The scripture reading this evening is from 2 Timothy 3. We'll be looking at verses 15-17. Let's hear God's word. But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power, and from such people turn away. for of this sort are those who creep into households, and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Janus and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith. But they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all as theirs also was. But you have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. May God bless to us this portion of his word, both read and preached. Now the first thing I want to mention is I preached on these verses just a little while ago. I can't remember if it were in the Growth Factors series or maybe earlier on in Christian Basics, but I preached on these verses when talking particularly about the fact that they are God-breathed, and we'll touch on that a bit, but there's a rather different application I want to get out of these verses so there won't be much overlap. as we get to this second important Reformation basic and that is the Scriptures alone. Now the first thing that someone might want to ask is why is this an issue? It is an issue now just like it was in Reformation times Because there are people who want either to deny that the Scriptures are of authority, they want to take away from them, or they want to add on. Now, this is exactly what much of the Western Church, and for that matter the Eastern Church, had done when it came to the time of the Reformation. This morning we looked at salvation through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. These were watchwords of the Reformation, but I mentioned to you that there were several other alones. Another area needing Reformation was in the area of religious authority. Now, do you children know what authority means? Authority means, well, someone having authority is the one who says what happens, alright? And authority is the one who declares maybe what's right and wrong, or what's true and false, or what is good and what is evil. Now, who says these things? That was a live question in the church. In fact, it still is today. Who says what's right and wrong? Who says what's good and evil? Who says what's true and false? Now sometimes, children, we have people whom we call authorities in other areas. We believe them and pay attention to them because they know certain things and they know them very well. So, for example, if you knew somebody, let's say you children have a relation of some sort, or a family friend who is an older man, and he knows different kinds of mushrooms, and he knows them very well, and he has been hunting and eating mushrooms in the woods for many, many years. he knows the local mushrooms, he knows which ones are poisonous, and he knows which ones are just fine. Now, it would not be safe for you, maybe, to go just picking mushrooms and cooking them up and eating them, but because he is an authority on mushrooms, he can tell you which ones are good for you and which ones are very, very bad indeed. that just a little nibble would kill you. You're safe with him in knowing which one is good and which one is evil because he is an authority, you see. So now, do you understand what I mean? An authority is someone who can tell you what to do. Now, in a similar way, we talk about the authority in the church. and where does that authority come from? Where can we find what we need to know when we need to know what to believe particularly about God and where do we find out what God wants us to do? That was the question. At the time of the Reformation almost 500 years ago the church was saying that ultimately it is the Church who decides. And the Church has the Bible. In fact, it is the Church who said what the Bible was. And then there were conditions that had been passed along, the Church said, since the time of Jesus Christ, and they were of equal authority. Sometimes what seemed to be this tradition would contradict itself or contradict the Bible. So it was that the church said ultimately the authority is in our teaching authority that Christ has given his body, the church. As time went on, more and more it was said to be especially in the Pope. I can give you children a great Latin word. A few of you have studied Latin. Where is authority to be found? In the magisterium. Or if you like the kind of pronunciation that some of you were taught, the magisterium. In fact, today, the Roman church has never backed off from that. That was 500 years ago, Phil, but what about today? Well, even today. This is a live topic. For many people believe there are a number of other places where truth can be found. Can you think of any? Maybe they have additional sacred books. They may have a Quran or a Hadith. They may have a Talmud. They may have a Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price and Doctrines and Covenants. They may think they find truth in the positions of the stars and planets. They may think they can find truth in their emotions. They may think they can find truth, oh, in all sorts of things, folks. In scientific inquiry. If it contradicts the Bible, we must forget about the Bible, is what they would say. So this is, even today, a question that is asked. Where do we find out what we must believe concerning God? Where do we find out what duty God requires of man? Well, borrowing from what we