00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
Thank you and you know it was
a privilege for me to write with these guys at the blog for years. I quit actually two and a half
years ago. I stopped blogging and people often ask me why and
do you miss it and the answer is I quit because I'd run out
of opinions. There really wasn't anything
that I was passionate about that I hadn't already blown off steam
on and I didn't really have anything else to to give opinions on. And it's true that we always,
or often, usually, 99% of the time, would take a different
view from the average evangelical on whatever the trends are. That
was sort of how we did the blog. We'd look at whatever the current
evangelical trend was and we'd critique it. Because most of
them deserve critique. But anyway, I'm thrilled to be
here and especially thrilled with the subject, the sufficiency
of scripture. People online have been speculating
about this conference for a long time. I didn't give it the name.
I didn't even choose the title. I mean, I didn't choose the topic. I love the topic, the sufficiency
of scripture, and I agree that that is really the issue that
virtually every conflict and every controversy we've ever
written about ultimately goes back to the sufficiency and supremacy
of Scripture over every other kind of truth claim. But what's
interesting to me is, and maybe it's because of the name, you
know, sufficient fire, kind of a reference to last year's conference
at Grace Church, which was called, what was it called? Strange Fire.
I knew it had to do with fire. And of course that was a critique
of the charismatic movement. And so all of my charismatic
friends think that this conference is going to be a critique, a
further critique of the charismatic movement. Actually, nothing could
be further from my mind. What I want to do is defend the
principle of the sufficiency of scripture. I think it's intriguing
and telling that so many charismatics think when you start to talk
about the sufficiency of scripture, the authority of scripture, somehow
that's an attack on them. It reminds me of my first year
on the blog when I decided to do a series that was prompted
in my mind by Henry Blackaby and his book experiencing God,
where he was saying, basically, if you don't hear messages in
your head from the Holy Spirit, then you're not really experiencing
God the way you should. He was not, as far as I know,
a charismatic. I suppose he's mildly charismatic. Actually, I don't know. He's
a Southern Baptist, so none of the charismatic theology would
come out of him, but he had this penchant for telling people that
you should listen for private promptings and impulses and maybe
even voices in your head from the Holy Spirit. And that greatly
troubled me because back in my Bible college era, I had friends
who sort of followed that. In fact, I myself experimented
with the notion that what if I just did what I think God is
telling me to do? What if I listen for this voice
in my head to tell me you know, give a track to that guy or witness
to this guy, what would be the response, what would be the result
of that? And if you do that very long, I promise you, you're going
to run into disaster. Spurgeon said the same thing,
that to do that is to live the, he said, is to live the life
of a fool. just because you're responding to whims and fancy,
rather than the clear truth that's been revealed in Scripture. And
so my idea was to write a series of articles on this notion that
God is constantly speaking, and I wanted to talk for one thing
about the sufficiency of Scripture, but I also wanted to debunk a
lot of the patently false prophecies and false messages that people
often claim are from the Lord. And the minute I even broached
the subject, and I'm thinking about Henry Blackaby, not the
Charismatics, but it seemed like the entire Charismatic world
came down on my head. And they all wanted to debate,
you know, continuationism versus cessationism, and I wasn't even
going there. And I ultimately gave up in frustration,
never did get back to that thread, but it was at the height of that
sort of back and forth with the rest of the charismatic world
that I decided I need somebody else to help me write this blog.
I was doing it by myself up to that point. The original blog
was called Pyromaniac. just singular. So I pluralized
it and invited these two guys to join with me. It was the best
decision I ever made and I loved doing the blog while we were
doing it. It never was tedious for me or anything but I really
did just run out of opinions and and plus started to gather
grandchildren around me, and suddenly my grandchildren became
more important to me than the blog. So that's why I'm not blogging
anymore, but I am still spouting my opinions, and I want to do
that this weekend on the sufficiency of Scripture. And so our text
for this morning will be what I think is one of the most important
and profound statements in all of Scripture about the authority
and sufficiency of the Word of God. 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and
17, and I'm going to read it from the English Standard Version. All Scripture is breathed out
by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent,
equipped for every good work. Now that's a familiar passage
to, I suppose, probably all of you, and it's clear, it is comprehensive,
it identifies scripture as God-breathed, profitable, authoritative, and,
and this is the important part, sufficient to equip us for every
good work. The scriptures, Paul says, furnish
us with everything we need that pertains to salvation and godliness. Now that is a plain statement
of the absolute sufficiency of the Word of God, Scripture. If
you've read if you read our blog during its heyday or any time
since, you're probably accustomed to hearing us talk about the
sufficiency of scripture, but this is a doctrine that has been
sadly neglected in the church at large, and I would say, as
I said earlier, I think pretty much every major problem in the
evangelical movement has something to do with the movement's departure
from this principle. Reformers used to refer to it
as sola fide, scripture alone. It didn't mean that scripture
was the only thing they would read. It meant that scripture is the
only thing that has that absolute authority and sufficiency and
all other truth claims are to be tested by bringing them to
scripture and comparing with what scripture says. I had never
heard of this doctrine, at least consciously never thought about
it, don't remember hearing about it. Through all my years in Bible
college and taking all these theology classes, I wasn't really
conscious of the implications of the sufficiency of scripture
and the principle of sola fide, or sola scriptura rather, until
I began to hear John MacArthur talk about this sometime, I think
it was around the end of the 1980s, the early 90s, and he
preached at that point a landmark series of sermons on Psalm 19. That was one of the most important
series of messages he ever preached from the pulpit of our church.
It became the basis for a book called Our Sufficiency in Christ.
