Jeff Durbin: Sola Scriptura & Rome Pt. 4

Sola Scriptura and the Authority of Scripture in Matthew 15

If you want to open your Bibles to the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 15. Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 15. This is the fourth part in our series about the Biblical doctrine of sola scriptura.

Matthew chapter 15, we're going to start in verse 1. Hear now the words of the living and the true God. Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

They do not wash their hands when they eat. He answered them. And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded honor your father and your mother and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.

But you say, if anyone tells his father or his mother what you would have gained from me as given to God, he need not honor his father. So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God.

You hypocrites. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

Thus far as the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray together as God's people. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for this gift. We pray, Lord, that through this series and what we've been examining in your word, God, that we would love your word, your revelation more deeply.

That we would be in awe of your word and this gift that we have of you, the only God, the eternal God speaking. You've condescended. You've given us your word. This is your word. It's the standard. Lord Jesus, you said in your high priestly prayer, you said, father, sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. And so we ask God that you would speak today by your spirit, through the proclamation of your word, that you would renew us, renew our minds, firm us up in our commitments to the truth, that you'd use us for your glory and kingdom and to draw your elect people to yourself.

We pray all these things in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. So here we are, part four. If you missed the other ones, make sure you go back and pick those up. I'm not going to be going over everything that we've gone over before.

And again, this particular little series that we're doing is not comprehensive. We could be doing so much more at length on this doctrine of the authority of God's word, the nature of God's word, the clarity or perspicuity of God's word, the power of God's word.

God's word is the ultimate standard, but we wanted to make sure that we don't merely assume as your brothers and pastors that you know these truths or why we say that we believe them because it's important as Christians, and you hear this often from us as pastors, that we allow the adiaphora, the side issues in the Christian faith, right, those side issues that we can disagree on or maybe scripture isn't speaking on, that we allow those to be the side issues and we maintain a unified church with all the side issues.

I'll make you uncomfortable right now. If you look in this room right now, you're going to see a lot of ladies with head coverings.

On.

And then you see a lot of other ladies with no head coverings on. How do we pull that off?

Right?

You want to start a war?

Let's have a church split.

How's that sound?

Right?

Let's debate.

Listen.

Does it happen?

It happens. It happens.

We've got in this room right now, raise your hand if you are in this fellowship right now. Raise your hand if you are, you're Presbyterian. Raise your hand if you're Presbyterian.

Hands up.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

Raise your hand. If you're Presbyterian, in case, don't, why are you so sad about it?

You're afraid.

Raise a hand high. Raise it up.

There you go.

Okay.

You're Presbyterian. You have Presbyterian commitments. You're members of Apology of Church. You're part of a Reformed Baptist church. So you've got Reformed Baptist here, we've got Presbyterians here, and yet, we're able to maintain a unified church body where we're at peace, we fellowship, we serve God together because we do want to follow what Scripture says in terms of when we have disagreements that we're allowed to have disagreements on, we have those with love and fellowship and essential unity.

Amen? Scripture calls us to that. But when we're talking about something like Sola Scriptura, we're talking about something that is truly definitional of the Christian faith in terms of how do I know what I know?

By what standard? We're asking the question as to whether God's word is final and ultimate or there's some other voice that can come along and pull rank and say, no, I will give you the ultimacy with me or with us.

Now you will find, brothers and sisters, this is obvious to all of us, you will find that broken position in every counterfeit Christian cult and religion. You will find an ultimate. It comes by way of the modern day prophets.

They come in, they say, well, I'm the prophet of God. I'm speaking for God. I will infallibly interpret the scriptures. I will tell you what that Bible says. And when their words contradict the words of scripture, you'll have something like in Mormonism where they'll say, well, the problem is, is that we actually are speaking for God.

We're the ultimate authority and that book is corrupted. You need us to tell you when, how, and where it was corrupted. And in the end, we're the ultimate. You'll notice that with Joseph Smith, with Charles Taze Russell, with Judge Rutherford, with David Koresh, or any number of modern day false prophets.

The ultimacy will be where? With the prophets. Or it might be today they'll say, well, yeah, we have a modern day prophet in Salt Lake, but we also have prophets and apostles as part of our organization.

