Reformation Day Special Episode: The Church Bible Study Session

The Church as the Pillar and Ground of Truth

This year, our podcast happens to be published on Reformation Day, October 31st. We wanted to take advantage of this opportunity and present to you a special episode commemorating the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to Wittenberg Castle Church.

To do so, we're presenting you with Session 9 from our study, The Church, Her Nature, Authority, Purpose, and Worship. In this session, Dr. Jeffrey Johnson is before Martin Luther's home in Germany to discuss the teachings of the true Christian church.

We pray it's a blessing to you, and if you want to see more from the study, you can click the link in the description below. Also for Reformation Day, a ring of discount on The Church, Pillar and Ground of the Truth.

Documentary.

You can see a link to that in the description below.

The three marks of the church are unity, purity, and verity. And we need to remember that these three marks go together. In fact, you can't have the first two of unity and purity without the third one, verity.

That is, truth is vital for the very existence of the church. The church doesn't exist without the truth, and this is why the church is called the Pillar and Ground of Truth. Churches are to be a school, a place where we learn about God, learn about God's Word.

Teaching and preaching the Word of God is the fundamental purpose of the church. The great commission is to go into all the world and make disciples, and part of making disciples is teaching. So if the church is not teaching and preaching and explaining this, the church is failing its main objective.

The church shouldn't be hiding from what the Bible teaches, but should be proud of what the Bible teaches, not ashamed of one jot or one tittle of the Word of God. But sadly, churches are now embarrassed about the Word of God, or they at least want to minimize it and put doctrine on the lower shelf, or put doctrine in the attic, where it's not about doctrine, it's about worshiping God.

It's not about the truth. It's not about theology as much as it is about giving people a worship experience. But when churches put more on experiences than they do the Word of God, then the church is on a slippery slope away from pleasing the Lord, away into, I would believe, into liberalism.

And once you start denying the Word of God or minimizing the Word of God, you cease to be pleasing God. And I think there are several reasons why churches no longer are proud of the truth, no longer are publishing to the world what they believe.

We are seeing a day where churches no longer want to be identified as a Lutheran church, or an Episcopal church, or a Methodist church, or a Baptist church, or a Presbyterian church, because that limits maybe who would attend the church.

So we need churches that are more interdenominational, or churches that are not going to limit who may attend, thus they're not willing to broadcast what they believe about baptism, broadcast what they believe about church polity, broadcast about what they believe about the Trinity or the nature of Jesus, or even the doctrine of salvation.

These important doctrines are being minimized. And I think there are several reasons for that. One, I think there's simply a lot of indifference today. Christians assume, wrongly, that all churches believe the same.

And what determines what many Christians will decide on what church to choose is not what the church believes, not their confession of faith, but the programs they offer. Will my kid like this church?

Will there be something to offer the college-age students? That's what determines, in many cases, why people choose this or that church. And part of it is that people just don't care about theology. Sadly, it's just something that's not a concern for a lot of church-going people.

They assume all churches believe the same, and that's okay, but what's important is other things. But this is just people not caring. But if there's one thing we all, as Christians, should care about, it's the Word of God.

We should care about important doctrines. We should care about the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man, the doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of the church. Should be very important for every Christian, not just for theologians, not just for the scholar, but every Christian should have a vital interest in the things of God, in the Word of God.

The Need for Confessions Against Error and Indifference

But people just are not interested. It's indifference. But also there's this ignorance out there where people just assume that a confession of faith is not that important. You've heard people say, I have no creed but the Bible.

I just believe the Bible. I don't need man's confessions. I don't need creeds. This sounds, in a way, it sounds wise and pious because I'm going to just believe this. This is my authority. And it is true.

This is the only authority, the Bible, the Word of God is the only authority we must believe even if it doesn't make sense to us or even if we don't understand it. We believe it because it's a divine authority.

In every human document, we must not believe until we understand it. Not only that we understand it, but we're convinced that that document is a clear expression of the teaching of this authoritative book.

But this idea that no creed but the Bible is a misunderstanding because every person has a creed. You have a belief and either your belief is based upon the Word of God or it's a belief based upon your own opinion or someone else's opinion.

You cannot not have an opinion about the doctrines of God. So either you're a good theologian or a poor theologian, but you are a theologian. The great Baptist B .H. Carroll said this, There never was a man in the world without a creed.

What is a creed? A creed is what you believe. So you believe something. So you need to have a creed, a confession of statement that is derived from this Word. But there's a third reason why churches are minimizing doctrine today.

And I believe it's just merely pragmatism, being inclusive. We don't want to shut off anyone. And there's a sense that that's good. Everyone should be welcomed into the assembly of the saints. There's no discrimination when it comes to inviting people to the church.

