The Failure of Rome: The Canon of Scripture

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Jesus prays to the Father, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.

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Okay. The word of God is truth. And tonight we need to deal with the issue.

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And this is, I understand for some of us, this is a little more intellectually heavy maybe, but we need to work through this well.

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And that is the canonicity of scripture or just shorten it, the canon of scripture, okay?

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The only canon in English, the word C -A -N -O -N, not two

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N's. If we got two N's, what are we talking about? Yeah, we're talking like boom, you know, canon.

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Okay, this is from the Greek word, which is also canon, which C -A -N -O -N, which in Greek, it's not that obviously, but it means like measuring rod or rule, okay?

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So the idea is when we say canon of scripture, so think about it, maybe some of you never thought about this before.

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And so I'm gonna introduce something new to you. But when we talk about canon of scripture, we're talking about which books of the

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Bible, or which books I should say, because that's kind of tipping my hand, which books of the

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Bible belong in the Bible, which books belong in the Bible. And this is gonna be important for a number of reasons, okay, a number of levels.

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How do we know that the Bible is actually the Bible? All right, what if there are books in the

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Bible that shouldn't be? What if there are books in the Bible that are not in the Bible, but they should be in the

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Bible? And you can see how this is important on a number of level, of apologetic levels.

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So for example, you're talking to an atheist, and the atheist denies the Bible altogether. And so he asks you, well, how do you even know?

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How do you even know? Because what was that movie that came out? I'm getting old, because I'm like a few years ago, but I know it was like 20 years ago now.

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Had Tom Hanks in it, and I think it was like The Da Vinci Code, was that it? The Da Vinci Code.

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And didn't that movie give like the premise that there's this big conspiracy, and like they kept all these books out of the

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Bible that should be in the Bible or something? Okay, well, that came out, and for a while, that was kind of popular argument of people.

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They're like, oh, you can't even trust the Bible. Or you have another extreme. So you take like Mormonism.

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So Mormonism will accept the Bible that we have, but they'll also say what? There's another testament, right?

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So we got two testaments. They say, no, no, if two testaments are good, three is great, right?

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So how do you deal with that? And then, of course, for our purposes, and I think what we're gonna, we're gonna come from this angle, you understand, but I think it'll also help answer all of it.

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We're gonna come to the angle of we need to address the claims of Roman Catholicism, okay?

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And in this tonight, we'll talk about authority and those things, but I'll have to deal with tradition in a different lessons.

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But you understand that the Roman Catholic Bible and the Bible, I've tipped my hand, but the

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Roman Catholic Bible and the Bible are a little bit different, because the Roman Catholic Bible has how many books?

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Well, let's start with this. How many books does the Bible have? 66, all right, that's good.

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So you have to pass that, I think, to get it into the gates of heaven. So 66 books, okay?

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How many does the Roman Catholic Bible have? 73, yeah.

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So they have seven extra books, okay? We call these books,

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I think they call them the deuterocanonical books, we call them the apocrypha. Apocrypha just comes from the

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Greek, means like hidden writings. These books were written in between the Old Testament and New Testament times, and I'll give them to you.

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Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, First and Second, or yeah,

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First, Second Maccabees, and Baruch. Did I get them all? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Yeah, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, First, Second Maccabees, Baruch.

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Okay, I've read some in that, I haven't really studied them much.

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And then in the Catholic Bible, there's also, oh, I'll put this on your sheet, didn't I? Also in the Catholic Bible, there is the additions to Daniel and Esther, all right?

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So who's right? All right, so just think about this for just a second, okay? Who's right, and how do we know we're right?

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Okay, so you're talking to a Roman Catholic and say, well, there's 73 books in the Bible. You're like, nuh -uh, there's 66, you know, like, okay?

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And they're like, nuh -uh, there's 73. Like, are you gonna get anywhere with that, right? Like, so you know what

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I'm saying? But that's how people today kind of argue, and that's how they, that's one of the reasons, I think, that the debate format,

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I hope, will be helpful and be good. Like, we're not just sitting out there like, am I right, you're right. Like, no, here's what

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I believe, and here's why, and here's the facts, okay? So why does the

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Roman Catholic Bible have that? So now we need more, and are we wrong?

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Obviously, you know where I stand on that, but we have to address canonicity, the authority of the canon.

