The Sufficiency of Scripture (Acts 15:12-35, Jeff Kliewer)

The recording of the sermon that I preached on Sunday was lost. But no matter. I'm glad that it was because I believe that God is sovereign and in his providence he has a purpose, a reason, a decree, and a good plan for those who love him and who are called according to his purpose for everything that happens under the sun including the losing of a recording of a sermon.

It will be an where I intend in this video to be even more direct and specific as to the assertion that I was making from the text from Acts 15. So let me just take some time to lay out the application of what Acts 15 would mean for us as a church.

The Church Must Stand on the Bible Alone

See, and not only for us but for the church in general, the universal church. The Bible is the foundation upon which the church will either stand or fall. Let's get specific. So I said in in the sermon on Sunday that there was an early heretic named Marcion.

Marcion taught that the God of the Old Testament was actually a different God than the God of the New Testament. He was some kind of demiurge and the God of the New Testament is a God of love. So he defined the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ and wanted to accept Christianity but not carte blanche.

He wanted to rework it according to the machinations of his own brain. That was Marcion and he was a heretic. Now unfortunately in our culture today there has been a massive downgrade to the Christian faith.

And by the way I didn't coin that term that comes from Charles Spurgeon and the downgrade controversy of the 1890s also used and taught recently by a guy named J .D. Hall, Jordan Hall. And he's absolutely right.

There is a downgrade happening to Christianity in America today. There's one prominent pastor of one of the biggest churches in America who teaches that we need to unhitch our faith from the Old Testament of the Bible because the Old Testament is hard to defend.

And so his contention is you just start with the resurrection. Preach that Jesus truly rose. Try to show that by some historical means and then back people into a belief in the Bible. But the way to do that is first and foremost to unhitch from the Bible.

Not allow the Bible tells me so to be the epistemology upon which the church is built. The foundation, the way of knowing things. It's a dangerous teaching. I'll tell you where it leads. A complete redefinition of the gospel and ultimately the loss of the gospel.

The crumbling of the Christian faith. The destruction of the Christian faith. I was looking on Facebook the other day and I noticed somebody who I think claims to be a Christian, at least she used to, getting married to another woman.

She was dressed the part of a man. Her wife was dressed in a wedding dress and they were married. And then the picture was posted on Facebook. It was liked and loved by many who claim to be Christian.

And those who would not like that or love that would be regarded as haters. And so the question comes up, what is love? What kind of love is this? Is this Christian love demonstrated in a gay wedding?

Or is it love to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and to uphold the scripture upon which the gospel stands or falls? I'll say the latter. What is love? Unless you have a biblical definition of love, it's an arbitrary, meaningless word.

Love itself is defined by the Bible. In this is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his son as a propitiation for our sins. 1st John 4 10. That's what love is. Not that we love God, but love is defined by the very nature of God.

Apart from the Bible, there are two things that we absolutely cannot know regarding love. Number one, the person of Jesus Christ. We only know who he is, that God exists as Father and as Son and as Holy Spirit because the Bible tells us that God is three in one.

Many scriptures claim the deity of Christ and reveal him as a distinct person from his Father, who also sends the Counselor, the Holy Spirit. So God exists in triunity and in that triunity there's perfect love.

The love of the Father for the Son and for the Spirit. In eternity past, he needed nothing. He was love because in that multiplicity of persons, there was love between each. The Father for the Son and for the Spirit and the Spirit for the Father and the Son.

So love existed before the creation of mankind. Love is defined by who God is. Secondly, love is defined in what God has done for us. The sending of his Son. But apart from the Bible, how would we know the meaning of his death?

We couldn't know the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ. It's only the scriptures which reveal the sacrificial system of the Israelites and the meaning of substitution. The laying down of one life in the place of another and ultimately the Son of God.

The divine blood of Jesus spilled on the cross to satisfy the wrath of the Father. That's the meaning of propitiation and that is the definition of love. The self-giving of the Son on behalf of a particular people that he loves.

He gives himself for them. That is love. The only way we know what love is, is that the Bible, 1st John 4 10, and God is love, 1st John 4 8, tells us what love is. And so it's nonsensical to then depart from the Bible and create our own categories of sexual morality.

If it's only the Bible that tells us what love is, then to obey what God says about his creation is love for God. It's to obey that first table of the Ten Commandments. And love for neighbor would be consistent with that.

