I think children sleep well in my teaching. Has everyone received two handouts? We have a handout with a staple in it, and then we have a handout. And so my lovely assistant, Vanna, yes. He found something I know how to do. Yeah. We need more over here. If you will just wave your hand at my bride, two things I want to let you know. We're going to have a commemorative celebratory service after our 1055 services Sunday, where we are actually going to have maybe about a 10-minute ceremony at the end of that service. So I'm going to invite you to attend. Our choir will be singing. Some of them are listening online to this message. So hi, choir. I'm glad you're listening. I also want to let you know that we are going to do this series for up until almost Thanksgiving. We're going to work our way through some of the key issues that Christians need to understand. We called it basic Christianity. It's a little bit of a deceptive title, because it's actually quite deep and meaningful. The time we're going to spend together tonight will start by talking about the Holy Scripture. Next week, we'll talk about the nature of God. So you can just imagine it's going to be fairly deep and comprehensive. So I want to encourage you to follow along. We'll do a handout for you each week. And some of you might want to turn this into a notebook, something that you could use over the years to help you. Maybe answer questions. Somebody asks you a question and you're like, oh, I learned that Wednesday night. I got it. One more thing. sweetheart, what's going on? Do you need more? You know what, I don't think I do. Maybe husbands and wives could share. I'm sure our friends from Alabama would be so happy to share. Wouldn't they, Raymond? What friends? Hey, I had a good question tonight. And I'm going to answer it for everybody. We're going to have a new members class on October the 30th. That's a Saturday. And it will be from 9 in the morning until 1 in the afternoon. So 9 to 1 on October 30th, if you've been a long time visitor, we would love to have you consider joining our church. Or if you're just kind of starting to come, and you want to be a part of this body, we would love to have you. So please consider that October 30th. And it'll be about a four hour class that Joel and I will be doing together. Just so y'all know, Joel's grandfather, 101 years of age, went to be with the Lord this week. He lives up in Wisconsin on a dairy farm, grew up eating eggs and bacon and sausage and biscuits every morning, and lived to be 101. And we're eating granola and dying at 50. You know, what's gone wrong here? OK, I want you to open up the last page of your staple to hand out, because I want you to take a look at some of the resources I've listed for you. I just want to give you a sense that if you're interested in some of the things we're talking about, and you want to try to drill down a little deeper, we've got Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology. It is a book that's about 750 pages. I went through it with my son a couple of years ago, and it's delightful reading. If you would like the shorter version, Christian beliefs, 20 chapters, you will love it. It's like just wonderfully presented, real simple. I also put GI Williamson's, the Westminster's shorter catechism as a resource on here. Very good resource, user friendly, good illustrations. So you'll love it. Hey, Robert, glad you made it, buddy. You'll need a handout. I'm sure you'll find one some kind soul will help you. Is there a kind soul in the house? Also, Hustle Gonzales did a three volume series called The Story of Christianity. It reads like a novel. I kid you not. If you want to read a really neat history of Christian, the Christian church of Christianity, grab those. They're paperback, they're inexpensive, they're well done. You'll really enjoy reading Hustle Gonzales. If you're a little bit on the technical side, in other words, you really, hey, hey, Tinsley, I want to know the documents. I want to know the Greek manuscripts. I want to know the Hebrew text. Where did they find this stuff? How, what's the textual criticism view on this? I've got it for you. The Canon of Scripture by F.F. Bruce. I guarantee it will put you to sleep. But if you want, if you really, you love that kind of stuff, he is excellent. Sorry, I wanted to give you that. And then if you want another user-friendly version that'll quote Latin in Greek in Hebrew, but RC is a very, very bright man, but he's gifted to put the cookies on the bottom shelf. And so everyone can reach him. So if you want to read Truths We Confess, it's a contemporary walk through the confession and you'll just eat it up, real helpful. I'll try to cite these sources as I kind of put a conglomeration of those sources within the text that I've worked my way through. So let's get going. All that as a way of introduction. Five minutes, that one's bad. Okay, what we're going to do is give you an introduction and I'll just kind of round things out. If you raise your hand for a question, I'm probably going to ignore you until we get a little closer to the end just because I want to work through. If you have a question, write it in the margin so you don't forget it. Okay, and we can circle back to it either later tonight or next week we can tee up a question. If you have a question you'd love to add, just email it to me and I'll either email you back or I'll tee it up next week and we'll start with it. Okay, in Genesis chapter three, the evil one came and he approached Adam and Eve
