Baptists & Reformed Theology

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Well, tonight we are in the 13th of 14 lessons, so this is almost the end of our series on church history, examining the creeds and confessions of the church to the ages and why they matter.
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And when I began this series so many weeks ago, I listed 14 individual lessons which we were going to cover regarding the history of the church and the goal of this course, as I mentioned in the beginning, was not to cover every single historical event of the past 2000 years, because that is impossible.
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We cannot look at every single thing that has happened.
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It's beyond our grasp.
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But instead, our goal is to show the clear and consistent testimony of truth which has been preserved down through the ages within the church.
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In the early centuries of the church, the ecumenical councils and creeds bore witness to the truth.
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Unfortunately, however, corruption made its way into the church and as a result, so did a removal of the ability of the church to speak with an ecumenical voice.
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No longer could the church speak as a worldwide church because there was division and corruption which had crept in.
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Last week, we noted that after the Protestant Reformation, denominations began to spread out and fracture.
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And as a result, now there are thousands of churches and many of them claim different types of Christianity.
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But again, as I mentioned last week, the one thing that holds all Protestants together is that we do reject the pope and we reject his authority and we say that we derive the authority which we have solely from the Bible.
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So instead of ecumenical councils providing creeds and affirmations for a worldwide church, we now have a local body of believers which must decide a group or denomination with which it will affiliate, if any at all.
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It's not just that we're saying that you got to find what flavor of Christianity you're a part of, as some have suggested.
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But the goal of the church is not to determine a flavor, but to determine the truth and to seek after the truth and to be aligned with churches that are also seeking the truth.
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This past week or two weeks ago, rather, our church affirmed a decision to join a group called the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals.
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And in doing so, we made a commitment as a church that we're going to stand for truth.
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We're going to stand for reformed theology.
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We're going to stand for the promotion of the gospel within the group called Fire.
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There is also a consistent understanding of baptism and understanding of what we would call and I want to introduce you because some of you might not be familiar with this term, the concept of credo baptism.
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It's interesting, you know, we've throughout this series, we've talked about the word creed.
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The word creed means I believe or a statement of beliefs.
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So credo baptism is another way of saying believers baptism.
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We believe in the baptism of believers, only the baptism of disciples, only those who have come to faith in Jesus Christ.
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The other teaching would be what they may familiar with the other side infant called pedo baptism, typically called pedo baptism.
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Pedo baptism is also known as infant baptism.
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Infant baptism is pedo baptism.
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Believers baptism is credo baptism.
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And we would, as a church, reject pedo baptism as being something that we would not practice.
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We would actually go as far as to say that we would believe that the practice is not biblical, for if we believe that the practice for biblical, we ourselves would practice it, but we don't.
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So as such, we have taken a stand to say that we are not pedo Baptists, but we are credo Baptists.
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We do not baptize a child simply because they are born into a Christian family, but we baptize a person based upon a confession of faith in Jesus Christ.
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As such, we have taken two positions as a church, we have taken the position of being reformed and we have taken the position of being Baptist.
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You might say, well, we're not a part of the Baptist denomination.
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Well, OK, you don't have to be a part of a denomination to say that that's what you are in the sense of that's what we are in in practice, because that's what a Baptist is, a person who believes in credo Baptism.
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We are not Presbyterians.
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We're not Lutherans.
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We are not Episcopalians.
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All of those would practice pedo Baptism or the baptism of infants who are born into a Christian family.
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So in a sense, we have taken the position of being reformed in our theology and Baptistic.
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If you wanted to add this, I see you could say we are Baptistic in our methodology regarding the ordinance of Baptism.
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So based on that tonight, we are going to look at the two documents which historically have been considered reformed Baptist documents.
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And actually, as we will see through this study, they are also the foundations for what is considered to be the modern Baptist movement and the Southern Baptist movement.
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How many of you, most of you are probably familiar, been in a Southern Baptist church sometime in your life, either for a wedding or funeral or something.
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Most of us have attended a Southern Baptist church.
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Some of us maybe even were members there.
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I went to a Southern Baptist seminary and graduated from there.
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So we all probably have some familiarity with Southern Baptist teaching and Southern Baptist churches.
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Here's the interesting thing, though, and this is the thing why this lesson itself will stand alone amongst the other lessons that we've done in the series.
