If you would open your Bibles with me to the book of Jude, the book of Jude tonight. As we begin this set of studies on the New Hampshire Baptist Confession, Lord willing, next week what we will do is we'll look at Article One, which deals with the doctrine of the scriptures, and we're gonna walk through each line of the confession, looking at the scriptural references and passages, and also then listening to some of the voices of the past and that era theologians and preachers concerning these different matters. What I want to do tonight is to present for us an overview of the New Hampshire Confession, and the title of our study this evening is Our Common Faith, Declaring Warm, Vibrant Doctrine. And I want you to notice with me this epistle of Jude, the first, excuse me, not the first two, but the verses three and four this evening. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, stood up and delivered an address. defending and calling on Baptists to recover their confessional heritage, that we were a people who had never been ashamed to lay forth in the public square what we believe and why we believe it. Moeller, towards the end of that address, said that if Baptists failed to cherish, learn again, defend, and proclaim the theological heritage and vocabulary that had been passed down to us, then we would become the world's most unembarrassed pragmatist. Now, he said all that in 1993. 25, almost to be 26 years ago, later this year in August. In 1995, he addressed the whole convention. And he talked about, in Joshua 4, the memorial stones that were laid. And how Joshua said, you are to look back to those stones and teach your children and your children's children what mean these stones. That there's a heritage, a story that had been passed on and they had a duty to teach it. And so it is with us. We're not here as New Testament Baptist Church in January of 2019. We didn't just appear here. There's a heritage. There's a story. There's things that have been passed on to us. And every person believes something. when it comes to religion. There is no such thing as a person who is devoid of a personal doctrine, a personal creed, or a personal declaration of what they believe when it comes to religion. If you ask a person, what do you believe about God, and they give you a response, that is their creed. That is their confession of faith. So everybody has one. The statement might be oral or written. It might be positive or negative, but it exists. Every person has a religious creed. Now the question is, is our creed biblical? Is it standing up with the scriptures? Has it been tested by time? B.H. Carroll, the founder of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, summarized this truth about everybody has a creed this way. Quote, every man in the world has some religious belief. Even if it's of a negative kind, he has a belief. It is as lawful to state it as it is to have it. When stated, whether in words or writing, it is a confession. Now, what's scary when we come to the church is people that are very hesitant about putting down on paper what they believe or saying this is what they agree to. Because then you've got a standard. And a lot of times we want to be flexible and kind of blow with the wind. But that's what a creed and a confession helps us not do. It says this is what the scriptures teach. This is what we have believed. And these are guardrails to help us stay on the path. How do we know that these things existed in the days of Scripture? Well, notice what Jude writes there in verse 3. He talks about our common salvation contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That is language that speaks of an established doctrine, a body of divinity, a system of biblical truth and theology. And what happened in verse 4? Certain people crept in, unnoticed, ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God. This brings us to the practice of statements, creeds, declarations. We read earlier, Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 5, that was the creed of Israel. We read a creedal statement in 1 Timothy 3.16 about what Jesus Christ did. In our study this morning, Hebrews 6.1 and 2, a list of fundamental doctrines. Once again, I'd like you to consider Dr. Carroll's definition of what is a creed and a confession. He said, a creed is what we believe and a confession of faith is a declaration of what we believe. The declaration may be verbal or it may be in writing. there is very much a great necessity for both creed and confession. So in the history of the church, the importance of setting forth doctrine, especially in a way that it could be taught and passed down, is seen. If you look at the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, those are shorter statements that can be memorized and passed down. A more in-depth creedal statement is what we know as the Athanasian Creed, which is very thorough about biblical Christology. As you keep walking through the history of the church out of the Protestant Reformation, come many confessional standards, many catechisms, which greatly expounded biblical truth. And yet, our present age is marked by a mindset of subjective truth, personal autonomy when it comes to standards of truth, and even a prideful boasting of a libertarian free will that says, I can believe whatever I want to believe. Even within the evangelical church, there is a professed love for Jesus and for the Bible, but away with creeds and confessions. We don't need those things. But the result is that many don't know what they believe. Now, I already know for a fact, we've had people visit here before and make the comment when they see that we read the confession or catechism, say, well, that's Catholic. And that's part of the