of the other person.
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So it's good to have that kind of third party involvement. So with that in mind, let's look at second
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Corinthians six versus 14 to 18. Yes. So, so, so let me interrupt you for a minute or introduce you to one of the other.
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That's true. The blinders can be an advantage in that we overlook their faults, right?
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We're not picking in every little thing along the way. And it's not probably till I like to think a year and a half, two years into the marriage where you just really go, okay, this person, you know, what was
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I thinking? And that's where you have to learn what you're talking, you know, to subjugate your own desires and, and everything and realizing that you're living with a real person.
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And I think that's true, but ultimately that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people are willing to overlook massive problems, including, you know, unbelief in, in order to justify it.
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Yeah. I think, I think we're going to start using Charlie for marital counseling. I like that. I like that.
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I like that optimism. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, you have to put, and that's kind of what we're, what we're getting to right now is we don't want to ever be in a situation where we have to put, you know, our faith on a shelf.
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You know, we talk about elf on a shelf at Christmas. Well, how about having to put Jesus on the shelf? You know, let's not talk about Jesus.
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So let's look at second Corinthians six versus 14 to 18. And this, by the way,
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I have to introduce it this way. This is not primarily to do with marriage, even though people use it with regard to marriage all the time.
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It's a bigger principle than that. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness or what fellowship has light with darkness.
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What accord has Christ with Belial or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?
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And the answer is none, right? These things don't go together. You might as well say oil and vinegar or whatever, you know, oil and water,
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I guess, whatever he's trying to say. These things contrast. They don't go together. What agreement has the temple of God with idols?
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Again, none for we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them and I will be their
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God and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the
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Lord and touch no unclean thing. Then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the
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Lord Almighty. So, I mean, this this principle has to do with business. It has to do with all manner of things, any kind of close relationship that is dependent upon someone else.
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And so the principle does apply to marriage. And here's what
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I would say. If you want to know misery as as a believer, then you should say, well,
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I'm going to date an unbeliever and see what happens, because then as you get closer to them emotionally and you overlook all their faults spiritually and then you go on and marry them, then what do you have?
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You have this situation where the thing that is most precious to you, the faith that you have in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, his word, his people, this other person is indifferent to.
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You love the Lord Jesus. You want to go worship with the people of God on Sunday, all these things that you just love to do.
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And this other person is like, I don't care about that. That doesn't mean anything to me. I don't even understand why you like those people.
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That is probably the hardest thing that there is. And so the the confession says that Christians ought not to do that.
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They should not marry infidels, unbelievers, idolaters, those who worship other gods. But it also says that they shouldn't marry those.
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Who what's the word there? Maintain damnable heresy.
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Well, what can they be talking about there? What's that bad doctrine?
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Really bad doctrine. We'll get to it in just a minute here. Yeah. Horrific doctrine.
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But anyway, the point is Christians. Christians should pursue a another
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Christian in order to marry that person, a believer, a believer, a fellow believer.
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I got my pages out of order, which is why I was like what is going on with my notes? OK, let's look at Galatians 1 8 familiar verse.
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And would somebody read that, please? Let him be accursed.
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Let him be anathema. Now, let's just imagine for a moment that as a
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Christian, I've married a Roman Catholic, that I've married a
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Mormon, that I've married a Seventh -day Adventist, that I've married a
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Jehovah Witness, a Muslim. Paul says, let somebody who has a different gospel be accursed.
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And what have I done? I've married somebody that Paul says should go to hell.
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And in fact, is headed for hell. That's damnable heresy.
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It means heresy that can be condemned, that should be condemned.
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And again, this is something that the confession tells us not to do and the
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Bible tells us not to do. Now, to some of the minutia of marriage, the confession says marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity.
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There's a word you use all the time or affinity forbidden in the word.
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Nor can such incestuous marriages be made lawful by any law of man or consent of parties.
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So as those persons may live together as man and wife, we're heading for this.
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I mean, our civilization is, if I could just say it this way, is becoming less and less civilized.
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All the rules and laws and norms that have existed for millennia are being undone.
