Knowledge Falsely So Called - 1 Timothy 6

All right, good Lord's Day he is risen so we have the ordination of Mr.

Walker today to the office of deacon We have Just to announce some stuff that's going on in the near future we have whiskey in the word that will probably be here on 12 -5 and then we have our next stated council meeting on 12 -8

For today for singing of Psalms, we'll be singing Psalm 119 T and 133

The Teaching will be broken into kind of two components. I'm going to be continuing in 1st

Timothy chapter 6 So 1st Timothy chapter 6 just continuing with that idea of knowledge falsely so -called

So last time we did the text of the end of the book And what I wanted to do was to spend a little bit of time emphasizing to you some of the

Ways that we can't get knowledge in the strict sense So again have us to hold fast to the word

And so we'll be talking about that knowledge falsely so -called And then we'll spend a little bit of time on the doctrine of ordination as we deal with the ordination that's occurring

Okay, any other announcements that I'm missing Thank you.

Exodus 13 is the reading so you have to bear with me.

I'm I'm at the tail end of a cold and then I Think that's everything.

All right. So let's begin with a call to worship.

Please stand for the reading of God's Holy Word Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 4 through 9

Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one You shall love the

Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength And these words which

I command you today Shall be in your heart You should teach them diligently to your children and she'll talk of them when you sit in your house

And when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up You shall bind them as a sign on your hand.

They shall be as frontlets between your eyes You should write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates

You may be seated this text reminds us that The greatest commandment is to love

God that he is the highest good That we possess him by knowing him that we store up his word in our hearts

And we should seek to teach all those under our authority at set times and also as opportunity arises and then we had to take the

Word of God and to bind it on our hand to govern how we act and to take the Word of God and bind it on our forehead in order to govern our thoughts and so the

Word of God is to be a sign on the doorpost to govern your household and a sign on the gates to govern the public government church and state and so we are reminded that the whole of Creation is to be governed by God's Holy Word Let's pray

While we come before you now in this time of worship

We ask that you would bless us That you would cause us to know you more deeply to to grow in the knowledge of you that your name would be holy to us that you would use the elements of worship to build up our souls and to cause us to have a greater zeal for his readiness to enter into public service and his willingness to go through training and to be judged and tested by the officers and by his fellow men in the congregation father we ask that you would bless him with boldness and That you would cause him to gain good reputation in office father.

We thank you that you would provide for us gospel officers We ask that you would help us more and more to see all the ordinances rightly ordered and that you would give to us

Everything that we need to do our duties in all of our stations We ask that you would prosper our homes that you would give to us good health that you would heal those who are sick

I pray for my wife that you would cause her to be healed in her throat. We pray that you would cause us to be able to have curse removed and to see

The truth advanced with bodies in good condition with minds Well ordered with a zeal and rigor of action as a father

We pray that you would help us to do what your law commands that more and more We would be like the righteous angels in heaven who promptly and sincerely obey you

Father we pray that you would give to us everything needful for the performance of our duties and that we would use it to your glory

Father we know that we are breakers of your law We have sinned against you broken the whole of your will help us to interpret things

Charitably and to avoid even having to cover over an offense, but rather to look the better at our neighbor

Father we pray that you would help us to remove sources of temptation and to order the space and time and Resources around us and use them.

Well, you would subdue the power of evil in us Well, we pray all this

Knowing you have the authority and power to grant And You work all things for your glory for the good of your people

We know that delays and giving what we request or answers of no

Are ultimately for our good No father we ask knowing that we have offered up prayers that you have revealed into your word that are right

We ask that you would give that you the God who is merciful and kind Who has forgiven us in Christ that we ask you

By the mediation of Jesus Christ based upon his merits that you would give us these things

We pray all of this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen Please open now your

Bibles to the book of Exodus Chapter 13

You can shaver please come forward Please stand for the reading of God's Word Exodus chapter 13 then the

Lord spoke to Moses saying consecrate to me all The firstborn whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel both of man and beast it is mine

No bread shall be eaten seven days and no leavened bread shall be seen among you

Nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters And you shall tell your son in that day saying this is done because of what the

Lord did for me when I came up From Egypt it shall be as a sign to you on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes

That the Lord's law may be in your mouth for with a strong hand The Lord has brought you out of Egypt.

You shall therefore keep this keep this ordinance in its season from year to year And it shall be when the

Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites as he swore to you and your fathers and gives It to you that you shall set apart to the

Lord all that open the womb That is every firstborn that comes from an animal which you have the males shall be the

Lord's But every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb And if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck and all the firstborn of man among your sons

You shall redeem So it shall be when your son asks you in time to come saying what is this?

That you shall say to him by strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt out of the house of bondage and it

Came to pass when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go that the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt Both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast

Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all males that open the womb But all the firstborn of my sons

I redeem It shall be as a sign on your hand and as frontlets between your eyes Whereby strength of hand the

Lord brought us out of Egypt Then it came to pass When Pharaoh had let the people go that God did not lead them by way of the land of the

Philistines Although that was near for God said lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt So God led the people around by way of the wilderness of the

Red Sea and the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt and Moses took the bones of Joseph with him for he had placed the children of Israel under solemn oath saying

God will surely visit you and you shall carry up my bones from here with you so they took their journey from sucketh and camped and eat them at the edge of the wilderness and The Lord went before them by day and a pillar of cloud to lead the way and by night and a pillar of fire to Give them light so as to go by day and night

He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people

Please stand and open your Psalters to Psalm 119 T Think of my affliction and save for I do not forget your law

Defend my cause deliver me Revive according to your word Salvation's far from the wicked for they do not seek your statues

How great your tender mercies Lord save according to your judgments Many persecute me as foes

Yet from your law. I do not shrink. I am grieved by the transgressors because they do not keep your word

See how I love your precepts Lord save according to your mercy. Oh The whole of your word is truth.

All your righteous judgments will stand Thank God my

Affliction and save for Forget your even my cause bring to Salvation's far from for see your

Statue rate your tears he's

Save according to your job

Persecute me. Yeah string transgress

Because they do not keep steps

Lord save according to her see

I just judgments will Please now either on the handout or in the scriptures open up and we're gonna read the very end of first Timothy again

First Timothy chapter 6 verses 20 through 21 Oh Timothy Guard what was committed to your trust?

Avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge

By professing it some have strayed concerning the faith Grace be with you

Amen You may be seated. All right.

