Sunday Live at Kootenai Community Church

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January 18, 2021

Sunday School and Worship Service at Kootenai Community Church

01:43: They did, yeah. Can we just do from, uh, let's pick up to 49.
02:04: Okay. Yeah. Wait, sorry, I have to throw it off.
02:09: Just before you press 1. Oh yeah, got it. 9, 5, 4, 8. Okay. ♪
02:44: Which measure? 1, 53. Okay. Play it for me.
02:50: ♪ You want to start right on that measure?
03:01: Yeah. Okay. I did something different then.
03:15: Right on measure 53. Okay. ♪ Welcome to Adult Sunday School class.
04:17: So if you're out in the foyer and you're wanting to join us for our study this morning, please come into the sanctuary and find a seat.
04:27: If this, if you don't need anything, it's best not to call my name.
04:36: Okay, so if you are here for the first time or if you don't have one of these, you can of these workbooks with you. We have a few extra ones here, so raise your hand if you need one of these or two of these.
04:44: I'll bring them to you. Oh, Rick will bring them to you. You just raise your hand. So if you need a workbook, raise your hand.
04:58: We have one over here. All right, let's begin with a word of prayer before we begin.
05:11: Our Father, we are so grateful for your word. We know that you have worked in history and through your people and through all of your providence to deliver to us your inspired, infallible, and inerrant word.
05:20: It is trustworthy, it is true, it is light to our souls and to our hearts, and we just thank you that we can have the confidence in your word and that you have preserved it for us.
05:29: We pray that you would help us today to think clearly about how it is that you have preserved that for us, as that you would use this time and our study and this lesson to instill in us the confidence that we ought to have in your truth and to worship you accordingly and that we would love you accordingly and submit our lives to the truth of your word accordingly.
05:50: May you be honored here today as we study and think and be glorified here through this time of teaching, we pray in Christ's name, amen.
05:57: All right, we're going through the study of God wrote a book. I announced last week that we would be resuming that. We have divided that study that you find there in your notebook into three different sections.
06:07: The first section dealt with basically the theology of scripture where we covered, and this was the doctrinal section where we covered the doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy and infallibility and what those mean as well as the promises in scripture that God has given to us that he would preserve his word.
06:24: And it's not that we question if God has spoken, we don't question whether or not scripture is the word of God, it is the word of God.
06:31: We're not defending any of that in this series of lessons that I've been teaching. Instead, what we're really doing is assuming that God has spoken and then we're answering the question, how has he preserved scripture for us over the last 2 ,000 years?
06:44: Since God has spoken, not if God has spoken, but since God has spoken, how has he preserved, how has he worked to preserve his word?
06:50: And how has he given us the scripture? And then we looked a little bit at the structure of scripture and the writing styles and materials.
06:58: This was kind of the second set of sessions that we did which really dealt with the structural or the textual issues of the
07:04: New Testament. We looked at the structure of scripture, how it is divided into Old Covenant and New Covenant. We looked at the different writing styles of scribes and people who transmitted and copied scripture for us.
07:16: And then we looked at the books that were written and how they were written and copied and eventually circulated and circulated widely.
07:22: And we understand that when God makes a covenant with his people, he gives to them a revelation that accompanies that covenant.
07:28: We saw that with the Old Covenant in the Old Testament. And so we have reason to expect that if there's going to be a
07:34: New Covenant, if God has inaugurated or initiated a New Covenant, that that New Covenant would also be accompanied with a series of, a section of covenantal writings which we call the
07:43: New Testament. And then we looked at the doctrines of apostolic authority. We saw that the apostles were the vehicles of divine revelation and their writings were treated and read and used as if they were authoritative in the very word of God.
07:55: And thus apostolic writings were cherished and collected and copied and then circulated. And then in that second section that dealing with textual issues, we covered textual variants, the inevitability of them, the types of variants that were made, mistakes that were made in the copying process.
08:12: And then of course through all of that, we asked the question, has God preserved his word even in spite of the various copying mistakes that were made and the different textual variants that were made?
08:21: And the answer to that of course is yes, he's did that through widespread circulation, the sheer number of the volume of copies that were made and the rapid distribution of those documents across the wide geographical area.
08:33: And then we looked at an example of that which was the Dead Sea Scrolls and we saw how God had preserved that and that discovery, how it shines the light on the preservation accuracy of the
08:43: Old Testament. So that's where we've come so far and those are the two major sections of the study that we've looked at so far, the doctrinal section and the textual section dealing with the textual transmission of the
08:56: New Testament. And now we come to the third one which is the canonical section, dealing with canonical issues of the
09:02: New Testament. And I apologize that we've had sort of breaks between these three sections.
09:08: The last time we were in this study, we were, that was before Thanksgiving so it has been a little bit of a while, it's been a couple of months that I haven't been teaching this but Lord willing, we have five to seven depending on how this works out, lessons in the last part of this and then we'll be done with this study.
09:24: So we are in lesson 11 in your notebook, lesson 11, defending or defining and defending the canon of scripture.
09:33: This section, so in your notebook, find your spot there if you can. Find my notes.
09:42: Lesson 11, defining and defending the canon. Now some of you are probably wondering what is a canon? Is it a big metal thing that they put on pirate ships that shoots large caliber ammunition with black powder?
09:53: What is a canon? It's not that, how many of you know what I mean when I use the phrase the canon of scripture?
09:59: How many of you understand what I mean by that? Pretty good, pretty good cross section there.
10:06: Or when we talk about something being a non -canonical book or a canonical book or when we use the reference or the phrase the canon is closed and not open.
10:18: Remember talking about, it's a theological term that we're using, refer to the canon of scripture. And this introduces us to a subject that most
10:23: Christians simply don't give a lot of thought to and unfortunately the enemy uses this to attack us frequently.
10:29: In fact, years ago, do you remember the Da Vinci Code when that came out? How many of you saw the movie,
10:35: The Da Vinci Code? Okay, a couple people. Nobody, nobody else, just a couple people? Okay, good, about half a dozen.
10:41: It's not a sin to say you saw that. I almost watched it for research purposes. But several years ago when
10:47: The Da Vinci Code book came out, the allegations or charges that were made in The Da Vinci Code were really designed to capitalize on the ignorance of both
10:55: Christian and non -Christians in the area of biblical canonicity and how we got the
11:01: New Testament. So a lot of the allegations that were made and the charges about secret councils of bishops that approved certain books and disapproved of other books and that brought in and got rid of teachings that they didn't like out of the
11:14: Gospels and purged the Gospels of those and some grand conspiracy. It was great fiction. I used to tell people it might make good fiction, but it's like the
11:22: Piercing the Darkness or This Present Darkness, Frank Peretti's novels. They might make good fiction, but they're horrible theology. Same thing with The Da Vinci Code.
11:28: The Da Vinci Code really capitalized on the ignorance of Christians on this biblical issue of canonicity. How many of you have heard of the
11:35: Gospel of Thomas? Probably a lot of you. The Gospel of Judas? The Gospel of Peter?
11:42: Do you realize that there are more Gospels than just the four Gospels in your New Testament? There are more Gospels than just those four that were written?
11:49: How do we know, and this is, or let me ask you another question. How many of you have heard reference to the lost books of the
11:55: Bible? Lost books of the Bible. About every, I don't know, year, 18 months, two years or something,
12:01: National Enquirer will run that old headline, right? New Lost Books of the Bible Found. And they're usually referring to some
12:06: Gnostic Gospel or some pseudepigraphal work of the early church. And they refer to these as the lost books of the
12:13: Bible. So here's the question that we're gonna be addressing this week and next week, Lord willing.
12:18: How do we know that our Bible contains all that it should have in it? I want you to give some thought to these questions.
12:24: How do we know that our Bible contains all that it should have in it? Are there lost books of the Bible? What about the lost books of the
12:31: Bible? What about the Gospel of Thomas and Peter and the Gospel of Judas? What about the other religious books that were written around the same time as the
12:37: New Testament? Who decided which books belong in the Bible and why? And was there some grand conspiracy involved in the selection of the books that we have today?
12:49: Why do we accept these 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, why do we accept those 66 books and not the other books that might compete to be included in our
12:59: New Testament? Really, dozens of others that might compete to be in our New Testament.
13:05: Why do we trust only a few men who lived hundreds of years after the apostles to decide which books belong in the
13:11: Bible? It's a good question, isn't it? Why do we trust a few men who lived hundreds of years after the apostles to decide which books belong in the
13:18: Bible? And why would they have made that choice? And on what criteria would they have made that choice?
13:24: What are the criteria that they use to determine this? Now, I wanna tell you, if any of those questions has shaken you or caused you to say to yourself, yeah, that's a good question, why did we do that?
13:36: How did that happen? I want you to understand that even in asking the questions that way, I'm not gonna answer those questions right now, but I want you to understand that even in asking the questions that way,
13:45: I have front -end loaded, I have preloaded a whole bunch of presuppositions into the question itself, things that I have assumed to be true even in asking the question.
13:55: The presuppositions are bad. For instance, why don't you Christians accept the lost books of the Bible? What is the presupposition behind that question?
14:06: That there are lost books of the Bible, right? That there are books that were once in the
14:11: Bible that were since taken out or lost to history. That's the assumption behind the question, right?
14:19: Why should we trust a few men who lived hundreds of years after the apostles to determine, trust them to determine which books belonged in the
14:28: Bible and which books didn't belong in the Bible? Can anybody identify the presupposition that I front -end loaded into that question?
14:37: What's that? Just trust? Haven't I presupposed that that decision was made hundreds of years after the books were written and not when the books were written, just in asking the question?
14:50: I presupposed that that process took hundreds of years and that nobody knew which books belonged in the
14:56: Bible or out of the Bible until hundreds of years had passed. I've also presupposed in asking that question that there was actually a small group of people who made that determination and not the entire church that made that determination.
15:07: See, so sometimes even in asking the question or raising the objection, you have to look at what is behind, what's the presupposition behind the objection that the people are raising there and is that biblically or historically accurate or true?
15:20: Well, that's what we're gonna look at today. So I'm gonna give you just a general overview of this subject matter and I think it's going to take,
15:26: I'm certain it's gonna take two weeks to do this, but I'm just gonna be giving you, I'm gonna try and keep you out of what
15:32: I call the chloroform layer of the subject matter, which is where we get up into something that all of us fall asleep, including the person who's presenting it.
15:38: So I'm gonna keep it out of the chloroform layer into something that's really simple and easy for us to digest and to understand and to kind of present a very basic approach to this issue of canonicity.
15:50: If you wanna dive deeper into this, I recommend a few books. And eventually at some point in the next five to seven weeks
15:55: I'm gonna put together a list of resources on all of the subject matter that I would recommend. It's not yet in your notebook, but you could put it in there if you wanted to keep it.
16:02: But the Canon of Scripture by F .F. Bruce is a good one. F .F. Bruce, the Canon of Scripture. From God to Us by Norman Geisler and William Nix kind of gives a good overview of some of the issues that we're gonna be addressed in a bit more detail.
16:15: And then I would recommend, there's two separate books by a man named Michael Kruger, and I think, and his last name is spelled
16:20: K -R -U -G -E -R, Kruger, Michael Kruger. Anything by Michael Kruger on this subject is worth whatever you have to spend in order to get the book.
