Second London Baptist Confession of Faith 1.9-1.10
Truth for Life • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
-Back in the day when I was in school, when you didn’t understand something and you asked your parents, they’d tell you to look it up in a dictionary or look it up in an encyclopedia. If the dictionaries or encyclopedias at home weren’t good enough, you had to go to the library and use their resources—maybe even having to look through a card catalog to find it.
~These are different days that we live in. If you need information, you just Google it. If someone asks me a question about how to do something on a phone or computer, I don’t know so I just Google it. Or if I want a video demonstration on how to do something, I search YouTube. I need to fix something on a car—I YouTube it. While you may find some helpful things on those sites, there’s no telling if it’s true of not.
-This leads to the question of the night—if you have a question about something in the Bible, where do you go? If there is something you don’t quite understand in Scripture, how do you find understanding? If you were here last week, we studied and saw that there are some things that are hard to understand in Scripture, so what do you do to gain that understanding? Some people might give the same answer—Google it! YouTube it! The problem with that is that there are so many cults and false teachers on the internet that you might look up an answer on a site that is completely heretical. You need a special dose of discernment to cut through the weeds of the internet. But there is a way to safely study to understand passages that are difficult.
-We have been studying creeds and confessions to find summaries of major biblical doctrines that we need to know because what we believe affects how we live. Looking at the Westminster Confession and the 1689 Baptist Confession, we have used these to spur discussion on important matters—specifically for now the subject of Scripture itself. The Bible is God’s inerrant Word that is sufficient for life and faith and practice. It is the ultimate authority because it is God’s inspired revelation of Himself and His character and His works. But it is a big book that covers a lot of ground, and some parts are not as clear as others. It is clear about the means of salvation through Jesus Christ, but on a lot of other subjects it is not quite as clear.
-So, the next sections of the confession tell us where we can go and what we can do when we need help.
Confessing the Faith: The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century I. The Holy Scriptures
1:9 The infallible rule for interpreting Scripture is the Scripture itself. Therefore, when there is a question about the true and full meaning of any part of Scripture (and each passage has only one meaning, not many), it must be understood in light of other passages that speak more clearly.
-What this paragraph is telling us is that the only way to ensure we are able to interpret harder passages correctly is to try to find further understanding from other parts of the Bible that shed further light on the matter. The only way to ensure that we do not fall into any sort of error is to let Scripture interpret Scripture. The particular doctrine is called the analogy of Scripture—the final and authoritative interpreter of Scripture is Scripture itself.
-We see this principle at work in the early church in Acts 15. Questions had come up about the faith and the practice of faith, and more specifically what the Gentiles needed to do or not do to be part of this people of God. Since they didn’t have New Testament Scriptures to refer to, they looked to the Old Testament. And they let Scripture interpret.
15 The words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written,
16 ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the fallen tent of David; I will rebuild its ruins and restore it,
17 so that the rest of humanity may seek the Lord, namely, all the Gentiles I have called to be my own,’ says the Lord, who makes these things
-So, what a reader of Scripture can do is apply sound rules of hermeneutics to find and confirm the proper interpretation by comparing passages of Scripture with the overall teaching of the rest of Scripture. What in the world is hermeneutics? Hermeneutics is the science of interpreting pieces of literature—for our context, specifically the rules for interpreting the Bible. Letting Scripture interpret Scripture is the first and foremost rule. But other rules apply in helping us follow that rule. Other rules would include deriving the meaning of a word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph from its context.
-The paragraph I read from the Baptist Confession includes a rule of hermeneutics stating that each passage has only one meaning, not many. You don’t go to Scripture trying to discover secret, hidden truths or a unique interpretation. Every passage has a literary, historical, and cultural context. God inspired certain authors to write certain things to certain recipients. Whatever God’s inspired and intended meaning for that audience was at that time is the only meaning, unless expanded upon by other Scripture.
-What do I mean by that? Sometimes the inspired writers of the New Testament were given insight into how certain events in Old Testament history actually pointed to and found their ultimate fulfillment in Christ. For example, in the midst of Israel’s disobedience, God reminds them of what He did for them:
1 “When Israel was a young man, I loved him like a son, and I summoned my son out of Egypt.
-That has its context, God is talking about the literal Exodus. Fast forward to Jesus’ early days, and the family had to flee Herod by going to Egypt, and then Joseph has a dream, being told to return to Judea. And Matthew, telling the story, quotes Hosea:
15 He stayed there until Herod died. In this way what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet was fulfilled: “I called my Son out of Egypt.”