looked at some weeks ago, let's look at what is special about the scriptures. They are unique. Let me explain this word to you children. Many of you know what the word unique means, because when I said it, you started nodding your heads. It means, if something is unique, it's one of a kind. So each one of you children is unique. There is no one else like you who has ever lived or ever will live. You are the only one God made exactly your way. In another sense, you're not unique because every single person in the world is unique. Isn't that funny? It's kind of like a bumper sticker I once saw that said, you're unique, just like everybody else in the world. It's using the word unique in two different senses, of course. But something that is unique is all by itself. This is why it is improper to talk about something being kind of unique. Well, it either is or it isn't. Now the Scriptures, the Bible, is unique in a certain way. They alone are the word of God. They alone are, as Jesus called them in John 17 verse 17, the word of truth. They are literally so. And we know that among other places from the text we've just read, which literally in the Greek says that the Bible, the Scriptures are God-breathed. Yes, they were written down by men. In fact, this letter here was written down by the Apostle Paul. And they were using, each different person that wrote a portion of the Bible used his own words. But, back behind, the Spirit of God was guiding each one from the days of Job, from the days of Moses all the way to the man who perhaps was the last man to have written anything in the Bible, the Apostle John, all the way to his time, the Spirit was making sure that each man wrote down exactly what he, the Spirit of God, wanted. Therefore, as we saw a few weeks ago, There are no goofs in the Bible. No mistakes, no errors. They teach what is correct in anything and in everything upon which they touch. Now this has some implications of course. What the Bible teaches is what we must believe. What the Bible teaches is what we must do. They alone reveal to us our sin, all the way that humans can be shown. They also show us the way of salvation through our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is himself called the Word. We have in the Bible, children, the word written. Jesus is the word as a human being. The word become flesh, as the Bible calls it. That's kind of interesting to think about. Now because the Bible is God's word, Because it was given by Him who knows all, and has created all, and He knows everything and every part of His creation down to its very bottom. And because God has given the scripture to us, and especially fitted the Bible for us, We can now talk about what we call the sufficiency of scripture. Now I know I explained the word sufficient or sufficiency to you children some little time ago. Do you remember? It means enough. Enough. Alright? After your 14th biscuit, if you're offered a 15th, you might say Yes, you might say, ooh. You might say, no mother, 14 was sufficient. 14 was enough. Right? If you've got a very big stomach or they're very small biscuits. The scriptures are enough, in other words. They are all ultimately that we need. They are totally adequate for knowing what to believe, that is our faith, and what to do, that is our life. The unchanging God of holiness has given us these scriptures and so they tell us what is truly holy and what is truly right. He has made them for us! And so they are perfectly adapted to our needs and lives. They are all that we need in order to know what to believe and what to do. Now, there are a couple of things I want us to think about in connection with this. The first is to ask, if this is the case, Should we get rid of our confession and our catechisms? All we need is the Bible. There are some people who say that. They say, why do you have your confession? Why do you have your catechisms? Why do you have your testimony? If you really believed, like we do, that the Bible is enough, you wouldn't use these. But here, you put them on the same level or even higher than the Bible. Well, first of all, in reply to that, we must make sure that what they're accusing us of is not true. Because some people have done just that. They will argue over positions using church history or using the confession or the catechisms as the last word. That is wrong. That is wrong. But there is a proper use for them. Why do we have them? Because they set out what we believe the scriptures teach. That is their main reason. They set out clearly and in writing what we believe the scriptures teach. Let us have someone from a different church here in our community. Classically, of all the churches in our community, we would most agree with the ones who own this building in which we're worshiping. They too, in the past, held to, and held pretty tightly to, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. When this town was first founded, this was one of the first congregations, the Presbyterian Church here, When this town was founded, the Presbyterians would have been fairly close with us on almost every doctrine. Not quite, but almost. They would have been almost right with us, except for little tiny details on church government. Would have been right with us in almost everything in church discipline. And in worship, well, they would have sung hymns But the piano wouldn't have been here, the organ wouldn't have been here. In the 1850s when this church was founded, most old school Presbyterians used no musical instruments. We would have found if we could take, if we could be along with Some of you know Mr. Peabody and Sherman and the Wayback Machine. If we could get in Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine and go to the Presbyterian Church of Bell Center in 1857, we would find those people to be pretty close to us in most every way. Now the Methodists wouldn't be. They would be on some things, but a lot less. The Church of Christ, Even less. But all would have said, well, we believe the Bible. In fact, the people at the Church of Christ would have said, the Bible alone. Where the Bible speaks, we speak. And where the Bible is silent, we are silent. In fact, even today, they have no confessions, no creeds, no catechisms. And they say we're wrong for having them. Yet. Yet. And they claim, and I'm sure, and I know, they sincerely believe this is what they're doing. Holding to the Bible alone. Well, yes, but what do you think the Bible teaches on how someone should be baptized? Why immersion alone? That's what we believe the Bible teaches. Okay, we believe differently. We believe the Bible says something very different from that. But we believe the Bible too, you see. And there are a number of other positions that the Church of Christ holds, some of which we would agree with, some of which we wouldn't. Yet we all say we hold to the Bible. The best thing to do, the most honest thing to do, is to be laying it out for people to see. That way they can say, ah, here is a congregation, here is a denomination with whom I can walk together. This is the use of catechisms, creeds, and confessions, or a use I should say. A second use is this, they are teaching tools. And you see if we object to that, then we object to having teachers at all. If we adopt a radical notion that each person is sovereign in their own understanding of scripture, ultimately and always, That gets rid of any notion of teachers. If we adopt that idea, then the next question is, why should we bother with teachers? Whether it be live ones, and I'm out of a job, that's alright, I can find another one. Or, we've got, and as well I should say, we get rid of all kinds of Christian books as well. Well, no one really believes that. But on the other hand, we must not make our teachers the ultimate authority. We are to check on them and to make sure they're in line with the ultimate authority, the Bible. I maybe shouldn't have picked out 119R. I think we sang the one just tonight. Yeah, maybe I should have picked 119M that someone picked in the favorites tonight. Oh, how I love thy law. It is my study all the day. It makes me wiser than my foes. Its precepts with me stay. More than my teachers or the old, thy servant understands. Thy testimonies I consult and follow thy commands. You see, it is possible that the teachers are wrong. It's not probable, but it is possible. So we should check them up against the scriptures. As I've mentioned at other times, it's been some time since I did so, the people in the town of Berea, in Iconium, made sure that an apostle was speaking the truth. They didn't see the Apostle Paul as the ultimate authority. They checked his words against the Word of God. Now then, there's another thing I want to look at, and that is this. Because we hold to, ultimately, the Scriptures alone, This does have something to do with what we are to believe and what we are to do. Again, nothing is to be taken from them or gotten rid of, although applications may change. And so it was that we hold to all of the Old Testament, though we change applications, and we change those applications because of direction from the New Testament. We are not merely a New Testament church, though we are a Bible church, for all the scriptures, as we've said before, are profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. Therefore, of course, we no longer have the bloody sacrifices. We have the sacrifice, of course, but we don't do those which are pictures of the reality. We have the reality of Jesus Christ. So we continue to hold to a great once-for-all sacrifice, one that is not repeated. Therefore, we do not have any bloody or unbloody sacrifices anymore. On the other hand, nothing may be added to them, although we can draw true implications from the scriptures by what we sometimes call good and necessary consequence. This holds true, friends, in what we are to believe. We can't demand that people have beliefs that are beyond the scriptures. We can't say, on the other hand, you can let that one go, it's not really essential. Not allowed to do either one of those. In telling what's good and right and true, in knowing what we are to do, we have no right to say that it's bad to do that thing when the Bible doesn't say so. We also can't say, it's alright if the Bible says, no. Even if all society around says, no, but it's really okay. We must say, no. No, it isn't. Because the Bible has said so. It's this way in church government. We are to govern the church in the way that the scriptures say. This is why, after all, we are Presbyterian. And I trust why the people of the congregation that owns this building are Presbyterian. We see certain things in Scripture. We don't drop them. We don't add to them. We see, for example, a number of elders in every congregation. We see