We've been going through Revelation 10, 1 through 11. You can follow in your own Bibles or from the majority text on page 21. I saw a mighty angel descending out of heaven, clothed with a cloud and the rainbow on his head. His face was like the sun and his feet like pillars of fire. And he had a little book open in his hand. He placed his right foot on the sea and his left on the land. And he cried out with a loud voice, just like a lion roars. And when he cried out, the seven thunders uttered their voices. Now, when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write, but I heard a voice out of heaven saying, seal up the things that the seven thunders said. And you write after these things. And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to the heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created the heaven and the things in it, and the earth and the things in it, and the sea and the things in it, that there would be no further delay. But in the days of the blast of the seventh angel when he is about to trumpet, the mystery of God that he declared to his slaves the prophets would be finished. Now the voice that I heard out of heaven was speaking to me again and saying, Go, take the little book that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and said to him, Give me the little book. And he says to me, Take and eat it up. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey. So I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it up, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. But when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. And he said to me, you must prophesy again over many peoples, even over ethnic nations and languages and kings. Amen. Father, we thank you for this, your word. And I pray that as we dig into it, that you would be honored, you would be glorified in the continued worship of our hearts. We bless you in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, this is our third week in Chapter 10, looking at the way in which the Scriptures came from God to us. And two weeks ago we saw what the identity of the angel was and what the identity of the little book was. Then last week, we started looking at the divine characteristics that accompanied the Word of God. This angelic messenger is clothed with the symbols of Christ because he is bearing the very Word of Christ. Those symbols showcase the fact that wherever God's Word travels, Whether it's from father to son, from son to the angel, from the angel to John, from John to us, wherever it is, it is always accompanied by the divine attributes of God himself. And the first six verses of this chapter have so lifted the spirits and the faith of many people in the power of God's word. And that's good because we live in discouraging times. when you see the Word of God being so horribly abused. For example, you see socialists and feminists, and you see even some homosexuals who twist the Word of God for their own agendas. You see politicians who waive the Bible trying to get evangelical votes. You see voters who will misuse the Bible to try to get you to vote for their particular candidate. This past week, read a post on Facebook by a PCA elder. who was using the life of David to try to prove that everybody should vote for Hillary Clinton. And he said, well, yes, she's pro-abortion, but David was a murderer too. Nobody's perfect, and I'm convinced that there would be fewer abortions under Hillary, he said. Now, I won't get into the ridiculous reasons that he was giving for why he thought there would be fewer abortions under Hillary, but just pointing out, there is such a twisting of scripture in our day of age. You may have noticed that the hat makers are both now using the scriptures to justify homosexual marriage as being good in God's sight. And with the avalanche of attacks on the Bible, it could be very, very discouraging. I've had Christians tell me they don't know how to respond. They don't feel intellectually up to the challenge of defending the scripture. They can't answer every objection. But we saw last week that the Bible has a power of its own. You just unleash it by faith. Or as Revelation words it, you put it upon your lips. I love the way that Charles Spurgeon worded it. He said, the word of God is like a lion. You don't need to defend the lion. All you need to do is let the lion loose and the lion will defend itself. And there are thousands of stories of the Bible doing exactly that. You read conversion stories and you see how God instantaneously turned people's lives upside down through a scripture that ordinary people have given. In one case, that a child had given. George Whitefield has tens of thousands of examples of this in his life. One time There was an atheist that wanted to find out what was going on that so many people were attracted to George Whitfield So he came to investigate and he climbed up into a tree to watch this vast crowd. He was just stunned by how far Whitfield's voice was able to project so he was just analyzing what's going on here, but the the Preaching was kind of irritating him and annoying him. So he put his fingers into his ears so he could just objectively watch what was happening Well, there was a fly kept buzzing around landing on his nose and he kept wrinkling his nose blowing on it finally he pulled his finger out of his ear slapped at the fly and at that very moment George Whitfield shouted out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And he said that scripture struck him like a train. And as Whitfield continued to talk about how people willfully are blaspheming against the Holy Spirit and resisting him and in danger of hellfire, he said he was soundly converted by that one scripture. For me, it was Hebrews chapter 12, verse 8. For one Ethiopian that we knew, it was the reading of a genealogy of nothing but names. How on the earth do you get converted by reading a genealogy? Well, he did. I mean, that genealogy was absolutely profound in the way it broke through. He was thunderstruck by it because God had prepared him to be converted with that verse. For a friend of mine at Covenant College, it was reading the scriptures that were in Gary North's book, Introduction to Biblical Economics. He had been utterly resistant to God's word, but seeing the scriptures addressing his discipline broke down all resistance, and he bowed his neck under the feet of King Jesus. The famous Lady Huntington, It was a noble woman who had helped George Whitfield a great deal. She was once asked how she got saved, and she said that she had been saved by one letter in the Bible. And when a person asked, well, what do you mean by that? She said, in God's word, 1 Corinthians 1 verse 26, it says, not many noble are called, That M saved my soul, for had he said, not any noble, I must have been damned. So God blessed the little letter M before any other for the salvation of my soul. She knew that God, generally speaking, worked with the poor. And it was that word that gave her comfort and hope to put her faith in Christ. Let me assure you, Even atheists, smart atheists, have been soundly converted by people just conversing and sharing a scripture with them. In one case, it was a child quoting a Bible verse to them. And this is what we were saying last week. God's Word is powerful. It's living. It is accompanied by all of God's attributes. And it's why it's such a shame that so few Christians bring the Word of God into the public arena. Your testimony cannot transform people's lives. Your testimony cannot tear down strongholds