Reflections On The Inerrancy Conference

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Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the

Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

No Compromise Radio ministry, Pastor Steve Cooley, the Tuesday Guy at the Tuesday Guy. Buenos dias, senores.

Steve, it�s probably been one month. What is month in Espanol? Mesa? Mesas? No, no.

What is it? Semana? Semana? What�s a month? I don�t know. I don�t know.

It�s been too long. Mesa feels, or maybe it is a month. I don�t know. I don�t know.

I don�t know either. I mean, I�ve forgotten all the time stuff because I just don�t know. Mas o menos. Yeah, mas o menos.

Anyway, it�s been about a month. Yeah, it�s been a month, and it�s kind of fun to sit down and do No Compromise Radio, especially in light of the

California trip. Tell me about your trip to California. I thought you were going to say, �especially in light of the Lord�s soon return.� Well, that�s

Maranatha. May he show up before this airs. That would be great. I would be very blessed by that.

California, what did I do? I mean, I just visited family. I mean,

I went and ate too much. I think I put on about four or five pounds, but that�s what� when you�re around family, they�re just like, �Hey, have something to eat.�

And family food is so good. It�s comfort food to the ultimate. C. El Gordo.

But you went there originally with a group of men from Bethlehem Bible Church for the Shepherds Conference, Uber Conference, I think it was called the

Inerrancy Summit. Yes, yes, I did. Yeah, I was laughing because I was thinking about how little sleep

I had for the two days before I went out there. And then I get in the car. In fact, one of our guys would go with me to just kind of smack me in case

I started falling asleep. And then the car conks out. I had to get a second rental car, all that. So, shout out to Jonathan Newton.

Thanks for keeping it real there, bro. Steve, for me as well, I get back from Israel late on Saturday night, technically

Sunday morning, then preach Sunday morning, then fly out on Monday night. And the wind currents were so bad.

Because you flew earlier in the day, I flew later. Basically, Virgin Airlines said we might have to stop in Vegas and fill up with fuel because the current, you know, it was like we were going to hunt 399 miles an hour into the wind.

The pilot told us, he said, because the flight was just over seven hours, he goes, it has never taken him that long to fly to LA, ever.

And I'm like, well, that says something, you know, so it was bad. So MacArthur has a conference, Strange Fire Conference, and he critiques the charismatic movement through Leviticus 10 and Nadab and Abai, who?

I like how you said that. And he got some flack for it. Was the flack warranted?

What was the pushback for? Why did he receive that? Was the flack warranted? Well, I didn't think so.

The flack was, you know, basically that John MacArthur had painted with a broad brush and not all charismatics were as bad as TBN, you know, kind of thing.

And hey, that's true. But he didn't paint with a broad brush. I think he named names when he had to, and he was reserved when he didn't have to be.

So I thought he was, if anything, kind of restrained. Well, I don't know if it's true or not.

But then I heard Mark Dever talk to John and say, John, in light of the last conference, the

Strange Fire Conference, why don't you make the Shepherds Conference into an inerrancy conference and this will be, you know, kind of what we're for, not what we're against or something.

And I thought it was great. You know, the charismatic book burning on Tuesday night. Now, you might want to cover your children's ears for that.

Yeah. It might be really, you know, scurrilous. Oh, yeah, it wasn't true. What I said wasn't, it was a joke, ladies and gentlemen, a joke.

There was no book burning. Okay, Steve, let's talk about inerrancy generally, and then we can focus maybe on a couple of the sessions and some of the things that were good to be reminded of when it comes to the relationship between preaching and inerrancy.

First inerrancy in general and a definition. I learned this week, Steve, that Augustine was the first person who coined the term inerrant.

Well, he was a pretty smart guy. He didn't have everything right, but he had quite a few things right.

Then according to Michael Horton, Luther and Calvin spoke of scripture as free from error.

And so, isn't that a good definition of inerrancy? Well, let's see, inerrancy, to be free from error.

Yes. I'd say that, yeah. No errors whatsoever. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, when we say inerrancy, it's

I -N -E -R -R -A -N -C -Y, not I -N -E -R -R -O -R -A -N -C -Y, inerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

No, that was very nice. I like that. I like your wit.

Repartee. Yeah, but I don't want to cause anybody to have to cover their errors. I know, I know. Especially children.

Inerrant means no errors. Infallible means there can be no errors. Amen. Some people, they equate the two terms.

They cannot err. The err of Caldees. You know, that's how you say, well, you can say

E -R -R, err or err. Oh, you can? Yes. I guess you can say it whatever way you like. Yes, but I mean, it's correct.

I had a seminary prof who used to keep saying err, and I thought he was wrong. So I went home and looked it up, and I found out, oh, he's actually right.

