Sunday, February 28, 2021 PM

As you head back to your seats, let's open our Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 18. We're continuing our study entitled, Coming to the Bible. And when it comes to the need to understand what the Bible is, if we have questions about the Bible, the Bible is the best source to answer those questions.

So we've been asking a variety of questions. We're on our fourth question now. We've talked about, well, the first question is simply, can I have one of those books? And God's answer is, yes, he wants those made in his image to have his word, to live according to his word.

And so God, in his instructions and commandments and providence, makes sure that people have his word. Second question, which translation? We've talked about what is a translation and the way that God is honored and glorified in translations.

And then we've talked about who wrote it, that it's divine and human authorship. And it bears the characteristics of being a human book, but it also bears the character of being a divine book and with all that means.

And now we're asking the question, why these books? For we recognize that this is the Bible, and that's a singular term, and it's all bound up in the same volume. And yet we do have a list at the beginning of the various books in the Bible, don't we?

Sixty-six different books. And these are not the only books to be written in the time periods that they were written. There are other books written, other books written about God, other books written about the themes of God.

So why these books and not other books? That's the question we're asking now. That's something that people will often ask. And so we want to try to answer that question from the Bible itself. Why these books and not others?

And so in Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 9 through 22, I'm going to read a section where Moses is preaching to the people and giving them the word of the Lord. And it is clear that not everyone who says things full of spiritual content, not everyone who speaks in the name of the Lord, is actually speaking in the name of the Lord.

They're not actually telling the truth. There are plenty of people out there who would lie. And what to do about that? So Deuteronomy 18, verses 9 through 22. When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.

There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.

For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners.

But as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you. So that's an important contrast. They're going to come into the land, and the land was filled with people who were getting their words from above and beyond.

They were trying to receive their revelation from all these various sources of evil and witchcraft and so on. And God says, this is not how you're going to get the word of the Lord. It's going to be different for you.

Verse 15, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear according to all you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly saying, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore lest I die.

Now, does anybody have there in verse 15, does anybody have the word prophet capitalized? If you do, raise your hand. In your translation, do you have that word? Okay, that's capitalized because the translators of this passage, they're not looking at capital letters in the ancient manuscripts.

They are putting that in there to indicate this is a confession. This is a matter of belief that this is a promise of the Messiah. This is a promise of Jesus Christ, who is understood to be not only our great high priest, not only our king, but also the great prophet, our prophet that was promised.

And it says, Him you shall hear. Now, notice that this was according to all that they desired of the Lord their God in Horeb. What did they desire of God there at that day of assembly? They said, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore lest I die.

Well, if you do read the accounts of the times that God brought the people of Israel together and gave them His word, gave them His law, gave them His commandments. The mountain smoked. There was all kinds of incredible signs and wonders going on.

They were instructed that they could not approach the mountain or touch it lest they die. They were frightened. They were terrified. It was a terrifying thing for them to hear the words of the living God.

And so they said, we can't hear anymore. And so they said, so Moses went and he received the Ten Commandments written down by the hand of God, by the finger of God. And he, as a mediator, brought the word of the Lord to them.

But here, notice the promise is according to their desire, according to what they desired of the Lord their God. They couldn't bear to hear that anymore. But then God appoints a mediator, capital P, prophet, him you shall hear.

And this is a promise of the mediator. There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And he comes as the very word of God, as the truth of God. He comes and speaks on behalf of God.

The son speaking only as the father has instructed him. And so the people receive the word of God through Jesus Christ. Now, this is a fundamental understanding of how it is that we receive the revelation of God.

This is one of the reasons why anywhere that I am in the Bible and reading, I consider that I'm reading the words of my savior, Jesus Christ, because he is a mediator of God. In fact, Peter says that the prophets that wrote down what they wrote down did so by the spirit of Christ within them.

And so he's the mediator. He brings the word of God to us in a way that we can understand and know God. Now, verse 17. And the Lord said to me, what they have spoken is good. I will raise up for them a notice, the capital P, a prophet like you from among their brethren and will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

And it shall be that whoever will not hear my words, which he speaks in my name, I will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

And if you say in your heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken.

