So we're now on the last chapter of Crisis of Confidence by Carl Truman, and so my goal is to get through the chapter this week and next week, so Lord willing, next week we'll finish this book by Truman. And just a little bit of review, in the book, Truman started with cultural factors at work that make people suspicious of creeds and confessions and the use of them. So he mentioned things like individualism, devaluing the past, pragmatism in the church, anti-authoritarianism. So these are just some things that have affected the way people today think about as it applies to confessions. And so we need to be aware of that for ourselves as we are immersed in the culture that we live in. the culture and its ideas seep into us by osmosis, that we might not realize it, but we can be susceptible to these ideas, and so therefore we might have a reaction against confessions. So those are the cultural factors, and then Truman moved on to argue that, in his words, the Bible at least strongly implies that creeds and confessions are used by the church. Strongly implies, because we do see creeds in places like Exodus 13 with the Passover, or Deuteronomy 26 when the man was to bring his first fruits for an offering, he was to recite a certain creed word for word. And Paul mentions in 1 Timothy 3.16, great we confess is the mystery of godliness, so there is some understanding that the church was aware of this saying that he said, we confess this, we have this confession about the mystery of godliness. And Paul also mentions in his letters these trustworthy sayings and how the church was to hold fast to the traditions that were spoken and by letter passed down from Paul. And so all of those things, Truman says, strongly implies, at least, if not requires, that churches would use creeds and confessions. And then from that, we move to the history of the church. And we see that early in the history of the church after the apostles have died, we have creeds being used and confessions. And so where there was the rule of faith first, which becomes a rule. A rule is a standard, objective measurement as to whether you believe the right things or not. And so the church used this rule to make that judgment. There's the rule of faith, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the other councils in the early church. And then we looked at the Reformation, and those confessions became longer and more detailed as the Protestants then began to explain how they are different from Rome, and then from one another, and so they get more detailed in their beliefs. And then the last lesson was on how creeds and confessions help us in worship, that our doctrine drives us to praise. And so the better we understand the doctrine in our confessions, then the more this will help us to praise God. So that's a fast review of five chapters. And now in this last chapter, Truman goes on to talk about the usefulness of confessions, some of the advantages that will come to a church if we use them. He gives 10, and so we'll try to cover four today, and Lord willing, six next week. And some of these will sound familiar. We've talked about it before, but it's really just about this final chapter, hammering the point home, as we finish up the book, and you know, when I come to these topics, I always wonder like, okay, it might be 20 years before I ever teach this topic again, so I'm gonna hammer this home as we finish up. So, the first point that Truman makes, and we'll get to what he means by this as a use of the confession, is he says all churches and Christians have confessions. So that's point number one, all churches and Christians have confessions. Now I wanna ask you, what does he mean by that? What does he mean when he says all churches have a confession? How can that be true? Dick. I think all churches have a confession in the sense that they believe something that's spiritual. and that would be their profession, whatever they're doing now. Yeah, so every church believes something. Every church has a doctrine. And that was, I think, a good point that you mentioned. Every church is different from another church. So, you know, there might be a town where there's one church in the town. This is how it was in the Roman Catholic Church. There was just that one church in the parish. But it's interesting even when you go to the different towns and they have five churches. Well, why do those five churches exist? because there's like one Methodist and one Episcopalian and one Presbyterian and one Baptist and all these things. So there's a reason they exist, and that's because they believe something different from the other church two streets down. All right, you want to add anything? Yeah. Yes, no creed, but the Bible is a creed. So that's ironic. So what does he mean by this? Why does he bring this up again? Well, what he's trying to say then is all churches and Christians have confessions, means the use of the confession in a document is to publicize and to be honest about what we believe. So that is where it becomes useful. Because we all have confessions, we might as well be upfront and honest and public about what we believe. So I'm going to spend about half the class on this point because this is, I think, really what