The Fight for Sola Scriptura | Sermon 10/03/2021

Apologia Utah

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We are starting this church with a series on the solas, the five solas.

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And we will begin that in Genesis chapter 1, 2, and 3. So if you want to turn now to your very first book of the

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Bible, Genesis. And I realize now what that sign language was. There's people still coming in, so if you're able to, you know, make some more seats.

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There's some people standing in the hallway. I almost missed that, Pastor Luke, Pastor Zach, thank you. So thank you for making more seating.

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We're going to be in Genesis. We're going to read from Genesis chapter 3 first.

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I will be preaching at Apology of Church Utah in the New American Standard Bible, the 1995 version.

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But an ESV or anything like that will work just fine. I just want you to know what I'll be preaching out of.

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So please turn to Genesis chapter 3. Hear now the words of the living and true

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God. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the

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Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Indeed has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden.

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The woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden,

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God has said, You shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die. The serpent said to the woman,

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You surely will not die. For God knows that in that day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

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And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate.

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She gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Thus ending the reading of God's word, let's pray quickly.

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Lord, we pray that you'd bless the sermon. Help me, Lord, to be an instrument, a vessel,

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Lord, to proclaim your word. God, let me decrease and you increase.

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Remove me out of the way. Let the teaching be clear, O God. Let it be helpful to your people and let it be true.

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Let no error ever come from this pulpit, O God. And so, Lord, please bless this time.

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Teach your people. And let us leave here, Lord, in awe of you and in greater relationship and knowledge of you.

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We pray this in Christ's name, amen. So, before we take a look into Genesis 1, 2, and 3 specifically this evening,

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I'm going to introduce us to the sermon series. We are a church that holds to and, of course, practices expository preaching, and that is primarily done by choosing books of the

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Bible to study verse by verse, passage by passage. But myself and the other elders of Apologia thought it wise to lay some foundations as a church first by expositing and expounding upon passages that give life to what we know called the five solas.

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In the Latin, that would be sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, sola

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Christus, and sola Deo Gloria. Meaning, by Scripture alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, by Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

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And these were the principles that were derived from or taken out of the work and the effects and the outcome of the

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Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Let me give you some historical context to the five solas and the

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Protestant Reformation to help you with that. You see, God used many people, even new technology, as well as various aspects of the culture and issues within the

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Roman Catholic Church that all combined would become the catalyst, the spark, so to speak, for the

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Protestant Reformation, which would ignite a revival of the apostolic teachings given by Christ.

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You have men like Johannes Gutenberg, who invented the movable printing press in the mid -15th century.

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You might have heard of pre -reformer John Hus, or Jan Hus in German, who was deemed a heretic by the emperor for his biblical teachings at the

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Council of Constance, and then he was later martyred, burned at the stake in 1415.

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And of course, there was things like the political nature of the Roman Catholic Church and all its corruption.

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Greed was a large aspect for the motives of the church then.

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The foundations were being laid for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in 1506, and the sale of indulgences to have sins forgiven was a profitable venture then.

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They made money selling these indulgences, and it was upon this scene in which the

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German monk -priest of the Augustinian order, Martin Luther, who after studied his

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Bible extensively, took many issues and complaints with the Roman Catholic Church, and of course, its wicked sales of indulgences.

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At that time, there was another man, a German preacher by the name of Johann Tetzel, who was selling indulgences to the people, as I said, to pay for sins committed or rescue a loved one from purgatory.

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And there's a famous saying that you might have heard before that goes, as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.

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In some cases, a rather large amount was given, and a plenary or ultimate remission of sins, past, present, and future sins, would be pardoned, which is, of course, an all -out assault on the all -sufficient work of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. If only people had known what Peter said in Acts 8 back then, when he said to Simon the magician, may your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money.

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And so traditionally, it is held that on October 31st, 1517,

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Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses against the church, onto the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg.

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And these doors were much like a bulletin board of that day, a place where ideas and things like that were advertised and maybe debated.

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Unlike what we probably have heard in a class or something like that about that day, no mob came out.

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No mob came out at the hearing of a hammer on the doors. Nothing like that had happened.

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The 95 theses were written in Latin, as were a lot of publications in that day, but a young German printer had found them, and he translated them into German, and they were made available to the public, which was unlike anything people had ever seen at that time.

