What does a reformed confession such as the 1689 Baptist Confession and the Westminster Confession of faith have to do with your family. Can your children defend the doctrine of the trinity, God’s decrees and divine providence, the nature of the fall of man, and the way of salvation in Christ? 

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Trent Moody, discuss how a sound confession of faith is vital for families and churches. All three men hold to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which stands as one of the richest and most helpful statements of faith ever written. Exalting Scripture as the ultimate standard, the 1689 Confession contains a treasure trove of orthodox doctrine, with scriptural proofs for further study. The confession’s original “letter to the reader” calls on fathers to teach the core truths of Scripture to their households, even as church elders should do the same to the household of faith. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. The Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, And today we want to talk about sufficient scripture for sound doctrine in a church and in a family. And we're really here to talk about the Baptist Confession, the Baptist Confession of 1689. We've been really encouraging churches and families to familiarize themselves with the doctrine that is in the Baptist Confession, not to go make up life on your own. But this confession is a treasure trove of the doctrines of the kingdom of heaven and so helpful.

We published this book over a decade ago. We added in our version of the 1689 Confession more verses than exist in any other publication. We got verses from Sam Waldron and all kinds of others. And we think it's a really good resource. We're gonna republish it again.

Also, wanna encourage you to check out the Family at Church, how parents are tour guides for joy, 20 days to transform your local church experience. But we're here with Trent Moody, Jason. Hi, Trent. Hi, Trent. We know Trent.

Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. Yeah, Trent, we are fellow elders together at Hope Baptist Church. What a blessing it is there. Yeah, it really is.

And we get to talk about something that's dear to our hearts. We really want our families and our churches grounded in sound doctrine. And so we have a confession that we have embraced. We are obligated to preach consistently with that doctrine. But what I really want to talk about today is how this works in the matter of the complementary role of the church and the family, because those who framed this confession, They were explicitly thinking about families and teaching sound doctrine to their families.

So what's the number, 1689? It's a year. The year 1689, that's more than 350 years ago. One of the things I love about this confession is it's time tested. It has survived the kind of assaults, theological assaults on it for more than 350 years.

Why is that? Because it is sound doctrine. That's right. Yeah. One of the things I always love to do when preaching is quote men who are already dead, because that way it doesn't change and they don't come back.

And that's really the blessing of this confession, is the strength of it is in the longevity. We've had it, it's been, like you said, scrutinized. And it's really a wonderful anchor for us. It holds us and really helps guide us in our doctrine. And it's really a protection to the church and to the family.

You know, and isn't it interesting when we're preaching, we often refer to the confession as we're doing exposition of Scripture. There are categories in the confession that relate directly to that doctrine. We do, you know, expositional but yet doctrinal preaching, and it's helpful for our people to understand how the confession describes the nuances of that doctrine. Yeah, it was a help to me early on in my family life with even young children taking that confession and reading it, really reading it for myself and studying, going through and looking at all of those wonderful scriptures that were listed there, the references, but then also reading it to my family even as we came upon certain passages, maybe some hard ones that we would look at, and that confession was just such a help to myself and to my family as we had family devotions together. Dr.

Gerry Breshears You know, in this version, we included the letter to the reader from the authors, and it's a very interesting introductory letter. And they talk about the fact that this doctrinal study needs to begin at home. I'm quoting the letter, begin at home. And they want us to remember that much of the decay of religion, quote unquote, can be traced back to what? A father's neglect of teaching his family in family worship.

So the authors are saying this confession is – the neglect of this confession is the reason for the decay of religion. And so they bring things right back to the family and the importance of sound doctrine in a family. There are kind of two rallying cries that are cousins. One is, no creed but Christ. The other is, no creed but the Bible.

They sound great, and I think maybe the spirit behind them, we affirm we have nothing without Christ, and the Bible needs to have the final say on every matter. But they're really not as helpful as rallying cries as they seem to be on the surface. Why is that? Because you have to define what you say, what you assert that the Bible teaches in these different categories. Every heretic from time immemorial has said, oh, I'm only using the Bible.

