Knowing From Who

Puritan Reformed Church Phoenix

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to 2nd Timothy chapter 3, 2nd

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Timothy chapter 3 verse 1. But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self -control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.

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And from such people turn away, for of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women, loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

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Now as Janice and Jambres resisted Moses, so did these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith, but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all as theirs also was.

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But you have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, long -suffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, what persecutions

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I endured. And out of them all the Lord delivered me.

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Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

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But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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But you must continue in the things which you have learned and assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them.

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And that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

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You may be seated. All right, so last

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Thursday evening we had gone through the first portions of this chapter, and we talked about the last days being the end of the

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Old Covenant, so the times that were coming with the destruction of Jerusalem.

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And in the last days, perilous times will come. So that was the great apostasy and the great persecution that occurred, the great tribulation that occurred in that time.

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And so these things, these difficulties, these losses that occurred there, we talked about.

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But in essence, we think about our time, okay, our time. We live in a time where many children that grew up in the last generation in Christian homes left those

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Christian homes upon going to college or whatever else. We've seen something like, according to some of the studies that were done by the

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Southern Baptist Convention, for example, something like 80 % of children having apostatized after having left their parents' home.

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Now there seems to be this kind of returning that often occurs later in life, but that is not a successful picture.

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The successful picture is not that men are raised in Christian homes, leave, and then when they have spent all the juice of their youth, they come back and give the dregs to God.

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That is not success. What we want to see is people raised in the fear and admonition of the

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Lord, and to give the strength of their youth to the service of the Lord, and to cause the whole of their life to be devoted to his service.

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And so we've lived in a time that is the second greatest, at least based upon the evidence that we have, the second greatest apostasy in the history of Christendom, with the first being the great apostasy that occurred when the vast majority of the

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Jewish Church, the Old Covenant Church, rejected the New Covenant, and also during the great persecution of the church in this time, many members of it departed to flee from the persecution and betrayed in apostasy.

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So we then think about all of these things that were, all these wickednesses, the loving of money, and of themselves, boasting, proud, blasphemers, we list all that out.

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These are men who had a form of godliness, right, but they didn't have the power. They had external forms, but not the power.

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And we talked about how in Israel, Jesus went around casting out demons, just enormous numbers of demons, including, in one particular instance, one guy who had a legion of demons in him.

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The legions, fucking 4 ,000 men in a legion, you count the auxilia and its baggage chain and all that, you're talking about 6 ,000 men.

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I mean, there's a lot of demons in this guy. The enormous number of demons that were cast out by the

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Lord Jesus Christ, by his 12, and by the 70 that were sent out to cast out demons and heal and preach and go around doing all these signs.

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And you remember what we're told, when demons are cast out, when they leave, if there's not somebody who comes in who's strong enough to keep them out, like the

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Holy Spirit, what happens is they come back with a bunch of their friends, and they concentrate even worse, and the place becomes even worse.

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So that's what happened in terms of Israel, and so we see this horrifying persecution and horrifying apostasy that occurred in the first century.

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But so inside of the church, when you see the manifestations of these ungodly characteristics, there's a special duty to turn away.

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For of the sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women, loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

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And so there's this danger that women would be deceived, and it is the duty of heads of house to protect their families and to protect their wives from false teachers.

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And we talked about when serpents come in, it's your job to cut the head off. And furthermore, that you make your wife a hardened target by washing her in the words, so instead of being silly or gullible or unserious, she becomes a woman who is serious -minded.

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And instead of being loaded down with sins, she's assured of her salvation. And so I advised you to study the doctrine of the atonement and the doctrine of assurance, and to make sure your family knows it well.

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And we need to know the difference between false learning versus the knowledge of the truth.

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And so that which we can know with certainty is that which God has revealed in his holy word, and we should look to it as the foundation.

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Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone, and the apostles and prophets are the stones that together are the fullness of the foundation that the

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Lord Jesus Christ has laid. The word of God is the foundation, and so we recognize that God himself is the foundation of the church.

