It’s a great pleasure and privilege for
me to be here with you and to be able to participate in this conference and to enjoy the glories
of the music here and the look into the Word with you and these other distinguished speakers
and it is a great joy and privilege to be part of Ligonier’s ministry and to have
fellowship with R.C. and Vesta and to appreciate a new, what a wonderful contributions they
have made for the cause of Christ and to the defense of the Gospel. And since I always say such nice things about
R.C. I don’t know why I got such lousy titles. Have you noticed this, you know The Attack
on the Bible, This Means War, A Good Thing Gone Bad and what do I get Five Errors. Yea, you know I used to have a professor of
history who said, History is so interesting that you have to work really hard to make
it dull. And most historians are very hard working. Well my title is, Five Errors. Why five? You know I really pondered that for a long
time it shows that I have far too much time on my hands but I pondered that and I wondered,
five errors, and all I could think of is that obviously there is a major of obsession at
Ligonier Ministries about Five points. They can’t seem to get beyond that and this
made me extremely nervous. What if I only could think of four errors
I’d be revealed as a sub-Calvinist. Or suppose I came up with six errors, I’d
be a hyper Calvinist. Well I’ll hope you all will be relieved
to discover I found five errors. I’m a Calvinist and these errors will even
perhaps have a slightly familiar ring to them. But let me begin by reading just a few verses
from Deuteronomy chapter 32 at verse 45. “When Moses finished reciting all these
words to all Israel he said to them. Take to heart all the words I have solemnly
declared to you this day so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words
of this law. They are not just idle words for you they
are your life. They are your life. This is why we’re concerned about the Word
of God. This is why we must be combatants in the War
on the Word because the Word is not just idle words, the Word is not just a curiosity that
we’ve been handed. The Word is not just something that should
occupy our idle moments but the Scriptures themselves bear testimony that the Word is
our life. The Word is God’s revelation of His saving
work and purpose and if we don’t have that Word we don’t have life. And so it’s important to think about, what
are the attacks on the Word. What are some of the specific errors about
the Word into which we can fall? And before we look at that directly I have
to say just a word in the spirit of Paul Salhamer to a couple here from my congregation in Escondido,
California, the Denbores, today is Debbie Denbores birthday and I want to wish her a
happy birthday. I don’t know where she is but Dutch people
love to have the spotlight put on them so I know Debbie is mad at me right now but happy
birthday Debbie. Ok Five Errors, the first error I would point
out to you is total slothfulness, some of you already see a pattern developing. Total slothfulness. Now sloth you may be aware is one of seven
deadly sins in the medieval catalog of sins and it happens to be one of my own personal
favorites. I like just the sound of the word, sloth. One of the things I appreciate about Ligonier
Conferences it’s always stimulating to the vocabulary so I wanted to make my own contribution. Sloth. There’s a great word. It just means laziness. But it’s a great way of saying lazy. It always reminds me of that line in Shakespeare,
I did waste time now doth time waste me. Kind of sobering thought especially when you
reach my advanced age. Total slothfulness. What does that mean when we apply it to the
Scripture. It means that we are lazy about the Word. Almost every family in America probably has
a Bible in the home and how often is that Bible opened. We’re too often lazy about the Word. We don’t open it, we don’t look into it
and even those of us who do open it and we don’t just look at those errors about the
Word that other people fall into, that might be comforting. But we want to spend a little time thinking
about the errors about the Word that we’re inclined to fall into. Preachers get to be much more popular if they
attack other peoples sins. They get into more trouble if they attack
our sins. But we need to think about, what are the errors
to which we’re inclined. Well we’re probably not inclined, the group
that would gather here, not inclined to not open our Bible. We’re not that kind of slothful in our approach
to Scripture. But are we content to often to read Scripture
in the way that is often classified as devotionally. Now I’m not attacking the devotional reading
of Scripture but I find some people use that devotional idea of reading Scripture as if
