Unashamed of Inerrancy Pt. 2

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This morning we looked at the subject, Unashamed of Inerrancy.
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If you weren't with us, let me just briefly mention that we looked together at Matthew chapter 26, specifically verse 54, when the
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Lord Jesus spoke to Peter and he said to Peter, having taken his sword out and struck
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Malchus, the servant of the high priest, and severed his ear. And Matthew doesn't tell us about the healing, but we know from other texts that that's what took place.
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And he said to Peter, beginning in verse 53 of verse 26, or do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels?
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How then will the scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must happen this way? And so what we did this morning is we considered
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Jesus' own theology of scripture, assuming that for Christians what
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Jesus believed in the subject of scripture would be the ultimate authority. I mean, not only do we of course believe that Jesus is trustworthy in the promises he gives us in regards to the matter of our salvation, but we believe that Jesus is the very incarnate
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Son of God, that he knows, well, everything there is to know about scripture, where it came from, what its intentions are, because he is one with the
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Father and the Spirit. And the scriptures tell us, for example, when speaking of David, a prophecy that David gives forth, it is said that David's speaking by the
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Holy Spirit. This is, as Peter put it, men spoke from God as they're carried along by the
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Holy Spirit. As Paul put it, all scripture is theanoustos, it is God -breathed, this is the constant message of scripture.
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And we saw that even in this text, when Jesus isn't teaching about the nature of scripture here, it wasn't his intention during his arrest to go, you know,
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I forgot to mention to you something about scripture that I need to reveal to you now. No, the point is that when he says to Peter, how then will the scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must happen this way, there are certain understood presuppositions, there are certain truths that are right there in the very words of Jesus, which we sometimes can go running by because we're looking more at what's going on, our mind is on other issues.
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And yet when we stop and we ponder and we meditate, we realize there are certain things that Jesus has said here without actually having to enunciate them.
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There's something about the very nature of scripture that must be fulfilled, that what scripture says in its prophetic text must come to pass.
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Otherwise, well, from Jesus' perspective, there is no otherwise. There is no room in Jesus' understanding for the vast majority, as far as I can see it, of the liberal understandings of scripture that are so prominent in our seminaries today.
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And so with that in mind, I wanted to read for you, a number of years ago, back in the 1970s, as I believe it was, late 1970s, there was a rather important gathering that produced what is known today as the
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Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. And I suppose if I can think of almost anything that has, in a sense, at least in our context, functioned as sort of a modern -day statement of faith or creedal statement, that Chicago Statement on Inerrancy has functioned in that way.
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There are many people who, of course, react against it negatively today, but having read through it, and I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but I would recommend it to your reading.
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It's readily available online. That's called the Internet of History, and you can track it down on your smartphone right now if you wanted to.
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There's a whole section of positive and negative statements, and that's a really good way of doing things.
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That really helps. I wish politicians did that, but that would require them to actually answer questions, so that's probably not going to work too well.
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But there are positive affirmations, and then there are negative statements that say, positively, we're saying this, but negatively, we're not saying this.
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And that is really, it's a difficult task to produce statements like that that are succinct, that are clear, that communicate, and that pass the test of time.
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And in a sense, this particular statement has done a very, very good job. Again, not going to read the whole thing to you, but there was a short statement provided at the beginning that I do want to read to you for purposes of comparison with what we've already seen from what the scriptures teach.
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Here's what it says. God who is himself truth, and speaks truth only, has inspired holy scripture in order thereby to reveal himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as creator and lord, redeemer and judge.
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Holy scripture is God's witness to himself. Holy scripture, being God's own word, written by men, prepared and superintended by his spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches.
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It is to be believed as God's instruction in all that it affirms, obeyed as God's command in all that it requires, embraced as God's pledge in all that it promises.
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The Holy Spirit, scripture's divine author, both authenticates it to us by his inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.
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Being holy and verbally God -given, scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts and creation, about the events of world history and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.
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The authority of scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the
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Bible's own, and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the church.
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So there you have somewhat of a definition in the fourth, there are five paragraphs, in the fourth paragraph, being holy and verbally
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God -given, scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts and creation, about the events of world history and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.
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Now, why did this statement have to be made? Well, there are many, not only in what's called
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Protestantism, but very popularly amongst, well, even some of the most conservative
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Roman Catholics, a view of inspiration that fundamentally says that, yes, scripture is infallible in the spiritual truths that it addresses only.
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Or you might say it is only inerrant when it is addressing spiritual truths, but it can actually, and this is when it starts getting a little bit confusing, it can actually utilize historical or scientific error to teach spiritual truths.
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Or another way to put it is that the spiritual truths are expressed despite the fundamental ignorances of the authors themselves.
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Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing in our doctrine of inspiration or inerrancy that demands that every writer of scripture himself or herself be omniscient.
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That would obviously be silly. And there were scientific truths that were unknown to preceding generations that we know, and I'm sort of wondering just how many truths were known to preceding generations that we don't know.
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The more I look back and see what men before us accomplished that we don't seem to be able to accomplish,
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I sort of wonder about that. But that is irrelevant to the nature of scripture because it is not necessary for the authors of scripture themselves to be infallible or inerrant because, as Peter said, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the
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Holy Spirit. Now there are some people who say, well that's a nice description, but that doesn't give us all the details of exactly how that works.
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That is correct. We do not have all the details, for example, of the incarnation.
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We don't have all the details of how exactly God holds together his entire universe and how exactly he designed every living cell and everything else.
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We don't have that information and we do not need that information for the purposes that God has in his creation.
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And it is not necessary that the authors of scripture themselves be somehow omniscient in all knowledge of all things.
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But there's a vast difference between saying that the authors of scripture, that the
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Apostle Paul did not understand cellular respiration, the
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Krebs cycle, glycolysis, and electron chain transport. I think we can probably fairly confidently say that that would not be something that you could have a fruitful discussion with the
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Apostle Paul about. But we need to recognize you don't need to have a fruitful discussion with the
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Apostle Paul on that particular subject for what he said in scripture to be inspired by God.
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What is being said here is that when scripture addresses all these areas, that since it is
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God speaking, God is not going to err in what he says. I suppose I should define, because it is a question that's often asked, what's the difference between being infallible and inerrant?
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Well, when you really think about it, infallible is a higher term than inerrant.
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Because as I mentioned this morning, probably everyone in here has produced an inerrant document at some point in your life.
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It may have been a very short document. But I bet you everybody in here, you took a spelling test once.
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You took a history test once. You aced it. You got it all right. Sure you did.
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Everyone's done that. I've got some people saying, no, not me. When you're right down front there, brother, it's not good to be so quite demonstrative and you're, no, not me.
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Because everyone's looking right down there. Well, even if not, you can imagine the possibilities of that happening.
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If you just simply study hard enough, you can produce an inerrant document. That's different than saying that someone is infallible in what they say and what they produce in any one particular area.
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There are some great scholars out there. I was listening to, Friday morning,
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I was listening to one particular scholar, a very, very well known
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Christian apologist, talking about Dr. Mueller's work on 16th and 17th century reformed history.
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As far as I could tell, he came as close as you could come to saying that that scholar is infallible.
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There is nothing he doesn't know about this particular area. But even he would admit, well, probably there might be something there, mainly because we don't know everything there is to know about things that long ago.
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But no one is infallible in that sense, even if we can produce an inerrant document.
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And so really, one is a higher statement that because of the nature of scripture, because of the author of scripture, it must be infallible because of who
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God is. God can only speak truth. Inerrancy would be, and then he managed to do so in such a way that he produced in the process of inspiration exactly what he wanted to produce, and it is inerrant in its nature.
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That's how you'd probably make a differentiation between those two particular terms.
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Now when we listen to what the Chicago Statement said, it probably,
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I think anyways, when I think about what it specifically stated and how it stated these things,
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I have to go back and I have to think about what our statement of faith says about the scripture, and sounds like we're pretty much right on the line in regards to historically what we have believed on the doctrine of scripture.
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Now I know our brother read through this just recently, but I want to remind you of some of the things that our statement of faith says about scripture and compare it with what we saw this morning, compare it with what we've seen in Jesus' teaching.
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I think it's an important thing to remember that the reason for the authority of our statement of faith is its fidelity to what
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God has revealed. We're not amongst those people who, well we have a tradition and we've exalted this tradition and we don't know anything else to do with this tradition and so we're just going to keep believing it, no, there is the power of reformed statements of faith is semper reformanda.
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It is always reforming, it is always being seen as reflective of God's truth in scripture.
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We cannot forget what our history has taught us. When you stop believing sola scriptura, the result is very bad indeed.
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And so what do we have? You can look if you wish, you know exactly where this is found in the back of your hymnal, but if you don't want to read, just listen as I note these things.
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Notice what is a certain, I can read all of it, but compare what we have been talking about and compare what
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I just read from the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy with what we believe, well for a lot longer than the
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Chicago Statement has been around. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.