problem. Because Baptists used to do this all the time. Protestants did this. This is nothing new, nor is it Catholic, nor is it of Rome. This is what we find in Scripture, of teaching a truth and passing it down. And that kind of mindset that says, well, I believe the Bible, but I don't know what's in it, is the cause of a lot of issues. I would encourage all of you tonight to go home and to Google Ligonier's The State of Theology. And it's a survey that they've done for the last, I think, six years. They do it every other year. And you will see that they will go to people who, this is not atheists they're talking to. These are those professed to be believers. So at Ligonier Ministries, they do this, The State of Theology, that's the title of the survey, The State of Theology, and they will ask those who claim to be evangelical Christians the most basic theological questions. And they can't answer them biblically. They'll give a response about who is Jesus that sounds more like the Arian controversy and what Jehovah Witness believe and what the churches believe. When they ask, does one sin send a person to hell? No. How are we justified? That's kind of a mixture of being good and believing. Again, this is not atheists. These are people who say they're born-again Christians who go to church every week. So there's a disconnect somewhere. If we say that we love the Bible but we don't know what's in the Bible, if we say we love Jesus but don't know who Jesus is and we keep going, then we don't know actually what is our faith. And that biblical and doctrinal ignorance tonight exists among the people who are called Baptist. A people who proudly say, we are the people of the Bible, the people of the book, but unable to explain what it teaches. As Hebrews 5, 11 through 6, 3 makes clear, every believer possesses a responsibility to mature in the faith and teach what they have learned to others. Now I will say here at the get-go tonight, we do not believe that creeds and confessions are equal to the authority of the Bible. And as we'll see next week, all Baptist confessions began with the scriptures as the first article, and every one of them said that anything like a creed or a confession is subject to the scripture. The authority is always finally in the Bible, but creeds and confessions help us understand the Bible, help us to teach the Bible, and it is time-tested. So we are not in competition between the Bible on one side and creeds and confessions on the other. They go hand-in-hand, for the one helps us to explain the other. Historic Baptists in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries penned confessions of faith and wrote catechisms for their families and children that were Orthodox, Protestant, Evangelical, and Congregational. Which brings us to our selection tonight, the New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith. It was a declaration of faith originally produced and adopted by the New Hampshire Baptist Convention in 1833. One of the key writers of this confession was a man named John Newton Brown. as you can see, who he was named after, John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace. Brown, though, should be credited for more than just helping to write the Confession, because we have to ask ourselves this, how in the world did a statement of faith written all the way up in New England eventually become the main confession of faith used by Baptists in the South and in the West. And the credit goes to Brown because 20 years after the confession was originally written, in 1853, he published a church manual. And in that church manual, he put this confession of faith. He added two additional articles, one on repentance and faith, which as we'll see is a very strong statement on the doctrines of grace, effectual calling, and sanctification. And that manual would then be distributed to churches and pastors, helping them understand how a church is to be organized and operate as a Baptist communion. And this confession was given as an example of a declaration of principles that reflected what Baptists historically believed. It would get even more exposure in 1867. If you've been in a lot of older Baptist churches, you have probably seen on the wall somewhere a church covenant hanging there. Now, unfortunately, that's decoration a lot of places, but it's there. Well, that church covenant came out of a church manual authored by a man named J.M. Pendleton, Pendleton's church manual. And not only did he have that covenant in there, but he also had a statement of faith or a declaration of faith. And that declaration of faith was the New Hampshire Baptist Confession as being an example of what Baptists historically believed. And Pendleton's Manual was very much used among Baptists in the South. So the New Hampshire Baptist Confession became really the main statement of faith utilized by Baptists. So much so that in 1925, when the Southern Baptist Convention decided to publish a statement of faith, They did so using the New Hampshire Confession as their foundation and template. They wrote, what they did is they took this, they modified some things, and they added some additional articles. So the SBC, the largest Baptist denomination in the world, used this statement as their template in 1925. But it just wasn't among the Southern Baptists. Many of us here have background in landmarkism, in the landmark Baptist work, and both of the biggest landmark associations adopted the New Hampshire Confession. In 1924, at their organizational meeting, the American Baptist Association adopted the New Hampshire Baptist Confession. and 20 years later in 1944, reaffirmed their commitment to that confession as expressing beliefs, quote, long held by those in their respective