Theology You Can Use - The Word Of God (pt-3)

All right, before we get into the text, just a little comment about preaching. I take preaching very seriously, and I think preachers proclaim the truth.

Don't you? I preached in California last summer, this summer, and I was criticized because I gave too many imperatives, too many exhortations.

I believe that preaching should contain both indicatives, statements of facts. This is the gospel.

Jesus died for sinners and was raised from the dead. But I also believe that preaching should contain imperatives.

Therefore, repent. And imperatives should even be for Christians. Ephesians, excuse me,

Romans 6 was read tonight. We have died in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let sin no longer reign in your mortal bodies.

Preaching must contain indicative statements of fact and imperatives. Obey. Now, if we only get up and say obey all the time, that would be legalism.

If we get up and only say indicatives all the time, then who gets any direction? But I think preaching by nature is someone standing in the pulpit, and they proclaim

God's truth for him from the scriptures. And when God speaks, he speaks with an authoritative voice, and he commands us and compels us and desires for us to obey.

So when I hear preaching, I think preaching should look at the congregation with the words you and you should obey.

It's not just we. All week long, the Lord is saying to Mike through the scriptures as I study, you should obey, you should obey, you should obey.

Then I get in the pulpit, and then what do I say? You must obey. That doesn't mean

I'm above you, but you must obey just as God has called me to obey. God has given us commands in scripture, not just suggestions.

And so when you hear preaching, I think by nature you should hear people say please.

Today I think, this is a first for me, but saying that you're insane if you don't use your spiritual gifts,

I think I use that word four times. I try to exhort you to serve. That is just preaching by nature, whether it's

John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.

You watch, and there will be second -person imperatives. You is second -person, right?

I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they, you kind of thing.

And so we just have to have that, and so I want you to hold me to that, where I give you both indicatives and imperatives, and when you preach the gospel to someone,

I hope you preach. You must be born again. Does this have anything to do with tonight?

No, but I just wanted to talk about that. I spent the day with MacArthur, as I said before, and I really was energized again, because John is a man who

I think preaches the word in season and out of season more than any other man I've met.

And so it was good to remember that truth is vital, and truth must be proclaimed by the person in the pulpit.

I will give lots of latitude and leeway to those who have a hard time communicating Scripture, but if you stand in a pulpit and you don't preach the

Bible, I have zero respect for you, because we have a duty, and that duty is we are stewards and ambassadors of truth, therefore proclaim it.

So it was good to be reminded by John that his job and our job as pastors is to preach the word of God.

I did ask him just one quick story. I said, what's going on behind the scenes with Larry King? As you know,

Larry King has invited MacArthur on many times, and he likes John because John actually believes the

Bible. All the other clergy come on and they just believe portions of it, but John believes the

Bible, and so Larry likes that, a man of convictions. And so John had dinner with Larry the other night, and John was trying to preach the gospel to him, and Larry just wanted to talk about baseball.

John said that Larry is a baseball fanatic, and he knows all the details and all the batting averages, and so it was baseball and gospel, and John was trying to preach the gospel to Larry.

He knows the gospel, and we just want Larry to be saved. I also asked John, I said, have you heard from Guy Ritchie lately?

Guy Ritchie is Madonna's husband, who called John one time and said, I'd like to meet and talk about Christianity, because you're one of those men on Larry King who actually believes the

Bible, and I'd like to know about Christianity from you. And so I said to John, has Guy talked to you recently, and he said no.

But there's hope for these people. We don't need stars to be saved so the kingdom comes quicker, right?

Because 1 Corinthians 1 says there's not many mighty, not many noble. It doesn't say there's not any, but we don't need stars to have the gospel go around the world.

But it would be nice when some of these folks would get saved. It's like when Denzel Washington was reading the

Bible, and someone from Grace, I think I told you the story, he was reading the Bible, and a person from Grace Church walked up to him and said, do you not understand what you're reading?

And he said, no. Kind of reminds you of which account? Acts chapter 8, that's right.

He said, my pastor's written a study Bible, and if you'll read it, I'll give it to you. So Denzel now owns a study

Bible. And so I'm sure some of these people God will rescue. Well, tonight we want to talk about the

Word of God. What does the Bible say about the Bible? And as you know, we've started a year -long series on Sunday night, and basically the title is

Theology You Can Use. I want theology to be practical. I want you not to run and flee to the exit doors when you hear the word doctrine or theology.

After all, theology just means a word about God. And you are all theologians, true?

You're all theologians. You're either good ones or bad ones. You're either biblical or not quite biblical.

And we're all growing, and I want you to be great theologians, and I want you to understand doctrine.

And so tonight we'll talk about having a high view of God's Word, of God's revelation.

And for me, let me just say simply at the start, it's all or nothing for me. Either God's Word is true, all of it, or it's just a big lie, and I can't figure out what's true and what's not.

But I'm an all or nothing kind of guy, and that's exactly the Scripture, the view of Scripture that we need, that Jesus had, that the disciples had, and that I want you to have.

