Matthew 4, beginning at verse 1. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, afterward he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, he said, if you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. But he answered and said, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your scriptures. They are such an encouragement. We love the promises in your word. We love the instructions for science. We love every aspect of how your word is a lamp unto our feet. And we pray that as we dig into this passage, that our hearts would be stirred up, not only to adore you for all of your goodness and your wisdom and your generosity to us, but we would also be motivated to look deeply into your word as a paradigm for life. And so we pray for the anointing of your Holy Spirit upon my speaking, as well as upon our hearing hearts. And we pray it in the strong name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. People tend to live only to the height of where their vision is. And so if you're not convinced that God is going to make the nations live according to God's law again, you're probably not going to strive that hard to make a difference to that end. If you're not convinced that the Bible speaks about science, you're probably not going to notice where the Bible speaks to that subject. because you're not looking for it. Our vision tends to limit how we live. It tends to limit how we think. It's one of the reasons why I think dads You know, don't notice the kid that's screaming across the way because their vision can be focused in so tightly on a narrow thing. Well, let me use an illustration on myself. I have to many times ask Kathy, would you please come over to the office? I know it's here, but I cannot find it. And one of my problems is I will see a book as being read and it's not red, but because I think it's red in my head, I am looking and looking. It's right there in front of me, but I cannot see it. And our mind tends to filter things out. It tends to, because we're not omniscient, our mind has to function that way, but it tends to filter things out that are not a part of the paradigm, that are not a part of the vision that is driving us. And so we're gonna be looking at expanding our vision so that we can live more broadly than we ought. Now, I was blessed by missionary parents who really had a much broader vision than a lot of missionaries in Ethiopia that we grew up with. He was always driven by a future perspective. And so my dad would plant fruit trees Even though he knew he was going to be moving on to another station later on. And people say, why would you plant a fruit tree? You're not even going to be able to eat from this. And he was saying, yeah, but there will be other people in the future who will be able to be benefited by this. The way he taught made sure that he multiplied the teaching. So he taught people to teach others, to teach others. And he taught in terms of the Scriptures applying much more broadly than other people tended to do, and the results have been pretty phenomenal. That was about 60 years ago. There were a handful of churches in Kambatha province, and Over the last two or three years, I've been in contact with one of the church leaders there, and this guy says that now, 60 years later, over 95% of Kambata province is solidly Christian. A little over 90% of the neighboring province is solidly Christian as well. And my father, even though he was very farsighted and applying the scriptures as broadly as he could, probably had no idea that things would grow to this extent. And so the church there is having to wrestle with questions that they had never thought about before. Things like city planning, what does the Bible say? Things like what are the limits of civil government? What are the limits of church government? And if you were a missionary, would you be able to give answers to people who queried you on things like that? Could you answer their questions on why female circumcision is wrong? Or why it's really not a good health thing to be pulling the uvula out of your kid's throat by a thread that's tied around it. That's a practice that's frequently done in some of those Ethiopian tribes. Could you give them answers from the Bible? Now, my dad was teaching from the Scripture. He had gotten the churches there to the point where they were going to forbid female circumcision, which is an abominable practice that has caused many deaths for women down through the years. And it's still being practiced, especially in Muslim countries, something you need to be aware of and be in opposition to. But he had almost gotten the church to that point. And some young buck missionary came along and said, oh, no, that's cultural. The Bible does not speak to that. And he got them to not make that decision. And this is an area that is really passionate for me that's passed on from my parents. The Bible speaks to all of life. It certainly speaks to issues like that. And people who especially are in leadership need to be able to give answers to those kinds of questions. I talked with the chief of a village of Dalits in India, and he begged me for teaching on how to rule his village from a biblical viewpoint. Now, his entire village had become Christian. And he wanted to glorify God in the various things that that village was engaged in. But he said, all I know is the Hindu way of doing things. And I've asked Western missionaries to give us some information. And the Western missionaries were absolutely no help because all they were talking about was evangelism, some personal growth issues, maybe some church issues. I was the first missionary that was actually giving them answers on what the Bible said about economics and starting businesses in their village and civics and questions like that. And the problem was that missionaries had not learned how to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. I talked with a brilliant Indian by the name of Vishal Mangalwadi, and I've mentioned him to you in the past. He was converted to Christianity by trying to figure out why the West was so blessed in technology, art, music, science, liberty, education, so many different areas. And he discovered that it was the Bible that was the foundation for virtually everything that he admired in the West. And what shocked him, absolutely shocked him, was that the West was no longer looking to the Bible in any of those departments. When he came to the West, he was troubled and saddened that Christians hardly applied the Bible to anything. He was shocked to find out pastors didn't even know the Bible did apply to science and music and so many other disciplines. And he predicts that we are going to be losing the amazing fruits, the beautiful fruits of Western civilization unless we get back to the roots of the Bible. And he's written a fabulous book on how the Bible really is what? Not Christianity, because Christianity was not always consistent with the Bible. But when they were willing to take the Bible seriously, that it had produced these wonderful fruits. Now he's talked to many church leaders about this, but they're not interested in sola scriptura. And so he said that the sun is setting on the West because we are no longer living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. It's really sad that it's a third world scholar that has to rebuke the church of the West. Now what about ordinary day to day issues? When families need counseling, where do they typically go? Rarely do they go to the pastor who is schooled in the Bible for counseling. They go to a psychologist who is schooled in the wisdom of the world. When Christians start businesses, where do they go for wisdom? Rarely do they go to the massive amounts of information found in the Bible on economics, administration, advertising, hiring principles, sales principles, and leadership principles. They go to secular wisdom. Why? the church is no longer used to applying the Bible to all of life like they did in centuries past. You go through just about every discipline from grade school through to the university and you will discover that Christians follow the teachings of humanism, not the teachings of the Bible. In