John Stott on the Bible and the Christian Life Small Group Bible Study

[Music] one of the most important questions in every religion is the question of authority by what authority do we believe what we believe and by what authority do we teach what we teach we cannot agree about anything until we have first agreed how to agree more ever we have to think about the authority of Scripture against the background of the contemporary crisis of authority authority is a very unpopular word today as I don't need to tell you people are searching for freedom and they take it for granted that freedom and authority are mutually incompatible so consider the revolt against Authority in the secular world there have a cost been many rebellions and revolts beginning I suppose with the disobedience about him in the Garden of Eden but perhaps none has been so profound and widespread as the revolt which erupted in the 1960s when the so-called free speech movements broke out at the University of California in Berkeley and when the French students took to the barricades in the streets of Paris and we are still caught up in this global revolution as the old order gives place to a new would you agree with me that all established Authority is being challenged today the authority of parents and teachers the authority of schools and colleges the authority of church and state the authority of the Pope the authority of the Bible and even the authority of God himself now of course it is right to protest against an oppressive Authority that the Christian mind distinguishes between tyranny on the one hand and authority on the true freedom combines freedom from tyranny with freedom under Authority and now consider next the loss of an agreed Authority in the church the anti-authority mood that we've been thinking about is now seeping into the church and if this that lies at the root of theological confusion in the churches of the world today I think for example of the multiplicity of Protestant denominations and our pathological tendency to go on splintering or I think of the competing factions of the ancient churches of the West and of the East well I think of the controversy about the World Council of Churches whose doctrinal basis is quite good but only minimal and then I think of the unedifying spectacle on television of Western church leaders either not knowing what they believe or if they think they do know what they believe then disagreeing with one another about it it's a state of theological confusion I think we could even call it a state of theological chaos and the basic cause of it is lack of agreement on the question of authority well in theory all Christians confess the authority of Jesus Christ Jesus Christ is Lord his contemporaries you remember were immensely impressed by his authority what is this they exclaimed a new teaching and with authority and not like the scribes and then after the resurrection Jesus declared all Authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth and the whole New Testament takes it really for granted that the church is under the authority of the risen Lord Jesus Christ you never Charles Lamb who is a British SA in the 19th century cha its said of Charles lamb this a theist he said if Shakespeare were to come into this room we would all rise up to greet him but if that person meaning Jesus Christ were to come into this room we would all fall down and try to grasp the hem of His garment now I think that it's right if Jesus Christ were to appear visibly today in such a way that no one would question his identity and if he were to speak audibly today in such a way that nobody could mistake his message it is charitable to suppose though I'm not sure it would happen but it's charitable to suppose that the church would listen to him and believe and obey but the fact is as we know very well Jesus Christ is not going to appear and address the church or not until the last day and by that time it'll be too late so the question before us tonight is how does Jesus Christ who holds this Authority in his hand how does Jesus Christ speak today how does he exercise authority how does he govern his church today that is the question we're going to wrestle with this evening well you'll see on your outline that there are five main answers that have been given to the question which I thought it might be helpful but to glance at very briefly first the Roman Catholic answers that Christ rules his church through what he calls or they call the Magisterium that is a teaching Authority which God they believe has given to the Pope and to the Catholic Bishops surrounding the Pope then there is Eastern Orthodox answer they look for their authority to what they call Holy Tradition but Holy Tradition to them cludes the Bible and the Creed and the seven ecumenical councils and the liturgy and the writings of the church fathers and because the Bible in their view is part of holy tradition it is not separated from it and it cannot stand over it and criticize it then we move on thirdly to the answer of liberal theologians they teach that Christ rules the church through the individual reason or the individual conscience or individual experience or what they like to call the consensus of educated opinion fourthly there is a popular Anglican position that is the christ rules the church through what is sometimes called the 3/3 court of scripture tradition and reason that's typical you will agree of the sweet reasonableness of the Anglican Church they don't like polarizations and opted instead for the Via Media the middle-of-the-road but the 3/3 court is in in practice unworkable because what happens when the three authorities are in conflict with one another scripture tradition and reason we must have a supreme authority which is even over the others which brings me to the fifth explanation which is the reformed and evangelical one Christ rules his church through scripture scripture is the Royal scepter by which King Jesus governs his church tradition and reason are important they both have a vital part to play in the elucidation of