that means we don’t really think about what we’re reading we just try to feel about
what we’re reading. What does this verse mean to you? How does this verse inspire you right off
the surface of it to some idea or some action. And I think that can easily slip into a kind
of slothfulness. Where we don’t think carefully about what
the Word is saying and teaching and meaning. We don’t try to plum the depths of the Word,
we don’t try to study it and reflect upon it and enter into it. But we’re satisfied with a kind of once
over lightly from which we derived a certain feeling about the Word. The Bible calls upon us to study the Word. The bible calls upon us to meditate upon the
Word. At least in Hebrew it appears that that word
meditation really means to mutter the Word to have it so in mind that we can repeat it
over and over again. We can reflect upon it. We can look at it from a variety of angles
so that we enter into it. We come to understand it. We grow in it. And it’s a good test for us to ask ourselves,
how do we approach the Bible? What kind of time do we spend with it? It’s not how much of the Bible you read
or how much time you spend reading the Bible that’s the really critical issue. The really critical issue is are you engaging
with the Bible when you read it. Are you really pausing to reflect on what
it’s saying to you what it means for you? What it is testifying to you about Jesus Christ. Now both in this message and the next one
I want to draw some examples about the points I’m making particularly from the early chapters
of Matthews gospel. And so if you want to turn there we’ll be
looking at a few passages there as we go along and right at the beginning of Matthew’s
gospel is a good test I suppose of our slothfulness. How does Matthew’s gospel begin? How does it begin? Well it begins with a section that we skip. We’re not quite sure why those Hebrews so
delighted in making long lists of names but we know what we do when we come to them, we
skip them. And my desire here is not to encourage us
to have a dramatic reading of the genealogy later in the session but to at lease pause
and say why when these names are all so boring to use did it ever occur to Matthew to include
them. And of course Matthew really tells us doesn’t
he, both at the beginning and at the end of the genealogy. He must have foreseen our day and knew that
we really wouldn’t pay attention and so he tells us at the beginning and the end of
the genealogy why it’s important. “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ
the Son of David, the Son of Abraham,” and then at the end verse 17 of Chapter one, “thus
there were 14 generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile
to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.” Here Matthew is laying out the great moments
of the history of the people of God. Abraham the father of the faithful, Jesus
is his son. Abraham the one to whom God spoke his promise
and said, in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed. That promise is fulfilled in the coming of
the Christ. David the man after God’s own heart, David
the King of God’s people, David whose kingship foreshadowed the kingship of Christ, he’s
the father of our Lord. Jesus is descended from David. Jesus is great David’s greater son. But David’s kingship for all the promises
for all the blessings that surrounded it failed. And the people went into exile and in their
exile they waited. They waited for the fulfillment of the promise,
they waited for the coming of the Messiah and Matthew is saying the father of the faithful
to whom the promise that all the nations of the earth would be blessed and David the king
who pointed to the coming of the greater king and the exile that showed the failure of the
old kingship. All that is signified in that is now fulfilled
in the coming of Jesus Christ. History hasn’t moved much. History has a purpose and Jesus stands at
the center of it. Wouldn’t it be a shame to miss that point
that Matthew is making because we’re a little to lazy to pause over this portion of Scripture
and think about it. We all know don’t we the dividends of digging
into the Scripture. We’ve all been and heard messages where
we come away saying, wow I never knew that Scripture meant that. Of course half the time it’s because the
Scripture really didn’t mean that but that’s a whole other issue, I don’t want to get
into that. But look with me just for a minute at the
important point being made in chapter 2 with the visit of the Magi to Jesus where the Magi
say to Herod, where is the one who is been born king of the Jews, we saw his star in
the east and have come to worship him. Verse 2 of chapter 2, we’ve come to worship
him and then verse 8, verse 11 that theme of worshiping him is repeated. We’re perhaps so familiar with that story
