The Bible on Inspiration, Part 1

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The New Covenant, Part 2 – Hebrews 8:6-7

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2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning of verse 14, you, however, continue in the things you have learned to become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

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All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

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And then in chapter four, Paul writes this, the very next passage, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word.

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Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.

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But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry. Oftentimes we don't connect those two passages, the passage about the inspiration of scripture, and the passage about preaching the word, but they are connected.

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It is the preaching of the word, which is the natural logical conclusion of believing that scripture is inspired.

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If we believe it's God breathed, then we're gonna handle it and treat scripture in a certain way, and it will have a certain preeminence inside the meeting of the people of God.

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All right, let's begin with prayer, and then we will get on with our lesson. Father, we commit our time and our attention and our minds and hearts to you, even now at the beginning of this class and this lesson, we pray that you would help us to think clearly and rightly concerning your word, help us to hold it in high regard as you do, and to view scripture in the light of what scripture says concerning itself.

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May you be honored through my teaching, and our time, our study, and our thoughts and reflections here this morning.

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Give us attentive hearts to that end, that you would transform us by your word, and equip us and encourage us together to be ready for every good deed.

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May you accomplish that in our hearts, the hearts of your people, through the power of your spirit we ask in Christ's name. Amen. All right, we are in lesson three, what the

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Bible claims, so we have looked in lesson two at the doctrine of inspiration proper, that is defining what inspiration means and the restrictions of what we mean by inspiration.

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I gave you some clarifications on the subject of inspiration and we contrasted a biblical view of inspiration,

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God's word, with a modernist view, a neo -Orthodox view, and a demythologizing neo -Orthodox view. And then we talked about verbal inspiration and plenary inspiration, and so today in lesson three, we're turning our attention to what the

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Bible claims concerning itself. How many times do you think scripture says that it is the word of God?

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How many, what would you think that number is? How many times does scripture make the claim that it is the word of God? 600,

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Lanny says 600. How many? Oh, 1 ,000. So she's going after the showcase, she's going just above Lanny, hoping to win the prize.

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Lanny, so you get 1 ,000. Anybody else? 10 ,000, all right.

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Peter? What? 140?

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That's oddly specific. Okay. The Bible claims to be the word of God 3 ,800 times.

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So you went over the showcase over here and Carol would get it by saying 600. No, what'd you say, 1 ,000?

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She got it by saying 1 ,000. So the claim that scripture is the word of God and that the written book is

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God's word is not an occasional claim in scripture, something that is mentioned a couple of times.

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It's not something that is an ambiguous allusion. It is a clear and unmistakable claim to divine authority.

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And in order to communicate that scripture is the word of God, the Bible uses phrases like this. Thus says the Lord. The Lord said.

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The word of the Lord came unto him and said. Those are the phrases used over and over throughout scripture that indicate that scripture claims to be

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God's word. So we need to keep this in mind. In order to avoid the charge that is sometimes raised against Christians, that was brought up a couple of weeks ago,

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Ken brought it up, how do we avoid the charge that our belief in the inspiration in God's word is circular reasoning?

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Sometimes Christians argue this way. They say the Bible is the word of God, so everything it says is true.

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Now how do you know that? Well, because the Bible says it. But how do you know that that is true?

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Because the Bible is the word of God and God can only speak the truth. But how do you know the

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Bible is the word of God? Because the Bible says it. You see, we get into this endless loop, round and around and around.

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There is a sense in which we concede the ground of the circular reasoning argument and say, you're right, the

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Bible does claim to be the word of God. We don't deny that. That's not how we get out of the circular argument charge against us believing in the inspiration of Scripture.

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That's not how we avoid that. We avoid it in two other ways. First of all, we would point out that when we're talking about the

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Bible claiming to be the word of God, we're not talking about one monolithic book written by one human author that makes this claim.

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We're actually talking about 40 different independent authors writing over the course of 1 ,500 years, composing 66 different books that make this claim about one another.

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In other words, we have Peter saying Paul is inspired, Paul saying Luke is inspired, Luke saying that Paul is inspired.

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We have Jesus saying the Old Testament prophets are inspired. We have people in the Old Testament saying that they were inspired and that others are inspired.

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These are claims that Scripture makes within itself regarding, so it's not one claim just in a circle like this.

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It's multiple people pointing to divine revelation, different elements and aspects of divine revelation and making the claim that it's they or it speaks for God.

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So that's one way of avoiding the circular argument. The other way of avoiding the circular argument charge is to admit that Scripture claims to be the

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Word of God, but then to say, but that is not our only evidence or our only reason for believing that Scripture is the

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Word of God. Yes, Scripture does claim to be the Word of God, and so we affirm that, but we look at Scripture from an external vantage point and we say, is there evidence within Scripture itself that it is the

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Word of God? That make sense? So we're not just, our only appeal is not just to what Scripture said.

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We do appeal to that, but that's not our only appeal. Our others appeals would be, it makes the claim of itself, and now we have to ask, do we have rational, reasonable, historical, legitimate, logical reason for believing that what

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Scripture says concerning itself is true? In other words, if this book comes from God, we would expect certain things to be true of it.

