Sunday Live at Kootenai Community Church

For it's hunger, art's always hunger.

We pray it's hunger, for it's hunger.

Oh, sing to the

Lord. Jesus, God's own son.

Precious lamb of God, we sing of you.

Oh. Are you ready?

All right. Let's get started. So, if you're out in the hallway and you want to be part of Adult Sunday School class, now is your time to come in and find a seat.

We are thankful that we have this place to meet, that you have provided that for us, that you have given us a free country to live in, that we are able to be here and fellowship and worship with such freedom and such enjoyable fellowship.

We're grateful for your Word, which guides us and gives us truth in all things, and we are grateful that you have not only inspired

Scripture, but that you have preserved it for us over thousands of years, that we may have your holy and true

Word. And it is in the light of your Word that we see light and that we see truth, and we pray today that you would help us to understand how it is that you have preserved this and how you have worked in history to give us your

Word. And may we appreciate that, and may we love it in you, thus you even more, we ask in Christ's name.

Amen. All right, well, we are continuing our series on how

God wrote a book, and today we're still in lesson 11, Defining and Defending the Canon. So if you have a workbook and you want to join us in your workbook, lesson 11,

Defining and Defending the Canon. And while you're finding your place, I'll just review what it is that we looked at last week.

We first described what canonicity is when we speak of something being part of the canon or left out of the canon or something being canonical or non -canonical, we're referring to that list of books which we regard to be authoritative and inspired

God -given Scripture. And so the word canon simply would refer to a rule or a stick by which you might judge something or measure something, it's the measure of something, and so a list of books like the marks on a ruler would be considered the books that are authoritative, and that list of books which we consider, which we call the canon, thus becomes the measuring rod by which all other things are judged.

And that was the definition of canon. And then we described last week some of the concerns that raised, some of the things that happened that raised the need to determine or at least to decide what a canon was and to determine what books belonged in that canon.

We looked at the theological concerns. You had early church heretics like Marcion who embraced some books and rejected other books and even rejected part of books in order to sort of keep his false teaching going.

Then we looked at the ecclesiastical concerns that arose. Which books do you regard as authoritative to govern your worship as a church?

Which books do you use for the evangelization of the pagans? Which books do you translate into other languages to evangelize people?

Which books do you preach out of and teach out of and read publicly? And so there was that ecclesiastical,

I'll get it, I'm going to get it, concern. Third, there was the political concerns. So you had the persecution of the early church.

Really persecution started around 63 AD and just spread and grew in intensity until Constantine, the rule of Constantine and his conversion in 312.

And the persecution of Christians raised the need again to make the decision or at least to know what books are authoritative.

What books am I going to die for? What books am I going to hand over to authorities? What books am I going to work to preserve and to copy and to hide from those who want to burn

Scripture? Those are the concerns, theological, ecclesiastical, and political that plagued the early church that raised the need to determine and to know which books were

Scripture and which books were not. Cornell, after Sunday school last week, pointed out something that I hadn't thought of and I should have mentioned this but this is a good point.

That decision, I shouldn't say it that way, that determination or that understanding of which books are authoritative and which books are not, the defining of the canon, the figuring out of what is canonical, that happened as a result of heretics, persecution, and the oppression of the state.

And I want you to remember that those were horrible things that happened to Christians, horrible things that happened inside the church, but it was the horrible things that happened to Christians and inside the church that really caused the church to crystallize this in their own view and understanding.

And a lot of the defining doctrines of our Christian faith were defined and codified in the context of heretics who were plaguing the church.

And when we looked at some of the early church heresies in that series we did on early church heresies, we saw that, that the rise of a heresy made everybody say, okay, what is it that we actually believe about this?

And out of that would come a counsel and a confession and some sort of an understanding of those doctrines and a clarification. But it was those horrible things that happened to the early church that really drove the clarification of what is canonical and what is non -canonical.

All right, so let's, we're at number three, Roman numeral number three in lesson 11 there. Why did this universal recognition take so long in the early church?

Because we looked at last week that it was not until in the years 300 and 400 that you have, you have sort of this, these public lists being produced of what is

Scripture and what is not Scripture, which books we're dying for and which books we're not dying for. Why did the recognition of the 27 books of the

New Testament not happen instantaneously in the church? That's one of the questions. Or at least the recognition of it universally not happen within the early church.

And there are three reasons for this. And first of all, you have the geographical diversity of origin.

You have books written from all kinds of different places. For instance, Jerusalem was the home, was the place of writing the book of James.

Galatians was written in Antioch. First Peter was written in Rome and First Corinthians was written in Ephesus.

So you have a lot of New Testament books that are originating from all over the Roman Empire in all these various locations.

It's not like there was one central hub where all of the apostles got together and wrote their books and then copied them and distributed them amongst the people.

You might be in the city of Jerusalem and not know for a decade or two decades that Paul wrote a book to the Ephesian church.

It might take 20 years for you to even see a copy of that. That's difficult for us to understand it, but that's how the ancient world was.

That's how writings happened 2 ,000 years ago. You might be in the city of Rome and not even be aware that there is a

Gospel of Matthew written to Jews. Why? Because it doesn't get circulated, it doesn't get copied, it never landed in your church.

So the geographical diversity of the origin of the books is one reason why an official kind of recognition or a universal recognition took so long.

Second, there's the geographical diversity of destination. In other words, books were written to people in all kinds of different locations.

Not like the entire New Testament was composed in one location and sent to a people group in another location.

You had these books not only originating in different locations, being written in different locations, but they were being sent and distributed to various locations as well.

Philippians was written to the Macedonians. Romans was written to Rome.

First Peter was sent to Western Asia. Revelation was sent to Eastern Asia. Galatians was sent to the city of Galatia.

Titus was sent to an island. Alright, so the geographical diversity of the places to which the books were written.

And then third, the diversity of the recipients. You had different groups of people. Some books were written to just one person.

Paul wrote 1 Timothy to Timothy and 2 Timothy to Timothy and Titus to Titus. Matthew was written to the church at large.

James was written to the scattered believers. First Peter had a geographical location in mind when he wrote to the saints who were scattered out in Bithynia and all those regions mentioned in the introduction to First Peter.

You had individual churches to whom books were written, like the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, and the Philippians.

And then Luke wrote his book to one person as well, right? One of the gospels was written to just one person. Who was it? Theophilus. Right?

Acts was written to Theophilus. I think I mentioned this before, but do you realize that a quarter of the text of your

New Testament was written to one guy, Theophilus, that we know virtually nothing about? That's wild, isn't it?

Not one quarter of the books, but one quarter of the text of your New Testament was written to one man of whom we know virtually nothing, other than his name is

Theophilus and he had some sort of a title called the Most Excellent Theophilus, at least when Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke.

So, Norman Geisel writes this, with such a geographical diversity of origin and destination, it is understandable that not all the churches would immediately possess copies of all the inspired

New Testament books. Add to this the problems of communication and transportation and it is easy to see that it would take some time before there was anything like a general recognition of all 27 books of the

New Testament canon. And yet all of those difficulties notwithstanding, the early church compiled collections of whatever books they did possess and whatever other literature they could verify and they copied it and circulated it widely.

All right. Let me, I need to diverge from our notes here for just a moment because what

I'm about to give you is not necessarily in your notes, so don't try and follow along at this point. Let's answer this question.

We've got to answer this question before we can move on. Who determines if a book is canonical? Who determines if a book is canonical?

I'll give you a second to think about it and then I'm going to go ahead and take answers whenever you want to give me an answer.

Remember, there's no such thing as stupid answers, just stupid people giving answers. So you can go ahead and give me an answer and even if it's wrong,

I will gently correct you. Who determines if a book is canonical? Who determines if a book belongs in the

New Testament? Peter? God. That's one answer.

Ultimately he would, right? He wrote it. Okay. Any other answers?

Various councils, that's another possibility. Individual Christians.

Does the church have a role in determining which books are canonical? Does the church have a role in that?

Which church would have a role in that? Nobody wants to say anything. You truly are scared that you're going to give us what you think is a stupid answer, right?

All right. Let's look at a couple different views real quick in order to sort of introduce this.

Let's look at a couple different views that people have offered for who or what determines whether a book is canonical.

The first one is that the church confers canonicity on a book. The church confers canonicity on a book.

This is the view of the Roman Catholic Church. They would say that the church is the ones who determine whether a book belongs in the canon or not.

Now they were in agreement with us Protestants for roughly 1 ,500 years of church history until in the mid -1 ,500s when they adopted a whole other chunk of books and determined that they were canonical, those books known as the

Apocrypha. So the view of the Roman Catholic Church is that the church itself has the authority to say which books are in and which books were out.

And they would look through church history and they would say that's exactly how it happened. Constantine and the early popes that succeeded

Peter and those bishops, they had councils, they had determinations, the church had the authority. They said Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and not the

Gospels of Barnabas, Peter, Mary, and Martha. Instead, they said that those books are canonical and these books are in and those books are out that the church makes that determination.

So that's the first view. The church confers canonicity. Here's the problem with that view. How does the church know which books are canonical and which books are not?

Yeah, especially the Roman Catholic Church, how would they know which ones are canonical and which ones are not?

But let's just, let's lay aside the identity of the theological convictions of the church itself and just ask, what is the problem, what's one of the problems with the church being the one to confer canonicity?

How would they know which books are canonical or not? They would have to have what? They'd have to have the

Holy Spirit, wouldn't they have to have some sort of criteria to know which books are canonical and which books are not?

They'd have to have some sort of a list, right, of if a book meets these qualifications, then we would know whether or not it belongs in the canon.

Who would determine that list? Go ahead. Yeah, you would have to have this, the question is, is this question not somewhat dealing with the theological underpinnings of who's making that determination of what is canonical?

And it certainly would. But if you're going to say that this book belongs in and that book belongs out, then you have to have some sort of a list of qualifications, right, qualities that you're looking for in a book that's canonical, okay, so how do

I know which qualities did I choose? The only answer that the Roman Catholic Church can offer is that the church would determine what the qualifications are by which the church determines which books belong in the canon.