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He is our rock. He is that which we are to build on, and we find that the word of God is true, and men are liars.

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And so what we find is that we should rely upon the word of God, and that allows us to have a certainty of knowledge.

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Now, page 3, we get to verse 8, which we did not talk about last time.

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Now, as Janice and John resisted Moses, so did these also resist the truth.

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There's a comparison now between the false teachers that come in, and they seek to creep in, and to deceive women, to deceive gullible women, and who are always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth, and there's this idea of the skill pursuit, the pursuing of things that aren't steady, and then there's this contrast to Janice and John Brees who resisted

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Moses. Who are Janice and John Brees? Well, you don't find the names specifically in the

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Holy Scripture, so you go, who are Janice and John Brees? So let me read to you what

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Matthew Poole says. Concerning this resistance of Moses by Janice and John Brees, the

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Holy Scripture says nothing but in this text, it is said by interpreters that they were two brethren, the chief of Pharaoh's magicians, who opposed

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Moses in the miracles he wrought, Exodus 7 -11, whose names might be known in Paul's time by tradition or the public writings of the

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Jews. So they could be preserved through historical record, and now through inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit, we have certainty that that's actually the right names of the people who were opposing Moses. So do these also resist the truth?

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So these false teachers resist the truth in the same way, and the kind of teaching they're bringing is to be viewed in terms of this type of, this learning that doesn't give the knowledge of the truth.

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So do these also resist the truth. So will corrupt teachers under the gospel resist the truth of the gospel published by Christ's ministers?

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Men of corrupt minds, men whose hearts are corrupted with sordid lusts, reprobate concerning the faith, adokimoi, of no sound judgment as to the doctrine of faith, or not approved of God or good men as to their sentiments about our faith.

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Now, I want to show you that text where this opposition initially occurs.

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Exodus 7 verses 8 to 13. Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, when

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Pharaoh speaks to you saying, show a miracle for yourselves, then you shall say to Aaron, take your rod and cast it before Pharaoh and let it become a serpent.

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It's quite the impressive sign and wonder. I can't turn my walking stick into a snake.

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I'm just saying. So Moses and Aaron went into Pharaoh and they did so, just as the

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Lord commanded. And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent.

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Wow. I'm like, these must be, these must be, these must be, based upon this sign and wonder, servants of the living

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God who can turn staves into snakes. But Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers.

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So the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. Oh, they also took staves and turned them into snakes.

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So they must be, must be servants of the living

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God. Is it signs and wonders that show us who is the true

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God or signs and wonders, things that draw attention to the Word of God and that draw attention to the message and the messenger?

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They draw attention. There are lying signs and wonders. For every man threw down his rod and they became serpents.

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May there's more of them and more of them were doing the sign. Did more of the signs add up to more? But Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods.

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Okay, so does might demonstrate? Is it like if you're, if you're, if your signs win the battle, if you're, if you win the battle, does that mean that your

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God is true? That's obviously what's all signified here, but we don't know it because of the signs. The signs are all things that are there that display the glory and power of God, but it's not the sign that proves.

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What is the thing that we know from? Well, the Word itself, there's a duty to believe it.

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Pharaoh had a duty to believe the Word regardless of whether or not there were signs that accompany it, but what does

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God do? He brings signs with it still and that increases responsibility and then the sign is followed by the serpent from Aaron eating the serpents from Janus and Jambres and all of their cronies and Pharaoh's heart grew hard and he did not heed them as the

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Lord had said. So even though sometimes the signs that are present are superior on the side of the righteous, still people kind of just accept the wicked sometimes.

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They, they, they're hardened. Why? Because it's not the sign that gives knowledge, it's not the eye that gives knowledge, it's not the ear that gives knowledge, and these things don't just enter into the hearts of men.

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It depends upon the work of God to give faith and God will accomplish his purposes.

