The Doctrine of the Word (Week 2)

oh lord how many are my foes many are rising against [Music] there is no salvation in your god i cried out to you and you [Music] there is salvation in your god salvation to you [Music] you strike my enemies on the cheek the wicked broken salvation belongs to you i lay down and slept and i rose again for you kept me i will not be afraid of thousands who have said against me i lay down and slept and i rose again for you kept me i will not be afraid of thousands who have said against me there is salvation in our god for there is salvation in our gods [Music] salvation [Music] salvation [Music] okay good evening everybody how are we man yeah i think uh we didn't scare you all off last week so that's good we're just gonna keep on going with this actually i've been really encouraged by uh the feedback that we've had and i think i said this last week but i just love this church and love the the heart that you all have to get into god's word and um think about really deep thoughts like it matters you know this isn't just a passing curiosity this is something that we're uh really yeah that that really matters for us and for our faith and our obedience and so thank you all for being here um i was also encouraged by how many people watched online and so i'm really grateful for all of you who uh will be watching this online let me just say to those of you if you can't be here in person i know i am giving out handouts i'm going to make physical copies of those available at the connection center when you walk in on sunday mornings so you can come and you can pick up hard copies of notes all of you here you should have grabbed notes on your way in just with some definitions and quotes and then your reading for this week so let me just ask about that get a little bit of audience participation in here anybody get to do that reading that i sent you home with last week yeah any thoughts on that i see nods yeah nods yeah yeah you should always nod about al mohler it's just a good rule if he says something you say okay i don't understand what you're saying but i'm nodding that's that's good anything uh well obviously did anybody meet with anybody else and talk about it all right there's one there you go good for you uh yeah this remember we don't do theology by ourselves so if you can take time to get into those extra readings with other people i think that will be really beneficial but i thought that was just such a good good note to start with actually the one of the versions of the holman christian standard bible they had essays from different pastors and theologians and they started with an excerpt from that essay so the very first thing you saw when you opened up the bible was that essay from dr mohler because this idea of god disclosing himself is the foundation for everything that we believe for our whole worldview as christians that we have a god francis schaefer said it that he is there and he's not silent and that is the basis for everything that we believe well this week your reading is a an important modern historical if that makes sense a theological document so it's from 1978 but this is going to be a document that we're looking at for probably centuries to come it's called the chicago statement on biblical inerrancy and what this was was it was a group of about 200 leaders of various denominational persuasions coming together in chicago in the year 1978 and they came up with this uh very very thorough document outlining what it is that conservative christians actually believe about the inerrancy of the bible so this was at a time in the 70s where it was just being really threatened by liberalism which was just more and more ascendant this idea that the bible maybe was not fully without errors that it had human misunderstandings in there somehow or it wasn't maybe as authoritative as we thought it was or its authority came from some other means and so this was 200 men they got together for three days and they came up with just a stellar statement about what it is that true christians believe about the bible and inerrancy and so you have that there uh especially the preface and the uh i think it's the the introduction whatever they call the introduction really really good but even all the little statements and we're going to look at some of those specifically tonight but this would just be really good for you to be familiar with it's a great statement about what we believe and uh that doesn't have the signatories on it but if you got online you can find it and it was i mean rc sprole john mcarthur norm geisler j.i packer i mean all of these guys that are still just just giants of the faith and then they were all affirming to this wonderful statement about what we believe so go and read that i hope you're blessed by it it's going to unpack a lot more of what we're talking about tonight and bringing up some of those names it helps me to remember to talk about this stack of books that i had sitting here last week that i didn't actually talk about because i didn't have it in my notes i have it in my notes tonight so i just want to show you some of these books not to drew drew saw these earlier and he was like man that is like the most show-off-y thing that you could ever do is bring the stack of books i have not read every word in all these books okay i'm just trying to give you some resources because many of you have even been emailing me and asking what are what are some books or some things that we can read along with so i wanted to bring a stack because one i don't think there's one theology book one systematic theology book that's perfect and we're going to get into that tonight because we are not perfect people we're not perfect interpreters of this perfect bible and so we're going to come to some different interpretations different conclusions about non-essential things and so it's good to read a diversity of different different authors and and thinkers on these topics and so i brought a stack but then i also brought a stack because i wanted to kind of give you all some different levels depending on where you feel like you're at in this process of reading and engaging in theology so maybe you're very new to the christian faith even and you're like i feel like i just have some fundamental questions and i don't need to go into you know infra-lab syrianism and stuff like that like i just want to know you know how do we know the bible's the word of god that's great so let me just run through these really quickly um so first starting at the the littlest level is this which is called the new city catechism this is by tim and kathy keller and it's a catechism so if you don't know what the catechism is it's just a question and answer kind of format for instructing children so we use this in my family to instruct our children and what i really like about this one one it is uh it's reformed but beyond that it doesn't get into specifics that might divide you know tim keller's a presbyterian i'm not but there's nothing in here that i really disagree with so it's a good reformed theology but it's very very simple for little kids and what i really like about it is there's an app that you can download on your phone that has songs for all the questions and they're annoying songs but they're very memorable and we just sing the song with right now my daughter um we just sing these songs every week and so it's funny the one that we're on let me just read it to you where is it okay so what happens after death to those not united to christ by faith the answer is they will be cast out from the presence of god into hell to be justly punished forever and so my daughter sings the use but what's funny is the tune to this song is way too happy to be singing about people being cast out into hell and justly punished forever but you can ask my daughter what happens after death those well you know i have to sing it to her but then she'll answer they'll be cast out cast out from the presence of god so really cool and i actually have this one to give away so anybody have kids or grandkids and they would like this copy of this book is that lillian i can't see it's bright okay come grab this from me afterwards okay so we'll start with that one another one for little kiddos this is by marty mikowski this is called theology so it's a little bigger but it's first kids still it goes through different doctrines and it is written it's got what i like about this one is it's got really great illustrations but then it's just very faithful but it covers i mean there's like 60 different theological concepts written for little kids and that another one this one just gets a little older but still for young people this is called emblems of the infinite king by ryan lister he's a professor at western and then it was illustrated by anthony benedetto and you guys know i went to art school i actually went to graphic design school and this one just has beautiful design in there so it's a really pretty book but what is also cool about this one is it's a bit more of like a story kind of in the way that it's written but it's explaining theological truths in story form so those are good ones and you can come and ask me about these later but i'm just going to kind of give you a flyby so this is the next one christian beliefs 20 basics every christian should know this is by wayne grudem so what's cool about this is we have this book by wayne grudem then we have this one called bible doctrine by wayne grudem and then we have this one called systematic theology by wayne grudem this is like a thousand pages then they shortened it to like 500 pages and then they shortened it again to about 150 pages so if you want to start with a good i think this one in particular i don't agree with everything wayne grudem says and the bigger books but in this one i haven't found anything that i object to really helpful i take college students through this it's really really good if you're trying to walk somebody else through the basics of the christian faith another good one in that same category this is by j.i packer it's called concise theology so this has i don't know dozens of different doctrines that he goes through and packer is just a beautiful thinker it's really really helpful another one in that same category essential truths of the christian faith by r.c sproul so those are some kind of if you're saying okay i'm an adult i want to get into some entry entry-level theology these would be some really good places to start another good place to start is this i talked about this last week knowing god by j.i packer so this is less he would even say that he didn't really set out to do this in a particularly orderly arrangement remember we said that last week systematic theology is the orderly arrangement of topics this really started more as a series of lectures on different thoughts