The Battle for Grace

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

6 views

This is my presentation in the Sola Conference at Countryside Bible Church, February 7, 2009.

0 comments

00:17
What a miracle we have this morning. We have a bunch of Texans up on a Saturday morning, and we didn't, you didn't make any offering or anything to, you know, raffling off a truck or something like that, a 67
00:32
Chevy, something like that, a Ford, I don't know. It is pretty amazing on a
00:40
Saturday morning, given the fact that, well, there's a lot of things the world would think would be a little bit better for us to be doing than discussing sola fide.
00:50
I mean, we're discussing a Latin phrase. Is that, is that an unusual thing in the United States today or what?
00:56
It is exciting to be with you. Before we get started, I would like to notice that everyone on the staff is running around wearing these really uber cool shirts.
01:05
And I'm feeling a little left out personally, so I'll make,
01:10
I'll make a deal with y 'all. If I can get one of those things, I won't wear a bow tie tomorrow night.
01:16
How's that? Is that? Actually, I'm trying to start a new reformed fashion trend.
01:24
It isn't catching on quite yet, but we're gonna, we're gonna keep trying. My wife doesn't want to be seen with me in public, but other than that, it's okay.
01:35
We had a great start last evening. I am very appreciative of the ministry of Brother Lawson.
01:42
I don't, I don't really normally get invited to things that are quite on the high level that Steve Lawson's at and John MacArthur's been here and all these folks like that.
01:53
So I'm sort of feeling a little giddy right now personally. But the brother was mentioning, the pastor was mentioning the fact that just a few weeks ago,
02:02
I, I had what I considered to be the most important debate I've done in about the 75 or 80 that I've done now since 1990 was with Dr.
02:10
Bart Ehrman. Some of you are familiar with his book, Misquoting Jesus, I'm going to be talking a little bit about him a little bit later on.
02:16
So I'm still sort of in that mode. So when I sneak him in here at the end, you'll understand why
02:22
I, why I did that. But it has been my privilege to be here before I walked into the offices last evening.
02:28
I said, I've been here before, haven't I? And yeah, about seven years ago. Ah, thank you very much.
02:35
And I think, as I recall correctly, I was actually preaching on justification. So it's a seven -year cycle,
02:41
I suppose. The locusts and me, they sort of go together. But we did have a great start last night.
02:49
I was mentioning this morning, I have to use digital stuff to make up for my obvious imperfections and flaws and the fact that I have no hair and Steve is older than I am and he has hair and can preach a lot better than I can.
03:01
So I'll try to amaze you with stuff up on the screen if we can. For those of you who are colorblind, the globe is turning.
03:14
I just thought you might. Took me a long time to make that, so I really hope you appreciate it.
03:24
Well hopefully that won't be a distraction as we talk about the battle for grace. I have been asked to speak to you about the common attacks that have been made upon Sola Fide down through the centuries.
03:36
I do have some expertise in that area, hopefully not in having launched any of them myself obviously, but in having dealt with many of them.
03:44
The first debate that I ever did in August of 1990 at a Roman Catholic church in Long Beach was with a former
03:54
PCA minister, at the time a doctoral student at Westminster Theological Seminary who had become a
04:01
Roman Catholic by the name of Jerry Matitix. Jerry is still running around out there, but that very first debate actually was on one of the
04:08
Solas, Sola Scriptura, one of the primary areas of difference between us.
04:13
Obviously Sola Fide can only stand on the highest view of scripture, as we'll be mentioning in a moment.
04:19
Once you abandon that high view of scripture, to be honest with you, the world figures that what we're doing here is simple foolishness.
04:25
When we define it, as last evening when Brother Lawson was preaching, what was he preaching from?
04:31
He wasn't preaching from a confession of faith. He wasn't preaching from a book of tradition. When he defined it, he was preaching from the word of God.
04:39
Well, once you abandon the highest view of the word of God, there really isn't any reason to even be discussing this or the deity of Christ, the
04:46
Trinity, or any other divine truth as long as we don't any longer believe that God has spoken. That is an area that I have defended
04:54
Sola Fide against to Mormons and Roman Catholics and others, and so it is an area of special passion for me.
05:02
I want to start, however, by emphasizing a couple of things that I think are very, very important for us to understand concerning Sola Fide.
05:10
When we talk about what it means to have saving faith, it is extremely important to understand what the
05:19
Bible says about the nature of that faith, what kind of faith justifies. Especially in today's context, there are many individuals, for example, some of you who maybe keep up with this, might be aware of the fact that the current
05:35
Pope was the leading theologian of the Roman Catholic Church prior to his elevation to the papacy after the death of John Paul.
05:44
The former Cardinal Ratzinger is quite a theologian in and of himself, and he has made statements recently that basically said that if properly understood,
05:55
Luther was right. And there are a lot of folks in evangelical circles who are saying, hey, it's great, the
06:01
Reformation is over. We won. Rome has adopted everything that we believe, and I did debate a liberal
06:09
Roman Catholic in Salt Lake City once. That was very interesting to have the Mormons going, what are you guys talking about?
06:14
They had no idea. It was strange. We have had a couple of those up there, and the
06:21
Mormons are always like, man, that's weird. But I did have a liberal Roman Catholic once say, hey, the
06:28
Reformation is over. Rome has agreed with us on everything. Let's just all get back together again. Well, my
06:34
Roman Catholic apologist friends aren't quite on that page yet, but there are people that are saying, well, you know, as long as we understand it correctly, well, what does that mean?
06:43
Some of you remember the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document that came out in 1994, and the fact that there were
06:50
Evangelicals saying, see, we've made such huge progress because it says that we are justified by God's grace through faith.
06:59
Well, yeah, everybody at the Reformation said the same thing. There was just one word left out called alone, and what alone means.
07:08
And when you don't have that word, then you're leaving the door open for the entire sacramental system of the
07:13
Roman Catholic Church. And that becomes the issue. What do I mean by the empty hand of faith? Let's look very quickly at Romans chapter 4, verses 4 through 8.
07:22
I'll be putting them up on the screen, but especially those of you who have the 47 pound edition of the
07:27
English Standard Version Study Bible, which in California has to be registered as a deadly weapon, thing is huge.
07:38
Look at that thing. There's one right down there. That's Joel's. Is that Seth's? Look at the size of that beast.
07:44
You can do curls with that thing. It's incredible. Man, and it's about seven point print, so it's only relevant to people under the age of 40, but trust me.
07:55
Romans chapter 4, there's so many places you could go, and obviously Brother Lawson only had so much time last night, and I know he'll be in Galatians, but I find
08:04
Romans chapter 4 to be the key text, to be perfectly honest with you, especially in dealing with Roman Catholicism on this subject.