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And the German people who read it, of course, they were growing weary of the unbridled power and demands of Rome, and in those 95 theses, they found hope and justice in the words that Martin Luther had wrote.

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I strongly suggest that you take the time to read through these 95 theses at some time. It's really not that long, actually.

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But I want to mention these two in particular, okay? Thesis number 56 says, this is

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Martin Luther's thesis against the Roman Catholic Church, okay? He says,

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The true treasures of the church are not sufficiently discussed or known among the people of Christ.

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The treasures of the church are not sufficiently discussed or known among the people of Christ.

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And so we can maybe deduce what that is. That's the Word, right? We think about our

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Bibles. Maybe we think about the Word of God. Maybe you're thinking about how much you love your

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Bible, and I think it's terribly sad that only largely the clergy and wealthy people possessed a

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Bible in those days. The Scriptures were locked up tight and held bound and captive away from the common churchmen.

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But even beyond the whole of Scripture, seldom any knew of the high treasure contained within them.

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What is that treasure? What is that treasure that was being kept from the people? Which leads us to thesis number 62.

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It says, The true treasure of the church is the most holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.

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Amen. That is the treasure. The true treasure of the church is the most holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.

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What is a greater picture of love than the bloodstained cross that held the

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Son of God upon whom the wrath was due for us? That cross that He was placed upon.

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That is a true treasure. The Roman Catholic church had a counterfeit, right?

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And that is especially a mark of an apostate church. One that sells a fictional

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Gospel for money and works that brings only the fires of hell while withholding the true

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Gospel of grace. Holding the Gospel of grace captive from the people.

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The cross was replaced by the Mass and indulgences. The once -for -all sacrifice of Christ was disregarded and Christ was sacrificed anew in ritual every

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Mass. Martin Luther had no idea what would begin as a result of these theses.

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He didn't have this master plan. He didn't nail these up going, ha, ha, ha, now I got you.

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He didn't really think anything was going to happen because of it. Maybe someone from another camp or school would debate him on it.

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But by God's providence and His sovereignty, that German printer would translate them and take them and be moved amongst the people.

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So he had no idea what would happen. But soon in 1519, he found himself at the

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Leipzig debate against Johann Eck, the German scholastic theologian and Catholic prelate.

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Eck was pressing Luther. He was pressing him in the debate. He was even reading quotes from Jan Hus and likening them to Hus' beliefs.

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Oh, you're like that heretic, Jan Hus. You're just like him, Eck was saying. At that time, all

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Luther had known about Hus was that he was deemed a heretic by the church. So he was of course shocked. He was aghast.

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No, I'm not like the heretic. How could you say that? On a break, Martin Luther, he goes to the library at Leipzig and he finds

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Jan Hus' writings and realizes he agrees with his teachings, with the pre -reformer.

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He goes back to the debate and essentially admits that Hus speaks many biblical things, many biblical truths.

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And in that way, Martin Luther loses the debate. Because the whole debate was, you're a heretic.

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And he comes back from lunch and he says, yeah, I guess according to your definition, I'm a heretic. So essentially in that way, he loses, but really so much more was gained.

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He didn't lose. Eck pressed him to deny papal authority, but what he accomplished was getting

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Luther to admit to the authority of the Scriptures. An authority greater than the pope.

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An authority the pope should be subservient to. Right? Luther cut to the chase and said this,

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I'm a Christian theologian, and I am bound not only to assert, but to defend the truth with my blood and death.

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I want to believe freely and to be a slave to the authority of no one, whether council, university, or pope.

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So the choice was Scripture or the pope. Scripture or the

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Roman church. What would he choose, right? And so Luther chose

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Scripture. Luther chose Scripture. So in essence, as Dr.

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James White concluded in his book, Scripture Alone, the material principle of the Reformation was that the free

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Gospel of Christ was by grace through faith. Sola Fide. That is definitely one of the most important aspects of the

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Reformation. Sola Fide. It is by faith we are justified. While the formal principle behind the

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Reformation was, and indeed, Sola Scriptura. Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith for the

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Christian church. Scripture is the measuring rod in which we determine truth.

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Like a measuring tape that never changes, contains no error, and is all sufficient, we take all things in world and life and ideas and philosophies, and we measure it up against God's Word.

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It is solid. It is objective truth. Not subject to change or to alterations from popes or Mormon prophets.

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So we can say things like what it says in Proverbs 30. Every Word of God proves true.

