Adult Sunday School - The Roman Catholic Controversy Part7

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What's that? Just go to the Lord. Let's pray.
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Father, before we thank the Lord for today, we thank the Lord for your goodness, your mercy, your grace which is renewed to us every morning.
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We ask, Father, that you would enlighten us now with your word, with instruction, with teaching that is pure from your word, that we would not fall into the errors which are so prone to the world and to wrong, which is to mix your pure word with things other than that which you have preached, spoken, and worked.
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We pray, Father, that you grant us protection from unbiblical practices.
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And we ask that you help us, Father, in our endeavor to worship you purely as you have desired.
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We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So, one of the things that we're going to talk about today is we're going to look at some of the struggle, the tension that exists between Scripture and church tradition.
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Let me ask you, because, you know, oftentimes when we look at Roman Catholicism, we tend to point the finger at them and say, look at all those unbiblical practices.
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But how many unbiblical practices do we have?
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Let's examine ourselves before we point the finger at Rome. What are some things that you, maybe in your past church experience, maybe even in your present church experience, that you have felt?
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Maybe, I'm not sure there's a direct line between what we've practiced or what we've done and the
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Bible. I want you to think critically here for a second. Let's not look just at Rome. Let's look at ourselves for a moment.
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So you're talking about the sinner's prayer. Yes. So there are many in Evangelicalism today that hold to this kind of false sense of security when they say what the preacher says, come on,
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Jesus in your heart, all you've got to do is raise your hand. I was a son of Baptist for a long time, so in our first church we did altar calls often.
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And I was always kind of uncomfortable with it because I felt the same tension. I was always trying to frame the altar call really like, okay, who wants to come and die today, right?
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The call's not for you to come and simply raise your hand and give your heart to Jesus, but this is a call to die to self.
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So who's actually interested in that? So I kind of pretext it a little bit more strongly.
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But you're right, you know, there's nowhere in the scriptures where Paul says right now, anyone here who wants to give their heart to Jesus, raise your hand.
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You don't see that necessarily in the scriptures. That's a great example. Anyone else have something in their experience?
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Yeah. I'm sure in the regular workspace there are some preachers that unless you speak in tongues, you're not saved.
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That's right. That's right. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, do all speak in tongues?
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It's a rhetorical question. Obviously not. Do all prophesy? Obviously not. So clearly not all the early
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Christians spoke in tongues. We are sitting in not a sanctuary, but an auditorium.
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I don't know if it's petty, but I always, you know, they say don't run in church or don't run in the sanctuary.
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And I go, no, it's an auditorium. Have fun. Yeah. I guess we're going to be really difficult.
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We'd be meeting in someone's living room right now. Because all the early churches met in homes predominantly.
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Although they also met in the public square and in the synagogue, scripture says. So there were three main meeting places, synagogue, when they were allowed in, the public square, and then people's homes.
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One cuppers. What's that? One cuppers. One cuppers. Okay. Let's find out from people who don't know.
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In communion, Christ handed around one cup. And so that's what they do in their services.
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Catholic. No. It's like in the Roman Catholic Church as well, right? Well, the
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Roman Catholics do that, but many churches do that. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks very seriously.
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We all drink of the same cup. Okay. So the financial prosperity gospel is saying.
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There is a biblical principle there, right? The Bible does say, he sows fairly, he reaps fairly.
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There is a principle there, but I think the almost prosperity creatures, they go before. Anyone else?
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Anything from your experience? Yeah. I'm not in any way an expert, but I'm starting to see, specifically in reform circles, theonomy.
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What's theonomy? Explain that for folks who don't know. My understanding is that the government should be like having the
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Christian faith be like the government rules faith.
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That our influence should be that all of our laws should really be biblically based.
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Essentially it's for theocracy, right? Yeah. Theonomy is a male theocracy where all of the government is subject to a biblical principle.
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Which on the outside doesn't sound too bad. But yeah, you're right. I would contend that a full theonomist worldview does not conform to scriptures.
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I would agree with that. And it is because we're a cobbler in Christian circles. Primarily the huge eschatology thing.
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Yeah, I love eschatology. You guys know that already. And I get passionate about eschatology. I just spend time with people about eschatology because that's the hope they have.
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It's to see Jesus in the view of Jesus. I always get choked up when I think about seeing Jesus.
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Anyone else have anything in their experience that, maybe their traditions, teachings, practices, that have not always comported with your understanding of the
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Bible? I'll give you one for myself. Our avoidance of using the divine name.
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To me it's very unbiblical. And what I mean by that, most churches, as a matter of fact, if you go to our hymnal.
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I love our hymnal. The reason I love our hymnal is because lots of songs use the name Jehovah in our hymnal.
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If you go to a modern, a new OPC hymnal book.
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Like with the song Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah. They changed the name from Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah to Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer.
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They took the name out. And this has been a practice over the last hundred years in particular.
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In Anglo -Saxon churches and circles of removing the divine name Jehovah Yahweh.
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And replacing it with other titles such as Redeemer, Lord, etc. Now that has a long, rich tradition in our
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English heritage. Starting with the Geneva and King James Bible. But the Geneva and King James Bible does have the
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Tetragrammaton translated as Jehovah. About five or six times if I'm not mistaken. But I think that's an unbiblical practice.