One advertisement I heard on the radio simply stated this, We as a church do not want to tell you what to believe. We want to help you find your best beliefs. Well, that's just pragmatic mysticism. That's just pragmatic relativism.

The Bible is authoritative. The Word of God is not worried about your feelings. It's not worried about what you want to be true or what's your best beliefs. The Word of God is God's Word. And it's the commission of the church to properly, accurately, unashamedly proclaim it.

Not just the doctrines that people want to hear, but the whole counsel. Proclaim the glories of heaven and also proclaim the woes and the dangers and the scariness of hell. We must proclaim the whole counsel of God.

Mysticism, Experience, and Sound Worship

But I believe the biggest reason churches are minimizing doctrine today, is not just for pragmatic reasons, not just for ignorance and indifference, but I think there's a rise in mysticism. Mysticism is seeking to find God independent of the truth.

That is seeking to have an experience without backing up the experience from God's Word. The nature of mysticism is an idea of an experience without truth, but it has three basic beliefs. One that God is ineffable, that you cannot know God.

And because you can't know God, you can only experience Him. And that experience is incommunical. That is, once you experience God, there's no way to tell others about that experience. There's some truth to this in Christianity.

However, when you divorce truth from the experience, then you're opening yourself up to all kinds of dangers. People love to worship God. Now that sounds strange when people who are lost and unconverted hate God.

But just because people in their natural state do not love God, doesn't mean they don't love to worship God because we are all worshipers. We're going to worship something. And looking at the human race, it's easy to see that the world is full of God worshipers.

And these worshipers, if they would be Muslims, if they would be Buddhists, they're sincere. They're sincerely earnest in their worship of their deity. In America, and throughout the Christian world, even Christians who don't know the Lord, and Christians in name only, they want to worship God.

People want to worship God. But are they worshiping the living God? And you can give unbelieving, professing Christians an experience through music, through setting the stage, and they can feel like they've encountered the living God through a worship service.

I remember being in such worship services when I was younger, being amazed about how powerful the Spirit is in this place. And I remember thinking about my hair coming, standing up on my arms and thinking, man, the Spirit is strong.

It's almost like electricity in this room. Until I went to a sporting event and they played the national anthem, and with such pride in my heart for the nation that I'm a part of, the same experience happened to me.

And I'm going, wait a minute. Is this the Holy Spirit? See, emotions can create in a worship experience, but it doesn't mean it's of the Lord. Mysticism is easy to produce, but we have to root our emotions, our feelings in something objective, something concrete.

Of course, true Christians are going to experience God, and it's going to be a heartfelt experience full of love, full of joy. In fact, it'll be a joy unexpressible and full of glory. No doubt about Christianity being real and personal, but everything that we experience has to be backed up with truth.

Why am I so enamored with Jesus Christ? It's not because I said, Jesus, I loved you 20 times in a song. It's because I meditate upon what Christ has done for me on the cross, thinking about the righteous dying in my place.

Now, that will bring emotion and a spirit of feeling close to the presence of God. But I can tell you why I feel what I feel. See, sound doctrine will lead to sound worship. Deep truth will lead to deep worship, but shallow doctrine will only lead to a mystical experience that can be reproduced by just crafting the right experience for people.

Why Churches Need Confessions of Faith

Every church is responsible to confess what it believes and what it teaches. If a church won't be upfront with you, you need to look for another church. If it says, join us, then learn what we teach, what we will preach, then I would be scared of a church of that nature.

This is why confessions of faith are so important. There's two basic reasons we need confessions of faith and statements of what we believe. First of all, it's because of error. Now, it'd be simple enough if everybody believed the same and there was no heresies or doctrinal error.

If there was no such thing as misunderstanding the Word of God, then we could all say, I believe the Bible. The Bible is my confession of faith. Then everybody would say, yes, that's my confession of faith too.

That's what I believe too. But we have Mormons, we have Jehovah's Witnesses, we have all kinds of false teachers claiming to believe the Bible. And you say, well, we may need a little more clarification than just, I believe the Bible.

We need a basic confession like, I believe in the gospel. But that too has a lot of misunderstandings. A lot of people say, I believe in the gospel. Even today, the word evangelical doesn't mean anything.

Say, well, I'm an evangelical Christian. Well, there's a lot of evangelical Christians out there that claim that, that don't believe in regeneration of the Holy Spirit, don't believe in imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, don't believe in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.

See, because of error, it's important that the church clarifies its teaching. James Bannerman puts it this way, confessions of faith would not have been needed if there was no error. And because there are errors and heresies, the church needs to be willing to confess what it believes.

