SECOND LONDON BAPTIST CONFESSION OF FAITH 1.4-1.5
Truth for Life • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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-In many jobs and workplaces, they have employee manuals and books of policies and procedures that detail the job and are the final authority over how things are to be done. If there is ever any questions about following or breaking of rules, or a question about what should be done in a certain situation, the manuals and the policies and procedures have the final say because they have been endowed with authority from the employers on how that workplace runs.
-What about life? Is there an authoritative manual that tells us how to live, gives us the rules, and points us in the direction we are to go? We know God is the ultimate authority, but has He endued anything with authority to guide us in life and faith and practice? We believe so.
-As we study the creeds and confessions of faith, we wonder why we should even bother looking at them or listening to them? It is because they summarize that authority. And the first sections of the Westminster Confession and the London Confession speak about this authority. Scripture is that authority. But why is Scripture that authority? Well, the confessions summarize that for us. We first look at chapter 1 paragraph 4:
Confessing the Faith: The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century I. The Holy Scriptures
The authority of the Holy Scriptures obligates belief in them. This authority does not depend on the testimony of any person or church but on God the author alone, who is truth itself. Therefore, the Scriptures are to be received because they are the Word of God.
-To put all of the paragraphs together thus far, because Scripture (as found in the 66 books of the Bible) are the standard and rule given by inspiration of God, they then have authority of the lives of all humans. Because they have that divine authority, then all of humanity are obligated to believe them and place themselves under them. As B.B. Warfield summarized it:
Because [it is] inspired, Scripture is the Word of God; and because [it is] the Word of God, it exercises lawful authority over the thoughts and acts of men.
-The authority belongs to the Word of God not because men have said so, or because the church says so. Scripture has that authority because God has said so. This is the plain teaching of the Bible itself.
20 Above all, you do well if you recognize this: No prophecy of scripture ever comes about by the prophet’s own imagination,
21 for no prophecy was ever borne of human impulse; rather, men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
16 Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
17 that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work.
13 And so we too constantly thank God that when you received God’s message that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human message, but as it truly is, God’s message, which is at work among you who believe.
9 If we accept the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, because this is the testimony of God that he has testified concerning his Son.
-We recognize that the Bible was inspired by God though the Spirit. Even though humans wrote the words down, they were moved by the Holy Spirit to write what was recorded for us. As such, it is God’s message, not man’s. Therefore, it holds that authority.
-It is so important to grasp this because the Roman Catholic Church tries to argue that since they formed the Bible (claiming to have been the ones to determine its final form), that they are able to add to it more tradition as they are led. However, they didn’t form the Bible. Church leaders merely recognized what God inspired. The Bible was not formed by the church. The Bible was not formed by mere mortals. It was inspired by God, and therefore carries God’s authority. If we were to say, “The Bible says...” and we were to say “God says...” we would be saying the same thing, for God speaks authoritatively through His Word.
-And because God is the author of Scripture, it is the authority for all people. The Bible’s authority is not dependent upon whether it is rejected or believed by humanity. If the world decided to take a vote and 99% of the people in the world voted that the Bible is merely a human book, it doesn’t matter. Mankind cannot take away from Scripture what God has put into Scripture, and what God has put into Scripture is His authority. And because of that fact, all people are obligated to believe them and live according to them—specifically its testimony of Jesus Christ and the necessity to believe in Him for eternal life.
-But that is a reminder to us that we can’t merely call ourselves Christians and then live however we want to. The authority of Scripture does not stop at the gospel—at believing in Jesus (although, that is obviously the needed start). But it is authoritative on how we live after we believe in Jesus. This provides our truth for life.
-But how do we know that the Bible is the inspired, authoritative Word of God. That is described in paragraph 5:
Confessing the Faith: The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century I. The Holy Scriptures
The testimony of the church of God may stir and persuade us to adopt a high and reverent respect for the Holy Scriptures. Moreover, the heavenliness of the contents, the power of the system of truth, the majesty of the style, the harmony of all the parts, the central focus on giving all glory to God, the full revelation of the only way of salvation, and many other incomparable qualities and complete perfections, all provide abundant evidence that the Scriptures are the Word of God. Even so, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority of the Scriptures comes from the internal work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.