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Now as Janus and Jambres resisted Moses, so did these also resist the truth. Janus and Jambres were magicians.

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They were practitioners of magic, of the occult. They were doing it no doubt in the name of their pagan gods.

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Many of the names of these Egyptian gods you're familiar with, but these false gods that they represented and the signs they did for them as a resistance were resistance to the truth.

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And they were men of corrupt minds just as those who opposed true teaching now are men of corrupt minds and they seek to bring in all sorts of glittering things to deceive the wicked and keep them ensnared in their lusts, but they are disapproved concerning the faith.

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So you must compare them with what God has said and compare their doctrine with what

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God has said. But they will progress no further for their folly will be manifest to all as theirs also was.

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Raising that conflict and having it be public, having it like this confrontation between Moses and Aaron and these magicians, having it be public was used to help to resist them.

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And God uses in his providence these fights to preserve the church and to reduce false teachers to nothing.

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Go to page 4. So on the other side of Janus and Jambres who have these wicked practices, these occultic practices, these magical things who are like these current false teachers who bring in false doctrines and false methods, but you,

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Timothy, you, but you have carefully followed my doctrine. And the doctrine there would be this idea of carefully following the public teaching.

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He's been careful to teach the way Paul taught.

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He's been careful to teach the doctrine that was given to the church.

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He's been careful to follow Paul's manner of life. What is the only rule of faith in life?

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The Word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. So the doctrine that we receive and the manner of life that we are to follow is given in the apostolic deposit.

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Paul was giving that deposit to Timothy. You have carefully followed my doctrine, my manner of life.

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Beloved, the teachers that you pick to seek to follow have a very significant impact on you.

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The doctrine and how you speak to others, more and more you learn from your teachers and you think the things they teach and you speak the things they teach.

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And the way they live, you begin to emulate and practice and you start to take on certain elements of their habits and behaviors.

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And so it is very important to be very careful to judge who should be teaching.

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Paul commanded Timothy, but you have carefully followed my doctrine, my manner of life.

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Teachers should not simply be distant men. Men whose heads are projected on screens.

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It is important that teachers seek to be in the lives of their people, to see the doctrine taught, to see it catechized, to be able to discuss and to work through things, to be able to see that the manner of life that's put on is proper and to encourage the following of a godly example.

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Paul encourages Timothy and says, but you have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, long -suffering.

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He goes on. But think about this. We so often would want to discourage people from pointing to the idea of following the example of godly teachers.

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And Paul is not ashamed to say, look you carefully followed my doctrine and you carefully followed my manner of life.

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Now if this doctrine is just Paul's invented doctrine, well that's sin. He's making himself

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God. And if it's just his invented manner of life, that's sin. He's making himself the pattern.

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But if he is passing on the doctrine from Scripture and the manner of life from Scripture, then it is totally appropriate for him to say, follow me as I follow

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Christ. Well you've carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life.

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And then we have purpose. What's the purpose? The purpose is to glorify God. And this is the goal. And this idea that you find intermediate objectives to take to glorify

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God more and then more and then more and then more and increase the rate at which you can do things to glorify

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God. Faith. How is it different from doctrine? The doctrine is the teaching and the faith is him actually believing it.

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He's not just teaching people things. Paul believes these things and it's evident by the way that he's worked.

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And that's why he lists out these other things. Timothy, you've been careful to follow my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith.

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And then now here are the things that really give strong evidence that those things are being followed and that this isn't just hypocritical.

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Long -suffering. Love. The desire for the well -being of his neighbor.

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Perseverance. He's continuing on. He's pressing on. Persecutions. Afflictions.

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Which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra. So this isn't just one time. It's not a one -time thing. It's over and over and over again.

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It's an ongoing thing. This example. Timothy is following Paul's example.

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Paul has gone through this in a long way, in a suffering way, multiple examples. And Timothy has followed after and suffered repeatedly himself.

