53 - Authority

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology This is a class in the SFE School of Systematic Theology. This lesson covered the topic of the doctrine of the authority of God's Word.

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54 - Preservation and Canonicity

54 - Preservation and Canonicity

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Well, welcome to the
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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are glad to have you with us.
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We are going through, as we've been going through in a class on systematic theology, we actually have broken it down into four major sections, so it's actually kind of like four separate classes, which kind of each have their own sub -parts.
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But this is our School of Systematic Theology. We are specifically in book number three, and we're calling that God Speaks to the
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World. This is the doctrine of the Bible. We are specifically, this lesson, in lesson number three,
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Illumination and Authority. We now dealt with the issue of authority in the last class, sorry, illumination in the last class, and in this class we're going to deal with authority.
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Now, as we've been going through, we've said throughout this course on theology that you always want to start your study of theology in the beginning.
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Now there's two areas that could be the beginning. We started in this doctrine of God, because all of our understanding of theology is going to be based on your understanding of who
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God is, his attributes, his character, his nature. That's going to define the rest of your systematic theology.
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What you often will find is that people tend to start their study of theology kind of in the middle.
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Two areas where most people start studying is either one, end times, they start looking at the end times, what's the future events, or the second is the doctrine of salvation, and they get into a debate over who saved who.
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You know, did God save man, or did man choose God, kind of who chose who.
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And most of those things are actually resolved when you start with the character and nature of God.
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The other area you could start your theology is this one here that we are looking at, which is the doctrine of the
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Bible. We have chosen to put the doctrine of the Bible more toward the end before we get into the doctrine of the church and end times, only because we wanted to start with, because we're trying to teach a broad audience and we have some newer believers, we wanted to start off with some easier to understand maybe, in some ways, more beneficial, immediate for a newer believer.
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How it doesn't mean that the things we're talking about now are not important. It's just that we're going to get into some things that, as we discuss the
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Bible, might lose interest for some, but I'm hoping that I will be able to keep your attention.
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Wake up, Jake. Oh, sorry. But the thing, though, is that as we look into the study, why would people start with the doctrine of the
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Bible? Well, everything we're discussing is based on an understanding of the Bible.
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Now, if you've been following with our classes, we actually started with a 20 -some -week class on how to interpret the
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Bible, and we said that was important to first understand how to interpret the Word of God before you get into a study of theology, and I think that's kind of important.
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We're going through, as I said, book number three, which you can purchase at our website, strivingforeternity .org,
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or book number three, that is Systematic Theology, book three, that is the class material.
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You can get that. What that gives you is kind of the notes that I have.
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You'll get the fill in the blanks, but where the benefit of that is, as we go through the class, it gives you a quick reference guide, something to go back to and be like, oh,
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I knew we talked about that. Now you have it. You have some verses with each of them. You also will have the advantage of being able to take your own notes right there, have it all in one spot.
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I encourage that. I encourage you, even as you go through and read other books, like Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, or Erickson's, or Schaeffer's, or any of the others, there's many
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Systematic Theologies out there that have written, where multiple volumes men have written on.
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A. A. Hodge is another. Chris Hodge is another. So just, you know, the irony was, I think it was
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A. A. Hodge who said when he finished his Systematic Theology, he said, it's now done. No one ever has to study this again.
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And I think Chris Hodge, I think, is his grandson who wrote one as well. But the idea being is that, you know, we want to be studying.
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And as you study those books and you have your syllabus, you can take notes from these other more detailed works and keep it in one spot for quicker reference.
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Advantage of the syllabus. Enough of that now. Last class we looked at illumination. We defined illumination as the present ministry of the
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Holy Spirit by which He enables mankind to understand and embrace the truths recorded in Scripture.
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We mentioned a couple distinctions between revelation, inspiration, and illumination.
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Those three things we looked at in the past three classes. And so we said revelation is the disclosure of God's truth.
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Inspiration was the product of the truth by God through men.