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I think when translators do not translate the name properly. Either as proper names such as Jehovah or Yahweh.
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I think they're doing a disservice in the quality of tradition of man. That's my personal prediction. Lord is not a name.
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God has revealed his name to us in the scripture. Exodus 3. Moses asks what's his name?
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He says Jehovah, Yahweh, I am that I am. That's his name. So when we do a disservice when we translate it as a title.
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Similarly we wouldn't like it. There's a practice that's done in the Middle East. For Muslim sensitivities.
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Where they do not translate the name Jesus. As Jesus in some Arabic Bibles.
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But instead they translate it as teacher, rabbi. Do you think that's right? Should we take the name
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Jesus out of the scriptures and give him a title such as rabbi. In order to corporate with the sensibilities of people in the Middle East.
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They do the same thing. There's some Native American translations that do the same thing with the name of Jesus. A major translation that was just done in one
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Native American language. Actually by people that I know in Canada.
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They translate it. God is translated as the great spirit.
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And Jesus is translated as the great teacher. So whenever the name Jesus appears. It's not
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Jesus, it's the great teacher. Is that right? I don't think so. Neither should it be right that we do the same thing with the divine name.
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Yahweh, Jehovah. There's a debate as to which would be the best term to use. But as long as you use one of them.
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I think it would happen. A new modern translation of LSB. Legacy Center Bible.
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I think it's a great translation. That keeps the divine name Yahweh. In the original text.
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So I'm very supportive. Obviously you guys know that translation in particular. So I think that's an example of a biblical tradition.
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That we have adopted in the secular circles. So the topic.
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The question I posed to you guys this morning was. What are some traditions. What are some things in our own experience as Christians.
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In the reform camp. Maybe in other experiences. That have not always been reported to the Bible. We're going to examine this struggle.
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This tension between scripture and tradition. And I would suppose.
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And I would submit to you all. That we all have traditions. We all have things that are either extra biblical.
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Or maybe even non -biblical. In our maybe faith or practice. In the way that we do things.
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Now one of the reasons I'm really proud to be your pastor here. Is because I think this is a church. Where we really try to focus. We really try to do all that we can.
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To do our best. To do everything by the scriptures. Now are we perfect in that endeavor? Most likely not.
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I'm sure there's some things that we're going to. Either through time and study. We're going to see that we could do better.
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Or when we get to the secretary. He's going to be like yeah. I love your effort. But you got this totally wrong. And so we have to be humble.
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And allow scripture to dictate truth. Dictate practice. And that's one of the reasons why we hold to what's called.
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A regulative principle of worship. Anyone know what a regulative principle of worship means? What does that mean?
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Yeah. I was going to mention that as one of the things. We. Our worship is not informed by our methodology.
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But theology. So we look at scripture. And that drives how we worship. One example
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I was going to give is. The use of hymns. As opposed to what. Even in catholic churches.
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As well as some evangelical churches. Using the popular use of. More modern worship music.
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So really sticking to. And it's.
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Not just in the hymns. But also. In how we conduct our worship services. You know it's not a rock concert.
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You know. It's very orderly. Very dignified. In corporate worship.
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We only do. What the scripture is. The methodology of worship.
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Where God has spoken. He has said this is what you are to do. And we do exactly that.
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You know Paul says this. And this is an overlooked scripture. He says do not go beyond the things that are written.
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And. Oftentimes evangelicals. We love going beyond the things that are written. You know I was an evangelical pastor.
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For many years as well. Non denominational. You know.
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There's a lot of liberties. It's almost like. There's two methodologies. That is prevalent in American politics.
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In terms of how to interpret the constitution. For the first. 200 years of our country.
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Most of our presidents. Regardless whether they are federalist, republican, democrat. All held to kind of a standard view.
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Of the constitution. As viewing it. Quite literally. And then also not doing.
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Understanding the government does not have the authority to do. Anything other than what is prescribed. In the constitution. In a kind of regular worship sense.
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Now in the 1900s. Sort of Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah. Yeah.
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He started to say well. How about. We don't do. Anything that is not.
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Solicitly. Condemned by the constitution. So the constitution didn't talk about something. It doesn't particularly.
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Give us a yay or. Yes or no. Then we can do it.
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Right. And that's where you start to see. Big government. Approaching government life.
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Life in this industry. So there's two different views. Of doing the constitution. Two different views of looking at the bible.
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We either do exactly what's in the bible. And don't go beyond what things are in. Or we take great liberty.
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And start adding more and more things. I think that's the danger. And I think that's what regular worship. Protects us.
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Protects us from unbiblical practices. Unbiblical traditions. I agree with that.
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In regard to. Being part of the biblical principles.
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But our liturgy. Or our style. When we do things. How we do things.
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How long we do things. How many services we have. This kind of thing.
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There's liberty there. That's right. This is why it's a principle. What does this principle mean?
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A principle is a little bit less. Hard and.
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Theoretical than a rule of law. There's a principle at play here.
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That in itself does grant some liberty. Obviously. That's a given.
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For instance. Elements of worship. Scripture gives us elements of worship.
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Prayer. Reading of scripture. Music. In your hearts to the lord.
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The preaching of the word. And community. Those are the big five ones. When we look at those.
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Scriptures. Paul does not tell us. How long each section should be.