fact, they don't even know how to dig into the Bible. You go to Christian college hoping that the Christian college is going to teach you something Christian which means biblical. No, no, no. Christian education doesn't mean biblical education to them. It's really humanism in a nice environment, in an environment where maybe occasionally you'll speak about the Bible, but you don't apply the Bible to those disciplines, and so they're not used to living by sola scriptura. Well, we're going to dig into this passage, and I think by the end of this time, it's my prayer that you will be so excited about the sufficiency of Scripture that it'll motivate you to dig into it and to apply these questions to every area of life. Let me give you a little bit of background before we dig into the verse. And the first thing I want to mention is that Jesus was quoting this from Deuteronomy chapter 8. And the connection between Deuteronomy 8 and Matthew 4 is very, very strong. There is a symbolic connection between the two. Just as Israel was tempted and tested in the wilderness, Jesus was being tempted and tested in the wilderness. Just as there was a nation under Moses that really was not looking to God for wisdom, they were looking to Egypt. You find the same thing in Matthew chapter 4. John the Baptist and Jesus have been having to call Israel to repentance and treating them like pagans. Why? Because they're living like pagans. Just as Deuteronomy 8 shows a leader trying to direct people's eyes to the Lord after a period of fasting, 40 days of fasting for Moses, Jesus was trying to lead and direct the eyes of the people to the Lord after a period of fasting as well, 40 days of fasting. Both passages call us to faith and prayer and dependence upon God and humility before God and other issues that we won't get into this morning. Both passages deal with how easy it is for Satan to suck us away from dependence upon God into independent living and thinking. And both passages deal with the fact that the Bible is designed to guide our thinking on every facet of life. So, I don't want you to think that Jesus is doing eisegesis as if he's doing bad proof texting, taking a verse out of context and applying it to the devil. No, he is very faithfully applying the Word of God. The second thing that I want to do before we dig into the passage is to show four things that Jesus is not saying in Matthew 4. Jesus is not saying that we can ignore the need for bread. I think the word alone implies the exact opposite. Man shall not live by bread alone implies we do need to live by bread, right? So when God had Israel fast in Deuteronomy 8, he was not denying that they needed bread. In fact, he commanded them to seek bread and he promised to provide bread for them. What he was doing was he was testing whether they would have an absolute dependence upon him in every area of life, including eating and drinking. He commanded Israel to seek bread in his time. and in his way. OK, so Deuteronomy 8 makes it clear that even the issues of eating have to conform to scripture. That's the point I think that Jesus was making. Secondly, Jesus is not saying that we don't need to make a living. I think that's implied by the alone as well, and certainly the context of Deuteronomy 8 mandated that Israel work hard to make a living to work to earn money for their families. Jesus spent the first 30 years of his life working as a carpenter and if that carpentry was not important to God he would not have had Jesus doing this, engaged in this way. If you remember when Jesus was 12 years old, he told his parents, I must be about my father's business. And his father's business is understanding the word, applying the word, but he goes back and he engages in carpentry. which means his carpentry was being about his father's business, but it was always under the authority of the word, and so there was no secular, sacred divide in Jesus's life. And if you don't think that the Bible says much about carpentry, I've got in my file a paper that I can probably dig out and photocopy for you. It was done by a friend of mine up in Canada, and he was a teacher in a Christian school for, yeah, carpentry, It was all the different shop disciplines. So he wrote this paper, wow, the Bible says a great deal about these kinds of trades. Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we're to do all to the glory of God. And the only way we know how to glorify God is in the Bible. So Jesus is not saying we don't need to make a living, we do. In fact, scripture says, if a man work not, neither shall he eat. Thirdly, Jesus was not saying that God is uncaring about life. On the contrary, Deuteronomy 8 says that God cared very, very much about Israel, even though Satan was tempting them to think God didn't care about them. Otherwise, he would have been providing for their every whim and their every wish. If Israel would have reminded themselves of the incredible promises of God, they would have realized God cares about every facet of their life. The short period of fasting was simply a test of their faith, just as Jesus' fasting in the wilderness was a test of His faith. Fourth, Jesus was not calling for escape from life into a monastery, as a couple of ancient commentaries have tried to make it out to be. The context of Deuteronomy 8 actually reiterates the dominion mandate, but unlike Adam and Eve, who tried to engage in the dominion mandate independently of God's will, our attempts must be firmly grounded in God's word, and God's word does speak to issues of stones that Satan was tempting him with, and bread, and every area of our dominion. So let's take our verse apart word by word. You don't need an outline. I didn't have time to put an outline for you. We're just going to look at it word by word. and see what it does mean as a paradigm for our lives. The first word is but, and that immediately indicates that Jesus was contradicting the devil. Now that's not a very polite thing to do in our pluralistic age, but it is imperative, absolutely imperative that we do that if we are to see long-term change. I have met liberals here in Omaha and in other states who are quite happy with you telling them that you believe certain things. Oh, that's great. You know, they affirm you, even if you're weird in your beliefs. Oh, that's good for you, you know. And that could be true for you, that's good for you, but this is true for me and this is good for me. Where they get angry, where they get irate is not when you tell the truth, it's when you say, but what you are believing is false. That is antithesis, and it's that but that enables you to begin penetrating into culture. Years ago, Francis Schaeffer was warning the evangelical church that they would lose the culture battles if they did not start maintaining absolute antithesis. Now, antithesis is a sharp, clearly demarked line, no fuzzy gray areas, a sharp line between truth and falsehood, between A and non-A, between right and wrong, between light and darkness. Okay? We have lost the battle because postmodern thinking has infected the church. Postmodernism rejects antithesis. Now, Schaefer pointed out, you have not fully defended the truth if the only thing you're willing to say is what you believe, what is true. You must also deny the truth of the opposite. You must oppose falsehood, and that right now is not politically correct. That's what's going to get you into trouble, is doing what Jesus did. Anyway, Francis Schaefer said, to the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism. And that, my friends, is an indictment of almost the entire evangelical church of today, and they desperately need to hear this message. And I want to read that quote again from Francis Schaeffer, to the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism. You see, one of the biggest problems with the modern church is they want conversation and not debate. They want opinions freely stated, but no opinion to be called false. They don't want anything called heresy, and so the word heresy has ironically become heresy. Church discipline is castigated. Intolerance is ironically no longer tolerated. They're thinking like the postmodernist pagans. I've