And the sexual ethic that comes from that, the second table of the law. So here's where we are in America today. There are many who desire to unhitch from the Bible. But what we learn in the text, in Acts chapter 15, it's the Bible and the Bible alone that's sufficient to inform us, to be the sole rule of faith in the church, sufficient to sanctify us unto godliness and holiness, sufficient to give us joy, real happiness in the presence of God here and now and then for eternity with him.

All of these things come from the scripture. I don't know if there's anything more important that I can say as a pastor, but that you ought to trust the Bible, the word of the living God. That we should take God at his word and not do like that ancient serpent did in Genesis chapter 3.

Did God really say? And then twist the scripture to conform to what we want it to say. To believe the Bible is to trust in God because it is his word. All scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching and rebuking and reproof and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.

The Bible is God-breathed. It's his breath. It comes from him. So in Acts chapter 15, we saw the the council come together to answer the question that was raised by some false teachers. The false teacher said, it is necessary for someone to be circumcised and to obey the whole law of Moses in order to be saved.

Paul spoke strenuously against that message. The message of those Judaizers. He wrote the entire book of Galatians to refute it. But in the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15, he appeals to the signs and wonders that God did through him in the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles as evidence that these things are not necessary.

Paul did not compel them to be circumcised and yet God confirmed Paul's apostolic ministry through signs and wonders. Second Corinthians 12 12 says that God gives signs and wonders to confirm the Apostles.

That's a loose paraphrase but the idea is that the Apostles are marked by signs and wonders. That's a unique reason for such miraculous events as we see in the book of Acts confirming the ministry of Paul.

So Paul, the writing that he puts to paper, well back then to parchment, this comes from the Holy Spirit and is the apostolic word. It is the foundation on which the church is then built. Peter, Paul, James, they write as Apostles.

They're the ones who God has designated for that special role. They are the New Testament prophets. As the Old Testament writers gave us the first 39 books, so come the 27 books from the Apostles and this becomes the foundation of the church.

Sola Scriptura. Second, in Acts chapter 15, a decision has to be reached about what they are to do with these Gentiles and who are now believers in Christ. And the decision is reached that they would be told four things that they must do.

Four things. They must abstain from blood, from strangled animals, from idolatry or foods that are offered to idols, and from sexual immorality. This was important enough for them to write. It goes back to the original creation design of God.

Genesis 2 21 to 25, a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. That's the created design. Noah's Covenant confirms this in Genesis chapter 9.

And in that particular passage, we learn also about how it's not appropriate, not right, to eat blood. Because life is in the blood. And so that explains where James, in rendering his verdict, in giving his opinion and his judgment at the Jerusalem Council, that explains where he gets it.

James got it from the Bible. That's where his judgment was rendered from. That's the foundation that he built it upon. And so the morality that is shaping the early church is coming not from the opinions of men, but from the God who wrote the scripture.

And the apostolic word, like a second half coming together to make the Bible, the Old and the New as one, is consistent with itself. The morality described in the Old Testament is still what God considers to be moral in the New.

Because it comes from Him, an objective source, not the arbitrary whims and the winds and waves of human opinion, but from the God who is from eternity past, who defines love. Love is what's consistent with who He is.

So that's what happens next in the text. They give this judgment. Notice then they send it with apostles and with particular designated prophet teachers to deliver this word. In Acts chapter 15 verse 27, we have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth.

It is the job of the preacher to exposit what the text says, to say the same things that the Bible says. This is the foundation on which we stand. It's not the role of a pastor to make things up, to create morality, to draw that out of the depths of the human heart, where there's nothing but wickedness and depravity apart from God.

No, the pastor, the prophet, the teacher, in this sense, is to tell you the same things by word of mouth. This is expository preaching. We see it in Nehemiah chapter 8 verse 8, where Ezra preaches from a high wooden platform and he declares the Word of God over the people.

And out amongst the people are expositors who give the sense of the Word of God. They read it clearly and give the sense so the people are able to understand. This is the foundation of the church. Now, in the New Testament, you see the same thing happening.

They tell you the same things by word of mouth. The same things as what was written by the apostles and handed down. Finally, in verses 28 to 35, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements.

He gives requirements, but the requirements of God are not burdensome. They are good and life-giving. And so, the genuine children of God, in verses 30 to 35, they receive it with joy. They rejoice because of its encouragement.

Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words. And again, I like to use many words when I preach, you know. Little sermons, just a couple little random thoughts.

We call those sermonettes. And sermonettes create Christianettes who are not raised up and nurtured on the good Word of God, on the meat of the Word. Rather, they're just fed milk and never mature. So, the milk is the beginning point, but we move on to meat.