about god so there's things that he left out that he didn't talk about but the things that he did talk about in this are just wonderful so knowing god it's a classic you should get into that now let me get into a little bit of some meteor stuff so i talked about herman bovink last time i should start the other way herman bobink was a dutch reformed theologian so reformed theologian one of the just most brilliant theologians i think that we've ever had in the church and he came at such a crucial time because he came right at the height of theological liberalism and modernism as it was getting started in europe and he just engaged with schleiermucker he engaged with hegel he engaged with these these main uh non-christian thinkers at the time whose ideas have continued to influence the whole world and he engaged with them so poignantly and so thoughtfully and he just espoused this amazing understanding of uh reformed theology and why it matters and if you're not familiar with just the whole dutch reform movement it's it's incredible so he wrote a really big four volume so this is just one of four called reform dogmatics that he did so this is this is big level stuff but then there's this that just came out recently called the wonderful works of god which is um kind of a condensed take on all of these things so this is what i love too about bothering because he he's just a beautiful writer it's in dutch i'm sure it's just as good but when they translate it into english it's just it's just beautiful so i would really commend this to you if you're if you're saying okay i kind of get the basics i want to jump into some meteor stuff start with bob inc would just fill your soul i'm just i i worship every time i read bobbing or another good place to start if you're trying to go a little deeper this just came out this is called essential christian doctrine so if any of you guys are uh john mcarthur fans or uh what's the school called masters masters seminary um this is by a bunch of guys at the master's seminary so this is kind of a textbook that they would use at the master seminary macarthur edited it i don't agree with everything that john macarthur ever said i don't agree with everything wayne gruden ever said i particularly don't agree with john mcarthur's eschatology so i would just say don't read the last chapter in this book but but actually i would say if you want a really good explanation of what john macarthur believes about eschatology read the last chapter in this book and then let's get coffee and talk about why i don't agree with john mcarthur but no every i mean i love this book i cite this book a lot uh in the stuff that we're talking about tonight and then i already mentioned grudom uh bible doctrine this is the shorter version of his systematic theology and then let's get to the big boy and then we'll get into stuff tonight but uh this this is actually the second edition of systematic theology by wayne grudem and this is um again you're not gonna agree with everything in this but if you're trying to find really what this is more than something you sit down and read all the way through is this is a really good reference to have so i think it's on sale if you go to christian books distributors they've got this on sale for a pretty good price but what i love about so this has a special place in my heart because when i first became a christian my pastor said you should get a copy of wayne green systematic theology and you should study it and so that's what i did as i got this and i would just sit down and i would read this and there was the way that he explains things it's very thorough it's very expansive he brings in all of the other views but then he does a really charitable job of saying this is why i think this is the right position to take on this and so i feel like i even learned about positions that i would not ultimately end up taking because he does such a fair job of explaining those other positions but this is great if you've got a question he's got a whole chapter we're going to talk about different attributes of scripture tonight and he's got a whole chapter on like every one of them so really really good resource but if you want something a little shorter he's got bible doctrine on and on so these are ones that i would recommend to you some of these we have for sale in the book nook out there if not let me know you can always borrow my copies as long as you bring them back but any any questions about any of those resources any other resources you wanna an opinion on at this point okay so um those are just a good like i said some of those are good to sit down and read all the way through i think you'll be very blessed by that some of them are great resources that i'm very glad that i have quick access to so hopefully that's helpful for you so um as we get started tonight let me do this i'm actually going to read from the ology one little part in the topic about what we're studying tonight which is the doctrine of the bible or what's called bibliology so this is number 68 in his book it's called god talks to you and you talk to god it says think of your best friend how did you get to know this friend most likely you talked to her and she talked to you and gradually you came to know each other well this is how it is with god god talks to us through his word the bible and we talk to god by praying of course god already knows everything about us but everything we need to know about god we can find out by reading his word what's more the holy spirit uses the words in the bible to speak to us he shows us how much we need jesus he comforts us when we are sad he reminds us that because of jesus death we can be forgiven for our sins and become god's dearly loved child the holy spirit uses the bible to teach us how to live for god let's pray god we do thank you for that that you talk to us and because of that we can have a friendship with you we can have a relationship with you and not just as a friend but as a bride to her husband and as a child to their father that we are in a relationship with you and you are not silent and so lord i pray we ask we talk to you right now and we ask that you would please speak to us again tonight that you would help us to think rightly about your word and that we would all be encouraged not to just say that we know more but that lord we would we would love you more that we would hear from you more that we would grow in our fellowship with you by your holy spirit in jesus name we ask amen amen so on this idea of having a relationship with god that wikowski talks about that we have a friend if we imagine we have a friend the way we became friends was by talking to one another this was the big idea of what we looked at last week that god speaks and that god speaks in a general way and then he speaks in a special way and so we can ask again well how does god speak to us or what does it mean that god speaks to us and i want to begin by looking at this verse in the book of amos chapter 4 verse 13 amos writes for behold he who forms the mountains and creates the wind and declares to man what is his thought who makes the morning darkness and threat dreads on the heights of the earth the lord the god of hosts is his name that little phrase right there in the middle of this is just so important god declares to man what is his thought we used to teach little kids in our old church and this was the first memory verse that we would always give to them but we would shorten it we would just say the lord declares his thoughts to man and we have the kids repeat that because again if you can have that idea that god speaks god declares his thoughts this changes everything the god of the universe who made us and who has authority over us he speaks and so then we ask well how does god speak and if you were to look earlier in the book of amos in chapter 3 verses 7 and 8 he says this the lord god does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets the lion has roared who will not fear the lord god has spoken who can but prophesy so the lord does nothing without revealing his secrets to the prophets and this is one of the big ideas that was going to really build on what we're talking about tonight that that the primary way we talked about all of the different ways that god speaks last week especially in special ways that he will just directly address people with his own voice he'll give them visions or dreams but the primary way and i don't know why this is this is just god's divine wisdom the primary way that god speaks to us is through other people we have to get used to that the primary way that god speaks is through other people and amos says that that god speaks through the prophets and we say we don't know why but i think exodus 20 might give us some kind of clue so you remember this now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking the people were afraid and trembled and they stood far off and said to moses you speak to us and we will listen but do not let god speak to us lest we die so they were hearing god's public address and i don't know if you've ever wanted that like man i wouldn't would it would be so cool if i could just hear god speaking to me audibly from you know the ceiling in my room or something well israel had god speaking to them audibly and they were so afraid that it would kill them that they asked that moses would go as an intermediary that he would go and god would speak to moses and moses would speak god's word to the people so they actually asked god to speak to them through an intermediary through a person but that's what a prophet is we saw this again last week that the prophet a prophet is somebody that god uses their mouth as the box that's speaking what god wants to say so their words are god's words and and as we said last week that what these prophets early on began to do even in the the book of exodus and the torah is that they would write down the words that god said and this created a culture but also a norm that god would use not just the spoken words of these prophets but the written words the things that they write down and that it became regarded those written words became regarded to have the same authority that the prophet's own words out of his mouth would have had which would have had the same authority as god speaking audibly and so early on we get what we call scripture this holy writing that was revered and treated like it was the very word of god so it's not a metaphor it's not an exaggeration when we hold up the bible and we say this is the word of god we think that there's a couple of steps in that process but this is in fact god himself speaking yeah that's a really good question the sound of the trumpet um yeah so it probably so this is actually what is the sound of the trumpet in the book of exodus when they're at sinai it just says that