The 5 Solas: Sola Scriptura

All right, so we're going through a series on the five solas, and let me just get this, okay. So these are the five solas. Sola gratia, grace alone. Sola fide, faith alone. Sola Christus, Christ alone.

The Five Solas and the Reformation’s Formal Cause

Soli deo gloria, to the glory of God alone. And sola scriptura. Right, so that word sola means alone. It means all the things that I just mentioned. Grace, faith, Christ, God's glory, the scriptures. We hold to those, not in addition to a governing authority above them, but in and of themselves.

They carry authority themselves. So, sola gratia, sola fide, sola Christus, soli deo gloria, and sola scriptura. Now, does anybody know what the formal cause of the Reformation was? The formal cause, the reason the Reformation happened.

Right, that's who it was against, but what was the formal cause of the Reformation? Okay, let me tell you. The formal cause of the Reformation was sola scriptura. Okay, the Roman Catholic Church said that it held the authority for the Church.

And you would have to be beholden to her teachings. Not the scripture alone, but the scripture, plus tradition, plus the teaching magisterium of the Church. They call it a three-legged stool, and we're going to go through that later on.

Anybody know what the material cause of the Reformation was? Sola fide. It's how a person was made right with God. So these two things are very, very important. Material cause of the Reformation is sola scriptura.

It's a question of authority. The material cause of the Reformation is sola fide, how a person is made right with God. And we differ with Rome on both of those things. Sola scriptura is going to be the one that we go through today.

Scripture Alone Versus Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium

So, what's the issue? The two main issues that still divide us from the Roman Catholic Church is, number one, the source of religious truth for the people of God. We hold that it comes from the scripture alone.

And how a man is made right with God, which is, again, sola fide. We maintain that scripture alone is our authority, not the scripture plus something else. Now, we're going to get into exactly what that means, because there are other authorities in the Church.

We have pastors and teachers and evangelists. They hold authority, but their authority comes from the scripture. They're not above the scripture. Roman Catholics maintain that scripture itself is insufficient as the authority for the people of God.

And that tradition, the teaching authority of the Church, and the Pope are necessary and must be adhered to in addition to scripture. That's a big claim. We both have commonality in that the scriptures are God-breathed, and they're an authority.

They go beyond that and say it's plus the teaching magisterium of the Church, plus sacred tradition. It's a question of authority. The Reformers contended that all things must be tested by scripture alone.

This explains why the Reformers accepted some parts of the Roman Catholic teaching and not others. We still hold to the Trinity. There's certain things that Roman Catholics teach that we would hold to, the virgin birth.

They believe that scripture is to rule the Church, for it is the word of God and the voice of God. Therefore, its authority is absolute, not derivative. The scriptures' authority do not come from the Church.

The Church's authority comes from the scriptures. See the difference? John Calvin said that scripture is as authoritative as if God himself had been giving utterance. A Christian should rely on and be governed by its promises, and the Church should be wholly subject to its authority.

In fact, all other kinds of authority, papal, creedal, civil, must be subordinate to the scriptures. So the scriptures are held at the highest standard. Everything else comes beneath that. The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the word of God—this is the Catholic catechism— the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone.

Its authority, the Roman Catholic Church's authority, in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. So this comes out of the Catholic catechism, and what the Roman Catholic Church is saying is that they're the authority.

You can't interpret the scriptures apart from what they say. The Church's magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ. So they say the Roman Catholic Church receives this authority of Christ.

Thou art pure, and upon this rock I will build my church. Peter's the pope. He's the one who's able to teach everyone else, and the teaching magisterium. So they hold that the Church's authority is above the scriptures, or equal to the scriptures.

They wouldn't say above. They would say equal to the scriptures. But I would not believe in the gospel had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me. Now we start getting into a little bit divergent views than us.

They're saying, based on the Catholic catechism, that people come to know Jesus as Savior because the Church moved her, not because the Holy Spirit moved her. The power which they, Catholic bishops, exercise personally in the name of Christ is proper, ordinary, and immediate, although its exercise is ultimately controlled by the supreme authority of the Church.