So last time I reviewed with you sort of the outline of first Timothy we walked through talked about that emphasis of doctrine and the dangers of heresy and At the end we are reminded in these last few verses that we are to officers, especially elders, especially

Hold on to the word of truth that was revealed The apostolic deposit that was committed to your trust to the trust of of Timothy to to the officers that apostolic deposit now

The rest of this is going to be a lot easier for you if you've got the handout So just real quickly and raise your hand if you don't have a handout

Okay, if we can It went to the Nelson family and then anybody else

Great. Okay, so then The handout we're gonna be going through more of these things to consider alternate views

We're gonna be thank you We're gonna be dealing with alternate views in terms of the Word of God being the authority we're gonna look at contrary or alternate views but the

Word of God is what was given to be held on to by the church and on the alternative side, we looked at this idea of Avoiding profane and idle babblings and contradictions

Of what is falsely called knowledge, okay, so profane babblings remember our use are there they're not holy

If it profane is the opposite of holy to be holy is to be focused on the glory of God Now to be idle is to be useless

Okay to be useful to be fruitful to be helpful is To have things that are worth doing to redeem the time

Words that are useful that are healthy that are good that build up souls that cause life as opposed to death we have profane babblings and they're idle babblings and there's this ease with which we can drown out the holy words and the useful words with Profane and useless speaking

And then there's that which contradicts the scriptures and that contradicts itself

So much of the speaking that you hear in the public sphere is self contradiction

How often do you hear the mainstream media supporting one position really to contradict itself pretending like this is always the way it was

And to just have things put side -by -side Straight faced no acknowledgment.

No recognition of the changing that occurs there just this We've always been at war with Whomever we've always been friends with whomever this classic

Orwellian changing of of the way things are lined up this Setting up of things in a way that is self contradictory and there's a straight face just bluster to get past So the idea of the profane babblings the idle babblings and the self contradictory mess

These are things that we use to evaluate if someone is holding on to the things that were committed to the trust of the church the words of God are not profane or idle or contradictory and so uselessness and profanation and Self -contradiction are helpful markers for us to reject message messages and messengers

We if you look at the very back of the handout just go to the very last page You will see there.

I've got for you the two texts from Deuteronomy with the tests for false prophets the first test

Deuteronomy 13 verses 1 to 5 is this idea that if somebody tells you to go chase after another

God As opposed to the God that has already been revealed the contradicting the revelation that's come before Okay, so Deuteronomy 13 verses 1 to 5 shows us that this is a test a

Test for prophets is have they contradicted the revelation that's come before and then there's also the

Deuteronomy 18 20 to 22 test Which is the test of presumption?

Do they prophesy something and it doesn't happen? Okay, so so when we look at prophets we have to deal with this idea of of the revelation that's given

Is it something that contradicts prior revelation? Is it something that is?

Presumptuous that there's a prophecy and it doesn't happen. So jump back with me back to the front I want to remind you this idea.

We this idea of contradiction as a hallmark of falsehood is not new to Paul and We find it back written in What Moses wrote and when

Moses wrote we're looking at about 1 ,400 years before Jesus people like to pretend like Aristotle who wrote out the laws of logic in a textbook around the

Mid 300s, right? We look at that idea somewhere about 400 years before Jesus You have

Aristotle talking about it Moses gave the use of logic to test prophecy a thousand years before Aristotle We pretend sometimes like logic is an invention of men or something the philosophers came up with Logic is the way

God thinks Okay, so when we recognize that the scriptures cannot be broken, they are not self contradictory

They are a coherent whole they are systematic. You can draw things out of them

We we see the way that the system of truth and its beauty is distinct from the human philosophies that we are so often bombarded with that are profane and idle and self contradictory so these tests are important and There's a danger if we pick up the profane words of the world and the idle babblings talk about useless things and if we hold on to contradictory things if you start to contradict yourself and You don't really care.

What you're doing is you're erasing your sense of integrity Okay people who don't care that they contradict themselves there's a special name for them and it's technical

I want you to we need to grab hold of this. Okay. Here's the word liars There's a lot of syllables.

They're liars When you contradict yourself and you don't care That's what you are you're erasing a

Concern for consistency, which is what integrity is And so if we care about integrity if we care about being men of integrity women of integrity if we care about this idea of holding firm to the word of truth

Scriptures cannot be broken when you contradict yourself. You've shown yourself to be wrong and so what you need to recognize is that when you find yourself in a

Contradictory mess when you're saying things that contradict themselves You have a duty to sort it out and to acknowledge that you're wrong about at least one of these things maybe both and So this willingness to go back and to search the scriptures and see if things are so even what you're saying is so And if we hold on to things that are profane worldly ideas and we hold on to just talking about useless things and restating the aphorisms of the world and and things that are just sort of accepted because that's what's in the culture even the

Self -contradictory elements of it if we hold on to these things and we don't care to replace them with what the word of truth has to say

We will stray more and more Concerning the faith and so holding tightly to the scriptures as the authority is the thing that allows you to Be built up in integrity and to be built up in the knowledge of God and to be strong in the faith

So page two we talked through some of this last time and I really think that first Corinthians chunk of text

I'd really encourage you in your private studies to go look at that and also go look at my sermon series on 1st

Corinthians chapters 1 and 2 those chapters of 1st Corinthians deal so beautifully with human philosophy and With the idea of how we know truth

So we spend a lot of time on these now What I want to do is to jump forward in the handout

And I'd like to take you to page 4. I Want to talk to you about knowledge falsely so -called compared to knowledge rightly so -called now

The knowledge that was committed to the trust of the church We looked at last time as you know

We those references to to John and the idea of the apostolic deposit that the words of Christ were given to the

Apostles They were given them for the church at the Holy Spirit Caused them to be brought to remembrance that we have the apostolic deposit in the scriptures now and When we try to instead come forward with something else

There are only three places that ideas come from Apart from God's mind.

Okay, so there's three The only places that you can get ideas from apart from what

God has revealed are your own mind Which the scriptures are not particularly complimentary of Right the heart is deceitfully wicked who can know it

The idea that man is incapable of doing any good Apart from the regeneration coming from the

Holy Spirit that all of his thoughts were evil continuously but that there is

One light the light is Christ and the light of Christ is something that is brought to us

Are we See Christ as light in the darkness not light in Moderately well -lit in place our own ideas

Our own ideas if we come up with things we find in the book of Romans that the tendency of man and not just the tendency but the constant tendency apart from The work of the

Holy Spirit to give you spiritual life is to suppress the truth in unrighteousness We suppress the truth in unrighteousness and the attributes of God and his law

Are in our hearts so as to make us inexcusable But we will not rightly come to the knowledge of God.

