Before we move into the core text, I want to share a few thoughts to set your expectations about the book and website.
They are for Believers
I don’t mean that unbelievers should not use the resources – they don’t wear a cheesy 1980s “Members Only” jacket. I want nothing more than for unbelievers to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. If God uses these resources toward that end, praise be to God!
And it is not the intent of these resources to diminish the work of The Gideons International and Bible translators around the world. Their efforts to get a Bible into the hands of as many people as possible are immensely valuable for the spread of the gospel, and I thank God for them and their ministry. Reading the Bible is way better than not reading it – or not even knowing it exists.
But these resources are primarily for believers who already have a Bible. Unbelievers need to hear the basic truths they can read in God’s Word. Believers need to grow in their knowledge of Scripture – and that requires more than merely reading.
They are Supplements, not Replacements
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Ephesians 4:11–14
These resources are not the Bible. They are not your pastor. They are not your church. They are not the primary means that God uses to build up the body of Christ. And neither are any of the other recommended resources you will find in the book or on the website. Paul makes that clear in the passage above from Ephesians 4. When you study your Bible, you will see the full picture of what Christian discipleship looks like. The equipping of the saints for the work of ministry is the primary function of the local church – both in its leadership and in its membership. Our leaders teach and preach the Word. Our brothers and sisters encourage us and bear one another’s burdens. Don’t forsake the assembly and use these resources or any other as your excuse. If you are not regularly attending a faithful church, and you are not providentially hindered from doing so, you are either in need of repentance and restoration or you are simply an unbeliever. “Lone ranger” Christians don’t exist according to God’s Word.
But the same Paul who wrote Ephesians wrote warnings to Timothy and the Ephesian elders about the need for discernment.
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
2 Timothy 4:1–4
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.
Acts 20:28–30
Some churches today, just like churches in Paul’s day, are solid, gospel-proclaiming, bastions of truth where members can expect Ephesians 4 to manifest itself. But way too many churches are like the ones Paul speaks about in 2 Timothy 4 and Acts 20. They are bastions of ear tickling and sheep abuse. Believers often complain about the sin in the world when the Bible gives as much or more emphasis to concerns about sin from within the church itself.
The writer of Hebrews provides examples of the men and women of faith in Hebrews 11, calling them a “great cloud of witnesses” in Hebrews 12:1 and encourages his readers to look to them as they “run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Much like these great men and women of Bible times, we have great examples who have come since then. Pastors, theologians, professors, and missionaries. Great sermons have been preached by men like Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Books have been written expounding biblical truth by such men as Saint Augustine, Martin Luther, B. B. Warfield, and R. C. Sproul. And those sermons and writings have been preserved for future generations. We should not ignore them. In fact, we should use them as tools – as guardrails against the warnings of 2 Timothy 4 and Acts 20.
Throughout church history, men have written statements of faith establishing guardrails as well. They are not intended to replace Scripture but to express what believers understand Scripture to teach. Among the thousands of denominations of Christianity, there are multitudes of ways professing believers have interpreted what God’s Word really means. And there is only one correct answer to every question. Hearing how history answers the question may help to guide you to the right answer.
So, use these resources as references to help you make sense of difficult passages of Scripture. Use them to help clarify your understanding of a particular doctrine. Use them to understand the heresies, failures, and ear tickling that have occurred throughout church history so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes. Use them as a guide to understanding how Christian doctrine applies to Christian life. Right practice is just as important as right doctrine – and right doctrine is just as important as right practice. And perhaps most importantly, use them to assess whether you’re in an Ephesians 4 church or an Acts 20 one.
The Book is More Guide than Teacher
When you go to the library – do people still do that? – you don’t expect the librarian to teach you the subject in which you’re interested. What you expect is that she can direct you to relevant books on the subject you want to study. She may have some good suggestions about the subject, some things to think about as you explore the subject, or even some cautions about which books to avoid. Consider this book as your friendly neighborhood Christian librarian.
You will not finish the book and have a clear understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. Nor will you learn how to engage the Mormon who’s knocking on your door while you stay really quiet and pretend you’re not home. Did my two-year-old just toddle into the foyer in clear view of the guy?
