I brought that in automatically. That's at the end of the sermon, so I'm not gonna get to that. No, that's okay. So, we're gonna continue our thoughts from this morning. And so I guess you could, whatever title you put to it, you can just put part two, I guess, if you want. Or you could put a title on it, How Does God Preserve His Word? Or I made a subtitle for myself, The Cancer of Modern Bible. But before we kind of get going into this, I had some preliminary thoughts that I was just so afraid I'd forget to say them. And there's better places in the sermon to say them. It'd be the proper place to say it. But I get wound up, you know what I mean? When I get wound up, I can forget to say it because something else will get me. And so I want to make sure I say these things. So let me say them now. And this all started because I was given an article, and in the article, the contention is, well, the first part of verse 5 of Revelation 20, concerning the first resurrection, is problematic to almost everybody. And so, and particularly the full preterists, it's a very big struggle. And they got some things they say, but even the honest ones amongst them admit, but you know, it's the hottest text. They'll tell you that. The smartest guys amongst them, they rightly acknowledge that. And I agree with them, and I appreciate them saying that. And I believe it's true. The two resurrections in Revelation 20 just present themselves as an issue. So the proposition in the article that was shared with me was the first part of verse five doesn't belong there. Only the last sentence, not the first sentence, just the last sentence. And then they had their reasons, as we talked about this morning. I'm not going to go into those. But in the end, they're saying that we've examined the older and better manuscripts And not in all of them, but in 40% of them. But in some of the really older ones, 50%. So therefore, we gotta ax that out. If we can just take a pair of scissors and cut that out of the Bible, our problems are solved. And so, I wanna say some things about that. If the inclusion of the first part of verse five causes us to not be able to reconcile our teaching, or the teaching as we see it in Revelation 20, to be consistent with the rest of the Bible. If that's the first part of verse five is problematic to us, then perhaps, someone might suggest, then perhaps maybe we should consider that Maybe it does need to be removed if it'll solve all these problems, and that maybe the higher critics are right. I mean, after all, we're Bible believers, so we can't entertain Bible contradictions. And so therefore, maybe that should be considered. We not be so rash, like I was so rash this morning. So I want to say this for everybody's benefit. The answer to that is should we therefore consider it if it seems to be so problematic 2,000 years of Christianity hasn't resolved the issue. Maybe there's a point to be made there. My answer is no. No, no, no, no. We should never, ever base our understanding on inspiration and preservation of God's word. We should never base our understanding of the proper approach, the biblical approach to the word of God, based on our having a problem text. You talk about a slippery slope. Jesus said to Martha, Those that believe in me presently shall never die. Believest thou this? I was just talking about this. And Martha, if I was making a movie, I bet Martha would look over her shoulder, up at the tomb where her brother is. And to her honor, with no understanding, she says, yeah, you Lord, I believe. I don't think she understood how it could be. That's my point. You see why that's such a great story? Believest thou this? Those that believe me, Lazarus, my brother believed in you. Those that presently believe in me shall never die. Believest thou this, Martha? Yes. Good for her. And those that say, maybe we should reconsider Revelation 20, the first part of verse five, are not like her. They're not thinking like her. Well, they're not thinking like Abraham. Take thine only son, whom thou lovest. You offer him up as a sacrifice tomorrow on the mount. And Abraham went to bed, scratching his head, saying, he said, in Isaac shall thy seed be called. Isaac's a little older now. He wasn't like a four-year-old. He was like a young man. In Isaac shall thy seed be called. Offer him as a sacrifice. We're told in the New Testament, Abraham said, well, I guess the Lord will raise him up, because God always keeps his word. Abraham couldn't make sense of what God said. So I wonder if Abraham should have said, well, maybe I didn't hear him right. Yes, you did hear him right, and you know you did. Or are you gonna start twisting his words? He didn't mean that, what he really meant, and then just start twisting his words, are we gonna do it? Or maybe we should just cut that out, he didn't really say that, I just imagined it. Well, that's what we're suggesting. Do you think God does that to Abraham, but he can't do that to us? You think God does that to Martha, but he can't do that to us? Job, I don't know what's going on. You know, talk about a man who tried and strove and was faithful and his wife says, just curse God and die. He will not curse God and die. But boy, he said, Lord, this... He wanted to die. But he never used his mouth foolishly and blamed God. And he had no idea what was going on. Sometimes that's the way it is. How about the doctrine of the Trinity? Wait a minute, Jesus is God? You just said he was the Son of God, yeah. But you say he is the, wait a minute, he's the Son? Well, God the Father, so how could he be the Father if he's the Son? And you say, wait a minute, he's also the Holy Spirit? This is too confusing. So you believe in polytheism. Nope, monotheistic faith. I don't understand. Come on, I didn't think you would. Well, explain it to me. I can't. Well, why do you believe it? Because the Bible says so. Then just don't hurry. See, zippity-doo-dah, you walk away, I got no problems, you got problems. They have the controversy. When they