Pray with me as we turn our attention to God's word. God, we thank you this morning for revealing yourself to us in your word. We might know you truly and worship you fully. Thank you for your son, Jesus Christ, and his work to save us from our sins. God, we give you thanks this morning for the heritage of faith that has been passed down to us through the centuries. God, we pray that you would help us to be good stewards of what has been entrusted to us. You would help us to be rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith, and that you would help us to contend for the faith that was once delivered for the saints. Fill our hearts with love for you and zeal for your truth. to these ends this morning in Jesus' name, amen. Turn in your Bibles to 2 Timothy if you're not already there. And if you're thinking just now, wait a minute, didn't we finish our study of 2 Timothy last week? And the answer is yes. Yes, we did. We finished it last week. But one of the reasons we chose the book of Second Timothy in the first place is because we wanted to talk about the value of creeds and confessions. At Grace Redeemer, we believe in sola scriptura. We believe in the inerrancy, the sufficiency, and the ultimate authority of God's word in the scriptures. That is the foundation of our church, but we also recognize the value of creeds and confessions. It's why we have a statement of faith as a church. They're useful tools in preserving and passing on the faith, and that is one of the two twin themes that we see running through the book of Second Timothy from beginning to end. In every chapter, we saw these two themes. Paul tells Timothy, in every chapter, preserve and proclaim the gospel and God's word, and endure suffering for Christ and his word, that gospel. And we're gonna preach through the book of 1 Samuel as our next text. That is where we're going, but we're gonna take three weeks and just do a short series, this first sermon on creeds and confessions, and then the next two weeks, two sermons on doctrines related to the early creeds, one on the Trinity and one on Christology, on Christ. And then we're going to dive into 1 Samuel. So that's where we're headed as a church. Why focus on the importance of creeds and confessions. Hopefully that will become clear as we get to the benefits later in the sermon. But one reason is the one just mentioned. Creeds and confessions are valuable tools for preserving and passing on sound doctrine. They were all written in a historical context of faithful Christians striving to define and defend true Christian beliefs. Another reason is because we've seen a trend of people moving towards Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy who were Protestant evangelicals. There are several reasons for this, I think. Some, I think, are attracted to a liturgy which seems more reverent and less casual than evangelical services often are. Some are drawn by a sense of being rooted in Christian history, being a part of a church that has a long tradition. In a culture with so much chaos and confusion, I think people want something that feels solid, that feels stable. Creeds and confessions remind us of our own rich heritage of faith and that we too are rooted as a church in Christian history. The truths that we believe and confess did not originate with us. Though we are an independent Baptist church, we are part of Christian history going back through the Reformation to the early church. Christian history helps us to know what we believe and why we believe it, and that is part of why we are studying it in our Sunday school class. So shameless plug, we would love to see you in Sunday school before service. And the message for us this morning is this, make use of creeds and confessions to strengthen your faith and contend for the faith. Of course, they do not replace scripture, but they do give succinct summaries of scripture, and so they are useful tools to help us. There are gonna be two main points today. What is the basis for creeds and confessions, and what are their benefits? What is the biblical basis for creeds and confessions? First, to be a Christian is to confess. The word creed comes from the Latin credo, which simply means I believe. Christians are believers. That's what we call ourselves. Creeds are just short summaries of what the Bible teaches and what we believe. That's why they all begin, I believe. A confession is more thorough yet still a succinct statement of our faith. A confession is a public statement of what a particular church or denomination believes the scriptures teach in a systematic or summary form. That definition is adapted from Carl Truman's book, Crisis of Confidence. Our statement of faith is our confession. And that statement of faith is based on the Baptist faith and message, which is a modern confession, But there are also several historic confessions. There's the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Three Forms of Unity, and others. And as a Baptist church, within the Reformed tradition, the historic confession that we would affirm would be the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. There are free copies of this out on the resource table if you wanna pick one of these for your own personal use. The question is not, do you have a creed or confession? Every church and every Christian has a creed or a confession. The question is, what is it? How thorough is it? How faithful to scripture is it? Is it written down so that it can be examined in light of scripture? Our faith is inherently confessional. We believe and we confess certain truths. Second, we're commanded to preserve and pass on the faith. The church is a pillar and buttress of the truth, 1 Timothy 3.15. So like a pillar, the church upholds the truth. Like a buttress, it's like this