London Baptist Confession Ch 8

I put a couple of copies, extra copies on the back. Baptistery of the London Baptist Confession, if you don't have one. I had just a few left. We're not necessarily following along in it, but it's my intention and it hasn't worked out this way. It's my intention every week for you to know in the bulletin what section we'll be covering on the following Sunday.

There's been a miscommunication on that. So I'm sorry if you haven't seen that. That way you could read ahead if you want. That was the plan. Somebody asked me for it personally.

Yeah, didn't I? Did I email that to the church or. No, I know which one was the last one. So I figured out the six was not correct. Yeah, I thought I changed that this time, but I don't know if you know, but the Magania girls and Serge went to Mexico.

So she told me that, like kind of on the way out the door. So that I could have tried to get it done before then and fixed it. But I'm sorry. Anyway, we're in chapter eight, and this is the chapter on. It's called the Offices of Christ.

That's what it's called. But we think of the offices as the particular prophet, priest and king. And I will be talking about that. But the main. There's a heading over that.

That is the mediatorial work of Christ. And that's what the chapter is about. If you wanted to be more general, Chapter eight in the confession. The Lenton Baptist confession is about the doctrine of Christ. It is really Christology, but it's very specifically in our context, about his work for us, between us and God.

So if you were reading ahead, this will all sound familiar. I'm going to be quoting at length from it today. I might ask you, before we get going here, how important what the confession says. And again, I'm going to reiterate that the confession is just a confession. But when.

When anybody confesses a truth, their confession becomes important, right? So if somebody agrees with Scripture and says what Scripture says, then what they say becomes important. It's because it's in alignment with Scripture. So it doesn't mean the confession itself or by itself because it's a confession is important. The confession is important because it properly relays biblical thought.

So when any. Whenever somebody says a truth, it becomes valuable or important, significant. And so this part of the confession becomes important because of passages like 1 Corinthians 2, 2 where Paul says, I determine to know, not to know anything among you. Except Jesus Christ and him crucified. To boil down the work of Christ as foundational, Paul does, and he says in Philippians as well.

Yet indeed I also count all things as loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, from whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. So how important is it to put Christ central in your thinking as a Christian? I said this morning you can actually put him so central that you neglect the Trinity. And I talked about patriology and the doctrine of the Father. Tonight I'm going to be talking about Christology and making sure that we don't belittle Christ and we're going to see him in action, to see all of his works from this section of the confession, which is very profound.

There's a lot going on here. I have so many notes that the entire time I've been reviewing has been, how can I shorten this? Because I have just for example, this Morning's sermon was six pages of notes. Tonight's message is 13 pages of notes. So typically I don't read my notes.

I use them as an outline. But because there's so much in the confession on this, it could have been two or three lessons or sessions. But I'm just going to go fast and I'll probably breeze over things that sound like I shouldn't be breezing over them. Well, that's the value of you having the confession. You can go study it on your own.

This isn't just people PJs messages. This is something that I'm relaying from the London Baptist confession of 1689. And you can hold on to that and read that. So let's pray and then we'll look at some of the thoughts that the confession puts forth and our beliefs. And I do think almost everything in here.

There's only a couple of things that there may be any exceptions to to anybody in the room. And there are maybe one or two different views of, and I'll try to reiterate those or iterate those as we get there, and we'll handle them as they come. So let's pray and we'll start. Father, we are looking in this portion of our confession, the confession of the London Baptist Confession of 1689 in particular, we're looking at your son. And that becomes very important that we, even though this is doctrinal and we are stating things and presenting things as fact, it is also really important for us to not forget that our relationship with you is based on these things.

So that as we study, as we said this morning, the truths that we not forget, to love, to love you, to love our Savior, and to love each other. So please help us strike that balance. As we're discussing something that is academic, it's also personal and we want to get both of those. So please help us with that. In Jesus name, amen.

Well, one of the first words you'll see is the ordination of Christ. And I've been using that word a lot lately because I've been talking to a friend about the sovereignty of God and the difference between the word ordain versus the word allow or other words. And I'm going to talk about the ordination of Christ. In the first paragraph of chapter eight of the confession, it has this phrase in it. It pleased God and his eternal purpose to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only begotten Son.

