All right, so tonight we are officially getting started with the Westminster Confession of Faith. We are in Chapter 1, Section 1. If you do not have a copy of the Confession with you, it's in the hymnal, the Trinity Psalter hymnal on page 919. 919 in the Trinity Psalter hymnal version of the Confession. Tonight we begin our study proper of the Westminster Confession, and we're aiming to get through the first three paragraphs or sections. They're most traditionally described as paragraphs, though as you'll see, some of them are like a sentence. So I prefer to call them sections, but it doesn't really matter. They're fairly interchangeable. I just share that so you know. If I refer to one thing and you're used to hearing it's something else, I mean the other one. The fact that the Westminster Confession of Faith begins here is actually significant. It's significant for a number of reasons, because it's a departure from other Reformed confessions that have come first. The Augsburg Confession, which is the Lutheran Confession, the 39 Articles, which is the Church of England's Confession of Faith, the Belgic Confession, which is the Dutch Reformed Confession of Faith, they all begin with the doctrine of God. And we would affirm generally what they say there, but the Westminster Confession actually departs from tradition there with beginning at the doctrine of Holy Scripture. Why is it that you would think this document that's supposed to be a consensus document, supposed to be synthesizing all that came before it, supposed to be uniting multiple national churches, Why would they, at the very forefront, deliberately and intentionally go against the grain by starting with the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures? Does anyone have a guess why that might be? Why would we start here, Mr. Weathers? Because if it's not true, then there's no need to study the rest of it. Yeah, that's spot on. If it's not true, there's no need to study the rest of it. If we don't start with Scripture, if we don't start with the authority of God's Word, Everything else is speculation right now. And we're not saying those other confessions are wrong in what they say in their various points. Those are biblical confessions. We like them. We agree with them mostly. But they're making the foundational claim that without scripture, there is no concrete definitive knowledge of any of the other topics they're going to cover in the other 32 chapters. Without a word from God, we have no concrete knowledge about who God is. Without the Word of God, we have no concrete, definitive understanding of His decrees of creation, of providence, and on down the line you could go through every single chapter of the Confession. The Scriptures are the foundation of all true knowledge about God and our relationship to Him. Irenaeus, who was a second-century church father, said, the Scriptures are the invariable rule of truth. That means they don't change. They stay the same, though everything else may change. Or John Chrysostom, who's a great preacher of the fourth century, would call the scriptures the exact scale standard and rule of all things. The exact standard and rule of all things. That is to say, scripture is our measure by which we judge things like truth, goodness, beauty, all of it. because it is the word of God. And we'll get into what it means that scripture is the word of God as we work our way through this chapter. I'm gonna lay it before you guys. I love the whole Westminster Confession of Faith, but chapter one is my favorite by a mile. Actually, when we first moved here, I desperately wanted a Bible that had the confessions in it and didn't have one. Now I do. But when we first moved here, actually, I begged my dear wife, and she acquiesced to actually write out Chapter 1 of the Confession on one of the blank pages of my Bible, because I love this chapter. So, tonight we're going to look at the first three sections of the Confession, and we're going to do it kind of under these headings, because these are the topics that they address. So, if you're a note-taker, this might be helpful for you. We're going to consider, from Section 1, why we need Scripture, why we need Scripture, And I'm gonna go ahead and tell you guys up front, this will be the longest part of the lesson. So when I get to the end of it and you're like, he's got five minutes for two more points, that's by design. The other two points are pretty brief. So the first one is why we need scripture. Secondly, what is scripture? What is scripture? And then finally, what is not scripture? So why we need it, what it is, and what it's not. We said earlier that scripture is the source of all concrete knowledge about God, but is it the source of all knowledge about God, period? Is the scripture the only way in which we know God? The answer is no. There are two streams of knowledge by which we can know true things about God. If you have a copy of the Bible with you, go ahead and turn to Psalm 19, which we just sang. Psalm 19. And you'll see that Psalm 19 actually gives testimony to two distinct and different ways that we learn about God. It actually divides it into two sections. If you look at the first six verses of Psalm 19, what does it say? How do we come to know God according to the first six verses of Psalm 19? Does anybody see anything that jumps out at you? Josiah? Creation. The heavens declare the glory of