fortification on a wall that the church helps defend the truth. The church upholds and defends the truth. We're commanded in Jude 3 to contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints. Contend for the faith. Contend means to strive, to put forth earnest effort, to preserve and defend the faith. The faith here meaning that body of doctrine, that set of beliefs that are essential to Christianity. Creeds and confessions are summaries of the core doctrines of the Christian faith. Consider the apostolic commands One qualification of a pastor is he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it, Titus 1.9. Or, Paul commands Timothy to guard the good deposit, 1 Timothy 6.20. I want you to look at 2 Timothy 1.20. Chapter 1 verses 13 and 14 from our text today, Paul commands Timothy, follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Guard the good deposit entrusted to you. Follow the pattern of sound words. The pattern, that word refers to a standard that Timothy must follow. That standard is the sound words he heard from Paul. This pattern of sound words, this body of sound doctrine was to guide his teaching. Like Paul commands Titus, teach what accords with sound doctrine, Titus 2.1. So Timothy is to guard this good deposit so that it's not lost or damaged. As we've seen, it had been by false teachers in Ephesus that we've seen mentioned in his letters. People like Hymenaeus and Philetus and Alexander. and others. And this body of sound doctrine is not simply to be preserved, but to be passed on. So if you drop down just a few verses later in our text, 2 Timothy chapter two, verse two, what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses in trust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. This is more than just handing these men a copy of the Bible. Passing on the faith involves more than simply the bare recitation of the words of scripture. Although referencing scripture would be a part of it, this is teaching. Through his teaching, he was to faithfully explain what the scriptures say that's in accord with sound doctrine. That's what creeds and confessions do. Their purpose in history has been to help clarify and define what the Bible teaches so that the church can preserve and pass on the faith. Third, we also see confessions, a creedal or confessional statements in scripture. It's the Great Shema in Deuteronomy 6, 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. This short confession that they would recite captures a fundamental truth of our faith. There is only one true and living God. In the New Testament, there are examples as well. Short summary statements of truth to be taught and believed, so for example, in 1 Timothy 3.16, right after Paul says that the church is to be the pillar and the buttress of the truth, he says this. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Sounds like a creed. It's a short confession of core Christian truths. Paul says five times in his letters, the saying is trustworthy. So, for example, at the end of our text for today, 2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 11 through 13, Paul says, the saying is trustworthy. For if we have died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. This trustworthy saying appears to be an early creed or confession, and Paul is using it here to ground the points that he is trying to make to Timothy. To remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the descendant of David, as he preached in his gospel, and to endure suffering for that gospel for the sake of the elect that they might find salvation in Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3 and 4 is another example. Paul reminds the Corinthian church of the gospel that he preached to them in a summary form. He says to them, I delivered to you what I received, suggesting this was an early confessional statement. He says, now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word that I preached in you, unless you believed in vain. Here we see that faith is essential to salvation. And he says, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. Here it is, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve. This is a succinct summary of the gospel, core gospel truths. Those who believe in Christ's death, burial, and resurrection will be saved. Now he reminds them of this short confession, this essential teaching, the things of first importance, because some of them were abandoning belief in the resurrection. But this is core to our faith. He says, you must believe this to be saved. If you reject the doctrine of the resurrection, there is no forgiveness of sin, no hope of eternal life, and no Christian faith. So that's what he's driving at and is gonna build on in 1 Corinthians 15. Perhaps the simplest and most profound creed in the New Testament is Jesus is Lord. At a time when Roman citizens were commanded to profess Caesar is Lord, when Christians could be killed and were killed for confessing the fundamental truth, Jesus is Lord. And we see this in several places in the New Testament. For example, Romans 10.9 connects it with saving faith. 