Baptist Faith and Message Lesson 1- PRELIMENTARY

Introduction-Now more than Ever

I said this morning. We need to know what we believe and why we believe it.

Our world has turned away from what is proper. We do not live in the same America we lived in even 20 years ago.

The world around us is changing.

As I said this morning, people reject God as creator and therefore they reject that He has any right over their at all.

There has been an all out assault on God as Creator and right belief and right doctrine.

Here is my reasoning for doing this specifically on Sunday Nights.

Now more than ever, we need to have a firm grasp upon what we believe and why we believe it.

So what I want to do until get are done on Sunday Nights is walk through our confessional document. As a church and as a member of the SBC, you may not know this-

But we hold to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

How many have heard of this?

If you would like to read it and I encourage you to read it in its entirety or if you just want to have access to it as we go through this over these Sunday Nights..

Its available on our website. Under the Tab What We Believe.

My goal for this over the next Sunday nights is to explain for you what we believe as a church, to answer any questions you may have, and hopefully help you to grow as a Christian.

One of my goals here is that we keep an open forum.

You can ask any questions you have.

I will never shut down your questions.

I may have to think about and study your questions in order to give you a good answer, but I welcome questions.

As a matter of introduction:

I want to answer the question that I have been asked many times:

The question being: Why are you a Baptist? Why are you not being a presbyterian? Why not be a Methodist? Why not a Pentecostal? And so on and so on.

Now, some may say, he is just a Baptist because his dad is a Baptist preacher. Thats a fair guess, but thats not why I’m a baptist.

I am a Baptist, because I believe that Baptist Doctrine is the closest to accurately presenting the theology of Bible.

The more I study Scripture, the more I’m convinced that Baptist doctrine is correct, and I’m prepared to defend that.

With that in mind, I want to be clear. This does not mean that Baptist are the only ones who are Christians.

In fact I would say as well, You can be a member of a Baptist church and not be a Christian.

Just because someone claims to be a Baptist, doesn’t mean they are a Christian

We are saved not by being a Baptist.

We are saved by grace through faith in Christ.

Ephesians 2:8–9 NASB95

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So being a Baptist doesn’t make you a Christian. Being saved by grace through faith is what makes you a Christian.

But I do believe that if you are a Christian, you ought to be a Baptist :)

But that leads to another question-

What about all these other denominations? Have you ever wondered about that?

What makes the Baptists right? Why are there seemingly disagreements among the universal church over theology?

Why the differences?

It really comes down to interpretation of key Scripture passages.

What does the Bible teach?

This is why I started by saying

I am a Baptist, because I believe that Baptist Doctrine is the closest to accurately presenting the theology of Bible.

But to be fair, a Presbyterian, a Pentecostal, a Methodist would say the same thing.

And from this, I want to teach through something that was helpful for me to grasp all the different denominations and beliefs.

Its called a theological triage- I think Al Mohler from SBTS was the one who coined that phrase.

He gets this from the medical field- A triage is a place of evaluation. Its where we decide which one needs immediate attention, who can wait, and who needs a bandaid.

For instance a hospital will respond differently to a person who is having heart failure or in the middle of delivering a child than they will to someone who has flu symptoms.

He argues that there is a THEOLOGICAL TRIAGE.

What he means by that is this is that there are basically three tiers or levels of theology.

There are first tier issues. (Primary Doctrines)

These are the things you must believe in order to be considered rightly to be a Christian.

These are the most essential and critical to the faith.

These are issues like- Belief in the Trinity, Jesus being fully God and fully Man, justification by grace through faith alone in Christ alone, and the authority of Scripture.

These are things where there is no room for disagreement if you are going to call yourself a Christian.

We would say that if you deny any of these doctrines, it is evidence that you are not a believer.

So we have those issues. These are issues that for the most part, the denominations would agree on. If they don’t agree on those issues, then theres good reason to say they are not Christian denomination.

If they deny the Deity of Christ, not Christian.

If they deny the humanity of Christ, not Christian.

And so on.

There are some things that are non negotiables. These are close handed issues. We will not join hands with those who deny these things. So as a church we couldn't in good conscience join hands with Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses deny the deity of Christ, so we could not call them brothers and sisters.

Same with Catholics- They Deny salvation by faith alone, so we could not rightly call them brothers and sisters. They hold to a salvation of faith plus works.

These primary doctrines are close handed

There are second tier issues. These create denominational divides.

Now these are still very important. So important that these are the issues that normally create divide with regard to denominations.

These issues create significant boundaries between believers.

So these are issues like baptism. There are others, but this one is probably the easiest to understand the divide.

Presbyterians and Baptist disagree on this- Infant Baptism and Believers Baptism. While presbyterians and baptist would agree on all the essentials, it would be almost impossible to hold to differing beliefs on baptism and still be apart of the same church.

Explain.

There are third tier issues

These are issues that we still would hold strong beliefs on but there is room for disagreement even within the same church.

The easiest example of this would be the different views of the end times. What happens when Jesus returns.

If you start studying the end times, what you will find is that there are many different views on this.

There’s pretribulation, mid tribulation, and post tribulation.

Then you have differing views on the millennial reign of Christ.

Theres Dispensational premillennialism, Historic premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Post Millennialism.

And with that particular issue, there is room for disagreement. We can still worship together, and fulfill the mission of the church and disagree on that.

So even within the Baptist denomination, you will find all of those views represented.

This is why our statement of faith is more vague on that particular issue.

LAST THINGS-

“God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth; the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.”

But those are issues that are fun to debate, but they should not create divide among us to where we would say, I can’t worship along side him over that..

Now hear me well, I’m not saying these things aren’t important.

I am saying two people can both be Christians, two people can even be Baptist, and believe differently about the end times. Revelation is a tough book to understand, filled with a lot of symbolism and your belief is going to depend on how you interpret that symbolism. But we ought to view these things more charitably.

Any questions or comments on that?

So with that said, TONIGHT, I want to read for you our statement on Scripture.

We won’t be able to cover this tonight fully but I want to read it and walk through it.

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.