Sunday Live at Kootenai Community Church

Luke, Hebrews, Mark, Acts, James, Jude, those are the non -canonical books.

We have Luke and Acts written by Luke, obviously, both of those books were written by Luke.

Then we have Hebrews written by, we don't know whom. Then we have Jude and then we have

James, did I say non -canonical, sorry, not written by an apostle.

Yes, thank you for correcting that. I didn't say they were, I said they were non -canonical, that's not what I meant. They were non -apostolic in terms of the person who we think wrote them.

And I say that of Hebrews even though there are early lists of canonical books that include Hebrews with Paul's writings and there are people throughout church history including early church fathers who viewed

Hebrews as one of Paul's epistles. Sometimes the book of Hebrews has been found lumped in with other epistles of Paul by Romans, 1

Corinthians, Galatians, etc. Hebrews is kind of collected alongside of Paul's writings because many people viewed it to be written by the apostle

Paul. I don't believe it was apostolic because the author of Hebrews refers to the apostles as them and they rather than I or us or we.

So he doesn't classify himself as an apostle in chapter, I think it's chapter 2 verses 3 and 4. He doesn't classify himself as an apostle.

So that tells us that it was probably written by or was written by a non -apostle. So we have non -apostolic books, that is books written by non -apostles, but there's a way of lumping in or including those books as canonical even though they weren't written by apostles because I say the criteria is not necessarily that an apostle himself wrote it but that an apostle himself either wrote it or authenticated it.

So it could be apostolic not just in terms of its authorship but also in terms of its content.

So let's talk about Luke for a second. Luke and the book of Acts were both written by Dr. Luke whom

Paul picked up on his second missionary journey in Acts chapter 16 somewhere before he landed on the fields of Macedonia and had the conversion of Lydia in Philippi.

It's right there. It's in the middle of chapter 16 where all of a sudden the narrative of the book of Acts goes from they and them and he to us and we.

There's a switch that happens there and so since Luke was a Gentile, most people believe that's when

Paul met Luke, Luke was converted, and Luke joined Paul's traveling team in Acts chapter 16. So Luke was a traveling companion of the apostle

Paul and was with Paul all the way to the end. In fact, I believe it is in 2 Timothy chapter 4 where Paul talks about Luke being with him.

Luke is one of his friends right there at the very end. Others had forsaken him but Luke was with him.

I think it was Luke. Is that right? Now that I say that it doesn't sound right, but I think it is right. I say a lot of stuff that doesn't sound right necessarily to me, but the beloved physician, yeah.

Okay, so then we've got Luke and Acts and then Hebrews. Hebrews is apostolic in its content and Hebrews was accepted as an apostolic book early on.

Some people believe that the apostle Paul spoke Hebrews or preached the message of Hebrews and that it was written down by someone else.

Somebody who transcribed it or took the manuscript of that message and began to circulate it, sent it out to the

Hebrew Christians. Jude and James. Jude was a half -brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, so was

James. James was a leader in the early church in Acts, in the book of Acts, in the early chapters there.

He was a leader in the early church, particularly the church that was in Jerusalem. So he kind of had an apostolic ministry to Jews in Jerusalem in the early years.

He worked alongside Peter and John, so obviously one who was part of the apostolic circle even though he wasn't a capital

A apostle, he was part of the apostolic circle. So his letters would have been accepted as authoritative and we could say the same thing for Jude.

Did I leave any out with that list? Okay, so we have divine authorship, the apostles either authoring the books or authenticating the books and certifying the books.

And they were accepted as apostolic not just in their origin, the person who wrote them, but also in their content.

If somebody knew in the early church that something was pseudepigraphal, that it was written under a false pretense or a false name, then it was instantly rejected.

It's not like Christians, and again we need to reiterate this, it's not like Christians in the first century just took any book about Jesus and any writing that mentioned

Jesus or Christianity and embraced it as part of canonical writings or Scripture. That's not how they viewed it. They only viewed those things written by or authenticated by apostles as authoritative.

And so if they knew that something was a false writing, it was rejected. And anyone who was known to have composed a work explicitly in the name of an apostle was disciplined from the church.

So apostolic origin or authorship was the standard in the early church.

Number two, letter B. Before we move on, are there any questions about that? We covered a lot of stuff there. Letter B is authenticity, and all of these are going to start with an

A. So authorship, letter A and letter B is authenticity. It had to have an authentic date or an apostolic date.

It had to be written during the first century. So writings of a later date would have been disqualified on the face of it, right?

Prima facie. It would have been disqualified. If something originated in the second century, they would have said, well, obviously that can't be apostolic.

It couldn't have been written or authenticated by an apostle, therefore that writing would never have been embraced by the canon. Basically by the middle of the, or by the first part of the second century, all

Christians would have known that anything that originated after the death of the apostle John, anything that originated, whether it was a gospel or a letter supposedly written by an apostle, it would have been rejected, out of hand, without any question.

And it had to have also not just an authentic date, that's number one, but also an authentic doctrine, and this was the orthodoxy test.

It had to have apostolic doctrines. So Paul's writings were known early on. His books were widely circulated early on, particularly in Gentile churches.

And so all the questionable books would have been compared to the apostle Paul. Remember Peter, toward the end of his life, somewhere around 61 to 63

A .D., when Peter wrote 2 Peter, he referred to Paul's writings as Scripture. He lumped them in, talked about Paul's writings, which they distort as they do the rest of the

Scriptures, including Paul's writings in that group of canonical authoritative books on par with the

Old Testament text. And so even in the early, even in the first century, the

Christians would have held Paul's writings up as a standard to which, by which everything else would need to be judged.

It would need to comport with Paul's doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ and Paul's moral teachings.

It had to have aligned itself with Paul's teachings concerning Christ and the gospel, etc. And anything that didn't line up with Paul's doctrines, or Paul's writings, would have been rejected by the church.

And by the way, do you know that, do you notice how remarkable it is that all four of our gospels which we embrace as canonical and authoritative records of the life of the

Lord Jesus Christ, all four of them are anonymous. Have you ever noticed that? None of those four gospels begin the way that Paul would have began one of his letters.

Like Matthew, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, called by Jesus Christ Himself. I write to you these things that are authoritative and by the hand of the

Lord. There's no claim in Matthew regarding that. Neither John. John just begins, in the beginning was the

Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. You've got to piece together these very, very subtle clues that John weaves throughout his gospel to even tell who it is that wrote the gospel of John.

All four of the gospels that we embrace as Scripture are anonymous. This is remarkable when you consider the fact that there were other gospels that purported to have been written by Peter and Mary and Paul and Barnabas and others who were eyewitnesses to the

Lord Jesus Christ. And they named themselves in the books. If you lived in the first century and you wanted to write a story about Jesus and you wanted to be accepted as Scripture, what would you do?

You wanted to pass this off to people and deceive them. What would you do? This is, look,

I'm Thomas and I'm writing this gospel. Or my name is Barnabas and I'm writing this gospel. My name is Peter and I'm writing this gospel.

Or Mary. Wouldn't you do that? Wouldn't you say, I'm Lazarus and I'm writing a gospel about the story of Jesus and weave yourself into that?

Isn't that what you'd do? To try and pass it off as authentic? What's remarkable that all four of the gospels that we accept as authoritative, all of them are anonymous.

It is as if the gospel writers themselves, the authoritative ones, wanted to step out of the picture and just simply present Jesus. And yet those were the gospels that were embraced by the early church as authoritative, which tells me that the early church, before they embraced

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they would have vetted those gospels very carefully and closely, simply to make sure that they were authentic.

All right, number C. Number C or letter three, however you want to do it.

It had to have authority or the quality of authority. And this is something that is, again, conferred not by the church.

It's not conferred by Christians. It's not conferred by a local gathering of believers. It's not conferred by the apostle himself.

This is something that is true of a book by virtue of the fact that God wrote it. It is authoritative.

Now, I just want to take a second to step aside and talk about modern day visions and revelations. There are people who say that God is still speaking today, but it's not authoritative in the way that Scripture is authoritative, or it's not inerrant and infallible the way that Scripture is inerrant and infallible.

See, that instantly should tell you that something is askew there. How is it possible for God to speak in a non -authoritative way?

Does God ever speak and then say, but this isn't authoritative? Yeah, Rick? They admit that.

Yeah, they'll say Scripture is the only infallible and inspired and inerrant word of God.