brought five copies with me of a book I just picked up two weeks ago, and I'm really glad that this is finally in print. And this is called Rebuilding Civilization on the Bible. proclaiming the truth on 24 controversial issues. Now the fascinating thing about this book is that these evangelical writers, most of them are reformed writers, have looked at most of the controversial issues of our day. They've affirmed the truth from the scripture, and then they make a denial from the scripture. We affirm this, we deny this. And what's good about that is it keeps liberals from being able to sign on to any of these statements. I've been in organizations where we've had fabulous doctrinal statements and a huge multi-million organization, dollar organization that I was on the board for several years. It was taken over by liberals because they were able to sign onto it with crossed fingers and just say, well yeah, generally speaking, that's a good idea, good paradigm. And what is really needed nowadays is not just affirmation of truth, but where we say, but we deny as a scurrilous doctrine from hell. Well, they don't say that in here, but that's what I would say. These other heresies, these other talks, that keeps liberals from having any wiggle room and being able to sign on to the documents. And it keeps evangelicals from pretending to be reformers when really they're cowards. They're not willing to have antithesis in their life. So I've put on the back table there five of these. And you can just give BB, we're just doing it, you know, basically it costs 17 bucks for those. I think that's a great paradigm for how to maintain this antithesis. Now, the second thing to notice is that Jesus had an answer to every one of Satan's temptations. Verse 4 says, but he answered and said. He had an answer. And it is critical that the church learn to find answers from God's word, even in the simple areas of life. Would you be able to give an answer to your son or figure out how to dig out an answer when your son asks you, hey dad, can I wear a necklace? Now you may have prejudices one way or the other on that question, but would you be able to give him an answer, at least say, let's study this out. Let's get out a concordance, let's look at how to study. If you don't know how to do your own inductive study, talk to me. I'd be happy over a period of two, three, four weeks to show you step by step how you dig out questions like that. Joel actually years ago brought up that question to me when he was a kid. I was surprised by the answers that the Bible gave. Well, there's other questions. Do you know whether it is biblical or not for your daughters to wear makeup? And if you think it's biblical for them to wear makeup, do you know how to instruct your daughter on exactly how to do it in an appropriate way and where the accent should be And how makeup can point and direct, even how you clothe yourself can point and direct attention to the face versus to other parts of the body. Can you, do you have a biblical philosophy of modesty and of makeup and some of these different things? On the makeup question, I've got a BB booklet you can download and it'll give you at least a jumpstart on thinking through some of those kinds of questions. Can you help your son to stop his poor purchasing choices by teaching him the 26 principles of resistance to salesman techniques and strategies that are found in Genesis chapter 3? And you may not have realized that Genesis 3 even talks about that. Satan is a brilliant strategist. He is a brilliant salesman. And he uses almost all the salesman techniques that are used in modern business. But in the process, the way God has written that chapter, it gives us clues as to how we can teach our children not to be sucked in and pressured, how to develop sales resistance to that. Now, my point in bringing up these illustrations is that the Bible must not be seen simply like a dictionary. Okay, every once in a while we don't know how to spell a word and we pull it down. You know, we pull down the Bible because we're curious about something, you know. How do you spell Nebuchadnezzar? I don't know. No, this is a Bible that we need to be living by every single day of our lives. Now, I'm an academic and so I use the Bible in ways that maybe you're not called to do. And over the past 15 years, I've had quite a few opportunities to go to UNMC and to Creighton, and I've been invited by the student body there to either do debate or to do some teaching on medical ethics. And I love showing, not just in medical ethics, but in other areas, how the Bible has the answers to the philosophical problems that plague the various disciplines. Take mathematics, for example. There are huge debates between the mathematical schools of logicism, intuitionism, formalism, predicativism, and Platonism. All of them have been stymied in being able to prove the truthfulness of mathematics. Now, some people say, well, who cares? I just use math and it works, right? And that's true, we peons use it because it works. But could you prove that it worked if push came to shove? Well, if you had been digging into the scripture for answers like Jesus had been digging into the scriptures, I think you would be able to demonstrate that the Bible shows the foundation for mathematics because it gives all the axioms for mathematics, but it also interprets mathematics. It gives a worldview framework within which to understand it, how to use it in godly ways. It gives philosophical answers to some of the mathematical problems, like Benacerrif's epistemological problem. And I've got an article I can send to you by Vern Poythress. That's a marvelous introduction to a biblical philosophy of mathematics in areas most Christians haven't even thought through. James Nichols got a wonderful book on mathematics is the Bible silent. And I won't bore you with all of the details, but the Bible gives answers to the perplexing problems in every academic discipline by having an omniscient creator infallibly revealing the axioms for life, giving a worldview framework within which they make sense. It also helps us to answer any ethical questions that may come up. I had a friend in Lincoln, Nebraska who called me one day and he said, Phil, I really need some wisdom from you today. My cousin has been in a car accident and she's in the hospital here in Lincoln and she has been declared brain dead and they're wanting to harvest her organs. I'm the one who's got the medical power of attorney and I don't know what to do. Could you please give me some advice? So I was asking questions, trying to find out exactly what had happened and where she was at and I was able to tell this guy No, you should not allow for any organ transplant. She is not dead biblically, guaranteed she is not dead biblically. So I walked him through all of the biblical principles on how the Bible defines death and some of the other ethical principles in there. Well, the end of the story, to make a long story short, is a week later, she was up walking around as healthy as could be. Here's a brain-dead person, they're going to harvest her organs and now she's walking around brain-dead. Now, if I had not already studied these principles from the scripture to be able to give an ethical answer on something that could happen to any one of your relatives, that lady probably would be dead, really dead, not just brain dead, okay? And so we need to look to the scripture and the scripture does give medical answers on which organ transplants are legitimate and which ones are not and what are the criterion for death. It's certainly not brain death. It gives answers on fertility. Studies assisted suicide and many other medical questions and I believe that many pastors and many leaders Do not dig into the Bible to find these kinds of answers because they're really not convinced that 2nd Peter chapter 1 is true when it says that the Bible gives to us all things that pertain to life and and godliness, not just ethics, but life and godliness. They're not convinced that that is really true. Jesus was ready with an answer because he had already dug for answers in the Holy Scriptures. And that's the third thing I want