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Does the church, think about this for a second, does the church have authority over the canon? Because, remember, when

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I say canon, I'm talking about what books are in the Bible. So a common Roman Catholic claim is we gave you the

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Bible. We gave you the Bible. So the Roman Catholic Church essentially says the

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Bible exists because the Roman Catholic Church told you which books are in the

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Bible, and that's how we know, okay? And what this does is gonna push us tonight into a discussion on final authority.

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Like, what is our final authority? If, so there's a long time ago, this was in, oh,

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I can't even, I don't have the dates in front of me, maybe the six, was it 600s? When Charlemagne, hopefully,

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I didn't have this out, but hopefully I have this, this is just from memory, so hopefully I have this right. Fact check me, grok it. So Charlemagne becomes the

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Holy Roman Emperor, and when he does, the Pope crowns him as Emperor.

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Now, the problem is, I'm gonna use this just as an analogy, but when the Pope crowns the

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King, who has the authority? Does the King or does the

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Pope? Yeah, it's the Pope, and they would manipulate that, so okay, so think about that.

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Now, let's go to the Bible. If the Roman Catholic Church crowns the

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Bible, right, who has the authority? Is the, who has the final authority?

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Is it the Bible or is it the church? Okay, from the Roman Catholic system, now they wouldn't put it this way, but I'm just telling you logically, it is the church.

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They would say the church and the Bible are equal authority, but practically, the Bible comes down here and the church is over the

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Bible, okay? So let's look at some scriptures. 2 Timothy 3, okay?

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2 Timothy 3, just work through this for a second. 2

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Timothy, okay, this would be a good place. Questions or comments so far, and you may have questions about something we're gonna get to, but do you just, about what we have so far, anything you need to ask?

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Are we all on the same page as far as like, what we mean by the canon and all that stuff?

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Okay, all right, so 2 Timothy 3, this is, again, a common passage, but I need to make a point.

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2 Timothy 3, 16. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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So let me just start with this. Scripture has a very high view of scripture, you understand?

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The Bible has a very high view of the Bible. It says here in verse 16, now some of your translations,

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I don't know if you have a different translation besides breathed out by God. I think it might be the NIV or maybe the

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King James translate it as inspired, okay? But the word there is the anustos.

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It is God breathed, God breathed, breathed out by God. So we call it inspiration, but just track with me here for a minute.

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It's not so much inspiration, although that's good, but when you hear inspiration, you might think

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Beethoven. Beethoven was inspired to compose the symphony or whatever.

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But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about more expiration. Now listen to me, when you think of expiration, you probably think of like the milk, or maybe

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I'm just the one. Well, I actually have so many kids now, our milk never goes expired. But used to, when we had less kids, the milk would go expired, right?

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And you're like, you think it gets old. But when I talk about expiration, we talk about what? Breathing out, okay?

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Not like dying, but like your breath coming out. That's the idea in 2

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Timothy 3 .16. That God's words are breathed out through the human writers.

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And this is review, hopefully for most of us, but maybe for some of you, you need to understand what we believe about the

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Bible. And it's not just what we believe about the Bible. I would argue this is what the historic faith confesses about the

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Bible. And that is that as the writers of the scriptures, Moses, or David, or Paul, as they're writing the scriptures, the

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Holy Spirit is working through them. He hadn't just taken over their mind where they're just like doing this, you know, in a trance.

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He's working through them. He's breathing out his own words so that the

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Bible is a divine book. So that every jot and tittle, we would say is breathed out by God, that the

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Bible is the voice of God in written form, okay?

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So I'm building an argument here. So that's true, 2 Timothy 3, 16 says it's true.

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We need to ask some questions then. If this is the word of God, here's some questions we're gonna ask.

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Does God, question number one, and you can give me an affirmative, a thumbs up, thumbs down, nod, shake, whatever.

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Does God know how to communicate? Do you think he does, right? Sometimes, thank you, my lovely wife is giving me that, appreciate that.

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Sometimes I don't know how to communicate. Now don't affirm that, yeah. God, no need for Amiens there, but God knows how to communicate, okay?

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Another question, does he know how to communicate sufficiently? I'll give you an illustration. Sometimes I give my children instruction about what to do while I'm gone.

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And when I come home and something is not cleaned like it should be or picked up or dealt with, sometimes the problem lies in them, sometimes it can lie in me.

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I can say, I communicated this, I wanted the kitchen to be clean, but I said, clean the counter.

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And so they literally just cleaned the counter and left everything else a mess. Okay, that's on me.