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Yes, this is part of a longer series, but also this lesson is going to demonstrate that the history of the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as the history of Baptists in general, go back to reformed theology and have their roots there in.
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And that's, I think, an important thing that has been abandoned.
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If you talk to a lot of people today who are in Southern Baptist churches and you talk to them about reformed theology, they'll say, we don't believe that we don't we don't teach that.
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And you say, well, you might not teach it now.
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You may have deviated, but this was the foundation out of which you grew.
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And this is, to me, beyond dispute that the Southern Baptist church grew out of.
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Reformed theology, so we're going to go tonight, we're going to look at two documents, the two documents are the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and then we are going to look at the abstract of principles.
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So let's begin with the 1689 confession.
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Sometimes we call this the two LBC.
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So if you want to shorten it, if you don't want to say 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith every time you say it, you can say the two LBC and the two LBC stands for the second London Baptist Confession.
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The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith is one of the most important reformed documents in the English speaking world.
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It was preceded and highly influenced by two other important reformed documents.
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The first one is the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Savoy Declaration of Faith.
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That is the two documents that preceded it.
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The Westminster was in 1646.
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The Savoy was in 1658 and then you have the two LBC in 1689.
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So the second London Baptist Confession was highly influenced by the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration.
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It is referred to as the second London Baptist Confession because there is a first confession.
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You wouldn't call it the second if you didn't have a first, obviously.
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Right.
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So there is one that preceded it and it preceded both of these documents.
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The first Baptist Confession, the first Baptist Confession was in 1644.
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So it preceded both the Westminster and the Savoy Declaration.
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However, once these two were written, it was determined that this one was sorely lacking.
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When when these two very powerful documents were written and published, the Baptists looked at what they had and realized that it was it was quite anemic when it comes to the to the breadth and depth of the other documents.
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So an expanded version was created in 1677.
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I know I'm throwing a lot of dates at you, but I'm trying to help you by putting them on the board.
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The first Baptist Confession was written in 1644.
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Westminster Confession in 1646.
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The Savoy Declaration was in 1658.
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A second confession was written in 1677.
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However, at the time, it was illegal to promote it because it was illegal to have it.
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So they did not promote it at the time.
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And in 1689, the Toleration Act was passed.
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And as a result, they took the document that they wrote in 1677 and they added a new front page that called it the 1689 London Confession of Faith, because now here it is as a document that can be legally shown.
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They had one in 44.
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They revised it in 77 and in 89, it became the official document of the English Baptists.
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During this time in history, English Baptists were separated into two categories.
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This is an important part of Baptist history.
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When Aaron gets more into Baptist history, I think he's going to spend a little more time with this, but I do want to share with you just sort of just to sort of give you kind of an important historical background.
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The general Baptists and the particular Baptists were the two divisions among the English Baptists.
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General Baptists, that should be an N, the general Baptists had been influenced by Arminianism and the term general was how they saw the atonement of Christ.
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You know, we talked about particular atonement or limited atonement.
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Well, they saw the atonement of Christ as being general, as being something that was in general for all mankind.
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So you can see what the particular would be particular redemption or particular atonement that the atonement of Christ was made for believers or the elect.
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So particular atonement would have been or particular Baptists rather would have been reformed in their understanding.
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So the general Baptists were the Arminians, the particular Baptists were the reformed particular Baptists were the ones who were affirmed in the 1689 confession.
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The 1689 confession affirms reformed theology.
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It does not affirm general Baptist or Arminian theology.
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The particular Baptists were then responsible for creating churches and colonial America.
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In 1707, the Philadelphia Association was established in the United States, the Philadelphia Baptist Association.
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The 1689 confession, this confession.
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Was adopted by the Philadelphia Association and the 1689 Baptist confession became the Philadelphia confession with the addition of two extra chapters.
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So they had everything that the 1689 confession had with the addition of two extra chapters, chapter 23 on singing praise is the name of that chapter and chapter 31 on the laying on of hands.
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So those are the two chapters that were added.
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And if you look at the Philadelphia confession and the 1689 confession, they will read exactly the same, except for those two points where the Philadelphia Association added two additional chapters.
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This 1707 was the Philadelphia Association was established.
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It is easily demonstrated that the earliest Baptist churches in America were reformed in their theology, and this theology would become the ancestor of the Southern Baptist Convention, which we will see expressed further in just a moment when we get to the abstract of principles.