God, right? We just sang that. Creation reveals to us some things about God. And then what do we see in verses 7 to 14? Where does David turn his attention to in verse 7? God's commands, God's law. Uh, and that's, that's a specific section of scripture, but it would, it would ultimately go on to clarify in verse seven, uh, the testimony of the Lord. And so it would encapsulate all of the word of God. Does anybody know what these two different types of revelation are called? General and special revelation. Yep. That would be what they're called. Um, general revelation is general, two senses. It's called general revelation because it's general in its audience, right? Everybody gets general revelation. Everybody gets the testimony of living in God's world as he created. Literally, there is nobody who has ever lived in a world that was not made by God. Everybody gets general revelation, but it's also general in terms of what it communicates. It communicates general truths about God. such as the fact that he is the creator. Creation necessitates logically that there is a creator. That's a general fact, a generally true statement about God. What else might general revelation reveal? It reveals that he is also the sustainer of all things. Notice that in Psalm 19 he says, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. So you look out on creation and you see the glory of God. But then David goes on and says, and day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There's a regular pattern to the way this world works. Everybody sees that, everybody's aware of that. That reveals that God is not only the creator of all things, but he's also the sustainer of all things. He's holding all things together. These are logically necessary conclusions to come to as we observe the created order. Now, I know not everybody reaches those conclusions, and we can talk about that later, but for right now, that's the point that Psalm 19 is making. Now, special revelation, beginning in verse seven, also reveals things about God. Special revelation, like general revelation, is special in two ways. It's special in terms of who gets it, that is, the people of God. Not everybody gets special revelation, but God's people do. Special revelation is given to the people of God. Jesus says in Matthew 13, he's teaching these parables, and I believe it's Peter asks him, Lord, what does that mean? What did what you just said, what does that mean? And Jesus says in Matthew 13, 11, it has not been given to all to know, but to you it has been given. And he interprets the parable for them. Special revelation is for the people of God. And it's also special in what it reveals about God, what it teaches about God. Namely, it teaches us the way of redemption. There's, of course, much more that could be said about those two categories, but I wanted you to see them in your Bible before we go to look at them in the Confession. The Bible holds them side by side, and that's why the Confession does as well. So let's turn back now to the Confession, Chapter 1, Section 1, and we'll begin to work through this. The Confession begins, Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God." So the light of nature is actually another form of what we might call general revelation. The light of nature would be an internal testimony to the truth of the existence of God. The scripture reference, if you have if you have those in your copy of the Confession, is Romans 2, verses 14 and 15. And what that speaks to is the Gentiles who do not have the law of God, do not have the word of God, by their actions demonstrate that they know it. That's what Paul's argument is in Romans 2, verses 14 and 15. And to illustrate this, there's a number of ways we could do this, but for example, Across cultures, across time, the idea of showing respect is embraced and is encouraged. That's a way of keeping the fifth commandment. They don't call it that, but that's what it is. Now that's going to look different depending on what culture you go to. We shake hands here. Other people kiss on the cheek, some bow and curtsy, whatever it might be. But the idea of showing honor and respect to whom it is due is done across cultures, whether people know the scriptures or not. So that's the light of nature. We might call that the conscience. That's an internal testimony that all people get. But then the confession also goes on to speak of works of creation and providence, clearly testifying that there's a creator who sovereignly holds all things together. So a knowledge of God based on the testimony both of internal and external general revelation exists. In other words, there is nowhere that God has not left for himself a witness. His fingerprints are all over creation, both inside and out. So in this way, everyone has received a revelation of God. However, that revelation, according to the confession and according to scripture, is only sufficient for one thing. It's only sufficient to condemn. the unbeliever. That's why the confession says, although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, so as to leave men unexcusable. So as to leave men unexcusable. Mankind is unexcusable, or we would say now inexcusable. It's just old English. Because we have received this revelation of God and have not sought him out. have not desired to find him." The Westminster Divines here are actually echoing Paul's argument in Romans 1, verses 18 to 