Scott Brown's sermon on 'Chapter 1: The Scriptures' delves into the foundational role of the scriptures in conveying saving knowledge, emphasizing their sufficiency, certainty, and infallibility. He discusses how the Baptist Confession serves as a crucial tool in apologetics, allowing believers to defend their faith by understanding what they believe and why. Brown highlights the scriptures' authority, independent of human or church testimony, and the importance of recognizing the canon of scripture as divinely inspired and authoritative, distinguishing it from the Apocrypha. The sermon further outlines the clarity and sufficiency of scripture in guiding faith and life, stressing that no new revelation should be added. The preservation and translation of scriptures are celebrated for maintaining their integrity across cultures and languages. Additionally, Brown emphasizes interpreting scripture through scripture itself and prioritizing its authority in resolving religious controversies, asserting that while confessions like the 1689 Baptist Confession aid understanding, they remain subordinate to scripture.

Okay, we're passing out a copy of the first chapter of the Baptist Confession. Now I did email the whole chapter to everybody this morning if you want to look on it there but this is a hard copy of it so let's pray Lord we thank you for your word thank you for all that you've declared about it it's it's beauty it's it's helpfulness it's goodness Lord we thank you for it Help us to love it even more now this afternoon. Amen. Okay chapter one, there are ten paragraphs in this first chapter. It's the second longest chapter in the Baptist Confession.

The longest is on the church. So this is so extensive. I'm really only going to be able to fly over this. And I know that's a little a little frustrating. Here is here is the summary of all 10 paragraphs.

And the language is in the confession itself. The scriptures declare the sum of saving knowledge. The sum of saving knowledge. That means that everything that communicates saving knowledge is summarized in the scriptures. Everything you need to know to be saved, everything you need to know how to live is the declaration here.

Now, Vodi Bakham was famous for arguing that the confession is a good tool for apologetics. And he argues apologetics isn't for elite Christians who know everything about culture not not people who know everything about every religion they don't have to know everything about science or history or philosophy They don't have to know the knowledge of the cults. What they do need to know is what the Bible teaches and he says that's why the confession is a central tool for apologetics. Apologetics is the defense of the faith. Now in order to defend the faith you don't need to know everything about all other faiths, but what you do need to know is about Christianity.

Once you understand what the Bible teaches you'll be able to smell a rat okay and I think that's the vow the apologetic value because what a confession does is is to help you to know what you believe and why you believe it so that you can detect error. My wife, just before I married her, worked in a bank. And she was able to deal out. Bill, she could tell a counterfeit because she was trained to detect the feel of a counterfeit and that's what a confession does for you. It helps you to understand what the counterfeits are and so Apologetics is not about what others believe, it's about what you believe and that's the most helpful thing about this.

Cornelius Van Til said, apologetics is the vindication of Christian philosophy against the various forms of non-Christian philosophy of life. So to be a good apologist you don't have to know everything about every world religion but you do need to know what the Bible says. So what you find here in the confession is really the essential knowledge of the Word of God. Now let's read the first phrase here in the first paragraph. The Holy Scriptures are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving knowledge faith and obedience so you have these these words that are really helpful sufficient that means it's all you need it is certain that means it's reliable and it's infallible in other words it is without error and it is a standard it's a rule of faith that is sufficient certain and infallible and then going on the light of nature and the works of creation and providence so clearly demonstrate the goodness wisdom and power of God that men are left without excuse however these demonstrations are not sufficient to give the knowledge of God and of his will that is necessary for salvation.

Trent mentioned this at the end of the service today that while that nature is beautiful it does declare the glory of God and everyone is without excuse at the same time there's there's not enough in the stars to save your soul. You need extra knowledge from the Word of God. Romans 1.19 speaks of this people who suppress the truth and unrighteousness because What may be known about God is manifest to them for God has shown it to them And that since the creation of the world every man has known that there is God and there there is truth and reality And then continuing on in paragraph one, therefore the Lord was pleased at different times and in various ways to reveal and to declare his will to his church to preserve and propagate the truth better and to establish and comfort the church with greater certainty against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and the world. The Lord put this revelation completely in writing. Therefore, the holy scriptures are absolutely necessary because God's former ways of revealing his will to his people have now ceased.

So the whole idea here is that God in order to clarify saving knowledge and the summary of it, he wrote it down and it was absolutely necessary but then he says and the writing has now ceased. So revelation has stopped. There is no new revelation. This is a cessationist statement. So you have this certain fixed infallible testimony for all saving faith and knowledge.

OK let's go to paragraph two. Paragraph two is the canon of scripture, the books of the Bible that have been received, and you'll see the listing of the Old Testament books and then the New Testament books. Now you're familiar with all those the names of those books. Here's something critical to recognize. God has not given us one book.