If you've never heard of that sermon or read that book, you
can download the sermon for free from the Grace To You website,
or better yet, get that book and study it. I'll be talking
about Psalm 19 and that same text, but I'm not going to steal
any of his material in my message tomorrow. So you need to hear
what he has to say about it and read that book. The book is a
systematic defense of one of the most important and essential
axioms of the Christian faith. It's the doctrine that scripture
alone contains every truth we need, not only for our salvation,
but also for our continued growth in grace and godliness. And there
are many multitudes, I would say maybe most evangelicals today,
people who would call themselves Christians but they don't believe
in the sufficiency of scripture. They don't believe the Bible
contains all the truth we need to equip us to live a godly Christian
life and in fact not to pick on the Charismatics, let's go
the other direction. One of the major problems with Roman Catholicism
starts with the ancient church's denial that the Bible alone is
the sole and sufficient source of spiritual truth. Every major
problem in Roman Catholicism comes back to that as the formal
issue. That is the formal error of Roman
Catholicism. But lately, and in my generation,
in my lifetime, this has become a major problem in the evangelical
movement as well. There are multitudes who are
convinced, for example, that we need psychology and psychotherapy
in order to enable us to deal adequately with, you know, the
really deep spiritual problems that people have. You can't just
quote scripture to people. You can't just tell people what
the Bible says and expect that to solve their spiritual problems.
They need therapy. And that is a dominant opinion
in our generation, even among evangelicals. And this is an
important issue. It's a critical issue. This doctrine
of biblical sufficiency was a huge issue in the Protestant Reformation.
It is, as I said, the formal issue of what the Reformation
was all about. All the great reformers agreed
on this principle, that all truth that's necessary for our salvation
and our spiritual life is either taught explicitly or given to
us implicitly in Scripture. And in fact the principle of
Sola Scriptura is often called the formal principle of the Protestant
Reformation. The Westminster Confession of
Faith has a great section on this right at the beginning of
the confession and it goes like this, let me read it to you.
It says, the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary
for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life is either expressly
set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may
be deduced from scripture. unto which nothing at any time
is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or
traditions of men." So the Westminster Confession, which really summarized
the Protestant position across the board, said nothing is to
be added to Scripture, nothing is necessary beyond Scripture
for our spiritual well-being, either from new revelations from
the Spirit or from church traditions or the traditions of men, it
says. Now, it is important, and I want to say this at the very
start, it's important to understand what this does not mean. It's
not a claim that the Bible exhaustively treats every truth it deals with.
For example, no one imagines that every word Jesus or the
apostles ever spoke is preserved in Scripture. And Scripture expressly
says this in John 21, 25, the Apostle John ends his gospel
with these words. He says, now, there are also
many other things that Jesus did, were every one of them to
be written, John says, I suppose the world itself could not contain
the books that would be written. And so the doctrine of biblical
sufficiency is not a claim that every detail of Jesus' earthly
life and teaching is recorded for us in Scripture. That's not
what it means. Also, the principle of Sola Scriptura is not a claim
that all truth of every kind is revealed to us in Scripture.
The Bible won't teach you the Korean alphabet. Unless you get
a Korean Bible, you might learn it from Psalm 119 there. But
the Bible is not, and we're not claiming it's an exhaustive source
of knowledge about rocket science or marine biology. It doesn't
instruct surgeons how to do microsurgery. And it won't give you all the
rules for filling out your income tax forms. These days you need
a much thicker book than the Bible for that. But on those
issues to which Scripture does speak, it speaks with absolute
and supreme authority. It equips us with all the spiritual
truth we need. There's no necessary source of
truth or divine revelation for the Christian life besides Scripture,
and there is no extra-biblical key that is necessary to unlock
the truth of Scripture. Scripture obviously doesn't tell
us everything we want to know about God, but it gives us all
the truth we need to know about God in order to be saved and
in order to live our lives to glorify Him. And furthermore,
the Bible is the foundation of all true knowledge. It's not
an exhaustive source of all true knowledge, but it is the foundation
for all true knowledge because of this, Scripture stands above
every other kind of truth. It's more authoritative and more
certain than any other source. It is more sure, according to
2 Peter 1.19, more sure than our experience, than any kind
of vivid experience. The prophetic word is more trustworthy,
Peter is saying, than whatever data we gather first-hand through
our own senses. And he actually, in that context,
compares his experience on the Mount of Transfiguration, which
I gather was the pinnacle of experience for Peter, the supreme
experience of his life, to see Christ in his glory on the Mount. And he says, nevertheless, we
have a more sure word of prophecy. He's talking about Scripture.
So scripture is the highest and the supreme authority on every
matter that it speaks about, and everything that's necessary,
everything that is binding on our consciences, everything that
God requires of us, is given to us in scripture. So that the
truth of the Bible is absolutely sufficient for all our spiritual
needs. That's what Paul is saying in
our text. and its authority supersedes every other kind of authority
and every other truth claim. So scripture is the perfect and
only standard of spiritual truth. It reveals infallibly everything
we must believe in order to be saved and everything we must
do in order to glorify God. And that, no more and no less,
is what we mean by sola scriptura and the sufficiency of scripture.