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He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar.

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The Word stands firm, my friends, from the very mouth of God, who cannot lie, does not change

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His mind, and is the very origin of truth. God speaks and doesn't attempt to say something truthful.

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God is truth, so when He speaks, whatever He spoke is truth. Right? And without this doctrine, all others would lose their foundation.

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Right? Now that was, of course, a very brief background on the

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Reformation and the solos and how they came to be. And I can recommend resources to you if you want to learn more about the

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Reformation. So, just so you know, this sermon is one of possibly four to five of Sola Scriptura.

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Then we'll continue on through the rest of the five solos, just so you're aware. So with that in mind, let's move into the

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Biblical text in Genesis. It would, of course, be best to read all of chapters 1, 2, and 3.

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And maybe if I was Pastor Jeff Durbin, I'd read all three chapters and then proceed with an hour -long sermon.

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I had to do one of those jokes at least once, so he knows. But time won't allow for that.

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And so I would encourage you to read Genesis 1, 2, and 3, either after the service or later this week.

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So from these chapters, I want to expound on three main principles. These are the three main principles that I want you to get.

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Okay, I'm just going to give them to you up front. Number one, that God speaks and it is powerful.

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Powerful enough to create. Number two, that God speaks and it is personal.

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It is personal. And number three, God speaks with authority and that carries significant weight.

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Eternal weight. So let's consider, number one, that God speaks with power to create.

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Turn to Genesis 1 .1 -5. Some of you could probably quote it.

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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep.

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And the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, let there be light and there was light.

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God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness

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He called night. And there was evening and there was morning one day. We see that everything was formless and void.

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At that point of what we know about the very fabric of our human existence and this creation, that there was none of it.

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None of it. It was completely formless and void. It did not exist. This world did not have its being.

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It was not. It was not. And now God speaks.

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God speaks. He utters a word. He declares. He orders. He speaks into the void.

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Creatio ex nihilo. Which means created from nothing. God created out of nothing.

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Paul was right in saying in Romans 4 .17, he says, God calls into being that which does not exist.

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We see matter was not eternal. It had to be made by the

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Eternal One. This is power unlike anyone will ever know or possess as mere creatures.

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Unlike anything we will ever know. The only Creator God has this incredible power.

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He addresses the creation object before it even exists. Let there be light.

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Light wasn't even there yet, but He says let there be light. And it knows what to do. There was light.

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This shows us the light did not operate on its own accord. In the very words the Lord spoke were the power and control and divine directive and you could say even programming in a sense that the light came to be.

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And you know what's interesting is the light precedes the sun and moon which don't come until the fourth day in verse 16.

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By His power and divine attributes, the light comes forth. He doesn't even need the sun or the moon to create and emanate that light.

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I want you to see a pattern here. Look at the pattern. It says,

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God said and God called. God said and God called. He speaks to the creation object.

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He speaks it into existence and then He names it. He speaks it into existence and then

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He names it. And if we can just pause for a second and just consider how foolish and blasphemous it is when people in the prosperity gospel crowd say they can speak something into existence.

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I don't know if you've ever heard that before. This is the eternal God. The God over all creation.

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The one Lord who possesses this great power. And I admit there is sure much power in the proclamation of the

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Gospel and God's Word, but our speaking God's Word in a way or giving positive phrases to make something come to pass is unbiblical and folly.

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We can't speak things into existence. Only God can. Nothing can thwart the sovereign decree of the

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Lord, the providence of Him. For ourselves, we may build something, command something of someone, and yet they are just arrangements of the matter that God has already created.

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And to be clear, we don't even manipulate the matter so as to reorganize what God has made. We operate in and work with what

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God has spoken to be. When it states God said, at that moment all the atoms and structure and purpose were perfectly ordered in their design.

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More than this, we know in Colossians 1 and John 1 that through Christ, all things were made and are even upheld and sustained by the very

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Word of His power. He creates and He sustains.

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That is a powerful word, my friends. That everyone right now, everyone in this room, everyone in this world, all cells, all molecules, all matter, and even all things spiritual are upheld by Christ's very

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Word. Amen. Again, we see He spoke and He called.

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He spoke and He called. He named. Naming something in the Old Testament denotes ownership.

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We especially see that when God makes man. He brings every animal before the man and tells him to name them since Adam will have dominion over them.