the whole issue comes down to is how and why we need a confession. So, and some of this is Truman, some of this is my own thoughts, but everyone has a system of doctrine. So everyone comes to the Bible to interpret the Bible, and we have our lenses, we have our glasses that we use when we read the Bible and try to understand what does it mean. That's why we have different interpretations. That's why we have different churches. Because we're all reading 66 books, the same books for the most part, but we're interpreting what those texts mean differently. I want to read to you a few statements as examples. of this issue. So here's one person, I won't tell you yet who it was, but this is what this person said. Quote, I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me. And I am as much on my guard against reading them today through the medium of my own views yesterday or a week ago as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system, whatever. Okay, so I've endeavored to read the Bible as though no one had read it before me. And so I'm on my guard from being influenced by anybody, any other name, authority, or system. So I don't wanna read the Bible with preconceived lenses, he says, of Calvinism or Arminianism or Catholicism or whatever. And then he even says, even through my own views yesterday. So I want to come to the Bible today as if I don't have any preconceived notions from what I read yesterday. I want to read it fresh again, as if no one had read it before me, even me, that's what he says. Now, that might sound good. to not want to come to the Bible with preconceived ideas corrupted by other men's opinions. That sounds good, but we're gonna see there are some issues with thinking that way. So that man was Alexander Campbell. Alexander Campbell was the founder of the Disciples of Christ, and their main problem is that they teach baptismal regeneration, that the act of baptism as a work saves you. So how did he get to that conclusion? Well, because he read the Bible not wanting to be influenced by any other man's opinion. He just thought reading the Bible himself would come to the truth. Well, the belief he came to was baptism saves you. Here's another example. This man says, quote, the very fact that I did not study a prescribed course in theology made it possible for me to approach the subject with an unprejudiced mind and to be concerned only with what the Bible actually teaches. Now, so again, well, that sounds good, right? I mean, we should be concerned only with what the Bible actually teaches. I mean, you might think, what could be wrong with that? Who can argue with that? And so this man says, I didn't approach the Bible with any theology that I'd studied before in the background. Well, that man was Louis Sperry Schaeffer, and Schaeffer was one of the most prominent dispensationalists in the 20th century, and he was the founder of Dallas Theological Seminary. And Schaeffer wrote that statement in his theology textbook. And so that's very ironic, think about that. The man boasted that he hadn't studied anybody else's theology. He just read the Bible himself. And that's how he came to the truth. He just read the Bible himself. But now what is he doing? He is writing a textbook of theology. And of course he wants people to buy it and to read his book. And he starts a seminary because he wants to teach students what he believes is true. So, what does that show us? He has a confession of faith. He may claim, he may be right even to say he didn't study theology under anybody else, but he did study theology under somebody, that somebody is himself, Lewis Sperry Chafer. He made himself the theologian, he made himself the expert, and of course now he wants everyone to listen to him. So he is going to encourage people to do the opposite of the very thing that he claims that he did. So the issue isn't what lenses are you using. Everyone is using a lens to understand the Bible. The question is, are you going to restrict yourself to your own reading, your own ideas, your own thoughts, Or are you going to let others shape you and give you ideas and help you see things in the word and give you things to think about? So the basic point is that it's inevitable that everyone has a system of doctrine that they come to when they read the Bible. Chafer even himself came to the Bible with his own ideas, and he read his ideas as he read the Bible. And so we're talking here about how to interpret the Bible. The Bible is true, but Am I always right in how I interpret the Bible? Are you always right in how you interpret the Bible? No, and that is where it's beneficial to have outside help and outside voices. So people who might dismiss confessions, they aren't just studying the Bible. They've replaced maybe other teachers, maybe they've gotten rid of Westminster, but they've put in place themselves as their teachers. And that's not the way we're supposed to learn the Bible. And Ephesians 4 tells us that Christ gives the church, the teachers, the apostles, and the prophets, and teachers, and shepherds, evangelists, so that we will be mature in the faith, so that we understand the word better. And not only has God given teachers to a church today, he's given pastors over a church, but