Mistakes We Make In Evangelism (part 5)

Reliability of Bible Translations and the Textual Basis of Scripture

Our Father in heaven, we thank you this morning that we can gather free of oppression with the ability to study your word, to rejoice in your goodness to us, to have fellowship. Father I pray that you would bless our time this morning as we look at various issues that you would help us to utilize this information and even think about these things that we might be better evangelists, better able to refute those who contradict sound doctrine.

We pray for these things in Jesus name, amen. I'm kicking this thing around here a little bit. I had an intro in my mind but you know how that goes. So basically I was looking for something that, well I wanted to let you know that nothing here this morning is original because you know I don't want anybody to look at me online and find out, hey he stole that because I did.

So one is from Crossway, the other is from Blue Letter Bible if we get that far and we'll find out if we do or not, I doubt it. Alright number one, and by the way Baker's Dozen quiz because 12 wasn't enough.

Number one, true or false, the Bible has been translated so many times by so many people that it is unreliable. Finn says false, I like that for a number of reasons, yeah that's false. But I like his citation here in a Newsweek article a few years back, the author claimed quote, no television preacher has ever read the Bible.

Now if you just stop there I'm like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, they're usually pretty bad. But he goes on, neither has any evangelical politician, neither has the Pope, ding, ding, ding, okay stop.

Neither have I, and neither have you. At best, I mean he's just making these sweeping generalizations, at best we've read, we've all read a bad translation, a translation of translations of hand copied, hand copies, hand copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.

What do you think about that statement? Okay he's overlooking the fact that God superintends the whole process, which is a nice way of saying that he's an unbeliever, I mean that's your first problem.

So he has this low view of God. But when I started reading that, and just thinking, okay, translations of translations, it's not true at all. We don't have one copy that was copied a bunch of times, etc, etc, etc.

The real problem is he doesn't understand the process of translation, he doesn't understand the process of the critical examination of the text, he basically doesn't know what he's talking about. The author says, this is not the Newsweek writer, this is the author here from Crossway, he says, I hope this is hyperbole, exaggeration, because I don't understand how a journalist could publish this.

He's saying that the best we can hope to find is a translation of a translation of a translation. I think he means our modern translations of the New Testament are translations of a Latin translation that was a translation of the original Greek.

Well, that's not even true. I can't speak for television preachers, evangelical politicians, or the Pope, no you can't. But I know that many students, or that I have many students and colleagues who read the Greek New Testament quite often and quite well, and we found that it is, and what we found is that our English translations, the ESV, NIV, and NAS, and many more, are very reliable translations.

Well, NIV, just a word about translations, because I haven't spoken about this in a while. If anybody has the NIV, you know what our dear friend Lewis Brown used to call that, the nearly inspired version.

And the ESV was the essentially superior version, but he wasn't quite right about that one. But the NIV is a thought-for-thought translation, that's their translation philosophy. And when I say thought-by-thought, instead of word-for-word, what does that make you think?

It's not quite a paraphrase, John. They're interpreting, they're doing more than just translating, right? But I mean, you know, paraphrase is kind of, I would call the living Bible more of a paraphrase, because they're like, oh yeah, we see what the Greek means.

Not really that interested in doing an accurate translation. Okay, yes. What do I know? Well, I've read every one, I think, of Will Varner's posts about it. Will Varner is one of the translators of the Legacy, it's, what's that?

LSB, is that the LSB? Yeah, the Legacy Standard Bible. I mean, you know, you get so many abbreviations, it's like, I feel like I get audible with those, you know, ESV, NIV, NASB, KJV, Hut, Hut, Hut. Legacy Standard is like, well, here's one of the reasons why the Legacy came about, was the NAS 95 has been redone to the, so it's now the NAS 2020, I think.