See, so they'll say that the Church's authority is on par with the scripture, but then they sneak in the word, the supreme authority. That leads me to believe that their authority is over the scriptures, not beneath the scriptures.

Only priests who have received the faculty of absolving from the authority of the Church can forgive sins in the name of Christ. Now we know that no human being can forgive sins, right? It's only Christ that can forgive your sins.

Now we can forgive each other, and that's fine. We should forgive each other in the proper context, but the ultimate consequences of your sins cannot be forgiven by another man. That has to come from Christ alone.

The Second Vatican Council's decree on ecumenism explains, for it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help towards salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be attained.

In other words, what they're saying is, you need to come to the Catholic Church, and through the Catholic Church, salvation could be mediated to you. Okay? So you have to come to the Roman Catholic Church.

But what's odd is, in today's day and age, Pope Francis doesn't believe this. He says atheists can get into heaven, Muslims can get into heaven, Jews can get into heaven, all by means of the grace of Jesus Christ, even though they don't believe in him.

Now that's dangerous. Dangerous. That's telling somebody that their religious system will get them to heaven by the grace of Jesus Christ, as long as they're sincere in their belief in their religion.

That's wrong. There's no other name under heaven by which men can be saved. But at the name of Jesus Christ, the apostles were adamant, preaching to the Jews, turn from your system that's going to save you to Christ, who will save you.

The whole book of Hebrews is dedicated to that topic alone. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the new covenant, in order to establish on earth one body of Christ, which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the people of God.

So what that's saying, the Catholic catechism is saying, to the apostolic college alone. In other words, the teaching magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church alone. They're it. Oddly enough, in 1040, they split away from the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Now the Eastern Orthodox Church claims to be the one true church. The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the one true church. The Egyptian Coptic claim to be the one true church. There's a bunch of them that claim to be the one true church.

Which is it? Right? So that's why we go back to the scriptures. We see what the scriptures say with regards to salvation. Not what any particular human being or human establishment tells us about it. And again, it's the apostolic college alone.

God has declared that whoever adds to or takes away from his word, his scripture, is subject to his curse. The Roman Catholic Church has declared that we Protestants are accursed, anathema, for taking away the word of God found in tradition.

If anyone, and this is from the Council of Trent, if anyone does not receive as sacred and canonical the books as they have been read in the Catholic Church and contained in the Latin Vulgate edition, and knowingly condemn aforesaid traditions, let him be anathema.

So the Roman Catholic Church has never taken this anathema away from us. We are still under this anathema, according to them, although they dilute it now. They call us separated brethren, which we're not.

We hold to a different authority and a different means of salvation. But they say that if we don't hold to the Apocrypha, those 13 books, that we don't hold to that, we're anathema. We're eternally cursed.

If we don't hold that the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church are binding, we're anathema. That's a serious charge. Anathema means devoted to evil, to curse. We read this in Galatians 1. But if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.

That is the heaviest curse you can pronounce on somebody. Let him be eternally damned. The funny thing is, not the funny thing, I should say, the sad thing is, Rome has added to the gospel. Because now, as part of the Roman Catholic Catechism, you need to believe that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven and was sinless.

If you don't hold to those two things, you are eternally cursed, according to Rome. Nowhere does that appear in Scripture. And that's not even part of the gospel. That was never preached to anyone in the first six centuries of the Church.

So they've actually added to the gospel. They are under the anathema that Paul pronounced in Galatians.

Very, very serious.

What Sola Scriptura Means and What It Does Not Mean

That's why we hold to Sola Scriptura. No one, relying on his own skill, shall, in matters of faith and of morals, pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, resting the sacred Scripture on his own senses.

In other words, we can't interpret it. Presumed to interpret the said Scripture contrary to the sense which Holy Mother Church, whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, hath held and doth hold.

The Roman Catholic Church is the only authority able to interpret the Scriptures and tell you what it means infallibly. The odd thing is they've only infallibly interpreted ten verses out of all Scripture.

So when you listen to Roman Catholic apologists, a lot of times they're in contradiction with one another. And all of a sudden that's okay because we're still part of the Catholic Church. It's like, wait a second.