there's really really loud noises happening it might be you know so you think of sinai is kind of the veil being pulled back a little bit in the heavenly reality manifesting itself which which they couldn't see which they weren't privy to but since god is there this is kind of this manifestation of the very very presence of god and when we see glimpses of heaven a lot of times there's music and there's loud noises there's quakes and and peels of thunder and so it's probably some kind of whether it was actually a trumpet being played you know by angels in there or it was just that was the best way that they had of describing this crazy noise that they were hearing on top of the mountain but regardless it scared them right it was it was a lot but that's just to say this is the the unfiltered unm remember we talked about the media and the immediate this is the immediate presence of god and they say we want a mediator because this is this is too much for us in our in our human form yeah so um what we're talking about then is when we're going to the bible we're saying these are the words of god and then we have lots of attributes that we ascribe to the scripture so that we can help we can rightly think about how this is the word of god and how we ought to not not just relate to god okay everything that we're going to talk about comes ultimately from god but but how do we relate to god through this written word how do we think about that so what we're going to do tonight is i'm going to give us eight eight attributes of scripture okay and we're gonna go through these all matter for us these are words that may be new to you but they're words that you need to just put in your pocket that you need to know okay so we're gonna have eight attributes and then as we're kind of gonna go through this i'm gonna engage a little bit with some um arguments that people will raise against the scriptures and against these different attributes so kind of common objections and so we will go through that tonight so eight attributes and we'll see how quickly we can get through these so the first is this word inspiration inspiration and here's a definition inspiration is the special activity of god the holy spirit acting in and through the various biblical authors to produce a perfect revelation of himself in written form contained in the 66 books of the bible so you should have that definition written down in your handout but inspiration is an act of the holy spirit acting in and through the biblical authors to produce a perfect written revelation of himself now if you're interested we actually believe in a more specific definition of inspiration or we'll add two more attributes to our attribute of inspiration which is that we believe in verbal plenary inspiration so what verbal means is that the influence of the holy spirit extends to the very choice of words and grammar of the bible so we don't just believe that the bible is inspired that god the holy spirit is speaking through the ideas in scripture that he's not just giving us general principles through scripture but no it's every word the way that every single word is written the grammar that's used the the the choice that this author made of this word and not this word all of that is inspired by the holy spirit every single word and we say plenary plenary inspiration plenary means all of it okay the whole the whole thing plenary is characteristic of every part and kind of literature found in the bible to historical works like genesis just as much as to doctrinal treatises like romans so this this is helpful for us because you can think of some parts in the bible where it's like thus saith the lord and then blah blah blah right that the prophet would say this is exactly what the lord said but then you have other places like genesis or chronicles or even the gospels that don't always have the words that god is saying but they're recording history they're recording the acts of god or they're recording the the different thoughts of different you know really philosophers almost like the book of ecclesiastes okay but we would say that even those parts even though it's not directly the verbatim word of god that that too is because it is in the 66 books of scripture that too is the inspired word of god so as i said inspiration is an act of the holy spirit so zechariah says hear the law and the words that the lord of hosts has sent by his spirit through his former prophets okay so this is the spirit working through these prophets and paul will say as much this is where we get the idea of inspiration this word inspiration which i'll explain a little bit more in a second paul writes this this is we're going to look at these verses or parts of them several times tonight the apostle paul writes this to timothy what's that uh sorry essential christian doctrine the john the johnny mack one that's ecd i got lazy this is a lot of work putting those all together essential christian doctrine so this is second timothy chapter three but as for you continuing in what you have learned and have firmly believed knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in christ jesus so he's talking about the old testament he's talking about the bible the sacred writings and then he says this all scripture is breathed out by god and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction for training and righteousness that the man of god may be complete equipped for every good work all scripture is breathed out by god so the word inspiration is like respiration it's the same it's the it has to do with breathing with breath inspiration is the spirit breathing in through so when paul says all scripture is breathed out by god he actually came up with a word he which you can do a little bit more in greek but he came up with this word fey up nustas it's breathe that's god breathed he put this word together so so this is saying that all of the scriptures the things that were written even though they were written by people by men that it was really god's own word his own breath coming out through those writers the apostle peter makes this really clear in second peter chapter one we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts knowing this first of all that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man but men spoke from god as they were carried along by the holy spirit so we have to start here this is the basis that we would say that the scripture is inspired by god it is god's word because god sovereignly worked through the human biblical authors to write down every word down to the grammar of everything that god wanted contained in his perfect written revelation of himself so it helps me to kind of think about this i meant to grab a pen and i forgot so my illustration is totally ruined sorry guys no uh yeah deb give me a pen you got a pen or is that a pencil oh no it'll work fine thank give it give a hand for deb sanderson everybody thank you okay it really isn't that important i'm just being silly um so here's a pencil okay and if i were to write something right here with my pencil none of us would say as we came along that wow look at what that pencil wrote would we no because what the pencil is an instrument it's a tool that i used to write god stands in the same relationship to the biblical authors to the men that actually wrote down the words of this bible okay and assuming they had pins god was working through their hands with their pens to write exactly what god wanted them to write but it's actually cooler than that because we don't believe that the biblical writers just kind of like turned into robots or that somehow god was just what's called dictation that god was just telling them exactly what to write but no it was more it was more sovereign than that it was more supernatural than that that god was actually inspiring them from within coming through them and so as they were writing they were writing what they genuinely saw what they genuinely believed what they genuinely thought about god but god was super intending everything that they were writing so this is a pencil it's a pink pencil but the lead that comes out it's just green i'm sure this is a number two pencil so it's a little dark i could have used you know a number four pencil and then it would have been darker or you know i went to art school so you guys don't know that there's different kinds of pencils that there are okay or i could use a pen i could use a black pen i could use a blue pen i could use an ink what are those kinds called the the ritzy kind you know where i could just use a ballpoint pen okay but there's different kinds of pins and every pen looks a little different they're idiosyncratic in their own little way well so it is with the bible so this is what's so cool about it the bible was written by somewhere between 30 and 40 different men writing the different books of the bible and they were all a little different they were at different points in history they spoke different languages many of them that wrote in the old testament they were most of them were writing in hebrew or a few in aramaic all the ones that were writing in the new testament they were writing in greek some were smarter than others so maybe you didn't know this when you're learning greek the new testament actually kind of works like a graded reader so like a little kid book so john and first john is very very easy to read because john was just an ordinary fisherman guy right and so you read that he uses really simple words simple short sentences it's very easy to understand luke was a physician and i still can't read luke in greek because it's really really hard it's really complex and it's very confusing the way that he writes he uses really big words that i have to look up in a dictionary so they are all kind of different and so god is using these different authors but in every way he is sovereignly writing down exactly what he wants them to write and so we would say that the people writing the book are just tools like a pencil and god is the one writing through them and that's what we call inspiration so what they were writing is exactly what god wanted written down but it has all of the human flavor of the different people that wrote it including their their own perspectives about the time the place and the the things that they were in so questions about how inspiration works exactly well i can't tell you exactly how it works but uh questions about sort of what we covered and can i give you your pencil back i put the lead away so you don't get poked in the eye yeah good catch oh i'm sorry dad that was all you yeah okay yeah no that's uh so she asked given down to the the words and the grammar how do we explain different translations yeah that's that's a great question and something that maybe you'll engage with you'll hear people say is actually you know i don't