But did you realize, and you will realize if you think about
it, that most people who call themselves Christians do not
believe today that the Bible alone is the ultimate authority
and the very word of God. We say that, even a lot of people
who would formally give lip service to the principle of biblical
sufficiency, they'll affirm it formally, but they don't affirm
it in the way they think and talk and make decisions and form
their theology. This is true. In certain segments
of the charismatic movement, for example, the Bible is sometimes
you'll hear it treated almost with scorn as something dead
and irrelevant, like outdated prophecy that belongs to an ancient
time. You sometimes hear charismatics,
especially the wild-eyed charismatics, talking about fresh words of
prophecy that they claim to receive from the Holy Spirit, and they
will look down on anyone who believes the Bible alone is the
Word of God. The Roman Catholic Church also
formally denies the sufficiency of Scripture. Catholic doctrine,
the Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly states that
the Word of God consists of both Scripture and Church tradition,
and in practice, tradition then becomes the ultimate rule of
faith, because where there is a conflict between a statement
in Scripture and tradition, Church tradition stands in judgment
over the Bible, not it never works the other way around. In
fact, the Catholic Church's rejection of the sufficiency of Scripture
is explicit and it's binding on all Roman Catholics. I said
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is the latest sort
of comprehensive collection of formal Catholic dogma, It says
this, I'll quote directly from it, both scripture and tradition
must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion
and reverence, unquote. And it goes on to say, that the
task of giving an authentic interpretation of the word of God, this is again
quoting directly, whether in its written form or in the form
of tradition, the task of giving an authentic interpretation has
been entrusted to the living teaching office of the church
alone. This means that the task of interpretation
has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with a successor
of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, that's the Pope, unquote. Actually
I should have said unquote before I said that's the Pope. I don't want to get some of these
Catholic apologists nitpickers on me, but in fact according
to the Catholic Catechism, again quote, sacred scripture is written
principally in the church's heart rather than in documents and
records. For the church carries in her
tradition the living memorial of God's word." So in effect,
church tradition is not only made equal to scripture, but
it becomes the true scripture, written not in documents, but
written mystically within the church herself. And when they
keep changing popes, it gets pretty hard to follow that, doesn't
it? Because the tradition seems to change from pope to pope. But that's what they say, and
that is the inevitable result of the Catholic Church's denial
of biblical sufficiency. Modern Catholic apologists, they
see this issue. They understand that the principle
of biblical sufficiency is really one of the two central principle
issues, the other being justification by faith. Biblical sufficiency
is so important to them that they have focused on this issue
and modern Catholic apologists have tried to attack the principle
of biblical sufficiency by claiming that this principle, sola scriptura,
is itself unbiblical. One famous Catholic site on the
World Wide Web says this, quote, The Protestant teaching that
the Bible is the sole spiritual authority, sola scriptura, is
nowhere to be found in the Bible. St. Paul wrote to Timothy that
scripture is useful, though air quotes are in the text too, by
the way, but neither he, Paul, nor anyone else in the early
church taught sola scriptura. And in fact, nobody believed
it until the Reformation, unquote. And modern Catholic apologists
have frequently tried to use that same argument. One famous
Roman Catholic apologist in a debate with my friend James White said
this, quote, he said, Sola Scriptura itself must be proved from Scripture
alone. And if it can't be done, Sola
Scriptura is a self-refuting proposition. and therefore it
is false." That was the claim he made, that was the challenge
he threw down. And so that's what I want to
do in this hour is examine that claim. And I have chosen this
text for this hour today, not only because it introduces the
subject, but also because this is the answer to that Catholic
apologist's challenge. Here is conclusive proof that
the written Word of God is absolutely authoritative and that it supersedes
any other truth claim. 2 Timothy 3.16, that's the text
this apologist was referring to. All scripture is breathed
out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
and for training in righteousness. He's right, that verse says only
that it's profitable, but here's the proof that the Word of God
is absolutely sufficient. Verse 17, that the man of God
might be competent, equipped for every good work, unquote. Now the text, our text, is a
complete and thorough summary of all the vital truths we have
to know and affirm about the scriptures. And so this morning
I want to consider with you four crucial principles, doctrinal
principles, about the Bible that are taught right here in this
passage. Four of them. If you're a note taker, good
for you. And I'll try to make it easy
for you. There's four points here. The first is about the
canon of scripture, the canon of scripture. Look at the first
two words of our text, all scripture. And here Paul is talking about
the whole canon, both Old and New Testaments. All of it is
inspired by God, he says, and therefore it is the very word
of God. You'll often hear people say, no, no, this is only talking
about the Old Testament because that's all Paul had. That's not
all Paul had, and he realized that what he was writing fell
into the category of scripture. Now I've used the word canon,
canon, sorry about that, And I want to explain what that means.
The canon of scripture is that group of writings that are collectively
and universally recognized as divinely inspired. Universally
meaning in all branches of Christendom, in the Christian church. The
word canon itself comes from a Greek word that means measuring
rod or standard. When we speak of the canon, we're
speaking of the anthology of books that we recognize as Holy
Scripture. This is the rule or the standard,
the canon, by which all other truth claims are measured. And
Catholic apologists are very fond of claiming that their church
gave us the canon. They'll say that all the time.
You often hear them quip that the table of contents in your
Bible is not part of the inspired text. the church, they say, had
the authority to decide what should be included in the canon
and what should be excluded. So let's talk about that. What
about that? That's a fairly modern Roman
Catholic claim. It's been really popular for
the last 30 years or so, and it falls apart when you look
at the facts of history. The first Catholic church council
that officially published the supposedly authoritative list
of inspired books that they go by today was the Council of Trent
in the 16th century. And that was the council that
was called specifically to respond to the Protestant Reformation.
And one of the things they did in order to try to assert their
ecclesiastical authority was they published what was supposed
to be the authoritative list of canonical works, but they
added the apocrypha to the official canon of the Catholic Church,
which is to say they got it wrong. They added books that had never
been recognized as scripture by the consensus of God's people.