08:11
Romans chapter 4, Paul is explaining his position, having enunciated it in Romans 3 .28,
08:18
that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law, and having enunciated that, he now gives us his primary evidence of that,
08:25
Abram. And Abraham believed God, Genesis 15 .6, and it was reckoned to him, it was imputed to him as righteousness, and then interpreting that ancient text, the inspired apostle says, now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
08:54
Now, normally, if I took the time to open all this text up to you, I'd put it up in the Greek, so you could see that these two statements are exact opposites of one another.
09:03
He uses the exact same words in the same order, but in the second place, he just puts the word not there, just to make sure that we understand that we're talking about a 180 degree contrast between these two attitudes.
09:19
You have one who works, and he uses standard language, the language that we would use of business even to this day, to the one who works, to the one who goes in on Monday morning and begins to do what he does, to earn his wage, the one who works, his wages, again standard secular term for wages, his wages are not counted as a gift, literally, according to grace, but as his due, what is owed to him, very same term that you would find found in documents of that day, talking about a debt.
09:56
So in other words, when you get up on Monday morning, and you go to work, if you're still blessed to have a job in our society today, and you go in to put in your 40, 50, or 60 hours a week, when you go in there, unless you're working as a volunteer, you are expecting at the end of the week, or the end of the pay period, to receive payment for your services.
10:18
You are working with the expectation of receiving something back from your employer, and if you should go in there, and your employer comes up to you and hands you your paycheck and says, boy,
10:29
I consider this a gift, that's probably not a good thing, that's probably not indicative of future advancement in your position, because you feel like you have earned that which you have received as pay, and that's all
10:42
Paul's talking about. To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as what is due him.
10:50
And so if in the situation of obtaining salvation, we are doing something so as to obtain something from God, if we think that by our actions, even if those actions we admit are prompted by God's grace, even if we admit that the very opportunity to engage in these actions are prompted by God's grace, if our attitude is,
11:11
I'm going to do this to gain this, to receive this, that's the attitude of verse 4.
11:18
But notice the contrast, a 180 degree contrast in verse 5, to the one who does not work.
11:25
It's just the working one of verse 4, but you put not there. The one not working.
11:31
But in contrast to that, the opposite of that kind of working is believing in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
11:44
What faith is going to be counted as righteousness? The faith that is not seeking reward.
11:50
The empty hand of faith that comes to God and says, I offer nothing.
11:56
It is not the painful illustration that I have heard used in Mormon circles of the young girl who wants a bicycle and they go to the bicycle shop and all of a sudden she's dejected because she sees the price tag and she only has 98 pennies and the bicycle costs $10 and so the father makes up the difference and this is presented as the idea of salvation.
12:25
That is not what Paul is talking about. You cannot bring even a single soiled penny before the holy
12:33
God as if somehow there was some way that we could make up for our depravity, we could make up for our sinfulness, the fact that we love our sin, we enjoy our sin, we spit in the face of our creator every day, we steal his air to engage in our rebellion.
12:51
One of the real things that needs to be understood in the biblical presentation of justification is the holiness of God.
12:59
If we do not understand the holiness of God, then the necessity of atonement, the necessity of the empty hand of faith is lost.
13:07
So much of the human denials of sola fide comes from having way too low a view of the holiness of God and way too high a view of ourselves.
13:16
Here is the contrast in saving faith. Saving faith is a faith that believes in him, notice it is not just believes, there is an object here, it is in him and it is in a specific him, him who justifies the ungodly.
13:31
Not who merely makes justification available. Justification is a divine act, it is something
13:36
God does. It is not a program where he makes it available if we will do X, Y, and Z.
13:43
Justification is a divine sentence based upon the work of Christ on behalf of the sinner where he says righteous, that is something
13:51
God does, it is not simply the end result of a process that we engage in.
13:57
But time is going way too fast for me and I am preaching. The next few verses, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom
14:04
God counts righteousness apart from works, bless are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered, bless is the man against whom the
14:13
Lord will not count his sin. Now I think it is very important to notice, Paul says that David here in Psalm 32, it is
14:22
Psalm 31 the Greek Septuagint, that David is speaking about the blessing of the one to whom
14:28
God imputes or counts righteousness apart from works. So Paul's interpretation is that David here is talking about God's imputation of righteousness but not based upon the works that a person does.
14:42
But notice what David says, bless are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered, bless is the man against whom the
14:50
Lord will not count his sin. Notice that in David's words, forgiveness of sin is in sight.
14:56
Forgiveness of sin is seen in Paul's understanding in concert with the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.
15:05
Now again, time precludes us camping on this, I would love to for a while because it's just so tremendous, but it's important to recognize something.
15:13
Here we have a definition from the inspired apostle of what it means to have
15:19
Christ's righteousness imputed to us. It involves in the same phraseology he uses over in 2
15:25
Corinthians chapter 5, he who knew no sin was made to be sin on our behalf so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
15:32
It is the great exchange. Our sin born by the substitute upon the cross of Calvary and his righteousness imputed to us as our soul standing before a holy
15:44
God. It is this great exchange that Paul is speaking of here and he uses David's words, bless are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered, and then notice this last verse, blessed is the man against whom the
15:59
Lord will not count his sin. Who is that? Who is that blessed man?
16:05
How many of you have family members who are Roman Catholics? I do too.
16:11
When you ask those individuals about the gospel, may I suggest a question for you?
16:19
I have found this to be extremely useful over the years. Who is the blessed man of Romans 4 .8?
16:26
Who is the blessed man? I have asked many a priest that question. Who is the blessed man?
16:33
Well I had one actually tell me, well the blessed man is the person who has just been baptized before they leave the church.
16:41
That is the blessed man. Because their sins have not been counted and they have been washed away in the ordinance of baptism by baptismal regeneration.
16:50
Now as soon as they walk out the door of the church, they might commit a mortal sin or a venial sin and so the temporal punishments of sins begin to pile up against their soul and they are no longer the blessed man.
17:03
I asked Father Peter Stravinskis in a debate on purgatory on Long Island in 2001, who is the blessed man?
17:10
He said it is Jesus. Blessed man to whom the Lord will not count his sin.
17:18
That is Jesus. And so he had obviously never been asked that question before.
17:24
And so I sort of gave him a second chance, would you like to reconsider that? And here was his answer.
17:30
Well, I hope I could be. I hope
17:35
I could be. Think about that. Folks, if you stand today professing faith in Jesus Christ, guess what?
17:45
You are the blessed man. Every believer is the blessed man.
17:52
That is what it means to be a Christian. That is what it means to be in Christ, is that your sins will not be accounted to you.
17:59
Why? Because they have been justly imputed to another who has borne them and borne the wrath that was due to them in perfection in himself upon Calvary's tree.
18:11
That is why you have peace with God. That is why you have right standing with God, is because your sins in their entirety are imputed to him, his perfect righteousness imputed to you.
18:24
That is what I mean by the empty hand of faith. This type of faith that does not work, this type of faith that believes in the
18:30
God who justifies, not in the me who justifies myself through my works, but the
18:37
God who justifies, that is the empty hand of faith. That is what saving faith is. And you can talk about faith all you want, but if it is not a biblical faith, then it is not the faith of which we are speaking.
18:50
So what about the apostolic experience? Was this a popular truth?
18:58
The epistle to the Galatians demonstrates to us that every generation of the church, including the apostolic generation, has to fight for the purity of the gospel.
19:12
That book of Galatians is a tough book. That book of Galatians contains the strongest language that I know of in the
19:20
New Testament. Matthew chapter 23 and the book of Galatians, strongest language that I know of in all the
19:28
New Testament. Some of it makes us blush, sometimes the English translations actually sort of try to soften it a little bit, but Paul is angry.
19:36
In fact, when you read it in the original language, those of you who can read Greek know that if you read Romans or you read
19:42
Ephesians, there is a sort of a certain cadence, a certain form. It is not in Galatians, because whoever is writing it is writing it with a lot of emotion.
19:51
And Paul even says, see what large letters I am writing to you, maybe he even wrote it himself. Normally he would dictate, as he says in Romans, to someone else, in Emanuelsis.
20:00
There is much fervor in Paul's language because he sees that the very gospel itself is at stake in what is going on in the churches in Galatia.
20:09
He sees that it is a possibility that the Christian movement itself could be divided up into parts with one gospel for one group and another gospel for another group and that is not what
20:22
Christ's intention for the church was. So if even when the apostles are walking the earth, there is a need to fight for this gospel, we can see that those who look back to the golden days of the early church, if we could just get back to then, have you read much of the
20:39
New Testament? Those churches had problems. Have you read 1
20:44
Corinthians recently? Or 2 Corinthians? Or Galatians? You know, Anathemas and so on and so forth?
20:52
If every generation has had to fight, why should we think we would be the exception? Why should we think we should be the exception?
21:00
The Judaizers in Galatia, by the way, when you put together a list of the things they taught, they clearly taught that there is absolutely no indication in that book that Paul accuses them of heresy in regards to the
21:18
Godhead, in regards to the deity of Christ, the resurrection, the historical reality of the cross.
21:28
In fact, in comparison to most liberal protestant groups today, the Judaizers would be our next door brothers theologically.
21:37
And in comparison to the list of stuff that you could put together that Rome teaches today, these folks look pretty good.
21:45
That's why a lot of folks look at Galatians 1 and Paul's anathematizing them and they're like that's just way over the top.
21:54
But you see, Paul recognized we're talking here about the very definition of the gospel. And they preached faith.
22:03
You need to believe in Jesus. They preached the necessity of grace. Folks, I'll never forget listening to a very well -known evangelical, one that I've even written a book in response to.
22:22
That doesn't actually define who it is, does it? Isn't that scary? I am an equal opportunity offender.
22:28
That doesn't really tell me who you're talking about, does it? No. But I remember listening to this man on radio one day, and he was going on and on and on about how, you know, if you really read
22:40
Trent carefully, the Council of Trent carefully, the Roman Catholics believe in the necessity of grace.
22:48
Really? Yeah. And he was just excited about this.
22:54
And I'm just like, have you read Calvin recently? Have you read any history recently?
23:01
The issue at the Reformation was not the necessity of grace. The only people that said grace is not necessary were the
23:10
Pelagians. There's a reason why we refer to Roman Catholics' eteriology as semi -Pelagianism, rather than just rank
23:16
Pelagianism. Pelagius said you could, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But Rome didn't say that.
23:22
In fact, Trent anathematized anyone who said that you could be justified outside the grace of God.
23:29
The issue, my friends, has never, ever been the necessity of grace.
23:35
The issue has always been the sufficiency of grace. That's the dividing line.
23:43
That's where it's always been. It's still there. There's lots of folks trying to cover that over.
23:49
There's lots of folks thinking that, well, if we could all just get together and get this Reformation thing over with, we'd just think of the voting block.
23:54
Yeah, how well did that work in the last election, huh? Right. The issue is, does
24:01
God's, is God's grace sufficient to save in and of itself, or does it require human cooperation for salvation?
24:10
That's still the issue. It's not changed any over time. But unfortunately, a lot of folks get confused on that matter.
24:17
So, the impetus of human religion is to acknowledge the need of God's power, acknowledge the need of God's grace, but then, then to control that power and grace through human religion.
24:39
Control it. I can admit God does 98 % of it, but I want to have that little bit of control.
24:50
I want to say God tried and tried and tried, but fundamentally, the reason
24:55
I'm saved, the reason I differ, is because I made the decision.
25:05
The idea that God's grace would be absolutely sufficient is simply beyond the comprehension of the natural man who has yet to come to understand his own slavery to sin.
25:16
This is what human religion is all about. Look at all of man's religions, as diverse as they may be.
25:24
The common theme all along is you develop this mechanism whereby the man, by his works, by his activities, controls the very power of God.
25:36
That is the Roman sacramental system. That's what it is. It's a means of controlling the grace of God.
25:45
Now, the fundamental power, the final decision, remains with man.
25:55
It cannot be something that is solely to the glory of God. It cannot be something that is solely his work, for the grace of God is always placed under the control of man.
26:07
That is the very essence of the systems that then must find some way of compromising the empty hand of faith.
26:15
You have to be able to have something in there that God's going to find worthwhile. That's the only way you can maintain control.
26:22
That's what Roman sacramentalism is all about. That's what all the acts and the idea that, well, you see, this is how it fits with faith, is because, you see, it's
26:33
God's grace that has provided these systems and these sacraments, and it's your faith in engaging in these sacraments that allows them to be effective, etc.,
26:43
etc., etc. And that's why that faith alone, you leave that alone out, and you're opening the barn door for the insertion of all sorts of human inventions in the process.
26:58
In the post -apostolic times, in those first 260 years after the founding of the church, up until the peace of the church in 313, the focus was upon survival.
27:10
Not being fed to lions, not being cast into prison. That does have an amazing impact upon the thinking of the church for some odd reason.
27:20
We have a hard time understanding that. We have a hard time understanding why even to this day in places where the church is persecuted, which happens every single day, in fact,
27:28
I wear this crown of thorns pin in remembrance of those who are suffering even this day, especially in Islamic countries, for their faith in Jesus Christ and for their unwillingness to deny that He is the
27:43
Lord of all. It's amazing how living in those contexts can focus one's attention.
27:49
There's not nearly as many books published in those areas about some of the frou -frou things that we have.
27:54
I don't think the prayer of Jabez did real well in Islamic countries. No, it didn't go over well for some odd reason.
28:04
But there were controversies, but the controversies were primarily focused upon the doctrine of God.
28:11
Soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, was not in the forefront during that period of time. There's also something else to remember about those early writings of the church.
28:20
The canon was still in the process of being recognized. We don't have time to go into this today, but just think about the Old Testament.
28:26
There's a 400 -year gap between the final Italian prophet, Malachi, and the
28:31
New Testament. See, it's Saturday morning, and normally I sort of use that to sort of see how well people are listening.