Yeah. Nietzsche. And so, there were 4 ,500 men who were pastors and elders and deacons and seminary students who attended this inerrancy conference.

And we know the scriptures are inerrant, but I'm certain that the enemy, along with liberalism, wants to attack such a view of scripture.

But Steve, I was not ready for the Calvinist Clowns poster board and sign ministry to greet us the very first day.

Yeah, welcome to California, right? I mean, we get in on Monday. I think I went to sleep pretty early

Monday night because I was a zombie. And, you know, you get up and you show up at the conference, and here's somebody right across the street from the parking lot carrying this sign, you know, and it says, like, hey,

Calvinist with a K. And with an A where an I should be. Right, Calvinist.

I thought they were first, Steve. I knew they were misspelling some words, but I thought they were like against the unit of measurement for heat, you know, there's

Celsius. That's Calvin. I thought they were against Calvin. Absolute zero minus 273 .6

degrees or whatever it is. I think so, yes. And so, I did the same thing. I got in late, but my clock was all messed up.

So, I got up early, internal clock that is, I got up early, sunny, warm, palm trees, all the wind had blown out the smog, and I walk onto the campus of Grace Church.

And I looked at the guy, and I was taken aback by this Matthew 23, Hebrews 9 Calvinistic Clowns thing.

I looked right at him, and he looked at me and he goes, you idiot. Yeah, yeah, he did the same thing.

You know, he said, when I was walking across the street, he said, welcome to the circus, you clowns. And I thought, somebody asked me about it later, what did

I think? And I just said, well, you know, like my seminary prof used to say, you have to be winsome to win some.

And he certainly was winsome. Steve, if I was an Armenian, I mean,

Armenian, I mean, harmardiological, but if I was going to spell something wrongly, or if I was going to try to, you know, go to an

Armenian conference, my tact might be a little bit different. Yeah, I don't know, you know, if he was trying to tweak, actually,

I just think he was bonkers. But, you know, that's neither here nor there. So we get past that, and there's lots of people serving.

Let's talk a little bit about ministry. The Lord Christ saves us, gives us spiritual gifts. Every person in the body of Christ has one.

And these days, you could divide them into two groups, speaking and serving. What was the servant attitude of the men and women at Grace Community Church when these pastors descended on Grace Community Church campus?

It's always so terrific. I think I heard a total, I was there the

Friday after the conference, I was at a Bible study there, because, you know, I like to get my spiritual batteries recharged when

I'm in California. Anyway, I think one of the men there, one of the elders at Grace said that there were 1 ,500 volunteers that week.

And, you know, it's just terrific. I mean, here's the best thing to me about it.

You know, unlike any restaurant or any store, not even Nordstrom or whatever that you go in, whatever you ask for, you get.

I mean, there was a time where I wanted a water bottle and I couldn't find one. And so I'm walking around the book.

They had this book tent. They converted like a big portion of the parking lot into a tent and they had all the books from the conference.

I got saved there, by the way. Did you? At the tent revival? Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I was walking around there and I see a guy carrying a young man walking away with like a couple cases of water.

And I said, where are those going? Can I, you know, can I follow you and get one? And an older guy just looks at my, you know, name tag and just opens it up and gives me one.

You know, it's just like, you're the customer, you're always, but the attitude there is just like, whatever you guys want, however, we can minister to you.

That's what we're here for. And it really is awesome. I think it was the shirt that said, Hi, I'm Tuesday Guy.

And then he immediately gave you the water with ice and everything else. I, you know, I have to deny that.

And I, all the children can now uncover their ears. That did not happen. I did not have a shirt that said, Hi, I'm Tuesday Guy.

First Peter chapter four, above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins.

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

And that's exactly what we saw demonstrated at Grace Community Church. And, you know, here's the thing too.

This is all weekdays. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And people,

I talked to a number of people who'd actually taken vacation. One guy said he takes his vacation every year during Shepherds Conference, not so he can go, but so he can serve.

And I just thought, man, this is, you know, the mark of true service.

And it really is amazing. Well, to God be the glory on this one. I hope it doesn't come across as some boast because I didn't do anything regarding this.

But Steve, for me, to see my son, Luke, who's 18 and a master's college student, say,

Dad, I've got a quick study. And I have to do my work study program as well and work.

And then I'll get a ride because I need to get back down to the campus at Grace Church to serve as a volunteer.

That was pretty nice. That was kind of a tear -jerking moment when I would look across campus and see my son,

Luke, serving other men as a volunteer there. It's pretty, pretty amazing. Who'd have thunk it?

I mean, here, you know, he goes to church here and he's serving at the Shepherds Conference. But that's because, you know, he's a student back there.