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And then illumination, what we looked at last week, is the understanding and acceptance of mankind to what
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God has already revealed. And we looked at some details of that. We looked at the fact that the
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Spirit does not illuminate the believer himself.
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It's not that the believer somehow is enlightened. It's the Scriptures that are infallible, not us, and that the
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Holy Spirit does not illuminate an unbeliever. We also talked about the fact that illumination is a potential ministry, that if we're not doing the study,
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God's not going to reveal His Word to us. And then lastly, that there was a special illumination for the apostles.
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Now if you look in your book, we're in Roman numeral number two, authority.
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Authority. And that's where we are right now, and that is where we are going to pick up in this lesson.
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We're going to deal with a doctrine that is often forgotten about in our understanding of the
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Bible. And since illumination is an understanding and acceptance of God's revealed truth, this doctrine necessarily follows.
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Why is that? Well, it follows because if God is going to reveal
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His Word to us, we have to understand that it's an authority in our life.
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The Bible is truth, and therefore it's going to speak truth into our life and tell us what is true.
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And therefore, because it is truth, it's an authority, and we have to obey it.
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So let's start with an explanation of authority. That just says, or authority, and that's nice.
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It's not explanation or authority, that should be explanation of authority. Yes, I would blame the engineer, but I actually did the slide.
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That's true. Thank you. Now, we're not about blaming others here,
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I'll have you know. You know, Adam and Eve kind of fell into that.
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Adam thought it would be better to blame Eve, and Eve thought it would be better to blame the servant. But the reality is, we're going to take responsibility,
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I messed up the slide. Is that clear? Please forgive me for messing up the slide.
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Yes, that's recorded live for people to see. I made a mistake. I'm not
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Fonzie from the Happy Days, you know. I was wrong. Okay, I dated myself, some of you people probably don't like Happy Days.
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What's that? It's a TV show in the 80s. Just saying. Alright, so let's look at an explanation of authority.
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The God of the Scriptures has the right, because well, He's God. And the power to command compliance in thought and in deed on the part of His rational creatures.
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Okay, His rational creation. Since God has provided the revelation, recorded it through men in the
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Scriptures, and provided the illumination of it, it only follows that we are obligated to comply with it.
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Let's look at Acts 17 for some Scripture on that. The times of ignorance
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God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent because He has fixed a day which
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He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom
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He has appointed, and of this He has given assurance to all by the raising of Him from the dead.
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So, with that we see that God, the authority that God has and His Word has on us is, well first off, since God created us,
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He's got the right to tell us what to do. By nature of that, I mean that shouldn't shock anyone, that shouldn't be rocket science.
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But for some it seems to be like, what? Yeah, God created you, He's got the right.
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And so when some people go, well God has to answer to me why, you know, God can't exist because I think there's evil in the world.
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Who are you to, I mean if you reject God, how can you even assume there's evil? What's evil?
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Evil's by the nature of God. Good is defined by God's nature and anything that's opposite to that is evil.
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So you can't even define good and evil without God. Boggles my mind. But since He's given us
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His truth, He's revealed His truth to us, Deuteronomy 29 .29
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says that the secret things belong to the Lord but that which He has revealed to you, obey and teach to your children.
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And so the idea is there, God's given us everything. As we've gone through these past three lessons, you've seen that God's given us everything.
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So we are without excuse to say that God doesn't have the authority to tell us what to do.
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He's given us His word, the Bible, to be that basis of authority. And that's what it is.
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It is a basis of authority. Oh, but I see I got it right on that one. See it says of there. I don't get credit when
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I do right, okay. I only get blamed when I do wrong, okay. Right now
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I'm doing a 50 -50 chance, a 50 -50 shot, right? I got half right. That's not bad,
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I guess. Maybe it'll get better. So let's look at number one there in your syllabus.
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It is the role of the Bible. We talk about the basis of authority. Let's first look at the role of the
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Bible. The Bible is profitable for a couple things, for doctrine, for proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
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But the verse doesn't stop there. And that's 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.