And I want you to take a look at the Bible, and when you have that all or nothing view, then you will study it with confidence, and you will be a man just like John Wesley who said,

I am a man of one book. I like that. Some of the things Wesley did

I'm not too sure of, but I sure like that. How about this one by John Bunyan? I was never out of my

Bible. That's what I want the congregation here to be. I think we should take

Spurgeon's advice now that I'm quoting some of these old giants. I would recommend you either believe the Bible up to the hilt, or else not to believe it at all.

Believe this book of God, every letter of it, or else reject it. There is no logical standing place between the two.

Be satisfied with nothing less than a faith that swims in the deeps of divine revelation.

A faith that paddles about the edge of the water is a poor faith at best. It is little better than a dry land faith, and is not good for much.

That's exactly right. Why, and for the visitors here tonight, when I ask you a question on Sunday night, it's good to get an answer, and it will keep you awake after a long day.

Why is the doctrine of the Bible, or your view of the Bible, important? Why would it be important for us to have the right view of Scripture?

Anyone? Raise your hand, or you don't have to raise your hand. Just blurt it out. Okay, and how many doctrines do we believe that are in the

Bible, and if we've got a skewed view of the Bible, then what about our salvation, and what about the second coming, and what about all these other issues?

Good. Any other reason why we need to have a good view of the Bible? Proper view of the Bible? Wesley? Where else are we going to go?

Visions, and mystic dreams, and some other book. I was sitting in the airplane from, let's see,

Providence to Chicago, and I was reading a book, and the book is called Exodus, why liberal churches are losing their members, and they're all going to conservative evangelical churches.

And I was reading it, and a guy sitting one seat over, I'm on the aisle, he's on the aisle, and you've got the middle cart area, and he had an old book, kind of tattered, underlined.

I saw the little tabs, and I wanted to kind of show him my book, that I was reading kind of a

Christian book, so he could see. It looked like he was writing a sermon. I kind of sized him up, and he kind of looked, you know, with a part, and I thought, all right,

I'm going to somehow talk to him a little bit, and I kept looking, and then

I thought, wait, there's not too many tabs in his Bible. He's taking notes, but I don't see one

Bible verse there. Then he got his palm pilot out, and he was looking up words, and searching everything.

Finally, I thought, you know, I'm going to have to just do the old, my eyes aren't as good as they used to be, but I did the old.

He was reading Doctrine and Covenants, Book of Mormon's adjunct text. I thought, oh no, now what am

I going to do? If we had the Book of Mormon, besides the

Bible, then we might have some kind of other knowledge, but if we only have the Bible, where else are we going to go?

We have no place else. And we live in a day where people, with their spirituality today, talk a lot, where Christians listen.

Can't speak, sorry. Christians listen. There's a lot of talkers about spirituality, but Christians listen.

Let me tell you some of the talkers. The first talker is rationalism. My mind is supreme, and my reason tells me what is true.

There's another one, mysticism. That we have divine revelation, but we have some kind of human experience, and that trumps the

Bible. We have Roman Catholicism, where you have not only the scriptures, but you have tradition and the church, the magisterium.

We have neo -orthodoxy, and by the way, neo -orthodoxy means what? New orthodoxy, and it is neither new nor is it orthodoxy.

Neo -orthodoxy means this. When I'm reading the Bible and a passage really hits me, that's biblical, that's inspired, that's revelation, but the other parts are not.

Here's how you can sniff out a neo -orthodox person. They will say the Bible is not the

Bible, it just contains the Bible. That is to say, let's use something smaller to make it easier, that the

Word of God is contained in the Bible, but all the Bible is not the Word of God.

There are cults that have the Bible plus, but we as conservative Protestants' orthodox position is the

Bible alone, sola scriptura, is our guide. It is God speaking.

And so tonight for an outline, if you're taking notes as we look to the Bible, I want to give you five words so that you will remember these words and then your trust of the

Bible will increase. This is not going to be really a sermon, but we will talk about five words and ask some questions about these five words.

And the first word tonight is canon. What does the word canon mean in the context of Scripture?

Anyone? Canon, C -A -N -O -N. When we talk about the canon, what are we talking about?

Kind of a quiet congregation tonight, aren't we? The loquacious ones have all stayed at home.

Welcome, Gladman. Are you using some neo -orthodox term, contain?

Oh, okay. Okay, excellent.

The word canon is used to describe those books that are recognized as inspired of God, and it comes from the

Greek word, any guesses? Canon, good. And the

Hebrew word keneh, and it used to mean a rod or a measuring stick or a reed.

And then as time goes on, it is then applied to the decisions of the councils, as it were, as they recognize these are the books in the

Bible. How many books do we have in the Old Testament? Thirty -nine. If the Jews were counting, how many would you count?

Same amount of information, same exact books, but they would count 22. And then in the

New Testament, how many do we have? Okay, good. Those are the books that are in the canon. Canonicity is the aspect of Scripture that determine which books of the

Bible, old and new, are the word of God. Why would canonicity be important, by the way?

We'll get to the Bible here in a second, so don't worry. Why is canonicity important? I could ask this question.

Were there any other books being written at that time? Yes, and so we need to make sure which ones were biblical, which ones are not, which ones are in the canon and authoritative, and which ones are not.

The term canon was used by Athanasius in reference to the Bible in A .D. 367 in something called the

Easter Letter. But the idea was held earlier, and when we think about the canon, here's the main point

I want you to get tonight. The church at that time did not determine which books were in the canon.

