Of the Holy Scriptures (1:6-10)

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An exposition of the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. Chapter 1:6-10 (Holy Scripture 2)

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Excellent. Well, as I mentioned, we're now in Lesson 3, in the second half of Chapter 1, the
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Holy Scriptures, paragraphs 6 through 10, in this first chapter, and it's a repeat, and it's a repeat intentionally.
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I've added a verse just for our opening passage here, and it's 2 Timothy 3, 14 -17.
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Would anyone here like to read that passage, 2 Timothy 3, 14 -17?
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Thanks, brother, appreciate that.
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Thank you, thanks so much, brother. So I've added the verse here, and verse 14 to verses 15 -17, and this is because it is one of the key verses as it relates to the sufficiency of God's Word, which we will spend a good period of time on tonight.
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And so if you remember back to last week, by way of a quick review, as we looked at the first five paragraphs of the first chapter of the
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Second Lenten Confession, we looked at the identity, the authority, and oh, and I missed it there for some reason, the identity, authority, and it was the necessity of Scripture.
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And in paragraphs 6 through 10, we're going to look at four different aspects now of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture, what does it mean that the
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Word of God is clear, the availability of Scripture, and oh, sorry, the sufficiency, the clarity, that's it, availability, and finally, the finality of Scripture.
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Sorry, I'm botching that. So the sufficiency of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture, the availability of Scripture, and the finality of Scripture.
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And we'll start with the sufficiency of Scripture, and that is covered in the sixth paragraph of the
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Confession. Harrison, you read the passage, so I'll pick on someone here at this table on my right.
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Would someone like to read paragraph number 6 on the sufficiency of Scripture? Thank you, brother.
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The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the
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Holy Scripture, unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the
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Spirit or tradition of men. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the
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Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the
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Word, and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the
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Church common to human actions in society which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the
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Word, which are always to be observed. Thank you, brother. I appreciate that very much.
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So as we look at the exposition, we'll pick it apart piece by piece, and as we look here at chapter 1 and paragraph 6, we begin to see the outlining of this concept of the sufficiency of Scripture, and it begins with that phrase,
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I won't read it all, but the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the
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Holy Scripture. Now, it begs the question, what does it mean when we talk about the sufficiency of Scripture?
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What is the sufficiency of Scripture? There are a couple of different definitions here that we'll work with.
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One comes from Joel Beakey and Paul Smalley's Reformed Systematic Theology, if you're familiar with that four -volume set.
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In the first of the four volumes, they summarize, they define it this way, the sufficiency of Scripture is limited to the
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Bible's purpose in revealing truth for our salvation and obedience.
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That when God is dealing with our faith and our obedience, His Word is alone sufficient to inform us in these areas.
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Meaning that if you were to come across someone on the street and they were to say, well, no, no, no, in order for you to truly obey
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God, yes, you need to read the Bible, but you also need to read this book from the
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Watchtower Society or this volume that was written by some mystic in China or Asia or North America, whatever the case might be.
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You need this as the key to unlock really a godly life, a life that pleases the
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Lord, a true faith, and that simply is contrary to the sufficiency of Scripture as we'll see it arise here in a moment.
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Sam Waldron, he defines the sufficiency of Scripture in this way. He says, the sufficiency of the
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Scriptures is nothing more nor less than their sufficiency to achieve the purposes of redemptive revelation.
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That if there is redemptive revelation that is sufficient, it is found itself in the
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Scriptures. He continues, the Bible is not sufficient for all that we do, but it does speak to all that all we do sufficiently as to the glory of God, the way of salvation and the path of duty.
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It is sufficient to achieve the purposes of redemptive revelation without supplementation by new revelation, contained by some and Baptists and others for traditions of men like those extra -biblical traditions claimed by the
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Roman Catholic Church. And he continues, if I can lean a little bit further on one of his examples, this example of a man named, we'll call him
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Chris College, or he calls him Chris College, first and last name, and a typical Tuesday in his life as he studies engineering.
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And he says here, we may take my way of illustration, a typical, by way of illustration, a typical
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Tuesday in the life of Chris College, a university student majoring in engineering. His Bible is insufficient.
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Now, that in and of itself is a terrifying statement. So what is he going to say? His Bible is insufficient as a textbook for his classes in calculus, biology and French, but it does show him the path of duty throughout a typical
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Tuesday. It teaches him to pray and read his Bible in the morning, to be diligent and discerning in his studies, and to avert his eyes when the college temptress walks through the library when she is studying.