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Because 16, we've done this in previous classes where we've shown that this verse, the things where it says there, it gives us four things, right?
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Profitable for teaching, for proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. You see those four, but those are all prepositional phrases.
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So when we do, we want to understand God's word, we don't look at the prepositional phrases because they're supportive.
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The main thought is actually in verse 17, all scriptures breathe down profitable for what? Well, really that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.
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That's the main emphasis. But the thing that we do see is that God breathed it out and therefore it is the basis for the good work.
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Let's go to 2 Peter, if we could, and 2 Peter 1, 16 -19.
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And according to this, we're going to see, according to this passage, the Bible is more certain to determine truth than hearing of God's voice.
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And I say that because so many people are looking for a voice of God today.
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Let's see what Peter says. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
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For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved
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Son in whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.
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And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, notice that, to which you would do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in the dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
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What you see there, because, and I really want to focus a little time on this because when it comes to authority, what a lot of people do is they say, well,
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I have the Bible. That's enough. I can read it. I don't need anyone to teach me.
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I don't need to read any books from men. And you know, sometimes they word it different ways.
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Sometimes it's worded that way. Sometimes people will kind of arrogantly say, I don't learn from men, as if they read their
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Bible and the Holy Spirit just illuminates their minds and that's all they need. But I often ask the question, how do you distinguish between your mind and God's illumination?
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How do you distinguish between that which is from within you and that which is from God?
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I find that most people don't have an answer other than, well, God gives it to me.
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If it's, if I think it basically, it must be from God. I had someone that once argued that way with me and said that God, he can't be wrong because God revealed it to him.
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And I said to him, well, God revealed to me that you're wrong in the
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Bible. And so I'm going to stand on what God has actually said. And his argument was, well,
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God decreed that you would be wrong. I guess there he was also saying that God decreed he himself would be wrong, just saying.
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But there are so many people that are looking for a voice from God. They're looking to hear from God. They want to hear some special message as if the
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Bible is not enough. Well, the Bible is sufficient.
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We don't need more. The Bible has the answers that we need for life, practice, and godliness.
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We don't need something more, like a voice. And that's what Peter argues.
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Third thing, let us see there. The Bible was the deterrent and cure for the future error about which
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Paul prophesied to the Ephesian elders. Look in Acts chapter 20. Acts chapter 20, we see that Paul was leaving
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Ephesus and he gave some instructions to the leaders there. He says, and now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among those who were sanctified.
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So you see, what is he commending them over to? To God and to the word. And that's what you end up seeing there, is that when we look here, we're seeing that this is something that Paul is saying, the word of God, it has the role of being an authority.
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And as you read the context there, that is going to be what's going to correct false teaching and encourage good teaching.
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It is going to be the cure for bad teaching. It's going to be a deterrent from error.
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And it's going to be the source for where we're going to get sound doctrine. Paul writes often on that throughout 1st
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Timothy, 2nd Timothy, Titus, where he's instructing future pastors and he's saying to them, teach sound doctrine.
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So the Bible is our ultimate authority for determining what and who is right and wrong.
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And truthfully, the ultimate authority would be Christ, but he's not walking the earth anymore. So the apostles would have that.
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They could have appealed to Jesus, but you and I can only appeal to God's word.
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That's what we have as the ultimate authority now. However, we have a dilemma.
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What's that dilemma? Because there is another thing that isn't authority, and sometimes it could be a problem.
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We're going to go from one authority that's most trustworthy, the Bible, properly interpreted.
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We're going to go from there to kind of downhill. The second thing, so the first authority is the role of Scripture.
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And that is going to be our greatest authority. That's going to be the ultimate authority that we have that we're going to look to.
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Now we have to rightly interpret it, but that takes the homework and that's what we have the class on biblical hermeneutics for.