want to disagree with God, they are the controversial ones, right? We're just saying, hey, if he says so, I don't have to understand it. I'd like to, I ask him to show it to me, but if he doesn't, that's his business not to show it to me. And how do I know he won't show it to me tomorrow? How do I know he doesn't want me to see me obey him today with no understanding so he can doubly bless me tomorrow? I don't know that. We say, well, that takes, takes what? An awful lot of faith. By the way, I do not believe that the first part of verse five of Revelation 20 is a problem at all. I believe our understanding of it is the problem, or the fact that we can't understand it, that's our problem. The fact that we can't understand it isn't necessarily even a problem. You say, how can that be? Would I dare suggest this? And I'm not saying it's true. Maybe for now God wants it that way. Oh, in fact, if it is that way, well, maybe I can say I know he wants it that way for now, because it's true. Maybe it's a form of a test. And I'm not saying that, oh, so he put a lie in the Bible to see if we'd still trust him. No, that's the Paul is a Benjamin Wolf Roman Catholics. No. Don't ask me about that, it's not worth talking about. Revelation 20, verse 5, the first part of the verse says, is utterly true, but the Lord has been a little bit veiled in his language here and here and here. So now we have a hard time tying it together, because there's a piece of the puzzle, and the Lord says, yeah, I don't have to tell you everything. Will you believe me? But I told you all truth in that word. Couldn't that be? I mean, didn't that happen in the Old Testament? Wasn't there a mystery that was hidden in ages past, which is now revealed unto his apostles and the prophets, the apostles? Isn't that true? And yet, was he lying? No. It was truth the whole time. Is it so? Everybody has to experience that, except us. God, we're such good friends with God. He'll never exercise our faith to make us stronger, because why? We don't need it. You see, when you think of it in all these different contexts, but when we, I was just counseling someone today, and they were a little bit worried about something. And they were worried about a proper thing. I understand why they were worried. And it was a good and godly concern. But I had to tell them, you gotta stop worrying. Now, this may be easy for me to say, and they're facing something real, but God is with his people. Whether he explains everything to us or not, we're supposed to believe that. And all through the scriptures, we see the Lord testing people that way, his own people that he loved. And he wasn't testing because when we say testing, it's a language of accommodation. It's not so he can find out what's really in their heart because he can't see. It's not that. He's testing them in the sense of testing them so that they would discover maybe the frailties of their own faith. Because when things are going right, we feel pretty bold. We're pretty bold for Jesus. We really got to act together. We get the doctrine, we get the faith. Okay, let something happen that throws you for a loop. And then your pride shrinks and you're humbled a little bit. Now, as Christians, we're not gonna lose our faith, but we can grow very discouraged. And we see that discouragement, which when we saw other Christians discouraged because of circumstances they couldn't explain, and we're trying to say to them, look, you're just gonna be faithful. You're just gonna trust the Lord. You know, be happy, trust the Lord, and the Lord will take care of it. Give it to the Lord, which is all sound advice. But after we do that long enough, and these people are struggling, we may begin to look down at them. And then the Lord says, now, let me do it to you, and let's see if you look down to yourself. So you learn how to be more compassionate with other people that maybe aren't responding correctly, and they're struggling, and they should exercise that faith, and we need to exhort them, but be careful how you do it because, you know, how do we know where we'd stand unless we were in their shoes? So God knows all these things way beyond what I could ever explain or even think of in my head. So I hold that out as just something that we need to bear in mind. But I don't believe that the first part of verse five is a problem. I believe our unhappiness with not being able to fully explain it is our problem. are discontent. Paul says, in whatsoever state I am in, do therein be content. We think that means, oh, I'm on the side of the road and I cut my arm. Or I went to the gas pump and they ran out of gas. Or something serious. Well, you may apply to these things. How about something you can't figure out in the Bible? Why shouldn't it apply to that too? Maybe even more so. So sometimes we just need to wait in the Lord, and we gotta teach ourselves that lesson. And one other thing I wanted to bring up, these are my preliminary thoughts. I didn't want to let them slip by, because they're so practical. See, I'll get going doctrinally and theologically, and it's all about the ideas, but in the end, the practical things are what the Lord's people crave after. I understand that. But the biblical truth leads to the practical things. It's the foundation in which We should come to these conclusions on our own, because that foundation's there. See? You got to learn how to do addition, subtraction, multiplication. I mean, when you're memorizing the tables, it's like, eh, eh, eh. Then once they're memorized, and now you're doing something at a higher level, you're awfully glad you have that. You see how useful it is? Or one other thing I wanted to mention. What would you think? If the higher critics wanted to delete from the Bible, Matthew 24, 34, this generation will not pass till all these things be fulfilled. What if the higher critics came along 100 years ago and said, you know, we've got these ancient manuscripts. In Matthew 16, 27, and 28, there's some standing here which are not