In his 1st-century epistle, Jude called on believers “to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Sound doctrine was under attack in his day, and so it is in ours. What the Bible actually means has, in many corners, been distorted and lost. To combat falsehood and shore up God’s people in the truth, Church and Family Life advocates that churches embrace the 1689 London Baptist Confession, or one of the other historic Reformed confessions.  

And so it’s with delight that we welcome Rob Ventura to the podcast to discuss a new commentary he’s published on the 1689 Confession. Join us for this discussion and discover how this defense of sound doctrine is a deep mine, filled with the everlasting treasuries of redemption. Note that in the confession’s original “Letter to the Reader,” they trace much of the “decay of religion” to a father’s neglect of family worship and instruction and appeal for doctrinal purity to “begin at home.”  Learn how it’s a wonderful tool for churches and families—a summary of fundamental doctrines for the whole family and church to master, to keep from departing from the true faith.  

Click here to purchase this New Exposition of the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. 

Click here to get a paperback copy of the 1689 Confession. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture and particularly church and family life. And we're here to discuss a really important book that Rob Ventura just published, a new exposition on the London Baptist Confession of 1689. Rob Ventura is the general editor. I'm so glad that he did it.

We've been advocates of the 1689 Confession for churches and families. Our mission really is to explain the complementary role of church and family, churches and families that are fixed on sound doctrine. And the 1689 is our favorite confession. We've always been advocates of churches embracing a historic confession. Most of the churches on our church and family life network are 1689 churches.

And then there are many Westminster confessions. These confessions are so similar. And then there are others, but we really do believe that now is the time for churches to embrace a historic confession. And this is just such a fantastic resource. In the introduction to the confession, the authors appeal to heads of households to teach these things to their families.

People think of this confession as some big highfalutin seminary level deal, but actually it was intended not just to be used in the churches, but also in families. And we, many years ago, Over a decade ago, we published this version of the confession. And what I did with this is I tried to find as many verses to support the propositions. In fact, Sam Waldron gave me the permission to use all of his scripture references. Sam Waldron also wrote a commentary on the Baptist Confession, and it's a good one.

This one that Rob has done is really, really wonderful. I want to say this is a tool for families and churches. In fact, in the letter to the reader, and I've got it published here, Rob, I don't know if you have it in your version, but in the letter to the reader, and I've got it published here, Rob, I don't know if you have it in your version, but in the letter to the reader, the authors appeal to begin at home, and they really blame the decay of religion on the decay of sound doctrine and families and the authors warn families that they have blood on their hands if they don't teach their children sound doctrine you can read all about it right here and maybe in Rob's. I'm just going to read you some of the words to the letter to the reader. And verily there is one spring and cause of the decay of religion in our day which we cannot but touch upon and earnestly urge a redress of.

This is the neglect of the worship of God in families by those to whom the charge and conduct of them is committed." So this actually is a confession that was originally designed for both churches and families. So it's great to have Rob Ventura with us. Rob Ventura, Pastor of Grace Community Church in Rhode Island. And it's just, we've done a lot of stuff together. Oh, also Rob is gonna come and preach at our national conference coming this May.

Hope everybody can come to this conference May 4th and 5th and 6th and Rob is going to be preaching there. Also we just recorded his life story. You should listen to it on our website. And also we're having a singles conference, a pre-conference on May 3rd and 4th. Paul Washer and some others are gonna be preaching at that.

Should be a great time. Hope you can make it. Well let's get back to Rob here. So Rob, why did you, you edited this, you contacted all these great authors, some of our favorite people. Why did you do it?

Yeah, it's a good question. So last year, or no, probably two years by now, I was writing a new chapter for Dr. Beeke in a book that he has called Growing in Grace. And in that book, I was asked to do the chapter on adoption. And they asked me to do it from the Westminster Confession of Faith.

So I wrote that chapter for them, and as I was doing it, of course, I looked at our 1689 chapter on adoption and their word for word. I think there's one word difference. So as I was writing the chapter in that book for Reformation Heritage Books, I had all of my wonderful expositions of the Westminster Confession of Faith, five, six, seven, eight expositions of it. Then I went to our Confession of Faith, and lo and behold, I saw we only had one. One exposition that was done by Sam Waldron 30 years ago and it's an excellent exposition.

As you know the church has profited from Sam's labors again 30 years ago but I thought man we can use an updated exposition of our wonderful confession of faith. So as the wheel started turning regarding this whole idea, again, seeing the many for the Westminster, but only the one for the London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689, I called Dr. Sam and said, Sam, hey, I've got this idea. I'm thinking about why don't we do something new, something updated, something with multiple authors on our great confession of faith. I said, what do you think?

He said, I think it's a great idea. Then I said, excellent. Now would you do three chapters for us? That's great. Hey, Rob, he said he would and he did.