and the high things that have exalted themselves against the knowledge of God in our culture. But God's Word can. It can. And by the way, people wonder, you know, well, how come God's Word is not, when I bring it, it's not having any impact on people? Well, God has promised. that his word never returns to him void. And we need to realize that for some it's a savor of life unto life, for others it's a savor of death unto death. Sometimes God hardens, and if it's his will to harden, that person will be hardened. If it is God's will for them to repent, that person will repent, but his word never returns to him void. The only question we need to ask is, are we willing to bring the scriptures into the public sphere of life? So last week we looked at many attributes of God that are also the attributes of the Word of God. And today I want to focus on the powerful imagery in verses 8 through 11. It is imagery of God's verbal revelation being incarnated, so to speak, into human language and experience. And I'm going to give an entire sermon just on that imagery because this is probably the most powerful image that you could get to deal with all of the heresies that are out there on the Word of God. Some of you are not as analytical as others. Some of you are very picture-oriented. Well, here is probably the most powerful picture, and if you can keep this in your memory, I think it'll help you to not be sucked in by or negatively influenced by the heresies that are out there. Now, one of the questions that people sometimes have is how can the entire Bible be the word of God when it is so obvious that it was written by men and that Each of those authors has their own unique vocabulary, grammatical idiosyncrasies, expressions, and emotions. That confuses many people. How can the Bible be both God's word and the word of a prophet? How can one New Testament verse say, David said, and yet another author, or sometimes in the same book, in the book of Acts, it'll say, of the same verse, God said. Which is it? David said or God said? How can it be both? How can the entire Bible be the word of God when Paul can say, We do not know what we should pray for as we ought. Romans 8 26. Or the psalmist can ask God, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Psalm 42 verse nine. People say, that doesn't sound very much like God speaking. That sounds like a mournful human speaking. And those are all very good questions, but I think they are perfectly, perfectly answered by our passage in Revelation chapter 10. Now in terms of how the very words could exist in this little book before John ate the book and even knew about them, I think it's helpful to remember that God decreed everything about John before the world was made. And he made John and formed him and prepared him and providentially governed his language acquisition and his experiences. And he knew how to use it. So God gives every word. Yet every word passes through John, so to speak, and then comes out of John. Okay. It is John's words. They're obviously John's words. There's a human dimension to scripture. Hundreds of times, the Bible says Moses spoke, Samuel spoke, David spoke, et cetera. So there's a human dimension, and yet 3,808 times the Bible says that every portion of the scripture is the very word of God. How can that be? How can it have such human characteristics and still be God's word? And the best analogy that theologians have come up with is the incarnation of Jesus. Just as God the Son took to himself a human nature in order to become the God-man, God's revelation took to itself human characteristics, you can think of it taking on a human nature, so to speak, in order to become scripture. And I've given a chart in your outlines that helps you to see the parallels. Virtually every heresy concerning the doctrine of Jesus has a corresponding error in the middle column concerning the nature of scripture. And the right-hand column then gives the portions of chapter 10 and Ezekiel 2 through 3 that correct that error. And so this morning, what we're going to do is we're going to be working our way through that chart and hopefully exhaust most of what this passage has to say. This is not going to be as easy as last week's sermon. You're going to have to put your thinking caps on, but I think you're going to find it to be very, very helpful for you. Lot of doctrinal confusion out there in the evangelical church, and there's a lot of bad fruit that has resulted. And unfortunately, this topic rarely, if ever, is taught in the pulpits. Now, so that you can have as clear, crystal clear an understanding of the background as possible, I really do want you to turn with me to Ezekiel Chapter 2 and 3. This is one of those times where I think it'd be great if everybody could just follow along and see these words in your own Bibles. I'm going to be reading most of chapters 2 and 3. Everybody in the commentaries agrees that the imagery that's in John where you've got this mighty angel who's giving a little book to John, John eats it, it tastes sweet, it's bitter in his stomach, he prophesies the contents of that book. Everybody agrees that is referring to the same image in Ezekiel chapters 2 through 3. So it's critical we have both passages in mind when we go through these points. Okay, Ezekiel 2, let's begin reading at verse 1. And he said to me, son of man, stand on your feet and I will speak to you. Then the spirit entered me when he spoke to me and set me on my feet and I heard him who spoke to me. Now Ezekiel had already been indwelt by the Holy Spirit as a believer, so this entering of the Holy Spirit into Ezekiel has nothing to do with becoming a Christian. The Holy Spirit invades Ezekiel in this passage in order to turn him into a prophet. Okay, so the Holy Spirit gives a special gift that enables Ezekiel to infallibly receive revelation and to infallibly communicate it. The spirit within Ezekiel will receive the revelation from God the Son, and then the spirit within Ezekiel will give that revelation from God the Son to the people who are out there. And the rest of these two chapters will show how. Verse three. And he said to me, son of man, I am sending you to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day, for they are impudent and stubborn children. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord God." I want you to notice that he wants Ezekiel to speak for him. to give God's words, and I want you to notice that God's words come to people even when they are unbelievers. The heretic Karl Barth claims that the Bible only becomes the word of God when we, by faith, receive an experience of Jesus in those scriptures, in those Bible words. His idea of the Word of God being found in the Bible means that the Bible becomes the Word of God only to those who experience it by faith. Okay, it's a very subjective view of the Word of God, and it is a heresy. This passage indicates, no, it's the Word of God whether you're a believer or an unbeliever. He's going to be speaking to unbelievers here, and everyone who heard it is hearing what? God's Word. And notice that his prophecies are not just, I think God is saying, it's not a subjective experience, they're dogmatic. Thus says the Lord God. Verse five. As for them, whether they hear or whether they refuse, for they are a rebellious house, yet they will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them, nor be afraid of their words. I want you to notice the humanness of Ezekiel. Do not be afraid of them nor be afraid of their words We're gonna be seeing that there is a