we could also say he's given the church in history different teachers. And so God has given men like, let's say, John Calvin 500 years ago to teach us. That doesn't mean that he's right about everything, but he does give us insights to understand the word of God. So Truman says on page 145, he says, those who reject confessions, and he's especially thinking about teachers, pastors, if they reject confessions, they are in a sense more authoritarian than the papacy. To reject confessions makes you more authoritarian than the papacy. Now how could that be true? Well the papacy, the pope, says the Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Pope, is the infallible interpreter of Scripture. Not only do they say, you can't understand the Bible without us, but they say, we are the only infallible interpreters of Scripture. That's what the Pope says. Now a teacher without a confession, or a church without a confession, doesn't say that in words, but that is what they are saying. The teacher is saying, I'm the one who's got the Bible right, and you need to listen to me. You don't need a confession, you just need me teaching you the Bible. And that's what Lewis Sperry Chafer was saying. He was basically making himself his own Pope as the interpreter of Scripture. Now, then why is it more authoritarian to do that than the Roman Catholic Pope? Well, because Truman says what the Roman Catholic Church does is they at least publish their confession. And they tell you what they believe so that you can go and buy the book or go on the internet and you can read it and scrutinize it. They're public about what they believe so that it can be tested against scripture. But a pastor who won't hold himself to a confession, you don't really know what he believes. And so he can take his church and he can teach one thing and then take his church in another direction and go all over the place, and when you walk in the door, you don't know what you're getting. Like Alexander Campbell, when he said, I try to read the Bible as if I didn't even read it yesterday. I didn't have yesterday's theology in my mind. Well, can you imagine what would happen if a pastor taught like that? Well, guys, I know I taught this last week, but I read the Bible afresh, and now I wanna lead you as a church in a totally different direction. And so what does that do? That makes that man's teaching the only guide in people's minds for the church as to how the church should be, what the direction should be. Whereas with confessions, we're saying the pastor in his teaching is submitted to the Word, but as the Word is taught in this church according to what we believe is true as stated in the confession. So two more statements he makes related to this. First he says on the same page, a church open about its confessional position is in theory at least better able to do justice to the supreme authority of Scripture. We want to put Scripture as the supreme authority. and that's why we have confessions. Not, you know, as people might think, that the confession takes away from the authority of Scripture, but because Scripture is supreme, we want to have confessions, and I'll explain how that works. But then he says, again, basically the same thing. He says, ironically, it's not the confessionalists, but the no-creed, but the Bible people who exalt their creeds above Scripture. So it's by not having a creed or a confession that you're actually putting the creeds above Scripture. Now again, how does this work? Well, because if we have public confessions The church can enforce those beliefs. You as a church, all of us together, led by the elders, we can enforce those beliefs. And when we enforce those beliefs, we are looking to scripture as the supreme authority. So let's say tomorrow, to give you an example, how would this work? I mean, this is hyperbole, but theoretically this could happen in churches. Let's say tomorrow I wake up in Armenia, And so next Sunday, I stand up here, and I start preaching Revelation 22, 17, whosoever wills may come. This means that God is sovereign, but God lets you choose your salvation, and God says whoever wills may come. And so clearly, God leaves it up to people and their will to be saved. So I stand up next Sunday, and I preach Arminianism. And so after I am escorted out of the pulpit, somebody here calls me up later this afternoon, or in the afternoon, and you say, what were you doing? And I say, well, I just was teaching the Bible. It said, whosoever wills may come. And you say, well, yeah, but we believe these other verses. And I said, well, you don't agree with Revelation 27 through 17? And I say, well, you know, there are lots of Arminians out there. Lots of people agree with me. And then you say, yeah, but in this church, that's not what we believe that verse means. So you see where we've come down to. My interpretation, my opinion about scripture versus what does this church believe the scripture means? We all agree Revelation 22, 17 is there in the Bible, but what does that verse mean? That's the question. So then we have two options. What are we gonna do as a church? Either the church changes or the pastor changes, right? If I wake up an Armenian tomorrow, one of us is gonna have to change. So