and he presented a question to them and the question he presented struck at the authority of scripture. Basically, if I could paraphrase it, I would say that Satan came to Adam and Eve and said, did God really say? Did God really say? And I promise you, the evil one has not changed his tactic. He questions God's word and if he can get you to question the authority and the validity of God's word, he's got you. He's got you going. He's got you doubting, he's got you a little confused, he's got you like, oh, did it really say that? Is that really for me or is that just for older people 500 years ago and that's how he works. So I want you to know that one of the reasons the pastors and I are doing this series is because Christians have a reasonable faith and Christianity is a revealed religion that's based, that's not based on man's speculative reasoning but it's a response to God's revealed truth. You need to recognize that we're really responding to God's revealed truth. And then there's two ways that God reveals himself. He reveals himself in general and in special revelation. Now I'm going to camp a little bit here because I want you to think about this. General revelation is indeed that. It's aimed at the general audience and it gives you general information about God. Now, if you want to take a note, that's a good one because you're going to be able to go, general revelation, what was that all about? The general audience, general knowledge of God. And then if you look at this, general revelation says the knowledge of God's existence, character and moral law that comes through creation to all humanity. Now, you might be staring at that and you're thinking, wait a minute, the knowledge of God's existence, character and moral law that comes simply through creation and that's saying a lot. Well, let's look at it together. Let's look at Psalm 19. I've had us use Psalm 19 as our call to worship the last two Sundays because I wanted you to get familiar with it and get a sense and I even addressed it this past Sunday morning and said, hey, Psalm 19 is one of the two forms of revelation. It speaks of general revelation. So I'm going to read Psalm 19 for you and I'm going to pretty much tie a lot of what I say to the scriptures tonight because I want you to be able to go back and study it on your own. I'm not going to camp as deeply as I would if I were preaching or doing the entire talk on general revelation but I want you to feel comfortable knowing Psalm 19. It says, listen just to the very first line. The heavens declare the glory of God. Well, what's the declare mean? It's communicating. It's proclaiming. It's revealing. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of His hands and so those two verbs build on each other don't they? In the parallelism of the Hebrew Psalms, the heavens declare the skies proclaim. See the pattern that they're building? Day after day, they pour forth speech. Not after night, they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. So in other words, all around the earth, every living person has had this revealed to them about God. That's why it's called general revelation. Look at verse 4. Their voice goes out into all the earth. Their words to the ends of the world and then we go on with a few more verses there. What is it about general revelation that we should be thinking? Well, I want you to recognize something. General revelation is sufficient to reveal God in general, but it's insufficient to reveal salvation. So general revelation is sufficient to reveal the general character of God to all people, but it's not sufficient for salvation. Now, turn over to Romans 1, 18 to 32. I'm not going to read that whole passage, but I want you to have it in your notes so you can study it. Romans 1, I'll begin in 18 and I'll just read a few of these verses. We use this in our worship this past Sunday too, so if it looks familiar, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the Godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth with their wickedness. Now listen to this. Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. And then here's the punch. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, well, what are those? His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, how, how, how's that possible? Being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse. So general revelation is able to present who God is and it is also able to bring condemnation to all people because they should honor God as God and they don't and that goes on to the rest of the passage. Now, the last little part about general revelation, this idea of the moral law is as a knowledge of God's existence, character and moral law that comes through creation to all humanity. And some of you might be thinking, the moral law, how does creation, how does looking at a tree bring moral law? What's that about? Well, look in Romans chapter two. I'll just read these verses here beginning in verse 14. It says, indeed, when then Gentiles who do not have the law, in other words, the written law, due by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. Listen to this, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. So within man himself, every man is, first of all, required the worship and honor God. And then secondly, within their heart, God has created their conscience by which they understand and have a sense of right and wrong. So I wanted you to get a sense of this, this idea of an internal sense. John Calvin called it the census divinity, how do you say that, Latin people, divinate totus, census divinate totus by John Calvin. And that simply means the sense of the divine. Now let's talk a little bit about special revelation. This is God's word addressed to specific people. Remember what I said, general revelation has a general audience, special revelation has a specific audience. And it's revealed to specific people and it includes the words of the Bible. It's distinguished from general revelation, which is given to all people generally. There are people right now on the earth who have not received special revelation. As one of the reasons when we do our missions conference in October, we are still motivated about world missions. Because until every single person on this planet has the opportunity to hear the gospel, we are going to keep going, okay? You know that, but I just wanted to reiterate that. So special revelation is this bringing of truth. The first manifestation of special revelation is the person of Jesus Christ. He's referred