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However, it is sometimes argued that the ancestors of the Baptists were actually the Anabaptists.
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Some of you may have even heard that, that the Anabaptists are the ancestors of the modern Baptists, like the Southern Baptists and others.
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Now, let me answer that, because there are people who make that claim.
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There is no doubt that the Anabaptists and their ideas regarding the baptism of believers only were influential on early Baptist history.
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That is no doubt.
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But there is not a direct line between the Anabaptists and the modern Baptist church.
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The modern Anabaptists are the Mennonites, the Amish and the Hutterites.
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That is the modern Anabaptist movement.
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The interesting point is that the English Baptists, the ones who were who were doing all this, the English Baptists made a point to separate themselves from the Anabaptists because the Anabaptists at the time were considered the radicals.
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The English Baptists said that they had derived their view of baptism from Scripture and they made a point to separate themselves from the Anabaptists who were not only Baptistic in their theology, but the Anabaptists had a very strong view on the responsibility of the church to be absolutely pacifistic.
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So even to today, Amish and Mennonites and others will not will not serve in the armed forces and things like that because of their belief and commitment to pacifism.
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So English Baptists made the point to include in their document of faith their position on theology of man and of God and of sin and of salvation.
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And all of these things are things which would we would consider today to be reformed.
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And of course, they were themselves reformed.
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I want to share with you two statements from the London Baptist Confession of Faith.
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I'm sorry, not two statements.
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I want to share with you a couple of statements, but I want to share with you.
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I want you just to hear these in case you're wondering, well, is the is the is the second London Baptist confession really reformed or that were they really reformed or am I exaggerating? Let me read to you chapter five, verse one of the London Baptist Confession of Faith.
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God, the good creator of all things and his infinite power and wisdom upholds, directs, organizes and governs all creatures and things from the greatest to the least by his perfectly wise and holy providence to the end for which they were created.
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He governs in accordance with his infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable counsel of his own will to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, infinite goodness and mercy.
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That's exactly as we would describe the providence of God.
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Now, chapter eight and verse five gets a little bit more clear.
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The Lord Jesus has fully satisfied the justice of God by his perfect obedience and his once for all sacrifice, which he offered up to God through the eternal spirit.
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He has procured reconciliation and has purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those whom the father has given to him.
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Again, that is a statement of particular redemption.
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It goes on in verse six to say, although the price of redemption was not actually paid by Christ till after his incarnation, yet its value, efficacy and benefits were communicated to the elect in all ages from the beginning of the world.
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There's the word elect and how Christ's benefits of his redemption affects both past and forward.
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This was accomplished through those promises, types and sacrifices in which he was revealed and presented as the seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's head and the lamb slain from the beginning of the world.
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For he is the same yesterday and today and forever.
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Verse eight says this to all those for whom Christ has obtained eternal redemption.
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He certainly and effectually applies and communicates this redemption, making intercession for them.
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He unites them to himself by his spirit.
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He reveals to them the mystery of salvation in and by the word he persuades them to believe and obey, controlling their hearts by his word and spirit.
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And he overcomes all their enemies by his almighty power and wisdom, using methods and ways which are perfectly consistent with his wonderful and unsearchable providence.
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All this by free and absolute grace without any foreseeing condition in them to obtain it.
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That is huge.
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That's making a separation.
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Because what does the Arminian say? God chooses you, but only by seeing what you're going to do first.
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God chooses you based on what you're going to do.
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And they said that is not what we teach.
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Finally, they have a whole chapter called Free Will, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention what they say in regard to the freedom of the will.
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Chapter nine, God has provided the human will by nature with liberty and power to act upon choice.
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It is neither forced nor determined by any intrinsic necessity to do good or evil in his state of innocence.
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Adam had the freedom and power to will and to do what was good and well-pleasing to God.
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But he was unstable so that he might fail or fall from this condition.
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The human race, through the fall into a state of sin, has completely lost all ability of will to perform any spiritual good accompanying salvation in our natural state.
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We are altogether opposed to spiritual good and dead in sin.
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We are not able by our own strength to convert ourselves or even to prepare ourselves for conversion.
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Verse four, when God converts sinners and transfers them into the state of grace, he frees them from their natural bondage to sin and by his grace alone, he enables them freely to will and to do what is spiritually good.