And so the claim that the Roman Catholic Church gave us our canon
is patently false. If you want to see it, all you
have to do is look at the table of contents in a Catholic Bible
and you'll see it's different. If anyone has ever told you that
a group of men somewhere met in a council or a holy conclave
and decided which books would be included in the scriptures,
that's not true. The church is the product of
God's word, not the parent of it. The church is subordinate
to the scriptures, not vice versa. And the Old Testament prophets,
of course, were fully conscious that their message was from God,
that their writings were authoritative, and they said so in their prophecies. They knew they were writing divine
revelation meant to be obeyed and revered and meditated on
and recorded forever and treated as the very word of God. Here's
what God told Isaiah in Isaiah 51 verse 16. I have put my words
in your mouth." Jeremiah told his scribe, Baruch, go, he said,
and on a day of fasting and the hearing of all the people in
the Lord's house, you shall read the words of the Lord from the
scroll that you have written at my dictation. That's Jeremiah
36.6. And the opening verse of Malachi
identifies Malachi's prophecy as the oracle of the word of
the Lord to Israel by Malachi. And I could cite, of course,
dozens and dozens of other examples from the Old Testament prophets
because the Old Testament is filled with claims like those. There's a sort of standard textbook
that helps with this issue that I would recommend to some of
you. I don't recommend many of Norm Geisler's books. But his
book, A General Introduction to the Bible, by Norm Geisler
and Bill Nix, demonstrates that every single book in the Old
Testament claims, either explicitly or implicitly, to be the very
Word of God. But it was Jesus himself who
settled the issue of the Old Testament canon for us. You know,
just before the resurrection, Jesus, on the road to Emmaus,
opened his disciples' understanding about the scriptures, and at
that point, Luke 24, verse 44 says, These are my words that
I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written
about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms
must be fulfilled." And in that one statement, Jesus was affirming
the canonicity of the Old Testament as it was universally recognized
in Judaism. Actually, the Old Testament canon
had been recognized by the Jewish nation from the time the books
were written, and they had a well-established canon consisting of the very
same books that are in your Old Testament today. And notice the
classic threefold division that Jesus spells out. He gives three
parts, the Law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms. That was a typical Jewish expression
that included the entire Old Testament. He was affirming that
the Old Testament books that were recognized by all of Judaism,
the same set of books you still have in your Bible today, those
are canonical. So there's no question about
the Old Testament canon, and the Roman Catholic Church had
nothing to do with the formation of that canon. It was well established
by Jesus' time. And incidentally, virtually every
Old Testament book is directly quoted as authoritative in the
New Testament. That same book by Geisler and
Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, includes a complete
list of places where the New Testament authors quote from
the Old Testament, and they cover virtually every book in the Old
Testament. When Paul speaks of all scripture, he certainly includes
the Old Testament canon. No question about that. And he
meant the Old Testament canon exactly as you have it in your
Bible today. But the tough part is the New
Testament. What about the New Testament?
How do we know that the New Testament is also the inspired Word of
God? How do we know that we have the right books? And how do we
know that we have all of the right books? Because those are
issues that have been, unfortunately, brought up as if they were new
questions for new debate just in the past decade or so. How
do we know? Well, the New Testament authors
also knew that what they were writing was scripture, and they
therefore often claimed authority for what they wrote. In 2 Peter
3 verses 15 and 16, for example, Peter writes this, Our beloved
brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given
him as he does in all his letters when he speaks of them in these
matters there are some things in them that are hard to understand
which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction
as they do the other scriptures. So Peter equated the Pauline
epistles with scripture. That verse alone proves that
a substantial portion of the New Testament had already been
compiled and was recognized as Scripture by the earliest Christians
before the death of Peter. And let me give you one more
example. Turn back just a few pages to 1 Timothy chapter 5
verse 18. 1 Timothy 5. Here Paul is talking
about paying ministers for what they do and he says this, The
scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out
the grain and the laborer deserves his wages. So he quotes two statements
and he calls them both scripture. What are these passages? Well,
the first one is easy. It's Deuteronomy 25 verse four,
you shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain.
And it's interesting, isn't it? Peter is using deduction there. That verse doesn't say how you
should pay your pastors, but Peter points out that the principle
it gives certainly has a bearing on that. So he's saying not only
is that text inspired, but the principle it teaches is one we
should apply across the board, not just with your ox, but it's
just as true with your, I don't know, your donkey and your pastor,
assuming those are different. But he quotes two passages, one
is Deuteronomy 25.4. What is this second phrase, the
laborer deserves his wages? If you do a search in your concordance,
you will find that statement appears in only one other place
in your Bible. it's Luke 10 verse 7, the laborer
deserves his wages. He's quoting that text from the
gospel of Luke and Matthew 10 10 is a parallel passage with
a slightly different word it says the laborer deserves his
food. but you won't find any parallel
or even a close parallel for that statement anywhere in the
Old Testament. Paul, I think clearly, is referring to Luke's
gospel, Luke 10 verse 7, he refers to it as scripture. And Geisler
and Nix say this, if the writings of Luke, who was not an apostle,
are quoted as scripture by Paul, and Peter, who incidentally was
rebuked by Paul, as recorded in Galatians 2.11, he considered
Paul's writings to be scripture, then Geisler and Nix say it's
not difficult to conceive how the New Testament as a whole
would be considered scripture. There wasn't debate about this
in the early church. These writings were collected
and passed around, and in fact, we don't need to stop there.