only two offices, Elder and Deacon. There is no one over that like a Bishop, or an Archbishop, or a Cardinal, or a Pope. We see higher assemblies with authoritative powers. And there are some other principles we see in Scripture that I'm not remembering at the moment. We honor all those, and everyone who holds to a Presbyterian sort of government does that. They may not call their local board of elders a session, they may just call them the board of elders. That's okay, there's no name given to them at all in Scripture. One name's as good as another. It's still doing it the proper way. The regional gathering they may call the regional gathering or something of the sort, while we call it a presbytery. Many Dutch folk call them classies. OK, that doesn't make any difference. It's still the same thing, and it's still scripture. What's important is not the name, for God has not given us the names, nor is he forbidden us to use the names. It is the actual form that is given to us in scripture, and we're not to drop it, or modify it, or think, well, we have a better way. Our management model might be a better way to go. No, we do what the scriptures say. And lastly, well, maybe not lastly, in worship, we're to do what God says, no more, no less. Of course, we're very strong on that, aren't we? Lastly now is discipline. We are to make sure the people of God are walking properly on the way to Zion. So friends, the scriptures are sufficient for us. We need no traditions. We need ultimately no overarching and final authority magisterium. We have the final authority in the Bible. That is what governs our church. That is what must govern each one of us. We thank God for the scriptures because, as I have said, ultimately they give us that which is the most precious. They give us life. They show us how dead we are. They show us the resurrected Jesus who is given to save us from our sin and they tell us of the way to be saved in him. They tell us how to glorify God. That is why they are most precious indeed. Now, there's an old saying in the English language, familiarity breeds contempt. That which we are very familiar with, we tend to think isn't worth very much. Something that's new and uncommon is a lot more interesting. And I warn you adults, and I warn you children, never, ever, ever think, oh, well, I've got my Bible, I've been having it since I was a little kid, I'm tired of it. Let me go find something more interesting. Ask God to help you never have that attitude. There are people, many people all over the world who would love to have a Bible and they don't. Maybe they're too poor. Maybe their government, their wicked government doesn't want them to have one. Maybe their false and devilish religion doesn't want them to have one. Children, you have been blessed by God to live in a time and place where you can have a Bible. Many of you can read. I want you who can't read yet, if you're old enough to start learning, to learn so you can read your Bible. I want you who are reading already to learn to read better, so you can read your Bible. And I want all of us, more and more, prayerfully, to be spending time in God's Word. I think I've used this illustration before. A few years ago, I found at my parents' house a bank book. I don't know if you children know what a bank book is. This little book, if you have a savings account at the bank, where they write down the money that's there, and they write down if you have interest or something of the sort. My mom's parents, my grandfather and my grandmother, Curtis, set me up an account in a bank in Chesapeake, Ohio. Now nothing was ever done with it since about 1957 or so, I'm sure it got taken by the state long ago for no activity. But here was the bank book, and in it was a special message to me, a little note written to me, by my grandfather, who has been dead for 50 years now. It was special, because it was from my gramps, that's what I called him. Children, are you listening? It was a special letter because it was from my gramps. Well, I can tell you where you can find something even more wonderful and special written to you. And from someone even more special than a grandpa. And it's right here. And it might be right in your hands too. It's your Bible. And it's written to you specially by your Father in Heaven children and adults. It is a precious, precious thing. And ultimately it is all we need for life and godliness. Let us treasure the scriptures as they point us to Christ and as in Him we live to the glory of His Father. Amen. Sing Now, I know I have 119 R, but let's go to M and sing it again. You ought to be in good practice since we sang it during the favorites time earlier this evening. I talked about what we must believe. That's taught in the Bible. And I read that in this first stanza here. More than my teachers of the old, thy servant understands. But it has to do with what we do as well. Look in this second stanza. I stayed my feet, that means I kept my feet, from evil ways that I thy word observe. I have been taught by thee, and from thy judgments will not swerve. Here's the attitude we ought to have, and you can pray to the same God who wrote this Bible, You can pray to him to give you this attitude. How sweet in taste by promises, than honey far more sweet. By precepts understanding give I therefore hate deceit. Well let's stand to sing this and then receive God's blessing. Psalm 119M