But I receive personal communications from God that are not infallible. I can err. They're not inerrant, and they're not inspired in the sense that Scripture is inspired, and they're not authoritative in the way that Scripture is authoritative.

So they want to make some break between how God speaks, that on one occasion He can speak authoritatively and on another occasion He just kind of speaks and is really not authoritative or inerrant or inspired.

You see, that's nonsense. So authority is not conferred by an apostle giving it authority, it is conferred by the fact that God spoke it or wrote it.

If the author is God, if the one speaking is God, it is authoritative, and it cannot err. So modern -day prophets who say, thus says the

Lord, I feel the Lord speaking to me and telling me to say to you this, and to say to you that, and direct you to do this, and to feel He told me to do this, and then they turn out to be wrong, and they're like, well, it's not inspired.

It's just the Lord speaking to me. How does the Lord speak in a non -inspired way? That is nonsense. That does not exist.

God does not speak in a non -inspired, non -authoritative way. So it had to have or it did have a quality of authority by virtue of the fact that God spoke it.

And to contrast that with a wrong view, we'd say this as well, it's not as if Paul wrote five books and said, now these three,

Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, I really like those three. This one that I wrote to the Corinthians, not so much.

This other one that I wrote to Trophimus, not so much. And so those are lost to history, but Paul picked three of the five that he wrote that month and said, these are going to be, these

I think really have good qualities. These I think will really be a hit for years to come. That's not how the Apostle Paul did not confer authority on his books.

God did by speaking them, by writing them through the Apostle Paul. All right, letter

D, and it had the quality of being alive. And I think this is something that I could develop if I wanted to in a little bit more detail, but I'm not going to this morning.

God's word has all the qualities that God himself has. In this sense, that God's word is eternal and everlasting, right?

It will endure forever. God's word is living. God's word is powerful. God's word is pure.

God's word is true. God's word is holy. God's word cannot err. These qualities that God's word has, these are things that God himself has.

So when God speaks these things, now obviously not every quality that God has does

Scripture have, but the qualities that make Scripture, Scripture, those qualities are also possessed by God himself in the sense that he is authoritative and he is inerrant, and he has these qualities because of who he is in his being, and therefore his word has these qualities.

So if it is God's word, then it will be a living document, and it has the quality of being living and powerful and life -changing, and all

Scripture has this quality. I've read the testimony of people who have been saved reading enigmatic passages of the

Old Testament about sacrifices and blood or genealogies or just hearing a verse quoted out of, randomly out of the

Old Testament. Even the Old Testament books, yes, the genealogies, they're living. Don't skip over those when you read them, and I'm not suggesting that you try and read every name that is there out loud.

That would be miserable, but don't skip the genealogies. Don't skip any passage of Scripture because it's all a living document.

It's all God's word. All right, so it had to have this quality that it is alive, and you sense this, do you not, when you read

Scripture? The Christian will sense this. You're reading Scripture, and then you realize it's not so much me reading this book, but this book reads me.

This book knows me better than I know this book, and there is a living quality to Scripture that other books do not have.

You can read War and Peace or the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and then sit down and read the book of Romans, and the book of Romans has a quality that no other book has in that list.

The Scripture has that living quality that changes the heart of the Christian and the believer. It has the capacity to give life when used by the

Spirit of God to do so. Scripture is a living book, and letter E is acceptance by the church, and we just use the term acceptance there to refer to the fact that Scripture was acknowledged and accepted and recognized by those who were

Christians early on. They recognized authoritative and inspired writings, and they were able to recognize those books that were not authoritative and inspired.

You and I have the same… We do the same thing today, by the way. We read through the New Testament. We say, these 27 books, there's a living quality here.

They are alive. They are authoritative. These books are inspired. They are a system. They all mesh together with all of God's revelation from Genesis to the book of Revelation.

These books all tie in together. The theme is the same. The glory of it is the same. The message is the same.

It's all about one person. There's a unity to these books, and then you can step aside and read something that claims to be inspired, whether it's the

Book of Mormon or Pearl of Great Price or Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, these books which claim divine inspiration.

You can read those books and say, these are not the same thing. How is it that you know that instinctively as a

Christian? Because you have the Spirit of God living within you, do you not? If you have the Spirit of God living within you, and you can read those books, and those books will have a certain testimony, a certain resonance in your own heart, where you can read the

Gospel of Thomas and you say, this is not Scripture. A person with the Spirit of God in them would know that.

The people with the Spirit of God in them in the first century knew that as well. It had to be generally accepted among the churches, and it had to be used widely.

These books were accepted among the churches and used widely. They were used for Scripture reading, for correction, for teaching, for guidance, for worship, for public reading, preaching, etc.

We know that because that's the testimony that we've seen in the New Testament itself. Each individual document was ultimately acknowledged as canonical, or each individual document that was ultimately acknowledged as canonical started off with a limited acceptance and a limited use.

Does that not make sense? Every book that you now have today that is used by Christians around the globe and has been used by hundreds of millions of people over the centuries, every single one of those books started off with a very limited acceptance and a very limited use.

But they grew over time, did they not? The book of the Philippians, when it started off, when it was first written, what was the scope of its use?

The church at Philippi. It was a small congregation of people, Lydia, Philippian jailer, their families, and a few other people, a small church in Philippi.

But eventually, those books, the book of Philippians, as well as all of our New Testament books, eventually the use of them and the acceptance of them began to spread over time as those books were circulated and recognized by others as authoritative and apostolic, and Christians began to read those books and say, yeah, this is

Scripture, this is the Apostle Paul. So F .F. Bruce in his book, The Canon of Scripture, says this, if any church leader came along in the third or fourth century with a previously unknown book recommending it as genuinely apostolic, he would have found great difficulty in gaining acceptance for it.

His fellow Christians would simply have said, but no one's ever heard of it. Or even if the book had been known for some generations but had never been treated as Holy Scripture, it would have been very difficult for it to win recognition as such.

Does that make sense? So books always started off with a local acceptance and a local use and began to be spread.

But over the course of centuries, people would be able to evaluate newer writings, things that came from the second and third century, things that purported or claimed to be

Scripture, and if it had not been accepted by the church on a wide scale, then it would have been rejected. They would have never accepted those books because they had never been recognized and spread and used by the church since the beginning.

That was one of the ways that they would recognize that if it's apostolic, if it's canonical, if it's authoritative, then the whole church would have had access to it and Christians would have used it as such.

So this decision to confer canonicity upon books was not made in the third or the fourth century. These books had always been recognized as canonical and authoritative since the moment that they were written in some circles.

It took time for that to be recognized as the recognition of that spread over the course of many years and over the

Roman Empire. Now there is a question that comes up, and Peter's asked it I think 15 times, and every time he asks it, he says,

I'm not throwing you under the bus. Every time he asks it, he says, I know I've asked this before and you said you were going to get to it, and I knew you would eventually get to it, is this where you talk about it or is this later?

And I've always up to this point said this is later. So here's the question. If we found in a cave, in a

Dead Sea Scroll type of a setting where some shepherd boy throws a rock into a cave and here's the shattering of jars inside of there, if we were to find a book that we knew had been written by the

Apostle Paul, we could certify that, maybe even the original copy of the

Apostle Paul, and we were able to translate it and publish it today, would the church be justified in accepting it as Scripture?

Would we accept it as Scripture? We have a no. Is there anybody who would say that we…

What's that? As canonical. And I'm using canonical and Scripture as synonyms here at this moment. We have one person or two people who said no.

Are there any takers that would say this is Scripture, that it should be added to the

Bible and we should have 67 books, 28 in our New Testament now? Is there anybody who would say that?

Why would you not say that? Give me some reasons. You're saying he's sovereign over the timing of it?

Because of the sovereignty of God, he's sovereign over the timing of those books being added in to recognize and so he wouldn't add something in later on?

Yes? If it hadn't been quoted or transcribed, you can say where was it?

Obviously lost to history, right? Yep. Okay.

Did everybody catch that? I'll just repeat that for the sake of those who might be listening. On the no side, we would say that God would never have deprived

His church for 2 ,000 years of an authentic, genuine, inspired revelation. On the yes side, you could make the argument that God and His sovereignty was waiting until now to reveal that revelation or to make it known to His church.

Yes, Ken. Okay. If it's to be, then it was.

The fact that it was discovered and God is sovereign over the discovery of it would mean that we would have to embrace it. Okay?

Yes? Is there anything discovered since 1611 that has brought clarity or helped define the text since 1611?