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We expect it to have certain qualities, certain characteristics. There would be certain evidences that wouldn't, our only evidence wouldn't just be that it claims to be that, but we would have other evidences that we would point to as well.

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So we ask the question, does this book contain evidence internally that it comes from God? Is there evidence outside the book that it comes from God?

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And in other words, we investigate the claim to see if it is indeed true that the Bible is the Word of God. We acknowledge the

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Bible claims to be that. Now we have to investigate that claim and say, do we have reason to believe that what it says is true?

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It would be as if I said to you, if somebody said to you, the president lives in the White House.

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That's a claim regarding an occupant of the White House, correct? How would you determine whether or not that is true?

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Well, you might go to the White House, look inside the windows, if you could get up close enough without being shot, look inside the windows to see if there is evidence that that claim is true.

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That's what we do with scripture. The Bible claims to be the Word of God. What we're gonna look at it and see, is there evidence or reason that we would believe other than just its testimony that it is in fact the

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Word of God? There is an element of faith whereby we say, I believe that the testimony of scripture concerning itself is true.

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It gives the evidence that it is a divine book, that is true, but I also believe it because this is

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God's Word and he says it. So there is an element in which, yeah, I do fall prey to circular reasoning partially, but that's not the only reason

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I believe scripture to be the Word of God. It does make that claim of itself and I'm fine with that. Rick, did you have a question?

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I was gonna... Yeah. Yeah, and that's one of the, he says, all things exist just like scripture says they would.

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And that's one of the evidences that scripture is the Word of God is that it does rightly assess everything that we observe with our natural senses concerning reality and human life and the human condition, et cetera.

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All right, so if the Bible is the Word of God, then it must claim to be so. See, the fact that the Bible claims to be the

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Word of God is not a mark against it, that's circular reasoning, because if the Bible is the Word of God, then it must make that claim of itself.

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If the Bible never claimed to be the Word of God, we would be irrational and illogical and without any justification for believing that it is the

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Word of God. War and Peace or Shakespeare's Hamlet does not claim to be scripture, doesn't claim to be the

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Word of God. I mean, I have a huge road, a huge mountain to climb in front of me if I have to try and prove to you that Hamlet is scripture, that Hamlet is divinely inspired, because Hamlet never makes that claim.

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And if scripture never made that claim, then we would have no reason to even ask the question, is this indeed scripture? So it must make that claim.

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Scripture has to make that claim of itself. But the fact that scripture makes that claim of itself is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition.

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Because there are other books that also claim to be the Word of God, right? There are. There are other books that claim to be the

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Word of God. The Mormons have three of them. Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Book of Mormon. These are books that they claim are scripture.

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These are books that claim to be from God. The Muslims claim the Quran comes from God. The Hindus or Buddhists, Hindus, I think it is, that claim the

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Bhagavad Gita comes from, that is the Word of God. So these are books that also claim divine origin, but we don't accept those books as having divine origin.

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Because though the claim that it is the Word of God is a necessary claim, it is not sufficient to prove that it is the

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Word of God. If it were sufficient to prove that it is the Word of God, then any book claiming to be the Word of God would be what? The Word of God.

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So we don't accept every claim of every book that claims to be the Word of God. We have to ask other questions.

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Does it give evidence internally and externally that it is indeed the Word of God? All right. That was all under number one, what the

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Bible says about itself. If you didn't take any notes there, I understand why, because it was kind of a rambling introduction. The second part, number two, the

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Old Testament claims of divine inspiration. So let's look at claims that scripture makes concerning itself, so we can understand how it is that scripture claims to be the

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Word of God. Deuteronomy 4 .2, this is a claim, first of all, letter A, we have claims that prophets spoke for God and wrote

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God's words. Like Deuteronomy 4 .2, Moses said, God said to Moses, you shall not add to the word which

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I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. So there's a claim right there that what

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Moses wrote was God's commandments in the Pentateuch. Deuteronomy 18, God promised

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I'll raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth. This is a claim that prophets spoke for God.

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God put his words into the mouths of the prophets. Amos 3, verse eight, a lion has roared, who will not fear?

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The Lord has spoken, who can but prophesy? This is Amos' claim to be a divine spokesman and to speak for God.

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Again, these are the claims that prophets of old spoke from God. So this claim that prophets spoke from God would apply not just to Amos and not just to Moses, but it would apply to Isaiah and Jeremiah, who also claimed to have spoken

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God's word and to have written God's word. Letter B, there are specific claims that specific men spoke from God.

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Moses made this claim in Leviticus 1 .1. The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, Leviticus 11 .1,

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the Lord spoke again to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, and these men quoted the word of God as God spoke it to them.

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Joshua claimed to speak from God, 24, verse 26. Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God and he took a large stone and set it up under the oak that was in the sanctuary of the

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Lord. The writings of Joshua were confirmed and viewed as scripture from the time that Joshua finished writing the book of Joshua.

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David said in 2 Samuel 23 .2, the spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was on my tongue. Concerning Jeremiah, Daniel said this, in the first year of his reign,

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I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolation of Jerusalem, namely 70 years.