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I did not communicate sufficiently to you. Okay, is God like that? Does God know how to communicate sufficiently?

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Answer, yes. Does God know how to communicate clearly? Answer, yes.

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Does God know how to communicate authoritatively? Answer, yes. Okay, here's what you need to know.

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What we believe about the Bible actually reveals a lot of what we believe about God.

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You understand? Because the Bible is the voice of God, as it were, in written form, it is the word of God.

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What we believe about the Bible reveals some things we believe about God. So has God given us a sufficient word or not?

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So Rome would say, I'll just say this, Rome would say, I don't know if they put it this way, but the Bible is necessary, it's just not sufficient.

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Right, because you need the Bible and tradition. Or has he held back things?

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Or has he given Bible code so that the common person can't know it? Or has he spoken in secret cryptic language that you can only figure out 1 ,500 years later?

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Or has God left our reason or traditions to stand in judgment over him?

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You understand? So what a person believes about scripture shows what they believe about God. Now, we haven't got to canon yet,

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I'm just building a foundation, and I need to push this. What I'm trying to build a foundation for right now is the nature of the scriptures, okay?

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So now let's get into this conversation, canonicity. How do we know that our

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Bible is the right Bible? We'll start with the Old Testament, natural place to start, right? Let's go to Matthew, this is on your sheet, so go to that verse there,

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Matthew 22. So I said already that the Bible has a very high view of the

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Bible. The second thing I wanna say is Jesus has a very high view of the scriptures.

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So we'll go to Matthew 22, and there's a few places we're gonna look at there, but let me just start out in verse 31.

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So Matthew 22, verse 31. Now, we're really not gonna get to the argument that Jesus is making.

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Instead, we're just gonna get to the point of why what he says is important for us tonight.

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So Matthew 22, 31, Jesus is arguing here with the

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Sadducees, and he says, and as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God?

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Well, hold on, just pause just a second. Did you miss that? You could almost just read that in your daily Bible reading or whatever, and you could miss that there's some important words there.

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He says, have you not read what was said to who? To you.

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Have you not read what was said to you by God? And then he quotes,

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I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now, he's quoting there from Exodus 3, 6.

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Were the people that he's talking to right now, were they alive during the, you don't have to know much

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Bible history to know the answer to this. Were they alive in the book of Exodus? No, of course they weren't, right?

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So how can he say, have you not read what was said, what was said to you by God?

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What is Jesus saying scripture is? It is

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God speaking to us in writing. You understand that?

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You see that there, okay? He gives us some more information. That's really important, but some more information just down there in verse 41.

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Well, actually I'm gonna start in verse 41 just to set the context. He says, now while the Pharisees were gathered together,

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Jesus asked them a question saying, what do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? They said to him, the son of David.

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He said to them that as Jesus is responding, how is it then that David, now what's this little clause here?

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In the spirit. Now, what is he saying there? David in the spirit. What is he saying?

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Did every word that David wrote or said, was it scripture?

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No, but every word that we have, he was in the spirit, right?

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Meaning Jesus is fixing to quote here from the Psalms. Okay, Psalm 110 actually.

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The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

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In other words, Jesus understands Exodus as the word of God. He understands the

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Psalms as the word of God, right? He quotes, if you remember

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Psalm 22 from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I wrote this one out on your sheet so you can just look at it.

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Luke 24, 27. It says in beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

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John 10, 35, Jesus says scripture cannot be broken. Just listen to me now. Jesus has a high view of scripture.

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What is scripture according to Jesus? It is the law, it is the prophets, it is the Psalms. And I would argue too that by saying it that way is shorthand, the

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Psalms includes all the wisdom, literature, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, all that. This is

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Jesus's understanding of the Bible. It is shorthand, if you will, for our

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Old Testament, the 39 books, okay? Now, questions, comments there, because now we've got to get into the apocrypha.

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How does that make it in? It's not really hard.

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Now, unless you are, now, if you're debating or talking or arguing maybe with a liberal sort of Christian, here's one thing

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I would keep in your mind, okay? So take Roman Catholicism out for a second. Keep this in your mind.

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When they try to say, I love Jesus, but I don't love the Bible, right? I love Jesus, but the

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Bible's flawed. Here's something you need to have ready for a response. What do you think?

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Jesus loved the Bible, okay? You cannot have a higher view of Scripture than Jesus had.