human dimension to his prophecies all the way through these two chapters. He goes on Though briars and thorns are with you and you dwell among scorpions do not be afraid of their words or dismayed by their looks Though they are rebellious house. You shall speak my words to them notice that Ezekiel speaks but he speaks God's words not man's He says, you shall speak my words to them. And notice that this revelation is actual words. It's propositional truth. What often goes for prophecy is kind of fuzzy feelings, but these two chapters show concrete propositions. Going on in verse 7. You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or whether they refuse, for they are rebellious. But you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Do not be rebellious like that rebellious house. Open your mouth and eat what I give you. I want you to notice that he is not a robot, okay? God commands Ezekiel not to rebel, not to refuse to speak. Obviously, a prophet can sometimes run from his prophetic office. That's what Jonah did, right? He did not want to prophesy, but God always has his way with a prophet. Jeremiah testifies to the fact he had been persecuted so much because of his prophecies that he was not going to prophesy anymore, but he said it was like a fire burning within him. He couldn't contain it. It had to come out. And here is the testimony that he gives. Then I said, I will not make mention of him nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I was weary of holding it back. I could not." Okay? So you can see that man's will is involved even though man's will does not originate the words of the prophecy. That's a key point. Okay, you see the Spirit moving him to prophesy God's word. So back to Ezekiel 2 verse 9. Now when I looked, there was a hand stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it. Then he spread it before me, and there was writing on the inside and on the outside, and written on it were lamentations and mourning and woe." So notice that the words were already written on the scroll of this book. This angel hands Ezekiel not a blank scroll, but a written one. That's key. The words precede Ezekiel having them. This is so key to understand. Because of this background, commentators believe that the same must be true of John's scroll, and there's actually several indicators in Revelation chapter 10, there were words on that scroll. Okay, continuing in chapter 3. of Ezekiel. Moreover, he said to me, son of man, eat what you find. Eat the scroll and go speak to the house of Israel." So just as in the book of Revelation, Ezekiel must first eat the words before he can speak the words prophetically. But even the eating of the scroll is God's work, not man's. The prophetic Holy Spirit within Ezekiel must infallibly receive the little book and internalize it within Ezekiel. Notice verse two. So I opened my mouth, so there is man's will that is involved, and he caused me to eat that scroll. So there is God's will that makes Ezekiel receive it with his will. Notice it says, God caused him to eat the scroll. Even the receiving of the word is not by man's will, though man's will is not bypassed. Now we're going to be making applications of all of these verses later. Verse 3. And he said to me, son of man, feed your belly and fill your stomach with this scroll that I give you. So I ate and it was in my mouth like honey and sweetness. Then he said to me, son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them." Notice that the very words that Ezekiel would later prophesy are already written on the scroll from heaven. Though the words will be mediated through Ezekiel, word for word what God has said from heaven is what Ezekiel will say on earth. He prophesies what God had caused him to internalize and God caused him to internalize what had already been written word for word. And this is quite contrary to one theory of inspiration, which has the spirit originating the words in the mind of the prophet. That's not the way prophecy works. But that's the way many people see it. Originating words in the prophet's mind. This is quite clear. The words precede the prophet, even knowing about the words. Verses 5 and following even put this down to the level of the kind of language that Ezekiel is going to use. For you are not sent to a people of unfamiliar speech and of hard language, but to the house of Israel." So he's not going to be writing in a different language. He'll be reading, speaking, and writing in Hebrew, the language he's familiar with, just like John. Is going to be writing in greek language that he's familiar with verse six Not to many people of unfamiliar speech and of hard language whose words you cannot understand surely had I sent you to them They would have listened to you, but the house of israel will not listen to you because they will not listen to me For all the house of israel are impudent and hard-hearted Behold, I have made your face strong against their faces and your forehead strong against their foreheads. Like adamant stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead. Do not be afraid of them, nor be dismayed by their looks, though they are a rebellious house. Then in verse 10, God reiterates that the words on the book that Ezekiel ate are the same words that Ezekiel will prophesy. Moreover, he said to me, son of man, receive into your heart all my words that I speak to you and hear with your ears. And go, get to the captives, to the children of your people, speak to them and tell them, thus says the Lord God, whether they hear or whether they refuse. Now I'll skip over verses 16 through 21. They are important. They speak of Ezekiel's humanness, his emotions, his will that's involved in prophesying, though it does not originate prophecy. But if you skip down to verse 22, It says, then the hand of the Lord was upon me there, and he said to me, arise, go out into the plain, and there I shall talk with you. So I arose, went out into the plain, and behold, the glory of the Lord stood there like the glory which I saw by the river Chebar, and I fell on my face. Then the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet and spoke with me and said to me, go, shut yourself inside your house, and you, O son of man, surely they will put ropes on you and bind you with them so that you cannot go out among them. I will make your tongue cling to the roof of your mouth, so that you shall be mute and not be one to rebuke them, for they are a rebellious house. But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord God, he who hears, let him hear, and he who refuses, let him refuse, for they are a rebellious house. Now though it's Ezekiel speaking, He will not be speaking on his own initiative. God will shut his mouth and he will not be able to speak even if he wants to speak. But God will open his mouth and he will speak. And it's always, thus saith the Lord. Now, there's so much more in Ezekiel 2 through 3 that we could go through that describes this amazing inscripturation process. But I think I've given you enough so you can see this is clearly the background to John chapter 10. They're talking about the same kind of inscripturation process. Both passages interpret each other. And that's what I've done for you on your chart. So let's go through that chart. We're going to look at the historical errors on the left-hand side, compare it to the errors on Christ's nature, and then in the middle column, the errors on Scripture, and then the right-hand column are the passages from Ezekiel and Revelation 10. The first error