you to notice from our text. Jesus reasoned from the objective written revelation of the Bible. Matthew 4.4 says, but he answered and said, it is written. Now this was shocking for the Pharisees, I've read a little over 1,000 pages in the Talmud, which is the collection of the teachings of the rabbis and the Pharisees and the scribes. They almost never appeal to scripture. Almost always what they're saying is rabbi so and so said, but this other rabbi said this other thing and they're always looking at opinions and you have heard it said, but Jesus cut through all of the opinions of man by saying, hey guys, this is what God says. Okay, let's say one for once and for all, it is written. He was able to reason from the Bible and the Bible must be our axiomatic starting point for every area of life. The reformer John Wycliffe said, all law, all philosophy, all ethics are in Scripture. In Holy Scripture is all truth. Now he's not saying that the Bible is a textbook in the modern sense of the term, but Wycliffe was saying that just as mathematics flows from its starting axioms, Every discipline in life flows from the starting axioms of the Bible, okay? So even though the Bible is not a textbook on mathematics, it gives us the axioms from which we can build a system of mathematics and from which we can write textbooks on mathematics, and it gives a whole bunch of other things related to mathematics in the process. So Wycliffe said all mathematics, philosophy, music, and truth systems flow from the Bible. Was he exaggerating? Is he just a nutcase? What's going on there? I do not think that he was exaggerating at all. I've been reading some of the most recent research on the biblical foundations of Western music. This is fascinating, fascinating stuff for me. Things like the Gregorian chant and how some of the church fathers were talking about where they got these ideas from, where they got their music theory from. It's been all very carefully preserved in the text of the Hebrew and the diacritical marks of the Hebrew. Now these marks show not only the notes, And that's very clear, that's just slam dunk. But it also shows the harmony, and it shows variety in tempo and scale, so they're not just using the diatonic scale, that predominates in the Psalms, but they had other scales that were divinely given that show that there's experimentation in music. And the marks show the meter, sometimes 5-4 meters, sometimes 4-4, and there's other meters that are out there. Josephus speaks of the different meters, and he lists the meters that were written by David. Now, a lot of critics nowadays, they look at this newest research and they say, that can't possibly be because The diacritical marks and the vowel points did not come into existence until the 9th century AD. Well, I've got some irrefutable evidence that that is not the case and that the reformers were right when they said that these vowel points and these diacritical marks go back to Ezra. When they came back from the exile, a lot of the people didn't speak Hebrew as well as they should. And in order for them to be able to know exactly what every word, how it was pronounced, and in order to distinguish some of the corrupt texts that the Samaritans had developed from the true text, that he came up with the new square Hebrew text, with the vowel points, with the diacritical marks, And the reason I have irrefutable evidence of this is we've got manuscripts that even liberals say predate Christ by two centuries that have these vowel points and diacritical marks. I tell you, in the next 50 years, all of this research is just going to turn liberalism upside down. It's great. We're living in exciting times, brothers and sisters. It's really wonderful. The point is, don't just assume that some of these older writers like, you know, Usher, he had access to documents that have long since disappeared. But don't think these older writers are nutcases because they're coming up with radical ideas that we just don't understand. If you've never researched it, keep your mouth shut. Don't be, you know, cutting down people from the ages past who were brilliant people, people like John Owen, who said, yes, all of these diacritical marks and vowel points stem way back to Ezra and were put there by inspiration. Now, I will hasten to say I've just begun my research on music, and some of it's a little bit above my head because I'm not rooted in music theory and some of those other things, I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to have to run this past some people who have really studied music heavily. But it does make sense to me in terms of the philosophy that the scripture sets forth. Let me quote from Luther. Martin Luther. said about Scripture that it is, quote, in itself most certain, most easily understood, most plain, is its own interpreter, approving, judging, and illuminating all the statements of all men. Therefore, nothing except the divine words are to be the first principles, and that's a synonym. First principles is a synonym for axioms. He says, therefore, nothing except for the divine words are to be the first principles for Christians. All human words are conclusions drawn from them and must be brought back to them and approved by them. Well, I dare say there are hardly any Christians who live by that principle, but that was the Reformation principle. The Bible provides the axioms or the starting points or the presuppositions upon which all thought and research and planning and teaching should be based, tested, and evaluated. Now, the next word in the sentence is the word man. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. I want you to notice he doesn't say, Israel shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. No, by using that word man or mankind, he is indicating that the paradigm he is about to share with us is a paradigm that was intended for us, and that's so important to understand. You see, in all of the debates over God's case laws, people get distracted in trying to figure out which of these case laws are moral laws that apply to all mankind, And which ones are ceremonial laws that only apply to Israel? Now, that is an important question to decide because we're not under the ceremonial law as a moral, ethical imperative. So we do need to figure that question out. But let me tell you, brothers and sisters, ethics is only a small part of life. God hasn't given a lot of commands. How many commands did he give to Adam? Don't eat from that tree. You can eat from anything you want. Okay, maximum liberty. So ethics really is only a part of life. And yet, there is so much that is found in the ceremonial laws that are information for living even though we're not bound by those ceremonial laws. For example, several of the axioms for mathematics are found in the ceremonial law. Without the ceremonial law, you would not have a sufficient foundation for truth. And if you like classical geometry, wow, you'll have a heyday studying the tabernacle and the temple. And I used to read through those things and just think, oh, man, I know I need to read this if I can honestly say I've read through the Bible in a year. But boy, this is boring stuff, you know? It just tediously goes on and talks about how many clasps and the shape of them and how many cubits they are and how they're all hooked together. And it's like, we're never going to build a tabernacle. Why do I need to know all of this stuff? But you see, it was not just intended to give them the foundations for their ceremonial law, but it was intended to give us patterns for aesthetics. That means beauty. And it was intended to give us foundations for mathematics and geometry, as well as teaching us all kinds of beautiful doctrines that we can live by about what grace looks like, and what Jesus Christ looks like, and what the New Covenant is going to look like, and other kingdom realities. Okay, so why does God give all of these details in the tabernacle and the temple? Well, Sir Isaac Newton, he just went wild over that stuff. He loved it. He said, he credits the Bible with many of his discoveries, and I read with absolute fascination Newton's, Sir Isaac Newton's discussions of the biblical