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Jesus was quite conservative when it comes to understanding the

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Scriptures. A literal Adam, a literal Eve, affirming Jonah and the whale,

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I mean, all these things, affirming Solomon's existence,

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I mean, all these things. Jesus upholds all of these things, okay? But when it comes to Roman Catholicism, we don't argue, like, there's no argument, really, about the

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Old Testament. But there is an argument about these books here in the middle. So in the 200s

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BC or so, that's just giving you a nice round date. We could argue back and forth about that. But in the 200s, the

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Old Testament is translated into Greek. Now, that's important for you to know. The Old Testament in Greek is called the

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Septuagint, and it's like a weird story why, but I mean, it's not really important. We'll talk about that a different time.

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You can ask me later. So you just need to know it's called the Septuagint, okay? The Septuagint is the

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Greek Old Testament because the Old Testament was originally written in what? Hebrew and some

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Aramaic, but primarily, vast majority Hebrew, a little bit of Aramaic, like in Daniel, I think.

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Okay, but so they translate that into Greek. Why? Why do they translate that into Greek in the 200s or something, 200s

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BC? Well, because Greek is becoming the common language. So it's like the same reason we translate the

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Bible into English, right? You get it? Okay, now, these Septuagints, they're not all equal, but the

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Greek translations, they begin to include these historical, what we call apocryphal writings.

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And the reason they begin to include these books is because these books kind of detail some things that are happening in between.

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Some of them are historically inaccurate, but they begin to detail some things that are happening from the closing of the canon until, now, they don't know the canon's gonna reopen again, but after closing canon until Jesus comes.

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So they're just detailing some things. Now, what happens is these Septuagint, the

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Septuagint includes the apocryphal books. I mean, some of them. Some of the books, it's not like a concise, you know, even thing.

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But here's what you need to know. By the time you get to Jesus and the apostles, they had the Septuagint Bibles, or I mean, they at least had access to them because they quote from them sometimes.

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And so it's important to note that because they quote from all these books in the

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Bible, but you know what they never quote from in the Bible? You know, Jesus never quotes from? He never quotes from the apocrypha, ever.

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The apostles never quote from the apocrypha. Now, you have that situation in Jude where there's a reference made probably to the

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Book of Enoch, but just because there's a reference made to something, so for example, Paul makes a reference to Greek poets.

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Does that mean that we need to think, he quotes from a Greek poet, right? Does that mean that we have to see

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Greek poets of scripture? No, just because you reference something. So that's the only time, okay? But it's important to note that they never directly quote.

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It's also important to note this. The Hebrew Bible, and this is gonna come into play in history. The Hebrew Bible never contained the apocrypha.

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It's only the Septuagint, okay? I'll talk about Jerome here in just a minute.

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Josephus, we remember Josephus? Josephus is Christian or not?

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Jew. So he's a Jew, and he affirms in the first century that his opinion of the

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Old Testament scriptures is the same as ours. Now, he would say there's 22 books.

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We say 39. That's because they count the books different. You understand? It's the same number of books.

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So let me give you an example. In the Hebrew Bible, you have the book of the minor prophets, which is, how many minor prophets are there?

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There's 12. In all these, so in our Bible, there's 12 minor prophets. But in the ancient

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Hebrew Bible, they're combined into one book. So that's how they would say. So if you're studying this on your own, and you find this out, and you're like, wait, they were saying there's only 22

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Old Testament books, but we have 39. No, no, no. The 22 and the 39, this is Perry County math. 22 equals 39.

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Now, the 22 and the 39, it's the same. Do you understand that?

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Because maybe I'm being confusing. They're the same books. Okay, yes. Yes. Yeah, I'm not sure of any of that work.

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Because they were in the Septuagint by the time he... Now, there's also like pseudographical writings, which are like false, you know, like...

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I think there was like, what's the Gospel of Thomas, and that kind of thing. That's different. And we don't have that argument at all.

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And I think I can kind of explain that in just a minute. Okay, now, so you have the affirmation of Josephus.

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Other Christian leaders throughout the early church, they rejected the Apocrypha. So you have, I'll just give you some names that won't matter to you, but Cyril of Jerusalem, John of Damascus, Athanasius, and then

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Jerome, but I'll talk about him in just a minute. Greg Allison says the earliest list of the books of the Old Covenant, so that's the

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Old Testament, that the church drew up in AD 170, included all the books of the

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Hebrew Scripture with the exception of Esther, but it did not include any of the Apocryphal writings.