mentioned was made by both the Apollinarians and the Nestorians who so separated the divine and the human natures of Jesus that they treated Jesus as being two persons. But the Orthodox position is that Jesus is not a human person and a divine person. He was a divine person who took to himself a human nature. He did not take to himself a human person. He took to himself a human nature. So he's fully God, fully man, but still one person. This person existed before the incarnation and was eternal. Yet in the incarnation, this perfect person took to himself human characteristics. Now you can see how that is perfectly parallel to what we've just read in Ezekiel two through three of how we get the scriptures. Very, very parallel. God's revelation preceded Ezekiel. God incarnated that revelation in a human vessel to communicate his will to us. This eternal word is incarnated in what? In human language, human grammar, and historical context, yet without in any way giving up its divine nature. Man's will did not originate any portion of scripture, only God's will did. And that can be seen in the fact that the words were already written on the little book before John wrote them down in his book. And I've given you some scriptures in the right-hand column that show this process in both passages. Word came from heaven, was incarnated in John's mouth and pen and language. And this is yet another reason why the scriptures can minister to us so profoundly. Now the divine side, we can understand that. We looked at that last week. They minister to us because it's God's very power working in our lives. But the human side shows that God knows how to identify with our exhaustion and our tears and our hurts. The Psalms contain every emotion known to man, and because they are authorized for us to pray, they can powerfully minister to us in the midst of our doubts, and our fears, and our feelings of despair. I think we'd have a hard time relating to the Bible if God had not put this human dimension to the Bible. In the process, those Psalms release our emotions, resolve them by fixing our faith on God. So far from being a weak point, as the critics really say it is, the human dimension of the Bible is a foundational truth for which we cherish it the more. Speaking on the Psalms, John Calvin wrote, I have been accustomed to call this book, I think it not inappropriately, an anatomy of all the parts of the soul, for there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit is here drawn to the life, all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated. And as you continue reading his introduction to the Psalms, You begin realizing that Calvin states that God has entered into our lives most fully and identified with all of our needs. So can you see why the human dimension really, really is important? I'm going to dig into this first point a little bit more because it is important. I want to first of all look at some other scriptures that show that 100% of the Bible is divine in origin. Even the words were there before the prophet thought of them. If you would turn with me please to 1 Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians chapter two verse 13. When you come to the Bible, you are coming to God and you need to reverence the Bible the way you would reverence God before his throne. So take a look at 1 Thessalonians two verse 13. For this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe." Notice that Paul denies that this prophecy is the word of men, though it Though it has a human nature, after all, it came through Paul, it's spoken by Paul, its origin is divine. He said, you welcomed it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. So the divinity of the word precedes Paul speaking it. So I think you can see it's appropriate to speak of the Bible as the Word of God in human form. It's kind of like an incarnation. Okay, turn next a page over to 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 8. Paul's already given some commands to this church, and they're not liking it. They don't like these commands too well. But he says this. Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who also has given us His Holy Spirit." People might have been tempted to say, yeah, I just disagree with Paul. I'm going to follow after somebody else's advice. But they couldn't do that because this is God's Word. Yes, Paul said it, but read verse 8 again. Therefore he rejects this, does not reject man, but God, who has also given us his Holy Spirit. Now this is the logical implication of the previous verse. Even though Paul is the vehicle through which these words were written, even though they contain human characteristics, emotions, grammar, color, they still represent God's will, not man. To reject any portion of the Bible is to reject God. Now, I've had people arguing with the scripture, thinking they were arguing with me. I remember one time I was just quoting a passage on predestination from the Bible, and the guy says, oh, I don't believe that. I don't believe in predestination. I said, well, I'm not interpreting the Bible here. I was just quoting it word for word. And I opened up the Bible and showed him, see, right here, it's Paul saying about predestination. And he's looking at that and he says, well, I still don't believe it. So there was a heart, a rebellion against that doctrine. I had one noted church leader here in Omaha tell me that Paul was wrong in his teaching on male headship, that the chauvinism of Paul's day had colored his thinking. As you can imagine, we got into a big debate over that one. But he tried to illustrate by saying that Paul had a vision of the Macedonian call, and in that vision Paul thought that a man called him to come to Macedonia. But when Paul got there, he realized, oh, I was mistaken. It was a woman who called me, Lydia. Lydia called me. And so he claimed that Paul's chauvinism kept him from receiving the vision correctly and kept him from communicating to us that vision correctly in the scripture. That is blasphemy, absolute blasphemy. To reject those scriptures because they are Paul is to contradict 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 13 and 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 8. OK, turn next. This is the third one. If you have these three scriptures, you've got about all the ammo you need to deal with every heresy out there. So 2 Peter chapter 1 and verses 19 through 21. This is a verse that describes how every portion of the scriptures came into being. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation. That's actually a wrong translation. If you look in the margin, it says is of any private origin. It did not originate from a person. Verse 21, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke, so it's not just scripture, they even spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So these three scriptures teach exactly the same thing that is visually presented before us in Revelation chapter 10. So if you take a look at your charts, the second heresy listed in your chart is thinking that some of the Bible is divine. and some of it is human. And some people might scratch their heads and say, now wait a second, I thought you were just funny saying that some of the Bible is divine, some of it's human. Just like Jesus is the God-man, this Bible is divine and human. But this is where we've got to make fine distinctions, and they're very important. This heresy teaches that you can trust the divine portions of the Bible, and you can't trust the human portions of the Bible. You see what's going on there? He's saying there is actual portions of the Bible that are divine and other portions that are not divine. That's wrong. The truth says that the whole Bible, every jot and tittle of it is divine revelation incarnated in human language and experience. Fuller Theological Seminary has unfortunately been teaching this heresy for decades. They call it limited inerrancy. But remember that 2 Peter 121 says that prophecy never came by the will of man. Never, ever, ever. Though it is men who give it, and therefore it has human characteristics, it is divine in origin just as Jesus was divine in origin. And just as Jesus' human will was in perfect unity with the divine will, the prophets' wills were totally moved by the divine will when they wrote the scripture. So the third column of the second row, I list several scriptures that show that exactly the same words that went into John and into Ezekiel came out of John and Ezekiel. The origin was not in man. Look at the third comparison on the chart. One of the heresies out there is known as peccability, the theoretical possibility that Jesus could have sinned. Peccability comes from the the Latin word, peceris, which means to sin. Now they don't say that Jesus did sin, they just said there was a theoretical possibility that he could have. I remember talking to an evangelical one time who believed that the angels were probably on pins and needles wondering whether Jesus would blow it and our redemption would be completely washed out and we would lose it. That is heresy. That is absolutely false. The scripture is quite clear that it is impossible for Christ to have sinned. Because of the incarnation, and he's divine, and it says it is impossible for God to sin, it would be impossible for Jesus to have sinned, even theoretically. So the true faith holds to impeccability, impossibility of sinning. Well, let's compare that to the doctrine of Scripture. In the same way, though men wrote the Bible, the Spirit's inspiration kept the Scriptures totally without error. After all, the Holy Spirit entered into Ezekiel in order to receive the little book infallibly and to prophesy it infallibly. And we spent some time last week looking at the symbols in the first six verses of Revelation chapter 10 to show that the angel is clothed in the attributes of Christ. Why? Because he's bringing the word of Christ. He swears, he raises his right hand to heaven, he swears by the living God. that what prophets say is absolutely true. The mystery they reveal is absolutely true. By the way, this is another reason why I absolutely insist that the prophets in the New Testament were identical to the prophets in the Old Testament. Identical to them. In Matthew chapter, in the Old Testament, a false prophet could be discovered if even one of his prophecies was false, and you see the same in the New Testament. Matthew 7, this is a key verse to write down, Matthew 7, 15 through 20, Jesus warned his disciples to watch out for false prophets who would come in their day, and the way to test them was by their fruits. If there was even one bad prophecy, they were to be treated as a false prophet and rejected. Okay, so Jesus is talking about New Testament prophets. This is an important passage. I don't know any modern charismatic who claims to be a prophet that has had 100% accuracy in his prophecies, not one. They don't even claim to be that way. The prophets, so-called prophets down in Kansas City, according to their statistics, they've got 60 plus percent accuracy rate on some of their predictions. Much different than Nostradamus. That is not prophecy. Okay, and by the way, do not misapply This passage to Christians Christians have good fruits and bad fruits. They are always growing that is not true of prophets not true of prophets some charismatics have said that this passage is testing individual prophecies and but not the prophet himself. They say that if individual prophecies don't come true, then yes, you can reject those prophecies, but read it yourself and you will see that it is the prophet who is the tree and the prophecy is the fruit. If there's even one bad fruit, then the tree must be judged as bad. In other words, it's not being a genuine prophet. In fact, let's just go ahead and turn to it. Matthew chapter seven. We might as well read it. Matthew 7, 15 through 20, I want you to notice who is being tested in verse 15. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them. Who will you know? It's not Christians in general. He's referring to those prophets. You will know them. You will know those prophets. How? By their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So there's judgment. Therefore by their fruits you will know them. A good prophetic tree cannot bear any bad fruit. Why? Because we've already read in 2 Peter 1 verse 21 that prophecy never came by the will of man. Never. Prophecy is always inerrant. This is why the angel in Revelation swears by the God who lives forever and ever, who sustains all things, that the mystery that all the prophets have spoken about is true. It will come to pass. But the passage also says that false prophets never have good fruit. In other words, they never have spirit-given prophecies. It's either or. If there is a failed prophecy, the prophet is to be rejected, since even the prophecies that might seem to be right are not from the Holy Spirit anyway. You don't accept the accurate predictions of Nostradamus as being spirit-given and then just reject the ones that didn't come true. No, since his failed prophecies reveal Nostradamus to be a false prophet, you reject even the so-called accurate predictions as being false prophecies because even the false ones are bad fruits. A bad tree cannot produce good fruits. They're all bad fruits. You don't trust the accurate prophecies and say, oh wow, we need to follow him because he's had such a good record. And we're going to see next week that all prophecy and all prophets ended in 70 AD. So the second heresy is that Christ's human will could operate independently of his divine will. The corresponding heresy on scripture is to say that a prophet's human will could act independently of and even against the divine will when prophesying and therefore could be theoretically wrong. That is absolutely impossible. Look at the next heresy on the chart. There were people who so separated the human and the divine natures that they turned Jesus into a schizophrenic. sometimes being human, other times being divine. And this is similar to the previous heresy, but it is a little bit different. It has to do with how the two natures relate to each other. Let me read from the Council of Chalcedon, their beautiful description of how the two natures of Jesus relate to each other. I don't expect you to understand every nuance of what I'm reading here. There's entire books been written on it, okay, but I want you to at least be introduced to it. In the middle of the creed it says, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably, the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union. but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. Wow, what a mouthful I mean as I said There's entire volumes that have been written trying to give the scriptures of the background to to their debates there But here's the part that I want to apply right now Orthodoxy says that what one nature experienced can be attributed to the person and I'm going to illustrate Even though God does not have blood, Jesus as a person is God, and Jesus as a person shed his blood as to his