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This is the role of experience, and that's your blank there. So the first, the role of the
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Bible. This, the role of experience, and yes, experience is an authority, but it is one we must keep under subjection to the word of God.
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Because unfortunately, this is how most people interpret the Bible. In our hermeneutics class, we spend a lot of time explaining the difference between interpreting by rules and principles versus experience.
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And most people come to the Bible with reading it from experience. Well, this is what
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I experienced and this is what the Bible must mean. That's not the right way to do it.
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So the Bible, often in the Old Testament, called Moses and the Prophets. You'll see that throughout the
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Bible. Moses being the first five books, the Prophets being the later writings, and so that is
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Moses and the Prophets is encompass of all of the Old Testament to a Jewish way of speaking.
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The Bible, not experience, which is through, though one rose through the dead, and what
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I'm referring to, let's actually read the verse. Could we put up Luke 16? And let's read this first instead of me explaining it.
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So this is a case of Jesus speaking to, you know, giving an event, depending on whether you see this as an event or a parable.
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I'll say this is a parable. We could get into that debate another time. But it says,
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And he said, I beg you, Father, send to me, send him, him being
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Lazarus. So Lazarus is in heaven with Abraham. And you have this rich man who is speaking.
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And he's saying, he's begging Abraham, Father Abraham, to send
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Lazarus to his father's house. Now verse 28, For I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they come to this place of torment.
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But Abraham said, They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them hear them. And he said,
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No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes from the dead, they will repent. And he said to them,
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If they will not hear Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced if someone should come back from the dead.
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So what you have there is, The point being is that The case is being made by Jesus That the
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Bible, Moses and the Prophets, Not experienced, in other words, someone coming back from the dead Is the determiner factor for authority.
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So it is the determiner that Jesus said would convince men
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To believe the truth of the torment of hell. So we don't go to experience
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To prove what scripture says. We go to scripture.
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If we want to know what's the right thing to do, We go to scripture. Experiences, and I say this to people all the time,
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But so and so experienced something. What do we, how do we deal with that? When this person experiences something.
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I cannot speak to someone's experience. I cannot tell you what they experienced.
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Maybe they were on an LSD trip, I don't know. People who have been on LSD or mushrooms and things like that Have seen some pretty wacky things.
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Psychedelic drugs do crazy things to the mind. Pink elephants jumping off of walls.
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Is that real? They experienced it. Can you trust it? No. You trust the
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Bible. This gets us into another thing. Signs and wonders, which is an experience thing.
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Do not produce proof that an individual Or the signs themselves actually are from God.
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See, there's a whole movement of people that say You need to have signs and wonders. You need to have this miraculous proof.
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The thing is that signs and wonders do not provide that proof. Signs and wonders provide signs and wonders
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But you don't know the origin of those signs and wonders. Let's first look at 2 Thessalonians.
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2 Thessalonians 2 .9 The coming of the lawless
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One is by the activity of Satan With all the power
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And false signs And wonders. So you see there that he is
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Providing, he's saying that This lawless one is going to do, Satan Is going to do signs and wonders.
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Let's look at Matthew 24. When Matthew says Well, Jesus said technically
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But then if anyone says to you Look, there is the Christ Or there he is
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Do not believe him For false Christs and false prophets will arise And perform, look at that Great signs and wonders
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So to lead astray If possible Even the elect
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Even the elect? Yeah, even the elect There are going to be great signs and wonders
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Done by false prophets By the antichrist And that's the reason you can't trust signs and wonders
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So when people make the argument But we need to have signs and wonders The question is what? The Bible is not enough?