trust the bible because it's just translations of translations of translations have you actually you know you've heard somebody say that or they say it's just copies of copies of copies of copies and what they're implying is it's sort of like uh like the game of telephone right you ever play telephone when you're a little kid and you all go around and you're whispering the thing by the time it gets all the way around to the end it doesn't sound anything like what it started out saying and so they're sort of saying you can't trust the bible because well that's not true at all and if somebody says that you can just say that's not true at all that what maybe what maybe they mean the worst case scenario is that somebody has a bible that was written in hebrew and greek and that was translated into latin which it was um when did he do that brett you know that i thought like 400. it was translated into latin the latin text kind of became a authoritative one for the especially the roman catholic church and then they translated it into english so you have greek to latin to english okay so it's not all the way around the room that's just you know translation of the translation but actually what pretty much everybody does now is starting with the reformation we went back to the original languages and so the hebrew and the greek and so that's why when i went to seminary i had to learn hebrew and greek so that i can do this and one of the things that i will say is these english versions that we have are really really faithful to the original languages so when we're trying to bring those things across we would say that and this is actually in the chicago statement that a translation sufficiently sufficiently brings across the meaning of the original grammar that you can understand that without problem as the word of god so none of those grammar things are significant enough that it changes like a major doctrine or any essential truth that we believe so but if that really bugs you you should learn greek yeah do we have a question well that's right and that's actually the problem with every language that there are things in english that work the same way that and that's right so yeah so a good so like uh this is an english standard version which is really really faithful to the original text the problem with that is greek and english or not or hebrew are not really always similar to each other so when you're sticking really closely to the original language and trying to write it in english it sounds like funny english i don't know if you've ever thought you read the esv and you're like this is just kind of weird the way that they said that so there's other translations the niv is really faithful but they make it and more normal to understand english the csb the christian standard bible is quickly becoming my new favorite translation because it's kind of a happy medium in there but but yeah you need to you need to maybe read different versions if there's something in there that's kind of puzzling you ryan did that on sunday uh it was either this sunday or the last sunday where he kind of read that there were different it was the the pharisee in the tax collector is it he's praying off by himself or he's praying to himself you know and so do a little bit of of study in that but a really good so like the esv if you ever look at the bottom there's those footnotes and they will always tell you hey this could also be this right so they always say like in that because sometimes greek and hebrew they do this all the time where they do like funny plays on words that you can't bring across in english but they'll tell you what the different meaning is and i would just say if that if that kind of bothers you a little bit start paying attention to those and pay attention to if there's anything that really matters that's called into question by those footnotes there isn't right there's going to be little things and sometimes it'll say some manuscripts or some of the oldest copies that we have of this might disagree a little bit but it's always going to disagree on like something pretty minor there's no major biblical doctrine that we believe that you can't get to out of a faithful english translation of the bible yeah brett did yeah yep yep yeah so he was saying that even the greek authors sometimes will use the greek translation of the old testament to so they were even familiar with the translation so and one of the things i think this is this is super cool we're never going to get through tonight this is i can already tell which is great um that hebrew i love this this is this is one of those things where i'm just like wow this is the word of god um hebrew hebrew poetry doesn't rhyme the way that like shakespeare rhymes when he's you know using or like a song rhymes hebrew poetry doesn't rhyme the sound at the end hebrew poetry rhymes the idea so like you guys are any ladies do the psalms class today go to the psalms class today a few of you you guys are having a full day good for you so a psalm is couplets and so it'll have one line and then another line that are interacting with each other those lines don't rhyme and sound but they rhyme an idea that's how the hebrews did poetry and what's the cool thing about something that rhymes an idea it's translatable so you can get the same beauty of hebrew poetry in english that you can in hebrew because they're not trying to play off the sounds they're trying to play off the the ideas and so there are really that's why lots of people have done really really faithful work to translate the bible so that we can from the original manuscripts and some of our manuscripts go back to the second century so that's a number with a one in front of it so some people would even say that uh some of the manuscripts that we have physical copies of may just be a copy of the original that the the authors wrote so really faithful really trustworthy and then we can get into those those different ideas so great question i don't know if that was all that you wanted from that but that was a really great great question any other questions inspiration okay well kind of tying into that this does raise the question what how do we know what books are actually inspired by god right because the people have got people of god have been writing lots of books but only these 66 we say were inspired by god so these other things that people wrote may be good may be helpful but they were not scripture because they were not the word of god so they don't belong in this book maybe you have heard that different people want to say different things belong in this book or how that process came about well i can't go into all of that tonight but i do want to tell you about one more book this is called why trust the bible by greg gilbert and look at this one's a little one okay so this is like on top of this deck um but this is an awesome book it has a whole question about this of what we call uh canonicity okay so canon refers to the rule or standard so we say with a canon of scripture it's a word that literally means it was a measuring stick like a measuring rod and it refers to what is the standard of the books that go in here and he's got a great chapter in that about how did we come to have these 66 books and not other books that could have that some people thought should have or think today should have been put into the bible so how did we get to these books well let me just say really briefly that by the time you get to the new testament and you're reading jesus and the apostles they were already dead set on the 39 books that belonged in the old testament they didn't have any question about the hebrew scriptures and what was the word of god and what wasn't what came from real prophets and what didn't so by the time jesus is around they're not even asking those questions so they so we're certain those books in the old testament those are uh the inspired word of god but even in that period in between the old testament and the new testament god's people were writing other books and they were writing books in greek and those books were really helpful anybody like reading c.s lewis okay i love reading cs list c.s lewis is not the inspired word of god right but i wouldn't say because of that you should never read cs lewis right i would say you should read c.s lewis differently than you read genesis but that could be a helpful book for you and so the people of god were always writing books and they had some really helpful books that they wrote called that we now refer to as the apocrypha and so in the those hebrew texts a lot of times they would have the hebrew bible the 39 books of the old testament and then they would stick those apocryphal books in there and they were very clear this is not the word of god but this is really helpful and so we're just going to stick this in here it's kind of like i'm coming here with this recommendation of these other books like this is not the word of god but this is really helpful well they did that with books like the book of first and second maccabees or tobit or the wisdom of solomon okay so they said these are really helpful books not scripture but helpful books but when you read the new testament the new testament authors are never citing those apocryphal books like their scripture why am i hitting on that so much well unfortunately much much later in the history of the church the roman catholic church started treating those books with um more authority than we would want to give them so if you've ever if anybody's raised catholic and you've got your bible and you read it you're going gonna see wow those protestants left out a bunch of books okay that that we don't have in there well no that's not it we're just saying those books are not the word of god and i and i still think today that the roman catholics wouldn't actually say it they say it's deutero-canonical so it's like different different category but they do give it more authority than we would give to it so that being said if you haven't read any of those apocryphal books they're wonderful they're really really interesting they're they're not inherent as we'll get into that but anyway then by the time we get to the new testament the writer there are writers writing gospel accounts and then they're writing epistles okay so the apostles writing letters to each other and this is uh where we said so we saw this last time paul peter says in ii peter that the apostle paul has written things that are hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures so peter referred to the writings of the apostle paul as scripture i think because these were all jewish people they had an understanding of what old testament prophets were and did and they knew that they had been given that apostolic and prophetic office by jesus that when they were writing they knew they were writing