All right, good morning, everyone. Let us open with a word of prayer. Father, we're grateful as we look to you this morning, knowing that you are our God and Father in heaven, the one who is near to us, the one who is ever faithful, the one whose love is enduring, the one who is persistent in your pursuit of us. And we thank you for your grace that is abounded toward us this day. You've given us a Lord's Day, a day, O Lord, to set apart and to set aside all other things and to consecrate ourselves unto you again. And as we begin this week today in your house we pray for your blessing. Lord upon your word may it minister to us. May you bless our study this morning as we continue to look at the benefit and the usefulness of being confessional Christians and being a confessional church and denomination. We pray that this would encourage our hearts and Lord that it would enable and cultivate the deepening of our roots in the faith that we hold so dear. We pray for your blessing upon our church and upon our services today in Jesus name. Amen. All right, grab the handout in the back if you haven't already and open your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 1. As you remember, we left off really in the middle last week, in the middle of the lesson, so I pushed everything forward. You've got three pages in front of you. I doubt we'll make it through it. We probably won't, which is fine, but I at least wanted to put it all together. These are largely I think pretty much I may have skipped one or two. These are pretty much all of the reasons that Carl Truman gives in his book and whatever it is I think maybe chapter seven that he gives in his book relative to the usefulness of creeds and confessions and so I hope that we can work through some of these and we'll work through what we can this morning and then next Lord's Day we'll look forward to finishing up. But I want to begin by looking at Second Timothy chapter one beginning in verse eight. This is Paul. You remember Paul's final epistle. his final letter before he gave his life as a martyr for the Lord Jesus. He writes to Timothy, the next generation of pastors, the continuing and successive generation of the Church of Jesus Christ, and he gives these instructions, beginning in verse 8. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling. not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed. For I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me." And now verses 13 and 14. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you've heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. So I think those two references there in 13 and 14, that pattern of sound words are Some translations have it, the form of sound words. And then finally in verse 14, that good deposit. Paul has entrusted to Timothy as much as he entrusted to Titus and as much as he entrusted to the church of all ages through the scriptures that have been given to the church. He entrusted a form of sound words, a pattern of sound words, a good deposit. He entrusted the faith, the faith and that is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and entrusting it to us He gives us something that we are to steward and as a church we're to steward it faithfully. And this has come to be understood then not only by us but throughout church history as the gospel that can be then summarized and has been summarized throughout history in creeds and confessions. And as you know creeds and confessions have normally arisen in the face of contradiction, in the face of heresy, In the face of the challenge, when the faith is challenged, the faith is known, it is preached, it is proclaimed, it is passed down in Psalm 78 from generation to generation. We know the faith, we love the faith, we entrust it to our children. It is housed in the church of Jesus Christ. But then from within and from without, that faith gets challenged by heresy. It gets challenged by false teaching. It gets challenged by a twisting, a different teaching. And we're told to test the spirits in 1 John chapter 4 verse 1, not every spirit is from the Lord Jesus. And so when that teaching and the faith entrusted to the church has been challenged and tested, the church has been driven to the text. It's been driven then to confess its faith and to write down in creeds and confessions. No, that is not what we believe. This is what we believe. And as you well know, this is how the five points of Calvinism arose. When Arminius and his, when the followers of Arminius approached the Synod of Dort and said, well, we want these things to be taught. It was then in response that the Synod of Dort said, no, we're not teaching those things. We're going to continue to teach what we've always taught, which is these things. And you have the canons of Dort becoming the five points of Calvinism. And what that means is, what that shows is the five points of Calvinism wasn't something that someone wrote up you know, in a theology class and then imposed upon the church. The five points of Calvinism arose in the context of the church defending what it always taught, what it always believed. And it was in the face of a contradiction, in the face of an assertion of false teaching, that the church is forced to say, no, this is the faith that we've held, this is the faith that we will hold, this is the faith that we will continue to teach and preach. And that's what the creeds and confessions largely are their response to confrontation which has been good for the church then because it gives us these historic creeds and confessions to be able to stand upon and subscribe to and adhere to and to confess. And what that's also done is it has served to embody the faith for generations because again we can say well this is what I believe but that's what heretics say too, right? Even the church of Latter Day Saints has the Bible. Of course, they have other documents alongside that trump the Bible and interpret the Bible, and that is the problem. But they'll confess the Bible, too. What do we believe when we say we believe the Bible? More importantly, what do we believe the Bible teaches about core doctrines? And that's where creeds and confessions come in. So by a creed and confession, a reminder from last week, we mean a written exhibition of some great doctrines which the writers believe to be taught in the Bible, all creedal formulations are subordinate to Scripture and subject to correction by Scripture, then you have that fancy theological language. Thus, Scripture alone is the norming norm. It norms everything. That's why the ultimate question in every case for faith and practice is, what saith the Lord, right? What does the Scripture say? That is the bedrock of it all. So it's the norming norm, while the church's adopted creeds are the normed norms. They become norms, right? It's a creed. It's a confession of faith. We adhere to it. We subscribe to it. We use it to teach our children by way of catechism. It is a norm, capital N, but it's a normed norm. It isn't made a norm. It isn't a norm in and of itself as scripture is. Scripture can't be normed and it can't be tested by an outside