The word ordain is another way of saying the word ordain. It's actually in the word is order. That's a simple way to understand what ordain means. It means to put in order. Okay, so you can think of ordain as the verb form of the word order, although the word order can have a verb too.

You can order your food, right? But the idea of ordain is to order. And it does say that God the Father. The idea is that God the Father does this by ordaining his only begotten Son. And we're going to see.

This becomes important because these passages I'm about to refer to talk about things like before Jesus was born, so before the incarnation, God had still ordered what Jesus was going to do. And that becomes important in various. For various reasons. Isaiah says, behold my servant whom I uphold, my elect one in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him.

He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. So there's a promise of Jesus coming where he is ordained by his Father before he's born. And it's according to his eternal purpose. Now Peter will say he was indeed foreordained before the foundation of the world, what was manifest in these last days. So when Christ was ordained and Christ was ordained before the foundation of the world, it was everything that God had planned, was planned through eternity.

This was something that that was going to be in God's eternal scope. And there is an issue of time and an issue of how. And in other words, a when and a how. These are the questions that get answered. And the London Baptist Confession specifically uses covenant of redemption language I talked about this before.

You don't have to remember this unless you care about it and you want to get good at your theological terminology and the. The glossary and having the right words. So there are three words for the same thing. They're not identical, depending on their context, but they're the three ways that various people say the same thing. One way is the covenant of redemption.

That is one way. The second way is the intra trinitarian covenant. Not inter, but intra trinitarian covenant. And then the third way is the eternal decree. Those are all.

Whoever uses those phrases, they're all speaking to the same subject, which is that God planned everything in eternity before he created anything. So whichever you use, as long as you understand that idea, and the confession uses the reformed idea of covenant of redemption. As long as you understand that idea. The idea there is that God had planned in the Trinity to save people and to mediate before there were people. So this has the idea that it's always important to remember that salvation was not an afterthought.

Salvation was not God responding to the fall. God ordained the fall and had already purposed the solution to the fall in Jesus before the foundation of the world. That becomes important because it emphasizes and amplifies the sovereignty of God and that there was no surprises to God. And you have language like Hebrews 10. Therefore, when he came into the world, he said, sacrifice and offering.

You did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. Right. That was said before Jesus was born. Why does he need a body? Well, because he was already purposed to be the Savior before He was born.

And remember, before he was born doesn't mean from the time Adam until the time of Bethlehem. It doesn't mean that. It means before the foundation of the world. Listen to Jesus. He says it so clearly in his high priestly prayer.

I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do. When did God give him the work? Was it when he was born? Was it in Bethlehem?

Or was it before the foundation of the world? So God, this was all ordained by God in the covenant of redemption, the plan of redeeming mankind. And Jesus being our mediator, happened before the foundation of the world. Now let's talk about this idea of office. Now, the first main office heading is mediator, and that is the language of the covenant.

And then I'll get into how he mediates as prophet, priest and king. Okay? So you don't have to know this. If you hear somebody say something different than What I'm about to say, it's okay. Even I, under normal circumstances, would say it different than I'm about to say.

Okay, there are three offices. Christ has three offices. Prophet, priest and king. So I think we all understand that. And I'll talk about the differences between those in a second.

But I do want you to see that the confession essentially makes mediator the main office and then those three ways that he mediates. Got it. And that's okay because we're saying the same thing, especially when we get into the meaning of those words. So there's one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. That's very clear from Scripture.

And the, the confession uses these words that he is to give a people to be his seed and to be by him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified and glorified. So this is his mission. This is his. In order for Jesus to be the mediator, there has to be someone to mediate between, right? And that is the Father and the seed that he would eventually save and call and glorify in those things that it said.

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. Paul says that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This was the mission of God in Christ, of course, we always emphasize the overarching mission, which is the glorifying him, glorifying God. But he does this with sinners because we can't glorify Him. He has to redeem us and save us so that we can glorify Him.

So redemption. A lot of people make redemption the main end goal, but it's not. It's a means to the main end goal, which is glory. Okay, so redemption is very important. It is just not the most important.

