Are there any written questions? All right, got that one. Someone else, Ash and I asked, because it's a very important question, and that is, if Fibonacci alone is the only rule of Fibonacci, why do we use it? And as Ash reminded us, I think it's very important that we use carefully and strictly the question and the larger and shorter catacombs. simply because they are but a summary of what the Bible teaches. And we need those summaries. In fact, in 2 Timothy chapter 1, Paul commanded the church, or Timothy, to hold fast to that summary standard. And Paul was circulating these summaries. We get snippets of them, 1 Timothy 3, 16, perhaps Philippians 2, humiliation, exaltation of Christ. Of course, we've got Deuteronomy 6, the great Shema, Heru, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. Still repeated every service in the synagogue. And so, what we have is the importance of coming together and saying, we believe this is what the Bible teaches. We're not adding to the Bible. In fact, as Danny pointed out, every ministry is a sermon. That's a distinction of faith. That's what preaching is. We're not just reading the Bible. We're learning what the Bible means. Now, if you ever belonged to a church that had no creed, Christ, and no confession of the Bible, every time a preacher was on the pulpit, you've got a private confession of faith. Or any church that said, we agree that the Bible teaches these things. And our officers are 100% committed to all of these truths. Believe they are revealed in Scripture. See, there's safety. That's why in the Dutch Reformed tradition, called the Three Forms of Unity, they have Heidegger and Catechism. You all remember a long time in the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dort. They were called the three forms of unity because Amos says, how can two walk together unless they're three? And now in Presbyterianism, they don't require the members of the church to embrace all doctrine. They must have an incredible passion of faith. They must have a modicum of facts, God, Trinity, Christ, salvation, education, et cetera. But the office bearers are to leave all of these things aside of their faith. So what happens then, as I said, is that when we integrate erosion in these things, then we've lost that spirit of trust and confidence. And the sheep are the ones that are harmed at the end of the day by that. So, Pastor, you were going to ask a question? Did I? And yours? Did I answer it sufficiently? All right. Really? Go ahead, Will. I have heard in reading where Roman Catholics Good follow-up, because that's exactly what performed to. The traditions were the summary of episodic truth that he recited in places such as symphony, either by mouth or, uh, by letter. Since the proper tradition was the summary of apostolic teaching, we realize that those who have written and read a whole variety of different churches, not every church is going to get the summary of apostolic truth. But these traditions were being delivered, particularly by the evangelists like Timothy, and Silas, and Barnabas, and more others. And so those are the traditions to hold to. On the other hand, Paul didn't write about any man-made traditions, and that's the difference. I believe you said in the beginning that our first federal head, Adam, if he had not sinned, he would have attained heaven by that sinlessness. Would Christ's positive righteousness not be required additionally to attain heaven? I mean, he would have attained heaven without that positive righteousness. We'll talk about that tomorrow. We'll have to have both his death, but also obedience. Now, the Vatican says, I can rest my mind on only fear, the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to us. So yes, he will be loved perfectly, as all perfect souls have loved for our sins. I think not. What Christ did was fulfill the concomitant works. So he obeyed law perfectly. Now, he didn't have the probation that Adam had with the Trinity in the Bible. But to the probation, it's important. Adam had the moral on his heart, and he wouldn't test it with respect to moral obedience. If he broke one of the moral laws, he would have broken the law. Because of his nature, he was tested. He used the word self-positive law. And a positive law, I mean, we talked about this a few years ago, is a law not in Christ God's character, but a will for a particular time ahead of the church. Just as you parents will have rules for your children when they're little, they can't go out in the yard, they can't have a seat. And if children break those rules, they're sick. Now, they are told not to lie, but to break that law, they're sinning. But the violation of God's command, and it cannot change. Now, when a child is 16, you don't want to tell him that he can't go out, well, I hope he can't go out in the front yard, or go out on the street. That is, he can only be out at a certain time. If he has the car, he can have it, whatever. And those are positive laws. So, positive test for Adam was there's a tree, and because God's word says you can't have it, he has to sit, will to God's will. That's where he failed. Now Christ's test wasn't a tree. Christ's test took place in a garden. Christ said, is any other way, take this cup from me. But what were the words? Nevertheless, not my will, but yours. And there in the ultimate test, he said to the will of God, a law that was for him and not for us. He has kept the covenant by a positive law, but he had to keep other laws as well. And he had to keep all the Jewish laws as well, because he was a Jew. And to keep, he was baptized, submitted by a sinner with us. Does that help? Good question. Well, they might want to say that, but there's a biblical instance for Peter. And Paul's tradition of only summaries of what's available, not extraneous material, that's in addition to even a summary to the Bible. So yeah, I think that's exactly what they would say. But traditions add to the Word of God and take away from it, so we can test them. Where Paul's would be a summary. and what not, they only, as we've brought it up, only often talk about the forgiveness of sins. So, one question is, why do you think that is? The second question, so, you know, Scripture also only is for, I'm just wondering why, anytime it's talking about the forgiveness of sins, by believing, it doesn't