I'm not allowed to read the Scriptures and interpret them, okay? In fact, what does Scripture tell us? Be a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. It's incumbent upon us to read the Scriptures and interpret them properly.

Yes, in accordance with what the historic Church has said, but not that the historic Church is the authority. The Church can be wrong. We talk about that when we go through the confession class. We hold to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

In as much as it reflects the Scriptures. If the confession doesn't reflect the Scriptures, it's not the Scriptures that are wrong. It's the confession that's wrong. The confession is not infallible. God's word is.

That is the ultimate, the supreme authority that we rely on. Protestants have declared that Rome is a false church for adding human traditions to the word of God. Despite sincere debates by fine apologists over the course of nearly 500 years, the differences remain the same as they were in the 6th century.

There hasn't been any changes. They still have not lifted the anathema on us. So now, I don't want this to be a Roman Catholic bashing session. Although we have differences with them, I want to talk about what Sola Scriptura is.

That's what we're here to learn. Sola Scriptura basically says, All things necessary for salvation concerning faith and life that are binding upon us are taught in the Bible with enough clarity that the ordinary believer can find them there and understand them.

The Scriptures speak with clarity. It's called perspicuity. It's clear enough for us to understand. You must be born again to see the kingdom of heaven. All those who believe in Jesus Christ as Savior, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead, you will be rescued.

You will be saved. The definition of Sola Scriptura basically goes like this. The Bible is the sole infallible authority, the supreme and final authority in all spiritual matters. That doesn't mean that there aren't other authorities.

We have pastors, we have teachers, we have evangelists. They're an authority, but they're subservient to the Scriptures. No human being is infallible. The only thing that's infallible are the Scriptures.

That's why we go to them. That's why they're the supreme authority. Furthermore, we're forbidden to add or take away from Scripture. Deuteronomy 4 .2, you shall not add to the word that I command you.

Verse 32, everything that I command you, you should be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it. Revelation, I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to them the plagues described in this book.

If anyone takes away from the words of this book, of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life. Simple. You don't add or take away from the words of Scripture. Why? Because they're perfect.

They're God-breathed. We'll get into that in a minute. Sola Scriptura is not arguing that all truth is to be found in the Bible. You don't find the molecular structure for water, H2O, in the Bible.

Right?

It's designed to give us everything we need for life and godliness as pertaining to faith. It's not arguing that every verse in the Bible is equally clear to every reader. There are difficult things in the Scriptures that are tough to understand that we have to ponder over.

Peter even said this. He talked about Paul writing Scriptures. There's things that Paul's explained in Scripture that are difficult to understand. Sola Scriptura does not argue that the church, the people of God in the mysterious office, is not of great value and help in understanding the Bible.

This is why we look back to the creeds of the church. The creeds, basically, are what we must believe. Then we look to our confession. That's what we should believe. That's why we have different confessions.

Historically, we all have the same creeds. We all hold to the authoritative creeds of the church throughout history. However, Scripture is the perfect and only standard of spiritual truth revealing infallibly all that we must believe in order to be saved and all that we must do in order to glorify God.

That, no more and no less, is what Sola Scriptura means. That's right from Ligonier. We can trust R .C. Sproul. This is our confession. Chapter 1. Right? Right off the bat. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.

Clear.

Paragraph 10. Right? Delivered by the Spirit.

Right?

We recognize that the Scriptures are the Word of God that come direct from Him to us by means of the Holy Spirit. That is why we stick to the Scriptures alone. Okay. Deuteronomy 31 .9. All the words of the law.

What books was Moses traditionally said to write? The first five. The Pentateuch.

Right?

Moses declared to all Israel, Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you. They are not just idle words for you. They are your life. And 1 Peter, Peter says, You yourselves are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.

So, Deuteronomy 31 .9 says, Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the priests. Who are the priests in the New Covenant?

Us.

He's given that to us. We're going to see some more Scriptures that are going to help. Three elements in this passage in Deuteronomy. The word of which Moses spoke was written. He wrote it down to be passed down.