churches. Another group, the Baptist Missionary Association, continues to endorse and subscribe to the New Hampshire Baptist Confession to this day. So this is a confession used by Southern Baptists, by landmark Baptists, and even by some independent Baptists. But the question we have to ask ourselves, what happened? What happened? What happened to the doctrines that were in this confession? How did they lose a place in churches that said they held to it? The New Hampshire Baptist Confession holds such a prominent place in the life of the Baptist, particularly in the South, but the theology of the confession, and even the place for confessions in the life of Baptists, has been under assault for years. If I were to describe the New Hampshire Confession, I would say it is a confession of vibrant grace. And yet the confession of vibrant grace, containing the doctrines of grace, are often treated as alien to Baptist life, and as if somehow it is in opposition to what Baptists believe. And yet this confession, this document, proudly declares God's grace in everything about salvation from start to finish. And every time it was published, every time it was reprinted, every time it was affirmed, it would be along the lines of, this is what Baptists have always believed. These doctrines are expounded upon in a confession many still claim as descriptive of their beliefs. but yet it's not being taught. And the purpose of this study, and if God willing we turn it into a book, is to help equip churches and men about how to teach the doctrines of grace, not in an arrogant way, I would say not in a hostile way, but I would say very gentle, encouraging, and I think life-changing way. Because every time we've had a membership class and I have walked through that statement, I am reminded every time of the beauty of the theology within each articles. So the question tonight, how can we better equip churches to have a robust understanding of what they believe is Baptist? what our forefathers cherished and taught, and how our members should be able to know and teach these fundamentals of the faith. These questions must be asked, because all of life is theology. There can be no worship, there can be no doxology, unless it is built upon and fueled by theology. The doctrines laid out in the New Hampshire Baptist Confession are vibrant, experiential, powerful, biblical, and practical. If we desire to defend Christianity and make an impression upon the pagan culture, a Christianity absent robust theology and doctrine that impacts our lives will make no impact because it is not a Christianity found in the Bible. So we must know what we believe because what we believe is sweet and good and influential and impactful. So what I want to do this evening is I want to first of all just set the scene very quickly for what was happening up there in New Hampshire that caused them to write the confession. Then I want us to see what's the theology of the confession and how that fits historically in Baptist life. And third, why we use confessions and how we use them. So let's talk about, first of all, my first heading tonight is entitled, Arrows on Every Side. Arrows on every side. The theological environment for the confession. Arrows on every side. There were assaults on every side. The theological environment for the confession. Step back very quickly. No confession of faith is ever written just to be written. There's something that's happening that causes them to write. There's some controversy. Most of the time, confessions are written in a reactive posture. They are confronting a theological crisis that has erupted. They must answer it. They must immediately correct it and address it. I could go through every, I won't, but we have to go through every Baptist confession that has been written in the last 400 years, and every time it was as the result of something. And the same is true here in the New Hampshire Baptist Confession. Baptists in America were greatly influenced by what we know as the Second London Baptist Confession, which there are copies of here in the book rack. This confession is the confession that has had the most influence among Baptists historically. When the Baptists started to settle in America, they adopted that in Philadelphia in 1742 and in Charleston in the South in 1767 with slight modifications. By the 1820s and 1830s, Baptists in New England, specifically New Hampshire, were facing many assaults upon the theology of the Philadelphia Confession. The eminent Baptist historian Tom Nettles notes that there were three sources of assault upon Baptists in New England. But listen very carefully. These three assaults were not just in New England. They would eventually affect Baptists all throughout America. The first was the rise of free will Baptists. The second was hyper-Calvinism and the anti-missionary society movement. And third, the Campbellite movement, from Alexander Campbell, which denounced confessions of faith, as well as no longer believed regeneration produced faith and repentance. So, the Baptists in New Hampshire realized they had to combat this, and they decided they were going to take the heritage, the Philadelphia Second London Confession, that theology, And they were going to take it and use that as their source to write a confession with these three assaults in mind to combat these different errors. They would maintain their theology of the doctrines of grace, but they would write a confession not as in-depth, shorter, more concise, but that would counteract these three growing movements. So let me talk about each three very quickly. The Free Will Baptist. The Freewill Baptists were led by a man named Benjamin Randall. Interestingly enough, Randall was converted under the preaching