This doesn't count off my time, let me say. What a fantastic talk, Phil. Thank you so much. That was a terrific start to our conference. I've noticed that same thing over the years. Every time you start praising God and affirming what the Bible says about itself, its own sufficiency, the charismatics start complaining and start defending and start attacking. I've noticed again and again over the years. that everyone who needs to make a case for something other than scripture has to, has to demean scripture. It just has to happen. I just observed the old saying that when you throw a rock, the dog that yelps is the dog you hit. So now the rest counts. Let's say a word of prayer together and dig into this topic. Heavenly Father, thank you for your presence with us. Thank you for your word. Thank you for these dear brothers and sisters making the sacrifice to come out and worship you together and consider your word together. And thank you that in your word we have an inexhaustible resource that is everything it says it is, that speaks to us the very mind and heart of God. Father, grant us ears to hear that are appropriate, the ears of servants, the ears of children, the ears of those who love you and hang on your every word. Father, use your word today. We pray in this talk, in this entire conference, we pray that you will use your word to strike at that mighty fortress of Satan today that strikes at people's confidence in your word, their reliance in your word, and their exclusive devotion to knowing you through your word. We pray that saints will be edified, that false doctrines will be torn down, that Christ will be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. I am convinced that the truth of the sufficiency of scripture is the central issue of our day. Now, a good brother or a good sister might say, you know, I don't know, isn't the gospel central today? Or justification, the nature of justification? the eternity of hell, the exclusivity of Christ, ecclesiology, sanctification, aren't these vital issues, central issues? They are all vital issues, but I'm convinced this one lies at the heart of all of them. Because just think, how do we even answer any of those questions? How do we even think about any of those issues? Is scripture alone sufficient to answer the question? Is scripture alone sufficient to lead us to confidence of the truth about those issues? Or do we need something else? And somebody says, say now, wasn't this the formal issue of the Reformation? Yeah, it was. Does it feel like we're in a way back machine? Kinda. Except in Luther's day, the enemies of the faith wore funny hats and were trying to kill us. And today, they may wear suits, they may wear jeans and t-shirts, you know, with, I don't know, with maybe even with Mickey Mouse on them, or they may wear feather boas, you know, and they're not wanting to kill us, they're just wanting to put the Word of God to the side. And what they say is they say, of course I believe in the Bible, of course I believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, of course I believe in a closed canon. What's the next word? But. And a world of iniquity lives in that one adversative conjunction. But, it's what follows that but, let's take somebody I know you all love and admire deeply, Rick Warren. He, what? Last October he gave a talk titled, Learn how to recognize God's voice. In that talk he said, and I quote, very few things are more important than hearing the voice of God. Because you can't have a relationship with God if you can't hear God. If all you ever do is talk to him in prayer and you never hear God speak to you, that's a one-way relationship. That isn't much of a relationship. God wants to speak to you. Now maybe some charitable souls are thinking, I think I can redeem that statement. I can find ways that's true. Okay, fair enough. What followed that statement? Was it a Bible study in how to hear God's voice in scripture alone? Was it a study in how to understand the word of God and see the personal application of the word of God? and draw near to God by means of the word of God exclusively? No, not at all. The voice of God he was talking about was not scripture. It was something other than scripture. Then he gave seven rules for testing the other than scripture thing you get to see if it's from God or not. Because this way of God speaking, you never can be absolutely sure. Might be God, might be your guts, might be your glands. You need a test to find out whether it's God or not. So he's got seven tests and he said, but if you do these seven, you'll know for sure. Okay, well, what's Rick Warren saying? Rick Warren is saying, I must have a personal relationship with God. Amen? Amen. And scripture is not sufficient for that. Amen? Hint, no, no, no. That's what's on the other side of the butt. This rhetoric, is very common, and you think I'm going to say among charismatics, well of course it's common among charismatics, that's their premise, but it's common among people who don't self-identify as charismatics. I don't think Rick Warren does. Take Southern Baptist, another person I'm sure you're all big fans of, Perry Noble. You know, very famously recently, a Christmas Eve sermon that he preached. Well, here's what he said about that sermon. Quote, on Christmas Eve, I really did feel the Lord pressing me to do a different message than we had previously done in the days before. I wrestled with this for several hours before saying yes. So we're supposed to picture God saying, Perry, preach this sermon. And Perry's saying, no. And God's saying, oh, but I insist. And Perry's saying, no. And God's saying, oh, you got to. And Perry's saying, all right, God, if you insist. He goes on to say, as I began writing down what I felt like he wanted me to say, and then we had that sermon about the 10 promises, not commandments, and how there's no Hebrew word for commandment, oy. But he says, this set my heart on fire and believing it was from the Lord, believing that sermon was from the Lord, and we saw over 200 people come to Christ as a result. So think about this and think about this. It was a disastrous sermon. It had palpable falsehoods in it, but that's okay because Perry had The God card. God pressed him to do