Hey, I'm going to interrupt you for a second because you wrote that chapter for Dr. Beeke on adoption. So you're going to preach at our national conference, or our national conference is the, the chief end of man. And what is the chief end of man the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever and you're gonna preach on I can't wait Enjoying your adoption Yes, how about that? That's your title?

Yeah. Yeah Enjoying the adopted life. There you go. Okay. So I'll, I'm sorry, I stopped you, but I couldn't resist.

Oh, it's totally fine. So that's a topic that's just been on my heart, you know, for the last few years, and I'm delighted to preach it there. I pray the Lord richly blesses. So yeah, so that was really the impetus for the whole project. And I think over the years, people have been thinking it'd be good to have an updated confession.

Again, not just one guy, but multiple authors. So at that point I had known Reformed Baptist pastors. I've been a Reformed Baptist pastor, a Reformed Baptist for 27 years and a pastor for just about 16 years. So I've known RB guys for a long long time, 25 years, knowing different Reformed Baptist guys. So I reached out to the guys who've been teaching the confession of faith for decades in their churches.

And I knew they were very familiar with the document. And I got a list of some of my best friends and they were all very eager to write chapters on the confession of faith. So then it basically became two years of management on my behalf and making sure everyone got their chapters done. I sent them my chapter that I did for Biki's book kind of as the paradigm to follow. And the guys really did an excellent job.

Again, Sam's chapter is outstanding. Jeremy Walker on repentance. We were just talking about with that chapter. On and on and on and on. Just some of our best guys, Austin Walker, Jeremy's dad, did the chapter on the historical development of the 1689, putting it in its context.

I mean, that opening chapter alone, I think, is worth the price of the book. So, yeah, So basically two years later, the book was done. Mentor Books decided to publish it, which I'm absolutely thrilled about. Interestingly enough, Mentor historically is a Scottish Presbyterian, Pato Baptist publisher, and their desire to put this doctrine or book forth, which puts forth our doctrine, I think shows a great love for those who hold to confessions of faith. So I was thrilled with Mentor Publishing, and I think they did an excellent job, and very grateful that the thing has been flying off the shelves in four weeks they've sold four thousand volumes.

So that shows there's a real need for this book. People have been really desirous of it. So we give glory to God and we pray most importantly that what's written in that book will build up the body of Christ and honor Jesus' wonderful name. So Rob, let's talk for a minute about the value of confessions. And I'm going to give you a springboard by quoting someone you quote in the editor's preface.

Oh, hey, that's you. You quoted B.H. Carroll, and he says this, and then just when I get done with the quote, just go on talking about the value of confessions, B.H. Carroll said this, "'The modern cry, less creed, and more liberty is a degeneration from the vertebrate to the jellyfish and means less unity and less morality and it means more heresy. Exactly.

So people say, you know, doctrine divides, and in the sense it does. It divides truth from error. So it does in that sense, right? It divides us. It separates us from error.

And we have to remember, historically speaking, that confessions weren't just written because a bunch of theologians, whether it was the Westminster divines or the particular Baptists in the 17th century just said, hey, you know, let's write our doctrines out. No, but there's always been heresy all around town. And the churches have had to stand against error and errorist, to borrow word from my dear friend, Jeremy Walker, and they had to say, these are the things we believe, these are the things we don't believe. What do we believe about scripture? What do we believe about Christ?

What do we believe about the Lord's Day, etc.? So, the confessions of faith initially were put out to protect the church from error and errorist all around town. But in addition to that, positively speaking, these confessions of faith were put forth to put forth our truths, or as the Baptists say, those things most surely believed among us. And then I would say thirdly, having a confession of faith instills unity among our churches. And that's why when people say, I'm going down to North Carolina, I say, let me tell you two churches you can go to.

You can go see Scott, you can go see Jason. Why? Because these are confessional churches. And I know that these people are always going to get the finest wheat of God's Word when they sit under the ministry. Why?

Because their confessional standards hold them to that high level. So it's a beautiful thing to be a confessional church and to be confessional Christians, as you know, by God's grace. 05 Rob, when you look at the New Testament church in Acts and beyond, it is a vertebrate Christianity. It is a Christianity with a backbone, for sure. When you look around the modern church, I think we find a jellyfish church, which is really hard to pin down on even essential foundational matters.

So I'm so delighted to see a return to an emphasis on confessionalism to say what you think the Bible teaches. Yeah, exactly. So everyone says, I believe the Bible, and I say, great, so what is it you believe about the Bible? Right? So I believe in Jesus.

Okay, which Jesus? Oh, I believe the Jesus who's the God, man, etc. Okay, so right now you're giving me your doctrine. You're giving me your confession. And for us, what's so wonderful is when people come into our churches, you know, we don't have just like a one-page document.