So to really know that this is true, you need to listen to our organization. And isn't it interesting? Think about this for a moment now. Isn't it interesting that when the Mormons come to your door in our community, they come to your door, of course, talking to you about a first vision account, which of course we know historically wasn't a part of Joseph Smith's original revelation.

We have numbers of first vision accounts that contradict one another. So that's an issue all by itself. But the Mormon missionaries that are getting younger and younger, by the way, the more missionaries will come to your house with a quad.

And what's in the quad? What's in it? You've got the Holy Bible, Old and New Testaments, King James Version, by the way. You've got Pearl of Great Price. You've got Doctrine and Covenants. You've got a cup.

You've got some some things in there that Mormons will say are authoritative, but they'll say, we believe the Bible is the Word of God. What's the problem? Is when we start talking to them about the Word of God and where the Word of God contradicts Joseph Smith's revelation, Brigham Young's revelation, Orson Pratt's revelation, Joseph Fielding Smith's revelation, Ezra Taft Benson's revelation, they will say, here's the problem.

Though we believe that's authoritative, it's not ultimate. If you want the interpretation or you want to truly know, you need to listen to our prophets and apostles because they know. So what do you have there?

You have a conflict in how do I know? Is it the Word of God is ultimate or is it your prophet that's ultimate? Is it your organization that's ultimate? And so this is a question in terms of essential Christian commitments coming from the Word of God.

How do I know anything at all? And how do I have certainty? What's the standard? How do I measure it? If somebody says something, how do I test that claim? Do I test it based upon their own internal conversation with each other?

See if it's consistent within itself? Do I test it upon my own feelings? It's the question of by what standard? And can we pause for a moment? It's easy for us. And by the way, reform folks are good at this.

It's very heady, theological. We think thoughts way up here, right? We like to have those deep, long conversations, hard thoughts up here, theological, philosophical conversations. And that's all. It can be good.

But in the end, I want to challenge you with this, and we're going to end with this today. Sola Scriptura is not simply a doctrine we need to know, believe, and be willing to die for in our disputes with those who counterfeit the Christian gospel or our dispute with the Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox or Mormons.

It's not merely a doctrine we need to know and embrace and understand as Christians for those conversations. I actually want to challenge you with this. What I think is more vital, what is more important to us as a church and as individual followers of Jesus is not to know this doctrine, believe it, fight for it, and live in accordance with it, for those conversations out there with them.

I want to challenge us on this doctrine of Sola Scriptura for my own personal life and walk with Jesus and us within the body of Christ. How do you live? What's the doctrine of Sola Scriptura? If we define it, we say that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the church.

That part of practice is vital. How will we live with each other? Because we can be really good. We can be really good at refuting those who contradict and bringing the word of God into conflict with Rome or the Mormons.

We can be expert apologists and defend the Christian faith and be so good at it. But if we haven't allowed the word of God to challenge us in our sinful moments, in our prideful moments, in our moments of conflict with each other, if we haven't learned to allow this doctrine to actually renew our minds and to change us as God's people, we have missed the point entirely.

And I want to say, when we need to talk to ourselves and correct ourselves, we need to be humble enough to do it. I love the Reformed faith. I love the Reformed faith. I am a hardcore, pipe-hitting Calvinist.

I love it. Like Doug Wilson says, I wake up in the morning and I go, oh, Calvinism. I love it. Because I believe it's an expression of what the grace of God truly is in the Gospel. I love what Reformation theology emphasizes.

It is the truth. It comes from the Scriptures. I am fully committed. But we, as a Reformed community, have a reputation for having a great mind that thinks high, critical thoughts. But we have a reputation, and Christians, of course, generally do, but let's speak to ourselves.

As a Reformed community, we have a reputation of being arrogant, haughty, pompous people at times. The Reformed community at times, I don't want to have anything to do with. I know Reformed people, I would rather eat with an atheist than that guy.

We can't live like that. These doctrines should transform us and humble us, and I want to argue that the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, you need to believe because the Bible teaches, and you need to master it for your sanctification.

You need to say, these are the words of God, which means, when it speaks to me, as a Christian, when I'm failing as a father, or I'm failing as a husband, or you're failing as a wife, or we're failing with one another, we need to be willing to let the word of God change us, challenge us, correct us in our most stubborn moments.