cubit, and he's narrowed it down to exactly how many inches that cubit was, and the relationship of that cubit to the temple and to the size of the earth. And he goes through all kinds of different things. Now, is he accurate on all of that? I have not yet evaluated that. It seems like he is absolutely mathematically precise in what he has done. I guess he would be. He's a lot better genius on math than I am. But here is the point that really I struggle with. Sir Isaac Newton was a heretic. Okay, now he called himself a Christian, but he was not a Trinitarian, and yet he had more confidence in the Bible for living in every area of life than most Christians today do. He's a rebuke to Orthodox Christians today. We need to have more confidence than a person like Sir Isaac Newton would have. And my point is that in addition to giving Israel essential information for ceremonial law, it gives us information for so many other areas. For example, I was reading a book recently that had a chapter that was critiquing some fad diets and I think did a fairly good job in doing so. And just as an example, there's one fad diet that says that it's really wrong to ever eat any meat. And this chapter says, well, that's ridiculous, because God's word infallibly says that God commanded the Israelites to eat meat on a number of occasions. In fact, their ceremonial laws, like the Passover and other things, they had to eat meat. But even apart from the ceremonial laws, they were commanded to eat meat. Now, would God really command people to eat something that was bad for them? No, because the very laws that command this, God says he's giving these things for their good, right? Now, was this book trying to impose the ceremonial law on us? No, not at all. You can eat meat, you cannot eat meat, but it's saying you are absolutely legalistic if you say it's a sin to eat meat, or if you say it's bad for your health to eat meat. You're contradicting the wisdom of God. And the chapter went on, and it was contradicting other fad diets that forbid salt. When scripture says salt is good for you, and actually science is catching up. When saturated animal fats being good for you. Now, not overdosing on them, but animal fats being good for you. Well, science is catching up, isn't it? Honey and fruit and grains and cheese. The book said that those laws were intended for our good. Not binding as ceremonial law, but she's using it I think now you're getting the point of who the book is about. Okay, I'll tell you. Trim Healthy Mama, you know. She's got a little chapter in there. I thought it was a great little chapter, you know, critiquing the fad diets. Now, is she imposing that? Do people have to follow it? No. We have freedom. We have liberty. But you can use the Bible to critique so many things in the world as well as to give God's good wisdom for our daily living. Here's the point. We must live by even the ceremonial law in some sense of the word live or we're contradicting Christ's words here in Matthew 4 verse 4. The Bible is not just intended for Israel. It was intended for mankind, every word of it. It gives us wisdom for living. So don't just think in terms of ethics, okay? That's where people get hung up. Yes, there are distinctions in ethics where ceremonial law is no longer binding, but think in terms of wisdom for living. Now, the next phrase indicates that the Bible is not a replacement for living, but the foundation for living. Jesus did not say, man shall not live by bread, but only by the word of God. That would turn us into ivory tower theologians who would starve to death. We should not look at it that way. Instead, Jesus wanted us living out the scriptures by taking dominion and subduing planet earth to his glory so there's work to be done and every bit of our dominion work must be captive to scripture. The moment we exclude the scriptures from things like rocks, like Satan was trying to do, and bread, or any other area of life, we have entered into the realm of humanism and independence, and of course that was the great temptation of Adam and Eve. Why should I be looking to God's word on whether I can eat from this tree of the knowledge of good or evil or not? I'll do like scientists do. I'll evaluate it myself and determine whether it's good or whether it's not good. That's humanism. Every if Jesus said that he did not do anything or say anything that was not in conformity with God's will We cannot eat or do anything that is not in conformity with God's will and so Jesus was making exactly the same point when he was hungry in the wilderness that Deuteronomy 8 was making when Israel was hungry in the wilderness. God tests us as to whether we will handle stones, food, and the rest of our life according to his word or whether we will take dominion independently of his will. Now this means that it's impossible to glorify God by keeping our heads in our books, right? God intends us to master the Bible so that whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do all to the glory of God. We've got to live out the Bible in science and architecture, farming, chemistry, every area of life. We've got to have orthopraxy as well as orthodoxy. We've got to have godly living as well as godly thinking, or as Jesus worded it, we're to love the Lord, not just with our minds. But also with our souls, our hearts, our very strength. So he's not against the trades and taking dominion. No, no, no, no. He's just saying there's a deeper foundation. And now the next word indicates that every word of scripture is important. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by Every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So this is a call to live by the whole Bible, not just the New Testament. It's a call to live by every word of the Holy Scriptures. Now I remember when I first began to realize that the church is just in the infancy stage of applying the Bible to all of life, I was at Covenant College and I was furiously taking notes as fast as I could while my genius professor, Dr. J.C. Keister, was at the blackboard writing out the axioms of mathematics, just using ordinary exegesis up there on the blackboard, and he came to demonstrating the distributive law of addition as revealed by God. And the distributive law is that A times the quantity B plus C equals AB plus AC. That's a pretty basic axiom. And the passages that he was using to demonstrate this law were boring passages. Very, very boring. Okay. I had read these passages numerous times, because I try to read through the Bible once a year, and I've done that for many, many years, and yet I'd never seen this obvious truth from mathematics. It only became obvious because he was now pointing it out to me. I had never seen it because I wasn't looking for it. You see, I began the sermon by saying that we tend to live only as high as our vision. We tend to live only as high as our vision and our minds tend to filter out that kind of stuff, and just like the illustration of that book, you know, I'm looking, I'm looking everywhere, I can't see it, why? Because I'm looking for something red. Our minds tend to filter things out, and I think that's what's happening when we read the Bible and think, the Bible really doesn't speak about science, there's not a textbook on math, there's not a textbook on any of these other things, and so we never see what the Bible has to say about it. Now, that was what happened with me because In God's providence, I had been reading exactly the passage that he was using to demonstrate this axiom in my devotions the day before, okay? And the day before, to my shame, I was reading along and I was thinking, wow, that's bad grammar. That's very awkward. If God had been just communicating a story, he could have said it so much more elegantly and so much more simply But when Dr. Keister was writing this axiom on the board, it was like boom. I could all of a sudden realize it had to be written in exactly that awkward way or we would not have had that axiom of mathematics. Well, from that time on, I began wondering, okay, what is my paradigm in my mind filtering out and keeping me from seeing in the scripture? I began looking for other axioms in the Bible. And as a result of that one event, I began noticing all kinds of amazing things in the order of words, the selection of words, the repetition of words. Every word of the Bible is significant. In fact, Paul makes a big point about one letter of one word, and Jesus makes a big deal about the jots and tittles of a word, which many of the older writers believed was a reference to the vowels and the diacritical marks of the Old Testament. And it dawned on me, I had not been living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. I'd just been living by the general meaning of strings of words that had been put together. But when Jesus builds the doctrine of the resurrection on the tense of a verb, Paul builds a doctrine on whether it is a singular or a plural word, and Paul later refutes feminism by the order of events. In Genesis 2, I realized I better take that word every a little bit more seriously than I have been taking it in the past. We are to live by every word. the Bible and when we have faith that every word counts we're gonna start seeing all kinds of new things like one one a team of logicians began seeing whoa the Bible is almost like a textbook of logic you see they see logic everywhere and they're developing a book that I can hardly wait till it gets printed it's a detailed in-depth Book on multiple levels of logic that we can we can learn I've got lower level logic an entire logic three credit hour course that was taught never deviating from the Bible Higher logic course now. I think that could be hugely improved upon and I think it will be in in in years to come But when we have a confidence that God makes every word count, we're gonna start seeing axioms for biology. And actually, you'll see a lot more than axioms. You'll see interpretation and worldview issues and principles that'll keep you from wandering down this dead-end road and wasting millions and millions of dollars, because the Bible says, ah, that's a dead end. Don't even go with your research there. Go with your research maybe in some of these areas. It will save us money. It'll save us time. And I first began seeing some of these things at the same school that Dr. J.C. Keister taught at, and it was probably the same year. I was sitting in a biology class, and Covenant College was so much better back then than it is right now, but there were professors who really were striving to teach the Bible and apply it to life. But anyway, Dr. Lauthers, another gracious, wonderful individual, he showed the brilliant purpose of God's taxonomy of creatures and how it contrasts with the current evolutionary taxonomy. You know the taxonomies everybody has in their Christian textbooks? Did you realize they're all evolutionary? They are. And it's good to know what the evolutionists believe, but why does God use the taxonomy that he gave to us? And there is a legitimate variety of taxonomies, just like scales, you know, and music. But anyway, he gave some very interesting insights into biology based on that taxonomy. And I could go on and on and pointing to things that most Christians completely ignore. The fact that we are not even remotely living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shows to me that we are living in the infancy of the church. I do not think we are at the end of history. My view is that every time the word last days occurs, it's referring to the last days of the old covenant leading up to 70 AD. We're not in the last days of the Old Covenant. And I wouldn't be surprised if we have 100,000 years of history ahead of us, maybe even more, who knows? But you know, you look at the Old Testament and even in the historical books that you should take literally, nobody takes them literally. They always go to the symbolic book of Revelation and talk about the thousand years that is there. But what about the passages in the history books that say that God is going to be faithful to his people in history to a thousand generations of those who love him? Now for generations, 40 years, that's at least 40,000 years of history where God is promising to be faithful and there's going to be people who love him for that many generations. Well, that's a long time in history. And I take that very, very literally, a thousand years, well, we're only at 6,000 mark, maybe just a little bit more than the 6,000 mark right now. And so I would think if God would give us a little peek into how the church is applying the scriptures to all of these disciplines 10,000 years from now, I think it would blow us out of the water, we'd say. That's amazing. How come I didn't see any of that stuff? Well, the reason we didn't see it is we're still in poopy diapers. We're in the infancy stage of the church, and God doesn't expect as much of infants as he does of grown people. But what do you do with infants? Do you keep them infants all the time? No. You keep pressing. We need to press ourselves to grow. Lord, give me more insight. Give me more blessings of insight as to how your word applies. So the goal of the church, and we should spur the whole church to do this, is to grow up in understanding the Bible and making new discoveries. Every discipline in which I've been looking into the scriptures is like looking through a window and I see all of those fields out there and my heart's just wanting to climb out of that window and start romping in the fields and start doing some of these discoveries and I don't have the time to do it, okay? But there's so many things out there that I'm hoping scholars will dig into and find. For example, I was having fun two weeks ago reading preliminary research some have been doing on fractal geometry in the Bible, of all things, fractal geometry. It is a fascinating study, not just in terms of measuring distances, but you know all of the little curves and structures within structures. And so there's applications there. But one of the things I found fascinating was the structure of the Bible itself. It is so fascinating. Now, when I'm preaching through First Samuel, I try not to bore you with all of the background material I have to master before I teach you with it. But one of the things that I have been looking at in the Bible is the structure of 1 Samuel. Occasionally, I'll throw a couple of these details out. The whole of 1 and 2 Samuel is one gigantic chiasm and a whole bunch of other kinds of structures and interlocking structures within the book. But the curious thing about that gigantic chiasm is it doesn't finish until you get to the first chapter of 1 Kings. There's an interlocking canonically between the books and you see different things like this on how God even developed the canon. Now if you want to get some insights on what the Bible says about itself as to how the canon is going to develop. and how we know for a certainty just from the Bible alone that there's only 66 books in the Bible. You'll have to download the biblical blueprints booklet there. But anyway, there's fascinating stuff that I'm just beginning to realize is out there. Others are working on biblical information on space having physical structure and space having some sort of polarity. In other words, a north. Science hasn't even caught up on that one yet, but I'm confident it eventually will. There's some kind of a north in space. How can that be? I don't know. Space being elastic and expansion of the universe and information being in our physical bodies, how in the world could that be? Maybe it's a reference to DNA and some of the other information that they're now discovering goes way beyond DNA. I don't know, but when I read passages like that, it gives me goosebumps. It makes me want to run down a rabbit trail. I don't have time to run down. And there is other information that could very well give rise to another scientific revolution if Christian scientists would only take it seriously. And you miss those kinds of things if you're not looking at every word of Scripture. Anyway, Matthew 4.4 goes on by speaking of every word. Okay? Every word indicates that Christianity is not just about feelings and experiences and relationships and work and things like that. No, there's something far more fundamental that undergirds all of