Scripture and in the application of Scripture but scripture has supreme authority in the church well that's the thesis that I'm going to try to develop tonight the reason why the church has historically submitted to Scripture is that our Lord Jesus Christ did and urged his disciples to do the same so the authority of Christ and the authority of Scripture either stand or fall together the church has no Liberty to repudiate what her Lord has affirmed well Jesus lived of course between the two Testaments when he was here on earth he looked back to the Old Testament which was already complete but he also looked forward to the New Testament which had not yet begun to be written so the way in which he affirmed both the old and the new testament is obviously different so you'll see I divided the rest of the lecture into two the authority of the Old Testament and then the authority of the new consider with me Jesus own view of Scripture as seen in his use of it his personal submission to our Testament scripture is seen in three spheres one it is seen in his moral obedience or in his moral conduct Jesus was determined to obey himself what stood written of him in Scripture no example I think is more impressive than his encounter with the devil in the Judean Desert when he was tempted to doubt and to disobey God and each cunning temptation Jesus countered with an appropriate quotation from Deuteronomy 6 or Deuteronomy 8 get behind me Satan is what the Jesus said to the devil get behind me because it stands written you shall not now that single greek word gig rapped i that it stands written was sufficient in itself there was no need to discuss the matter there's no need to argue there was no need to invite the devil to the negotiating table the issue had already been settled by Scripture it stood written so you shall not disobey because of what stands written in Scripture the voluntary subordination of the Son of God to the Word of God is exceedingly significant Jesus lived under its moral authority himself now secondly we see his submissiveness in his official mission and his understanding of what his mission was in the world the Gospels don't actually reveal how Jesus came to know either who he was his identity or what he come into the world to do his mission but it must have been that he came to and stand these things maybe gradually but through Scripture as God spoke to him through the scripture as he meditated upon it his quotations from the Old Testament seemed to make this abundantly clear thus Jesus claimed to be both the son of man written of in Daniel 7 and the suffering servant of the Lord in Isaiah 53 he claimed to be Daniel son of man who would come with the clouds of heaven and whom all the nations would worship in his glory and he fulfilled Isaiah servant of the Lord for the servant had to suffer and to die for the sins of the world and then bring light to the nation's in fact I wonder if you know this that Jesus did what nobody had ever done before and that is to fuse those two images both the Son of Man which spoke of his glory and the servant of the Lord that spoke of his sufferings so Jesus said that he must enter into his glory as the son of man through suffering the Son of man will go this is Mark 1421 the son of man will go just as it is written about him so it assisted explains Jesus self sense of compulsion to do what was written of him it began when he was a boy of 12 you remember he said didn't you know that I must be in my father's house it continued during his public ministry mark 8 31 the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected and after three days rise again and it continued after the resurrection he said in Luke 24 everything must be fulfilled that is written in the law and the prophets and the writings why must these things take place what is the explanation of this sense of compulsion that Jesus had throughout is life the answer is because scripture says so and he was determined to obey what was written of him in regard to his mission so voluntarily and deliberately Jesus put himself under the authority of Scripture he determined to fulfill Scripture in his mission as in his the the standards moral standards of his conduct so in the Garden of Gethsemane when Peter drew his sword and lunged out into the night and cut off the right ear of the high priests servant you remember what Jesus said he turned him to sheath his sword and then do you think that I cannot call on my father and he will at once give me more than twelve legions of angels but how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so well to me it is a most remarkable fact that throughout his entire earthly life he's a boy of twelve during his public ministry and again after the resurrection Jesus felt the steady compulsion of Scripture upon him and he maintained an unwavering determination to do what was written of him in Scripture so far then we thought about his submission in his own moral conduct and in his official mission our thirdly in his public debates Christ was a controversial esteem gauged in constant debate with the religious leaders of his day they disagreed with him and he disagreed with them and the point is that in every question or conflict Jesus regarded Scripture as the final Court of Appeal what does the scripture say how do you read it he would ask and in particular he criticized both the Pharisees and the Sadducees he criticized the Pharisees add into scripture he criticized the Sadducees for subtracting subtracting from Scripture he added were they added rather their own traditions so that Jesus could say you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God by your traditions you put tradition above Scripture he said which you shouldn't do and then he criticized the Sadducees for subtracting the supernatural element they didn't believe in the supernatural Jesus said to them is this not why you are wrong you don't know the Scriptures neither the power of God say then with regard to the Old Testament it is rarely beyond question that our Lord Jesus Christ was personally submissive