also, on top of that, talk about being Christ's righteousness also. I mean, there are a few that talk about that, but why is it that it's more, Well, the remission of sin has to take place for the other to be there. So if my sins are remitted, if I stand the whole, that includes the other. Now, the reason that evangelicals, they've cut themselves off from biblical exposition of this doctrine. They've cut themselves off from church history and historical theology. They just, but the danger of this is that if you make justification, just pardon alone, it's another thing that makes evangelicals more susceptible to Rome. Because if it's just pardon, I want more than just pardon. And so I want acceptance. And so they get on the performance mill. And that's why Romanism can be very attractive to, should I be repeating these questions? You've been making funny, faces back there. I'm sorry. So the question was, why are so many evangelicals only talking about forgiveness of sins, and why does the Bible sometimes say believe in Christ for the remission of sins and not include the other? Well, I think remission of sins includes the other in the Bible, but as evangelicals talk about justification, they're just being short-sighted and have not really searched the Scriptures with respect to those things, and I'm probably afraid of language. You know, Paul, we use language, this is by students, is that, does God make us righteous in justification? And of course, invariably, my students will say, no. And I read them in 5, 2 Corinthians 5, and he does. We have to understand that there's a constituted. Make can mean constitute. And evangelicals don't think that far sometimes to understand that, yes, he's not making me inherently righteous, but he's making me constitutively righteous. Any of you can read from it, it's been the great Scots on justification. He probably has the fullest development of this concept of being constitutedly righteous. You see, the Roman Catholics, again, accuse evangelicals of a fiction. They say, it's not really true that God declares you to be innocent if you're not. And that's right. And what Buchanan points out, and another book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, and so many others, is that God actually constitutes me righteous and then declares me to be innocent and not guilty. So it's not a legal fiction. It's actually an act of God's justice, as we'll see tomorrow, because Christ has fulfilled the demands of the law. He asked of me, and I'd like you to elaborate on it, if salvation is by faith alone, what is the part of the covenant? Why do we baptize children? What's the point of that? And your question got picked up by the microphone, okay? Okay. Why the necessity of the covenant? Why baptize our children? Because of what gave us sacraments. God gave documents to the old covenant, and God gave the two documents to the new covenant. Baptism replaces sin, and the Lord's Supper replaces the Passover. Baptism in the phrase is a declaration of my need of Christ's righteousness, and of being born again. So baptism is a confession that I'm born dead in sin and trespasses, and I must be cleansed. Baptism is also the mark of membership in the covenant community. and thus my children baptized to show their part of the community to whom these promises are proclaimed and under the regular means of grace and are sealed in to the promises so that their hearing If they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, they will be saved. And we also tell our children that God loves them and has placed them in this special relationship, and now to take hold of Christ by faith. Faith is the covenant response. So God has made covenant. Faith is our response to covenant, as obedience. So we obey, as believers, we obey what God has commanded us to do. So, our love for God. These, but in no way regarding our salvation. Are these actions, are they righteous actions? Okay. Works are acts of gratitude, commanded by God, and show our love God. So, do they indicate our salvation? No, there's no way to indicate salvation at all. No, no cats. You see, salvation is salvation. We always think of salvation. But when the Bible uses salvation, and the standard uses salvation, it's talking about the whole ball of wax. And so we must pursue that justification without which no man should be saved. We're a part of our enduring and obtaining eternal life. Our acceptance is on the basis of Christ alone. But we will not be eternally saved without works. Yes, we have. So we've got two types of righteousness that we must have. We've got the imputed righteousness of Christ, which is the foundation, that's acceptance. But then we've got the internal transformation, that's righteousness. And so we are to be growing in righteousness. And thus when Jesus says, your righteousness must pass that of the scribes and the Pharisees, he's talking about both things. So we must have the imputed righteousness for acceptance, but the inherent righteousness as conformity to Christ. And so again, A lot of even reformed people are downplaying inherent righteousness. We see this in what I call the hyper-grace, sonship theology and hyper-historic theology where you're all in the indicative and there's no imperatives to the Christian life and I just tell myself that I am justified. And they've overreacted and failed to understand then that righteousness is two things in the Bible. And they must have righteousness that's a product of the spirit in us, as said in the first message. So Isaiah says, all our righteousness is like filthy rags. He's talking there to hypocrite formalists who are trusting their works and showing them their works are fruitless. But that's not true for the Christian. The confessed chapter on good works is really the sound answer here because Good works are works done in faith in Christ according to the law of God, and are made acceptable because of our union with Christ. Now, all good works would still be pitiable, but Christ justifies them as well as us. were to believe what the Bible explicitly teaches us, and that which could be deduced by good and necessary consequence. Was there a debate among Westminster Bines or ministers and theologians of that era as to what good and necessary consequence There's a disagreement among them. Just for example, someone