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So there's Daniel claiming that Jeremiah spoke from God. Remember when I talked about you have 40 different authors writing over the course of 1 ,500 years, composing 66 different books, and each of them make this claim concerning not just themselves, but also others?

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Here's an example of that. You have Daniel pointing to Jeremiah, saying this was the word of the Lord spoke through Jeremiah the prophet saying this.

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So we have evidences that the prophets in general spoke from God. That is the claim. We also have claims that specific men spoke from God.

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Job in Job 38 verse one, then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said. By the way, this is just a sampling because as I mentioned, we have 3 ,800 different such references to these men speaking from God in scripture.

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Now there are some books that have no explicit claim to divine inspiration, and I've listed their five groups of books there in your notes.

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Let me just deal with each one of these because this is true that there are these five books which make no explicit claim to divine inspiration.

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Does the fact that a book in scripture does not claim to be scripture, is that in itself proof that it's not scripture?

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No, it's not, right? Just because the book does not claim to be scripture is not proof that it is not scripture.

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Just because a book claims to be from God is not proof that it is from God because you could pull out apocryphal writings and books that are not in our

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New Testament and our Old Testament, which might claim to be from God, but that in itself is not sufficient proof to give evidence that it actually is divinely inspired and written by God.

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So there are five books here or groups of books that do not make any explicit claim to inspiration.

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The book of Ruth, for instance, was likely written by Samuel as part of Judges. That's the best textual evidence.

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It was written by Samuel as part of the book of Judges. The book of Esther gives an authoritative reason for celebrating

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Purim, which is an implicit claim to authority. It's not an explicit claim to authority, but in the book of Esther, you have at the end of the book an explanation for why the

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Jews celebrated the Feast of Purim. And that claim that this is why

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God gave us the Feast of Purim, this is why we celebrate Purim, is itself an implicit claim to a source of authority for the celebration of Purim.

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The book of Song of Solomon was part of Solomon's writings, and Solomon wrote and spoke for God. You have that in the book of Ecclesiastes and in the book of Proverbs.

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The book of Lamentations was written by Jeremiah, who was a prophet, and we've already seen that Daniel calls Jeremiah a prophet and that Jeremiah claimed to have spoke from God.

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And then Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles were also probably written by Ezra. There's no name or script given to any of those books that would indicate who the author is, but we believe that Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles were written by Ezra or Nehemiah, and those men were, though they're not called prophets, they were prophets in a function, in that they did mediate for the people and function as prophets during the time of Nehemiah.

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During Israel's captivity period. Okay, so those are five books that make no explicit claims to divine inspiration, but those are books which are written by people who we do have reason to believe did speak from God and write for God, and that's why those books were accepted in Scripture from the very beginning.

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Yeah, Bryce. Oh, but didn't you say that just because it was written by someone who hasn't, the other people can hold to the opinions?

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Yep, so Bryce's question is, didn't I say, and I did, that just because the book is written by somebody who was inspired in writing other things, that that doesn't necessarily mean that they were inspired in everything that they wrote, and that is true.

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So that would cut against the acceptance of those books, except that there are other reasons why we accept those books as Scripture, which we'll get into later when we talk about issues of canonicity.

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Okay, so if, for instance, we had in the New Testament references to some of these books as authoritative books by Jesus or the apostles, that would be a reason why we would accept it as inspired.

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Yeah, we have no reference in any of the New Testament amongst any of the apostolic writers or speakers of them quoting from the apocryphal books, the books that the

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Roman Catholics add in the Old Testament period. There's no references, Jesus or the apostles never cited them as sources of authority or as the word of God.

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Therefore, we reject those books, even though they might claim to speak for God. Emily, did you have a question?

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Yeah. Yeah, okay, gotcha.

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So to restate it, I said earlier, it's a necessary claim that Scripture must necessarily claim to come from God, but it's not a sufficient claim.

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So is that a contradiction, then, to say that these books don't necessarily fit that necessary condition of having an explicit claim to be from God?

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Does that disqualify them? And I would say, as a whole, when I make that statement that it's a necessary claim,

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I'm speaking of Scripture as a whole, what we accept as canonical books, because Philemon does not make any claim to divine inspiration, either.

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That make sense, the New Testament book of Philemon? And yet, we accept that as inspired

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Scripture because of other canonical considerations. So it is a, I'm just speaking in terms of if Scripture made,

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I'm speaking in a general term, not a specific term when I make that claim, that it's a necessary claim, not a sufficient one. If Scripture as a whole made no claims to divine inspiration, we would have no reason to accept this random collection of books.

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But our inclusion of certain books that make no explicit claim is not necessarily based upon the fact that it claims to be the word of God.

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There are other factors that we would consider as part of, whether we would accept that as part of the canon or not. Make sense?

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It doesn't make sense. It's something we will touch on later, yep.

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The other qualifiers. What makes a book canonical? Why do we accept the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and not the

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Gospel of Thomas? That's what, we will cover that later on. Okay? All right, let's look at number three.