I could take the church and the elders, you know, they would not let me do this, but the elders, we could say, all right, we're Armenians. We're gonna be an Armenian church. So we change our confession. Now what would we have to do? We'd have to take the church to the Bible. guide the church through the Bible. That's the only way a church can change what it believes, is by going to the Scriptures. And so this is why having a confession elevates the Scriptures as a supreme authority. Because the only way to change what our church believes in our confession, and which confession we're gonna use, is to say, Scripture says this, our confession's wrong. That's one option, or the other option is change the pastor, get rid of the pastor, get rid of the Armenian pastor. And why would you do that? Because you say, yes, what he said doesn't line up with our confession, but what he says doesn't line up with the meaning, the truth of Scripture. And we've heard what he said. Yes, he's trying to preach Revelation 22, but he's wrong. about how he interprets it. And so either way, we're being taken back to does what we believe in our confession line up with scripture? Either it does or it doesn't. If the pastor changes, well then, you know, something about the pastor changes or the church's confession changes. So all of that is better than not having a confession in the church so that if the pastor wakes up an Arminian tomorrow, the church doesn't become Arminian and then charismatic and then just going and being carried about by every wind of doctrine. The confession is there to kind of slow us down and say, no, this is what we've agreed is true. And so if we're gonna adopt this as what we believe is true, then we need to believe that it's scriptural and look to scripture. And if we're wrong, then we need a change. Or if the confession's wrong, then we say we're using a different confession. Before we move on to the next point, let's look at one verse, 1 Timothy 3. First Timothy 3.15. And Paul is writing and telling them why he is delayed or why he is writing as he is delayed. And so he says, Verse 15, if I delay, I'm writing this so that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth, or a pillar and ground of the truth. So the church is described as the pillar and the buttress, the ground of the truth. And that imagery is from the architecture, especially Greek-Roman architecture, that the pillars, the buttresses, they hold things up. They hold the weight. So what is the church supposed to do? Hold up the truth, preserve the truth, maintain the truth. The truth is the Word of God. God's Word is the infallible truth of God. It's how God has revealed His truth in the Word. What is our job as a church? It is to uphold the truth of the Word of God. So there's a distinction between the truth itself, which is the Word, and the role of the church, which is to uphold that truth. and that's all a confession is doing. The confession is saying, we believe this is truth from the word of God, and by stating it in a confession, we want to hold on to these statements. Now, that confession itself is not the infallible scripture, not the infallible word of God. So that's the difference between us and Rome. Rome says, What we teach is exactly the same as the word of God, it is at the same level, it is equally infallible, equally without, can't be wrong. And that's our difference with them. And yet we are saying that we have agreed as a church, this is what we believe is true. And I hope we can all admit we could be wrong. We could theoretically be wrong. But if we know that we're wrong, then we wouldn't hold to this confession. We would hold to something else. So we would do something different. So because we believe this document states the truth of the word, it is our responsibility as the church to hold up this truth. So that's point number one. Every church has a confession. Let's be clear about what ours is, let's be public, and we don't have to be ashamed about it. It's what we believe is true. It's our job to uphold the truth. All right, number two, this is related. Confessions delimit the power of the church. Confessions limit the power of the church. Truman says this is possibly one of the most important functions that confessions fulfill. Confessions can limit the power of the church. There's a lot of talk in our day about spiritual abuse. And in the last five or 10 years, people have talked about things like power dynamics and how you need to be careful if you're in power, you have positions of authority and you can use your authority in bad ways. There's this whole understanding and talk about spiritual abuse. Confessions can help avoid spiritual abuse. Truman says, elders have doctrine and authority, and those two have to go together. Doctrine and authority have to go together. If you have doctrine without authority, then there's no point in having the doctrine. If it's just, I believe this today, and tomorrow I'm gonna wake up something else, then there's no point to that. If I have an opinion about fast food burgers and I have an opinion about McDonald's versus Burger King, that's not really relevant to you as a church and my role as an elder because it's not in my authority to enforce