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It does provide him an infallible record of creation and of redemptive history.
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This record does set certain boundaries or limits which guide him in his study of biology, history.
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Any theory of history or biology which contradicts the historical statement of the
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Bible, he will properly, I think it means to say, he will properly reject.
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Thus, while the ethno -religious sphere of human knowledge is distinct from all spheres, it is basic to them all.
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And so what he's saying is, for this Chris College, or maybe for you at work, while the scripture is not in and of itself sufficient to deal with every possible thing under the sun as it relates to our understanding of salvation, our knowledge of God and of what it looks like to be obedient to him, of our duties that are due to him, scripture is entirely sufficient and is the only sufficient rule for faith and life.
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Now, does that make sense, or are there any aspects there that would anyone lean in and say, well,
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I don't actually fully disagree. I would add this point or that point. Is there anyone there?
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So there's a theoretical agreement across, well, we'll say broadly, evangelicalism.
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But in practice, it's absent. I would agree. What would be an example, if you could think of one?
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Because the assertion is, well, there's something prohibiting it in scripture.
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But, you know, so it allows for it. And then it comes to certain amounts of worship, or carrying on in the
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Christian life. Well, it is sufficient. But you're going to have
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Christians who are going to see it differently and say, well, it's not normally promoted.
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You're going to have to say, well, there's something that disqualifies that. Yeah, and another example might be what we see oftentimes in the modern church growth movement, where there are all kinds of plans of men that are implemented as, this is the must -be, the fail -safe, this is the necessary thing for people to do.
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If you want to be, I think of a good example, Andy Stanley at one time, though it's low -hanging fruit,
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I appreciate, but he said that really there should be, that small churches are just being selfish.
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And they should cease being small churches, and they should join other churches, and all churches should be big churches.
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Or he once criticized the sequential, systematic teaching through books of scripture, and said that that was lazy, that instead preachers, they should have a new text, a new theme, a new idea every week rather than that.
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And really, if you're going to say that small churches are selfish, and that sequential expository preaching is lazy, you are, in a sense, you're adding a condition to the duty of a
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Christian, how we are to glorify God, how we are to obey Him. And because we find neither of those expressly stated in scripture, whether he appreciates it or not, he's undermining the sufficiency of scripture as he does that.
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Do you guys have any thoughts or things that you see? Maybe not even that the church growth movement would be inclined to, but are there ways that we as Christians today, even in our reformed, conservative, evangelical traditions, where we might be tempted to undermine the sufficiency of scripture?
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And then the other way around for those, you know, somebody comes around and says,
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I want to join your church because it's a smaller church, because I come from a big church, and then, you know, they would complain about the big church.
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There's nothing wrong with the big church. Yeah. Also, there could be some other reasons, but you're putting some, there's a tradition there that, you know, small church, big church, it's relative.
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Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it can work in the opposite direction. Yeah, yeah.
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Any other thoughts there? It's not like the great error, but it's really the consistency, when you kind of measure it.
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Yeah. Yeah, it's that, yeah, keep that close at hand, brother.
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It's that logical fallacy, that appeal to authority, where the sufficiency of scripture is brought into question by our leaning on, you know, in many respects, a faithful preacher, teacher of the word.
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We would see it in worship, in terms of the regulative principle of worship versus the normative principle of worship.
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Do we let God's word regulate how we worship, or do we say whatever the
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Lord doesn't forbid is fair game, and so we can do that? And in those ways, we undermine the sufficiency of scripture as well.
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Now, the classic text that we would use to assert, or that we would say teaches very clearly the sufficiency of scripture would be, oh, and you know what?
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I must apologize. As often as I put these together, I find my own errors as I teach through them, but 2
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Timothy 3 .15 -17. It's often thought of as the classic assertion of the sufficiency of scripture.
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And here, Sam Waldron, if I can lean on him, he points out that there are three assertions made in this text regarding the sufficiency of the
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Bible. And I think that if we look at that first paragraph and then we compare it with this layout,
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I think he's correct here. Where is it here?
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The sufficiency of scripture, it demonstrates that it makes one wise for salvation, in verse 15.
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It presents with a four -fold usefulness for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.
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And this is relative to the text, not to the paragraph. And it does not make a man complete.
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Sorry, it makes a man, what am I saying here? Complete and sufficient for all his needs as a Christian.