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New Testament claims regarding Old Testament inspiration. Remember I said that one of the ways that we escape the circular reasoning charge is that we recognize that we have various individuals who spoke for God and gave evidences that they spoke for God, claiming or making statements regarding other people's authority or divine inspiration.

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So it's not just us claiming that this one source is written by God, it's multiple people making multiple claims concerning each other as well.

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All right, letter A, the New Testament affirms the inspiration of the Old Testament as a whole, which I just read to you, 2 Timothy 3, 316, all scriptures given by inspiration of God.

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Now, by that, Paul is speaking generally all scripture, and I think that he would include his own writings in there because you're gonna see later on,

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Paul, we have evidence that Paul believed that in some instances he was writing scripture, that it came from God, he spoke with the divine authority.

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So Paul would include his writings as part of all scripture, but in the context of writing to Timothy, I think

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Paul probably specifically has in mind necessarily the Old Testament itself, the Old Testament scriptures.

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And there is evidence that the apostles, because they didn't quote from the Apocrypha, there is evidence that the apostles and the

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Jews of the first century understood exactly which 39 books constituted their Old Testament canon, which came from God and which didn't.

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So when Paul affirms the inspiration of the Old Testament as a whole, he can use the phrase all scripture is given by inspiration of God.

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Then we have John 10, 35. If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken, there's

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Jesus describing scripture, quoting from Psalm, what Psalm is that, 91?

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90, anybody know off the top of their head? No, you don't, sorry.

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There's Jesus quoting from the Psalms, and he affirms to them, the Old Testament saints, that the word of God came to them, and he's quoting the

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Psalms there. Mark 7, verse 13, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down in you many things such as that.

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There's Jesus criticizing the Old Testament, the Pharisees, yeah? Psalm 82, Psalm 82.

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I was in the right, I was in the right area. Psalm 82, so there you have in Mark 7,

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Jesus referring to the Pharisees invalidating the word of God, which is basically what they were doing to the

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Old Testament Mosaic code through their traditions. Romans 9, 6, Paul says, is it not as though the word of God has failed, for they're not

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Israel, who are descended from Israel, who's referring to the Old Testament as a whole. You could get this also in Hebrews 4 and Luke 24 and Romans 3, verse 2.

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So let it be the New Testament, look at the New Testament view of the Old Testament. Jesus quoted the Old Testament as authoritative scripture in Matthew 19 and Matthew 4.

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Jesus cited the existence of Adam and Eve, a historical Adam and Eve and the events in the garden, and God bringing them together in a covenant of marriage as literal history, and Jesus affirmed that that was at the beginning, not millions of years after the first creative event, but at the very beginning of creation,

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Adam and Eve existed. Jesus cited Noah's flood and what went on in the days of Noah as actual, literal history.

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Jesus cited David as an actual, literal, historical figure with a kingdom. Jesus referred to the

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Old Testament prophets of men who lived and spoke from God, and Jesus affirmed that Jonah was swallowed by a fish, a large fish, not necessarily a whale, but a large fish, and that he survived those three days and came out, and that that was a symbol or a type of shadow of his own resurrection.

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So those events from the Old Testament that Jesus quoted from, and he quoted from Deuteronomy and affirmed that what

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Moses wrote came from God, that was Jesus's view of the Old Testament, that it spoke from God, that it came from God, and that these men spoke from God.

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Number two, you have Paul quoting the Old Testament as authoritative. Paul refers to the Mosaic Code, the

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Ten Commandments, and says, children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right, and this is the only commandment given with a promise, and he recites that as scripture and as authority, does the same thing in Acts chapter 13.

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In fact, the apostles, when they speak of Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies, when they quote the prophets, they quote the prophets as those who spoke from God.

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Read through the book of Acts, and you'll see quotation after quotation from the Old Testament, where they cite the

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Old Testament prophets and said, this is what God said, and since God said it, it must come to pass, and therefore, what has happened has come to pass because this was

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God's word. You should have expected it to be fulfilled just as God wrote it, and so they cited the Old Testament as authoritative, divine revelation that had to be fulfilled.

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That's how Jesus and the apostles viewed the Old Testament. And then there are Old Testament events cited in the New Testament.

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You see it in Luke chapter four, Luke 17, and Matthew 12, and I mentioned some of those just in Jesus' reference to those events.

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You have the apostles also. Peter mentions the flood in 1 Peter chapter three.

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He mentions Noah and his household being saved, and the building of the ark. You have Paul mentioning

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Moses coming out of the wilderness, the children of Israel coming out of the exodus, all the way through the

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New Testament. Our New Testament is a book that cites and references the Old Testament over 350 times, direct quotations from the

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Old Testament. And in all of these instances, they quoted the Old Testament as authoritative, actual history, and divinely inspired scripture.

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Remember, we talked about what is necessary to have the doctrine of inspiration as divine causality, human agency, and written authority.

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Well, the Old Testament, the New Testament apostles and Jesus quoted from the Old Testament as a written authoritative document, believing it to be divinely inspired.

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And this, I would remind you, they did not do for the Apocrypha. They did not do that for the

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Apocrypha. All right, are there any quotes before we move on? Or sorry, any questions before we move on?