In other words, if I'm holding in my hand a copy of the Gospel of Matthew and I say, how do

I know that this book is canonical? The church would say, with a view that the church confers canonicity, they would say, well, the church has conferred canonicity.

Canonicity is something that we say belongs to this book. It's a quality or a title, an authority that we put upon that book, and by that we know that it is canonical.

So what gives the church the authority to confer canonicity? That's another question. What would give the church the authority to confer canonicity?

The Roman Catholic Church would say, well, Scripture gives us the authority to confer canonicity. So the next question, which

Scripture gives you the authority to confer canonicity? And if you're saying that that is the authority, that's the authoritative

Scripture that gives you the authority to confer canonicity, how do you know that that Scripture is authoritative? Well, because the church has determined that it's authoritative, and you see that we're on a big circle, right?

The church says it's authoritative, and by that authority, we are able to confer canonicity, and we confer canonicity upon that book, which gives us the authority to confer canonicity.

That's how that goes. That's one of the problems with that view. So ultimately, this view places the church above Scripture as the judge to what is canonical and authoritative and what is not.

That's the fundamental problem with that view of canonicity. It places the church, be it a council or a pope or bishops or whatever it is, above Scripture as the one who judges and evaluates whether something is canonical or not.

Here's the second view, that the early Christians chose the books, that the early

Christians chose the books. You can say, we'll go back to the first century, we're not even waiting until the third or fourth century, and Constantine and the

Council of Nicaea and these other councils were just going to say that the early church, the first century

Christians chose which books belonged in and which books belonged out. Okay. What criteria did they use?

How did the early church do this? Did the early Christians vote on it? Did they take a vote in Corinth?

Okay, we got a letter from Paul. Who votes that this is canonical? Is that how they worked?

And we got another copy of a letter that Paul wrote to the Thessalonians. Let's vote if this is canonical. Let's get the church at Thessalonica, the church at Corinth, and the church at Colossae together and vote on whether this collection of books is canonical or not.

Did they do it by vote? Did they do it by a consensus? Well, everybody seems to agree that that's true, so we're just going to go kind of along with the flow.

Most Christians believe these books are canonical, so we're just going to go along with it as well. Or did they do it by use? Did they somehow determine which books are most used?

You know, everybody's reading Matthew, but nobody's reading the Gospel of Barnabas. Everybody loves the Gospel of Luke, but people aren't really hot on the

Gospel of Thomas. So I guess the ones that are used most, those are the ones we're going to view as canonical. So the view that the

Christians, the early Christians in the first century determined or conferred canonicity upon books, one of the questions that has to be asked is what criteria did they use and what gave them the authority?

Who is the authority that confers this canonicity upon books? See, we're coming back to an authority issue.

What determines the criteria by which we acknowledge certain books as inspired, authoritative, or not?

In each of these views, we're doing the same thing. We're placing something above Scripture as that which determines what is canonical and what is not.

The third view is that there are certain qualities of canonical books. And so we need to find out what these qualities are, and then we can historically look at all of the potential books.

We can line up Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Barnabas, Peter, Paul, this other

Gospel, Gospel of Mary. We can, the Gnostic Gospels, we can line them all up and we'll just ask which of this collection of 27

Gospels that were written in the first 300 years of the church, which of these 27 have these qualities?

And if they have those qualities, then we'll set those aside, those are canonical and the others are not. What is the problem with that approach to canonicity?

Differing opinions, what are the criteria? And how do we determine what the criteria are?

What is the authority that is outside of Scripture that tells us what is Scripture?

That's the problem with that view. Who determines what that standard is and by what authority?

Now, note, I want you to know something, canonical books will all have certain qualities.

They will all have apostolic authority, they will all be living books, they will all be inspired, they'll be inerrant, they'll be preserved, they'll have certain qualities that all canonical books will share.

But the question is, what makes those books have those qualities?

Do we look for those qualities? Do we know that those qualities exist because of some authority outside of Scripture and then once we find those qualities in a book, we say, okay, that one belongs in our

Bible and when we don't find those qualities in a book, that one doesn't belong in our Bible. So are those qualities something that is outside of Scripture?

These things, inspiration, authority, inerrancy, etc., those qualities mark the books because they are canonical.

For instance, widespread acceptance of a book in the early church did not make it canonical.

It's canonical status made it widely accepted. I want you to understand the difference between these two things.

When we say that this book was widely accepted amongst Christians, okay, that's not what makes it canonical. We don't say if it's widely accepted, that makes it canonical.

It was widely accepted because it was what? Because it was authoritative, it was Scripture. That's why it was widely accepted.

So with all of these competing views of how we determine what books belong in and what books belong out, the problem with all of them is that we are appealing to a standard outside Scripture to determine what is

Scripture. So we come back to the question, who determines if a book is canonical? It obviously can't be the church because that would suggest that the church is a higher authority than Scripture.

It obviously couldn't be the early Christians because that would suggest that the Christians themselves were an authority over Scripture and it obviously can't be because they have certain qualities because then that would suggest that those qualities themselves, which we determine outside of Scripture, then become the standard by which we see them as Scripture.

Thomas, the second answer,

Scripture identifies itself as Scripture, as the

Word of God. It does, but there are other books that also claim to be the Word of God. So that has to be, we talked about this before, that's a necessary condition.

Scripture has to say that it is from God. Any book that is from God would tell us it's from God, but that's not, it's a necessary condition of Scripture or canonicity, but it's not a determining one because the book of Mormon also claims to be from God, the

Koran also claims to be from God, the Bhagavad Gita also claims to be from God. So that's not sufficient.

It has to be there, but it's not enough to determine canonicity, okay? So now we're back to your canonicity, now back to the workbook in Lesson 11.

Who determines what is canonical? Another way we could say it is who determines what is authoritative?

That's actually a better way of asking the question because it removes the presuppositions that there's something outside of Scripture that we measure

Scripture against. Let me ask the question this way. When does a canon come into being?

Now we've talked about a canon, a list of 66 books, 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament. So here's the question.

When does a canon, a list of books, when does a canon come into being?

Was there a canon before God inspired a single word of Scripture? Did a canon exist?

Is this hard to answer? Did a canon exist before God inspired a single word of Scripture?

So there was no written revelation, no divine written inspiration whatsoever. None of the 66 books, was there a canon at that point?

Sorry, what? In God's will there was, but in terms of if you lived back then and you said, okay, what books are authoritative?

What belongs to the canon? That would have been a nonsensical question, wouldn't it? So did a canon exist before God wrote a book, a single book of Scripture?

The answer to that is no. What brought a canon into being? When God wrote a book, the canon came into being.

Let's assume, because I think a case can be made, that Job is the first book of the Bible written, the oldest book that we have.

Okay? When whoever wrote Job wrote Job, how many books were in the canon?

One. Now in the mind of God, he had 66 planned, but at that point there was one book in the canon.

There was one authoritative book given by divine inspiration that was inerrant and infallible.

What determined that that book was in the canon? It goes back to Peter's question at the beginning of all of this mind wrestling that I've asked you to do.

God determined that that book was in the canon. And how did God create a canon?

By writing that book. When that book was written, there was one book in the canon. There was one book that was divinely authoritative, inspired, and inerrant.

So God is the one who determines which books belong in Scripture and which books do not belong in Scripture.

How does he determine that? How does he create the canon? By inspiring books. Right? So, Sub Job was the first one written.

Let's take the Pentateuch, Moses' five books, Moses writes Genesis, let's assume they were written in this order.

Genesis, and then he writes Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and then Deuteronomy. Now we have how many books in the canon? The five books of Moses plus Job, we have six books in the canon.

Who determined that those books were canonical? God determines it. The church doesn't determine it.

Christians don't determine it. See, Christians do not determine or fix. We do not confer authority on a book.

The church of God, true Christians, recognize which books God has written. We don't determine whether something is canonical.

We discover whether it is canonical. God is the one who determines it by writing the book. We discover that it is what it claims to be.

We discover that it is the Word of God. We recognize it as authoritative, not because we confer authority on it, but because God Himself has written it and therefore it is authoritative.

God determines Himself which books are going to be in there. That's why I say in the mind of God, when Job was written in the mind of God, there were 66 books that would eventually be considered canonical.

But at the moment before Job was written, there is no canon, there are no canonical books. There's just Job.

And whatever God speaks is authoritative and binding and inerrant and infallible and inspired.

There's no way of getting around that. And so when God writes a book, it is what it is, even if nobody recognizes it.

So now the next question is if Paul wrote a book, but those who received it did not recognize it as authoritative, does that nullify its canonicity?

If Paul writes a book and then he sends it to somebody and they say, this is just Paul, it's just his ideas, patriarchal, sexist

Paul, not wanting women to preach and teach, that's just Paul as we might expect and toss that in the trash, we don't even recognize that as authoritative, would their reaction to that book nullify its inspiration, inerrancy and infallibility?

Would their reaction to that book therefore make it non -canonical? Or is it canonical regardless of how the people who receive it, receive it?

It is canonical regardless of what they do with it or how they receive it. Why? Because the people receiving it don't determine whether or not it's canonical.

The person who writes it does not determine whether or not it belongs in Scripture. God Himself determines what belongs in Scripture. God determined the canon, we discover the canon.

It's up to the church of God to simply look at the books and say, because I have the Holy Spirit of God in me, this is inspired

Scripture and this is not inspired Scripture. All I'm doing when I'm wrestling through this issue is I'm applying,

I'm doing the same thing regarding Scripture that we do in every other area of life. So if I ask you, is it okay for women to preach in a public assembly of men?

What would we go to to answer that question? Go to Scripture. Is abortion okay? What do we go to to answer that question?

Scripture. Is homosexuality acceptable? What do we go to to answer that question? Scripture. How should my house be structured? Who's the authority?

Who makes the decisions? How am I to treat my wife? How is my wife to treat me? Where do we go to to make these decisions, to find this information?