we don’t even pause to think very much about it. But that’s a very important testimony to
the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ especially when we move on to Matthew Chapter 4 and what
do we find there. There in the temptation in the wilderness
where Jesus confronts the evil one. The evil one calls on Jesus to bow down and
worship him and what does Jesus say using exactly the same Greek word and says you shall
worship only the Lord your God. Matthew is saying that Jesus, as a baby received
that worship and Jesus as a man declares that only God is worthy of that worship and what
does that tell us. It tells us that Jesus is God come to flesh. That’s the benefit you see of meditating
on the Word, of spending time with the Word, of thinking about the Word. Now this is not a call for all of us to become
ministers or professors. I happen to think that ministers and professors
are useful creatures slightly embarrassing but need to be called out from time to time. We can’t all study the Greek language. We can’t all spend a great deal of time
in in-depth study of the Word of God. But we can all seek to find ministers who
will lead us in this way, into the Word of God. We had a pastor who retired a couple of years
ago and one of the things he said at his retirement was thank you congregation for paying me to
study the Word of God. And we do that because we want someone to
give his time to that intense study. If the Word of God is our life, then we want
somebody who can help us live, who can know that Word. Have time with that word and what a privilege
it is then if we are led into that word in a profound and deep and reliable way. And you see where that particularly impacts
you is with the question what kind of creature do I seek out. What kind of teacher do I like to hear? What kind of books about the Christian faith
do I like to read? Do I like to read stuff that is just frothy
and entertaining and easy or do I like stuff that challenges me to grow and develop and
maybe even rethink something. Now there’s something we American’s are
opposed to in principle, of thinking in the first place or rethinking in the second place. But you see we need to avoid a total slothfulness
as one of the great errors in approaching the Bible. Secondly, the second error to which we are
prone is unconditional self-confidence. Unconditional self-confidence. This is pride another deadly sin and when
we think of this kind of self-confidence in relation to the Word we may very well think
primarily of liberalism and that’s always a good place to begin. What is the essential attitude of liberalism
towards the Word? The essential attitude of liberalism towards
the Word is I stand in judgment towards the Word it does not stand in judgment of me. I decide what’s true and not true in the
Word. I decide what I’ll follow and what I won’t
follow. I’ll decide what’s reliable and what’s
not reliable. And there’s an amazing kind of self-confidence
there. There’s a staggering kind of pride there. In the heyday of liberalism back in the 1920’s
one of the great issues debated was the doctrine of the virgin birth. And liberals said, well, modern people can’t
believe some kind of legend like that. Modern people know how conception works. It’s amazing the ancients were able to have
children at all. We can’t believe something like the virgin
birth. It can’t be true, things like that don’t
happen. And the Bible only says it twice. And so let’s just kind of spiritualize this
text. I heard one liberal say once you know what
this text is really teaching us, Jesus was born a virgin Israel. How often do the prophets refer to Israel
as a virgin? And how often were certain other images used
of Israel’s faithfulness but you see that the basic point is that this is an attitude
of superiority, of pride, of standing in judgment over the Word of God and if we stand in judgment
over the Word of God it will never fulfill it’s function in us of judging us. But it’s not just liberals who can be filled
with pride as they approach the Scripture. It can be us too. Ken was just pointing out so affectively the
danger of a kind of radical individualism that comes to the Scripture and says I can
figure this all out on my own. I don’t need anybody else. I don’t need any help. I don’t need any other people to think about
this. Table talk a while back did a series on approaches
to Scripture and one of the provisional titles I don’t know if you finally used the title
or not, one of the provisional titles that I really liked was Solo Scriptura not Sola
Scriptura, the Scripture alone but solo Scriptural me as a solo act with the Bible. I’ll do it all on my own. This is profoundly unbiblical and profoundly
unreformed. We need the humility that says I don’t know
it all. It’s often forgotten that when Luther appeared