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I just gave you a bunch of quotes. Are there any questions before we move on? We clear on all that so far? Okay, so all we're doing is looking at the internal evidence that these people believed that one another spoke from God.

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The New Testament claims of divine inspiration. So if we establish that the Old Testament claims to be the word of God, which it does, and then we establish that the

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New Testament authors viewed the Old Testament as the word of God, which they did, and if you're going to deny that the

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Old Testament is the word of God, then you have to deal with the fact that Jesus and the apostles believed the Old Testament to be the word of God.

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So was Jesus wrong? All right, was Jesus wrong when he said that these things happened in the beginning,

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Adam and Eve? Was he wrong about the flood? Was he wrong about Noah? Was he wrong about these things? He can't be wrong, right?

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You know what it does to your faith? You know what it does to your faith to have people question those events and then they call into question the integrity of Jesus who cited those as actual history?

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I mean, he would know, right? You have to conclude then that Jesus was either mistaken about these things or that he was lying about these things.

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If he quotes them as actual history and is authoritative, but they're not, then Jesus was either mistaken or he was lying.

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All right, New Testament claims of divine inspiration. So we looked at the Old Testament claims, look at New Testament claims. Letter A, Jesus promised the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit to the apostles. He said in John 14, 26, the helper of the Holy Spirit and the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

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This is significant because in the context of this promise in John chapter 14, Jesus is in the upper room with his disciples and he is taking them through the last supper.

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You remember he gave to them the bread of the covenant and the juice, the wine, and said, this is the new covenant in my blood.

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He's talking about the cutting of the new covenant and the mediating of the new covenant in his blood, his blood of the terms of that.

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He did all of that. Now in context of the old covenant, new covenant idea, in the old covenant, the old covenant and the giving of it was associated with a body of revelation, a content body of revelation that was given to those saints by which they were to understand the terms of the covenant and fulfill the covenant and be correct in their understanding of the covenant, et cetera, and that's the entire

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Old Testament. Jesus anticipated that in the giving of the new covenant that there would be a

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New Testament, and the word testament simply means covenant, that there would be a New Testament, a new covenant group of documents that would be written to explain the terms and the implications of the new covenant, and Jesus, anticipating this promise to his disciples that he would give them the

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Holy Spirit who would bring to their remembrance everything that he said to them and everything that he taught them so that in writing these things out, they would be writing and speaking for God under inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit. That's John 14, 26. Letter B, the apostles were to teach with divine authority all that Christ taught.

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This is what Jesus said, teaching them to observe all that I command you, and lo, I'm with you even to the end of the age. So Jesus gave his disciples the promise of the

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Holy Spirit, gave them authority to teach everything that he had commanded them. Letter C, Peter said that Paul wrote scripture, 2

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Peter 3, 16, has also in all his letters, speaking of them and some things which are hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort as they do also the rest of the scriptures to their own destruction.

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Notice what Peter said. Peter said of Paul, there are things in his epistles which are hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable twist and distort just as they do to the rest of scripture.

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Now if he says, Paul wrote these things, they're hard to understand, but people twist them just like they do the rest of scripture, what is

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Peter saying about Paul's writings? If they do this to the rest of scripture, what are

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Paul's writings? They're also scripture. This is Peter viewing, now listen, if Peter viewed

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Paul as an instrument of divine inspiration, and Paul was an apostle who was given the Holy Spirit and authority in the church by Jesus just as the other apostles did, what would

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Peter have likely necessarily have believed about his own authority and his own writings? Peter had every reason to believe that his own writings were also scripture.

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And Paul would have had every reason to believe his own writings were scripture. So here you have an apostle, a contemporary of Paul, writing probably about the time, toward the end of Paul's life, you have an apostle, contemporary of the apostle

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Paul, who knew Paul, who affirms Paul's divine inspiration. He said, what Paul is writing is scripture. And the untaught and the unstable twist it just like they do all the rest of the scriptures.

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And Peter would probably have in mind other New Testament books by this point, since most of the New Testament would have been written by the time that Peter wrote 2

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Peter chapter three. Most of the New Testament would have been written by that point. And so Peter would have had in mind

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New Testament as well as Old Testament scripture. Letter D, Peter viewed the scriptures as inspired by God.

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We've read this in weeks past here recently, 2 Peter 1, 19 through 21. Letter E, Paul claims that Luke was inspired.

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Now this is interesting, 1 Timothy 5, 18. Paul says, for the scripture says, you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing, and the laborer is worthy of his wages.

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The scripture says this, and then Paul quotes scripture. What's interesting about this is that there is no place in the

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Old Testament where it says the laborer is worthy of his wages. You know where you find that? In Luke's gospel, chapter 10, verse seven, stay in that house eating and drinking while they, what they give you for the labor is worthy of his wages.

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Do not keep moving from house to house. Now that's Luke recording what Jesus said on one particular equation, on one particular occasion.

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Later on, Paul quotes what Luke wrote and calls it scripture. So here's Paul affirming the divine inspiration of Luke, his traveling companion and physician.