You see that on sometimes church websites, like, what we believe, God, Bible, Trinity, Christ, salvation, you know, we're a forum, so we like to write a lot. So our guys have to go 30 plus chapters and really, you know, exposit what we believe. So people know right up front exactly what we believe. There's no guesswork as to what we believe. These are the things most surely believed among us and I love a church with a backbone.

You know, right now we live in the land of what, you know, evangelicaly fish, you know, so, you know, everyone, you know, everything is changing all the time. You know, what we believe about Christ, what we think about worship. I mean, you know, worship wars, God has no wars when it comes to us worship. It's very clear about what he believes. So we go back to our confession of faith and we see, oh, look at that.

The writers understood that there was a regulated principle of worship and that God dictates how he wants to be worshiped from his own word. So therefore when we have all these things in play, we don't kind of have our finger up in the air, what are we gonna do this week? What's the fad du jour? We're not doing those things. No, we're going back always to the old path where the good way is.

That's where things are safe and that's where things are biblical. Okay, so this confession was written out of a historical context. I'm gonna ask you a double-barreled question. Okay. The first is related to the second.

The first is what was this confession addressing particularly? And then secondly, what fads, what departures, what invertebrate issues, is this addressing today? So why was it written? And then how is it right for today? Yeah, just quoting the opening of the confession itself, what the historic reform back to say, I've got a quote here.

They say that they're writing this to help people, quote, understand what their principles are, and or in that case, as we look back, what they were. And I think it's important to understand that the Reformed Baptists were seeking to say in one sense primarily to their Paedobaptist friends that on the one hand were not Armenians and on the other hand were not Anabaptists. And there was great confusion as to who these Reformed Baptists were and they're saying basically we're just like you in fact we're gonna take your Westminster confession of faith and you know as we used to say in the in the hip-hop day we're gonna bite it right and that means we're gonna we're gonna copy it And it's pretty much a copy of the Westminster, of course, from a Baptist perspective, no disrespect to my dear Pato Baptist friends, the Baptist made it a bit better, I've got to say. But with no disrespect, because again, the Westminster Confession of Faith, an outstanding document along with many other of the great historic confessions and the Canons of Dwarfs, the Three Forms of Unity, etc. They're all excellent, but our Baptist forefathers needed to put things down so that they could know, that is to say others around them, who exactly these Reformed Baptists were, which at that time they would have been called particular Baptists.

So super important for the Baptists to address and let people know who they were, what they believed. And again, As you look at our confession compared to Westminster, it's like 98% the same. There's obviously some differences regarding obviously baptism and church polity. But again, we love those other documents. The Westminster divines were excellent men.

And all of that stuff, I think, is an initial reason for that. And then the second reason, I think, is, again, to protect the churches from error. There's always error around about us. And when it comes to things like worship and doctrine of Christ and Trinity, We don't need to figure those things out. It's so wonderful that I do not have to come up with anything new.

All I have to do is crack open the confession of faith and I'm doing it all the time and say, what did our forefathers teach about this? And again, all the scripture references from the word of God, It's just a safeguard. As Paul says in Philippians chapter three, I'm preaching through there now, he says, I write these things to you not to be tedious, but rather for you. It is safe. It is safe.

And in our confessional standard, the 1689 Lenten Baptist Confession of Faith, we have safe doctrine for our lives as the people of God. As far as fads, fads, oh yeah, I mean again, we're full of fads in our day, as I said, worship wars, right? Every three months there's a new fad in the church for you know how we're gonna worship what we're gonna do what we're not gonna do and the confession of faith just puts forth a biblical perspective on worship we are regular worship people we're not normative worship where again you know anything that God hasn't commanded we do. I mean that opens the door for all kind of nonsense as you see happening in the churches all day long, but we seek to follow God with reference to how we used to be worshiped in the way that he commands us to do. And when you do that, you see the worship is simple, it's God-glorifying, it's Christocentric, and it doesn't put man at the center of the worship, it puts Christ in the center of his people, which the true people of God love having him there.

Amen. You know, I've always thought that, you know, two of the great correctives in the confession is the chapter on the law. It really clarifies the purpose of the law. And I, you know, I've had interns memorize it. It's so helpful.

And then the chapter on the Lord's Day. Those are two great correctives to a modern church that thinks that those things are irrelevant today. Right, and especially as I mentioned, On the one hand you have Arminianism, which is correcting, and then you have Anabaptists. And I think with this third category, which you're raising is really Antinomianism. Just if I wanna get an A so I could be a good, alliterated preacher, you've got Arminianism, you've got Anabaptists, and then you've got antinomianism, right?