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You can't trust The Bible? No If you're saying you must trust
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Signs and wonders, you're actually saying The Bible is insufficient As an authority And really what you're doing when you say that Is that your experience
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Is a greater authority than the Bible And you will see this in groups of people Not for all charismatics
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Please make sure I want to make sure I'm clear Because I know that we have a wide audience
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But there are some people In the charismatic movement That put more emphasis
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On their experience Than the scripture If the scripture says something
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It doesn't matter whether you or I believe it It's settled God said it We have to remember that So signs and wonders are not a proof
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It is Faith That's your blank there Faith, not experience
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That gives evidence of that which is unseen It is faith It's not our experience
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It's our faith Hebrews 11 Now faith is the assurance
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Oh look at that The assurance of things hoped for The convictions of things not seen
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Wow So So We have to realize that It's not what we experience
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But it's faith Letter E there is
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Those considered Blessed of God Are those who have
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Not seen yet Believed, seen That's your blank there We already saw in Hebrews 11
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But what about what John 20 says John 20 verse 29 Jesus said to them
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Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen
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And yet Believe And what you see there Is as we look at the role
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Of experience, experience can be an authority But it should be under Submission to the word of God Secondary to the word of God And you will often see
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Whenever I'm talking to someone You actually could see it If you watched our theological discussions
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When I did the discussion with Can you lose your salvation The argument that Justin put forth
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Was really one of experience What he felt What he saw
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He saw people that were in church But no longer were in church And so he allowed that To dictate
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His understanding Of the meaning of scripture And we have to be careful with that Therefore The experiences always
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Agree with The Bible Therefore Experience must always agree with the
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Bible In order to have a valid indicator of truth If your experience Does not agree with scripture
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Then your experience Is wrong, not scripture If you're
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Reinterpreting the Bible To match your experience Then you're hermeneutic
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Your art and science of Interpretation Your interpretation of God's word is wrong
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That's why people think there's so many Interpretations of the Bible It's because most people are using their experience
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To interpret the Bible And not the word of God Following practices and rules For interpretation
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Number three is The role of feelings Woah, woah, woah
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Okay, I'm not going to sing to you Feeling The role of feeling, that's your blank there
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And this really is the most Dangerous, and yet this is The one so many people rely on What they feel
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The Bible makes it clear that our feelings And emotions are not Not Not An accurate source of truth
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Because they're subjective They're biased They're open To misleading and deception
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Alright We cannot trust Our feelings You know, dealing with someone
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That is dating an unbeliever And they're like, but I just feel this is right No, you feel something else
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And it has nothing to do With what's right God makes it clear
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That we are not to be Bound to an unbeliever We are not to be in relationships
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Looking toward marriage With an unbeliever That's your feelings
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And you need to give those up You need to, you know, and people want God's blessing in their
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Disobedient acts And they try to feel spiritual By saying, well this is,
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I'm feeling It's from God, I have a feeling of the Lord God's given this to me I mean, all these spiritual sounding phrases
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But the Bible The Bible makes it clear that we shouldn't be doing that So I say it makes it clear Let's look, letter
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A there Some are doomed to destruction because Because something
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Seems, that's your blank there Seems right to them This is in Proverbs 14 Let's look at it
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There is a way that seems right to man But look at that But it's end is
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The way to, ooh, death Yeah There's a way that seems right
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To you and I In our flesh But following that leads to death Jeremiah pointed out that a man's heart
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Is deceitful Deceitful is your blank Deceitful above all things
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And desperately wicked Desperately wicked That's your next blank The heart is deceitful above all things
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And desperately wicked or sick Who can understand it Jeremiah 17 9
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One's heart Can lead a person into error Hebrews 3 10 Therefore I was provoked
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With that generation And said They always go astray