We go to Scripture. All we're doing with the issue of canonicity is we are looking at Scripture to determine the question, how do

I know what is inspired by God? To what source do we go to that is higher than Scripture to make that decision?

We can't go to the church, we can't go to Christians, we can't go to some standard outside Scripture. What do we do? We go to Scripture. Yes? I have a question.

Okay. How does the conversation change or how would we approach the conversation if we're dealing with an unbeliever who maybe doesn't recognize

Scripture or is picking issues with which books belong in and which books belong out? Since our way of determining, since our way of discovering canonicity,

I almost said determining there and that was the wrong word. Since our way of discovering canonicity or recognizing what book is authoritative in Scripture has to do with the testimony of the

Spirit of God within me, I have an insight, I have the author living in me. And so there is a subjective element by which we read,

I read the Gospel of Barnabas and I say, no, this is not the work of the Holy Spirit. I know that because I have the

Holy Spirit living within me. There's a subjective element to this. So and if I'm dealing with an unbeliever and they're saying, how do you know which books belong in Scripture and which books don't belong in Scripture?

I would say to them the means by which I know this are because God Himself has determined which books belong in Scripture.

He has promised to inspire that, to preserve it inerrant and infallible and to preserve it for His church forever.

So what do we have in Scripture are these 66 books which God Himself has written and He has preserved and Christians, those who have the

Spirit of God have recognized this for centuries that this is the case. So I don't expect an unbeliever to be able to understand what books are canonical and which books are not canonical.

Now most objections to the canonicity of certain books are going to go back to, well, you also have the Gospel of Barnabas and you have the

Gospel of Matthew, how do you know which one belongs in there? And then you could just put it right back in their lap and say, have you either read the Gospel of Barnabas or the

Gospel of Matthew? Have you read them in full and studied through both of them? And most unbelievers who raise issues regarding canonicity have never read any of the non -canonical books.

They haven't read any of them. They've never done any kind of a comparison amongst them, most of the people you meet on the street. Now if you're talking to the professor of religious studies at Harvard University, he's probably well -equipped to talk about the

Gospel of Thomas because such a Gnostic gospel he would love with all of his being. But your average run -of -the -mill garden variety pagan out on the street who you're witnessing to is not going to be adept at having any kind of conversation like that.

That help? Okay. So where were we at before we got into that? Do we do number four?

Yeah, that's what we're working on right now, general considerations. That authority is not conferred upon books by naming them as canonical.

In other words, there's no authority outside of that which would say, okay, this is canonical and that's canonical because we say so.

What gives you the authority to say so? Whether you're church, council, or Christians, individual Christians, what gives you the authority to say so?

In all of those issues we come into a needless circular reasoning with all of the other views.

I'm suggesting to you that God Himself has determined it, so our circular, our arguing in a circle goes right back to God. He determines it, and since He has determined it, and this is why we spent time talking about inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility, and the doctrine of preservation.

Since God Himself has determined that and He has promised to hand off to us His revelation to us and to preserve it for us, we can simply look at what has

God done in history to preserve these writings, and then we as Christians can say, we recognize because we hear the voice of the shepherd in Scripture.

This is not private revelations, God whispering in my ear, and all that nonsense. We hear the voice of the shepherd in Scripture.

We hear Him when He calls to us. There is a spiritual reality that is true for those who belong to Him, and that is that we have the ability to tell what comes from God and what does not come from God.

I don't expect pagans to have that ability. I don't expect undiscerning people to have that ability, but I do expect

Christians to have that ability. So then the question is, what books have Christians universally recognized as divine inspiration from the very beginning?

That would be the next question that we ask. And we're asking that question not because that's the criteria that makes it canonical, but rather that that is what

I would expect from a canonical book. Because the book is canonical, I expect Christians to recognize that throughout history.

I don't say it's canonical because Christians have recognized that throughout history. That's putting the cart before the horse.

I'm going to switch those around and say, if something is canonical, I would expect it to be almost universally recognized through church history.

I would expect the people of God to be able to look at it and say, yeah, this is the voice of God in this passage, in this book. Yes. Yeah.

We have the Spirit of God dwelling in us. The author is living in us. Yeah, that's right.

So Sarah Young's book, Jesus Calling, she claims to be giving divine inspiration.

She claims that this is the whispers of God speaking to her, Jesus talking to her, and she writes these down, one for every day of the year, 365 of these little missives from Jesus.

And there's no way of escaping the fact that she is claiming divine inspiration because she's claiming that this is the word of God.

I read Sarah Young's book, Jesus Calling, and I say, that's not scripture. I can recognize that as a Christian that that's not scripture.

I can read Ephesians, and I can read Hebrews, and I can read the Gospel of John, and I can tell you those are scripture. I recognize it.

You recognize it. And so we have this ability, because we are the people of God, we are the covenant community to whom

He has given the Holy Spirit and His Word, I would assume that there is some sort of an ability in us to recognize what is scripture and what is not scripture.

And we make that determination not because of criteria outside of scripture, but because of the nature of scripture itself,

God Himself has determined this, and He has given those books to us. Are there any other questions?

Yes, Thomas. Have I just stated that the individuals within the

Catholic Church who determined what books were in the Bible are not Christians? No, that's not what I was saying. Those people who lived back then,

I can't know whether they're Christians or not, so that's not my place to judge that. I'm simply saying that the view of canonicity, that the church determines what is canonical, that is caught in an endless regressive circular reasoning, and it is not biblical because it makes the church authoritative over scripture.

And it is scripture that creates the church, not vice versa. Scripture creates the church.

Scripture creates the people of God, regulates the people of God, and therefore it cannot be the church that creates what is scripture.

Say that last part again. It's possible that they were not

Christians. It's also possible that the Roman Catholic Church in 1500, when they had the Apocrypha, had different theological or ecclesiastical reasons for doing so, other than the fact that there had already been a recognized canon for 1500 years.

And they did have that. They did have a motivation. It was called the Reformation, by which they grabbed all of these other books and said, here's our authority, and we're just going to add these in.

So whether those people were Christians who did that or not, I'm not determining that. I am saying that in terms of our view of canonicity, we come back to the fact that the canon is a self -authenticating entity.

The canon exists, whether we recognize it or not, whether anybody likes it or not, the canon exists.

God Himself has determined it, and it authenticates itself. It is what it is, and it shines like a light, and believers understand and recognize what that is.

Yeah, Peter? Is it possible that in the future we could dig up a book that would be added to the canon?

And I would say, no, because of what we're going to cover next week. We'll talk about it next week. See, I have to assume, there's an assumption that I'm making, and everybody makes assumptions when you're dealing with this issue.

So people who disagree with me, they have all kinds of assumptions that they make as well. I'm going to put one of my presuppositions out on the table.

If God wanted us to have a book today that is considered canonical, it would have been given to us 2 ,000 years ago, and it would have been recognized by the church for all this period of time.

That's an assumption that I make going into it. I don't think that there is some book out there that God has neglected to give to His church for 2 ,000 years, and suddenly it comes on the scene.

If we discover Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, or sorry, his first letter to the

Corinthians, we have, 1 Corinthians is actually the second letter Paul wrote, 2 Corinthians is actually the fourth letter that Paul wrote.

We have a first and a third that have not been preserved for us. Does that mean they weren't authoritative? They were authoritative because Paul wrote them.

But are they canonical today? If we were to discover one of those in a cave in Africa somewhere, or a modern Dead Sea Scrolls discovery and we thought, man, this is the

Apostle Paul, I mean his DNA is on it, this is the actual original document, would we consider it canonical?

Would we accept it and put it into our New Testament as 1 Corinthians and then renumber them, right? 1

Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and 3 Corinthians, would we end up doing that? And the answer to that is no, because our belief is that if God wanted that for His church, for His covenant community, it would have been there from the beginning, preserved for us from the beginning.

Because God has promised to give us an inerrant, inspired, infallible, and preserved revelation.

That's the presupposition. And I'm bringing reformed presuppositions to this argument.

God Himself is the authority. He determines this. And if He wanted us to have that, we would have had it forever. So even if we discovered it,

I would say it's non -canonical. It's like the Didache. Look, if we discovered Paul's shopping list,

I need tent fabric, I need thread, I need needles, I need some labels, I need some ink and some dye. If we discovered that and said, dear

Timothy, fetch me some, and he had a list and then signed the Apostle Paul, would we simply say that because Paul wrote it and we now have discovered it, that it is therefore canonical?

And would we call it the book of shopping list? And what do I preach from it? Stand up here and say, turn in your Bibles to the book of shopping list.

We're going to go through Paul's shopping list. Would we do that? Just because he wrote it. No, we would not. And so it's the same, it's the very same thing with the books that we might discover today.

What God wants to have is there. That is a precept that we bring to this enterprise. All right, any more questions?

Yes, Jack. If we were in a church that was preaching from the

Gospel of Thomas, how would we get out of it? How would we realize that that is not canon?

In the same way that if you're in the Mormon church and you're told that the Book of Mormon, listen to Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl Gray Price or Scripture, and then

God saves you, you would soon realize that these are late additions. And in studying those things, you as a believer would have a recognition that these things are not canonical.

So you would be in this, I would put you in the same class as a Mormon who is in a situation where you're being told that these things are authoritative.

And it might take some time for God to save you out of that, sanctify you out of it. But I believe that He eventually would because those whom

God saves, He eventually grows and removes them from false doctrine. Yeah, Brian.

So Brian says that he's a little uncomfortable when we talk about feelings, even if it's the people 2 ,000 years ago who had feelings.

Can't we go back to Scripture and say, determine what is canon? That's exactly what I'm arguing is that Scripture itself, the writing of it, the existence of it, is its own canon.

And so we're looking not to our feelings, we're not looking to feelings or counsels or Christians or acceptance or any criteria outside of Scripture.