Other than the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which helped us to see which dated…we have scrolls now that date previous to anything we had had in 1611.

Those scrolls only help us to see that the transmission of the text has been faithful over time, but it's not as if some new fragment was discovered that says, oh, this is what

John 3 .16 should read. It's totally different than how we've read it so far. So there has been nothing along those lines that would alter the text itself or the translation of the text itself.

Are…no, there was no gaps to fill in. There may have been gaps in our understanding of history or culture or even our understanding of original languages that might have influenced how we would have understood how to translate some things.

That has developed over time as we learn more about ancient languages in the last 500 years, but not…nothing that would have filled in gaps of Scripture because there's no gaps to fill in in that sense.

Yeah, Jenny? Yeah, there is that warning at the end of the book of Revelation, it says not to add anything to God's Word.

Okay, let me add some detail to this question before I answer it. The detail that I would add to this would be we go back to what we started with, and I know it was a year ago, but we talked about our doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy and infallibility and preservation, and we spent weeks hammering those out.

What does Scripture teach about those things? So if we believe that a document was inspired, is it possible for something that God wrote and inspired, and He inspired it as part of the new covenant, right?

Remember that Revelation is connected to covenant. If God inspired it as part of that new covenant revelation, does it make sense?

Is it in keeping with our understanding of preservation and the nature of God that He would wait 2 ,000 years to reveal that new covenant document to His new covenant community?

Would He wait 2 ,000 years for us to have an understanding before we could know what was in that document which was written to the new covenant community?

Would God have done that? And I would have to answer, no, He would not have done that. What God wrote and inspired is authoritative and inerrant, and then

God has worked in history to preserve exactly what He wants to preserve. And we would have to go back to what somebody else said,

I forget who it was, that not everything that the apostle Paul wrote was necessarily inspired

Scripture. Paul would have wrote things that were not inspired. Just because he was an apostle does not mean that everything he said and everything he did was inerrant, but it does mean that when writing as an apostle a document that the

Holy Spirit was working through him, moving through him to author, that that document itself was inspired and inerrant, but not that Paul himself was infallible.

Paul might have believed that the earth was flat. Paul might have believed that the moon was made out of cheese. I don't know, but all of that is irrelevant.

But when Paul writes to the church at Rome and he's writing the book of Romans, that's inspired, inerrant, and infallible

Scripture. And I would argue it is intended for His new covenant community, which is believers,

Jews and Gentiles. And therefore, God would not, because He has promised to preserve His word for His people,

God would not deprive His people of that which He intended to give to them, nor would He wait 2 ,000 years to deliver something that was essential for His church for all of His time.

We would have to then argue that these Christians have been without this revelation for all of these years, and now we have something that the previous church in all of its forms never had.

And that does not comport with our doctrine of inspiration and God's purpose in giving us revelation in Scripture.

And the fact that the church for all of these years has not known of it and has not accepted it and has not used it, that means that it does not have that quality of canonicity, which is that it is recognized by the church at large, because we would have to say that there's more people who have lived who have been

Christians up to this point than there are Christians alive today, right? Wouldn't you say that? That the church that has passed away is probably larger than the church that exists currently alive on this earth right now.

Okay, so if that is the case, then you would have to be arguing that most of the people who belong to the church have been without the revelation that God gave to His church, and it has not been used or accepted by most of the church.

It's been used or accepted by only a small portion of the church, which is us today in our scenario that I laid out of a book being discovered recently.

Yeah. No, but I'm not making just a time argument.

I'm making a usage argument. That book has not been used by the church for all this period of time. The Gospel of Matthew was used by the church from the time that it was written.

We could say that of all the New Testament books. Now, their spread would have taken a long time. We're not talking about the spread of a book, we're talking about the usage of those books.

Those books, those 27 books of our New Testament were written and recognized and used from the time that they were written.

If we discovered a book today that was written back then, we wouldn't be able to say that of that book. It has not been accepted and used in the church, nor has it been recognized by the church for all these years.

So, we would not be justified in saying, well, this is canonical, right?

Yep. So, we would...does this mean then that we would strike a match to it and burn it?

I'm not suggesting it would have no value. I'm saying it's not canonical. There's a difference between it having no value to us whatsoever and not being canonical.

Because listen, if we discovered a book written by the Apostle Paul, I would want it translated and I would want to read it.

Now, would I preach it? No, I would not. Would I add it in my Bible? No, I would not. But I think it might have tremendous value to us historically, archaeologically, culturally, theologically.

We could read it like we might of devotional, but we would not and would not be justified in regarding it as Scripture. But we could be regarded...we

could be justified in regarding it as beneficial. Cornell? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Very good point. Yeah. It would have the value...the

same value as the apostolic fathers. Yeah. That's a good point too.

If we did discover something written by Paul as of late, it would not be something that would overturn

Scripture. It would have the benefit, I think, of helping us understand certain other things that Paul might have written or his word usage.

It could have other benefits and other blessings to us, but we wouldn't regard it as Scripture. And it certainly wouldn't overturn Scripture. Peter? If it was confirmed that it was written by Paul and it said, this is the

Word of the Lord, hypothetically, because I don't believe this will ever happen,

I don't believe it can happen because my theology of revelation and my theology of preservation and authority and inerrancy, it precludes this from ever happening.

But hypothetically, we would have to say that when Paul wrote that, he was not inspired. He might have thought that he was writing an inspired document, but he would not be inspired because it has not been accepted and used by the church for all of his time.

And it was not known and it was not circulated and it obviously was not copied. If it had been regarded as Scripture by early

Christians, they would have copied it and it would have been preserved just like our New Testament documents have been. So I would say this is a good example of Paul writing something that was not inspired, maybe even thinking he did, and that is why it has been lost to history and why it should not be accepted as Scripture.

Yes, sir? A lot of questions here. Go ahead. Yeah, very good.

So you caught me in a presuppositional error there. I said it does not make sense when I critiqued it that way.

And you're right. That would be me saying, according to my judgment, here are the criteria that it would make and it doesn't match up to these criteria, which

I determined when I say it doesn't make sense. So very good. You caught me in a... That was a good way of examining my argument.

So my argument, did everybody else catch that when I said that? Okay. So you're right.

It would be wrong to say that it doesn't make sense that God would do this because that would be me saying God has to operate according to what makes sense to me.

But a better way of saying is that theologically we cannot make our theology of these things as revealed in Scripture comport with this happening.

Those two things cannot mesh up. Yes? Right.

Nobody's ever... Well, not nobody, but we... Somebody read them.

Yeah. No, they're lost to history.

It's not that those books have been discovered and somebody has read them. It's that they've not been preserved for us.

We don't know what was in those books. We have no record of those books. Paul, there's no record. There's no record. Those books do not exist.

Paul makes mention of those books. So we know that they existed at some point, that the Corinthians received them, that they read them, but they have not been preserved for us.

So our book of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians makes reference to two other letters that Paul wrote to them, but those letters have been lost to history.

So somebody read them at some point, the Corinthian church, and whoever had that had those at those times, but that has not been preserved for us.

There was somebody else. Yes. So I would use the same argument that I've just used to disqualify

Paul's writings. I don't believe that God, my doctrine of God's inspiration of inerrancy and authority and preservation precludes me from accepting the

Book of Mormon because I cannot be... I will not theologically believe that God would have a covenant community exist for 1 ,850 years, in the case of the

Book of Mormon, or a little bit longer than that, that God would have a covenant community exist for that period of time, and they would be bereft of this revelation.

They would not have access to this revelation, that God would suddenly come on the scene and give brand new revelation for His church as if that were necessary.

And the way that the argument for that would also, on the Mormon side, the argument for that would go to the fact that there is something lacking in Scripture that necessitated further revelation, and I deny that out of hand as well.

Is the warning in the Book of Revelation addressing the whole canon of Scripture or the Book of Revelation?

I think, specifically, I think that what John had in mind was this book, the

Book of Revelation. I think that's the context that he has in mind, though I think that providentially that that warning appears at the end of the last book of our canon because I do believe that probably in the mind,

I can't get into the mind of the Spirit of God, but my suspicion is that in the mind of the Spirit of God, that is positioned there as a warning regarding all of Scripture.

So I do think it is appropriate, because there's another warning in Proverbs that talks about adding to God's Word, and I think a warning in Deuteronomy, if memory serves, that talks about adding to God's Word, and we have the one in Revelation.