It is second or something to the glory of God. And then you have that Romans chain of grace. I'm going to skip it now. But in Romans, chapter eight, the ones that he, he called and justified and glorified in all of those things, those texts, the idea is that this is the purpose of God, to redeem a people so that they would be glorified and glorify him. This is why Jesus came to the world.

Why did Jesus come to the earth? To save people, to the glory of His Father. So this is so basic, but it is important to say you have to say that basic thing. Otherwise you might make Jesus mission something different than God makes. You might make Jesus mission your happiness.

You might make Jesus mission your political party's goals and objectives. You might make his mission War or something else. There's a lot of things that can be done in the name of Jesus that are not the main thing, which is the redemption and mediation for people. Now the second paragraph, that was one paragraph, by the way, in the confession, the second paragraph deals with the Incarnation. This is important because not.

I'll just. I'm going to brief, I'm going to say it in one sentence, even though the confession says it in multiple sentences, that the Son of God did take upon himself, man's nature. Now I'm sort of paraphrasing that, but the idea is to make sure this is. Again, people, you can be general when there are no stakes, when there's nothing at stake, you can be general, right? So like, let's say you kind of have an idea that you need to change the oil regularly in your car.

You might not know when that is or how, what kind of oil it takes, or all those things. And that might not be important to you. You can trust the guy at the oil change shop to do that for. And you can just have a general knowledge every once in a while. I need to change the oil in my car.

But if your livelihood depends on your car running, or you happen to be a race car driver or something like that, you're a delivery driver or an ambulance driver or something, now all of a sudden the maintenance of the car becomes very important. It becomes specific. It becomes something you need to know correctly. And that's true of theology too. A lot of people are content to be general, but these things that we're talking about, like the Incarnation, become really important.

Instead of just saying vague God and Jesus and saying these general things, we need to recognize that only the Son of God becomes a man. Why is that important? Mormonism says that the Father, the Father was once a man. Did you know that? That Mormonism teaches that, that God used to be a man and he became a God.

So when we come along and in our confession, it says that only the Son of God is incarnate and becomes a man. Now all of a sudden, we've separated ourselves from other false teachings. Do you see? So it's not okay to just be general. We've got to be specific in order to have sound doctrine.

And there is one of them, that Jesus became a man. When did he become a man? In the fullness of time. Now we know in our time that's roughly 2000 something years ago. But the main thing is that when did he do it?

When God said so? That's the right way to understand When God had purposed it and God said so when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us in due time or in the fullness of time. Another good, important note, doctrinally speaking, is that the Christophanies of the Old Testament, the appearances of Christ in the Old Testament before he's born, are not the Incarnation. Now, I know you know that, but it's good to remember it. It's good that when you see him appear, for example, to Abraham or to Joshua or to.

Or those situations where the Old Testament, in the Old Testament, Jesus makes an appearance, or Isaiah, when Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, right. When you see that, you're not seeing the Incarnation, you're seeing a manifestation of the pre incarnate Christ. So you know that. But it's good to know it because the time issue becomes a doctrinal issue, that you don't say that he was incarnate before he was, and then you also don't say he wasn't incarnate when he was. Right?

So if you just think of Jesus as the way he is, pre incarnate and showing himself in various manifestations, you might think, well, then it's not important that he became a man, is it? Yes. And once he's become a man, he's no longer that same way. He's no longer manifesting himself the way he did in the Old Testament. He has now become a man.

So now you're getting precise and saying things correctly. The essence of the Incarnation is that he took on man's nature with all the essential properties and common infirmities. Now that's a tough word, isn't it? Because we might say that somehow Jesus is weak or maybe missing something or. No, it just means that he became fully human, that we have a high priest who, who can, who can and does sympathize with our weaknesses.

Now, now here's a part. Here's one where there can be fights. Now there's nobody in this room I don't think is going to fight. This is a doctrine over which people argue. And this is the fun part, because who was it, I'm trying to remember, who was it that says that theologians argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Have you heard that before? In my, in my ordination examination, somebody asked me, hey, tell us what language you think angels speak. You know, And I said, I had no idea. I never even thought about what language angels speak. Am I supposed to know that to be a pastor?