They what? They recognized. Just burn that into your brain.

You can read books on the canon by F .F. Bruce and by others, but I want you to understand the difference between recognition and determination.

And you will see, especially in this part of the country, oh, our church determined which books were biblical. Our church made the

Bible. What is the difference between recognition and determination where people receive the word of God, they recognize it as the word, versus standing over the word, saying that's in and that's out.

It's very important. Recognition, not determination. Let me give you some hints on the canon or some information.

True or false? In the New Testament, Jesus and the Jews argued about the extent of the

Old Testament canon. They argued, the Pharisees and Jesus and the scribes and Jesus were arguing which books were in the canon and which ones were not.

No. There was no debate at that time about which books were in the Hebrew canon.

Why don't you turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 11. This is interesting. If you don't know the Jewish testament of the

Old Testament in terms of which books are which, you might miss it. But just turn to Luke 11 .51. You know me,

I like exposition, but tonight's going to be jumping all around just because of the nature of the

Grudem book that we're working through a little bit at a time. Luke 11 .51.

What was the first book in the Old Testament canon in the Hebrew canon? Pretty easy one.

Genesis. What was the last book? Was it Malachi? No. Which one?

2 Chronicles. Exactly right. And so what does Jesus do in Luke 11 .51?

He said, "...from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah." And if you're a preacher today in England or in America, you say, it's from the blood of those from A to Z.

It's A to Z. No, but that's not what He's trying to do. From the blood of Abel, He's talking about this death in Genesis to the blood of Zechariah.

That's in 2 Chronicles. "...who was killed between the altar and the house of God. Yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation."

Here's what's going on from the first book of the canon to the last book of the canon, the

Hebrew canon, that is. Why don't you turn to John 14 .26

as I give you another bit of information about the canon. And there is help by Jesus through the

Spirit of God so they will know what to say, what to write, specifically, so it would be in the canon.

Now, I'm going to say this verse and you tell me what it means. That's kind of a scary thing in our church, I know. I didn't say what it means to you, but what does this mean?

"...but the Counselor of the Holy Spirit," John 14 .26, "...whom the Father will send in My name.

He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."

What does that mean? Does that mean you have a personal relationship with Jesus so that He has given you the

Holy Spirit and then when you study the Bible, He helps you understand things?

Or if you're in a difficult spot and you need to preach the gospel to someone, and the Word of God is brought to your memory by the

Holy Spirit in exactly the right time. What's the context here? Who is He talking to?

The disciples are promised these gifts, amazing gifts, that will enable them to write what?

Scripture. That's what He's talking about. To remember all that Jesus said, I could ask you this.

How do you know John 17 is in the canon? The Lord's Prayer, the real

Lord's Prayer, where Jesus is praying. John 17, one of the best chapters in all of Scripture. What were the disciples doing, by the way?

Sleeping. So John was peeking. By the way, they had wine for Passover, and wine makes you tireder.

And there they go, when Jesus is praying in the garden and they're sleeping. How do we know

John 17 is in the text? Nobody even saw it. Because the

Spirit of God, according even to this verse, and as an application of this verse, came to John himself and was given that exact prayer by Jesus in the garden.

Why don't we go to 1 Corinthians 2 as I'm trying to look at passages that will help us with the canon.

John 14, we're helped with the canon when we understand the Holy Spirit will make sure the disciples teach the right things so they're put into the canon.

And now 1 Corinthians 2 is another one of those passages that if you're not too sure about, you miss the import when we miss one particular word and that word is we.

1 Corinthians 2, verse 9. I have sadly preached sermons from this verse all out of context, all wrong.

As you know, we're just jumping into a passage here and I want to give you the background of Corinth and everything else, but let's just look at this in particular.

1 Corinthians 2, verse 9, but just as it is written, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love

Him. Here's how I would preach that sermon in the old days. Heaven is going to be so great. You can't imagine all the great things about heaven.

Your heart just can't understand. Your eye hasn't seen. Your ear hasn't heard.

Oh, it's going to be so great. Is that what the passage is talking about? Will heaven be that great that we're going to be blown away?

Absolutely. But look at verse 10. If you don't understand the passage, what do you do? Everybody out loud.

Keep reading. Thank you. For to us, and we're going to talk about apostles here,

God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

To us, this is Paul and the other apostles. Don't miss it. But to us, these things have been revealed, and this is the word apocalyptic, a revealing, an uncovering.

God is giving divine revelation of supernatural secrets, as it says in the Expositors Bible commentary.

Verse 11, for who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the Spirit of the man which is in him?

Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Who can reveal what

God knows? The Spirit of God and Him alone. Now, we have received. There's the we again.

Not the Spirit of the world. He's talking about the apostles, but the Spirit who is from God so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.

Which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom when it comes to revelation. It's just not

Paul being smart, but in those taught by the Spirit. The Spirit teaches the disciples, the apostles rather, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

And in fact, the Spirit brought the truth into the minds of the apostles.

Well, let me give you some other words that are not not words, but other verses that I think are very interesting.

Why don't you go to 1 Timothy chapter 5 as I'm trying to now use the Bible and you might think circularly to show that even the

Bible recognizes that there are certain books in the canon and certain books are not in the canon. And it's amazing how this all works out.