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He doesn't tell us. At what point of service these things should be. It's interesting because in the first century.
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We have an early Christian document. Have you ever heard of that before? It's like a.
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It's like the first. Christian. Very short. About 2 ,000 words long.
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It's not very long. It gives us. Destruction. Fills in some of the gaps.
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What early Christians. Assume. It's really interesting. Affirms.
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Trinitarian baptism. In full immersion. They also.
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Baptism is. Church membership. We have today. Here in this church.
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They fill in some of the gaps. On some of the things. That is not. It's not.
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The bible. We don't hold on to that. As the. So there is flexibility.
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In the principles. But we follow the principles. As a rule of faith. Any thoughts or questions?
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Some people. Put that towards. Maybe around. 70 to 180.
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Some people. Put it in the 2nd century. But that's actually. It was likely.
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Written around the time. So early church fathers. Debated whether or not. This should be.
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Ultimately they rejected. And I would agree. With that assessment.
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When you read it. You can certainly tell. Early Christians are doing their best. Compiling data.
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And having a rule of faith. Like us in hiring. And holding fast to.
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For instance the 1689. But we would never say. This should be included in the canon of scripture. We examine the 1689 document.
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We say this is a good examination. This is a good assessment of the faith. But by no means.
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This is not part of the scripture. So I think the docket. Served as an early
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Christian. Early Christian confession. For the 1st century. And 2nd century
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Christians. Thoughts or questions? Let's get into the actual.
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Reading of this week. Which is chapter 6. And it's called.
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A thousand traditions. And where are some things. That set up to you in the reading. There are traditions.
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The way they claim. That they were. Received from the apostles.
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Through the very word of Christ. And then transferred down. Directed to the truth. And of course.
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Always governed by the Holy Spirit. Like you would be coming against. The apostles and the Holy Spirit. That's right.
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That's very good. Very slick. I think it was. 1 and 2 in Trent.
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That the chapter quotes from. It's like hand in hand. It's like they go hand in hand.
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It's the apostles. And now it's the pope. It's all this beautiful succession. And that's one of the appeals to Rome.
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Is that. Rome says. You don't have to worry about.
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How to interpret the Bible. Because we've already done it for you. And that is an appeal. Let me tell you. The Jehovah's Witnesses do the same thing.
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The Jehovah's Witnesses say. That the Bible is not a book for individuals. But rather it's an organization of it. And it can only be understood.
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Within Jehovah's organization. And so they give you the Watchtower magazine. And they say this is your interpreter. This magazine will interpret the
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Bible for you. So you don't even have to read the Bible. You just read the Watchtower. You'll know what the Bible teaches. There's an appeal to that.
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Because it's easier to read a 30 page magazine. Than it is to read. 2 ,500 pages of the
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Bible. It wasn't clear.
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Were the traditions ever written down? Here's the struggle.
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There's the old tradition. That they talk about that they appeal to. Which of course to some degree is written.
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Verbalized. And script. Because they had to keep it. So that's a great question.
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To ask a Catholic. Is say. When we're talking about oral traditions. What are we talking about exactly?
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Which oral traditions? The ones that are being canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Which are no longer oral.
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They're not written. They're literally written. So that's a good question for a
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Roman Catholic. I'm just real confused. The same thing. Where are these written?
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Are they in a certain amount of doctrine? I know they're oral. But how do you bring it in?
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To even be able to see what it is? Do they let us see everything? No. You got to go to the
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Vatican Library. Which is top secret. You'll find the Da Vinci codes and stuff there. But no.
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The thing about Roman Catholicism. The interesting thing about it. Roman Catholicism has.
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A lot of history. Nearly. Over 1500 years of history.
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So they've kind of monopolized. A lot of Christian documents. A lot of Christian tradition. And what they consider to be.
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Authoritative. Is what has been prescribed. In their councils.
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Or in their catechism. I think I've showed you the catechism. The Catholic catechism. It's huge.
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And so. Those are the things. That they consider as authoritative. Traditions.
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And obviously that much they practice. Within their mass services. Those are the things that they consider to be.
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Oral traditions. If anyone would give me an example of an oral tradition. In Roman Catholicism.
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What would be considered kind of an oral tradition? The Eucharist.
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Yes. It's actually the body of blood. It becomes that. Yeah. That certainly.
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They have an interpretation. Of the Eucharist. Of the communion.
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And that is based upon. Primarily. Tradition. Not just oral tradition.
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But written tradition. So the Catholic Church would make a small distinction. Between written.
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Apostolic tradition. And oral tradition. And so. They would make a small distinction.
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Between the two. Their understanding of the communion. Would be more so a.
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What's an apostolic handing over. Understanding of the Eucharist.
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So you would say that. That comports to oral tradition. But really there's a whole other line of tradition. That supports that understanding.
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Of the Eucharist. Would the oral tradition include. Things like. Stories of the saints.
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How the saints became. That's a perfect example. Have you seen the news lately?
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This week there was. Somewhere in Ohio. There was a nun who was buried.
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And they were to. Communicate her body. And when they checked. She had not decomposed at all.
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It's now her body is on display. For having this proclamation. Touching the dead body of this lady.
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Who died just a couple of years ago. And this saw. Is part of oral tradition.
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There's no meaning coming from Rome. Saying now go visit this person. These are all things that. Corporate oral traditions.