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Nevertheless, because of their remaining corruption, they do not perfectly nor exclusively will what is good, but also will what is evil.
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Only in the state of glory will our wills be made perfectly and permanently free to do good alone.
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So again, what is the Second Lenten Baptist Confession of Faith say? Man was created in the garden with a free will.
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He fell and as a result, his posterity, all human beings fell into sin.
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And as a result, we are now born in a condition of sin.
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We're born in moral inability.
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And until God grants us the ability to do good towards him, we cannot do good towards him.
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And of course, that includes even the coming to Christ, which necessitates a pre act of grace on behalf of God.
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So the Second Lenten, the Second Lenten Confession of Faith is a purely and completely reformed document, without doubt.
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It's not a perfect document.
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No creed of the past is perfect.
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Every confession of faith can be picked apart to the point of finding some kind of something that we would disagree with.
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But I would argue this.
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I would argue that the two LBC most clearly testifies to what our understanding of the scripture would be, because it most clearly testifies to what God has done in salvation through Christ, what man is under sin in the fall of Adam, who God is, how God works and what the church is responsible for in regard to our working out of our salvation.
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The Second Lenten Baptist Confession is not a very long document, but it is too long for us to go through all through tonight.
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You wouldn't want to have me sit here and just read it all to you.
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So I encourage you.
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Since Google does exist, as we've already seen, take the time, go into your search engines, type in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, look at it, read it and study it.
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It is worth your time and effort to do so.
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Now, having said all that, I do want to switch to a document which we will read in its entirety.
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We didn't read the whole Second Lenten Confession because of time, but we are now going to switch to a much shorter document, a document known as the abstract of principles.
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So let me clear my board here and we're going to switch to the abstract of principles.
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The abstract of principles was the first statement of faith which was ever endorsed by the Southern Baptists.
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Somebody said, well, why do we care what the Southern Baptists thought? Well, here's why I think this is important.
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Maybe this will help you understand why this and this lesson is so important to me.
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Having gone to a Southern Baptist school, I was taught from my professors.
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People think I learned reformed theology in school.
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I did not.
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I was actually taught against it in the seminary that I went to.
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I am a rebel.
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This is why I haven't been asked to come back and teach.
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I have a doctorate from the school.
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You'd think they might invite me to teach an adjunct class or come in and teach some type.
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They haven't invited me back.
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I've been blackballed.
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I'm not popular among my peers because of my views on reformed theology.
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It's fine with me.
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I don't mind being unpopular.
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It's it's it's worked for me so far.
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But the reality is this is the thing that bothers me the most is the men who I stood under and I still love to death and I think are godly men.
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I think they're wrong on this issue, but I think they're godly men.
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I would never speak ill of them.
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But I do think on this issue, they're very confused because where they would deny being reformed in their theology, their history says otherwise and their history so loudly says otherwise that to me it is it is something that I feel the necessity to proclaim, to say, look at history, look at what the truth is.
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And so we look at the history of the abstract principles.
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This is the first, as I said, statement of faith which was ever endorsed by the Southern Baptists.
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It was commissioned by the first president of Southern Baptist Seminary, which was who, Richard? James, James, James Pettigrew Boyce was the first president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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He commissioned the writing of this statement of faith.
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It was written by Basil Manley, Jr.
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So the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, by the way, this is where Aaron is in school.
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Now, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, it actually opened in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina.
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It moved to Kentucky later on, but that is where it opened.
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It opened under the authority of James Pettigrew Boyce and Basil Manley, of course, writing this statement of faith.
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The fundamental laws of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary were written in 1858 and in them is contained the following statement.
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I want to read this to you.
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And I quote, Every professor of the institution, speaking of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, every professor of the institution shall be a member of a regular Baptist church.
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By the way, regular Baptists are what the particular Baptists became known as.
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There was the regular Baptist and they became that because the general Baptist basically went out of vogue and it became the particular Baptist were the regular Baptist.
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So anyway, moving on, every professor of the institution shall be a member of a regular Baptist church and all persons accepting professorship in the seminary shall be considered by such acceptance, acceptance as engaging to teach in accordance with and not contrary to the abstract of principles herein laid down, end quote.
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So if you are a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, you have to sign this document and you are forbidden from teaching outside of this document.
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And guess what? It's still that way today.
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Every professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, even to today, 2014, still has to sign the abstract of principles.