examiner. There's no plumb line but scripture itself. And so that puts it beyond testing, beyond evaluation. Scripture doesn't go into the dock and get examined. Scripture sits in the judge's chair and examines everybody and everything else, right? God is not, as C.S. Lewis said, God is not in the dock. God is in the seat, in the chair. So let's come then this morning then to begin the usefulness of creeds and confessions. And again, several things here. First of all, creeds and confessions are useful because they limit the power of the church over the consciences of the people. And I'll try to run through this and we'll have some discussion. Adopted confessions, we know what confessions we've adopted, the Westminster Standards, as a denomination and therefore a church. But whatever the church may be, adopted confessions describe the message which the church is to preach. And it limits the church's power to what's contained in that document. And again, this is made all the more clear in a denomination like ours in which every minister and every elder And every deacon has to subscribe to those creedal statements, to the confessional statements, has to vow that this is what he believes and this is what he will teach and preach. So you know what you can expect from the pastor and nothing more. You know if an elder fills the pulpit what he's going to do. He's not all of a sudden going to try to turn the church upside down and bring something new. We know exactly what he believes. He's already vowed to uphold what we believe as a church and as a denomination. And you know when an elder meets with you in your home exactly what he's going to bring with him by way of a doctrinal understanding of scripture. And so in a church where the minister has no creed but the Bible we talked about that last week and that of course we don't want to we don't need to call out names that's a lot of churches right. We might say that's the majority of the churches right. Pastors have no creed but the Bible. But let's think about that situation for a moment. In a church where the minister has no creed but the Bible, how would that church handle a situation in which a minister suddenly decided that the Bible teaches that all Christians should wear clothes of a certain style? That happens in churches. Many churches, right? It happens. But where do you go when that happens? You can say, I don't agree. But if you have no creed but the Bible, if he has no creed but the Bible, then he's beyond examination, isn't he? It's his interpretation of the text that carries the only weight. And that's the rule for what he's asserting. He believes the Bible teaches. And so a minister suddenly decides that we should wear a certain kind of clothes or a certain style. There's nothing you can do. You can leave the church, but that's not healthy, right? That's not healthy. What's not healthy in particular is the situation in which that church finds itself. How would a church handle a situation in which a minister suddenly became convinced that firstborn sons should go into the ministry? Right? God set aside the firstborn, he purchased the firstborn, and by the Passover set aside the Levites, right? In lieu of the firstborn of Israel, they're not to be killed, right? Instead, I'll take the Levites in the place of the firstborn, and so therefore the Levites should serve the Lord, and they did, even serving the house But then is there then a doctrinal understanding? Is there a dogma there? Should all our firstborn sons go into the ministry? What if someone believed that? What if a minister taught that? What if a church held to that? What would you do? He's going to go to the text. He's going to show you, well, you see, God bought your firstborn. God owns your firstborn. He's supposed to serve like the Levites did. What do you do with that? In a church where the minister has no creed but the Bible, the point to make here is that there is no one and there's no means to contradict him if he preaches like a Unitarian one Sunday and a Trinitarian the next. The church is at the mercy of the minister, particularly because his creed is private and it's not open to critique because you really don't know in those situations what the pastor is going to say. And I grew up in these kinds of churches. You really didn't know what the pastor was going to say. First of all, you didn't have expositional preaching. You know exactly where, likely, where I'm gonna be next week. I'm gonna be on the next verse, the next set of verses, the next chapter, because we work through books typically, right? For the most part, you know exactly where I am and where I'm gonna go. But in churches where there's not expositional preaching, you don't know what the pastor's gonna bring that morning. He's going to bring whatever the Lord laid upon his heart, right? He's going to bring whatever he believes the Holy Spirit has given him. And what he then believes doesn't become clear until he tells you. And once he tells you, in asserting the text as his support, what do you do with that? You're going to tell him he's wrong? On what basis? How do you examine him? He's holding to what he believes. He's always believed that. You just didn't know it until now when he's preaching on this particular text. But his creed is private. It's not open to critique. I heard of a minister one time who held this no creed but the Bible mentality. And he once said that he was neither a Calvinist nor an Arminian. but he preached every text on its own terms. Now what's wrong with that? Right? Right? Now what's wrong with that? This can also happen in the previous example, which sounds extreme, where a minister might sound like a Unitarian one Sunday, and then a Trinitarian the next, right? What's happening in a situation in which there's no creed but the Bible, the minister himself is not bound by an understanding, right? There's no doctrinal formulations, there's no doctrinal theological Fences, which of course arise from scripture, that's what a creed and confession is, right? A summary of what scripture teaches, but there are no fences to hold the man in, right? And more importantly, there's no fences in his own mind. So when there's no fences and no understanding of the unity and the system of doctrine taught in the scriptures, as it's mentioned in our vows, then it doesn't, there's nothing to keep a man from opening a particular text, telescoping on that text, right? Microscoping on that text, and just preaching that text. That's what it says. So what does the person who says he has no creed but the Bible, what's his answer to the creeds? I think you need to flesh that out. You tell me. What's that? You tell me. He obviously considers them as being imposed upon the church. Why? Where are they from? Okay, I'll put my cards on the table. He thinks they're from men. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And what we're to understand here is not the assertion and the proposition of creeds and confessions as being a final authority, right? Again, they're norms, but they're normed norms, right? And they're for the good of the church. And yes, it's men who composed the creeds and confessions, right? And well, it's actually one of the benefits that we'll get to. It's men who have composed creeds and confessions as sinners, right? But that's why creeds and confessions are always subject to and subordinate to scripture, subject to correction and to revision. And the polity of a church, the book of church order of a church, needs a manner and a means by which to correct the confession, if need be. If the majority of men came to the conviction that the creed was wrong, that the confession needed adjustment and revision, the church needs a means by which to do that. But what the church never has is a means by which to correct scripture. Because scripture, right, is the norming norm. I don't know if I can answer that. Yeah. I don't think I don't think any of the creeds have been changed in any substantial way that I remember. Yeah. Well, that's one of the benefits, right? You know, the historic consistency and the historic nature of the creed shows that what they address are things that really matter for the church. They address the basics and the essentials and the core of the faith. That's why they're still here, right? And that's one of the encouragements of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the other two standards as well. You know, the Westminster Confession is from the 1640s. It's still here. It's still unchanged. It's been revised to make way for American Presbyterianism versus, of course, English Presbyterianism. But the reality is, it's still the same doctrinal stances. It hasn't been altered. It hasn't been changed. It doesn't need to be. The church has never seen that it needs to be. It has held up over all these years. Sandy? So, Chris, what you're trying to say, is when someone says, no creed but the Bible, how do you answer? How do you, I mean, I know in a general way how to answer that person because, like you say, you can't. Why, I would answer, I don't mean to answer with a question. No. It's what I was trying to say. Why do you believe there's no creed but the Bible? that they're from men and they're not inerrants. So they're open immediately to suspicion wherever they are. You can open it up completely and have a Unitarian come out of it or whatever. But the great thing about the creeds and confessions being written, being public and not being private, is they're open to critique. They're open to evaluation. Anybody can take the Apostles' Creed and go to scripture. And you could say to somebody, You know, in response, do you not hold to the Apostles' Creed? Right? Do you not hold to the Nicene Creed? The Athanasian Creed? These are historic, these aren't denominational confessions where one might say that, you know, the Westminster is. But these ecumenical creeds, do you not believe these things? Do you believe what these creeds teach? And if you do, then why can't you understand that these creeds are good for the church and good for your people? Because it formulates. Remember, the point of a creed and a confession is to take a summary. It systematizes, right? I believe in God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It systematizes, which is, in essence, what a confession and catechism does, right? What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, goes on down the line, right? Who is the redeemer of God's elect, right? And then you go through your catechism, you'll see all the little footnotes with all the scripture text. It's going through scripture, and bringing it together and saying, this is what we believe about Jesus Christ. This morning, we're gonna go back to Westminster Confession 7. We're gonna gather from scripture. This is what we believe about the covenant, the covenant-making God, the covenant of works which we broke, can't keep, and the covenant of grace, which the Spirit enables us to walk in the way of in Christ. So we're gonna look at that this morning. Yes, it's from the Westminster Confession that someone else wrote, but the reality is, go to scripture and see that those things are there. And if they're there, then we can confess it. And in confessing it, we're confessing the system of doctrine taught in scripture, right? And what's great is anybody can go to scripture and take this document and say, okay, let me test this. You can be a Berean, right? We're supposed to be Bereans, right? You're supposed to be Bereans against your pastor and your elders. Is that what the Bible says? I'm gonna go home and find out. Go right ahead, right? And if you can't see it, then let's talk about it, right? But the reality is the church is protected. Again, we're looking at benefits and usefulness, Jim. Yeah, exactly, right? So again, we're dealing with how this limits the power of the church. It limits the church to what you understand, because you know this is what we hold to denominationally and as a session. It limits it to what you believe and what you understand we're actually going to teach and preach. And nothing's going to come from left field. If it does, then you need to talk to your elders who will talk to me, and then Presbytery, right? And General Assembly if we need to, right? If something's coming from left field, then I'm not keeping my vows. Now, that doesn't keep me from believing something else, right? I mean, in, let's say, recent years, but there's three or four men that I know particularly who were in the OPC that came to convictions of Roman Catholicism and left and joined the Roman Catholic Church. And I don't know how that's possible, especially after going to Westminster and being raised in the Reformed faith. But the reality is, the creed doesn't keep me from changing my mind. The confession doesn't keep me from changing my mind. Because I'm not bound by them as a final standard, I'm only bound by scripture. And if I believe the creed is wrong, then I need a new creed. Maybe I need the counsel of Trent from the Catholic Church, right? So it doesn't keep me or an elder from changing our mind. What it binds us to is we vow not to teach anything else. And then if I come to find, as a minister, that I can't stay in this church any longer in good conscience because my convictions have changed. I don't believe in infant baptism anymore. I believe that's an error. I can't stay here. It would be wrong, it'd be hypocritical to stay here and to continue under the guise that I'm in full agreement when I'm not, especially as where I disagree is going to somewhere somehow change and alter and influence my teaching. Right? I'm being unfaithful. Again, I can hold to what I hold. I just need to do it somewhere else where that's allowed and accepted. But I'm not allowed and accepted here. to preach and teach hypocritically, right? I'm supposed to hold to my vows. And if I can't keep my vows any more than in good conscience, I need to step down as an elder or a minister or a deacon, right? Because I've changed. So we can disagree. We're not bound by the confession as if it's a final standard. The only final standard is scripture. And if I come to see scripture differently, that's between me and the Lord. I mean, let's face it, Baptists see scripture differently than we