But I know that's cool. Mike Ebendroth with Steve Cooley today on No Compromise Radio. You can always write us at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

Steve, we're talking generally today about inerrancy due to the Shepherds Conference theme, inerrancy. Steve, what would you say is the correlation between a high view of Scripture, that is,

God and man wrote Scripture, but of course, God is making sure that there are no errors there, and preaching?

In other words, if you've got a high view of Scriptures, will that affect your preaching? And if so, how?

Well, I think if you have a high view of Scripture, you're going to stay in the Scripture, right? Your want is going to be to give as much

Scripture, as much truth to your people as possible, because you're going to then trust your sovereign

Lord to transform people through the preaching of your word. What you won't do is veer away from it and find, you know, just kind of pick and choose, find little jumping off points so that you can say what you really want.

You know, get away from Scripture as fast as you can, so that you can just pour out your humor and your, you know, perhaps your own personal wisdom.

You know, you want to stick to the Bible. I mean, and by the way, that is not to say that I would never be humorous or that I would never involve my –

Yeah, or that I would never, you know, mention some kind of personal insight during a sermon. But that is to say that your goal would be to preach the word and to stay in the word as much as is humanly possible.

Steve, when I contemplate sola scriptura, Scripture alone is sufficient.

Then I say to myself, you know, if traditions of man were without error, if the magisterium was without error, if other people without error, then you know what?

We could just kind of not just preach the Bible. But since all those are clouded with the error of humanity and sin, why don't we preach from something that is authoritative and incapable of error and free from error, both of those infallibility and inerrancy.

And so, that's why it's so wonderful to preach something that's truth. Don't we deserve to give truth to God's people?

Well, shouldn't we want to? Don't we deserve? I don't know. You know, anytime I hear the word deserve, I'm like, you know, unless it's attached to the

Lord, you know, God deserves praise. God deserves a lot of things. I don't really think

I deserve a whole lot. Okay. Does God deserve to have his under shepherds preach his word to his people?

Yes. You know, you theological guys, it's Calvinist clowns strike again. All right.

So, how about if a pastor doesn't preach the Bible expositionally?

Could you ask yourself the question with any merit? I wonder if he even thinks it's inerrant. So, his theology is affecting his methodology.

Yeah, I would certainly wonder why he doesn't do that. If he doesn't want to expose the text, well, why is that? You know, he obviously thinks it's deficient or, you know, cannot hold the people's attention or something else.

You know, I mean, it's like people can only listen to 10 minutes at a time anyway, so I don't want to really bore them.

You know, that kind of thing. Why wouldn't he preach expositionally? That would be a question to ask him.

Think about those who are news reporters, Brian Williams, and of course, we're no better than a

Brian Williams. But how about scripture? When I'm reading Harold Lenzel's definition, the very nature of inspiration renders the

Bible infallible, which means that it cannot deceive us. It is inerrant in that it is not false, mistaken, or defective.

And when it gets back to this, right? Is it Theanoustos? Is it God breathed? If God breathed it out, if it is the very breath of God written down by men, you know, using their personalities, etc.

If it is that, then how can we then say that it has error in it?

What happened? You know, when did God sort of take his eye off the ball and, you know, oops.

You know, Jack Haley died. Did you know that? Yes, a fine former Bruin. I know, a fine former

Laker, former Bull. Yeah, but I mean, for me, it's all about UCLA. Yeah, I know. Steve, let's talk about some of the specific sessions.

If you had to pick one of the sessions delivered there at the Shepherds Conference, some were by Mark Dever, Alistair Begg, John MacArthur, Ian Murray, Carl Truman, Steve Lawson, Derek Thomas.

A bunch of nobodies. Yeah. Which one was your favorite message and why? Okay, if you're going to say which one was my favorite,

I'll just be honest. Can I be honest? I think I can. Well, Let's see.

I'm going to sound like a homer, but I'm going to have to go with the last one, the Friday night message.

And I'll tell you the reason why, you know, it was By MacArthur. Yes, by MacArthur. It's one of those sermons you listen to in the beginning, you just go, you know, he's talking about the

Sadducees and the Pharisees and this debate and humdrum, humdrum, you know, come on, can we get into the text?

And then he goes to the text and it was like, here's what I would put. It was like in a boxing analogy.

It was like, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, knock out. And, you know, it was like when he threw the haymaker, it was lights out.

And I thought it was great. I don't want to give it away. I want people to listen to it. But when he gave the, you know, the meaning of the text, when he revealed everything that he was going to reveal, it was pretty powerful and a powerful testimony of Scripture, of Jesus Christ to Scripture, you know, and the inerrancy and the usefulness of Scripture in order to answer theological questions.