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Calling or naming from God has power and truth to it too. When God makes

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Adam in chapter 2, He calls him man. When God makes

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Eve, He calls her woman. And those aren't simply names or labels, but they're actually truth claims about what they are and what they aren't.

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In this case, man is not woman and woman is not man. You see, that's why sola scriptura applied to the doctrines of creation are not simply secondary things, things that we can have disagreements on.

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They're in a way fundamental. The evolutionary worldview tries to remove those

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God -given distinctions. And it goes beyond their names, the way that God created them, their function, their biology.

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Just as the light isn't darkness and the darkness isn't light, so is the distinction between man and woman.

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Amen? Do you see how sola scriptura matters in this sense?

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If God didn't speak, if God didn't call, then you have this purposeless and indistinct mess.

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Or in the case of humankind, it becomes androgynous and sexless. Just this one being thing.

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It disobeys the command to be fruitful and multiply. And I don't see the survival of the fittest there.

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I see no survival at all in that worldview. Sola scriptura in that sense guards us from destroying ourselves.

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The Word of God in a way is His omnipotence. His attribute of being all -powerful.

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In Genesis 18, after God had promised Abraham and Sarah a son in their old age, He says, is anything too difficult for the

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Lord? Which in the Hebrew is literally, is any word too wonderful, too difficult for the

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Lord? He can give the Word and it will be done according to His sovereign power.

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God puts it this way in Isaiah 55 .11, So will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth, it will not return to Me empty without accomplishing what

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I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. So the kings of ancient times or medieval times only had a shadow of such power.

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A fraction of such power. From their throne, they could command a word and almost anything in some ways could happen.

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And yet, they are so much more dependent than we could realize. An earthly king like that, they are dependent upon God's Word through creation as we saw.

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And that the creation and its creatures would act consistent with their original purposes.

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That the cosmos or the fabric of reality would not just fall apart.

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They would need Christ to uphold all things by the Word of His power lest it be cast into chaos.

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And the kings need other people, creatures, food and water, and not to mention, God's decree and providence is to command anything from their throne.

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In other words, the word of the earthly king is so utterly dependent on God's Word that any power it would contain is a mere derivative or given sovereignly by God.

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He alone possesses such power in His Word. He can speak to a dead body and that dead body comes to life.

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He can speak a word and all His foes are vanquished. He can speak into the void and out of nothing comes everything.

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And so the Lord's Word is powerful. Number two,

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God speaks and it is personal. God's Word or God's speaking is as a divine attribute.

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In this we can deduce that where God is, His Word is there too. Where His Word is, is where He is and where His personalness is.

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And that makes sense too when we consider that the logos or the

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Word is a title given to the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.

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And Christ is, of course, Emmanuel, God with us. The Word is with us as Scripture.

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The Word is with us as Christ took on flesh and dwelt among us. And the

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Holy Spirit is with us and testifies to those preceding truths. The Lord is a personal

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God. Even within the Godhead, you have interpersonal relationship between God the

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Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And we see in Genesis 1 that all were present in the action of the creation.

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In v. 2, the Spirit of God was moving or hovering over the surface of the waters or over the emptiness.

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In v. 26, God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

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And some argue this is a plurality, a plural of majesty, a deliberative plural in God directing the statement to Himself.

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Some have even said that this is God speaking to the angelic court. And they're saying let's make man in our own image and likeness.

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And so, we let Scripture interpret Scripture. The Bible demonstrates we ought to hold to not only just sola

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Scriptura, but tota Scriptura. All of Scripture. And so with that, we let

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Scripture interpret Scripture. The New Testament makes it clear once again in John 1 that not anything that was made was made apart from Christ.

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And Colossians 1, that all things were created by Him and for Him and through Him. I think it's safe to say that all the holy persons of the

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Trinity have been there and they were present in that creation. From eternity past and unto now and into eternity, the

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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit have always experienced and will continue to experience that glorious communion together.

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And so, the only God is a personal God. In chapter 3, we see that the

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Lord God even walks in their midst in the cool of the day. The God of the universe who in the previous chapters we see create all things was walking among them.

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It'd be unbelievable almost if He told us so. That the God of the universe who created everything was walking among them.

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But He tells us it was so. The Lord just wielded all this incredible and awesome power by His Word and He makes man special and different from all other creation objects, from all other creatures, and now

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He walks among them. The Lawgiver gives us commandments to follow that which flows out of His very character and attributes.