The whole New Testament is itself filled with claims of authority
that are equal to that of the rest of scripture. The apostles
who wrote the New Testament books flatly claimed that their teaching
was authoritative for the church. Paul told the Corinthians, 1
Corinthians 14, 37, if anyone thinks that he is a prophet or
spiritual, he should acknowledge the things I am writing are a
command of the Lord. And a few verses later, at the
beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul again asserts the divine
source of his doctrine, I delivered to you as of first importance
what I also received." Verse 3, he's claiming that the source
of his teaching was God. And the epistles in the New Testament
contained the substance of apostolic doctrine and their teaching.
And these books were meant to be collected and studied and
read and taught to people as infallibly true. And that's emphasized
again and again in the New Testament. I'll just give you some examples.
2 Thessalonians 3.14, Paul writes, if anyone does not obey what
we say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing
to do with him that he may be ashamed. 2 Peter 3.2, you should
remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment
of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. And there Peter
equates his own words and the teaching of the other apostles
with the Old Testament prophets. And the only record we have,
the only reliable record we have of the apostolic teaching is
what's preserved for us in scripture. John likewise wrote John chapter
21 verse 24. This is the disciple, he's ending
his gospel and finally revealing a bit about himself. This is
the disciple who is bearing witness about these things and who has
written these things and we know that his testimony is true. So
he asserts it as true and because of the nature of what he's writing,
it's clear. He means it's infallibly true,
you can trust it. He said, I wrote these things
so that you might believe. So he's not just saying, I think
these are true, or I think this is reliable testimony. He's not
giving the sort of sworn in court testimony. He's saying this is
infallibly true and you need to believe it. And the New Testament
epistles were circulated through the churches and read aloud as
authoritative revelation, Colossians 4.16. When this letter has been
read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans
and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. Now we
don't know what that letter from Laodicea was. It wasn't an epistle
of Paul to Laodicea. It was another one of his epistles
that was making the rounds. And they were to get it from
Laodicea and read it in the church because it was authoritative
scripture. 1 Thessalonians 5.27 I put you
under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all
the brothers." Titus 2.15, declare these things, exhort and rebuke
with all authority, let no one disregard you. And there are
many other passages of the New Testament scriptures that attest
to the absolute authority of New Testament truth. And notice
for example that in just beyond our text here, 2 Timothy 4 verse
2, Paul instructs Timothy, preach the word, in season and out of
season. That commandment in 2 Timothy
4, which defines what church preaching ministry ought to be,
preach the word, he's saying preach the word of God, the scriptures,
that cannot be at odds with what Paul already told Timothy in
1 Timothy 4.11, where he's giving him a bunch of commands in that
epistle, and then he says to him, command and teach these
things. meaning these things that I am
telling you in this epistle, he is in effect claiming that
what he wrote is the word of God worthy of being preached.
And you'll find both implicit and explicit claims of authority
like those throughout the New Testament, just scattered throughout. So when the Bible says all scripture
is given by inspiration, it's talking about all the Bible,
the Old Testament and the New Testament canon, the full canon. Now, the assembly of the New
Testament canon began really almost as soon as it was written. It's folly to think that the
early church created the canon. What they did was recognize it.
The church is the discoverer, not the determiner of the canon.
The church is the child, not the mother of the canon. The
church is a witness to the canon, not a judge of it. The church
is the servant of the canon, not a master of it. You may want
to read further about the formation of the canon. There are several
excellent books that deal with the subject. I already mentioned
Geisler and Nix, because that's probably the simplest, most succinct
treatment of it. But if you want something even
more in-depth, some excellent resources are Laird Harris, The
Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible, kind of an authoritative
work there, and B.B. Warfield, The Inspiration and
Authority of the Bible, and there's a There's a whole section of
books in our bookstore, in our church, dealing with the Bible,
and many of them deal with this question of how the canon came
to us. Don't be confused by the popular
lore that's out there, especially in the wake of these books like
the Da Vinci Code and all that imply that there are books out
there that mistakenly or by surreptitious politics got excluded from the
canon. That's not an honest way to look
at how the canon of the Bible was received and recognized by
the church. And I'll just summarize all of
that by saying that the 66 books of our Bible are the only books
that have historically and universally been recognized by the people
of God over the centuries as canonical. And there are many
compelling reasons to reject, say, the Apocrypha as fraudulent,
and certainly all the Gnostic Gospels that have sort of been
dug up in recent years. Take the Apocrypha. If you just
read it, for example, you will see that the Apocrypha is of
an entirely different character from the inspired scriptures.
Some of the Apocrypha is filled with mythological and fanciful
overtones. And at key points, the Apocrypha
flatly contradicts certain biblical teachings. That's why we sometimes
even use the word Apocryphal as a synonym for fictitious.