humanity, but since anything experienced by one nature can be spoken of as being true of the person, Acts 20 verse 28 speaks of God purchasing the church with his own blood. Very interesting language there. His divine nature didn't have blood, But the divine person did because it was inseparably united to the human nature. So even though what can be said of the divine nature cannot be said of the human nature or vice versa, what can be said about each nature can be said about the person. Now here's where evangelicals, modern evangelicals, get really freaked out. And they get freaked out because they don't know their doctrine. Unlike the Protestant reformers, a lot of evangelicals do not affirm the ancient creeds. Here's what they get freaked out about. The phrase right before what I just quoted says this. Born of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, that is, according to the manhood. Doesn't say she was the mother of God, period. It says she was the mother of God as to Christ's manhood. Now the Greek word is actually Theotokos, and it's more literally translated as God-bearer. I prefer that translation to Mother of God. Roman Catholics prefer Mother of God translation, and technically it's a possible translation, and it is absolutely true if you nuance the meaning carefully, okay? If you nuance it carefully. But because of the meriality that is rife in the Romanist and the Eastern Orthodox churches, and we abominate that, That itself is heresy. We Protestants prefer the translation God-bearer. Now here's the point. Jesus didn't become God later in his life. To think that he did is rank heresy. It's not Protestantism. Jesus was God even while in his mother's womb. This is so important to understand. He was God while his body was being suckled by his mother, Mary. To say otherwise is to heretically divide between the natures of Jesus. Protestants at the Reformation had no problem whatsoever affirming the Ottokos, and neither should we. They had no problem affirming that the person of Jesus was born, grew up, hungered, thirsted, died as to his manhood. And the Confession is very careful to put that in there, as to his manhood. Even though his divinity could not hunger, thirst, or die, he as a person experienced that. That's all that the Chalcedonian Council affirmed. They're not worshiping Mary. That didn't come until much, much later. Now, if you want a name for this true doctrine, the Protestant Reformers called it Communicatio Idiomatum. Communicatio Idiomatum, which is a Latin for communication of properties. It means that what can be affirmed of either nature can be affirmed of the person of Jesus. Is Jesus omnipresent? You might say, I don't know, is that a trick question? Of course he's omnipresent because he's God, right? Is Jesus local while he was here on earth? Is he local now at the right hand? Of course, because he's man. His body can only be in one place at a time, but as a person, he is local, he is omnipresent. Because he is both God and man, it's appropriate to say that Jesus hungered, grew tired, did not know the time of his second coming. But since Jesus was also God, it's just as appropriate to say, as Paul does, that Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power, and in him are hidden all the riches of God's knowledge. He knows everything. I know this is probably making your head want to explode because it's complicated stuff. We like to simplify things to make them understandable to our children. But let me tell you something, if you simplify the doctrine of Christ too much, you become a heretic. Simplification sometimes is dangerous. And many modern, uneducated evangelicals really hold to a heretical view of the nature of Christ. Well, enough on the complicated doctrine of communicatio idiomatum. How do we apply this to scripture? Well, it's perfectly appropriate to say of any passage of the Pentateuch, Moses said, or God said. Because the whole thing is came through Moses, but God said it as well. God and Moses are like those two natures, and Jesus affirmed to the Bible as a whole, God said, the author said. And the Bible does this over and over again. For example, the very same words that are quoted and said to be the Spirit's words, the Holy Spirit's words in Hebrews 3 verse 7, are again quoted later on and said to be David's words in Hebrews 4 verse 7, one chapter later. What David said by inspiration, the Spirit said. This means that we really should not, Bible producers drive me crazy when they give red letter editions. See all these red letters on there? And people treat the red letters as if those have a higher authority. They come from Christ. No, the whole Bible comes from Christ. The whole Bible needs to be treated with equal authority. OK, next line of the chart. keeps us from going to the opposite extreme. Though we cannot separate the natures, our creeds say that they are inseparable, right? We cannot separate them. We can distinguish between them. And if we don't distinguish between them, we get ourselves into trouble. For some heretics, the human nature of Jesus was so absorbed into the divine that there wasn't any human any longer. Now the Lutherans aren't as bad as the Eutychians, but Calvin and the others were right that the Lutherans were treading dangerously close to the Eutychian heresy. Think about it. To be able to munch on Jesus' body in every Lutheran church all the way around the world at the same time, Jesus' body would have to be omnipresent. Now, if his body is omnipresent, by definition it's not a human body. And if he doesn't have a human body, then he cannot be fully our mediator, and our salvation comes into jeopardy. Now, we Reformed people have been gracious to the Lutherans, and we say, you know, we accept you in the flock, and we love you and everything, but we really get nervous about that, because it's dangerously close to Eutychianism. We think that they have held it in in ignorance. On another heresy, Christ is neither divine nor human, but a hybrid, something in between. Well, that's false. Now, let's apply that to scripture. Though every word of this book is God's word, we can distinguish the human characteristics of the language. And for that matter, you can distinguish between the human grammars and vocabulary and the personalities of each of the authors of each book of the Bible. It's actually, here's an entire grammar book written just for Revelation. It's really remarkable. And it was looking at the grammar, the unique vocabulary, and the other language pointers that have convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt. And I've looked at Luke, Acts, and Hebrews. And there's been books written on this as well. It's convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt that Luke was the author of the book of Hebrews. It's not an unknown author. It's Luke. Had to be part of the Pauline group. But I think it's clearly, clearly Luke. Now all of those kinds of things are human characteristics, and we misinterpret the Bible if we ignore those. So when John, in obedience to the command in verse 11 of Revelation 10, prophesies the contents of this book, when he writes it down on paper, we see that it contains John's emotions, John's amazement, exclamations, joy, sadness, grammar, vocabulary, et cetera. We'll skip on. The next row emphasizes another heresy that has been rather common. I've got a book by Fuller on my shelf that says Jesus made a mistake when he said that the mustard seed was the smallest seed. You look in context, he's not saying that the mustard seed was the