-Now, the original context is the nation Israel and the exodus and the like. But now, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Matthew gives the verse an expanded meaning—connecting it to Jesus. Ultimately, what this means is that God is identifying His people with His Son the Messiah. Or we might also reverse that and say that the Messiah is identifying Himself with God’s people. Here, it was the Holy Spirit that expanded upon the original context. But just because the Holy Spirit inspired writers to do it doesn’t mean we can do it.
-People can’t just come up with some personal interpretation willy nilly taking a passage kicking and screaming out of its context. People will say: well, I have the Holy Spirit and He can give me whatever interpretation He wants. That’s not how it works. You and I are not Holy Spirit inspired writers of Scripture, and the Holy Spirit will never contradict Himself or the writings He inspired.
-When the Puritans found these truths in Scripture and put them into confessional form, they were fighting two battles. First, they were fighting against the Roman Catholic Church who made the claim that the only infallible rule of interpretation is that it has to come from the Church. Meaning, the Pope on down are the only ones that can correctly interpret Scripture, and so whatever interpretation that they give is the official word and is to be taken as gospel truth. This is why for the longest time the Roman Catholic Church kept the Bible out of people’s hands—because they couldn’t interpret it correctly anyway. We’ll tell you what it says and what it means. The problem is that the Holy Spirit can lead people to truth in Scripture if they cooperate with the Spirit, following the rules of hermeneutics.
-The other issue that they were dealing with was that certain church leaders and denominations allegorized much of Scripture—they would give meaning to bits and pieces of details within a narrative that God never intended to be there. They would spiritualize minor details that actually hold no meaning and the interpretation therefore hold no merit. And this happened to some otherwise solid teachers. For example, Augustine looked at Genesis and he said that the fig leaves in the narrative of the Fall stood for hypocrisy, the coat of skins stood for mortality, the four rivers of Eden stood for the four cardinal virtues, and the ark was pitched within and without with pitch to show the safety of the Church from inward and outward heresies. None of that is correct. Do you know what the fig leaves stood for? FIG LEAVES! And the four rivers—they were literally rivers. There is no special meaning. God’s Word says what it means and means what it says.
-The modern version of this is found in a lot of Bible Studies where the leader will read the passage and then ask the class: Well, what do you think this means? You know what, it doesn’t matter what you THINK it means—what matters is what God says it means. And the first step to understanding is to let Scripture interpret Scripture within its context. And the next paragraph is related:
Confessing the Faith: The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century I. The Holy Scriptures
1:10 The supreme judge for deciding all religious controversies and for evaluating all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, human teachings, and individual interpretations, and in whose judgment we are to rest, is nothing but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit. In this Scripture our faith finds its final word.
-What this paragraph is telling us is that confessions, like the ones we are studying, or the councils that have happened all throughout church history, are not the final say on how to interpret Scripture. All the millions of books and commentaries written over the years are not the final say on how to interpret Scripture. Unlike what some of our charismatic brethren might believer, individual interpretations and supposed words of knowledge from the Spirit are not the final say on how to interpret Scripture. Denominations are not the final say on how to interpret Scripture. None of these things are the final arbiter or authority. What is the final arbiter or authority? NOTHING BUT THE HOLY SCRIPTURE DELIVERED BY THE SPIRIT—IN THIS SCRIPTURE OUR FAITH FINDS ITS FINAL WORD.
-You see this issue demonstrated in the Bible itself. The Pharisees came to Jesus to try and trick Him. Their denomination or school of theology did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, and so they came up with a story to try to trick Jesus into confirming their previously held beliefs. And, so, this is how Jesus responds:
29 Jesus answered them, “You are deceived because you don’t know the scriptures or the power of God.
30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
31 Now as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God,
32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living!”
33 When the crowds heard this, they were amazed at his teaching.
-Now, having said that, commentaries and books and what people have taught throughout church history are great tools of help, and this is not a call to avoid them. However, if what your favorite writer or teacher or preacher says or teaches contradicts what the whole of Scripture says, then Scripture has the final say, not your favorite writer or teacher or preacher. Look, if I’m wrong about something, I want you to follow Scripture, not me. But I pray that I do interpret things rightly—but Scripture has the final word.
-And we also want to pray that we will let Scripture lead us in truth, that we will not try to impose our own interpretations on it, but let it speak for itself in its context, and we conform ourselves to its truth, especially that of the gospel—believing in Jesus.