I want to get ahead of myself, but I'm not going to do it. While you turn to 1 Timothy chapter 5, did in fact

Paul write Scriptures that Peter said in 2

Peter 3? Are difficult to understand. He even called those Scriptures. When you read the word Scripture in the

New Testament, I believe it's 51 times there and almost every time it's talking about the Old Testament. And just as the

Old Testament canon were Scriptures from God, so too some of Paul's writings.

And here I love this one, 1 Timothy chapter 5. The elders, and I don't love this because now

I get to talk about money. But I want to talk about this because there are two verses put together that is just amazing to me.

The elders who rule well are considered worthy of double honor. What kind of honor might that be?

Especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching for the Scripture says.

Now we have two quotes. You tell me where they come from. You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.

Where does that come from? Okay, I guess I'm looking for something more general.

Old Testament. Even my NES with the capitals, I realize that is coming from Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 25 .4. But now we have a second quotation under the umbrella of Scripture.

The laborer is worthy of his wages. Which book of the Old Testament does that quote come from?

It doesn't. Where does it come from? With the exact same Greek words.

Luke 10 .7. So do you see what Paul is doing? Paul is saying, listen,

I'm going to quote Scripture to you and not only is this Old Testament passage in Deuteronomy 25 .4

Scripture, but what Jesus said is also what? Scripture. This is kind of scary, but we'll do it anyway.

If I were God... If I were God, here's how

I would make the canon. Here's how I would put the Scriptures together. Here's how I would make sure my people understood

I have said this and I've said it with clarity and with conviction and with authority.

I would have some kind of angel deliver the Bible in its entirety.

Maybe a gold Bible. Might that be good? I don't know if I'd call the angel Moroni or not, but I would have some kind of supernatural thing almost like when

God took His finger and wrote the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. But I would make

Him do that for everything because I'd want to make sure my people got it right. I'm okay in sending.

I'm not so sure the people are okay in receiving. But that's not how

God did it. How did God put the canon together? How did God let people recognize which books were

Scripture and which ones were not? With a council? Did the council determine the text?

Remember that word, determine. You don't even want to go close to that. No. Did the church determine the text?

No. Did the church recognize the text? Might be a better question. Listen to what Partington said. The canon of the

New Testament was formed gradually under the providence of God, the Holy Spirit in the churches, we believe, giving the needed discernment to accept the genuine and reject the spurious.

The fact that certain books were for some time held in doubt but later were accepted simply shows what care was exercised.

Do you know in the eastern part of Christianity in the 300s said, these are the books we recognize as Scripture.

How many? 27. Do you know in the western part of the world, in the

Mediterranean Sea, the church said, these are the 27 books that we have recognized as Scripture. That's amazing to me.

Let me give you the quote from Grudem. In AD 367, the 39th Paschal Letter of Athanasius contained an exact list of the 27

New Testament books we have today. This was the list of books accepted by the churches in the eastern part of the

Mediterranean. 30 years later, the Council of Carthage, representing the churches in the western part of the

Mediterranean, agreed with the eastern churches on the same list. These are the earliest final lists of our present -day canon.

It is amazing to me that no one sat down and said, these are the books by fiat or by declaration they said in all the different places.

It's amazing. These churches over here, these churches over here all recognize this is the Word of God. God guiding those very people.

I have a question for you. What about the Apogrypha? What's the Apogrypha, by the way?

Hidden books. Good, they're hidden. Well, maybe they're not so hidden. They're in some people's

Bibles. They're in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text of the

Old Testament. Something that's hidden or covered. Well, let me ask you another question. When were the Apogrypha books written?

From about when to when? Intertestamental, good, from about 200

B .C. to maybe about 100 A .D. is the general time. And let me give you those books.

First Edris, Second Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Esther 10 -16,

Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Daniel 3, 24 -90, chapter 13 and 14, the

Prayer of Manassas, First and Second Maccabees, and sometimes you'll see these listed, the

Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, and Bel, the

Dragonslayer. Can we use the

Apogrypha for anything? And don't say kindling. I'm talking about something better than that.

How could we use the Apogrypha? We have this intertestamental period where some books were written.

History, that's a good way we could use the Apogrypha. Let me give you an example. Do you remember Herod, that one day he had the party for himself?

In Acts, I think it's Acts chapter 12, possibly 13. Let's have a party for the day and remember what happened.

He was eaten by what? Worms, and then he died. Listen to what the

Apogrypha says about that in Second Maccabees 9 .5. And that is the disease recorded by Antiochus Epiphanes in the

Apogrypha. The text in Acts chapter 12 says, Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him because he gave not the glory to God and he was eaten of worms and he died.

As a matter of fact, if you study sometime, those are the kind of worms that have male parts on one side and female parts on the other side so they just reproduce.

And it's the worm that dieth what? Not. It just keeps multiplying and multiplying and multiplying.

Josephus talks about that death as well. And so we could use it a little bit and I think they're interesting.

If you haven't read them, I would... If you don't read the Bible that much, well, then don't read them. But if you read the

Bible plenty, I think it's okay to read them. But let me tell you why we should reject them.

Were they ever in any Jewish canon? Did the Jews ever recognize them as scripture?