20, which I'll read for us briefly, because it's such a fundamental passage for understanding the condition of fallen man. Romans 1, beginning in verse 18, Paul writes, "'For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." Men in their unrighteousness suppress the truth. What truth is he talking about? "'For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made." Paul is saying what I said earlier. Creation is evidence of a creator. And yet the natural man, not born again, not born from above, suppresses that, denies that, and yet they know it deep down within themselves to be true. This is why religion is all over the place. People can't help but to worship one thing or another. They may not always call it religion, they may not always call it a deity, but we were made to worship. There is a longing in the human heart to praise, to honor something. General revelation is only enough to bring that condemnation. It by itself, while sufficiently revealing God in some manner, cannot as the confession goes on to say, give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore, it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in diverse manners to reveal himself. What does that mean? It means that because this general revelation that everyone got can't do anything but condemn, it pleased God who delights to show mercy to reveal himself in various ways at various times. How are some of the ways that God has revealed himself in special revelation besides Scripture? What are some ways that, because it says there are various ways across various times that God has revealed himself especially besides in Scripture. I'm not saying besides things that happened in Scripture, but besides Scripture. Yes? He showed his power in Egypt, huh? The 10 plagues, yeah, that's a demonstration of his wrath. What's something else, a special direct revelation that he might have given Josiah? The burning bush. I am that I am, right? Yeah, very good. His covenant ceremony with Abraham, this is before any scripture was ever written. The dreams of Joseph, God is revealing himself. He's revealing stuff directly and specially to people. So that's the first reason that we're given any manner of special revelation. It's necessary that God might adequately reveal himself, that people might repent and believe the gospel. You might think of it this way. General revelation reveals things about God. Special revelation reveals God. It's the difference from knowing facts about your favorite football player, basketball player, whatever, knowing things about them, and then actually knowing them, it was not the same thing. General revelation does the first, special revelation does the second. And we gave several examples of special revelation at various times and in various ways, but this chapter of the confession is dealing with scripture specifically. And so it focuses our attention, it says, he at sundry times and in diverse manners to reveal himself and to declare that his will unto his church. and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same holy unto writing, which maketh the holy scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God revealing his will unto his people now being ceased." Now there's a lot to unpack there and we're going to work through it gradually. I think we can do it fairly quickly though. If we do step by step. The scriptures are not necessary because they're the only way God can reveal himself. We've just given several special revelation ways that he has revealed himself in the past. Rather, they are necessary that he might reveal himself not just to individuals, but corporately to the church. The word of God belongs to all of us. It is for all of us. So the overarching reason for the necessity of special revelation is that God might more fully reveal Himself and the plan of His salvation to all of His people. You don't have to just take my word for it. You've got the Word of God in your lap, on your phone, wherever it might be. But there are two very specific reasons in this paragraph in addition to that. For the better preserving and propagating of the truth. In preserving the truth, We grow in our confidence that the scriptures we're reading now are the same ones that have been used for all of church history. I'm preparing for my ordination exams right now, and the big one that I'm worried about, and I would continue to ask prayer for, is church history. But there are so many citations in the early church fathers, we're talking men that lived in the second century, like we're talking less than a hundred years after Jesus and the apostles, that are quoting verbatim long sections of Paul's letters that you have in your Bible right now. That's the confidence that we grow is the truth of God is propagated and preserved. We have long citations of the gospels in these early church fathers. In fact, it's been said that if you lost every manuscript of the Bible and all you had was the preserved copies of the letters and the manuscripts of the sermons of the writers of the first 400 years of the church, you could reconstruct the whole Bible. It's all quoted in there in some place or another from the New Testament. It's an amazing gift. The Word of God has been preserved for all ages in writing. We have portions actually even at the time of the writing of the apostles that quote other New Testament passages as Scripture. Paul would write to Timothy and