1 Corinthians 12.3 connects it with the work of the Spirit in us to make such a confession. And in Philippians 2.10 and 11, it teaches us that one day every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Those who believe in Jesus willingly bend the knee and make this confession now. Those who do not believe will be forced to bend the knee and confess that Jesus is Lord, though not in faith. They're going to confess it as they're condemned for their unbelief and for their sinful rebellion against Christ the Lord. Jesus is Lord has been the confession of every true believer in all Now, there are other examples, but suffice it to say, given that to be a Christian is to confess, to be a believer, and that it's the church's responsibility to be a pillar and buttress of the truth, and the commands to preserve and pass on the faith, and the many examples of creedal statements in the Bible, there's a clear biblical warrant for the usefulness of creeds and confessions. So, it should be no surprise to us that we see creeds and confessions being used in the early church and in church history. They include things like the rule of faith, the Apostles' Creed, a summary of what all Christians everywhere believe, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Chalcedonian definition. And during the Reformation, many confessions were written to clearly and succinctly and precisely and openly declare what they believed the Bible teaches and that they believed. And we have a stewardship that has been entrusted to us, a responsibility to contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints, to preserve and pass on the gospel, the core truths of our faith. Creeds and confessions are a tool that help us to do that. It's worth highlighting here, Paul's repeated emphasis through the book of 2 Timothy, that this is only done by the power of God. 2 Timothy 1.8, by the power of God, by the Holy Spirit, 2 Timothy 1.14, and by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 Timothy 2.1. Every person of the Godhead, the Trinity, is involved in this work. Our living and upholding of the faith can only be done through the strength that God provides. Now, some Christians think that holding to a confession of faith contradicts or perhaps undermines the doctrine of sola scriptura, but that isn't true. Sola scriptura is the doctrine that the Bible alone is our ultimate standard and authority for the Christian life and faith. Sola scriptura has never meant that there is no need for other teachers or writings to help us rightly understand God's word. And that would be to mistake sola scriptura with nuda scriptura, or bare scripture, nothing else. They would say something like, no creed but the Bible. What is ironic about something like that though, is that no creed but the Bible is a creed, a very weak and inadequate creed. Every heretic says they believe the Bible and has their texts and their interpretations. No creed but the Bible falls short, not because the Bible is insufficient, but because it gives the impression that all other Christian writings, creeds, confessions, catechisms, books and sermons and so on, they're not really needed. Like all I need is the Holy Spirit and the Bible and I will come up with all the right doctrines on my own. I don't need other teachers or theologians. But a moment's reflection shows that that's not true, and it's not honest. We are indebted to Christians in the past for establishing orthodox beliefs. The Trinity is an obvious example. But there is a good concern here to guard the ultimate authority of Scripture. We don't want any human tradition to be placed on equal authority with the scriptures, like the Roman Catholic Church does, and neither did the reformers. The reformers said, no, scripture alone is our ultimate and final authority. Amen. That's what enabled them to critique and to reject the unbiblical teachings and traditions of Rome. And that's why most confessions of faith start with a statement on the scriptures, including our own. Our statement of faith says the Bible alone reveals God's standard for faith, life, and obedience, and by which all human conduct, religious doctrines, and truth claims are to be measured. As the 1689 Confession puts it, the Holy Scriptures are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. So far from undermining the authority of Scripture, the Confessions themselves seek to uphold Scripture's final authority. We can think of Luther making his defense, his famous defense before the Diet of Worms, saying, unless I am convinced by the testimony of scripture or plain reason, I cannot and I will not recant, for my conscience is captive to the word of God. Amen. But let's not forget that this is the same guy who authored numerous books, wrote two catechisms, and helped formulate the Augsburg Confession. Of course, any human creed or statement of faith can be wrong, can err, and so the scriptures always remain the final authority on sound doctrine, and that's why churches have faithful mechanisms, processes for being able to update their statements of faith if needed, according to the scriptures. But a confession makes a church's beliefs open for everyone to see. They put them out on the table so that they can be examined by the scriptures. A couple years ago, I was helping a young man to decide whether or not he could use his musical gifts to serve a local church in the area, and as I was helping him try to discern that, we went to look on the website, and that church did not have anywhere any statement of faith. You couldn't find what they believed. Well, after some digging and digging, we found out that that church was affirming of homosexuality, and so it became clear immediately that he could not attend nor use his gifts in order to serve the ministry of that church. The point is is that confession, statements of faith, make a church's beliefs public so that they can be known and examined, evaluated by the scriptures. I came across this quote by Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon republished a copy of the 1689 Confession, and he wrote a little introduction to it. He said this, this ancient document is the most excellent epitome of the things most surely believed among us. By the preserving hand of the triune God, we have been kept faithful to the great points of our glorious gospel, and we feel more resolved perpetually to abide by them. This little volume is not issued as an authoritative rule or code of faith whereby