to as the word. You all know John 1-1 in the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. How much more of a special revelation do we need to proclaim the word of God being Jesus the person? I've added a couple other verses up there for you so that you can see interestingly enough, just so you know, only the apostle John refers to Jesus as the word in the New Testament. It's pretty interesting if you think about it. You've got to love John. I know you're going to. I love that guy. He's one of my best dead friends. But revelation, the gospel of John and one of the apostles of John, he speaks of Jesus as the word. I want you to also recognize that God speaks his word. In Genesis 1-3, God gives this special revelation. Let me just read that for us. I think most of you will know as soon as I begin to read it. Unless you know it by heart, it says, and God said, let there be light and there was light. So there's a sense of God speaking. And then we have God's word in a personal address. And that's where God communicates to his people on earth by speaking directly to them. And remember when God spoke to Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 2, verses 16 and 17. This is the first manifestation of the covenant. It's known as the covenant of works, by the way. If you've never been exposed to that thinking, Genesis 2 says, and the Lord, God, commanded the man. You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat of it, you will surely die. And so God literally speaks in a personal address to man. And I gave you a few more scriptures that you can look at. Now when you think about God's speaks as word and then God's word in a personal address, that's called immediate revelation. Why is that? Because there's no medium. There's no translation. It's directly from God. God speaks his word. And God speaks his word directly to somebody in a person. That's called immediate revelation. The other two are called immediate revelation because it's revealed through nature or through a person, through written form. And so Deuteronomy 18, verses 18 to 20, speak of God speaking through human beings. And so here in Deuteronomy, I purposely did not print out these Bible verses because I wanted to look them up with you and take the time to do so. And actually, I wanted you to handle your text. I wanted you to get that feeling of I'm flipping through my Bible. I'm making marks in the margin. I'm going to own this deal. And one of the reasons I'm teaching this course, you might not know this. It's for our officer training. You might think, why ain't never been an officer? Well, you know what? I want every member of our church to understand what's required to be an officer. And for our elders and deacons, they're required to shepherd the flock. And one of the ways they're going to shepherd the flock is when you come to them with a problem and you say, I really doubt what's going on in my life with the Lord. They're going to say, well, that's an old trick that Satan has. Because he gets you to doubt the authority of his words. Let's go to God's word and see if it can strengthen your faith. And so we're equipping elders and deacons and all the wives, and anyone who's interested in our church is welcome to attend, including the choir who are singing their little hearts out right now. But they're thinking about us. Due to around me, 18, 18 to 20, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and I will tell them everything I command him. So we get the idea that God is speaking through a human voice through the prophets. And then we have God's words in written form. And this is probably what you've been waiting for. You've kind of been waiting for this shoe to drop. What are we going to talk about the Bible? Just think how kind it was of God to inscripture his words for us. I mean, did you ever get a letter? And you kept going back with that letter to reread it again. We have this evidence that's written down for us. And God in His kindness and His providential care has protected His word all these centuries so that we have a valid piece of valuable revelation from God so that we can read it. And I want you to recognize that God gave His commandments and written form if you can look up those scriptures if you want. You could also think of Exodus 20, the idea that God was actually handwriting on those stones, the 10 commandments. He is giving us His word. And it was common for the people of the Old Testament, which I'll get into in a minute, for them to keep track of the things that God was telling them. Now, I want you to just take a moment here and think, Kate Tim, you've just started talking about the Bible. How is it that different books of the Bible were decided to be included? I mean, how did they decide to do that? We've got the canon of the Bible or the canon of Scripture. The word canon, I put in the notes up there, there's a Greek term for measuring rod. In other words, how do you measure a book in order to include it in God's word? And I put a Latin term up there. I got this from R.C. Sproul, and the term means we receive. Why did R.C. say that that way? Why did he say we receive the books of the Bible as the word of God? Well, it's important to recognize something. The church doesn't have authority over the Bible. The Bible has authority over the church. Now, a lot of people ask me, was the difference between the Roman Catholic church and the Protestant church? Here's one very clear for you. Roman Catholic church believes that oral tradition is as valuable as the word of God. And they believe that they have authority over the word of God. The Protestant church believes that while oral traditions can be valuable, they are subordinate to the word of God and that the church is subordinate to the word of God. So we don't tell the Bible what we think the Bible says. The Bible tells us what the Bible thinks it says. Okay. Huge difference. We could go on a long time for that one. But I just wanted to give you a sense of, if you were going to kind of take a macrocosmic