it, because we all accept that God speaks apart from scripture, evidently. And besides, 200 people got saved, so that kind of proves it, in a way. Although, you know, there's the unexamined implication that God doesn't know his Hebrew very well. But in a healthy church, what I want to say now, what he said about the commandments, what he said about Hebrew, that was a big thing. What I want to say is in a healthy church, in a healthy Christian church, the scandal would not have been merely the content of that sermon. The scandal would have been what he said about sermon prep, that he claimed in a way to be a prophet, that God gave him that sermon, and then when it blew up, he backed away from it. So he's a prophet only with only 50% of the account, no 10%, actually none of the accountability. of being a prophet. Southern Baptist writers Richard and Henry Blackaby in a book, an article I should say, I reviewed on pyromaniacs, they said that the Bible is the primary way God communicates with his people. The primary way. Okay, the primary way. If it's the primary way, what does that suggest? There's a secondary way and tertiary way and a quaternary way and a fivernary way or a you know, whatever comes next. It makes you think of Pat Robertson, you know, saying that the Bible has 95% of what we need as Christians, 95%. Except I don't think the Blackabees say that they're charismatics, and Pat does. And so they write this, that, quote, the only way, now the Bible's the primary way, but quote, the only way for us to have a relationship with Christ, close quote, is if he continually directs our daily lives like he did with the apostles. And that means necessarily and obviously apart from scripture. You don't have that, you don't have a relationship with Christ. Sorry, you need that, you need it. It's necessary, but it's not here. So what does that mean about this? Not sufficient, not sufficient. Now all of these preachers and writers assume that We need to hear God's voice and we can hear God's voice speaking to us apart from scripture. And they propose tests of what we get apart from scripture. And if anyone's eyebrows start to raise, they say, oh, oh, we always test the results by scripture. And that's supposed to make it okay. Oh, okay, as long as you test what you hear from God apart from scripture by scripture, well, that makes it okay. Well, a hand goes up at the back of the classroom and in this case it's my hand, and I ask, but what if we test your premise by scripture? What if we test the assumption that normal Christian living involves hearing God sorta speak to us apart from scripture? How about if I test that first? And that's exactly what we're going to do in the remainder of this talk and to a degree in the next talk as well. And I'm going to do something a bit different with you. Now, you're going to think that Phil and I colluded in our talks in the way that mine dovetails with his, but we just had a general idea of what each other would say. It's providential the way that they're going to work together. I want to approach the Bible with you, seeing what we can learn about a relationship with God, and I'm going to assume nothing except for what the Bible tells me. That's going to be where I start. I'm not going to start with the assumption I need something beyond the Bible. I'm going to see if the Bible tells me that I need something beyond the Bible, see how it presents itself, what it says about knowing God, and rather than focus on a single proof passage, which is a a great thing to do as Phil just showed us. The way I'm going to do it is I'm going to look at the whole Bible with you and see the shape of everything that's in the Bible and what impact it has on this and see if we find in the Bible that what we really need is a constant flow of subjective individualistic semi, hemi, demi revelation or whether scripture itself is completely sufficient for a relationship with God. And I'm going to do all of that in... We better start. So, first we're going to look together at God's Word in the Old Testament. And the way I'm going to do this, hopefully without falling into the drum set, is I'm going to use the Old Testament shape that, as Phil mentioned, was probably the shape of the canon in Jesus' day. The Old Testament was divided in Jesus' day into law, prophets, and writings, all the same books that we have, but a different order than what we have. And so I'm going to borrow a little bit from John Salehammer's book, The Meaning of the Pentateuch, which had a lot of really wonderful ideas. His focus was on messianic prophecy. I'm going to take a little bit of a different slant, but use some of the things that he observed in scripture, and then a whole lot of touches that weren't in that book. So first of all, let's look at the law, which in this case is where our Bible starts. The first five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy, the books of Moses. As we look at Genesis to see about having a relationship with God, words are how God fashions the universe. The first verse says God created the universe. If you were to imagine the universe as a sentient being, what's the universe's first experience of God? Is it a sight, or a smell, or a vision? It's words. וַיָּוֹמֵּר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אֹרָה Then God said, let light be. וַיְהִי אֹרָה And light was. And at point by point throughout creation, God creates and fashions and forms the universe by His Word. His Word is how the Creator contacts the creature. How He connects with the creature. Well, you say, I don't care about the creation, I care about humans, okay? Take the first man, take Adam. What is Adam's first encounter of God? Now, I'm concerned about the black words on the page, not the spaces between the words, all right? And so I am assuming that scripture's telling me what I need to know. So you might say, well, I'm sure Adam had an innate sense of God from Romans 1. Okay, but I really wanna focus on what Genesis shows me. And what does Genesis show me? What is Adam's first experience with God? Is it a feeling of God's presence? Is it a sense of God's presence? Is it an impression? Is it God speaking to his heart in some ineffable way? Is it, again, a sight? Is it an aroma? No. What