The people could and must listen to it and learn it. In other words, it was understandable to everyone who was there. In this word, they could find life. Same with the Scriptures that we have today. He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

He has told you. Where does that come from? The word of God. Not the church, not the teaching magisterium, or the tradition. Old and New Testaments. If this principle of the sufficiency and clarity of the word of God was true in the Old Testament, we can and must assume that it's all the more true in the New.

The New Testament gloriously fulfills what the Old Testament promises. The New Testament makes plain that Scripture is sufficient and clear. One example is 2 Timothy 3 .4. He says, You, however, talking to Timothy, You, however, continue the things you have learned and 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 wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

So he's telling Timothy, even if all you had was the Old Testament, it all points to Christ. You have enough with just the Scriptures. Then he goes on to tell Timothy, you know this, all Scripture is God-breathed, useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

This is the only use in the Bible of the Greek word theopneustos, which means God-breathed. We use the term inspired by God, but it's actually breathed out. It's expired. It's breathed out by Him because of His inspiration.

This word is never used for any other authority. The church is not God-breathed. Tradition is not God-breathed. The Word of God is breathed out by God. By nature, it's divine. No human authority, no tradition is divine.

Therefore, the Word of God stands alone as the only divine words that we need. That's why last week I said, if we marinate in the Word of God, we went over Psalm 1, we take those things, we meditate on God's Word daily.

That's what's going to feed and nourish our soul. Paul continues, "...you, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of.". The sacred writings, which I actually went through.

He didn't give him Peter's email address. In other words, if Peter was the pope, and the teaching magisterium was the authority and had interpreted the Scriptures for us, I don't need to go to the Scriptures because I could be wrong.

I can't read them and understand them on my own. I'll just go to Peter. He'll tell me everything I need to know. That's the exact opposite of what the Scripture tells you to do. God is speaking to His people, and He does it with clarity.

We do not need an intermediary between the intermediary. We go direct to God. The usual response of the Roman Catholic apologists is to assert repeatedly that 2 Timothy 3 does not teach sufficiency. They refer to other Scriptures and say that the word complete does not mean sufficient.

But these passages are not parallel. A completely different Greek word is used there. Where 2 Timothy 3 .17 uses exartizo, which has to do with being fitting for a task, these other passages use the Greek word telios, which has reference to maturity or having reached a desired end.

The telos, the objective end to what it is. So the word that Paul uses is complete, sufficient, completely qualified. So the Scriptures are enough to complete the man of God for every good work. If all we had was the Scriptures, we'd have enough.

The confidence that Paul had in the Scriptures which he taught Timothy was clearly understood by the Church Father Augustine. In his treatise to prepare leaders of the Church in an understanding of the Bible on Christian doctrine, he says this, Among those things which are said openly in Scripture are to be found all those teachings which involve faith, the mores of living, and that hope and charity which we have discussed.

So Augustine, as well as many other Church Fathers, talked about the sufficiency of the Scripture. The Scripture is enough. You don't need the Scriptures plus an authority interpreting them or telling you what to believe in those situations.

Jesus, the Apostles, and the Sufficiency of Written Scripture

So most importantly, what does Jesus say about Sola Scriptura? At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus faced the focused temptation of the devil in the wilderness. He faced the temptation as the Son of God, but also as the second Adam and the true Israel.

How did he make out? He did not appeal to the oral tradition of Israel, which he could have done. There was oral tradition. He didn't appeal to that. He didn't appeal to the authority of the rabbis or the Sanhedrin, the teachers of the Old Testament law.

He didn't appeal to them. He didn't even appeal to his own divinity. If I was Jesus, I'd be like, look, this is what I'm saying. I'm God. That's it. He didn't do that. He appealed to the Scriptures. He turned again and again to the Scriptures.

It is written. It is written. It is written. And that's all he needed to say. It is written. This is what the Scripture says. That's what I stand on. Not even standing on my own divinity, although I could.

I am here standing on the Scriptures. The Scriptures had made him wise. They equipped him for every good work. They were clear, and he implied that even the evil one knew it. When the devil quoted Scripture, intentionally twisting it, misapplying it, Jesus did not turn to some other authority.