those things, and it is words. Okay? Or what Francis Schaeffer called propositional truth. Words are important to God and an understanding of propositional truth is critical to healthy living. We live in an age when people just don't have the patience to study that kind of stuff. They don't have appreciation for it. But we will never become a mature Christianity until we become people of the book and until we see sola scriptura as the defining characteristic of Christianity. And we begin to use logical thinking to wrestle with the text. The eighth feature of this paradigm that is wearing the children out, and I need to hurry through, is that these words are a revelation from God himself. It speaks of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Now, that phrase proceeds from indicates there's something coming from God to man, and it's words that are coming from God's mouth to the prophet's mouth. And this deals with epistemology, which is just a $10 word meaning how do we know that we know that we know, okay? Epistemology, very, very important. And the Reformed Church has got to get back on track in this area of epistemology. We do not know truth through science, period. We know whether a scientific declaration is true or not based upon the Bible, but we do not discover truth from science. We discover truth from scripture. And there's plenty of evidence all around us that unbelievers are going to interpret a different way. They're going to reject, you know, Luke chapter 16, Jesus gave the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and the rich man's in hell. He's looking up to paradise. He sees Abraham and he says please Abraham Bring Lazarus back from the dead to my brothers so that they don't come here He's basically saying I want you to show evidence of the afterlife to my brothers who are still living and then they will believe And they won't come here And he thought evidence could save them. But Jesus relates this. Abraham said to him, they have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear, yes, let them hear them. And he said, no, Father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But he said to him, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from the dead. Now where is God's focus? It's not on evidences, as important as those can be. It's on the Word of God. It's not on experiences, as important as those are. It's on the Word of God. It's not on miracles, as important as miracles are. It's on the Word of God. And if we have a faulty view of revelation, it will mess everything up. Now liberals believe that words have no objective meaning. That's why it's so frustrating to argue with liberals. No objective meaning. They don't hold to a correspondence view of words where a word has an objective meaning and corresponds very literally to some objective reality. And they can't because they don't believe that the scriptures really are the very words of God incarnated through human words. They don't believe that they're the very words of God. They believe that any word is so colored by my understanding that when I speak a word, it's going to have a different meaning to me than the same word will have to somebody else. And therefore, there can be no objective meaning. They become utter skeptics. They become like Pilate who said, what is truth? And so what happens with liberals, they're more interested in experience than they are in looking for biblical truth. And there are a lot of implications of this phrase, which I don't have the time to get into, that deal with apologetics. It's one of the reasons why I think Van Til, as much of a hero as he is for me, is wrong on his analogical knowledge. Because he said, okay, do I even get into this? Okay, okay. Liberals hold to an equivocal view of words and knowledge. They say that God's thinking and our thinking are utterly different, there's totally different meanings for this, there's no correspondence whatsoever, and so it leads to skepticism, and all you care about is experience, not truth or meaning. Guys like me, and historically they held to this as well, until Thomas Aquinas, Gordon Clark holds to univocal knowledge. In other words, if there was a revelation of God's thoughts to our minds If a true revelation has occurred, there's been something communicated, traveled from God to us, there must be some point at which there is going to be an absolute identity between our thinking and God's thinking. Okay, that's univocal knowledge. It's not saying we're going to think exactly like God will because God knows a chair. Not only in terms of all of the molecular structure, he knows everything in contrast to everything that it is not. In other words, he's omniscient, so he's going to know that in a much more thorough way than I will. But if I know that chair at all, then I'm going to know it in the same way, at least at some point, that God does. And if there are words that came from God's mind to the prophet's mouth and they actually are words that traveled from God to the prophet's mouth, then the words of scripture have to have some point of identity between what we're thinking and what God is thinking. That is univocal view of knowledge. Now, Van Til followed Thomas Aquinas. Now I think I'll see Thomas Aquinas in heaven, okay? So I'm not bashing him because I think he's not a believer. But the sad thing is he wedded Greek pagan thought together with biblical thought and he created the monstrosity we call the Roman Catholic Church today. And it began taking over because his textbooks were being used everywhere and over the next 300 years it just produced disaster. And so he came up with this idea of analogical. And Van Til followed this, and Van Til says that what we are thinking is like what God thinks, but at no point is there any identity. He's so emphasizing the transcendence of God above man, the creator-creature distinction, that he says there is a line between God and man, and we say no. There is a line between God and man, but God breaks through that line by giving us revelation, real words. So that is a nutshell difference between univocal, the good guys hold to, equivocal, that the really bad guys hold to, and analogical that the really good guys that are messed up hold to, okay? So, Van Til is a friend of, I love Van Til, and I think he has taught us so many wonderful things, but I think that's one area, and by the way, many Van Tilians have abandoned him on that. John Frame has abandoned him on that. John Frame holds to univocal knowledge just like I do. That's a long rabbit trail, and boy, the kids are really waiting for lunch. OK, if the point I've just talked about is true, then it means that the Bible has all the authority of God. The Bible is infallible and inerrant. Why? Because God is infallible and inerrant. Matthew 4.4 speaks of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. When scripture speaks, it is God himself speaking to you. And so Hebrews 4 says that the scriptures have all of the attributes of God backing them up. God is powerful, and so the word of God is powerful. God sees and evaluates all things and discerns the motives of our hearts, and so God's word in Hebrews 4. It's almost like it's a person. And it is a person. It's God speaking to us. It discerns. the features of our hearts. And it says God gives life, the Scriptures give life. God heals, the Scripture heals. If we took at all seriously the incredibly powerful transformational nature of the Word of God, we would read it more, we would memorize vast sections of it, we would meditate upon the Word of God. And B.B. has a little booklet that was edited by, I forget who wrote it, but it was edited by Michael Elliott that really helps you to memorize entire books of the Bible, extended chapters from the scripture. It's a very helpful book. And it's possible to do that, by the way, if you just take some time. How precious is God's word to you? Proverbs says you need to treat it as more precious than silver and gold. Now most of us work 40 hours a week to get silver and gold, right? FRNs, I'd rather get silver and gold. But anyway, we work 40 hours a week or more to do that. Some of us work 60, 70, 80 hours a week, but