Now, people sometimes ask, how can we be sure that none of the
inspired books of scripture have been lost or overlooked? And
my answer to that is, I think we can be confident that we have
the correct canon of scripture because God promised to protect
and preserve his word. Jesus said, Luke 21, 33, heaven
and earth will pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
Isaiah 40, verse eight, the grass withers, the flower fades, but
the word of our God will stand forever. Psalm 12, verses six
and seven, the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined
in the furnace of the ground, purified seven times, and then
it says, you, O Lord, will protect them. So you can be confident
that the Bible you have today is the all-sufficient Word of
God, because God has sovereignly and providentially protected
His Word across the years of human history, despite all the
corruption that comes and goes in the Church. The people of
God have consistently and universally recognized the canon we have
as the only canon of truly inspired Scripture. Look at the next phrase
in 2 Timothy 3.16. All scripture is breathed out
by God. Here's a second truth we need
to consider. It's the inspiration of scripture. The inspiration
of scripture. Let me give you a technical definition
of divine inspiration and you don't need to try to take this
down because it's long. But here's my definition. Inspiration is
the influence of the Holy Spirit over the writers of Scripture,
the human writers, by which he guided those men using their
own personality and abilities and mind and vocabulary and all
their human faculties to pen the books of Scripture. And yet
the Spirit superintended the process so that the finished
product in the original manuscripts was fully and inherently the
very word of God, word for word as God would have it. The words
themselves are the words God chose. Now, there are several
elements in that long definition. Notice that I said that inspiration
is the work of the Holy Spirit. And yet, at the same time, it
acknowledges the role of the human authors and the use of
their personalities, their abilities, their vocabularies, their manner
of writing. It reflects the human aspect
of the process of inspiration. I don't want to take anything
away from that. In fact, I would say this doctrine, more clearly
than anything else, shows us the perfect blend of divine sovereignty
and human responsibility. And I'll show you that in just
a minute. But notice that the definition I've given you also
underscores the inerrancy of scripture in the original manuscripts. It's the original manuscripts
and not any translation or printed edition that is inspired and
inerrant. So don't let your faith be shaken
if you find a bad translation or a typographical error in your
Bible. One of the very first editions
of the King James Bible had a pretty glaring typo where it said he
instead of she. It's called the He Bible. John MacArthur owns a copy of
that first edition. It's a fascinating thing. It's
sort of a very embarrassing typo. You occasionally find that in
Scripture, although in my experience, publishers thankfully tend to
proofread their editions of the Bible more carefully than anything
else they publish. So it is rare even to find a
typo in Scripture, but that's not because that's what God is
promising. He's promised to preserve His
Word, meaning so that what we have, we can be confident in.
It doesn't mean every translation is perfect. It doesn't mean any
translation is perfect. means the original word as it
was recorded by the authors was perfect in the sense that it's
inerrant. And my definition also makes
the point, deliberately, that inspiration is verbal. It extends
to the words themselves, not just the ideas or the abstract
message, but it's the words of scripture that are inspired and
that guarantees that the original manuscripts accurately convey
the very word of God verbatim. word-for-word and all those elements
are crucial to a biblical definition of inspiration people always
want to fudge on one or more of those principles and when
you see somebody doing that you know it's somebody who's tinkering
with theology in the way he shouldn't because he's trying to overcome
something that's authoritative in scripture But all of those
elements are crucial to a biblical definition of inspiration. It
is the words of the original authors that are inspired, not
only the ideas or the doctrines. And this word-for-word perfection
was sovereignly accomplished through the agency of the Holy
Spirit, and yet without doing any violence to the wills of
the human authors, without putting them into a trance or a coma,
without mechanically dictating what they should write, the Holy
Spirit simply providentially oversaw the process so that they
would produce God's Word through their own pens so perfectly that
the result is as if it were breathed out by God himself. That's what
Paul is saying here. In fact, look closely at our
passage again. The King James Version says,
all scripture is given by inspiration of God. And the ESV, I think,
gives a more literal translation of what the Greek expression
is saying. All scripture is breathed out by God. Theonoustos is the
Greek word, literally means God breathed. It isn't saying that
God breathed his authority or something else into the words
of scripture. It's saying that scripture itself
is the very breath of God. God breathed out the words of
scripture. He didn't breathe something into
them. And that is as strong an affirmation of the sovereignty
of God as I know. Even the most determined Arminian,
if he's truly evangelical, has to affirm this doctrine of inspiration. You cannot deny that God is absolutely
sovereign in the process. In some mysterious fashion, God
superintended the thoughts and the minds and the hands of those
who penned the books of the Bible so that what they produced were
precisely and perfectly the words God chose. And yet, he did that
without violating the choice or the will of the human authors. Paul says, in a very real sense,
God himself breathed out those words, and yet it is nevertheless
clear that the inspired words of Scripture also reveal to us
the personality, the vocabulary, the temperament, the writing
style of its various human authors. And there, by the way, you have
a perfect picture in that process of how divine sovereignty and
human responsibility perfectly coexist. One doesn't nullify
or contradict the other. Peter, who knew firsthand what
it was to be used by God in a way like that, describes the process
for us. 2 Peter 1 verses 20 and 21. No
prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation,
for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke
from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. That's
how Peter says it. In other words, the Holy Spirit
sovereignly moved the writers of Scripture so that what they
produced would be the perfect inerrant Word of God, right down
to the jot and tittle detail, so that the words of Scripture
are in one sense the words of the human authors, But the authority
of scripture derives from the fact that these are also the
very words God chose. God inspired, breathed them out.