taste of death. They see the son of man coming in his kingdom. That's problematic, and all the Christians were like, that is very problematic. We've got a huge problem with that. We had some pretty good explanations. But now that you mention it, the scholarship, yes. Yes, there's something wrong. And you know, these ancient manuscripts are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And look, that guy who said that, he came from Yale. And they said, yeah, it needs to be smitten. And so we stopped putting asterisks around them. We put them in brackets, put footnotes saying, well, the best and oldest manuscripts, until finally some versions just don't put it in there. But guess what? Those aren't the only two texts that teach a first century parousia. So then when we start paying attention to the ones where, and we start seeing how many there are, even without those, and then we go back to those, did we take those out prematurely? And if we did, what did we do? We subtracted from the word of God based on the world's intelligentsia. I'm not playing that game. I'm not going to do it. I know everybody wants to do it, so they can have Bibles that are easy to read. I'll grow up, you know. When I was in eighth grade, and it stunk. It was the wrong time to do it. We're reading Beowulf in eighth grade? You know, probably don't do that now. But in that dumb English class where the teacher thought, I'm going to, teaching eighth grade is the inner meaning of poetry. And they're like, oh, let's just kill ourselves now. But then when he went to say, we're going to do Beowulf, Beowulf? I mean, the English on that? Blah. Eighth grade is not the time. I don't have a problem with them teaching it, but eighth grade? And it's not that they're not smart enough, the maturity isn't there that they're gonna want to imply themselves to it. You have to judge not just by brain cells, but by maturity level as well. And oftentimes these principles apply in our studies of scripture as well. So, Yeah, I mean, we don't want to have the higher critics tell us to remove Matthew 24-34 and Matthew 16-27-28, but would you and I have been more open to that, say, 10 years ago? Because it was really problematic. Now, think if 10 years ago, I still would have said no, but I would have thought, oh, I kind of wish it was true, because it was a big problem to me. But I wouldn't have said that. And thank God. I thank God. He said, how do you know? Because I knew how I thought then. I mean, that wasn't good. I mean, I could see it when I was 15. I lived with that contradiction from 15 up until whatever, five or six years ago. Now, if I can do that, any Joe Schmoe should be able to do it. The Lord's worked in his life in regeneration. So if we took out Matthew 24, 34 and Matthew 16, 27 and 28, because Well, it just makes the Bible, it makes the words of Jesus a lie. And we're Bible believers, so maybe there's something to that. No, there's nothing to it. You don't have to understand. And we didn't understand before, and we weren't saying, let's get rid of it, were we? You weren't saying that, were you? No. For almost 1900 years, Christianity, almost the whole of Christianity thought, oh, this is an impossibility, what's Jesus saying? Oh, I wish he didn't say it that way. And what were they thinking? Yet, even Christianity in mass said, even so, we believe them. And they had no answer for it. They said, that's something I'm commending them for. I don't have a problem with not having an answer. I have a problem with coming up with fake answers, and I have a problem with saying, if we can't answer it, let's destroy it. 1900 years of Christianity, it was an impossibility. Oh, there's one other thing I wanted to say. My preliminary, yeah, I guess I did have to cut this in half. I haven't started the sermon yet. You know, these, I made these, some notes to myself. These are my preliminary notes I made like five minutes before I left. You know what, I don't want to forget these statements, these principles. So these were not even part of the sermon. I haven't started the sermon yet. But you can see where these thoughts are very extremely practical, and they have many, many applications. But the second thing I want to not forget to say, and that's why I'm doing it now. We know that the Bible says, do not add or subtract from the Word of God. And in Revelation, I think it's fundamentally referring to the Book of Revelation, but the principle applies to all of Scripture, no doubt, because the Revelation is Scripture, so it would also apply to all Scripture. But I think it's specifically, in its context, talking about the Book of Revelation. So we should not add or subtract to the Word of God. And those that add or subtract to the Word of God have God's wrath and judgment waiting for them. We all can agree on that as Christians. But the higher critics and the people that use the modern Bibles would say, okay, Pastor, yes, we agree with that. But the problem is that early on, some scribes inserted that. It was a commentary put on the margin. And then after copies after copies, some copiers end up, instead of putting the margin, they put it into the text. And then people begin to make the mistake, thinking it's part of the text, and they copy that, and that's what happened. And that's what they're telling us. So they say these most Bibles for the last, well, for 1,500 years, say it's the corruption they would say started around 300, and then it was being started to get cleared up in the late 1800s with Tischendorf and Westcott and the rest. So for 1,500 years, we had Bibles that had additions to them. So it isn't just a matter of don't take away from the Bible, but don't you add to the Bible. As if to say, so pastor, you're demanding that that stay in there, so you're adding to the Bible. How can I add to it if it's there? If that's an addition, I didn't add it. And that's not my fault. I had nothing to do with it. If that's an addition, and it isn't, but if it's an addition, whoever did that is