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We're just kind of building a case right now that the church's early position was that the Apocrypha was not Scripture, okay?

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So now, so how do we have the Apocrypha? Why is that a thing? I'll read to you this quote from Dr. Allison.

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This is from his book, Historical Theology. He said, in 382, the Bishop of Rome invited Jerome, so I've mentioned him a couple times, to embark on a new

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Latin translation of the Bible. As he commenced his work on the Old Testament, Jerome realized that a proper translation required a

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Hebrew original and not the Greek Septuagint. Thus, he began to translate from the Hebrew Bible and had to confront the obvious differences between it and the

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Septuagint. Thus, he relegated the Apocrypha to secondary status in comparison with canonical scriptures.

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Let me explain it to you this way. So Jerome, so the ancient Rome is moving from Greek, Koine Greek, to Latin.

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That's just how language changed. We can get into that later. So let's say, okay, let's have a Bible in Latin. So we're gonna translate the

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Bible in Latin. So Jerome says, you know what? I don't wanna translate from the Greek to the Latin.

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Why? Well, because it's obvious. You're, that'd be like saying, you know what?

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Let's translate the Bible into Spanish from our English Bibles. Why would that not be a good idea?

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Well, because our English Bibles are a what? Translation. So you don't wanna do that.

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You don't wanna translate from a translation. I mean, if you have to, you know, I think Wycliffe did that. Okay, fine.

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But if you don't have to, the best is let's go from the original, as we can, to the language.

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So Jerome says, I'm not gonna do the Septuagint to Latin. I'm gonna go from the Hebrew to the

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Latin. Now I get to the Hebrew. What's the problem with looking at a Hebrew Bible? There is no what?

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There's no apocrypha, okay? So it makes a point. Look, the apocrypha is not actually scripture, y 'all.

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I mean, Jerome wouldn't have said it that way, but pretend he's from Perry County. The apocrypha is not actually scripture, but he's influenced by Augustine and others to say, no, no, you need to keep it in there.

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And Augustine actually, and he's wrong about this. He said the apocrypha is scriptural. So they keep it.

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So they keep it in the Latin Vulgate, even though throughout the history of this up until the 1500s, there's differences of opinion.

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I would argue that many people saw the apocrypha not as scripture. It's like, you could read it.

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It's devotional, but it's not scripture. You understand? Okay, so that's how it works its way in.

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Now, in 1546, I think this is important. Not until 1546 at the

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Council of Trent is it dogmatically asserted by the

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Roman Catholic Church that the apocryphal writings are to be considered scripture.

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That doesn't happen until 1546. The reason I think that's important is a couple of reasons.

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One, if someone says to you, the Roman Catholic Church has always believed the apocrypha is scripture, false.

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It was not infallibly, now this is wrong, but this is the way they would say it. From their position, it is not infallible dogma until 1546, right?

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And I'm making the argument, of course, all that infallible dogma stuff, that's their language, not mine. But I'm making the argument, the reason that they include the apocrypha is because they're doing like the na -na -na stuff because the

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Reformers, this is because, yes, the Renaissance influenced Reformation.

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But you have this phrase, Latin phrase, in the Renaissance, ad fontes, to the fountain.

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It means like to the source. So the Reformers were like, we don't need the

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Latin Vulgate. What do we need? Let's look at the ancient texts. Let's look at the Hebrew.

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And let's look at the Greek. And they began doing that and so they began to say, look, the apocrypha is not in the scriptures.

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And we affirm the scriptures that Jesus affirmed, that the apostles affirmed, that the 39 books of the

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Old Testament, that is what we affirm. And so I think that Rome was being reactionary to say, no, no, no.

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I mean, what they should have said is, you know what, actually, you're right. We've always kind of seen these books as not inspired the way that the others are.

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But instead they doubled down and said, nope, nope, this is the way it is, okay?

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So that's the apocrypha. Well, let me clear this up. When Rome says the Catholic Church gave us the

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Bible, that should be completely rejected, okay? The early church, by the way, man, the early church had the

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Bible, you understand? People would be like, the early church didn't have the Bible till Rome gave it to them. Yes, they had the Bible. What did they have?

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They had the Old Testament. The same 39 books that Jesus used, the same 39 books that we have, the early church had the

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Old Testament scriptures, they had the Bible. And we affirm that these same scriptures are inerrant, infallible, authoritative, breathed out word of God.