All scripture, the full canon, is inspired in that way. The
very words are the precise words of God. Is that not a tremendous
thought? And do you see why scripture has such inherent authority and
power to affect our lives? Let me just give you one other
text. that underscores all of this. Jesus said in Matthew 5.18,
truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away not an iota,
not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
He's claiming inspiration and authority for the Word of God
in the tiniest meticulous details. The iota is the smallest letter
and the dot is the point on top of it or next to it and he's
saying even those tiny meticulous details, the tiny strokes that
form the letters are authorized, inspired by God. Paul says all
scripture has this property. It's God-breathed and that claim
is an inherent claim that the scriptures carry the very authority
of God himself. You can't escape that and in
fact that brings us to our third point if you're trying to take
notes. We've talked about the canon of Scripture and the inspiration
of Scripture. Now notice what our passage says
about the authority of Scripture. The authority of Scripture. I
think it was, what's his name, Brian McLaren, who famously said,
well this text doesn't say the Bible's authoritative, it just
says it's useful. Listen to the verse again, verse
16. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
In other words, Scripture teaches us, it reproves us, it corrects
us, it instructs us in righteousness, and you cannot reasonably think
that through and not realize there is an inherent claim of
authority in all of that. You can't teach legitimately
without authority. Scripture couldn't rebuke and
reprove me unless it had authority over my heart. It couldn't instruct
me in righteousness unless it had the authority to do so. And
since Paul has already stated that Scripture is God-breathed,
the clear and inescapable meaning of this passage is that Scripture
speaks with the full authority of God himself. Now, I think
that would be obvious to any reader, but it's a truth that
has been under attack, really, ever since Satan asked Eve, yea,
hath God said? Did God actually say that? And today, there's a horde of
teachers who echo the voice of Satan. Now, you may think that's
a harsh statement, but I mentioned Brian McClure. Let me give you
a quote from him. This one is from his book titled,
Another Kind of Christian. And by the way, this is a book
that won the award of merit from Christianity Today magazine a
few years ago. So here's another reason to regard
Christianity Today as totally apostate. This is a terrible
book. I mean, I don't want to mince
words with this. One of the reasons I got into blogging in the first
place was to be able to speak about things like this. This
is a terrible book. I read this book and I thought,
what a horrible thing to be promoting for, it was really aimed at college
students. It's a fictionalized attack on
the authority of Scripture. And McLaren is proposing a new
kind of post-modernized Christianity. He wants to take the name and
the credibility of historic Christianity while he rejects everything that's
distinctive about biblical Christianity. And on page 52 of that book,
McLaren has the hero of his fictional story say this, quote, that oft
quoted passage in 2 Timothy doesn't say all scripture is inspired
by God and is authoritative. It says that all scripture is
inspired and useful. And then he goes on to say that
the Bible tells a story. And the story has, in his exact
words, quote, incredible spiritual value, unquote. But he says,
it's not supposed to be viewed as an authoritative answer book
to all of our spiritual questions and needs. So let's examine this. Does the Bible claim to be authoritative
or does it not? I've already pointed out that
When Paul says scripture is inspired, God-breathed, there is an inherent
claim of authority in that. This passage taken as a whole
clearly is not saying, Paul is not telling Timothy that the
Bible is useful in some kind of nondescript sense. He's saying
that every word of scripture is God-breathed and for that
reason it's profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training
in righteousness. He's saying that scripture reproves us, it
teaches us, it corrects us with the authority of God himself.
That's Paul's point. And there is no other source
of doctrine or correction, including especially the books of Brian
McLaren, that could ever make a claim like that. This is the
very highest possible claim of authority. Scripture is God-breathed. And in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse
13, Paul says this, We thank God constantly for this, that
when you received the word of God, which you heard from us,
you accepted it not as the word of man, but as what it really
is, the word of God. And think about that. If Scripture
is God-breathed, it is in truth the Word of God, and its authority
lies in that fact. This really was the theme of
our blog. It's where the name of the blog came from. Jeremiah
23, 29. Is not my word like a fire, declares
the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? If
it's truly the word of God, if it's God's very breath, then
it is authoritative because of that alone. furthermore from
cover to cover scripture speaks with authority it demands that
we obey its commands and it demands that we live by its precepts
it demands that we obey its commands be doers of the word and not
hearers only James 1 22 Luke 11 28 Jesus said blessed are
those who hear the word of God and keep it and And so scripture
speaks with authority, with God's own authority, and it demands
our obedience on that ground alone. To disobey scripture is
to disobey the authority of God, and scripture says that throughout.
The King James Version translates Psalm 138 verse 2 this way, thou
hast magnified thy word above all thy name. The New American
Standard Bible translates that verse like this, Thou hast magnified
thy word according to all thy name. The ESV says, You have
exalted above all things your name and your word. So the verse
itself, the proper translation is a little bit ambiguous, but
anyway you read it, in all three of those versions, The truth
is the same. It's saying that God's word is
in no way and in no sense inferior to his personal authority, his
name. Rather, the word of God is the expression of God's personal
authority. In other words, scripture is
equal in weight and in authority, equal in its holy perfection
to God's own reputation. That's what it means, your name.
The scriptures are definitive as a verbal expression of God's
mind, his will, and his truth to us. And so the Bible speaks
with God's personal authority. There's no way around this. When
the Bible commands us, we better obey. When it rebukes us, we
have no option but to reform. When it instructs us, we are
obliged to yield to its truth and embrace it. When it warns
us, We better take heed, and when it speaks to us, it is our
bounden duty to submit and to listen. The absolute authority
of Scripture is also established by one other claim Scripture
makes for itself. And here's the key point we really need
to acknowledge about the written word of God. It's very simple.
It's true. It's true. 2 Timothy 2.15 calls
Scripture the word of truth. In John 17, 17, Jesus praying
to the Father says, thy word is truth. Second, or rather John
chapter 10, verse 35, scripture cannot be broken. And Hebrews
4.12 says, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than
any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit,
of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of
the heart. Every phrase of that verse, Hebrews 4.12, affirms
the absolute authority of God's Word. It's alive. It's powerful. It discerns and judges the secret
motives of our hearts. Only an inexcusable and sinful
arrogance would pretend to acknowledge the inspiration of Scripture
and yet question its absolute authority. But there are a lot
of people out there who do that. They'll give lip service to the
doctrine of inspiration but then question the authority of Scripture.