maybe you ought to quit being workaholics. But we balk at the idea of spending half an hour a day in memorizing and meditating on scripture. Are we really treating scripture as more precious than silver and gold? In the boarding school I went to, there were a lot of things that I faulted for, but there were a lot of good things that they did there as well. One of the good things that they did is from the time I was in grade one, every one of us kids had to spend the half hour immediately before breakfast memorizing scripture. And we kids, all of us, we were memorizing not only topical verses, but we memorized entire books of the Bible, memorized all of Ephesians, Philippians, James, all kinds of books that we were memorizing. And we were just ordinary kids, okay? But you get transformed, your brain expands. I've told people who say, I can't memorize. And I say, well, how long have you tried to memorize? Well, I haven't, but I know I can. Let me tell you something, could you run a five-mile marathon if you had not been working up to it? No. So why are we so foolish to think that we're going to be able to memorize without working up to it? You just keep working at it day after day after day, and it becomes easier. Some people say, I can't memorize. I just say, let me give you some techniques. And I want you to use these techniques and don't worry about whether it actually sticks in your brain or not. Just use these techniques for half an hour. And lo and behold, when they do it, they've memorized. They've memorized. So talk to me if you have difficulty memorizing, but don't tell me that you treat the word as more precious than silver and gold when you're not willing to spend at least half an hour in God's word and memorizing it and meditating upon it. How many times have you read through the Bible? I've talked to Christians who have been Christians for 60 years, they have never once read through the Bible. Are they trading? Is it more precious than silver and gold? Wow, I'm getting into herringing, so I better move on. But Deuteronomy 32 says this, set your heart on the words which I testify among you today, which you shall command your children to be careful to observe all the words of this law. For it is not a futile thing for you, because it is your life. And let me repeat that, because it is your life. And by this word, you shall prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess. Many people think they have a high view of scripture because they believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. And I say, you got a very low view of scripture because you're not in the scripture every day. You're not meditating on the word of God day and night. Deuteronomy. says that prosperity and living does not come from the abundance of things and of food. Satan hoped to tempt Jesus to think the opposite, to think it really is important. Food is more important. But Deuteronomy affirms that prosperity comes from hiding God's Word in our hearts, meditating on it day and night, conforming our lives to its every precept. Joshua 1 tells us, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. But you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success." And that's exactly what Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4.15. Meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. Too many people send their kids to government schools so that their kids can walk in the council of the ungodly, and they wonder why their kids are abandoning the faith. Psalm 1 says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit and its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish." Now, I'm going to skip over some of what I've written here, but I would just say evangelicals today are actually far from valuing God's Word. They're embarrassed by God's Word. They're embarrassed and they apologize, you know, when the Bible speaks to issues of male headship and male voting, and they apologize for the Bible when it speaks, you know, of the death penalty for homosexuals or when in various ways. In fact, I know one evangelical leader whom I love, I think is Heart in many ways is right with God, but he's got such a prejudice against the Old Testament. But he speaks of it being abominable that God would. Make a law that use stone Juvenile a dangerous juvenile delinquents. I think what's there to be embarrassed about this is a perfect solution to the parental abuse that's happening in the Bronx and New York City and In other places where parents are in fear of their lives. They're held captive the the children take the social security checks and they're fearful of their lot of their lives and Now, this would take care of things very, very quickly. There is nothing to be embarrassed about the Word of God. In fact, Deuteronomy 4 says there's coming a time when the nations will become jealous of those nations that actually implement that Word. That's what happened to Vishal Mangalwadi. He became a Christian because he was jealous of the incredible blessings that came to the West because they took the whole Bible seriously. He was jealous. He became converted. This is what we should long to see Christian states set up that are so blessed by God because they're willing to follow God's law that other nations look at us and they say, I want that. I want whatever it is that's blessing them. So there's nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, I'll end with one more passage from Jesus. It's Matthew 5, 17 through 19. Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, and last time I looked heaven and earth has not passed away. till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled, and your interpretation of what we've just read better line up with Jesus' conclusion, his therefore, whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does and teaches them He shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. He is saying that if you both keep and teach others to keep, All of God's Old Testament case law, which, by the way, when he's quoting from Deuteronomy 8, it had in mind, including the case law of Deuteronomy, right? One to live by it. But Jesus is saying, if you both keep the laws and you teach others to keep the laws, you are going to be great in the kingdom of heaven. If you teach other people that the law has passed away and it's no longer relevant, you will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. That's exactly what Jesus is saying. And by the way, the least of these commandments is a reference to Deuteronomy 22, 6, the passage about the mother bird and her young. It says, when you come upon young birds and their mother, let the mother go, you can eat the young birds. And you might say, I don't know what that one's all about. It doesn't matter. You might discover later that there is a great significance, but Jesus said it is significant. It's something you should value. It's something you should cherish. The whole word of God needs to be treated like gold. And so, very literally, we are to live by every word that proceeds out of God's mouth. May it be so, King Jesus. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, and it is our longing to understand more of it. The more I look into your word, the more I realize how little I understand. There are just vast vistas that are so exciting that I would love to dig into. And I pray that you would raise up scholars all over the world who would dig into your word and apply it consistently to every area of life. And please forgive the Church of Jesus Christ for the way in which they have abandoned your word and believed in evolution and believed in homosexuality and every imaginable kind of humanistic thing because they're not anchored in your truth. Please forgive them and open their blind eyes and help the Church of Jesus Christ to once again be a bride whom you could not be ashamed of, but whom you would love because she is adorned not only in your legal righteousness, but imbibes in her living every word of scripture. And do bless us in the remainder of this day. May it be a refreshing day, an encouraging day of fellowship and loving on one another. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.