before the emperor at the diet of worms and was asked if he would recant of his errors. The first thing he said was not here I stand. The first thing that he said was can I have
24 hours to think it over and Luther recorded that he wrestled for 24 hours with the question
am I alone wise? And I’ve often said most American evangelicals
never wrestled with that question, am I alone wise? Of course, what could be more likely than
that? I know myself to be a splendid person. I like myself a lot. And I always believe what I think. And therefore I must be right. Recently we’ve seen a very sad manifestation
of that. The work of a man who did a lot to spread
reform Christianity in this country, Harold Campen. How many people have heard of Harold Campen? He was my Bible teacher in High School. Don’t laugh. He did a lot of good and now suddenly having
spent years alone with his Bible and not listening to the broader Christian community he’s
come to the very sad conclusion that all churches have now failed and that all Christians should
leave all churches. This is solo Scriptura at work. A man who really isolated himself from real
contact with others in the formation of his thoughts and has come in my judgment to a
very, very bad conclusion. But you know it’s not just an individualism
that can do that, a theological tradition can do that. We can only talk to each other. We can never pause to rethink and reexamine. We can become so proud that we’re obnoxious. A lot of people feel that about the reform
community. Our religion’s all in our head and we’re
awfully proud about it. Now I don’t think most of the time that’s
a fair criticism. That’s a criticism we aught to listen to,
it’s a criticism we aught to think about. It certainly an impression that we aught to
seek to overcome, because the theological virtue that is the opposite of the sin of
pride is the virtue of humility and we aught to be a humble people. We are certainly a people that has a lot to
be humble about. We are not wise and we’re not rich and we’re
not very successful by and large. And we aught to be humble and we aught to
be humble above all else before the Word. And Jesus, I think, in his confrontation with
the devil, particularly as it’s recorded in Matthew chapter 4 provides us with a wonderful
pathway to follow to avoid unconditional self-confidence. The devil as we know in one of the temptations
of Jesus quote’s the Bible. “Cast yourself down from the temple because
He has promised that His angels will take charge of thee lest thou dash thy foot against
the stone.” The devil came with the Word. And how does Jesus respond to this misuse
and abuse of the Word? He could have responded in all sorts of ways,
he could have said, look buddy I was baptized with the Holy Spirit and I know what the Word
means. Or he could have said, I wrote this Word,
don’t tell me what the Word means. Or he could have said, I know the traditions
of the Rabbi’s and so I know what it means. There are all sorts of authorities that He
could have appealed to quite legitimately to answer the devil. How does He answer the devil, if we look at
verse 7 of Matthew chapter 4. “Jesus answered him, it is also written”,
Jesus signals there first of all his submission to the Word as His authority. This is fascinating, these opening chapters
of Matthew. Matthew says over and over again, this was
done that the Scripture might be fulfilled. This was done that the prophesy might be fulfilled. This was done that the Scripture might be
fulfilled. Jesus came to fulfill the Scriptures, as God’s
Word and God’s will. And Jesus says to the devil if there’s a
question about the meaning of the Bible; the only place to look is back to the Bible. Is to go again to the Bible and Jesus teaches
us there where we have a disagreement where we have a problem, where we have a difficulty,
the only thing to do is to go back to the Bible. When I try to convince Ken Jones about the
manifold errors that he holds on the sacrament of baptism I can quote the Westminster Confession
of Faith, I can quote the Heidelberg Catechism, I can even quote our real authority John Calvin,
and in the end of the day Ken just shakes his head and scoffs which he should but together
we can go back to the Bible and say what’s the Bible really say about baptism. And the only way we are ever going to get
anywhere over that impasse between Baptist and paedobaptist is to keep going back to
the Scripture. Now because we are sinners we may never solve
the problem but there’s not even any hope of solving the problem unless we keep going
back to the Scripture together. There’s not much hope because Ken is on
this point apparently invincibly ignorant. And I’m nicely manifesting that reformed
pride and arrogance that I have been attacking. Okay, total slothfulness, unconditional self-confidence,