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Just stop right there. The only sufficient. Now are there other rules of faith?
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Well, the 1689 is a rule of faith, but it is not sufficient, it's not inspired, it's not infallible.
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It's a rule of faith, we utilize it to give order to our worship and to our fellowship, but it's not an infallible rule of faith.
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The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient. I really wonder, I really wonder how many people really believe that today.
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I really do. When people bring in all sorts of stuff from outside, constantly seemingly looking around for things to grab hold of, to make things more exciting, do you really believe
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Scripture is sufficient? When you're having to do all that almost desperate seeking to make it interesting to people?
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I guess you don't really trust the Holy Spirit to do that. It is the only certain, infallible rule of all saving knowledge.
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Remember, the Scriptures do not describe to us the process of cellular respiration.
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By the way, cellular respiration is fascinating, it really is. If you've not looked it up on YouTube or something like that, oh man, there are some great videos out there that just will amaze you at the complexity of God's creation, but the
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Scriptures don't have to describe cellular respiration and have diagrams and everything else to be the
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Word of God. They give us the principles to look at that and be amazed at God's creative power, but they don't have to describe those things.
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The Scriptures are only so long. It is not meant to be an exhaustive revelation of all knowledge there is to be had.
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Saving knowledge, it's an infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith and obedience.
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If you want to know what it means to be saved, if you want to know what it means to have faith, if you want to know how to obey God, there is only one sufficient, certain, infallible rule of all those things, and that is the
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Scripture. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God as to leave men inexcusable, that's
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Romans 1, creation around us does that, they are unapologetus, they are without an apologetic.
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Yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation?
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And yes, that means that confessionally we can't accept that gospel in the stars stuff out there where if you just knew all the signs and everything like that, you'd come up with the
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Trinity and the Atonement and everything else, and it's like, no, that's special revelation, that's not the general revelation.
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Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times and at adverse times to reveal himself and declare that his will unto the church, and afterward for the better preserving and propagating the truth and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing.
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So in other words, our confession recognizes that there was times when God's word was orally transmitted before it was written down.
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I mean, there was a long time between Abraham and Moses. So, there's no question about that, however, it was in God's wisdom to commit the same wholly unto writing which makes the
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Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being ceased.
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So the idea of prophets walking into the door and saying, thus saith the Lord, that is a past way of God dealing with his people, not a present way.
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All of which are, then we have the listing of the text and this statement, all of which are given by the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life, the authority of Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed does not depend upon the testimony of any man or church.
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Now don't misunderstand what's being said there. Most of us came to believe these things through a testimony of man or church.
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I realize that. God uses means. But when we study those scriptures, we come to understand that it was not because pastor so and so, as godly a man as he might have been, said so.
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That's not why the scriptures are the scriptures, that's not why they're the word of God. That's not the authority upon which that truth is to be understood.
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Nor the church. The church is extremely important. God established the church, he uses the church, he uses the collective testimony of the people of God to encourage all of us and to point us to the word of God and everything else.
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But the church is the product of the word, not the one who rules over the word. That's a fundamental difference between ourselves and Roman Catholicism where the word is seen as being under the authority of the church, which means there really isn't any authority over the church.
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Theoretically God is, but when you depend upon the church to tell you what God's saying, good luck if you then claim to be infallible.
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Instead, the authority of holy scripture is based wholly upon God who is truth itself, the author thereof, and there's the problem for so many people today.
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That's clearly what Jesus was, the basis upon which he was functioning in Matthew chapter 26.
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Why must scripture be fulfilled? Because God's the author of it and God cannot lie. It either is the word of God and therefore it's going to happen and it's true or it's not.
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This gray area in between simply doesn't exist. There's a lot of people who want to live there because they've lost their confidence, but it's only a halfway house.
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The reality is, for the vast majority, when it says the author thereof, you've just left quote, unquote, meaningful scholarship.
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Now you've just entered into faith. Now when
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I think about that, I just step back and I go, okay, so to engage in meaningful scholarship
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I have to somehow come to the conclusion that the God who made us communicating beings has no interest in actually communicating to us in such a way that the communication would be consistent and constant over generations, over the development of man's knowledge and technology and so on and so forth, that it could communicate to generation after generation, culture after culture, language after language.
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God can't do that. And exactly why can't God do that again? Well, because he revealed these things to people back in the days long before they were as smart as we are.