we see, again, is words. In fact, in a way that becomes characteristic of the rest of Scripture, God says what he's going to do, then he does it, then he says what he did. God says, let us create man in our image, and when he does that, he says, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, And he goes on to tell Adam to tend the garden and to eat of any tree that he wants, except for this one tree, don't eat that, and the day you eat that, you will die. Again, everything that God and Adam has, the connecting point is God's word. That's the connecting point between creator and creature. It's at the point of God's word. And what does Satan target when he comes in? Where does he go? Where's the first place he goes? Does he try to challenge Adam's His sense of God, his feeling of closeness to God. What's his first words in scripture? Did God really say? He goes straight for the word. Why? Why? Because he knows if he can blow that bridge, the connection is gone. Understand? If he can blow that, then the relationship between God and his creation is blown apart. He challenges the accuracy of the Word of God. He challenges the completeness of the Word of God. He challenges the sufficiency of the Word of God. He cajoles Eve into imposing her judgment over the Word of God, which obviously itself is not sufficient to compel her obedience or to dictate her thinking. Her reason is more sufficient. She says, sounds good to me. Adam says, I don't think so, but okay, dear, if that's what you say, and goes along and Hell, cancer, rape, sin, misery, guilt, all of it is born in the rejection of the sufficiency of God's Word. It all starts with that. So, now we've got to move a lot faster. Genesis, all of the events in Genesis turn by the Word of God, his interactions with Noah and so forth. But of course, the big thing comes in chapter 12 with the, what do we call it, the what of Abram? Call of Abram. Call, what's that? That's words where God speaks to Abram, tells him to get out of his country into the one he'll show him, makes promises and commitments to Abram, which become the basis of the rest of redemptive history, right? The Abrahamic covenant sits right at the foundation of the rest of redemptive history. And how's that covenant expressed? In words. You say, oh, but I remember a smoking oven and so forth. Yeah, after God told Abram what to do, There was smoking oven and then God told Abram what that meant. So again, action framed by words. And so on through the book of Genesis, which ends with Jacob making a verbal prediction about the future of his sons, a spoken prophecy. Well, that brings us to Exodus. And I will spend more time in the first five books because they are the foundation for everything that follows. in the Old Testament as well as the New. So the book of Exodus. So God, you say, I know what Exodus is about. It's about God getting Israel out of Egypt. That's right. So what did he do to do that? Say he lit a bush on fire. That's right. Why did he do that? To get Moses' attention so that he could speak to him, have words with him. And the bush goes out of the narrative. The bush is not the big deal. That's just the calling card. The words are the big deal in what he says to Moses. So what does God do before he starts acting in Egypt? Well, he invents the office of prophet. And what's a prophet? He's someone in whose mouth are the words of God. Someone who hears and speaks inerrant, binding revelation. Now, the word prophet occurred once in Genesis before this, but here in Exodus 4, Exodus 7, we have it introduced in Moses' relationship to Aaron and his relationship to God. Now, there's a hermeneutical principle called the law of first occurrence. That means the first time you see a significant concept in scripture, other things being equal, that becomes programmatic of the rest. That becomes what you should see everything that follows in the light of. And so here we have the office of prophet introduced and defined, defined as being one who receives and speaks the words of God inerrantly. Now, Wayne Grudem and others have labored mightily to redefine that, but Scripture never does. It means the same thing all the time. A prophet is someone in whose mouth are the inerrant, binding words of God. So, God invents prophets and sends them to Egypt. Now, I want to change the camera angle from the prophets to the Egyptians. you're, you know, you're Joe Egyptian and you're by the Nile, you're thinking about playing Crocodile Hunter, you know, or something, and suddenly the Nile turns red like blood, and you go, huh. And your next few days or weeks are really weird, because at one point there's frogs everywhere, and then there's like gnats and mosquitoes, and then there's like, there's like darkness that you can touch, and there's a plague, and there's locusts, and last of all, everybody's first born ups and dies. And very last of all, this bunch of swarthy people just exits the land. And you think, there they go. They worked for us, but now they're going. And your friend Ipuer says to you, did you see all that? And you say, yeah, I saw every bit of it. And he says, what do you think that meant? And you say, I have no clue. I have no idea what all that meant. I'm kind of wondering about our gods, right? Because we got gods who are supposed to, we got one of the sky and one of the sun and one of the Nile. They should have been taking care of all this, but I guess they're on vacation, you know, or whatever. But otherwise, I don't have any idea what this means. And you're saying to yourself, you slow-witted preacher, I know exactly what that means. Well, yeah, you do. Why do you? Because you have what God said about it. You have God saying what he's going to do, God doing it, and then God saying what he did. Now, to people today who say, oh, you can't have a relationship with God unless you move in the realm of the supernatural. Well, you know, there was the realm of the supernatural and no Egyptian would have gotten one single thing out of it apart from the word of God. Well, you say, I still think that the miracle was the most important part. Well, does God agree with you? How does God Would we agree that God wants to keep the faith alive in the generations that follow? Sure. So what