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I would say that there is a mixture of four and five pointers.
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There are debates.
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I don't think that the I don't think that there is really a lot of division, though, among them.
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Guys like Al Mohler are clearly five point.
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He'll clearly call himself a five pointer.
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And he's the president of the school now.
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You familiar with Al Mohler? He's a great guy and he's clearly that way.
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But as I said, there are some who would who would identify themselves as four pointers.
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But typically the document stands very much in line with the five points.
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So what we're going to do, I've given you this.
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We're going to read every one of these.
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There's only 20.
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There's there's there's only 20 of them.
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No, I'm sorry.
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Yeah, 20.
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Yeah, there's there's 20 statements here, 20 statements of faith.
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We're going to read every one of them.
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And I honestly believe and I know I may be building this up too much, but I honestly believe this to be one of the absolute best statements of faith that's ever been penned.
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I think Manley's Manley's writing of this was so masterful.
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I just I find very little with it that I would have any issue with at all.
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But my again, my point tonight is not just to hold it up as a great document to study, but is to say, look at what was taught and look at what is still taught by the largest Southern Baptist seminary in America.
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And yet the churches, so many of them don't teach this.
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But this is what and this is why so many of the so many Southern Baptist churches are dividing now, because the seminary is putting out men who teach these things.
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And they're going into churches that don't want to hear the truth, and so churches are dividing.
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You and I know of some churches that this is happening.
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Men are coming out of these seminaries and they're preaching the truth and the people are so committed to their traditions.
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They don't want to hear it.
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But listen, as we will go through, I know they're printed kind of small.
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I if you got to bring a little closer to you, there were 30 of them.
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I tried to fit it all in one sheet here.
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In regard to the scriptures, the scriptures of the Old and New Testament were given by inspiration of God and are the only sufficient, certain and authoritative rule of all saving knowledge, faith and obedience in that such a simple but yet powerful statement.
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I think it's so good.
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Number two, God, there is but one God, the maker, preserver and ruler of all things, having in and of himself all perfections and being infinite in them all and to him all creatures owe the highest love, reverence and obedience.
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Number three, the Trinity.
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God has revealed to us as father, son and Holy Spirit, each with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence or being more that simplifies it.
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But it really does express the truth.
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Providence here is where it begins to express more of the so far, so so good.
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No one would argue in any Baptist church.
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I know the first three where they would all agree from number four on is where it begins to really express the reformed theology.
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Number four, Providence, God from eternity decrees or permits all things that come to pass and perpetually upholds, directs and governs all creatures and all events, yet so as not to destroy the free will and responsibility of intelligent creatures.
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People say reformed people don't believe in free will.
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Well, we do.
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We believe you're free as in accordance with your nature.
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I've said this many times.
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You're free.
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God's free.
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God is more free than you are.
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When your freedom runs into God's freedom, you lose.
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Yeah, you've heard me say that because I said all the time, you know, people say you don't believe in free will.
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No, you don't understand the will of man.
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That's the problem.
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Man's will is bound by his sin.
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But don't tell me I don't believe in the will of man.
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I absolutely do.
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So to move on, it goes on to say number five, the big one, the election.
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Election is God's eternal choice of some persons unto eternal life, not because of merit in them, but because of his mere mercy in Christ and consequence of which choice they are called, justified and glorified.
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That's clear.
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I mean, it's so concise, but yet so clear the fall of man.
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God originally created man in his own image and free from sin, but through the temptation of Satan, he transgressed the command of God and fell from his original holiness and righteousness, whereby his posterity inherit a nature corrupt and wholly opposed to God and his will are under condemnation.
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And as soon as they are capable of moral action, become actual transgressors.
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That's actually pretty deep because it's saying we we inherit a nature from Adam, which is sinful.
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And I see this.
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I see it in my daughter, Sonny.
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Jennifer and I have a little, you know, we tell, you know, babies, they're vipers in a diaper, man.
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They really are.
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They'll scream and shout and hit even at 18 months old, the fall down, scream and hit.
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It's an it's their nature.
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It's within them.
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And are you saying your daughter's a sinner? Yeah, yeah.
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That little baby right there has the same nature within her.
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And I see it there.
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As I said, they're viper in a diaper, man.
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God makes them small so they can't kill us.
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And he makes them cute so we don't kill them because that no, look at it.
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Look at it.