Why? Because what is the doctrine of Sola Scriptura? Ultimately, this is the revelation of God. Why? God speaks. God has said, and that's why I live in accordance with it. So I'm going to challenge us with that.

As we wrap this up today, this little sidestep in the series, let this doctrine of Sola Scriptura cause you to love God's word more deeply and to be changed by it. Don't just be changed by it in your personal relationships with each other or our relationships.

Let the word of God shut your mouth when you are having an internal dialogue or monologue where you are succumbing to anxiety, worry, fear of the future, when you are feeling lonely, when you feel guilt and shame, or you feel like God is far off.

This doctrine of Sola Scriptura has the revelation of God at the center of your life, meaning, when you have those moments where your mind, your fallible mind, is going a million different directions, you're dealing with death or grief or shame or anxiety, whatever the case may be, you're letting the word of God be the word of God.

You're allowing it to challenge you and confront you. In your moment, you're having, with the husband and wife, difficult spat. That doesn't happen in your house, does it? No. No. But when you have it, when the conflict happens, will the husband allow the word of God to be the word of God in that moment?

Will he allow the wife to bring the word of God and say, God says, and he goes, you're right, I repent, I confess, I yield. Will the wife do the same when the husband says to the wife, God says, will the wife allow the word of God to be the word of God in the home and to confront, no matter how you feel, no matter how much you want to resist it at that moment.

Do you see, the doctrine of Sola Scriptura isn't merely about our fight with Rome. It is about our personal lives. Amen? So, we started this off talking about the origin of Scripture, the nature of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture, the power of Scripture, the ultimacy of Scripture, and we gave an example, Matthew 15.

This is a very, very important section. It is so important, and I hope we can all see why it is so important here in this conflict or conversation we're having with either Roman Catholic friends and family or our Eastern Orthodox friends and family.

Here's a moment with God himself, the incarnate one. God's walking among us. He's giving us new revelation. Mark that down. Sola Scriptura says at the heart, God speaks and it's self-attesting, authoritative.

It's the foundation. Here's a moment in redemptive history. Get this. Revelation is now alive and active. It's still coming. It's coming from Jesus. It's coming from the apostles. Don't miss that. You'll understand why as this conversation deepens.

Revelation is still coming. When Jesus is walking here in this moment, he's God among us. Every word is pure. Every word is authoritative. He's speaking and more revelation is extending into time. And yet, here we have a moment where Jesus, God with us, is now dealing with, let's call them, the church, the Jewish church.

And he's dealing with what they thought were divine traditions handed down. Now, don't miss that. This is vital to get. We're talking about the gathering of God's covenant people with the Jews. They had the scriptures.

What does Paul say in Romans 3 about the Jews? Like, what benefit did the Jews have? If Jews and Gentiles are all sinners, Paul says, then what advantages did you have? And Paul makes the point. They, listen, this is key and it's going to be important later when we talk about the Apocrypha.

How come the Catholic Bible is different than our Bible? Paul says that the Jews, listen, were entrusted with the oracles of God. God sovereignly entrusted the covenant people of God with the oracles of God, the scriptures.

And that's why the Jewish people at the time of Jesus had laid up in the second Jewish temple the very books you have in your Bible today. Our Bible matches the Jewish Bible because historically the Jews recognized these as scripture and the Apocrypha as, you know, helpful sometimes historical works but not scripture.

The Jews are entrusted with the oracles of God. Get it. The Jewish people, the Jewish church right now coming to Jesus and saying, excuse me, you're the Messiah? You're the Son of Man? Okay. So if all this is true and you're the one we're waiting for, I'm filling out now the details, they're challenging them now, how come your disciples are breaking this tradition?

Now what's interesting about that is you've got the Jews who in this moment would have affirmed that these are the words of God in the Old Testament. These are holy words, pure words. This is Yahweh speaking to his people.

They would have recognized the authority of scripture and yet they have a tradition running alongside the Bible that they say is binding upon the people of God. So they're coming to Jesus and they're saying, hey, I want to know how come your disciples are breaking the tradition of the elders?

And so Jesus, God incarnate, actually gives us a principle here. He could have authoritatively as God spoken and his word was the rule. And yet Jesus teaches us something here when it comes to what is allegedly divine tradition passed down to the church that's not in the scriptures.