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What persecutions I endured. And out of them all the

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Lord delivered me. So this idea that here's this hope, here's this idea that he relies upon God to save him and he points to the past work of God to save him.

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Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. That's not a great sales pitch.

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But wait, there's more. By today, and I guarantee, you'll be persecuted.

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All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

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There are joys that are guaranteed to the Christian and there is suffering that is guaranteed to the Christian. These are manufacturer's guarantees.

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This is the way God made it and promised it will operate. This is designed to remove people who would bring shame on the gospel, on the name of Christ, to the church, and would bring suffering.

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This idea, this warning, is meant to scare off those who do not think it worthy.

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What Christ does in the believer, when the believer sees Christ for who he is, he sees him as a precious thing, as a treasure.

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He'd be willing to sell all he has to buy the piece of land it's hidden on. And so faith overcomes the world.

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It overcomes persecutions. It overcomes devils and heretics and false teachers and those who bring lying signs and wonders.

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And we look at this opposition in verse 13. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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Now this danger of evil men and impostors growing worse and worse, this is the antithesis.

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Why do I say that? The antithesis is this doctrine that there is an irreconcilable war between darkness and light, between truth and error, between good and evil, between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

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Evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse. And some post -millennial guys want to say, well that's just true leading up to, leading up to 70

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AD. But I want to put forward to you that this is the general direction of anybody who's reprobate throughout their life.

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If you do not convert, you grow in unholiness.

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You grow in ungodliness. Your wickedness manifests itself in increasing ways.

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Evil men and impostors grow worse and worse. The righteous grow from strength to strength and the wicked grow from worse to worse.

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But Christ matures the church so that it's able to overcome. And what you find in the world is wickedness maturing in ways.

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And so you have things like the Gulag and the Stalinists and the Maoists, and I can't even recommend that you read the atrocities that the

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Maoists did. I'm a grown man who studied the

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Holocaust when I was a kid because I had a fascination with war, and World War II books were the cheapest at Barnes and Noble.

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And I'm haunted, I'm haunted by the stuff that I've read about Mao in the last decade.

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But just don't do it. Just spare yourself. Don't read about the atrocities.

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The horrific evil and wickedness that men commit.

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Godless communism, papal inquisition, all sorts of wickedness.

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These things, evil men and impostors, will grow worse and worse. The atrocities of the

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Mongols under the Khans. These horrifying things occur in history.

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They are real things. And the false teachers that come in, the wolves that come into the church to seek to destroy.

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There's evil men, just the world, and there's impostors, the people that pretend to be

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Christians. And they grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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They seek to deceive other people, and they are being deceived.

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They're in self -deception. They're deceived by other false teachers. They take and latch on and attach on false doctrine, and they try to bring it into the church.

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The syncretistic process of evil men deceiving evil men, and sometimes the evil men deceiving evil men is the same guy deceiving himself.

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There's a progress that the world hardens against Christ, and the church advances.

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But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of. So there's this temptation to say, well,

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I mean, if the world gets worse, and if people become more opposed, then what are we supposed to do?

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We're supposed to continue in the things which we've learned and been assured of. The same tools pull them down.

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The same chains bind them. Beast empires become more powerful.

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I mean, the ability to kill people fast in the hands of government now is so much higher than it has ever been before.

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The capacity to do horrific evil. But the law of God is a chain that binds beasts, and the gospel is a leaven that leavens the whole lump of the earth.

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The Word of God tears down idols. The Word of God powerfully converts people.

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The same things are to be continued in. The teaching of the Word of God, and the applying of His law.

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These things are powerfully used against these evil men and imposters, who grow worse and worse.

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And Christ matures His church, so the righteous grow stronger and stronger. In any series about combat or fighting, you have to make the enemies get stronger and stronger, or else the series gets boring, right?

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Do you think God is a worse writer than the script writers for Netflix?

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Do you think He doesn't get it? His story is better than any story that men have written.