We're simply saying God has promised to give us His Word. He has promised to preserve it and He has. Now as Christians, now the role is there is a subjective element to this where we as Christians do have the

Spirit of God living in us and we recognize what is Scripture. And it's not based upon our feelings because I'm not arguing, and I'm glad you brought this up for clarification.

I'm not arguing that if I feel strongly that the Gospel of Thomas is a great book that that makes it Scripture. Even if eight billion people felt really strongly that the

Gospel of Thomas was Scripture, that wouldn't make it canonical, it wouldn't make it authoritative because God Himself determines that.

So what I'm actually appealing to is not our feelings or even our subjective assessment of it, I'm appealing to Scripture.

So then the question becomes if God has given to us an authoritative revelation, what are the qualities that an authoritative revelation would have?

And we can see those qualities, and I went back to this earlier, like for instance widespread acceptance.

We don't look and say is the book widely accepted, therefore it's canonical. We say it is canonical because God determined it's canonical and therefore

I would expect it to have certain qualities. Widespread acceptance would be one of those qualities. Does that clarify that at all?

Okay. Yes. Number 4B, the church,

I just wrote this down, the church did not decide upon which books would be in the Bible. The church simply recognized what

Christians had always believed about certain books for three centuries. So when you go back to the councils in the late fourth century, we're not saying that because they said it's

Scripture, it's therefore Scripture. I'm saying that these books had always been regarded as Scripture because they were always

Scripture from the moment that they were written. Authority is conferred upon a book by God, not by the church. So they simply were recognizing what had always been affirmed by Christians.

And letter C is the absence of a book, and this is maybe a good place to close. I didn't get nearly through half of what

I thought we were going to do today. The absence of a book from a list is not evidence that the compiler of the list did not view the book as authoritative.

Let me explain that for a moment. There are people who would go back and they would say, okay, well you go back to the first century, let me give you an example here,

Irenaeus of Lyons who lived in 125 to 200 A .D., he was a student of Polycarp who was a disciple of John the

Apostle. He wrote the book Against Heresies in 180 A .D. He quoted from every New Testament book except Philemon, 3rd

John, James, 2nd Peter and Hebrews. Now he accepted Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as authoritative, but Irenaeus quoted from all of our 27 books except for 5 of them, or 5 of them that he didn't quote from in his writings.

So do we look at that and say, well Irenaeus did not regard those books as authoritative? Would you look at that and say, would you be justified in coming to that conclusion just because you can find an early church father from the first 300 years after the

Apostles that didn't quote from a certain book or didn't reference a certain book, does that mean that they didn't view it as authoritative? It doesn't mean that at all, does it?

It just means that they didn't happen to quote from it. You'd be hard pressed to find in any of my writings a quotation, any of my published writings a quotation from 1

Chronicles. It doesn't mean that I don't think 1 Chronicles is a scripture, it just means that I haven't had the occasion to quote from it.

If you were to judge what this church viewed as canonical by what I preach on a

Sunday morning, what conclusion would you come to? He really thinks the Gospel of John is canonical and the book of Hebrews and he must really believe that Ecclesiastes is canonical because he taught that in Sunday school once and preached through it twice in his 25 years of pastoring.

So you can't judge, you can't go back to the early church and look at what they published or what they wrote and what they said and say that they didn't recognize those certain books.

They might not have known about those certain books or they might not have had opportunity to quote from those certain books.

That was what number three there was supposed to be. Alright, are there any questions about that issue?

We went really deep into something here that I hope got you to thinking along certain lines and kind of laid a little bit of a foundation for what is coming up.

We're going to talk about what canonical books, what qualities they all have in common and how the early church sort of looked at those books and what they saw in those books.

Any other questions? We'll do that next week. Yeah? Okay, so what about books in the

Bible that certain people say should not be? I would say that that is in the same camp as Marcion who did the very same thing. Marcion, to reverse that, remember

Marcion accepted all of Paul's writings and the Gospel of Luke but none of the other books. So I would say that they've got it wrong as to which books are authoritative and which books are not.

Yeah, that's just it, you're wrong. You've got the list wrong and you're going against years of church history and understanding of how we got those books and why those books are in there and the fact that you cannot see that Mark is inspired or Luke is inspired is a you problem, not a problem with the book.

That would be the short answer. All right? Okay, let's pray and then we'll finish up.

Father, we are so thankful again for Your Word. It is trustworthy and reliable and we know that You have worked in history through people, through Your people to not only write

Scripture for us but to preserve it, to copy it and to hand it down to us. We thank You also that You have worked in Your church, in Your providence just as You have promised to preserve that which

You have inspired and You have given us Your Holy Spirit and we recognize what is Scripture, we hear Your voice in the pages of Scripture because of what

You have written and how You have preserved it and we thank You that You share this truth with us and that You have preserved it for us. We love

You and thank You and pray that we might be a people of the book adequately equipped for every good work and able to give an answer to those who ask us a reason for the hope that is in us.

We ask these things and we commit ourselves to You in Christ's name, amen. Next week we'll talk about canonicity in the early church.

Did the early church recognize canon and did the early church fathers recognize canon and then if we get far enough we'll talk about the criteria or the qualities of canonicity.

Alright, we are dismissed, thanks. Make a joyful noise to all the earth.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord. With gladness come into His presence with singing.

Know that the Lord, of His pasture made.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless

His name. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.

His steadfast love and His faith.

God, refuge and strength. A very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear. Though the earth gives way.

Though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea.

Though its waters roar. Though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

There is a rising. I will be exalted among the nations.

Exalted. I will be exalted among the nations.

Most is with us. Is our faith.

Faithful. Wish neighbors.

Each may boast. Those who say with our tongue. We will prevail.

Because the. The safety.

For which He longs. The words of.

We seek You. Thanks for You.

As in a dry and weary land. Where there is no water.

Behold. Because Your steadfast love.

Is better than life. My lips appraise You. So I will bless You. As long as I live.

In Your name I will live. I will be satisfied.

Morning everyone. Thousand tongues to sing.

My great Redeemer's praise. The glories of my

God. Include His grace. That charms our fears.

That bid our sorrows cease. His music in the sinner's ears.

His life and health. Breaks the power of cancelled sin.

He sets a prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean.

His blood availed for me. His praise be done.

Our Savior come. And lead me lame for joy. May gracious Master and my

God. Assist me to proclaim. To spread through all the earth abroad.

The honors of Thy name. You can be seated.

And I'm the replacement guy. Just so you know. Say hi to one another. Greet one another please. Well, good morning everyone.

All right. We just have one announcement here before we begin. Next week is our annual business meeting in potluck. Which means that right after the service.

We break down the chairs here and set up tables. And we enjoy a fellowship meal together. And that's followed by our annual church business meeting.

And you are welcome whether a member or not to attend both of those events. And there are details in terms of what to bring.

And whether or not you're bringing a main dish or dessert. And all that stuff in the bulletin. So please pay attention to that.

And then you can bring your food with you. And put it in the kitchen back here to keep warm during the service. And then we all sit around here and smell the food for a whole hour in agony.

During the message. All right. Turn to Psalm 36 please. Psalm 36. We're going to read together this entire psalm.

It's only 12 verses long. The pre -script says for the choir director a psalm of David the servant of the

Lord. Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart. There is no fear of God before his eyes.

For it flatters him in his own eyes concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it. The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit.

He has ceased to be wise and to do good. He plans wickedness upon his bed. He sets himself on a path that is not good.

He does not despise evil. Your loving kindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

Your righteousness is like the mountains of God. Your judgments are like a great deep. O Lord, you preserve man and beast.

How precious is your loving kindness, O God. And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They drink their fill of the abundance of your house. And you give them to drink of the river of your delights.

For with you is the fountain of life. In your light we see light. O, continue your loving kindness to those who know you and your righteousness to the upright in heart.

Let not the foot of pride come upon me. And let not the hand of the wicked drive me away. There the doers of iniquity have fallen.

They have been thrust down and cannot rise. Will you stand with me as we pray? Let's bow our heads.

Father, you are our gracious and loving, sovereign and omnipotent God. It is our joy and our delight as your people, those who have been called out of darkness and into light, to come here and worship you this morning, and to give you our praise, and to sing of your mercy and your kindness, your grace and your great salvation.

And we rejoice in these pleasant gifts that you have given to us, life and light and truth. These are the blessings that you have poured out upon us, your covenant people, and we thank you for that.

We thank you that you have included us in the gospel of our salvation, that you have brought us to know

Christ and to worship him, and you have opened our eyes to know the truth and to love you. And we pray that you would increase our love and affection for Christ, and for your word and for your truth, and that we may be delighted again with the truths of scripture today, that we may gather around your word and around the truth, and love it and proclaim it, and we pray that we would be faithful in communicating it to a lost and dying world.

And we pray for this nation and for this new administration that is now exercising power and control in this land.

Father, you know what you have appointed for your people. You have not revealed all of the future to us, and we know that things may get bad, they may improve.

We don't know what you have in store, but we do have every reason to believe that this is a nation that has turned its back upon you, and it is a nation under your judgment.

So we pray that in the midst of that judgment, that you would remember mercy for your people, that you would let not the foot of pride come upon us, and let not the hand of the wicked drive us away from you.

We pray that in all that is to transpire in the years ahead, that the truth may be known, and that your people would be faithful to proclaim the truth for the gospel is the only hope of salvation, and it is the only hope in a world that has abandoned the truth.

So we pray that you would continue your loving kindness to those who know you, as the psalmist has said, and that your righteousness would rest upon the upright in heart, and that your people would be faithful.

We pray for those who are in power, that they would use the authority that you have granted to them for the good of your people, for the good of your church, and for the advancement of your causes.

And we pray that if they do not, that you would bring swift judgment upon them, and remove them even from office.