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I'll have to resend this document out. It makes a man complete and sufficient for all his needs as a
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Christian. It should be noted that many other texts here teach the sufficiency of scripture.
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And we'll look at a couple. Deuteronomy chapter 4 and verse 2. You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the
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Lord your God, that I command you. That if God's word is sufficient, we need not add to it, nor take away from it.
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When Paul was speaking to the Ephesian elders about his ministry, he speaks in Acts chapter 20 about how he went house to house, ministering the word to them.
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As he ministered the word to them, he says in Acts 20 .27, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.
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That all of God's counsel is found in his word.
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Or in Psalm 119 verse 65, Great peace have those who love your law, nothing can make them stumble.
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That is, it teaches in 2 Timothy 3, that it makes a complete man, one who is complete, equipped for every good work.
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So God's word makes a man so that nothing under the sun can make him stumble.
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And then in chapter 1 and paragraph 6, the confession adds this.
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Nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the
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Spirit or traditions of men. Now, you'll remember last week
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I told you how the confession frequently is interacting with Roman Catholicism and some of the other excesses that it sees around itself and around the framers during that day.
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And we see here that it deals with, I think, two things that are very relevant for us still today.
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Again, people will ask, why? Why a 17th century confession for a 21st century church?
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Well, because it deals with the same issues that we are still dealing with today. One of them is the traditions of men.
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And when we look around ourselves, we can see, for instance, in the Roman Catholic Church, that that continues to be a problem today.
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The traditions of men continue to be a stumbling block and continue to undermine the sufficiency of God's word.
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So the Roman Catholic Church today continues to teach that we are bound, that the Christian is bound, both by the word of God and by church tradition, by the decrees of the
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Pope and the Roman system of church, if I can call it that, as well as other human documents, human teaching.
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And at the same time, as the 1699 framers were dealing with Roman Catholicism, I mentioned last week that the
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Quakers were beginning to rise up. And with Quakerism came its own excesses.
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And those are excesses that weren't novel or new to that day, nor are they new to our day today.
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But these excesses of seeking, as the Confession says, new revelation of the
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Spirit, are things that have really existed as long as the church has existed.
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And I'll quote here from a couple of different places. John Ruther, he writes, it is in this book here, it's a volume edited by Rob Ventura on the
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Second Lenin Confession of Faith. He says this about these excesses. He says, Church history evidences this tendency to add to God's word early in the 2nd century through a teacher named
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Montanism, after whom the movement known as, sorry, Montanus, after whom the movement known as Montanism was named.
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This movement was directed against the coldness and spiritual apathy of the professing church, the champion of the charismatic gifts and the continuing revelation of the
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Spirit through gifted men. It resisted systematic study of the Bible and emphasized experience more than knowledge.
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Tertullian was a defender of this position. It was the precursor of both the Pietistic and Pentecostal movements in modern times.
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Now does that sound familiar? In terms of critiques that are leveled against what we might say as conservative
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Christianity today, that there is a spiritual apathy and a coldness in the professing church.
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Now in many cases, that criticism that might be leveled against the church can be true.
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It can be a true diagnosis of the problem but then a wrong prescription for the remedy of that problem.
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And so, what happened? Well, through the Montanists, what essentially we see is a 2nd century
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Pentecostal movement where people are relying on the ecstatic gifts of the
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Spirit to demonstrate the validity of their profession of faith and there are prophecies and interpretations of prophecies and really a wide, a whole bunch of disorder in the church.
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And so, when we look in the history of the church, not only do we encounter then this excess of Montanism but then we see the response.
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And here this is coming from one article I found by a Presbyterian church that is rather helpful.
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They speak about this, about Claudius Apollinarius, the Bishop of Hierapolis, where it says, "...in
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about 172 composed a book against Montanism, as did another churchman from Asia Minor.
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Apollonius in about 2010, Publius Julius, Bishop of Debeltum, I'm not sure how to say that exactly, and a large number of other bishops signed a public letter condemning the heresy.
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Serapion, Bishop of Antioch in 211 affirmed, and this is what they said, that this false order of the so -called new prophecy has been abhorred by the whole brotherhood out of the world."
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And then again, another commentator from the early church, this one an anonymous commentator, says this, "...the
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faithful in Asia met for this purpose of examining Montanism many times and in many places in Asia.
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They examined the recent sayings, i .e. their prophecies, carefully, declared them to be profane and rejected the heresy.
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So at length they were thrust out of the church and excluded from the fellowship."