16:28: So he has two books on this subject that I can find. Canon Revisited, Canon, C -A -N -O -N, not
16:35: N -N -O -N. Canon Revisited, and the second book, The Question of Canon, both of those by Michael Kruger, K -R -U -G -E -R.
16:44: There's also a course that he teaches, if you want a bit more detail, and there's a course he teaches that is available on Credo Courses, C -R -E -D -O
16:52: Courses. I got it for free, and I downloaded the whole thing and I'm listening to it.
16:58: If you can get on there, I'm not sure what they charge for it, it's a video and audio course with curriculum, 50, 60 bucks, something like that.
17:05: But if you get on Credo's list, eventually you'll sometimes get emails for free courses.
17:10: I happen to pick his up for free. And I don't even know what the name of the course is, but just look for Michael Kruger. I think he's one of the best people on this subject.
17:17: A good, solid reformed guy, doctrinally sound. He deals with issues of canonicity. All right, let's define the word canon.
17:23: This is number one. After all of that introduction, this is number one. What do we mean when we speak of canon? The Greek word is kanon, and the
17:31: Greek word kanon meant a rule or a ruler or a rod, and not a ruler in the sense of one who rules over men, a potentate, but a ruler in the sense of something that you would use as a measuring stick or a rod by which you might measure something.
17:45: The Hebrew word kanah is meant a measuring rod. So it was a rod, a kanon was a rod, especially a straight rod used as a rule or a ruler to measure something.
17:55: Think in terms of your yardstick or your tape measure or a ruler. We use the word ruler, right?
18:02: That's what the word kanon meant. It came to be used, that word came to be used in a figurative sense in the early church.
18:08: For instance, we find the word, that Greek word in Galatians 6, 16, where Paul says, and those who walk by this rule, this kanon, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the
18:16: Israel of God. And there Paul is talking about a standard or the ruler or the measure, those who walk by this measure or by this rule.
18:25: So that word was used then in the early church figuratively to describe the standard by which one would walk.
18:32: If you wanted to measure something, you say, how long is that? Don't you have to have some standard? You have to have some unit of measurement, right?
18:38: By which you might know if this pulpit is two feet wide or 22 inches wide or three feet wide. If I say this is eight feet wide, doesn't that presuppose that there is some unit of measure, some standard by which we could put eight of these one foot units next to here and see if it truly is an eight foot wide pulpit?
18:53: Right, that's the idea of a ruler. It's the standard of measure. And so it was used that way. So the definition in terms of New Testament books is the list of writings acknowledged by the church as documents of the divine revelation.
19:05: That's F .F. Bruce's definition. The list of the writings acknowledged by the church as documents of the divine revelation.
19:13: And so when we speak of the canon of scripture, that's what we're talking about, the list of authoritative books. So you say, why would the word canon come to be used of a list of things?
19:24: Or why would the word ruler be used as a list of things? There's sort of a double meaning to this word when we speak of the canon of scripture.
19:31: The word was first used in this sense by Athanasius, who was the Bishop of Alexandria in 367
19:37: A .D. He referred to the rule or the ruler, the canon of scripture. So canon in Greek or the canon in Greek would have a series of marks like a modern day ruler.
19:45: Doesn't your modern day ruler have a series of marks on it, right? 1 16th, 1 8th, 3 16ths, 1 quarter, and that's as far as I can go from memory.
19:56: Okay, doesn't it have a series, a list of marks on your ruler? Well, if you stood that upright and you used that marks as a series of mark, or a series of marks, it came to be used of a list.
20:06: That's a list of marks. And so that series of marks could be used as a list. And so canon came to be used to refer in the general sense to any series or list of things.
20:17: That is the sense in which it's used when we speak of the canon of scripture. When we talk about the canon of scripture, we're talking about a series or a list of what?
20:24: Of scripture, of the books that we consider to be inspired. That's the canon. So on our list, there are 66 marks to our canon.
20:30: There are 66 hash marks, and we put Genesis through Revelation on those 66 marks. That's what we refer to as the canon of scripture, that list of books that we consider to be authoritative.
20:40: And eventually that word, canon, came to be used of scripture as a whole so that we refer to scripture as the canon.
20:46: So when we talk about what is the canon of your religious faith, we would say the scripture is the canon.
20:53: Genesis to Revelation, that book is our canon. It's the rule by which we measure life and godliness. It's the rule by which we determine what is true and right, what is revealed, what is false, et cetera.
21:03: That's the ruler, that's the standard. It's also the list of books that we include as given by divine revelation.
21:10: That becomes the rule, that becomes the list, our 66 books. Now if you ask a Mormon, what is your canon of scripture, what would they say?
21:19: They have a different canon, don't they? Instead, they have a Bible, King James Bible, so far as it's translated accurately.
21:27: They always have to put that on there. There's never a worry about Doctrine and Covenants of Pearl of Great Price being translated accurately, but they would include scripture as part of the canon, but they would also have to include the later revelations, quote unquote, later revelations of Jesus Christ, which would be the
21:40: Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Was there a fourth one? Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price. No?
21:51: Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price. Anyway, you get the idea. They have a different canon than we do, a different list of authoritative documents.
21:57: So we have a certain list of authoritative documents, so when we speak of the canon of scripture, we are using it really in two ways.
22:03: We are saying, first, this is our list of authoritative documents. Second, we are saying that scripture itself is the standard by which we measure everything else.
22:14: So when we call scripture the canon, we're saying it is the unit of measurement, it is the yardstick, it is the ruler, it determines, we put everything up against that to see how does it measure up.
22:25: Scripture then becomes the authority by which we measure all other things in the same way that a ruler becomes the authority by which we measure the length of something.
22:33: Does that make sense? So we're using, canon has sort of a double meaning there depending on how we're using it, but it always refers to scripture.
22:40: So it refers to the list of books as well as the fact that scripture itself is the measuring rod by which we measure everything else.
22:48: Now, there were three concerns in the early church which led to the need to officially recognize which of the writings the early church determined to be or the early church regarded as authoritative.
22:59: And there were three different types of concerns. Letter A, this is number two, theological concerns.
23:06: Letter B is ecclesiastical concerns and then C is political concerns. I think this is going to absorb the rest of our time here today.
23:13: Before we get on to this section, are there any questions that you have regarding what we mean when we refer to the word canon?
23:19: Yes, Cornell. Book of Mormon, yes, that was it.
23:30: Nobody else said that. Anybody look around at me like I was stupid for even suggesting there was a fourth one. Yes, Book of Mormon.
23:36: I don't know how I forgot that one. Let's speak of the Mormon church, it's understandable. All right, are there any other questions or comments that don't make me look stupid?
23:45: Any questions or comments that I can leverage into making myself look intelligent? No? Okay. Number two, the need to define the canon.
23:52: Did you have something you wanted to say publicly or are you just going to laugh at me, that's it, okay. Okay, first, theological concerns.
24:00: There was, after the time of the apostles, and let's say, no, we can actually say that during the time of the apostles, there began to be writings, there came to be writings that claimed to be apostolic in origin.
24:14: Can you think of an example, even during the New Testament, of that?
24:22: Paul said to the Thessalonians, is it in 2 Thessalonians?
24:28: Do not be alarmed about what you have heard as if, in a letter from us, he refers to a letter that somebody had sent to the
24:37: Thessalonian church that had talked about the day of the Lord, and Paul, that seems to suggest that there were writings out there that were being sent to Christians under Paul's authority, is this came from Paul but they weren't really apostolic, they didn't come from Paul.
24:50: We certainly know that after the, toward the end of the first century and after the end of the first century, 100 AD, that there were writings that began to circulate that were false writings, written by people who claimed to be apostles and claimed to be prophets, and these writings began to circulate amongst heretical groups, and there's an excellent early church example of this in a man who is known as Marcion, Marcion, M -A -R -C -I -O -N, and in order to appreciate the problem that the early church faced or the difficulty that the early church faced, you just have to study a little bit about the life and the ministry of Marcion.
25:27: He was born in 100 AD at Sinope, and he was a huge fan of the
25:33: Apostle Paul, huge fan of the Apostle Paul. Paul was his man crush, so anything that Paul wrote, anything that Paul said, anything that Paul believed,
25:43: Marcion was all in on the Apostle Paul, and he ultimately concluded that Paul was the only apostle who accurately communicated the truth that Jesus delivered, and that Paul was the only apostle who preserved the teaching of Jesus in its purity.
25:58: Marcion is the first person that we know of who published a fixed collection of what he called
26:04: New Testament books. Now, let me be clear, Marcion is not the first person to publish a list of New Testament books.
26:10: Marcion is the first person that we know of who published an official list of New Testament books.
26:17: So what did Marcion, and we're gonna return to that here in just a moment, what did Marcion teach? Here were some of Marcion's teachings. He believed that not only the
26:24: Old Testament law, but that the entire Old Testament itself had been superseded by the gospel, and that the gospel was something that was completely new, not something foreshadowed or pictured or even promised under the old covenant in the
26:37: Old Testament, that the gospel itself and the teaching of Jesus was something entirely new, as if God took the entire
26:44: Old Testament and that old covenant, and he just wiped it away. It had no meaning. He just started from scratch something entirely new.
26:51: So we would say that the New Testament is really the fulfillment of the old, that the old foreshadows and portends the new, and that the new really is the fulfillment of that and the accomplishment and the zenith of all of that, the conclusion of it.
27:03: Marcion would have said the gospel is something entirely new, so all the Old Testament needs to be ditched.
27:09: He would say, and he taught, that the law and the prophets made no preparation for Christ whatsoever, but that anything in Paul's writings that might suggest any kind of Old Testament origin for a
27:21: New Testament teaching, that anything in Paul's writings that suggested a connection to the Old Testament must have been added by a legalistic
27:28: Judaizer who was trying to corrupt Paul's writings. So he maintained that all of the other apostles, all of them, all corrupted the teachings of Jesus by adding admixtures of legalism into the teachings of Jesus, and he distinguished between the
27:43: God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament, saying that they were two different deities with independent existence, that the
27:50: God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were two independent and separate deities with independent existences.
27:57: So he would say, well, it was the God of the Old Testament. That's not the same as the God of the New Testament. That's a modern -day, there's a modern -day form of Marcionism that kind of teaches the same thing.
28:06: I've heard people say that. You can't trust the God of the Old Testament stuff. You got it all wrong. God and the God of Jesus, Jesus came and accurately communicated to us the truth, and that had nothing to do with anything, any of the
28:17: God of the Old Testament. So Marcion, because of his view of Judaism and the Old Testament scriptures and the
28:24: Old Covenant, he would have said, to borrow the vernacular of a modern false teacher, that we needed to unhitch the
28:29: Old Testament from the New Testament. That's Andy Stanley's language. That's a form of Marcionism, that we just need to just unhitch and disregard all of the
28:39: Old Testament. We just have the New Testament. That's Marcionism. Marcionism was an early form of Gnosticism.
28:47: Gnosticism believed that the God who created the material world was different from the God with whom Jesus spoke, and the God of Jesus was good and kind and merciful and gracious and willing to forgive, and the
28:56: God of the Old Testament was a different God, an angry, vengeful, almost a pagan deity.
29:02: So whatever happened to Marcion? Now Marcion cropped up in the New Church, and you can imagine that he would instantly find common ground with a lot of Christians in the first century.