scripture and peter acknowledged paul's writing as scripture so even in the new testament they had this idea that they were adding to the word of god and that was right that was good they were doing that but then it stopped and so even if you read the book of revelation one of the last things that says is cursed be anyone who adds any of anything else to this book yes ma'am yeah yeah yeah so there's a lot of debate about so when she so she's saying what about the places where the apostle paul says uh not i but the lord and i think it's just one place that that happens uh in first corinthians seven is that i can't remember but but paul says uh i tell you this not i but the lord or not the lord but i and and so what is that so are we saying actually that little part of scripture not scripture because paul's saying that didn't come from jesus that came from me i don't think that that's what he's actually saying is what he's saying is i'm at first what i was giving you was some things that came from the oral tradition of jesus okay so this is something that paul heard from some of the other apostles that jesus actually said this because remember paul wasn't following with jesus during his earthly ministry he believed after jesus was resurrected and so paul didn't have all of the teachings of jesus so he was getting that from guys like peter and guys like um uh you know luke or these other people that had some of that other teaching that were maybe a little bit closer to the story so paul can sometimes say now this i'm giving to you because jesus himself said this and then other places saying i'm giving this to you as a prophet myself okay so this isn't something that jesus said that i'm quoting to you this is something that as an apostle i'm telling you but because he's an apostle it also comes with the weight of the word of god so it's just this is either verbatim something jesus said or this is something that i'm saying but i'm a prophet so this is scripture too does that make sense but that was the idea that they had that all of the apostles were writing prophets just like isaiah was just like moses was and they were writing scripture and then they were done and they had this list of books that they started compiling very early together these are the apostolic writings and these are the um really the most important thing and this is this is good for us to hear the most esteemed new testament writings early on were actually the gospels and so we can kind of like uh the epistles the writings of paul especially because of the way he talks in the way that he thinks but they there's a reason that the gospels come first so the gospels were really esteemed and then they had these apostolic letters that helped unpack and under explain the teaching of jesus and they would put these together in books and that was what became the new testament so there are people today who want to kind of paint the picture that the new testament books especially that were put together and even the gospels that are included in the new testament that there was some like shady political process where certain people in power were in backfilled near smoke-filled back rooms trying to kind of decide what books were most advantageous for them to include in the new testament and which ones to leave out to suit their purposes and so that was a very shady political process for what books were included in the new testament and what weren't so if you remember the da vinci code i know it's been a while since the da vinci code but this was the whole argument of the da vinci code was that there was a council where they left out all of the books that talked about jesus having a wife because christians hate women that was kind of the big idea of the da vinci code christians hate women and so they left out all of the books from the new testament that didn't serve their misogynistic purposes and that again couldn't be farther from the truth for how the whole process came together we can't again greg gilbert's book what why trust the bible he gets into this really well as well but let's just look at this these are four main ideas that all of the books in the new testament have together that that these attributes that they have that helped the church the church didn't even decide really which books to put in the bible and which ones which ones not to put in the bible they just received the authoritative books of the bible because they had these four qualities so apostolicity which means it came from an apostle or somebody who was adjacent to the apostles okay so like mark was an assistant to peter and so you can really think the gospel of mark is really peter's telling of what happened there so this is either an apostle or an apostle adjacent person antiquity so these books came early right so within the first century so the book of revelation was written in the 90s and that was the last one written and so they recognized these books were all written early and all the other books books that you might hear like the gospel of thomas or the gospel of peter they were all written in like the ones and two hundreds okay so all of our books in the new testament were written early consistency so they all are consistent with one another they all teach the same truths and so like if you read the gospel of thomas which is so funny again because that's the one that everybody says like oh they left that out because they hate women jesus actually says in the gospel of thomas that because mary believes she will become a man because only men can go into heaven and that's inconsistent with everything else in the new testament and so when the early church saw and somebody came and they said oh yeah this was written by thomas they say well no it wasn't because this is new and thomas died a long time ago and this says that women can't go to heaven and we know that that's not true so this is not bible and they said not inspired we're just going to not even consider that as a book and then lastly universality so it was accepted by the broad range of the church so again we need to move on but that is here's the conclusion the books and this the 66 books in the protestant bible this is the inspired word of god anything else that somebody says they left out they're wrong it is not the inspired word of god this is the inspired word of god okay any other questions about that before we go to the next one all right we're gonna pick up the pace a little bit so attribute number two inerrancy inerrancy inerrancy means without error and this is a definition and the errancy is the idea that scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact so there is nothing wrong in the bible the bible doesn't contradict itself it doesn't say things that are inaccurate historically it doesn't say anything that's inaccurate scientifically okay the bibles are the the bible is in erin it's without error and you'll see that it says in the original manuscripts and so again that's saying that when the original authors wrote those words now what we do have are copies of those words but you have to remember they didn't have fax machines back in the early i don't know i said a fax machine who has effect they don't have scanners they don't have cameras they don't have you know so but the scribes that they had that would make these copies were really really well trained and so this was this was their business and so they did this really well they made really good copies the copies that we have are very trustworthy but we believe that the only actually inspired thing was the original writings and then what we have are faithful copies that then are inspired through through that but what i was saying is sometimes the reason that we stress that is because sometimes those scribes made little errors does that make sense they made little like you ever you know you're right you're you know in class and chase is talking too fast and you're trying to write down what he said and you like leave a word out and you come back to your notes and you read it and like why did i leave that word out where did that get you know but you know what you were trying to say and you just kind of skipped that does happen with some of the manuscripts that we have but again none of the important that doesn't call into question anything that's important and a good translation of the bible will tell you if there's a little bit of a question with the manuscripts there this is from the chicago statement we affirm that inspiration strictly speaking applies only to the autographic text of scripture so the original copy which in the providence of god can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy we further affirm that the copies and translations of scripture are the word of god to the extent that they faithfully represent the original does that make sense so the original was inspired but to the extent that these were copied faithfully we can trust that that is the word of god that he intended for us to have and we can be assured that the copies that we have and the translations that we have are faithful here's another important aspect in this so this is also from the chicago statement we further deny so when you read the chicago statement you'll see that's how it's structured an affirmation and a denial an affirmation in that denial we further deny that inerrancy is negated by biblical phenomena such as and i'm going to go through each one of these kind of slowly a lack of modern technical precision so i remember talking to a college student one time and he was saying i don't believe that the bible is the word of god i said well why not he says well in the book of kings they're talking about how solomon made his basin it was this big round water thing and they give the measurements for how far it is around and they give the measurements for how far it is across and if you do the math it doesn't equal pi and he was dead serious and i you know obviously he had lots of other reasons and he just didn't want to believe that the bible was the word of god but the the ancients were using their arm length as a measurement you know so we don't need to call into question the fact that that didn't quite equal pi because they are not using the same kind of technical precision that we are so we don't we don't think that when we have issues like that that do come up in the bible that that calls into question the inerrancy of the bible nor irregularities of grammar or spelling so remember i said some of these guys were smarter than others and so sometimes they would write things in kind of a funny sometimes they would even say things the wrong way right but you know what they're saying it's not an error in the bible observational descriptions of nature doesn't call into question inerrancy so what this is is like in the psalms it says the sun rises and runs its course across the