does Moses do? What does God move Moses to do? Does he move an annual ceremony? You say, yes, he does. No, wait. An annual ceremony where all of Israel goes back to Egypt and God kills a bunch of Egyptians and splits the Red Sea every year so they can keep believing in him? No. What does he do? Ceremony. And at the ceremony, God pictures a man's son saying to him, what does this mean? And you shall say to him, and God gives him words. The faith is transmitted in words about the miracle, not the miracle, but God's words about the miracle. That's the charge. That's what keeps the fear of him alive in Israel. Then you go to Leviticus. Leviticus, the title in Hebrew is Vayikra, which means, then he called, because God speaks to Moses through the whole book. There's 27 chapters in Leviticus, and 27 times in the book, the exact phrase, vayadever yehweh elmosha lemor, then God spoke unto Moses, saying, that exact phrase, 27 times in the book, saying nothing of other, a synonymous phrases, it's full of the words of God. You say, well, I've always thought of Leviticus as a book of ritual and laws. Yes, it is. It's a book of God's words about rituals and laws. God's teaching about rituals and law, enforcing it with, I am Yahweh, I am Yahweh. Be holy for I, Yahweh, your God, am holy. Again and again, it's the words that give the meaning to everything else. What about numbers? Why do we call it numbers? We call it numbers because God instructed Moses to number Israel. Verbal instruction. And what's the turning point in numbers? Well, again, it's the word of God. God tells Israel, go take the land. They say, no. God says, okay, fine, stay there and die. They say, no. God says, die anyway, and they die. But at each point, the story's moved by the words of God. God speaks, they reject it. It's disastrous when they reject it. When a man listens to God, well, then he's a servant of God, like Moses is, like no other. The word of God is the turning point. And boy, oh boy, when we get to Deuteronomy, well, we could go on and on, but I just want to look at two passages. Look at Deuteronomy 4 with me. I could eyeball chapter 4, verses 10 through 14. All you're finding there, I'll just tell you, the name of this book in Hebrew is Devarim, which means words, from the first two words in the book, Elahadevarim, these are the words. It's a book of the words of God. But Deuteronomy chapter four, verse 10, Moses recalls, how on the day that you stood before Yahweh your God at Horeb, Yahweh said to me, gather the people to me that I may let them hear, literally the Hebrew is that I may cause them to hear my words, Look at this, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth and that they may teach their children so. What, the sight at the mountain, all the special effects and everything, that wouldn't do that? Evidently not. Once again, it was simply the calling card. The point was the words, so that they may learn to fear me and that they may teach their children. So they would have a relationship with God, and you all know, that the heart of our relationship with God is the fear of God. It's the beginning of knowledge, that reverence, that acknowledgement of God's lordship. How do you learn that? By God's words. Hear my words that they may learn to fear me and teach their children. Verse 12, then Yahweh spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form. There was only a voice. And maybe we don't get how revolutionary that was. Other nations had a relationship with their gods through forms. That was the manifestation of their god. That was kind of like the phone booth, you know, where they could talk to their god. God expressly says, you didn't see any form. All you had was words. Words were the contact point between the creator and the creature. Turn towards the end of the book, chapter 31. Verses 10 through 13. Moses is talking about the Feast of Booths. Verses 10 through 13. All Israel is to come and appear before Yahweh. Verse 11. When all Israel comes to appear before Yahweh your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear Yahweh your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, and that their children who have not known it may hear and learn to fear Yahweh your God as long as you live in the land." So words from Yahweh are the focus of the whole book, this pivotal book of the entire Bible, and at the climactic end of the book, you remember in chapter 18 there is the prophecy of the prophet like Moses, which we understand ultimately to be Christ, right? Well, here's this note in the very final words of the book, chapter 34, the very ending words, verse 10. I wish I knew when the editor lived who wrote this appendix after the death of Moses, but he notes in verse 10, and there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses. So that chapter 18 prophet, the prophet like Moses, hasn't come yet, hasn't come yet. Whenever he wrote this, they're still waiting for that prophet who we know to be Christ. So in all the law, the first five books, God is known, God is related to, at the connection point of his word, which is always electrifying, it is unmistakable, it has absolute authority, because it is the word of God. Never once does anyone have a relationship with God that is by feelings or impression or by semi-revelation. There's just two categories. There's word of God and not word of God. There's not some gray middle ground between the two. There's no sort of word of God, but I could be wrong, so I have to test it. There's just the two. And the relationship comes here, in the Word of God. So, the first division of the canon ends looking forward to Christ, looking forward to the prophet. He's not here yet. Leaving the question, well, while I'm waiting for him, what am I supposed to do? What's godly living while I'm waiting for Messiah? That's answered by the start of the next division, which in the Hebrew Bible is the prophets. And it's not what you'd think. The prophets are counted as books that we call prophets mostly and other books as well. The first book in the Hebrew division is Joshua. That's the first of the former prophets. And so if you look at Joshua and you look at verses eight and nine of the first chapter, here's what God says that he wants his people doing as they wait for Messiah. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful 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. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go. Now, I want you to try to keep that theme in mind. We'll return to it later, Lord willing. But God says what I want you to do is read my word, study my word, memorize my word, practice my word, and as you do, I will be with you. What does that teach me? Relationship with God. It's through his word. That's where I connect with him. That's what mediates his presence to me. That's how I have relationship with him. That plus, okay, plus nothing, just that, just that, just God's word, it does the trick. Now, we go to the writing prophets that we commonly think of the prophets, like starting with the book of Isaiah. The prophets serve as God's prosecuting attorneys. The covenant of Moses is their legal brief, and they take Israel to court again and again, And they call Israel to do what? They call Israel to the word of God. They call them to obey the word of God or they quote the word of God to them about how badly God's going to judge them if they don't obey the word of God. But the prophets make the word of God the issue and God enables them to do it because the office of prophet always means the same thing. He's a man in whose mouth are the words of God. So you see this exact expression, ko hamar Yahweh, thus says Yahweh. That exact expression occurs 291 times in the whole Old Testament. Of those 291 times, 221 times are in the writing prophets from Isaiah to Malachi. Thus says Yahweh. And that's just one expression. You know there are many others. Thus says Yahweh. Thus says Yahweh. Now that's a black and white proposition. What follows is either God's word or it isn't. They never say, thus says Yahweh, and then conclude, just saying. They never say, just saying. No, it's never that. This is the word of God. And they expect it to be accepted as the word of God. And if it's not, they expect to die. That's what happens to a false prophet. He isn't given a book deal. He's given a rock deal. His career is over. His career is over. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. So God reaches out to them by his word through the prophets. He threatens them by his word. He promises them restoration by his word. If they accept his words, they're saved. If they reject his words, they're judged. But there is a great gulf fix between word of God and not word of God. Again, to go to the verse from which we took the name of our blog, Pyromaniacs, it comes from Jeremiah 23, 29. Be turning there, Jeremiah 23. That verse comes in the middle of a scathing rebuke of false prophets. So to Jeremiah 23, starting with verse 16, listen, thus says Yahweh of armies, that's what Lord of hosts means, thus says Yahweh of armies, do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds. I can hear somebody saying, what, is that a bad thing? Well, to God, today, it's a great thing. It means you're intimate with God. Back then, that was a bad thing. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of Yahweh. They say continually to those who despise the word of Yahweh, it shall be well with you. And to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, which is today's gospel, they say, no, disaster shall come upon you. And then verse 21, I did not send the prophets, yet they ran. I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. He didn't say, I spoke to them, but they kind of got it wrong. It's A or B, it's upswitch, downswitch, very binary. Verse 22, but if they had stood in my counsel, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds. And verse 28, let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat, declares Yahweh. And here we go, is not my word like fire, declares Yahweh. and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. So, that's the writing prophets. The law ended looking forward to the Messiah. The prophets started with focus on the word of God. How do the prophets end? How does the book of Malachi end? Looking forward to Messiah. Looking forward to the messenger of Yahweh and to Elijah the prophet heralding his coming. That's the end of that division of the canon as well, looking forward to Messiah. Huh, so how's the third division of the canon gonna start? The division of the writings. Second division started with a stress on the word of God. While you're waiting for Messiah, study the word, live the word, you'll walk with me. How about the writings? Where did the writings start? Songs? Anybody going, oh, I think I know where he's going. Well, I'm going to Psalm 1. If that's what you thought, you thought right. What does Psalm 1 say? Who's the blessed man? He's the man whose delight is in the law of Yahweh and who meditates in the day and night. Where did I hear that theme before? That's just like Joshua 1, 8, and 9, isn't it? Yeah, it's exactly like Joshua 1, 8, and 9. The happy man is the man who stays in the word of God. Psalm 119, Psalm 19, lift up the word of God. The writings through Proverbs. Does Proverbs lift up the word of God? How many times does Proverbs say, hear my word, give ear to my word, write my words on the tablet of your heart, make them a necklace, put them on your head, take them with you wherever you go. Again and again and again, a stress on the word of God, yeah? Sure enough, that's stressed in the book, the portion of the writings. And this portion of the Old Testament canon ends in 2 Chronicles, actually, with the fulfillment of the word of the prophet Jeremiah. And Sailhammer makes the case that it It also looks forward to Messiah. I don't quite see his point yet completely, but it does end with a fulfillment of prophecy. So once again, in this division of the word, God relates to his people through his words. He holds us to them, He judges us by them, by our response to them, and there's no second category of absolutely necessary. Remember, Blackabee, Warren, so many others say this is absolutely necessary for relationship with God. Absolutely necessary, yet somehow, somehow overlooked in the entire canon of the Old Testament. Somehow left out. He'd expect a sufficient Bible to do better if that was really important, wouldn't you? Actually, I