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So there was perhaps a coldness and a formalism which we should at all times want to put away from ourselves in the church and arising from that or arising out of some discontentment there, there is this
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Montanism, these ecstatic gifts, this second -century Pentecostalism, if we can call it that.
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And the church not only saw to it to dispel some of these excesses, but they actually put some of these folks out of the church.
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And then we see the Reformers and then Puritans adding on later on to their own views on this.
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John Calvin said, "...all our wisdom is contained in the Scriptures, and neither ought we to learn nor teachers to draw their instruction from any other source."
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William Perkins wrote this, I believe William Perkins, if I remember correctly, was called the
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Prince of the Puritans, one of the early Puritans, "...the sufficiency is that whereby the word of God is so complete that nothing may be either put to it or taken from it which appertaineth to the proper end thereof."
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And then William Ames, last of all, said this, "...all things necessary to salvation."
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And this really mirrors that definition of sufficiency that we looked at earlier, "...are contained in the
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Scriptures, and also those things necessary for the instruction and edification of the church."
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So you look at Waldron's definition, you look at Beakey and Smalley's definition, you look at William Ames' definition of the sufficiency of Scripture, they all align, one and the same.
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And I looked at a number of other definitions from some other folks, from John, I believe it was
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John Ruther, and from Wayne Grudem, and they align as well. So, the
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Scriptures are in themselves sufficient, not for necessarily calculus, but for all things pertaining to life and godliness, all things pertaining to faith and life.
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And even as we relate to things like science, as Sam Waldron calls it, biology history, when we do encounter things where things out in the world seek to interact with truth that God speaks on, in those cases,
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God's Word is sufficient, even if it doesn't speak in complete nuance, in a complete picture.
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If someone says, millions of years, billions of years, we need to come back and say, actually, because God's Word is sufficient, this is the case.
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So, I've heard it said that the Second Lenten Confession, and we will look at it in greater detail, must be, in some ways, a young earth creation document.
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It is a six -day literal creation document that would affirm that and would align with that.
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Paragraph number seven. Would anyone like to read that paragraph? Thanks, Isaiah, appreciate that, brother.
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Thank you, brother, appreciate that. So, as we look at the exposition of that, again, we were looking at the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Now, as we get to paragraph seven, we're looking at the clarity of Scripture. And this is what
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I thought I was referencing earlier. Waldron, as he aligns his commentary on the
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Confession, I think lines it up quite nicely with paragraph seven, where he says that here, the
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Confession makes three important assertions. One, that the Bible is clear. The Bible is perfectly clear in many respects.
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And yet, number two, the Bible is not clear in all of its parts. That there are aspects of God's Word that are more difficult to understand, and the
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Bible is not equally clear to all, as in all people. And so, we'll look at each of those statements, because that is, in fact, what it is saying here.
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And so, in several places, we see that the perspicuity of Scripture is clearly taught.
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I've always appreciated that the clarity of Scripture has used a word that is, in itself, at least for modern
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English speakers, quite unclear. What is the perspicuity of Scripture? And really, that word perspicuity means that it is vivid.
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It is lucid. Think about when you've been driving in your car down the road, and maybe you've driven on a lot of gravel roads, or whatever the case is, and you get all those little picks and scratches and cracks in your window and spots on it from all the road grit and salt and whatever it is that wears down your windshield, and you've been driving, and then one day you decide, okay, we're just going to spend the money, we're going to get a new windshield.
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The car needs a new windshield. And so you drive it to the dealership or to the glass repair shop.
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You're kind of peeking under that crack that's right in your line of vision as you're going there. You drop it off.
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You come back an hour and a half later, and it comes up, and save maybe two pieces of masking tape that are at the top of the windshield.
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You get in the car, and for the first time, it's like you've been given a pair of glasses to see the world anew with.
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That's what the word, if you want to use the word or have a picture of perspicuity, that window in that moment, you're seeing the world with perfect perspicuity.
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And so in several places, we see this perspicuity of Scripture taught, and some of it implicit, and others explicit.
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And we'll look at a couple. Maybe I'll have a few folks take turns. Would someone like to read Psalm 19 verses 7 and 8?
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Sam, can I pick on you, brother? Thank you. And Psalm 119, verse 130.
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Thank you, sister. And you know what? Maybe we'll just do one more. Matthew 22, verse 31.
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Anyone on this side of the table? Okay, thank you. Thanks, Robert. Okay, take it away, Sam. The law of the
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Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
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Thank you, brother. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul is a good thing, but that it's able to make wise even the simple.