So always the Lord warns us against adding to Scripture, whatever late fashionable revelation we think is great.

So that principle stands over all of Scripture, do not add to what

God has said, do not take away from it or God will curse you. So specifically, I think John is addressing the warnings and the plagues in this book, the

Book of Revelation, 30 verse 5 and 6,

Proverbs 35 and 6. Okay, are there any other questions about that?

We're out of time, we have some questions and objections we'll answer at the end, and I'm just going to zip through these quickly because I've actually sort of woven this, what's taken us so long up to this point is kind of weaving some of these objections into what we've done in the last three weeks.

So here they are, objection number one, the determination in New Testament books depends upon the decision of a council of men 300 years after the

Apostles lived. I've heard this, this is Bart Ehrman's critique, most atheists bring this up, this is a very common objection to Christianity and the formation of the

New Testament. And our answer to that is no, historically, Christians recognized from the moment the books were written what was authoritative, what was divine, what was inerrant.

They preserved them, they copied them, they distributed them and circulated them widely and they recognized them from the earliest time.

So the Synod of Hippo in 393 only recognized officially what had been accepted by the church for over 300 years.

Those Christians didn't go about in the early first century saying, okay, now we've added a book, we've added a book. There was no official list of books kept in Jerusalem.

So yes, the spread of this information, the recognition of it did take time, that is true, but it's not as if there was nothing regarded as authoritative until 400

AD, that's falsehood. These books were regarded as authoritative from the moment that they were written.

They were recognized by the church somewhere. So objection number two, obviously some early church fathers from different locations questioned the legitimacy of certain books including

Hebrews, 2 John, 3 John, 2 Peter, James, Jude and Revelation. Some church fathers did not quote from some of the

New Testament books. Doesn't this show that some books should not belong in our Bible? And we answered this a little bit last week.

Just because somebody does not quote from it does not necessarily mean that they did not regard it as authoritative. It simply means that they didn't quote from it.

Or because some list left it out doesn't necessarily mean that they regarded those other ones as non -canonical.

It simply means that maybe they didn't even know that those books existed. So the lack of…the fact that books were doubted as authentic proves that books were not easily accepted.

Their motto was, when in doubt, keep it out. It proves that a lot of thought, investigation, analysis and discussion went into accepting books and regarding them as authoritative and they only accepted the books which they felt met certain criteria or had certain qualities that they knew had been written by God.

And so they were subjected to incredibly close scrutiny. And I think I'll read it to you just in case you don't have the quote in your notes.

Josh McDowell in his book, A Ready Defense, said, Christians today can be thankful that the final formation of the New Testament canon was such a long and difficult process.

It was so difficult, in fact, that there was heated debate over whether Hebrews, James, 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation were truly canonical.

But the close scrutiny to which the New Testament books were subjected before being universally accepted as authentic should give readers today increased confidence in the reliability of these books and the things which they reported and taught.

So again, books were not just accepted. When in doubt, we're not going to regard that as authoritative. Calling something

Scripture was a very serious thing in the early church. They only did that to books that they knew were apostolic in origin or commissioned by apostles.

And the third objection, there was no agreement on the canon for over 300 years after the apostles. That's true or false?

It's false, right? Peter and Paul agreed on what was canonical, what they knew about.

Peter regarded Paul's writings as Scripture. So the earliest known list of canonical books is the

Muratorian Canon. It's compiled sometime in the second century between 100 and 280. It was discovered by Lodovico Antonio Muratori.

He was an Italian, if you couldn't tell from all the street names. And he published it in 1740. It is a list of New Testament books written in Latin.

It does not list all the New Testament books that we have. It is missing Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and 1

John. Now it's possible that whoever composed the Muratorian Canon did not know that those books existed because 1

Peter and 1 John were accepted everywhere without question. There was no dispute over those two books and yet the

Muratorian Canon leaves it out. And so that is evidence that those other books of the

Muratorian Canon were not necessarily rejected but maybe had been missed or forgotten or lost due to damage.

So it's possible that the fragment upon which the Muratorian Canon was written was itself damaged and so that those books were simply lost to that fragment.

In other words, that somebody might have written down all 27 books and had them on that list and then that list itself has been damaged over time.

So the Synod of Hippo and the Council of Carthage only published what had been the standard position of Christians and Christian churches for 300 years.

Now as Christians sometimes we struggle with this because we like everything instant and so the idea that it might have taken a couple hundred years for these books to be widely circulated and universally recognized, we look at that and we say, man, that's just…how is it possible that God could give a revelation and it not be widely recognized or known about instantly?

And we say that because we're used to something that we write down being able to send that out to a hundred people instantly in email or text or an instant message.

But that's not how history works and that's not how God worked in history. God worked in history by writing books to various locations to different people.

Those books were circulated and over time and it did take time because it was the ancient world not today where communication and travel are done on a scale and at a speed that was unimaginable to people in the ancient world.

So it did take time for those books to be even found out about. You might have lived in the first century and died at 90

AD, 60 years after Jesus died. You might have died an old Christian of ripe age and never even have read the

Gospel of John because you didn't even know it existed. You might have lived in a place in the Roman Empire where in 90

AD you had never even read any of John's writings or you might have lived in a part of the

Roman Empire where what Peter wrote or the book of Hebrews you never even saw. You might have died at 90 only possessing or having been exposed to 10 or 12 or 14 books out of the 27 in the

New Testament. That doesn't mean that those other books are not inspired. It simply means that you were living in a culture and at a time when that was the reality.

But the fact that those books were not known about or the fact that those books were not circulated everywhere instantly does not mean that they're not authoritative or they're not canonical.

It just means that God worked in history in a certain way and we don't judge history by our modern standards.

Instead we look back and say how is it that God preserved that in history? Because God worked in history and at that time things took longer than they do today.

One more question or comment and then we'll close. The Old Testament canon was recognized even at the time of Jesus.

So Jesus never quotes from any of the apocryphal books. None of the apostles ever quote from any of the apocryphal books. They mention other books that have been written but they don't quote them as Scripture.

Paul quoted from poets of his own day but he doesn't quote them as Scripture. So we would say

Jesus and the apostles recognized what the Old Testament canon was. They knew what the books were accepted, what were part of the

Jewish Scriptures back then. That's something that is known and there was no debate over that.

So that was a settled fact and we would say that all of the apostles, Jesus and the apostles embraced all 39 books of the

Old Testament as canonical and there was never any dispute over that in the early church. All right, next week lesson 12, whatever it's titled.

I don't know what it is. I don't have it here in front of me. But let's pray. Father, we are grateful for this time of consideration and discussion that we have had and we're thankful for how

You've worked in history and again, we just recognize that we're not here to try and convince ourselves that Scripture is

Your Word and that You have spoken authoritatively but we're here to simply see how it is that You have done so and preserved for us and for Your church,

Your people, a perfect revelation, Your true Word. And we thank You for it and we praise

You for it and we ask Your blessing upon our worship and fellowship that is to follow in Christ's name, amen. Well, good morning everyone.

I hate to interrupt the joyful fellowship but if you got here early enough, you should have enjoyed that before the service.

I just have two dates that I want to make you aware of to mark on your calendar. The first is May 21st to the 23rd and for those of you who may not know, we have a spring equipping conference and this year our special guest is

Phil Johnson. He is the executive director of Grace to You from Grace Community Church and he's going to be doing a conference on the life and ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Spurgeon lived at a time when the church was compromising and the world was becoming, well, very worldly and his stand for truth and his fight for the faith ended up costing him his very life and as it really sent him to an early grave because of the stress of what was happening in the church took its toll on him and he is,

I think, for me at least, apart from the Apostle Paul, the most fascinating figure from church history.

So we are going to have an entire conference, a Friday evening and an all -day Saturday tied and dedicated to Charles Spurgeon and we'll have registration open in the next couple of weeks and there will be a cost.

I think it'll be less than a year's pass because we have no books that we're giving away for this one. And the second date is July 21st to the 24th and that's our annual church camp out and barbecue out at Marley Beach, July 21st to the 24th.

So just make note of those two dates and make sure you set them aside and are able to be here for those. Turn your

Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10, please. We're going to read together the passage we're going to be looking at this morning as well as a little bit of the context,

Hebrews 10, Hebrews 10.

We're going to begin reading at verse 19 and we'll read through the end of verse 31 of Hebrews 10.

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has insulted the

Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the

Lord will judge his people. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Will you stand with me as we pray?