The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him. In other words, you shall give his words no credence. You shall not revere the words he's giving as if they are from the Lord.

So there are further instructions and so on in Deuteronomy about how to tell a false teacher from a true servant of the Lord and so on. But I think it's important to recognize the fact that there is a promise that God gave to his people, that he would send to them a prophet, one who would bring to them his very words and that what he said, well, what he says goes.

And everyone should follow what he says. And this ties together with what we have in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, for whom also he made the worlds.

So just a reminder that if we're going to say why these books are the word of God and not other books, we'll have to somehow tie in to what has Christ through his Holy Spirit revealed to his servants for our sake.

The authority of the word of God is not the fact that it's old. The authority of the word of God is not that it's the bestseller. The authority of the word of God is not that it's come so nicely bound all the time.

The authority of the word of God is that these are the words of Christ by his Holy Spirit through his holy servants to his people, to us. And remember that Christ has been given all authority in heaven and on earth.

He has a name which is above every name. That if we were to ask the apostles in the New Testament, where is Christ? They would all unanimously say, well, he's at the right hand of the father. He's at the right hand of the father.

He's the heir of all things. He is reigning from on high. What does that mean? That means that this word being the word of God, being the words of Christ through the Holy Spirit bears the authority of Christ.

We talk about Jesus Christ being savior and Lord. Well, we know what kind of a savior he is from the word. And this word is the scepter of his authority in our lives. We say he is Lord. Here is the scepter of his authority coming to bear in the world today.

So I want to begin there in that basic conviction. And then consider why these books, why these 66 books? We have the 39 books that we recognize in the Old Testament, the 27 books we recognize in the New Testament.

And they have all types of variety to them. As we talked about this being a human book, there's all sorts of genres of literature, some of its poetry, some of its history, some of its letter writing, some of its genealogies.

What a variety of different writing we have here. But why these 66 books? Let's begin with the Bible's self-attestation. The Bible's self-attestation. What I mean by that is, what does the Bible say about itself being the word of God?

We've already looked at this briefly in the previous point, but I want to review it. Because how often do you, when you're doing your daily Bible reading or reading through a section of the Old Testament, how often do you find a prophet saying, thus saith the Lord?

You see that all over the place. In fact, you see it so much that sometimes you just kind of gloss over it because you see it all the time. But what is being said? This is what God has to say. This is the word of God.

Now, if someone says this is the word of God and it's written down, well, we have the word of God. And if somebody else says, well, this is the word of God, but it's not true, as we read about in Deuteronomy 18, then we say, well, that's not the word of God.

It's not because someone's claiming it to be so. It has to actually be so. But we have the assertions of the prophets, thus saith the Lord. And we also have the assertions of the apostles saying that what they wrote down is the word.

Of God.

In Galatians chapter one, we have Paul in the midst of a very significant controversy going on in the churches in Galatia. The question is, how must one be saved? And that's pretty serious, isn't it? In the words of the jailer, what must I do to be saved?

And if you get two different answers, you have a conflict and you have a fight worth having. But notice what Paul says in Galatians 1, 11 and 12. Remember that the apostle Paul used to be known as Saul of Tarsus, the great persecutor of the church.

Verse 11, but I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.

We read elsewhere that after Saul of Tarsus was converted, after God saved him, that he was out in the wilderness with Christ for a time. And Christ was discipling and training him. And so Paul came to know the risen Lord Jesus Christ and was instructed by Jesus Christ as to what the true gospel was.

And so Paul says, I know what it is by the word of Christ, and I'm preaching that. I'm preaching his word, not the word of man. So I'm not going around preaching the word of man. He's writing his epistles.

He says, I'm not conveying the word of man. I'm conveying the words of Jesus Christ, qualitatively different. He makes it even more clear in 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 in verse 13. The apostles were aware of their station being especially chosen and especially authorized by Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 13. He says, for this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.

So they were preaching the gospel to them, and they said, this is the word of God, not the word of men. They were making those contrasts regularly. And then also in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 15, therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.

These things are authoritative. These are things that have been delivered to you, and they are to be followed.

Why?

Because they come from Christ. Christ through his spirit in his holy servants, the word of God coming to man. These are authoritative. They are to be believed and followed without exception, bar none.