of George Whitefield, but he came to no longer believe in Whitefield's Calvinism. Freewill Baptists, by their name, were those who believed in traditional Arminian theology. But Randall's Arminianism would eventually go into a more and more erroneous position because by the time of Randall, there was somebody else coming on the scene in New England by the name of Charles Finney. And Finneyite, or Finneyism, was not Arminian. It was semi-Pelagian. It didn't really even see the fall of Adam as impacting us very much at all. And so Phineism, which would give rise to revivalism, manipulating people to walk the aisle, to play on their emotions to get a conversion, all of that starts up here. And then Randall himself had a very strange view on the doctrines of grace. Do you know how he came to the conclusion that Romans 9, Brother Harry's favorite chapter in the Bible, isn't teaching about sovereign election? Or how Ephesians 1 is not talking about God's predestinating grace? Randall said that he had a dream. And in that dream, he was told that his views on grace and election were compatible with Romans 9 and Ephesians 1. And he would go forth and say, God told me this in a dream, and I don't have to defend what I believe anymore. That became the foundation. So a theology rooted on mystical experience free will not touched by the fall of Adam, and that salvation is a cooperative act between God and man in conversion, challenged the doctrines of grace held by Baptists in New Hampshire. That's one of the arrows coming at them. The second one is on the completely opposite end of the spectrum, and that is hyper-Calvinism. And that was held by those who among Baptists in New England were growing to oppose missionary societies. The most famous Baptist missionary society was that founded in 1792 in London among the English particular Baptists that sent William Carey to India. And those societies began to be formed all through the United States of America. But there would be some Baptists who rejected both the concept of duty faith, taught by Andrew Fuller, and they rejected missionary society saying that they usurped the authority of the local church. So they said they had an issue with it from an ecclesiological or from the position of the church. The problem, though, is that view grew more and more and more into what we would call hyper-Calvinism. that says God has elected those to be saved, and they're going to get saved, and we really don't go evangelize and do those types of things. It's just going to happen. Very what we would call fatalistic. So you got on one hand the mystical Arminianism, semi-Pelagianism over here. On the other, you've got this hard-shell hyper-Calvinism. And in the midst of that, here comes a man named Alexander Campbell. and the Campbellite movement still with us today in the churches of Christ that you see along the highways. Alexander Campbell was an Arminian. But he went beyond that and began to teach and to preach baptismal regeneration. But a person is not regenerated until they are baptized. He originally came out of a Baptist church, and he would though begin his own group. They called themselves the Restoration Movement. But Campbell rejected creeds and confessions. He famously said, no creed but Christ. No confession but the Bible. Why would he say that? Because all the historic Baptist confessions said he was wrong. It's not what the Bible teaches. So you throw those to the side and say, I believe the Bible and it supports what I teach. And so Campbellism became very much influential among Baptists. So much so that you and I could take a trip to many Baptist churches today and we would hear people say right now, I have no creed but Christ, no confession but the Bible. That's not historic Baptist views. It's Campbellism. But that Campbellism still holds sway in many Baptist churches. So, think about yourself as Baptist up there in New Hampshire who love and cherish and preach the doctrines of grace. You've got all of this on your doorstep. coming from different angles, different directions, but all opposed to what you teach. How could they respond to these various threats ranging from rank Arminianism, heretical semi-Pelagianism, baptismal regeneration, hyper-Calvinism, and anti-Credalism? All that's on them. What are they going to do? And that brings us now to the confession itself. And I want you to see second of all, Amazing Grace, the Theology of the Confession. Amazing Grace, the Theology of the Confession. If you pull out a typical Baptist history book and it talks about the New Hampshire Confession, It'll usually describe it this way, a document that capitulated, Tarminianism. It's watered down, Calvinism, or it abandoned the doctrines of grace. They were embarrassed about them. I say all that very respectfully as hogwash. Because as you read the confession, you will not read a confession that upholds grace built upon our free will, but upon the sovereign hand of God. There is a truth that they stated the doctrines of grace in a modified or put it in a milder form than what was found in the older documents. But the reason, though, is that they were reacting to forces opposed to them at that time. and the confession they wrote still possesses the doctrine of Baptist that goes all the way back to the 1640s. The church historian Philip Schaff and his work on Christian creeds and confessions writes, quote, the New Hampshire confession is a clear and concise statement of faith in harmony with the doctrines of older confessions, but expressed in milder form. How can I not see the doctrines of grace as I walk through that confession? The confession affirms inability and depravity of mankind. the nature of God's electing grace, the work of regeneration by the