do. And actually, that's because it's not. But we'll return to that in a moment. What about the New Testament? Well, everything changes in the New Testament, right? Because the Holy Spirit comes and the word of God's put on the shelf. Now it's ookie spooky experiences, you know, from here to heaven. Well, let's see. Now, the New Testament doesn't have, I'm going to divide it my own way into three divisions. I'm gonna divide the New Testament into history, epistles, and prophecy. There's just one book in this last division, but that's the way I'm going to lay it out for the sake of convenience. What do we learn from the division of history? Obviously that's made up of the Gospels and Acts. What do you see in the Gospels? Well, I would say that what you see is God's Word incarnate. Only John may call Jesus the Word of God, but all of the Gospels show Jesus is the Word of God, right? Jesus always speaks the Word of God. Jesus never says, just saying. Jesus never says something and says, of course, I could be wrong. Jesus never said, you know, my view of that is. No, Jesus speaks as God. He speaks with absolute authority. What's the first thing you see him doing in Matthew's Gospel? You see him baptized, that's done to him. What you see him doing is enduring temptation with Satan. Right? You remember that story. That's the place where he blasts Satan away with super son of God power, right? How does he oppose Satan? Gegrapti, Gegrapti. It is written. It is written. He opposes Satan by quoting Scripture. Scripture, Scripture, Scripture. Then what does he do? He starts preaching. Oh, that sounds cool. Do we have any sermons? Yeah, we've got a big one. Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 through 7. What really impressed people about the Sermon on the Mount? The end, verses 28 and 29, the crowds were amazed at his teaching for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes. And so it is through the gospel of Matthew, God's word through Jesus, God's word through Jesus. How does it end? Now here's where I'm gonna draw back on something we saw earlier. How does Matthew's gospel end? Matthew 28, verses 18, 19, 20, we call it the Great Commission. What is the Great Commission? Disciples of all nations. What's a disciple? It's a student. It's a pupil. Oh, what's the textbook, I wonder? Verse 20, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, and lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. You say, wait, I know, that sounds familiar. Yeah, it does. Joshua's on the verge of entering the land of Canaan and God says, you stay in my word and I'll be with you. Jesus tells the apostles that they're gonna go to all the nations. And what does he say? Keep them in my word and I'll be with you. So once again, the point of relationship between the creator and the creature is God's word. And you can trace that in the other gospels. And in Mark's gospel, Jesus is called the teacher. You know, the verb didosco, didache, didoscalia used over and over again, stressing the words. What did he upbraid the Pharisees for? in chapter seven, for making void the word of God. That was a big point with Jesus. What about Luke? Well, just take two things that are unique to Luke that are only in Luke's gospel. Chapter 11, verses 27 and 28. One of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed. But he said, on the contrary, blessed are they who hear the word of God and observe it. So Jesus stresses on the hearing of the word of God. And at the end, in chapter 24, you remember the story of the road to Emmaus and of Jesus' subsequent encounter with the apostles. What did Jesus say? Does he say, you know, I don't blame you for being depressed. It's been a rough week. I know it's been rough for all of us. Is that what Jesus says? He says, I can't believe how thick-headed and slow-witted you are that you didn't get from the Old Testament that this had to happen. He believed the Old Testament was sufficient to prepare them for his crucifixion and his resurrection, all through the Word of God. And then we get to the Gospel of John. It's just, it's all over John's Gospel. I mean, obviously the first verse in the beginning was the Logos, the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and throughout, Jesus giving the words of God. He says, my words are spirit and life. He says, he who hears my word and believes in him who sent me will not perish but have everlasting life. At the very end of it, he says that these words were written that you might believe and have everlasting life. His word cleanses us. His word is how he abides in us. Those who love him keep his words. We'll dwell on this in the next talk, Lord willing, but in John 8, he says, here's the point of being a disciple. Who's a disciple? Jesus says, person who continues in my word. The word, the word, the word, the word. Okay, how about the book of, oh, you say Acts, good. Now here's where you're gonna take back everything, all those mean things you've been saying. That's the Acts of the Holy Spirit, isn't it? That's what the book of Acts is, the Acts of the Holy Spirit. Okay, well, the Holy Spirit gathered a crowd. God set a bush on fire and got Moses. God put tons of fire over the heads of these people and enabled them to speak in languages they hadn't learned. A crowd gathered. What did Peter do? Did he get up and he say, Oob-da-boop-da-bop-da-bang? No. He got up and he preached the word of God in perfectly understandable Greek. He preached the word of God. He preached the Old Testament to these people. That was what his text was. It was the word of God. And Luke stresses this fact in verse 41. He says, those who received his word were baptized and added to the church. Received his word, the issue was the word. In fact, I might make a counterpoint that I understand calling it the Acts of the Apostles. I understand calling it the Acts of the Holy Spirit. But I'd be tempted to call the book, if we're gonna rename it, I'd be tempted to rename it the book of the spread of the word of God. Why? Because that's Luke's refrain. Chapter 6, verse 7, the word of God kept on spreading and the number of the disciples continued to increase. 12, 24, but the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied. 13, 49, and the word of the Lord was being spread through the whole region. 