you are to be fettered. It's not the standard ultimate scripture is, but as an assistance to you in controversy, a confirmation in faith and the means of edification and righteousness. Here, the younger members of our church will have a body of divinity in small compass, and by means of the scriptural proofs, will be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in them. He expected the young people in his church to be so familiar with this, they could use this in their apologetics. He says, be not ashamed of your faith. Remember, it is the ancient gospel of martyrs, confessors, reformers, and saints. Above all, it is the truth of God against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. Let your lives adorn your faith. Let your example recommend your creed. Above all, live in Christ Jesus and walk in him. giving credence to no teaching but that which is manifestly approved of him and owned by the Holy Spirit, cleave fast to the word of God, which is here mapped out for you." That's his introduction to the 1689 confession. Now, what are than some of the benefits of creeds and confessions. Why are they important for the church? First, they're useful for defining and upholding sound doctrine. Confessions give thorough and succinct summaries of Christian truth. They help us to accurately define what we believe that the Bible teaches on a given doctrine, and that's important because you cannot uphold the truth unless you know what it is. Creeds and confessions play an important role in the church's duty to preserve and pass on the gospel to the next generation. So let me just give you an example from the Heidelberg Catechism. This is part of the three forms of unity. Question one asks this, what is your only comfort in life and in death? Answer, that I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has delivered me from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, also assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him. That answer references 22 Bible verses. What a beautiful, beautiful summary of so many truths of Scripture. What a help to our faith. What a comfort to us as we read that. Second, they are useful for defending against heresy and false teaching. The reformers did not see themselves as innovators. Rather, it was the Roman Catholic Church who were the innovators. They were the ones who had strayed from the faith of the early church. The reformers were recovering and upholding true Christian faith, the ancient faith. The creeds and confessions were all written in a context of battles over right understanding of Christian Truth, like the Trinity, or Christ's deity, or justification by faith alone. The creeds address heresies like Gnosticism, the material world is bad. Modalism, there is one God who just appears in different modes. Arianism, Jesus was truly man, but he was not truly God. Apollinarianism, Jesus was truly God, but not truly man. Pelagianism, we can in our own strength work our way to heaven, and many more. Heresy gets a core Christian truth wrong. Now the names of the heresies are not as important as the fact that they are all still circulating today. Creeds and confessions are useful tools in defending against error. For a church to reject false teaching, it must first know and agree on what is true. That requires more than simply saying, we believe the Bible. Arius believed the Bible. He understood it wrong. Every heretic and false teacher has their texts. Even people who sincerely believe the Bible can still believe in some serious errors. For a church to reject false teaching then requires more than just saying, we believe the Bible, it requires a written, public, agreed upon, body of doctrine, some statement of faith that accurately summarizes the essential truths of the faith. That's what confessions are. They're like guardrails that keep us from straying off the path of the Christian faith. They're built on the Bible, they don't replace the Bible, but they help serve as guardrails to keep us on track. This is why historic confessions are so valuable, because they've stood the test of time, they've been evaluated by scripture, and so we know that they are trustworthy. Years ago, there was a Christian, a Christian man in our church who held a different view on salvation than our church does. He believed that a genuine Christian could lose their salvation. Now at Grace Redeemer, our statement of faith says the following, and it's on the board. We believe all true believers will persevere until the end. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereby they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and temporal judgments on themselves, yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." Now, it was no problem for this person to attend our church. We welcomed the chance to teach and disciple him. The problem came when he began to try to convince others of his view and insist that we change our statement of faith to include his view of salvation. In the end, he ended up going to a church that teaches his view, but we were able to point to our statement of faith and what we believe and why we think this is what the Bible teaches in order to stand and defend against what we would consider false. The church's confession is also a check on pastoral authority. Pastors, and for that matter, anyone else who teaches in a ministry of the church, they're not free to teach whatever they personally believe. They must not only teach what is faithful to scripture, but they must teach what's consistent with the church's confession, our statement of faith. They don't get to just teach whatever they think the Bible teaches. If one of the pastors started teaching something different, something that contradicted our statement of faith, that would be grounds for removal. It's