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And listen, for those who object that some of two of the gospels were not written by apostles, that's true. Luke and Mark were not apostles,

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Matthew and John were. They would object to that. Mark was likely written under the auspices of Peter. It's often called

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Peter's gospel. And Luke was written under the auspices of the apostle Paul. He was Paul's traveling companion. So here you have

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Paul familiar with what Luke wrote in the gospel of Luke and calling that scripture. He quotes it as scripture.

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So again, we have evidence that the New Testament writers understood that what they were writing was indeed the word of God given by divine inspiration.

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And by the way, if Luke was an inspired author and that applies to the gospel of Luke, then it would also apply to the book of Acts, which was the second volume of the two books that Luke wrote.

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And here's an interesting little side note. Did you know that the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts constitute one quarter of the

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New Testament text? One quarter of it. Not one quarter of the books written, but one quarter of the amount of text.

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Luke and Acts is one quarter of your New Testament. That was written by Luke and Paul affirms

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Luke's writings as divine scripture. All right, letter F. Paul puts his own writings on par with scripture.

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And this is significant. First Timothy chapter four, 11 through 13. Prescribe and teach these things. Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity.

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Show yourself an example of those who believe. Until I come, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching.

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Now what was Paul, look at the beginning of that quotation, at the end of that quotation. Prescribe and teach these things.

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What was Luke to teach? Until he comes, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching.

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In the early New Testament, the apostles viewed the gathering of the church, or taught that the gathering of the church should have as part of its normal gathering and worship the teaching of scripture.

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And here was the apostle Paul saying that what he wrote Timothy was to be taught in the local congregation. Now what would you think of me if I left and went to Shepherd's Conference next week?

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Or two weeks from now when that is. And right before I left, I wrote you a letter. And then I sent it to the congregation and said, look, when you guys gather together for worship, make sure you take my letter, read it to the congregation, and teach that.

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What would you think? You would think that's the last time Jim is ever gonna teach in this congregation.

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And you would be right to say that, because what right would I have to demand that what I wrote to you ought to be taught in the public gathering of the saints when they get together for worship?

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What right would I have to suggest that? None whatsoever to demand that. But the apostle

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Paul can say that regarding his own writings. Prescribe and teach these things. What I'm writing to you, teach this. When you gather together for public worship, teach these things.

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Why? Because he viewed it as scripture. John claims divine inspiration and authority for the book of Revelation.

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Revelation 22, 18 and 19. I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to them the plagues which are written in this book.

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If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written in this book.

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Why did John write that concerning his own book of Revelation? Because he viewed it as scripture. And by the way, that's a parallel construction, a parallel idea to something you find

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Moses saying in the book of Deuteronomy. A similar warning not to take away from or add to the words of scripture.

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John is able to give the exact same warning regarding his words. Why? Because he viewed them as scripture. He understood the book of Revelation was divinely inspired.

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Letter H, all Paul's epistles lay claim to divine authority and inspiration. Actually, I would correct that and I would say not all

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Paul's epistles lay claim to divine authority or inspiration explicitly. I'd have to say there's an implicit claim to divine authority because you don't get, for instance, a claim to inspiration in the book of Philemon, as already mentioned.

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So Paul's epistles, generally speaking, lay claim to divine authority. First Corinthians 1437, if anyone thinks he's a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which

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I write to you are the Lord's commandments. It's a claim to divine inspiration to speak from God. Again, put this in terms of if I wrote to you and said, look, what

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I'm writing to you is God's commandment. And then I give you a whole bunch of stuff that's not found in the New Testament or the Old Testament. What would you think of that?

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You'd think I was crazy? You'd think I'd overstep my bounds just a wee bit? Yeah, you would, and you would be right to think that.

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But Paul can write that, he can say that. Galatians 1 .2, I neither received it from man nor as I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

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There, Paul's talking about his gospel. Ephesians 3 .3, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before in brief.

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Colossians 1 .25, in this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God, bestowed on me for your benefit so that I might carry out the preaching of the word.

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That's a claim to divine authority. 1 Thessalonians 2 .13, for this reason we are constantly to thank God when you receive the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but for what it is in truth, the word of God, which performs its work in you who believe.

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Paul says when you heard our words, you received it as the word of God. How did Paul view his own writings?

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As divinely inspired, okay? This is the New Testament claims to divine inspiration. Letter I, Paul expected his epistles to be read in services like scripture.

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We talked about this a little bit, but you see there are a list of other examples of that. 1

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Thessalonians 5 .27, I injure you by the Lord to have this letter read to all the brethren. Paul expected that his letters would be read in the congregation when he wrote it to them, and it would be read and treated and taught as scripture, because these things were binding on the church.

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That was Paul's own view of his writings. And by the way, that's Peter's view of Paul's writings. And Paul would only have reason to have that view of himself if he believed that what he was writing was the

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Lord's commandments, that it was the word of God, and divinely inspired. And letter

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J, other claims to divine inspiration. You have some listed there, Hebrews 2, three to four, Hebrews 13, verse seven, 2

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Peter 3, verse two, and Revelation 1, 10 and 11. All right, now let's look at number five.

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Any questions on that before we move on? Okay, let me add something to the mix here regarding Paul's use and claim to divine authority.