28:38
Have we got any Krispy Kremes left out there? I think we need an emergency infusion here. It's about a 400 -year gap between the end of the writing of the
28:49
Old Testament and the time of Christ. And the canon is recognized. The church does not, the people of God does not create the canon, but they recognize it during that period of time.
28:58
Same time period, in essence, in the New Testament as well. And so there were times where you had some people who might be living in an area where they don't have all of the
29:08
New Testament available to them at that point in time as yet. And that impacts the balance of their viewpoints and their understandings of certain things.
29:19
Some lack the full apostolic witness at that particular point in time, and I think we need to be careful in judging people overly harshly.
29:28
It's real easy for us to sit in judgment of them now. We're sitting here with our ESV study Bibles, and the pastor has what
29:35
I call the Uber Bible, the Lachman NASB made of the calf skin that moos at night.
29:40
It's so nice and soft. Really, just turn off the lights, turn the air conditioning off, and you can hear the thing, it's just great.
29:49
Everyone's going to be coming up and asking to feel your Bible now. We sell that.
29:55
We call it the Uber Bible. It's great. But hey, we, you know, it's even got thumb indexing. Why does a pastor need thumb indexing?
30:01
I've tried to figure that out. I had not thought of that until just now,
30:16
I want you to know. Yeah.
30:24
Okay. Anyway. Back to the point. They didn't have that.
30:30
I mean, it's a blessing for us to have that. I hope you realize you live in the generation of Christians who has more information about the
30:38
Bible available to you than any generation that's ever lived. Ever lived. I can't tell you what's on this computer.
30:46
I don't know how many thousands of volumes I have on this computer, original languages and so on.
30:51
It's just incredible the availability of information and how little we seem to be utilizing it.
30:57
To be perfectly honest with you, it's amazing. I mean, I can do a search and programs on this thing that used to take Greek scholars and all their graduate students a year to do.
31:04
I can do in less than one second. That's how things have changed. Well, a lot of people in the early church didn't have any of that.
31:12
They didn't have the calfskin Bibles. They didn't have any of that kind of stuff. And so we need to be a little bit careful in looking at what they had to say in light of that very issue.
31:20
So, Justin Martyr is one of my main examples. And of course, given his name,
31:26
I think anyone who is martyred, you might want to be a little bit slow in condemning them. But if you look at the writings of Justin Martyr, he lives in the middle of the second century.
31:35
He's very clearly far more influenced by Plato than he is by Paul. He does not really seem to have almost any familiarity with Paul's writings, at least in a deep sense.
31:46
And since he comes to the Christian faith from a philosophical perspective, we can't necessarily just go with everything he has to say.
31:54
And so, when you look at his soteriology, it's not exactly what I would call robust on these issues.
32:01
That's understandable. But don't get me wrong. That's not everybody in the early church. For example, there is a man, we call him
32:07
Matetes, because he calls himself a disciple. We don't know what his name was. But he wrote an epistle to Dionysius.
32:13
And I just wanted to give you just an example, because you normally don't hear anything overly positive about the early church, but let me give you an example of what he said in regards to justification.
32:22
But when our wickedness had reached its height, he himself took on him the burden of our iniquities. He gave his own son as a ransom for us, the holy one for transgressors, the blameless one for the wicked, the righteous one for the unrighteous, the incorruptible one for the corruptible, the immortal one for them that are mortal.
32:40
So, for what other thing was capable of covering our sins than his righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified than by the only
32:51
Son of God? O sweet exchange, we were just talking about the great exchange, O unsearchable operation,
32:57
O benefit surpassing all expectation, that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous one, and that the righteousness of one should justify many transgressors.
33:07
Having therefore convinced us in the former time that our nature was unable to attain to life, and having now revealed the
33:15
Savior who is able to save even those things which it was formerly impossible to save, by both these facts he desired to lead us to trust in his kindness.
33:25
To esteem him our nourisher, father, teacher, counselor, healer, our wisdom, light, honor, glory, power, and life.
33:33
And so, it wasn't that some people have the idea that as soon as the apostles died, apostasy everywhere.
33:40
That's it. They somehow weren't able to teach anybody, the truth just disappeared. But the early church is a mix mash of things and that needs to be kept in mind as we look at historical sources.
33:53
Of course, you're probably familiar with the Pelagian -Augustinian controversy, the controversy between the
33:59
British monk Pelagius and Augustine. This results in a hardening form of what we would call semi -Pelagianism after the days of Augustine.
34:08
Augustine was the greatest theologian in the West up to the time of Calvin, some would say of all time.
34:15
That doesn't mean that he was perfect. Augustine was not one of those who knew both of the original languages of the
34:21
Bible. There were very few in the early church who knew both Greek and Hebrew. Origen was one,
34:27
Jerome was another. Augustine did not, and so he had some errors concerning justification.
34:32
He thought that that verb to justify meant to actually, literally change a person.
34:42
And so, he had some odd views there, and in fact, if we had time, I would talk more about Augustine and how he is an excellent example of how we are all formed by the controversies of our day.
34:53
There were two great controversies in Augustine's life that formed his theology, and the problem is they pulled him two different directions.
35:02
As a result, there are some very interesting contradictions in Augustine's perspective. For example,
35:08
Augustine did believe in divine election, that God predestined a certain number of people, and that he did so not on the basis of anything that they did, but on the basis of his free grace, and that he would give them the gift of perseverance, and they would not fall away.
35:25
All those things would go, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the reformers quoted him on that. But because of his view of the church, and his view of baptism, he also believed there were people who were regenerated by their baptism, but they weren't given the gift of perseverance, so they would eventually fall away, and they wouldn't end up being saved.
35:41
So you've got this other kind of Christian out there, and it comes from the two major controversies that took place in his life.
35:48
But even after his death, while there are many who did not want to argue with his voluminous output, still, the bent of human religion is always away from the idea of the sovereignty of God and salvation, and so you had the creation of a form of semi -Pelagianism, where the grace of God is necessary, but it's not in and of itself sufficient.
36:13
And as the centuries go by, the formal church moves farther and farther and farther away from even the position that Augustine himself had presented, so that before the end of the first millennium, you have a man by the name of Gottschalk, who was beaten and chucked into a jail cell for daring to preach
36:33
Augustine's views of election. So it didn't take very long, it only took about 500 years before this kind of shock could be expressed at someone who would present even
36:47
Augustine's perspectives on these particular issues. Now last evening,
36:52
Brother Lawson talked to us a lot about Martin Luther, but I think Luther would have been one of the first ones to tell you that he recognized he was not alone.
37:00
There were those pre -Reformation reformers. I hope you have the opportunity sometime, many of you have already done this, and if you have, you know what
37:09
I'm talking about. Studying church history is a very encouraging thing, as long as we do so in a balanced way anyway.
37:17
Some people sort of lose their balance. To see the hand of God in Providence. There were men who
37:23
I would think would have been much more likely candidates to spark the fire of the
37:28
Reformation than Martin Luther was. Martin Luther was not a systematic theologian. He wasn't like a John Calvin.