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Notice it doesn't say to make wiser the learned or to make clear the intelligent, but it makes wise the simple, implying that the simple can read it and benefit from it.
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Kath, Psalm 119. Again, that just echoes those words there.
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And then Robert. Brother, if I can pose the question to you, how does that teach the perspicuity of Scripture?
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And he's expecting that they have read it and understood it. It reminds me of when others seek to trip him up and ask him about the resurrection of the dead.
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Whose wife will this woman be in the resurrection if this whole sequence of husbands have died and our
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Lord, he doesn't get sucked into that verbal trap. He says, you know neither the power of God nor the
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Scriptures. With the expectation being that these men, these lawyers, these teachers would have read the
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Scriptures, would have understood it and would have ascertained the power of God in resurrection through that reading of the
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Scriptures. The Lord expects us not only to read his word, but to understand his word.
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And so we should come to God's word. Sometimes we hear this, I'm sure many of you are familiar with this.
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And I'm not saying those who are unregenerate, but brothers or sisters in Christ or even our own children who say when
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I read the Scriptures and trusting that they are reading with regenerate hearts,
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I'm reading it but I'm not understanding it. We should encourage them to continue to read it, to continue to, what
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I will oftentimes counsel people to do is get a notebook, write down, and this is something that I have shamelessly borrowed from someone else.
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I can't remember who it was, but it's good counsel. Get a notebook as you're reading the Scriptures for the first time.
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Every question you have, just write down the question. You don't necessarily have to find the answer to it. Just write down the question.
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And then as you're reading Scripture, just keep writing it down. You might end up with 50 pages of questions at the end of that first reading.
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But after you've read through the Scriptures the whole time, then come back to Genesis 1 .1, open that book, and there's a good likelihood that you can answer a third or two -thirds of the questions there because now you have seen that you've seen the whole story and you know the answers to these questions as you go.
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And then with the remaining questions that you have, now go be curious. Go chase down the answers to those.
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And that removes someone from that rut of being stuck, let's say, in Leviticus asking the question, what is this?
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How do I make sense of this? What do I do with this as a Christian? Whereas when they get to, hopefully, they've gotten through Galatians, they've gotten through Hebrews, they've gotten through some of these other passages of Scripture, and they're beginning to have a framework through which they can read and understand these things.
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Now, with that said, and maybe acknowledging or bunny -hopping, hopping on to what I just said, while Scripture is in itself clear, not all
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Scriptures are equally clear. And we see again, if 2
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Timothy 3, 14 -16 is the classic text for the perspicuity of Scripture, then 2
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Peter 3, it's interesting, it's almost exactly the same for the exception of the person who the letter is written by or written for.
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2 Peter 3, 14 -16, deals with some of these more difficult passages.
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And yet, it teaches, while not all Scriptures are clear, equally clear in and of themselves, it speaks to the
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New Testament Scriptures as being inspired. And so I appreciate it that while it lays out a difficulty for us, it also lays out a blessing for those who read carefully.
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So 2 Peter 3, 14 -16, Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him, without spot or blemish, and at peace, and count the patience of our
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Lord as salvation. Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters.
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There are some things, here it is, there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.
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There's a comma there. I'm so grateful there's a comma and not a period. Because what do we see there?
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As they do the other Scriptures. Lumping Paul's words here, his letters even, with Scripture, Peter acknowledges that not all passages of Scripture are equally clear in themselves.
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And I want to pose the question to you, how do we solve this problem, dealing with some passages that are more difficult to understand than others?
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How do we deal with these things without becoming like, again, just to pick on someone who's quite,
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I guess, easy to pick on, like the Watchtower Society, or the Mormons, or those who rely on extra -biblical revelation in its way undermining the sufficiency of Scripture to explain these difficult passages?
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What might you suggest? How do we deal with hard texts without undermining the sufficiency of Scripture?
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I think we need to mine, go down into the text, go down into Scripture before we come back up and start looking at our horizon to see what other men, to hear second -hand, third -hand, what other men have seen.
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Let's go down, and go down the shaft, as it were, and look for ourselves. And what you pointed out there,
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Brother, we'll look at in verses 9 and 10, when we deal with the finality of Scripture, that the confession as it deals with the finality of Scripture, it really does give us the,
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I think, one of the chief means through which we come to these difficult texts, that we rely on the analogy of faith and the analogy of Scripture.