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Is there any reason that we should accept Paul's use or claim of divine authority, prima facie, on its face?

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He claims to speak from God, so therefore, he must speak from God. Would we have reason to just accept that?

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It's because he says it? Or is there some other reason why we might believe that?

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Peter said so, yeah, but I mean, Peter and Paul, they got together, they're just colluding, the two of them. It's like the whole Russian collusion thing all over again.

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They're just colluding between the two of them, and Peter pats Paul on the back, Paul pats Peter on the back, and of course, they're gonna affirm each other, because these were men making money off of the gospel in the early church, and so they have to, this is like Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland also affirming each other's ability to do miracles, right?

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Somebody could raise that objection. Paul's encounter with Jesus, right?

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People dropping dead, Ananias and Sapphira is an example of the authority that they had. That would be a good one. One thing to keep in mind, yeah,

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Peter? Why does God say signs and wonders? Yeah, that's the answer to it there, the signs and wonders.

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Keep in mind that when Jesus was on the earth in John chapter five, he said, I speak to you the word of God, but basically,

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Jesus said, don't just accept my claim as it is on face value. Look at the works that I do. What the

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Father gave me to do, those are the deeds that I do. Jesus pointed to his own ability to do signs as proof of his divine authority and of the claims that he made.

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It is the same thing that is true of the New Testament apostles. Paul had the ability to perform signs. He says in 2

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Corinthians 12, the signs of an apostle were wrought among you. I have this divine authority because I am able to perform the signs that Jesus did.

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And this was the evidence. You know why the New Testament accepted the claims of the apostles to divine inspiration on their face and at face value?

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Because these men did the exact same signs that Jesus did. Jesus said, I give these men my authority, I tell them to teach,

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I'll put my words in their mouth, and I'm giving them the ability to do these signs to prove that they speak for me. And so when

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Jesus left and the apostles came on the scene and they began to do the exact same kinds of signs that Jesus did, heal the sick, raise the dead, et cetera, they performed these signs as evidence that what

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Jesus said was true concerning them and their divine authority. In the New Testament church, you could look at the apostle Paul, you could look at Peter, and you could say, do we have reason to believe that when they say they speak from God that they actually speak from God?

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We have every reason to believe that is true because these men perform signs just like Jesus performed. And so that was the evidence that their claim is more than just,

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I claim to speak from God. I mean, I could get up here and claim to speak from God, but if I come up here and claim to speak from God, you better demand some kind of evidence.

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Do a sign, perform a miracle, do something, show us that you have this divine authority before I'm just gonna accept your claim at face value.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there are people who claim that their signs and wonders today back up their claims to divine authority and inspiration.

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That is true. They do make that claim, but even on the face of it, the supposed miracles of the

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New Apostolic Reformation, the Word of Faith movement and that, they're not even close to what we find in the New Testament. And they have to say that, yeah, prophecy is going on today, but it's not the same as the

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New Testament. And yeah, we're not growing out new limbs and we're not emptying out hospitals and we're not healing all the sick in our community, but we are walking down the streets and lengthening people's legs.

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This is the type of nonsense that they do. So you have to examine those claims. The type of miracles that Jesus and the apostles did, they were irrefutable.

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In the New Testament, nobody in the New Testament or the first century ever tried to refute or challenge the miracles themselves.

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Remember when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Nobody said, oh, this was a neat circus stunt that he did, or this was an illusion.

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Nobody made that claim. Even the enemies of Jesus said, concerning Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, we need to kill this man or the whole nation's gonna believe on him.

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He's raising people from the dead. They didn't challenge any of Jesus's miracles. When Jesus pointed to the signs, if the

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Pharisees could have critiqued any of the signs or miracles that he did, they would have done it. If they could have called into question his ability to perform signs, but nobody ever questioned any miracle that Jesus or the apostles did.

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Nobody ever suggested that they weren't done by divine authority. The only response that the Pharisees could give was, we need to kill this guy or the whole nation's gonna believe in him.

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They didn't challenge the legitimacy of the miracles themselves. Nobody did. And that's different than what we see going on today, when you can say, oh, you claim to be raising people from the dead.

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Let's see some examples. Let's go down to Kaufhaus after church today, and let's see you raise some people from the dead.

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They got a cooler full of people down there, and I wanna see you raise them from the dead. And they won't even try to do that. That was brought to light just in all of the prayer and stuff going on with the little girl that died recently, whose parents were part of that movement.

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Olivia, Olive, right? That made national headlines. And their inability to do that is evidence that these people do not speak from God, because they do not do these miracles.

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They claim to do these miracles, but they're bogus and baloney. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah, that's another good observation. Their message is the miracles themselves. Rather than pointing to the miracles as legitimate for a true gospel that they're preaching, their message is not the true gospel.

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Their message is something entirely different. It's a different gospel, and it's a different message, and that is that God is doing these miracles and that we can have them, et cetera.

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All right. Let's cover one more quick section here, letter V, the

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New Testament evidence for New Testament inspiration. So here's just sort of a summary of what we've looked at so far, and with this, we'll end for today, and we'll cover the rest of the lesson next week.