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Now I'm gonna try to hammer through the New Testament, okay? Now the

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New Testament is not as complicated as some people want to make it. Three criteria that a

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New Testament book needed, I put this on your sheet. I alliterated it for you, so there you go. First, apostolic.

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Second, acceptance. Third, adherence. Number one, the book needed to be written by either an apostle or a close associate of an apostle.

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So if a book shows up in 130 AD that was written by the apostle Paul, just brand new, written by the apostle

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Paul, no, why? He died in like 68, okay?

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So no. So if it's written by an apostle or close associate apostle, that's number one. Number two, let me add this, or no, no, no, this is still number one.

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Let me just say this real quick. This comes up sometimes. I'm gonna just give you a quick plug. Did they know they were writing scripture?

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Yes, okay? Yes, they did. Let me just show that to you real quick. 2 Peter 3. 2

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Peter 3. Did they know that they were writing scripture when they wrote it?

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Yes. 2 Timothy, or sorry, 2 Peter 3. Hey, if you ever thought, man, some of the stuff

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Paul writes is hard. Well, good, Peter thinks so too. 2

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Peter 3, verse 15. Listen to what Peter says. 2 Peter 3, 15.

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And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters.

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There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.

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Now, listen to this. As they do what? The other scriptures.

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So when Paul wrote, he knew he was writing scripture. Peter knew he was writing scripture.

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They understood that what they were writing was on par. And by the way, they don't use scripture lightly because when they use scripture, they're talking about disagreed upon canon in the

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Old Testament. They're saying, no, no, what we're writing is on par with that. So it had to be apostolic.

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Secondly, it had to be accepted. So acceptance. Okay, was the book received and accepted as scripture by churches?

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So when you're kind of thinking through the canon, like, well, no church has ever accepted this as scripture. Well, it's not gonna make it.

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Thirdly, adherence. And that is, did the book adhere to the rest of the teaching of scripture? So if he introduced something crazy, like you've got to eat jelly beans or something.

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I mean, I'm just being silly. You're like, okay, it's not really accord with the rest of scripture. So apostolic, accepted, and adherence.

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Now, I'm gonna make a different argument, but let me just put that. That's the human realm.

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That's the human means. That's the human mechanism. Explain more in a moment. For Rome, it's like this.

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How do we know we got the Bible right? Listen, this is Rome's argument. I'm being very, very simplistic.

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I understand they wouldn't agree with what I'm about to say, but I'm just gonna make it simple for you. How do we know we got the Bible right?

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Here's what Rome says. Well, we just do. Because God told us, right? God gave us the canon through the tradition of the apostles, okay?

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Rome would argue that the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, formed the canon through counsel's tradition, all that, okay?

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Okay, but yeah, but yeah, okay, but Rome, how do we know? Like we said, we just do. We are the authority.

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Listen to us, okay? I'm grateful, actually, that God's given us a better authority than the church of Rome, okay?

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Because their little thing, that's like epistemological games. Ultimately, it's not sound theology.

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It's not in line with history. There's a better way. I'll give you a quote, helpful. I said earlier, the human mechanism, the apostles, was it apostolic?

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Was it accepting the churches? Did it adhere to the Bible? But listen to what James White says.

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He says this very well. The canon is a function of Scripture. Or to be more specific, it is a result of the inspiration of Scripture itself.

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It is not an object of revelation separate from Scripture, but is revealed and defined by God's action of inspiration.

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The canon flows from the work of the author of Scripture, God himself. Canon is not made by man.

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Canon is made by God. It is the result of the action of his divine inspiration. That which is

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God -breathed is canon. That which is not God -breathed is not canon. It's just that simple.

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So let me simplify that for us. The canon of Scripture, the canon, what books are in the Bible, it is inevitable, it is an inevitable and necessary result of the inspiration of Scripture.

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In other words, Scripture is not in need of an authority above it to approve it or to define it or to canonize it.

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Why? Because Scripture, church is not the highest authority, not church tradition, not council.

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It's Scripture. Scripture is what produces the church, not the church producing

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Scripture. So the nature of Scripture is such that it is impossible, listen to me, it is impossible to keep it from coming together and being recognized by true

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Christians as authoritative, sufficient, necessary, clear, inerrant, infallible.

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The nature of Scripture, I'm saying, means that the canonization of the right books of the

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Bible is an inevitable result. Now, humanly speaking, that process, at least for the

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New Testament, it took some time. That is, for all 27 books to be recognized, they weren't approved, they were recognized.