limited connections. I didn’t say this was going to be good,
you know, I ‘m hoping it will be memorable. Limited connections, what do I mean by that? I think one of the temptations that perhaps
evangelicals in particularly maybe drawn to is the temptation to treat the Bible as a
fairly disconnected series of stories. Evangelicals often have a great deal of Bible
knowledge, that’s very impressive, they know the content, they know the stories of
the Bible. But there is a danger that in knowing those
stories we will miss connections. We will miss the system of truth that the
Scripture reveals to us. We live in a world where very often system
is seen as a bad word and I want to get over that, system is a good thing. God is internally consistent with himself
and His Word is internally consistent with itself. It reflects Him. And God is not full of internal contradictions. And neither is His Word but rather there’s
a pattern there’s a picture of progressive revelation in the Scripture. Look again with me just at these early chapters
of Matthew to look at this point. Very familiar stories here, we have the genealogy,
we have the visit of the magi, we have Herod’s slaughter of the children, we have the temptation
of Jesus in the wilderness, we have the early preaching of Jesus. All of these first 4 chapters of Matthew’s
is gospel. Those stories are all probably very, very
familiar to us. But do we with equal clarity see that Matthew
is telling all of these stories to make one great systematic point. And the great systematic point that Matthew
is making is that Jesus is the king of the Jews and our King. Why the genealogy? To prove that Jesus is born a King, the Son
of David. Why the visit of the Magi? To show that Jesus was honored as King, even
as an infant. Why the slaughter of the children by Herod? Because we see there the persecution of the
King, as Herod knowing that Jesus is the true King seeks to destroy him. Why the temptation in the wilderness? Because the devil tries to make Jesus become
King as a false king. Bow down and worship me and I’ll give you
the kingdoms of the world, the devil says, He could have been an easy false king that
was the temptation. And what does Jesus preach as he begins to
preach. He begins to preach as John, had that the
kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom has come near to you. If the kingdom has come near so to has the
King and that’s why Jesus taught as one with authority. He was the King. Later in the gospel Matthew makes the point
that Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly as the one hailed as King by the people. When he was crucified, Matthew tells us, He
died under a sign that said, “This is the King of the Jews”. And when Jesus was raised in glory from the
dead He gave a commission to His disciples saying all authority on heaven and earth has
been given to me. He declared Himself to be King. And so it’s not surprising that when John
in the book of the Revelation begins that book, he blesses the church in the name of
Jesus who is the ruler of the kings of the earth. Who is Jesus? He’s not the one who will one day be king,
He’s the one who is King of His people today. He will not one day be King of Kings and Lord
of Lords He is today, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is not a king of two peoples the Jews and
the Church. But the message of the New Testament is that
He is the King of one people. The Gentiles engrafted into His Kingship as
King of the Jews. That’s what Matthew is saying. There’s a systematic presentation of truth
here. King Jesus that’s the point being made,
one of the points being made over and over in this part of Scripture. And if we don’t see those connections we’re
going to miss the very most important thing that the Bible is telling us. Today we have this great controversy raging
over the true definition of the Gospel and the correct relationship of the law to the
Gospel. And many of those who in my judgment completely
misunderstand the Gospel are not doing so because they don’t know Bible verses, because
they haven’t read the Bible, because they haven’t studied the Bible. But they haven’t seen the right connections
in the Bible; they haven’t found the true system of the Bible. And the true system of the Bible in its deepest
sense is this; there are two ways to God by doing perfectly or by being in Christ. Because He has done perfectly, all that we
can never do for ourselves. And if you don’t understand that basic message
of the Bible you can have memorized the whole book and have completely missed the point. You have two choices when you stand before
God at the last day, you can say Lord, I read your law and I’ve done it all. I don’t recommend that defense. And the other defense is Lord I stand before
you in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who perfectly kept your law, in my place and