What you will receive as you work your way through the chapters of the book is the guidance of an experienced curator of the library of options available to you. In each chapter, I will provide:
- A brief explanation of the topic and why it matters
- What you should seek to understand as you study the topic
- My high-level views on the topic
- Recommended books on the topic (available on the website)
From there, you will need to decide whether you wish to read one or more of my recommendations, choose something else instead, or go fishing, go hunting, go bowling, watch TV, or take a nap. Since there is an abundance of fishing, hunting, bowling, TV watching, and napping, my advice is to suck it up and read a book.
How to Use the Website
I got about a third of the way through writing the book when I realized that for much of what I was trying to accomplish, a website would serve as a much better medium for the reader. There was just one problem. I know nothing about web design. I have the artistic ability of a 2-year-old. But you know what came along from the time the book was an initial idea to where I had progressed? AI.
Now before you start thinking I’m some Southern Baptist Convention president plagiarizing sermons, understand that I am the sole writer of this book and the website content. But the coding of the website is largely ChatGPT. I gave it ideas for the pages, and it wrote the code. Much like the internet before it, AI is becoming a tremendously valuable resource that can be used for either good or evil. I chose to use AI in order to enhance the overall Entrusting the Faith to the Faithful project, and my sincere desire is for you to benefit from it.
Access the website at entrustingthefaith.org. The home page consists of four primary areas designed to supplement your reading of the book:
Entrusting the Faith to the Faithful
Following these links, you can read the book itself. If you’ve ever read on a Kindle or other digital device, the experience is very similar, and I have tried to make navigation user-friendly. You can explore individual parts of the book or start at the beginning and read all the way through. It reads like a great mystery novel or an intense drama, so you probably won’t be able to put it down once you start. I’m not sure how you put down a digital book, so you’ll have to figure that out on your own.
One thing I believe you will find is very helpful. As you read each chapter, you will see recommended additional reading on the right. Clicking a book will pop up details about the book, my brief take on why it would be useful for you, and links to Amazon and/or the publisher’s website where you can research more or make a purchase.
Confessing the Faith
If my goal is to entrust the faith, it seems important to understand which faith is meant. Well, the Bible, of course. That’s great! But what does the Bible teach? Catholics, Churches of Christ, Pentecostals, Methodists, Baptists, and many other groups all appeal to the Bible as a basis for what they teach. Yet their teaching yields dramatically different conclusions. A faith entrusted according to how all these groups understand the Bible would be a doctrinal mess.
When folks use the phrase “no creed but the Bible,” what they mean is the Bible as they interpret it. And guess what? That’s exactly what creeds, confessions, and catechisms do. They express what a person or group understands the Bible to mean. Across denominations, teaching is contradictory, and when contradictory things are taught, at least one is wrong. One may be right, all may be wrong, but contradictory doctrines cannot all be correct.
That’s where Confessing the Faith comes in. Here, you will find greater specificity about what is meant by entrusting the faith. I want to pass on my understanding of God’s Word, and that understanding is best expressed in documents that for centuries have served as summaries, expressions, or formulations of what the Scriptures teach. It is my conviction that historic Particular Baptist doctrine, commonly identified today as Reformed Baptist doctrine, faithfully expresses the body of biblical truth that will serve here as “the faith.” Further, I believe that the broader Reformed tradition shares much of that same body of truth.
So, here you will find three sections of doctrine.
Christian Orthodoxy
These creeds confess the central truths of the Christian faith. Denying these essential teachings is to reject Christianity itself.
The Protestant Reformation
This narrows the doctrinal focus to the body of teaching arising from the sixteenth-century Reformation and expressed in the historic Lutheran and Reformed confessional traditions. While some doctrines within the broader Reformed tradition differ from Reformed Baptist doctrine, those differences concern secondary matters that warrant denominational distinctions without destroying the Christian kinship shared between Reformed Baptists and the broader Reformed community.
Particular Baptists
This narrows the focus further still. Particular Baptists emerged from the reformational movement in England and share the central convictions of the broader Reformed tradition while differing in important areas such as baptism, covenant theology, and the nature and government of the church. The Particular Baptist tradition forms the historical foundation for what is commonly called Reformed Baptist doctrine today and is expressed especially in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, commonly known simply as the 1689. For purposes of this website, the 1689 serves as the principal confessional expression of “the faith” being confessed, taught, and entrusted to others.