responsible. You can't be responsible for that. If they did that, that's on them. But the Bible we've used for, well, the Bible I used my whole life, the Bible that we Western Christians have used since the birth of our nation, since the Mayflower touchdown, the Bible that was used in the Reformation, going back to Luther, Geneva, Wycliffe, Tyndale, they all weren't using the King James Bible, but they were using the same fundamental majority Byzantine text that the King James used. We agreed those 5,000 manuscripts that fundamentally agree when there's errors, all you gotta do is compare them to the other 5,000. And you see, these five guys made this mistake over here, these two guys made this mistake over there, and you can resolve it. So if that was an addition, somewhere down the road, like 1,500 years ago, someone did that. How am I supposed to know that? How can I prove that? But if I take it out of the Bible and say, you know what, that needs to go. What audacity is that of me to say that? What proof do I have to substantiate that kind of a radical move? And if it wasn't added and I don't remove it, God's not gonna hold me responsible because I can't verify. If I can't verify that was added maliciously and it's not God's word, how dare I take it away? If we do it in doubt, it's sin. So the Lord would know my heart and say, well, poor old Jim over here, that was an addition but, I know that he doesn't know that, and I know he can't prove that, and he's too fearful of me and reveres me too much to remove it, something from the Bible without absolute definitive proof, and there's no such thing. I've done no wrong. You know, the death angel will pass over me. It isn't willful ignorance. But you know what? I don't accept the premise. And that's what these two sermons are about. I don't accept the premise that the Bible was lost for 1,500 years and was rediscovered kind of in a better way, but there's still more discoveries to have, in the last couple hundred years. This is what we're talking about. So I wanted to get those two things out because they're very, very practical. So now we can start the sermon. I guess it's already going on, so it is part of the sermon. So let's back up here. So those are some practical considerations. Let's be very, very philosophical here. And as we go through this sermon, we'll go from the philosophical to more specific, to more specific. And as this sermon continues, of course, next Sunday I'm gone because I'll be away on vacation. The following Sunday when I get back, we'll continue and it will keep getting narrowed down to specific things. We're going to start very broad here. Let me start broad this way. God is sovereign over all the earth. Okay? God is sovereign over all the earth. He causes the grass to grow. When I get back from vacation, I don't want to be raking. So Lord, help me to mow it down to like it was cement the day before I leave. Lord causes the grass to grow. And he causes the storms to rage and the rain to fall. God causes the beast of the field and the fowl of the air to receive their food. Scripture says all these things. He clothes the lilies of the field and adorns them in a way far more glorious than Solomon could have ever dreamed. And a sparrow, Jesus said. A sparrow, which in the Jewish mind is one of the smallest, most insignificant of birds. When you sold it in the marketplace, it was worth next to nothing. You're not going to even get any meat off it. And Jesus said, a singular sparrow cannot fall without my father's say so. He's involved. The Lord is involved. He causes the sun to rise and the sun to set, the waves to roar. He marks out the bounds of our habitation, and he causes it to rain on the just and on the unjust. We're told that promotion is from the Lord. Obama says, you didn't do that. We did that. You entrepreneurs, you think you did so much. We did that, because we've got a bunch of union workers that paved the road so your workers can go to work. So we built your business. Get out of here. Well, you know what? God can say that. You didn't do that. I did that. I gave you the capacity, the physical ability, the financial means, the intellectual prowess, the opportunities. I lined the things up for you, and now you lift yourself up in pride. And then, as a judgment, he could continue blessing you. You say, that's not a judgment. Well, give it time. And one day they'll discover it is. Because to whom much is given, much is required. We're so far off thinking the thoughts of God. But if we did, it actually becomes pretty easy to know what we've got to do. Promotion comes from the Lord. He appoints all the kings and magistrates to their positions of power. And we know he even, we have proof now, he appoints even the basis of men to rule over the kingdoms of this world. And he gives all men breath in life. And the number of our hairs is counted by him. And the number of our days on this earth are determined by him. This is a God, if we're gonna believe the Bible, who's involved with everything, you say, it's autodeterminism. In all of that, we all have free volition to choose. And if people can't live with that, that's their problem. But if this is all true, We believe that God failed to preserve his word so we can really know what he's saying to us. He was neglectful on this, but not the sparrow or the number of hairs on our head. The Lord's subtracting. Lord, take a break and let's do some addition for a while. Too late for addition for you, pal. He failed to preserve his word. Now we understand the Bible is now in question in the light of the, these are Bible doctrines. You know, I didn't go, we could have looked up everything I said, we could have looked up verses and, but you know it. But if we're actually gonna believe these things, how can we entertain that Lord will be loose with this? When he's particular with Sparrow from the number of hairs on our head and the people who reign. And the rain that falls from the sky. And when it does, you know, just because rain falls