sky but we smart modern people know that it's actually the earth that's moving the sun stands still and the earth revolves around the sun but they were saying the sun ran across the sky can't trust the bible because that's not scientifically accurate well no that's how you said the sun rises and the sun sets we still talk like that okay we're just describing nature so that's not an error in the bible reporting falsehoods this is still from this definition so satan lies and his lies are recorded in the bible the fact that he's saying a lie does not mean that god's word is itself lying to us that is recording what somebody said and these are all things it's kind of that you know there's a name for every rule okay these are all things that people bring up the use of hyperbole and round numbers okay just because they're rounding up that doesn't mean that it's an error in the bible we do that too the topical arrangement of material does not call into question the inerrancy of the bible so if you read the gospels the synoptic gospels will have jesus overturning the tables in the temple at the end john puts it at the beginning okay but that's not because they're trying to give a chronological description of what happened and that they're in disagreement with each other that there's an error no we know that john was intentionally putting that for a topical reason that he was putting that first variant selections of material in parallel accounts so that means is uh i can't remember which which one it is one of the gospels says that when they get to the tomb there's an angel there and then i believe it's john says there's two angels in the tomb so is the bible in contradiction is the bible does the bible have errors can we not trust it no it just means that as they are giving different accounts they're focusing in so it would not be inaccurate for me to say there's a guy in this room but i could also be really specific and say there's like 30 people in this room okay neither of those would be untrue i'm just giving you a different account of it based on different observations that i made that i'm trying to make and lastly the use of free citations so that just means that sometimes people will say things especially in varying historical accounts like the gospels or samuel versus chronicles will say things and it's not quite the same wording and so you say well which is it how can i trust the bible you know in this place he said it this way you know jesus jesus says truly here and he says truly truly here but they're saying the same thing so which is it what they said no that's just they're just quoting citations in that they're just trying to bring across the voice of that person so all those things we would say don't call into question inerrancy and this all matters because again i have heard pretty much every one of these with people saying this is why i don't believe the bible so questions about any of those and the errancy so closely related to this is a third one infallibility so if inerrancy means the bible doesn't make mistakes it says it doesn't say anything that's contrary to fact what infallibility means is that the scripture is not able to lead us astray in matters of faith and practice so they're they're related but they're you can differentiate them and it's helpful to do so what you can't do and some people that this is a lot of what the chicago statement was actually engaging with some people were separating out inerrancy and infallibility and actually saying that the bible isn't inerrant but it is infallible so the bible can make little mistakes that it's inaccurate it's inaccurate about you know this city and this place and these people or whatever it was but what it's saying is true the big idea the meaning of what it's saying is true and we would say well how do you know if the bible can make mistakes how do we know any of it is actually infallible we say those things have to come together but what infallibility is getting to is that the bible and what it is telling you is true and of course this is rooted in god god can't lie god is only true god is infallible and so his word is infallible okay so infallibility any questions about that one it may raise some questions about contradictions in the bible okay what about places where the bible seems to be and it's meaning what it's saying so not not i'm not getting nitpicky about you know this not exactly equaling pie but what do you do like in galatians when galatians 2 where paul says we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in jesus christ and then you have james 2 24 say you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone okay so those things are that's more than just a little error that's that's saying fundamentally two different things or so people want to say that those are in contradiction with each other and now maybe you've had this too that somebody says oh i remember this i was we used to do a thing on campus where we would we try to you know tell people about jesus and a girl came up to me and she said she was muslim and uh and i said hey have you ever have you ever read the bible because no no i don't i don't believe the bible the bible is full of contradictions and i said well which contradictions are you referring to what contradictions and she couldn't answer and so i asked her have you ever read the bible and she says no and so i said well how then how do you know that it's full of contradictions if you've never read it why don't you come read it with us and she walked away she didn't come you know join our bible study but if somebody says the bible's full of contradictions the best thing that you can say is which ones where show them to me because there really aren't any somebody's giving the bible a faithful generous reading even with what i just saw in paul and james we we talked about this when we were going through the book of galatians that they're not actually in conflict with each other they're just coming about things from two different ways and if you read what they're saying in context you'll understand that the whole bible is is never in contradiction it's always saying one infallible thing so go number four this attribute is clarity or the old word for this is perspicuity which is a french or a lot word that just means clear so we'll just say clarity the bible is clear so what that means the knowledge of god contained in the bible has been revealed in such a way that it can be sufficiently understood in and of itself by those who seek it stated negatively the bible is not a collection of mysterious writings that requires the assistance of some other knowledge to render it understandable scripture is so clear that it judges and illuminates everything else and the bible itself attests to this fact the law of the lord is perfect reviving the soul and the testimony of the lord is sure making wise the simple and this always stood out to me my roommate in college became a christian while we were roommates together and i love this guy but he was he was kind of a uh sometimes before he was a christian i mean he was just and he didn't didn't really care he was not into critical thinking he was um just just kind of a bonehead honestly and then he became a christian he started studying the bible and it just amazed me that there were not there was nothing in the scriptures that were out of his reach and actually that as he was studying the scriptures god was making him wise and he stopped being a bonehead but you would have thought man there's no way that this guy would have understood infallibility as we were talking about there's no way this guy would have understood the trinity or things like that because he just didn't seem to care but when god gave him a new heart and he started studying the scriptures there was nothing in the scriptures that was not accessible to him and he became wise and this is uh this is something that if you're here and you're a protestant which if you're a member at desert springs church you are then you should love this truth because this is one that was especially reclaimed in the reformation this is something that martin luther was a huge champion of because at the time leading up to the reformation the church actually said that the bible was not accessible to ordinary people like you it was only accessible to the church and the leaders in the church that they had the right training they had the right insights they had the right traditions passed down to them and so you just needed to come and not be taught from the word of god but be taught from the priests who actually knew what the word of god said this was not accessible to you you weren't even allowed to read it because you were not trained in that and martin luther came back and said no this is the word of god for all the people of god and that every person of god can understand this accurately because it's clear it's understandable there's nothing in this that requires some special knowledge there's nothing in this it requires outside knowledge like you need to read other books in order to understand what this says okay that it is understandable by all people and that's a that's an amazing truth so you don't need me to tell you what this says you just need to work hard and study this spend time understanding this and all of the essential truths that you need to know to be saved will be perfectly clear to you from what this says so does that make sense questions about the clarity of scripture a question that that raises for some is if the bible is clear then why are there different interpretations of passages in scripture so if the bible's so clear if it's so understandable why do some people think it's right to baptize babies and some people think that it isn't where did that come from well when we say that the bible is clear it's understandable what we mean that it's understandable in its essential truths how you need to relate to god as a sinner saved through jesus christ there's nobody who disagrees on that there are other things in scripture that are less clear but they're also less essential and so there's room for disagreement on that you still need to come to a conviction about that but it's less essential your salvation is not at stake if you choose to baptize a baby instead of baptizing a grown up although i don't think you should baptize babies so but that's a not essential teaching in that so this is where we bring up this idea we've talked about a lot if you've gone through the membership class recently we talked about this idea of theological triage in the church so when we say theological triage we say there's that center dot and those are the things that the bible is extra clear on that to disagree with them makes you not a christian so we are sinners but we are made in the image of god but we're sinners that stand judged before god and because