And the drift was towards a more liberal translation. So the Legacy folks, the Masters people stepped in and did their own translation. So it's Abner, Chow, Varner, and some other people there. It's a little more, you know, if you were to compare it to the ESV, I think it has some things that are better, and some things that aren't better, necessarily.

And it's a little more of a wooden translation, meaning, you know, word for word, without thought. I mean, I don't want to spoil anything from this morning's sermon, and this isn't a spoil alert. I mean, we'll see how the sermon goes.

But I'm reading all these different translations, and there's this part where Samson kills, you know, a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. And, you know, what do you call that hill? And so I'm reading all these various translations, and then I get to the, was it the, I think it's the Christian Standard Bible, or maybe it was the, there's so many, you know, whichever one it was, and I think it's the one Kofi likes.

And they called it, or Samson calls the hill Jawbone Hill. And I was like, I mean, that's, but that's a kind of a, it just ignores the language and just goes, eh, it's close enough, you know, Jawbone Hill.

Anyway, so what do I think about the legacy? I think I love the Yahweh parts, some other things, less so, but overall, it's a very good translation, you know, kind of an update on the NAS 95. So, and I do know, I am actually kind of excited because I know some of the people who worked on it, the legacy is finally going to get a MacArthur version.

So that's going to be coming out. I don't even know if they've officially announced that, so, shh, just between us. Okay, number two, true or false, we have no way of knowing what the Bible originally said, that is false.

And again, why do we know that? Because, like Bill said, you know, first of all, if God's superintending, if God cares about what God's word says, and we know he does, then, you know, we know we're going to have sufficient information to put it all together.

But when we think, when we talk about how they do this critically, they take, you know, there's, there are two ways of looking at scholarly efforts. One is so-called higher criticism. And then what's the other one?

I guess it must be lower criticism. What's higher criticism, by the way? Anybody know? Higher criticism is when these people look at the Bible and say, well, I can't, I can't possibly be inspired by God.

For example, they'll say that the Pentateuch, the five books written by Moses, could not possibly have been written by Moses. You know why they say that? Because they look at some of the words, this is higher criticism, they look at the words and they go, wait a minute, the words in Genesis or this part of Genesis are a little bit different than how he phrases things over here in Leviticus.

Therefore, there must be different authors. So they've got these ideas that there's a, it's called J-D-E-P, a Yahwist, that's the J, a Deuteronomist, an Elohist, and let's see, what's the other one?

Oh, and a priestly. So they've got these four different voices and they think they're all weaved in there and there's no way Moses could have written this. Or you can look at it and say, well, wait a minute, maybe Moses used different words in different settings for different purposes, you know, like good authors would do.

So, but what the Bible originally said, and here's what they do. This is lower criticism. They look at the different manuscripts that we have, they compare them and they determine, they have a series of standards that they use to decide, you know, which is the more likely error.

Let's say there's a variation between two manuscripts, you know, and so it's like, okay, which is the more likely error that a word was added or subtracted and, you know, all these kinds of things. And I'm not really wanting to talk about all that, but there's a whole process they go through it.

And I'm here to say that what we have in terms of the Greek and Hebrew is probably about as close to the original language as you could ever hope to get. If, you know, one of the original authors or, well, I guess one of the original authors walked in and picked up a copy, he'd go, well, that's not bad.

You know, I mean, it's really close. So we have, you know, there are some numbers and some other things that aren't perfect in the Bible, but we have something that's very close to the original manuscripts.

What does he say? It is true that until the 15th century, the text of the Bible was copied by hand and sometimes scribes made mistakes. To err is human. But this does not mean that the text we have is nothing close to the original writings and completely unreliable.

In fact, it's just the opposite, especially when we compare it with the ancient texts. We have over 6 ,000 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, not to mention close to 20 ,000 ancient translations.

In other words, not in the Greek, probably in Latin. Of the 6 ,000 Greek manuscripts, the evidence of their contradictions has been greatly exaggerated. While there are many variations in the text, most of these are either spelling differences or word order.