Ever? No. Did Christ, an apostle, or any other New Testament writer ever quote from the

Apogrypha? Never. Did the Apogrypha writers ever claim inspiration?

Never. Are there errors of geography and history and some contradictions between the

Bible and history and the Apogrypha? Yes. Does the Apogrypha contain prayers for the dead?

That might be a good reason, I think, to get rid of them. The Apogrypha was not held as canonical until Council of Trent, 1546 -1547.

And just when you thought it was all over, there's one other group of books that's popular today, and they're not called the Apogrypha, they're called the what?

Pseudepigrapha. And if I was a big pastor, you know, and you see the TV pastor, I'd say, turn to the person on your left and say the word pseudepigrapha.

It's just one of those words that you like to say. I like to say sacerdotal. I like to say apogrypha. I like to say pseudepigrapha.

And I like to say propitiation. Propitiation. They're just words that we like to use every day.

Pseudepigrapha. Now, don't go to the pig area, but can you think of a word at least at the front? The pseudo.

That's right. These are the false books. But interestingly, they claim to be authoritative, and here are some of the books.

The Gospel of Peter. The Gospel of Thomas. By the way, has the

Gospel of Thomas influenced any big book and big hit movie?

Now we have to suffer through the big movie now called the what? Just Between Us Girls.

The Da Vinci Code book. The Apocalypse of Peter and the

Ascension of Isaiah. Those are books that claim to be authoritative, but we still reject.

Now I have a question for you, and this is the big one. If you're sleeping, here's the big question. Why is it important for you to know which words are

God's words and which ones are not? So you don't believe the other.

That's pretty good. Did your dad tell you that? They're false words, okay?

Grudem says, how would your relationship with God be different if you had the scriptures in the canon,

Old and New Testament, the Apographa and the Pseudepigrapha? Yeah, they don't agree.

Good, they contradict. When we study the canon, and I didn't get into all the details tonight when the books were recognized and everything else, but when we know the canon, we can say this is for sure what

God has said, and let's get busy obeying what He has said. Remember Deuteronomy 29 .29,

the secret things belong to the Lord? But what does that verse go on to say? But the things that have been revealed, oh, do them.

How about Ecclesiastes chapter 11? Does anybody know how a bone forms in the womb of a pregnant woman?

Answer, no. We can look at it with ultrasound, but you can't know. But what do you know? Chapter 12, fear

God and keep His commandments. So don't be out there trying to figure out all these things that you don't know. Do what God says to do, and He says fear

God and keep His commandments. So we need to know as Christians what God has said so we can be busy obeying those very things.

How did the canon come about? Just a last few comments. There were some attacks back early on like the

Marcion canon. He said there were only 10 books. And if you have somebody saying there are not all these books, these are the only 10, then the church has to respond to this error to say, no, these are the ones we really believe.

How about when Diocletian in 303 A .D. said all sacred books should be burned?

That is going to cause the Christians to figure out which ones are worth burning and which ones to be killed over. You can study sometime the

New Testament manuscripts if you'd like. How many manuscripts do we have of the New Testament either in portion or in total if you'd like to figure it out?

Pretty good. Are you in the Bible Institute class? No. I think you are.

Add 10 ,000 Latin Vulgate passages, 9 ,300 other early versions, and we have 24 ,000 manuscript copies of portions of the

New Testament. That's both in Greek and other languages. How about other documents, by the way? What's an old document that we have 500 copies of or more that go way back that everybody would say, for sure this guy wrote that?

Iliad. We have 643 manuscripts that survive of Iliad by Homer.

And the oldest completed preserved text of Homer dates back to the 13th century.

Does anybody question the Iliad and the Odyssey? How about Caesar's Gaelic War which is composed about 50

B .C.? There are 9 or 10 good copies.

The oldest one is 900 years after Caesar died. I just find that interesting.

Well, we've got to keep moving. The first word is canon. The second word is authority. What about the

Bible? We have the completed canon. Number two, authority. How many people have seen that bumper sticker? Question authority.

That is something that we like to do. We question authority. Does God have the right to command us to think and to obey

Him? To think properly about Him and to obey Him? The answer is yes.

Grudem pushes it so far. He says this, The authority of Scripture means that all the words in Scripture are

God's word in such a way that to disbelieve or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey

God. God has an authority. He's our creator and therefore

He commands us to obey. We know, 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, all

Scripture is God -believed. Does God believe the Scripture? Well, Jesus on earth,

He believed it. Let's turn there. You don't know what to do. Tell the people to turn to the text. 2

Timothy 3. Please, if you'll turn there. Can God command us to do something?

It gets back to that whole thing of if God makes us do something or command us, how can that be real love and all those kind of silly arguments.

Here He certainly calls people to obey. Matter of fact, it's a pastoral epistle. Pastors, here's your tool.

All Scripture is God -breathed. This is one place where the NIV does excel and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

First of all, see the word Scripture. Graphe, written Scripture. 51 times in the

New Testament. And this is talking about the sacred writings that were just up in verse 15. Breathed out by God.

Teaching is the standard of life. Reproof is saying you failed to measure up to that.

Correction, I'll pick you up and straighten you up and dust you off and point you in the right direction. And then training in righteousness.