of that god sent his son to be judged on our behalf who was fully god and fully man that he was raised bodily from the dead is now seated at the right hand of the father if you disagree with any of those things because those things are so abundantly clear in the bible if you disagree with any of those things you're disagreeing with the word of god and we would say you're not a christian okay because you're disagreeing with a clear essential truth but then as you go outside of that century thing you're going to get into some of those other things that there's room for disagreement on and so we would say that second circle is things that differentiate one church from another church so i keep on using the example of baptism we don't baptize babies in our church if you want to baptize babies i would take you to a good pca church down the road that would that would do that and we'd say that's great you're still a christian but we're going to draw boundaries around these different churches and then some things where the bible is even less clear for example what is the thousand years referred to in revelation chapter 20. i think that that is unclear and so there's a lot of room for disagreement in that and so we would say that's a third order issue there are people in this church that have different opinions on that because it's a less clear doctrine so greedon puts it well the clarity of scripture means that the bible is written in such a way that it is able to be understood but right understanding requires time effort the use of ordinary means a willingness to obey and the help of the holy spirit and our understanding will remain imperfect in this lifetime so questions about the clarity of scripture we're caught up on time now so you guys can ask questions again it's okay i told you i can speed up number five authority the authority of scripture means that all the words in scripture are god's words in such a way that to disbelieve or disobey any word of scripture is to disbelieve or disobey god i had a hard time deciding which one of these to put first and in what order really this one i think could have been a candidate to be the number one thing that we need to think about the scripture but of course you need to go through all of these other things to to understand why the bible is authoritative but this is what it comes down to that the bible is our authority because god is our authority god made you god owns you if god saved you god redeemed you god is in charge of your whole life and you have to obey god the whole reason we're in this mess is because we didn't obey god and now that he has recreated us we obey god and how do we know what it means to obey god god has told us he has not kept his will hidden from us the lord reveals his thoughts to man and he does so authoritatively so this is packer the christian principle of biblical authority means on the one hand that god purposes to direct the belief and behavior of his people through the revealed truth set forth in the holy scripture on the other hand it means that all our ideas about god should be measured tested and where necessary corrected and enlarged by reference to biblical teaching authority as such is the right claim fitness and by extension power to control authority in christianity belongs to god the creator who made us to know love and serve him and his way of exercising his authority over us is by means of the truth and wisdom of his written word so when paul says all scripture is god breathe the reason that god breathed it was so that you could know how to obey god and so the scriptures are authoritative over us so what this means is that when we come to to living our life we're always being met with other authoritative truth claims we're always being met with people saying no this is what actually has authority over your life sometimes somebody will say it's science science is what's authoritative because this research has said this this is true and you must act accordingly or sometimes people will say no no reason your reasonableness and logic see this makes sense and because this makes so much sense you must act in a certain way or sometimes people will say your emotions are authoritative i feel this so strongly and because i feel this that must be authoritative and i must act in a certain way or some people will even say that the church is authoritative this again goes to that roman catholic understanding that the church is what actually has authority over you and even how you understand the bible and so because the church has said this you must act this way but we say no god has authority and god has spoken clearly and so i am governed by this this is what tells me what is true and how i ought to act and so if any of these other truth claims that i encounter science reason emotions on and on if any of these things are saying you should do something other than what this is saying who wins this okay this is what has authority over our lives and so we come to this humbly and saying i must do something with this i must respond to this this isn't just something that i read and learn and then walk away and forget what i read okay like the man that turns away from the mirror and forgets his own face looks like james says no you read this and you react to this because this is authoritative because god is authoritative so questions about the authority of scripture and how we come to that so again we ask the question how is how is it that we know that the scripture is authoritative and this is another important attribute that we believe in the self-authentication of scripture so the self-authentication of scripture i'll just read this this is from the westminster confession it says we may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to a high and reverent esteem of the holy scripture and the heavenliness of the matter in the bible is what it's saying the efficacy of the doctrine in the bible the majesty of the style in the bible the consent of all the parts the scope of the whole which is to give all glory to god the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation the many other incomparable excellencies and the entire perfection thereof are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of god that's old these were old guys right but what that's saying is you read the bible and there are so many reasons to read the bible and to say this has to be the word of god i remember thinking that when i first became a christian as i would read this book and i thought this just has to be a divine book this has to be from somewhere there's no other book like this and the more you become familiar with this the more these things it says they become so evident to you it's like man this was written by 30 or 40 different authors over thousands of years and yet it all is consistent with itself it's beautiful it's glorious if you actually live by this it leads to flourishing and blessing in your life this is wise and good and right and just there's so many things about the bible that are so beautiful what the westminster divines were saying was that all of those things kind of help testify to the fact that this is a defined book but here's the thing this is cool what they would actually say what we would believe is that we don't believe it's the word of god because of any of that ultimately we don't believe that this is the word of god because it's beautiful because it's consistent because it's wise because it's good okay that's all evidence to that but we don't believe this is the word of god because of that why do we believe it well let's finish this quote yet notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the holy spirit bearing witness by and with the words in our heart we don't believe this because if we say i believe this is the word of god because it's logically consistent what you've actually done is you've made logical consistency the authority do you see that i don't believe that this is the word of god because it's beautiful because if i'm doing that then i'm making beauty and aesthetics the ultimate authority over what makes something divine or not no we believe that this is the word of god because god tells us that this is the word of god by his holy spirit when you read the bible the holy spirit this is what we call illumination on the holy spirit side it's called illumination on the scripture side it's called self-authentication we read this and as we read it god works directly on our hearts to tell us that what we're reading is truly the word of god it is a supernatural act the same way that you are saved because god acts directly on your hearts to give you ears to hear and believe and receive the gospel we say the same thing is true about the scripture that it's actually the holy spirit that attests to the divine nature of the bible did i totally skip that part i'm sorry guys this is what jesus says john 15 when the helper comes whom i will send to you from the father the spirit of truth who proceeds from the father he will what bear witness about me that's how jesus says you'll know that this is true the holy spirit will bear witness to you about what i'm saying and so that's why we say this is a divine book and that we say this is why some people can read the bible and say i don't get it okay if we were saying no no it's logically consistent and it's beautiful and it's wise and it's good those are all good things to point out but that's not going to persuade somebody you know saving to give them saving faith they are persuaded by the holy spirit packer says it like this it's a matter not of imparting new information but of enlightening previously darkened minds to discern divinity through sensing its unique impact the unique impact of divinity on our hearts that's how we know because the scripture the holy spirit acts through the scripture to tell us that this is the word of god and somebody will say well that's a circular argument and when you come to any matters of ultimate authority it's all circular arguments for anybody okay somebody says well i believe that reason is the supreme authority in life well how do you know that well it seems reasonable to me that's a circular argument okay when you're getting into metaphysics it's all circular reasoning but that's what we believe the holy spirit because the bible says so the holy spirit is what tells us that this is the word of god this is the word of god because it says it's the word of god through the word of god right questions about the self-authentication all right we've got two left necessity necessity the necessity of scripture means that the bible is necessary for knowing the gospel for maintaining spiritual life and for knowing god's will but it is not necessary for knowing that god exists or for knowing something about god's character and moral laws so what's he getting at in that