do. That's between them and the Lord. I just met a Baptist brother the other day, good brother, right? He sees things differently and even said to me, you know, we're Baptist. I'm like, yeah, I'm Presbyterian. We have differences and that's okay, right? Because we're not disagreeing on the essence of the gospel, we're both Protestants, we're both Christians, but where we disagree requires that we not minister in the same church. He's required to minister in a Baptist setting because only then can he have a clear conscience for God. I'm required to minister in a Presbyterian setting because I can only have a clear conscience here, right? Make sense? So understand the importance of confessions Usefulness and importance, it limits the church, and it limits the power of the church, but each one of us has freedom of conscience before the Lord, right? And the Lord alone is Lord of our conscience, and the Westminster Confession doesn't bind my conscience. Scripture does. I just find that the Westminster Confession is one in which I can, in good conscience, agree with. Do you understand that? Right? Makes sense? I think Arnie had his hand up. Sorry, Arnie. between Protestants and Catholics. And they say the creeds are the one thing that caused all those, because you got one group on one side, one group on the other, and then they go to war. But they missed the point, really. So you're saying it was a counter-reaction against the Catholic creeds and rules. That was the difference. You have two different creeds, you have what Protestants So someone trying, people trying to find a middle road, right? The writings of men are causing. Today, if you go into fundamentalist circles, you mentioned catechism, I mentioned it one time in my kids' church, they said, are you Catholic? Are you Catholic, that's the question, yeah. And so, there's an emanation from that. Yeah. Hold on, who had their hand up? Oh, Misty did. I did. Sorry, Melody, sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say that they know creed, but the Bible people, The minister has a creed, they have a creed, because we all have a system of doctrine. Again, like we said last week, when someone says, what do you believe? In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and you just go to Revelation, right? All of us are going to say, well, what do you believe about God, or who do you think God is? Well, according to the Bible, and we're going to grab text and put them together and say, this is what I believe about God, right? What's required for someone to become a Christian? Well, I'm going to go to the text, and I'm going to gather and say, this is what's required. So we all do that. We all have a system. That's actually, I skipped it, that's actually Truman's first point under the usefulness of creeds and confessions. He begins with, number one, let's understand that everyone has a creed, everyone has a confession, right? It's like we said about worship. Every church has a liturgy. Right? People feel like they come in, they get this piece of paper, and I tell them, it's a roadmap. Just keep going. Don't get lost, right? We have a liturgy, and it's fixed, and we use it every week. But every church has a liturgy. It may not be written down, right? It might be in the minister's head or in the worship leader's head, but everybody has a liturgy, right? Misty? Yeah, sort of on that note, I was just thinking that the priest and confessions are so useful, too, because, number one, it does prevent, obviously, you talked about this, Right, exactly. Right. Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Right. This text. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to remember that the Westminster divines went back and added the scripture proof text later because they were required to. Right. This all came from their understanding of scripture. Right. They knew the word of God so well. And so the thing is to realize that you need, as you said, you're highlighting several of the benefits that are listed here. Right. The church needs to understand and appreciate their usefulness for the guidance of the preaching and teaching and the belief in the faith of the church. And what we do when we preach a particular text and we zoom in on it and we forget what's called the analogy of faith, the scripture interprets scripture, God is his own commentator, we forget that and we wind up actually mispreaching a particular text, right? Because we're not weighing it in accord with the rest of scripture. This is what we're getting to on Sunday nights, right? that the true context for every text is the whole text, the whole text. And that's been the greatest challenge to me coming to a book like Hosea, right? Because you can take a text from Hosea, you know, we could have taken chapter one and we could have preached a sermon on marriage, right? There's a lesson for marriage in chapter one, right? Don't be an adulterer. But that's not what we're being taught there preeminently. It's an application. But what's going on between Hosea and Gomer? It's very clear what's going on when you read the whole chapter, right? And when you put it in the context of Israel's apostasy and continued decline away from the Lord and the danger, the judgment of coming exile. It's clear how we need to, so for me as a minister, it was clear to me what I needed to do with chapter one, right? And now chapter two and this morning we'll come to chapter three and we'll end the biographical section of Hosea But the challenge is, again, looking at chapter three, it's okay, there's a lot that could be said here about many other tangential, relevant things, but what's really going on in chapter three? Well, God tells us, because remember, God is interpreting in the text. You know, Hosea, go do this, right? Because I'm doing this, right? Gomer that. Because Israel this, right? God tells us what's going on and how we're to interpret it, but we can miss sight, lose sight of that and completely miss it when we just want to, I want to preach a sermon on, you know, marriage. We're going to go to Hosea, right? It really highlights that. And again, it can be an application, it can be something that can be drawn from it, but when we're saying this is what the text means and this is, you know, Hosea did not come, let me put it this way, Hosea didn't come to Israel to talk about marriage, right? He came to Israel to talk about the covenant which its best analogy is marriage, and so that's why you have the illustration, but Hosea came to preach the covenant that had been broken that they made with the Lord under Moses. So keeping that in mind guides and limits me to the text in light of the whole text. So again, that's what the confession does, and that's how we handle scripture. All right, so let's go to number two here. And as far as we've gotten. That's okay, this is good. Number two, Church-sanctioned confession creates a community where what's regarded as normal belief and practice, number one, three things here. Number one, it's publicly stated. What is normal belief and practice in this church? It's publicly stated, right? And if you want to look beyond the