He said, it is written. When the devil or his representatives misuse the Bible or imply that it's unclear, Jesus teaches us that we must look more deeply into the written word, not away from it. So when we're confronted with a heresy, with a false doctrine, we go to the written word, not to an ecclesiastical authority outside of the written word.

That's why any time we're talking with Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Roman Catholics, Jews, Eastern Orthodox, you name it, where do we go? We go right to the Scriptures. That's the authority. We take their beliefs, we examine them in light of what the Scripture says and say, look, we weighed your doctrine, and it's found wanting.

This is what the Scripture says. We don't go to a church council and say, well, the council said this, although the councils are useful, they may support what we believe. Ultimately, it comes down to the Scripture and what the Scripture says.

The Word of God, Tradition, and the Church’s Real Authority

So let's defend Sola Scriptura. First, the Word of God. The Roman Catholic Church says that the phrase the Word of God can mean more than just the Bible. And we granted that. The Word of God could be found in tradition.

It could come from a teacher. Teachers can give us what the Word of God says. The question before us is whether anything today, other than the Scriptures, is necessary for knowing the truth of God for salvation.

Our opponents need not show that Paul referred to his preaching as well as his writing as the Word of God. Again, we grant that. Those are the Scriptures. They need to show that Paul taught that the oral teaching of the apostles was necessary, needed, in addition to the Scriptures, to supplement them for the Church throughout the ages.

Now, they cannot show that because Paul did not teach that. And the Scriptures as a whole do not teach that we have to hold to some traditions that were not found in the Scriptures that no one knows about.

No one knows what they actually are. If no one knows what those traditions actually are, how can we possibly rely on them for our salvation? If it's necessary, God would need to reveal it to us. That's why we have the Scriptures.

Tradition, our Roman Catholic opponents, while making much of tradition, never really define tradition or tell you what its content is. Tradition is a word that can be used in a variety of ways. Historically, they have not even agreed amongst themselves about the nature and content of tradition.

You ask several different Roman Catholics what tradition is, they're going to give you a couple of different answers. So much for an infallible authority. And if those traditions are necessary for our salvation,.

Where do we find them?

Almost all Roman Catholic apologists for more than 300 years after the Council of Trent argued that tradition does add to the Scriptures. And we read the Scriptures that specifically say, do not add to the Scriptures.

If you have to believe in the bodily assumption of Mary and that she's co-mediator, mediatrix of all grace, that she was the one who crushed the head of the serpent, that's what they teach. If you have to believe that, you're way outside the Scriptures and not in Christianity.

Rome usually tries to clarify its position by saying that its authority is Scripture, tradition, and the Church. They call it a three-legged stool. You can't have one without the other. Vatican II declared, again, they're joined together, they cannot stand without the other.

Basically, if you listen carefully, you will notice that the real authority for Rome is neither Scripture nor tradition, but the Church. Sola ecclesia. In other words, we rest on Scripture alone, they rest on the Church alone.

The Church is the only one who's able to interpret the Scriptures properly. They're the only one who have been entrusted with sacred tradition. They're the only one that you have to come to in order to get salvation.

You don't go directly to Jesus. You come to the Roman Catholic Church, you perform the sacraments, and then you get to Jesus. But you don't get to Jesus first, you've got to go through his mother to get to Jesus.

This is dangerous, dangerous, and it's the result of taking your feet off of the Scriptures and placing them on man. Man is going to twist and distort what the Scriptures say. It's inherent in us because we're depraved, and we have to be careful ourselves.

We have to constantly be measuring what we believe by the sacred Scriptures. Protestantism arose in the 16th century in reaction to such claims and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. In the Middle Ages, most within the Church believed that the Bible and the traditions of the Church taught the same or at least complementary doctrines.

But as Martin Luther and others studied the Bible with a greater care and depth than the Church had done in centuries, they began to discover that tradition actually contradicted the Bible. They discovered that, for example, the Bible teaches that the offices of bishop and presbyter are the same office.

Tradition says they're different offices. The Bible teaches that all have sinned except for Jesus, but tradition says that Mary was sinless. The Bible teaches that Christ offered his sacrifice once and for all.