29:10: Why? Paul's my man, right? You're gonna find almost a ready audience amongst
29:16: Gentiles for this idea that we need to forget the Jews, forget the Old Covenant, here's the Apostle Paul, brand new gospel, brand new teaching, this is great.
29:24: Paul's my man, I've got Paul's writings here, and I affirm the authority of Paul. He would have instantly found some common ground with a lot of Christians.
29:31: So whatever happened to him? The leaders of the church in Rome found his teachings to be unacceptable, and so Marcion withdrew from the church in Rome and started his own fellowship.
29:39: It survived for a few generations. Growth in Marcion's church came only by conversion since one of the teachings of Marcion was absolute celibacy by all of the members of the
29:50: Marcion church, absolute celibacy. Now that's a hard sell, right?
29:56: You wanna join our movement? Yeah, you like Paul, I like Paul. Tell me, what does this involve?
30:02: Well, celibacy. I don't know, that's a hard sell. So the only opportunity you have to grow your fellowship is converting people to your way of thinking.
30:14: Since you're not, and this was part of Gnosticism, the idea that anything physical was bad, only the spiritual was good, and therefore any physical desires or the fulfillment of those physical desires was a bad and evil thing in and of itself, and even within marriage, this was not something to be enjoyed or participated in, and so, of course, you have no kids, being born in Marcion's church and eventually became all old people and died away.
30:37: That was Marcion's movement. Now what did Marcion publish? I mentioned earlier that he was the first person that we know of who published a list of what he considered canonical books, even though in Marcion's day, the word canon wouldn't have been used in that sense, probably.
30:51: But what did he publish? He published an edition of the Greek New Testament, which he considered to be inspired. He called it
30:57: Gospel and Apostle. Gospel and Apostle was the name of his book, and that referred to its two component parts.
31:04: The gospel was an edition of the gospel of what? Which gospel, because it's singular, not gospels and apostles.
31:13: It's gospel, singular, and apostle, singular. So obviously we could probably guess what apostles' writings were in there, right?
31:21: Paul's, right. Which gospel do you think Marcion included? Any guess?
31:28: Sorry, what? Luke. Luke, it was Luke. Why Luke's gospel? Yeah, Luke was
31:35: Paul's traveling companion. Paul's fingerprints are all over the gospel of Luke, as it were. Luke is a very Gentile -oriented gospel.
31:41: It mentions Jews. Luke's a very Gentile -oriented gospel, and of course, it was written by Luke, who was Paul's physician and traveling companion, and of course,
31:48: Luke is somebody that Paul mentions in 2 Timothy. So, but,
31:56: I should say, but Marcion purged the gospel of Luke of all the elements that he deemed to be incompatible with his understanding of truth, and so he viewed those purged sections as inserted by Judaistic scribes.
32:08: For instance, the birth of Jesus in Luke's gospel was omitted. Why? Because Marcion believed that Jesus came by supernatural descent out of heaven, just like he left.
32:18: Why would Jesus have to come from supernatural descent? Because anything related to childbirth or being in the womb of a mother, these things were material, and therefore, they were evil and dirty and bad, and so he purged the gospel of Luke of that aspect, the birth narrative of Jesus.
32:36: Marcion found the whole idea of conception and childbearing to be disgusting, which, of course, explains his ban, or his promotion,
32:44: I should say, of celibacy, and so what was the response of the, oh, no, no, so that was the apostle section of it,
32:51: Luke. Let me talk for a moment about the apostle section of his book, or his list of books. Out of the, the apostle contained 10 of Paul's letters instead of 13, 10 of Paul's letters.
33:03: The pastoral epistles were missing, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. They were all missing from Marcion's apostle, but that is probably because Marcion didn't have access to those books, not because he viewed them as non -canonical.
33:16: He just would've, he just didn't even know, probably didn't know, we can't know for certain, but likely Marcion did not know that those books even existed, so he didn't have access to them, and he handled
33:27: Paul's writings the same way that he did Luke's writing, in that anything that appeared inconsistent with his beliefs, he removed.
33:34: He assumed that all of those things that he disagreed with, anything referencing positively the Old Covenant or the
33:39: Old Testament had to have been inserted by legalistic scribes, Jewish scribes who were trying to work their
33:45: Judaism and their Old Testament stuff into Paul's writings. So what was the response of the church? Well, Tertullian was railed against,
33:52: Tertullian, early church father, railed against Marcion in his book, aptly titled Against Marcion.
33:59: Now, because of that controversy that you have here, a teacher who becomes quite fashionable early on in the early church, and he is quite in love with Paul and Paul's writings, he accepts one of your gospels, and he accepts at least 10 of the books that you would accept as canonical in the early church.
34:16: Can you see the need that there would be for some standard, some official list by what do we do with this?
34:22: Is Marcion's gospel, copy of Luke's gospel, the right one? Or is there another copy of Luke's gospel that is the right one?
34:28: If Marcion only includes 10 of those, do we reject three of Paul's other epistles, 1
34:33: Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus? What do we do with that? So there came to be this need of establishing some sort of a list, some sort of recognition of what books are in the list and what books are not in the list.
34:46: What do we regard as authoritative? And this becomes especially needful when you're dealing with false teaching and false teachers, because in dealing with a false teacher, you have to be able to quote from an authority.
34:58: So, for instance, if you are dealing with a Mormon who has come to your front door, and they're trying to evangelize you into the
35:04: Mormon church, and you begin to address their doctrine, there is immediately an inability to communicate between you and the
35:11: Mormon missionary, because they have an entirely different authority structure. They recognize the church, and they recognize the apostles of their church, and they recognize the
35:20: Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants, and what's the other one? The Book of Mormon, also is canonical or authoritative.
35:25: So they're gonna quote from their authoritative sources, and you're gonna wanna quote from your authoritative sources, which is the canonical books of Scripture.
35:34: And so if you're dealing with a false teacher, there has to be something where you say, what books do we regard as the new covenant,
35:40: New Testament, community of saints, God's people, what books do we regard as authoritative? This was the theological concern, especially when dealing with false teachers and heretics like Marcion.
35:51: Second, letter B, there were ecclesiastical concerns. And by the way, when I talk about Gnosticism, we did a,
35:57: I did a series, I'm not even sure if it's on the website anymore, on early church heresies. And we talked about Gnosticism at some length in there, so if you don't know what
36:05: Gnosticism is, those should be available on the church website, I think. And if they're not there, you ask me for them if you want them, and I can make copies of them or something and give them to you.
36:14: But Gnosticism was, you see the seeds of Gnostic theology in some of the
36:19: New Testament writings, the book of Colossians, for instance. You can see that Paul is arguing against false doctrine, he doesn't call it
36:25: Gnosticism, because the doctrine was there and it was starting to crop up, even though it hadn't kind of come to full bloom yet, it was still, it was there, and he's dealing with issues of Gnosticism in Colossians.
36:36: First John, which David is teaching through in adult Sunday school class when I'm not here and Cornel's not here,
36:42: First John deals with that at the very introduction. Those things which we have seen, which we have heard, which our eyes have seen, our hands have handled concerning the word of life, that was a direct affront to Gnostic theology, which taught that Jesus was merely a spirit and had no physical form.
36:57: And John is addressing those. New Testament books address Gnostic theology, even, and it's kind of there in its seed form in the early church.
37:03: Well, by the end of the first century, it was a full -blown heresy that was affecting everything. Okay, letter
37:09: B, ecclesiastical concerns. Ecclesiastical concerns have to do with church concerns. Which books should be read in the public worship service?
37:19: Imagine that you're sitting in the year 100. Which books do we read in the public worship service? Because we have a letter from Clement and we have a letter from Paul.
37:28: Are these equal? Which of these books do we pick up and read and make people obey, expect people to obey?
37:36: What books do we teach from? We know that the reading of scripture involved apostolic books. First Thessalonians 5 .27,
37:42: I urge you by the Lord to have this letter read to all the brethren. Colossians 4 .16, when this letter is read among you, have it also read in the church of the
37:50: Laodiceans. The apostles, Paul particularly, when he was writing his epistles, expected those epistles when they were received by the churches to be read and to be obeyed by the church because he had apostolic authority.
37:59: And Paul wrote knowing that he had apostolic authority. And so you have to ask the question, which books then do we read in the public worship service?
38:07: Or which books do we read as authoritative and which books do we regard merely as devotional? Today we have creeds and confessions that we read.
38:16: When I preached through the Gospel of John in the early chapters, I read often from the Chalcedonian Creed. And we have the
38:21: Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. So we have creeds and confessions, the London Baptist Confession.
38:28: We have all kinds of confessions and creeds and catechisms today that we might use. But do we regard those as authoritative on the level of Romans?
38:36: Would we regard the Chalcedonian Creed as authoritative on the same level as John? Even though I might quote from some of those sources in church or use them in teaching, do we regard them as authoritative?
38:46: In the early church, they would have to face the same question. Which books do we regard as authoritative and which books do we regard as merely devotional?
38:54: For instance, there was a letter that Clement sent to the church in Corinth that was read for decades, but it was never viewed as scripture.
39:01: But it was read and used in the church of Corinth for decades after Paul wrote his letters. And the early church revered the apostolic writings.
39:10: So another question, which books should be translated into other languages for evangelizing pagans? That's a good question, right?
39:17: In the early church, you got the Epistle of Clement and you got the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. Which book do we translate to go evangelize pagans?
39:25: If we're gonna take this into Egypt, we're gonna send a missionary to Egypt to evangelize the Egyptian pagans, do we translate as scripture the
39:33: Gospel of Clement, or sorry, the letter from Clement, or do we translate the letter from Paul to the church at Rome?
39:40: Well, what do you wanna translate? You're gonna spend your efforts translating and copying something? You don't wanna translate and copy what you believe to be scripture.
39:48: We do the same thing today, by the way. The Hunts, when they went to Paraguay and started translating the
39:54: New Testament, they didn't translate John MacArthur's commentaries on the New Testament into Monthui.
39:59: They started with scripture, and once they had worked through sufficient scripture, then they began to translate other study resources alongside of that, but the priority was scripture, because it was authoritative.
40:13: Another question, which books are to regulate the life of the church? What do we turn to for instruction in doctrine, teaching, church polity, moral issues, et cetera?
40:22: And then which books do you preach from and teach from? These are the questions, the ecclesiastical concerns of the early church.
40:28: There's a lot of books out there, a lot of competing books. Which ones do we regard as authoritative? Which ones are we gonna translate? Which ones are we gonna preach from?
40:34: Which ones are we gonna teach from? These are the ecclesiastical concerns. Before we move on to the last one here, we have a few more minutes.
40:39: Are there any questions? Nope. All right, we're either in the chloroform layer, or I'm just doing a really good job of communicating everything.
40:50: Number three, the political concerns. There were political concerns in the early church. The emperor Diocletian, whose name was
40:56: Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, if you'd...
41:03: No, no. He reigned from 284 to 305 AD. And according to Eusebius, who was a church historian,
41:12: Diocletian ordered in 303, quote, the destruction by fire of the scriptures, close quote.
41:17: Diocletian was persecuting the church. He ordered the destruction by fire of the scriptures. Now, ironically, within 25 years of his edict in 303, the emperor
41:26: Constantine, who succeeded him at some point, became a believer, and he ordered Eusebius, that church historian, to prepare and distribute 50 copies of the scriptures.