Westminster standards, then go online and order a copy of the Book of Church Order, which will give you the form of government. It'll give you the directory, the form of government, the book of discipline, and the directory for public worship. And you'll know everything you need to know. You'll be an expert on the OPC. So it creates a church community where what's regarded as normal belief and practice, number one, is publicly stated. Number two, it can be challenged and tested by scripture, right? The norming norm. And number three, it allows both elders and lay people to know exactly where they stand in relation to one another, right? Very important. You know exactly where you stand in relation to your elders men who have vowed and subscribed, and they know exactly where you stand in relation to them as a member. Now again, remember, members don't take vows of subscription, right? We'll get more into that. But members who make vows in this church and join this church do so knowing that it's a church with standards. You can't miss that in the new members class, you can't miss that in the OPC, right? We are a church with standards, right? We are a church whose elders are vowing to uphold something. Think even of the baptism, right? The parents' baptism vows. Parents make vows, right, to raise their children in the teaching of this church, right? The importance of recognizing, recognizing that this is a confessional church. You should know that before you join. And if that's something you didn't know, then either get on board or maybe move on, right? if that's a bother, because you need to be where you can be in clear conscience. Furthermore, confession states clearly what a church stands for, and thus it allows the people to know what to expect from the eldership, and most importantly, when the eldership is overstepping its bounds in three areas. Number one, in doctrinal assertions, saying that something is taught by the Bible that isn't, or that he has made vows, right? that he has vowed and subscribed to confession that doesn't include that and in fact may contradict that. It would be wrong then for an elder to say that as a doctrine from scripture to start asserting Unitarian doctrine or the doctrine of annihilationism. So first of all, when an elder is overstepping his bounds in his doctrinal assertions, secondly in his requirements from the members, and thirdly in his expectations. from the members, right? As we'll see later, right, a creed and a confession adopted by a church helps us understand what can be expected by way of doctrinal maturity from the church, right? We can expect the church, those who would sit under this ministry, and we, as elders, we are bound to encourage, right, and to uphold these standards, and so these standards are the very thing that we're going to teach and preach, They're the things that we're going to give our Sunday school teachers to teach your children, right? And so it levels out the expectations. We know exactly what to expect, and if that's being overstepped by an eldership, then it can become clear because we have a public church-sanctioned confession. Again, something that holds us all accountable. Okay, so creeds and confessions limit the power of the church over the consciences of the people. Very, very important. Second use then, creeds and confessions offer succinct and thorough summaries of the faith. Remember, that's in the definition of a creed and confession itself. They focus the church's mind on the main thing, right, on the main thing. When we consider how some, this is what we said already, when we consider how some of the church, how old some of the church's confessions are, it indicates that they ably address the essentials of Christian existence. So they're still there, unchallenged, still faithfully being held and subscribed to by the church, by the denomination, by ministers of the gospel. They address these things well. A church with a creed or a confession has a built-in gospel reality check, says Truman, a built-in gospel reality check, right? And the reason this is important is because you can imagine, I can certainly remember and think of situations in which churches lose sight of the main thing. Churches lose sight of the main thing. There's been so many churches throughout America's history that have begun to just shift to the side and their whole main focus becomes something totally different. Think of the social gospel, right? Losing sight of the essence and the core of the gospel itself and becoming so focused on social concerns, mercy concerns, That the church's main thing has now become a social gospel. The church's main thing has now become a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, right? These things are great, but if any of them arise, they need to be the fruit of the church's gospel ministry, right? And not become the main thing. So what the creeds do is they limit, right, the church's power, but they also summarize the church's faith in a way that helps us remember what we believe. and what the church is here for. The church with a built-in gospel reality check is unlikely to become sidetracked by the peripheral issues of a passing moment. Rather, it'll stay focused on the great theological categories that touch on matters of eternal significance. And this is so important in the church's preaching. We need to preach the gospel consistently, completely, faithfully. As Paul says, declare the whole counsel of God. Remember in Acts 20, right? I did not fail to declare the whole counsel of God to you in all my public preaching and my personal ministry. It was always the gospel. Even think of what he said in summary to the Corinthians. I determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Getting at the very heart and the core of that life-changing, right? Altering of all things in the Lord Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection. Everything has come to. they had at that point. Furthermore, number two, creeds and confessions cover the basic topics of Christian doctrine to protect the church and its leaders from making their own issues the issues, right? Again, it happens, right? People have doctrinal pets, people have pet peeves about certain things, right? Think of the situation in which churches get caught up, especially, we've all seen it, churches get caught up on such a focus on the end times, and it becomes all they preach, all they teach, constant focus on the end times, right? The tribulation, the rapture, the temple, the Israel, the millennium, all these things occupy the main focus of the church's ministry. Its message is continual. Now the message should be continual. The gospel, right? But when a church has that sort of focus and it has that sort of distraction, what it does is it makes its own issues the issues. Yes, we should preach on the end. Yes, we should be prepared. Amos says, prepare to meet your God, right? We should all prepare, we should have doctrine, we should have lessons and sermons and teachings and studies on the end times. But that's not the church's main thing, because as Christ said in Acts 1, this is not for you to