view at this internationally, that's one of the great tensions between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. So the church leaders and councils followed something similar to the following principles to determine whether a new testament book was truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. Recognizing that God gave us His word and it doesn't become His word because we authorize it, it's His word already and we recognize it. That's a key point. If you're going to write anything down that's critical tonight, you might have thought that was kind of a transitional statement. It's very, very critical. That's a principle. You must gather if you're going to have intelligent conversation with people of either other religions or people who have a similar basis for their belief about God. It's very important to understand that we believe that God has given us His authoritative word. It isn't authoritative because we say it's authoritative. There's a bumper sticker. It says God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Sounds kind of cute. Very wrong thinking. Very wrong thinking. God's word is God's word and it's authoritative where you believe it or not. Right, I kind of catch you a little bit short, doesn't it? Well, let's talk about how we have come to recognize these books of the Bible. Number one, and this is the main thing you need to recognize when you think about how did that New Testament book get in a New Testament? Now, some of you right now are going, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Old Testament. What about Old Testament? What about Old Testament? You went right to New Testament. The Old Testament because it was given to the people of God and the Old Testament, the Jewish nation, they have copious records of the word of God that was revealed to them. You'll read in Isaiah where it says he wrote it down. You'll read in Jeremiah where they wrote it down. You'll read in the Pentateuch or the first five books to the Bible where Moses wrote these things down. So they always recorded everything. And so when it came time to pronounce that the Old Testament was actually the authoritative word of God, nobody questioned that for one second. Everybody's like, well, of course. We've been doing this for thousands of years. Did you just fall off the camel train? You don't get it, right? And so we have very little commentary about the canon of the Old Testament because it was inculcated within the Jewish people. But now what happened? Now we come to this situation where the message that was given primarily to the Jews of the Old Testament is now being expanded to the people of God among the Gentiles. What's the Gentile? A non-Jew. There were two categories. You were either a Jew or a year weren't. Pretty simple, OK? So now what are we going to do? How are we going to figure this out? How are we going to make sure that people recognize that it's really the word of God? Well, the main thing they did was they wanted to make sure the author was an apostle. Now there's requirements for being an apostle. That's why there are no apostles today. An apostle was required to have seen Jesus' ministry from the time of his baptism to the time of his ascension. And Paul actually considers himself a bit of a stepchild apostle. You'll hear him refer to himself as, oh, I was kind of added on at the end. It was because he didn't walk with Jesus as the other apostles, but he did see Jesus as Jesus revealed himself on the road to Damascus. So one of the main ways they found that they accepted was if the author was an apostle, or he had a close connection with an apostle. For instance, Mark had a very close connection with Peter. In fact, most of us believe that the gospel of Mark was dictated to him by the apostle Peter. So it's really Peter's gospel as written by Mark. You can look at 1 Peter 5.13 and see the close relationship he had with Mark. And that's the very same Mark who Paul kind of kicked off the team when he wasn't quite as vociferous in his ministry call and acts. Next, we see that Paul considered Luke's writing to be authoritative as the Old Testament. And so Paul validated Luke. Luke wasn't an apostle, but he worked closely. He worked very closely with Paul. And so because of his relationship with Paul and the interaction they had, then we found that that was widely accepted because of Luke's relationship. You can read that throughout the book of Acts. Peter recognized Paul's writings as scripture. Now this is a really key point. That word scripture that's used in the Greek text and the New Testament is the Greek word graph A, G-R-A-P-H, long A, if you will. It's hard to translate into English from the direct Greek, but it'll give you a sense of pronouncing it. And it's used 51 times in the New Testament, and it only has one meaning. 51 times that term is used in the New Testament, and it only has one meaning. And that is the authoritative approved word of God of the Old Testament. The authoritative approved word of God of the Old Testament. Now, something really amazing happens here in 2 Peter chapter three. If you have your text, you're going to want to see it. If not, just believe me, I'm going to read it to you. 2 Peter 2, I'm sorry, 2 Peter 3. Listen to what he says in verse 16. He writes the same in all his letters. He's speaking of Paul. I'll go up to 15 so you believe me. Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation. Just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes, in other words, Paul writes the same way in his letters, speaking of them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, amen to that. Which ignorant and unstable people distort the present company excluded. And then he says, as they do the other scriptures, as they do the other scriptures, what does that mean? It means he's equating Paul's teaching to the other scriptures. And the word scripture is a technical term that only applies to the approved authoritative word of God. And so what we're finding here is the Apostle Peter validating Paul's writings and equating them with scripture. Another instance is Jude was Jesus's brother. If you want to be technical, I guess we'd say half brother. But so Jude got in under the nepotism policy. And then we have some books of the New Testament that were being circulated among the churches. And that also adds validity to their acceptability. So I just wanted you to get a sense of the main thought here is that the books of the New Testament were included mainly because of the apostolic authorship. So think about it in your brain. Who are the apostles? You might think, oh, Matthew. And then we had John. And then we had Paul. And before you know it, you have the majority of the New Testament. So I just wanted to touch on that for you to give you a little confidence. Here's a few, I believe, minor points that have kind of been retrofitted through church history. The book is being accepted by the body of Christ at large. In other words, that first century church did they accept that as authoritative. Thirdly, the book contained consistent doctrine and Orthodox teaching. Did the book bear evidence of high moral and spiritual values that would reflect a work of the Holy Spirit? Now, I'm about to touch on something here that I want you to catch. And I'm doing it on purpose. Again, it's crucial to remember that the church did not determine the canon. No early church counsel decided on canon, it was God and God alone who determined which books belonged in the Bible. Now, there's another issue I just want to bring to your attention. The Roman Catholic Bible includes the books of the apocrypha. The apocrypha, which means things that are hidden. Those books were not accepted by the early church. They're not quoted in other parts of the Bible. And so Protestants have not included them in our Bible. So just I don't want to skip over some things that might be helpful for you. I just want you to recognize that the apocrypha is not included. And I also want you to know that the final authority rest in the Bible, it doesn't rest in the people who approved it to be the Bible. Now, if you're a thinking person and you might be, you might be saying, why wasn't the New Testament already clearly defined? The first counsel that gave approval of the New Testament was in, I think it was, I have it written here, 363, the counsel of Lea Decia. So the reason we say the counsels didn't really approve the canon is because the canon was already functioning before they in a retrofit sort of way approved them. They didn't really approve them. They ratified them, if you will. You might think, and why did it take so long? Well, there was a movement in the second century by a man named Marcian. And Marcian was an interesting guy. And I brought notes, and these notes I've taken from our friend Hustogonzales. And Hustogonzales talks about Marcian. And the reason Marcian is so important is because Marcian actually found it a church that lasted for centuries. Just let that sink into a second. Marcian actually found it a church that lasted for centuries. Centuries being more than 100 years, more than 200 years. Okay, a pretty serious problem. Let me tell you just a little bit about Marcian. Marcian began to teach that because so much of the Old Testament was filled with wrath, go to the Philistines and wipe them off the face of the earth and go to the Amalakites. And so as Marcian's wrestling with this, he says, you know what, there's no way that the God of the New Testament who is so loving could be the same God as the God of the Old Testament. It just is a non-sequitor. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't add up. So he created two gods, pretty easy. We got an Old Testament God who's vengeful and wrathful and mean, but now we have a New Testament God who's sweet and kind and forgiving and loving. That's Marcianism. So the church is watching Marcian and they're thinking, this guy's off his rocker. He's just gonna go away. He didn't go away. In fact, not only did he not go away, he got stronger and he got more followers and the church went, huddle up, huddle up, huddle up. And this was the beginning of the canon of the New Testament because they had to. Until then it was just accepted. Now look what happened, about 150 AD. Now we believe that the Apostle John who was the last living Apostle probably died, I'm just gonna guesstimate for us. Let's say a hundred AD, about 70 years after Jesus, Jesus's crucifixion. So once that last Apostle died, you lost your living eye witness. Let's say we did something. Let's say we played golf yesterday. And let's say Colin and I played and Colin showed up tonight and he goes, I made four holes in one, every part three. I made a hole in one and I'm listening to this stuff. I'm like, Colin, you did not make a hole in one. At all. I was an eyewitness, I saw it. The eyewitnesses dead now, they're all dead. They were either martyred or they just died of natural causes. Once your eyewitnesses leave, you're open to speculation. And Marcy and began to speculate. And the church said, uh-uh, uh-uh, we're not gonna go there. We know better than this. We've got these 27 documents and we're gonna stick to them. And he's wrong because these 27 documents revealed to us that the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. And we're not gonna put up with this. Even with that strong standing, this, his church went on for hundreds of years. So we need to take care of see very seriously. Another thing happened is a group called the Nostics. Nostics, and I just, I wanna unpack this stuff so you're not intimidated by it. You know, my wife was so interested in studying Greek until she married me. Now she's like, he'll figure it out. What's the big deal? Right. So the Nostics, it means to know. And what the Nostics believe is that in order to have salvation, you had to receive a special secret revelation that gave you the key to salvation. The key that other people didn't have. And this was a personal revelation. It didn't happen at church when