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They're a veneration of saints. A veneration of different people. Angels. These are all things that.
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Corporate oral tradition. For sure. Very strange stuff.
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Relics and things like that. Would be passed on as an oral tradition.
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Yeah relics. A lot of things have to do with relics. A lot of things have to do with indulgences. For instance the shroud turban.
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You guys ever heard of the shroud turban? There's a shroud that supposedly. Was wrapped around Jesus' body. It's a very interesting thing.
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We don't know how this thing works. It supposedly shows the body of Christ.
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But we don't really see. It's all derived by oral traditions. We don't really see anything of it.
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In tradition. Until around the 1300's. From a written.
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From scripture. They take. Part of the two verses of scripture.
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One in the Luke's gospel. One in the Apocrypha. And they extrapolate that to.
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This huge. Doctrine. Dogma of Purgatory. And a lot of their understanding.
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Does come from oral tradition as well. They have to fill in the blanks. Oral tradition works great in the
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Roman Catholic Church. As a great filler. Because you have these big things in scripture. Maybe that they point to.
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But then how they support their dogma. Is through the oral tradition. Well look at all those who come before us.
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And all the things that they've written on this. And therefore we can extrapolate. We can have this dogma in place. Because it's supported not just by.
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One or two scriptures text. But also because of the weight of church tradition. And church awareness.
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The idea of sins. Being no sins. Oh for sure. Absolutely.
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And actually you begin to see. Kind of the beginnings of that. In the Doctrine. That I mentioned earlier from the first century.
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Where you have kind of a listing of. Sins. I think the Doctrine makes.
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Like a threefold distinction of sins. I think the first distinction. If I remember correctly. Is like.
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You know basically. They talk about the ways of life. The ways of death. And these are the things that you have to avoid.
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And these are the things that you have to do. And then they talk. So the sins that you're to avoid. That lead to death.
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And then there's other gross sins. That are forbidden. That okay they're not going to.
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These are sins that lead to death. These are sins that won't kill you necessarily. But they're bad.
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And then you have what they call other forbidden sins. So kind of a threefold degree of sins.
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In the Doctrine. Which is where Roman Catholic Church I think eventually. Develops some of their views. On different kinds of sins.
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You have any thoughts or questions so far? So we know. In the Roman Catholic perspective.
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They obviously. Do not hold to what's called. But instead. They teach something that's a little bit different.
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They believe in sacred theology. So I'm reading from. I think this is from.
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2nd Vatican. It says. Sacred theology rests on the written word of God. Together with sacred tradition.
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As it's primary. And perpetual foundation. That's the last. Sentence there.
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Sacred theology. Rests on the written word of God. Together with sacred tradition.
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So again it's hand in hand. Sacred tradition. Being the interpreter of the sacred word.
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Why is it appealing? What was the question?
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Why was. Why is it appealing to have this view. That sacred theology.
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Stems from. Not only the word. But the sacred tradition that interprets the word. Here's Urban intimidated by.
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The book of Revelation. Right. You know we think of the.
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Certain books of the Bible. Ezekiel, Revelation, Jeremiah. It's like. Prodigals.
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Prodigals. Were through those names in genealogy. Intimidating isn't it?
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Someone in the men's group. Sent a picture. A meme. My worst nightmares read through the genealogy.
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It's certainly. Something more intimidating. In the Bible for sure. John. You can make it as.
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in the sense that you would be reading, you would be, the scriptures wouldn't be interpreting what you believe, you would be reading into the scriptures what you believe and interpreting it through the scriptures.
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That's right. You know, I would suggest that maybe a lot of evangelicals do the same thing.
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You know, we don't have Rome. We have our favorite TV preacher. You know, we have our favorite writer on eschatology,
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Ron Rhoades or Tim LaHaye or whatever the person may be. We all have these little books that we run to to help us interpret the
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Bible. You know, my previous church, I had spent four years in depth studying eschatology and in particular, the book of Revelation.
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It's after compiling all the data, I wanted to teach it to the church. And so, we're very afraid of accepting that because my interpretation did not compare with a dispensational view of Revelation.
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And so, I was allowed to teach it, but I wasn't really allowed to advertise it. And so, we had a small group of the church who would meet every
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Tuesday, I think it was, who would study, you know, the material that I came up with.
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I would actually tell you that the book of Revelation is probably the easiest book in the Bible. For those of you who have never been intimated by reading the book of Revelation, I think it's actually the easiest book in the
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Bible. And I can say that because if you know the rest of the Bible, the book of Revelation is a big deal.
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Revelation will not make sense to you if you don't know the Bible. If you don't understand the narrative, the meta -narrative, starting in Genesis, going all the way through, there's these huge, you know, overarching ideas and themes, and they're just carried straight through Revelation, and they make a lot of sense.
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You know, you have this scary seven -headed dragon, where did he come from? He's the serpent from the garden, right?
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And it's this narrative, this little cunning snake has now become this huge monster.
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I mean, the imagery is just so rich there. There's so many things there that, you know, if you just know the
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Bible, Revelation is very easy to understand. And it comes down to a difference of obvious human interpretation, that we believe as Protestants that there is a science to interpretation, and that's called hermeneutics.
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It's called exegesis, whereas the Roman Catholics say, the hermeneutics of exegesis has been done for us.