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And so history is Him showing in more and more grand ways

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His glory and His ability to destroy wickedness. But evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of.

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The church will grow across time in the knowledge of what's been revealed. And here's the thing, while we're doing this, as our enemies get worse and worse, do you think you come on the scene, you see here's

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Goliath, he's like pretty tall, nine feet. Okay, you beat him and you go, great, empowered by God to defeat

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Goliath, it was super great. You get into the field the next day and here's a 12 -foot guy. Whoa.

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You defeat him by the grace of God, the next day you come into the field, now there's a 24 -foot guy. You defeat him, the next day you start to go,

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I get it. And you start to need reassurance that you can win. Now this phrase that follows, knowing from whom you have learned them.

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Most people will come here and interpret this and they'll think, okay Timothy, how is he to be reassured?

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As he's facing evil men who grow worse and worse, how should he be reassured? And the reading goes like this, people go, but you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you've learned them, your grandmother and mother.

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How is that a reassurance in the face of men who are growing worse and worse? It is the case that Timothy's mother and grandmother discipled him in the faith, but here that doesn't fit in the argument.

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The reason people say this is because they're mentioned earlier and then in verse 15 it says, and from childhood you have known the

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Holy Scriptures. So okay, who did he learn these scriptures from in his childhood? His mother and grandmother, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

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This is not a statement about the importance of the Christian tradition passing down from generation to generation.

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That's an important thing, that's a beautiful thing. Mothers teach your children, grandmothers be tight as two women to your daughters, and then also teach children.

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Wonderful. But that's not the reassurance that Timothy's receiving here. This tradition, this apostolic tradition, it doesn't become tradition the moment

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God speaks it or puts it into the hands of the church. It's tradition once it's passed down. It starts as God speaking from his holy mouth.

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These words are God -breathed. They are self -attesting, they are transcendent, they are above all authorities.

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The Word of God, there is nothing higher. And when the

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Word of God is delivered, it's the Word of God, and it becomes a tradition as it's passed down.

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But the Word of God is the highest authority. And the

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Word of God comes to us externally by the preaching and reading of the Word, and internally by the work of the

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Spirit. The confession of faith that we hold to emphasizes this doctrine, talking about the divine inspiration of the scriptures.

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First chapter, section 3, at the bottom of page 4 here, it says, The books commonly called

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Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.

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When people make the scriptures into a mere tradition, it's blasphemy. Rome tries to do this and to say that we have received the scriptures as a tradition from the church.

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That's blasphemy. They've deified the church when they do that.

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These are the words of God, they're God -breathed. They weren't made

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God -breathed after, they were God -breathed. The Protestant doctrine of authority of tradition is this, it has none.

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The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, notice the marker for authority, divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.

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How much authority? No authority. Section 4 of the

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Westminster Confession, chapter 1. The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God, who is truth itself.

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So, our doctrine is the doctrine that the scriptures are to be believed because they're

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God's Word, which is the highest authority. God's the truth itself. What is more authoritative than the truth?

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Nothing. He's the author of the scriptures, and therefore, since the

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God who is the truth is the author of the scriptures, the scripture is to be received. And just for emphasis, because it is the

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Word of God. Do you see the line of argumentation there? How plainly that's laid out?

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This is an epistemological justification. We should believe the scriptures because they're God's Word.

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That's not an argument saying the scriptures say they're God's Word, and therefore they're God's Word.

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That's not the idea. The idea is not a circular argument proving. The idea is there's no higher proof than the fact that God spoke.

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The Word of God is the highest authority. This isn't talking about the sequence of events in your experience.

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This isn't talking about a metaphysical causation. I guess it's talking about elsewhere. It's called illumination. This is talking about an epistemological justification.

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Why is it to be believed? Because God said it, who is the truth itself? And he's the author of the scriptures.

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He's the speaker. Section 5, we may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to a high and reverent esteem of the

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Holy Scripture. The scriptures are pointed to by the church. That's what I'm doing right now. What am

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I doing? I'm saying the scriptures are true. Is that why you should believe it? No, you should believe it because it's God's Word.