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The God of the universe lets the Apostle John rest His head on His chest. Jesus Christ, the

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Creator, weeps for the sake of the grieving Jews when Lazarus died. The famous two -word verse that says,

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Jesus wept. The Creator of the world wept. And when we see our

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Redeemer you yourself will get the opportunity to embrace Him and to touch

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Him when you see your Redeemer face -to -face. He is not a

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God of deism who creates and then just sets things on autopilot. He just spins it and it just goes.

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Our God is transcendent, all at the same time transcendent above all things, and yet He is imminent.

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He is near to us. The Lord especially gives us this principle when

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He speaks to Israel in Deuteronomy 4 .7 -8, for what great nation is there that has a

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God so near to it as the Lord our God whenever we call upon Him?

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Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as the whole law which

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I am setting before you today? Our God hears when we call on Him.

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He listens to every word that one of His children speaks. Even when we think

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He doesn't, He listens. In that Deuteronomy passage, God even equates

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His nearness with His giving of His statutes. And typically, the

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Bible demonstrates that generally His law can be used as His Word. So we have a

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God so near to us because of His Word in that way. God made us communicative beings as He Himself is communicative.

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The Lord is even differentiated from all other gods. Paul calls them mute idols in his letter to the

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Corinthians. They're just mute idols. They're nothing. In Psalm 115, 5 -8, it says of other gods, they have mouths, but they cannot speak.

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They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. They have noses, but they cannot smell.

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They have hands, but they cannot feel. They have feet, but they cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throat, it says.

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And those who make them will become like them. Everyone who trusts in them.

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Isn't it ironic? I don't know why, this made me think of like cell phones, believe it or not.

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Cell phones were created as a way, as a medium of communication, right? Speech, words, text, all that.

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But now many of us stare blankly at our phones just swiping, swiping, looking at pictures, looking at videos,

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Facebook, playing games, whatever. And of course, I'm not saying phones are evil and we just need to throw them out or anything.

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I know how useful they can be in ministering to each other verbally or through text.

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Listening to maybe the Bible on audio, something like that. Listening to sermons. I love all that.

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I use my phone for that. But how often do we see like a family at a restaurant, and each parent as well as the children have a device in front of them, okay?

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And they're slowly losing the ability to carry a conversation with each other. They're just like, you know, robotic in that sense.

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And I mean, I do it too. Honestly, I'm guilty. My wife knows. She'll tell me something to do, take out the trash, and I'll just be like a caveman, like, huh?

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You know, just deep in that phone, right? And so maybe like the psalmist said, in some way we're becoming like those items.

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And so those are just a few thoughts as I meditated on that psalm. But ultimately, God speaks, and so we speak.

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God speaks, and so we speak. His Word is personal, and it is living.

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Hebrews 4 .12 says regarding this, For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two -edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

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Let me ask you something. Who would you say knows you the best? Who would you say knows you the best?

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I think probably the majority of us would say our spouse knows us the best. Or maybe if the children are listening, they'd say mommy and daddy know me the best.

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My parents know me the best. Something like that. And so the person who knows you the best might know your aspirations, your likes, your dislikes, the various aspects of your personality, and they might know how to detect when you're happy, or even detect when you're unhappy and maybe you're faking it, and so on.

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But unlike God's Word, God's living Word, they are not able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

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They are not able to do that. The very core of our nature and person, God's Word, knows it says.

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Like the splitting of joints and marrow, does

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His Word know us so personally? Because as I said previously,

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God's Word is where He is. And He desires that relationship with us.

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He spoke to us, and He wants us to speak to Him. How could the bride neglect the bridegroom?

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Right? How could the bride neglect the bridegroom? Let the personalness of His Word drive us to speak to Him.

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For even though He knows our thoughts and intentions, just as His mode of intimacy is

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His Word, He desires for us to speak to Him in prayer.

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So let's of course make a habit of that. Just as we must be intentional to speak with our spouses and children, therefore growing together, let us be intentional about our time with God.

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And we have number three here. God speaks with authority. God's Word not only does something very powerful, or it doesn't just simply possess

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His personalness, it also means something. God's Word means something. And this meaning has authority, and it obligates a response by those who hear it.