Nobody gets an exception clause in this regard. That God's word is universally authoritative. And we have other passages as well that affirm that the apostles, such as John, knew exactly he was writing the very words of God.

In 2 Timothy 4 verses 9 through 18, we read at the very end of Paul's ministry, a concern that the word of God be handled with care. He says, be diligent to come to me quickly, for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica, Cretans for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia.

Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry. And take a kiss I have sent to Ephesus. Bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas when you come, and the books, especially the parchments.

Especially the parchments. What are these parchments? Now we're not told exactly what they are. But especially the parchments, he says. These are things that must be brought and kept. Now whatever those things might be, I think that it's possible that these were not, they may be just the materials he was going to write on, but maybe these were things that he had already written on, and he wanted them kept and preserved.

And it could be very well scripture. And so there are assertions of the apostles. They recognize the importance of what they're writing down. There's a clarity there in their hearts. But one of the most important things that we know what scripture is and what scripture isn't, Jesus gives us himself in John chapter 5, verses 38 through 47.

The Bible attests to itself that it is holy scripture, that it is Bible, because it agrees with Jesus. Why is scripture scripture? Because it is the words of Christ. It agrees with Jesus. It's about Christ.

So in John chapter 5, verses 38 through 47, Jesus has a conversation with the religious leaders of his day, those who are most familiar with the word of God. They have been tasked with memorizing vast portions of it, if not the whole Tanakh in entirety, the Old Testament.

They were to be incredibly familiar with the nooks and crannies of the writings from old, from the prophets, the actual holy scripture. And Jesus continually has to educate these most educated men on what the Bible is and what it's about.

For all their learning, they had not come to the knowledge of the truth. So in verse 38 of John 5, he says, but you do not have his word abiding in you.

Well, what do you mean?

They memorized it, right? That's all it takes. No, you do not have his word abiding in you because whom he sent him you do not believe. They don't have the word of God abiding in them, even though they've memorized large portions of it and could outclass any of us in Bible trivia.

But they don't have God's word abiding in them.

Why?

Because they don't believe in Christ. If they don't have Christ, then they don't have the word of God abiding in them. They don't get what the word of God is. It's not living and active and doing anything in their life at all.

So he says, you do not have his word abiding in you because whom he sent him you do not.

Believe.

You search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life. In other words, there's some pattern there. I think that we could figure out how to have eternal life. Remember the rich ruler who comes to Jesus and says, what must I do to have eternal life?

And there's a variety of opinions, just how I can have eternal life. And the scriptures have a code. I know if we just if we just decode the code, we can figure it out. You search the scriptures for in them.

You think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of me. They're looking in the scriptures for eternal life, but they won't believe in the one who brings them to living water. Verse 40, but you are not willing to come to me that you may have life.

I do not receive honor from men, but I know you that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in my father's name and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, him you will receive.

How can you believe who receive honor from one another and do not seek the honor which comes from the only God? Practical application of this is people are, if you notice, they're more ready to receive a, the writing in a book with a big name on the front with accolades on the back and quote, you know, reviews from all these other big names.

They're more willing to take a book like that and believe in a book like that than they are the very word of God, where Christ speaks in the name of the Father by the Holy Spirit. Verse 45, do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father.

There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust. They trust in Moses. They trust in the Torah, the first five books of the law and the ways in which the writings and the prophets expound upon the writings of Moses.

He says, there is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust. The very guy you think that you're in agreement with, he's going to actually, he's the one who accuses you. Now, notice this is very important.

For if you believed Moses, you would believe me. For he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? Do you see how important this is? You know, they, hey, they believe Moses because, hey, it's Moses.

But why is Moses anything? Because he wrote about Christ. And that's, and that's what they were missing. That's why they, they knew all about the, the Bible, but they didn't have the word of God abiding in them.

Because they were all about Moses, but they didn't recognize that the reason Moses was anything was because, because God used him to write about Christ. A lot more to say there, but why is the Bible the Bible?

It's because it's in agreement with the word of God incarnate. The word of God, which is scripture, is the word of God because it agrees with the word of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, who is the one who reveals God to us, the mediator between God and man.