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In their heart They have not known My ways
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Wow We also see that a man's heart Can lead a person to believe
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He or she is spiritual When he or she is not James 1 26
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If anyone thinks he is religious But does not bridle His tongue
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He deceives his heart This person's religion
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Is what? Worthless So when you have the person who argues But I know
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God has led me to this My heart has told me so You can feel spiritual
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But that spiritualness That you're feeling Is a blind spiritual pride
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You cannot be trusting Your heart and your feelings The term for heart Is a word that means your feelings
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And so you cannot trust That Always makes me think
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When I think of this topic Of ignorance In Pilgrim's Progress If you've never read that book
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I'll kind of ruin a little bit of the ending for you But it is an allegory
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Why can't I say that? It is Where this man
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The main character Christian Is on his way to the celestial gates The heaven And he meets many people
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One of which is a man named Ignorance Ignorance Comes upon This wanting to go to heaven
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But he doesn't want to go through The wicked gate like Christian did The way that Evangelist told him to go
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He's going to go his own way Christian has the Bible Which is leading him in the right path
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And he's got a certificate of entrance And Ignorance Does not, but Ignorance knows in his heart
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He could trust his heart Because his heart Would not lead him astray His heart can be trusted
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Even though Faithful and Christian try to warn him He is not
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Going to have any of it And he is going to Argue that he's going to trust his heart
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And in the end of the story Christian enters heaven He gets his celestial kingdom
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And at the very end he sees Ignorance And Ignorance comes banging on the doors Pleading to be let in But Jesus says
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I do not know you Depart from me, you who practice Lawlessness And right at the gates of hell
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Is a doorway Sorry, right at the gates of heaven Is a doorway to hell And Ignorance is put through it
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And that's what trusting your heart Like Ignorance will do It will lead you to think you're going to heaven
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But Matthew 7, 21 -23 It will lead you to destruction Because though the way seems right
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It leads you to destruction Though you want to trust your heart In thinking you're spiritual
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You're blinded Even the Apostle Paul realized That his heart could be wrong
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In its judgments Look at what he said in 1 Corinthians 4 1 Corinthians 4 and this is verses 3 -5
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But With me It is a very small thing
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That I should be judged by you Or by any human court In fact
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I do not even judge myself For I am not aware of Anything against myself
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But I am not Thereby acquitted In other words what he's saying is Though he's not aware of anything he did wrong
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It doesn't mean he's right It is the Lord who judges me Therefore do not pronounce judgment
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Before the time Before the Lord comes Who will bring to light
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The things now hidden in darkness And who will disclose The purpose of the heart
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Each one will disclose The purpose of the heart Then Each one will receive
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The condemnation From God So what you see there is He's realizing that he
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He's going to be judged by God And he could be wrong He's saying hey I'm not acquitted
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Just because I don't think I did anything wrong You and I may think In situations that we're right because We can't think of anything we did wrong
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That doesn't mean we're right and that's Paul's argument there Alright One more that we have
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One more authority Now we've been saying the Bible's the ultimate authority And these are in order of right
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So trust the Bible first Then our experience then feelings may But the role of the individual
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That's your next blank individual The role of the individual There is an important role Every individual
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Must diligently seek To fulfill in order to determine Biblical beliefs and behavior
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And to correct unbiblical ones Alright in other words You and I have a role to play
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In authority it means we gotta study God's word that's really what it comes down to If God's word is the ultimate authority
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Then we need to be studying God's word If we're going to Say that this is going to have an effect
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In our life it's going to be the accurate Authority in our life We can't just go
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By our feelings or our experience So the individual Must first The individual must
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Be saved The individual must be saved 1 Corinthians 2 15 and 16
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The spiritual person Judges all things But is
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Himself to be judged by no one For who has Understood the mind of the
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Lord So as to instruct Him but we have the Mind of Christ So when we're going to be judging these things