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I'm pointing you to it. The heavenliness of the matter, the stuff it discusses, is so unearthly, so unmanly.

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I don't mean that in terms of being effeminate. I mean it's not what men would come up with.

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It is matter. It is material that is so impressive and obvious when you study it that it is beyond what men would invent.

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It's so effective at causing men to reform.

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It is so majestic when you read it. The words are powerful in terms of not merely the arguments, but in terms of the order of things and the placing of things side by side, the engagement of ideas, the way in which the truth is laid bare.

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That in some places it's the high court writing of Isaiah and in other places it's the plain -spoken

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Jeremiah. But in all of these places, the majesty of it, especially when viewed as a whole, as a work of artistry, the more you study it and see chiasms and poetic elements and all of these things embedded, you go, no man just sat down and wrote this.

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It's a book over a thousand pages that doesn't contradict itself.

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It's a coherent system. I mean it's hard to get men to sit down and write two pages without contradicting themselves when it's the same guy.

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Much less dozens of authors across a thousand years or more, like 1 ,500.

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The scope of the whole, the whole of it focuses on the glory of God. There's not a human -centric element of it and it discovers our need, our neediness, our inability to save ourselves and the fullness of the way in which

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God could provide salvation in a manner that brings glory to him and him alone. Men do not write such things and there are many other excellencies and the wholeness of the scriptures shows a fullness of perfection, a completeness.

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And all of these things are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the

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Word of God. But evidences aren't proof. Evidences aren't proof.

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These are all things that would cause men to go, this book. And they do, right?

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There are many godless men who will go, yeah, Western civilization really depends upon this thing. You've all heard

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Jordan Peterson wax eloquently about the incomparable excellencies of the scriptures and the man still remains a liberal who doesn't believe in the

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God of the Bible. At least he hasn't made plain that. Yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the

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Holy Spirit. This is the metaphysical cause, this is illumination, bearing witness by and with the

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Word in our hearts. And the bearing witness is the epistemological cause. Why should we believe the

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Word of God? Because God spoke and there is no higher authority than God's Word.

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You want to deny that? Okay, talk to me about truth at all. Is truth eternal or not?

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Does it change? Okay, truth changes. That's absurd. Then perhaps the truth that truth changes will change and then it won't change anymore.

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Is truth not propositional? Is it not in minds? Can truth exist outside of the mind of a thinker?

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Can you have truth and no one thinking it? Is it possible for something to be true and for it to not be in a mind somewhere?

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Just think about that for a second. What is truth? Truth is propositional, it's thought content.

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You can say two plus two equals four and if I write that on a wall with symbols, I can put the numbers and a plus sign and equal sign, get two plus two equals four.

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That symbol on the wall is meaningless to a person who's only learned

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Roman numerals. The thought content behind it, truth is eternal.

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Then there's a mind where that truth is and you can't deny that without denying the eternality of truth.

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These are things where we have these ideas about God that are communicated to us infallibly in the

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Scriptures and we can argue to show that the denial of them is absurd, but the authority is

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God and when he says a thing, it's true and you're obligated to believe it.

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The Holy Spirit inwardly, metaphysically, causes us to understand and believe and epistemologically, he bears witness by his word and with his word.

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So, why am I emphasizing all of this? Because when you are facing horrific enemies that grow worse and worse, you need to know what you need to keep doing to fight these enemies.

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You need to keep doing the things that were given in the apostolic deposit and in order to do that, you need to know from whom you have learned these things.

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Was it just from your mother and your grandmother? Are you just a

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Christian because you happen to be born in Western civilization as though God didn't control that or did you learn these things from God?

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From whom did you learn them? The inward illumination of the

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Spirit of God is necessary for saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word.