So there needs to be an articulation of what you think the Bible teaches. The Confession is not in any way an attempt to supplant the Bible as the ultimate source of truth, but it's to explain and articulate in a category what the Bible teaches across Scripture and across that progressive revelation, and it's enormously helpful to have a baseline of what the Bible actually teaches in some reform, because if you don't define it, you can't defend it. And churches are given the task, fathers are given the task of defending sound doctrine. Well, what is sound doctrine? This is a baseline where a church can say, we believe this is sound doctrine.

Dr. Darrell Bock Hey, in the letter to the reader, you know, these authors, they condemn heads of families who don't train and instruct their children in the doctrine, and they – here's how they say it – their blood is on your hands. I mean, the seriousness with which they engage this confession is – you know, it's not really well known. That type of passion, you know, for doctrinal purity is kind of gone out of style. Yeah.

One of the things we don't realize is that in one sense, it is not only with our children, but even to our grandchildren and multi-generationally, because the patterns that we set down, the doctrines that we teach, that does go beyond us. It goes beyond where we are. It goes beyond our children into our grandchildren. And I've met people in the past who often have a doctrine unto their own, kind of like what you were saying, Jason, no creed but Christ, or no creed but the Bible. But it's not just that you're holding to the Bible, but what do you believe about the Bible is what defines all of that.

And so people would argue with me in the past about that, and I'd say, well, tell me what you believe about the Bible. And they would begin to tell me, I said, there's your confession of faith, there's your creed. But I've known men in the past who really, They did not have those very protective bounds of a solid confession to help them to interpret the Scriptures. And so often they would get so far off in their understandings of things, you know, just some vague idea that they had about something. And they really needed to have something to draw them back in, what saith the Scriptures.

And then also, as has been said many times before, if your interpretation of Scripture is different than anyone in history, you probably won't most likely need to abandon that interpretation. So for anyone who thinks that holding to a confession diminishes the importance of the Bible, my challenge would be just go to the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith and look at chapter one. What is chapter one? Of the holy Scriptures. And it's the most exalted view of Scripture you could ever articulate.

So the authors of the Confession were not trying to detract from Scripture in any way. In fact, they were trying to honor it in the kind of the highest possible terms. John Dickerson You know, most people think of this doctrinal statement as some highfalutin advanced theology, But the authors never thought of it that way. They thought it was super street level, that every child should understand it. The fundamentals of the faith, basic Christianity.

Just basic Christianity. And hey, we are church and family life, okay? Church and family life. And I think this confession is such a help to solidify the complementary role of church and family because we're preaching sound doctrine in the church And fathers are obligated to teach sound doctrine in their families when they sit in the house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, when they rise up. But a confession stands really at the crossroads of a church and a family.

Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, it's such a heavy – a lot of times new members that come into our church, we recommend � that's one of the things that's required is that they read through the confession and that they understand this is what this church believes. And it's actually a � It's a guard and a protection for the local church itself, because our elders, we are bound to that doctrine. And any time we veer from that, we're veering from what the doctrine of the church is, and it's really a protection for the flock. And it's not something that we would exalt above Scripture because the Confession itself, like what you said, Jason, it exalts Scripture.

The Confession holds Scripture in such high view, And it's full of scripture. And so I encourage new members to even go into that confession and begin, almost as a daily devotional, you can read through that and then just look up all of those scripture passages in there. What a balm to the soul. What just a tremendous blessing it is to read through that. And the interesting thing is, like what you were saying, is so often we think about this as really high or deep theology.