Because that's what they were qualifying me for right. They were saying I should be ordained of the ministry. And I'm like, I don't know. I never thought about the language angels speak. So there are things that people fight over that they don't need to fight over.

And this is one of them. In fact, for fun, I'll let you in on a little secret. I was called a heretic over what I'm about to tell you. Now. That was an accidental label, heretic.

My professor didn't know I held the view. And my professor, I'm giving him lots of charity here, did not know that many theologians hold the view that I'm going to share with you. So here are your two views. Because when you talk about the Incarnation, the confession says he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Now, we all understand that.

Everybody agrees with that, right? But there is a phrase missing from the London Baptist Confession that is in the Westminster Confession. And this would be something that separates many Reformed people, Westminster people from Baptists historically. And here's the question, and you're going to think, are you kidding me? This is what people fight about in seminary.

Yes. Was Mary's egg fertilized by the Holy Spirit or did God put a completely new zygote in Mary so that Jesus was not born of Mary's egg? So do you guys want to fight? Why would you think of it?

So the reason I'm bringing this up is because most Reformed guys, Presbyterian, Reformed churches, they believe that it was Mary's egg. The reason they believe that, and it's a good reason, you need to be careful before you judge anybody, the reason they believe that is because the Bible says the seed of woman would crush the head of the serpent. And they would say to maintain that seed, you have to think of that, her egg, as the seed. Right. The problem is that seed is usually referring to the male parts and not the female parts.

So I went home after my professor said in class, if you hold to a few other than that Mary's egg was fertilized, you're a heretic. He didn't know I held to that. So I stayed quiet. I didn't fight in class. I went home and I, thankfully, I was in seminary in the Internet age, and I just copied and pasted a bunch of theologians comments on it.

And one of those is Charles Spurgeon, who believes it was a new thing. That's what typically Baptists believe. And the reason that becomes important is because then the egg is not. Is not carrying Adam's sin in Mary Got it. So you don't have to hold to either of those.

But what I'm telling you is people fight over those things and you don't have to even have an answer for it. In fact, do you want me to give you the help? If you're ever going to be in a debate over this, don't debate over it. Don't debate over it.

Well, I do think it's important. My professor counted it very serious. He was very serious about it. That to maintain the seed of woman promise. I appreciated that.

Right. But I also know that there's also a need to maintain that Jesus was sinless and didn't carry Adam's sin through Mary to him. So there are some arguments to be made one way or the other. But I am telling you that the London Baptist confession does leave the phrase out. And the phrase that leaves us out is of her substance, of Mary's substance.

So the Baptists leave that out. So to make that distinction. So it's not all Baptists believe one way or the other, or all reformed guys believe one way or the other. I just want you to know there's a discussion that's had there. Then the result of the Incarnation is what we call the hypostatic union.

And I'm going to read the confession on this because it's so good. I love that the confession that we care about says this the way it says it, because I don't know if you know, but over the centuries when these things were being argued, they weren't always laid out in such a clear way so that they're useful. You can get in trouble by using just one or two words can make a big difference in the way you present something. So listen to what the confession says. It says so that the whole.

No, sorry. That two whole perfect and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person without conversion, composition or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man. Just so perfect. Such a great way of stating the idea that there's one person with two natures.

And maybe this Christmas I'll go into the heresies associated with that again, like uticianism and docetism. And there's a bunch of heresies that try to fix, like how can God be 100 Jesus be 100% God and 100% man. And what does man do? He tries to explain that in a way that he understands. And usually when you try to explain God in human terms, you lose some doctrinal Form.

And the better way of saying is, it's a mystery that somehow there can be two natures in one person. We don't understand that. We can't grasp it. We can't. We can't fathom that.

So there are attempts to fix it. But you don't need to fix it. You don't need to understand the un. Understandable. It's okay to say that there are mysteries in the Lord that we don't understand.

And one of those is that there are two natures in one person. Now let me talk about the qualifications of Christ. Now, that may seem silly to say. What do you mean, the qualifications? Christ is anointed, right?

That's what his name means or that title means. The title means anointed or chosen one. That's what the title means. And that becomes important because his qualification is given to him and he is expected to carry it out. And the main first and clear understanding is that he is qualified by sanctification and the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

In this case, it's not him needing sanctification like we do. It's him being separated for the work of his ministry. I'll read it from Acts, chapter 10. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. And for God was with him.