know, right? The time determined by the Father. This is your business. Wait in Jerusalem until the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, because he will enable you to be my witnesses. To do what? To preach the gospel. All right, so the church has, there in Acts 1, verse 8, The church has its preoccupation. The church is to be busy about preaching the gospel. But when churches are focused particularly on things like the end times, as we've seen so often in our day, in our generation, it is distracted by that which is not the main thing, right? Because about the end times, we have lots of opinions, right? Because we're not there yet. But about the gospel, there's no opinions, right? We know exactly what the gospel is. and the church needs to be busy preaching it because the key is we'll never outgrow the gospel. Remember, the gospel is not only that by which we come to Christ, it's that by which we live upon Christ, right? So the church's core ministry is to be about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, particularly the past events, what has been accomplished by Christ and finished. Truman brings up a point here about the confessions being so long. They're not that long, compare the confessions to a book, you tell someone the confession has 33 chapters, like 33, that's how you, they're like that long, you know? Go to read the Westminster Confession of Faith, right? It's not long, but he says if we're tempted to think these confessions are too long. We should ask ourselves if we really want a church confession that said nothing about the doctrine of scripture, or the doctrine of God, or the nature of justification, or the definition of the church. Now, we might disagree with the content of a particular confession, but we can't really argue that it doesn't represent some of the basic concerns of the Bible itself. Go to the table of contents, to the Westminster Confession, look at the table of contents, if you will, quote unquote, of the Apostles' Creed, and you'll see that what it concerns itself with is the very basics of the Christian faith. And we're thankful to have a confession that addresses such a broad you know, such a broad course of issues as the Westminster Confession does. It's not too long. It's as succinct as possible. It's meant to be a summary. It's not meant to be exhaustive. As we said earlier, we can't exhaust scripture. We can't say it all and we can't say it such that no more could be said, which is why there are multiple confessions that the church has produced and multiple catechisms. But as a denomination, we have subscribed to the Westminster standards because we find them to be a sufficient, a sufficient summary. of what the Bible teaches on the core issues of the Christian faith. In number three, it must be understood, however, that for a church to maintain a consistent Orthodox witness, a certain level of complexity is necessary in its doctrinal statements in order for them to be theologically stable, right? A certain level of complexity is necessary, and this is why And we find this every Lord's Day when we read a catechism answer together or we read a confession together. Again, chapter seven of the Westminster Confession for this morning, it's not easy to read. It's not easy to get your mind around it. That's one of the reasons why we try to read it publicly because then we involve eye gate and ear gate together. It's twice the means, twice that we're doing double duty on comprehension here. And so it's helpful to read that out loud, but the reality is, yeah, You kind of need to take that maybe afterwards and say, wow, okay, what did I just say, right? And go home in the afternoon and look it up again. Or as you know, because you have the bulletin going out before Sunday, it'd be really good to look up the confession of faith, right? Don't just look up the sermon text, but go to the confession of faith, look it up and say, okay, now what am I going to confess tomorrow, right? What am I going to say I believe? And break that confession or that catechism answer down in such a way that you understand it. But you see there's complexity. comma, comma, comma, semicolon, semicolon, semicolon, comma, comma, comma, period, right? There's a lot of complexity there, but that complexity is necessary in order for the church to be theologically stable, right? For example, Truman says take the doctrine of the incarnation, right? In order to maintain this basic Christian belief, what we mean by the incarnation of God, the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person in the Trinity, We need to have an understanding of what deity is. What is God, right? God is a spirit. We need to begin there and understand that God doesn't have body parts. God's infinite, right? Infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, right? The Lord is without bounds. God can't be confined to a body, right? We need to know what deity is. Secondly, we need to know what humanity is, that there is a narrowing, there's a confining, that Christ has one heart, right? One human heart, one human mind, one human soul, ten fingers, ten toes, right? There's limits there. We need to understand what humanity is and that that which is, you know, he which is infinite took on finitude in a real way, in a incomprehensible way. And as a creed says, in such a way that they weren't combined and confused and made into some composite. But Christ remains in himself one person with two entirely distinct natures that are not combined. Distinct and yet belonging mysteriously, hypostatically to one person. He's not schizophrenic, right? So we need to know something of what deity is. We need to know something of what humanity is. And we need to also know whether or not sin is inherent to humanity. Is Christ even able to take on humanity, the fullness of true humanity? Can he really be a true, full human being, a rational soul and mind and a true human body without taking on sin? Aren't human beings by nature sinners? Yes, but in the beginning, not so. Sin came into humanity by the fall. Sin isn't inherent to humanity, so Christ is able then to take on to take on humanity in a way that actually is not taking on sin, which is why he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin, which tells us something very clearly about what happens at conception between a man and a woman, right? There's the passing on of that original sin. It's inescapable. This is why everyone born by ordinary generation is a sinner, to show that Christ was one and only one who was born by extraordinary generation. even by the Holy Spirit, right? So again, you see what's being packed into, we believe in the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. And remember, this is part of our second vow, second membership vow, right? But you realize what happens here. We need a certain level of complexity. We need a Trinitarian understanding of God and realize that it's not the Father who became incarnate. It's not the Father, right? It's not the Spirit who became incarnate, right? It's only Christ who is the second person of the Trinity. Not the first, not the third, there are