41:36: And Constantine then made an official list of those canonical books, because when Constantine wanted the scriptures to be published or produced for the sake of the church, because he was now a
41:49: Christian, history's somewhat divided as to how legitimate his conversion was, but he at least was promoting scripture and producing scriptures, well, you'd have to have to,
41:59: Constantine's around 325, 328 AD, so you'd have to ask the question, well, then, which books are we regarding? Which books is
42:05: Eusebius supposed to produce for the church, right? You have to know which one of those is, because by 300, you've got all of those pseudepigraphal and apocryphal books.
42:12: You got the books written between the Old Testament and the New Testament that's in the Catholic Bible, the Apocrypha, then you got a whole bunch of writings that claim to be apostolic from the first 300 years of church history, the writings of the apostles alongside of the epistles of Clement, and the writings of the
42:27: Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Judas, and the Gospel of whoever, and the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Barnabas, and all of these other books, so which ones do you promote?
42:35: Well, Constantine would have to make that decision, so he eventually published a list of the books that were considered at 325 canonical.
42:42: Now, here's the historical mistake that many people make. They look at Constantine's publication of that and his production of the scriptures, and they say, the pagan emperor
42:49: Constantine determined which books are in your Bible. We talked about presuppositions at the beginning.
42:56: What's the presupposition behind that statement? That nobody knew which books were authoritative until Constantine published his list.
43:08: So the assumption is that until Constantine published his list, there was no official list, or nobody knew, or the
43:16: Christians just assumed all of those books were authoritative. That's what's the assumption. I would look at what
43:21: Constantine did and say, already people knew which books were inspired, and which books were canonical, and all
43:28: Constantine was doing is saying, these are the books that are recognized by the church, therefore publish these. Not that Constantine made the determination, but that Constantine recognized what had already been determined a long, long time before that.
43:41: Okay, so that is one of the political concerns. Now, when... Okay, so in light of that persecution, let me ask you this question.
43:50: When Roman soldiers arrive at your home and want you to hand over the sacred writings, because Gaius Aurelius Villanius Diocletianus has ordered the destruction of the scriptures by fire, so when they show up at your house, and they order you to hand over the sacred writings or the scriptures, and they're
44:08: Roman soldiers, they're not Christians, which books do you hand them? The Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon, yeah, they're very good.
44:18: Which books do you hand them? You'd have to know which books the church regards as authoritative, wouldn't you?
44:26: You wouldn't want to hand over scripture. If you can hand over the Shepherd of Hermes, or the
44:31: Didache, or the Gospel of Barnabas, or the Gospel of Mary. If you can, if a
44:37: Roman soldier shows up, and they're saying, give us your sacred writings, and you say, well, we got the Shepherd of Hermes here, and here's a letter from Clement, and here's the
44:43: Gospel of Mary, here's the Gospel of Barnabas, and here's a copy of the Gospel of Thomas. There you go.
44:49: They're gonna look at that and say, yeah, old writings, religious, there's stuff about Jesus in here. Yeah, that looks good. And they're gonna walk away and destroy those.
44:55: So in the light of persecution, that's the political concern, in the light of persecution, you'd need to know, already,
45:01: Christians would need to know which books are authoritative and which books are not. Do you have a question? Who actually would have had copies of anything at that point.
45:15: So if we're talking about 300 AD, there was already, by that time, widespread copying and distribution of New Testament documents and authoritative documents.
45:25: Individual members of churches? Probably not. Everybody in an individual church would have had a copy of those things.
45:31: But somebody in the church, Christians did collect those books. And they used some of them for devotional reading, and some of them as authoritative reading in the church.
45:40: All right, so if you had a copy of the Shepherd of Hermes and a copy of the Epistle of Clement, you would give them over to satisfy the officials without giving up Scripture itself.
45:48: And then here's another political concern. If you're gonna be asked to die for one of these books, don't you wanna know which one you're gonna die for?
45:56: If you're gonna spend your efforts copying something in a dark cave with the threat of the Roman government overshadowing you with death as the sentence for you copying that book, don't you know which one of those books you're gonna wanna risk your life for?
46:11: Are you really gonna wanna risk your life to study the letter from Clement? You really gonna wanna risk your life to copy the
46:18: Shepherd of Hermes? See, those are the political concerns in the early churches that Christians faced persecution.
46:23: They needed to know which books do we read, which books do we regard as authoritative, which books do we hand over to Roman officials, which books are we willing to die for, which books do we wanna translate in order to evangelize pagans, and which books do we need to make sure that we preserve for our children and our grandchildren and generations to come?
46:39: Those were the theological, the political, and the ecclesiastical concerns that required people to think through clearly what books do we regard as authoritative?
46:51: And I would suggest to you that that decision was made long before Constantine ever made his list of what he wanted to have produced and published for the
46:59: Christians in the Roman Empire. Now, there were a couple of other considerations. Books were circulated and copied even though no official list was ever published because there was no list given by the apostles, right?
47:12: There's no chapter 14 in, no, there's 14 in Romans, a bad example.
47:18: There's no chapter 17 in the Book of Romans that says, oh, by the way, here are the list of all the books that I've written, that Paul says that.
47:25: Paul makes reference to other books that he wrote, but no apostle ever produced a list of what was to be considered canonical books.
47:32: Jesus didn't give a list of books that we should expect. At no point in the Gospels does Jesus ever say, look, I got this guy named
47:38: Paul, I haven't saved him yet, I'm going to eventually, he's gonna evangelize a whole bunch of people and here's a list of the books he's gonna write for you guys.
47:44: Jesus didn't leave us an official authoritative list. So it fell then to the church to recognize which books were given by God and which books were not.
47:53: And it did take a while for there to be a universal recognition of various books in the
47:59: New Testament. It did take a little bit, a while by our standards, but not a while by historical standards, right?
48:07: Heating up coffee in a microwave takes a while for us, right, that's, oh, I gotta do that, I wish my coffee hadn't cooled off.
48:14: If only I had a mug that would keep my coffee hot all the time so I never had to waste that 90 seconds heating that up again.
48:19: So that type of, that's a while for us, but in the early church, for something to take decades before it would be officially recognized and kind of circulated and widespread, that was not a long time in that time period in the ancient world.
48:32: All right, that is it for our time. So we just did get to, we're gonna pick it up next week with a discussion about why universal recognition took so long, and then how it is that we recognize which books are authoritative and which books are not.
48:47: Yes? When did he save Constantine? Constantine was officially saved in 325
48:54: AD, and I'm not gonna make any determination whether Constantine's conversion was genuine or not, but he was supposedly saved in 325
49:00: AD, 325? Yeah, now I'm questioning that, just like the Book of Mormon thing.
49:06: It was the early third century, or early fourth century, so it was after 300, because 325 was the
49:13: Council of Nicaea, and it was Constantine who called that. So he was a Christian by 325, let's just say that.
49:21: Right, yes? Okay, so the question is regarding Marcion, when he would take out sections from Paul's writings of the
49:47: Gospel of Luke, because they didn't fit with his theology of the Old Testament, did he leave those sections blank and just cut them out, or did he fill them with his own stuff?
49:58: I don't think that he filled them with his own detail. I think he just simply omitted that in copying those books and in publishing those books.
50:05: So for those books of Paul, it would have been quite prolific, obviously, because the Apostle Paul makes mention of, he quotes the
50:11: Old Testament all the way through his books. Must have been much shorter than Paul's originals.
50:20: Yeah, it probably would have been. Or if Marcion felt that the Apostle Paul was using the Old Testament in such a way as to disparage the
50:27: Old Testament, then he would have included that. It would have been only Paul's glowing references to the
50:34: Old Testament that he would have felt the need to get rid of. Yes? 312, that's a better name, yeah, 312.
50:44: That's Constantine's conversion? Thank you, 312. Yeah, yeah, in battle he saw a cross and a symbol of a cross in the sky.
50:54: He had a vision and said, in this symbol or in this sign you shall conquer, and that was his conversion. I don't know, more reliable than many conversions in many churches today,
51:04: I guess, but. All right, that's it. Next week we'll pick it up again with this issue of canonicity, let's pray.
51:13: Lord, we're so grateful to you for the time that we've had here, and we ask your blessing upon our worship and our fellowship that's to follow, and we pray that you'd help us to remember these things and to put these things deep into our hearts so that we may have an answer to the people who ask us a reason for the hope that is in us.
51:28: And we are grateful for the fellowship that we have enjoyed, and we pray a blessing upon our service to follow in Christ's name, amen. ♪
57:05: It is he who made us ♪ ♪
57:13: We are his people ♪ ♪ And the sheep of his pasture may make a jump ♪ ♪
57:53: Enter his gates with thanksgiving ♪ ♪ And his courts with praise give thanks to him ♪ ♪
58:00: Bless his name enter his gates with thanksgiving ♪ ♪ And his cross with his steadfast love ♪ ♪
59:52: God if you gent strength ♪ ♪
59:57: A very present help in trouble ♪ ♪
01:00:04: Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way ♪ ♪
01:00:13: Though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea ♪ ♪ Though its waters flow the mountains tremble at its welling ♪ ♪
01:00:33: There is a river whose streams may clasp ♪ ♪
01:01:57: Voices to the end though it shatters the spirit here ♪ ♪
01:02:59: It's all to among the nations ♪ ♪
01:03:16: This is with a Jewish neighbor ♪ ♪
01:05:06: May those who say we're not done ♪ ♪
01:05:56: The same would she long ♪ ♪
01:06:10: Like silver I stand against thee
01:07:44: I seek you ♪ ♪ My soul flesh faints fear ♪ ♪
01:07:53: As a free land where there is no water sanctuary ♪ ♪
01:08:13: Behold as your steadfast love is better than life ♪ ♪
01:08:28: My lips appraise you so I will bless you as long as I live ♪ ♪
01:08:33: In your name I will lift up my hands ♪ ♪ You'll be satisfied ♪ ♪
01:09:03: I'll wait on you in the watches of the things to you ♪ ♪
01:09:32: Your right hand upholds me ♪ ♪ Those who seek to destroy my life into the depths of the deep ♪ ♪
01:09:56: They shall be portioned for jackals rejoicing clouds of iron ♪ ♪
01:11:10: Teach me oh I may keep your law lead me in your testimonies ♪ ♪
01:12:12: Two selfish kings turn in your way ♪ ♪
01:13:21: Behold I justness give me justice ♪ ♪
01:14:02: May God be gracious to us and lick his face to shine upon ♪ ♪
01:14:17: May God be gracious to us and lick his face to shine upon ♪ ♪
01:15:17: May God be gracious to us and lick his face to shine upon ♪
01:15:57: Good morning and welcome to Kootenai Church.
01:16:23: If you would stand and join us as we sing this morning. If you're in the hallway, if you'd come inside, find your seat.