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It's because we have the mind of Christ That we can judge these things The things of God are
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Veiled to the unbeliever we looked at that When we talked about illumination And so knowing that God Does not illuminate the mind of an unbeliever
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Therefore we Have to first be saved to Understand these things So the first thing we have to do is be a
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Christian to be able To know the things of God To be able to Determine what's the authority
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The second is the individual must Be surrendered The individual must be surrendered
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Acts says this in Acts 18 Now a Jew Named Apollos a native
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Alexandrian came to Ephesus He was an eloquent man
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Competent In the scriptures he had been Instructed in the way of the Lord and Being fervent in the spirit
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He spoke and taught Accurately the things concerning Jesus Now I find that Interesting so he spoke
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And taught accurately Though He knew only
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The baptism of John So he speaks Correctly of the spirit
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Okay According to Jesus But he only knew the baptism of John He began to speak boldly in the synagogue
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And when Priscilla and Aquila heard him They took him aside and explained to him The way of God more accurately
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And when he wished to cross Arabia Sorry not
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Arabia Achaia The brothers encouraged him
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And wrote to the Disciples to welcome him When he arrived He greatly helped
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Those through grace Had believed He Powerfully refuted
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The Jews in public Showing by the scriptures That Christ was Jesus And then you also see in Romans Romans 12 1 and 2
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I appeal to you therefore brothers By the mercies of God that you Present your bodies as a living sacrifice
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Holy and acceptable To God which is your Spiritual worship
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Do not be conformed to this world but Be transformed by the renewing of your mind That by testing you may discern
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That which is the will of God What is good and acceptable And perfect So we have to be
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Surrendered We have to be saved The individual must be saved Second they must be surrendered
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I'll give you a hint they all start with S here Third the individual must be Searching Must be searching
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Acts 17 Now the Jews were more Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica They received the word with all eagerness
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Examining the scriptures Daily to see if these things were so These are people who are Paul is coming
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Paul an apostle Is delivering to them God's word They're not trusting it they're searching the scriptures
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Daily to see If the things Paul said are true And Paul says these Bereans are more
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Noble They're searching They're not just trusting their
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Feelings or their experience Trusting the Lord and going I trust the Lord he's going to reveal it to me
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No, they're studying they're searching That's the idea of them Digging into God's word
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And comparing what the scripture Says and then scripture with scripture to see if These things are so Fourthly the individual must be
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Studious must be studious Second Timothy 2 15 It says but Do your best to present yourself to God As one approved a worker
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Who does not need to be ashamed Rightly handling the word Of truth
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And so what you see there Is that you must be studious What point being is
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The individual plays a role That role is you the individual Must first be saved
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Second they must be surrendered to God Third they must be searching The scriptures and fourth they must be
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Studious and doing that Then they're all that focuses in the scriptures And comparing the scriptures to Their experience and their feelings
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Their feelings and experience Must be and themselves Must be subject to God's Word That's the thing here the basis
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Of our authority for life Cannot rest in Religious experiences
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Or in our own personal feelings It must ultimately Rest in God's revelation
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Which is inscripturated Through the Inspiration of God's of God And is illuminated to our
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Minds by the Holy Spirit Okay That is what we must recognize
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And when that is so Then God's word is An authority in our life
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Okay And that's the authority When we have something that happens or something we
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Believe we must compare it with Scripture and see what it says That's what's going to keep us from going
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Astray So this is vitally important And the reason that may people want to Start their study of theology here
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Is because of the fact that You have to first understand The word of God before digging into the word
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Of God And we're trying to help you to understand the importance That the
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Bible plays In the authority In the Christian's life Okay I can be wrong
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Yeah, thank you I proved it in this class When I did the slides
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Thank you And some people will always try to point out When others are Wrong But the reality is
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That We have people that are An authority in our life Um The reality though Is that God's word is what's going to be