from the sky doesn't mean people are drowning. Or catastrophe is happening and judgment of God is coming. You know, a gentle rain. We do that, I planted some grass. I don't want a hard rain, but some nice gentle rain would be nice. Is the Lord overly concerned in my lawn? No, I don't think so, but it's not out of his purview. The divine multitasker. It's hard for me to believe it, but people now question words, sentences, and paragraphs in the Bible. Some, like I said this morning, even books. And they want us to doubt whether or not those words, sentences, or paragraphs, or maybe even books, is the byproduct of fraud, forgery. copious errors that maliciously inserted those thoughts in there. And they remained in there and God didn't do anything for 1,500 years. It's a concept that doesn't jive at all with everything I read about God in the Bible. And we have to believe that there's some pathogens that aren't being questioned by the scholars today. Did they come up with something else? And they interpret the way they do. It's like with science. Well, Todd was talking to me this morning. Well, not this morning, but just a few minutes ago. He was saying, well, you know, you look at the news, you listen to them report on the weather. Oh, you know, there's an awful lot of rain. So is climate change. There's snow in the winter. It's climate change. It was foggy out down near the beach. It's climate change. It's sunny out in the summertime. It's climate change. The sun rose in the morning. It's climate change. And after they say this long enough, everybody says, yeah, I mean, yeah. And they just, you know, you say a lie often enough, and people are going, yeah, it wasn't that way before. Yeah, you're right. No. And so those cherished verses that we take as rock solid, they can be questioned down the road. And then what are we going to do? We're going to start picking and choosing the verses we like? We will let you take these, but not those. Who's the arbiter of that? And I'll tell you who the arbiter is, if these people have their way that sell these modern Bibles. It's those fellows that dwell in their ivory towers. The ivory towers of apostasy, and if I may say, promotion. Because a lot of discoveries, this is the way a lot of science works, a lot of discoveries, money, power, you discovered something. So they found that Tregallus, it was actually Tregallus that found the manuscript at Sinai in the 1800s. And they were about to burn it. And he said, hey, let me have those. And it was Tichendorff, but he couldn't get them. Tichendorff was the one who went back and actually got them, but it was Tregellos. And then he says, well, we'll give you, you know, I forget how many pages, 20, 40 pages or something, whatever. And they're about to burn the whole thing, but they're now thinking, hmm, is this worth more than we thought? We'll give you a few pages. And then he ended up going back and getting more years later. And then Wes Cotten-Hawthorne says, yes, we got to use that, the Alexandrian text. We got to use that Byzantine text. It's been around in all those old Reformation Bibles and goes all the way back. But you know what? The oldest manuscripts go to the 12th century. We've dated this one. It goes back to the 4th century. Was there anyone in the 4th century who lied? Well then guess what? They lived a lot earlier than any of us here did, so they must be more accurate with the truth. Anybody lie about Jesus? How about we go to the Bible and what the scribes and Pharisees said about Jesus? Well that's getting about as close to Jesus as you can get, as they were living in his day, and they said he was a phony, he was a wine bebber, he was a drunkard, and he did his miracles by the power of Baalzebub, and they're closer to Jesus than we were. It just doesn't cut it with me. This is the argument of people that don't really believe in God, and they're going to make all the decisions under statistics. And we see how God works. God works the opposite of statistics. He's going to do the thing that you expect the least to say, will you trust me? It's everywhere in the Bible. I say, if you want to know God's will, then expect the unexpected, because that's what's going to happen. You didn't think you'd be over here on this coast when you were on that coast. I didn't expect I'd be here because I couldn't find a Bible school. Then I found out, ha, the Bible school's, I'm sitting in it. I didn't even know it. I mean, I couldn't have planned that. But see, when I recount these things and just hear myself talk about them, because I'm not inventing them, right? But when I hear them, it's like, they're very encouraging to me. That's why I always say, you know, I ought to write a book. I ought to write a book. There's so many things that just happened in my own life. But I don't even have to go to my life. Just everything in the scripture is that way. And then you see it in other people's life. They tell their stories. We're way too nervous about the Bible as Bible believers. We let the world get to us the way they think about it. We're supposed to be Bible-living Christians. Well, if as Christians, then I would say if you're out there in Christian land over there, not pointing at you, I'm pointing above your head at the camera. Boy, you Christians out there in Christian land on the internet or TV, wherever you're seeing this, if you're thinking of buying an ESV Bible, Everything I've just described is what is required of you to think if you're going to buy it in consistency with your own thoughts. You're a follower of Jesus Christ and you're thinking of buying an NIV. or an RSV, or NASB, or any of these other modern Bibles that litter the shelves of Christian bookstores today, this is exactly what you're going to have to live with. You're going to have to make peace with this because that's the foundation upon which you're using those Bibles. You're saying older is better. We've got a handful of older, and I haven't gotten into it, but the technical reality of