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I'm not really so certain about that, but so the idea is God cannot communicate in such a way, if he communicates to people back then, he's got to come up with version 2 .0
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for us, maybe version 10 .0 now, whatever it might be. We need the constant upgrade type thing.
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Don't you think he might be applying some modern standards here that don't really have a solid basis to them?
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The author thereof, this is not a denial, by the way, of God's using men or men speaking from God or anything like that.
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It is fundamentally recognizing the same thing that Jesus taught, when he quotes from David and he says he spoke in the
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Holy Spirit. Well, whose words were they? Well, if you had been standing there that day, you would have heard
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David speaking. But from Jesus' perspective, he was speaking in the Holy Spirit, so it's the
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Holy Spirit's speech that is there. It's both. It's men speaking from God as they're carried along by the
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Holy Spirit. You have to allow for all of that, and it's only by cutting that down and simplifying it to a natural process, and that's where so much of it is, folks.
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So many people today are, all of us, every single person in this room is every single day assaulted by naturalistic materialism.
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If you can't put it under a microscope, if you can't measure it with some type of electronic equipment, if you can't photograph it, it doesn't exist.
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And if you really believe in a spiritual realm, well, then you might as well just start acting like all those weird people on certain channels that we never mention here in this church, but it's between 20 and 22.
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And you can just, you've got all the wacky stuff going on, and there's no middle ground.
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It's either just naturalistic materialism or wild -eyed craziness. And the idea of the balance that is found in Scripture, the recognition that is found in Scripture of the reality of the spiritual realm, and yet the self -control and the discipline that is supposed to mark the
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Christian life, and so on, evidently that gets thrown out. And that's where the real problem is. So the authority of the
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Holy Scripture comes from God, the author thereof, therefore it is to be received because it is the
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Word of God. It is its nature. It's not the creeds of the church.
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It's not the testimony of anybody else. It is because it is God speaking.
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When God speaks, what He says is authoritative to what He makes, and we are what
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He has made. And so when He speaks to us, what He speaks to us is authoritative.
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We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures. And the heaviness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies.
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I love the list that is provided there, because I'm not sure how many people would actually come up with that as some of the primary examples of how
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Scripture speaks to its own authority and its own glory and things like that, but to me especially, the consent of all the parts.
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So there's one of the problems today. There are so few teaching in our seminaries that believe there is a consent of all the parts.
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And I don't know how many times in responding to critics or even responding to those who are allegedly a part of the evangelical movement, again whatever that means, and pointing out where they're heading down the wrong road and they're taking other people with them.
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But one of the absolutely central issues always is, do you believe there is a consent?
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That there is a harmony? See, you're not even allowed to harmonize, even, and this has been the way it's been for decades.
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I remember when I was in seminary, and I'd have a seminary professor talking about the tensions in the text, and again the whole idea was, if you really want to be on the cutting edge, then you need to embrace this idea of incoherence and inconsistency and contradiction.
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You don't call it those things. You call it tensions in the text, but that's what you have to believe. And when
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I would do my silly conservative man thing and put my hand up and say,
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Dr. so and so, looking at the text here, isn't one of the possible ways of reading this author that he meant this, and this author that he meant that, and therefore they're actually consistent with one another?
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Is there a reason not to read it that way? And you sort of get the, yes, you must go to a fundamentalist church look, that type of looking down, but the reality was there was a presupposition operating there that harmonization isn't really allowed, allowing for the consent of all the parts.
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But the reality is, folks, this is where so much of the beauty is lost. I've tried to explain, and we've talked about it before, so much of the beauty of scripture is seen in the flow of the parts, in the beautiful fabric and how it's woven together and you have these themes, and one author will put it in one way, and one author in another, and one experience of God with his people will put a certain hue upon this idea, but then his experience someplace else will give a different color, and it's bringing them together that creates this beautiful, beautiful tapestry, but it can only be seen if you allow it to stand as a whole.
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If you tear the threads apart, you'll never see it. Another one of the most common examples of this, or illustrations of this, is if you listen to truly beautiful music, especially to the beautiful music of the great minds of the past, you listen to a
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Bach, or a Mozart, or a Beethoven, and you listen to their symphonies and you listen to the intricate interplay of the instruments and the counter melodies and all the things that go into truly appreciating this incredible music, if you tear it apart and just listen to the trumpets without the counterbalancing of the woodwinds and the strings, it's not really beautiful.
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In fact, it may not even make a lick of sense. It's when it's brought together that you hear its true beauty.
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And that's why, again, I'm lost, I really am lost. I don't understand people who spend their lives studying the
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Bible only to tear it apart. I mean, that would be a really boring life.