The second reason churches need confessions of faith is because the church is commanded to teach the whole counsel of God. It is sad that churches intentionally minimize doctrine. But when they do this, when they elevate the singing to the point where it's dominant and minimize the preaching to 10 to 15 minutes, and in that sermon, it's not much theology at all, but how man can help himself.

When it becomes real shallow teaching, the church is failing in its most important responsibility. Because churches are not preaching the truth anymore, or minimizing theology and doctrine, there's a huge amount of ignorance in the pew.

It's sad, the amount of ignorance that lies in many, many evangelical churches today. There's been a recent study commissioned by Ligonier Ministries in 2018 that says that 70 of professing evangelicals think that Jesus Christ was the first created being of God.

Now that's heresy, but that's a large amount of professing evangelicals. 70 don't even know that Jesus is God. This is very sad indeed. 56 think the Holy Spirit is just a force and not a personal being.

50 thinks God accepts pagan worship from other religions. I mean, this is people in the pews. I once saw a study where a person went into church after church and after the services, interviewing the members.

And only one out of 100 people, essentially, was able to explain the doctrine of justification by faith alone. What would Martin Luther think of that? The core of the gospel, the most important doctrine that Luther says is in the Bible, that we're justified not by works, but by faith in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

This is essential to the gospel. You get this wrong, you've got salvation wrong. You've got the gospel wrong, and it's a soul damning heresy. We have to know these things. And only one out of 100 people could answer that question.

When I saw that study, I made a commitment to myself that I must teach the word of God so the people who I'm responsible in shepherding and discipling know the truth. Churches must be committed to teaching their people.

And this is what happened to Martin Luther. Martin Luther, who was born in 1483 in the house that's right behind me. As the story goes, he would go on to become a monk, then from there to start a reformation in 1517.

But after the reformation, he went and traveled the area of Germany looking at the churches. After visiting the churches, he writes, I have been compelled to write this catechism in this simple form by lamentable deficiency in the means of instructions which I witnessed lately in my visitation.

God help us. What deplorable things I have seen. The common people wholly without any knowledge of doctrine. I think Luther would discover the same thing in our day. And churches are responsible for this.

The church who's called to be the pillar and ground of truth. The ambassadors of God. Ones who are responsible to proclaim the whole council are failing to do what they're called to do. Well, Luther says it's not just the members, but it's even the pastors that he found that were ignorant of basic Christian truths.

Thus, he wrote these two catechisms to help solve this problem. And I think today, churches need to reevaluate their purpose. We may not need another program as much as we need to get back to the main objective that church is called to carry out.

The pulpit ministry, the teaching ministry of the church is paramount. If we fail in this area, we failed as a church. Well, there's a third reason that churches need confessions of faith. And I would even say robust confessions of faith.

And that's because every Christian has the right to know what church he's entering into. That should be the most important question you ask about a church. So what should I look for in a church? You should look for a church with sound theology, sound doctrine.

You should look for a church that puts a high priority on preaching and teaching the word of God. You see, every church member or potential church member has the right to know what the church believes or how the church will interpret the scriptures.

With all the false teaching that's prevalent in churches today, it's not sufficient just to say we love Jesus. The question is, what Jesus do you love? Who is this Jesus that causes you to love him so much?

Is he the Jesus of the Bible? Well, to know if he's the Jesus of the Bible, you have to know the Bible. You have to know who this Christ is. And therefore, confessions are important because it's stating what the church believes, and that is simply stating how the church interprets the scriptures.

So I don't need to know that you believe the Bible. I need to know how you interpret the Bible. And by hearing how you interpret the Bible, that's how I know what you believe. James Betterman writes about this.

He says, the language of scripture is best language to express God's mind, but it's not the best language to express the mind of the church. And that's important to understand the distinction. The word of God is infallible.

Nothing needs to be changed. But this very word is interpreted differently by different churches and different ministers. And so I wanna know, as a potential member of the church, how the ministers, how the church interprets the word justification.

Just to say I believe in justification is not sufficient, because many people put different definitions to that biblical term. So we need extra biblical language of explanation of what does the Bible actually teach about justification?

And this is why confessions of faith, especially those historical proven confessions of faith, are so important for the church. So we can look, this is what the church believes about the deity of Jesus Christ, about the inspiration of scriptures, about the gospel, about justification and sanctification and glorification.

All these things are vital, because in the end, it's the truth that saves. It's the truth that sanctifies. It's the truth that glorifies God, and it's the truth that edifies man. If we're not about the truth, if the church minimizes the truth, it's failing in its main objective.

This is why churches do not need to be ashamed of a robust confession of faith.