And that's why we use many words, which is really just the words of Scripture. We continue to read and understand and explain the meaning of these things. After they had spent some time, they were sent off in peace by the brothers to those who had sent them.

But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the Word of the Lord with many others also. And so, this is so important. The church is built on the Scriptures, the Word of the Lord, teaching and preaching what the Word of God says.

If we depart from the Word of God, we lose the gospel. If you unhitch from the Old Testament, if you make a break from the morality of the Bible, you no longer have a foundation upon which to know anything.

And by some sentimentality of your past or some connection to growing up in church, you may be able to retain some confession of Jesus Christ, but you've lost the faith and you will not pass it on to the next generation.

You will not keep the faith to the end. Under persecution, you will not stand fast and endure. Rather, you will deny His name. The only sure foundation for the Christian faith and for the Christian life, in order to be sanctified, to grow in grace and knowledge, all of these things come from the Scripture.

That is the foundation. Sola Scriptura. Without that, if you undermine that, the devil knows this, if you undermine that, you lose Christianity. You say, well, I just want to believe in Jesus. I want to believe He died and that sounds like a loving message.

He would die for my sins and He would rise from the dead. How do you know the meaning of those things? How do you know substitutionary atonement apart from the Bible? How do you know the meaning of the sacrificial lamb dying for a particular people, unless you discover that in the Bible?

How do you know that He rose from the dead? By some historical investigation? By reading historians? Will you prove it from that? No, you know it by the Word of God, which is a trustworthy foundation.

Build your life upon the Word of God. The downgrade controversy began in the late 1800s, when there were liberal teachers who no longer believed in the authority of the Word of God. James Thew was one of them and he hated Charles Spurgeon.

Spurgeon stood up to that and really was censored by his own Baptist Union denomination. They thought he was being too harsh, too hard, but he saw what was happening as a downgrade and an undermining of the Christian faith.

Was he right? Yeah, he was right. Look at Europe now. 2 evangelical across the whole continent. What happened? The foundations were destroyed. The foundations were undermined. The Bible was rejected as the authoritative Word of God.

It began in Germany with the higher critics. Adolf von Harnack, teaching this higher criticism that denied the authority and the inerrancy of Scripture. It gave rise to a culture in Germany that no longer stood upon the Word of God.

It gave rise to Adolf Hitler and Nazism. All of the doctrines of men are like winds and waves and they are destructive waves. They are destructive hurricane force waves and they're blowing hard in our culture and they will blow down any house that is not founded upon the rock Christ Jesus in obedience to His Word.

You depart from His Word, you depart from Him. It's coming to America and dare I say it's already here. The foundations are being destroyed but there will remain a remnant chosen by grace who believe the Word of God, who will not waver, who will not cower in the face of being called a hater because the very people who call us haters can't define hate.

By what basis are they able to define hate? Anybody that disagrees with you? Is that what a hater is? Someone who disagrees with you? Well who are you to define that? Hate is anything that is against the Christ, against Jesus the Savior and His Word.

So when soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and pressed it on the brow of our Savior that was hate. It was hate when they spit in his face and the darkness of that day was an indication of hate that was surrounding him.

The hatred and violence of men in their wickedness, in their sinfulness. But what was love? What was the light? It was the light bursting from Him, from the beauty and the glory of His face. Jesus the Christ, that's love.

That He would lay down His life for His friends. That's love. Greater love has no than this, has no one than this, that He lays down His life for His friends. Jesus is the picture of love. He's the definition of love.

He's only known through the scriptures. It's the only way of having the light come to you. We're made wise unto salvation by the scriptures according to 2nd Timothy 3 15. And so, in closing, the most important thing for us to do as a church is to be established upon the Bible and the Bible alone.

The scripture is the only rule of faith and practice. It's not only necessary, it's sufficient. We don't need another authority. We don't need a Pope. We don't need some other ruling class that will tell us what to believe.

We need to believe what God says, not what man says. God's Word versus man's Word. We need to stand upon the Bible. It is sufficient to sanctify us as we go to the Word of God and take this church. Go to the Word of God every day.

Be found in His Word every day, meditating upon the Word, thinking about a passage like a tree planted by streams of water. Meditating on that Word and allowing that Word to change the way you think. Not thinking that your mind dictates what's true, but allowing the truth of God as revealed in His Word to conform your mind to God's way of thinking.

That's where sanctification comes from. That's the pursuit of holiness that we need, without which no one will see the Lord. Pursue holiness without which no one will see the Lord. The Bible is sufficient to inform us what we need to do and what we need to say.

The Bible is sufficient. Sola Scriptura.