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I just can't imagine what that would be like. Because what's beautiful for me is the more you dig into the text, the more you begin to see the interrelationship of how the language is used in this author and that author, and the beauty of that all coming together, that comes from the consent of all the parts.
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I wasn't thinking about preaching on that line, but it just struck me. The full discovery it makes of only the way of man's salvation, all these incomparable excellencies, are arguments whereby it abundantly evidences itself to be the
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Word of God. So notice, we're not saying that there is not evidence that it's the Word of God, but yet notwithstanding that nice long particle in older English, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the
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Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts. And so, our statement is saying that there's plenty of evidence.
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There's a mountain of evidence. But fundamentally, to truly believe that God has spoken, to desire to be obedient, to believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, requires the work of the
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Spirit of God in man's heart. Why? Because we are spiritual creatures. And no man who embraces the modern view of man as merely a highly evolved primate is ever going to have any meaningful reason to look to the
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Word of God and accept what it has to say. As long as you limit man to merely an animal, you'll never have a basis for truly understanding.
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That doesn't mean God can't break through, because you were made in His image. You're not going to live consistently with that viewpoint of yourself.
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You're not going to live consistently with that viewpoint of other people around you. There's going to be that blessed inconsistency that the
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Spirit of God can use to bring conviction, to bring enlightenment. But there is no way to make the
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Word of God understandable and attractive to those who are perishing.
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Isn't that what 1 Corinthians 1 is all about? Isn't that the whole point that God has made the wisdom of the world foolishness?
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And that in God's wisdom, man by his wisdom does not come to know God? That the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing?
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Isn't that the whole point of that? It is. It is. And so there is a necessity.
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When Jesus meets with the disciples after the resurrection, He has to open their minds to understand the
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Word of God. And then they see the testimony as He teaches them from the Scripture of what the
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Scriptures had said about what the Messiah must do. Then they understand. But there is something spiritual there. Now I've met atheists who have studied the biblical languages and they've studied biblical backgrounds and unfortunately it can make most of us look pretty sad.
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But they may know, but they cannot begin to comprehend, cannot begin to desire to be obedient to.
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They cannot hear the voice of God in Scripture. It's not simply a matter of knowledge.
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Knowledge is important. We cannot eschew it. We cannot just say, well, there's always the two sides you can fall off into.
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I know so much. Well, if you don't have the Spirit, it's not going to do you any good. Well, I have the Spirit. But if you don't have any truth, just zeal, you're going to end up hurting yourself and everybody else.
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There's much evidence, but it only becomes truly evidence in light of the witness of the
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Holy Spirit of God. Now, the whole counsel of God, considering all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation,
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I'm so glad it's in that order. I wish it were in that order in most of our thoughts and minds. If you truly, as a believer, have in your mind
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God's glory, man's salvation, in that order, you're doing well.
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Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians, first and foremost, the whole counsel of God concerning man's salvation, then somewhere down the line,
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God's glory, demonstration of his power, so on and so forth. It's not what
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Ephesians 1 says or Romans 9 says or anything else. For his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the
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Holy Scripture. By the way, you can't make heads or tails out of the phrase necessarily contained if you do not have a
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Bible that is consistent with itself. You can't even begin to start talking about what it's necessary to believe.
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Why do we have doctrines such as the hypostatic union?
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Well, because the Bible says this, this, this, and this about Jesus. And if they are to be harmonized, the result must be we believe this.
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If you don't have that consent of the whole parts, forget it. It's irrelevant. You can't even go there.
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So either expressly set down, Jesus is called God in Scripture, no question, or necessarily contained in Holy Scripture.
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They would not have crucified the Lord of glory. How do you crucify the Lord of glory? Well, because the incarnation was real.
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And so you take John 1 .14, you take phraseology like that, you understand what's being said.
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Unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the spirit or traditions of men.
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Now believe it or not, despite the fact that that channel between 20 and 22 did not exist in 1689, there were lots of people who were still behaving like the people on the channel between 20 and 22 in that day, just as much.
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And so the idea of new revelation of the spirit, it's not something that's new in our day at all.
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That's been, we haven't gotten to it in church history yet, but we're going to discover that there was a big movement in the early church.
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These guys would have absolutely been on TBN. I'll go ahead and name it.
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They would, 1 ,700 years ago, and they would have been stars on TBN.
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We're going to, it's called the Montanus movement. And they, prophetesses and the whole nine yards, nothing new, nothing new.