We will not rightly Come to an understanding of right and wrong apart from the

Word from God Coming to us and the

Holy Spirit illuminating us and so your own ideas

These are any opinions that you invent a hypothesis that you come up with And you can't demonstrate it from some other source

These things are not things that you can have certainty about Things that you just make up are

Exactly that There are things you just make up Some people love the ideas that they make up and want to defend them vigorously

And they want to put them forward and so we need to be aware of this tendency for people to put forward the ideas that they make up and to try to Impose them on other people

There's another source which is Other human beings that came before you Okay, this often gets called tradition human tradition.

We have a tradition in the Reformed faith in the Protestant faith There is an authoritative tradition

It's called the apostolic tradition and it was captured in the scriptures of the

Old and New Testaments So human tradition any opinions that come from other men that cannot be shown to be from a source beyond mere man

Okay, that's that's one thing so The world is a dark place with other men who are like unto you in every way including sin

Jesus Christ was like unto you in every way except without sin But if we have the words of Jesus, we've just got

God's words. So we're gonna separate that out from just human tradition Okay, so human tradition.

You're gonna have other people who have the same problems as you and then

There are demonic doctrines. You might go. Well, what about angelic doctrines? well, let me tell you the difference between an angel and a demon they're both angels and The angels obey

God and only carry messages that God told them to carry God's Word The demons disobey

God and they like to make up ideas and impose them on humans. They find it very fun

They had a wonderful partnership with Joseph Smith They wrote a best -selling book called the

Book of Mormon they had a really good and effective partnership with Muhammad and Wrote a very good -selling book called the

Quran demons are very good at this making stuff up thing and they are very good at getting human beings to become effective messengers of the doctrines of demons and so the doctrines of demons are something that Americans with our modernist attitudes and our emphasis on physical and material things we undervalue

The terrifying reality of the supernatural Demonic doctrines

Bring about all sorts of horrific falsehood reigning in human society and Caused people to waste their lives with very cleverly devised profane babblings idle babblings and self -contradictory things accompanied by powerful signs

So these things The stuff you make up the stuff other people make up and the stuff that demons make up These are the alternate sources of ideas besides God's ideas

So Deuteronomy 4 verse 2 says you shall not add to the word which

I command you or take from it That you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you

Isaiah 8 20 to the law and to the testimony If they do not speak according to this word it is because there is no

Light in them. It does not say some light It says no light

So here is one of the most common Christian efforts to try to say that there's a bunch of information

We can get apart from the scriptures they will go to the idea of general revelation and they will try to say that general revelation gives you an enormous amount of stuff that you can infallibly know and say is certain and put it right next to the

Bible and say here are two sources of the information beloved Unless we already have the

Bible. We're going to horrifically misinterpret the world

Which is often put forward so a Christian worldview we only interpret the world rightly with a

Christian worldview And so without first having the scriptures coming to a person to make you spiritually alive

You're not going to be able to go interpret the world in a proper way

General revelation in the scriptures if we if we look at what God has revealed in his holy word

About the idea of general revelation. Here's what general revelation is General revelation is the light as we find that in the book of of John It talks about the light that lights the minds of all men.

Okay, the light that lights the minds of all men General revelation is the light that illuminates the minds of all men

This light consists of reason and innate ideas So in other words the innate ideas if you look at the book of Romans chapter 1 especially

Romans 1 verse 20 You're going to find that it says that there are certain things written in the heart of man

These things are the eternal power and divine nature of God His eternal power is one of his attributes.

He's eternal without beginning without end and He has power.

He has all power That's those are some of his attributes and then it lists next to that that depending on the translation

It'll say either the Godhead his eternal power and Godhead or it'll say divine nature

Those are both fine as translations the idea of the Godhead is What are the attributes that are shared by the

Father the Son and the Holy Spirit? The divine nature is the same thing. It's the listing out of the attributes that God possesses that are distinct from creatures and The Westminster Shorter Catechism does an amazing job of giving that as a summary list.

Here's the summary list Question for the Shorter Catechism. What is God? God is a spirit

Infinite eternal and unchangeable in his being wisdom power holiness justice goodness and truth

Okay that right there question for the Shorter Catechism does an amazing job of giving to us a list of those attributes of God that help him to be

Differentiated from creatures and the three key ones there. Okay, infinite eternal and unchangeable

Think about this. God is infinite and no creature is All creatures are finite

God is eternal and no creature is all creatures are temporal which means they change They're in time time is change

And then change ability is of course a working off of being eternal or temporal So God is infinite

Creatures are finite. God is eternal creatures are temporal God is unchangeable

Creatures are changeable these are things that are that are helpful for us to be able to understand the

Incommunicable attributes of God God can't create something. That's God That would be to communicate his attributes

It's not communicators in like help us to understand it. He clearly communicates in his word by telling us what these things are the issue is

He can't give eternality to a creature because if you're created

You have a beginning Right. He can't he can't give that without making you

God and God is uncreated So it's a logical impossibility God by his very nature is

Uncreated and So we think about these Attributes.

These are the innate ideas the ones that are talked about in Romans in man these innate ideas

When you talk to unbelievers You can pull on that stuff that's in their heart

You can pull upon the attributes that exist there and show them that they have made idols in their hearts

They've made the world eternal or they've made some other thing eternal they've made something else that is

Infinite and given that attribute to it apart from God and so everybody makes idols but only the

Christian religion reveals the true God and yet this suppression of the truth and this

Self -contradictory garbage that we all invent up in our minds and put it forward and live our lives by that Junk is the stuff

That we believe apart from the Word of God coming to us and the

Spirit of God giving us spiritual life now reason and these innate categories allow us to communicate with other people the

Way Men are inexcusable before they form eyes in the womb Men are inexcusable before their ears are capable of capturing sound men are inexcusable before their tongues function or their noses function or they have the ability to feel

The moment of conception David was conceived in iniquity

His eyes didn't function and his ears didn't function But he was suppressing the truth in unrighteousness

That conceived in iniquity, but there's the guilt of Adam, but we have a corrupt nature where we

Suppress the glory of God in our minds. We do not believe what we ought to believe

And we are idle factories And we need to understand that from our first moments after we are made

We are not glorifying God as we ought and Our guilt is rooted there and our guilt is rooted in Adam's sin

And then we every choice we make that's sinful out of that unbelief comes forth. This is important for us to understand

What we're really saved from we're not just saved from sins or we've broken laws that are particular

