In his sermon, Jason Dohm discusses the importance and value of a robust church confession. He emphasizes that while a confession is a carefully defined and precise articulation of what a church believes to be an accurate expression of scripture, it is not infallible or inerrant like the Bible. Dohm outlines two main points: what a confession is and isn't, and why it matters. He stresses that a confession should not replace scripture in importance but serves as a useful tool for defining and defending sound doctrine. Dohm provides four reasons for the importance of a confession: it allows for the defense of doctrine, helps prevent theological drift, ensures transparency in church beliefs for members, and facilitates partnerships with other churches. He also highlights the historical significance of the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, which has withstood challenges for over 335 years, providing a theological anchor for churches. Dohm concludes by expressing gratitude for those who have worked on the confession and prays for continued faithfulness to scripture.

So I view this will definitely be quick by view it is important. I think our confession is very valuable. I think Churches holding to a robust confession There are confessions and aren't very robust But but ours is robust meaning it covers a lot and it's very careful, it's very full, and I think it has a lot of value and I think it's very important to our church. September 8th, James preached a message on reformed theology and confessions, but that's a lot to mash into one message and reformed theology got a lot of that message, which is right, but I wanted to double back and talk more about confessions. Sovereign Redeemer is a confessional church, meaning we have adopted a historic confession to define what we believe.

What do we believe? We've defined it and it's this 336 year old, something like that, confession. We confess, confession, that these things are true according to the scripture. So our our body confesses that these are representative of what scripture teaches. I try to make two points.

One, what a confession is and isn't and two, why it matters. One, what a confession is and isn't. I want to start with what it isn't. A confession isn't the word of God. You hope that it represents what the word of God teaches, but never get it twisted.

Our confession is not the Bible, And in saying that it's valuable and in saying that's important, we don't want it to get lost that it doesn't belong on the same bookshelf as scripture. Scripture gets the top shelf and it doesn't share with any other book. All the other books as helpful as they might be have to go on a lower shelf and the confession fits within that. The Bible is infallible, inerrant, and is sufficient. Infallible means that it can't possibly be wrong.

Inerrant means that it's not wrong, and sufficient means that it actually tells us all the things that we need to know for our faith and for how to practice our faith. So we actually don't need anything outside of the Bible for faith and practice. Our confession is none of these things. It's not inerrant. It's not infallible.

It's not sufficient. So it's not the final rule of faith and practice for Christians when we're trying to settle what's the what's the final word on faith and practice, we go back to the Bible and nothing about the Bible. So A confession should never take the place of scripture in our affections or studies. We should never love the confession more than we love our Bibles. We should never study the confession more than we study our Bibles.

Then what is a confession? Confession is a very carefully defined, precise articulation of what someone or what a group of someone's believes to be an accurate expression of scripture, of what scripture teaches across a range of categories. So let me read that again because that was long and too wordy, but I couldn't figure out how to squeeze it down, so I'll just say it again in hopes that you'll get more the second time. Confession is a very carefully defined, meaning people have poured over this and poured over this and poured over this and swapped out words and worked on it and worked on it until they couldn't work on it anymore. Very carefully defined, precise articulation of what a group believes to be an accurate expression of what Scripture teaches across a range of categories.

So if you look at our confession, we have 32 chapters. Each chapter is a category. The first one, Chapter 1, is of the Holy Scriptures. What do we think the Bible teaches about what the Bible is? This is what we think.

That's what chapter one is. Now why would we need that? Because there's a book of Genesis and there's a book of Revelation, but there is not a book of marriage. Nope. There's not a book of marriage that collects up all the truth of scripture in one place to carefully, precisely define what the Bible teaches about marriage.

So if you want to know about marriage, you go to Genesis 2, and then you go to Malachi 2 where it says he hates divorce and that's the holy institution that he loves. You go to Ephesians 5 that says it's a reflection. And so the confession is trying to pull from all marriage truths from all these different books of the Bible and collect it up to have a unified teaching about marriage from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible is simply not organized that way so it's a way that we reorganize to say in this category these are the truths that Scripture teaches. Confession is a useful tool because it summarizes in a very carefully defined precise way the key things the Bible says about marriage from Genesis to Revelation.

So it's collecting all those trees up. In the case of our confession, the second London Baptist confession of 1689, 1689 isn't the number of tries that they did to get it right. It's actually the year. So it has stood the test of time. It's been around and being attacked for 335 years.

So if you know of something that has survived attack for 335 years, you probably have something pretty good there. This is what people who have stood in a really sound theological stream of theology have confessed as being the truth of scripture for 335 years. So I'm thankful that it's thorough, meaning it covers these 32 different categories, and it's robust and it has stood the test of time. Okay. Two, why does it matter?

Let me give you four reasons why it matters. First, because you can't defend what you haven't defined. Fair enough? So if we're going to defend sound doctrine, we better have defined sound doctrine because how can you defend it if you haven't defined it? Listen to 1 Timothy 3, 15.

This is what Paul writes to Timothy, 1 Timothy 3.15, says, but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. So what are local churches and communities? Well, there are a lot of things. One of the things that they are though is the pillar and ground of the truth. They're where people ought to be able to go to get truth.