what is in those older texts stands as a stark witness that these texts are not reliable. I meant to bring the book with me, I didn't. I was gonna say, anyone that questions that, because you have to go into the weeds. I was gonna hold it up, but I can't move any of the book. I wanted to say, but that could be a subsidiary of that book, but it doesn't matter. What I'm saying is, okay, it's good to do. And I've done that before years ago. I could do it again, but it's kind of dry stuff. You're going to be talking about manuscripts and all that stuff. But I'm trying to argue the point from the scriptures. If we're Bible believers and God is all the things the Bible says he is, how do we reconcile that concept that we don't know what the Bible is now? I don't see how you do it. We're being forced to believe, if we embrace that, that today's Bible is better than yesterday's Bible, and tomorrow's Bible will be better than today's Bible. And there's money to be made in the sale of all of them. Because our Bible is just riddled with human error and contradictions that were never part of God's Word. Well, I know the first part of verse 5 in Revelation 20. What else is out there? And that's another study we could do, and I've done that with you before. We hold up like three or four modern Bibles, and we'll take our King James Bible and say, okay, I'm reading all this, keep reading, okay. Everything I just read, it's not in this Bible, it's not in the, the words aren't there. Or they're there, and they got a footnote saying, the oldest and best manuscripts say they shouldn't be there. Well, what'd you put them in there for? Because you know they belong in there, and you don't have the guts to just remove them. That's fine. So I think we got a problem. And the problem is, I'm speaking, I told you I'm starting broad, philosophically, and we're narrowing it. We're probably only going to be on the broad phase tonight. But there's another broad phase proposition I want to lay before you. Malachi chapter three. Malachi chapter three. And I love talking about this because it's actually way more fun to talk about than the different parchments that we use, and the geographical area where they made this discovery of Codex A and B. And it was put on this kind of vellum, but this other one was used. OK. All right. There's a place for it when you got to do it. But let's just use the Bible. I mean, I think that's way more authoritative and trustworthy. In Malachi chapter 3, Verse six, for I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Now, we'll explain that, but if God doesn't change, then he will keep his promise. If he says a thing, he's going to do it, it will come to pass because God doesn't change. And the context here is a reference to the promise made to David of the coming Messiah. I mean, look at verse one. Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall appear the way before me. And the Lord whom he seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom he delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord, who may abide the day of his coming, who shall stand when he appeareth. Well, the messenger, and then the messenger, we got John the Baptist, we got Jesus, and we know what this passage is about. No Christian denies that. And yet we read in verse six, and so we're talking about the coming Messiah, and we're told in verse six, I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. The Lord made a promise to David that his seed would endure as the sun. Go to Psalm 89. Psalm 89 in verse 34, starting at verse 34, 34 to 37. We read, my covenant, the Lord says, will I not break nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips? Once I have sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David, His seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established forever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven. Selah. God made a promise to David that David's seed would sit on David's throne, establish an everlasting kingdom, and his seed would endure forever. And he's saying, I don't alter it, I don't change it, that will come to be, and it is eternal. And thus, in Malachi 3.6, when he says, for I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed, what he's saying is, because he's talking about that first century generation when Christ would come. This is an untoward generation. A wicked and evil generation. Your fathers killed the prophets. You garnished their sepulchers. Jesus knew the hypocrisy, that's the generation. Well, that even Malachi is referring to. But look at the promise. For I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob, who are walking in evil, that murder the prophets, and you will murder Christ. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. And what he means by that, I won't utterly consume you off the earth. David's seed, we saw in Psalm 89, David's seed would last forever. We know ultimately his seed is Christ, but all those who are in Christ are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So the promise in Psalms 89 and Malachi 3 is true because we are the Israel of God. We are the seed of David. Christ is not the seeds. He's the singular seed and therefore we're in him. So we are his seed, David's seed, Abraham's seed. and errs according to the promise. God kept his promise in Psalm 89, God's keeping his promise in Malachi 3, and there was a believing remnant amongst the Jews that believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. God doesn't change, he always keeps his word. Now, just underscoring that, in James 1.17, God is called the Father of Lights, right? In James 117, God is described as the Father of Lights, which is a very scientific description, in one sense. The Father of Lights with whom there is no variableness. No variableness. See, God doesn't change. No variableness or shadow of turning. So God is not like the sun. The sun is, well, in Genesis, it's the great light. Oh, there's one light greater. God is the father of lights. And