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We have no need to do it ourselves. Rome has done it for us. Rome is the interpreter. Rome is essentially the infallible interpreter.
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Now, you have some groups who have this idea that the Bible is inspired. So the Roman Catholics will agree, God's word is inspired, so amen, we agree.
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So does the Seventy Adventists, so do the Jehovah's Witnesses, so do the Mormons. But all those groups have in common that I just mentioned,
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Catholics, Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, is that they all affirm the
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Bible, but they also add something, a caveat on top of the table. We have a, not only do we believe the
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Bible, we have a perfect interpreter for the Bible. For Jehovah's Witnesses, it's the Watchtower. For Mormons, it's the
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Mormon prophet. For Seventy Adventists, it's L .M .G. White, who is the founder and prophet of the church.
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For Roman Catholicism, it's the Pope and his many councils. They all have an interpreter who say, we're the perfect interpreter for the word of God.
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So in order for you to understand God's word, you have to be on our side. You have to accept our authority.
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So when it comes down to ultimately, it's whose authority do you accept? As Protestants, we accept the
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Bible as the authority. As the sole authority for faith and practice, all right? And so nothing supersedes the
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Bible. That our creeds, that our catechisms, that our confessions, all those things are subject to Scripture, servants of Scripture, but in no way are they on par or over Scripture, and that is the basis for sociatory.
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Sociatory does not say that we cannot have inter -biblical sources, right? Obviously, we look at history, we look at all the things of the church fathers, we look at the creeds, we hold, we are a creedal faith, we do hold on to confession, we are a confessional faith, but those things are servant to the
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Scriptures, not that they are the infallible rule or infallible interpreter of Scripture, you understand?
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So you can come to this church and you can say, well, I'm not sure I believe this part of the 689 Confession, and as long as it's not something major like the
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Resurrection, the Deity of Christ, the Trinity, things like that, things that aren't damnable heresies, then we're fine, right?
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We're not gonna kick you out of the church because you don't believe the Pope is the Antichrist, we're not gonna kick you out of the church, and I'm not gonna do that, but, no, we're not gonna do that, we're not gonna kick people out because you don't agree with every single sentence in our confession, obviously, so.
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Most people who adhere to our confession, for instance, don't hold on to everything. In fact, if you look at our website, there's two or three things that we say, we hold loosely to these things, so not completely, so.
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Any thoughts or questions so far? And so we wanna make sure that we understand exactly our perspective on this, that we're not saying you can't have tradition, we think that's an extreme, but what we're saying is that tradition should be subservient to Scripture, right?
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So our traditions should ultimately be derived from Scripture and have its foundation in Scripture because we all have traditions.
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What is, let's define this for a moment, what is a tradition anyway, what does it mean? What does the word tradition mean?
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I can give you a definition if you can. What does a tradition mean?
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It's just something that's been believed for a long time. Something that's believed, and really the word tradition has the connotation of transmission, of transmitting something over time, right?
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And so it's generally, a tradition is something that is customary, that is transmitted over time.
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So for instance, some of us have traditions in our families surrounding holidays, surrounding Christmas, for instance.
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I love our family's traditions around Christmas. Well, not that I didn't grow up celebrating
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Christmas and now that I get to do that with my kids, it's very special. But our Sunday, or our
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Christmas is pretty well -defined now and what we do is we have, first and foremost, we wake up, we go, you know, kids on Christmas Day walk the streets with presents, we don't do that.
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We don't do presents until like much later today, actually. The reason why is because we start the day off with worship and we go into the narrative of the
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Christmas story and we go through it as a family and then we'll sing Christmas songs and then we'll have breakfast and then we'll do all these nice things and then we'll open presents.
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We'll actually sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and then we'll say, you know, Jesus is so good on his birthday, we get to have presents.
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That's how good Jesus is, right? So kind of instilling that in our children. That's a tradition, right? And I love that tradition and I think it's, obviously, we try to drive that from the scriptures and, you know, we start the day with family worship and not venerating the presents, that's not the center of what we do.
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And it came to a point where even this past year, when we did it, you know, sometimes the kids get very itchy and they just wanna open the presents.
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But I didn't think we opened the presents until like two in the afternoon or, you know, it's actually this year because it, this past year because it fell on Sunday, we did our
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Christmas on Saturday. So it wasn't until much later in the afternoon that we actually ended up opening the presents.
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So, it's okay to have traditions, is what I'm saying. But this should be derived from scripture, right?
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And all of our traditions, especially those surrounding our worship, surrounding our families and how we conduct ourselves during the holidays and other special occasions, should be derived from scripture.
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So traditions in themselves are not bad. Let's not have an allergic reaction to this word tradition. But also, the warning of Christ, which is, you make no void of the word of God by the traditions of men.
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What do you think Jesus is trying to accomplish here when he confronts the Pharisees with such a powerful statement? You make no void of the word of God by the traditions of men.
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Think about what the Pharisees were doing, right? The Pharisees were taking the scriptures and they were saying like the
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Catholics, we affirm it's the word of God. But the Pharisee class became the interpreters, the keepers of the religious system of Judaism and the keepers of the
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Old Testament law. And so what ends up happening is they begin to build systems, add more laws, add more dogma on top of God's inspired word, which
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Jesus came and says, you make no void of the word of God. Like you miss the entire point by adding all these things.