Tradition says that priests continually offer sacrifices of Christ on the altar of the Mass. They re-sacrifice. When the priest snaps that wafer in half, they're re-sacrificing Christ's death on the altar.

Blasphemous! The Bible says we do not bow down to statues. Tradition says that we should bow down to certain statues. The Bible says that all Christians are saints and priests, but tradition says that the saints and priests are special cast within the Christian community.

They pray to saints. You know what a saint is in Roman Catholic theology? Someone whose good deeds outweigh their bad deeds. And you need at least eight miracles performed in the name of that particular saint.

So now when this person is canonized, they're in heaven, and the excess merit that they earned on earth goes into a bank account called the treasury of merit. So that when one of you die, their excess merit goes to your account and helps you get into heaven rather than staying in purgatory.

And the only question I ask is, was the merit of Jesus Christ not enough? We need your merit and your merit? You don't have a Savior. You have a man-made system of works to get you into heaven. It's so sad.

It's so sad. We don't have merit. We've demerited salvation. But the Bible says that Jesus is the only mediator between God and man. Tradition says Mary is co-mediator with Christ. The Bible says that all Christians can and should know that they have eternal life, but tradition says that all Christians cannot and should not know that they have eternal life.

When I talk to a Roman Catholic, I say, listen, I know that I have eternal life. They say, that's the sin of presumption. And I say, you haven't read your Bible because these things are written so that you may know that you have eternal life.

That you may know. You can know. It's not a sin. It's called faith. I trust that Jesus purchased me on the cross. When He died, I died. When He was raised, I was raised. I'm with Christ. The Reformers saw the words of Jesus to the Pharisees applied equally in their day.

You nullify the Word of God for the sake of your tradition. Those traditions nullify what God says specifically in His Word. Why are you going to step off what God said and start listening to what a human authority says?

Dangerous. So let's go and show what the Scriptures say specifically with regards to themselves. Psalm 1. Where have I heard this before? Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on his law he meditates day and night. And I told you last week, the word law means instruction. It doesn't mean just the Ten Commandments. Ten Commandments are included, but the law is the whole instruction of God.

We have the whole Old Testament that the New Testament saints were relying on to show them who Jesus was and how He fulfilled all those prophecies. We're told to meditate on that day and night. We're not told to go to the priest and ask him, what does this mean?

Joshua 1 .8, the book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success.

The law, it was written down for us. Deuteronomy 6, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house.

And on your gates.

Incidentally, this is where they get phylacteries from. They write up God's law, the Ten Commandments, and bind it with a string around their head, the Jews. Deuteronomy 17, and when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a book of the copy of the law.

So anyone who became a king in Israel didn't just have to read the first five books of the Bible, they had to copy them themselves, write it down so that they could read it, write it down, read it, write it down, so that it would get implanted in their head because they're going to be held accountable how they rule over the people.

Are they going to rule according to God's law? Makes it a lot better for the king to read it and write it down so that he knows what it actually says. The point is, it was written down. So where should we look as New Testament believers?

Romans 15, for whatever was written in former days, the Old Testament, was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. Acts 17, now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica.

They received the word of God with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. They always went back to the scriptures, back to the scriptures. That's where we need to go.

So what is necessary to be saved? John 20, these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name. These are written so that you will believe.

1 John, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. All the scriptures point us to Jesus and the fact that we can know that we have eternal life.

This is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. And what don't we do? We don't go beyond what is written. That's what Paul tells the Corinthians. Don't go beyond what is written.

Very simple. Stick to what we wrote, you'll be okay. Go beyond that, now you're treading in dangerous water. 1 Timothy 3 .15, the church of the living God is a pillar and a foundation for the truth.

Right?

Those are pillars. What is a pillar designed to do? Designed to, yes, to support, to hold something up. The church is to hold up the Word of God. In other words, the scriptures authority is above man's authority.

You got God's authority, which is the scriptures, and then the pillar, the church, is to hold the scriptures up. That's how we view things. We recognize and hold the scripture up as God's Word.