Now get that. That's what the Jewish church was saying with these rules is they were saying, you've got scripture and you've got the tradition of the elders. This is divine tradition. The Korban rule, this is binding upon God's people.

And Jesus says to them, ready? Here's a standard. God says, and what's Jesus quotes? He quotes the Old Testament. He quotes the scriptures. And he says this, ready? You say. And then he quotes their tradition.

And he shows that their tradition that they said was divine tradition. This is required to believe and you got to hold to this. He says, you've made void the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

And he says something that is a powerful indictment that we need to wrap our minds around. He says, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you? And he quotes scripture again. And he says, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

In vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines, the commandments of men. And so Jesus has two categories here. He has scripture and then he has your commandments of men, things that are making the word of God void.

It's a tradition of the elders. It voids the word of God. It's the commandments of men. These aren't from God. And how were they supposed to know? Ready? Watch this. Get this. You get the whole thing.

How was Jesus delivering to them the punch? How did he knock them down that day? On what basis? He said, God said this. Here's the words of God. He spoke clearly. Your tradition contradicts God's word.

Therefore, your tradition is not from God. It's the commandments of men. Jesus delivered the knockout punch by quoting the previous revelation of God in history. That was the standard. Now this is vital because in our conversation with our Roman Catholic friends, they will say we have the scriptures and then we have this alleged sacred tradition, church tradition that is this unified tradition throughout church history.

By the way, that is a myth. Roman Catholic apologists are good at spreading the myth of this unified testimony of the church throughout history. You can see that conflict as obvious as it truly is when Roman Catholics try to say we have scripture and church tradition, scripture and sacred tradition.

This is how God has done this in history. That's how we know we have this unified voice throughout history. Just watch a conversation between an Eastern Orthodox and a Roman Catholic. They both say the same thing.

We've got scripture and tradition. Yet, the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have split over some very important doctrinal matters when it comes to the infallibility of the Pope, the papacy itself, doctrines about Mary.

There's all kinds of splits between Eastern Orthodox and Rome. Apparently, church tradition isn't as clear and unified as we are being told. Amen? Think about it. Roman Catholics will say we have the Bible and we have church tradition or sacred tradition.

Yet, the problem is that throughout the history of the church, you see church fathers, bishops, pastors, you see church fathers, theologians saying things that are incredibly consistent with scripture.

It is a blessing. And then you see those same church fathers and bishops and theologians absolutely face-planting. If you want an example of a major face-planter, just read Origen. Or you can see development even happening in their own theology with like Augustine or Augustine.

You see in even his own theology where he will contradict what he said previous before because he is a fallible man. He is not inspired. He is not infallible. In church tradition, you have people who argue with each other over what Rome now says you must believe, De Fide.

It is dogma. You must believe it to be faithful to God and in communion with the church. And so think about the standard. Rome says today we've got the Bible and we have church tradition. How did Jesus teach us as the incarnate one to deal with the issue of alleged divine tradition?

What do we compare it to? What do we compare it to? The scriptures. We compare God's revelation to this alleged divine tradition. Now we talked over the last couple of weeks. I'm not going to go into all the details.

We talked about scripture. It is by nature God speaking. One of the verses was 2 Timothy 3, 16, and that is that all scripture is what? Theanoustos, it is breathed out by God. There Paul is speaking about the scriptures and he says they are Theanoustos.

They are breathed out by God. This is the revelation of God. He's speaking. So Paul tells us something there about the nature of scripture. What makes it different than all the other words of men and women is that scripture is Theanoustos.

Peter says in 2 Peter 1, 21 something about the origin of scripture. How does it happen? And Peter says holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So it is by nature God's own word.

It is something that God himself orchestrates. He has authority over. He's the one that gives it to us, the Holy Spirit of God. And next Jesus in conflict with others would challenge the Jewish people of his day using the scriptures and he said things like Matthew 22, 31 about their controversy.

He says you do err not knowing the scriptures or the power of God. And he says have you not read what was spoken to you by God? Isn't that interesting? Isn't that amazing? It's incredible that Jesus could quote scripture to them, words that were said to other people long before and he could say have you not read what was spoken to you by God?