We are saved from a condition of not purposefully glorifying

God And you need to understand That sin makes life miserable in part because of the consequences of particular actions

Beloved, you know that oftentimes your sins that you commit that you are ashamed of flow from being bored

That boredom comes from the mind not Enjoying the beauty and glory of God If we were sinless we would always be joyful in the glory of God our boredom our

Inability to sit in a room by ourselves contemplating the glories of God That is this thing where our minds are not focused on his glory now

I'm not saying you should just sit in a room and contemplate We are called to go out to exercise dominion to build to cut trees down and turn them into houses

To tear down mountains and turn them into plains, right? We take the high places and we raise up the low places and we make these glorious things

We're called to go out and to fill the earth with culture to build institutions to have people working hard We display the glory of God with all of these things, but that stuff comes out of minds that are already enthralled by the glory and beauty of God the manifesting of external work that beautifies the world and glorifies

God comes from a mind that rejoices in the glory of God and General revelation is not the thing that is used by God to make men have spiritual life

General revelation is used to hold men Inexcusable the human condition is that we are fallen and We use the light of general revelation to build and defend self -contradictory philosophies and To have profane babbling and to give idle talk

We can make use of general revelation and show people by pulling upon the information that they can't deny things that they are guilty of So I go to page 5

Special revelation, which is now contained entirely in the scriptures of the

Old and New Testaments God can

Give me give you the definition here the words from God given either immediately or through messengers All which are now contained in the

Bible as explicit statements or necessary inferences True knowledge is justified true belief.

That's a technical phraseology. Here's the deal People want to talk about you know, what's the difference between a true opinion versus knowledge?

Here's the important difference a true opinion is something that you don't necessarily know why you believe it, but you believe it

Knowledge is when you have truth in your mind And you can show

Why it's true. So the ability to show the thing to give a rational justification

To give a reason for the hope that's in you an apologetic a defense and So we want to know the scriptures and we want to know

How we can show people that apart from scripture. They they don't have a certain word

They don't have a foundation to rely upon Now the means of revelation this can occur through immediate divine illumination as with the prophets

Or through ordinary means accompanied by divine illumination. So in other words Think about this

We have the prophets received a word from God sometimes God spoke to them and they heard a noise like they heard like a voice

Talking to them. Sometimes you might just give to them immediately in their mind what it is that they are supposed to write

You have the example of John the Baptist when he was in the womb And Mary came in to visit

Elizabeth and John the Baptist jumped for joy that he was in the presence of the mother of his Savior Right this how did he get that?

How do you know that because God gave it to him immediately in the womb? Right.

So this idea that that God Can plant information in your mind? He can give you information and so We know that now that he has completed his scriptures so we don't have new prophecy new prophets

And so what we must rely upon is He has given us his word in a book

But not everybody who reads the book and not everybody who listens to the book being read or hears it being preached believes right, so Remember what's knowledge knowledge is is when you believe something and it's true and you've got a good reason for it

You've got you can show it so Even if you hear the truth It requires the work of God to illuminate your mind and as Calvinists We typically we're real quick to go.

Amen. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Absolutely You got to have irresistible grace for regeneration. Nobody's gonna believe apart from the

Holy Spirit doing that. Absolutely But that's true for every new truth. You come to know

Is this illuminating work? That's true in terms of sanctification. It's not like, you know,

God resurrects you and then all your sanctification comes from your own power All the sanctification you have all the growth you have in the faith is by the work of God, too

Christ is the author of our faith and he's the finisher of it. He builds it and he preserves it

This work of illumination so we look to God and his sovereign power over knowledge he is the one who gives us knowledge and he gives it to us externally with the scriptures and Internally, he brings powerfully his work to cause us to know now

When we talk about this from an apologetics perspective, we have to basically come down to say well, how do

I know the Bible is the Word of God and You can there's two basic approaches.

I'm gonna take something else And I'm gonna use it to prove the Bible Okay, so here's the thing

Here's the Bible. I'm gonna prove the Bible from the thing Okay, that's scenario one

Put whatever thing you want in there scenario two There is no higher authority than the

Word of God What kind of a joke is this that you're asking me to prove the thing that is the highest authority?

Were you listening? That's scenario two The Word of God is above everything else.

So some people's response to that is to say that's Fideism.

Okay. Well, first of all Fideism is just a Latin word for faithism So I would encourage you to put your faith in the

Word of God But secondly Every philosophy

Has to start somewhere Now I would suggest to you that the label

Fideism is Actually best applied when somebody says you should believe the

Bible and I can't give you any reasons We can give a reason we can give an argument we can give a defense of the faith, but it's very different To give a defense of the faith than it is to try to prove the

Bible from a higher authority To give a defense of the faith is righteous and it's a commandment that God gives to us

To seek to prove the Bible from some higher authority or to say that there's something more certain than the

Word of God is Is blasphemous There is nothing more certain more authoritative higher than the

Word of God. So here are Here's the here's the thing about a first principle.

Everybody has a first principle whether they want to admit it or not Here's why you have a first principle If I ask you, you know, what do you believe you

I believe the Christian religion I go Why do you believe that because the Bible says so you go? Why do you believe the Bible and you go well for these reasons

I go Why do you believe those things and they say well for these reasons, well, why do you believe those things? Do you see how long I could go? Yeah, we just put dot dot dot there, right?

Like well, why do you believe that? Why do you believe that? Why do you believe that you can go on forever? Something somewhere is the starting point because if you prove everything

You can prove nothing because an infinite series of proofs is impossible

It is not possible for you to complete an infinite series of proofs It is not possible for anybody to every philosophy starts somewhere

The philosophies that the world has Gordon Clark did an amazing job of organizing the philosophies of the world

Into three basic efforts to give an answer for how do you know? The first answer is called irrationalism and it's basically the idea that you know

You can't really know anything and we all know the answer to that one when you talk to the guy You just go. Well, how do you know that and goes

I don't and you go great. Maybe you should shut up and Then let's talk. I've got some things.

