Article 8 - The Holy Scriptures

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It's a rather short article, but at the same time, that in a sense is what a confession does.
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It's a statement of faith, and then it's up to those who consider it to expand upon it and to make sure that they believe what is being said.
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So let's just read the article together.
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Article 8, the rule of this knowledge, faith and obedience concerning the worship of God in which is contained the whole duty of man is not man's laws or unwritten traditions, but only the word of God contained in his comprising the Holy Scriptures, in which is plainly recorded whatever is needful for us to know, believe and practice, which are the only rule of wholeness and obedience for all saints at all times in all places to be observed.
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So that's the article as it was written by the brothers back in 1644, and of course as we see it in the 1646 edition.
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So again, my task, if you will, tonight is to speak about the authority of Scripture, and certainly as we've been saying, and I hope you'll understand that there is no way to take 30 minutes and speak about any article in the confession in its entirety, but yet we get the ability to examine it at least for ourselves in a group setting and then on our own as we go forth.
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So a couple of things I want to focus in on tonight under this article of the authority of the word of God and the authority of the Scriptures, and one of the key words, and probably you picked it up already, is how they frame it in the sense that it is the whole duty of man.
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And I think that's the one thing that many, many people miss in their thinking about the Bible, about the authority of God's word, and it's truly this.
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God's word is not an opinion.
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It's not an opinion, it's not an editorial or any such thing.
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God's word is not only not an opinion, but it's not asking us for our opinion.
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God's word is the authoritative rule, and the whole duty of man is to be in line with it and be obedient to it.
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And so if we don't start there, then it's just a downhill slide.
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If we don't start coming to the word of God as it is in truth, the word of God, we're going to run into all kinds of issues.
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Now I'm not going to try to do this from the sense of defending the word of God.
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There are many apologists that have done that, have dealt with the criticisms that are presented against the authority and the integrity and the inerrancy of the Bible.
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That's not what my purpose right now.
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I'm probably not the best as an apologist.
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Probably Brother Keith could do that far, far better than I am.
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But in another sense, I don't believe we have to defend the word of God.
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I believe we have to proclaim the word of God.
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I think we can get ourselves focused in on so much of what other people are saying that we almost lose sight of the positives that can come out of just accepting it as it is in its totality as the word of God.
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And as I said, just think about this, brothers and sisters.
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If we do not have an authoritative word from God, then in reality, there is no authoritative truth.
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Just think about that.
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If there is no authoritative divine word, then we really have no real rule to go by and it could lead us nowhere but to break down to a point where we just do what's right in our own mind.
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In other words, we have to accept it as the revelation of God and as absolutely true and inerrant and as an absolute authority.
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And one of the quickest ways to tell if someone is in a right relationship with God is to find out what they consider the word, the Bible to be.
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And it's interesting how they say it in the confession and I wanted to kind of bring this out.
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Look at it as it says, it says that in which is contained a whole duty of man is not man's laws or unwritten traditions, but only the word of God contained in or in parentheses or comprising the Holy Scriptures.
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And I wanted to just deal with that because they mentioned that here and I don't think that, I don't believe they had the same sense when they say that the Scriptures contain the word of God that we have today.
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Because I think that they meant that it was in its entirety the word of God and I wanted to make this point that we need to be careful that we don't get to that position which is held by many today in that they would say, yes, the Bible contains the word of God.
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Because I will submit to you that someone who says, yes, the Bible contains the word of God is a veiled way of saying that they don't believe in the whole Bible.
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They believe in certain parts and they'll say, well, certain parts of the Bible are true and inerrant and inspired and authoritative, but others aren't.
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So therefore, yes, the Bible contains God's word.
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That's not what we're saying, is it? We're saying the Bible in its entirety, and we'll deal with the canon and all that in a minute, but in its entirety, it is the word of God.
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It doesn't just contain the word of God, it is in fact from beginning to end the very word of the only true God, right? So I don't believe the brothers were saying what people today are saying by them saying that it's contained in.
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I think they had a much purer understanding than we do.
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Because again, if you don't take it that way, we might as well just do what's right in our own mind because there's no truth in it.
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Then the Book of Mormon and the Watchtower and any other book or sayings of Confucius or any other philosophy, they're just as binding on us as anything else.
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If we don't have an authoritative, inspired, inerrant, infallible word from the creator.
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And I'm not going to seek to deal much on the canon because I want to look at some scriptures that talk about the fact of God's authority in his word.
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But I will say this.
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We could spend a long time talking about how the Bible came to be in 66 books and the books that are comprised in the Old Testament, the books that are comprised in the New Testament, and then that whole discussion about how did God's canon, if you will, how did the scriptures come to be and to finally be, in that sense, closed.
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Because I hope we do believe in a closed canon.
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That we believe that these 66 books are the inspired word of God, although there is multitudes of other books, right? The Apocrypha and some of the other writings that some of the groups will try to assign to it.
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Shameless plug for the Academy.
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If you are interested in how the Bible came together, that's part of what we do.