Spirit that produces faith and repentance, and states that faith and repentance are gifts wrought by the Holy Spirit of God. This confession sets forth the doctrines of grace in a beautiful way that rebuffs both the freewill Arminianism of one side and the hyper-Calvinistic tendencies of others. As Tom Nettle writes, Rather than interpreting the New Hampshire Confession as a gradual retreat from the Calvinism of former days, it is better to see it as an affirmation of the Calvinist position on the particular issues raised by the presence and growth of free will Baptists in New England. The Calvinists did not jettison their distinguishing tenets, but rather were saying, we have a defensible and biblical understanding of the relation of man's will and duty to the doctrines of God's sovereignty. Furthermore, consider with me for a moment the Baptist who lived in this time, so we're not reading into our own views right now, but the Baptist of that time who said, we use this confession in this document to explain what we believe. What were their views on the doctrines of grace? We've already said that the Southern Baptist Convention 1925 used the New Hampshire as the basis for their confession. But we can see beyond that, that Baptists in the late 19th and early 20th century saw themselves as men and women who held to the doctrines of grace. In the year 1900, what was then called the Sunday School Board, today is now Lifeway, of the Southern Baptist Convention, published a book entitled Baptists, Why and Why Not? And it was edited by the President of the Board, J.M. Frost. In this book, at the end, Frost includes the New Hampshire Confession as a summary statement of what Baptists believed. So that's how the book ends. He says, here is a confession, a sample of what we believe. Now here's what he says through the book and at the beginning. In the introduction, Frost describes Baptists as, quote, people who are as stout as the stoutest in holding fast the true great doctrine of election with its coordinate doctrines." Now that would be talking about what we know as the other points of TULIP. In that same book, Why Baptist, there is a chapter titled Why Baptist and Not Presbyterian, penned by a pastor T.S. Dunaway. Dunaway offers more insights into how Baptists saw themselves as believers in the doctrines of grace. If you and I went to the typical Southern Baptist pastor today and we were to ask them, what's the difference between us and Presbyterians, most of them would say something like this, they're Calvinist and we're not. What did Dunaway say when he said, well, I'm a Baptist and not a Presbyterian? Dunaway writes this in a remarkable way about the unity. between Baptists and Presbyterians. He said, quote, concerning what we call the doctrines of divine grace, the Baptists and Presbyterians are perhaps nearer agreed in their beliefs than any other large and distinct Protestant denominations. the soundness of their views concerning these doctrines of grace, their intelligence, the prominent part they've taken in higher education, their reverence for God's Word, their strict observance of the Sabbath, their fervent piety and consistent Christian living, call forth the praise and admiration of every true Baptist." So he said when it comes to the theology of grace, We're together. Here's what he saw as the difference. Ecclesiology, the administering of the sacraments, particularly baptism, obviously, but not concerning soteriology. 1900. We and the Presbyterians all agree on these things called the doctrines of grace in a book that they used, the New Hampshire Confession. A confession, they said, what? Teaches these doctrines of grace. Baptists were not hesitant to profess belief in these doctrines of sovereign, amazing, effectual grace. While serving as a pastor in Baltimore, Maryland in the late 1800s, F.H. Kerfoot, who would later become president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, described the theology of Baptists when it came to grace this way, quote, nearly all Baptists believe what are usually termed the doctrines of grace, the absolute sovereignty and foreknowledge of God, his eternal and unchangeable purposes or decrees, that salvation in its beginning, continuance, and completion is God's free gift, that in Christ we are elected or chosen personally or individually, from eternity, saved and called out from the world, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, through the sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth, that we are kept by His power from falling away and will be presented faultless before the presence of His glory." Do we see the theme here? All through this time, prominent Baptist pastors and theologians are saying, we believe in the doctrines of grace, and we also use this confession to teach these doctrines. B.H. Carroll at Southwestern Theological Seminary led the seminary to adopt the New Hampshire Confession as the articles of faith of that institution. The Sunday School Board published in 1913 a work entitled What Baptists Believe by O.C.S. Wallace. It was an exposition of the Confession of New Hampshire, and Wallace dedicated the book to two men, Carol, we've mentioned, and James P. Boyce. the first president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Albert Moeller rightly notes that the New Hampshire Baptist Confession does not contain the in-depth, exhaustive Calvinism as explained in the earlier Confession of Philadelphia, but, quote, is undeniably Calvinistic in shape and substance. No tenet of traditional Calvinism is denied. So as one surveys the historical context, and the understanding of the New Hampshire Confession, the conclusion is that this is a document that didn't run away from the doctrines of