Let's bow our heads. Father, it is all by your grace and mercy that we are able to be here together and to worship you and to fellowship with one another.

It is by your grace and mercy that we as your people do not suffer under the wrath of the justice of our sin, but that instead we have been delivered from that by the once and all sufficient sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

We thank you for that blood that was shed and that body that was broken for us that we might have eternal life. We thank you that access into your presence is no longer barred, but that now we can come before you with great confidence because you have opened a new and living way through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And it is not in our own righteousness or by our own merits that we come to you. It is not because we deserve access to your throne or entrance into heaven, nor is it because we deserve in and of ourselves to stand before you and to petition you and to address you as father, but it is only because of what

Christ has done. And as your people, we humbly, gratefully thank you for that provision.

Because Christ has died in our place and because he has borne our sin and taken it away, we can come before you with great joy, with great confidence to find help in time of need and we are grateful for that.

We do pray that you would sustain us and encourage us in the days and weeks ahead. We pray that your church might be your church, that you would unite our hearts in love and affection for Christ and in unity together around your truth, that you would be glorified through us as we live out your word and minister and serve one another, fellowship with one another, be honored in and through us as your people, we pray.

And we pray that you would strengthen us for every good work and every act of service and that we might do so with great love and affection, all because of what

Christ has done. We praise you in his good name, amen. In Psalm 147, praise the

Lord for it is good to sing praises to our God. Praise to the Lord, the almighty. Let's sing.

Praise to the Lord, the almighty. My soul praise him, for he is the yoke and salvation.

All ye who hear, now to his temple draw.

To the Lord, who o 'er all things so wonderfully sustains.

Hast thou not seen, how thy desires there have been?

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work, and he is good to send mercy here.

Praise to the Lord, O let all that is in me, of all that hath life and breath, come now with praises before.

Sound from his people, I sure can trust him, the

Savior's blood. How much should thy glory despise, so free so with amaze.

Empty himself to show his love, and on selfless praise.

Tis mercy all, immense and free.

O ye, what should die for me.

Is a spirit plain, past mountains, sin, and nature's night.

Thine I defuse, the quickening rain.

I woke, the dungeon flame. My chains fell off, my heart was free.

I rose in love, what should die for me.

O condemnation now I dread. Jesus and all in their living, justness divine.

Bold I approach the eternal throne.

And claim the Christ my own.

What should die for me. Amazing love, how can it be, that thou, my

God, should die for me. God of sea,

God of heaven, gentle Savior, closest friend.

Strong deliverer within me.

Falls at your throne to serve your majesty.

Earth and worship you, handsome souls.

Brought the sinner here to your throne. All within me cries out in praise.

Your majesty, I can but bow to serve your majesty.

Your majesty, I can but bow.

I lay my all before you now in royal robe deserved.

I live to serve your majesty. In royal robes

I don't deserve. I live to serve your majesty.

We're going to introduce a new song this morning. O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

The psalmist says in Psalm 18 verses 1 through 3. I love you,

O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my

God. My rock in whom I take refuge. My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

I call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised. And I am saved from my enemies.

My rock and my redeemer.

The greatest treasure of my longing soul.

My God is no other.

True delight is found in you alone.

Felt the deep depht of love. Your love exceeds the heavens reach.

Your truth a fount of perfect wisdom.

My highest good and my unending need.

O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Strong defend my sword,

O deceiver. And my shield against inscapeful darks.

My song when enemies surround me.

My hope when times of sorrow rise. My joy when trials are abounding.

Your faithfulness my refuge in the night.

My rock and my redeemer. Gracious savior of my ruined life.

My guilt and cross laid on your shoulders.

In my place you suffered, bled, and died.

You rose, the grave and death are conquered. You broke my bonds of sin and shame.

You rose, the grave and death are conquered. You broke my bonds of sin and shame.

O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. May all my days bring glory to your name.

May all my days bring glory to your name.

You may be seated. And now with your

Bibles open to the book of Hebrews, please, Hebrews chapter 10. I'll pray before we begin.

Our Father, we confess and acknowledge that if it is without the work of your spirit, we would never be able to understand spiritual truth, or how that truth should apply to our lives, or what we are to do in response to that truth.

We need the work of your spirit to accomplish this in our hearts. And we pray that you would do so this morning, that you would use your word to comfort us and encourage us, to equip us, to sanctify us, that you would sanctify us by that truth, that you would strengthen our hearts together, and that you would help us to see

Christ and his glory, and the glory of what he has done in the pages of this book.

We pray that you would cause your Holy Spirit to open our eyes and our hearts, so we may see and understand these things for the glory of Christ our

Lord. In his name we pray. Amen. We are here in Hebrews chapter 10, and last week was really one long introduction to today's sermon.

And we got to the end of that time last week. It was an overview of the larger context. So we noted the beginning at verse 19, the author is now transitioning into a section of the epistle where it's going to be heavy on exhortation.

And so last week we just kind of did an overview and set the table of what we're going to be looking at in the weeks ahead. Well, let's be honest, in the years ahead as we finish up the book of Hebrews, as we begin to work through the exhortation section of this, we kind of needed to have an idea of where the author is going in this last section.

And we saw that he is really the... I should say that the central exhortation of this last section of Hebrews is the exhortation to hold fast, to stand strong, to stay firm and to hold fast to our confidence and our hope that we have in Christ.

This is the goal of everything he has been writing. He is writing to these people to encourage them not to be shaken by persecution, not to be shaken by the hostility of the world, not to be shaken by their family and friends abandoning them, not to be shaken by tribulations and trials or even discipline from the

Lord, but that they are to hold fast and to stand strong to the very end. That would be the very evidence that their faith is genuine.

And those whose faith is not genuine, those who make a mere profession of faith in Christ, who haven't had experienced no actual regeneration and no true born -again experience, those people will very quickly fall away in the face of temptations and trials and tribulation and the hostility of the world.

So the central exhortation for the rest of the book of Hebrews is to stand fast. And we even see it here in our immediate context, which we're going to get to here in just a moment.

So that was kind of the overview of the whole last chunk of Hebrews. And then we focused in more closely on specifically in chapter 10, and we saw that after the author finishes his theological argument at verse 18, he immediately demonstrates or gives to us two possible reactions to the truth.

This truth that Jesus Christ is our high priest, that he has made a sacrifice for sin, that he has entered into heaven where he sits at the

Father's right hand and makes intercession for us. Those glorious truths, there are two ways of responding to that. The first is as a believer would respond in verses 19 through 25.

Skip that for just a moment. The second is how an unbeliever would respond in verses 26 through 31. That unbeliever's response in verse 26 through 31 constitutes the fourth of the five warning passages in the book of Hebrews.

It is a warning against those who would step away from the truth and respond by walking away and considering as unholy or inadequate the blood of Christ and thus would insult the spirit of grace.

So there's a very stern warning later on to those who might see the truth that he has presented in the epistle and then turn and walk away from that.

The way that a believer would respond to that is given in verses 19 to 25. Here he is addressing them as brethren.

You see that in verse 19, therefore brethren. He's addressing them as brethren. These are people whom he knows are not only probably his ethnic kinship, they're

Jews, but they're also brothers in Christ. He is saying to them, since these things are true, verses 19 and 20 and 21, therefore we are to do the following things.

Verse 22, let us draw near. Verse 23, let us hold fast. And verse 24, let us encourage one another even more as we see the day drawing near.

So there's those three let us statements, three exhortations. Here's what you are to do. Since this is true that Christ has given you access to the throne of God, and since it is true that we have a great high priest over the house of God, therefore we are to draw near to him, we are to hold fast to him, and we are to encourage others to do the same, to draw near and to hold fast.

Those are the three applications that he gives to believers. So that was our overview last week, and now we're just getting into verse 19 and 20, and actually we're going to get through the end of verse 21 today.

Looking at the things that he says are true, these are really summary statements of what he has covered in chapter 6 through 10.

Let's read it together. Verse 19, therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, and verse 22 is the application, let us hold fast.

So I just want you to notice just those two since statements. Since it is true that we have confidence to enter the holy place, and since it is true, verse 21, that we have a great high priest over the house of God.

Those are two great advantages that we have that Old Testament saints did not have.

And so we're going to spend our time today looking at these two advantages and really comparing them to what the Old Testament saints had and expected under the old covenant.

And you're going to see that what we have is far, far better. So he's drawing here upon some facts that he has already established back from chapter 6 through chapter 10, the middle of chapter 10.