oftentimes in scripture, God is portrayed as light. Well, in Genesis, the sun is the great light, the greatest light. Then there's the lesser light that rules by night, the moon. But in James 1.17, God is the father of lights, but he's not like the sun, because he's the father of lights in whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning. And so the exact imagery that's being communicated there by James, in the book of James, is God does not change, There's no variableness like there is in the Sun. When the Sun is lower than the horizon, it casts a certain shadow. When it's high up overhead, it's totally different. When it's down over there, it casts a different shadow. There's variableness in the turning of the Sun, covering all sides of the Earth, and the Sun has a different effect. Every moment of the day and depending on where you are on the earth, how it affects you at any particular moment. And it affects this guy this way, but now this guy is closer to the equator, it affects him another way. There's all sorts of variableness with the turning of the sun around the earth. But God is the father of light in whom there is no variableness. Nor is there any shadow of turning. The shadows don't grow long. When the Lord is the Father of light, it's like it's high noon every day in every corner of the earth. And there's nothing to hidden. See, he doesn't change. Far greater than the sun. That's the exact imagery that's being brought there. God changes not then. If it's like this and it speaks in this majestic language so powerfully and distinctly and with specific examples, if God doesn't change that way, then how can we believe his word does? Because tomorrow, there'll be a new Bible that comes out. And there's gonna be even more accurate. There's a reason you need to get rid of the old one that you just started to get used to. Maybe you just started to learn how to memorize certain verses out of that Bible, whoop, you gotta start over again, because this one's so much better. There's no end to it. Not a lot of people can speak the same language in the Bible. So one person asked me, why is it when you pray, you say these and those, you know, like, you know, that's not how you normally talk, as if to say, and I know, you know, evangelical, you know? Evangelical. Yeah, yeah. You know, they're like, you know, as they're done licking their lollipops, they say, yeah, you know, so you're just like kind of self-righteous in your King James language and just trying to talk really holy. So we look up to you and he's like, look, you know, there's probably people that do that. That's not why that comes out. And by the way, I say this, if you notice, sometimes I'll say you when I pray. Sometimes I use these and those. Usually I'll, particularly if I'm talking of God, it's these and those. And sometimes I'm talking about people, I might say you, and sometimes I'll say they, the and thou. It's not consistent, but usually I'll use these and those. Am I trying to impress people with how holy I am by using this sophisticated King James language? And I think that's what's underlying the question. Well, let me answer that. When I was a, before I could speak, when the Bible was spoken, that's the language it was spoken in. When I was in Sunday school and we learned the Lord's Prayer and we memorized it as little children, that's the language we learned it in. When we learned Psalm 100 in Sunday school later on, that's the language we learned it in. When we memorized John 3.16, that's the language we learned it in. When I heard the ministers pray, they prayed in the language of the Bible that they taught about God in. And so then you go into that gear. I'm speaking to God. He's not common. He's not like us. And I don't consciously even think to do it. That's how it's gonna come out of my mouth. The reason that's so hard for you to understand is you didn't do that. Your minister didn't do that to you. For quite a while, you were using the new King James. You start to do it, and he says, hey, there's this new Bible out. It's the NIV. And I remember our church converted to the NIV. We used to use the King James. I remember it. I can't tell you exactly how old I was, but I'm going to guess maybe I was 10, 12. I thought, what's all this? And now everybody's talking a different language, and some people are still carrying their King James, and some people are bringing in new NIVs, and I ended up buying an NIV. And they say, well, why do you do that? Is it holier than thou? No. I wish I heard everybody do that. I wish all the Lord's people would speak the same language. Not because there's something holy in these and those, but I tell you what, these and those are more accurate than you and they. Because they're communicating things those English words can't communicate. If you want to be specific with the scriptures, the old ancient these and thous will communicate what the Greek words do that our modern English words don't. We have to look them up to say, well, what's the tense here? Is he talking plural or singular? You can be plural. You can be singular. And we don't know. But when you use these and thous, we do know. Yeah, it's all zeros in that thing. What are they trying to do to me? God doesn't change. I don't believe his word does. And I don't believe he's the kind of God that allows people to mess with it. Numbers chapter 23. Let's go to Numbers 23. Telling you, we're arguing very broad, but even to me, at this very broad level, it's enough for me, but we can go way more specific. We will, we'll be narrowing it down in time, not tonight. But Numbers chapter 23, in verse 19. God is not a man that he should lie, because that's what men do. Neither the son of man, that he should repent. God doesn't change his mind. Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? How can we experientially or experimentally know that's true if we're not sure of what he said? if, well, maybe it's been corrupted some. We really can't. We may say, well, I think in the vast majority of places, we can be sure, okay, which part? If you can't answer that question, then we don't know. We're told that, in Hebrew, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Huh, just like the Father. Doesn't change. And Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away. Now for the preterists, this has nothing to do with what we're talking about. He said, heaven and earth shall pass away. Well, that's the metaphoric heaven and earth. Well, maybe some. Maybe it's both. I don't know. Well, you can't read into that? Read into it. He said, heaven and earth shall pass away. I'm not being dogmatic about anything. I'm just saying, you know, I don't box Lord in to make sure he stays in my particular parameters of eschatology and that he is not allowed to do something outside that box that I don't know anything about. Whatever. Heaven or hell shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away. And we're saying, we've lost it. Well, he means it'll come to pass. Well, how do we know that his word is trustworthy if we're not exactly sure what he said? Now, I don't know of anyone arguing against Matthew 24, 34, this generation will not pass till all these things be fulfilled. I don't think anyone's holding in contention the idea that, I've never read where a higher criticism says, well, that doesn't really belong in the Bible because of older and better manuscripts. I don't think they're saying that with that verse at this point. I don't think they're saying that. I've never seen that. Well, how are we gonna know that his words will never pass away if we begin to lose his words? Because guess what? They've already cut words out of Jesus' mouth. I referenced this morning that one section that takes up like at least a third working towards a half of a column. And it's that text about if they take snakes and they get bit, they're not gonna die. And that whole section there, the modern Bibles remove it right out, doesn't belong there. Those are the words of Jesus. Hey, those are red letter words. You have taken words out of Jesus' mouth. No, they were added in, and you know that, so therefore you're willing to take them out. Now, if someone deceived you, God isn't gonna hold you responsible for someone deceiving you, you didn't know. So by what authority do you take them out? You really know something I don't know? No, we just don't like them. I think that's the truth. Jesus says, my words shall not pass away. I think when Jesus said that, he's obviously in the context referring to what he was prophesying in Matthew 24. What are you going to suggest to me? That's not true for all of Jesus' words. They will not pass away. If we're Bible believers and we're believers in Jesus, we must believe all his words shall come to pass. And the glory of his perfections can't be known if we don't know what he said. So in the end, we're going to have to end here. If God changes not, and if the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever, that's what it says. The word of our God shall stand forever. If that's true, then we must have it. If he says, that the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever, then we must have it. We'll say, well, where do we find it? Well, okay, that's a legitimate question. I'm just trying to, before we can answer that legitimate question, I'm just trying to show you, but it has to be true. Or we've got nothing to go on. So when I get back, I get a mark generally where I left off. Where am I? Well, I guess something like this. See, I'm actually doing this. I almost never do it. We're going to talk about Jesus in John 1. You know what he's called in John 1? The Word of God. So if we're going to be flippant with the written word of God, that's touching very close to the living word of God. And we're also going to take a look at the value God puts on the living word of God, but more importantly, the value God puts on the written word of God. And you tell me whether he let it crumble And he's going to let a few compromised apostate eggheads tell us what he said and didn't say. Is that what God has done to us? I don't think so. Bow our heads in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we've approached this very simply. I suppose we could say, to the best of our ability, we've tried to approach it as little children. who implicitly trust their Heavenly Father in all that He has said about Himself and His Word. And Lord, we want to be just that simple, because they just shall live by faith. And that is the gift of God. And we thank Thee for it. And yet, Father, we also have another level of understanding which isn't needed. to realize, but in the details, it's still true. But the truth is, Lord, and more profoundly, we don't even really need those details. Men may argue that our parents don't love us, but if we know better, it doesn't matter what those men say. It doesn't matter what evidence they bring forth. Because we've lived with them. We've seen what they've done for us. We've seen the sacrifices they've made. There's nothing that they can say, no matter what they say. And so Father, we thank thee for this faith that is a gift from thee that brings us peace. We can be satisfied in Christ and in his word. He is trustworthy. Man is not. God is not a man that he should lie, which men do. We are thankful for that. And we ask your forgiveness for our own lies as human beings. And even as individuals, when we try to deceive ourselves, Because we want something. We want to maybe be connected to a certain group. We want to live our lives a certain way. We want to be in a certain place, maybe geographically or in our place of employment that may be outside of your will. We find all sorts of ways to justify ourselves in sophistication. But Lord, you see through all these things. We don't want to enter into those things. We want to be humble, plain, and honest before Thee and our fellow man. Help us to be that. Forgive us for we haven't. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.