smallest seed. He said of the gardens that he was looking at, that he was pointing at. But in any case, Fuller says that he's overlooking Christ's human frailties and he's submitting to Christ's divine authority. Nonsense. You can't do both at the same time. I've got another book by a so-called evangelical that claims that Jesus was accommodating himself to the superstitions of the time when he spoke of demons. He doesn't believe that demons exist. He thinks what is described as demonic is really psychological problems, but he still claims that the bulk of what Christ has said is something that he submits to. He just discards the human frailty problems. I have another book that says that Jesus believed in a young earth. Because that was all that Jesus had ever heard. But now that science has supposedly proved that the earth is billions of years old, we need to take the kernel of Christ's statement and leave the husk behind. What all of these heresies have in common is a belief that you can resist some statements in the Bible and only be resisting man, not God. See the problem there? But Ezekiel 2 through 3 is quite clear that resistance to any of Ezekiel's words is resistance to God. We saw that Paul said the same thing in 1 Thessalonians. Resistance to what Paul was writing was not resistance to man, but to God. If we lose the infallibility of the scriptures, we lose the infallibility of Christ, period. Both were incarnations. Now in the next row, I give another comparison. that of the docetist heresy. Just as the docetic heretics denied that Jesus was human, they said, you know, he looked like a human, but that was an illusion. There have been some who claim that the writers of scripture were merely typewriters, so to speak, taking a direct dictation from God that they were not at all involved creatively in the crafting of the books of the Bible. This is actually the Muslim view of how they got their scriptures. That's not how the scriptures came to us. You might think that they did because the words were already written in the little book before Ezekiel or John ate it, and before they prophesied its contents. Doesn't that make them little typewriters? No. When the angel says, you must prophesy again, in verse 11, he's recognizing that John's will is involved. He's not a robot. He's addressing his will. When Ezekiel is told he must prophesy, not be fearful, it indicates that Ezekiel is very human. And you may remember that I've already said that God decreed everything about these prophets before the foundation of the world, prepared their language, their emotions, everything else about them to perfectly communicate to us in just the way that God wanted them to communicate. So Ezekiel's little books had the words that Ezekiel was ordained to write. This has been the Orthodox teaching of both Christ and the Scriptures for the last 2,000 years. On the other hand, and this is the next row, just as Nestorians made the mistake of saying that Jesus was merely a God-bearing man rather than the God-man, heretics today say that the Scriptures only contain the Word of God or become the Word of God in our experience. but that the Bible isn't the Word of God in every jot and tittle. This is the error of Karl Barth that I mentioned earlier. He believed that the Bible becomes the Word of God when we have an encounter with Christ in it. In other words, when we have an experience with Christ. But for the most part, people who read the Bible, it's just reading a human document. For him, faith alone can make it become the Word of God. So he believed we can find God's word within the Bible if Jesus meets us, but that the Bible itself was human. And we've got Barthians all around us in Omaha, and you need to be aware of it. They sound evangelical, but they are not. Barthianism is heresy, and the scriptures we've already covered refute that. The little book was the word of God when it was in the father's mind. It was the Word of God when it was in Christ's mind. It was the Word of God when it was communicated, carried from Christ to John by that angel. It was the Word of God when the Holy Spirit received it into Ezekiel. It still was the Word of God when it was spoken out and written down by Ezekiel. At every point, it is objectively, not subjectively, objectively the Word of God. Now, the next heresy is Apollinarianism. This heresy denied that Jesus had a human spirit. They said that the Logos, the divine spirit, took the place of the human spirit, so they said Jesus had a human body. They don't deny that, but not a human soul. Well, the church called that a heresy because a body is not enough to make Jesus a man, fully a man. It also makes no sense or should I say nonsense, of the various passages that speak of Jesus' spirit being crushed, sorrowing, being overwhelmed. It makes no sense of Jesus saying that there were some things that he did not know. Logos, he knows all things. As God, he always knew all things. He was always omnipresent. At the very time that Mary was holding Jesus in her arms, Jesus was upholding Mary in his arms. Why? Because he has always upheld all things, Hebrews says, by the word of his power. All things. So when Jesus was here on earth, he could have done any miracle by his divine power, but he chose not to do so. As a model man, he restricted his power as divine son, subjected himself to the spirit, and did all of his miracles by the power of the spirit, just as men would do. Okay, so the church rightly rejected a Paul an area of Paul an arianism though. Jesus was one person He was a spirit as God the Son he had a human spirit, but it was in perfect unity With his divine spirits one person, but two spirits two wills in perfect unity Okay applying that to scripture We make the same error If we do not recognize, for example, that Paul, by inspiration, records that he does not know whether he's going to be coming to Rome right away. He's sharing what he's thinking. That's in Scripture. In 1 Corinthians 419, Paul says, if the Lord wills, I will come to you shortly. Though God's Spirit moved Paul to write down everything he wrote, God moved Paul to write in a way that showed his human character and emotions and limitations, but kept him from error. And when you look at the other interaction that the Apostle John had with this mighty angel in the book of Revelation, you see a human spirit that is interacting. And I praise God that the Psalms have this human element because it allows us to express through the Psalms all of our emotions of sadness and feelings of betrayal and frustration and loneliness. Those aren't divine characteristics, yet they are God's words. And because God's Word was incarnated in real human, soulish emotion, it makes us realize that God really does care about what we go through. I've got to finish this because there's just not enough here to make another sermon out of. Okay, it is both. Okay, so we saw the emphasis was on the divine characteristics in the first six verses. Second half of the book, emphasis is on those divine characteristics being incarnated in real human characteristics. And it's both of those that give it such sweetness to us. The angel promised that when John ate this revelation, it would be sweet in his mouth, but become bitterness in his stomach. And that is a perfect image of the nature of redemptive judgments. Judgments bring salvation to God's elect, condemnation to the non-elect, but prophets rejoiced at God's purpose of redemption, but wept at the hardness of heart of those who rejected it. Even Jesus wept over Jerusalem's