I know I'd be happy to tell them to you and Then you could make some progress in life The next one is rationalism, which claims that knowledge comes through reason alone

And I'm gonna talk about that. There's a problem called the problem of anti forms Which when you've just got reason alone, you can't overcome and so we'll talk about that in a bit

The next one is empiricism, which is very popular in our time that knowledge comes through sensory experience alone and this idea that knowledge comes through sensory experience alone is

You know sometimes called scientism or or some sort of idea that you're gonna look out and you're gonna you know By observation and figure everything out and that idea has a number of problems

I'm gonna give you a very brief explanation about it right now Because what I'm gonna spend most the remainder of my time on is actually dealing with Rationalism because it's something that I know many of you have had to run into a lot

And I want you to really understand the problem with it Which is weird because we live in an age dominated by irrationalism and empiricism but It's important that as we realize that Philosophies go in cycles in history in terms of which ones are popular between irrationalism rationalism and empiricism

And the Word of God gives gets to grind them to dust over and over again until it's conquered all of them.

And so Empiricism, here's the problem. Here's some basic problems with empiricism First of all truth is universal and your experience is not

Truth is universal and your experience is not Secondly your sense experience is fallible

Therefore it's not infallible Stick with me here Your sense experience is fallible and therefore not infallible third point

There's a problem called the problem of induction Induction is this you look around you see a bunch of particular things, right?

I go like oh, here's a pen. It's orange Here's a pen. It's red. Here's a pen. It's blue Therefore all pens are either orange blue or red

Right, so you go. No, there are other pens and some of you lift up you go I got a pen right here And this one is not one of those colors when you lift up a yellow highlighter and you go.

Oh, there we go Oh, what was the problem? The problem is I came to universal conclusions based upon a few particular examples

And here's the reality of your experience in life Wisdom was not born with you and it will not die with you

Lots of stuff happened before you were born and lots of stuff will happen after you die

Your experience was in a very narrow portion of the world during a very narrow portion of time and Any pretense that you have to having a wide breadth of experience is laughable in the face of the whole of creation

For you to try to come up with universal truths based upon your experience would be like trying to take a microscope to look at one portion of a 747 and come up with a sense of the design of the whole from what you were looking at in the microscope

We do not have the ability from our experience to draw out universal truths

We must rely upon God Who has given universal truths to us in his word?

we use that scientific method to make technology and Scientific hypotheses are hypotheses and they change and They're changing is a process of we're constantly improving technology.

We find stuff that works better than what worked before We're constantly coming up with new hypotheses testing new stuff

Changing those things and that is the method of Dominion with technology, but it's not how you get knowledge

So when we talk about certainty things that we can know with certainty we're talking about the

Word of God so now You you have to pick a first principle. You have to test for coherence as a contradict itself

Does it give meaningful answers the Bible is? Consistent with itself and it provides answers to what's true.

What's real? What's good and Then we have to deal with our own challenges across time and we need to Understand and grow in the knowledge of God and as we go and face the world, we're gonna be faced with new challenges

We're gonna find ignorance in our own understanding We keep returning to the Word of God as we are renewed after the image of Christ in knowledge holiness and righteousness

We are matured We are made bigger and stronger in mind and that is the work of the

Christian life is to keep going back to the word And looking for God to renew us And we have to go fight in the world

And build things and our faith will be challenged with all sorts of hardship and difficulty and and False doctrines that confront us and it forces us in our laziness

When we didn't search the scriptures to go and search them in new ways How many times have you had some subject come up that you found in the

Bible? You'd never thought about before most people experience with Calvinism, right? You go I didn't know about the sovereignty of God Then I believed in the sovereignty of God and I read the

Bible and I saw it was everywhere How many other doctrines have you had that happen with?

Right. There's there's something where as you start to study a subject like when you read the

Bible and you don't have some truth In mind, there's all these truths that we just brush over that we just don't pick up because we're dumb and slow and then

God Opens our eyes and all of a sudden we're like this thing is everywhere

What happened before like did I have like, you know stickers over them that I've peeled off now

No, same Bible. No stickers. It's just when you were reading before you didn't see it because You were ignorant or misinterpreting and so as we grow we find that the same passages have

Deeper and deeper meaning because we see more and more we see in higher and higher definition so Go with me to page seven.

Yeah, I want I want to again because I know a number of you are interacting with this issue. I Want to emphasize rationalism?

Okay, so I've talked a little bit about empiricism. We talked a little bit about irrationalism I've had a longer form it deals with both of those but this idea of rationalism

Human knowledge is through logic alone Okay, that's it's knowledge falsely so -called

Here's why Logic when you don't have any other information is just a set of laws

You have to plug things into okay Here's the laws of logic law of identity a is a great a thing is itself truth is true.

I mean, you're right True statements a true statement fantastic Absolutely true you can find it in the scriptures

God reveals the law of identity when he reveals himself He says to Moses I am that I am do you see how

God there is using the law of identity? To and he's showing how I am that I am he's revealing himself and saying

I am What I am I'm distinct from everything else I'm God and so I am not able to be defined by creatures and so we we get to the fact that God is holy or unique from other things and he's

Showing he was defining himself by himself using the law of identity beautiful Okay The that law of logic we can find it in the scripture.

There's also the law of contradiction Statement cannot be both true and false at the same time in the same sense.

It seems pretty obvious, right? But you know the Apostle Paul for example says the truth is not of a lie

Sound like the law of non -contradiction to you So then we also have the law of the excluded middle a

Statement has to either be true or false Okay, Jesus says you have to be for me or against me why he's eliminating a middle ground

The excluded middle the middle doesn't exist. There's not some space between That we sometimes talk about this as the antithesis the doctrine that that there is

No space that's neutral Okay, but so this doctrine of the excluded middle these laws of logic you say a is a

Both not both a and non a at the same time in the same sense either a or non a

And you go fantastic. What's a? We go well, we're trying to talk about God or we're gonna talk about man or we're gonna talk about trees

We're gonna talk about the world. I'm sorry. Where did we get these terms? I?

Always had was logic. Are you trying to smuggle this in by experience? Are you trying to like have definitions that you're positing?

Are you trying to pretend you reasoned to like Trina's? Sitting in a Dutch oven somewhere

Like this idea people want to pretend like they're so smart and they invent ideas

Out of reason alone Human beings can't do that you can't just Reason from the laws of logic to nothing to something being plugged in there you have to have a place where you're getting definitions and so human philosophy

Leads to once people start to rigorously analyze human philosophy it leads to this place of horrific depression

Okay, when you read the Republic by Plato, it's super exciting and fun He's like running around with like young Greek guys arguing about ideas, and they're like hey

What do you think about this or that and let's talk about caves and so you get through all these conversations?

And they have a fun time, and it's like really exciting when he was old he wrote a book called the laws and in the laws

He was like I know before I was talking about how we could like Contemplate the good and come up with the nature of things and everything, but but honestly

I don't think that's true anymore So we're just gonna have to make things up and consider if maybe they might be right

And you got you know young Plato was way more fun than old Plato Young Plato thought you could know things old

Plato didn't think you could know things Why because he had challenges from people like?

Aristotle who said why are you plugging that in and Aristotle advocated for you've got a reason you got to pull stuff out of your sense experience

Aristotle was a student of Plato, and he was like Plato. You can't just reason all this stuff. You gotta look at the world

You can experience things and pull them into reason about it. You're talking about man.

What do you even get man to think about? We're talking about birds like how do you get birds to think about you're looking around at the world?

So we'll define man or Bird or whatever by looking around at things and making up a definition based upon our observations remember the problem of induction

Are there any black swans? Not in Europe in Australia they found one so is whiteness a part of the definition of a swan

Right so the problems you know that's us that's you know well who cares swans whether white or black

Okay, you still have to deal with the problem that experience can't provide you with certainty your experience is limited

We must have a word from God human philosophy that tries to build Without the

Word of God you can't Do that there are five things that happen when you're a rationalist you got to pick one of these five things, okay?

Look at page seven If you've got the laws of logic, and you got nothing else you've got to just admit that you're stuck talking about a

A is a it's not non a And everything's either a or not a

You say that over and over again Until you're tired of talking about a Or you start plugging things in Okay, so those definitions.

Where do you get them? We could just smuggle them in and be like yeah, these are the definition of these things don't worry about it I found him someplace.

They were a corner over there. See that's why smuggling it You're illegally bringing them in you're not paying attention to the rules of logic

You're not thinking about how to validly reason because when you get to a conclusion you can't logically

Put in a conclusion that stuff that wasn't in your prior premises There you go conclusion Information that wasn't in the earlier argument

That's not how arguing works. That's why it's called smuggling in So then you got this idea of well, let's just mix together our experience in our reasoning, okay?

So we when we do that we still have the problems that apply to Weaknesses of empiricism it still exists there and that can be dealt with a different time you want to talk more about it

But I you can't the blending them doesn't solve the problems that exist in empiricism

Fourthly your alternative is to try to do a dialectic, and this is what this is what Plato did here's the dialectic

What if I said to you? that man is A featherless biped you think about you go.

I don't know of any Things that walk around with two legs Without feathers except for birds and men that seems like a pretty good definition of man

Plato. Let's go with it and The response of Diogenes who was a guy who liked to stir things up he found a he found a chicken

And he took all of the feathers off of the chicken and then threw it onto the floor

Where debate was occurring and he was like this is Plato's man So okay a featherless biped

Okay So this is the dialectic the dialectic is to go through a process of positing things and asking people to challenge it

And you just see what happens as you go through the challenging process. That's the dialectic, okay The problem with the dialectic is how many ways could you define

God? Like an infinite number of ones How many of those are right oh just one how about man how many times how many ways could you theoretically define man?

How many of them are right? Do you see how this problem exists with everything you're going to define? So if that's the case

Then what we're stuck with is that the dialectic is just a process of Hypothesizing from an infinite number of possibilities and unless God tells you the definition of things

You're not going to have certainty that you've gotten to the right definition So the last thing you can do is a rationalist a lot of people call themselves

Christian rationalists do this we're just gonna acknowledge that we're starting with the

Christian system and We're going to defend it by by answering objections and tearing down the false positions

And that's exactly the same as being a presuppositional list. So what's a presuppositional list?

What does what is a to be a classical presuppositional list or a rational presuppositional list or a

Christian rationalist? These are all names to get thrown around but just most people know this is presuppositional ism.

Okay? What is presuppositional ism? You start with the idea that God's Word written

Is the Bible? The Bible is God's Word written as opposed to pretending like you were able to come up with definitions of everything yourself as opposed to pretending like your experience is

Infallible and extensive as opposed to just denying the truth is knowable you say the Bible is the

Word of God written and I'm going to start with it and I'm going to Understand its teachings.

I'm going to draw out its implications. I'm going to apply those things And that includes logic

Logic is a part of Scripture. You remember earlier on I showed you the laws of logic and Scripture themselves You can also read

Jesus arguing with people and he shows you how syllogistic reasoning works You can also read the

Apostle Paul using complex argument chains in the book of 1st Corinthians in chapter 15

You have argument after argument after argument where he takes the conclusion of the prior argument and uses it as a premise in the next this rigorous logical reasoning

Christianity the Word of God is An intellectual fortress that men cannot tear down But it sends out its power to tear down everything that raises itself arrogantly against the knowledge of God Christianity cannot be defeated and when it engages in battle always wins the

Word of God is Unbreakable But it breaks to pieces every false philosophy

The Scriptures give to us the thoughts of God and It's one thing that people like to try to raise here when

Emphasizing that Scripture rather than experience or reason Feeling is the source of knowledge people will say well, but don't you have to ultimately experience the

Bible as you're reading it Does you have to like read it with your eyes? Yeah, yeah, that's the ordinary way that God's Word comes to us

But it doesn't guarantee it just like the preaching right now doesn't guarantee that you'll understand or believe it is the

Word of God coming to us and the Holy Spirit illuminating that gives knowledge and You have to reason through things, but you won't reason rightly unless the

Holy Spirit illuminates your mind. We are dependent upon God To reason rightly and we are dependent upon God to understand and believe his

Word We get all certitude all knowledge from the

Word of God Which is the foundation and so I want you to hold on to that which was delivered to us

Rather than profane babblings speak the holy words of God rather than Idle words speak the useful healing words of God Rather than the self contradictory mess of every human philosophy

Hold on to the philosophy of Christ the love of wisdom that comes from Christ Which does not contradict itself and cannot be broken and if you hold firm to that word you will not stray from the faith

Instead you will be firmly planted and you will have an anchor you will build on foundation as opposed to on sand

It will allow you to have certainty and for your mind to be steady So that you will not be blown around and blown about by every wind of doctrine

But the certainty of the words of truth Will allow you to build in the same direction all your life

If you have ever experienced Building and then realizing that all you were chasing after was vain.

It is so disheartening You could spare yourself that pain by having certainty in the

Word of God and building consistently toward the glory of God the law of God teaches us how to build and The certainty of the words of truth allow us to be stable

On page 9 I have a list for you of verses that show you that the Father is truth that the

Son is truth that the Holy Spirit is truth on page 10 and There are a number of arguments that are useful in apologetics that I've laid out on pages 11 and forward

I don't have time to go through right now. I Had not originally when I finished last week planned to go through the second part

But I had a number of you asked me to go through it You saw the outline and and wanted me to go through it.

So I hope that part I emphasized was helpful to you Let me see now. Are there any comments questions or objections from the voting members those with speaking rights?

Mr. Nye the human mind begins at conception and so does thinking yes

Just as the body does Well, I think what they mean is claiming that you should believe the

Bible Without reasons and I think that there are reasons why not believing the

Bible is absurd I just don't think I can prove the Bible from higher authorities or prior authorities and You know one of the things that I would say about Cornelius van

Till who wrote a lot of great things but some places in his apologetic that I would

I would say that there Are places that can be latched on to to try to attack some presuppositional lists as fideistic

Until taught that logic was created I Think that's not what the scriptures teach logic is the way

God thinks the logos is eternal and So God as the wisdom and logical one is eternal and logic is one of his attributes.

So it's not created And so as a result, he would say things like, you know It doesn't matter if the

Bible contradicts itself basically because because those things are are they're true in God's mind you if they're not to us

And I would just say no if your interpretation of the Bible is contradicting yourself. You're doing it wrong You need to examine the the premises that you're holding to The Bible does not contradict itself and God is logical and logic is eternal

So that's that's a that's a big thing that I would want to emphasize as something that it is a difference between Any that you should have faith without reasons as opposed to you should that you must start with the truth that God reveals and you can defend it from itself and with good reason from it and When we talk about the scriptures

Being the Word of God written and that's the starting point idea is it's the explicit statements and the necessary inferences

Of what the scriptures say and so it's the whole system of truth there Using good and necessary inference.

So logic is a part of God's Word and that's what I want to emphasize that I think a lot of times gets missed out on So hopefully answers your question

Yeah, and so the need for a an axiom for example was given by the absurdity of the alternative, right

So you can show the absurdity of every alternative to Christianity The absurdity of an alternative called reductio ad absurdum

By reducing to absurdity is something that you can use to prove that something else is wrong

But it doesn't it's not a it's not a proof In the terms of a prior premise that you can get to the thing

So by defeating all of Christianity's enemies, that's not a prior premise that you prove

Christianity from you're starting from Christianity And you can destroy everything else So, okay anything else?

All right. Let's pray father we ask that you would bless the teaching of your word and also the defense of the

Highest authority of your word. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. All right, so We are about to ordain

Clay drew Walker's true. Okay. Well now I know What I want to do is to remind you all of a couple of key things first of all

I want to give you the word of institution for the ordination of the office of Deacon So please stand for the reading of God's Word Acts chapter 6 verses 1 through 7

Reads as follows now in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplying there arose a complaint

Against the Hebrews by the Hellenists. I'd be the Greek speaking Jews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution when the twelve the twelve apostles to the

Hebrews When the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said it is not desirable that we should leave the

Word of God and serve tables Therefore brethren Seek out from among you seven men of good reputation

Full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom and whom we may appoint over this business but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the spirit of the and the ministry of the

Word and the saying pleased the whole multitude and they chose Stephen a man full of faith and the

Holy Spirit and Philip Prochorus Nicanor Timmon Parmenas and Nicholas a proselyte from Antioch whom they set before the

Apostles and when they had prayed they laid hands on them Then the Word of God spread and the number of the disciples

Multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith Okay, so you may be seated.

So this right here. This word is the word of institution for this ordination and What we need to also understand is that when ordination occurs it's supposed to be accompanied with fasting and prayer

And so the officers have been set apart in fasting. We've encouraged any of you who are able to join in that fast

And to spend time in prayer Helping to ask for blessing on that and for us to search out and find things to repent of and and blessings to beseech of God now

We have talked about the qualifications of office and you have gone through the process of your nominating and Examining and testing and ultimately having also the officers test and electing this man to office

So this has been a period where he's trained and undergone your questioning and testing and observation

And so now having received the consent of the congregation we entered into a religious fast with prayer and There will soon here follow an imposition of hands for ordination

So these are the things that have occurred there when you think about the office of deacon we are told and there are qualifications to look for and We have gone through its process of testing of those and first Timothy 3 lists out those qualifications as a man who's reverent

Not double -tongued not given too much wine not greedy for money holding the mystery of the faith of the pure conscience

And we're told also that we should let those first be tested and then let them serve as deacons being found blameless and Mr.

Walker has worked hard in that period of testing And has also been tested in terms of examined and been found blameless

We have also in talking with mrs. Walker seeing her we see that the wives of deacons are to be reverent not slanderers

Temperate which means to be serious minded and faithful in all things believing in other words all the things that are the reformed faith

And she is an excellent woman And so we're told to let deacons be the husband of one wife ruling their children in their own houses well

For those who have served well as deacons obtained for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith

Which is in Christ Jesus so we have This work to be done and we have also the joy of the prospect of seeing blessing for mr

Walker in his service of good standing and boldness in the faith Now We are in an unsettled condition

We don't have multiple elders at this time So we have deacons serving and doing the work of elders alongside me as an elder

So those sort of interim elders so to speak are a thing that we need to understand

There's a historical precedent for doing that first of all when we look at the Westminster Assembly It says in the directory in the form of Presbyterian government

In extraordinary cases something extraordinary may be done until a settled order may be had yet keeping as near as possibly

May be to the rule There is at this time as we humbly conceive an extraordinary occasion for way of ordination for the present supply of ministers

Now just to remind you when they were writing this When the Westminster Assembly wrote the

Presbyterian form of government They had an established Reformed Church there were thousands of Puritan ministers in the land and They thought because they had not been able to see all the churches properly settled that it was still an extraordinary situation at the time

When there were thousands of Puritan ministers in Britain in the 1640s and Britain's population was six million and it was about the size of Arizona That they had an established

Reformed Church. They thought it was an extraordinary situation There are less than thousands of Puritan ministers in Arizona our population is about six million and the size of our area is about the size of Britain the

Similarities are amazing except for the fact that we don't have the Reformed faith established in the land or thousands of ministers

So that being the case, I humbly propose to you that we live in an extraordinary situation

So that being the case we follow the biblical model where we are trying to see A more settled state occurring and keeping as closely as we can to the ordinary condition second

Chronicles 29 gives a another key proof text for the idea of the duties that belong to higher offices being performed by lowly officers in times when there is a shortage of officers 2nd

Chronicles 29 verses 34 to 36 reads as follows, but the priests were too few

They were trying to do the Passover feast lots of Lots of lambs to kill and cut up.

So there were too few All the Israelites had to come to Jerusalem Come to the temple so they could do the

Passover and there weren't enough priests They were too few so that they could not skin all the burnt offerings therefore their brethren the

Levites By the way, you know the office of priest The you know, they are the guys who administer the sacraments

They very closely relate to elders or pastors in the New Covenant and Levites helped them with all the material goods and dealing with You know mercy ministry and helping to care take care of orphans and widows and do all that stuff

They very closely relate to the office of deacon So the overlap between those two relating is very close but it says therefore their brethren the

Levites helped them until the work was ended and until the other priests had sanctified themselves for the

Levites were more diligent in sanctifying themselves than the priests Also the burnt offerings were in abundance with the fat of the peace offerings and with the drink offerings for every burnt offering

So the service of the house of the Lord was set in order Then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced that God had prepared the people since the events took place.

So suddenly so It is sometimes the case that there is a shortage of men for Offices that need to be filled and people have to stand in the gap

And so these Levites standing in the gap and assisting the priests, you know, it is explicitly forbidden

For anybody but the priests to offer these sacrifices and get the Word of God Commends it in this circumstance in terms of these lower offices the

Levites Filling the duties of the priests So you see how plainly this helps to demonstrate the ability to deal with the devolution of authority

When you are dealing with an unsettled condition all right, so the

Office of Deacon we are about to go through ordination on is what I'd like to do is to pray

For blessing. We've already had the reading of the Word of Institution. So we're gonna pray for blessing on the ordination

I'm gonna call forward the existing officers and mr. Walker for us to then go through the covenanting process and To have the ordination occur.

So let's pray Father we thank you for the gift of ordination

We ask that you would bless this ordination and that you would bless this church and that you would bless

Mr. Walker as he soon becomes Deacon Walker Father we pray that you would cause this office to be used for the service of your people and For us to all be able to work together.

Well to see things put into good order And the church properly settled we pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen All right, mr. Walker, please come forward And with the other officers, please come forward.

All right, so We have oaths that are the oaths of the ordinant

And these are oaths where he is swearing in the sight of Almighty God to perform duties towards you towards me towards the congregation as a whole

Swearing to perform a duty Is a grave matter You call upon the witness of God to observe what you swear and to bless the performance of those duties and to curse

Not performing those duties. And so the seriousness of this that this man is willing to Swear do these duties

It's grave And so you also as a congregation those of you who are covenanted members will be taking sworn statements of duty as well

All right, so because it's only appropriate that duties be mutual So, you know, we've done these before but we'll start with the duties of the ordinant

Alright, Clayton drew Walker Do you believe all the statements and necessary inferences of the scriptures of the

Old and New Testaments? To be the rationally coherent and infallible Word of God The very truth itself and the only rule for faith and life.

Do you? Do you believe the covenanted uniformity and the

Reformed faith contained in the confession catechisms directory of worship and form of government

Adopted by Puritan Reformed Church to be true and right according to scripture alone.

Do you? Do you promise in taking this office to seek the good of the congregation and the glory of God do you

Do you promise to be diligent in prayer reading study meditation and all the duties of your office which are to Seek to free the elders to focus on the word and prayer perform the duties of the church toward them

Attend to and assist the elders on all lawful occasions and work at their direction and call collect account for keep manage and dispose of the property of the church maintain the officers of the church discharge expenses for incidentals to ministry provide for the place of church assemblies

Provide for the elements of the sacraments and assist in their arrangement distribution and right use

Provide and care for the needy by distributing material aid in the name of Christ with discipleship and prayer

Do you? do you promise to seek to keep yourself and your household blameless and Exemplary in order to continue in service and encourage the usefulness of your office.

Do you? Do you promise? to seek to maintain and Advance the purity unity and peace of the church against all error and schism

Do you do you promise to submit to all lawful?

admonitions and discipline and humility and meekness Do you? Do you promise to continue in service against all trouble and persecution?

To lead the people and aid the elders through difficult times Do you and for those of you who are in the congregation?

Who have aged to understand? If you're a covenanted member, I ask you to stand now and to say

I do it is your duty to take these oaths If you are a covenanted member So I will ask you do you at the end of it and then you will say

I do congregation Do you acknowledge this man to have been nominated?

Examined and elected by this congregation to the office of deacon. Do you?

Do you receive and acknowledge him as an officer of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ with lawful claims?

on your loyalty honor obedience submission and defense of his station and person

Especially in times of trouble or persecution Do you do you promise to maintain encourage and assist him in all the parts of his office?

Especially in times of trouble or persecution. Do you? You may be seated

Christ let's pray Father we ask that you would bless this man You would bless him in service

He would make him effective that you would gift him that you would cause him to be useful to the church

That you would build him up that you would cause him to have a great reputation And furthermore that you would build up his boldness in the faith

We asked you help him to be a good steward and governor that he would be useful in his role

And that you would cause the people to be blessed and prospered under him father We ask that you would cause the people to honor him the father

We pray that you would add to our numbers and that you would increase our effectiveness And you would help us to bring honor to your dear son.

We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ Amen Deacon Walker I extend to you the right -handed fellowship as a fellow officer

All right, please now open your psalters to Psalm 133 and stand

All right

Psalm 133 reminds us of the beauty of unity But also of the strength that comes from unity and the way in which officers are used to help to unify and to direct strength and the blessing of Anointing for office and so the

Holy Spirit anoints powerfully and effectually An ordination is used as a way to show this idea of the transferring of gifting and power

Authority, so let's let's read this text 133 a song of a sense of David.

Oh Truly, it is very good and pleasant to behold when the brethren come together and dwell in unity

Oh, it is like the precious oil poured out upon the head Which does run down from Aaron's beard even to his garments as the dew from Hermon descends upon Zion's mountain

For there the Lord his blessing gave even eternal life There's a pleasantness and goodness in unity.

The unity is like strength that comes from anointing and That relates to office and That anointing reminds us of the dew that points to baptism this idea of water that comes to bring life from Herman to Zion and so there's a blessing of the gift of eternal life that comes from God and the gift of unity is unity in the truth and Knowledge of the truth is eternal life.

And so as we have unity in the truth There is this blessing that comes from out of Zion out of the church

Of eternal life. So let's let's sing Oh Truly, it is very good and pleasant to behold

When the brethren come together and dwell in unity

Oh It is like the precious oil poured out upon the head

Which does run as the dew from Hermon descends upon Zion's mountain

For there the Lord his blessing gave even eternal life

Lord bless you and keep you Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you

Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace We now are about to break