He's drawing upon those theological points that he has been making back then, and he's really summarizing it down to these two things.

You and I have two great advantages. We have direct and personal access to God, and we have a high priest who represents us in heaven.

These are two things that were inconceivable to an Old Testament saint, two things that Old Testament saints did not have.

First, direct and personal access to God. Notice in verse 19, he says,

Since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus. Now that word confidence is a bit of an interesting word.

Its definition here is, it's not exactly translated the way that we probably should take it here with the translation confidence, because that word confidence means a boldness or a courage.

It was used to describe a free -spokenness, a freedom of speech, or an openness, an unhinderedness of freedom or liberty.

That's the idea behind it. Actually, an access. The idea is not necessarily to be understood subjectively as we might feel.

I feel confident to do something, but objectively as something that is true of us. We have this confidence.

We have this access, this freedom, this unhinderedness to come right into the throne of heaven. So there is a subjective way of understanding this idea of confidence and an objective, and the author here intends us to understand this not as what we feel subjectively to be true, but of what is objectively true regardless of how we feel.

Namely, that something is true. We have access. We have this boldness to enter into the throne room of God. So let me describe the difference between a subjective feeling and an objective fact.

When I was a kid, pre -teen kid, I got a job mowing lawns, and I did this as soon as I could push a lawnmower, and I figured out that I could earn money pushing a lawnmower.

I was pushing a lawnmower for money somewhere in the county any day that there was a lawn growing. I was after it.

So I got this job mowing a lawn for a man who lived about three -quarters of a mile from me. He lived in Spokane, actually, but he had a house on the beach, on the lake, about three -quarters of a mile from where I grew up.

And I went down and interviewed, as it were, or auditioned, or whatever you want to call it.

I mowed his lawn. I said, What is this worth to you? And he said, It's worth X amount. And I said, I'll take it. And then I did this for a few weeks.

And finally, he said, Look, you do this. I like having you come down here during the week because he lived in Spokane.

He would come up on the weekend. So he would be there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. He liked having his lawn mowed when he showed up to spend the week at the beach house.

So he said, I like having you here during the week and right prior to the weekend. The more you show up, the better because I don't want the house just sitting there without any activity going around it because otherwise it's just sitting there.

And it was kind of out by itself before that area really got developed. So he said, If you want to, come down and use the beach.

You can any time. You and your friends, you and your family, come down and just use my area. He had a nice dock. It was like an

L -shaped dock. He had a boat. He had a floating dock with a slide, a curly slide that kind of went down. And it was beautiful.

And this was a huge upgrade for me as a kid. I mean a huge upgrade because I grew up swimming in the slough over here in Boyer Slough.

And the water sewer treatment plant dumped its treated effluent about a quarter of a mile upstream of where I swam.

And I drank, swam that water all growing up. So the idea of having free access to come to a lake house any time that I wanted and to swim in nice, pure, clean water was, that was a huge upgrade.

And not only did I swim, let me just for a second, not only did I swim in the slough, that was like my stomping grounds.

I did everything in the slough. It was seaweed. It was catfish. It was perch.

It was tench. It was all the horrible stuff. And we used to actually go back, raft back into the place where the water actually flowed out of the treatment plant into the water, and we would swim right in there.

So people say, Are you worried about the virus at all? No. No, I'm not worried about the virus.

What I was worried about is that one of my kids would be born with six toes or three arms. The virus didn't bother me at all.

So this was a huge upgrade. And Mr. Brungie told me, Any time you want, you can come down and use the beach, you, your friends, your cousins, your family, anybody.

They just have to be with you. You have to be the one down here. I don't want your friends coming down here. So I would go down by themselves.

So I would go down there. I could bring anybody that I wanted down to the beach to go swimming. We'd go down to swim. And it was a three -quarter of a mile bike ride for us.

So we'd go down and swim almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day. And sometimes even when he was there, he'd be happy if we showed up and we'd go swimming and enjoy the beach.

That's just not something that you do today, right? Now, objectively, objectively,

I had access to go there any time that I wanted. Subjectively, I felt complete freedom to do so.

And I did. Now, at first, I was a bit skittish, a bit skeptic. I thought, should

I really go down and take advantage of his dock and take advantage of his house and take advantage of the beach when

Mr. Brungie is not there? Should I really go do that? So at first, I had a lot of hesitation. That was how

I felt. Objectively, Mr. Brungie was happy if I went down there. He wanted me there, using it as often as I wanted to.

I had free access. Now, what was true of me is that I had complete access to use that beach any time

I wanted. There's also a parallel here, by the way, that my friends could only use it if I was there. In the same way, we only have access to God's throne because Christ has gone ahead of us.

We'll get to that later. So there's another parallel there. But I want you to see the difference between objective confidence and subjective confidence.

Objectively, I had confidence and free access to come any time that I want. Subjectively, I also felt the complete freedom to do that.

Now, I've had other people who have said, anytime you need this or you want this, you just call, you ask, and you get to use it. And sometimes that happens, and we don't necessarily feel the freedom to use it, do we?

Somebody might give us freedom to use something, and we think, I don't know. I just don't really feel that I should do that. I might be taking advantage of that person.

Even though they might give me access to do that, we might not necessarily subjectively feel like we have the confidence and the freedom to go ahead and take advantage of that, do we?

That's the difference between subjective confidence and objective confidence in the way that this word is used. Objectively, something is true of us.

We have personal and direct access to the throne of God. Subjectively, how do we feel about that?

It's not always that we feel like we can just walk into heaven's throne room and make our petitions before the Lord. Isn't that true?

Isn't it true that sometimes we just feel like, I'm not sure he wants to hear from me. It's been a while, or I'm not in a good place, or this happened yesterday, and I lost my temper, or I sinned in such and such a way.

Maybe I should just stay away a while. Subjectively, our confidence might be minimized. Objectively, our access is all the same.

Objectively, our access never changes because it's a new and living way. So the author here is not describing the freedom that we have in how we feel about coming in, a feeling of freedom.

He is describing here objectively what is true regardless of how we feel about it, that you and I have full and free personal access, direct access to the throne room of heaven itself.

That is objectively true regardless of whether we feel confident about it or not. And it is objectively true because of what

Christ has done. And we have freedom to enter the holy place, verse 19 says, since we have confidence to enter the holy place.

Now he's using here Old Testament language and symbolism that goes back to the tabernacle. Do you remember the tabernacle was the tent in the wilderness?

The back was closed off, but there was a veil at the front. And as you walked inside the tabernacle, on the right you would see the table of showbread, and on the left, the candlestick, or the candlelight, the candelabra.

I forget what it's called. What's that? Menorah. No, that's not it.

You should get somebody who preaches and knows a little bit more about what they're talking about. And as you come toward the back, there would be the altar of incense there.

And then there was the veil that separated the front chamber of the tabernacle from the Holy of Holies. Behind the veil was the

Ark of the Covenant. And that veil separated only by inches the Ark of the Covenant from the altar of incense.

And the priest had to tend the altar of incense every day, but only on one day of year, only one man could enter behind that veil.

And he entered behind that veil not with anybody else or with anything else other than the incense that he was to bring from the altar outside the tabernacle and the blood of the sacrifice that he was to bring behind that.

And there he would sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat, on the Ark of the Covenant, and then he would hurry out of there.

He had access on one day, one man, because of the blood of the sacrifice. So when the author here says in verse 19, since we have confidence to enter the holy place, he is alluding to that inner chamber of the tabernacle, not the outer chamber where the furniture was, but the inner chamber where the

Ark of the Covenant was, where Yahweh himself dwelt between, where his glory was manifestly seen between the wings of the cherub over the mercy seat on the

Ark of the Covenant. That was the holy place. Now, the author is already in the book of Hebrews likened the holy place to heaven because he has already drawn a connection.

That holy place where God dwelt amongst his people, that was accessible only by one person on one day of the year, that holy place is likened to heaven in Hebrews 9, verses 11 -12, when he says,

When Christ appeared as a high priest to the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, he entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

And in Hebrews 9, verses 11 -12, the author is likening heaven to that inner sanctum of the tabernacle.

That place behind the veil was a picture of heaven. God dwelt there. And that veil that separated men from the dwelling place of God was a reminder constantly every day of sin, that no man can approach

God. No man can step behind that veil. There's only one exception. He has to come by blood. And he has to come by blood, himself having been offered a sacrifice for himself.