to it as the word of his father his heavenly Father in his moral conduct in his official mission in his public debates the decisive factor for him was what stood written in Scripture that settled every uncertainty and there is no example of Jesus contradicting Scripture only of his fulfilling it oh yes I know what some of you are thinking you are asking what about their six antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount when he said you've heard that it was said by the men availed that I said to you something different well it's important for us to understand that Jesus was not contradicting Moses he never contradicted Moses he was contradicting the scribal distortions and perversions of Moses he was contradicting not what stood written scripture that what was said the oral tradition so the Gospels evidence is incontrovertible in heart in mind and in life Jesus humbly submitted to the Old Testament as to God's Word written and because he did we must also now you'll see in the outline that we come now just briefly to two possible ways of escape from the logic we've tried to develop thus far and the first possible escape route is to say well okay Jesus was mistaken he thought that the scripture was the Word of God and had authority and was inspired and infallible and so on but he was wrong these people say he was imprisoned in the by the Incarnation in the limited mentality of a first century Jew so of course he believed in the authority of Scripture all his Jewish contemporaries believed in the authority of Scripture but like them he was mistaken now this theory is commonly called the theory of kenosis Genesis is the Greek word for emptying and it's taken from Philippians 2 verse 7 I can no sin see oton he emptied himself in the Incarnation said the question that theologians have all the time debated is what did he empty himself off and liberal scholars will say well of course he emptied himself if not him his deity at least of his supernatural knowledge and because he emptied himself of that so it's understandable that he made mistakes and among the mistakes that he made was his erroneous view of Scripture well let's think very carefully about this it's true so far as we can tell that during his life on earth Jesus was not omniscient at least he asked questions which suggests that he didn't know the answer otherwise there were not much point in asking the question what is your name and so on but most important he specifically said that he did not know the day of his coming he said the Angels don't know human beings down now he didn't know the father knew when he was coming back so what is remarkable about this statement of Jesus is that he knew what he didn't know he was not ignorant of his ignorance so knowing the limits of his knowledge he stayed within them and he never strayed outside them he taught only what his father gave him to teach and therefore he made no mistakes though he was not I think omniscient he was in errant and so his teaching about the Old Testament was not mistaken we say it was true so that's the first a possible escape route which is to say he was mistaken because of the canosa's now the second one the second possible escape route is to say that he pretended he believed in the authority of Scripture when he didn't he knew perfectly well that scripture was not infallible yet because his contemporaries believed it was and because he didn't want to upset them unduly he went along with their error and pretended that he held it to now this is the theory of accommodation because he deliberately accommodated himself to their view even though he knew it was wrong but this theory as I hope you'll agree is equally intolerable to attribute to Jesus Christ a conscious deception is a slander on his own integrity besides Jesus never hesitated to disagree disagree with his contemporaries if he did disagree with them he didn't hesitate to say so publicly he criticized their views on tradition on the Sabbath on fasting on their political and understanding of Messiahship so if he disagreed with all those things why would he not dissent from their view of Scripture if he did this from it further the accommodation theory would make Jesus guilty of the sin that he detested most and that is the sin of hypocrisy pretending what you don't believe so let me recapitulate katha we've got so far here are two attempted escape routes both of which declare that Jesus teaching was mistaken according to the first Jesus mistake was involuntary he couldn't help it it was because he was imprisoned in the mentality of a first century Jew according to the second Jesus mistake was deliberate he chose to pretend that he agreed when he didn't according to the first Jesus was deceived according to the second he was a deceiver but both canosa's and accommodation must be firmly rejected they seriously discredit the honesty and integrity and authority of the Son of God endeavor against the slanderous speculations Jesus we say knew what he was saying he meant what he was saying and it was true so we must believe and teach it as well where we turn now from the authority of the Old Testament and Christ's endorsement of it to the authority of the New Testament and Christ's provision for it the argument goes like this Jesus not only foresaw the writing of the New Testament Scriptures parallel to the scriptures of the Old Testament he not only for saw them he intended them and for the same reason namely to record and interpret what God was doing now through Christ and so he made provision for it by appointing and equipping his apostles and the nature and function of the Apostles is absolutely crucial to our understanding of the argument so consider with me this word apostolos the greek word for an apostle the verb at castellan means to send and so the noun apostolos is one who is sent and it's used in the New Testament in three quite distinct ways and I think we need to understand this once and only once is it used of all Christian people all the disciples of Jesus are in one sense Apostolou sent out into the world