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In our introduction to the New Testament, in our introduction to the Old Testament, we spend a lot of time with that question.
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I know a lot of people want to know.
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Sure.
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It's there.
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We do deal with that.
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Yeah, I mean, it's a big question and it's good to know how to answer the objective of the question or answer how it came to be that we have an authoritative, closed canon in that sense, complete canon.
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But at the same time, I've always thought of it this way, and we could go to Revelation where it says, if anyone adds onto this book, God shall take away his part from the tree of life.
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And I've always thought of it this way, and I probably heard it somewhere along the way, but I've always thought about someone who will say that although we have God's word, there's more revelation to be had.
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And I've always thought of it this way.
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If it's in God's word, I don't need it, right? Because I have it.
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And if it's not in God's word, I don't want it.
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So if you think of it that way, in other words, again, it becomes an issue ultimately of faith and conviction based on the scriptures as they interpret themselves.
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But in truth, if it's not in the Bible, I don't want to hear anybody's revelation.
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And I certainly can't take it as authoritative.
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And if it's not in there, I don't want it, and if it's in there, I don't need it.
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I don't need anybody to tell me anything else because I'm going to stand on the truth that this is, by God's providential oversight and care, a complete revelation that he has given us.
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So again, if we start there, I think it's much easier to deal with variables, and I think we've come out of it in a much more positive way than a negative way.
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Let me ask us to think about this, and it's a scripture that just about everyone knows, but when we think about what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
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All scripture.
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Which scripture? Well, this scripture, right? The 66 books that we stand on to be the authoritative word of God.
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It's not all the King James Scriptures, by the way.
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It's not all the American Standard Scriptures.
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It's all scriptures given by inspiration of God, and I think that's important for us to understand.
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I want to ask you a question because I'm going to read something.
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Do you ever want to read a good book? Martin Lloyd-Jones, this little bitty book that he wrote on great doctrines of the Bible.
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Just one of his smaller works, but he makes a point, and I wanted to bring this paragraph up.
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And here's what he's doing.
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He's talking about the difference between revelation and inspiration.
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So let me ask you, before I read it, could you see a distinction between revelation and inspiration? Yeah.
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Okay.
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I want to read what he wrote concerning this because he writes, one of his chapters in the very beginning is the authority of the Bible, that's why I thought to bring it.
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But he's talking about how he, in his writing at this point, is not going to follow that path of trying to answer all the critics and deal with all the negative aspects that come out of all the people who have all these supposive ways to destroy the integrity of God's Word.
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But he does say this, and I thought it was interesting, so let me read it.
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I probably stumbled, my eyes are really not doing too good tonight, so bear with me.
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But he says, at one point he says, now the Bible claims that it is not only the record of divine revelation, it goes beyond it.
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It claims that it is God's Word.
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It claims to be divinely inspired, and its authority is based upon that.
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Now it is important that we should be clear in our minds as to the difference between revelation and inspiration because the two things are not the same.
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Everything that is in the Bible is not revelation, but everything that is in the Bible is inspiration or inspired.
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You understand what he's saying there? And then I'm going to read one more paragraph.
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So what he's saying is, everything in the Bible is not revelation, but everything in the Bible is inspired.
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So there's a distinction to be made, and this is how he breaks it out.
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I thought this was a pretty good point for us to think about.
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So he says, let me explain what that means.
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Revelation means God unfolding of himself, God revealing himself.
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You will see at once that there are many things in the Bible which are not revelation.
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Take, for instance, the book of Ecclesiastes or the statements recorded in the Bible, which were uttered by sinful, ungodly people.
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There is no revelation in such statements, nevertheless, the Bible says that all these statements are recorded and done so in an inspired manner.
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You understand what he's saying? In other words, it's not all revelation.
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It's not all, if you will, a revealing of God.
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Again, many sinful people in the Bible are included in the Bible, and many of the things that they say are not worthy to be considered as revelation.
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But at the same time, the fact that they are included in the Bible makes them what? Inspired.
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Right? So there's many different ways to break this out, and I think it's important.
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And as the confession states, and as Martyn Lloyd-Jones is speaking about, we're talking about the authority of the Bible, and that you and I need to understand that.
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So when people ask us crazy questions like, how could this be the Bible when you read this in the Bible, you read that in the Bible, it seems impossible that that could be the word of God.
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Our answer has to be, we believe that regardless of what is said, what is contained is inspired by God to be in His Bible.
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And that's where we'll stand.
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And if we do that, brothers and sisters, we will allow ourselves to be able to stop some of the foolishness that comes from the minds and the hearts of men as they try to tear away the authority of the word of God.
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So I thought that was a good point to make, that there is a difference between revelation and inspiration.
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So if you think about that, if you think about subscriptions, I want to just look at a couple familiar to us, but listen, as I've often said, I'm very familiar with steak, and I can eat steak tonight.
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And our brother Paul, he likes steak and lobster, because he told me about his little steak and lobster deal that he has.