01:16:30: His mercy is more. ♪
01:16:38: Both could remember no wrongs we have done ♪ ♪
01:16:53: Omniscient all knowing he counts not their sum ♪ ♪ Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore ♪ ♪
01:17:03: Our sins they are many his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:17:09: Praise the Lord his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:17:20: Stronger than darkness through every morn ♪ ♪ Our sins they are many his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:17:30: What nations would wait as we constantly roam ♪ ♪
01:17:36: What father so tender is calling us home ♪ ♪ He welcomes the weakest the vilest the poor ♪ ♪
01:17:47: Our sins they are many his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:17:53: Praise the Lord his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:18:03: Stronger than darkness through every morn ♪ ♪ Our sins they are many his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:18:13: What riches of kindness he lavished on us ♪ ♪
01:18:18: His blood was the payment his life was the cost ♪ ♪ We studied the debt we could never afford ♪ ♪
01:18:29: Our sins they are many his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:18:35: Praise the Lord his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:18:46: Stronger than darkness through every morn ♪ ♪ Our sins they are many his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:18:54: Praise the Lord his mercy is more ♪ ♪
01:19:05: Stronger than darkness through every morn ♪ ♪ Our sins they are many his mercy is more ♪
01:19:16: Amen. Take this time and greet each other this morning. Well, good morning, everyone.
01:19:51: Welcome this morning. I just have one pertinent announcement, and that is that our annual potluck and business meeting is two weeks from today, two weeks from today, so that's the last
01:20:01: Sunday in January. We have a potluck after the service, so the details for that are in your bulletin, and then following that is our annual business meeting where we talk about the ministries of the church, things coming up in the next year, and sort of deal with the business of our church body, so we invite you to join us for that.
01:20:16: That's two weeks from today. Turn your Bibles, please, to Psalm 32, Psalm 32 for a
01:20:32: Scripture reading. We're going to read the entire psalm.
01:20:41: The prescript says it is a psalm of David, a mascal, and you'll notice sometimes when
01:20:48: I'm reading through the psalms that I never read the word selah. Do you notice that? The reason is, and this was pointed out to me by Dave Rich, because I asked him one time when
01:20:58: I asked him to read Scripture, he was reading through the psalm, and he didn't read the word selah. I didn't pronounce it or anything, and I said, why do you skip that over?
01:21:05: I mean, that seems like it should be there, and he said, because it's likely a musical notation, which I knew this, it was likely a musical notation that said, stop here, be silent, pause, and reflect.
01:21:15: So then when you read it, you're kind of defeating the purpose, aren't you? Right? Be silent, and then I read, be silent, and then everybody goes over it.
01:21:22: So that's the reason why I don't read that. Instead, when I get to that word, I usually pause for just a moment, give my mind an opportunity to reflect upon what we've just read, because that's sort of the psalmist way of saying, what you've just read, stop, don't go on, reflect upon that, and then move on.
01:21:37: So that's how we read this altar here. Psalm 32. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
01:21:46: How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
01:21:53: When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away, through my groaning all day long.
01:21:59: For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.
01:22:06: I acknowledged my sin to you, and my iniquity I did not hide. I said I will confess my transgressions to the
01:22:12: Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to you in a time when you may be found.
01:22:21: Surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him. You are my hiding place. You preserve me from trouble.
01:22:27: You surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way in which you should go.
01:22:34: I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check.
01:22:44: Otherwise they would not come near to you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but he who trusts in the Lord, loving kindness shall surround him.
01:22:52: Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones, and shout for joy all you who are upright in heart.
01:22:58: Will you stand with me as we pray? Let's bow our heads.
01:23:07: Father, you are indeed so merciful, infinitely so, to forgive us of our transgressions. When we call out to you, and when we ask for forgiveness, when we look to Christ, the one who has paid for that forgiveness on the cross, you are gracious and merciful, and you forgive our iniquity.
01:23:22: You have redeemed us. You have justified us. You have sanctified us. You have perfected us in the death of your
01:23:28: Son. We thank you for this infinite blessing and this infinite grace. You are the one in whom we have placed our trust.
01:23:36: You are the one to whom we look for forgiveness. You are the God of deliverances. You deliver us from our troubles.
01:23:43: You deliver us ultimately out of this life and away from the presence of sin. You deliver us even from the judgment that is due for our iniquity.
01:23:51: We thank you and we praise you, O our great God, a forgiving God, for your loving kindness and grace, which you have made ours in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
01:24:00: Amen. You were condemned.
01:24:35: Your spirit is within me. Because you died and rose again,
01:24:46: I'm forgiven. Because you were forsaken, I'm accepted.
01:24:56: You were condemned. Your spirit is within me.
01:25:06: Because you died and rose again, I'm forgiven.
01:26:07: Because you were forsaken, I'm accepted. Because you were forsaken, Because you were forsaken, Because you were forsaken,
01:26:22: Because you were forsaken, I'm accepted. Because you were forsaken, I'm accepted.
01:26:50: Because you were forsaken,
01:27:13: Because you were forsaken, And I am safe on the solid path.
01:27:28: The Lord is my salvation. I will not fear when darkness falls.
01:27:41: His strength will help me stand these walls. I'll see the dawn of the rising sun.
01:27:53: The Lord is my salvation. Who is like the
01:28:02: Lord our God? Strong to save, faithful in love.
01:28:11: My debt is paid and the victory won.
01:28:17: The Lord is my salvation. My hope is hidden in the
01:28:26: Lord. He flowers each promise of His blood.
01:28:35: When winter fades, I know spring will come.
01:28:41: The Lord is my salvation. In times of pain, in times of need,
01:28:54: He calls when I am weak. His grace will renew these days.
01:29:04: The Lord is my salvation. Who is like the
01:29:13: Lord our God? Strong to save, faithful in love.
01:29:21: My debt is paid and the victory won.
01:29:27: The Lord is my salvation. Reach the final days.
01:29:51: My salvation. Who is like the
01:29:59: Lord our God? Strong to save, faithful in love.
01:30:07: My debt is paid and the victory won.
01:30:13: The Lord is my salvation. Glory be to God, the
01:30:21: Father. Glory be to God, the
01:30:26: Son. Glory be to God, the
01:30:32: Spirit. The Lord is our salvation.
01:30:40: The Lord is our salvation. The Lord is our salvation.
01:31:09: Peace like a river. Attend sorrows like seagulls.
01:31:24: The Lord has taught me to say,
01:31:37: It is well, it is well, it is well.
01:31:56: It is well, it is well.
01:32:07: No Satan should come. No trial should come.
01:32:19: Last assurance control. Hath regarded my helpless estate.
01:32:35: And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
01:32:50: It is well, it is well.
01:32:58: It is well with my soul. I sinned o 'er this glorious thought.
01:33:13: My sin not in part, but it's nailed to the cross.
01:33:26: And I bear it no more. Praise the
01:33:32: Lord. Praise the Lord. It is well, my soul.
01:33:50: It is well, it is well, my soul.
01:33:57: Taste the day when my faith shall be sight.
01:34:08: The clouds be rolled back as a scroll.
01:34:15: The trump shall resound.
01:34:21: And the Lord shall descend. Even so, it is well with my soul.
01:34:36: It is well, my soul.
01:34:45: It is well, it is well with my soul.
01:34:52: Let's sing that acapella. It is well, my soul.
01:35:04: It is well, it is well with my soul.
01:35:17: In 1 Corinthians 1 verse 18 it says, For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
01:35:24: But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Take a dying man and raise him up to life again.
01:35:49: What can heal a wounded soul? What can make us white as snow?
01:35:56: What can fill the emptiness? What can end our brokenness?
01:36:09: Mighty, awesome, wonderful. What restores our faith in God?
01:36:48: What reveals the Father's love? What can lead the wayward home?
01:36:54: What can melt the heart of stone? What can free the guilty ones?
01:37:01: What can save and overcome? Awesome, wonderful is the hope.
01:37:43: It's a miracle to me. It's a miracle to me.
01:37:49: And it's still a mystery. And it's still a mystery. It's a miracle to me.
01:37:58: The power of those who believe.
01:38:07: Mighty, awesome, wonderful is the
01:38:14: Holy Cross. Where the
01:38:20: Lamb laid down His life to lift us from the fall.
01:38:30: Mighty is the power of God. You may be seated.
01:43:18: The passage for our study this morning is to be found in the book of Hebrews chapter 10. Be pleased and you open your copy of God's word to Hebrews chapter 10.
01:43:27: And we're going to be looking specifically at verses 15 through 18. And when you found your place, let's pray together before we begin.
01:43:47: Our Father, we pray that your word may be our focus this morning and may occupy the attention of our minds and of our hearts.
01:43:54: That your Holy Spirit would be our teacher and that your glory would be our immediate concern. We pray that you would remind us again of how deep and how broad and how thorough is your forgiveness and your work for us on the cross.
01:44:09: That has purchased our salvation and that has secured us everlastingly for your glory and for our good.
01:44:16: We pray that you'd help us to appreciate these things that we may live in obedience to you and in loving affection toward our
01:44:22: Lord Jesus Christ who has given Himself for us. He is our God and He is our King and He is the one in His name we pray.
01:44:29: Amen. We've said in the last couple of weeks that we are nearing now the end of the theology section of Hebrews.
01:44:36: That's not to say that the rest of Hebrews doesn't have theology in it. It certainly does. But we're nearing the end of the theological thrust, the central theological point of the book of Hebrews.
01:44:47: As we approach here now the end of chapter 10 or the middle I should say of chapter 10. And this section has been talking about the law and the priesthood and the sacrifices and the old covenant versus the new covenant and what has been accomplished for us in the death of Christ as opposed to what was accomplished under the old covenant by the animal sacrifices.
01:45:06: And we have come to see that examined from every conceivable angle and looked at from every possible direction that the sacrifice of Christ and His work for us far exceeds anything provided under the old covenant.
01:45:19: It is far more glorious. It is far more thorough. It is far more perfect than anything that the
01:45:25: Old Testament could have provided or the old covenant could have provided. It exceeds by mortars of magnitude infinitely so the old covenant with all of its provision of sacrifices and animals and offerings and worship.
01:45:38: And in all of that the glories of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ have become manifest to us if we worked our way through this middle section.
01:45:45: The blessings that accrue to us through Jesus Christ are truly infinite and without measure.
01:45:52: They are infinite blessings. They are not infinite just in the number of blessings. They are infinite in order of the magnitude of those blessings and the provision of what we have been given in salvation in Christ.
01:46:02: I want you to think of it in these terms. If your sin debt was unlimited and eternal and infinite, which it certainly was, which is why an eternity in hell could never pay the debt for your sin, even one sin against an infinitely holy, infinitely righteous, and infinitely benevolent
01:46:18: God who is infinite in all of His qualities and His glories and His beauty, if one sin against Him deserved infinite punishment, and it did, then how much does the nearly infinite number of sins that we have committed against that God, how much punishment does that deserve?
01:46:34: Even one sin is worthy of eternal damnation. And we have sinned not one time and not two times and not ten times, but an infinite number of times.
01:46:43: I shouldn't say an infinite number because there is a number to our sins, but it's a numberless time.
01:46:49: There we go. That's a better word. An innumerable number of sins. An innumerable number of times we have sinned against God.
01:46:56: So we have heaped up eternal damnation upon eternal damnation upon eternal damnation an innumerable number of times.
01:47:04: Well, if even my one sin and all of my sin together is worthy of that kind of punishment, then
01:47:11: I ask you how do you describe the benefit and the blessing of having all of that sin debt wiped away entirely?
01:47:18: How glorious is that? How infinite is that blessing? How eternal is that blessing?
01:47:24: That is an infinite blessing just in and of itself. Just to have an infinite sin debt removed forever is an infinite and eternal blessing.
01:47:32: And that blessing goes on forever and ever. That blessing never ends. And just to have the sin debt wiped away is infinite.