the pastor's preaching didn't happen in Bible study. It happened when you were alone in this mystical, mystical revelation came to you. And all of a sudden you got the secret. You had the secret. And you became this elite Nostics. And the church said, uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. That's not how revelation works. And so that's what brought the church to this point of bringing the clarity and focus. And I got a lot of that material. Like I said, chapter 8, the deposit of faith, who stole Gonzales? The youngest man to ever get a master's and a doctorate from Harvard, he's brilliant and so readable. You've ever wanted to read the history of the church and you just couldn't quite do it. This is your best chance. Who stole Gonzales? Okay. Okay, what's the view of the Bible that's held today? I just teed up four, okay? I tried to generically classify so you could kind of say, okay, I get some of this. First of all, we have pagans or people who are moralists, moralism. And what do they believe about the Bible? They believe the Bible is a book written by men that contains stories, morals, and fables. It's just a book like any other book. And that's good for you, good for you, you know? It doesn't have any authority over me. Okay, I let the secret word out, authority. If you believe the Bible is the word of God, it has authority in your life. If you do not believe the Bible has a word of God, it is simply a suggestion. Hey, think about this. The ten suggestions. Thou shalt consider having no other gods before me.
Right, you get the difference. So we've got this world, this pluralistic world, pluralistic. Is that a common word? Pluralistic meaning that in our culture, we have elevated all religions as equally valid. That's a generic definition of a pluralistic society, like the one in which we live. Dominated by this, by the pagans. We're becoming more and more pagan as we stop holding the Bible as the authoritative word of God. We become more pagan. Let's go to the liberals. I call this modernism. It's a bit of an oxymoron. Some parts of the Bible are God's words and some are man's words. And man decides for himself whether he thinks it's true or false. What just happened, what's happening is the seat of authority has been transferred from the throne of God to the heart of man. Happened in the enlightenment. If we ever do a little church history or if you say, I want to study that, go to the enlightenment. The American church has never recovered from the enlightenment of Europe. I would even go so far back to say the churches of the first century were horribly impacted by platonic thinking, the work of Plato who believed in the evil material and the good spirit. It still influences the preaching of some Protestant denominations today. Won't go into that, that was for free. Okay, let's talk a little bit about neo-Orthodoxy, which is new orthodoxy. It's also called postmodernism. Carl Barth was a huge proponent of this in the 1900s. And that is the whole Bible is the fallible word of man. But when people read the words of man, God somehow uses these words to reveal to them the truth of the word of God. I'm going to walk through those three definitions for you, just in case you're taking copious notes. By the way, this stuff will be posted on our website with the notes and the audio. So if you're missing something and you want to go back over it, just know you're going to have that in front of you on your computer if you happen to have one. Moralism is the idea that the Bible's written by men containing stories, morals, and fables. The liberals believe that some parts of the Bible are God's word, and some parts are man's word, and that you decide for yourself what you think is true. Neo-Orthodoxy believes that the whole Bible is fallible, but somehow miraculously when we read it, God turns it into his word. Now, the last one is this idea of conservative Christians, reformers I put on there. We tend to hold this view, and that is that the entire Bible is the word of God. The entire Bible is inspired, or God breathed, is the actual Greek term by God, and God reveals himself to his people through the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. So I'm going to read that one more time. The entire Bible is the word of God. The entire Bible is inspired or God breathed by God, and God reveals himself to his people through the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. Now, I'm going to teach about a heretical view, and then I'm going to explain the difference between illumination and revelation. It's very, very important you get this. First, the heretical view. There's a movement within some denominations of Protestantism, mainly denominations like assemblies of God, more charismatic movement, and it scares people like Presbyterians to death.
He raised his hands in worship! The charismatic slippery slope! Well, really, there's only one thing we really fear in terms of charismatic. Uh, it's not wrong to lift your hands in worship, it's not wrong to clap, not wrong to make a happy noise, it's not wrong to dance before the Lord, right? If that were so, then we would need to get rid of a lot of Bible verses, and we would have to elevate our tradition over the Bible. We are in the wrong church to do that. We do not elevate our traditions or our preferences over the Bible. That is wrong. So if you have a preference or a tradition that does not agree with God's word, you need to hold it loosely, and not judge other people, trying to bind their conscience according to your preference instead of according to God's word. Now that, my friend, needs about an hour of explanation, but I wanted you to get that, because it's very important in a church that has a lot of traditions, that we hold our traditions with reverence, but we hold them loosely, unless they are prescribed in God's word, or unless they prohibit something that God's word prohibits. So I use two P words there, you need to get these. It will help you through church history for the rest