grace. It was not embarrassed about the doctrines of grace, but sought to explain them in a way to confront Campbellites, Free Will Baptists, and Hyper-Calvinists. and those errors we're still having to combat today. They remain, and this confession is a weapon in the spiritual arsenal to combat these theological errors. It is not a document to be tucked away in a binder or a book, but to be engaged in practice and life, which leads me to our third heading this evening, for growth and defense. for growth and defense, utilizing the confession. It is true that Baptists have never been a people who employed creeds as a means of determining citizenship in a country, because one of the things that makes us a Baptist is we've never believed in a state-run church. So we don't believe in using creeds for political citizenship. We do believe in using creeds and confessions for church membership. We do believe in boundaries. It is historically inaccurate and misleading to say that Baptists, because they rejected the use of creeds in a political way, rejected them in a meaningful way altogether. Church historian Greg Wills writes, quote, most Baptists employed confessions of faith and supported their use in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most churches adopted them. So did most associations. Associations usually required churches applying for membership to present their creed because they felt the association should comprise churches of the same faith and practice only. They judged that they had no assurance of a church's orthodoxy unless its messengers presented the association a written statement endorsed by the church. It's not like that anymore. We have personal, first-hand experience with that here. When we went through the process of potentially uniting with the local association here that's affiliated with the SBC, I thought that it would have been very much the standard practice that we as a church would have adopted the Baptist faith and message. So we went through on a few Wednesday nights through that document, and we in a business meeting voted and said, we adopted. And I called him down here and said, I want you to let you know that we adopted the statement of faith to be a part of the group. And the brother I was talking to laughed. He says, you don't have to do that. All you got to do is send money. It's sad. Amen. That's not what Baptists believe. That's not what we have been historically. But yet that's the reason why I would say that we're in the condition we're in, because that's what's driving it. I don't want to get on a tangent. Why is there a need for creeds and confessions? How do we know what we believe? A Baptist and a Roman Catholic both say they believe in justification. You will not meet a Roman Catholic priest who would say, I don't believe in justification. He does believe in justification. But the question is, what does that mean? And a well-crafted, biblically-based confession of faith will distinguish the Baptist belief about justification from that of Rome. A Baptist, a Muslim, and a Mormon will say they believe in Jesus. And they may even use language like divine or son of God. But a confession like the New Hampshire will show that the Jesus of the confession and the Bible is far different from the Jesus of Muslims and Mormons. Anyone can say they believe in Jesus. The question to be asked is, who is this Jesus? And when a response comes, you are doing the work of a creed and a confession. It's needed. And the notion that Baptists are hesitant to affirm creeds and confessions possesses no historical bearing. In fact, history testifies to the complete opposite. Baptists heartily wrote confessions, subscribed to confessions, used confessions, and made confessions a standard for who could fill pulpits, who could associate as churches, and which churches could operate. Tom Nettles writes this and said, the pastor of the first particular Baptist church in London, John Spillsbury, believed that a confession of faith was essential for the beginning of a church. Thomas Keech, excuse me, Benjamin Keech, Thomas Grantham, John Gill, Andrew Fuller, Abraham Booth, William Scriven, Oliver Hart, Richard Furman, Adniram Judson, Luther Rice, Basil Manley, the Philadelphia Association, the Charleston Association, James P. Boyce, J.B. Granbrill, B.H. Carroll, and a host of others could be added to the list of Baptists who accepted the obvious reality that the adoption of a doctrinal standard was only requiring that a man appear to be a Christian before he can have a right to be treated as such. As we've seen in our studies in Hebrews, there are things that must be believed to be a Christian. And we have that right to teach those things and expect those things. The man that I cited earlier, J.M. Pendleton, who included the New Hampshire Confession in his church manual, he wrote that creeds are needed and required. Pendleton said, quote, it is eminently proper for those who appeal to the scriptures as the fountain of truth to declare what they believe the scriptures to teach. To say that they believe the scriptures is to say nothing to the purpose. All will say this, and yet all differ, to the teachings of the Bible. There must be some distinctive declaration. It's not enough to just say we believe the Bible. We must say, what do we believe the Bible teaches? So using a historical confession, like the New Hampshire, ensures that a student of doctrine does not create a novel, new interpretation of biblical truth. This document is tested by time and has been upholding under scrutiny for that time. There is a theological stream and a heritage to the Confession. The New Hampshire rests upon a theology that Baptists held going all the way back to the 17th century laid