01:47:40: It's difficult to even describe that or circumscribe the description of that blessing. But then you add to it all of the compounded other blessings that we have received.
01:47:50: The blessing of our election and our sanctification and the indwelling of the Spirit. And the blessing of our adoption into the family of God.
01:47:57: The blessing of our fellowship one with another. The ability to approach God and bring to Him our needs and to approach
01:48:03: His throne of grace freely and fully any time that we want. Those are blessings.
01:48:10: And then add to that that moment by moment in heaven for all of eternity, every moment will be an eternal blessing.
01:48:18: Not because there's no time in heaven, but because every blessing that we receive, every moment that we are there, we know we will receive and enjoy everlastingly forever.
01:48:27: We have had an infinite debt wiped away and we have had it replaced with pleasures and joys and delights and glories at the right hand of God forever and ever.
01:48:43: Blessings without number. Blessings without end. How glorious of a provision is that?
01:48:49: And central to all of that, of course, is the forgiveness of sins. Central to all of it is the forgiveness of sins.
01:48:55: Because none of those blessings and none of those glories can be enjoyed or experienced apart from having your sin debt taken away.
01:49:02: So that is central to all of it. Because without the removal of our sin debt, all we deserve is hell.
01:49:08: And all we have to look forward to is hell and the wrath of God. But to have all of that taken away is central to having all of the other blessings heaped upon us.
01:49:16: And just the removal of the sin debt itself is eternal and is infinite. And it is also the central provision of the
01:49:23: New Covenant, which is what we have been looking at here in this central section of the book of Hebrews. The concluding paragraph of this theological treatise in the middle of Hebrews is from verse 11 all the way through the end of verse 18.
01:49:35: And we have noticed a number of the themes that we have been looking at through this middle section of Hebrews, they all kind of come to a head here in this concluding paragraph as he brings together the discussion of the
01:49:45: Old Covenant, the discussion of the New Covenant, the idea of being perfected, sanctification, forgiveness.
01:49:50: It all comes to a head right here in this last concluding paragraph. And so we are looking today at verses 15 and 18.
01:49:58: We looked last week at what it meant to be perfected and what it means that God in Christ has perfected those who are sanctified, verse 14.
01:50:05: So we pick it up at verse 15. And you'll notice, if you look at your Bible, you'll notice that verses 16 and 17 are probably set apart in some sort of a fashion to indicate that they are a quotation.
01:50:16: They're all capitals or they're italics or they're set apart in a poetical prose. You'll notice that because those passages, verse 16 and verse 17, those are quotations from Jeremiah 31.
01:50:26: And they're probably a familiar quotation to you, verse 16. This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the
01:50:32: Lord. I will put my laws upon their heart and on their mind I will write them. He then says, and their sins and their lawless deeds
01:50:39: I will remember no more. Now we looked at that very same quotation back in Hebrews chapter 8, and I would just ask you to turn back there and remind you of what we're looking at there.
01:50:48: Hebrews chapter 8, in verse 7, he talks about the first covenant not being faultless and there being a need for a second.
01:50:55: So verse 8 says, finding fault with them, he says, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
01:51:03: Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant and I did not care for them, says the
01:51:11: Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their minds and I will write them on their hearts.
01:51:19: And I will be their God and they shall be my people. Now you'll notice that that is referenced, that is quoted in chapter 10, verse 15.
01:51:26: Verse 11 of chapter 8, and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen and everyone his brother, saying, know the Lord. For all will know me from the least to the greatest of them.
01:51:34: Verse 12, for I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more. Now turn back to chapter 10, to our passage, beginning at verse 15.
01:51:41: The Holy Spirit also testifies to us for after saying, this is the covenant. You'll notice that that is a quotation from Jeremiah 31, and verse 17 is also a quotation from Jeremiah 31.
01:51:51: Those quotations are also made back in chapter 8. But you'll notice that the author in chapter 10 does not quote the entire passage.
01:51:57: He's somewhat selective. He quotes the part about having the law written upon our hearts, and then he quotes the part about having our sins and our iniquities remembered no more.
01:52:05: There are other parts of those promises that he leaves out. He's being somewhat selective in his quotation, because the author, in drawing all of this to a conclusion, is intending to show that the
01:52:15: New Testament promised these basic provisions that are ours in Christ. Number one, that God has provided for himself a sanctified or a holy people.
01:52:24: Second, that God has provided for himself a forgiven people. And then third, the new covenant has meant the end of sacrifices.
01:52:31: Verse 18, now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. So the author is selectively quoting passages of the new covenant promised in Jeremiah 31 in order to bring together these main themes that he has been driving at all the way through this section.
01:52:47: Number one, God has provided for himself, that is us, a sanctified people, a forgiven people, and then
01:52:53: God himself has brought to an end all the Old Testament sacrifices. Where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no more sacrifice for sins.
01:53:00: So those are going to be our three points as we work our way through here. We will get to all three of those this morning. A sanctified people, a forgiven people, and then the end of sacrifices.
01:53:09: Let's look first of all at a sanctified people. Verse 15 is a quotation from chapter 8, verse 10, regarding the law being written on our hearts.
01:53:21: Verse 17 is a quotation from chapter 8, verse 12. And again, this quotation is shorter because the author doesn't need to repeat everything he said back in chapter 8.
01:53:30: He is simply highlighting the parts that really have to do with the things that he has been talking about in the immediate context, which is number one, that we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
01:53:42: Number two, that we are forgiven by that sacrifice. And then number three, there is no more need for any further sacrifice.
01:53:49: Previously, he used this quotation from Jeremiah 31 to show us that the old covenant has come to an end and is no more, and has been replaced by a new and better covenant.
01:53:57: Here, he is using the quotation from Jeremiah 31 to highlight the provisions of that covenant.
01:54:03: Namely, a sanctified people, a forgiven people, and an end of the Old Testament sacrifices and the animal sacrifices.
01:54:09: Notice that verse 15 begins with the words, and the Holy Spirit also testifies to us.
01:54:16: Here is what I find interesting about that. The author of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah who was quoting what
01:54:22: God said to him, and the author of Hebrews says that Jeremiah's words were the words of the Holy Spirit.
01:54:28: Now, this is a proper and biblical view of Old Testament Scripture. The author quotes
01:54:33: Jeremiah who was quoting what God said to him, and the author of Hebrews calls Jeremiah's words, the words that Jeremiah wrote, the words of the
01:54:41: Holy Spirit. Look at verse 15. The Holy Spirit testifies to us, and then he quotes Jeremiah.
01:54:47: The words of Jeremiah are the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Just as I might point out are the words of Isaiah, and Zechariah, and Haggai, and Malachi, and 1
01:54:57: Kings, and 2 Chronicles. All of the Old Testament text is the testimony of the
01:55:03: Holy Spirit. God is said to be the one speaking in Jeremiah. The author of Hebrews says it is the
01:55:08: Holy Spirit speaking in Jeremiah, which means that the Holy Spirit himself is the
01:55:13: God who spoke that to Jeremiah, and that Jeremiah's writing of what God said to him was in fact the words of the
01:55:20: Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is God, and the Old Testament text is the word of God. Now I ask you, do you have that view of the
01:55:27: Old Testament? Do you have that view of the Old Testament? That the words of Jeremiah are the testimony of the
01:55:34: Holy Spirit? Listen, to you, to us. Now what the text says, and the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, that those words from the
01:55:43: Old Testament were spoken just as much to us as they were to us if we lived in Jeremiah's day.
01:55:50: Yes, they were spoken to Jeremiah, but the author of the Holy Spirit says that those words written to Jeremiah, by Jeremiah, or given to Jeremiah, and written by Jeremiah, those words are the words of the
01:56:00: Holy Spirit spoken to us. Are you familiar enough yourself with the Old Testament text that it would be evident that you view that as the word of God to you?
01:56:09: Or do you make one of the common errors regarding the Old Testament? One of them is to simply say, that half of the book, that first part, that really doesn't have anything to do with me.
01:56:19: I'm a New Testament Christian. I'm going to unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament.
01:56:25: And I'm just going to have the New Testament. I'm a New Testament believer. That Old Testament stuff doesn't really apply to me. It applied to a whole bunch of people a long time ago.
01:56:33: I've got news for you. Your New Testament applied to a whole bunch of people a long time ago as well, 2 ,000 years ago. My Old Testament applied to a whole bunch of people a long time ago, and it's really not for me.
01:56:41: Don't ever make that error. The words of Jeremiah are the words of the Holy Spirit to you.
01:56:48: So get back into the Old Testament. Don't disparage that as the word of God. Don't give that the short shrift, and ignore that.
01:56:55: That is the testimony of the Holy Spirit to us. And by the way, that is the healthy and biblical view of the
01:57:00: Old Testament. Now I want you to notice that the quotation here, as I mentioned earlier, is a shorter quotation.
01:57:05: He puts something in order here, verse 15, the Holy Spirit testifies to us, for after saying, and I'll look at the end of verse 16, he then says, there's an order to what he is putting here.
01:57:15: He quotes one first and then another quotation second, and the purpose of that is simply to highlight two different aspects or two different provisions of the
01:57:23: New Covenant. He's letting us know that he's leaving some stuff out, not because it's unimportant, not because it's not the testimony of the
01:57:30: Holy Spirit, but because the other provisions of the New Covenant are not his focus at this point. His focus on the provisions of the
01:57:35: New Covenant are twofold. Number one, God has provided for himself a sanctified or holy people, and second,
01:57:40: God has provided for himself a forgiven people. We are sanctified and we are forgiven. And those are the two elements of this concluding paragraph that the author is bringing back around to us again here in his quotation of Jeremiah 31.
01:57:52: We are a sanctified people and a forgiven people. Let's deal first of all with the sanctified. Again, we talked about this in verse 10.
01:57:59: Remember up in verse 10 where he says that, a quick quote from memory, by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
01:58:07: By God's will we have been sanctified. What sanctifies us? God set us apart for himself, by himself, unto himself.
01:58:14: Sometime in the past, that is in the offering of Jesus Christ, those for whom he died were set apart as his people by virtue of the fact that Christ died in their stead, in their place, that he paid the price for their sin, they became his people.
01:58:27: So we are a sanctified people. Then in verse 14, by one offering he has perfected forever those who currently are being made holy or currently are in the process of being sanctified.
01:58:37: So there is a past element to sanctification, a present element to sanctification, of course we talked last week about a future element to sanctification, but this sanctifying process applies to these people for whom
01:58:47: Christ has died. So those who are included in the New Testament, this is by the way all one people group that's being described here, really through all of Hebrews, but beginning in verse 10, if you could just notice that there is the same group of people that are sanctified by his offering, also have their sins taken away, verse 11, they are perfected by that one offering, verse 14, they are sanctified by that offering, verse 14, they are in new covenant with him, that's the whole point of the quotation in verse 16, they have the law written on their hearts, verse 16, and they are completely forgiven, verse 17.
01:59:19: It's all one group of people. We don't have one group of people for whom Christ died who end up not ever being forgiven.
01:59:25: It's one group of people that he dies for, that he gives his life for, that he sanctifies, that he makes holy, he makes his bride, he perfects them forever, he secures them, he sanctifies them everlastingly.
01:59:36: At no point between him dying for these people and him glorifying these people are a bunch of people lost in the process.