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Primarily things concerning the Sabbath, for instance, is a big deal. You know, you couldn't even, the
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Sabbath law, which is, which commandment is the Sabbath? Fourth Commandment, which is the only one that actually starts off with this phrase, remember the
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Sabbath and keep it holy. It's the only one that we're called to remember, to have a remembrance of.
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And so God's fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, had a pretty clear cut statement.
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Now over time, over centuries, over the Pharisee class taking it over, had become so complex that there were a lot of do's and do nots on the
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Sabbath, right? So if you had, you know, even today, you go to a
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Hasidic Jewish community in New York, so I grew up pretty close to New York, and in upstate
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New York, in Manhattan, the Brooklyn area, there's a lot of Hasidic Jews. And they won't even like switch, you know, put the switch up for the lights on the
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Sabbath, because which is Saturday for them? You know, there are so many things that they cannot do, it's because of all the regulations that they put on top of it, because they're trying to be careful not to break the
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Sabbath. Similarly, one of the reasons why the divine name Jehovah Yahweh was taken out of the
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Bible translations was because out of the superstitious Jewish tradition, which says we can't even utter the name
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Yahweh or Jehovah out of fear for contaminating it and making it unholy, because we're commanded to keep
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God's name holy. You know, not to blaspheme God's name. But they took that very simple prescription from God's word, and they added so many things to it that they've lost the meaning of it, so much so that they don't even have a name for their
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God anymore, they don't even name God's name. The Jewish community, you know what they say instead of Yahweh or Jehovah, they'll never say it.
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Any time you see it in the scriptures, you know what they say? They say, you know, Adonai is the Lord, or, which is where we get our
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English tradition for doing the same thing. Or they actually made up a whole term for it called Hashem. You know what
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Hashem means? Hashem just means the name, okay? So when they read it in the scriptures, in the synagogues, they'll likely say, when they see
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Yahweh, Yud -Hit -Vav -Him, they'd say Hashem, the name. They don't say what the name is, they just say the name.
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Again, traditions that make known for the word of God. And so we wanna be careful of that, and we wanna make sure that as Christians, we're not falling into the same traps as Pharisees or Roman Catholicism by making known the word of God by the trinity of thoughts and questions so far.
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Some things that were of interest as well in this discussion on the 1 ,000
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Traditions is the idea of sufficiency. Can it be said that the Roman Catholic, in all honesty, have a view of a sufficiency of scripture?
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Are the scriptures sufficient in the Roman Catholic view? How can we defend that? How can we defend that view?
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Well, they think that it has to be interpreted by their traditions, or it's not complete without the tradition,
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I'm sorry. How does that differ from the Pharisees, though?
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How does that differ? Solely on the scripture, yeah.
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So we save ourselves the trouble, so here's what Catholics will slap back at us, right? The Catholics will say, well, you have the same problem that we do, because look at all the different interpretations that you have in scripture, right?
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And everyone, essentially, becomes a pope of their own. See, we have one pope, we have one interpretation, but for the
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Christian, but for the Protestant, everyone's their own pope. And so, it's kind of like that scripture that says, everyone live that which is right in his own eyes.
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Everyone interprets that which they want in their own eyes, essentially, with the view of a Catholic rebuttal.
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They say, well, you've got the same problem, except we have one pope, one dogma, one interpretation, and you have thousands, right?
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How would we rebut that? How would we answer to that? It's true.
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There's the same problem within all those, they argue. They do, yeah, oftentimes,
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I mean, that's one of Martin Luther's, in his thesis, is one of the things he pointed out, was how the myriad of popes and councils have often been contradictory, right?
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They've contradicted themselves, often, throughout the church history. And so, yeah, there's a myriad of contradiction to admit for a dogma, from pope to pope, and we just look at the style of popes, right?
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We had Pope Benedict, who recently died, and he was considered kind of a bulwark of conservatism.
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Now, we've got Pope Francis, who says, atheists and gays go to heaven, right? I mean, and that's not official church dogma, either, but the pope is saying, he'll go out there, and he'll say that, yeah, atheists will go to heaven, yeah, but gays will go to heaven, and that's not official church dogma, so we have all these contradictions happening even now before our eyes, so, yeah.
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It's the official Catholic position that scripture is not sufficient. You can't understand scripture by itself.
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We would assert, yes, we can, and we would also agree that humans are fallible, and different people are gonna get it wrong sometimes, but they would actually, officially say, no,
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God's word is not clear enough for you to write your own. And here's the Protestant perspective is, we believe in the sufficiency of scripture, that scripture in itself is sufficient for every good work, for every teaching, for every, you know, 2
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Timothy chapter three, obviously, comes to mind, but we also believe in the clarity of scripture.
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Part of the sufficiency of scripture is understanding the clarity of scripture, that scripture is, in itself, in its plain reading, sufficient, we hear.
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That's important, because, you know, we can trust that we can hand this book off to a child, and he'll come, by and large, to the same conclusions that we have, right?
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The scriptures are sufficient, and they're sufficiently clear, and so that's why, although Protestants, we do have lots of different views of Protestantism, among the major things, we're pretty much on board with the
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Trinity, the deity of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, all these major Christian dogmas and teachings, of which are the citadel of the
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Christian church. We all agree on them, right? So, on the essentials, we're all pretty much on board, unless you're a part of the cult, like Mormonism, Jehoshaphatism, or maybe an urge from Christian orthodoxy on the major essentials.