this one occasion is in John's Gospel chapter 13 and verse 16 in the context of the foot washing in the upper room Jesus said he who is sent in the Greek that is apostolos he who is sent is not greater than he who sent him so all of us in a sense a part of the apostolic mission of the church jesus said elsewhere as the father sent me into the world so I send you into the world all of us are sent into the world to witness and to serve and in that sense we're all apostles we all share in the apostolic mission of the church sharing the gospel with the world but two or three times the word apostolos is used of the Apostles of the churches we would call the mission partners or if you like missionaries sent out by one church to another in order to fulfill some errand or other in second Corinthians 823 Paul refers to certain brothers as representatives of the churches now that's I think the New International Version but the Greek is the Apostles of the churches and in Philippians 2:25 a path for a Titus who was a member of the Church of Philippi is said by Paul in the Philippian letter to be your messenger your representative literally your apostle because you sent him out on an errand actually to bring some money to the Apostle Paul so once and only once the word apostolos is used in verse or two three or four times it is used in the New Testament for the apostles of the churches missionaries but the overwhelming use of the word is of that unique groove we usually call the twelve the Twelve Apostles to whom Paul and James the leader of the church in Jerusalem we're later added these were apostles of Christ not apostles of the churches they were sent out by Jesus himself so consider now in order to understand the significance of this the double background to this word apostolos on the one hand a prophetic background and on the other a rabbinic background the Apostle was the New Testament equivalent of both so take the Old Testament prophets they were described as having been sent by Yahweh I am sending you God said to Moses to Isaiah whom shall I send who will go for us and Isaiah said here am I send me and that was his commission as a prophet well God said to Jeremiah you must go to everyone I send you - for again through Jeremiah God said to the Israelites day after day again and again I sent you my servants the prophets and this language of sending which is used I mean I've given you a small sample it's used to gain and again in the Old Testament he's very significant and it's used that the false prophets as well as the true ones God said they are prophesying lies in my name and I did not send them so they'd had no Commission as prophets I did not send them so just as Yahweh sent his prophets to speak to Israel in his name so Jesus sent out the twelve to speak and preached in his name the twelve where the New Testament equivalent of the Old Testament prophets and were equally inspired well if the first background to the meaning of apostolos was prophetic the second was not the profit but the shalyah of rabbinic Judaism the shalyah was somebody sent out by the Sanhedrin the Supreme Council to teach in their name and it was said of this this is a very important little phrase for us to try and remember the shalyah the one sent the Apostle the Prophet the shalyah the one sent by a person is as this person himself in other words he carries with him to send the authority of the sending body well doing these things about the profit and about the shalyah Jesus still deliberately chose this title apostolos in the Greek at least for the 12 I quote he called his disciples together to him he chose twelve of them and he designated them apostles Luke 6 verse 13 so they were his spokesman his ambassadors his authorized representatives his apostles sent out by him into the world so he sent them out saying he who listens to you listens to me because you carry my authority with you he who receives you receives me he who rejects you rejects me and then later as we'll see in a moment he added Paul and James now it's important then to understand the three third uniqueness it might be fourfold I'll take the fourth letter but certainly a 3/3 uniqueness in the twelve the apostles of Jesus Christ the first was their personal appointment and authorization by Jesus himself we've seen how he chose the twelve and how he gave them his authority and then on the Damascus Road which was not just the conversion of Saul but the commissioning of soul-g the Risen Jesus said to Saul agar F Costello Sid I Apostle you I make you an apostle I send you out as an apostle and he was the apostle of course to the Gentiles and in 9 of Paul's 13 letters he begins Paul an apostle according to the will of God or according to the command of God so there is their personal appointment and authorization by Jesus secondly they had to have an eyewitness experience of Jesus Jesus appointed that well in order that they might be with him mark 3 verse 14 he gave them unrivaled opportunities to hear his words to see his works and then to bear witness to him to what they had seen and heard and he John's Gospel chapter 15 verse 27 jesus said in the upper room you also shall bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning so when Judas had to be replaced as the twelfth Apostle Peter made it clear the kind of qualifications he would need he would have said Peter to be one who has accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us in order that he might be with us a witness to the resurrection now Paul and James had not been witnesses to the to Christ during his public ministry that they had been witnesses of the Resurrection take Paul this because this is why Paul could still be an apostle although he hadn't companied with Jesus during the days of his public ministry 1st corinthians 9 verse 1 am I not an apostle says Paul have I not seen Jesus our Lord so he claims that on the Damascus Road he was granted a resurrection appearance and having seen Christ Jesus and become an eyewitness he could be an apostle or again 1st Corinthians 15 verse 8 last of all he's