01:59:43: It is all one group of people that enjoy the blessings secured for them in the death of Christ. So we are a sanctified people, the same group of people all the way through having their sins forgiven and being sanctified by his death, being perfected by his death, all of it is his work, and it is all something provided for under the new covenant.
02:00:03: Verse 16 says, this is the covenant I make with him, after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws upon their heart and on their mind
02:00:09: I will write them. That is the promise of sanctification. This group of people who are included in the new covenant for whom
02:00:17: Christ has died and by whose death he has sanctified them and perfected them, that same group of people has the law of God written on their hearts.
02:00:26: So there is no such thing as an individual included in the new covenant for whom
02:00:31: Christ died, who does not eventually have the law of God written on their hearts. Because all of those for whom he has died, all of those included in that covenant end up enjoying this blessing where the word of God is inscribed on their hearts.
02:00:44: No longer written on tablets of stone as under the old covenant, but instead written upon our hearts.
02:00:50: And this is a central provision of the new covenant, that the law of God would be written on our hearts and thus we would have not only an ability and a knowledge, but a provision by which we might obey the law of God.
02:01:01: Under the old covenant, when the law was written on tablets of stone, that covenant made no provision for the obedience of its people.
02:01:09: In other words, that covenant, all you heard under the old covenant was, It was the righteous requirements of the law and the standard of God that was thundered from Sinai.
02:01:20: But there was no provision in the old covenant by which those who were given that covenant would be able to obey it.
02:01:26: And so all that old covenant did was condemn us and show us the need for a new covenant. But in the new covenant, with the law of God written upon our hearts, suddenly there is a new affection, there is a new desire, there is new ability to obey that law.
02:01:40: Because we don't look externally now to a law of God written on tablets of stone.
02:01:46: Now, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the moral requirements of the law are written upon the hearts of all those who are in the new covenant.
02:01:55: And so we then become a sanctified and obedient people, growing in holiness, because at the moment of salvation, the
02:02:02: Lord himself in the person of the Holy Spirit inscribes his moral character on our hearts. And we have not only now an internal knowledge of the
02:02:10: Holy Spirit and of God's moral law in us by virtue of his dwelling in us, but now we also have an inward renewal and an ability to obey that moral law.
02:02:18: We have new affections. So that now we love the things we once hated and hate the things that we once loved. That's the mark of a new believer.
02:02:26: That is the mark of a new creature. We are new creatures in Christ. And now, by virtue of the new covenant, we have not only the desire to obey, but now we have been given the ability to obey.
02:02:36: And that by the indwelling of the Spirit. And so perfection, or this perfection we talked about in verse 14, we have been perfected, a past tense, a past event that has current ramifications for us or describes also a current situation.
02:02:50: You and I have been perfected, verse 14. That does not become an opportunity or an excuse for sin.
02:02:56: So that a new covenant believer does not say, well, I've already been made perfect, so therefore I can continue sinning. No, that's an impossibility.
02:03:03: Now the person who has been perfected suddenly says, I don't want to sin. Now I want to do righteousness because the moral law of God is written upon my heart.
02:03:11: And now I have a relationship with God and I have an ability to obey and I have a desire to obey because I hunger and thirst for righteousness, which itself is
02:03:18: God's provision for us. So a believer does not say I've been forgiven, then
02:03:24: I can go on sinning. He doesn't say that. And he doesn't say that because that's not the character of a believer.
02:03:30: A believer is one who says, now I know what is right and I have a desire to obey it and I want to obey it and God has provided for me the ability to obey it in the power of the
02:03:37: Holy Spirit and therefore I will strive to obey that command. So God has provided for himself a sanctified and holy people because of what
02:03:46: Christ has done on the cross. He has secured this for his people on his own behalf. Second, a forgiven people, verse 17.
02:03:53: Look at it, in their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. Now this is the distinctive feature of the new covenant.
02:03:59: The old covenant did not provide forgiveness. The old covenant pictured forgiveness. The old covenant described the need for forgiveness.
02:04:04: The old covenant showed what forgiveness would eventually look like when it was secured. It would come through the shedding of the blood of an innocent victim.
02:04:11: That's what the sacrifice is pictured and portrayed. So the old covenant looked forward to the provision of forgiveness but the old covenant and all of the animal sacrifices and the priesthood and the offerings, none of that actually affected forgiveness.
02:04:24: None of it actually provided forgiveness. It only showed that when forgiveness would come it would come through the death of an innocent victim and the shedding of blood.
02:04:31: So as Hebrews 9 .22 says, one may almost say by the law, according to the law, that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
02:04:38: What the old covenant taught us was that forgiveness would be purchased but it would be purchased by the blood of another. A blood of another victim who would give his life as a sacrifice for many and by that blood and by that atonement and by that purchase he would purchase his people and forgive them.
02:04:53: So the means of forgiveness then becomes the death of Christ and not just God willy -nilly ignoring the sins of people.
02:05:01: See, forgiveness is available but it is not because God simply says, well, all that you owe me, I'm just gonna forgive that.
02:05:06: I have no basis for forgiving that. I have no just reason for forgiving that.
02:05:11: I'm just gonna take all of that sin and I'm just gonna put it, bury it down here and pretend as if it is no more. That's not how
02:05:17: God forgives sin. He doesn't forgive sin by forgetting it or ignoring it or perverting justice.
02:05:23: He forgives sin by fulfilling the demands of justice. So the justice that was deserved by that sin has now been fulfilled or met in the person of Christ.
02:05:34: So God forgives sin not simply by ignoring it, not by passing it over and not by pretending as if it never happened.
02:05:40: God forgives sin by meeting the demands of justice for that sin himself in the person of his son so that the righteous requirements of the law that sin be punished are fulfilled and met on the cross.
02:05:54: So that God can be just, he can be righteous and just and he does not have to pervert justice in order to declare righteous the believing sinner even while we were still in a sinning state.
02:06:06: God can be just and he can justify the ungodly because of what Christ has done. So you say, how is it possible for God to just forgive sin, to ignore sin, to treat it as if it has never happened?
02:06:16: He doesn't treat it as if it has never happened. He treats it as if we have sinned that sin but then he meets the demand of justice for that sin by sending his son to die on a cross.
02:06:26: He himself taking a bodily form coming and living a perfect life, dying a perfect death on the cross and in that death on the cross he fulfills the demands of his own justice so that justice is satisfied.
02:06:37: So that God can then say that sin is forgiven not because he has ignored it but because he has paid for it. And when the sin is paid for then he can be just in forgiving sin and excusing that debt.
02:06:48: And that is how God forgives sin. And I love how it is described here in the passage. Verse 17, And their sins and their lawless deeds
02:06:54: I will remember no more. Those who currently enjoy the blessings of the new covenant have this confidence.
02:07:01: And I want you to think about how infinitely glorious this is. Those who enjoy the new covenant have this promise. God will never again bring your sin up.
02:07:11: Ever. Have you ever sinned against somebody?
02:07:17: Maybe even grievously? And then you're in the presence of that person and you're reconciled, it's there.
02:07:24: You know they remember it. You know you remember it. Of course you know you remember it. If you'd forgotten it you wouldn't know you remembered it.
02:07:29: But you remember it and you know that they remembered it. And then you always kind of wonder is this going to come up over dinner?
02:07:38: Is this going to come up while we're driving to the store? Is he going to bring this up? Is she going to bring this up? Is it awkward for me not to bring this up?
02:07:46: You know one of the most glorious blessings of the new covenant is that God will remember your sin no more. He will never ever bring up any single sin you have ever committed.
02:07:56: He treats it as if it never happened. Not because he's denying justice but because he's satisfied justice.
02:08:03: And there is no need for him to ever bring it up. That is beautiful language that is used to describe the forgiveness of sins.
02:08:10: He remembers your sins and your lawless deeds no more. Never again to be brought up. This is how the
02:08:17: Old Testament, this is the language the Old Testament often uses to describe the forgiveness of sins. I'll give you a few references. Psalm 25 verse 7.
02:08:23: Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your love and kindness, remember me for your goodness sake,
02:08:29: O Lord. Don't remember my transgressions, just remember me. Don't forget me. Forget my transgressions but don't, forget my transgressions but don't forget me.
02:08:37: Remember me, just don't remember anything I've ever done. That was the prayer of Psalm 25 verse 2. Sorry, verse 7.
02:08:43: Psalm 79 verse 8. Do not remember the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your compassion come quickly to meet us for we are brought very low.
02:08:50: Isaiah 43 verse 25. I, even I am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins.
02:08:58: Isaiah 64 verse 9. Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord, nor remember my iniquity forever.
02:09:04: Ezekiel 18, 22. All his transgressions which he has committed will not be remembered against him.
02:09:09: That's the language that is used of God forgetting sin. And speaking of unforgiveness, then it's just the opposite.
02:09:16: For those who are not forgiven of their sins in Jesus Christ, the language in scripture is the opposite. I will remember their sins.
02:09:23: I will remember their iniquities. So for instance, Hosea 7 verse 2.
02:09:29: And they do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. There's a rebellious and iniquitous people who went on sinning and God's condemnation of them is they continue to sin, not realizing in their hearts that I remember every last thing that they do.
02:09:44: I remember all their iniquity. Hosea 8, 13. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish them for their sins.
02:09:52: Hosea 9 verse 9. They've gone deep in depravity as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity.
02:09:57: He will punish their sins. The defining feature, the defining blessing for those who are in the new covenant is that God remembers our sins no more.
02:10:07: For those who are outside of Jesus Christ and die in unrepentant sin without forgiveness, the defining feature of your, if you're in that condition, that situation, of your relationship with the
02:10:18: Lord is that he will never, ever forget your sin. For those in Christ, he will never bring up any sin we've ever committed.
02:10:28: For those who are outside of Christ, the only thing God will ever bring up is every sin you've ever committed because that is the basis of your judgment.
02:10:38: He will judge you according to the deeds that you have done, all of which are written down in a book. God doesn't need a book.
02:10:44: He can remember them all and he will remember them all for all of eternity so that a million years from now when you are suffering the torments of eternal damnation, which you rightly deserve and you justly deserve, you might ask, a million years from now, has
02:10:57: God forgotten any crossword I have spoken, any lustful thought that I have had, any work of iniquity that I have ever done?
02:11:05: No, a million years from now, he will not forget a single iniquity. A million years from now,
02:11:11: Christian, you'll be able to say, God never brought up a single sin I've committed because none of our sins define our relationship with God at this point.
02:11:22: Now, listen, God doesn't literally forget sins. Can we understand that, what that means?
02:11:28: We're not talking about literally forgetting sin. In heaven, I don't even know if this would be possible, but in heaven, if I brought up my own sin, it's not like God would say, what?
02:11:37: What do you mean? I don't even know what you're talking about. I forgot about that. It's not that they exit his memory. It's not that he literally forgets them and cannot recall them.
02:11:45: It's that he doesn't recall them. It is that in terms of our relationship to him and how we approach him and he deals with us, it is as if they have completely been erased from his memory bank.
02:11:56: He remembers them no more. He casts them into the depths of the sea. As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our sins from his mind and so far has he removed our sins from us.
02:12:06: So he puts them away. He casts them away and if he wanted to, if he desired to, he could bring them up and give us a list of every sin that we have committed.