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And I'll define those a little bit as we get into 9 and 10, but we're comparing Scripture to Scripture. And so Scripture is not undermined in the process as we go, okay, well, what does
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Revelation chapter 20 mean as it speaks about the Millennium? And why do
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I not see this in other places in Scripture? Okay, well, how do I make sense of this?
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Now we're getting into biblical interpretation, but looking at this in its context, understanding its genre, and what else does
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Scripture have to say about this topic? Anything else that you guys might...
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Well, of course, the Scripture contains also words of prophecy that is not clear, because some of it has been fulfilled, and some are not.
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Yeah, and some of it is sealed up.
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There's... I'm reminded of Deuteronomy 29 .29, which is in line, maybe,
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Robert, with what you've said, which is sometimes people are barking up trees that they don't need to be barking up, because the
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Lord has not revealed that. Deuteronomy 29 .29 as Moses is dealing with the nation of Israel, just before they're about to cross the
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Jordan River, he's standing before them, and he is giving this Deuteronomy. It means
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Deuteros is the second, or number two. It's the second reading of the
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Namos. It's the second reading of the law is what's happening here. And in verse 29, the secret things belong to the
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Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
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There are things that the Lord has revealed to us, and there are things that he has not revealed. And we need to be content not to know the answers to every single question.
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And that's not to give us an excuse to say, well, I'm a pan -millennialist. It'll all pan out in the end.
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If the Lord has spoken, we should seek to ascertain what he has spoken about. But we should also have humility to understand that we won't understand everything exhaustively.
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As an under -shepherd in Christ's church, I think that another important means is the body of Christ and the local church.
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I hope it's the case that men and women, boys and girls, come to the
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Lord's church on the Lord's day, and they hear the word preached, and they learn things, and they benefit, they glean in ways that they would have not otherwise benefited in their own private reading of the word.
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The Spirit is illuminating, to use a word that, if I'm not mistaken, was used in paragraph number one, illuminating the text of Scripture.
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Yes, nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary.
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The inward illumination of the word by the Spirit through private reading, as well as through public reading, and the preaching and teaching of God's word.
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And those are just a few of the ways that we can look at some of these difficult aspects of the text and come to a better understanding without undermining the
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Scriptures. And then, number three, Waldron says, well, the Scriptures are clear.
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The Bible is not equally clear to all people, and I have added there, i .e.,
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those without the Spirit of God. And we see that taught in 1 Corinthians 2 .14.
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The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
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I can think of an example in my life where I saw this firsthand, where the
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Lord saved us, and probably many of you have a similar experience, where the Lord saved Nicole and I.
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It was in a church that really, largely, did not believe the Bible, and sadly, did not have leadership that believed or preached the
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Bible. And I want to tread carefully, but I think, and I say this with humility, before the
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Lord was a church largely made up of unregenerate people. And one of the evidences of this was, as the
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Lord saved us, we were very encouraged by it, but we began reading our Bibles and speaking about what we were reading and what we were learning, and other people began reading their
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Bibles along with us. And a couple of the interactions that I had with people,
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I think of one particular woman, and this is a dead giveaway as to the health of the church, she was one of the elders of the church, and she said that this was really the first time that she had ever read her
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Bible seriously, and I was excited for her, that she was reading the
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Bible for herself, though she was an elder, which in and of itself is difficulty, of course.
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And I said, in my excitement, that's great, what are you learning? What have been your gleanings as you're going through the text?
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And she said, I've learned that there's a lot of incest in the Bible. And I remember thinking, that's all you've learned?
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That's all you've learned from your reading? And there was another lady there who spoke, we were talking to her, and she had confessed that she had never, and she had been a professing
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Christian for decades, she had never really read her Bible, and we were driving her home one day, we were,
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Nicole and I were in our early twenties, and she was in her mid to late fifties, and I asked her, why?
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Why haven't you read the Bible? And she said, because when I read it, it's like it's in a different language.
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It just makes no sense to me at all. And the question is, and the
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Lord knows her heart, I don't, but the question is, why would a person have that experience? Well, because God's Word is spiritually discerned.
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It comes to us through that inward illumination of the Spirit, and those who are without that Spirit are not able to discern the meaning of the text.
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I'm not sure if anyone has any thoughts on that, but I find that, even as I recount those stories, heartbreaking for those people, that they have something that appears, a semblance of godliness, a parroting of godliness, but they're lacking that, the power of true godliness, the power of the true understanding of God's Word.