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The authority We don't have God audibly speaking to us anymore The apostles did
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Jesus walked the earth And that was when he spoke That was authoritative
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And that's a reality So You have to deal with the fact that We don't have
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God Speaking directly to us As normative anymore And therefore we rely on His word on the
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Bible Alright Now next lesson We're going to look into next class
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Is going to be the doctrine of preservation and canonicity In other words we're going to talk about How did
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God's word How is it preserved over the many years How do we know what was in the canon We talk about the
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Bible What makes it the Bible What makes it God's word We're going to look into those things
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And that's in the next class If you have any questions about this class Or any other please feel free to email us
44:17
At academy At strivingforeternity .org Academy at strivingforeternity .org
44:23
You can go to our website at strivingforeternity .org You can go to store .strivingforeternity .org
44:28
You can pick up the syllabus And get your own copy And take all the notes you want to take But you can see the other things that we have
44:34
On the website some other class materials And other resources That you can purchase and help
44:40
To keep us afloat Keep us being able to teach these classes And do these type of things
44:46
Another way you can support us is through Amazon Amazon has a program called Amazon Smile And if you go to smile .amazon
44:51
.com And choose a charity Striving for Eternity Ministries You will find us
44:57
And with that you can just register us And every time you go shopping And you go to smile .amazon
45:03
.com Not amazon .com but smile .amazon .com They will give half a percent
45:08
Of everything you purchase They will donate to us And we would greatly appreciate that Again mention that we do have
45:16
Our new Seminar that we would be Greatly appreciative if we can come to your church
45:22
And teach on Bible Interpretation Made Easy This is a 8 hour 6 session
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Training that we do on a Friday night And Saturday We will train you how to interpret the Bible It's a really fun
45:39
Seminar we have a lot of fun with it We look at a lot of scripture Also this is the last week I will mention this
45:45
So if you are watching this live you will get to know OhioFire .org OhioFire .org
45:50
The Ohio Fire For this 2015 is coming up now
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In April 9th, 10th and 11th Really the event is the 10th and 11th
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We have the pre -conference There also Really encourage you to come out
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On Discipleship It's going to be a lot of fun If you have never seen Matt Slick and myself
46:14
Together we like to have a lot of fun I will get to meet for the first time Ken Cook face to face
46:20
We have spoken hours and hours on the phone Have never gotten to meet that brother But I have a feeling that just knowing
46:26
The personalities There is another speaker there who is going to be Michael Coughlin From Striving for Eternity But knowing the character
46:34
Of Matt Slick, Ken Cook Myself And Michael Coughlin It's going to be an interesting event
46:42
To say the least We will have a lot of fun Besides We are going to be speaking with two guys
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Who's names are Slick and Cook We are going to have some fun I'm sure But with that We always like to have you encourage someone
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Each week We want to encourage you to encourage others To say nice things Truthful things about people
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Because truthfully we all need encouragement And we don't get enough of it And so There is someone this week
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That really really needs the encouragement Because Ohio Fire is coming up And there are
47:19
Individuals who have to put a lot Of time and energy Behind the scenes And it's a lot
47:26
And this would not happen If certain people Were not crazy busy
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But the reality is It is the wives of those men That need encouragement So we are asking you to encourage
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Erin Coughlin That is Michael's spouse His bride That you'd encourage her this week
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As she is allowing Michael to run around With a chicken With his head cut off As he's doing all of the planning and organizing
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And he's also Asked to deliver A message So he's got a lot to do
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He's going to be crazy busy this week And therefore we'd like you to encourage his wife
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Because she could use it On a week where her husband Is running around crazy
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And she's doing a lot She's going to be hosting people like Me Trashing her house
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No I won't trash the house Erin Don't worry But you know She's going to be
48:24
She just does a wonderful job At hospitality She goes like way over and above I'm just saying the cooking
48:32
It's great Really really good food And it's real Italian food
48:37
It's not this Olive Garden stuff Real stuff But you know
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She's going to be hosting several of us That are going to be staying there She's going to be as well
48:49
Allowing Michael to run around And do all the last minute things that have to be done This week So would you please encourage
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Erin Other than for the fact that Being married to Michael Tells you she needs encouragement
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But Erin is just If you do not know her
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I cannot express enough How strongly you should try to get to know her Very sweet spirit
49:13
If you come to Ohio Fire You want to get to meet her She's got like a bubbly
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Personality I just find I can't Be in a bad mood around her
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It's like She's just like one of those people That make you feel happy When you're around her
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I don't know why, I can't put my finger on what it is It just is And so she's the type of person you really want to be around and get to know
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So encourage her this week And next week again We'll talk about how we got to Canaan We'll talk about preservation