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Yeah, I think it was John MacArthur who said it this way.
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He said, if I and I could be wrong, I could be quoting him off on this.
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Basically, he said, if a grown up human being have the disposition of an infant, he would be a murderer because he would have no control over his own desires and wills.
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But he'd have all the strength of a full grown person.
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Could you imagine a full grown person with the disposition of an 18 month old child? They would be it would be it would be a murderer.
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They would they would they would have no sense to their own self.
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It's just.
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But it's interesting because he says it says in this document that as soon as they are capable of moral action, they become actual transgressors.
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There is a point at which my child as a baby does not understand her actions as moral actions yet.
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There will come a day when she does understand her actions as moral actions and she will go from being not only a sinner by nature, she'll go to becoming a sinner by choice.
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That's why I say all people are sinners by nature and by choice, because when we have the capacity to make the moral decision, we make the wrong one.
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We because of our nature being sinful, we make that sinful decision when we have that moral capability.
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Again, this document is is is is concise, but it's powerful.
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Moving on just for time.
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Number seven, the mediator, Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, is the divinely appointed mediator between God and man, having taking upon himself human nature yet without sin.
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He perfectly fulfilled the law, suffered and died upon the cross for the salvation of sinners.
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He was buried and rose again on the third day and ascended to his father at whose hand he ever liveth to make intercession for his people.
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He is the only mediator, the prophet, priest and king of the church, the sovereign of the universe.
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There is, of course, they're not a exact statement of limited atonement.
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It could be read, but it simply says he died for sinners.
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And we would argue, of course, that he died for the elect who are all sinners.
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Regeneration, this is, again, hugely important.
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Regeneration is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit who quickeneth the dead and trespasses and sins, enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the word of God and renewing their whole nature so that they love and practice holiness.
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It is the work of God's free and special grace alone.
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Number nine, repentance, repentance is an evangelical grace wherein a person being by the Holy Spirit made sensible of the manifold evil of his sin, humbled, humbled himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it and self abhorrence with a purpose and endeavor to walk before God so as to please him in all things.
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I like the first statement that repentance is an evangelical grace.
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I remember having a conversation with a young man who I said, you know, repentance is a gift from God.
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And he said, no, it's not.
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Repentance is what we do.
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Now, repentance is something that God gives us the ability to do.
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In fact, that's what the Bible says, that we are to to be gracious to people when we share the gospel with them, because God may grant them repentance, which leads to eternal life.
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That repentance is a gift.
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You know, the ability is not within ourselves.
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Faith.
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Number 10, saving faith is the belief on God's authority of whatsoever is revealed in his word concerning Christ, accepting and resting upon him alone for justification and eternal life.
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It is it is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit and is accompanied by all other saving graces and leads to a life of holiness.
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It is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit.
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So repentance is a gift of grace and faith is wrought in the heart by the spirit.
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So far, again, it continues to say what we have what we have said all along, and that is that it is all a gift of God's justification.
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Number 11 is God's gracious and full acquittal of sinners who believe in Christ from all sin through the satisfaction that Christ has made, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but on account of the obedience and satisfaction of Christ, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith.
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I imagine there wouldn't be a whole lot of disagreement on that one among among most Baptists even today.
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Sanctification.
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This is an important one.
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Those who have been regenerated are also sanctified by God's word and spirit dwelling in them.
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The sanctification is progressive through the supply of divine strength, which all saints seek to obtain, pressing after a heavenly life and cordial obedience to all Christ's commands.
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I like the phrase progressive there.
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Again, this isn't really so much a reformed understanding as it is just the right biblical understanding, which which is that sanctification is that us being conformed to the image of Christ.
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And it's not something that happens immediately.
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And it's not something that happens at one magical time, as believed by the Wesleyans that they have.
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How many of you ever heard the phrase the second blessing? Wesleyans believe that you are saved, justified of your sins, and at some point later you get a second blessing where you're sanctified.
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And they do believe in a a a a sinless perfection which accompanies that sanctification.
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They believe that you can live a life that is without sin, at least practically.
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And so they believe in you're saved.
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And then at some point in the future, you're sanctified.
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And I taught this on Sunday to our young people because I was showing them the belief in Wesleyanism is, you know, you get saved and then at some point you get the second blessing and you're sanctified.
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Whereas within the Bible and reformed theology, we teach that you are saved.