of your life. Prescribed verses prohibited. If God's word prescribes it, we obey it. If God's word prohibits it, we don't do it, right? But in the areas where we see that God's word does not prescribe nor prohibit, we need to be gracious and thoughtful. Now with that as our backdrop, I'm going to make a very strong warning. The warning that I have for anybody who is in the assemblies of God denomination, or more of a charismatic mentality, is this movement that's happened to them, and it centers around the concept of new revelation. New revelation is when somebody says, God gave me a word of knowledge for you, Chad. Now wait, let's back up. What is the essence of God's word authority? So if I have new revelation, and I'm going to try to apply it to Chad, that new revelation is authoritative because if it's from God, it has authority. If it's from man, it's open to discussion. Authority means you bind another person's conscience. The danger of new revelation is how do you know it's new revelation? How do you know it's from God? How is it that some guy in India had this revelation from God, and I don't know about it? I'm not going to find out about it. What's the canon, remember that term? What's the measuring stick? How can he try to bind my conscience with something he heard in his prayer time? It should be for all ages and all people. It should be universal, right? That's what revelation is. General and specific revelation. Okay, if you glossed over on that, get ready to get sick to your stomach. Three in the morning, three in the morning, I'm sound asleep by phone rings. It's a woman. She's weeping so hard, I can't understand her voice, and this is pre-collar ID, so I don't know who it is. Her husband takes the phone. Tim, can you come over here? I'm like, David, I can come over there. It's three in the morning. I just got home. No, kidding. He goes, I really need you, man. I said, I'm there. Pulled on a pair of jeans, threw on a sweatshirt, headed over to the spawns house. David and Silya Spon. Silya had been diagnosed with cancer three years, previous to that. She had gone through a number of treatments. Just lovely lady, lovely children, great husband, a good friend of mine.
I got over there. Silya is weeping out of control and David is furious. I go, David, just give me the short story, man, what's going on? He goes, a couple of people from our church came over this afternoon and told Silya that God had given them a word of knowledge for her. God had told them that he had healed her of cancer and that all she had to do was believe. And if she didn't believe, then she wouldn't be healed. But if she did believe, she'd be completely healed. You might be mad right now or you might be, well, what if he did? Okay. When you seek to bind another person's conscience with anything other than the word of God, you're in sin.
And so Silya looked at me and said, Pastor Tim, if I don't have enough faith to be healed by Jesus of my cancer, I sure don't have enough faith to go to heaven when I die. And I know I'm about to die. Are you owning it now? Are you with me? New revelation no longer exists outside of God's revealed word. But what does exist? Illumination. Illumination is the Holy Spirit revealing to us what's already there. So maybe you read John 1 this week and you're like, I've read this my whole life, but whoa, I've never seen everything. Jesus was actually not only present at creation. He was actively involved hard and you know that the Holy Spirit has just illumined the truth of God's word. It's not new revelation. It's illumination. So I warn you as you're shepherd, do not submit to any revelation apart from God's word. Do seek the Holy Spirit to illumine you as you read God's word and as you live your life. But new revelation is wrong. It's sinful. It's dangerous. It's destructive. So I did a little summary thing here. Let's just talk a little bit about this. The Bible is. So Tim, what, you know, if you only had five minutes, how would you say it to us? The Bible is authoritative. Exodus 4, 22, 2 Timothy 3, 16, John 10, 27. I'm going to read 2 Timothy 3, 16. This will be worth the price of admission. I always have this fear that sometimes I'll like pick up the Bible and I won't know which direction to go. Like, man, I'm like a paid professional. Is that before or after he brews? Okay, 2 Timothy 3, 16. I've found it. Rest assured, you don't have to rescind my call. And of course there's a table of contents. All scripture is God breed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training and righteousness. Why? So that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. The Bible is authoritative. Secondly, the Bible is clear. Ephesians 6, 1 through 3. Who knows that? By the way, who knows Ephesians 6, 1 through 3? Any parents in the crowd? Children will bury your parents. You've got that one, Lynette. Where's my briefcase? What did I do with that? Did I leave that around here? There's a book in there. I hope I'm not going to squelch anybody with my microphone wandering. I brought a book, and it's one of my reference books, and I was going to give it to the person who quoted the verse. And you know what? Somehow, maybe I didn't bring it. Lynette, I owe you, I owe you, Wayne Grudom's little short one. You're going to love it. Christian beliefs. You'll eat it up. And if you read ahead, you'll still some of my funders. Now, Ephesians 6 is written to children. Children. Oh, baby, your parents. So the Bible is so simple. It's so clear. Secondly, the Bible, or thirdly, the Bible is infallible. When we use the term infallible, what you need to know is that it doesn't contain untruths outside of their context. In other words, you might find somebody lying in the Bible, but it's within context. You get it. You know, they're not trying to deceive you. You can look at Psalm 53 if you'd like to. Also, the Bible is necessary. And if you know that passage in Romans 10, there's a logic. And I'm just going to give you the logic without the passage. Number one, you must