-This paragraph first recognizes that the church might give its arguments about why Scripture is the inspired Word of God and why it is authoritative. And there is nothing necessarily wrong with such proofs and testimonies. We might say that these are the external arguments that apologists might give for the truthfulness and divine origin of Scripture. External evidences might include the supporting evidence from early Christian writings. It might also include the writings and evidences given by non-Christian sources (such as non-Christian historians, political writings from the time of Christ, and the like). External evidence would include findings in archaeology that confirm items from the Bible (for example, in the 1970’s they found the judgment seat of Pilate that John 19:13 calls THE STONE PAVEMENT).
-There is more than enough external evidence to consider the Bible to historically accurate. And that might persuade people that the Bible is divine. But, the majority of people are not so persuaded. And when a person’s heart is hardened in their sin, they will be blinded to any and all evidence that you give them. So, the first point of this paragraph is that the testimony of the church and the external evidence that could be called upon to testify of the Bible’s truthfulness is not sufficient testimony to the Bible’s inspiration or authority.
-This paragraph then dives heavily into what we might call the internal evidences of the Bible’s truthfulness—how the Bible bears witness to itself, testifying to its truthfulness and faithfulness.
-It talks about its heavenly content—the Bible tells us true things about life here on earth, and so we can rely upon it telling us true things about spiritual and heavenly matters. This paragraph mentions the power of the system of truth—the Bible doesn’t just tell the truth, it does so with power. The Bible has the power to change lives. We see this testified in:
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
12 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart.
-The paragraph speaks about the majesty of the style. Even though the Bible was written in common language for the common man, yet it testifies of such marvelous things in such marvelous ways. We could say that the Bible is beautiful. The paragraph mentions the harmony of all the parts—the Bible is consistent within itself without any contradiction. This is amazing when you consider that varieties of the personalities of the human authors, the time span for all the writings, the different kinds of literature and genre that the Bible contains (history, law, poetry, prophecy, etc.), and yet the entire work remains internally harmonious, that is an amazing testimony of its divine origin.
-The paragraph points out that the central focus of the Bible is to give all glory to God, meaning that it has the highest purpose possible. It says that the Bible gives the full revelation of the only way of salvation—the Bible is the lamp to our feet and light to our path that guides humanity to the only means of salvation from their sin (which is through Jesus Christ alone). And on top of all that there are other incomparable quaities and complete perfections.
-There is external evidence and internal evidence galore that points to Scripture being exactly what we claim it to be. And yet, the confession states that none of these evidences are enough. What gives the most sure testimony of the inspiration of Scripture and the truthfulness of Scripture and the authority of Scripture is the internal witness that we receive from the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, who is within the believer the moment that they believe, bears witness to God’s Word in our hearts.
-So, here’s the thing—if somebody says that they are a Christian, but they deny that the Bible is the inspired, truthful, authoritative Word of God, then they are not a Christian because they do not have the Holy Spirit within them. If they had the Holy Spirit, they would have that internal witness about Scripture. There are a few verses we can rely upon here:
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but will speak whatever he hears, and will tell you what is to come.
14 He will glorify me, because he will receive from me what is mine and will tell it to you.
10 God has revealed these to us by the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
11 For who among men knows the things of a man except the man’s spirit within him? So too, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God.
-God’s Holy Spirit reveals the things given to us by God—His very Word.
-To summarize these two paragraphs, I refer to what one author wrote. He said:
We must believe and act on the Word of God (1) because God possesses all authority; (2) because the Word of God proves itself to be from God, commending itself to our consciences with remarkable evidences; and (3) because there is a living internal, personal witness in our own heart as we prayerfully commune with God through written Scripture. That witness is given by the Holy Spirit.
-We want to pray that the Holy Spirit would break through the unbelief of those who refuse to bow the knee to Jesus Christ—or, as Ezekiel puts it, to take out their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. But we also want to pray that we would have the same softness of heart—that we would not be so stubborn so as to go our own way, but to be moved and led by the Word through that witness of the Holy Spirit. That we would allow the Word to have its way in us so that our lives promote holiness and righteousness and advance the glory of God and lead us to everlasting blessedness (as John Owen wrote).