There are several other differences that do not change the meaning. You know, let's talk about word order for a minute. Do you ever, like, I say that I'm hearing dyslexic. And here's what I mean by that.

Like, somebody can give me their phone number, you know, and let's say they tell me their last four digits are like 7, 4, 3, 2. And so I'll write down 7, 2, 3, you know, 7 or something, you know, I mean, I just turn the order of the numbers around.

So I always say, would you please repeat that? Because I think about 75 of the time I've written them down in the wrong order. So word order, not that big of a deal, doesn't change anything, could change the emphasis.

But what they do is they, like something like that, you would just look at the preponderance of manuscript evidence and go with that order. And age has something to do with it. Older manuscripts, newer manuscripts, which is better?

An older manuscript or newer one? Newer? Okay. Yes, older is better because it's closer to the source. So newer is not always better. Stop. It says less than 1 of the variants amount to a meaningful change, and none of these affect any essential Christian doctrine.

None of this even considers the tens of thousands of Hebrew Old Testament scrolls and codices that show a similar level of reliability. The evidence is clear. Our modern English translations are reliable translations of a reliable text.

Okay. Number three. So, I mean, people, when you evangelize people, sometimes people say, how can you even believe the Bible, right? Because it's been translated. And that's kind of what he's getting at here.

You know, people want to attack the veracity of Scripture for basically spurious reasons, reasons that they don't know anything about. Number three, true or false? Hundreds of Christian documents were read in churches and treated as authoritative before Constantine legalized Christianity.

The Canon of Scripture and the Myth of Lost Gospels

That's false. I'm going to give you a hint. I think just about every one of these questions is false. It's false. And he says, I'll call this second myth, the Da Vinci Code myth. How many have seen the Da Vinci Code?

Tell the truth and shame to the devil. Okay. Yeah. All right. I haven't seen it, but, you know, it's because I like good mysteries. Okay. Says the story goes something like this, that during the first two centuries, there were hundreds of Christian documents being used in churches.

Books like the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Peter, and even the Gospel of Judas were read alongside Matthew, Romans, Revelation, and the rest of the New Testament books. It wasn't until Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the early fourth century that we narrowed the list down to our 27 books.

And he says, it's true that the early Christians wrote dozens, maybe hundreds of documents in the first two or three centuries AD. It is also true that the New Testament canon was debated until around the time of Emperor Constantine.

But that's about as right as the Da Vinci Code gets. Christians never considered all these books authoritative. I mean, you know, I love to talk about the Gospel of Thomas. Why? Why would I love to talk about the Gospel of Thomas?

Show how unreliable it is. I mean, first of all, you know, it's usually liberals who argue for its inclusion. And there are a couple of problems with the Gospel of Thomas. First of all, it's not a gospel.

Secondly, it's not written by Thomas. Other than that, you know, and then I mean, it's long after Thomas is dead. And, you know, it has such inspiring words from Jesus. This is a paraphrase. You know, this is kind of my living translation, but it's pretty close.

They have Jesus saying something like, unless a man or unless a woman becomes a man, she can't enter heaven. You know, after you read the Gospel of Thomas, you're less impressed by it. And those books were written by who?

Like the Gospel of Thomas. The Gnostics. So not reliable, not Christian, not inspired, etc. What is he? Okay, listen, because number four ties in here. Number four, true or false? More than 80 Gospels were considered for the New Testament.

Think about that. More than 80 Gospels. We have how many? Four. And, you know, the whole thrust of the Da Vinci Code is to say to you, you know, a lot of really good stuff was kept out of the Bible. I mean, look at this.

80 Gospels. There's a lot of truth about Jesus we don't know. And if we just included those 80 other Gospels, we'd have a lot more information about Jesus. No, we wouldn't. We'd have a lot more confusion than we already have.

He says in the Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown has one of his characters describe what happened next. More than 80 Gospels were considered for the New Testament. And yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion.