be called to be saved. Number two, you're only called if you believe in Jesus. Number three, you can't believe unless you've heard. Number four, you can't hear without a preacher. And number five, saving faith comes through hearing, right? There's this sequence. The Bible is necessary for our salvation. That's one of the reasons it is specific revelation. And then the Bible is sufficient. I read you that second Timothy passage, but I want you to get this sense that sufficient means that the Bible contains all we need to know for salvation. Not like the Mormon church. Maybe Mormon church is an oxymoron. Some good don't consider the Mormon church. They say it has to be the Bible plus the Book of Mormon. Roman Catholicism in some form says it's not just the Bible. It's our oral tradition. Anytime you hear somebody talking about the Bible plus something else, just run. Just take off, okay? The Bible is all sufficient. Let me review authoritative, what does that mean? What's the implication for authoritative Tim? This is what it means. To disbelieve or disobey God's word is to disbelieve or disobey God himself. Does that make sense? You will view the scripture in one way or the other, but if you get the sentence I just said, it will reveal whether you really believe God's authority is in his word. I'm going to say it again. To disbelieve or disobey God's word is to disbelieve or disobey God himself. Why have I asked our congregation to stand when we read God's word? A little bit of a trick question. If we read God's word, it's as if God himself were speaking to us or playing a neat classical song. Okay, let me finish up with these questions. What questions do you have about the Bible? I'm sure there's supposed to be a definite article in there. What are the questions you have about the Bible? I would just love you to write them down. Number two, how do you use the Bible as an authoritative document? Do you only use it with your children? What is general revelation in the Bible? I want you to answer that. I want you to get that. How does special revelation differ from general revelation? I give you three or four ways to jump on that horse. Do you respect God's word as though he was speaking to you right now? What is the main canon used to measure the New Testament books? Or is the main canon used to measure the New Testament books? Okay, you might not believe me, but I worked really hard to make that simple. And I want you to get the general picture that God's word is authoritative. And if you begin to lose your confidence in God's word, you immediately lose the standard of measure for your relationship with God. You immediately move into a subjective relationship. Some people call Calvinist tulips, right? Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement. That's a hard one. Irresistible grace, total depravity, right? Or I'm sorry, perseverance or perseverance of the saints, depending on how thoroughly reformed you are. Others would say, if you look at life from broadstream evangelicalism, you would say that they don't believe tulip, they believe daisy. And daisy is, he loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. If you lose your respect for God's word, you are reduced to emotionalism and you're reduced to a hope without a valid object. You become subjective. And you say things like, well, I think God loves me. I want him to love me. Surely God wouldn't judge sinners. And when you lose the authority and the respect for the authority of God's word, you get on a slippery slope from which you may not recover. I mean, we believe in God's sovereignty, so he'll recover you. But I just want to warn you, if you're in a place where you doubt God's word, you need to go back over this lesson that I've given, you need to grab a hold of a couple of those resources and you need to go deep. And after that, if you need some help, I want you to come see me or one of the other pastors because doubting is not the end of the world. Many times doubting is the next step to deeper faith. Don't be afraid of doubting, okay? Don't be afraid to have them questions because that's how we grow. We're not omniscient. We don't know everything all at the same time like God does. We kind of grow a little bit at a time, right? Don't be afraid. But come here on Wednesday nights ready to listen, ready to grow, ready to take notes and ready to scribble questions because I really want you to think deeply. And I want you to help us as pastors to think deeply and to scratch you where you itch. So that was basic Christianity on the authority of God's word. Next week, we're going to talk about an even more magnificent topic and that is God, our triune God. Let me pray for us and then we're all done. Father, we're grateful to you. You're so patient and you're so kind and you're so marvelous, Lord. I was so overwhelmed today that I drove my get a school and I didn't once praise you for your creation. You caused the sun to be just far enough away that we were warm and yet not so far that we were freezing and not so close that we burned up but close enough that we were comfortable. And Lord, you caused the trees to grow and they were crying out the glory of God. Your spirit works within us in ways that brings conviction. And Lord, I'm just overwhelmed with who you are in the way you work. And I want to thank you so much for inscripturating your will. In other words, riding downwards for us that we can go back today, after day, after day. We can memorize, we can meditate, we can study, we can learn and we can know for sure that our faith is an in a subjective sense of kind of an emotional hope. Our faith is in your word that reveals, especially to us, that the work of Christ is the object and hope of our salvation. So we praise you for revealing that to us through your word. Help us to hold your word dear, to treasure our Bibles, to memorize our Bibles, and to grow to a greater understanding of who you are through your special revelation. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you all.