19, 20, so the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing. What's this book about? It's the book about people being one to the Lord. But how's that happen? How's that done? Is it done by vapors and gold dust in the air ducts and dancing bears? It's done by the word of the Lord. And the spread of Christianity is the spread of the word of the Lord, because where there's the word of the Lord, there's Christianity. Where there's no word of the Lord, no Christianity. That's the book of Acts. So now we get to the correspondence, and that's Romans through Jude. Obviously, it would be impossible to do justice to the diversity of material in all those books, but I'm just fool enough to try. So, I'm going to try to reduce, I'm going to suggest that you can reduce all these epistles to four main themes, variations on four main themes. I'm not saying that any of the books are exclusively, but these are the four refrains that you get in all the epistles, all right? So here they are. First, you got the word of the gospel good and straight. Praise God, stay with that. And let me give you more words showing you the implications of the gospel. So the first is you got the gospel, you got the word of the gospel good and straight. Praise God, stay with it. And here's more words about how to live out the gospel. Second, you seem not to have gotten the word of the gospel good and straight. We can't have that. So let me explain it again to you in apostolic binding words. So first, you got the word of the gospel straight, praise God. Second, you seem not to have got it straight. Let me explain it to you. Let me lay this out for you in binding words. Third, you seem to be drifting away from the word of the gospel. Might be because of persecution, might be because of false teaching. Let me warn you of the eternally dire consequences of leaving the word of the gospel. And the consequences of straying from what they teach. And let me repeat and underscore the word of the gospel for you. So you got it, praise God. I'm not sure you got it, let me explain it. You seem to be straying from it, don't do that. And let me explain it again. And the fourth category is you're a church leader. Stay with the word you've already been taught. Be on guard from any teaching that varies from that word. Preach, teach, and transmit the word you already got. And absolutely nothing about how to get a further word or the Extreme importance of teaching them how to get further words of their own. Nothing, not a word, not a syllable. Stay with what I taught you, teach what I taught you, find others who will teach what I taught you. And then finally, the last division is the book of prophecy. And that's one book, the book of Revelation. It's written by John, and who is John? Verse two says he's someone who bore witness to the word of God. Oh, and where was he? Well, he was in exile because of the word of God, verse nine. Oh, and what's this book? It's the book that there's a blessing for those who read and hear the words of this book. Oh, and what's in the book? Lots of words from God. It's full of words from God. Oh, and how does the book end? You know how the book ends? It ends with the threat of a dire curse on the person who takes away from or adds to the words in that book. Now, I know that that's a very challenging couple of verses to interpret, but the least you got to take from it is that claiming to have a word from God is a big, big thing. It's a huge thing. Doing it wrongly endangers your eternal soul. It's not the sort of thing one should do like most people do today. It's not the sort of thing someone should do casually. Talk about God speaking to his heart and so forth and so on and not being scripture. So there's a great stress on the power and on the integrity of scripture. So where does all of that bring us? We put all that, we've just taken a tour of the entire Bible. So what's the sum of all that? What's the net impact of all that? God's word today. What is God's Word and what is not God's Word are going to be my concluding questions. What is God's Word? Scripture only knows one kind of Word of God. It is powerful, it is inerrant, and it carries the full authority of God. I sort of chuckled when Phil was talking about what Brian McLaren said, that he said that, you know, 2 Timothy 3.16 says that God's word is profitable, it doesn't say that it's sufficient, or that it's authoritative. It doesn't say it's authoritative, just that it's useful. I thought, God breathed doesn't mean authoritative? What's more authoritative than God breathed, you know? I mean, if you were to transcribe this talk, what you'd have would be Dan breathed, because my breath is the vehicle for my words, which is the vehicle for my heart. I'm speaking my mind to you. by words, my breath is carrying it to you. So what we've got in scripture, we've got the heart of God. The heart of, let me re-inflect that, we've got the heart of God. If that is not authoritative in itself, what do you need? I mean, what are you looking for if that doesn't do it for you? So, scripture only knows one kind of word of God. It is powerful, it's inerrant, it carries God's authority. It is binding. It demands our belief and our obedience. We know scripture is that. Scripture is fully that. Scripture is only that. Everything it affirms is without error. So what is the canon then? The canon, the way I define it, probably leaning on John Frame's definition, it's the list of books that God has given to rule believers. to rule the lives and thoughts of believers. It's a list of books that God has given to speak for him. That's what the canon is. And the canon is either open or closed, right? Can we all agree on that? The canon is either open or it's closed. If it is open, then God is still giving inerrant, universally binding words. Or to put it another way, if he's still giving inerrant, universally binding words, then the canon's open. Right? Follow me? On the other hand, if the canon is closed, then that means he's not still giving inerrant, universally binding words. Leading to the question, but people say all the time they're getting words from God, what are those then? If they're not inerrant, universally