37:34
He was a theologian of the heart. He did not organize things overly well.
37:40
He never wrote a systematic theology, for example, of his own. And so there would be people that I would have pointed to and said, well it wouldn't make much sense with that guy or with that guy there.
37:51
But you see, the Reformation came into existence because of all these streams of development under the sovereignty of God, His kingly decree, coming together to allow the
38:01
Reformation to take place. Let me give you just one example. When, during that time period that Brother Lawson was talking about, where Luther is struggling with these things and he's teaching through Romans and he's teaching through Galatians, he obtains the first edition of Desiderius Erasmus' Greek New Testament, which came out in 1516.
38:18
The Novum Instrumentum. And it was in studying that text that he was able to discern.
38:25
You look at the Latin Vulgate and it has the command, Poenitentium agitate, do penance.
38:31
But then he looks at Erasmus. He looks at the Novum Instrumentum, now available printed in Greek for the first time, and what do you find?
38:38
Metanoeite, repent. And so he looks at the words and he realizes repentance is not do penance.
38:45
It's a change of heart, it's a change of mind, a change of direction. The Latin Vulgate has not rendered it correctly.
38:53
And so printing had to come into existence. And the availability of this information, and the cry of the
39:00
Renaissance, ad fontes, to the source, so that the learning of the original languages could again be part of what was taking place, and people like Luther could know these languages and use these languages.
39:13
All these things had to come together. Well, if we look back at an earlier period, John Wycliffe, brilliant man.
39:19
Brilliant man. He said if you turned all the popes and cardinals and bishops and friars, if you turned all of them and counted all of their opinions,
39:32
I would not accept what they had to say over against the word of God at all. And he rebels against Rome in regards to transubstantiation, he says this was just defined a few hundred years ago.
39:43
This is not what the early church believed. And so he translates the Bible into English, and the church doesn't want that, because that's a vulgar language, and it needs to stay in the
39:53
Latin. And all these things, and we'd look at Wycliffe and go, well man, this guy is, by temperament would seem to be better than Luther, but it wasn't time.
40:01
It's too early. The printing press has not been invented yet. The Renaissance has not taken place yet.
40:09
It's not God's timing, but they were there. And of course,
40:15
Luther himself mentions Jan Hus, Jan Hus, the bohemian preacher, who likewise reading
40:23
Wycliffe's materials begins to preach Wycliffe's doctrines, and he begins to preach about salvation by believing in Jesus Christ, and not by the things that you do, and the importance of reading the scriptures, and the scriptures as the sole source of authority.
40:38
And he is invited to come to the Council of Constance in 1414, that actually was meeting to heal the papacy.
40:48
You may be aware of the fact that there was something called the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, that in the 14th century, the papacy left
40:55
Rome, went to Avignon, France, was there for many decades, and then there was a split, where you had one pope in Avignon, and one pope in Rome, and both of them were anathematizing each other, and half of Europe followed one, and half of Europe followed the other, and they were busy anathematizing each other, and it was a tremendous scandal that there were two heads of the church.
41:14
And so there had been one attempt to fix that, which had only resulted in a third pope, who then excommunicated the other two, and so that wasn't working real well at all.
41:22
And so finally they were getting together at this council to heal the papacy, which they did, by the way, the papacy came back into one at that point, but it was also the same council that Jan Hus was given a promise of safe conduct.
41:35
And so when he comes, he, however, is arrested, he is tried, if you can call it being tried by forcing you to sit wearing a wizard's robe and a dunce cap, if that's really a trial, and he was burned to death by that council.
41:51
And in fact, when Luther was in that formative period, he debated a man by the name of Johan Eck.
42:00
And in that debate with Johan Eck, Eck stumped Luther, because he kept reading out these statements and saying, is that Luther?
42:10
It sounds like him, but it wasn't, it was the condemned heretic Jan Hus. And he demonstrated that what
42:16
Luther was saying was the same thing Hus had said. The only thing Luther knew about Hus up to that point was he was a heretic who got roasted.
42:24
And so during one of the breaks in the debate, debates back then went a lot longer than they do today, he went to the library and started reading
42:30
Jan Hus. And that's when he realized that he was in trouble because Jan Hus was right.
42:38
And that had happened only a hundred years earlier. And so when Luther was given the promise of safe conduct to go to the council of Worms, you can imagine what was going through his mind as he went there, because that's exactly what he was expecting.
42:52
But again, it wasn't yet time, though they were there in history, and we can thank the
42:58
Lord for them. The Reformation, of course, solidifies positions, but quickly produces a wide variety of new attacks upon Sola Fides simply because commitment to justification comes from a work of grace in the heart, not merely because one is no longer under the heel of Rome.
43:17
We need to realize that the vast majority of people who would be identified taxonomically as Protestants today reject the centrality of God's grace and salvation in their formal theology.
43:34
The line is not between Catholic and Protestant any longer in any sense of the word. We have to, in every generation, redraw that line, not reinvent the wheel, but redraw that line because of how quickly many are willing to compromise on this central issue of the gospel itself.
43:55
Religiously oriented attacks upon the centrality of grace and the empty hand of faith today predominate the landscape.
44:03
It may not be the primary point of discussion, but that's because almost nobody is talking about it at all.
44:09
But in the beliefs of so many today, that would even sadly be called evangelical, this particular issue is no longer in the center.
44:19
Most Protestants have abandoned the principle due to two things. A lower view of scripture.
44:24
My friends, if you look at church history, look at any denomination today that is promoting homosexual marriage, promoting all sorts of godlessness.
44:36
150 years ago, they never would have done those things. What happened in the history of that denomination?
44:43
Fundamentally, at some point in time, their view of the Bible as the authoritative word of God collapsed.
44:52
It didn't happen overnight, it happened always incrementally, but look at the history and that's always the case.
44:59
No denomination goes into apostasy that still believes the Bible is truly the word of God.
45:06
That must be attacked at its foundation. Once you abandon the view that the
45:11
Bible is the word of God, you have a lower view of scripture and a lower view of sin and depravity, the influx of humanism through the doors of the church and into the seminaries, and therefore into the pulpit, strengthening the cultural presuppositions.
45:26
You put those two things together and what we are talking about today becomes foolishness. From the world's perspective, what we are discussing today is foolishness.
45:37
I hate to have to tell you this, but in a large majority of seminaries today, and I'm talking about seminaries in the broad sense here, that would be simply called
45:46
Christian seminaries, whatever that means anymore. In the large majority of Christian seminaries today, systematic theology, which is where you would discuss justification by faith, is no longer the central class, it's now in the church history department.
46:01
You know why? Because the vast majority of the academy no longer believes the Bible is clear enough, perspicuous enough, consistent enough to even tell us anything about justification, let alone is it really important.
46:14
And so it's become a church history topic. We talk about what people in the past used to believe about this, and oh, weren't they so naive?