God's speaking. Reading scripture is God speaking to you. He's talking to you. And it's amazing because let's let this be practical for us now as Christians. Like let it be what it is. Like I don't think that I or any of us treasure this book the way that God wants us to, that he calls us to.

We don't see it as the gift that it is. It sits there in our home. It's the word of God, the creator of the entire universe and all that is, the eternal God, the faithful God, the God that keeps his promises, the loving God, the God that condescended to save us.

These are his words. And we want to know like I just wish that God would speak to me. I just want to hear a word from God. Here's your word from God. Here's your word from God. You know, people just want to have this new experience today, right?

It's popular in evangelism, right? I want a new experience. I want to like a charismatic spirit filled experience. I want to hear God speaking or even have people who want to get this gift of being able to hear God speak and deliver those words to others like current modern revelation.

We love that idea of like, hey, I have a word from God for you. You know, I was praying last night. I was thinking about you and the Lord delivered me some words for you and I just want to deliver those words.

By the way, anyone ever says that to you, that is you're in the danger zone. Because if someone says to you, God spoke to me and he told me something to say to you, and here's what he said to say to you, you should write it down and slip it behind revelation.

Right? Right? I mean, let's be real here. The person who claims that God spoke to them and here are the words that God told me to tell you, here's his revelation. If that person really believed that it was God speaking, then they should slip it in the back of revelation because that's God's revelation.

And you're claiming that this is God's revelation. Do you see the point? I like to see the person brave enough to do that in the Christian church, or maybe we should stop doing that. I'm not saying that we can't as Christians have a word for one another as brothers and sisters, but that word should be these words.

Here's what God says. I don't have any problem. And we shouldn't have any problem saying that God's within me. I'm his child. He's given me like a conviction, a desire, a passion to say something from his word to you.

And I need to say it to you, but these are the words of God, not new revelation coming from God. If you want to hear God speaking, open your Bible. And that's not me saying that that's the Lord Jesus.

He says, have you not read what was spoken to you by God? If we want God to speak, read the scriptures. Next, we talked about that it's clear, God's word is clear, the perspicuity of scripture, the clarity of scripture, and that we are accountable to it.

Just one, two references here was Matthew 22, 26 through 29, that same text where Jesus is challenging them over a doctrinal issue. He says, you do err, not knowing the scriptures and the power of God, what standard does he hold them to, the scriptures?

And what is he actually doing? He's chastising them. He's saying, God's word says this. You're supposed to know this. Isn't it amazing? Because listen, you're wondering why, why are you making this point?

Because Rome will often say to Christians, to Protestants, to the reforms, you can't really understand that book all by your lonesome. You need the infallible interpretation of the church. By the way, which verses has Rome infallibly interpreted?

And they'll go, well, not many, maybe six. I mean, there's dispute on like how many they've actually infallibly interpreted. But they tell you, you can't really understand that book without the church infallibly interpreting it for you or telling you what it says.

And it's amazing because Jesus says to people in his day, you do err, not knowing the scriptures. Apparently their failure was that they didn't understand the scriptures. That was the standard. And Jesus does it again in Luke 24, 25, on the road to Emmaus, the clarity of scripture, Jesus indicts them.

Jesus is alive from the dead. They saw him murdered on a tree and now they're walking along the road to Emmaus. They think this whole thing is over. I mean, it's kind of unbelievable. I really thought he was the Messiah.

Totally seemed like he was that walking on water thing, that calming the storm, that raising dead people, that feeding the 5 ,000, that knowing our thoughts from afar, his perfect wisdom and righteousness.

It seemed like he was legit the Messiah, but I guess not because he's dead. I saw him. There's no way to recover from that. And then when Jesus confronts them, what does he say? He says, foolish, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

He calls them foolish and that they're slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. And so how does Jesus indict them? He says, was it not necessary that the Messiah die and rise again?

So he points them to the scriptures and shows them from the old Testament everywhere it spoke of him. And so when Jesus indicts them, on what basis does he indict them? Think about it. It's critical in this conversation with Rome.

He indicts them because they refused to go to the scriptures to believe and understand. And he says they were foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. He challenged them.

You have this word. You should have understood it. You're foolish and you're slow of heart because you didn't believe it. Scripture taught this. You should have known this. Apparently the scriptures are clear enough to be understood by the simple.