last part right there it's not necessary for knowing that god exists and knowing something about his character what's the word i'm waking you up we're almost done what's general revelation that's what he's talking about okay so remember we said that last time general revelation is just enough to condemn us to hell that's not enough to save us so what is necessary to give us a full understanding of god in order that we can be saved special revelation and what is the embodiment of special revelation that we have today this the inspired and infallible clear word of god okay so it's necessary paul himself says this it's necessary to be say romans chapter 10 everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved but how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed and how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard and how are they to hear without someone preaching and how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news but they have not all obeyed the gospel for isaiah says lord who has believed what he has heard from us so faith comes from hearing and hearing what through the word of christ so faith comes through the word and you cannot be saved apart from the word so that's why we say the scripture is necessary this is necessary for you to be saved it's necessary for somebody else to be saved but it's necessary in another way too so there's a kind of a primary way that it's necessary in that you cannot be saved apart from hearing the word of christ okay but then also it's necessary because you can't live a life of obedience to god a life that's pleasing to god a life that leads to the blessing the abundant life that god intended for us you can't have that life apart from the scripture so it's not enough just to hear the word of christ and be saved you have to have the word that's necessary for you on every step of this earthly pilgrimage that we're on so this is like what deuteronomy 8 says man doesn't live by bread alone but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the lord or psalm 1 blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of the lord and on his law he meditates day and night so remember back to what we we started with that we have this relationship with god and god is talking to us and why is god talking to us not just because he wants to save us but he wants to comfort us he wants to encourage us he wants to tell us about the promises that he has for us he wants to teach us how to live in obedience to him in a way that glorifies him he wants to teach us what to avoid that would lead to our own destruction god loves us and he wants to lead us in paths of righteousness every single day and the way that he does that is through his word and so it's necessary for us to meditate on the word of god and as a pastor i would be remiss at this moment to not give you a little bit of practical advice at what it means to meditate on the word of god to really treat this like it's your it's your bread okay that you live off of this that is necessary for you so so let me just give you this encouragement read it read it and not just read it to say okay check i read it but read it and think about it that's what it means to meditate ruminate on it consider it and not just consider what it means for you but to consider what it says about god and then in the light of that what does this have to do with me how is this authoritative god seeking to exert his authority his good authority over me through what he has revealed to me in this word and then ask this question this is this is a really simple question when you're reading the bible to say how is my life going to look differently because of what i just read here that's a great way to meditate on the word of god i won't go into this just for the sake of time but i've included this in there this is a little acronym that i like to use spec okay so as i'm reading the scriptures i'll ask is there a sin to confess a promise to take hold of an example to follow a command to obey knowledge to be gained and in light of that i can live my life differently i can eat the bread of god and i can live in that sustenance throughout this week so that is how we meditate on god lastly the bible is sufficient we believe in the sufficiency of scripture the sufficiency of scripture means that scripture contains all the words of god that we need for salvation for trusting him perfectly and for obeying him perfectly the bible has all that we need for salvation and for living this life in light of the scripture again this is second timothy all scripture is breathed out by god and what profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training and righteousness so that the man of god may be complete equipped for every good work so the bible has everything that you need to be complete god hasn't left anything out that you need to know that you need to go find somewhere else this is all that we need and that's incredible i think the the older i get in my faith the sufficiency of scripture comes more and more to be one of the attributes of god's word that i hold most dear that god knows me he knows you he knows us he knows what we need and he has given us everything necessary for life and godliness not a thing is missing that you need it doesn't always feel that way does it it doesn't always feel like god has told us everything that we would want to know and so that's an important principle to think about when it comes to the sufficiency of scripture god has not told us everything we want to know he has told us everything that we need to know one of the verses that i meditate on often deuteronomy 29 29 the secret things belong to the lord our god but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of this law it's just perfectly enough yeah it's just so he asked does god's word fully reveal god you know so think about uh the book of john and the way that the gospel of john ends that he uh he says first there are many other things that jesus did and said that are not included in this book but these have been written that you might believe that jesus is the christ the son of god okay so there's a lot of other stuff that jesus did that i could have written down to you but i didn't i just wrote what was necessary right parchment was at a premium so i only wrote down what was necessary for you to believe but it's sufficient it's sufficient for you there's enough here to know about jesus that you can be saved and then actually he goes on to say uh were all the things to be written not every book in the world could contain them right and so i think that we have an infinite god okay or just you know again i i this is i think about angels a lot i'm really really interested in angels and demons the bible has not said a lot about angels and demons okay it's said enough that i can have an accurate understanding of what angels are and demons are and that i need to stay away from demons okay but because the bible has not spoken more to that okay and this is on a finite topic angels are a finite they're way way bigger than me but they're still finite okay but god hasn't said a whole lot about this finite thing there's a lot that i would like to speculate on about that there's a lot that but i'm not going to do that because i know what god has said about that is enough for me to have sufficient knowledge there well how much more an infinite god right he can't there's no way that he could tell us all about himself but he's told us enough enough that we can know him and how much he loves us what his plans for us are that he died for us that we can have everlasting life by believing in him so that's the sufficiency of scripture it doesn't tell us everything that we need to know and and sometimes too we need to think about this you know wouldn't it be great if you could read in the bible somewhere you know third corinthians where it says oh yeah you should take that job in nashville right like we're asking god give me give me some wisdom on this and it's like oh yeah there's some bible verse that i missed that tells us this is the name of the person that you should marry you know well god hasn't given us that either right but god has given us principles sufficiently so that we can make informed decisions in every aspect of our life right it's actually a good thing that god didn't get overly specific or we'd get pigeonholed but he gave us in perfect wisdom just what we needed to live wisely in this world so what that also means what the sufficiency of scripture means is that we shouldn't consider something to be sin that the bible doesn't call sin right so the bible has clearly told us what is right and wrong and if it hasn't explicitly said that something is wrong then we shouldn't act like it's sin right so we can live in matters of conscience and lie to those principles but we shouldn't call something sin that god calls sin and we shouldn't that god that god's word does not call sin and we shouldn't consider something required that god's word doesn't require okay so that's also what the sufficiency of scripture means that we shouldn't say that this is what the pharisees did right is they were adding rules on top of god's law because they thought god's law wasn't sufficient that we actually needed to improve on it somehow by giving man-made rules on top of that but we don't need to do that we can trust god has given us everything that we need right here so that's the sufficiency of scripture let me just end with this because all of this should lead us to worship and i was just thinking about this week that there's a song that we sing about these attributes of scripture called how firm a foundation we sing this in church i'm not going to sing it for you don't worry but this is the first verse how firm a foundation ye saints of the lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word what more can he say than to you he has said to you who for refuge to jesus have fled what more can he say how firm a foundation you have everything that you need he has laid the foundation for you in his excellent word that reveals jesus your savior and so brothers and sisters build your life on this foundation okay meditate on this this is necessary and it's everything that we need it's god's excellent word so let's let that lead us to our prayer of adoration remember this is how we close every week so break up into your groups now to small groups right around there and you can even use these words as sort of a starting point to pray a prayer of adoration and thanksgiving to our god for his excellent word and then i'll close this in prayer and we'll be dismissed okay so go ahead group up let's close in prayer and we'll go home you

Channel: DESERT SPRINGS CHURCH

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Length: 89min 55sec (5395 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021