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And so we see people marrying themselves. Marrying, I think, some woman in Japan, I think it was, married a building.
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I mean, people are doing bizarre things. I'm sure that people somewhere are marrying animals, you know, their dog or whatever.
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Well, why? Because, first of all, people have lost their minds. But secondly, this idea of marriage has just been so watered down and defiled by our culture that it can mean anything people want it to mean.
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So will we see, and probably somewhere it's already happening, brothers and sisters getting married?
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I think so. I mean, everything that the
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Bible says ought not to happen, people are doing. And we won't go through Leviticus 18, but it gives a long list of all the marriages that should not take place.
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Leviticus 18, beginning of verse 6. And you can read all about it if you care to later.
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Let's look at Mark 6. I mean, people say, well, what's wrong with this?
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I mean, there are, you know, and I was even talking with somebody recently who said, well, what about, you know, the children of Adam and Eve?
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You get a lot of what about questions. What about the children of Noah? You know, how were they able to intermarry and whatnot?
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Well, what's the answer to that? Okay, the genome was far more uncorrupted.
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And the reason for that is because it wasn't so far from the fall, right? It hadn't had so much time to be corrupted by disease and other things.
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And why else was it maybe not so bad?
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Okay, as of yet, there was no prohibition. That comes in Leviticus. That comes later with when Moses writes that all down.
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Okay, so Mark chapter 6, we're well into the time where these things are forbidden by the law of God.
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Mark chapter 6, and I'm going to read beginning in verse 16. But when
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Herod heard of it, he said, John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.
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He's heard of this work of Jesus. John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.
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For it was Herod who had sent and seized John the Baptist and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother
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Philip's wife, because he had married her. That's forbidden in Leviticus 18.
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You can read all about it. For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.
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And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. In other words, his sister -in -law, now his wife, said, put
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John the Baptist to death. But she could not. For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man and kept him safe.
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When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. This is an unbeliever just hearing a preacher and thinking,
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I don't really like what he says, but I like how he says it, and he's a very clever fellow. Verse 21, but an opportunity came when
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Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.
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For when Herodias' daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests.
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And the king said to the girl, now this is his niece, right? Ask me for whatever you wish and I will give it to you.
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And he vowed to her, whatever you ask me, I will give you up to half my kingdom. Name your price.
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And she went out and said to her mother, for what should I ask? And she, being her mother, said, the head of John the
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Baptist. I can't even imagine going in there and asking for that.
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But, and she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me at once the head of John the
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Baptist on a platter. And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests, he did not want to break his word to her.
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So he did it. But here's the point. The point is it was sinful then, it's sinful now.
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It's always sinful because God said it's sinful. The fact that people want to do sinful things doesn't make it okay.
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We have a few minutes to just kind of, are there any questions? If not, then we'll proceed to, yes,
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Anthony. Well, I mean, there are certainly people, you know, healthy as a matter of opinion, right?
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She's in the pink of health. You know, she got a, she went and saw the doctor, she's fine.
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Or it can just mean somebody who's got, you know, good mindset and all those things. But the truth is we all,
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I mean, I'm just thinking about what I call myself healthy. I don't know, that's hard, you know,
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I mean, because we all have baggage, we all have things that we carry around with us in life, you know, from our childhood and whatnot, you know, and I think it's just really a matter of how we handle those kind of things.
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So I understand what you're saying. And I'm like, you know, I wouldn't want, let's put it this way.
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I think there are people who profess Christ and who exude Christ and exude the kind of the joy of being saved.
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And then there are people who profess Christ and don't have much joy.
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And I think it's harder to somehow see Christ in them.
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And I think it would be harder to recommend somebody like that, you know, as a potential mate.
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But I mean,
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I understand. I'm just, I don't know how to measure healthy. You know, I don't, I don't know any other thoughts about that.
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Yeah. I didn't say unlovable. I said unattractive. So that would be bad, right?
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Well, I mean, that's not only unhealthy. I mean, it's kind of, it's problematic, you know? So yeah,
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I mean, there is that. All right. We'll just introduce this here.