You know, it's this whole conspiracy theory. The Bible is a conspiracy, basically. And I say, boy, if those guys without computers, you know, can figure out which books to pick and weave together. That was very clever of them.

When asked who decided which Gospels to include, he replied, this is in the book, the Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. Now, was he a pagan? I think so.

Why did he make Christianity, you know, when he says he declared it legal? What did he really do? He made it the official religion of the Roman Empire. He says, even though these claims are a little grandiose in Brown's book, many people believe some version of this today.

You know that there was this, I mean, how many of you have ever been speaking to somebody and they say, well, it's, you know, the New Testament canon was decided at the Council of Nicaea. You ever heard that one?

That's kind of one of those things that they throw out there. It's just false. My favorite one, though, is, you know, who decided what books go into the Bible? The Roman Catholic Church. They're like, thank you.

You can thank us for, you know, the Bible. I'm like, okay, sure. So, number five. Yes. Did Catholicism get its start because of Constantine? I hear a yes. I think the Roman Catholic Church as we know it probably didn't start for another couple hundred years after that.

So, he didn't hurt. You know, I think that that may have been, I mean, why is the Roman Catholic Church the Roman Catholic Church? Why did Rome become the center of Christianity, as it were? Why do you think that was?

It was the center of everything else. That's a good answer because it was the biggest city in the world, right? It's like New York becomes the center of Christianity just because there's 20 billion people living there.

Yes, Wes. Well, yeah, that comes later. Yeah, I mean, when you look at, if you study European history, you know, I think it's maybe 1200 to 1400, something like that. The most powerful man on the face of the planet was the Pope.

You know, and if he said, jump, all the kings said, how I, you know, because if they didn't obey, they got sacked. And that went on for a while. The Pope had tremendous political power, which is a really odd thing when you think about it.

But yeah, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't start for a while, even after Constantine. But the population, you know, the money and all that stuff, I mean, that's what essentially builds up Rome. And eventually it becomes, plus you've got Jerusalem, on the other hand, you know, getting sacked and destroyed in 110 AD.

And, you know, so eventually Christianity becomes a tussle between Eastern Orthodoxy in Turkey and Rome. So anyway, number five, true or false? The Bible is imprecise and questionable when it comes to science.

The Bible, Science, and Human Language

False. Yeah, I kind of didn't like that either. That's why if somebody was going to argue for true, I'm like, well, you know, yeah, I don't really like that. I mean, because let's just put it this way.

The Bible is not a science textbook. Right? It's not trying to teach the world science. What it addresses, usually addresses, well, I'll just say what it talks about, it talks about correctly, but it's not always trying to give absolute precision.

So if you want to say true, or if you want to say false, I'll take either one. He says, even many Christians believe some version of this myth. They will say that the Bible intends to teach late Bronze Age or ancient Near East scientific theories.

We cannot trust a book that is so misinformed about science, right? The problem is when people assume that the Bible is attending, is intended to be a scientific textbook, and then they run into issues.

I recently read someone accusing the Bible of scientific error because it describes the circular bronze sea in the temple with a circumference of 30 cubits and a diameter of 10 cubits. This would give the value of pi as 3 .0 instead of 3 .14.

Others say the Bible teaches a geocentric universe because of Ecclesiastes 1 .5, which says that the sun rises and sets. What's the problem with that? I mean, if we say that the sun rises and sun sets, what does that mean?

Does that mean we're saying the sun is the center of the universe? I mean, if you say, if you talk about sunset, are you an ignorant rube? I mean, why do we say that? Perspective, right? It's our observation.

I mean, do we go, yep, the sun sure is rotating around the earth. Yeah, good job. Or do we just say, you know, oh, what a beautiful sunset, you know? I mean, that's just kind of how we, or sunrise. Sunrise this morning was a little less beautiful than normal for some of us.