He had to go once back to offer a sacrifice of the blood for the sins of him and his family, and then he would come back out, offer another sacrifice for the sins of the nation, and go back there.

And only on that one day of the year could he do that. And that veil constantly hanging there was a reminder of sin and the barrier that stands between us and God.

No man can approach God. No man can see God. No man can draw near to God because of our sin. So blood had to be offered to give us access to the

Holy of Holies. So in verse 19, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus.

But we don't enter just behind the veil, but we enter into the reality itself, into heaven itself.

We have access to the throne room of God. So we're not talking here in verse 19 about entering into the physical shadow of heaven, but into the real spiritual reality of heaven itself.

We have access to the throne of God. We have access to the greater thing, which is heaven itself, not just the symbol.

And this type of language, by the way, remember, this would be unthinkable to a Jew. There's one thing that no

Jew ever expected to have happen in their life, and that was for the high priest to bring them into the tabernacle and say, go ahead, step behind the veil into the presence of God.

Or even better yet, hey, I'm heading back there, do you want to come with me?

No Jew would have ever presumed to do that because he would know that he'd be struck dead for doing it. So the whole idea of a sinner entering into the very presence of God himself, that was almost inconceivable to an

Old Testament saint. They couldn't imagine that. They could only approach God through a mediator, a high priest, and only then he would do it on their behalf once a year.

That veil always separated them from God. It's unthinkable to a

Jew because it really is unthinkable to a sinner. Why should the God of all of heaven, the

Holy and Righteous One, why should He give us access to come and stand before Him and to pray, or to praise, or to petition

Him for anything? Why should the Holy One do that? Is not our sin heavy enough and the weight of it serious enough to keep us barred from heaven forever?

It certainly is, isn't it? All of my iniquity, my lying, my thieving, my blasphemy, my covetousness, my idolatry, my horrible thoughts, wicked in every way, all of my gossip and slander, every wicked and evil deed that I've done, every wicked and evil thought that I have ever thunk in my head in all of my life, all heaped together and added together, and God knows it all.

It's all written down in a book. He misses none of it. He sees every thought that I think is hidden from everybody.

He sees it, and He knows it, and He knows the motives of my heart, and He knows everything I have ever done in broad daylight or in darkness.

He knows everything I've ever wanted to do but lacked the opportunity to do. Every wicked deed thought of, every wicked deed conceived and not executed, every wicked deed ever executed,

He knows it all perfectly. What sinner, understanding the weight of that sin, would ever presume to step into the presence of heaven itself and to petition the

God of all of the universe, the God who knows His every wickedness and sin? What sinner could ever do that?

Do you feel the weight of that? You know why this is so unthinkable? There's only one way you can, and that is if blood has been shed to pay the price for your sin.

Then a priest who has shed that blood can take that blood back and say, this is the payment for the sin, and he can gain us access.

Under the old covenant, the holy of holy and the priest and the animal sacrifice, it was all a picture of what was to come.

And that is that there would come a perfect priest, not of the line of Aaron but of the order of Mechizedek, a perfect priest who himself would offer a sacrifice, but not an animal sacrifice, his own blood, his own body.

And then having offered that, he would step behind the veil into heaven itself. And if that's not amazing enough, he would then beckon us to come, to join him, to step behind the veil, enter into heaven itself, free, personal, and direct access to the very throne of God, before the very

God who weighs all of our sin and knows every last one of them. But because Christ has shed

His blood and the sin has been atoned for, all of that sin is taken out of the way, and the veil, as it were, is taken down, it is torn in two, it no longer is a barrier to us between heaven and us.

So, verse 19 says, since we have confidence to enter that holy place, and we do so by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way.

This is an interesting phrase, and I think that it is a lovely one. By a new and living way. That word new, there are a lot of words that are translated new in the

New Testament. We talk about being the new self, Ephesians chapter 4, to put on the new self. We talk about being a new creation in Jesus Christ, that's not this word new.

We talk about the new covenant. This author has actually used the word new previously to speak of the new covenant, but that's not the same word that's used here for new.

This word that is translated new here in verse 19, a new and living way, sorry, verse 20, a new and living way, this word for new is only used one time in all of the

New Testament, and it's right here. And here's the interesting thing about that word. The word is a prefix with a root word, and the root word means slain or slaughtered or killed, and the prefix means freshly, recently, or lately.

So if you look it up in a concordance or a dictionary, the literal transliteration of the word would be freshly slain or recently slain, recently slaughtered.

Now, eventually the idea of sacrifice got dropped from the meaning of the word, and the word just simply came to be used as a synonym for new or recent or something that is fresh.

But it's only used one time in the New Testament. And that is to say the author could have used a lot of words that could be translated new, but he chose this one, and why did he choose this one?

Because it's in the context of sacrifice. And I think that the author, I'm relatively certain, that the author has in mind the very thing that he's been talking about, the blood and the body of Christ.

And so this is the recently slaughtered living way. You and I have access through the recently slaughtered living way, the new and living way.

It is the living way because Christ himself is living, and, of course, this is a reference to his resurrection. You and I do not count upon an animal sacrifice to gain us entrance to God, but we count upon the one who was freshly slaughtered, and he lives.

And he is our high priest who has entered into heaven itself. Our way that we trust, the way that takes us into heaven itself, is the recently slaughtered and living one.

That's a beautiful picture. He is the one that leads to life, and by him we have access, by his blood, which he inaugurated for us, verse 20, through the veil that is his flesh.

That's an interesting phrase, through the veil that is his flesh, and there's a lot of ink that's been spilt on this. Because he's obviously referencing the veil, again, that stood between the outer chamber of the tabernacle and the

Holy of Holies, that veil that separated by a matter of only inches the altar of incense from the Ark of the

Covenant, which was behind that. It was only through that veil that the high priest, again, entered once a year and only on one day. And here he makes reference to that veil, but he says that is his flesh.

Now here's the question, here's what makes this difficult to interpret. In what sense is the flesh of Jesus Christ a veil?

Notice it says in verse 20, we enter by the new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh.

How is the flesh of Christ a veil? And this is the perplexing part. The veil was the thing that separated us from God.

So in what way does the author mean to say that the flesh of Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, separated us from God, or kept us from God?

And some people have taken that and tried to make all kinds of illusions and connections. They say, well, the flesh of Jesus then had to be ripped or torn in order to, just like the veil of the temple, had to be torn from top to bottom to give us access to God.

And if the flesh of Jesus Christ had not been torn, then still his flesh would be a barrier to us from entering into heaven itself.

So the veil is a barrier. In what way is the flesh of Christ a barrier to us unless it is torn?

That's what causes perplexion. I have a brief answer to it.

I'm not sure. I wouldn't die for this, but I think that this is the best one. And here it is.

The veil served not only as a barrier between men and God, but that veil was also the way into the

Holy of Holies, was it not? It was a barrier, but it also marked the way. You could close those doors back there.

Those doors serve two functions. They are a barrier to keep people out or people in, but they also mark the way into something.

In the same way, the veil in the tabernacle and later on in Solomon's temple, that veil was a barrier to keep everybody out, and it symbolized the separation between us and God because of our sin.

And that veil was torn in two when Jesus died on a cross. That veil was torn from top to bottom, symbolizing the access that we now have.

But it is not the barrier feature of the veil that is in mind, in the mind of the author. I think it is the fact that it marked the way.

So he is simply here using the veil as another reference to the way into the Holy of Holies because you had to go through the veil.

So he has inaugurated for us by his blood. We enter by his blood. We enter by a new or freshly slaughtered and living way, which he inaugurated for us, and we enter through that veil that is the way into the

Holy of Holies. And that way into the Holy of Holies is through his flesh. His flesh had to be sacrificed.

His blood had to be shed. And in that way, through that sacrifice, which was his body and his blood, that complete sacrifice itself marked the way and gains us access through, as it were, behind the veil, where Christ is now and where he has already gone.

So that, I think, is the solution to it. There is only one way into the Holy of Holies.

And Christianity is an exclusive religion in this sense, an exclusive faith. There is no other way to God except through Jesus Christ.

And some people shy away from that. Some people are upset by that. Some people even try and apologize for God for that.

They say there is no other way to get to heaven except through Jesus Christ. You can't get there through Mohammed or Joseph Smith or any mediums or spiritists or any other path, not through your good deeds, not through any other way can you have access into the throne room of God and into eternal life.