He's given us a library of books. Sixty-six books written by at least 30 authors over 1, 600 years on three different continents. And these are the books. And there's nearly every kind of writing history, law codes, commands, songs, biographies, letters, prophecies, every every kind of writing except there's one kind of writing that is not in the Bible you know what it is fantasy no fantasy but God gave the scriptures its authority and the church recognized the authority of the books of the Bible over time The church never gathered and voted on Which books of the Bible should be received? You know some some of the modern modern contradictions of Scripture say that this happened at the Council of Nicaea.

It did not happen to the Council of Nicaea. But the church recognized how different and how blessed these books were and they were just progressively received by the church. Now of course the Old Testament was inherited from the Jews and the Hebrew Scriptures of course established this first list, these 39 books of the Old Testament. The New Testament was really authorized, the Old Testament was authorized by Jesus because how do we know the Old Testament books are authoritative? Well Jesus thought they did and he's constantly referring to Moses, to Jonah, to Abraham, to the flood, to you know to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Jesus believed the Old Testament was authoritative. That's why we believe the Old Testament is authoritative, because he did. So the books of the Bible were not voted on, they were acknowledged as authoritative over time. And then in the next paragraph on the Apocrypha, The books commonly called the Apocrypha were not written, were not given by divine inspiration and so are not part of the canon or standard of scripture. Therefore they have no authority for the Church of God and are not to be recognized or used in any way different from other human writings.

The Roman Catholic Church embraced different books of the Apocrypha, the names such as the Book of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Serach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. The early editions of the Bible included them, but they were never thought by the church to be authoritative, just because you might have a Bible that has the Apocrypha in it. The church didn't recognize the Apocrypha as authoritative. They were historical reference points, particularly the book of Maccabees, which really speak to the the intertestamental period between the time of the last prophet, Malachi, to the time of John the Baptist, the first prophet. And most of the Apocrypha speaks of that 400-year intertestamental period.

In 1548, my fellow elder and his council, the Council of Trent, rejected, they rejected the Apocrypha as unreliable and contradictory. The Jews did not embrace any of the Apocrypha as being authoritative. And Jesus and the apostles do not identify these books as having any authority. Having any authority. So then paragraph four, and this really speaks of the self authenticating nature of the scriptures.

In other words scripture speaks about itself as having authority. Here's how it reads, the authority of the Holy Scriptures obligates belief in them. This authority does not depend on the testimony of any person or church but on God the author alone who is truth itself. Therefore the scriptures are to be received because they are the Word of God. This is this paragraph is important particularly because of the time of writing.

The authors wanted to make sure that the scriptures are not dependent on the authenticity of man, on the authoritative choices of man, doesn't depend on man. There's an independent authority. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the truth is authenticated by the tradition of the church and the Protestant Reformers said no it's not the tradition of the church that authenticates scripture It's scripture and scripture alone apart from any man. So this is the authenticating authority of the scriptures. And Then the next paragraph, the evidences of the truth of scripture.

You may have noticed in what we recited today from the Westminster, from the Westminster Catechism, larger catechism, We have some of the similar kind of language, but in this paragraph there's a there's language that describes the evidences for the authority of Scripture. The truth is there there's really no book like the Bible that's so interconnected, that's so consistent. You're not going to find books written over 1600 years by 30 authors on three continents that agree but the scriptures is so different There's really no book like it anywhere in the world. So that's the force of this paragraph. Here's how it reads.

The testimony of the Church of God may stir and persuade us to adopt a high and reverent respect for the Holy Scriptures. Moreover, and listen to this list, it would be really a blessing to camp on each one of these, but the heavenliness of the contents. Just ponder that for a moment. And then the power of the system of truth, The power of the truth of scripture is unmatched. You think of all the psychologists, all the scientists, all the social philosophers, and what they write and their system of truth compared to this system of truth.

This system of truth transforms your whole life. The power of the system of truth. You know Jesus said, I came that they might have life and might have it more abundantly. That's the system of truth of Jesus. And then the majesty of the style, the majesty of the style.

When you think of the poetic beauty of the scriptures, You know, you read things online on the internet and it's discombobulating, but you think about the poetic beauty of the scriptures. The Bible always has been the most purchased book in the world. It is still today. Everybody wants a Bible, but there's just something about the majesty of the style which makes it even more important why you meditate on such majesty of style. And then the next phrase, the harmony of all the parts, how they're interrelated.