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Has this experience been universal for people here, in terms of observing that?
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Yeah, it's very difficult to talk about, it's difficult to see, when you see people in those conditions, and yet, when you begin really pressing them on their knowledge of Christ, or their submission to Him, their faith in Him, what would appear to be a saving faith, you see very quickly that they still, they do not want the
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Christ of Scripture. They want the Christ of something, but they don't want the Christ of their own imagination, of their own making, but not the
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Christ of Scripture. Paragraph 8. Sam, do you want to read that for me, brother?
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Thank you. In all controversies of religion, the
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Church is finally to appeal to them. But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have a right unto and interest in the
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Scriptures, and are commanded in the fear of God to lead and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the
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Word of God, one and plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable and to be patient and comfort of the
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Scriptures in our hope." Thank you, brother. Here, again, Sam Waldron defines this, or describes this paragraph as the availability of Scripture.
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That Scripture is given to us in these two languages, in Hebrew or in Aramaic, in parts, in the
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Old Testament, and in Greek in the New Testament. And I really appreciate here, as we were looking at Canon last week, the comments here, being immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.
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And I didn't go down this bunny trail today, although it's a fascinating study to look at all of the copies, partial and whole, of the
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Old Testament and the New Testament that we have. And with every archaeological discovery, the purity of God's Word being again and again and again confirmed.
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So that people say, no, the Jews weren't in Egypt during that time. And then, lo and behold, they find something that evidences that.
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No, that this king didn't exist. Lo and behold, they find something that evidences that. This location didn't exist.
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Then we find something that evidences that. We find the Caesars and their images on coins, so that you can go on eBay right now and buy, and my wife and I have looked at this and joked around about doing it, but you can go and get a denarius with the inscription of Caesar, with the thought or the hope, maybe, and this can quickly go down the trail of idolatry, that it would be one of the denarii that Christ held up and said, whose inscription is on this?
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Give to Caesar that which is Caesar, and give to God that which is God, that you can find those denarii with Caesar's inscription on it from the days of Christ still today.
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And it says here that it's translated into the vulgar language of every nation. Not into the, when we think of vulgar language, we think of dirty language, of filthy language.
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And what that means simply is into the common language of every nation into which they come, so that God's word is accessible.
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The goal, I believe it was William Tyndale, of having a Bible that the plow boy could read is the case.
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And this should inspire us, as we see this, that the Lord has spoken to us clearly. He has spoken to us sufficiently, authoritatively, inherently, that as he has spoken to us in these ways, we should seek to bless every tribe, tongue, nation, and land on the earth with the scriptures in their language, that the
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Bible translation is a good and important thing. Because as we looked at last week, natural revelation, the book of nature, general revelation is not enough.
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We need special revelation. We need redemptive revelation in the words of all people.
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And by God's grace, we should, this fact often escapes us.
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We should give thanks to God that he's given us his word in our language and in abundance, in abundance, so that we can wake up in the morning and we can know the living
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God in his word. It's how often do you take that for granted?
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I know that I take it for granted far too often. Paragraphs 9 and 10.
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Oh, yes, please. I guess it would be also a question, is it actually a question?
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Is it important that we speak the right version? Good question. That's a good question.
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Because I know a lot of people with certain Bibles that translate it the way it was in the first place, where they just translate the talk of it.
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That's right, yeah, the dynamic equivalent versus the formal equivalent, so the thought for thought versus the word for word.
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Well I think I have probably the opinion that most people in this room would share, which is
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I think that if you're going to do a careful study of Scripture, a formal equivalent, a word for word translation is going to be your best friend in that respect, well your second best friend,
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I'll explain what I mean in a moment. While the thought for thought can be beneficial so far as it's understood that it's a thought for thought, not for word for word, especially for new believers or children or things like that, but again a good dynamic equivalent, and I think that that maybe can be like we put a stepping stool in front of the sink in the bathroom so the kids can reach the sink to spit and rinse their toothbrush when they're growing up, eventually we remove the stepping stool, right?
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And so what becomes a difficulty is when you find someone, for instance, who has been reading the
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Bible for 30 or 40 years and you find that they're using, they're reading something like,
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I want to be careful not to pick on translations, because I don't want to be mean, but a good example,
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I read the New Living Translation, or really it's New Living Paraphrase, when I was a new believer.
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It was a tremendous blessing to me. That was really my first real interaction with God's Word.