God can easily command us to obey Him with the words of reproof even.

Rebuke. True or false? God binds us to obey by giving us commands.

And the answer is yes. What did Jesus do? He used the

Word of God against the devil. Why? Because it was authoritative. He used the

Word of God in rebuking the people. He said in Matthew 21 .42, did you never read in the

Scriptures? Why? Because the Word had the authority. He used the Word to vindicate

Himself cleansing the temple. Mark 11 .17, is it not written, my house shall be called a house of what?

Prayer for all nations. You've made it a den of thieves. And the reason it can be authoritative is, listen to this, because it's divine, not human.

I feel like I'm preaching to the congregation. You know this. Turn to 2

Peter 1 and let's talk about a verse that's taken out of context quite a bit. Some Sunday night

I'm going to do a verse by verse study of passages that people take out of context.

Two or three are gathered. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. Those kind of things. Let's just look at how many of those verses are taken out of context these days.

But 2 Peter 1 .20, can you imagine in the context of false teachers in this book that would soon arrive, they'd get there in Jude's book.

People running around, God said this, God said that, God said this. 2 Peter 1 .20,

but first of all, or but know this first of all, no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation.

What does that mean by the way? Most evangelicals get this wrong. What's the context trying to show us?

For no prophecy, it's not talking about your own private interpretation. That's my interpretation and that's yours as we read the

Bible, somehow illumination by the Spirit. No, it's talking about how Scripture was made.

For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will. They never sat down and said, oh, I think I'll make that up and call it

God. But men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. These prophecies of God weren't by men's impulse.

They were made by God. It's not a product of an author's idea or human opinion. The ultimate source in the production of Scripture is by God.

People think this all the time. Sadly, my reason is my ultimate authority because it seems reasonable to me to make it so.

Versus God has spoken, I will obey. Alright, we've got to get going.

Let's maybe do one more word. Inerrancy. Canon, how many books of the Bible? 66.

Authority, we are under the word. We know that here at this church. And now inerrancy. I -N -E -R -R -A -N -C -Y.

As I was spelling that, it reminded me of the MacArthur story. He told me that there was somebody who had a child and they were in the emergency room.

They didn't speak English and they were having to give a name for their child so the child could be a

U .S. citizen. True story. And so they gave the child's name

Nosmo King. Nosmo King. Because the person looked up and saw the no smoking sign, he had to write something down.

Nosmo King. Inerrancy.

That's why I thought of it. Do you believe in inerrancy? Are you a troglodyte?

Are you a dinosaur thinking that there's no error in scripture? The opposite of inerrancy is errancy.

People believe there are errors in the Bible. And by the way, I have all kinds of friends who are unbelievers and they like to find errors in the

Bible that get them out of obeying God. You know, be born again. How about this?

In Reforming Fundamentalism, a George Marsden book who claims to be no evangelical fundamental type person, said that surveying 85 % of the students in one of America's largest evangelical seminary, and then they did a bunch of seminaries, they did not believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

Do you believe scripture is inerrant? 85 % no. Just like with colleges and seminaries today, 100 out of 106 believe in some form of evolution.

A poll of 10 ,000 USA clergy men, 74 % replied.

In 1987, and it's gotten worse now, said these things.

Is the word of God inerrant? 95 % of the Episcopalians said no. 87 % of the

Methodists said no. 82 % of the Presbyterians said no. 77 % of American Lutherans said no.

67 % of American Baptists said, no, the Bible's not inerrant. Using some synonyms, is the

Bible certain? Can you be assured of what the Bible says? Is there certainty? Is there authority?

Is the Bible free in the original manuscripts from all error? Doctrinal, historical, scientific, geographical?

By the way, what I should have done with that man sitting next to me, the Mormon guy, I should have said, can

I see the last bit of your Bible there, the book of maps? Because they've got all kinds of maps there, and so far there's not been one archaeological find in the

Palestinian area that would contradict anything in the Bible. And then I saw him open up the back, and they had all kinds of maps, even of New England.

I don't know what that was for. All right, let me say something to you, and you put your thinking caps on, and tell me if this is good or bad, or kind of weaselly.

You already know what's going to come. Probably, we here in Massachusetts and in New England are the seedbed for all kinds of errors, aren't we?

Christian science, you can go right down. Pardon me? Is Christian science?

Okay. Let's just skip that.

The Bible is inerrant in all that it affirms. True or false? The Bible is inerrant in all that it affirms.

Do you know, both errantists and inerrantists could say yes, but we as inerrants, boy, that's hard to say, isn't it?

Need to go a little farther. So much so that the evolution of terms trying to defend the

Bible have gone like this, according to Ryrie. Here's what we used to say.

I believe in the inspiration of the Bible, but sometimes the words weren't inspired, so then we had to say this.

I believe in verbal inspiration of the Bible, but maybe not all the Bible's inspired.

I believe in the verbal, plenary, all of it, inspiration of the Bible, but then it's not maybe all accurate, so now we have to say,

I believe in the verbal, plenary, infallible, inerrant inspiration of the

Bible. To me, that's all kind of weaselly.

The Bible's inerrant in everything regarding faith and practice? Well, that was the question

I was going to ask you. Is the Bible inerrant in everything pertaining to faith and practice? Yes, but in everything else too.