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Theologian John Frame states in his Theology of Lordship series, when God shares

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His love with us, we have the obligation to treasure it. When He questions, we should answer.

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When God expresses His grace, we are obligated to trust it. When He tells us

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His desires, we should conform our lives to them. And when

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He shares us His knowledge and intentions, we ought to believe that they are true. God is eternal.

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God is absolute. The Lord God is ultimate. By His very nature,

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His Word is the same. By His very nature, His Word is the same. The words of an absolute authority demand absolute obligation.

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Everything we do, every decision we make, every command we obey or break for that matter, is a direct response to God's explicit

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Word, His commands, or His implicit Word, that especially seen in creation and order.

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In Leviticus 22 .31, the Lord makes it clear, so you shall keep

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My commandments and do them. I am the Lord. So He's saying, obey all that I tell you to do, and where's

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My authority? I am the Lord. That's My authority. I am the Lord. Do it.

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And so in Genesis 1, God, by the authority of His Word, defines what His creation is to do and to obey.

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He says, be fruitful and multiply. He commands and blesses

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His creatures. And a response is obligated. They will do exactly what

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His Word says to do. The creation will do what He has ordered. And in 1 .28,

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God tells man to subdue and have dominion over everything else in creation. It is a special command.

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So if man is to listen to and obey God's Word, and God says have dominion over the animals, is

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Adam then supposed to listen to the Word of an animal? He's supposed to have dominion over animals.

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Is he then to listen to the Word and trust the Word of an animal? No, of course not.

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He's to be over all of them. Besides this, the dominion mandate, what else does

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God command the man? In Genesis 2 .16 -17, it says, the

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Lord God commanded the man, saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.

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For in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. From this we see that man has a moral capacity then, and man has a moral responsibility.

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God commands, God says, this is what you should do, this is what you shouldn't do. Man then has to respond the way that God has prescribed.

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This is the Adamic covenant, or what's called the covenant of works. That has now been established.

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In Adam and Eve's moral relationship with God, they have a duty to obey His Word or die. That's the covenant that we see here.

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He says obey this Word or die. And this kind of covenant puts conditions on the man, a requirement of total obedience and total perfection in that obedience.

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And as we know, only one in the history of all creation from then until now has been able to obey the covenant of works.

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And so I don't mean to give up the ending, but that is of course the Lord Jesus Christ. The covenant of grace is

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Jesus Christ performing and fulfilling the covenant of works. Doing what

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Adam did not do. While being the perfect substitution and sacrifice that the

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Mosaic covenant introduced. Perfect obedience and a perfect sacrifice to appease the wrath of God.

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That's a little covenant lesson right there. And so again, what

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I'm establishing here is that God's Word is authoritative, and it necessitates a response.

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And that response should be obedience according to His nature, His ultimacy, and His eternality.

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But what occurs in chapter 3? We all know, let's take a look. Genesis 3, starting in v.

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1, it says, Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

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And he said to the woman, Indeed has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?

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The woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden,

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God has said, You shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die. The serpent said to the woman,

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You surely will not die, for God knows that in that day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

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And this, brothers and sisters, is where the fight for sola scriptura began.

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This is where the fight for sola scriptura began. It wasn't simply a 16th century reformation fight between the reformers and the

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Roman Catholic Church. There has been a war of words since the beginning of this very creation.

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A war of words. What word has the supremacy and ultimate authority?

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Here, a talking serpent who we know to be Satan gives the challenge,

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Has God said? Has God said? Did God actually say that?

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So he gets Eve to first question God's Word, ultimately getting her to question

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God Himself. Secondly, the serpent then carefully lies and attempts to remove the consequence.

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You surely will not die. Well, God said they would die. He says surely you will not die.

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He lies to them, removing the response. And isn't that not what we see today?

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The world, the flesh, and the devil question God's Word, distort God's Word, then soothes us into sin by delusion of penalty removal.

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I know God's Word says not to commit adultery, but my feelings tell me this is right, and I know

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God is gracious and He'll forgive me. He won't hold this against me. Or I know what the

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Bible says about male and female, but I'm going to go ahead and mutilate my body, enter into a sodomite relationship, and because there is no

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God, it doesn't matter anyway. It's the same old lie from the garden.

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Did God say that? Did God say that? The system God instituted was

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Himself having supreme authority, then a creation hierarchy of the man, the helper wife, and then over the animal creation.