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That's different. But it's not as long as some would say. Like, we're talking about decades, not centuries.

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Calvin, spot on with this. Listen to this. Let this point, therefore, stand, that those whom the

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Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture, indeed, is self -authenticated.

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Remember that word, self -authenticated. Hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning, and the certainty it deserves with us, it attains by the testimony of the

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Spirit. For even if it wins reverence for itself by its own majesty, it seriously affects us only when it is sealed upon our hearts through the

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Spirit. Therefore, illumined by His power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else's judgment that Scripture is from God.

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But above human judgment, we affirm with utter certainty, just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God Himself, that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men.

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We seek no proofs, no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean, but we subject our judgment and wit to it as to a thing far beyond any guesswork.

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That's beautiful. It reminds me of Psalm 119, 103. I put that on your sheet. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.

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So, analogy. I think it's going along with what Calvin says. How do we know that honey is sweet?

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How do you know that honey is sweet? How do you really know that honey is sweet? Kermit? Yeah, you eat it, okay?

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Now, can you give scientific arguments for why honey is sweet? Yes, yes you can.

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Yeah, can you, sugar, right? Can you give these reasons that you know it's sweet and all that?

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Of course you can. But you know the best way to know it's sweet? You eat it. And this is an analogy to the

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Scriptures. I can give you that criteria, the apostolic criteria, the accepted criteria, the adherence.

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I can give you that. And it's not that it's not helpful. It is helpful. It's historical, it's important.

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There are those man -made mechanisms, if you will, for affirming the Scriptures. But do you know how you really know the

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Bible is the Bible? You eat the Bible, right? No, whoa, Kermit. That's figurative, okay?

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You eat the Bible by faith. Now, another quote by Calvin, and I think it puts the

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Roman Catholic claims to rest. As to their question, how can we be assured that this has sprung from God unless we have recourse to the decree of the church?

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It is as if someone asked, whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter?

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Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do to their color, or sweet and bitter things do to their taste, of their taste.

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You see what Calvin is arguing there? He's arguing for the self -authenticity of the

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Scriptures. They are self -authenticating. They are enough.

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We receive them by faith. We don't need counsels to tell us what's in the

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Bible. In fact, you give the Bible enough time, right? Because of the nature of inspiration, the nature of Scripture being

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God -breathed, it's impossible for it not to come together. There's human mechanisms, there's a process, we see all that, but the church,

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Rome, does not say, this is your Bible, you read it. Well, by the way, Rome doesn't want you to read the

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Bible anyway, but that's for a different lesson, okay? Let me make a couple of closing applications to all this, and then we can have some brief discussion, okay?

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So just two closing applications. First, the Scriptures are so precious because they give us

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Christ. John 5, 39, you remember what Jesus says? You search the

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Scriptures because you think that in them, you have eternal life, but it is they that bear witness about me, okay?

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So it's not the Scripture for the sake of Scripture, it's Scripture has a focal point in Christ. The whole story of the

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Bible can be boiled down to this. God has created all things good and perfect.

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Mankind fell and is in rebellion against God, just like we talked about Adam and Eve running away from God, but God is pursuing after man, and he is willing to forgive their sins by the work of what

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Jesus has done, by his perfect life, by his virgin birth, by his righteous life under the law, completing the law, by his dying under the wrath of God, by his raising again from the dead.

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You receive that by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone. This is the message of the Bible. Why are we so serious about the

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Scripture? Because it's only from the Scriptures that you get this, not from the church tradition. In fact, you follow church tradition, the gospel's distorted.

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But this, this is sweeter than honey, and it gives us

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Christ. And then the second application, too, is if this is true, and it is true, some of you need to be fatter.

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Again, let the record show that was spoken figuratively. What I mean is you need to eat more honey.

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Eat the Bible, right? Like, brother Charles is about, yes, they're gonna buy more honey, you know?

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Eat more Bible, right? Look, we can scoff at Rome all day long, but we are at the height of hypocrisy if we scoff at Rome because of their distortion of Scriptures, but we ourselves don't read them.

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Let us be Bible men. Let us be Bible women. Let us remember the great cost of getting the

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Word of God into our own language. So that's canonicity. We're not done talking about Scripture.

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We gotta talk authority, church, and I don't know where we're gonna go next. It'll be a couple weeks before we gather back as far as, you know, because of Mexico and other things.