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The church, talking about the church. The confession says the Catholic or universal church, which is to define
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Catholic, just means the universal church, the church across the earth, which with respect to the internal work of the spirit and grace of truth, truth of grace, may be called invisible, consists of the whole member of the elect that have been are or shall be gathered into one under Christ, the head thereof.
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And is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. So again, the
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Catholic church, we often use Catholic as shorthand for the
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Catholic church of Rome, right? The Roman Catholic church, which is a denomination within Christendom, but not within Christianity, meaning it is they named the name of Christ, but we would not consider that a valid or a
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Christian church. But the Catholic small c church just means the universal church, the church of all believers everywhere, whether they are
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Presbyterians or Baptists. And that's pretty much it. Oh, sorry. But those who actually profess
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Christ and are Christians and it separates kind of the invisible from the visible church.
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Well, you know, if you're a believer and you're here today, are you invisible? No. And that's not the point of the invisible church just means that we can't see the hearts of people.
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It means that we can't determine by looking at you whether you are saved or not. The invisible church exists substantially within the visible church, but it cannot be identified with it.
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Augustine said that every church is a mixed body. And by that, he wasn't talking about ethnicity or anything else.
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What he meant was that the wheat and the tares exist side by side and we can't know who is which.
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Right. We just preach the gospel indiscriminately and we trust the Lord for the results. It is also possible for a true believer to not be part of the visible church.
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Now, how could a true believer not be part of a visible church? Okay. They could be under persecution and afraid to go to church.
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I think that's a good one. Other thoughts? I think that's probably the main one.
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Sickness would be another one where they simply can't get to a church.
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Okay. Another situation where, you know, maybe they don't even know of a local church.
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Maybe they live in a country that is predominantly Muslim or something like that and they can't really go to it.
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Yeah. They could be also, it's possible for somebody to be a believer and be in a wrong church.
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I think there are probably Christians in the Roman Catholic system that have just been blinded.
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They, you know, they've been told their whole lives that the Protestants are not right and they believe what
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Protestants believe and they don't even know it because they've never experienced anything outside of it. So I think that sort of thing is possible.
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Other thoughts? Okay. Just a little bit more and then we'll close.
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The church consists of those who belong to the Lord, those who have been purchased by him. And the word ecclesia, from which we get ecclesiastical, and that's the word that is most commonly translated church, and it means those who have been called out from the world.
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And it specifically refers to the elect and God calls them out, right? When you get saved, it is
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God removing you, as it were, from the world and saying, you belong to me. That's the picture of the church.
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These are the people who gather together on Sunday morning and especially in Sunday school. You know, if you want to know who the weed are, just look around in this room and then, you know, we'll have the time for, we call it tear time at 1015.
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No, but the idea is that God calls us out and places us in the local body, right?
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The Lord does that. And then we gather together as the church.
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This is what we do. I'll just read this.
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Yeah, sure. From the confession, all persons throughout the world, professing the faith of the gospel and obedience unto
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God by Christ, according unto it, not destroying their own profession by any errors, everting.
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I had actually had to look that up, averting the foundation or on holiness of conversation are and may be called visible saints and of such ought to all particular congregations to be constituted.
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Now, I'm just going to briefly summarize that this way. How do you destroy your own profession?
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Well, to evert something means to turn something inside out. So when it talks about everting the foundations of your profession, it would mean basically showing what's inside of you and showing a heart of unbelief.
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You make the profession, but inside you're an unbeliever. And eventually your sins reveal that.
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And I'm going to, I'm going to leave that there. We'll sins that evidence the fact that you're not actually a
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Christian. So there's a stumper come back ready for that one. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you for the confession. We thank you for the surety of the gospel that we can rely not on our own works, our own efforts, our own holiness for salvation, but we can rely upon the perfections of Christ.
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Lord teach us even with those around us that it is never about our best efforts or their best efforts, our failures or their failures.
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It is the perfection, the perfect life of Jesus Christ. Keep us focused on him, the author and perfecter of our faith.