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But I would say that this actually shows the veracity of scripture, as being clear, concise, and clear enough to lead us into, if you were to put a man on the high level of the
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Bible, I promise you, at the end of that experience, he would not be a Jehovah's Witness. I promise you, he would not be a
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Mormon. He probably wouldn't be Catholic, either. He'd be a Christian. So, that shows the clarity of scripture, and not just the sufficiency.
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The sufficiency, in order for scripture to be sufficient, it also has to be sufficiently clear. You understand that?
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And so, we believe in the clarity of scripture, as well, along with sufficiency. Does that make sense?
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That's the perfect thing to talk to a Mormon Catholic about, is, obviously, their dogma of scripture isn't sufficient, but for the
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Christian, we can say with confidence that it is not only insufficient, but sufficiently clear. So, that's important.
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That's very important. John? It's very interesting. The Catholic belief wants to have control and understand all things, in a sense, and I'm only saying that because of what
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I witnessed. A friend of mine had committed suicide. They had three priests.
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They did this incantation in Latin over him, and they prayed him out of purgatory into heaven, and then they gave assurance to his family on that, because of what they did,
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God's time for them, but to be able to take, to usurp that kind of...
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You know, one of the things that came up in this chapter, as well, is the development of dogma, the development of doctrine, and the
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Mormon Catholics, similar to us, to most Protestants, would agree that you need a little more tradition, because Scripture, the canon of Scripture, is closed, right?
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So, unlike, for instance, the Mormon Church, the Mormon Church believes that the canon of Scripture is not closed.
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Do you know when was the last time Mormon was added to the Scriptures? It was in 1973.
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In 1973, the prophet of the Mormon Church decreed that blacks were no longer outcasts, and that blacks could not be included in the priesthood, and that was the last major revelation.
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It was included in what's called Doctrine and Covenants. So, the Mormons have four major Scriptures, and it's the
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Bible, the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants.
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And Doctrine and Covenants is mostly the writings of Joseph Smith and other prophets after him.
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And the last Scripture that was added was in 1973, when they included blacks into the Mormon priesthood.
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And so, they're still adding things to Scripture over time. So, their canon is not closed. But the
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Roman Catholics and the Protestants would both firmly agree that the canon is closed. What we would disagree on is the development of Doctrine out of that closed canon, right?
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And so, the development of Doctrine in the Roman Catholic dogma obviously includes the councils, the reeds, and the
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Pope, having the final authority for what is canonical, what is official church teaching.
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But if you didn't know, it's not just like these guys kind of just get into a room where the
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Pope can just say things and it's true. So, for instance, I showed you how Pope Francis said, atheists and gays can make the heaven.
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You know why that's not official church doctrine, even though the Pope said it? Why is it not official church doctrine?
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It has to be speaking ex -vitra or something, from the seat. It's gotta be like switch on the magic switch.
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Now, that's true, but it's more complicated than that, a little more nuanced than that as well. In order for the
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Pope to speak in that condition, he needs to convene with the
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Council of Cardinals to come, the College of Cardinals to come, and they would debate these things.
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And then only afterwards, when this matter is settled, can he now take his authority and say, this is official church doctrine.
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So, he can't just sit there and say, okay, this is official church doctrine. There's a process in place in Roman Catholic teaching for a teaching to become officially
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Catholic doctrine, right? And so, it's not simply that the
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Pope just agreed, because Popes over centuries have all said some wild things and not been a part of the official canon of Catholic doctrine, right?
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So, there's a process in place. And that's essentially how the interaction happens.
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For the Protestants, it's a little bit different. Let's look at our own history, let's look at our own confession.
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We have the 1689 Confession. Anyone know a little bit how that was compiled? How was the 1689
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Confession compiled? It is often referred to as the second London Baptist Confession, which means it was the first one, the first one being,
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I think, in 1646, right? So, you have the 1646 against the 1689. How are these confessions compiled?
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Isn't the second one then a combination of their
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Baptists? That's right. So, the Westminster Confession is kind of like the gold standard of confessions in terms of Protestantism.
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It is kind of like the first major English confession with Protestant distinctions and, you know, it's just an invaluable document.
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It really is just a marvelous piece of work. Obviously, the reason why we don't hold to a
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Westminster Confession is because we hold to a second London Baptist Confession because of their Baptist distinctions. And so, what happened is, over the first and second
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London Baptist Confessions, you had, you know, essentially, dozens, if not almost hundreds,
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I'm not sure it was almost a hundred or not, but there was over 40 churches that compiled, that were
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Baptistic, Calvinistic, who says, okay, we need to have a kind of standard of what we believe.
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And so, you have 40 different pastors, 40 different churches represented, and they're all trying to sort out, okay, what are our beliefs on Baptism?
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What's our beliefs on Jesus? And so forth. And they took a systematic approach to doctrine.
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And they say, let's take every major Christian doctrine, and let's come to a place of commonality, of common ground.
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And so, over many years, debates back and forth, they said, okay, these are the essential truths that we believe on these essential matters.