46:21
They didn't know nearly as much as we do to recognize that, for example, Paul didn't write everything that we think
46:26
Paul did, and Paul contradicted Paul, and we didn't have N .T. Wright to tell us about what justification is really all about, and so on and so forth.
46:34
We have become so enlightened in our day. That's what's going on out there. That's the reality.
46:43
Given the rise in humanism in the West, the prevalence of a Darwinian worldview, the idea of salvation, afterlife, judgment, etc.,
46:53
does not ring the bells of man's soul as it did 500 years ago. Luther could be consumed with a desire to know how a man is right before God because Luther lives in a context where death is all around him.
47:09
Infant mortality rates were, in many places, you'd have to have 10 live births to have one child live to maturity.
47:20
And you saw the death. We insulate people from death, don't we? I learned that when I was a hospital chaplain.
47:26
Toughest job I've ever done. Toughest job I've ever done. In November, I was debating
47:32
Muslims in London. In London. And that was nothing compared to being a hospital chaplain.
47:40
I'm just not cut out for that. It was one of the most difficult things I ever did. And I learned a lot about death and dying.
47:46
I'd never seen anybody die. Never held anyone's hand while they died until I did that. Changes you. Changes you a lot.
47:53
And we insulate people from death. We don't even hardly attend funerals.
48:00
And we keep our little ones away. We don't want them to see anything like that. You know, some of you are old enough, only a few, and I'm not going to point to any of you, to remember when entire generations lived in one house.
48:13
You saw when Grandpa died. You saw when the great -grandparents passed away. You saw that this life has an end to it.
48:23
And I don't think we're any better for denying the fact that death takes place. And Luther knew.
48:32
I mean, the plague had swept through in the 14th century and taken out a third of Europe. And it still kept coming back every once in a while.
48:38
Everybody just fleed the cities. You never knew when it was going to come, the Black Death.
48:45
And so it was important to be thinking about eternity. You couldn't just amuse yourself into oblivion about eternal issues.
48:56
Think of how many billions of dollars we spend every year on amusing ourselves. You know what amusement is, right? Muse is to think, to ponder, to reflect.
49:04
Amuse uses the alpha privative, to not think, ponder, or reflect. And is that not what we're like?
49:11
How many people in our society spend any serious amount of time whatsoever in reflection upon eternal things?
49:19
Everything in our society is designed to keep us from thinking about that. You're never going to die. And so we live in a completely different context.
49:30
It's no wonder then that when we talk about things like God's wrath and judgment, what's the response not only from our society, but let's face it, from within the church itself most of the time?
49:42
Ho -hum. For our next conference, could we do prophecy?
49:47
That's a whole lot more fun. How about a Christian financial seminar? Surviving in the
49:53
Great Depression. Well, there's nothing wrong with that, but the fact of the matter is that we are so focused upon the now, so focused upon things, that it's difficult for us to understand why people were willing to die about these things not that long ago.
50:15
And it's hard to get people overly excited today. I mean, you can preach your heart out, and most people are like, well, you know,
50:22
I'm glad to know that. That's not exactly the passion that people had at that particular point in time.
50:32
The greatest attacks upon the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone today all arise from the same source, a bold, brazen rejection of the principle of divine revelation.
50:45
As we opened up the scriptures last evening, as I opened up, I carry a
50:50
NET NA 27 diaglot, and I'm looking at the text. I'm rejoicing once again in those great words,
50:58
Romans chapter 3, how important it is to understand right before that's the bad news, universality of sin, wrath of God.
51:08
Now the good news. Here is the heart of the gospel. And yet I could not help but think of how many are those men training this very day for ministry who at the very heart are being told, now these words of Paul are contradictory to things
51:32
Paul said elsewhere. And these are just the opinions of Paul, you see. James had a completely different perspective over here, and Peter had a different perspective over here.
51:42
And we've gotten beyond the necessity of thinking that there is a harmonious, consistent message to the text of scripture.
51:49
You just need to realize that's outdated. We know better now is what they're being taught.
51:59
You wonder why people stand behind pulpits and what they say is a opinion fest rather than an authoritative proclamation?
52:10
That's why. That's why. The very heart of the gospel has been ripped out.
52:18
Because if you don't believe that the scriptures are the word of God, that there is a harmonious truth, yes, you have to work at it.
52:29
Yes, you can discern differences and emphases between biblical authors. No question about it. James isn't in the same situation
52:36
Paul's in. They're addressing different contexts and different situations. But that does not mean that God isn't big enough to use both in their situations to give us a balanced presentation of his truth.
52:49
But for me today, no, no, no, no. We can't allow for harmonization. The big way to get yourself tenure and get yourself published today is to find a new way of attacking the consistency of the
53:02
Bible as the word of God. That's what we're facing. Let me give you some of the well -known attacks.
53:14
I'm not going to spend much time on this because we're almost out of time, but we've got about 15 minutes left here.
53:20
Many of these attacks are well -known to us. You know about Mormonism. Mormonism has fallen on hard days.
53:28
Mormonism is a religion that has lost its identity. When I first started studying
53:34
Mormonism, on an average week, 273 Southern Baptists became
53:41
Mormons, and the average Southern Baptist church had 274 members. That was one church each week wholesale, 52 churches a year.
53:50
It doesn't happen anymore. It's not that they're still not making converts, but their growth rate is pretty much flat.
53:56
It's pretty much based upon natural growth. That is, they've got a lot of kids. And you grow faster when the new family joins the church and they've got 14 kids.
54:08
That sort of helps the membership roles. They've run into some difficulties because, to be perfectly honest with you, they've decided that the best way to do things is to try to look like they're
54:17
Christians. They tried to mainstream. And they did real well when they were saying, we're the one true church, and the rest of you just don't have it.
54:27
But that's changed over time, and now they want to be involved in ministerial fraternals and all the rest of that type of stuff.
54:33
They sort of lost their way, which is an interesting phenomenon to watch and maybe to learn from as well.
54:41
But of course, their view of Scripture is that the Bible is the Word of God as far as it's translated correctly. They have a corpus of four texts of Scripture, the
54:48
Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and then the King James Version of the Bible. And those first three take preeminence over the fourth because nowhere is there a statement that those have been mistranslated.
54:58
In fact, the Book of Mormon is the most perfect book of any on earth. And so, from their perspective, they really, you talk to a
55:04
Mormon, they have no idea what justification is. There is no meaningful doctrine or justification in the
55:11
Mormon Church. And given that they believe that God is an exalted man who lives on another planet, their whole concept of grace, sin, atonement is so far removed from anything relevant to Biblical Christianity.
55:23
Given the fact they're polytheists, they believe in many, many, many, many, many, many gods. In fact, I think
55:29
Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion I've ever encountered. I have often said, to the shock and dismay of many, but I am more than happy to defend this, that Islam is significantly closer, logically, to Christianity than Mormonism is.