Okay, so he says, if I told you that the sun is setting at 645, would you accuse me of being a heliocentrist, heliocentrist? Somebody who believes that the, you know, is that right? Yeah, it should be.

It should be, I don't know, how would you say that? Earthocentrist and scientifically ignorant. It's true that the sun is not actually setting at 645. The earth is rotating on its axis to the east, so that we will move out of range of the sun's light.

But if I talked about the earth rotating out of the range of the sun's light at 645, instead of saying the sun is setting, you'd think I was, yeah, I'd say you're a little daft, you know. So the Bible uses normal human language to describe scientific phenomena.

The Image of God, Women, and Biblical Coherence

Okay, okay, number six, true or false, the Bible is misogynistic. Well, you know, I guess if you said, you could probably cite specific instances and get me to say, well, okay, especially if you're talking the Old Testament, you can get me to say, there's some misogyny in the Bible.

There's also some slavery, and there's also some, there are a lot of bad things in the Bible. Yes, they're not prescriptive. And so that's the idea, I guess, of this whole question, is whether or not, if the Bible describes misogyny, that is to say discrimination against women, actual hatred of women or abuse of women, is the Bible itself or is the God of the Bible misogynistic?

And the answer would be no. He says, many people assume that in the Greco-Roman world, women were treated with honor, respect and dignity until Christianity came along. That would be wrong. This fails to understand what the Bible actually teaches about women.

It is true that God also designed men and women to fulfill different roles and responsibilities in some areas. But different does not mean unequal. He says, many people have twisted scripture to oppress women, but this is a failure to understand.

People have twisted scripture to oppress different people groups. I think about, again, my roots as a Mormon, and they said the Mark of Cain was a legitimate reason to discriminate against black people.

I never really understood that, but that's what they say. Why would the Mark of Cain be that? I have no idea, but that's what they say. From the very beginning, scripture is clear. Both men and women are created in the image of God, Genesis 1, 26 and 27.

The women were consistently mistreated and abused in the ancient Near East. The Old Testament is full of stories of women of faith like Hannah, wise and courageous women like Deborah and Abigail, and women who saved God's people from destruction like Esther.

In a world where women were hardly ever seen as anything more than property to serve men, the Bible's view of women who are made in the image of God and used by him to accomplish his purposes is remarkable.

It says the New Testament only makes this picture clear. Jesus treated women with dignity, love and respect, even when they were shamed by the culture they lived in. While he certainly called women to repent of their sins, he did not leave them in their sin, but saw them as God's image bearers who are to be loved and honored.

Throughout the rest of the New Testament, we see women playing key roles like Priscilla, Lydia, Mary, the mother of John. Women were important co-laborers with Paul and the other apostles, etc. Questions?

Comments? Okay. Moving on. Number seven. True or false. The Bible is a collection of writings from miscellaneous authors that is only coherent if one exerts great effort. Yeah, it's false. He said, this is one of the arguments here.

Imagine if we took a legal document written in 1718, a collection of poems from 1818, a biography written in 1918, and finally a historical narrative written in 2018, and tried to make it tell a coherent story.

It would be difficult, right? And this is how many people conceive of the Bible. That it's these disparate stories written in disparate situations by disparate people. But the reality is it was written over thousands of people by dozens of people in several different cultures and languages.

How could it tell a coherent story? How could the Bible possibly be coherent? What's that? Inspiration of the Holy Spirit, right? You know, a divine author working through human authors. So absolutely.

He says, consider how the term offspring unfolds throughout the Bible. Genesis 3 .15 speaks of the offspring of Eve who would one day crush the head of the serpent. God promises Abraham, the descendant of Eve, that he would give certain promises to his offspring.

Abraham's great-grandson Judah received a promise that his offspring would rule over the nations. Centuries later, God told King David that his offspring would rule over a kingdom that would never end.