We'll go ahead and look at the second point just briefly. The Bible's self-arbitration. Now, the Old and New Testaments are fully aware of false teachings. And very often certain books were written only because of one particular issue, one particular false doctrine.

Sometimes that was needful, but the Old and New Testament are fully aware of false teachings and they wage war against them, whether the prophets or the apostles. And so we are told all manner of false teaching throughout the scriptures.

And it's, and it's obvious that the, well, the devil or Diabolos from the Greek means a through thrower. So he's a pitcher. And you know, a pitcher has so many pitches. He doesn't have an infinite amount of pitches.

He just has a, he has a number of pitches and he throws them in interesting combinations to try to throw something through, to get something through. And that's what the devil does. And you see it throughout the scripture that he has quite a number of pitches and he's throwing them at various ways and various angles.

Um, but the Bible shows us that conflict so that we can be aware of the ways of the enemy and that we would stand firm in the word of God and resist, uh, his deceptions. Very interesting, uh, in Acts chapter 17, when the apostle Paul comes preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and he comes to Berea and, and he begins to, to, to preach there in the, in the synagogue of the Jews there in Berea, how do they determine whether or not the apostle Paul was telling the truth?

Well, they applied Deuteronomy 18 and other passages that said, you know, if someone comes and says they're speaking in the name of the Lord and they're contradicting, they're contradicting the word of God, well then they can't be true.

But if they come in the name of the Lord and what they say is an agreement with the word of God, then they are, then they are to be believed. That's what happened in Acts 17. Uh, the, the, we remember that they are called more fair minded than those in Thessalonica.

The Jews in Berea were more fair minded than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. And that's how they were going to tell whether or not it was true or false.

They waited against the scriptures and they're searching the scriptures daily. I mean, they're, they're not in just one or two places, but they're taking up scripture to look at other scripture. It's called the analogy of scripture.

Scripture is the best interpreter of scripture when we remember that scripture is about Christ, about who Jesus is. And so it says that many of them believed now. So there's recognition of false words.

That's, that's the fact. So some things aren't a Bible and some things are that which is false and failing or not. But then we also have the actual removal of false teachers. There were several showdowns in the old Testament.

Can anybody remember any false prophets in the old Testament? Yeah, there's a bunch that Elijah killed. Don't remember their names. It's 400 prophets of Baal, 450 prophets of Baal or the 450 prophets of Asherah.

It was 850 of them that got slaughtered off Mount Carmel. You remember the showdowns in the old Testament or the new Testament? You know, I know that today's 11th commandment is thou shalt be nice. But Paul wasn't, wasn't following that commandment.

He dropped names. He actually, you know, he actually, in his, in his writings, you read Paul's writings, he will list the names of the people who are causing the problems in the churches and say that these are false teachers and don't follow them.

Also, John did the same thing. It wasn't, it wasn't unique to, it wasn't unique to Paul. But there was the need to remove false teachers. Not everyone who claimed prophetic or apostolic authority, not everybody who claimed to be speaking in the name of the Lord, actually were so.

There was a difference between them and there was a need to remove false teachers. And the Bible tells us about those conflicts and shows us the different directions that the false teachers were going and the different things that were happening to show us the need to fight for the truth.

The Bible self-arbitrates. And so it is, it is not surprising that when we, when we read in one part of the scripture and another part of the scripture that it agrees.

All right.

It's not in contradiction to one another. It's not refuting one another. One of the favorite words of, of Squish academics is tension. And they say it with a lisp, but tension. You know, Job, Job and Solomon are in tension.

And what they mean by that is that they, that they disagree. And that they, there's things that are apparently contradictory. And we need to just embrace that. But the fact of the matter is, the only tension is in the heads of these people who are trying to read the Bible.

The Bible is to be accepted as, well, as one person said about the gospel of John, I think applies to the rest of scripture, that it's, it's safe enough for a child to wait and deep enough for an elephant to drown.

But we're not going to find any contradictory in there. Where at one point we say, well, God is like this. And another part, it says, well, God is definitely not like that. That's not in the word of God.