And you know, the more you read the Bible, the more you see it, you see how it works across from Genesis to Revelation. And you got, you people who are raising children, your children, you should read through the whole Bible multiple times. Here's what happens. It happened to my kids. We read through the Bible many times and they can they can they can map out the storyline of the Bible even though they weren't taught it systematically, we just read through it many, many times.

And as a result of that, they can smell out unsound doctrine. They're kind of like, it's sort of like what Vodi Bakum said you don't have to know everything about every religion but if you know the Bible like I said before you can smell a rat but this this whole idea of the harmony of all the parts You know this is why you have all these cross reference Bibles, hundreds and hundreds of cross references. Some of you have, I have a study Bible right here, I don't know if there's 10 or 20, 000 cross references in it because the Bible is all interconnected and the more you read it the more your brain connects with it. There's just something of the sorting out of your brain when you read the whole Bible because the harmony of the Bible becomes the harmony of your thinking. It's very beautiful.

And then the central focus on giving all glory to God because everything points to God, the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the full revelation of the only way of salvation and many other incomparable qualities and complete perfections all provide abundant evidence that the scriptures are the Word of God even so our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority of the scriptures comes from the internal work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts. So That's paragraph five. And then paragraph six really elaborates on particularly the sufficiency of scripture. And that's why it opens with this language of the whole counsel of God.

In Acts chapter 20, Paul tells the elders of the Ephesian Church that he did not cease to declare the whole council of God. It's so important that you have the whole council of God written in your heart. So here's how it reads. Paragraph six. The whole counsel of God concerning everything essential for his own glory and man's salvation, faith, and life is either explicitly stated or by necessary inference contained in the Holy Scriptures.

Nothing is ever to be added to the scriptures, either by new revelation of the Spirit or by the traditions of men. Now with that statement you can understand what to do with Mormonism, you can understand what to do with Christian science, you can understand what to do with with the other heretical religions because they always offer new revelation and when new revelation is offered you know what you have going on you have a cult it's an important it's important to say this particularly this matter of nothing ever to be added to the scriptures because you do have Christian groups that insist that there's continuing revelation of the Spirit and that you have prophets running around. I don't deny that from time to time, God may give a person a legitimate word of prophecy, But there are no prophets around who are prophesying and they always get it right. That's the definition of a biblical prophet. They always get it right.

In the Old Testament, if you didn't get it right, you got the death penalty. Maybe that should happen again. And then he says, nevertheless, we acknowledge that the inward illumination of the Spirit of God is necessary for a saving understanding of what is revealed in the Word. In other words, God opens your heart to understand the Scriptures. The world is full of people who read the Scriptures and they didn't understand it.

It made no sense. They didn't connect with them. And then all of a sudden it did. That is the work of the Holy Spirit to open the heart to see the beauty and the truth of it. And then in the next phrase, we recognize that some circumstances concerning the worship of God and the government of the church are common to human actions and organizations and are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian wisdom following the general rules of the word which must always be observed.

Now what what the authors are telling us is that there are certain things in church life you don't need a Bible verse for. There are certain things circumstances he they call them circumstances concerning the worship of God and the government of the church. That means that there are some things that the Bible doesn't spell out in terms of the worship of God. The Bible doesn't demand that we sit on chairs. Is there anything wrong with us sitting on chairs?

No, the Bible doesn't really address that. These are these circumstances. The Bible doesn't say that you have to have a pulpit like this. The Bible doesn't say that you doesn't address microphones or even the time that the church meets. Well we meet at 10 o'clock.

Is it is it illegitimate to meet at two o'clock or at night? No it's not. These are just circumstances that the Bible doesn't speak to. What about about wearing ties or clerical collars or things like that. None of these are required by scripture.

These are circumstances that are not necessarily addressed in the Word of God. You know, do you pass the elements of the Lord's Supper out through the congregation or in some churches? They have it up front and people come up front, which is the right way. Well, this is these are circumstances. Our elders have decided to do it this way.

We don't think there's anything wrong doing it another way. But everything and everything you don't have to have a Bible verse. There's no there's nothing in the Bible that tells you what sequence a church service should proceed by. You know how it is here. We gather, we sing, we pray, we intersperse these things together.

But if we change the order of the service, don't freak out because the way that we're doing it is not biblically required we could change the order and do it and I think we're very convinced that we should do all the things that the Bible commands to pray and sing and take the Lord's Supper and all those things. But when they happen during the service is inconsequential. That's what this paragraph is all about. One writer said that the Bible is sufficient, but it's not omnisufficient, okay? It doesn't speak to absolutely every element of the circumstances of the worship of God.