He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. He was set apart for the work of his being, the Messiah. That becomes important because when the Holy Spirit affirms him, when the Holy Spirit sends him and empowers him to do what he's doing, then you now have the whole Trinity involved in approving and active in the work of Christ. It's Christ doing the work, but he's anointed by the Spirit. He's also called and commissioned by His Father.

I'll read a couple verses to you for that. For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God. God does not give the Spirit by measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands. So there you have the Father commissioning the Son.

So this becomes important. Back to the thing I said earlier. The covenant of redemption that God in Himself within the Trinity had discussed, had counseled what he was going to do when he created man, and he was going to redeem man. And now here you see, this is the Father giving judgment to the Son, giving authority to His Son. So he's commissioned him as the Anointed One, right?

So the Spirit anoints him. The Father Commissions him. He, of course, accepts the anointing. Now, let's talk about the works of Christ. We're doing pretty good here on time.

Look at that. I'm more than halfway through already. The works of Christ. And this is in the confession, chapter eight. It's paragraphs four through eight.

Okay. And I'm just going to hit them briefly, the highlights. The first is to overview his work. Now this. I don't know if this language is in the confession.

I reviewed it, but I don't remember if the words I have at the top of my page were in the confession or not. But I want to use a couple of words that even if they're not in the confession, you should know, which is the humiliation and the exaltation. I bring that up because when we talk about the humiliation of Christ, that's a technical phrase, like I said this morning about introductory material. Humiliation doesn't just mean he was humiliated and embarrassed or shamed or whatever. No, it's actually a doctrine, the doctrine of the humiliation of Christ.

So there's that aspect of his work, and then there's the exaltation. That's another doctrine. And the things that are involved in that, with his going to heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Father. So I'll just read the confession on it so you can hear it from the confession. This office, that's the office of Mediator.

The Lord Jesus did most willingly undertake which that he might discharge. He was made under the law, and did perfectly fulfill it, and underwent the punishment due to us, which we should have borne and suffered, made being made sin and a curse for us, enduring most grievous sorrows in his soul and most painful sufferings in his body, was crucified and died, and remained in the state of the dead, yet saw no corruption. So that's him being humiliated. When Jesus came to earth, that was his. The beginning of his humiliation, right?

So when he became a man and everything that he endured, all the temptation, the death, everything he went through was the humiliation. And then, and Peter uses that language, he suffered once for sins, right? The just, for the unjust. Then you have the exaltation. And the confession says, on the third day he arose from the dead with the same body in which he suffered, with which he also ascended into heaven, and there sitteth at the right hand of his Father, making intercession, and shall return to judge men and angels at the end of the world.

So you can see it, right? The humiliation. He comes to earth, deals with. Everything here is rejected by his people suffers, dies, and all of that. Then he raises from the dead and ascends to heaven.

And that's the exaltation, right? And all the facets of the exaltation. So you have the ascension, you have him going in the clouds, you have the session. That's where he sits down at the right hand of the Father. All of that is the exaltation.

And then even the coming, when he's glorified and he comes at his second coming. That's all a part of the exaltation, that he will be exalted in his mediatorial work. I have passages there where, you know, in the Book of Acts, where they see Jesus ascending and they say he's going to return the same way in which he's going up. And Hebrews talks a lot about him entering the holiest place, right? Not made with hands.

In other words, going into heaven and interceding for us. So these aren't things we're just making up. These are things that are essentially paraphrases of Scripture. Now, what is the work that he does in the atonement? The actual work.

So those are the ideas. There are the overview. But the actual tasks and the work that he accomplishes in the atonement. The first one is that he accomplishes the atonement. And this is in paragraph five, if you have the confession handy.

The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he, through the eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of God. Now, here comes an important word that I will emphasize in a moment. That's kind of like the egg thing in a second, but I think more certain. Hath fully satisfied the justice of God. Procured reconciliation.

Hold on to that and purchase an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those whom the Father have hath given unto him. And then we know the proof text is Matthew 20:28. The son of man did not come to serve, but to. To be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom. For many, this becomes important.