my belief about McDonald's and Burger King. And so what happens then is that something like Calvinism and Arminianism could become a mere opinion about something as trivial as fast food burgers. It doesn't really matter because it's not enforced in the church. And so there are some churches where that is the way that they operate, where you have a pastor who's a Calvinist, and then two weeks later, their other pastor will be an Arminian, and he'll preach something different. And so what does that tell the church? It says, well, this isn't really that important that we need to go one way or the other. It's just an opinion of difference between pastors and Christians. So because the church doesn't have authority over that issue, if a church decides to do things that way, because they don't have authority over that issue, then the doctrine doesn't really become relevant. So doctrine without authority is pointless. but also if you have authority without doctrine, that's where you can become domineering. If the elder says church members are not allowed to eat at Burger King because I don't like Burger King, and therefore I require you to not eat there, that's obviously domineering, that's a problem. The authority of elders is not their own opinions as elders. The authority is in the doctrine. So, that's where confessions come in. What is the authority then? On what basis can elders say, do this, don't do that, believe this, don't believe that? The authority, of course, supremely is in the word of God. but it's the word that we understand as true according to the confession that we all have agreed to. So the confession limits the church's power to what is in that confession. The confession doesn't say anything about homeopathic medicines versus pharmaceuticals. And therefore, I cannot make a requirement of you to do either one. There are churches that operate somewhat like that. There are churches that require abstinence from alcohol, or that you can't put your kids in certain types of schooling. So they'll stand before God for requiring those things of their members, but they have, they're using their authority to say this is the doctrine we believe. And at the very least, we can at least say, well, they're upfront about it. They tell people, if you're gonna be a member of this church, you can't drink alcohol and you have to school your kids this way. Whether that's right or wrong, you can have your opinion about that, but they are being consistent with their confession, okay? So, the confession is the limit of what an elder has authority to do. Because he doesn't have authority, you know, you haven't all agreed to abstain from alcohol, I don't have the authority to force you to do that. Our confession, though, says things like that family worship should happen daily. So as an elder, I might come to you and I say, you know, you should be doing family worship every day, fathers. because the Bible teaches family worship, and you might say, well, I don't know, where does it say I have to do it every day? And I say, well, you're right, but we have agreed in our confession, it does say that family worship should be practiced daily, so you should do that. And what can your argument be? We've all agreed that this is a statement of truth. On the other hand, the confession doesn't say anything about abstinence from alcohol. Therefore, I cannot require that of you. You can say, well, the Bible doesn't say that, and you would be right. You can say, we didn't agree to that, and then you would be right. So that would be a case of overstepping authority. The power of the church is limited to the confession of what we've acknowledged is true. Okay, that's number two. Number three. Number three, confessions offer succinct and thorough summaries of faith. So we should use our confession because it's succinct and thorough. Now, how can a confession be succinct and thorough? What would you say? That's not a rhetorical question. How can a confession be succinct and thorough? John. Well, it could be thorough in covering a whole bunch of different areas and then succinct in that it touches on them to a different degree but doesn't go all the way down depth-wise. Good, yeah, so later in the chapter he'll use the image of a map. So it's like a map. A map covers a lot of area. but you're not gonna find every street, let's say the map of a country, you're not gonna find every street, you're not gonna find every detail of that country, but you're gonna find the whole country, and you'll find the main points, right? So the confession covers lots of topics, but is succinct in the way that it covers them, and succinctness is a benefit. maybe one of the best benefits of these creeds and confessions. Sometimes we're like this with our own words. Sometimes the more we talk, the more we get ourselves in trouble. We just dig holes for ourselves as we're trying to dig out of the hole. We keep talking and the hole gets deeper. And in the same way, sometimes churches might have a statement of faith, and it's like, the more they try to explain the Trinity, the more words they use that are, well, that's not really right, and they just kind of dig themselves into a hole. So sometimes the more words you use to try to explain