binding, what are they? There's something Scripture knows nothing of. There's something absolutely foreign to Scripture. It's a concept made up, not from Scripture, but from somewhere else. So that's what God's Word is. It's powerful, it's binding, and that is what Scripture is. What is not God's Word then? Anything else. Anything else is not God's Word. Let me put it two ways. Negatively, Scripture knows nothing of N, Errant, non-binding Word of God. Those words just don't go together. You can't say errant, non-binding Word of God any more than, you know, jumbo shrimp. I guess there is such a thing, but that doesn't make sense either. Dry water, up, down, hot, cold. Errant, non-binding Word of God. Scripture just doesn't know any such thing. God doesn't just share. God doesn't do the just saying. He doesn't just, you know, I mean, Perry Noble says that God gave him that sermon, and it turned out to be a disaster, but he doesn't tell us. After he discovered that, did God say, psych! Because he says God made him preach that sermon, and it was not good. Well, God doesn't give errant, non-binding words. Scripture gives no authority for identifying tenuous, ambivalent, subjective impressions as God's word, his voice, or his speaking. Scripture gives no authority for that, So I have a suggestion, we shouldn't do it. We've got no authority from Scripture, so we just, we shouldn't do it. Positively, Scripture is observably and manifestly sufficient and complete. I'm gonna give you a lot more on that in the next talk, Lord willing, but for now, let me just say this. The Old Testament has lots of pointers to the New Testament. The New Testament has a lot of pointers to no other Testament. Just the return of Christ. The New Testament is manifestly final. What do I mean by manifestly final? Well, it talks about the coming, about God's revelation in Christ, and his once for all perfect atonement in Christ, resurrection and ascension, and then the apostles explaining fully all the meaning and implication of that, and what does that leave? But waiting for him to return. What does that leave? What does it point down to? The Holy Spirit, as Jesus promised he would do, the Holy Spirit led the apostles to say the rest of what Jesus had to say, and then he was done. And now we're in the position that Hebrews 2 says we're in. We really better listen to that word. We really had better listen to that word that's been given to us, because now he's done. He said all he's gonna say. Issue is, are we going to listen? Not ask for something else when we haven't even listened to it, but are we gonna listen to what he said? So what have we learned? We've learned it's true that we can't have a relationship with God unless God speaks to us, that's true. And scripture is God speaking to us. And so scripture is sufficient for us to have a relationship with God. Scripture will give us a relationship with God. Scripture is God's word and that is the point at which God connects with us. the point at which God relates to us. It is how God communicates his presence to us. And anyone who hears that and says, yes, but, and insists on something other than scripture, necessarily denies the sufficiency of scripture. His only recourse is, if he wants to really affirm a closed canon and sufficient scripture, the only other option he has is to say, oh, I believe it's sufficient and closed, but I still believe that there's something else. It's just not very important. Then is it the word of God? Again, if it's God's word, it's important. So is it or isn't it? Well, if it is, then the canon's not closed and scripture's not sufficient. You can't have your cake and eat it too. The miserable side effect of this is that these people who elevate their subjective experiences and their feelings and say that that's the Lord speaking to me, that's God talking to my heart, that's the Lord speaking to my spirit, and what they're doing is they're elevating their subjective feelings and experiences and they're canonizing them with that august expression God said. or the Lord spoke. And when they do that, what they're doing is they are elevating the meaningless to the point of great meaning. But at the same time, they necessarily cheapen that which means everything to the point where it doesn't mean that much. Because God said, God said. My experience, the Bible, yeah, God's talking all the time. You can't elevate the one without cheapening the other. Brothers, sisters, We should not. As Isaiah says, to the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of your word. And we must confess, even as we confess that truth, that we don't revere it as we should. We don't look for you through its words as we should. study as we should, as prayerfully and expectantly as we should. We don't ransack the pages of scripture to find you as we should. We don't approach it with the excitement and expectancy that we should. We who preach may not preach it with the full reverence and humility and awestruck attitude that we should or study as we should because it is your word. But we thank you for giving it to us. We pray that you'll help us to grow. and our confidence in it grow in our grasp of it, grow in the degree to which it grasps us and fills our preaching, our thinking, our relationships, our view of church, our view of life. And Father, we pray for your church. We want to confess that so many of your professing church don't have the view of your word that you have of it, don't realize it for the gift that it is. And I'm sure in many cases unintentionally, cheapen it and denigrate it. I would pray that you would give repentance to your church, that you would sweep your church with a renewed awe and reverence for the word of God, that people who name Christ's name would continue in his word, study it, learn it, live it, love it, praise it, dig into it as to a limitless treasure, and that those who have been, whether intentionally or not, denigrating it, or seeking places that you never sent them seeking, trying to find you in places you never said you'd be found, grant them repentance. They might come to find the fullness of blessing that is in the spirit given, God-breathed, inerrant Word of God. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.