This is something the confession states. And it is something that obviously I believe it because I hold to the doctrines I hold to, and I think it is important to. Whether you agree with me or not, you have to at least acknowledge the difference in the two ideas. The word provide and the word procure are not the same word, okay? When you provide something, you are laying it out with the hopes of it having its effect.

But when you procure something, you go get the thing and pull it to yourself. Salvation of sinners to the Lord is not provided, it's procured. Meaning God saves everybody he intends to save. He doesn't only merely provide salvation. So that language becomes important.

Is the salvific work of Jesus effective or is it potential? Got it. Is it possible or is it actual? That's the idea. And that's why when you hear that kind of language, he came to give his life a ransom for many.

It doesn't say he came to give his life for the hopes that people would be saved. All the language of people being saved is very certain in the Bible. That's one thing that I wish people would be more attentive to in the arguments over these things. Limited atonement and things like that is just to take. Take time and go See if you can find any verses that make it sound like Jesus is giving himself for the hope of people being saved.

You see a lot of certainty, like the elect and the brethren and a lot of us, a lot of language about us who are saved, right? Like the truth that we heard this morning abides where in us, that language of a certainty, of an absolute, of a finality of it, that it's effective. In fact, that's the next point of the confession in paragraph 6 is that the efficacy of the atonement is eternal. And that's why you have passages like Hebrews 7. He does not need daily, as those priests in the Old Testament, to offer up sacrifices for his own sins and then for the sins of his people, for he did once for all when he offered up himself.

In other words, the atonement of Jesus is sufficient. You don't need more atonement after that. You don't need continual sacrifices. His atonement is sufficient for the salvation of his people. Hebrews 10 says, by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And. And you might want to make that all. You might want to say, well, that sounds like it means all. No, he just said we. We have been sanctified.

So it's not. He can't be saying we have, but it's for all. No, he means it's for all of us. That's what it means. So the idea there is that Jesus atonement is effective when God applies it.

And I'll talk a little more about the application in a little bit.

This next section, paragraph seven, is a little confusing even to me in the confession. But the idea is that if I were to boil it down, maybe I could Say it this way. The way God says he did it is how he did it. And he. We want to be careful not to say more than he did.

So there's a. There's a phrase about Jesus after his ascension that is talked about in, like, Roman Catholicism and that, like, what happens after Jesus ascends to heaven because communion comes into play. Where does he. How can Jesus become the bread? Or how can Jesus be in with and through the bread, the way the Lutherans say?

And so there's a doctrine called the communicato idiomatum. That's Latin. That just means the communication of his body, the way that works. And so I bring that up here because. Because of the confusion already that's in him being God and man at the same time.

And then people trying to fix that and make it make sense when it can't make sense to our human brains. When you can't understand 100% God and 100% man. And there's not 50, 50, it's 100 and 100. Right? Once you're having trouble understanding those things, then in the future, when you talk about how he intercedes for us and what happens at communion and other things, and how can God be.

How can, if he has a body, he be omnipresent and those kind of things. When you start talking about those things, paragraph seven is essentially saying, he did what he did the way he did it. And the Bible is the final word on that. And you want to be careful not to say more than that. It gives the Book of Acts here.

Therefore, take heed yourselves and to all the flock, this is the Paul leaving the Ephesians with his encouragement, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. The reason that becomes important is because it says the Church of God which he purchased right. Now, of course, the easiest way to say that is Jesus is God. But it is important that when you come across passages like that and they might confuse you, you want to be careful not to say, okay, I guess I have to build a whole new doctrine on that one verse. You need to have an overall view picture.

Jesus is the Word. He's the Logos, he's the God man. He's the Savior. All of that's true. He works in both natures.

The language doesn't necessarily delineate between the two natures all the time. So you want to just be careful and have enough, keep yourself in check. How does he apply the work? Now this. This becomes Fun.

I'm just going to read the way my notes. I use my notes to essentially outline what the confession here says in paragraph eight. So who does he apply the work to? To all those for whom Christ hath obtained eternal redemption. What is the nature of the redemption?

And that work? He does certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same meaning. Whoever God chooses to save, he applies redemption to them. Right? Effectively.