55:43
At least the Muslims believe there is only one true God. The Mormons believe that God lives on a planet that circles a star named
55:50
Kolob. Okay, a little bit of a difference there. So there is no sola fide whatsoever in Mormonism.
55:56
And again, their view of Scripture. You all missed your opportunity this morning.
56:02
This Saturday morning, someone knocked on your door and you didn't know it because you were gone. You were here. But the
56:10
Jehovah's Witnesses would say they believe in Sola Scriptura. They would say they believe that the
56:16
Bible is the inspired word of God. They don't have other books of Scripture. But of course, they deny
56:22
Sola Scriptura in the fact that they believe that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is Jehovah's only organization on earth today.
56:27
And that you, in essence, need their leadership to be able to interpret the Bible and to understand what it's saying.
56:32
And as a result, they have an entire scheme of false religion in regards to multiple groups.
56:40
You either have the anointed class and you have the great crowd. Only the anointed class are in the New Covenant. Only they will be with Christ.
56:47
So on and so forth. And so obviously, the idea of justification by faith in their concept simply cannot exist.
56:55
All these flow from a fundamental attack upon the Bible. Either adding Scripture to it, denying it's sufficient of itself.
57:02
There's an external authority that rules over it, et cetera, et cetera. But many today are unaware of the approach of the enemy.
57:12
Consider one of the hottest topics today. In regards to justification, what's the hottest topic today?
57:18
Real easy. New perspectivism. New perspectivism. What in the world is new perspectivism?
57:24
Well, in five minutes, I can't give you a whole lot of information here, but I'll try to define it very quickly for you.
57:31
If you want to be really up in the scholarly ranks, then you have to have a tremendous amount of respect for a guy who's very intelligent.
57:39
Very, very intelligent. There's no question this man's a genius when it comes to mental capacity.
57:48
But the Bishop of Durham, N .T. Wright, Anglican Bishop, is considered to be one of the leading lights in New Testament studies today.
57:57
He cranks out books that are 700 -800 pages long with a bazillion footnotes, and that's all very, very impressive.
58:05
And sometimes he says things you go, yeah, right. I've often said, what
58:11
Bishop Wright giveth, Bishop Wright taketh away. I've heard him, when I was preparing to debate
58:16
John Dominic Crossan, one of the co -founders of the Jesus Seminar back in 2005. Dr. Crossan is the nicest heretic you'll ever meet.
58:23
There's no question about that. I'm absolutely serious about that. He's completely heretical.
58:30
He believes that Jesus died on the cross, was taken down, buried in a shallow grave, and then dug up and eaten by dogs, and that there's no afterlife, and so on and so forth.
58:36
But he is the nicest heretic you'll ever meet, and we still correspond once in a while. He signs his emails, your favorite heretic dom.
58:43
So I've told him that he's okay with that. But I was preparing to debate
58:51
Dr. Crossan on the historic reliability of the Gospels, and I was listening to a debate that N .T.
58:56
Wright had done with another man that I debated at that time, Marcus Borg, also one of the major people in the Jesus Seminar.
59:02
And I'm listening to N .T. Wright, and he's going, we don't know that there was a Q document. We don't know what order the
59:08
Gospels were written in. And I'm sitting there going, yeah, yeah. And then like three minutes later, he's going, no,
59:14
Lazarus hadn't actually died. Lazarus hadn't actually died.
59:19
And even Marcus Borg, the skeptic's going, but Lord, he stinketh. I mean, you know, refuted him right there.
59:26
It was just, you know, so he gives with one hand, he takes with the other.
59:32
So you've got to be really careful with N .T. Wright. But be it as it may, N .T. Wright's one of the biggest names in what's called
59:37
New Perspectivism. E .P. Sanders is really the source of all this stuff. And these folks write huge books that basically tell us that the righteousness of God, Luther missed it.
59:48
Remember last night, Steve was talking to us about Luther's coming to understand what this righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is.
59:55
And what the New Perspective says is that righteousness is a demonstration of God's righteousness.
01:00:01
When a person is baptized, they are demonstrating God's righteousness. Righteousness is never something that comes from God.
01:00:10
It is always something that is an attribute of God. And the Reformation missed it on both sides.
01:00:17
New Perspective says, we don't need that Reformation anymore because guess what? You were both wrong. Both the
01:00:23
Catholics and the Protestants were wrong. You both missed the point. Justification is not a doctrine about salvation.
01:00:30
It's a doctrine about church communion. And it means as long as you've been baptized, we're all together. And that's really all it is.
01:00:39
Well, that is all the rage in many seminaries today because, hey, you don't want to be out of step with N .T.
01:00:45
Wright. I mean, these guys are smart. But you know what is amazing to me? I hear people arguing about New Perspectivism going back and forth, and I almost never hear someone mention something really basic.
01:00:59
Every single New Perspectivist, certainly the ones who founded it, operate on the idea that Paul only wrote seven books.
01:01:07
He didn't write Ephesians. He didn't write the Pastorals. He didn't write Colossians. That's why they can leave all that out.
01:01:14
They come up with a doctrine of Paul based upon a mini Paul. And most of us are sitting there going, how did they come to these conclusions?
01:01:20
It says right here in Ephesians 2. Well, let's see. If you were just enlightened, you would know that Ephesians 2 was written another generation by someone who wasn't
01:01:27
Paul. And see, your problem is you're trying to make this book actually say one thing.
01:01:33
And that's why you keep missing it. And it's amazing to me how many people are afraid to say anything about that.
01:01:41
I actually happen to believe Paul wrote everything that says Paul on it. And for that,
01:01:48
I will never be one of the big boys. Seriously, I'm telling you the truth here.
01:01:54
Now, I happen to be able to argue that there's a really good reason for believing all that. And I am familiar with the arguments they use against the pastoral epistles and stuff like that.
01:02:03
I know, but the point is we need to recognize even New Perspectivism, it couldn't have even developed without a decay in the view of Scripture itself to where you can make
01:02:14
Scripture contradict Scripture, and it's okay. You're being very insightful when you do that. I think you're being a little bit lazy, personally, but that's just me.
01:02:23
That's what's going on today. That's what's going on today. The person who has been convinced that God has not spoken in Scripture will not find the gospel message compelling or powerful.
01:02:35
Few who believe Paul contradicts Jesus will find the debate over Sola Fide worthwhile. We're all just out of step.
01:02:44
And that's why you see the situation you see today. My time is passing very, very quickly.
01:02:50
Western culture is stewing a soup of God -hating anti -supernaturalism that is focused upon Christianity.
01:02:56
Every person who will offer a reason to disbelieve will be richly rewarded by our society today.
01:03:04
And let me give you two examples as I close. Two modern examples. Dan Brown.
01:03:11
Bart Ehrman. I told you I had to get him in here somewhere. But I think you'll see why it's important. What do
01:03:17
I mean? Well, Dan Brown, that's easy enough. There's Dan. He's smiling because he's got millions. Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code sold over 50 million copies resulting in a major motion picture.