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Go to the bottom of page 5. The doctrine of illumination is an obvious doctrine in the

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Scriptures. It's plainly taught. Matthew 23, bottom of page 5,

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Matthew 23 verse 10, and do not be called teachers for one is your teacher, the

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Christ. Now, we know that we're commanded to teach people and pastors are called teachers, so how does this work?

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Well, in one sense, some people teach you. I'm trying to teach you right now. I'm saying words and they are bouncing off your face, right?

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That's what the voice, the sound waves are hitting you in the face right now. Some of them hit your ears, great.

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Maybe you understand them or maybe I lost you 20 minutes ago and you're just tuning back in now.

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If so, welcome. Glad you're here. And let's think about the doctrine of illumination, which is taught in the

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Scriptures. And do not be called teachers for one is your teacher, the

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Christ. How can that be the case? If I am supposed to be teaching you right now and Christ is the only teacher, how does this work?

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Well, Ephesians 1, 17 to 18, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the

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Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.

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There's this prayer that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him and cause your eyes of understanding to be enlightened.

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1 John 2, 27, but the anointing which you have received from him abides in you and you do not need that anyone teach you but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things and it's true.

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There's this work of the Holy Spirit inwardly. Now, Quakers and others would go,

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I don't need the Scriptures. I don't know. The Word comes to us with the

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Scriptures and then the Holy Spirit testifies to us with the

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Scriptures. These things go together. The external word and the internal illumination over and over and over again.

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This doctrine is the confessional doctrine. Go back to page 5 and look at Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1, section 6.

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The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life.

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By the way, didn't God make everything for his glory? He did. I agree with you. I'm glad we're on the same page.

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The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory are either expressly set down in Scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.

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Everything you need to know about how to glorify God is contained in the Scriptures. That's the purpose for which you were made.

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It's there. The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life.

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Your salvation doesn't just include you being justified. It includes you being sanctified. It's your whole life.

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It's the removing of all curse. It's the advancement and maturing of yourself to the perfect man.

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Everything necessary for that. All things necessary for your faith.

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All the things you need to believe. All things necessary for your life. All the stuff you're supposed to do.

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It's either expressly set down in Scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.

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Unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men. Nevertheless, wait this is here we are.

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We're at illumination now. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the

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Spirit of God to be necessary. 24, back at page 6. Luke 24 verse 45. And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the

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Scriptures. This was Jesus. Jeremiah 31, 33 to 34.

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This is the new covenant promise. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

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God in the new covenant does more illuminating than in the old covenant.

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He will write the law in our minds and hearts.

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Which are the same thing. It's a restatement for emphasis. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother saying know the

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Lord for they all shall know me. Well, I thought there's only one teacher. That's right. There's only one teacher. And that one teacher, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, by his vicar the Holy Spirit, will illuminate the hearts of men so much that evangelism will no longer be necessary and it will seem as though the church is filled with mature people.

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Imagine a congregation with hundreds of men all fit for eldership. Which one should teach?

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Well, maybe some are more gifted or understanding than others. Okay, the promise of the new covenant involves the illuminating work to cause people to understand and believe.

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To have the law written in their minds. For they shall all know me.

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John 14, 26. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

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This work of God in the mind of men. God turns the hearts of Kings like engineers can turn water with channels.

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They can plan it very accurately. God does it even more accurately.

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This is a view that has been the understanding of the church and is the Augustinian understanding which, by the way, people will sometimes say the

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Reformation was basically Augustine's doctrine of grace in conflict with Augustine's doctrine of the church.

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And the doctrine of grace includes the idea of illumination and the irresistible grace of God to convert men, to teach them by inward teaching.

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So here's Augustine talking about illumination, in case anybody thinks this is an invention of the last century.

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There is a light which is above the mind of man by which the mind is enlightened that it may see.

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The mind needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself so that it can participate in truth because it is not itself the nature of truth.

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That other light is the nature of truth. What is truth? God is truth. Just as the eye of the body cannot see unless it is illuminated by the light of the sun, so the eye of the soul cannot see unless it is illuminated by God.