02:12:14: But in terms of our relationship with the Lord and how he approaches us and deals with us in Christ, it is as if we have never sinned or as if he has forgotten every last thing we have ever done because he will never bring it up again.
02:12:26: I've had people come to me and say, look man, I sinned against you. I said such and such when we were together here a couple months ago and I felt really bad about that and they come up and they say to me and sometimes you know what my response is?
02:12:37: I don't even remember that conversation. I say that to my wife all the time. I don't even remember that conversation. I really don't even remember what you think was a sin against me.
02:12:45: It's completely gone from my mind. It's not that it didn't happen. It's that I totally forgot about it. I either didn't catch it or I caught it and thought no big deal and it just passed from my mind.
02:12:55: I've had situations in my life in ministry where things happened in the early years of our ministry and then something will happen and I think remember that person?
02:13:01: Remember what they did before they called me all those names and left? What was that? And I have totally forgotten those things.
02:13:08: Now if I really wanted to sit down and drudge it all up, I probably could but I'm intent about trying to forget.
02:13:15: Now God doesn't try to forget. God doesn't try to do anything. God does. What does he do? He just forgets but not literally.
02:13:22: He just puts them out of his mind and never brings them up again. How can he do that? Because justice was satisfied and if justice is satisfied and forgiveness is granted, there is nothing to bring up ever.
02:13:40: That is how God deals with it. Now I ask you this sinner, if you're impenitent and you do not know
02:13:45: Christ and you are outside of him, I ask you this, do you have your sins forgiven? Do you know that? Do you know that God has forgiven you of your sins because you have recognized your blasphemy, your lying, your fornication, your lustful thoughts, your idolatry, your gossip, your slander, the ill use of your tongue, the fantasies in your head, all of those sins you have committed,
02:14:07: God knows all of them in thought, word and deed. Every last imagination, every deed done in darkness, he remembers it all.
02:14:13: Do you know for a fact that they are forgiven in Jesus Christ because of what he has done? Have you come to him and repented of your sin and can you say today that because of what
02:14:21: Christ has done, you have turned from your sin and you have believed solely and only upon the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation and that all your sins are taken away, that justice has been satisfied because Christ died in your place and you have responded to that in the way that God demands, you respond to that by repentance and faith.
02:14:37: Can you say that? Do you know that your sins are forgiven? If you do not, I promise you, if you die today outside of Jesus Christ in an unforgiven state,
02:14:46: God will never forget any of your iniquities. And if you are in Jesus Christ, I promise you, if you die today in him,
02:14:53: God will never bring up any of your iniquities because he has promised your sins and your lawless deeds, he will remember no more.
02:15:00: Why? Because you were perfected forever in the death of Jesus Christ, that's why. Not because you haven't done anything that deserves punishment.
02:15:09: And not because God has forgotten what you have done and it just skipped his mind, but because he remembers all your iniquities and he has laid them all upon the person of Christ so that in your place he died and justice has been satisfied and then he can declare you righteous.
02:15:25: Not because of anything you've done, but because of what somebody else did in your place. So God has provided for himself a sanctified people, a forgiven people, in verse 18, the end of sacrifices.
02:15:36: Verse 18, Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. This flows naturally from the idea of forgiveness and sanctification that we have looked at here in this passage.
02:15:44: There's a logical argument that the author is making here and he's made the argument two different ways and he's actually argued both directions the same point.
02:15:52: I want to point out how he has done this. First, the author has made the logical argument that if forgiveness has been granted and if it has been purchased and provided for in the death of Christ, then there is no need for any offering to take place after the death of Christ.
02:16:06: In fact, that one offering is evidence of its effectiveness. He has made this point. Because Christ has died one time, that one offering, and God is not required of him to make multiple offerings or to come back and offer sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice, the one offering is evidence of its effectiveness and its sufficiency.
02:16:25: And so that one offering shows that it is sufficient and if it is sufficient then that means forgiveness has been granted and if forgiveness has been granted and forgiveness has been paid for, then there is no further need for any offering for sin to go on.
02:16:38: Now, he has argued the same thing but from the reverse, from a different angle. Because earlier, he pointed to the animal sacrifices and he said that the repetition of the animal sacrifices was evidence of their ineffectiveness and their ineffectiveness is due to the fact that the animal sacrifices could never take away sins.
02:16:55: In fact, he made that point at the beginning of chapter 10 for the law, verse 1, since it is only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of the things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year after year, make perfect those who draw near.
02:17:09: Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered? Because the worshipers having once been cleansed would no longer have had consciousness of sin but in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
02:17:24: So what does the author said? With the animal sacrifices there's multiple and repeated animal sacrifices.
02:17:31: That's evidence that they aren't doing the trick because if they were accomplishing any kind of salvation or atonement then there would come a point where the animal sacrifices would no longer be offered.
02:17:40: But the animal sacrifices continued to be offered which was evidence that they were not forgiving sin. The sacrifice of Christ on the other hand was offered one time.
02:17:47: The fact that it was offered only once was evidence of its effectiveness and if it was effective then it has purchased forgiveness and if forgiveness has been granted, if forgiveness has been made available in that one sacrifice and by that one sacrifice because it was effective and because it was sufficient no further sacrifice is necessary.
02:18:06: That is the end of animal sacrifices. That is the end of all the sacrifices of the Old Testament. It is the end of all necessity for any kind of sacrifice if indeed forgiveness has been granted.
02:18:19: Christ by His one sacrifice has done what all the Old Testament sacrifices could never do. Now, if the sacrifice is repeated then it can only be because one is not enough.
02:18:29: Right? You follow me on this? If the sacrifice is repeated it can only be because that one time was not enough. It didn't do the trick, didn't purchase salvation, didn't accomplish redemption, didn't perfect anyone.
02:18:39: This is the argument of the author all the way through chapter 10. The multiple sacrifices are evidence that it did not perfect anyone but if in the death of Jesus you have been perfected then
02:18:50: I ask you this, what further need is there of any other sacrifice? Any animal sacrifices?
02:18:57: If everything you need has been provided finally and fully in the person of Christ and by His work then what are you going to do?
02:19:07: Another animal sacrifice? Do you need to do anything else to atone for your sins? To make payment for your sins?
02:19:14: There's nothing else you can do. If the sacrifice of Christ is sufficient you need no further sacrifice.
02:19:21: That's verse 18. Where there is forgiveness that's the release of a debt where there is forgiveness of these things that's the sins and the lawless deeds mentioned in verse 17 where there is forgiveness of these things there is no longer any offering for sin.
02:19:33: That statement in verse 18 is the concluding sentence of this entire theological section in the book of Hebrews.
02:19:41: That's the last sentence. Where there is forgiveness of these things there is no longer any offering for sin.
02:19:47: It's all over. All the sacrifices are over. Why? Because of what Christ has done.
02:19:54: He paid for the sins of all his people. Now let me give you three quickly three implications of this.
02:20:01: Number one this would say to the Hebrew Christians who were reading this that there was no need for them to return to any of the
02:20:07: Old Testament sacrifices. We can tell by reading the book of Hebrews that the author is writing or speaking to a group of Christians Hebrew Christians who had embraced
02:20:16: Christ many of them genuinely some of them superficially and were not really believers they had embraced
02:20:22: Christ in some sense but with one foot over here in the church and in Christianity they were looking back to the
02:20:29: Old Testament the smells and the bells and the whistles and all of the features of the old covenant that they had grown up with and they were looking at that saying but we only have one sacrifice and they're offering hundreds of animals a day over there we only have one high priest they have a whole priesthood over there we only have
02:20:43: Jesus and him alone they've got all the blood and the sacrifices and the tabernacle and the temple and all the vessels of it over there
02:20:48: I'd really like to kind of leave if I could just keep a hold of this and go back and sort of grab what
02:20:54: I grew up with and sort of bring them together or you had Christians who were saying or people who were saying since I've come to Christ it has cost me a lot my whole family has left me
02:21:03: I don't have a job people are persecuting me they hate me because of my profession of faith in Christ if I could just go back and be part of that system which
02:21:10: I was part of years ago I would be loved again by that whole community and so there were people even in the first century who were longingly looking back to that and the author of Hebrews is intending to say this if you have
02:21:24: Christ there is no need for any further sacrifice don't look back nevertheless don't even even more so don't go back to that there's nothing in that that is provided that provides you anything that Jesus Christ has not provided in his death and in his sacrifice the second implication of this is that you
02:21:43: Christian today can rest in his accomplishment everything you need for life and godliness is provided for you in the death of Christ and in scripture everything you need you can rest in the fact that all of your sins are forgiven from now and forever because of what
02:22:01: Christ has done all of it was laid on him he has provided in that perfecting death your salvation your sanctification and your eternal security everlastingly why?
02:22:11: because he died in your stead and he will not lose you he will not forsake you he will not abandon you he will not forget you he'll forget your sins but he'll never forget you and there's a third implication and it is this that any further offering for sin listen to me carefully is an affront to the work of Christ any further offering for sin is an affront to the work of Christ and they say
02:22:39: Jim you sounded really serious when you said that as if there was some danger that any of us were going to go home and offer a sacrifice this afternoon for our sin there's no danger in that happening
02:22:51: I don't know all of you really well but I'm pretty certain that there would be no animals offered for sin this afternoon after you left here pretty certain of that so why did
02:23:01: I say listen carefully to this fact that any further offering for sin is an affront to the work of Christ because as Christians we can do two things one of them is something that probably a lot of people here might be prone to do and that is to think that we need to do something to pay for our sin to make up for our sin or something additional just to make ourselves feel good about the sin that we've done some cost we have to bear something to make us right before God and I'm here to tell you that nothing else needs to be done other than what
02:23:27: Christ has done but second this fact that any further offering for sin is an affront to the sacrifice and the work of Christ that is something we need to keep in mind as we talk about the
02:23:39: Roman Catholic view of the Mass because their view of the Mass is that the
02:23:44: Mass or the Eucharist when they participate in communion they view that as an unbloody sacrifice offered again and again week after week every time it is done next week
02:23:56: I'm going to show you what the Roman Catholic Church believes about the offering of the Mass the sacrifice of the
02:24:02: Mass and I'm going to show you that from the book of Hebrews there is no way at all that you can square what the
02:24:07: Roman Catholic Church teaches about the sacrifice of Christ with that which the author of Hebrews teaches about the sacrifice of Christ and we'll save that for next week let's bow our heads
02:24:18: Father we are grateful again for the blessing that we have of salvation in Christ everything we need you have provided so thoroughly so fully so abundantly more than we could ask or even think more than we could have ever imagined when we first came to faith in Christ you have given to us all for your glory all for your namesake and it has been to our good and to our benefit and blessing and so we thank you in the name of Christ who has done all of this for us may you be praised and glorified and honored both now and forever
02:24:50: Amen Please stand It's Jesus my
02:26:12: Lord He taketh my burden away
02:26:33: My soul in the clothes
02:26:39: Of dry thirsty land He hideth up to His arm
02:26:49: And covers me there With His hand
02:27:02: When clothed in this Brightness Transported I rise
02:27:08: To meet Him In clouds of the sky
02:27:14: His perfect salvation His wonderful love
02:27:20: I'll shout With the millions on high
02:27:26: He hideth my soul In the cleft of the rock
02:27:32: That shadows Of dry thirsty land
02:27:38: He hideth my life In the depths of His love
02:27:44: And covers me there With His hand