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Whether by new revelation of the spirit or traditions of men, you know what the background of that is. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word.
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You know, nothing scares me more than to see an unbeliever who knows the word and has no spiritual sensitivity.
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There is a person who is going to stand before God. And I remember my
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Lord said something about, woe to Christ and in Bethsaida, in other words, the more light, the greater one's condemnation before God.
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They may know the truths, but without that spiritual element. The inward illumination of the spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word, and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and the government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence according to the general rules of the word, which are always to be observed.
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In other words, God's word gives us principles that we are then to apply in all of the context in which the church is placed down through the ages.
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If it was just a simple rule book, which is what a lot of people want it to be, then it would not be able to transfer into all the different languages and cultures that the gospel is to go into.
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So it gives us the principles that we then make application in those areas. One last section, all things in scripture are not alike plain themselves, nor alike clear unto all, yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and open in some place of scripture or other that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of ordinary means may attain to a sufficient understanding of them.
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This is so very, very, very important. So often the arguments that are made against the sufficiency, even the inerrancy of scripture is because, well, you people disagree about stuff.
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I have to deal with this all the time. Oh, you say such and so when you speak to the
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Muslims, but that scholar over there says something different. That scholar says this, and we live in a day where, again, thanks to that internet, which
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I certainly use to try to get the truth out to folks, but all sorts of other people use it to try to get all sorts of untruths out to folks.
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Because of that, you can probably find somebody to disagree on anything.
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Every topic known to man, you can find a scholar someplace who's going to say something else. We are not saying that you can sit down with the
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Bible in abject ignorance, ignore the due use of means, and just simply read it like it's a printer manual, like it's an instruction manual from Ikea on how to put together your desk you just bought, though some of them are extremely difficult to understand, actually, now that I think about it, mainly because they're not actually written in English.
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But that's a whole other issue. If it's actually written by an English -speaking person. That's not what the
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Bible is. There are background issues. There's a need to use the ordinary means, which includes other people that God has given to us.
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But yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and open in some place of scripture or another.
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And so there are people who say, well, Christians disagree about eschatology, so how can you tell me
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I need to repent and believe the gospel? And so they're taking one area and saying all areas are the same.
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And what the confession here is saying is, yes, there are some things in scripture that are difficult. There's no question about that.
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There are some texts of scripture that are hard to understand. No question about that. Why is that?
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Well, there's a lot of reasons, but one of them is God has chosen to give us a scripture that flows out of his dealing with his people.
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His people have gone through some pretty interesting experiences, so he might demonstrate his character in his dealings with his people.
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But I can't go there this evening. I've already gone longer than I needed to. But the point is, that does not change
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God's self -revelation of who he is, of who Jesus Christ is, or what the gospel is. And so, once again, what's the underlying principle here?
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Scripture is consistent with scripture. Scripture becomes a very interpreter of scripture in the sense that it provides that context.
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Once you get rid of that, once you step away from what Jesus said to Peter, Peter standing there with a sword in his hand, blood on the sword, he's probably shaking because he ain't a soldier.
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He's probably trembling, Malchus certainly is, and in the midst of that, what
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Jesus says to him communicates to us a view of scripture that would correct the vast majority of the false teaching and error in today's churches if people would but listen.
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Because what was absolutely necessary to understand what Jesus said to Peter, it's necessary that scripture be fulfilled because scripture is
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God speaking, it is consistent, it is truthful, or it's not scripture at all.
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Or it's not scripture at all. Oh, that God's spirit would cause his people to hear the constant testimony, not only in this text, but throughout
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God's word to the reality of this truth. How blessed the church would be with a consistent proclamation of the gospel.
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Isn't that what our nation needs? May God bless his church with a renewed faith that God has spoken.
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Let's pray together. Our great
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King and Lord, we thank you that you are the King of the ages, you rule over your creation, and you have not stuttered or stammered in your speech to us, you have made yourself known.
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Forever settled in the heavens is your word. We do thank you for that.
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We would ask and pray that you would bring a revival in our land and let it begin in your churches, let it begin with those who stand before your people.
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May they once again truly trust your word. And then may your people, encouraged by that word, dive into that word, be immersed in that word, memorize that word.
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And then think in light of it, so that we might be a light upon a hill.
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There's so much darkness. May we not add to that darkness by our apathy or by our lack of faith.
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May we, like the psalmist who wrote the 119th Psalm, be truly enraptured in our love for the word of God.
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May it be our guide, may it be our guard even this coming week. We pray in Christ's name, amen.