We desire these things, so that your people may live peaceable and godly lives in Christ Jesus, for the honor and glory of Christ our

Lord and our King. In his name we pray. Amen. Jesus in your name we pray

Come and fill our hearts today Lord give us strength to live for you

And glorify your name There's a strong and mighty tower

There's a shelter like no other Your name Let the nation sing it louder

Cause nothing has the power to say But your name

There's a strong and mighty tower Your name There's a shelter like no other

Your name Let the nation sing it louder Cause nothing has the power to say

But your name Christ alone my hope is found

He is my light, my strength, my song His cornerstone, his solid ground

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm What heights of love, what depths of peace

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease My comforter

I stand Christ alone who took on flesh

Fullness of God in helpless faith His gift of love and righteousness

Scorned by the ones he came to save Till on that cross as Jesus died

The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on him was laid

Here in the death of Christ I live There in the ground his body lay

Light of the world by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious gain

Up from the grave he rose again And as he stands in victory

Sin's curse has lost its grip on me This is the power of Christ in me

From life's first breath to final breath Jesus commands my destiny

No power of hell, no scheme of man Can ever pluck me from his hand

Till he returns or calls me home Here in the power of Christ I'll stand

For a merciful Savior Precious Redeemer To rescue the souls of men

Counselor, comforter, healer

Spirit we long to embrace

You offer hope when our hearts have

Hopelessly lost, the way

Hopelessly lost, the ways our

Hearts always hungered for Oh, our hearts always hungered for Almighty, infinite, five

Faithfully lost, you find us

Falling before you eyes

Our hearts always hungered for Oh, our hearts always hungered for You are the one that we praise

You are the one we adore To give the healing and grace

Our hearts always hungered for Oh, our hearts always hungered for Speak, O Lord, as we come to you

To receive the food of your hope

Take your truth, plant it deep in us

Shape and fashion us in your likeness

That the light of Christ might be seen today

In our acts of love and our deeds

Speak, O Lord, and fill in us

All your purposes for your glory

Teach us, Lord, full obedience Holy reverence, true humility

Test our thoughts and our attitudes

In the radiance of your purity

Cause our faith to rise, cause our eyes to see

Your majestic love and authority

A power that can never fail

Let their truth prevail over us Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds

Help us grasp the heights of your plans for us

Truths unchanged from the dawn of time

That will echo down through eternity

And by grace we'll stand on your promises

And by faith we'll walk as you walk with us

Speak, O Lord, till your church is built

And the earth is filled with your glory You may be seated.

Please turn your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, chapter 10. Book of Hebrews, chapter 10.

And we're going to read together beginning at verse 11. And we're going to read through the end of verse 18. Hebrews 10, verse 11 through 18.

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.

For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the

Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them, after those days, says the

Lord, I will put my laws upon their heart and on their mind I will write them. He then says, and their sins and their lawless deeds

I will remember no more. Now, where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

Let's pray together before we begin. Our Father, we pray for the mercy of being able to understand your word, that you by your spirit would grant us illumination and understanding into the things that we're going to be looking at this morning.

We pray that you would help us to compare error with truth and that your word may be our guide in doing so.

That you would recall to our minds all that your word says about these issues and that you would be glorified through the teaching, through what is said, and through the meditation of our hearts here we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. This message today is a little bit different than what I normally do in the normal course of preaching.

If you've been here for any number of weeks, you notice that we open up a passage of Scripture, we read the passage, explain the passage, and we kind of work our way through a book.

Today is a little bit different because I'm briefly deviating from that pattern for the purpose of comparing what we have learned in the book of Hebrews with the

Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass. And not because I'm here to pick on Roman Catholics or anybody who's had a

Roman Catholic background. The purpose of this is to address an issue that is obviously in the front of us, the

Roman Catholic Mass, in the light of Scripture. Because as I've been working my way through Hebrews 10, a number of people have said, now, in going through all of this, you're going to tell us how this deals with the issue of what

Roman Catholics teach regarding Mass, right? As if you can see, obviously, that what we're learning in the book of Hebrews cannot be squared with Roman Catholic doctrine.

So, a few different folks have asked that question and I have wanted to wait until this point, till we have reached the end of what

Hebrews has to say about that. We let the author of Hebrews and the text of Scripture have its say. We go through the entire argument, see what the author is saying, and now we can compare that with the false doctrine of the

Roman Catholic Mass. And in doing it that way, it allows us to be able to evaluate what we're going to be evaluating in light of everything that we have studied thus far.

So, rather than, even though I've had plenty of opportunities to sort of inject some of this teaching in this and deal with it up till now,

I wanted to let Hebrews have his say, not that his name was Hebrews, whoever wrote Hebrews, the book of Hebrews have its say on this issue and then we can compare that to Scripture, compare

Scripture with this doctrine of the Roman Catholic Mass. Let me offer a couple words of a disclaimer here.

I have a lot of ground to cover, so I'm going to jump right into this without too much more introductory stuff, though I do have a little bit more introductory stuff.

A word of disclaimer, I know there are people here who grew up in a Roman Catholic church, I know there are people who were baptized in a

Roman Catholic church, I know there are people here who probably have family members, friends, the little old lady next door that right now probably are attending a

Catholic church. There are people here who had great experiences in a Roman Catholic church, people here who have had horrible experience in the

Roman Catholic church. People here who are excited, and they think that I'm just up here to just grind and ax on the

Roman Catholic church. That is not my goal at all. My only goal up here today is to ask, what does the truth of Scripture say, and how does that comport with what

Roman Catholicism teaches regarding the issue of the priesthood and the sacrifice and the mass, and the sacrifice of the mass.

This is all something that we have been discussing in recent weeks and months as we've been going through the book of Hebrews.

So I want you to know that I'm not up here to grind an ax, I have no personal, I take no personal umbrage against Rome, Roman Catholicism, I have not been abused in a

Roman Catholic Church, I do not have a bad history with the Roman Catholic Church, I was baptized as an infant in the

Roman Catholic Church, and other than that, the only experience I've had in a Roman Catholic Church is observing some of the beautiful architecture in Vienna, attending a mass at a funeral that I eventually walked out of because I felt it was so blasphemous, and reading

Scripture at my grandfather's funeral, which is in a Roman Catholic Church, and I did that in such a way as to make sure that they got the gospel.

So we are here to address theological issues, not personal issues, and I'm not here to just grind your ax or to grind my ax,

I want you to understand that the goal of this is simply a theological evaluation, and if you are new to what the

Roman Catholic Church teaches concerning the mass, then this will be something of an eye -opener for you.

Now, the mass, or the sacrifice of the mass, as Rome would call it, is not the only place in Roman Catholic theology regarding what they do on a

Sunday morning that directly violates what we read in the book of Hebrews. They also have an entire priesthood, the nature of the sacrifice is not the only thing that Rome gets wrong, they also get wrong the view of the priesthood.

Jesus was appointed a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, and the argument of Scripture in the book of Hebrews is that that entire

Old Testament priesthood, all the priests of Aaron, and the priesthood initiated under Aaron under the Old Covenant, all of that is gone away with, it's all obsolete, it's part of an old system, it's done, it's gone, it's no longer functioning at all.

God is not working through that at all. And we would recognize as Protestants that what has replaced that is a higher and better priesthood, one high priest who never dies, who always lives to make intercession for those who are his.

One high priest who offered one sacrifice once for all time that has perfected all those for whom that sacrifice was offered.

That is what we would say the book of Hebrews teaches. We would not say that that old priesthood has been entirely replaced by thousands of other priests who continue to function in a liturgy that is very similar to that old liturgy.

And in observing the Roman Catholic system, you cannot help but come to the conclusion that they would have to argue that all of that old priesthood with all of those old priests and the rituals, the forms, the liturgy, the ceremonies, and all of that has been scrapped but then entirely replaced by something that is a whole lot like that, is it not?

With the liturgy and the functions and the ceremonies and the sacerdotalism and all of the other stuff that goes along with that.

We would say that that New Covenant has entirely scrapped the old. They would say that under the New Covenant, we have a mirror image of the old, with a priesthood with thousands of priests.

Now they have to have a priesthood and a priesthood is a necessity in the Roman Catholic system because of their view of the mass.

They would say that the very nature of a priest is to offer a sacrifice. And if you have, by their view, a sacrifice taking place on the mass, at the mass, then you have to have a priest who is initiated to offer that sacrifice.

So by their theology, the priesthood is essential to offering the sacrifice of the mass. Now what is the mass?

We would say that this is communion or that this is the Lord's Supper. They would call it the

Eucharist or they would call it the mass. Now regardless of the, we would both say that what we're celebrating,

Catholics and Protestants would say that what we're celebrating is what Jesus instituted on the night he was betrayed when he said, "'This is my body which is broken for you.

"'Take this and eat it and do it in remembrance of me. "'This is my blood which is the blood of the New Covenant. "'Do this often as you drink it in remembrance of me.'"

We would both appeal to the same passages in Scripture and as we would say that our observance of the Lord's Supper is the way of fulfilling that continual observance, they would say that that continual observance is manifested in the mass or what they call the

Eucharist. Now regardless of whether you call it the mass or the Eucharist or whether even Roman Catholics would call it communion or the

Lord's Supper, they would say that there have to be, has to be three elements for this to be effective.

It has to incorporate three different aspects or three different things and here they are. Number one, transubstantiation.

Number two, sacrifice. And number three, sacerdotalism. I say sacerdotalism just because a big word makes me sound smart.

I'll explain that here in just a moment, okay? Transubstantiation or you could call it trans, I was going to say you could call it substantiation if you wanted to but it's transubstantiation.

It's transubstantiation, sacrifice and sacerdotalism. Those are the three elements that must be in place for the mass to be effective according to Roman Catholic theology.

What is transubstantiation? Here is a, well let me define these first of all. The transubstantiation,

I'm going to define that here in just a second. The sacrifice, obviously the Roman Catholic Church would believe that the mass or the observance of communion in the

Eucharist is a sacrifice and I'm going to describe that. I'm going to show you what it is that they teach regarding that here in just a moment.

And the third thing, sacerdotalism, is a reference to the idea that there has to be a functioning priest in order for what the priest does to be effective.

So I can't just step into a Roman Catholic Church and do a mass. I can't walk up to the altar and swing the incense and ring the bells and do the thing and say the magic words over.