And then the next paragraph, paragraph seven, this really speaks about the clarity of Scripture. Some things in Scripture are clearer than others. Can I get an amen? You know, God is smarter than we are and so he has things in his word that are a little bit above our pay grade. Can anyone please explain to us the interplay between the sovereignty of God and the agency of man.

No one has ever been able to explain that with perfection. There are lots of things like that in the Bible. Because if you understood everything then you would be God. You should expect that everything is not perfectly clear. Thankfully it's the clear things that are really bothersome to us.

So anyway some things are clearer in Scripture than others and some people understand the teachings more clearly than others. However, the things that must be known, believed, and obeyed for salvation are so clearly set forth and explained in one part of scripture or another that both the educated and the uneducated may achieve a sufficient understanding of them by properly using ordinary measures. Well this is a real blessing of the scripture because we all have different intellectual capacities and we have different levels of knowledge of scripture and we have different levels of understanding of things. And what this paragraph makes clear is that there's enough clarity for everybody. It doesn't matter who the person is, educated or uneducated.

And then the eighth paragraph about the translation and the preservation of the scriptures. I don't know how many languages the scriptures have been translated into at this point but the the efforts of Bible translation has been have been going on in a fever pitch for hundreds of years. And so let's read this. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the native language of the ancient people of God. The New Testament was written in Greek, which at the time it was written was most widely known to the nations.

You understand how this works. You know, God sent his son when the language, when the Greek language was all over all over the Middle East. These these testaments were inspired directly by God and by his unique care and providence were kept pure through the ages. In other words, the translation efforts have been very, very well done. And there's, there's, we could talk about the, the discovery of various fragments and papyri and the Dead Sea Scrolls, where we've really found that the copying efforts have been remarkably accurate, and that any, basically we have copy, mainly copying errors, but there's no doctrine that is contradicted by any of the variants, no particular doctrine that's critical.

So These testaments were inspired directly by God and by His unique care and providence were kept pure down through the ages. They are therefore true and authoritative so that in all religious controversies the church must make their ultimate appeal to them. All God's people have a right and claim on the scriptures and are commanded in the fear of God to read and search them. Not all of God's people know these original languages, so the scriptures are to be translated into the common language of every nation to which they come. In this way, the Word of God may dwell richly in all so that they may worship him in an acceptable manner through patience and the comfort of the scriptures they may have hope.

Now this is a really encouraging paragraph because it states a truth that we really need and that is that God has preserved his word throughout the centuries miraculously and The copying distinctiveness in biblical literature is unmatched in secular literature, unmatched. And there are books written about this. The New Testament manuscripts by F.F. Bruce and other books really speak of the integrity of the manuscripts. The biblical manuscripts are order of magnitude and more accurate than the transmission of secular documents.

And then paragraph nine, interpreting scripture by the analogy of faith. This is a really important one for how you interpret scripture. If you read a verse and it's confusing, well, there's likely another verse that will clarify it. So, paragraph 9, the infallible rule for interpreting scripture is the scripture itself. That's also called the analogy of faith.

In other words if you if you read something about the faith in one place there's an analogy in another place to cross-reference it. 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. There's a large book called the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge that gives you a cross reference for every verse in the Bible, almost every word in the Bible. It's a big fat book. John MacArthur used to use that in his preaching.

He would be preaching on a verse of the Bible, he'd go to the treasure of Scripture knowledge, and he would look up all the cross references to see the analogy of faith for that. And it's actually a very good way to study the Bible but this is interpreting scripture by scripture so if there's a controversy or a difficult verse use the scripture to interpret scripture. And then the final paragraph, resolving controversies. The supreme judge for deciding all religious controversies and for evaluating all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, teachings of men, 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.

It's really important that we become the kind of people who when a subject comes up or a controversy is laid out before you. Your first impulse is not to say, I think, but to say, the scripture says. Because it's the scripture that is designed to decide all controversies. The scriptures stand above all councils, the scriptures stand above all confessions including the 1689 confession. These confessions are attempts to reflect what the scripture already teaches but the 1689 confession is not authoritative.

The scriptures are authoritative And this doesn't rule out confessions but it puts confessions subservient to the scriptures. So, boy, that was a flyover, wasn't it? You know, Each one of these paragraphs could receive an hour of elaboration. But I will give you a flyover of it and we'll continue on next week in the next chapter. Jesus said this, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets.

I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly I say to you till heaven and earth pass away One jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever does and teaches them he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Let's pray. Oh Lord that you would give us a grace to help so that all of our understanding of life and godliness would come from the scriptures and that we would be a people whom you would say are great in the kingdom of heaven because we love your word because we've hidden it in our hearts because when an issue arises we always ask what does the Lord say Lord help us to be that kind of people.

Amen.