Can't stop it. We can talk about the irresistible grace idea. Making intercession for them. So the Mediator applies His redemption to us. The Father and the Mediator apply the redemption to us.

It's effective. And then he intercedes for us. Those are all happening in the application of redemption. And let me just give you five. I'm going to go quick here.

Five. Man. We might. What would happen if we got out early with 13 pages of notes? You'd probably hate me for that.

Huh? Five ways that redemption is applied to us. And I'm going to just give them to you the way they are in the confession. I'm going to go fast. The things that happen when God applies redemption to us.

That's the idea. What happens when the Mediator, when his work is for us? What happens? The first thing is that we're united to him by His Spirit. And then you have passages there, like First Corinthians 12, that were baptized into one body.

Then he reveals to us in and by His Word the mystery of salvation. So these are things that are given to us in redemption. We understand the mystery. We take part in the mystery. We get to be beneficiaries of the mystery.

Then he persuades us to believe. He persuades us by the Holy Spirit and regeneration. And then he governs our hearts by His Word and with His Spirit. And then the last thing is he overcomes all of our enemies by his almighty power and wisdom. So those are five things that happen in redemption.

He joins us to Himself. He shows us His Word and our need. He persuades us to believe and obey. He gives us the Word in our heart that we can walk with Him. And then we overcome all of our enemies.

Or he gives us the victory over all of our enemies. And then the passage is he must reign until he puts all enemies under his feet. So all this flows from grace. Everything you're hearing that God does for us comes through and by his grace he does it. We don't deserve it.

It's not something we're earning. It's not part of us adding to salvation. He just does these things for us in redemption. Now, this is the part where with the remaining time, I'll talk about the offices. The way I said before, the confession has the mediatorial work as like the overarching big office.

Maybe you think of that as the general heading, and then under the general heading are the specifics of that general heading. And I'm going to give you the nature of his offices in paragraph nine. And these are. I'll say these in two different ways, one here and one in a moment, but I want you to try to, as much as you can, pick up on them, this office of mediator between God and man is proper only to Christ, who is the prophet, priest and king of the Church of God, and may not be either in whole or in any part thereof, transferred from him to any other. Now, you can hear the authors of the Westminster and the Baptist confession saying, no Popes.

You can practically hear them saying it. This office of mediator only belongs to Jesus and no one else. They want to nail it down so that we don't make the mistake of thinking there are other people that are doing the mediatorial work of Christ. Side note, I meant to tell this to Mike when he was here and I forgot or I didn't get a chance. That within the Catholic Church over the, well, centuries and in the last few decades, there was a phrase going around called.

That was calling Mary the co mediatrix, which is that means she was the co redeemer of mankind. Right? So she, she was with Christ as redeemer, a partner in redemption. And in November of Last year of 2025, the new pope made a statement on that that said, no, we don't hold to that. Now that might be good, except for that they've believed it for 900 years or something, you know, so you might say, well, yeah, it's a step in the right direction, but they do not agree on it.

Right now, Roman Catholics don't agree on it. That's a quiet fight within the Roman Catholic Church. The reason I bring that up is because how many mediators are there? Only one. Right.

So if. Does that mean that the saints or Mary can be co mediators? No. So if they say she is, that's bad. And even if they say she's not, and now the church is internally conflicted about it, the Roman Catholic Church, then I'm telling you, that's a church you don't give any attention to because they're exalting Mary or fighting over exalting Mary when it's an absolute slam dunk, obvious there's no other mediator.

Jesus is the only mediator, so there's no other. That's why when the Bible says there's only one mediator, it means it.

Now let me talk about the necessity. And this is how I'll use the offices. I'll just separate them for you and we're already about done. The number and the order of office offices is necessary for in respect to of our ignorance we stand in need of. Now listen, I'm going to tell you, this is essentially the confession telling us why we need the offices.

The first one is because of our ignorance. We need his prophetical office because we don't know, we need him to teach us. We need Jesus to be our prophet. Got it? That's the idea.

And in respect of our alienation from God and imperfection of the best of ourselves services, we need his priestly office to reconcile us and present us acceptable unto God. So what do we need? We're in trouble. We have imperfection. And we need our priest to represent us before God and to represent him to us as far as forgiving and things like that.