I have to be an ordained priest and I have to have the authority in order for what I do there at that altar to have the effect that it is intended to have.

That's the sacerdotalism. It's the belief that an ordained priest has to do this and in the doing of it by an ordained priest, it actually does all of these things that we're about to describe.

So number one, what is transubstantiation? Transubstantiation, this differs substantially from what we as Protestants would view, how we as Protestants would view communion.

Transubstantiation, quote, is the doctrine that as the administering priest consecrates the elements, an actual metaphysical change takes place.

The substance of the bread and wine, what they actually are is changed into Christ's flesh and blood respectively.

Note that what is changed is the substance, not the accidents. I'll explain that in just a moment. Thus the bread retains the shape, texture, and taste of bread.

A chemical analysis would tell us that it's still bread, but what it essentially is has been changed.

The whole of Christ is fully present within each of the particles of the host and all who participate in the

Lord's Supper or the Holy Eucharist as it is termed, literally take the physical body and blood into themselves.

Close quote. Now that definition is from Millard Erickson's book, Christian Theology, describes there what transubstantiation is.

It is the belief that when the priest who is an ordained priest without authority, when he consecrates the host, gives them over, that there is a substantive, that the substance is changed of the bread and the wine into the literal body and the literal blood of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Now once that is done, you might walk up and eat the bread and drink the wine, and you would say, at taste, it feels, it smells a lot like bread and wine.

You would be correct, it does. And you might even put it under a microscope and say, that looks a lot like bread and wine.

You could do a chemical analysis and say that strikingly similar to bread and wine, and you would be right in all of that.

But Rome would teach that even though it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's actually a dog.

That even though it tastes like bread, smells like bread, feels like bread, that it's actually the literal physical body and blood of the

Lord Jesus Christ. That there is a transition that happens, a change, when those elements are consecrated, it is a change of substance, not of appearance, not of taste, and not of chemical analysis.

It's a change of what it really, truly is has changed. Even though it appears, and according to our senses, nothing has changed, they would say that in substance, in what it really is, its essence, has actually changed.

That's the doctrine of transubstantiation. Now, here it is according to Rome. The Council of Trent, Session 13,

Chapter 4, titled On Transubstantiation. Here is what Rome says. Now, before I quoted you, Miller and Erickson, who is a

Christian theologian. Here it is straight from the Church of Rome. Quote, and because that Christ, our

Redeemer, declared that which he offered under the species of bread to be truly his own body, therefore has it ever been a firm belief in the church of God, and this holy synod doth now declare anew that by the consecration, all of that was preamble, but here's the money paragraph, that by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our

Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood, which conversion is, by the holy

Catholic church, suitably and properly called transubstantiation. Close quote. Now, what are they saying?

In the consecration of those items, they truly become the real body and the real blood of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Now, remember that they believe this to be the real body and the real blood of the

Lord Jesus Christ, even though it doesn't taste that way or smell that way, et cetera. That's what it really is in its essence, and they would believe that the whole,

W -H -O -L -E, the whole or entirety of Christ is present in the elements that are there, in the blood and in the body, that the whole, the totality of Christ is present there.

What would be the logical conclusion of such teaching? You would have to logically conclude that if Christ is literally, physically, and spiritually presently there, that those elements should be worshiped, right?

That those elements should be worshiped, because if that is God physically in your presence, those elements should be worshiped.

You say, Jim, now you're taking it too far. The Council of Trent, session 13, chapter five.

Here is what Rome says. Wherefore, there is no room left for doubt that all the faithful of Christ may, according to the custom ever received in the

Catholic Church, render in veneration the worship of Latria. Let me pause there for just a moment.

Latria, in Roman Catholic theology, is the highest worship reserved for God and God alone. I mean, you can worship icons and saints and chunks of the cross and the tooth of the

Virgin Mary. You can worship all that thing. That's not Latria. That's a lower form of worship and reverence.

The worship of Latria is the worship that is reserved for God and Him alone, okay? Let me go back for just a moment.

It has ever been the firm belief in the Church of God. Oh, wrong paragraph. It has ever received in the

Catholic Church that we may render, the faithful may render in veneration the worship of Latria, which is due to the true

God, to this most holy sacrament. For not therefore it is the less to be adored on this account that it was instituted by Christ the

Lord in order to be received, for we believe the same God to be present therein, of whom the eternal

Father, when introducing Him to the world, says, and let all the angels of God adore Him, whom the Magi falling down adored, who in fineness the scripture testifies was adored by the apostles in Galilee, close quote.

Now, what are they saying? That when God sent the Son into the world the first time, He said to the angels, let all the angels of God worship

Him, the Son. We saw that in Hebrews 1, did we not? We've seen that in a number of places in scripture, in the

Psalms, what Hebrews 1 quotes from that. And since He was there in the flesh and was worshiped by the

Magi, and since in the flesh He was worshiped by the apostles, if He is present before you in the elements of communion in the flesh, what does

He deserve? Worship, the worship that is due to the one and true God.

Rome says in a Council of Trent, Session 13, Chapter 5, that true veneration, the veneration, the worship of Atreia due to God alone can rightly be given to these elements by the faithful because the

Father has commanded us to worship them. If you believe that Christ comes into the world at that point, just as He did in the room of the

Virgin Mary, He comes into the world at that point through the consecrating act of the priest.

If that is your belief, then Christ is there physically in your presence, those elements are worthy of worship.

Now, according to the Roman Catholic Church, if you deny any of these doctrines, you are damned.

If you deny any of what I've just said to you here, you are damned, anathema. Council of Trent, Session 13,

Canons 1, 5, 6, and 8, if you wanna look them up. According to Rome, if you deny that the elements are really the body and blood of Christ, you're damned.

If you deny that the elements are worthy of worship that is due to God, you are damned. If you deny that when you actually eat the communion, you eat the body and blood of Christ, you are damned.

And if you deny that the sacrifice of the mass is a real sacrifice, you are damned.

Now, at this point, people usually like to say, you know, Jim, you're being awfully harsh and awfully critical, and you're saying all of these really stern things.

And like President Trump's tweets, it makes my tummy hurt, I don't feel good about it.

You're just being a meanie. I'm not being a meanie, and that's not my intention in doing this. Listen, I'm not the one throwing around damnations like they're hard candy at a 4th of July parade.

That's Rome that does that. If you deny any of this, you are damned. If you deny this, you're damned. If you deny that, you're damned.

Well, it just so happens that I would deny everything that I've just read to you that comes from the Roman Catholic Church. I would deny these things.

And Rome would say that I am damned and judged because I deny these doctrines. And on this point,

I would say that the Roman Catholic Church and we as Protestants would have to agree, we hold this in common, the belief that on this issue, one of us has it right and one of us has it wrong, and the one that has it wrong is damned.

I would agree with them on that. This is an essential issue. This is a big issue.

We're talking about the nature of Christ's atonement, what it does, what makes it effective, its power, its ability to save, what is accomplished on the cross.

Those are central and serious issues. So that's the description of transubstantiation, but that's the first element that you have to have for the mass to be effective is this belief and this affirmation that these elements are actually truly genuinely changed into the real, literal, actual body and blood of the

Lord Jesus Christ. The second element then follows naturally from the first and that is that the mass is an actual sacrifice.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1365, it reads thus, quote, because it is the memorial of Christ's Passover, the

Eucharist is also a sacrifice. The sacrificial character of the

Eucharist is manifested in the very words of its instruction. Quote, this is my body which is given to you, and this is the cup which is poured out for you in the new covenant in my blood, close quote.

In the Eucharist, Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins, close quote.

Notice that they're affirming that it's not a different body and a different blood, but the very blood, the very same blood shed at Calvary 2 ,000 years ago is present sacrificially in the mass.

And they call the Holy Eucharist the sacrifice of the mass. Paragraph 1055 of the

Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the Holy Eucharist the, quote, the holy sacrifice of the

Eucharist. It's the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist. And they say that by it, quote, the church commends the dead to God's mercy, close quote.

I'm gonna read you here in a moment a quote where they say that this sacrifice of the mass is to take place for the living and for the dead.

Because remember in Catholic theology, when you die here, you don't go directly to heaven, you go to purgatory.

And once you're in purgatory, you have to burn off all the sins that never got forgiven or atoned for here in this world.

And so in the burning off of those sins, once those are all burned off, then you get to go into heaven. While somebody back home is doing the mass on your behalf, it's taking years off of your sentence in purgatory.

And so therefore, this sacrifice of the mass is done not just for the living, but also for the dead in Roman Catholic theology.

Paragraph 1068 of the Catholic Church Catechism, quote, for it is in the liturgy, especially in the divine sacrifice of the

Eucharist, that the work of our redemption is accomplished, period, close quote. Do you hear that? It is in the liturgy, especially the divine sacrifice of the

Eucharist, that the work of our redemption is accomplished. Where do we believe that the work of our redemption was accomplished?

At communion? When that is done? Or at the cross? It's in the cross. See how different, see how irreconcilable these two views are.

We're not talking about just shades of meaning between two different views of the Lord's Supper. We're talking about radically and entirely different theologies.

Catholic Church Catechism, paragraph 1366. The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it represents or makes present the sacrifice of the cross.

One last one. Roman Catholic Catechism, paragraph 1367. Quote, the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the

Eucharist are one single sacrifice. The victim is one and the same. The same now offers through the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the cross, only the manner of the offering is different.

Listen, that's the same sacrifice he's now offering out on a table at the hands of a priest, the very same sacrifice he offered on the cross.

Quoting again, and since in this divine sacrifice, which is celebrated in the mass, the same

Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner, this sacrifice is truly propitiatory, close quote.

This sacrifice of the mass is truly propitiatory. What does propitiatory mean? It means it satisfies the wrath of God concerning sin.

This sacrifice of the mass actually satisfies divine justice on behalf of those for whom the mass is performed.

It's truly propitiatory. It forgives sins. It erases sin debt.