given a list you may remember of the different apostles last of all he appeared to me and I and the least of the Apostles so in both those verses he goes straight from being an apostle to having seen Jesus so that's the reason why we need to have the courage to say there are no apostles in the church today there is nobody at least who has the authority of the Apostle Paul or the Apostle Peter or the Apostle John of course there are bishops there are Archbishop's that are superintendents that are church planters the missionaries but they're not apostles we shouldn't call them apostles we could I think just give them the adjective and say they have an apostolic kind of ministry but I've said several times to my charismatic friends surely you don't believe do you that there is anybody in the church today with an authority comparable to the authority of Paul and Peter and John of course they say oh no no no of course not there is nobody with that authority so the Apostles the twelve had no successors because an essential qualification for the apostolate was to have seen the risen Lord to have had in a resurrection appearance so their personal appointment and authorization by Jesus they're what I witness experience of Jesus thirdly their extraordinary inspiration by the Holy Spirit we come now to the Upper Room discourse on the last evening of Jesus life on earth and he gave them on that occasion in the upper room two special promises which apply not to us but to the apostles who were gathered round him in the upper room the first promise was in John 14:26 he will remind you of everything that I have said to he being the Holy Spirit I've said many things to you and when he comes he will remind you of what I have said to you it's a reminding ministry and the second promise was John's Gospel 16 verses 12 and 13 I have much more to say to you Jesus confessed that his teaching ministry had been inadequate in the sense that he'd wanted to teach them must much more but they were so dumb so stupid that he couldn't tell them all he wanted to tell them but he said when the Holy Spirit comes he will lead you into all the truth in other words he would complete or fulfill the teaching ministry which I Jesus had not been able to fulfill now these two texts are regularly misapplied they are miss applied to us for example I have known Christians say well I got a bad memory but the Holy Spirit will remind me you'll have helped me in my scripture memorization well you could say that's a secondary or tertiary meaning but it's not what Jesus was talking about at the time and then again people take the other promise he will lead us into all the truth said the Pope uses that promise regularly that the the Holy Spirit has led him into the truth even beyond Scripture some liberals teach the same thing it's commonly misinterpreted but know these promises are made to the Apostles and we cannot change the you in the middle of the sentence who is this you to whom these two promises were made well listen carefully this is Jesus speaking all this I have spoken to you while still with you but when the Holy Spirit comes he will remind you of everything that I have said to you I have much more to say to you but you cannot bear it now but when he comes he will lead you at all I think it's seven or eight times the you is repeated so Jesus had indeed said many things to them but now the Holy Spirit would remind them of these things that they had learned from him again the Holy Spirit had much more to reveal to them but they couldn't take it at that point they had to wait for the spirit to come the Spirit would supplement or complete what Jesus had taught them so I hope we've got there's two promises clear in our minds in the first the spirit had a reminding ministry and in the second the Holy Spirit had a completing or supplementing ministry the first promise was fulfilled in the writing of the Gospels the second promise was fulfilled in the writing of the epistles now let me come on to what I said might be a fourth uniqueness in the Apostles and that is the ability to work miracles of course we must never restrict God and tell him when he's allowed to perform miracles or not nevertheless if we want to have a biblical understanding of miracles we must say that their major purpose has been to authenticate fresh stages of revelation one of which is the teaching of the Apostles so the Apostle Paul could say it's in 2nd Corinthians 12 verse 12 he says the signs of a true apostle we're worked among you in signs and wonders and mighty works the signs of a true apostle so paul says in his own teaching ministry as an apostle was authenticated by miracles well now we must move on from the four third uniqueness of the Apostles to the recognition of their uniqueness first by Christ himself where I've already quoted this Matthew 10:40 he who receives you receives me Jesus gave them his own authority so that if they listened to the Apostles they would be listening to Christ himself then secondly their uniqueness was recognized by the Apostles themselves they're self-conscious apostolic authority shrines out of their letters they did not write in the name of the church on the free they read to the churches in the name of Christ they required their letters to be read in the public assembly alongside the scriptures of the Old Testament said that the churches began to collect the Apostolic letters and have them read during the service of worship and Paul thanked God in 1st Thessalonians that when the Thessalonians had received his message they received it not as the word of men but as it is the Word of God now there is Paul sin claimed that his words were God's words equally surprising I think is in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3 where Paul wrote now I command you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you keep away from undisciplined brothers and so on and if anybody does not obey my instruction in this letter now we say to one another but who is this who is issuing commands and expecting obedience there is nobody in the church