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And then the process of sanctification is this kind of thing.
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Yeah, you're still a sinner, but you're you're you're well, they do.
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Wesley taught a holiness view that you could become perfectly holy.
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Absolutely.
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Well, Methodists are Wesleyan that teach that.
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Oh, you mean, OK, I thought I thought you were saying there's not many that believe and teach that there there there there are those who do believe and teach this.
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But it is not the popular view.
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In fact, recently I was sitting at dinner with a with a our website guy and he and me and Chris Belcher were having dinner and we were talking about churches and he brought up the fact that he brings his children to a Wesleyan church, not for church, but for homeschool co-op.
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And Chris said, well, what's a Wesleyan church? Never heard of it.
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And I began to express this.
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I said, well, Wesleyans believe in the teachings of John Wesley.
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John Wesley was an Arminian.
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He was actually the the he was a very strong Arminian.
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His perspective on prevenient grace still stands as one of the one of the perspectives that people hold to.
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And I said, and one of the things about his theology is they believe in a certain type of perfectionism, holiness.
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In fact, the Holy Club was something that that he was a part of.
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George Whitfield was a part of.
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George Whitfield was reformed, which is interesting that they had that relationship.
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I talk too fast.
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I know.
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But but anyway, the point of the matter is I was saying all this and the guy beside me who takes his kids to the Wesleyan church, he was going, what are you talking about? And I said, well, this is what they historically have taught.
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He said they don't teach that no more.
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He said they're very liberal.
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But it's just funny how things change.
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This is the foundational part of what they're teaching was.
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But he said he said he said the church we go to this this this co-op, the Wesleyan church, very, very liberal.
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And he said, well, they have a lot of things.
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Huh.
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Well, I would say it was I would say was mistaken.
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I have a lot of affection for Wesley, even though I would disagree with his theology on a lot of areas.
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I think he was a godly man.
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I don't think that you this is where I think a lot of people misunderstand me.
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They tend to think that I think that just because somebody doesn't share my particular theological view on everything that I think that they're damnable heretics, that it's not the truth when it comes to Wesley Whitfield, George Whitfield, a man who I thoroughly respect.
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He was asked once about Wesley, he said, do you believe that you will see Wesley in heaven? And George Whitfield said no, because he will be so much closer to the throne of grace than I will.
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So that's a risk.
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That's a level of respect that George Whitfield had for Wesley.
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So I think of it as, yeah, I think he was wrong on that.
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I think he was mistaken.
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But, you know, we all have the capacity for error.
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Do I think it's a serious error? Yeah.
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But I don't think that it's enough for me to say Wesley wasn't a Christian.
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I think Wesley was mistaken on this.
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Yeah.
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And like I said, I I have a lot of respect for Wesley and I have a lot of respect for Whitfield.
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And knowing the respect that Whitfield had for Wesley, it adds to my respect for Wesley.
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Does that make sense? OK, so.
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So, yeah, I see.
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Well, let me we have just a few left, I want to read these to you and then we'll close.
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I know time is eluding us.
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Perseverance of the saints, those whom God has accepted in the beloved and sanctified by his spirit, will never totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere to the end.
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And though they may fall through neglect and temptation and to sin whereby they grieve the spirit, impair their graces and comforts, bring repoach on the church and temporal judgments on themselves, yet they shall be renewed again unto repentance and be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.
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That is the view that just continue to hold.
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I don't know any Baptist that would argue against that, that salvation is once for all.
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It's not something that's lost and gained and lost and gained and lost and gained.
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The church, the Lord Jesus is the head of the church, which is composed of all his true disciples, and in him is invested supremely all power for its government, according to his commandment, Christians are so associate are to associate themselves in particular societies or churches.
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And to each of these churches, he has given needful authority for administrating that order, discipline and worship, which he has appointed the regular offices of a church or bishops or elders and deacons.
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Baptism, baptism is an ordinance of the Lord Jesus obligatory upon every believer, wherein he is immersed in water in the name of the father and of the son of the Holy Spirit as a sign of his fellowship with the death and resurrection of Christ, of remission of sins and of his giving himself up to God to live and walk in newness of life.
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It is prerequisite to church fellowship and to participation in the Lord's Supper.
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That is what we teach.