In other words, if this is not done, there is sins not forgiven and sin debt not atoned for.

That's the Roman Catholic view. The Catholic Encyclopedia topic,

Sacrifice of the Mass, says the church intends the mass to be regarded as a true and proper sacrifice, close quote.

So it has to be transubstantiatory, transubstantiation. They also believe it to be a sacrifice.

And by the way, if you deny this, you are damned. Council of Trent, Session 12,

Canon 3 says this. If anyone saith, by the way, I saith this, if anyone saith that the sacrifice of the mass is only a sacrifice of praise and of thanksgiving or that it is a bare commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross and not a propitiatory sacrifice or that it profits him only who receives and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, pains, satisfaction, and other necessities, let it be anathema, close quote.

In other words, if you deny that it is propitiatory, if you deny that it is a sacrifice, if you deny that it should be offered for the living and the dead for the atonement of their sins, you're damned for denying those things.

This is, this sacrifice of the mass, by the way, happens constantly in Roman Catholic churches.

In worship services, it's going on somewhere right now. It's going on somewhere. You sit here, somewhere in this world, probably hundreds and thousands of places in this world, this sacrifice is being done.

This goes on constantly at funerals, at weddings, in church services, in morning services throughout the week, in special high and holy days that the

Catholic church honors. The sacrifice is made, they believe, of the body and the blood of Christ. They believe it to be propitiatory.

They believe it to be done for sins, and they believe it to be the vehicle by which sins are atoned for and forgiven.

Without the sacrifice of the mass, they would say the sins are not forgiven.

So they believe it is a real sacrifice, and it is the same sacrifice, the same body, and the same blood of the

Lord Jesus Christ offered perpetually and continually for all of eternity, and that the work of the priest is to represent the same sacrifice over and over again to the people, and that by doing this over and over again, sins are being forgiven, atonement is being made, and divine justice is being satisfied.

That's Roman Catholic teaching regarding the mass. What does the Scriptures teach? I'm gonna read you a few verses from Hebrews.

Okay, with all of that in the background of your mind, I want you to listen to what Hebrews says.

Hebrews 1, verse 3, when he, that is Christ, had made purification of sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Past tense, he made purification of sins. Finished. And so he sat down.

There's no more work to be done. Hebrews 7, verse 27, he, that is

Christ, does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this he did when he once for all offered up himself.

Hebrews 9, verse 12, not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood he entered the holy place, once for all, having obtained, past tense, eternal redemption.

Hebrews 9, 26, otherwise Christ would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world, but now once at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Hebrews 9, 28, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await him.

Hebrews 10, 10, and by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Hebrews 10, 12, but he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.

Hebrews 10, 14, for by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

That's glorious, what I just read to you. What is the author of Hebrews repeating?

Every conceivable way, that this sacrifice is a one -time historical act, a one -time sacrifice, that it is not repeated day after day after day, just like those

Old Testament priests who daily did the service of that worship. It's not repeated daily, it's a one -time sacrifice, and it is a one -time sacrifice that has forever accomplished what was intended to be accomplished.

If the goal of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was the forgiveness of the sins of his people, listen, he has perfected forever those who are sanctified through that one offering that he made once and for all, and when he was finished, having made purification for sins, he sat down.

No more sacrifice. No more offering. No more representing the same offering over and over again.

No more priesthood to do this work over and over again continually. The work was done one time, once for all, it is a completed work, and he sat down.

And the fact that he sat down is itself an evidence of its completion. Now the argument through the book of Hebrews has been that the new covenant is better than the old covenant.

The old covenant had all of those priests always doing that work. And Rome would say, yeah, all of those priests always doing that work has been replaced by all of these priests doing very similar work.

And we'd have to say, how is that better under the new covenant? We just have still thousands of priests doing still the work perpetually, continually, day after day, all over the world.

How is that better? The argument of Hebrews says that the one sacrifice has forever ended all other sacrifices.

Where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins. A completed work. That's what

Hebrews would say. The Roman Catholic Church would say, well, yeah, but that one sacrifice now continues to be represented over and over again, perpetually, just like the animal sacrifices, but a little bit different.

I say to you, how is that better? How is the repetition of the sacrifice any better than the repetition of the animal sacrifices?

See, the argument of the author of Hebrews all the way through is that this new covenant, what we have received is better. The argument of the

Roman Catholic Church is that the new covenant is just a mirror image of the old covenant. All of these new things have just replaced those old things, and it continues to go on just like it did under the old covenant.

And Hebrews says, no. No more priesthood, no more tabernacle, no more sacrifices, no more offerings, no more liturgy, no more robes, investments, none of that stuff.

This completed work has been done in Christ, and it is sufficient. So the contrast is clear, and we've observed it through Hebrews, that this is contrary, obviously what the scriptures teach in Hebrews, is contrary to what the

Roman Catholic Church teaches about the sacrifice of Christ. And listen, there is no common ground between what

Rome teaches regarding the sacrifice of Christ and what we would believe and what scripture teaches concerning the sacrifice of Christ.

There's no common ground in these things. It's either once or it's daily. It's either once or it's continual.

It either accomplished it or it needs something else to keep it going and to accomplish the work that Christ started on the cross.

There is no meeting of the minds between these two views, what scripture teaches and what Rome teaches. Now you say, well, how is it then that they would deal with Romans 10?

Because that's a big question, right? I mean, Catholics added a whole bunch of books to the Bible in the 1500s, but they didn't take out the book of Hebrews.

So when a Roman Catholic reads through the book of Hebrews, they read the same verses that I just read to you. How does a

Roman Catholic get around that? How do they argue and deal with, how do they deal with these passages in Hebrews 10, which seemed to be to us so clear?

Hebrews 10, 18 says, where there's forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. How does the

Roman Catholic Church deal with Hebrews 10? Here are the arguments that they make. There are three of them. First, they would say that the mass is not another sacrifice, it is the same sacrifice.

Now you heard this in one of the passages that I read from the Catechism or from the Council of Trent here earlier, that this is one and the same sacrifice.

It's the same blood, it's the same body. So you say, well, so you're just offering up Jesus all over on the altar again, that's a whole nother sacrifice.

Hebrews says that there's only been one sacrifice. And Rome would say, I agree with you, there's only been one sacrifice. What we're doing at the mass is simply representing the same sacrifice that was made back then.

So it's one sacrifice that is continually presented and represented always and forever, all the way through church history.

It's not another sacrifice and it's not a re -sacrifice. They would say you're misrepresenting us by saying we're re -sacrificing

Christ or we're offering up another sacrifice because according to Rome, it's the one and the same sacrifice.

It's not a different body, it's not different blood, it's the same body and the same blood that is then represented.

So they would say what Christ did on the cross, he's just offering and, it's the same offering, it's the same sacrifice.

We're just re -presenting it. We're just sort of opening up the doors of heaven, looking at it all the time. We're just constantly making it new, bringing it up, pulling it out of eternity and making it real and present in front of us.

It's all the same sacrifice that has happened for all of these years. That would be their argument. They would say that Christ offers himself to the

Father on our behalf in the mass and that Christ himself is the one who is continually, through the hands of the priest, offering always to God his sacrifice.

Always one sacrifice. It's not done for them. It was done in the sense that there was a historical event that happened, but that that offering is always and continually being made to the

Father. Second, they would say that the sacrifice of Christ is offered continually in heaven.

They would argue that it is an eternal sacrifice, an eternal sacrifice. And this is the language that Rome uses to describe the sacrifice of Christ.

Since Christ is a priest forever, and here's where their redefinition of terms becomes obvious, since Christ is a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek, they would say that the nature of the priesthood is to always offer sacrifices.

Therefore, if Christ is eternally a priest, according to the order of Melchizedek, he must eternally be offering the sacrifice.

And since Christ is eternally offering the sacrifice, which started at the cross and continues on today, the high priest today just simply opens up the windows of heaven, as it were, and represents that same sacrifice, which

Christ himself is continually offering in heaven to the Father. That he, Christ, is offering the same sacrifice eternally.

And they would say that Calvary is the perpetual, the sacrifice of Calvary is perpetually offered to the

Father by Christ. And thus, it's not a new sacrifice, it's not a re -sacrifice, it's not another sacrifice, it's not a different sacrifice.

And that is why they can say that the mass is propitiatory. Because the sacrifice on the cross was propitiatory, it forgave sins, since the mass is the very same sacrifice just represented all over again, it has to have the same qualities of what took place on Calvary.

So if Calvary is propitiatory, then so must also be the representation of the very same sacrifice.

Does that make sense? That's how they would get around it. Hope that makes sense. I mean, it doesn't really make sense. But you know,

I hope that what I'm presenting to you as what doesn't make sense, at least makes sense that I'm presenting to you what doesn't make sense.

So here's the answer to that. That explanation of the one time or the continual nature of the sacrifice of Christ really does not help their case at all.

And I'll give you a couple of reasons why. Number one, Christ's intercession is not sacrifice. See, Rome confuses intercession with sacrifice.

We believe that he is always continually, eternally interceding for us, his people. And they would say, well, that intercession must involve sacrifice, since the nature of a priest is to offer sacrifice.

So if his intercession is sacrifice, then his intercession, or sorry, if his intercession is eternal, then the sacrifice must be eternal.

They confuse, they blend the ideas of intercession and sacrifice, so that if one is eternal, the other one also has to be eternal.

According to the Catholic Answers website, under the question, is the mass a sacrifice, you would read this, quote, Protestants have no qualms accepting the perfect and efficacious nature of Christ's sacrifice, but invite them to consider its eternal aspect.

Jesus is eternally a priest, and a priest's very nature is to offer sacrifice. In the case of Christ, the eternal sacrifice that he offers is himself, close quote.

Well, it is not, Scripture does not teach that the sacrifice of Christ is eternal, meaning continually ongoing.

Scripture teaches that the sacrifice of Christ was a one -time event that has eternal consequences.