rejection of the prophetic word. Now I want to take a look at the sweetness of God's word first. He said that it tasted as sweet as honey, and that's an allusion to at least three passages in the Old Testament. We've already read Ezekiel 3 verse 3, but Psalm 119, 103 says, how sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Psalm 19 verse 10 says much the same. Now that is so foreign to the unregenerate mind. They don't understand how we can savor God's word so much. They find God's word distasteful. They've been deluded into thinking the Bible is legalistic, barbaric, outdated. It's to be rejected. But Christians savor every word of scripture. They treasure it. They agree with it. They love it. It's a delight of our soul. And even though the sweetness was being experienced by a prophet, most commentators make an application to all preachers and all believers. Scripture indicates that the moment a human heart is genuinely born again, it has an instant appetite for the Bible. As 1 Peter 1.22 words it, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby. There is something wrong with a baby that doesn't have any appetite, right? And if we say to God, how sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth, we're saying something's right with my soul. Thank you, Lord, that you have given me this new appetite. It has grieved me to see so many evangelicals becoming embarrassed by the Bible. The hat makers of the most recent casualties calling homosexual marriage holy and honorable before God. And when evangelicals have to change the Bible to make it palatable, I question whether they are even regenerate. I really do doubt people are regenerate when they do stuff like that. Pagans can study the Bible on one level and admire it on a literary level, but they cannot find it sweet to eat. They cannot live by it. 1 Corinthians 2.14 says, but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. If any portion of the scripture is foolishness to you, it's unattractive to you, it's a sign that you're not regenerate. or at least you're not sanctified by God's Spirit. Romans 8, 7 says, So in one sense, having a taste for God's words and evidence of regeneration But certainly this prophet found God's word to be pleasing to his palate. But what happens the moment you start preaching the scriptures? You get persecution. You get pushback. You get resistance, right? So the same Bible verses that you love and that minister to your soul end up bringing grief to you because you're ending up weeping over those who don't get it and who hate it and who resist it. And most commentators relate the bitterness to either the persecution and backlash that comes to the prophet, or more likely to his inner, because his stomach was bitter, right? I think it's his inner weeping over their hardness of heart. Douglas Kelly says, no matter how sweet and wonderful the gospel is in your heart, there will be people around you who do not accept it and who may even hate you for where you stand. Beal says, the non-repentant response to his message in the church and the world is a bitter or mournful thing for John to contemplate, as it was for the Old Testament prophets and Jesus. This is why Jeremiah, even though he affirms how sweet the word of God was to him, he says, it's bringing me pain as well. Yeah, in Jeremiah 15, 16, he says, when your words came, I ate them. They were my joy and my heart's delight. And he's excited to share it with other people. He gets this pushback and he says, oh, the hurt of the daughter of my people and my hurt, I am mourning. Astonishment has taken hold of me. So you can see why commentaries apply this to the preacher today. Though he loves God's Word and delights in it, there is a pain in his work when he continually sees believers ruining their lives by rebelling against it. I can tell that Rodney and Gary are good pastors because they not only love the Word of God, but because it brings them pain. I see the pain in them when I see people rejecting God's Word. It pains them. It brings me pain when I see people blinded to the Word, and I see the negative fruits that are going to come to them. There is a sweet and sour aspect to the ministry, and no one should enter the ministry without being prepared for such pain and bitterness in his heart. Leon Morris said, the wickedness of man grieved God at his heart, Genesis 6 verse 6, and the true preacher of God's word enters to some degree into this suffering. So commentators like Matthew Henry say that when preachers avoid certain sections of the word of God because they know they're going to get persecuted from it or it's going to bring bitterness, they're trying to avoid the bitterness. He says, they are not true preachers. They are hirelings. And so you need to pray for us as pastors that we would not only delight, but we would be willing to take the bitterness in our stomach knowing that this word is going to be resisted. And brothers and sisters, please, we do take it personally when you react negatively against God's word. It does bring us pain. It really does. And I think you need to be aware of that. Yet in verse 11, John is commissioned to bring this message of redemptive judgment to all. Yes, even to those who reject it. And he said to me, you must prophesy again over many peoples, even over ethnic nations and languages and kings. Too many people don't bring the word of God to the public sphere because Pagans don't believe in the word of God. Why would I bring it to them? They don't even accept the Bible as the authority. Well, that's a ridiculous argument. Just imagine that a murderer is coming after your wife with a knife, and you pull out a .357 Magnum and say, drop that knife or I will shoot you. And the burglar says to you, ha, I don't believe in guns. Are you going to sadly reholster it and say, oh, that's too bad. I wish he believed in guns. No, you're going to pull the trigger and make him a believer, right? And in the same way, we need to unleash the Word of God. We need to have it on our lips. Deuteronomy 6 says 24-7 the Word of God needs to be on our lips. We're in the mess today because Christians use carnal weapons to deal with the strongholds of our nation. God calls us to use His weapons, which are mighty in God for tearing down strongholds. So it's my prayer that Revelation chapter 10 will cause us to have such faith in God's word that we will put it on our foreheads, that means our thinking. We'll put it on our hands, that means all our work. We're gonna put it on our doorposts of our house. We're going to talk about it, whether we sit, whether we walk by the way, no matter what we are doing. And may God bless and prosper us as we do so, amen. Father, we thank you for your word. We treasure your word, we love your word. And we ask you to forgive us for those times when we question that. We know that our flesh sometimes does rise up, but I pray that we would be like Jeremiah, and like Ezekiel, and like John, willing to find the sweetness of your word in our mouth, and willing to proclaim it even though we know it's gonna bring us weeping and tears as people reject it. Help us to value your word whether it hardens people, or whether it brings them to repentance, whether it tears down strongholds, or whether you choose not to tear them down at this particular juncture of time. But help us, Father, to be faithful stewards of the scriptures that you have so richly entrusted to us. We love you, we bless you, and we want to continue to worship you faithfully and to serve you faithfully. In Jesus' name, amen.