And Scott, as you mentioned, it was basic theology years ago, but I believe it's shown us how far we've fallen because family devotions and because of reading the scriptures in the homes have gone to the wayside. And I believe that if we would return to that, we would see this doctrine being more normalized and everyone would understand these things across the board. Scott Cunningham Trent and Scott, we're three pastors, so we don't believe in casual church participation. When someone joins with us, it's our hope, and we want it to be their hope that it's a serious commitment and it's a long-term commitment. No one knows what the future holds, but we want it to be a serious long-term commitment.

As church leaders, we owe it to people. If a serious long-term commitment is being expected, we owe it to them to understand what is going to be taught and defended as sound doctrine in the Church. One of the experiences from time past is to have a very broad, shallow doctrinal statement in the past that could attract a lot of people, but they didn't know that in our hearts we were actually 1689 guys. And then after a couple of years of investment has been made, now they discover actually we're on very different theological tracks. And they had a right to feel disappointed or worse about that because we hadn't been clear up front.

We really are this, theologically. And it's actually very helpful on a number of fronts. One is that it's a wonderful tool to assist us when we're being accused of false doctrine. And what we say is, this is our doctrine. Maybe you don't like that doctrine, but this is actually historic Christian doctrine.

If you don't like historic Christian doctrine, then maybe you're just, maybe you want to keep making it up. But it's a protection for us to have a fixed statement of faith so that we can answer our accusers. And, hey, it helps you identify drift if it's happening. Meaning in our churches, we have tethered ourselves to the 1689, and we invite to be called on it for teaching something that is contrary to what's expressed there, because we've said this is the doctrine that we believe and intend to teach and defend. And if you're drifting from that, it gives you a mechanism to discern the drift, because theological drift often happens a little bit at a time, but it progresses over time and this gives you a way to diagnose it.

Scott Cunningham You know, it's a help even in pastoral ministry in counseling with people, but also in those who may bring in accusation that our doctrine might be slipping. It really heads a lot of that off because we profess to hold to these truths. And when we turn back to those and look at those things together, it really takes care a lot of that little, little so. We, you know, our time is valuable and it, it, that's just another benefit of the confession. It really guards that and really helps us not having to, you know, to, to argue every point that could possibly come up.

But that confession is a help to us and it's a help to our people. So the authors of the confession say begin at home. We're here to say begin at home, send it into the church, bring it back into the home, send it back into the church. Look at the outline of this confession and think about just for a minute what it would be like to have children who have clear understanding of these things and they are so fortifying. Chapter 1 of the Holy Scriptures, 2, of God and the Holy Trinity.

Number 3, of God's decree. 4, of creation. 5, of divine providence. 6, of the fall of man and sin and the punishment thereof, number seven, of God's covenant, number eight, of Christ the mediator, number nine, of free will. Really helpful, important matters of doctrine.

Well, I just read a very few chapters of the 22 that are in this. Darrell Bock Thirty-two. Dr. Gerry Breshears Thirty-two, sorry, yeah. Hey, remember when We did that conference on the 1689.

Darrell Bock Those were long days. Jay Smith Those were long days. We had somebody preach through every chapter all week long. We started early in the morning, ended at 9 o'clock at night for an entire week, and created kind of an arsenal of messages. Darrell Bock That was a great week.

Jay Smith That was a great week. I'd love to do that again sometime. It was drinking from the fire hose for sure, though. So I don't know where this originated, but many commentators pick up on it and say that theology should always lead to doxology, meaning the truths of Scripture ought to lead you to praising the God of Scripture. And we have dear, dear friends in Malawi, Africa, and they're – they hold to the same confession, and they are encouraging their people to use it devotionally.

Yes, yes. Chapter one of the Holy Scriptures, chapter two of God and the Holy Trinity. So that is fertile, fertile soil for doxology. Amen. Okay, so that's the message.

Begin at home, take it to church, bring it back into the home, and continue the loop and help everybody in your family understand the truth about God. So thank you guys, Thank you for joining us. What a blessing it is to talk about things that really have been so helpful to us over the years. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope to see you next time.

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.