Do you understand the difference between those two? It's a one -time event that has eternal consequences. He has obtained eternal redemption,

Hebrews 9, 26. By that one sacrifice, he has perfected, for how long?

Forever, those who are sanctified. So the sacrifice of Christ is not an eternal ongoing sacrifice, it is a one -time sacrifice that has produced eternal fruit.

It has produced an eternal state for those of us who are in Christ and for whom that sacrifice was made.

So he's not continuing his sacrificial work, and he's not continuing to offer that sacrifice to the

Father. Having offered that one sacrifice, what he continues to do is to intercede and pray for those who are his, those for whom that sacrifice was made.

So in terms of Christ, he has done, and the arguments of Hebrews makes that so crystal clear and it is so glorious, that that work, having once been done, has accomplished what it was intended to accomplish.

So in describing the Roman Catholic Mass, I have described a view of the sacrifice of Christ that it is continually at odds with the scriptural teaching regarding the sacrifice of Christ.

These two things cannot be reconciled, these two things cannot be brought together at all. Rome's view of the sacrifice of Christ is completely and always, and in every way, at odds with what scripture teaches concerning that.

And I would actually say that it is a blasphemous teaching. Here are the differences between Rome's view of the sacrifice and our view of the sacrifice.

First of all, the nature of it. Is the sacrifice represented at every communion? Is the sacrifice continually being made and presented in heaven, perpetually, and for all of eternity?

Does that sacrifice need to be represented, or represented, I should say, by a priest in order for it to be effective?

Does that sacrificial work still continue? And must it continue in order for it to be effective? Or was it a one -time, once -for -all sacrifice?

Second, the nature of his intercession. Does the intercession of Christ in his interceding for us involve the continual offering of himself to God?

Or is his intercession a perfecting work where he prays for those on whose behalf he has accomplished eternal redemption?

And third, the effectiveness of his sacrifice. Does the effectiveness of Christ's sacrifice require a participation in the mass?

Because if you've never attended a mass, never had a mass done for you, is that mass necessary for you to partake of the eternal benefits that Christ's death secured?

And if you've never gone through a mass, then do you have a whole heaping of sins that you need to have atoned and paid for by the sacrifice of the mass at the hands of the priest?

Is his work only applied when we do some religious act? Is the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church necessary for our salvation?

Is it in the liturgy and the mass that eternal redemption is accomplished? Or was that accomplished on the cross?

The doctrine of mass, I believe, is an unbiblical and high -handed act of blasphemy that diminishes the work of Christ and detracts from his glory and actually compromises the scriptural teaching on the effectiveness of Christ's sacrifice.

And only because I have a little bit of time, I'm going to include this, at no extra charge. I don't have anything on this in my notes.

If you are, what I've been presenting is a reformed view of the sacrifice of Christ.

And comparing that to the Roman Catholic view of the sacrifice of Christ. The reformed view, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, is the idea that in the sacrifice of Christ, it was not made for all people, but it saves all for whom it was intended.

That the power of the cross, the power of that sacrifice is unlimited. It accomplishes what it was intended to do.

And it does not need our approval or our recognition to accomplish what it was intended to accomplish. Now, the reformed view is entirely different from the

Arminian view, which would say that Jesus died for all people. And what he really needs is our approval to make the cross effective for us.

He needs our repentance. He needs our faith. He needs us to make a decision, to pray a prayer, to come to him, to repent, and then to believe.

And when we do that, then that becomes effective for us. Then the cross has its power toward us.

What it needs is some work of man. I just want to point out that Roman Catholics and Arminians do not disagree at all on the nature of the atonement concerning its power.

The Arminian and the Roman Catholic would both agree that Christ died for all people, but that his sacrifice needs some human work or some human action in order to make it effective for those for whom it was made.

The Roman Catholic would say that the mass is necessary. At the hands of the priest, the priest must do these things, and then the cross has its power.

The Arminian would say what is necessary is for the human to repent, to believe, and to embrace

Christ. And when he does that, then the cross has its power. Arminians and Roman Catholics do not disagree on the power of the atonement.

They both agree on that. What they disagree on is what human activity or action or work is necessary to give the cross its power.

So my Arminian friends, and if you are here, just recognize that your view of the atonement is very similar to Roman Catholic view concerning its power.

What you disagree with Rome on is just what human activity is necessary to give the cross its power.

For those who have a Reformed view of the atonement of Christ, I would say that the atonement of Christ has perfected forever all those for whom it was made, and that that one -time act back then has had its intended effect, and every last person for whom that sacrifice was made will be saved, will be sanctified, and will be secured everlastingly to the glory of God.

Fully powerful, fully able to save all those for whom it was intended, it needs nothing from us, no activity of a priest or of a sinner to give it its power.

In fact, the repentance and faith of the sinner is the fruit of that atonement. It is the result of that atonement.

It is not what actuates the atonement. The Roman Catholic mass teaches that something else is necessary, namely the work of a priest, in representing that sacrifice in order that we may partake of it and have our sins forgiven.

They deny that the death of Christ in and of itself without any human agency is sufficient to satisfy the wrath of God.

They deny that. They deny that the death of Christ in and of itself without any human agency or any human work is sufficient to satisfy the wrath of God for sin.

Jesus, they would say, needs a human priest to intercede and to change bread into his body and wine into blood for our sins to be forgiven, and that,

I believe, is a high -handed act, a statement of blasphemy. I attended the mass of a man who one time attended our church, and I'm not gonna name his name because it's irrelevant, but his mother had died and had the funeral.

She was a Roman Catholic, and so the funeral's at the local Catholic church. I attended that mass, or sorry,

I attended the funeral, and after it had gone on for, I don't know, two, three days or something like that, we were sitting there, and they finally got around to the mass.

And I was hungry, and hours had gone by, and I was wasting away. And I finally got to the mass, and I thought, okay, this has gotta be close to the end of it.

Oh, no, it was only the beginning. The mass goes on for a couple more days before it's completed. But about halfway through,

I was there trying to observe it, trying to be respectful, but about halfway through of what

I was seeing and observing and the way that they were performing it, I said, this is blasphemy. I cannot, I cannot endure this.

And it was grievous to me to see this person, who was a friend of mine, go up and partake of the mass and participate in it.

And that action, that was a dividing and defining moment in terms of our perspective on truth and what makes something true and whether something is glorifying to God and honoring to God, and if we are able to even participate in things like that.

I don't understand how any Christian, with even a small amount of discernment and love for the truth of Scripture, can participate in a mass and believe that.

It is why I believe that when somebody is saved in the Roman Catholic Church, not because of what Rome teaches, but in spite of it, that God the

Holy Spirit will eventually bring them out of that. He will eventually sanctify them out of it. Eventually they have to come to a point where they see what they read in Scripture, they compare that to what they see in a mass or what is going on in the veneration of saints and icons and idols and images, et cetera.

And they have to say this is dishonoring to God. They have to say this is blasphemy. The truth of Scripture will open their eyes and their hearts to that.

For you as a Christian believer, I would say to you that you are trusting in the finished work of the

Lord Jesus Christ, a one -time sacrifice that has forever accomplished your redemption. All your sins were laid upon Him.

You can rest in that. That one -time sacrifice is sufficient. It is all you need for your faith, for your repentance, your forgiveness, your justification, your righteousness, your sanctification, your holiness, your security, your obedience to God's word and for eternal glory.

It's all you need. Everything is provided for you in that one -time sacrifice. Having offered and made purification for sins,

He sat down. There was no more representing of that sacrifice for Him to do.

If you are a sinner and you've never repented of your sin or trusted Christ for salvation, then I would just simply say to you that you need a payment for your sin, your blasphemy, your adultery, your idolatry, your greed, your selfishness, your lying, your stealing, your high -handed acts of blasphemy.

You need a payment for your sins. And your payment does not come at the hands of a priest at an altar.

Your payment does not come in the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Your payment does not come through the continual re -offering of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The payment for your sin was made on Calvary. And if you will repent and believe, you will find that there is sufficient power in the atonement to save, sanctify and secure you everlastingly.

But you must look to Christ and to Christ alone and not to a priest or to a liturgy or to forms and rituals and symbols and smells and bells and incense and liturgy.

You must look to Christ and Christ alone. Turn from your sin, repent, believe upon Jesus Christ, trusting that the sacrifice, the one -time sacrifice that he has made is sufficient to pay the price for your sins.

And he will forgive you and he will cleanse you of your sin and he will impute to you his own righteousness at the moment of your faith and trust.

For your salvation comes not by your works of righteousness and not by anything that anybody does on your behalf in this world, but because of what

Christ has done on your behalf one time on the cross when he offered himself once for all and by that sacrifice, he perfected forever those who are sanctified.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for such a great mercy of salvation in your son, the

Lord Jesus Christ. We can and do rest in a finished work because he has completed all that is necessary for our salvation.

Our eternal glory, our faith, our repentance, our security, our growth and holiness, all of this secured for us because of what

Christ has done. So we thank you for the power of that sacrifice, for the glory of what you have done.

We thank you for Christ who alone has done everything necessary to redeem us. So we look to him and we are reminded again of how gracious you are, how loving you are and how full of power you are to save sinners such as us.

We deserve none of the blessings and benefits which you have bestowed upon us, including our repentance and our faith, which are not human activities or human works, they are gifts of divine grace.

And so we thank you for giving those gifts to us and for turning our hearts to Christ, cause us to rest upon him and him alone and to trust in your word and what it says concerning the salvation that has been accomplished on our behalf.

Thank you that he has obtained eternal redemption forever for those who for whom he has died. We rejoice in that and we thank you and love you in Christ's name.

Amen. Redeemer. There is a

Redeemer, Jesus, God's own son,

Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Jesus, my

Redeemer, Name above all names,

Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, And I thank you,

O my Father, for giving us your

Son, And feeding your spirit in the work on earth it's done.

When I stand in glory,

I will see his face, There I'll serve him forever in that holy place.

Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your

Son, And feeding your spirit in the work on earth it's done.

Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your

Son, And leaving your spirit till the work on earth is done.