It is through Christ and Christ alone. And some people, some Christians say that and then feel like they have to apologize for God.

I know I don't really personally like that, but that's just what Scripture says. So I just got to tell you what it says. I think we should embrace that and double down on it and proclaim it as a glorious thing.

There is a way. Right? We ought to be thankful that there is at least one. And it is through the body and the blood of Jesus Christ.

And it is an exclusive way because only one person has done what is necessary to gain us access to the throne room of God.

Only one person has done the deed. So if you have a disease and there is only one cure and you go into a doctor and he says you have this disease because you swam in a slough when you were a kid so therefore you have this and there is one cure for this.

It is this medication. Would you, like a fool, say, well, one medication? How narrow -minded and bigoted and exclusive is that one medication?

I want to be able to take multiple medications. I want to be able to offer to everybody all kinds of medications to solve their dilemma.

That's not how it works. If there is one cure, there is one cure for the disease. Our disease is sin.

Our problem is separation from God. Only one person has done what is necessary to solve our problem and to cure our disease by raising us from the dead.

And that is Jesus Christ. So yes, there is only one way. And I say it gladly, happily.

That's what Scripture teaches. And the good news is that there is a way. There is a way to have my sins forgiven.

There is a way to be made righteous. There is a way to have eternal life and to enter into heaven itself.

But it is only through the Lord Jesus Christ, by his blood, by the freshly slaughtered and living way, through the veil that is his flesh, that is the access that we have into the throne room of God himself.

So this describes the access that we have, a free and unfettered, continual, freely spoken access.

We come right into heaven itself. Our entrance is secured for us because of what Christ has done, right into the Holy of Holies. If we were speaking in the language of the

Old Testament text, we would be able to step behind the veil and behold with our own faces the

Shekinah glory of Yahweh himself. Positioned between the wings of the cherub, over the

Ark of the Covenant, over the mercy seat, we would be able to behold that glory. That was just a small token in the

Old Covenant. It was just a small token of God's promise that his people will dwell with him. And now because of what

Christ has done, someday you and I will stand before him and we will see him face to face. And we will not be consumed.

No man today can see God and live because we are not glorified. But because of what Christ has done, he has taken our sins out of the way, he will glorify us and he will fit us for heaven.

And when we stand before him, we will be completely righteous because of what Christ has done. And only because of what

Christ has done. And when we are completely righteous and we are made fit for heaven with that glorified spirit, in that glorified state and eventually a glorified body, you and I will be able to stand, as it were, right before the

Shekinah glory and behold it fully. And to enjoy it. And to receive from him delights and pleasures and joys and fellowship everlastingly and forevermore.

We have free and unfettered access to God. Second, we have a great high priest who is in heaven.

Verse 21. We have a great high priest over the house of God. And he is just reminding us of what he has told us about the

Melchizedekian priesthood of Christ, that our high priest, he is impeccably qualified, he is faithful, he is sinless, he is living, he is eternal, he is a permanent priest, he ever lives, he is able to save, powerful, he is the divine son, he is the one who upholds all of creation by the word of his power, he is immutable and he does not change, he has finished his work, he is a perfect priest, he is a perfect intercessor, he has done a perfect work, he himself was totally sinless and he stood in the place of all those for whom he died and he represents them even today and now that high priest, having finished that perfect work, now goes into heaven and offers a perfect intercession for his people.

And now he has perfected forever all those who are sanctified, he has done that work and completed it and gone into heaven itself.

And the author is just causing us to reflect again upon these two great truths. You and I have access to the throne room of God because we have a high priest who has already gone ahead and he sits now in the throne room of God at the father's right hand, waiting until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet, he ever lives to make intercession for us and he beckons us to come and to enjoy the blessings and benefits of that unfettered and free, confident, bold access to his throne all because of what he has done, he beckons us to come.

And he has gone ahead for us and because we are in him positionally, he has taken us with him so we can say our citizenship is there, our life is there, our inheritance is there, truly everything that is most valuable to us is already there.

And Christ is there. And he doesn't stand outside of the veil of heaven, he doesn't stand outside of heaven saying to us, now go on in,

I think it will be alright, I mean I think my father will be okay with you, why don't you go ahead and go in and give it a try.

That's not the kind of access we have. He has gone ahead. Hebrews chapter 6, verse 19 and 20 says, this hope we have is an anchor for the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil.

Notice the language. We have a hope behind the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

What is the author saying? Christ has already gone ahead. He's already paved the way.

He by offering that sacrifice has already stepped behind the veil, that is where your hope is, sure and steadfast and immovable, cling to that hope, it's already behind the veil, he is already there and now the divine son says, come on in and one day we're going to get to.

That is a hope you can cling to. Now if it is true, since it is true, not if, but since it is true, that we have bold access to the throne room of God and since it is true that our high priest has gone there already as a forerunner for us and that is where our hope is, since those two things are true, then there's three things that you and I ought to do.

Draw near, hold fast and encourage others to do the same. That's verses 22 through 25.

Draw near. You see, if this is not true, if he has not paved that way, if he has not gone behind the veil, then there is nothing for you to draw near to.

If you don't believe that he has access and that he has granted you access, then you are not going to be motivated to draw near to him, but if you understand and you realize fully he has already gone ahead, he has torn the veil in two, he has stepped into the presence of God and now he welcomes me to come, he has given me that access, if you believe that in your heart of hearts, then the number one thing you need to do is draw near to him.

Come to him. You and I have blessings which were unimaginable to Old Testament Jews.

Christian, you enjoy something today that Moses, Noah, Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jacob, none of them enjoyed what you have.

None of them have what you have. You have been provided something under the new covenant that none of them could ever imagine being true.

They couldn't approach God like you and I can approach God. They cannot draw near like you and I could draw near. They couldn't have confidence in their own righteousness and a high priest who ever lives to make intercession for them.

They didn't know about any of these things. They lived under a different covenant, an old covenant, which was a picture of what was to come and you and I enjoy the fullness of it.

We have blessings and we enjoy an intimacy with God that David never had. David never had that access.

David could never approach God like you and I can. That's amazing. I hope you understand how blessed you are.

I hope you understand what God has provided for you in Jesus Christ. And it just so happens that these two things, direct access to God and a high priest in heaven, they are perfectly suited to meet our most fundamental need.

And what is our most fundamental need? We need to have somebody who can draw us near to God, who can bring us to the

Father. Because without a high priest who has offered that kind of a sacrifice and without that kind of intercession, you and I can never approach

God. Our most fundamental need is to have our sin issue dealt with because the weight of our sin is more than we can bear.

And the wrath of God on us for our sin is exactly what we deserve. And if that is not taken out of the way, if sin is not removed, and the debt of that is not taken out of the way and accounted for, then you and I cannot approach

Him and we cannot have any confidence and we cannot come into heaven and we shall never see heaven. So what has

God provided for us? The very thing that we most desperately needed, forgiveness of sins, infinite and perfect righteousness, and access to the throne of God.

That is what it means to be perfected by the death of Christ. These are the things that He has given to us.

The weight of our sin was more than we can bear, but Christ has taken it away. Glory to Him and glory to His name.

Let's pray. Father, we rejoice in Your provision for us in Your Son.

We thank You, Father, that even though we were unworthy and condemned and deserved divine justice, for all of our iniquity and all of our sin, that Christ has borne the cost of that and paid the penalty for it.

We thank You that now all that is necessary is for us to respond to that gracious offer through repentance and faith, the gifts that You give to those whom

You call to Yourself. And if there's anybody seated here today or listening to my voice who does not know

Christ as Savior and as Lord and has never been born again and had their sins taken away, Father, I pray that You would work in their hearts, convict them of their sin, help them to feel the weight of Your wrath against their sin and the weight of their guilt so that they may see in Christ an only remedy and a perfect remedy, a perfect Savior, able to give them access to heaven itself, forgiveness of sins, and divine righteousness.

May You be glorified not only in the hearts of those who are Yours as we respond to this truth and draw near to You through the access that You've given to us, but may

You be glorified in drawing unbelievers to Christ that they may see Him as a precious Savior and find in Him forgiveness of their sins and everlasting life.

Be honored, we pray, and glorified through all of our response to this message in Christ's name. Please stand.

His mercy and love at the feet of Jesus We cry holy, holy

We cry holy is the

Lamb His mercy and love

Holy, holy, holy We cry holy, holy, holy

We cry holy is the

Lamb Have a great week. God bless you.