E .J. Young said, here's what inerrancy means. Quote, By this word we mean that the

Scriptures possess the quality of freedom from error. They are exempt from the liability to mistake incapable of error.

I like that. It's okay with inerrancy if there are different styles.

Peter writes one way, John writes another. It's okay if there's a problem passage because the problem's in our mind.

Inerrancy demands that account does not teach error or contradiction. Is it okay if we just find a minor error?

Just a little one. You have to think before you talk.

Let me tell you some of the doctrinal matters that are affected by denying inerrancy in just a little spot here or there.

Adam didn't really fall historically. That's what people would say.

Jonah, not swallowed by a real whale. It's a good story, though. There's some power to the storytelling, they'd say.

Moses didn't write the first five books of the Bible. Who did, by the way? Well, sometimes people will say

J -P -E.

What else? Two authors wrote Isaiah. Lifestyle errors in the

Bible. If we have a low view of inerrancy, not so big a deal. Adultery, gay marriage, homosexuality, divorce, remarriage.

It's kind of cultural. Women, pastors, no big deal. Samuel Butler, I think, summarized all this.

The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That's bad.

God wrote the Word of God, therefore it is the truth. Let's see, what else do

I want to say? All right, I find this very interesting. It's hard for me to do these kind of messages because I'd rather just preach from the text, but I said

I'd do it, so I'm doing it. There are seven divisions within inerrancy. You tell me which one you are.

Absolute inerrancy. These are found in Erickson's Systematic Theology. Everything is true, and if there is a contradiction, it just needs explaining.

Okay? Full inerrancy. The full would be similar to the absolute, except they would not attempt to prove contradictions to be false in the area of science.

So when the Bible speaks of salvation, Roman Catholics do this, it's inerrant. When it speaks of other things, science, you know, not quite inerrant.

Limited inerrancy. The Bible is not attempting to be an authority on science and history.

And, you know, because of the day and the age, there might be some error in that. It was written a long time ago.

Which one are you so far? Inerrancy of purpose.

Scripture is to bring man to God. Everything else, gravy.

But there might be a fly in the gravy. Accommodated revelation. Well, maybe some man's word got in there.

Maybe some is revelation of God, some of it's man's word. Paul kind of brought in maybe some rabbinical style and not really sure what's what.

Of course, these are getting worse as we go. The first one was the right one and now we're getting worse. Non -propositional revelation.

The Bible's a guide to personal relationships between people.

And the Scriptures are only the words of men and they want us to have good person -to -person encounters. And the worst one, inerrancy is irrelevant point.

If you think about inerrancy, it's just going to make you concentrate on the minute thoughts of inerrancy while ignoring what might happen if someone just studies the

Bible, it has got error in it or not. We believe the

Bible is errorless because the words of the Bible are God's utterances.

Augustine said, most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books.

Whenever I have this debate with someone, I always and always, did

I tell you that? I always go to Jesus' view of the Bible. That's where I go.

I can't defend what book came into the canon or what time. I'm not supposed to defend the Scriptures anyway.

I'm supposed to proclaim the truth. No wonder they don't want to believe it because they don't want to be under the Scriptures. So I just say, for sake of being nice,

Christ's view of Scriptures. He could have corrected anything. Could he have not? Jonah, it's just a story.

It's no big deal. The whole Moses thing and all the laws. He could have corrected it all, but he did not.

He affirmed it. From an unbeliever's perspective,

Kearsop Lake at the University of Chicago said this, it is a mistake often made by educated persons who happen to have but little knowledge of historical theology to suppose that fundamentalism is new and a strange form of thought.

If anybody thinks this idea that the Word of God is inerrant along with other fundamental truths and propositions, it's not new.

Lake goes on to say, it is nothing of the kind. It is the partial and uneducated survival of a theology which was once universally held by all

Christians. No. How many were there, for instance, in Christian churches in the 18th century who doubted the infallible inspiration of Scripture?

A few perhaps, but very few. No, the fundamentalist may be wrong. I think that he is.

But it is we who have departed from the tradition, not he. And I am sorry for the fate of anyone who tries to argue with a fundamentalist on the basis of authority.

The Bible and the corpus of Scripture and of the church is on the fundamentalist side. It's not new.

This is what the church has always believed. What's new is, we want to get from out of underneath the Scripture, but we want to have our non -profit clubs on Sundays.

In 1978, a bunch of people got together for the Inerrancy Council and they stood up for the

Word of God. If you haven't read it, I just sent it out to my email list today, or Friday, for you to read, this

Council on Inerrancy in Chicago. And I think we want to stand up for the Word of God.

Lenzel said, To fail to speak is more than cowardice, it is sinful. There comes a time when Christians must not keep silent, when to do so is far worse than to speak and risk being misunderstood or disagreed with.

If we Christians do not learn from history, we are bound to repeat its mistakes. And here's the crusher, and then we need to close.

If you think there's an error in the Bible, Grudem said, then maybe we could imitate

God and just intentionally lie on small matters too. God intentionally lied, maybe we could do that too.

Grudem says, If you can't trust the Bible, can you trust God in anything that He says? If you don't trust that the

Bible is inerrant, Grudem says, then you make your human mind a higher standard of truth than God's Word itself.