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Letter A, the New Testament writings were read in the early church. That is an evidence that the early church viewed the New Testament writings as divinely inspired, divinely given.

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It was the custom to read scriptures on the Sabbath, Luke chapter four, and the Christians continued that practice and read the apostles' writings on their

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Lord's Day, when they gathered together for worship. Letter B, the New Testament writings were circulated widely, Colossians 4, 16.

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In the early church, it was, we're gonna see this in a few weeks' time, it was not cheap or easy to copy writings or to circulate them, but Christians copied and circulated the

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New Testament documents. Why would they do that? Because they believed that they were divine scripture. It's the only reason you'd sit down, spend eight hours copying the

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Book of Romans to make sure you got it exactly right, and then try and circulate it amongst your friends, is if you believed that this thing was worth your time and investment, and they did because they viewed it as scripture.

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Letter C, New Testament was gathered into collections. Second Peter chapter three, which we just read, talks about Paul's writings.

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There's evidence that within the first century, there were collections of Paul's writings, that Paul's writings were copied and gathered together and bound together in book form by the end of the first century.

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Why would Christians do that? Why would they collect together the writings of some particular man? Because they believed that these things were scripture.

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This is not stuff that they did with grocery lists and fables and stories and tales and just random letters sent by people and their families.

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It's not what they did. You didn't waste writing material and time and circulating documents unless you believed them to be of imminent importance.

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And the New Testament first century saints did that because they believed the New Testament documents were inspired. Letter D, the

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New Testament books were quoted as scripture. Looked at examples of that. And letter E, the New Testament is quoted as scripture by the early church fathers.

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Every one of the New Testament writers is quoted with divine authority by the apostolic fathers in the first two and three centuries after the lifetimes of the apostles.

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Those leaders of the church, the early church, lived within a generation of the close of the New Testament. So you have men like Polycarp and Ignatius and Irenaeus and men like that who were quoting the

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New Testament as divinely inspired documents. And that was from the earliest points after the first century.

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It's not like this was just a group of people that lived within the first century who believed this about themselves and nobody else believed this.

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You had people who were discipled by John the Apostle, for instance, and discipled by Paul, et cetera, who, living into the second century, believed this about the

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New Testament. So those are the New Testament evidences for New Testament inspiration. That's kind of a good summary of what we looked at thus far.

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So, any questions before we close? No? Is this new information or new to anybody here, kind of thinking through this and looking at it?

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I mean, not that I'm saying everything new, but is it kind of at least putting it all together like this, helping you to see the consistency of it and presenting it in a way that's making you kind of like, oh yeah,

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I never thought of some of these things. Just shake your head if you're getting something out of this. Okay, you got two or three of you?

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That's good. All right, well, for the sake of two or three of them, we'll continue this. So next week, oh yeah,

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Peter? Yeah.

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So did the acceptance and embrace of these documents as authoritative take time? It did take time.

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And that's something that we have to be careful that we don't think of the development of this, the development of the

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New Testament or the development of the collecting of the New Testament in terms that we would today, because we think in terms of everything is instant today.

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Something happens and we know about it because we get a notification on our phone. Paul wrote a new book. Oh, I mean, you get that, right?

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Come up on my smartphone. That's how we think that things have to happen quickly. And it didn't happen quickly like that.

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You might be horrified to find out that the book of Hebrews was not accepted universally by everybody the day it was written.

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That's scripture. Neither was Revelation or 1

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John or 2 John. These things took time. And we'll look at why it took time, some of the factors, some of the reasons why these things took time to be recognized and to be for news of that and acceptance of it to spread.

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There are reasons for that which we'll look at in its context. All right, so next week, we'll finish what the

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New Testament says about divine inspiration. That might be a bit of a shorter lesson, but I'll see if there's some bonus material we can throw in there. So we'll deal with that.

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And then the week following, which will be the week after I get back from Shepherd's Conference, Dave Rich will be preaching that Sunday, but I'll do

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Sunday school. And we'll talk about preservation and infallibility of scripture. Those two doctrines.

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We'll tie all of that together hopefully in one class. And then on March 15th, the Sunday after I get a pay raise and add a room onto my house.

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In other words, my daughter's getting married. The Sunday after that happens, then I will not be teaching

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Sunday school that Sunday. And Jess and Cornell will take back over the Sunday school class and do it for a few weeks.

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And I'll collect my wits, and then we'll start the next section of the study. All right, let's pray together. Father, we are grateful for your word.

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It speaks to all of the issues that concern us, and it is truly a divine and right assessment of life and the human condition and all that you have done for us in your

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Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that you have given us a revelation of yourself and of your will and of what you have done so that we might know it and that we might embrace it and have eternal life.

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We thank you for preserving your word for us. We thank you for how your word has worked out, the intricacies of it.

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We thank you for inspiring men and moving them by the Holy Spirit to write exactly what it is that you wanted us to have.

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And then we thank you that over the years, you have preserved it for us so that we might have it in our own tongue, in our own language, and that we might be edified by it.

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We're so grateful for your grace in providing this for us. And make us good stewards of your word, we pray. In Christ's name, amen.