something, the more confusing it gets. And so these historic confessions are good at being succinct. They're also thorough, and Truman says they deal with what he calls hardy perennials of Christianity. So maybe you have hardy perennials in your garden, these plants that endure the winter and they come up year after year. And the issues that come up in the confession are issues that are relevant to the church. year after year, century after century. The fact that these confessions have existed for so long shows that they have been useful for many years. And so he says confessionalism is a built-in reality check. It's a built-in reality check. So we're all focused on whatever cultural issue of the day is, whatever political issue is going on, and those issues come and they go, they will fade away. But if we are being shaped by our confession, we're always coming back to the really relevant topics. the Bible, and God, and Christ, and salvation, and the church. He says the confessions give us, he calls it ineradicable complexity, ineradicable, eradicable complexity. Maybe you know this term irreducible complexity from intelligent design and creationism. Irreducible complexity means that if the parts don't all exist at the same time, then the thing can't exist. So the eyeball is so complex that it could not have evolved because it would have been dead, it would have just been dead tissue or something. The bacteria, the microorganism, they couldn't exist if it all didn't work together. So, whatever that creature that was supposed to have evolved eyeballs, It wouldn't have happened. It's either you're blind, and so all the dinosaurs eat you, or your eyeballs work, and now you can survive and pass on those genetics. So this is the idea behind intelligent design. It all has to be there at once for it to survive and to exist. And so in the confessions, there's enough complexity that it stands the test of time. So to understand Christ the right way, you don't just have to believe certain things about Christ, you have to believe the right things about the Trinity. And you also have to believe the right things about humanity, what mankind is, and the right things about what salvation is. And it all goes together. So it all has to exist together at the same time. And so a simple statement, Jesus is God. Jesus is God is a true statement. But it's not complex enough that it's going to survive lots of heresies that are gonna come out across time. And so what the confessions, creeds do, is they give it all together at once, and you believe it all together as a package so that it'll stand the test of heresy about the Trinity, or heresy about Christ, or heresy about mankind. And so they are thorough, and yet they are succinct. So confessions cover the essentials in a succinct way. Number four, the last one, a thorough confession provides moral guidance in an age of moral confusion. I remember when I first read the Second London Confession and just getting really excited about all this stuff that I'm reading. And then I get to chapter 25 on marriage. And this was like, you know, back when I'm younger, like college days. And this is the times when same-sex marriage is being talked about and debated and starting to be legalized. And I read chapter 25, and it says, marriage is to be between one man and one woman. Wow. They said that in the 1600s. And they said it in a way that is not confusing if you're around today. If you're around in 2010 or 2015, you know exactly what that says and that means. These issues that have morally been debated and are causing issues in our day, the confession has already addressed. a lot of them in the way that it talks about mankind and creation and marriage. In New York, at the governor's desk right now is this assisted suicide bill that if she signs it would legalize physician-assisted suicide in our state. Well, our confession, already gives us understanding of how to think about that when it teaches us about creation and about mankind and what life is. So we don't necessarily need to go into all sorts of detail about why that's wrong, because we already know why it's wrong based on what we've already been taught. And so young people today can be taught these truths and be grounded already in what's right and wrong. and point to what Christians have believed for many hundreds of years. So it provides moral guidance in this age. Let's pray. Our God, we thank you that your truth stands for all time, forever. Oh, Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. We thank you, God, for revealing yourself in your word. We pray that we would hold to your truth. We ask, Lord, that You would give us wisdom even in studying Your Scriptures that we might know what is true and what is false. We pray that You would give us help as we look to those who have gone before us and have read and studied Your Word. that we might be helped by their insights. May this church, we pray, be a pillar of your truth. We pray that even today as we preach the gospel to sinners and as we preach to the church of Christ that your church would be built up in truth, that your truth will firmly stand in this assembly and in the pulpits of what we preach. We ask these things in Christ's name, amen.