distinctions that Scripture makes here that we adhere to and we understand. That the eternally begotten Son of God is the one who became a man. He incarnated, he tabernacled, right? And not the Father. This is where we fall into. When we forget that, we fall into, you know, the heresy of patrapassionism, right? When people think that it was the Father who died on the cross. So the Father didn't die, the Son did, right? The Son had his passion, there, his suffering, the father didn't suffer, the son only suffered, the spirit didn't suffer, so we fall into the trap, you know, thanking the father for dying for us, the father for suffering for us, that's an error, that's not what scripture teaches. So you see, scripture puts up these fences to keep us in bounds so that we can confess our faith in a way that's consistent with scripture, right, because that's true faith. but the certain creeds and confessions give us, as we said last time, tried and trusted vocabulary that help us even to confess that which is incomprehensible. The Trinity, right? We can't comprehend it, but we can assert it. We can say we believe it, and we can use proven vocabulary to say this is what we believe because that vocabulary has historically, historically carries all the freight of scripture that would support, right? and that would actually be what we're confessing. So again, you can see the benefit and the usefulness of a creed and a confession, but also the necessity that it be, that it have some length to it, but the necessity also that it have a certain level of complexity, right? What we believe cannot be stated so simply as to avoid complexity. This is one reason why the Westminster Standards are still held in the old language. Now, we do have a committee that's been at work for a long time and probably still has a long time to go that's trying to update the confession in the catechism. And you should see the charts and the tables, right, that they've put forth and say, okay, this is what we've done so far, changing hath into has, right, doth into does, and also changing some words that, you know, like particularly in the catechism, right, that just don't We don't use anymore, and when you confess that, do you really even understand what you're saying, and can you even find that in a dictionary anymore, right? Some words that need to be altered there, but what they're doing is they're, this committee is working very slowly, very deliberately, very carefully to try to update the language of our standards, but not to alter the substance of those standards, right? So it'll be a long process, and we'll see where it stands when it finally comes before General Assembly and whether it'll actually be adopted or not. because we want people to understand what they're saying, but we don't want to change, we don't want to say, okay, this is way too complex, this is 17th century language, let's get rid of it, and let's bring it down a little bit, right? These guys had a theological acumen, and they expected people to have a theological acumen that's just beyond the reach of 21st century man, so let's simplify the catechism and confession. That's not what the committee's trying to do. The OPC would never pass that. What we are trying to do, what they are trying to do, is to see if it can be bettered so that what we do confess is better, more understandable, but also still carries all that good freight of what scripture teaches that we hold as Reformed Presbyterian confessional believers. In order for a confession, bottom of page one, in order for a confession to be succinct, Its statements require a certain amount of complexity that assumes and requires the parameters and influence of its broader doctrinal matrix. Now what we're saying here is that the confession in the catechism requires a certain amount of complexity, right? To actually be theologically stable and not subject to the work of a wax nose here, right? So we need to be theologically stable, so you need complexity, but let's remember that the confession in the catechism has a context in which it's expecting its readers, its adherents, its subscribers, it's expecting you to know the context. It's assuming you know the context. It's assuming that you're not just going to say something you don't understand, but you're going to say it within the context, first of all, of the confession, which itself stands in the context of scripture. So the Westminster divines who pinned the confession in the catechisms were not afraid to use language that assumed upon scripture and assumed your knowledge of scripture so that when you're asserting these things, you're thinking of scripture. And this should happen to you. You know the Bible well enough, if you do any regular reading of the scriptures, you know the Bible well enough that when we rehearse an answer to a catechism question or even this morning, you know, the confession chapter 7, you should see phrases that are cut and pasted from scripture. You should see things that if they're not directly cut and pasted are built on particular texts that you probably are thinking of even as you're saying it. You're thinking immediately of this text, that text, that text. That should happen to you because that's exactly how the whole thing was put together. And so what the divines have done and what any confessional statement seeks to do is to expect you to search the context and to interpret what they mean, to take what they mean in context of the confession and to take what they mean in the confession in the context of scripture, right? Understand that. So every confessional statement is a statement in context and we need to remember that. Now on a given Sunday morning, we're only gonna take one catechism question or maybe a paragraph or two and last Sunday, I think we skipped paragraphs, right? We did paragraph three of chapter seven and then paragraph five of chapter seven, right? I try not to make our confession and catechism recitation too long, because I want to get right to the heart of things, but we skipped number four, which is great, right? But we chose, right? My expectation is that you're going to put paragraph three and paragraph five with paragraph four, which is an important link, but also that you're going to put three and five in chapter seven of the confession, you know, that you'll look at the whole thing and that you'll consider what's going on and what we're confessing, because we're only confessing in a particular Sunday morning a part of what we believe about the covenant, right? And in a catechism question, it's a little easier because you come to a question and an answer, and it may be that the next question goes on to another topic, but even that, right, even that is grounded in a whole context, right? All right, maybe we should stop there. I'm gonna get on to the next one, because it's almost a whole second page, right? Any thoughts or questions? Getting back to the King James and the wording, I was listening to something a while back that said that the King James Bible, the way it was worded, was because it was mainly an oral presentation from it. It wasn't really people didn't