Christian Education
I didn’t grow up as a Reformed Baptist. I was well into my adult years and was training in seminary before I began to embrace the Reformed faith.
I have found that to be true of many of my fellow pastors and brothers and sisters in Christ. For us to entrust sound doctrine and faithful practice to others, we sometimes must first do as Yoda instructed Luke: “You must unlearn what you have learned.”
That may sound a little silly, but the point is serious. Before we can pass along the truth, we must first understand the truth. That is the purpose of this section of the website: to help correct doctrine we may have picked up from other traditions or denominations and to provide instruction in sound doctrine.
Not everyone is going to be a pastor. But every believer is a steward of the truth, and that means having the faith entrusted to us. That is exactly the pattern Paul gave Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2: “what you have heard from me.” Paul entrusted the faith to Timothy. Timothy was to entrust it to faithful men. Those faithful men were to teach others also. And so it goes.
If we want our children and grandchildren to know the truth and faithfully entrust it to others, we must be diligent to learn it ourselves, teach it to them, and prepare others to do the same.
To that end, the Christian Education page contains three choices:
Christian Education Library
This provides interactive search functions for a library of Christian books, including:
- All the recommendations by chapter from Entrusting the Faith to the Faithful
- Several recommendations for systematic theology texts. My favorite is the four-volume Reformed Systematic Theology by Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley, but there are several good ones from which to choose.
- Spiritual Formation resources that are used in conjunction with the Foundations and Ministry Training options. I would encourage everyone to read a book from this list regularly.
- Historically Significant Works are well-regarded books that have played an important role in the development of Reformed theology. They are excellent additions to your library.
Foundations Training
This is a structured training plan for lay people. Review this list of suggested courses along with reading and other recommendations to see a path to being well-educated and prepared to entrust the faith to your children or others.
Ministry Training
This is a structured training plan for men preparing for ministry. The suggested reading, lectures, and other requirements can be reviewed and adjusted as needed to accommodate the needs of the local church preparing those men.
The Toolbox
The Toolbox provides additional resources to aid you in your Bible study and educational journey. They are organized into three main areas of emphasis:
Bible Study Resources
The Core Tools are commonly used resources for Bible study, such as a study Bible, a printed confession of faith, an atlas, and a Bible dictionary. Advanced Tools are more specialized resources that pastors, Sunday school teachers, church leaders, and those pursuing deeper study will find useful.
Bible Commentaries
Commentaries are extremely helpful as you study a particular book of the Bible. I have provided at least two recommendations for commentaries for each book of the Bible. Pastoral Commentaries are the resources most believers will want as they provide good explanations of the text but don’t delve into the weeds of the most technical academic aspects of the books. Academic Commentaries provide deeper analysis and get more into those weeds. Pastors and those training for ministry may want both pastoral and academic commentaries. Lay people may be fine with just the pastoral commentaries. If you like to collect books, and your wife needs convincing that you need one more, these recommendations should keep you going for some time. Just remember you still have to pay your mortgage payment and your kids’ college bills.
Digital Content
Once you explore this website, you may say to yourself: “Self, this website eliminates the need for all other websites. It is truly that spectacular.” (Ouch! What is that thorn poking me?) But despite your enthusiasm, I would beg to differ. Greater minds than mine have created incredible resources that far surpass the surface-level details provided here. While I’m sure there are dozens of sites I could have added to this page, I’ve selected a group of sites that I have frequented over the years and keep going back to. I highly recommend you look beyond this website and explore these other recommendations.
Finally, I want to share a bit of encouragement as you begin your studies. Remember how I said there are no “lone ranger” Christians? There are also no lone ranger students. Many of the topics you encounter will not be easy. In some cases, I will recommend lighter reading along with a primary text, because the subject matter can be intense. The only thing standing in the way of asking questions is pride. Ask your pastors. Ask your Sunday School teacher. You can even ask yours truly – with one caveat. If this book survives past 2075, I will likely be dead and unable to respond. After all, dead is dead.
Normal is ignorant. Be weird.
Understood? Then get going. You’ve got a lot of studying to do!