just like teachers at a Christian school. What a school believes is made public, and the professors of that school are called on to adhere to it and to teach it. And if they can't, then they must be removed. So creeds and confessions not only help define the truth and defend against error, they third, are useful for unity in the church. A benefit of creeds and confessions is that they unify us as a church body in the truth and with other believers in history. To borrow an illustration from Samuel Miller, imagine that a nation had no founding documents, no constitution, no bill of rights to define beliefs or laws or rights, and instead of it all being written down, it was left to the various opinions of the individual citizens of the nation. If that were the case, it would be a free-for-all, it'd be chaos, there'd be no stability. It's just as unthinkable to expect unity or stability in a church without a robust confession. So Miller writes, the inference, then, plainly, is that no church can hope to maintain a homogenous character. No church can be secure, either of purity or of peace, without some test of truth explicitly agreed on and adopted in her ecclesiastical capacity, something recorded, something publicly known, something capable of being referred to, which is not merely what a private member supposes to have been received, but which the church has agreed to adhere to as a bond of union. The point is, is for there to be real union in a church, there has to be some written public agreed upon body of truth to which we believe and adhere. Fourth, they're useful in anchoring us in the historic faith. They've been evaluated by scripture and affirmed by Christians for hundreds of years. In our culture today, we tend to think that we have little to learn from the past because we have advanced so far. Creeds and confessions put our own place into perspective, our own place in history into perspective. They help humble us. They remind us that we don't have all the answers. We stand on the foundations laid down by those who have come before us in the faith. They remind us that we're stewards in this long line of faithful Christians charged with preserving and passing on the faith to the next generation. And they remind us that even our young church here at Grace Redeemer has a long and rich Christian heritage. one that we can be grateful for and grounded on. Fifth, they're useful tools for teaching and disciple making. This can be done in a lot of different ways, reciting creeds as a church, quoting from confessions or statements of faith in a sermon to summarize a key doctrine or a core doctrine in the text. They can be used as a Sunday school outline for working through the core truths of the Bible. They're useful for personal study, for teaching your children, as Spurgeon suggests, And catechisms are really useful in this regard as well. You know, we've lost a biblical worldview. We have lost our moral compass as a nation. And what that means is, is that we need to be far more intentional about teaching ourselves and teaching our children what is true and what God expects of us as his people. How to think biblically, ethically about the issues that we are facing. creeds and catechisms are tremendously helpful in that regard. Finally, they're useful for corporate worship. Your doctrine and your doxology cannot be separated. The truth of who God is, what God has done, led the psalmist to praise him. The truth of the gospel led Paul over and over to break out in doxology, in praise. How can you rightly praise God if you don't rightly know God? The ultimate point of sound doctrine is not having the answers to a Bible quiz. The point of sound doctrine is that we would know and love and believe and treasure God and his son, Jesus Christ. That's where they lead us. If knowing God does not lead you to worship God, something is wrong. Something is off. Our doctrine informs our doxology. As we believe, so we worship. Worship then fuels our delight in God, our devotion to God, our obedience to God because we love him. If you wanna overcome idolatry in your life, some form of idolatry, the solution to that is worship of the true God. As a church, we're gonna make more of an effort to incorporate the creeds and confessions into our worship services, reciting them together, referencing our statements of faith of the confessions, nothing drastic, not every Sunday, but we want to do this for the benefits just laid out. Creeds and confessions are biblical and beneficial. They are useful tools to help define Christian truth, defend against error, ground us in the historic Christian faith, promote unity, teach core truth, and foster our worship. So make use of creeds and confessions to strengthen your faith and to contend for the faith. Here's why. Paul says this just before our text today. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace. which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. That's what it's all about, the gospel. The good news that God saved us, not because of good works that we have done, but because of his grace in Jesus Christ. Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light. Life and immortality. It is worth carefully defining the glorious gospel so that we don't distort it or lose it. life in immortality in Jesus Christ. This is worth living and dying to preserve and proclaim by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we give thanks to you this morning for your word. We ask this morning that you would unite us in the truth, protect us from error, establish us in the faith and help us to contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints. Enable us at Grace Redeemer to be a pillar and a buttress of the truth. We ask for this in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, amen.