Now let's let the rubber hit the road. Do you think inerrancy should be required of the next pastor of this church?

Not planning to go or anything, you know, pastor goes out of town, is he candidating in Omaha? No, I'm not candidating.

It's very simple, I don't go to other churches, and I don't think about going because I never get the letters, I have buddies.

Yeah, if you're in a place for five years, they'll just send you all these letters, everybody will want you. I've gotten one letter so far since I've been here nine years.

I think I might have saved it because guess who it was from? Tim LaHaye wrote me a letter because he got my name off some distribution list at the

Master Seminary, and so at the time all those books were being sold at a huge pace before the whole purpose -driven thing came out, and I said, the number one

Christian author in all the world has sent me a letter, and then within that letter it also asked me to take some temperament test or some kind of psychobabble deal, and I thought,

I showed it to Scott just to make sure he knew. Remember that? How about this?

Should church membership, people who are brand new in the faith, should we require church membership to believe in inerrancy?

How about this? Someone teaches a Sunday school here, should they have to believe in inerrancy?

How about a new elder? How about a pastor? Have you decided on the church membership deal yet?

How about teaching in a seminary? You know, we are such a minority.

We are troglodytes. People don't believe in inerrancy anymore. You might ask the question, well, why didn't

God preserve the original autographs? If we say that we're not sure about, you know, we're sure about the original autographs, but then what about this?

Why didn't God say, here's the original autograph? Does anybody know? They would worship them for sure.

I mean, when I was coming back from India, I was trying to scheme and to plan everything I could so I could have a layover in Geneva because then

I was going to get on a train. Actually, I was going to fly into Milan. Where was I going to fly into?

What's the big city in Switzerland? Not Geneva. That's not... Zurich. I was supposed to fly

Swissair to Zurich. I was going to take a three -hour train ride into Geneva and then I was going to go stand in Calvin's pulpit.

I'm not even an iconoclast. I'm not even a Roman Catholic. I'm not even involved in that stuff, but I just wanted to like stand there where he preached.

When I went to England, to Bedford, I got to stand in the pulpit of John Bunyan.

I thought that was pretty good. I went to Princeton and touched the tombstone of Jonathan Edwards.

I don't even worship... Well, maybe I do. You just think, oh, the legacy.

I went to West Brookfield and stood right by your parents' old house on the rock that George Whitefield preached to 2 ,000 people from.

Call it Whitefield Rock. You can go to Boston and stand and touch

Cotton Mather's tomb. Just think if we had a real manuscript.

I think it's cool to go to Scott Ferris' house and see a page from the Geneva Bible, let alone the real autographs.

Remember Moses? I remember standing on Mount Nebo, looking down to Jerusalem and thinking God buried

Moses on Mount Nebo. Why? Because you can just imagine they would embalm the guy and carry him all around.

It's the new Ark of the Covenant kind of thing. Are there difficulties because we don't have the manuscripts?

Yes. But I'll go back to what I said before and then we're going to get to clarity next week or in two weeks.

Because this new deal, the Emergent Church, how many people have heard the words Emergent Church? Anyone? The Emergent Church has come along.

Open theism said this, God doesn't know the future. And God is going to let your free will be so free that you can choose whatever you want and He's not going to touch it and He doesn't know what you're going to choose until you choose it.

And so God's just up there thinking hmm. And with the Emergent Church it comes along and says this, you are arrogant if you think you know what the

Bible says. How could you know? We're just humans. How could we know? And so now they attack this doctrine that God cannot communicate clearly and they attack the clarity.

Do you remember the old term for clarity of Scripture? Perspicuity of Scripture.

And we're going to talk about clarity next time. Can God clearly speak? The answer is going to be yes.

So tonight we've looked at canon, authority, and inerrancy and next time, not next Sunday night because we'll have the

Sunday night off, we'll look at clarity and then we'll look at another one that is big and that is called sufficiency.

What did the poor church do before Freud came along? Alright, let's sing one last song.

Do we have a good song, Mark, about the Word of God? Who has a good song about the

Word of God and we'll sing that? Standing on the Promises? I think that's good.

What's that number? 76? I don't think we can sing it not standing.

What number is it? 271. There you go.

By the way, I'd like to be able to have somebody go through all the hymnals and change And Can It Be to the proper and original lyrics if somebody would like to do that and go through.

I want it done well. And Can It Be is a great song by Wesley but it says

Jesus emptied himself of all but love. Did Jesus empty himself of omniscience?

Did he? He emptied himself of all but love, Wesley said. Is that right? So what we need to say he emptied himself in matchless love because he did empty himself according to Philippians chapter 2 and that emptying was by adding human flesh and so I'd like to do that and I'd also like to change the lyric that says and bled for Adam's helpless race

I'd like to change that to he bled for Adam's what? chosen race so we sing proper theology as I said this morning there is no premium on ignorance nor false doctrine he emptied himself of all but love every time

Stephen Nelson and I just try to sing real loud he emptied himself in matchless love that's what he did because he never when you think about the incarnation never say this

Jesus was not God in that particular area because then you're gone into false doctrine he emptied himself in matchless love but he didn't empty himself of all but love and you say just sit down and let's sing ok