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Could you eat lobster every night? Almost.
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We'll give you one night off.
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But even as we read the scriptures, friends, if we read something that we already read, two things.
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Let us not think that we understand everything that it says, because remember what Paul says, if any man thinks he knows anything, he already knows nothing.
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And if we read something that we've already read, it's good, just like steak.
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Steak is always good.
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So I wanted to look at a couple scriptures.
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Go to 2 Peter, just, again, the ones that you would think that we would go to, to talk about the Word of God, talk about the inspiration of the Bible, 2 Peter chapter 1, and I'm sure many of you know the verse I'm going to go to, it's chapter 1 and verse 18.
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As soon as I get to 2 Peter, we'll do it.
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Okay, so, am I in the right? Yeah.
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There it is.
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In verse 19, it says, we also have the prophetic word made much, made more sure which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your heart, knowing first that no scripture, no prophecy of scriptures of any private interpretation for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men spoke as they were, what? Moved by the Holy Spirit.
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So again, when we talk about the authority of the Bible, what we are saying, and again, to Mark Lloyd-Jones' point, that the men who spoke in the Bible were inspired by God to not only speak, but to record those things that God had set before them to record.
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So again, not seeking to defend it, rather just seeking to set it forth as truth.
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The scripture that I've always enjoyed is in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2.
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If you want to turn there, if not, just listen.
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In 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, as Paul speaks to the church at Thessalonica, and he commends them for their diligence, and we read this in verse 13.
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He says, for this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectually works in you who believe.
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I mean, very straightforward, very clear, very pointed, that the thing that set them apart was that as the word of God was spoken to them, they received it not merely as the word of men, but as the word of God.
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So you and I, as we come to the Bible, if you come to the Bible, and all you want is to gain some worldly wisdom, then I don't believe you're going to be able to get what you thought you were going to get from it.
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We first have to come to it, we first have to believe.
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It's the same thing that it says about faith, right? Without faith it's impossible to please God, right? And before we come to God, we've got to do what? First believe that he is.
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And at that point, that's to me, and I don't want to go off, but that's to me where regeneration comes in.
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When we come to that point where we receive it, not as the word of men, but as it is, what? In truth, the word of God which lives and abides forever.
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So there again is another scripture that we could look to.
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I'll just quote this one to you from Isaiah, and it's familiar to many of us.
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Isaiah chapter 8, verse 20, to the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to what? To this word.
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What word? The word that Isaiah was given by God.
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If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
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Right? That's the reason.
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That's why Paul says to some the word of God and the message of the cross is what? It's foolishness.
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They can't understand it.
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They can't receive it.
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And it's because they will not come to it as it is in faith, believing it as the authoritative word of God.
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And again, it comprises the whole duty of man.
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I always get a kick when some people will quote the Bible, but they're very selective about the verses that they quote.
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Even politicians are really good at that.
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They'll come out and they'll quote a scripture and they'll take it and they'll set it in a context that's 3,000 miles from where it ought to be set.
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And yet they'll use it.
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And then if you approach them on a different subject that God's word speaks about, all of a sudden their tongues are tied.
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Right? Now, now it's a different story.
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So you can't do that.
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I think of it this way.
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If we're going to come to the word of God and play with it, then we're going to get nothing from it.
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And actually, I believe we're just going to bring to ourself further judgment for not receiving as it is in truth the word of God.
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As I say sometimes, be careful what you do with Jesus.
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I will say it to us this way.
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Be careful what we do with the word of God.
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Because it's not the word of men.
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It is in truth the word of God.
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And so when people say, when you ask people, do you read the Bible? And they say, eh, you know, sometimes.
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What they're really telling you is I have no desire to be under the authority of the word of God.
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And they might not say it that way to you, but that's really what they're saying.
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Last one I'm going to read, and then I'll turn it over to Brother Keith, is what Paul says in Galatians chapter 1.
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So let's turn there just for a second.
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Galatians chapter 1.
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And again, nothing unusual in the verses that we're going to, except that this is the subject we're speaking on, and it's essential for us to at least know some of the scriptures which address the authority of the word of God and this whole area of the inspiration and revelation of God.
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And so in Galatians chapter 1, as Paul greets the church at Galatia, he says this in verse 6.
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He says, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel.
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Right? Which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
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But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you, then what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.
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As we have said before, and now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you, then what you have received, let him be accursed.
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And then Paul adds, I don't seek to persuade.
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Do I seek to persuade men of God, or do I seek to please men? For if I please men, I would not be the servant of Christ.
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Again, anybody that resists the authority of the word of God, no matter what they tell you, I will tell you that according to the word of God, if they resist the authority of the complete word of God, then they do not know the Savior.
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I will be as bold as to say, someone who challenges the authority of the word of God cannot in truth believe in the Son of God, who is the living word.
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You might take exception with that, but I think I can defend that from the scriptures.
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Alright, I'll turn it over to Brother Keith for his part.
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We will trade seats.
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We'll sit next to the man who eats steak and lobster.