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And that's how we come to Christian doctrine, is we look at the scriptures. These guys were pouring over the scriptures.
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They weren't debating about ecumenical councils or things that had to do with the politics of the church, how to get more indulgences, how to get more money into the coffers of the church, how we can build the next great cathedral.
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They were concerned with doctrine of purity. And that's a great foundation. And that's what distinguishes a confession such as the
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Second World Baptist Confession and the ecumenical councils of the Roman Catholic Church, where there's so many other considerations, such as church history, which was not things that were not considered in our confession.
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Those things are all secondary to what the scripture plainly said and taught.
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So, when we develop Christian doctrine teaching, it really comes from the Bible being the main source, whereas in Roman Catholic doctrine, the
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Bible is not necessarily the main source. It can be often secondary to things such as tradition.
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So, does that make sense? Any other thoughts or questions? Yeah. Your previous question, if they came and pointed out that you don't have one person like Pope telling, that reminded me of the verse, 2
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Peter 1, 20, noting this verse, that no offstage of scripture is of any kind of interpretation.
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Remember, carried along by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the dictator of truth. And Jesus says, the
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Spirit will lead you to all truth, which is why he believed in the sufficiency of the clarity of scripture, because how does he lead us into truth?
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Jesus says, the Holy Spirit said, Father, your word is truth. So, how does he lead us to truth? It's through the word, right?
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So, the word has to be sufficiently clear in order for the Spirit to lead us into the truth of the scriptures.
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And so, yeah, one more thing. Any other thoughts or questions? Yes. So, like, how do you do the, do you know what the question is?
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No, it is a contention, right? There's a tension there. And I would say, you know, there is a science to interpretation, right?
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It's hermeneutics, it's exegesis. And so, part of the science of interpretation is understanding that oftentimes the plain reading is the correct understanding, right?
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So that when Jesus is saying, if your right hand calls to you to stumble, cut it off.
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You actually cut it off? Well, we understand. What's the plain reading of this? Put yourself in the, just like you were taught in elementary, put yourself in the audience.
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What would they have understood? What they would have understood is clearly being metaphorical. And it wouldn't have come to the conclusion that some evangelicals have today, for instance, to say, well, the reason
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Jesus says to cut off your hand is because you might take the mark of the beast. If you take the mark of the beast, the only way out of it is by cutting your hand.
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So, Jesus is actually being literal here. And that's not what he's talking about. If the plain understanding, the plain reading is usually the correct reading, right?
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And so, I would say people have to directly study the science of interpretation, remember, maybe it's exegesis, in order to come to an understanding.
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And if you do that, and if Christians did that, man, we would be so better off. But the problem is, is that for us, it's all the same trap as Catholics.
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We all want the little pope to tell us what to believe. Whether it's the pastor, whether it's the, you know,
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Tim LaHaye's of the world, whether it's the Rom Rhodes of the world. We want someone to tell us what the Bible teaches, instead of just knowing the basic principles of interpretation and reading it.
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And a lot of the spiritualism is all true. And I think that would be, you know, that's my answer to that. I think we would be so better off if we just knew the basics of hermeneutics and exegesis.
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I was gonna say, so I, here at Hermeneutics, we're gonna look at the science. What is it?
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What's, because everybody has their own hermeneutics. That's right. Well, not everyone has the same hermeneutics. There's a foundation of what hermeneutics is, right?
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So just like in science, the word science, there is a basic understanding of what science is and what takes place in order for it to be science.
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It needs to be observable, it needs to be measurable. These are all things that have to, you know, deal with true science.
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The same is true of hermeneutics. There's a basic underlying principles that dictate hermeneutics.
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If you do something other than those basic principles, you're doing something other than hermeneutics, right? So again, some of the, just real basic principles of hermeneutics.
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One is that scripture interprets the scripture. Two, that the plain reading is usually the correct reading.
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Three, you have to take the historical and narrative context into account when reading scripture, right?
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So when Jesus says, again, I've used this a couple weeks ago, I think. When Jesus says, this generation will, by no means, pass away, he's, you know, if you were in the
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Mount, on the Olivet Discourse hearing Jesus say that, you wouldn't be thinking to yourself, oh, those guys in 2023 are really screwed.
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You know, that would not come to your mind. You'd be saying, oh, we're in trouble. This generation, all right.
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So again, you know, you just have to put yourself in the shoe of the audience and, again, those basic principles of hermeneutics come into play.
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And acts of Jesus, which is important as well, which is another facet of hermeneutics, which is basically, we exegete, which means we take out of scripture.
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We don't put into scripture, okay? So we draw out, yeah, we exegete. We don't isogete, isogete meaning putting in versus drawing out.
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Jesus says in John, well, it says in Jesus that he is the exegeter, he is the one who has explained the
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Father to John 19, right? He's the one who's exegeted the Father. So, you know, very important principle there.
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Will you pray for us and then we'll get ready for service. Father, we do thank you, Lord, that you've given us time to consider these matters.
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Lord, we know that you have given us your word, which is sure, which is sufficient and clear, which leads us into all truth.
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Father, we pray, Lord, that your will be done in our lives, that we would use this information effectively to help and serve others.
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And, Lord, that we would not become haughty in our own estimation, our own spirits, but,
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Lord, rather that we would be humble in how we use this truth to reach the laws. In Jesus' name, amen.