Why Does TCC Exist? #1

We're explaining the theological reason that we hold to the 1689 confession. We believe that it accurately summarizes biblical teaching, and we're looking at a couple of examples to help us see that. This is the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hi, I'm Bill Wright. Today on a very special broadcast, Don will share with us the reason his church exists, looking at what Truth Community Church believes God has commissioned them to do in their community and in the lives of those who feel called to be a part of their fellowship. Let's join Don now as he continues teaching God's people God's word with part one of a message called Why Truth Community Church Exists here on the Truth Pulpit. We explored why a church should even have a confession of faith, why a church would lay forth the things that it believes in a detailed document at all. We saw why it is so important for a church to have a detailed confession of faith. Today what we're going to do is explain why we use the particular confession of faith that we do at Truth Community Church. It's the London Baptist Confession of 1689.

It was a confession that was written 331 years ago. Today we want to explain why we use this particular confession. As we see these things, it will help you understand why our church exists. Why does Truth Community Church do what it does? Why do we rally together? Why do we come together?

This explains and helps you to understand that. You see, it's easy, and I've never wanted to be a church like this, where you come in and you just have a vague sense of, I'm not sure why the things that happen here happen. I don't want anyone to be in that position that comes to Truth Community Church on a regular basis. I want people to be able to articulate in their own mind, this is what our church stands for, and this is why it does, and I understand why I am here. We make no apology at Truth Community for this fact, is that we exist for reasons that are transcendent, that transcend our individual lives. They transcend our individual purpose, they transcend the time in which we live. We live and exist as a church for things that are beyond us, that transcend us, and yet our lives, the Lord is allowed to intersect with these things. And so we'll see this as you understand and as I explain to you why we use the 1689 confession.

There are four reasons that I'm going to give to you, and the first one is this. There is a theological reason. There is a theological reason that we use the 1689 confession, and in the easiest and simplest form that I could explain it is this, is that we believe that the 1689 confession is an accurate summary of the teaching of the Bible. We use this confession because we believe that it accurately summarizes the teaching of the Bible. Now it's very important to remember what we said last time, is that the Bible is the supreme and final authority in the church of Jesus Christ. That has always been the case.

It will always be the case. There is no new revelation beyond the 66 books of the Bible. But as we said last, we have to ask a question, what do we understand the Bible to teach? It's a big book. It's written by 40 authors over 1,500 years.

It takes a lifetime of study to really start to grasp it in something of its breadth and depth. And how do we do that, and how do we go about that? Well, we believe that the 1689 is a summary of what the Bible teaches. Here's what you need to understand.

I am greatly simplifying a process, a system of thought in a few words here so that you would understand the way that this works. We study the Bible. We realize, and the Spirit places within our heart a conviction that the Bible is the word of God. And because we believe that, because we've been redeemed by the blood of Christ, we read God's word to understand what he has revealed about himself, about us, about Christ, about sin, and about salvation. And we read and we study these things because we're drawn to the word of God. We believe it to be true, and we know that it is in the word by which we grow in the grace and knowledge of our salvation. Well, as we read and study, we find that our understanding as we do that is expressed in the words of this confession.

So let me give you three illustrations about how this works. I'm going to read a passage of scripture and then give you a quotation or a reference from the confession of faith. So we ask this question. What does the Bible say about itself? What does the Bible teach about itself? Turn to Paul's letter, 2 Timothy chapter 3. 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 16 and 17.

So remember what we're doing here. We're explaining the theological reason that we hold to the 1689 confession. We believe that it accurately summarizes biblical teaching, and we're looking at a couple of examples to help us see that. In 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 16 and 17, the Bible says about itself that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Scripture says that it is a product of being breathed out by God. It is the very word of God, the Spirit of God came upon the writers of scripture and guided them, protected them from error, used their personality, used their vocabulary, used their circumstances, so that in that circumstance, their human words were guided by God in such a way that what they wrote was the very word of God without error and expressing fully exactly what God would have them to say. And so when we read the Bible, we are reading the very word of God himself. Now, what does our confession say about the Bible? Here's one line among many from chapter 1 of the confession.

It takes the teaching of scripture and summarizes it in a way that is brief, that is direct, that is to the point that we can understand the significance of what we just read in 2 Timothy chapter 3. Our confession says chapter 1.1, it says, the holy scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, end quote. And so we've looked at scripture, we see what it says about itself, and we see this confession expressing it in modern language and affirming the sufficiency, the certainty, and the infallibility of the word of God. There are those who would look at these words from scripture and mitigate against its inspiration to say that only parts of it are inspired, that only those things that teach about faith are inspired.