01:03:31
There is a reason why it's found on the fiction shelf. Even though it's really bad fiction even at that point.
01:03:39
It was nothing but an anti -Christian screed yet the public ate it up.
01:03:47
Remember flying a few years ago? No matter what gate you were sitting at an airport there was somebody reading the Da Vinci Code, right? Am I not telling the truth?
01:03:53
Everywhere. I even saw somebody flying back from Florida. They were reading the Da Vinci Code. Still there. It's like, man, you're behind the times.
01:04:00
But anyway. Slow reader. Probably a good thing when you're reading that.
01:04:07
It's all right. Folks, if the Da Vinci Code had been about Islam, Dan Brown would be in hiding.
01:04:15
Wouldn't he? You better believe he would. Some ayatollah over there would have gotten hold of it and he'd be in big trouble.
01:04:22
Made millions off of it. And then there's a picture. There's a picture from just a few weeks ago. There's Bart Ehrman and there's yours truly.
01:04:29
See, I can wear regular ties, but actually that tie is actually a Biblical manuscript, P52. So I'm even freaky when
01:04:35
I wear a regular one. So it's all right. Bart Ehrman was nominated as Time's Man of the
01:04:41
Year for writing Misquoting Jesus in 2005. How many of you have seen Misquoting Jesus? Boy, the few of you.
01:04:50
I saw it. I didn't read it, though. I saw that there.
01:04:57
I saw you. I did, yeah. Not in Texas, no. We have border guards for things like that.
01:05:13
You know the only reason why Bart Ehrman was nominated for Man of the Year? Bart Ehrman is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, Wheaton College, and Princeton Theological Seminary.
01:05:20
He's an apostate. That's the only reason. There wasn't anything in Misquoting Jesus that was at all new, unusual, unknown.
01:05:29
In fact, as far as dealing with sexual variance, the book I wrote in 1994 came out in 95, went into a lot more depth, but no one ever nominated me for Time of the
01:05:36
Year, Man's Time of the Year, because I'm still a Christian. You see, he's an apostate, and so he's on NPR, and he's on The Daily Show with Stewart, and he's on Colbert, and he's on all these programs because he's been enlightened.
01:05:53
He has a new book coming out. It's called Jesus Interrupted, Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the
01:05:59
Bible and Why We Don't Know About Them. It's a blatant attack upon the Christian faith.
01:06:05
I just got this straight off of Amazon. I wish I had known about this two weeks ago. I only found out about this a couple days ago.
01:06:10
Picking up where Bible expert Bart Ehrman's New York Times bestseller Misquoting Jesus left off, Jesus Interrupted addresses the larger issue of what the
01:06:17
New Testament actually teaches, and it's not what most people think, you silly
01:06:22
Bible believers. Here, Ehrman reveals what scholars have unearthed.
01:06:28
I love that. You know where I said all the time? In the checkout line. Isn't that where you see it?
01:06:35
Bible scholars unearth that Jesus is not coming back. It's like, what?
01:06:41
This is simple historical liberalism repackaged, and it's going to sell a million copies. It's the things that scholars have unearthed.
01:06:49
The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was and how salvation works. The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later.
01:07:02
That would be the pastoral epistles, specifically, is what I'll be referring to there. Jesus, Paul, Matthew, and John all represented fundamentally different religions.
01:07:15
Yeah, I'm sure one was Buddhist, one was a Hindu, one was a Mormon, right? Established Christian doctrines such as the suffering
01:07:26
Messiah, the divinity of Jesus, and the Trinity were the inventions of still later theologians.
01:07:34
These are not idiosyncratic perspectives of just one modern scholar, as Ehrman skillfully demonstrates.
01:07:41
They have been the standard and widespread views of critical scholars across a full spectrum of denominations and traditions.
01:07:46
And you know what? He's right. It's called liberalism. Nothing new there. It's amazing someone's going to make enough to retire on by repackaging liberalism and sticking it back out there again on the bookshelves.
01:07:58
Amazing. Why is it most people have not, have never heard such things? Well, maybe because we refuted it a long time ago.
01:08:07
This is the book that pastors, educators, and anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for.
01:08:13
Pastors, you've been waiting for this one? Oh, guess not. A clear and compelling account of the central challenges we face when attempting to reconstruct the life and message of Jesus.
01:08:26
Coming to the local community college near you to be used as a textbook to beat your children over the head.
01:08:36
You see, folks, when that kind of belief becomes embraced, that the
01:08:44
Bible is just merely a collection of human writings, then what we're talking about at Sola Fide is considered to be sheer foolishness.
01:08:57
You can't talk about a doctrine of justification in the Bible when the
01:09:04
Bible is insufficient to reveal truths on that level. This is the greatest attack upon Sola Fide today because Sola Fide stands upon the bedrock of an inspired scripture.
01:09:19
And so from an apologetic perspective, I would say that this is where the battle rages today.
01:09:24
Are there still people who are teaching all sorts of falses about it? Yes, indeed. Can we ignore those things?
01:09:30
No, we cannot. But we need to recognize the next generation, the focus is not going to be on the details there.
01:09:35
The focus is going to be on whether you can believe that the Bible is what we've always believed that it is.
01:09:42
The enemy has the media and a willing culture that wants every reason given to it to ignore us.
01:09:51
That's the situation we face today. But let me tell you something. God's still in control.
01:09:58
We are not the first generation to face issues like this. Maybe in this particular form, yes.
01:10:05
But there has always been a bent to the human heart to find a reason to disbelieve.
01:10:12
And yet God, by His Spirit, keeps building the church. And the message that keeps building that church is the message of salvation in Jesus Christ.
01:10:21
Let's play it again. Indeed, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the freedom we have had to gather at this time to consider these things.
01:10:30
And as we have reviewed, but very quickly, the history of how human religion is always seeking to compromise your grace, to control your freedom.
01:10:44
Father, we are thankful that as we have gathered here this day, we are not among them. Not because we are better. But by your
01:10:51
Spirit, you have convinced us of the truth of your word. You have opened our hearts and minds. You've quelled that rebellion that is ours.
01:10:58
And you have caused us to be obedient to your truth. We ask that you would, by your Spirit, help us to remember your truth.
01:11:06
And that we would live in light of it each and every day. This would not just be an exercise in learning something about history, learning something about theology, but to recognize that having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
01:11:21
Lord Jesus Christ. May we enjoy that peace. May that peace be our treasure. We pray in Christ's name.
01:11:36
Ministry, what an encouragement. What a reminder that we have to be faithful, not only to love the truth, but to defend the truth.
01:11:44
And may God give us the grace to do so in our generation as Paul did in his, even against Peter.
01:11:52
Well, it's not because we don't like your bow tie, James, but... There you go.
01:12:01
It's even the right size. They went, hmm, let's see. Okay, now there's a guy walking out in just a
01:12:07
T -shirt. Did you take it off his back? Come on now. Whatever we have to do. Thank you.