out in the Second London Baptist Confession. Now, I love the Second London Baptist Confession. We use it here to say this is what describes those who are pastors and elders as our standard for teaching. It's more in-depth. But there's also a place for using a shorter confession like the New Hampshire in membership and in teaching. So for example, Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill up there in D.C., founder of Nine Marks, when he came to Capitol Hill in 1993, he said he was hoping as he went through their original minutes that he would see that the church, when they organized, adopted the 1689. He discovered, though, that they didn't. But in the 1870s, when they organized, they did adopt the New Hampshire Baptist Confession, just as a side note. Churches back then, when they organized, they always did two things. They adopted a confession and a covenant. That's what made them a Baptist church. So, they had the New Hampshire. And he said at first he was disappointed. but he came to love the Confession of New Hampshire. For these reasons, it's faithful yet concise enough to teach new members the fundamentals of the faith. Further, Deborah writes that as people come to the church, who are not from a background familiar with the doctrines of grace. This document, along with the preaching and teaching of the church, guides them in understanding the beauty of sovereign grace. Deborah writes, they come to affirm the sovereignty of God, the depravity of humanity, the sufficiency of grace, all of which is affirmed in the New Hampshire Confession, and Arminian could not honestly sign it. Now, the New Hampshire should be a guide. As I said earlier, in my opinion, the Second London Baptist is a fantastic document, a good teaching standard, but the New Hampshire is a good standard for us to use as we teach people who might come and their experience is that of hearing the term Calvinism and they have hostility. The New Hampshire document helps guide a person through the doctrines of grace, I believe, in a gentle, experiential, vibrant way in seeing the beauty of God's grace. Deborah again writes, and I think it's a really good word, God will be more glorified in this world as more people come to acknowledge the sovereignty and sufficiency of his grace. That is what we all desire. And I think that at this time in our setting, the New Hampshire Confession can better help men committed to the doctrines of grace and expositional preaching to lead our churches to grasp more fully the glories of God's grace, and at the same time, allow people with questions to be a part of our congregations on the way there. Just as young pastors learn that by asking for too much too soon, they can lose a whole congregation, whereas patients can lead the whole congregation into a fuller appreciation of God's truth, so with individual Christians they can so often be led to understand God's grace more fully if we don't wrongly screen them out by asking too much too soon. I love the 1689 Confession and believe it is indeed, in the words of William Cathcart, the most beautiful and noblest exposition of the Scriptures. But I also understand that I would not expect somebody who maybe has no familiarity with theology whatsoever or who might be coming from a traditional Baptist background and say, you must affirm all 32 chapters of this to be a member. I would not do that. But I do believe the New Hampshire Confession is a concise summary of what is in the larger confession and say, this is what we teach, this is what we believe, and to guide them as they might have questions concerning the fall of man, regeneration, and so forth. So I'll close this way. Now you probably thought I went all Sunday morning and did not give a Spurgeon quote. How could I go through two sermons, and especially on this day? It is on this day, on this Sunday, in 1850, when C. H. Spurgeon was converted in that primitive Methodist chapel on the snowy day. But the greatest Baptist of all time, at least in my opinion, C. H. Spurgeon, when he reprinted the Second London Baptist Confession for his congregation in 1855, he wrote this preface, which summarizes the need for confessions, including the New Hampshire. He said this little volume is not issued as an authoritative rule or code of faith whereby you are to be fettered. but as an assistance to you in controversy, a confirmation in faith, and a means of edification and righteousness. Here, the younger members of our church will have a body of divinity and small compass, and by means of the scriptural proofs, will be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in them. May it be so said concerning our journey through this confession that the aim of these studies ultimately is to deepen our love for God, to be more in awe of the gospel of grace, and to seek to convert lost souls to Christ. Let us not aim for a minimalistic creed or shallow theology. but prepare to set sail in the deep waters of truth, whereby the soul is nourished and strengthened. And may it all be for the glory of God alone. Father, we do thank you for those who have went before us. We do thank you for men who labored without the luxuries and technologies we have today in crafting and putting together these wonderful expositions of truth. May we not take it lightly what has been given to us, but may we have a greater appreciation and may we be more equipped to be able to teach others what we believe and to help us be guarded against the assaults of air that are on every side. We pray for the spirit most of all to guide us in these studies. as we would launch next week and begin a study concerning the scriptures. Oh, may we have a greater appreciation for the revelation of God given to us. In Christ's name, amen.