There's my headings. So absolutely, the law of God's a fantastic chapter, super helpful for the Christian to understand law, gospel, all of that kind of stuff. And then the stuff on the Sabbath is absolutely glorious. And Sam Waldron has done a fantastic chapter on that along with this chapter on the church and here I'll give a plug for our dear brother Jeff Pollard we were just talking to him just a few minutes ago before we got on air and Jeff Pollard is going to publish Sam Waldron's chapter on the church in a standalone booklet. And that should be out, I would imagine, sometime this year.

And that'll go to over 80 countries. So Jeff loved the chapter on the church that Sam did. And again, it's a 30-year of Sam thinking on the church from when he originally wrote it. So it's 30 years improved as it were, it's fuller and it's absolutely outstanding. Okay, so who believed and who believes this confession?

Like, because I think people say, this is really weird, you know, because confessional Christianity's kind of gone out of style over the last, you know hundred years So but who really believes this stuff give us some people that people understand Yeah, I mean, you know, so so, you know one thing I say to people, you know, when you see the number there, 1689, London Baptist Confession of Faith, that is not the word count. That's the year it was written. So what I say is there are actually Baptists in the 17th century, 1600s, who believe these beautiful doctrines. So every Christian will say, oh yeah, we come out of the Protestant Reformation as it were, right? They say, We all come from, we break from Rome and Luther, justification by faith alone.

But really, like look at the church today and you see it's gone so far afield from those historic doctrines, justification by faith alone, election, predestination, all of that is in the word of God. And so you've always had Baptists who have believed this confession of faith. And granted at times in church history, the thing was in vogue more or less, you know, here or there, I get it, but you've always had churches holding the confession of faith. And like you said earlier, Scott, there is a revitalization of the confession of faith. I think Church and Family Life has done a wonderful job in promoting the confession over the years.

Of course, Pastor Martin and Walt Chantry and all these churches, these guys for decades were putting forth confessional churches so that really all over the world you can go now and you'll see these 1689 churches. So I think that you had historically people holding to this document all the way through. Of course Spurgeon himself held to the 1689, interesting little story, that when Spurgeon was directing the Met Tabernacle there in London and it was being built how when they put down the foundational stone, he put in a Bible and the confession of faith, both in the cornerstone of the church there. So Spurgeon had a huge part in revitalizing the 1689 confession, even in his own day. And as you saw, Jason, I quote Spurgeon, of course, his little plug there on the 1689 saying that this document is a help to our faith and it Stands it helps us to stand in those things most surely believed among us, etc.

And then of course in our day, there are just so many guys who hold the confession of faith, you know, Vodi, Balcom and others, you know, big preachers who are loving the confession of faith and are actually teaching it to their people in their churches. So I think historically, modern day, it's all over the place. And one thing for me, for modern day that really helps me, as I think about the confession of faith, it helps me to remember that we are not new kids on the block, right? We're not new kids on the block. Like our Baptist forefathers held to this great document so that things like, again, saboteurism, regular worship, the doctrines of grace, et cetera, those aren't novel things.

No, these are things which the church has always held to. And where we are not holding to those things in our day shows how far afield the church has gotten. And you can look at the broad even-jogged church and say, that's historic Christianity. But really it's just the opposite. It's those churches which have been holding to these confessions of faith which were spun out of the Protestant Reformation Which really are being true to the biblical gospel.

Mm-hmm. Amen. I'm gonna just quote Spurgeon on the confession It's assistance to you in controversy a confirmation of faith and a means of edification and righteousness. Here, the younger members of our church will have a body of divinity in small compass. So there you have it.

Jason, any final final shots? Yeah, and it's it's off topic. It is a plug for another book of Rob Ventura's that is coming out later this year. I think, is that right? Your commentary on Romans is coming out later this year.

The plan is October, November. I'm preaching through Romans now, and Rob has been gracious enough to let me have some of the chapters that I'm preaching through. And I just want to say, like, I've overbought on commentaries for this, And I've sidelined some of them because I just can't read it all every week, but I'm reading yours every week because it's tremendously profitable. So be looking for Rob's commentary on Romans. Good deal.

Until then, you have this. You have a new commentary. The confession was written for families. It was written for churches. It keeps you from fads It helps you to think rightly about the things that are happening in your culture it's a great confession and we hope you read it and we hope you get Rob's book And so Rob, where can they get it?

Anywhere. That's the beautiful thing. It is everywhere and anywhere. Amazon, RHB, Westminster, everybody has it. You can get it at Barnes and Nobles if you just happen to ever walk in there.

Okay. And, And you can also get it at Church and Family Life. How about that? So there you have it. Yeah.

Okay. And thank you for joining us. And thank you, Rob. It was thrilling to hear about this book and hope everybody buys it. And I hope you can join us next time on the Church and Family Life podcast.

Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to ChurchandFamilyLife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.