he would say, as the Scripture says, and give a direct citation of the Gospel of Luke. You can look that up in your own Bible later, 1 Timothy 5, 17-18. He says, as the Scripture says, and he quotes something from Leviticus and then something from Luke. Paul knew Luke was Scripture even in the first century. God gave us the scriptures that we might have the truth preserved. And then in propagating the truth, God gave us the scriptures that the truth might spread. Where the Bible goes, Christianity goes. Aren't you glad that you don't have to be dependent on my teaching for the rest of your life? I'm here to help you read the Bible, but the Bible is your teacher. And so long as you have the scriptures, and you know how to read them, you have the truth preserved and propagated for you for the rest of your life. I can help explain things when things get difficult, but it is the word of God that teaches you and that changes you, and that is why he gave it to us, among other reasons. And then the confession also says, for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against our threefold enemy, against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan in the world. We've got three enemies to be on the lookout for in this life. The world, the flesh, and the devil. In other words, everybody else, you yourself, and Satan. And I think it's significant that this is kind of a popular rendering of that order, because a lot of people like to jump down here, It's like, no, I can be sufficiently tempted by my own sinful flesh, it doesn't always have to be the devil. You have to know that about yourself. And God gave us the word of God that he might protect us against all three of these. So that when we recognize improper desires in our heart, that when we recognize inordinate affections, we might remember passages of scripture that not only correct that thinking, but can preserve us through it. When we feel ourselves given over to to the ways of the world, we can remember Paul's caution to the Philippians, keep a close watch on yourself. We can remember his warning that there are many who have abandoned the faith, following after the desires of the flesh, walking as enemies of the cross, Philippians chapter three. We can remember these things and be warned against them. He gave us the word of God that he might protect us from those things. That's, again, among other reasons, why it's here. So with the time I have left, before I move into what is Scripture and what is not Scripture, do we have any questions on the necessity of Scripture? Any questions on why we need it? Seeing none, I'm gonna move on, but if you come up on anything later, by all means, let me know. All right, so, Paragraph or it's section 2. This is one of those ones. I really don't think should be called a paragraph Under the name of Holy Scripture or Word of God written First let me pause there They distinguish between they distinctly say the Word of God written as opposed to the Word of God preached Those are not the same thing Word of God written is what you have in your Bible, and it is invalid. It is not capable of error When Dr. Phillips preaches on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, that is the word of God preached. And in so far as he is correctly, and I believe that is vast majority of the time. In fact, nothing comes to mind that isn't. In so far as he's preaching it correctly and applying it correctly, that is also the word of God. God inspired not just the words, but the implications and the good and necessary consequences of those words. And we'll get to that in a couple of weeks when we get to the Good and Necessary Consequences Clause in the Confession. But anyway, they're saying, the word of God written are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testaments, which are these. I'm not going to read the list. I hope you know the canon of books in your Bible. Talk to Jill Mann after. If you don't, she'll teach you the song again. It'll be great. But the 27 books of the New Testament and the 39 books of the Old Testament, are the Word of God written. That's canonically speaking. But what are the Scriptures, if I can put it this way, ontologically speaking, what are they in their essence? The Confession says, all which, so all those 66 books, all which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life. Inspiration of God. What does the Confession mean when it refers to these are given by the inspiration of God? What does the Confession of Faith mean when it says these books, canon of the Old and New Testament, are given by the inspiration of God? Mr. Gamble. It's saying that the men who wrote these were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Okay. It's God-breathed. Very good. God-breathed. That's the word I'm looking for. If you have any familiarity with the King James Version of the Bible, you'll see that because this was written in 1643 and that's what they used, there are so many allusions that are pulled just straight from that. And so when they use this word inspired, they're pulling from the KJV rendering of 2 Timothy 3.16, which can be confusing because we don't use the word inspired quite that way. Usually the way we use the word inspired is like, I saw over the summer that Top Gun Maverick was really popular. And so I was inspired to grow a mustache. And that's the way we generally use the word inspired. That is not what they