And in respect to our averseness and utter inability to return to God and for our rescue and security from our spiritual adversaries, we need his kingly office to convince, subdue, draw, uphold, deliver and preserve us to his heavenly kingdom. So we need Jesus to be all of those things. We need him to be a prophet to give us the word of God. We need him to be a priest, to be our mediator and our go between between us and God. And we need him to rule us because when we rule ourselves, everything gets messed up.

We need King Jesus to be King Jesus. Right? So this is his mediatorial work in those offices. And I think that's. If you were to just read this section of the Confession, Chapter 8 and read the whole thing and then go read the Book of Hebrews, you would see that they very much are echoing the same things, that the confession is almost just a concise book of Hebrews.

It's really saying all the things that the Book of Hebrews says about Jesus. So Christ is the mediator, he is the only mediator. And that's what the confession says. And the confession again comes out of Westminster, which comes out of the Reformation. Right.

The idea that, that there are no popes, there's no, there's no priests, there's no more any despots, there's no, nobody between God and man. And so when in these days, in our days that we live now, I would Challenge you to be careful. Again, you hear me say this a lot. In fact, I don't know that a sermon goes by that. I'm not saying some version of be careful because you're going to hear things outside out in the world, on the news, on the Internet about Christianity.

That word is getting thrown around out there a lot. And you might think, well, if they're using the word Christianity, they must mean what I mean by it. And you have to be careful because these areas, the specific things you'll find out are people. For example, it's really popular right now in the conservative Christian political world to be talking about Christian principles, but to never be talking about the need for a mediator, right? So we might talk about the reason our country would do so much better if we all just lived the principles of Jesus, right?

If we all just practice what Jesus taught us to practice and, and used him as our example and then lived like he lived. Back to the what would Jesus do? Thing that was so popular a few decades ago. But to have sound doctrine and have unity with people. We said this morning that in order to be in a love relationship with people, you have to have truth in common.

We need to be really careful because these are the areas when man thinks he's good, he doesn't think he needs a mediator. Do you understand that? That if man doesn't think himself sinful, he doesn't need a priest. When he doesn't think himself stupid, he doesn't need a king. When he doesn't think himself ignorant, he doesn't need a prophet, right?

So when you have proud, egocentric men, you don't have, in their minds, you don't have a need for a mediator. So these things are really important. I know they're doctrinal and they can kind of seem cold. They might seem, you know, academic or whatever. But it is important to be mindful of the theology that we hold to, and this is 1689.

That's we're in a good tradition. Our confession is older than our country, Right? That's important. I think that we've stood on these things and said these things for centuries now, and they're still valid. And there's still not a whole lot of reason to correct and undo anything.

It's all a good representative of the doctrines of Scripture. And so we don't want to deny Christ by trying to make friends with everybody in the world who doesn't love him. Well, I have Revelation 5, 12 and 13 just to close to get all this, all this Wonderful doctrine. Let's at least just have a moment that we see in the future from the book of Revelation, from John, where you see the Lord John is recognizing Jesus for who our confession says he is. Now, John doesn't know about our confession, but you know what I mean.

The things that our confession says Jesus is when you understand correctly. Let's listen to what John says about that. He says, worthy is the Lamb who is slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing and every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and. And all that are in them. I heard saying blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.

You don't get tired of learning about Jesus, do you? I sure hope you don't. I sure hope you never get tired of learning about Jesus and talking about how awesome he is and talking about how wonderful he is. And in this case tonight, in his mediatorial work on our behalf, as he represents us to God and God to us. Don't ever get sick of Jesus.

Don't ever get sick of grace. Jesus did everything so that we could be in a relationship with our Father. And we always want to make sure that we're putting him in front of us and that we never belittle him, diminish him, set him aside, ignore Him. We want to exalt Jesus. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for these thoughts. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you that he is who your word says he is. What a powerful, constant refrain. We get that he is worthy of worship.

He's worthy to be praised. He's worthy of honor. Now just ask, Father, that we would never ever forget that and that we are a church, a church of Jesus Christ, and we want to honor him and praise Him. So help us do that well, please, in Jesus name, Amen.