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That inner master who teaches Christ is the one who inspires the truth within us so that we learn it by the illumination of his spirit.

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That last quote is from Of the Teacher, which is a little blue book I would love to give to you if you want one.

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It's a little 30 -page discussion of Augustine with Ediodatus, his son, about the fact that nobody who's merely human ever teaches any other human.

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And Ediodatus is quite surprised by this since it seems to him like his father tries to teach him a lot. Now one of the last things that people will do to try to attack this view is to try to claim that this is really just an irrational subjective view.

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And they'll try to say it's Bartian or neo -orthodox, which is laughable and shows a total lack of study or a dishonesty when it is contrasted with Augustinian or Clarkian or presuppositional illumination theory.

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Augustinianism versus neo -orthodoxy. I've got quotes here for you.

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Bart, his view of revelation is that revelation is not an objective propositional word where the

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Holy Spirit also then by illumination causes us to understand and believe the objective word.

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But instead, illumination is a dynamic event. Revelation itself is a dynamic event instead of word and spirit communicating truth of the mind of the believer.

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Bart argued that the Bible becomes the Word of God in the event of God's self -revelation through the

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Holy Spirit rather than being inherently the Word of God in a propositional sense.

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Here's the difference. I'm telling you the Bible is the Word of God written and the

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Holy Spirit is the one that causes you to understand and believe it. That's not neo -orthodoxy, which says the

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Bible is not the Word of God but when you hear it or maybe the Quran or maybe whatever else, maybe you could just be reading

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People magazine and God illuminates your soul through the process of it and this dynamic event, that's now the

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Word of God coming to you. That's taking an experience or an event and making it the

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Word of God. The Bible is the Word of God written. So Gordon Clark argued against Bart and he said that that was false.

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It attacks the authority and reliability of Scripture and if the

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Bible becomes, if it merely becomes the Word of God, it is truth. Its truth is dependent upon subjective human experience rather than being fixed and absolute.

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Clark teaches that the Bible is the Word of God and that it is understood and believed by the

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Word of the Spirit, the work of the Spirit, to illuminate the mind of the hearer. This is classic reformed thought and it's not

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Bartian. So here's an example of Clark critiquing that. He says if the Bible only becomes the

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Word of God, then it is, then what is it before this event? Bart leaves us with a Scripture that is neither dependable nor divinely authoritative.

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And here's the other thing, the rejection of the idea that the Word of God is propositional. Clark responds this way.

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He says to deny that God has revealed himself in propositions is to deny the intelligibility of revelation itself.

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Bart's theology by its rejection of propositions descends into irrationalism.

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The other thing is there's this view of paradox that's put forward where to say that God's Word is incoherent and you can't discern the difference between a contradiction and something that just looks like a contradiction.

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Okay, so here's what Clark says to that. A theology of paradox is a theology of contradiction and contradictions cannot convey truth.

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Bart's acceptance of paradox betrays a lack of commitment to the logical coherence of Scripture.

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I hope that I have made clear to you what the doctrine of illumination is and what it is not.

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And I hope that you see that this is extremely important. Why? Because you need to know from whom you have learned these things.

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Are the Scriptures the Word of God or are they merely human traditions?

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And when you understood them, was it merely because humans taught you or was it because the

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Holy Spirit illuminated your mind to understand and believe the

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Scriptures? When you know from whom you have learned, it allows you to face down great opposition that grows worse and worse and you could have certainty that you will grow from strength to strength.

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Comments, questions, objections from the voting members and those with speaking rights, let's pray.

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Father, we ask that you would bless the teaching of your Word and that you would cause us to believe that you, through your

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Son and by his vicar, the Holy Spirit, cause us to understand and believe that we have one teacher and that it is necessary for illumination to occur for us to learn truth.

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Father, we look to you as the sovereign giver of knowledge and we ask that you would cause us to know from whom we have learned.