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Why don't every Sunday I say, if you have if you believe in Lord Jesus Christ and you have been baptized in the name of the father and of the son, don't I say that every Sunday, if you believe and have been baptized, it's a prerequisite to the table.
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I would say baptism is a prerequisite to the church membership, but well, fellowship within the church at this time in history would have been a membership within the church that would have been understood as being not not just coming to church, but being a person who is a part of the church, a visible part of the body that is the local church that to be a part of the body.
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If you have not been baptized, that is a prerequisite to membership.
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That's the same way here.
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I mean, if you've never been baptized, then we would request your baptism prior to you joining church.
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That would be part of.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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The Lord's Supper.
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The Lord's Supper is an ordinance of Jesus Christ to be administered with the elements of bread and wine and to be observed by his churches till the end of the world.
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It is in no sense a sacrifice that is a direct response to Rome.
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It is in no sense a sacrifice, but is designed to commemorate his death, to confirm the faith and other graces of Christians and to be a bond pledge and renewal of their communion with him and of their church fellowship.
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Again, I find no fault with this is exactly as I would teach it again.
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I'm not saying this document is perfect.
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I'm saying for me, this is how I would teach this.
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The Lord's Day.
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The Lord's Day is a Christian institution for regular observance and should be employed in exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private, resting from worldly employments and amusements, works of necessity and mercy only accepted.
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This is a pretty simple way of understanding that Sunday is for worship and rest.
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It's not for work and going about doing things that are frivolity.
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It's it's it's a it's a solemn day.
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It's a day of worship and rest.
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Eighteen, liberty of conscience.
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God alone is lord of the conscience and he has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his word or not contained in it.
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Civil magistrates being ordained of God's objection and all lawful things commanded by them ought to be yielded by us in the Lord, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
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We have liberty so far as the scripture allows and also government.
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Allows in the sense that we have responsibility to be good citizens, you know, to do to follow the law.
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Number 19, the resurrection, the bodies of men after death return to dust, but their spirits return immediately to God, the righteous to rest with him, the wicked to be reserved under darkness to the judgment at the last day, the bodies of all dead, both just and unjust, will be raised.
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And finally, the judgment God hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world by Jesus Christ when everyone shall receive according to his deeds, the wicked shall go into everlasting punishment, the righteous and everlasting life.
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Again, I look at this and I say, you know what? It's not perfect, but boy, is it powerful.
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And I want to conclude tonight with a quote from.
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A man who most of you have heard of, I'm sure all of you have heard of me talk about him from time to time, a man by the name of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
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If you don't know who Spurgeon was, Spurgeon was a Baptist, he was an English Baptist, he was reformed in his theology of that.
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There is no doubt he called himself clearly said he said he used Calvin's name very specifically in his theology.
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Remember that night we read at the at the elders meeting from one of his sermons that there is no gospel other than that which is commonly known as Calvinism.
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And it's it's simply biblical theology.
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He's very clear.
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But this is what he says about the sixteen eighty nine confession.
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And remember, the abstract of principles is simply a distilling down of the 1689 confession.
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So you have the larger confession and then the the the the smaller statement of faith, which is the abstract.
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This is what he said.
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And I wanted to close tonight with this because, you know, if there's anyone respected in Baptist history, it's Charles Spurgeon.
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And this is what he had to say.
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And I quote, This ancient document is the most excellent epitome of the things most surely believed among us.
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It is not issued as an authoritative rule or code of faith whereby you may be fettered, but as a means of edification and righteousness.
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It is an excellent, though not inspired, expression of the teaching of those holy scriptures by which all confessions are to be measured.
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We hold to the humbling truths of God's sovereign grace in the salvation of lost sinners.
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Salvation is through Christ alone and by faith alone, end quote.
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So he certainly spoke very highly of the London confession and in the London confession and in the abstract of principles, we have together two documents from history which stand the test of time in regard to the faith that we continue to stand upon as a church.
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Now, next week is our final lesson in it.
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We are going to be addressing some of the major events of the last hundred years.
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So I look forward to all of you being here as we there's a lot that has happened in the last hundred years.
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So I look forward to you all being here for that study.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for this time that we've had to examine these creeds and confessions together.
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And I do pray that you would use tonight as a time wherein we are drawn closer to you by a better understanding of the faith that we have inherited from your word and from your very spirit.
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We thank you.
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We praise you.
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We give you all glory and honor in Jesus name.
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We pray.
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Amen.