meant. What they meant is what Jack said, that it is God-breathed. Theonoustos is the Greek word. If you only know one Greek word, that's the one. Theonoustos. Theon being God. Neustaus being breathed, breathed out, blowing, whatever. These words were breathed out. They were spoken by God. Yes, they are the product of human authors, but they are also the product of one divine author. R.C. Sproul explains it this way. The theory of inspiration is that though the documents of sacred scripture were written by human authors, they were not merely recording their own opinions or recollections. They were performing their task as agents of revelation under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit. In other words, on the one hand, it is appropriate to say that a man wrote the Gospel according to Matthew. That man was Matthew. He's the human author. He really wrote that. On the other hand, it's equally appropriate to say God wrote the Gospel according to Matthew. God, working through Matthew, caused him to write exactly what he wanted him to write, exactly in the way he wanted him to write it, and yet he did so according to Matthew's own personality, style, and choices. This is all over the place in the Bible. I've got a couple illustrations here. Probably the plainest one is, if you read any of Paul's writings, Romans, 1st, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, whatever, Paul is a very linear guy. He goes from point A, point B to point C, and there's a clear connection, a clear train of thought, and it's just very, it's my love language. It's just very straightforward. John's not like that. John is all over the place, and yet perfectly rational. If I could put it this way, maybe Paul appeals more to the intellect, and John appeals more to the heart. And that's his stud, and you need both. I was talking with Pastor Anderson about how to illustrate this earlier today, and he pointed out, and he's exactly right, there's a reason that first year Greek students love 1 John. Because it was written by a fisherman. That means the language, not super sophisticated, not super complex, easy to figure out. And first year Greek students, and second year Greek students, and seminary graduates like myself, really don't like Luke. Because it was written by a doctor. And it's complicated. And the compound words and the sentence structures are all really high-end Greek. And so you see that while God superintended both. God wrote both. He did it according to the styles and the giftings of the men whom he inspired. Does that make sense? That's what we're saying when we say that God breathed out the scriptures. That's what it is. Now lastly, and this will be most succinctly, what Scripture is not. The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of other than other human writings. Quick clarification, because people probably read Apocrypha and you think immediately of the Apocryphal Gospels like Thomas and Peter and those documents. That's not what they're talking about here. Those are also to be rejected, but those aren't the documents they have in mind. What they're thinking of are the deuterocanonical books that Roman Catholics have in their Bibles that we don't, such as 1st and 2nd Maccabees and things like that. And they're saying that those are not of divine inspiration. Well, we'll discuss more about the marks of canonicity and how we know that in the coming weeks when we get to those portions of the confession. But for right now, I'll just give you guys a quick three reasons why we don't accept the apocryphal books as canonical. One, the Jews of Jesus's day did not accept them as canonical. In other words, they were written before Jesus was walking around the earth, but they weren't considered scripture when Jesus was walking around the earth. They could have been, they were known, but they were not considered part of the canon by the Jews in the day of Christ. Second reason, Jesus accepts the Jewish canon as it was in his day. So to me, that's kind of the one-two punch we're done here. Jesus testifies that the canon of scripture is Genesis to 2 Chronicles, which I know that's not how our Old Testament ends, that's because we have them in a different order, but it's the same collection of books. Nonetheless, Jesus did not quote them. He did not cite them. None of the New Testament authors did. And then the third reason is none of the early church recognized them as scripture. The early church did quote these books and made use of them, but never referenced them or cited them as the Holy Spirit says, as the Word of God said. They never give it that status. And then lastly there are many errors and contradictions between these books and the other and the legitimate books of Scripture so for those four reasons we don't take these as canonical I know that probably sparks some questions for you guys, which I'd be happy to entertain and talk about but right now I'm going to pray for us and turn off the microphone, and then we can chat if anybody wants to God in heaven we do give. Thanks to you for your word and that it is pleased you to reveal to us the way of salvation through it, that we might, as we study it on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, come to see Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, and as we behold him, that you would draw us nearer unto him. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.