And that's twisting the text that we looked at. Well, we find in 1689 a summary of what we believe and what our hearts tell us is true about scripture, and that's why we use the 1689 confession. Now, moving along, covering a lot of territory here today, what does the Bible say about God? What does the Bible say about God? Well, we're just using representative texts, of course, because the whole of scripture tells us about God, the whole of scripture is a revelation about the Lord Jesus Christ, and so we can't say everything that needs to be said in 60 seconds like this. But in 1 Timothy 1, verse 17, you can look there with me.

Again, this is just a sample, it's just one example. In 1 Timothy 1, verse 17, it says this. It says, now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen. The scripture tells us that God is eternal, he is immortal, he is invisible because he is a spirit. Well, what does our confession say in chapter 2 about the nature of God? It says, the Lord our God is but one only living and true God, infinite in being and in perfection. And so, here again, I just want you to see the pattern.

These are just illustrations. We go to the Word of God, we read it, we study it, we come to understand it, and we find this confession expressing the very thing that we believe to be true. That's why we use this confession. One more.

I had others in my notes, but I'm skipping them for the sake of time. We're staying in 1 Timothy here. What does the Bible say about Jesus Christ? What does the Bible say about the Lord God incarnate? Well, one thing that it says in 1 Timothy 2, verse 5 is this.

It says there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Scripture tells us that all men are born into sin. Every one of you was born into sin in a condition of separation from God.

The Bible tells us that if you die in that condition, God will judge you and send you to eternal damnation in hell. That means that you and I, we all need a savior, we all need a redeemer. And who is that redeemer? The Bible tells us that it's Jesus Christ. God became a man in order to go to the cross of Calvary to redeem us from our sins, to offer his life as a sacrifice pleasing to God, acceptable to God that would, by a blood sacrifice, a human blood sacrifice, human sin would be washed away for everyone that would believe in him. That's what the Bible teaches. Well, what does 1689 say about Christ? Chapter 8 says this, it pleased God in his eternal purpose to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only begotten son, to be the mediator between God and man.

Beloved, a little bit of a tangent here. When we say the mediator, there are positive and there are negative implications to that statement. When we say that Christ is the mediator, it means that there are no others. And when you make a statement like that, it means that all of the efforts to go to God, to approach him through Mary, through the saints, through other means, through other religions, through other prophets, all of those religions are by definition false. They are leading people to hell because there is only one mediator and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. That is foundational.

That is essential. There is not a church without that truth. What I mean by that is there is not a true church unless they are teaching that. And if they are contradicting that, they are manifesting the work and doctrines of demons. Now, the confession helps us express that succinctly, quickly, clearly in the language that we find written there.

Now, that's the theological reason. I want to summarize something for you here. What I have just done is a gross oversimplification of the whole process.

It is a terribly brief and superficial treatment of it. But we're not trying to do everything here today. We're simply trying to explain and to communicate that there is a theological reason why we hold to this confession. We believe it is an accurate summary of what the Bible teaches. It helps us in our teaching task to communicate what the truth is. And follow this, as I said last time, a church that has a detailed confession of faith is exercising integrity toward the public and toward the people of God. We are making plain. We are putting out on the table. This is what we believe.

We are not hiding anything. You can read it for yourself and find what it is that we stand for, which is different from simply telling people to read their Bibles because you and I know that there are all kinds of different conflicting interpretations about the Bible. And so the question is, okay, I get that. You say you believe Scripture.

Good. So do Jehovah's Witnesses. So do Mormons to some extent. So do Catholics.

They add a whole lot of other stuff onto it. But tell me what you believe. Don't just tell me to read the Bible. Tell me what it teaches so that I can know if your convictions match with mine. And that's what a confession does. It is a summary of the theology that we believe the Bible teaches and therefore what we teach – we study Scripture and we find 1689 expressing our views.

Okay? Now, I've been wanting to say these things for like eight years. I wrote a summary of these things eight years ago, and finally I'm saying them from the pulpit.

I feel a great sense of relief in being able to say these things. Now, as you and I come together, as we come together, as you contemplate whether Truth Community Church might one day be your church home, what we're saying is this, is that Truth Community Church exists to proclaim and defend that truth to the public, to the people of God, and to instruct its people in it. That is why we exist. And what I want you to see is this, is that I am so very grateful to God for the relationships that exist in our body, for the fellowship that takes place as you get to know each other and as you encourage and strengthen one another with your words and your service and your deeds of kindness to one another.

I'm so grateful for that. And that is an essential part of church life. But what we need to understand corporately as a body is that we exist for purposes that exceed and transcend the horizontal dimension of our human relationships.