Centuries still after that, the prophet Isaiah spoke of the offspring of the virgin who would rise up to rule over the nations. And when we get to the New Testament, we discover that the offspring of Eve, who is the offspring of Abraham, is also the royal son of Judah and David.

Finally, in a symbolic picture of the fulfillment of Genesis 3 .15, a dragon, the ancient serpent, tries to destroy the offspring of the woman, but he is defeated. And the dragon and his allies are once and for all destroyed.

So he says that's just one thing that we can trace all the way through the Bible. He says, if this was any other book, I'd be hard-pressed to explain its consistency and depth. How could a book written in such a diverse way have such remarkable unity?

The Kenosis Debate and Christ's Divine Nature

Okay, number eight. True or false? Jesus set aside... Now we're shifting gears. We're getting away from... This is the one that came from the Blue Letter Bible. We're talking about the kenosis. I really wanted to...

I had another commitment this last Friday, and when I get a link, I'm going to post it. I had the opportunity to chauffeur... How many know who James Dolezal is? I see that hand. Who's James Dolezal? The one book that comes to my mind right away is All That Is God, right?

He wrote that book. And he's super smart. You know, when I told my wife, I said, I'm going to be driving Dolezal to lunch and everything, she goes, I'm jealous. And I'm going, well, it was fun. Yeah, he's a super nice guy too.

But I already knew that having talked to him a little bit in Bakersfield and some other places. But anyway, he did a session Friday afternoon about the kenotic heresy. Anybody know what the kenotic heresy is?

K-E-N-O-T-I-C. It's a heresy stemming from Ken. No. Okay. It deals with the idea that Jesus set aside his divinity to come to earth. Now, where would you get an idea like that? Emptied himself, which comes from?

No. Philippians 2? Yes, Philippians 2. And that's the Greek word, kenosis. Emptied himself. Or maybe NAS says something like, I don't know if it's NAS, but other translations have made himself nothing.

So that's the idea. So, kenosis. True or false, Jesus set aside his deity when he was formed in Mary's womb. Why? Why is that false, Bill? Okay, he's eternal. Well, what happens if he sets aside his deity?

What if he just goes, you know what, I'm going to take off deity for a while and put it in the closet. Okay. He needed to remain deity because his life had to have infinite value. But supposing Jesus could lay aside his deity, then what?

He would no longer be God, and then we'd have just a man. But we'd also have a mess with regard to the Trinity. What happens when the second person in the Trinity, so to speak, goes into stasis or whatever that would be?

I don't even know what that would be. And you look at something like Colossians 1, where Paul writes that Jesus is upholding the universe, basically, by the word of his power. So what happens if he puts his deity in the closet?

The universe goes kaput, right? He has to sustain. I mean, when we think about the God-man, there are so many mysteries. So think about this. While he's in this human body, not my human body, but while he's veiled in humanity, he's sustaining himself.

He's upholding the universe. He's upholding all things. So he's sustaining himself. And you go, yeah. And that's later on the quiz, and I'll probably skip so we can get to it. But yes, he can't lay aside.

But let me just read this part, and then we'll move on. The Bible says, Jesus emptied himself of certain things when he came to this earth. This is known as the kenosis debate, blah, blah, blah, blah.

What emptying does not mean. He did not cease to become God when he came. We already talked about that. He can't. Jesus was always conscious of the fact that he was God. Again, it's kind of mind-boggling because we want to believe that...

I mean, think about this. Jesus is born. He's still upholding the universe as God. He knows everything as a baby. And does that mean, like the song, Jesus never cries. Jesus knows how to walk from the minute he gets out of...

Jesus doesn't need diapers. No, and you're like, I don't know. But the Bible does not say that God changed into a human being, right? He didn't go, I'm done being God, or I'm shifting gears, and now I'm just going to be a man.

Why? Because Jesus cannot change. The same yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13, 8. It's impossible for God's nature to change. So what happened when he comes to earth? He doesn't change natures.