Well, Jesus always considered in the way he viewed

Scripture and used it. He always considered it as inerrant, right? Yes. Yeah. And so,

I always think if the Messiah would come along, I did not hear that final message. But I say to myself, if Jesus knew there were errors in the

Hebrew manuscripts, and he comes along, he is Messiah. He's the word incarnate.

I think he, instead of affirming everything, he would have said, this part got transmitted correctly.

And this part here got transmitted incorrectly. Let me correct it. And by the way, that whole

Jonah deal is just a myth. You guys are taking it too literally. Instead of things like him saying, you have heard it said, but I say to you, he'd say something like, you have read, but I say to you, right?

But he never said that. Not one time did he ever say, you have heard it, or you've read it, you know, thus says the

Scripture, but I say to you, you know, he never contradicted Scripture ever. In fact, he always referred to it as what it is, the word of God.

Well, I'm not saying this particular message was my favorite, although this is one of the things that I enjoyed the most, was encouraged by the most, was most thankful for, is in Ligon Duncan's message on 2

Timothy chapter 3. He talked about verse 14, but as for you,

Paul writing to Timothy, but as for you, Timothy, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

And so for Paul to say to Timothy, by the way, remember your mom and your grandmother, remember their view of Scripture, remember how they thought it was

God breathed and authoritative and sufficient, and how we send off our kids to colleges and universities and to the workforce.

And there is something very meaningful and impactful for a young man or woman to sit back and say, yes, but you know, you liberals are telling me the

Bible's full of errors, but my godly mom and my godly dad, that's not the way they think of Scripture. Wasn't that wonderful?

Yep. Very powerful, very powerful. And I would, you know, from the breakout sessions, I've heard good things about Farnell's, although I haven't listened to it yet.

But I would say Abner Chow's breakout session was awesome. Really enjoyed that. I have the handouts from Grisanti's, I was going through that.

That's really, looks really good too. By the way, MacArthur's message was from Matthew 22, verses 23 to 33.

So, really excellent. You know what, Steve, I think maybe John pulled out my first book, Jesus Christ, Prince of Preachers and Christ's View of Preaching and the

Word. And I have a little section there from Matthew 22. Maybe John looked at my notes. I'm pretty sure he didn't.

And so, we want to encourage the listeners of No Compromise Radio, if you have not listened to the main sessions, or I think even many of the breakout sessions, you can just go to shepherdsconference .org,

and they have a Vimeo link, and you can watch and listen to these very encouraging messages.

Psalm 119 by Mark Dever. He read the entire, I don't know, what is that, 176 verses? Yeah. And then

I started counting his reading mistakes. And I think, you know, and this is going to sound like I'm being critical. I'm not.

Listen, if you've done public reading, it's not easy. And I think he made like three little mistakes along the way and corrected each one.

But I just thought, dude, I really thought it was impressive. I thought that was good public scripture reading.

And had the right inflection, everything else. And then when he gave many allusions to the

Passion Week, the Lord's death and return, or resurrection rather, in Psalm 119, the way he did it.

Doesn't this remind you of? Is this an allusion of and focusing on making it a Christ -centered message, even though Psalm 119 is not necessarily messianic by category?

And, yeah, I thought it was really excellent. Some of the guys were asking me about it afterwards. And, you know,

I, because I thought what he did was really excellent. I really enjoyed the reading.

And by the way, just what he said about it afterwards, he goes, you know, some of you might have been a little antsy while I spent an entire 15 minutes reading the scripture.

And I just thought that was kind of just kind of like a little dig, you know, because we shouldn't have been antsy.

You know, but he didn't also he didn't announce it. He was gonna read the whole thing. I don't think at a time, but No, yeah, that was that was wise.

Well, we hope you listen to some of those messages where we were encouraged the shepherds conference .org,

the inerrancy conference. Did you get any good free books there? Any book you want to recommend the people to read if they are interested in inerrancy?

Well, I mean, the coolest book that we got was the B .B. Warfield one, because it just looks cool, right? I mean, you know,

I'm looking forward to kind of tackling that. But Steve, what is the MacArthur book by Crossway 2015 that has probably 12 to 15 chapters that were all single articles written by a

Barton Payne, John Murray taking every captive every thought captive. Is that it? I don't remember the name of the book.

That sounds like a apologetics book. It's something that he edited and put together different articles.

So yeah, looks looks really good. My problem is I wish I would have thought of that, but it wouldn't have sold as many. I have no response to that.

All right. Well, You are my boss. Well, especially on Tuesdays. And may

I just say that, contrary to what some people may think, not one of the speakers at the conference mentioned you.

Yeah, I was wondering about that in the bookstore and all that stuff. Not not one. Yeah, yeah. But they came to me and they said, where's

Tuesday guy? Not the speakers, though. What day is it? No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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