The word of God, it's, we see is a consistent fight against deception and a consistent adherence to the truth. So just a couple of examples in, in 1st John 2 .18, and then we're going to read John 1, Jude 1, and then we'll be done.

But 1st John chapter two, we, we see that there is a clear concern that there are false teachers, but there is a proper response to this. 1st John 2 .18 and following, little children, it is the last hour.

And as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us. Now that, that sounds as clear as mud. But he explains, he says, but you have an anointing from the holy one and you know all things.

I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it. And that no lie is of the truth. That last part is, I think, a very helpful medicine in our day to day. The fact that John had to say in his time, and that we have to say in our time that no lie is of the truth.

What a clarifying and helpful thing to say. But it needs to be said, no lies of the truth. In particular, what is the context that John is writing about? Who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ.

So before he talked about deceivers who went out and so on. Well, what is he getting at? Who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Now let me ask you something in the apostle John's day.

Jesus has risen from the dead. He's ascended to the right hand of God. John is in the business that the other apostles are. And pushing forward the great commission. And they're planting churches and discipling folks.

And raising up pastors of local elders and local churches and so on. They're doing the Lord's will. You know, what is this? Is this the 40s or the 50s or the 60s? Sometime 10, 20, 30 years after Christ has returned to the right hand of the Father.

Who are the people in those days who would say? Yeshua of Nazareth is not the Messiah. Who was saying that?

Right?

Not all the Jews. A whole bunch of Jews got converted and were happy in Jesus. But a whole bunch of other ones were not. They're the, you know, no Gentiles out there saying. Yeah, well, I, you know, that Yeshua of Nazareth.

I just don't think he can be the Messiah. Because of, you know, these different passages in Isaiah. They're not saying that. They don't have a context for that. The ones who were saying that Jesus is not the Christ.

Were the religious leaders still in Jerusalem. Who were operating an empire-wide hunt and destroy of the followers of the way. Notice how John talks about them. He says that they are antichrists. That's what he calls them.

He says they're antichrists. And in two different ways. One was obviously, you know, they're antichrists. Like, you know, I'm anti-abortion. They're totally against Christ. But they're also, in the use of the term, anti, in the Greek.

Has an idea of they want to be in the place of. Isn't that the jealousy? Isn't that the jealousy? They wanted to be in the place of Messiah. Messiah came to fulfill all these things. And it's like, no, we're keeping our temple.

We're keeping our sacrifices. We're keeping all of our customs and our ways. You're not going to replace all those things. You're not going to fulfill all those things. And their jealousy was like that of Saul to David.

And that's why they killed him. And so look how John puts it. Now, a whole lot of Jews got saved. 5 ,000 the day of Pentecost. A whole bunch of them. At some point, they stopped counting.

But not all of them.

And notice how he puts it. They went out from us. They went out from us. We didn't leave them. They left us.

Why?

What did they leave?

They left the temple. Where's the temple? Where's the temple? Temple is the people of God. These who rejected Jesus left the temple. The believing Jews, they didn't leave the temple. The temple was with them.

They're the temple of God. They're the temple of the Holy Spirit. That's where the temple was.

Who left?

The non-believing, they left the temple. These believing born-again Jews, they didn't leave the faith. No, the faith is with them. These other ones, these antichrists, they left the faith. And these believing born-again Jews, guess what?

They didn't even leave Jerusalem. As Hebrews reminds them, you guys are the city of God. It was the non-believing Jews. They're the ones who abandoned the faith. They abandoned the temple. They abandoned Jerusalem.

They abandoned the Messiah. And that's the way John puts it. So they went out from us. So it would be manifest that they were not of us. In fact, they are antichrists. They are jealous. They want the position of Christ.

And they hate Jesus. And that's the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Which again is, some people like to pit the Old Testament against the New Testament. But the New Testament is the satisfying conclusion to the Old Testament.

It fits perfectly. All the, if you were to have a giant puzzle with all sorts of jagged edges left undone, the New Testament comes in and completely fills it all very satisfyingly. And that's what they would not believe.

But there's a reminder here that there is no disagreement between old and new, but there is cohesion and unity and fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Well, that's all the time that we have for tonight. But let's close by singing the doxology together.

Praise God from...