Amen? Next, we talk about how scripture is self-attesting. Self-attesting. Why? Because it comes from God's own mouth. God doesn't need your backup. Right? So for example, let's put it in the context of of a conflict like who says?

Right? Like who says? Now imagine for a second that you're pulled over by a police officer and the police officer says, you're in trouble because you violated this law. And you would say something like, who says?

Right? Where's that law come from? And the officer could ultimately say, well, it goes over here. Our legislature has said that this is considered lawless conduct. And so on that basis, our state says that this is lawless conduct and that's why.

And you could just go down another step and you could say, well, who made them in charge? Who put them into power? And you say, well, we're part of the United States of America. We have the system of government where we have like states and we have like lesser magistrates and we've got a federal government.

And you could push that back and back and back and back. And it's always going to be because they say, because them, because of them. And it's going to get back to an ultimate, ultimately, where you've got to say, ultimately, how do I know this is wrong?

And by the way, that is how the Christians built this nation. They did it on the basis of lax rex. What does that mean? The law is what? King. They said, the Christians, the Covenanters, the Huguenots, those Puritans that came over, they were arguing that when we have government, the government is not God.

It is not ultimate. The ultimate is going to come from the king of kings and Lord of lords. It's the law word of God that is ultimate. Here's the point. God says, that's why it's ultimate. It's self-attesting.

Here's my point. If God confronts a creature and says, this is my word, you are to do this and not do that. Is it appropriate for the creature to come to God and say, who says? Just consider how foolish that is.

He's the creator. I'm the little ant on the hill. I'm the bug. I'm the creature. I'm the one who is fallible. And it's completely insane and inappropriate for the creature to say to the creator, who says?

On what basis? Here's the point. Because God is God and I am not, when he speaks, it comes with a self-attesting authority. God does not appeal to anybody or anything outside of himself to verify his authority.

He speaks with final authority. Amen. And that's why when we started this conversation, we started in Genesis in the garden. And in the garden, you see the first conflict of how do you know? And on what basis should we obey?

And in the garden, what do you have? God says, eat, don't eat. The day you do, you die. And Eve comes along, Adam comes along, Satan comes along and Satan goes, not die, eat and not die. And then you have that original conflict of how do you know?

And it comes out in God's favor. God, it turns out, was right because his word is ultimate. He spoke and that should have been the basis that they obeyed with because God said what they should have done is what Jesus did in the temptation in the wilderness.

That's what they should have done. Have you thought about that for a moment now? Stop. Think about it for a moment. In light of Sola Scriptura, how does the incarnate one, the perfect image of God, show us how to navigate conflict in the trial and temptation?

When Satan comes with the trials and the temptations, what does the Lord of Glory do as a man with Satan? He quotes the word of God. He rests on the revelation of God. That's our model. That's how we're supposed to be.

Satan comes in, says, all right, if you're the son of God, you know, throw yourself off of here. And Jesus quotes what? You should not, what? Don't test the Lord, you're God. And then Satan comes in one of the temptations and he says, all right, here's all the kingdoms of the world.

I'll give them to you right now. What's that mean? No cross, no suffering, none of that condescension, none of the obedience to death. You don't have to do any of that stuff. I'll give you the kingdom you came for.

You're the one bringing the kingdom of God. I'll just give them all. You just got to do this one thing, bow down and worship me. And Jesus says, what? You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.

Here is the Lord of Glory doing what our first parents ought to have done, resting on the revelation of God. God says. So God's word is self-attesting and it is ultimate. It is authoritative. Now, the inspired revelation has always been the ultimate standard for truth and testing throughout redemptive history.

In other words, when God spoke, that became the ultimate standard. Whether that revelation had been written down or if that revelation was ongoing, that was the standard. But it was still to be tested by the previous revelation.

This is vital in our conversation with Roman Catholics. This conversation is going to come up a lot in redemptive history. Deuteronomy 13, even if the prophet comes and he has signs and wonders, it looks like it's coming from God.

But he leads you after other gods, gods which you have not known. That's how you know he's a false prophet. You shall listen to God's voice. In other words, the Jewish people knew God already said this.

He's already revealed this. So even if this religious leader, this prophet looks like he's from God, his words must be tested by God's previous revelation. That's the standard for the Jewish people. That's in God's law.