We are not essentially a social club. We are grateful for the social aspects of fellowship in the life of the body of Christ, but we exist for far more than that. We exist to proclaim the truth that is revealed in Scripture and to propagate it, to teach it to our children, to teach it to each other, to teach it to anyone who will listen by whatever means the Lord gives us to extend that. And so we exist to defend and proclaim this truth that we believe the Bible teaches.

And that is more than the sum of the horizontal relationships that take place within. There is a transcendent purpose in the existence of Truth Community Church that we recognize and that we assert without apology. That's the theological reason. Now secondly, and I'm leaving obviously, I'm leaving out whole broad planes of theology and what I'm saying, you get the point.

We're talking an illustration here, not exhaustively. Secondly, and I love this point as well, there is secondly a historical reason that we use the 1689 Confession. And this is so important. This is so important to grasp, especially in the spirit of the age in which you and I live today. We must understand this, is that the Bible, the scripture, is distinct from the spirit of our age. Our age says that everybody can have their own truth.

You have your truth, I have my truth. That truth is relative. It's not absolute. Morality can change and shift as public opinion changes and the spirit of our age says that's all right. Well, scripture says the exact opposite. Scripture is distinct from the spirit of our age and says that truth is unchanging. While the opinions of men may change, the Word of God does not deviate from itself. The Word of God is true. Now, beloved, listen to what I am about to say very carefully because it will help you understand why we are using a centuries-old confession as opposed to something that we've drafted ourselves or something that was created and written in the course of our lifetime.

It was a conscious, deliberate choice that we made at the beginning of our church life. Understand this. In the spirit of our age, our age believes that innovation is progress, that a new idea is better than an old idea. One of the things that justified homosexual marriage in the Supreme Court decision was the fact that the millennia were wrong, we've learned new things, and now it's time for something new to be imposed upon society, the thought being that this is better than what was already believed. A new toaster is better than the old toaster. A new refrigerator is better than the old refrigerator. A second edition of a book is better than the first edition of the book, and on and on it goes. You and I are so affected by that mindset that we don't even recognize the powerful impact that it has on us that something new is always necessarily better. Scientific progress, and so it goes. And so that the newer that something is, the better it is. People think that a new car is better than an old car. That's not necessarily true. You get the idea.

Always something new. Well, beloved, when you come to the teaching of scripture, when you come to an area of truth that is lethal, that is a very bad idea to have in your mind. God is eternal and unchanging, and so is his truth. The book of Jude, verse 3, says the faith was once for all handed down to the saints, and biblical truth never changes. And we believe that when the Reformation took place 503 years ago on October 31st, when the Reformation took place, essential truth was recovered, stated accurately, in a way that is to be honored and upheld and not tampered with by subsequent generations. It was expressing the truth that was always contained in scripture, but was recovered from the darkness that had enveloped it in a thousand years of the Dark Ages and the ascension of the Roman Catholic Church. Now you must understand this. You must understand this. Truth Community Church seeks historical continuity with Christian men whose teaching has stood the test of time and biblical scrutiny.

We are not trying to invent something new here. I want you to turn to 2 Timothy, chapter 2, to see something very vital about this process and about what we are discussing here. In 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 1, Paul's final letter, before he was soon put to death by the Roman Empire, speaking to Timothy, who was taking up the mantle, not as a new apostle, but as the next generation after the apostle, Paul said to Timothy, said, You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Now, beloved, Paul, just in the genius and brilliance that can only come from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul just set forth a four-generational pattern of how truth is to be handed down without change from generation to generation. First generation, Paul. Second generation, Timothy, you heard these things from me. So there's Paul, first generation, Timothy, second generation. Timothy, you entrust these things to faithful men, third generation, who will be able to teach others also, fourth generation.

This is to be handed down, preserved, and kept in purity, in sincerity, and kept unmixed from error and deviation and change, because the faith was handed down once for all to the saints. That's Don Green with the first half of a lesson called Why Truth Community Church Exists here on The Truth Pulpit. Friend, if you'd like to hear this lesson again, we invite you to visit thetruthpulpit.com. While you're there, you'll find this message along with a ton of additional Bible study resources.

That's thetruthpulpit.com. And now just before we go, here again is Don with a closing word. Well, friend, I hope this series is giving you a sense of the importance of Bible teaching in the local church. And if you're in a Bible teaching church and your pastor spends time preparing for the messages that he brings to you, I encourage you to pray for him and to let him know that you love him.

It's not an easy job that he's trying to do, and there is opposition that you probably don't know anything about. Let your love and encouragement go to him freely, because you never know how timely your good word might be to him. Love your pastor and pray for him, and thank you for praying for us on The Truth Pulpit. Thanks, Don. And friend, we're out of time for today. I'm Bill Wright, inviting you to join us next time as Don Green continues teaching God's people God's Word here on The Truth Pulpit.