He takes on an additional nature. One person, two natures. Fully and truly divine, truly human. Okay, questions, concerns, comments, heresies? I mean, this is an easy place because I'd say raise your hand if you never taught or uttered any kind of canonic heresy, but every hand that went up, I'd have to say, yeah.

I mean, there's a mystery involved here, and some of it we can sort of understand, and some of it we really can't. Yeah, I think it's fine. Yeah, kind of like the Trinity. Let's go to number 10. I'll just tell you number nine.

True or false in his humanity, Jesus knew everything his divine nature knew? False. How can I say that? He said, you know, there are things that only the Father knows. Well, does that mean that in his divinity, Jesus didn't know?

No, because there's one will, one divine essence, so he had to know that. So how is it he knows and doesn't know? Stay tuned. I don't know. Number 10, true or false, Jesus set aside, Anderson, some of his attributes and kept others.

Yeah, it's false. This view contends that Jesus Christ set aside certain of his divine attributes, such as being all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere present when he came to earth. At the same time, he kept some of his attributes, such as holiness, love, and truth.

His moral attributes, why do we know that's false? Can he put some of his divine attributes off and keep others? Divine simplicity, he can't do that, right? He's all these things all the time. Jesus is the eternal God.

He enjoys all the rights and privileges of that position. If Jesus was God, as the scripture teaches, he could not rid himself of some of these qualities and still be God. Okay, number 11, Jesus did not know he was God until he had come of age.

False. I mean, you know, when was the moment, you know? He's like, I mean, just imagine that for a minute. He's like eight, and he's sitting at dinner one night, and he goes, mom, dad, I have news for you, you know?

I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. He always says, there are some who believe that Jesus did not give up any of his divine attributes while here on earth, but rather gave up his divine self-consciousness.

In other words, he did not know he was God. All the attributes of deity remained with him, but he was simply not aware of them. Oh, that kenosis thing is really... Okay, I don't want to do anymore on that.

Number 12, true or false, Jesus sometimes acted as if he did not possess divine attributes. And I love what he says here. This answer, if you think about it, Jesus is like feigning, faking that he doesn't have some attributes.

It would mean that he's deceiving people, right? Yes. Well, because he was a human. Do you? Let me see. Let me see if I want to fire the person who wrote this question again. Jesus sometimes acted as if he did not possess divine attributes.

I think you guys are reading too much of it, maybe. But I digress. He says this is, you know, the idea of deceiving people is inconsistent with the pure holy character of God. He can't deceive people.

Okay, number 13. Oh, the highlighter failed. There is no highlighter on this one. So it's up for grabs. True or false, Jesus set aside the use of his divine attributes. It is false. This is what I would call the...

Are we being recorded? The Bruce Ware option, which is the idea that Jesus operated only as a man by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that's false. This position holds that Jesus gave up the use, not the possession of his divine attributes.

While he was fully God during his time here on earth, he did not use any of these divine attributes. Though he could have used them, he did not. I mean, if we just think about the number of predictions by Jesus concerning coming events, I mean, even when he tells Peter that he's going to deny him Jesus three times, you know, how did he do that?

And, you know, some would argue that it was by the power of the Holy Spirit. But if that was the case, then what? The Bible would tell us. So, Andrew. That is correct. Well, he's not. Yeah, he's not. I mean, you know, and again, we get back to the mystery, because he's not walking the face of the earth and, you know, doing everything as this blazing divine, you know.

OK, so any thoughts or questions about the kenosis before we close? OK, we've had a complete self-emptying. Complete kenosis. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you for this time. I thank you for these folks who've gotten up so early in the morning to be here.

Father, I praise you for the finished work of Christ on the cross, for his life, his death, his resurrection. Father, I thank you for adopting us as your children and granting us eternal life. Father, I pray as we go through this morning that you would bless our fellowship and all that happens here today that might glorify you, Father, Son, and Spirit.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.