today with an authority comparable to that but Paul used that language and he believed that he had the authority of an apostle now I bring you now in Galatians 4 14 and 15 what in my own thinking is the most extraordinary of all as you know he read to the clerk to the Galatians as you know it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you we don't know what it was some people think he got malaria in the swamps of Pamphylia and when he got up the Taurus Mountains he was sick it had affected his eyesight and disfigured him so that he says to them if you could have done you would have given me your own eyes give me I transplant anyway my illness was a trial to you probably because it had disfigured him but you did not despise me in spite of that instead you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God and as if I were Christ Jesus himself now think of that it's a most astonishing thing he didn't rebuke them for thinking too highly of him no they were right to regard him as having the authority of Christ Jesus himself because they were Jesus apostles now we're his representatives his plenipotentiaries so the unique authority of the Apostles was recognized by the Apostles himself said Li it was recognized by the early church they believed that when the Apostolic age came to an end and the last apostle had died they moved into a new situation altogether and I think the best example of this is of a man called Bishop Ignatius dated usually by scholars at 110 ad and Bishop of Syrian Antioch he was condemned to death as a Christian and he was on his way from Antioch to Rome to be executed and on his way there because it took of course several weeks he wrote and he wrote seven letters which have survived to the Romans to the trillions to the smyrnaeans and others and this is what Bishop Ignatius wrote several times in his letters I do not issue you with commands like Peter or Paul for I am NOT an apostle but a condemned man now he was a bishop in the Church of God he was one of the first evidences of what we call them anarchical Episcopal that he said I'm not an apostle I don't have the authority of the Apostles I cannot command you as they do so in their early battles with heretics the Church Fathers liked Italian and our Aeneas appealed to the teaching of the Apostles and so did our tenacious in his refutation of the heretic arias so now I think we need to consider the New Testament canon and why it came to be settled it was not finalized until about the middle of the third century but the very fact that the early church closed the Canon and saw the need to close the Canon shows that he drew a clear line between the Apostolic age and the post-apostolic period the test of canonicity was a post olicity they asked themselves was this book written by an apostle if not and they went all of them Luke was not an apostle but he was a close companion of the Apostle Paul so if they came from the circle of the Apostles if they contained the teaching of the Apostles if the book was apostolic in one of these ways then it was accepted into the New Testament Canon I've nearly finished but I want I've got two other examples to share with you fourthly the Reformers the 16th century reformers well understood the uniqueness of the Apostles of the twelve here is a quote from Luther thus it's referring to the Sermon on the Mount thus Jesus subjects the whole world to the Apostles through whom alone it should and must be enlightened all the people in the world Kings princes lords learn it men wise men holy men all the people in the world have to sit down while the Apostles stand up they have to let themselves be accused and condemned in their wisdom and sanctity as men who know neither doctrine nor life in right relation to God well there is a whole world sitting down while the Apostles stand up to teach them and my fifth example comes from the contemporary church and surprisingly enough from the Anglican Church in the Lambeth conference of 1958 quite a long time ago the bishops produce really quite a good statement about Scripture and I want to quit this part of it to you the church is not over the Holy Scriptures but under them in the sense that the process of canonization was not one whereby the church conferred authority on the books but one whereby the church acknowledged them to possess authority and why the books were recognized as giving the witness of the Apostles to the life teaching death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the interpretation by the apostles of these events - listen to this - that apostolic Authority the church must ever bow so there is a need for the church to bow down before the authority of the Apostles so it's time to sum up and conclude firstly our Lord Jesus Christ repeatedly endorsed the authority of the Old Testament by peeling to it and by submitting to its authority himself and secondly our Lord Jesus Christ deliberately provided for the writing of the New Testament by pointing and equipping his apostles to speak and teach in his name thus versio Testament and the New Testament were there in different way they're the stem of his authority therefore if we wish to submit to the authority of Christ we must submit to the authority of Scripture if we wish to hear the voice of Christ we must listen to Scripture through which he speaks to the authority of Scripture carries with it the authority of Christ so the ultimate question before us tonight and the ultimate question before the whole church today is who is the Lord is the church the Lord's or Jesus Christ so that it has the Liberty to edit and manipulate his teaching or is Jesus Christ the lord of the church so that it must believe and obey Him and since Jesus Christ is Lord there should be no hesitation on our part about our answer to those questions [Music]

Channel: zondervan

Views: 79,308

Rating: 4.8193226 out of 5

Keywords: Authority of the Bible, john stott, Interpretation, christian life, small group, bible study

Id: F3b17TGbzDA

Length: 52min 47sec (3167 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2013