recently, comparing Dr. McGraw's book on goodness and consequences, said that Gillespie was not in agreement with McGraw in that respect. Your studies, have you come across differences? You mean in terms of the method, its validity? Or in terms of particular doctrines? Yeah. What exactly is good and necessary consequence? And as we derive those, what may we are? Are there limitations? Limitations. Limitations. I think there could be differences of opinion. I don't know. You can ask him when he's here in October, November. The limitation is that the thing is infiltrated to all be biblical truth. She's not going to infound ignorance. So he argues, he is, I think, he argues from a cross-argument with the Sadducees about the resurrection. And he says, just take them back to the burning bush, where God says, and out of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That was not the intention of that passage to show that men were still living. But if he is the God of those men, Christ brought that doctrine, the beautiful sense of the soul, and they accepted it. So it was a clear biblical truth. I am Abraham, I am Jacob. And once they heard that, they didn't change their minds. They had no argument to stand on. It's a very simple inference that if he is the God of these men, they're still alive. Turrett says that a doctrine proved by good and necessary evidence is as archaic as one on the basis of explicit scripture. Now, will there be differences of opinion when I think of an argument over women in combat? I think that the clear good and necessary evidence of scripture is powerful that a woman should never be involved in combat. I heard people argue in my denomination that that was not a balance of all the comparison, calling soldiers women, and all these different things that are being said about who fights and everything else. And so they didn't accept it, although I think the majority of the church would accept it. So there can be people that will remain unconvinced by this analysis. But I don't know the particular difference between Gillespie and the assembly. that, or that the Assembly ever really defined. It didn't. It didn't define either how to use the principle or doctrine might reach by the principle. I didn't help at all, but you're welcome. Yeah, I just covered this in class. There are a number of arguments. The first is that if it walks like a duck and cries like a duck, it's a duck. First is a scriptural proof of how it works. It has all the markings of a covenant. And so you've got parts. You've got relations, which are requirements. And you've got sanctions, which are either assists or penalties. And so it has all the structure. Second is the reference to Hosea chapter 6, where God refers to the covenant with Adam. Very few people trust that it's a covenant of blessing or whatever. But the very clear biblical testimony there is a covenant with Adam. Third argument is Romans chapter 5 and 1 Corinthians chapter 15. In Romans 5, death came through Adam. Life came through Christ. Death came through Adam, not according to the sin of the mosaic law. Then Adam was a representative who was acting on behalf of the human race. We do that both in Romans 5 and in 1 Corinthians 15, 20 and 21. There's no problem called a covenant. We take the covenant of 2 Samuel chapter 7. It's not called a covenant in Psalm 9 that refers to that. It's referred to as covenant agreement with David. And it's noon. Well, the questions are always quick. What was it that he was teaching that got them off, or that eventually got Grace to learn? Okay, the question has to do with Norman Shepard and his role in the development of visual vision and perspective. He wasn't a strong place of perspective. He was parallel, and he was one of the sources of fetishism. Word went wrong, and for a long time, he and sex in writing are much likely. He finally, in the lectures that were given out in California, came clear on what he believed. But he actually told me, I foolishly, when I was doing my PhDs, I was filling up at Cowan Inside. street from the seminary and it was a very interesting congregation because it was made up of both the pre-shepherds and the anti-shepherds, all in one congregation. So, being fairly young, I decided I would preach on that passage in Matthew, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees. I just talked about the need of inherent righteousness by imputation and personal righteousness through sanctification. And dear Arthur Kuschke comes out, great sermon, Joey, I appreciate that. And Norm comes out and he says, I really liked the sermon. Oh, I mean, I think just on the basis of what I preached, what you're saying, and you can't understand this. Why distinguish between imputed and inherent righteousness? That's what he would go on, finally, to write in the book that came out of the lectures that were given in California. So that he first would hold only to repentance, not any mention of Christ's righteousness. And it was not faith alone, but faith plus, for example, repentance and all that repentance would involve. So that was clearly a genuine desire of holiness. He was a godly man. And we were close with him and his wife. One of our first friends moved to Philadelphia. I think we spent that first July 4th with them. But, and part of what happened there is, if you look at it, because initially Dr. Gaffin defended him, and Dr. Gaffin saw the error, but it came out of a misconception, I think, a misconception about union with Christ. Because Gaffin was saying early on, and she was following him, that the big issue was union with Christ, and the justification to stop sanctification were also aspects of union with Christ. And so, Dr. Gaffin would hear Shepard through those lenses. and not want to separate. So finally, between justification and sanctification, where it took a long time for some of those dear men to realize, but part of that was in his early writings, they were, it was ambiguity, whether I don't know that he maybe himself was wrestling with how to say this. He got a little clearer at the lectures he gave at the seminary. At the time, the two chapters were in that book. He's very clearly stating his error. So federal vision people did latch on to that, latch on to Aspen's perspective, as well as kind of a hyper-covenantalism. At the end of the day, it is. Yeah.