perfectly died on the cross to satisfy your wrath against my sin and therefore I stand
in the good news of a Gospel of the kingdom heaven that your Son came to make known to
me. Those connections you see are critical and
that leads very naturally on to the fourth point. Irresistible moralism. We as readers of the Bible find it almost
impossible not to turn almost any Biblical text into a morality tale and it fits in well
with our American culture. When Ken was talking helpfully about certain
aspects about American culture, we’re an individualistic people, we are a democratized
people, we are a people of great historical forgetfulness, and I am resentful about that
only cause it tends to make me unemployable as a historian. But we are also a people absolutely committed
to our national myth that anyone can get ahead who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps. Right? You can do it. You can get ahead. You just have to work hard at it and if that’s
true in school and if it’s true in politics and if it’s true in business then it must
be true in religion as well. And so the message heard over and over again
in all sorts of ways from all sorts of pulpits and it gets deeply rooted in our being is
a message about what you need to do. You need to do more, you need to work harder,
you need to be better, you need to pray more, you need to study your Bible more. Particularly you need to give more money to
seminaries in California. Look at the phenomena of the prayer of Jabez. At the heart of that in many ways is if you’ll
just pray right you’ll get everything you want, it’s all about you and what message
would we rather hear than that. Work hard. See, sometimes they’re even pretty good
messages with useful information. We ought to pray more, we ought to evangelize
more, we ought to read the Bible more, we ought to do everything more or at least everything
good more. My wife teaches at a Christian high school. It’s really quite a good school and she
says the principle discouragement that she’s experienced in recent years there is going
to chapel, and how many preachers come to chapel and tell the young people what they
need to be doing. And my wife comes away shaking her head and
saying another Christ-less chapel. Don’t use drugs, don’t drink alcohol,
don’t have sex, don’t do this, don’t do that. Do this, do that. There’s a place for some of that. But it is not the whole message of the Scripture. It’s not even the most important message
of the Scripture. There is sometimes an evangelical temptation
to think, well you begin the Christian life at the cross but once you’ve been saved,
once you’ve been converted then you go on to grow apparently, mainly by your own strength
and hard work. Oh yeah, the cross, well yeah, that’s important
at the beginning. No, it’s important everyday. Because everyday we are sinners in need of
grace. Everyday we need a savior, everyday we need
to be filled with the sense of gratitude to Jesus Christ for all that He’s done for
us. Everyday we need to be reminded that the only
motivation for Christian living that will move us forward in holiness is to live out
of gratitude for what Christ has done and out of ardent love for Him. We have to avoid the moralism that so easily
besets us. Matthew gives the longest version of the Sermon
on the Mount that we have in chapters 5-7 and it’s terribly tempting to treat the
Sermon on the Mount in a moralistic way. What’s it mean to be a disciple of Jesus
Christ? Well, lets make a list of all the duties we
have in the Sermon on the Mount. Now there are duties in the Sermon on the
Mount. There is an ideal presented before us to which
we need to strive. But we must never read the Sermon on the Mount
or think about the Sermon on the Mount except in the context of what Matthew tells us in
Chapter 4. And what we read in chapter 4 is that the
Jesus who stood on the mount teaching his disciples is the Jesus who came into the world
as the great light. Matthew 4:16, “The people living in darkness
have seen a great light on those living in the shadow of death a light has dawned.” Jesus is the great light coming to the world. That light shines in the way in which He fulfilled
prophecy. That light shines in all of His deeds especially
as He hung upon the cross for our sins. That light shines in His Word and all of His
Words to us. And it’s only as we look to Jesus that great
light that the Sermon on the Mount does not become a new and more burdensome law to us. But because He is the light, because He is
our Savior, because He has shined into use to give us the light of life, we can look
at that Sermon on the Mount and say, “Oh Savior, let me live a life that pleases you,
out of gratitude for what you’ve done, out of my love for you, because of your great