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But what do we see in v. 12 -13? An attempt to change the order of the authority.

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You have the serpent. Eve blames that serpent. Then you have

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Adam blames the woman. Oh, this is the woman that you had given me, God. And ultimately, together they blame

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God. Upon hearing the Word of the Lord, then the Word of the serpent, they then consider their own word.

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They heard God's Word, the serpent's Word, and then they have to go inside and they consider their own word.

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Making themselves out to be like God, they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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They trusted their own judgment as if it were divine. And this is a false notion of autonomy.

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And so the fall of man occurs. Adam was our federal head. It says, therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

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The fall occurs at that time in Genesis 3. And don't worry,

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I'm wrapping up here. In the midst of God declaring the curse upon the serpent, woman, and man, hope is given.

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God is giving the curse for these three. And hope is given.

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And when you think about it, God promises they will die, and yet they are not killed immediately.

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A grace was given. Right? God could have killed them right then and there.

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He could have stopped creation from that moment, but a grace was given that day. And they were not killed.

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V. 15 is the greatest hope of it all. In v. 15 of chapter 3, it says,

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And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.

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Her seed, He shall crush you on the head, and you will simply bruise

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Him on the heel. This is called the Protoevangelium. The first Gospel.

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The promise of Jesus Christ to come. That Jesus Christ, the last

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Adam, would destroy the works of the devil. And the wages of sin is death, and He will die for His people, granting eternal life to them.

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The entry into the Garden is now guarded along with the tree of life, but through Christ we have access to the

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Garden once again. We have access to the tree of life through Christ.

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It's Christ's Word now. It's Christ's Word. It is finished.

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In this war of words, Christ says it is finished. And He vanquishes all

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His foes. It is finished with His Word. It started with the Word. There's a battle for words, and Christ finishes it with His Word.

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It is finished on that cross. Such a Word is like a two -edged sword that comes out of His mouth.

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The war of words has been won by the Logos, the Word, Jesus Christ. I think the most glorious aspect of all that we've covered is that God's Word doesn't just tell us something.

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God's Word isn't just informative. It actually does something. We aren't just told about redemption.

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Jesus actually accomplishes redemption for us. God's Word doesn't just tell us something.

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It does something in that sense. And so God's Word is powerful. It is personal.

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And it is authoritative. Is Sola Scriptura just some lofty and heady doctrine above us?

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A doctrine of theology that doesn't interact with you or me or something like that?

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Of course not. Of course not. It undergirds and holds up all other doctrines and promises and truths that God has given.

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The world, our flesh, and the devil still try to fight with, did

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God say that? Even in our context, the

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Mormon church has us all question, did God say that? His Word is missing many plain and precious truths.

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Did God say that? It's the same lie perpetuated over and over again.

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But as Christians, we need not question His Word. Our question should now be not did

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God say that, but what does God say? What does God say? What does the

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Lord say about this? How does His Word shed light on this issue? How is one justified or made right before God?

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And that's a huge question. That's a question of eternal significance. And so we look to His Word for that truth.

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How does God equip Christians to live lives of holiness and in reverence to Him? We look to Scripture.

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We look to His commandments for this. We don't look to the advice of the world and its distorted view of morality and righteousness.

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We look to the All -Righteous One. How do we know that there is only one

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God? Because He says so in His Word. There is only one God. And He's the only

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One He knows of. Given the supremacy of the Author, the

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Word of God can make no claim to any higher authority than which it already possesses.

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It is self -attesting. You see, forever and ever, now and into eternity, we will look to see what

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God says. What did God say? God speaks, and so we are comforted.

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God speaks, and so we answer. God speaks, and so we listen.

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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, please bless the

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Word that went out today. God, please help us in our areas, in our sphere of influence, to consider

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Sola Scriptura and how Your Word is true and how

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Your Word is life and liberty. How Your commandments are not burdensome, but they are a delight now to us in Christ.

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Lord, help us to consider this Word and how we make decisions in the workplace, with our family, and how we deliver the

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Gospel to those around us. Lord, we thank You for Your Word.

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We thank You, God, that You did not just create us and put this on autopilot, Lord, but that You've given us

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Your Word. And it's far more than just instruction. Your Word shows us that Jesus Christ paid the penalty in full, and there is now no longer any condemnation for those in Christ.

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And so we thank You for Your Word. Please let us consider it as we go about our week.