So are you following with me? These are the truths we've considered
from this passage, the canon of scripture, the inspiration
of scripture, the authority of scripture. And now, if you're
taking notes, here's point four, and it brings us back to the
issue we began with, the one we're really focused on this
weekend, the sufficiency of scripture. And verse 17 is the key verse
here, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every
good work. The word translated competent,
the Greek word artios, And it means adequate, complete. It's
in the sense of fully furnished. That's the idea. It's translated
perfect in the King James Version and it denotes full sufficiency. It's saying that there is no
spiritual need you have. There is no good work that you
are required to do that scripture cannot equip you for. Look back
at verse 15. Paul actually begins this point
by reminding Timothy of his spiritual heritage. Timothy had grown up
from childhood, Paul says, you have been acquainted with the
sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation
through faith in Jesus Christ. Now, we already know that Timothy
had a godly grandmother and a godly mother. Paul refers to them in
chapter one, verse five. He says, I'm reminded of your
sincere faith, the faith that dwelt at first in your grandmother
Lois and your mother Eunice, and now I am sure that same faith
dwells in you as well. So Timothy had been taught and
trained from childhood. in the true faith, literally
from birth. He had wonderful encouragement
from at least two godly examples who oversaw him. But it was the
word of God, the scriptures, that made him wise unto salvation,
and only the scriptures that would be able to bring him to
full spiritual maturity. That's what Paul's telling him.
This passage is a clear and straightforward affirmation of the absolute sufficiency
of Scripture. That's Paul's point here. How
dare anybody say this principle isn't taught in Scripture? His
whole point here is about the sufficiency of Scripture and
the inspired and authoritative Word of God. It's all you need,
Paul is saying, to bring you to complete maturity, to equip
you. Paul was about to to move on, to die, and he's assuring
Timothy that, look, Timothy, you have everything you need
to disciple you the rest of the way, just as you've had everything
you need to bring you to this point in the scriptures, not
in your grandmother, great for good examples, not in your mother,
not in the apostle Paul, all those great examples were an
encouragement to Timothy, but what equipped him and brought
him to salvation, Paul says, is the word of God. If you're
looking for spiritual help, or instruction, or correction, or
rebuke, or sound doctrine, you don't really need to look any
further than the Bible you have in your hands. Now I know there
are a lot of people who would instantly dismiss that as a naive
and shallow statement, but there's nothing shallow about it, because
we're talking about the God-breathed Word, the only authoritative
source of spiritual help. This is a pretty clear affirmation
of the superiority and the sufficiency of the Bible over every other
kind of authority. It demolishes the Catholic claim
that the Bible isn't enough, the incredibly arrogant claim
that, you know, you can't know the truth of God without the
teaching of authority of some Roman Catholic bishop. And in
fact, this passage takes every other book and every other source
that claims to be necessary to unlock the true meaning of Scripture,
and it makes them all superfluous, doesn't it? If Scripture is sufficient,
In and of itself, you don't need Mary Baker Eddy to unlock it
for you. No man, no church, no religious
authority has any right to add to the inspired Word of God any
kind of additional doctrines or interpretations or traditions.
To do that, in effect, is to invalidate the Word of God and
to replace it with another authority. Well, that's what the Pharisees
did, isn't it? That's what Jesus scolded them for the most. Matthew
15 6, Jesus rebuked him, saying, for the sake of your tradition,
you've made void the Word of God. He said that for them to
add their tradition to the Word of God was to transgress the
commandment of God, and he addressed them as arrogant hypocrites.
He cursed them, basically. That's how Jesus himself affirmed
the absolute sufficiency of Scripture. Listen to Psalm 19, and we'll
look at this in detail in a session tomorrow, but Psalm 19 verses
7 through 9, this is the text I mentioned earlier that John
MacArthur unpacked in that famous series of messages he preached
on biblical sufficiency. Here's what that text says, I'll
just read it. perfect. Bear in mind, this is all talking
about Scripture, the written Word of God, because that Psalm,
as you'll see tomorrow, contrasts the Word of God, the written
Word of God, with the revelation of God we see in nature, and
says Scripture is better, stronger, more authoritative, perfect.
And he starts out that way. The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is
sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are
right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is
pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether. More to be desired are they than
gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey in the drippings
of the honeycomb." So he says God's word is perfect, sure,
right, clean, and righteous altogether. It will equip you with all the
spiritual truth you need to rejoice your heart and convert your soul
and all that he says there. We'll look at it tomorrow. But
this is a truth taught in both the Old Testament and the New
Testament, that scripture, what God has given us in writing,
is sufficient for what we need at any given point in time or
history. And if your perspective on scripture is any different,
if you imagine any other truth is necessary, or if you question
the authority or the truth of scripture in any degree, then
you need to have your whole worldview overhauled. The Word of God itself
can do that for you. It is living and it's powerful
and it's capable of judging the thoughts and intentions of our
heart. It's able to make us wise unto
salvation and then after that able to equip us for every good
work. And my prayer for you is that
you will submit to its authority in your life. And as we look
at this doctrine this weekend, it will have a radical impact
on your worldview. Let's pray. Lord, we are grateful
that you have given us sufficient revelation in written form where
it's there for us to study and learn from and be rebuked by
and be taught and brought to maturity. And we pray, Lord,
that you would Use even what we hear this weekend to mature
us and to strengthen our faith and to motivate us to order our
lives by your word in all its sufficient power, we pray in
the name of our Lord Jesus, amen.
Session 1: Is Scripture Really Sufficient? What does the Bible Say?
Series Sufficient Fire Conference
The first general session sermon by Phil Johnson at Pyromaniacs Conference "Sufficient Fire" on 1/23/2015.
| Sermon ID | 215151239494 |
| Duration | 1:04:58 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments