The Spirit's Work in Revelation and Inspiration

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Good evening.
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It is good to see everyone here tonight to study God's Word and to continue our conversation and our lessons on Christian theology and doctrine.
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I hope that I can say that you all are enjoying this.
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I know I'm enjoying this because certainly there are several ways to study the Bible.
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In fact, I'm doing an online course right now.
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It's a video series that I'm doing on expository preaching.
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That's my job, is to preach.
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And expository preaching is the way I believe the Word of God is supposed to be taught, to expose the Scripture, to explain the Scripture.
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That's what expository means, and to open it up so that it be seen.
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And sometimes expository preaching is done verse by verse through entire books of the Bible.
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And that's probably the most preaching I've done in this church, is verse by verse through books of the Bible.
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Sometimes you can narrow that down to chapters or sections, but in general we start at the beginning and we end at the end.
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But another way to do expository learning, expository teaching, is through the process of systematic theology, through the process of systematic study.
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It's not opposed to exposition.
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It relies on exposition because what we're learning relies on what the Bible says and explaining the words.
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And I was thankful that the man teaching the course mentioned that in the lesson that I was watching today.
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It was Dr.
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Steve Lawson.
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He mentioned that one of the ways to do expository preaching is through the systematic breaking down of the doctrines of Scripture and looking and explaining the relevant passages.
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So that's what we've been doing.
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So this is just another form of preaching.
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Brother, if you'll pass that your way.
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Here you go.
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If you'll pass this your way.
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So that's what Wednesday night is.
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It's a little less formal than Sunday morning.
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And Sunday morning is the time that I focus on the most during the week because I feel like that's the time when we have the body is together, assembled.
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And so that's the meat and potatoes, as it were, the meat and potatoes, verse by verse.
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But on Wednesday night, we get a little extra, a little something different.
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And that's what we've been doing in this study of systematic theology.
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And we're in the study of pneumatology.
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Study of pneumatology means what? What's that? Study the Holy Spirit.
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Why? Why is it the study of the Holy Spirit? What does it mean? Yes, but what is the what is we call it pneumatology? Why do we call it pneumatology? The word pneumos means spirit can also mean air or breath.
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It is that word for wind.
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But but when it's used in this context, pneuma means spirit.
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And so we are studying the hagios pneuma, the Holy Spirit.
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And so we are looking at the third person of the Trinity.
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We've we've looked at his nature over the last several weeks.
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We've seen that he is personal.
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He is divine.
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And he is represented by several different objects in Scripture which give us an idea of his nature and his character.
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Last week, we looked at the fact that he's represented by a dove.
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He's represented by water.
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He's represented by clothing.
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He's represented by fire, represented by several different things.
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Oil.
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I don't know if I mentioned that oil was a representation of the Spirit.
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Well, tonight, we're going to move on to the work of the Spirit, the work of the Spirit.
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And on your sheet, you'll notice there are four major headings on the work of the Spirit.
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And if you were to ask me how far I think I'm going to get tonight, I will say one for sure.
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But I just want to give you just a quick overview of what the reason why I'm breaking it down the way I am, and then we'll go back and dive in.
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When we talk about the work of the Holy Spirit, we're going to look first at the Spirit's work in revelation and inspiration.
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And how does that how do we know that the Holy Spirit is the one who is at work in those things? And what does the Bible say? We're going to look at the Holy Spirit's ministry in the Old Testament.
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It is clear, at least to me, that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is at least somewhat functionally different than the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.
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And we're going to talk about the differences.
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So that's why there's an entire heading.
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It says the Holy Spirit's ministry in the Old Testament.
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He was working.
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He was there.
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But the promise of the new covenant is the promise of a new administration of the Holy Spirit, that he would fill everyone, that he would empower everyone and gift everyone, and that that would be the difference.
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And so we're going to see we're going to see the how we understand the distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
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We're going to look at the Holy Spirit's work in relation to Christ, looking at things like the virgin birth, which we've already talked about in Christology.
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So some of this is going to be rehearsing some things we've already discussed, but it's important to see how things dovetail.
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It's not as if it's sort of like this.
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I don't know how many of you have noticed lately, but like doctors, they become specialists in one area and they're so specialized in that one area that it's like they don't know anything about anything else.
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You know, I'm a knee doctor.
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Yeah, I know, but I got problems with my ankle.
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Well, I'm not an ankle doctor.
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I can't help you with your ankle.
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I got to go to a different guy for the ankle doctor and I can't help.
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Well, you know, there's a your heart has a sac around it called the pericardium.
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Right.
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So you got the heart doctor and the pericardium doctor is the same spot, you know, but you kind of wonder why there's these such specialization that it almost seems like you have to ignore the other things to become so specialized.
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And I think it's one of the downfalls of modern medicine.
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We don't just have general practitioners anymore that sort of just do everything.
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But again, I'm not here to argue that my point is simply this.
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When you deal with systematic theology, there's going to be overlap.
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There's going to be dovetailing where you might say, well, we talked about that a few weeks ago.
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Yes, but that was in relationship to how it was in related to Christ.
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Now we're looking at it in relationship to the to the Holy Spirit.
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Same subject, but looking at it from the perspective of how does this help us understand better the spirit? And then finally, we're going to look at the Holy Spirit's work in relation to the believer.
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We're going to look at the indwelling, the sealing and the filling of the spirit of God.
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So tonight we're going to look at, number one, the Holy Spirit's work in revelation and inspiration.
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First of all, and just for the sake of understanding, I want to make sure that we understand the difference.
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When I use the word revelation, the word there is oftentimes most associated in our minds with the book of the Bible.
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Right.
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In fact, one of the things that people always say, revelations, it's the book of Revelations.
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It's the book of Revelation.
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It's a singular term.
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And people say turn to Revelations 16.
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Turn to Revelation 16.
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It's a little pet peeve.
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But the word in Greek is the word Apocalypse.
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Apocalypse.
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Now, that probably in your mind brings to mind another word.
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What word? Apocalypse.
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Right.
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And that is the English transliteration of the Greek word Apocalypse.
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Now, what do you think when you think Apocalypse? The end.
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Right.
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If I say this, it's the Apocalypse.
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People think the war or the end or the battle.
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It's, you know, you think it brings to mind the conditions of the end.
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But that's actually not what it means.
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And so it's important just because you hear the word Apocalypse that you don't automatically think that the word means the end.
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The word Apocalypse means to uncover, expose or reveal.
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To uncover, to expose or to reveal.
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Another word might be to unveil something.
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You've been to one of those where they're showing a new product and it's behind a big curtain and everybody's waiting to see what the new thing is going to be.
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And the person comes back and they whisk the curtain back and here's the new widget that's going to change the world.
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That's a revelation.
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That's a revealing.
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That's disclosing.
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That's unveiling.
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Right.
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Pulling back the curtain.
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That's what revelation means.
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And when you open up the book of Revelation, you turn to Revelation chapter one.
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It says what in the first chapter? This is the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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It's the revealing of what must soon come to pass.
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That's what Revelation, the book is.
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It's what must come to pass.
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And it talks about the seals and the vials and the judgments and the churches and all of the things that are about to happen and the great war and famine and all of these things that are about to happen.
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Right.
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That's usually why we associate it with the word revelation.
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But apocalypse, apocalypsis simply means to unveil or to reveal.
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Now, inspiration, the next word on your sheet, is quite different.
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Inspiration is not revelation because inspiration means what? Let me back up a minute.
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What Greek word do we have for this? No, no.
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What I'm saying is, is there a Bible verse that uses the word inspire? I'm sorry, I was a little confusing with the way I asked, so it was my fault.
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Is there a Bible verse that uses the word inspire? It's 2 Timothy 3, 16, right? Is that the one you're thinking about? Right.
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It's 2 Timothy, right? 2 Timothy 3, 16.
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You can go ahead and go there if you'd like.
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I just sometimes I get it.
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I know it's not 1 Timothy 3, because that's the 1 Timothy 3 for elders and deacons.
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So it's 2 Timothy 3, verse 16.
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And I say 2 Timothy sometimes just to throw people off.
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That's my, some people get offended.
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I remember Donald Trump said 2 Timothy, and people lost their minds.
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Because it's 2 Timothy.
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Nobody says 2 Timothy.
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Actually, a lot of scholars say 2 Timothy.
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So don't lose your mind over something so ridiculous.
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It just depends on who's saying it.
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But 2 Timothy 3 and 16 says what? Is that what, what translation do you have, Laura? King James.
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Thank you.
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I'm glad somebody does because I knew you would too.
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Because that's probably the only translation that's going to say inspired, but I wanted it.
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I was thankful that that's the word.
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Most of the modern translations don't say inspiration.
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What does the New American Standard Bible say, Richard? It says inspired.
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The New American does.
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Great.
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Thank you.
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What do you carry, brother? New King James says inspired, right? Okay.
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Well, maybe I'm the oddball tonight.
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James, what do yours say? Breathes out by God.
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Okay.
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That's more so what I'm going to explain in a minute.
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But for the sake of it, the word inspire in the King's English, meaning the language of the King James Bible, was translating the word Theopneustos.
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And if you've ever been, if you've ever heard me teach on this, you've heard me talk about this.
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I hate to be reiterating so much.
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The phrase, you can see that Theopneustos, sometimes I'll drop the P and just say Theopneustos because the P is normally silent in English, like with pneumonia and pneumatic and things like that.
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So the word Theopneustos here is two words.
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In fact, this is a this is a word that only appears once in the whole Bible.
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And it only appears once in all Greek literature, ancient Greek literature.
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And it's in the Bible.
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It's not a word that is used anywhere else for anything else.
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There are several times in the Bible where there are words that are used, usually they're compound words like this one, where Paul seems to have taken two words, pushed them together to create one word or a new word, so that we would have an understanding.
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And then we do that, you know, we create new words based on, you know, ginormous used to be a joke.
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But now it's in the dictionary.
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It's a combination of giant and enormous.
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And it's ginormous.
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And it is in the dictionary now.
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So we we create words, we take two words and push them together.
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Well, Theopneustos, what word do you notice in here? Now that you study pneumatology, what word do you do you notice in there? You notice neustos, which is, which is just a different form of the word pneuma.
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So what do you have? What would pneuma be? It would be spirit, right? So if pneuma is the root, and you have the prefix theos.
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Theos means what? Theos is God.
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Pneuma means, in this sense, if you say spirit, it would be, it wouldn't be correct, it would be breathed.
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Theopneustos would be breathed.
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All right.
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So you have God breathed.
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And so we go back to the conversation is which translation is better.
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James has the ESV, and it says God breathed, or it says breathed out by God, right? Inspirational.
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Huh? That's inspirational.
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Yes, but but the you see, though, where they're getting God breathed or breathed out by God is from that compound word.
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So what am I trying to point to here? I still think inspiration is a good word.
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I don't think the King James translators are wrong.
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I don't think the New King James or the New American Standard Bible are wrong.
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I simply think that in our modern day, the word inspired carries with it a lot of baggage.
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Because when I say I was inspired to write a song, or inspired to draw a picture, or I got up this morning, I was inspired to clean my house.
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I wasn't.
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But if I was, some people might take that to be in the same ballpark as inspiration in the Bible.
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And thus, when they hear all scriptures inspired, they might say something to the effect of, oh, well, that means all scripture is simply the same way I'm inspired to sing, or I'm inspired to speak, or I'm inspired to clean or do any good thing.
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The scripture was inspired.
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It's not what it means.
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And we must be careful to understand.
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Because when it comes to revelation, and it comes to inspiration, these are two very specific theological terms, which refer to something that the Holy Spirit does.
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Thus, these are works of the Holy Spirit.
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The Holy Spirit reveals God.
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Let me give you two words to think about under revelation.
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The word general.
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And what's the other word? Have you been in my class years? Special or specific, but I say general and special.
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Some people say general in particular, but general and special.
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Right? Because revelation comes in two ways.
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Revelation can come generally.
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Revelation can come special, in a special form.
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How do we get general revelation? Well, what's an example of general revelation? God's creation, right? So we have, was it Psalm 19? The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above His handiwork, or the firmament, His handiwork.
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So we have there general revelation.
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God is revealed from heaven.
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In fact, Romans chapter 1 says that no man can ever say he doesn't know God exists.
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When we did this in, I spent a lot of time on this when we did the series on apologetics.
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I say, I don't have to wonder whether or not somebody knows God exists.
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They can tell me they don't believe God exists, but I know by saying they don't believe God exists, all they are doing is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.
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As Romans 1 says, God has revealed Himself from heaven against unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, who by their ungodliness suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God, His divine nature and eternal nature, have been clearly seen by them, and they suppress it in unrighteousness.
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Romans 1 beginning at verse 18, you can go back and read that later, but the point of the matter is there is a general revelation that goes to all men, thereby all men are unapologetus, they are without excuse.
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No man has an excuse when he stands before God.
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Bill Nye, when he stands before God, if he says, God, I didn't know you were there because you didn't give me enough evidence, God's going to say baloney.
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Now, you might not say it just like that, but that's basically how.
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When Richard Dawkins stands before the Lord Jesus Christ and says, you didn't give me enough evidence for your existence, that's baloney.
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General revelation has gone to all men and make all men culpable and guilty before God.
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That's general revelation.
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You say, is that a work of the Holy Spirit? Yes, because the Spirit of God is the revealer.
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Is it a direct work of the Spirit of God? I would say it's a direct work of the Trinity, God revealing Himself to all men, but I wouldn't leave the Holy Spirit out.
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I want to be clear.
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What I'm saying is it's not a specific role of the Spirit in general revelation, but we see Him at work in all aspects of revelation.
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We're going to see in a minute how He does give Himself to special revelation in particular.
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So let's look real quick.
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If we know general revelation goes to all men, oh by the way, it goes to all men in two ways.
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Through the nature that they see and through the conscience that they know.
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It comes through the outside and the inside.
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Men fight a battle against the knowledge of God from without and from within.
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By the way, this should give you great confidence to share the gospel, because when you're sharing the gospel, you're sharing it with somebody who knows it's true.
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Even if what they're saying with their mouth is, I don't believe it, I don't believe it, I don't believe it, they know that it's true.
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And you know, because you know the Scripture is true, that what you're saying is bearing witness with the conscience that they know is true.
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And even if they're spitting in your face while you're telling them, you have bore witness with the truth that is in their heart.
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It may not happen right that moment.
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It may happen late at night when they're by themselves.
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It may not happen in this lifetime, but they will know that they have denied the Lord.
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So just keep that in mind when you're, when you, when you feel afraid.
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And I, and hey, I, I, I feel it too.
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I get, I get scared when I'm going to share the gospel with somebody.
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And it's all kinds of different reasons.
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Sometimes it's just because of weakness of the flesh.
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And sometimes it's because of feeling like you're intimidated.
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I get intimidated by people.
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You know, I, so I love Brother Mike.
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Brother Mike doesn't seem to be intimidated by anything.
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So I like to go out witnessing with him.
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I get sort of absorbed some of, some of him because he just, he's so, he's so bold.
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And I don't have that same boldness always.
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You know, I watch guys on, like a guy out in Arizona, his name's Jeff Durbin, who goes out and preaches and he preaches strong and he loves people.
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And he's, he's seen so many people come to Christ through just conversations about the gospel.
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He's so firm and so strong.
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And I like to watch those videos because it just encourages me to be more bold.
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And so, but I'm just telling you, if you, if we should be bold because the spirit of God is, is, is, is witnessing along with us because he's already put this in her heart.
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He's already put it in this, in the world around them.
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They have double witness on top of us becomes a three part witness.
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The world, their conscience, and our words become a threefold witness of the gospel to them.
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So that's just an encouragement when we share.
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The second one though is special revelation.
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What is special revelation? Comes by a direct intervention from God.
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Special revelation is direct intervention from God.
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Prior to Moses, there was no written revelation, at least none that we know of.
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I don't, I don't think there was, there doesn't, you know, there, there, there's, we could talk about things like book of Enoch and stuff like that.
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There's questions about stuff like that, but there's nothing that meant to go in the scripture that was ever lost.
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Had somebody asked me that this week about whether I thought there were lost books of the Bible? No, because God is, God has promised one to, to, to ensure the accuracy of his word.
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You know, not one jot, not one tittle will pass away.
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That's also ensuring the, the, the perpetuation of his word and the, that his word not only is going to be accurate, but his word is going to be preserved.
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It's preserved word.
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And so we have the word of God, but before we even get to the word of God, what, what did they have before the Bible? What's some of the ways that the spirit of God revealed God to men before the Bible? Prophets.
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That's in Hebrews one, right? God spoke in times past through our fathers to our fathers through the prophets, right? And we even have prophets after scriptures written because they're writing scripture.
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Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, they're writing as they're prophesying.
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What else? What's some other ways that there's, there's apocalypsis or revelation happening prior to scripture? Yeah, there's direct revelation from God.
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And we just say that direct immediate revelation from God.
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The burning bush, right? Which is likely a manifestation of the spirit of God and the fire, right? What was one of the things we said last week is fire, right? Yeah.
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But we also see you talking about Abraham eight.
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I think Abraham ate with Christ.
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I think any, I think there, there are times where we actually see pre-incarnate visions of Christ, uh, pre-incarnate visitations of Christ.
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That's just said rather than visions of visitations.
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We have, uh, Isaiah six.
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It says, I saw the Lord seated on his throne later in the gospel of John.
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It says, Isaiah saw his glory referring to Jesus's glory.
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So we know Isaiah six is Jesus sitting on the throne and in the train of his robe.
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So, so we have to be careful again, inter-Trinitarian workings here.
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How are the, how we know this it's all empowered by the spirit of God.
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However, the revelation is happening, but there's immediate direct revelation and that comes in various forms.
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But when the written word comes into play, it takes a new place among the people of God.
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The written word becomes a particularly distinct form of special revelation.
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So I want to just point this out.
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Special revelation includes inspiration.
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Special revelation includes inspiration.
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We can, I have a whole list of other ways God revealed himself, uh, the Urim and the Thummim and all these different things God revealed himself.
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Uh, that was something that was on the breastplate of the, uh, the priest that was used to discern God's will.
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Even the lot was used to discern the will of God, you know, casting the lot.
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Those were all done as a way for God to reveal his will, reveal himself.
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But under the heading of special revelation and big bold letters should be inspiration because there is only one thing that is ever said to be God breathed.
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Only one thing is ever said to be inspired and it is the scripture.
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Inspiration refers only to the scripture.
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Nothing else in the Bible is ever referred to as the scripture.
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The scripture thereby becomes a unique form of revelation because it's God breathed.
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It's God's letters.
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It's God's word.
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This is why we make such a big deal about it being the word of God, the truth of God.
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It doesn't contain the truth.
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It is the truth because if it contained the truth, it could also contain error.
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It doesn't contain error.
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It is truth.
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And so the word of God becomes to us a special type of special revelation, if you will, because in it, see, it's unique.
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It's an all time thing.
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Immediate revelations that came to individuals weren't meant for all time.
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Even though we read about them, they don't happen to us.
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I've never had God come to me in a glory cloud.
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I've never had gold dust fall upon me and angel feathers and all this silliness that seems to be happening in a lot of places.
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I've never heard the voice of God except when I read this book out loud.
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That's the thing, right? If you want to hear God speak, read the Bible.
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If you want to hear him out loud, read the Bible out loud.
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That's God's voice.
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That's I mean, it's your voice.
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It's God's word speaking.
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Thus, inspiration is a is a unique form of special revelation, and it is a work of the Holy Spirit of God.
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Now let's open the Bible.
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We've said all this.
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I haven't had you look at a scripture yet.
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Let's go to first or second Peter, chapter one.
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Second Peter, chapter one.
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Again, if you've, you've probably heard me talk about this before, but I can't, I can't but talk about it.
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I could teach on this every week and never get tired of it.
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Second Peter, chapter one.
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Second Peter, chapter one, beginning at verse 20.
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Actually, let's look at verse 19.
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And we have something more sure, the prophetic word to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing first of all this, that no scripture, I'm rather, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
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For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
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Right there, one, my argument tonight is that the work of the Holy Spirit is revelation and inspiration.
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That's proof.
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If we only had one proof text, that's it.
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I mean, we have 2nd Timothy 3, 16 as well.
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But this text says, it says something very important.
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It says that men did not give us the scripture from their own imagination.
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Again, it says, it says it doesn't come from someone's own interpretation.
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And by the way, some people use that to mean that we're not allowed to interpret the scripture.
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In fact, some people argue that we're not supposed to interpret the scripture ourself because it says it's not.
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In fact, read it in the King James.
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If somebody has a King James, read verse 20 for me.
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That's it.
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Thank you.
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The word private interpretation, because it's in the King James Bible.
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Sometimes people use that incorrectly.
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It's not what the King James means, but some people use that incorrectly to argue that you shouldn't interpret the Bible privately.
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Therefore, you have to have someone interpret it for you, whether it be pastor or a priest or a pope or bishop.
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You can't interpret it privately.
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Somebody has to interpret it for you.
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That's not what that means.
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In fact, the interpretation there is on the part of the prophet.
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It's linguistically, it is because what it says again, looking at it, the prophecy of scripture, no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, meaning it didn't come from the prophet looking at the world around him, interpreting what's happening and giving the prophecy.
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It's not coming from his own interpretation.
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That's the point.
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Does it has anything to do with how we receive it? It has to do with how it came.
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It doesn't come through one's own interpretation.
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Verse 21, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.
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That's another way of saying the same thing.
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It didn't come out of the prophet's mind.
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It didn't come out of the prophet's will.
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It came out of the spirit of God that was at rest in that prophet, speaking forth the will of God and the truth of God.
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They were being carried along by the spirit of God.
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So there is the spirit of God's work in revelation, which is the material.
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I'm going to give you a little thought here.
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Revelation is the material.
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This is what we need to know.
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Inspiration is the method.
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This is how we know it.
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Revelation is what we need to know.
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It's the material we need to know.
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Inspiration is how we came to know it.
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How did we come to know what God wants us to know? By the Holy Spirit of God inspiring it to be written.
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Oftentimes you'll hear this and you might even hear me say it on occasion because even I sometimes can make a mistake as I admit too often.
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Sometimes you'll hear somebody say, well Paul was inspired to write Romans.
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It's not correct.
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The scripture is inspired, not the person.
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All scripture is inspired by God.
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The person is the instrument.
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The scripture is the inspiration, not the person.
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That's just an important little side note.
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Is Paul being used? Yes, but he's being carried along as the scripture says.
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He's being carried to do this.
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He still gets to use his language.
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He still gets to write the way he wrote.
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In fact, some of the text says he wrote in big letters so they'd understand.
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There's a passage in the New Testament where Paul says, see with what big letters that I write to you and understand this.
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I do that in my notes sometimes when I have something really important to say, I'll bold it or make it bigger.
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Paul did that in his letter to make sure you understand this is important.
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And I would say that's Paul's interjection, but God is superintending the writing.
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That's the word I like to use for inspiration is the superintending of the writing.
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Thereby, Paul's writing sounds different than John's, but they're both superintended by the spirit.
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As I've said before, it's not the automatic writing thing where they start doing their hand like this and somebody puts a piece of paper in front of them and they just start writing.
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That's pagan.
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It's not Christian.
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Christian is this.
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Paul sits down to write Romans and he begins at the very first word and from the very first word to the very last word.
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God is superintending those words to ensure that his church is receiving exactly what they need.
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Every word is inspired and every word is true.
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God is ensuring that we don't have to weed through it to find the errors.
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I've talked to so many people.
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They say, well, I just don't believe the whole Bible is true.
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I can't believe the whole Bible is true.
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I said, if you can't trust the whole Bible is true, how do you determine what's not? You only determine it by your own opinion.
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Well, I'm a scientist.
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I don't like what the how I understand this because the Bible is unscientific.
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Or I have a different opinion on marriage or homosexuality or abortion or whatever, a thousand different issues.
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And I'm going to change what it says to agree with me.
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Right.
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All these thousands of different issues we could place.
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And it all comes down to whether or not you believe the scripture is inspired.
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And Paul says, all scripture, Theanistos.
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And by the way, when he wrote that, there was no New Testament.
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So the immediate context of 2nd Timothy 3 is the Old Testament.
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So lest you think that Matthew through Revelation is inspired and Genesis through Malachi is somehow not inspired.
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Think again, because that's what Paul was pointing to when he said all scriptures inspired, he was referring to the Jewish scriptures.
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But let me add quickly to that.
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He was not discounting the New Testament either, because there are times, in fact, we're going to look at this in two weeks.
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First 1st Corinthians 14.
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He says, what I have said is from the Lord.
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And if anybody doesn't listen to him, he's not listening to God.
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Paul understood the authority he was writing with.
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And even Peter would later say that some people have twisted Paul's writings as they do all the scriptures, equating Paul as having written scripture.
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So don't doubt for a second that it includes 1st 2nd Timothy 3 16 includes the New Testament, but it wasn't directly referring to the New Testament.
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It was referring to the Old Testament, both testaments equally inspired by God.
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Same Holy Spirit inspired Moses, inspired Paul.
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And this is a work of the Holy Spirit that he would reveal God to us.
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And the revelation that we have today that is clear and unambiguous and absolutely available is the inspired scriptures.
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That is how we see the work of the Holy Spirit most clearly in the church is when we read what he has inspired.
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All right, we're going to end there with number one.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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It is your word.
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It is your inspired word.
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Infallible and God trustworthy.
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Let us be committed to your word as we've been looking at Psalm 119.
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Lord, before we study each week, Lord, let us love the word.
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Let us love your law as the psalmist did.
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Let us understand this is a marvelous work of the spirit of God in Christ's name.
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Amen.