love for me.” Well, have you got a good suggestion for a
‘p’. The final error I think is a persevering unbelief. The great error always in reading the Scripture,
the foundational error is unbelief. You noticed didn’t you, in Matthew chapter
2, that when the Magi came to Jerusalem and asked where Messiah would be born, everybody
knew. These were people who knew their Bible. I mean how many verses can we quote out of
Micah? They knew. Their problem was not an ignorance of the
Word. Now I don’t know whether Herod could have
quoted Micah but Herod knew enough to know that when his teachers of the law told him
that Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem that they were right. And how did Herod and everyone in Jerusalem
respond? They were upset, they were disturbed, they
were worried. A new king, will I still get my pension. A new king, will I keep my job. I knew how to flatter the old king what am
I going to have to learn to flatter the knew king. They did not receive the Word that they heard
and that they knew on some level with faith. They persevered in unbelief and because they
were unbelieving we have this horror story of Herod sending out to slaughter all the
young children that he could find, lest this king slip through his grasp. The consequences of unbelief are tragic. And the essence of belief as we come to the
Scriptures is to find Jesus and His Gospel there. That’s what Jesus taught us, didn’t He,
when He was speaking to the Jewish leaders in John 5, he said, “His Word does not dwell
in you, for you do not believe the one He sent, you diligently study the Scriptures
because you think by them you possess eternal life, these are the Scriptures that testify
about me. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” There’s the essence of what the Scriptures
are about. To teach us about the one God sent in whom
there is life. And if we won’t believe in the Christ and
if we won’t accept what God has said about Him in His Word, if we won’t accept the
Scriptures definition of the Gospel we can have no hope of life, we will be those who
persevere in unbelief. Psalm 95 after it’s wonderful call to worship
suddenly midstream changes its mood and direction apparently and having celebrated the God whom
we come to worship then says to the people, “Today if you hear His voice do not harden
your hearts”. Today if you hear His voice do not harden
your hearts. Through the whole history of Biblical times
and the history of the church there have been those who heard the Word and shut their hearts
against it. Hebrews takes up that verse in a kind of extended
meditation in Hebrews 3 and 4 and applies the verse to the church and says, “See to
it brothers that none of you has a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away from the
living God.” Who is the living God? The God revealed in the Scripture. What do we know about the living God apart
from Scripture? Nothing. See to it brothers that none of you has a
sinful and unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God and we need that Word
because that Word reveals to us the character of our hearts. It reveals to us, it makes clear to us whether
our hearts are hardened or not. Chapter 4 verse 12, “For the word of God
is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword, it judges, it judges the attitudes
and thoughts of the heart.” Do you need to know what’s in your heart
then you need to open the Scripture and look into it and let the Scripture do it’s work
in pointing out to you if there is unbelief there, if there is resistance there. There are lots more errors that we could find
but we don’t want to become hyper Calvinist so we’ll contend ourselves with these five
and if we can avoid these five we’ll do a pretty good job and avoid some of the most
deadly sins in approaching the Bible. Guard yourselves against total slothfulness,
against unconditional self-confidence, against limited connections, against irresistible
moralism, against persevering unbelief. And approach the Bible rather in the spirit
of Psalm 119 verses 10 and 11, “I seek you with all my heart, do not let me stray from
your commands, I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” May that be true of all of us. Let us pray together. Oh Lord our God, you know how prone we are
to sin and to error. You know how much we need to be humbled before
your Word, how much we need the wisdom of your people and we pray oh Lord that you will
fill us with a delight in your Word and eagerness to know it and to love it and that by the
power of your Spirit you would protect us from the many errors that can beset us. And rather help us to see in all of it’s
sweetness and all of it’s purity that Scripture that leads us on to Christ and to life in
Him. Hear us for it’s in the name of our Savior
that we pray. AMEN.