So it will not have to, it will not do to have indistinct views of what this book teaches because we're supposed to be the repository of it where if somebody wants to know what the truth is, they can go to a local church and find what the truth is. Indistinct views will not do if what you're supposed to be is the pillar and ground of the truth. Here's what Paul writes to Titus in Titus 1.9. Now this is the end of the qualifications for elders, So it's a long list of things that elders should be to lead a local church, and this is the final one on the list, Titus 1.9. Holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict.

So an elder is supposed to be a man who has been taught the word faithfully, the faithful word faithfully, so that he has this deposit of sound doctrine by which he can exhort people and convict people who contradict sound doctrine. So elders should define sound doctrine so that they can defend sound doctrine. I'd just like to submit that it's a really bad idea for elders to start with a blank sheet of paper, especially when great work has been done 335 years ago and it stood the test of time. We'll start with a blank sheet of paper. Go to people who have already done really good, careful work and time has sifted out good from less good, and we have this to draw on.

So that's the first reason why confessions matter because you can't defend what you can't define. Number two, because it makes it harder for us to drift theologically and that's good. So there's nothing wrong necessarily, there's nothing inherently wrong with your theology changing. In other words, if you have bad theology, do you want your theology to change? I hope so.

But what you don't want to do is insensibly drift, meaning your theology is changing, but you're not even aware because it's happening by such small increments. You've heard about the frog that you up the temperature one degree at a time and it will never jump out of the pot. You can actually boil it. Supposedly, I've never tried this, so don't call PETA. But you can boil a frog without it ever jumping out by just raising the temperature one degree at a time.

So we don't want that to happen to us theologically. If we should change our view to conform to scripture, then let's change. If there are errors in our confession, then let's identify them and let's take exceptions. Charles Spurgeon did that. There are very few changes.

He loved the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, but he said, here, here, and here, I actually think that the Bible teaches this. That's not what's in the confession, and these are the exceptions we take to the confession. So there's nothing wrong to do that. You don't have to take it all. It's not all or nothing.

You can take exceptions and people in Baptist history certainly have. But we shouldn't insensibly drift away from what we once confessed to be true. So if you confessed it to be true, don't insensibly drift away from it. That is how theological error and compromise comes into churches over time. And theological error and compromise has come into so many churches over time so that they didn't understand what was happening when it was happening but 30 years later they looked nothing like they were theologically at the start because little errors crept in one after the other, little compromises, theological compromises crept in one after the other.

So anchoring yourself theologically to a confession makes it harder to drift theologically and that's good. Third, because people have a right to know what our church believes. In church membership you're actually asking for a significant commitment, a real commitment, and it's wrong not to spell it out right up front, hey, this is what we think the Bible teaches. The last thing you want is to have a really broad confession that any Christian can come under the roof of, but you have a much narrower view, and then people find out three years into investing their lives into relationships in that church. That's not fair.

I've actually done that before. It led to a nuclear meltdown in that church, and that was one of the key reasons. The alternative to having a carefully defined confession is to have something that's very broad and then surprise people later with what you actually believe from the pulpit. It's really not fair to do that to people. So that's the third reason why it matters, because people have a right to know what our church believes.

Fourth and finally, because we have a right to know what other churches believe when we're considering who to be close to and who to work with. So we have an enormously fruitful partnership with Antioch Baptist and Glantire Malawi almost all the way across the world. One of the key reasons why it's been enormously fruitful is because we knew early on we think the Bible teaches the same things, Okay, and it's allowed us to get past a long phase of wondering, do we really believe the right things? We knew really early on because they held the 1689 and we could tell they were serious about it and we held the 1689 and they could tell we were serious about it, that we had a theological platform that would allow us to work together across a really broad range of things over the long term. They had a right to know what we believed and we had a right to know what they believed and that allowed us to get close to them and to work with them on a lot of things over the long haul.

So our confession isn't scripture but it is a very useful tool and we think it's important. We've done some teaching from it last year, if you wanted to stick around after prayer, We read Rob Ventura's commentary on the confession. But we've done actually very little of that. Given how important we believe it is, you might marvel that we haven't done more. I would say this, we are actually teaching small doses of our confession every week in the preaching.

So we're not saying this is from the confession, but Our preaching is undergirded or our preaching is sitting on the foundation of this theological framework that informs my understanding of so many texts. So you're actually, I bet if we gave a quiz on just points of the confession to people who have been here a long time and heard a lot of sermons, we'd actually find that we understand what the confession teaches, because we're getting it sort of microdose at a time every time I stand up this is the framework from which I'm preaching on these texts so I think I'm actually done early can you believe that okay Becca can't all right let me give thanks for people who have worked so hard on this confession. God, I thank you for the people whose names we'll never know, who worked and worked and worked to be so careful and so precise about the articulation of these things. God where it's not an accurate reflection of what infallible, inerrant, sufficient scripture teaches I pray that you would give us an awareness of those weaknesses and errors over time so that we could correct them. But in the meantime, I thank you for giving us a theological anchor to hold our church from drifting.

God keep us from drift into error and compromise. We want to believe your word and rejoice in it and live by it. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.