have it in their hands. Their own copies. So the wording was made to emphasize certain points that would be from the public reading of scripture in the act of worship, and that's why it was And that's why I understood the test of time because of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. It's well known that the King James, that Elizabethan language, is very readable. It's good for the ear. It's wonderful for public reading. And so the King James is very suitable for that. The effort, by comparison, the effort of the New American Standard, which is probably the most accurate translation of the Greek and the Hebrew, the New American Standard is a great study Bible because it's so word-for-word translation from the Greek and the Hebrew, but it's a terrible reading Bible. It's terrible, it's my opinion, but it's a terrible reading Bible because it is so wooden, it is so choppy, which I think it makes it terrible for the ear, right? The New American Standard doesn't sound good. You know, you might be able to You can comprehend it as you read it to yourself, but to try to read it publicly, to try to hear it publicly, it's not the same, right? It's very choppy compared to, say, the King James. So you have this great translation, but terrible for public use. Again, my opinion. The NIV, right, swung the pendulum the other way. You know, my NIV's extremely readable because it's brought so down, you know, so low in terms of its comprehension level, right? CNIV is very, very readable, which is why it's such a popular translation for the pew, right, for most churches. CNIV is great, but it's not a really good translation. It uses a policy of translation called the dynamic equivalence, right? If we translate word for word, it's gonna be too wooden, like the New American Standard. So, well, why don't we give the dynamic equivalence? And so now you're saying, well, here's the word, but this is what it means. Now you have translators making interpretive decisions. So now you wonder, who was on the committee of translation? Who's interpreting the Bible for me? The NAS says, we're not going to interpret it for you. You deal with it. I know this sounds wooden and sounds weird, but that's your problem. We're just giving you the text. That's your job. You're the interpreter. Your conscience is bound by the Lord. So the NAS says, you deal with the problem. The NIV says, we'll take care of this. They bring it down and make it very accessible. What is the NIV, sixth grade, eighth grade level? I forget now. bring it down very, very low, it's wonderful, it's beautiful, it's readable, it's conversational, it just sounds like you're sitting in a room hearing people converse, right? But you lose some important aspects of accurate translation because the translators are making interpretive decisions. That's why I favor the ESV. I think the ESV has found a good middle ground so that it's done a great job of being an accurate translation like the NAS, but I think it's also done a great job of preserving the readability of the King James Version. So ESV, in my opinion, is a really good central place between a very readable King James and a very good translation of the NAS, right? So that's why, in my own use, I land here. Jim. A quick question. As far back as if you're as far up in Spurgeon, preached against Arminianism big time. We don't do that today, why? Well, I mean, it's a good question, right? But I think also we need to We need to evaluate whether, let me put it this way. We need to think about whether preaching should be largely defensive or offensive, right? And my own conviction is, as I've never been a bank teller, but I hear tell that bank tellers are trained in counterfeit money, right? What's counterfeit? by making them very, very familiar with what's real. Because just as soon as you figure out what counterfeit money looks like, they're going to change it, and it's going to look something else. As soon as you learn the flaws of counterfeit money, they're going to perfect that, because now they're getting caught, and then they're going to do something else. It's going to improve and improve. In other words, the deception is going to get better and better, as close as possible. So the best way, they've said, as I've heard, the best way to train bank tellers is like, hey, this is what real money feels like, looks like, These are its key markings, this is real money. And then whenever counterfeit comes along, whatever it looks like, from any corner, whoever made it, doesn't really matter, you'll know instantly. Ideally, you'll know instantly, something's wrong with this, because you know the truth. So my own conviction is not to be a defensive preacher, but to be offensive. And so rather than trying to take shots at people, as it were, or churches, or denominations, or even doctrines, Say, look, let's just open the text. Let me just preach the text. This is what it says. And my hope is that you'll go away and say, well, that's not what that guy teaches or what that church holds to, or that's not what my neighbor said, and be able to say, well, OK, there's a difference here in what is being taught at my church and what my friend believes. Let me go to scripture and be a Berean here. Let me test the spirits, right? And so my personal goal as a minister has been to just stick to the truth, let the chips fall where they may, if that winds up excluding or exposing someone or something, then so be it. We'll just both move on here, right? But I don't think there's, I don't think it's healthy. And I've said under very defensive preaching, everybody else is wrong. And you wonder what you're supposed to believe because the preaching is so busy correcting everybody else or trying to protect you from everybody else by saying that guy's wrong, that guy's wrong, that guy's wrong. And I just don't think that's healthy. Let's just preach the text. Yeah, exactly. I think in a Sunday school class... They answer your objections. Yeah. Well, this is where I think of the reform worship class we did. I've done two classes on worship now, right? And in those classes, we're asserting what we as an OPC church believe and what we practice, but naturally in that class comes up considerations of other types of worship and other forms of other approaches to liturgy. And we get to look at those and evaluate those in a way that hopefully is with scripture as our guide and not saying, okay, we're right, and this is what we believe, so let's just knock down all the others here, you know? That's not gonna be good, so, make sense? All right, we need to close. Father, thank you for this morning, thank you for the time you've given us, we bless your holy name, and we thank you for your word and for your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our savior. We do pray that as we continue to work through this study on the creedal imperative, that it would be a blessing to us, and that you would, again, deepen our roots in your word and in the truth and Lord that we would rejoice in being confessional and realize that this is a blessing and a good for us and for our church and we pray this in Jesus name.