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But I didn't stay with the New Living Translation forever. I stayed with it for a couple of years, and I kept hearing these guys talking about the
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NASB and this, you know, the most rigid, literal translation.
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And so I went and read the NASB, and read that all the way through, and I was in the epistles sometimes, and I was asking myself, what am
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I reading? I'm not sure that, I love the language, for instance, you know, that God, that the
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Lord holds all things together by the Word of His power. You know, if you understand
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Greek, you can actually see the way that He is using the genitive, or the translators are using the genitive of His power, and they're keeping the whole word order together.
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And I like the, it has a potency to it, it has a regal nature to it, the
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Word of His power. But what does it mean? Well, He's holding all things together by His powerful
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Word, right? And so I ended up settling on the ESV, because it took the best of what
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I thought was the formal equivalent, while still being readable for me, and understandable as I was reading it.
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And I do think that we need to be discerning about translations, because not all translations are translations.
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And I think a lot of publishers now are very motivated to have their own translations, because they can use those translations in their own books, they're not paying royalties to other publishers as they quote from those texts of Scripture.
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And the whole thing is, I appreciate all the labor that goes into, for instance, a committee that translates
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God's Word into the English language, but the copyrights that are attached to translations irk me a little bit, and that's something else for a different day.
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But a good English translation, formal equivalent, will be your second best friend, your first best friend, and I'm a lover of languages, is to, if you can, acquaint yourself with some of the original language, so that if someone were to come to you and say, that's not what that word means, it means this, you can, especially if it's a word that is used frequently in Scripture, maybe it's used more than 100 times or 200 times in the
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New Testament, you can say, I'm sorry, that's just not what that word means. That's the
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Greek word dikeiosune, to be just or righteous.
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I mean, if they are somehow trying to say that it means something else, that it means that you're meritorious, or whatever the case is, you can say, no, that's just not what the word means.
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It means this. This is the clear lexical use of the word.
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It was used during this period of time for this specific reference. And that's why
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I love the languages, and I encourage people to at least dabble in them a little bit, if not to be able to read them for yourself, but I'm biased there.
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Sam knows that I love the languages too much, maybe to my own detriment at times.
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No comment. I was told that I'm not allowed to study the languages formally anymore, because that's all
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I was thinking on. But good question, brother. Paragraphs 9 and 10.
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The infallible. This is the finality of God's word. The infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself.
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And therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture, which are not many, but one, it must be searched by other places that speak more clearly.
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There's that answer to our question about those passages of scripture that are not always in and of themselves clear.
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Paragraph 10. The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and by all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the holy scripture delivered by the
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Spirit, into which scripture so delivered, our faith is finally resolved.
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So the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, are to be but the holy scriptures delivered by the
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Spirit. So what this means is that, Lord willing, if in ten months' time or so our church adopts the confession, as we are going through and having discussions around doctrine, maybe we encounter a difficulty, may the
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Lord help us not to, in a moment of controversy, pick this book up and say, but the confession says this.
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We might say the confession articulates what is said here, and scripture is our final authority not the confession.
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And that is an area I wouldn't be teaching through this class if I didn't appreciate this confession.
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But at the same time, there are excesses, and those who sometimes go to this book before they go to this book forget paragraphs 9 and 10 of the
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Second Lenten Confession. And really, to summarize those quickly, this idea where it speaks to the infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself.
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We can go all the way back to the first and second century, as the early church was doing their interpretation, and what they developed as a fail -safe method for their interpretation, even as some questionable methods of interpretation were arising, was that they used the analogia fide, the analogy of faith, as their guide.
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So what does all of scripture have to say? Does this relate to that which all of scripture teaches?
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And then the analogia scripturae, the analogy of scripture, to determine, for instance, if we're dealing with marriage,
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I'm reading this text in Ephesians 5 about marriage, what else does scripture teach on this topic, the analogy of scripture?
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And so if you think of analogia fide, what you're doing is you're comparing what you're reading, what you're interpreting, to the whole scope of the faith.
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It's the analogy of our Christian faith as men and women in Christ.
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And then the analogy of scripture is you're saying, okay, how does this interpretation, this reading of scripture, align with the clear teaching of scripture on this point?
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And so it really gives us a broad scope for our interpretation, and a narrow scope for our interpretation.
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And that is what the confession here is dealing with, that we would be ultimately a people who are submitted, not to the confession, not to the teaching of John MacArthur, as good as it might be, or as disagreeable as we might be on certain points, but on scripture alone.