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Well, let's pray. Father, we do thank you that we have this opportunity to get together and consider your Word, consider what we have in your Holy Scriptures. We ask that you would preside over these things, that your Holy Spirit would be poured out upon us more and more, that we would be taught by God as we consider your Word. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, well I've already had to insert an extra class. Last week we covered the Triune God and began to cover Revelation in our statement of faith, our proposed confessional statement that we're looking to adopt. And we really didn't have any time to do justice to Revelation. And that's, I think, a fairly foundational point that I wanted to give the rest of this class to that alone. So this will be Revelation Part 2. So why don't we start off by reading the statement together and then we'll look at my notes and dig in from there. So if you would just get out that confessional statement and follow along as I read it to you. Point number two, Revelation. God has graciously disclosed His existence and power in the created order and has supremely revealed Himself to fallen human beings in the person of His Son, the Incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by His Spirit has graciously disclosed Himself in human words. We believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the scriptures the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of His saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of His will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do. and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of knowing God's truth exhaustively, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God's revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed as God's instruction in all that it teaches, obeyed as God's command in all that it requires, and trusted as God's pledge in all that it promises. As God's people hear, believe, and do the word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel." Alright, quite a mouthful, there. We touched on last week how this confession points at the primary way that God speaks through his son, that he is the word taken on flesh, Jesus, when he came and he revealed God perfectly, but also God has had these things written down both before he came And after he came, explaining who he was going to be and then who he was in the Holy Scriptures, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so we asserted that these are the authoritative word of God. And we didn't get much further than that, aside from that assertion. We didn't get to really much chance to look up some scripture. So we'll do some of that today. If you would turn and let me get you on duty here. Do you need this article? Alright, if you turn to the notes on page 2, I have a quote from this article right in my notes, so page 2 of my notes. The article is The Holy Spirit, Author of Scripture by John Piper. He begins after citing What does he cite? 2 Peter 1, that no prophecy is a matter of one's own interpretation because prophecy ever came by impulse of man. No prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." So, his whole article is launching off that verse, that this is Holy Spirit-inspired writings, all of it, Old and New Testament. But he starts off his article with this little quote. On June 27, 1819, Adoniram Judson baptized his first convert in Burma. His wife, Anne Hasseltine, described how Hmong Ngao had responded to the scripture. A few days ago I was reading with him Christ's Sermon on the Mount. He was deeply impressed and unusually solemn. These words, he said, take hold on my liver. They make me tremble. God spoke through Isaiah the prophet 2,700 years ago and said, This is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble, and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word. Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word. That's what Isaiah the prophet said, and that was the same experience of this first convert by Adonai Reuben Judson in China, inland mission. It's a nice example of It's just an anecdote, if you will, of someone who comes to a realization that these are the words of the living God. That's what we're asserting. By his Son, we communicated in our confession. I have that in the box there. I'm not going to re-read it right now. And by his Spirit in human words, that second box. This is our confession again. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who, by his Spirit, has graciously disclosed himself in human words. We believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the scriptures, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means. Understand that? It records what happens, and it is the means by which these things are effective. The Holy Spirit inspired these things to tell us what happened, and the Holy Spirit used these things to help us to believe it. It's both record and means of His saving work in the world. The record of His saving work, and the means of His saving work. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired word of God. So if there's one reason why I'm always contending from the pulpit that we need to be people of the book, this is it. Because it's not only just a record of salvation, this is also the means of salvation the Holy Spirit uses to, as a monk now put it, these things have taken hold of my liver. Which is, you know, every culture has a way of speaking of their inner man. Apparently that's the way they do it there. But it took hold of his inner man. And my prayer is that this book will continually take hold of our inner man as well, as well as anybody else that we might come in contact with. Let's look at some scriptures that assert as much. 2 Timothy 3.16, let's turn there. Would somebody read chapter 3, verse 16? 2 Timothy 3, verse 16. All scripture is inspired by God, profitable for teaching, reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Alright. God breathed. Do you see that? breathed out by God, okay? This is another way of saying, Holy Spirit inspired, right? Inspired by the Holy Spirit, God breathed. How about 2 Peter 1, 20-21? Knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Alright, this is nice and explicit, and this is the one that John Piper is launching off of in his article. That it's not a private interpretation. In fact, it wasn't even written by any private interpretation either. But men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. It's pretty straightforward, isn't it? Real men wrote these books, but real men carried along by the Holy Spirit. That's what we mean when we say the Scriptures were inspired by the Holy Spirit. We mean that the Holy Spirit was actively involved guiding these authors, both Old Testament authors and New Testament authors, so that what we have in our hands is not just the record of these particular men, as if they had some private angle on things, like even a commentary, even a good one. It's a discussion about these things, but that would be a private interpretation. That would be that man's particular take on things. Not so with the Bible. We're saying this is not that. This is something distinct. This is something where the Holy Spirit was actively involved carrying along such men, so that what we have here are not the words of men, but the word of God. I agree. We also see in the scriptures, especially in the epistles, well, in the prophecies of the Old Testament, the character of men coming through. Sure. Their own personal perspective, historically, the events of that time are seen through their eyes. So, I agree that this is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Right. It's not that they were in a trance and they just wrote it. They inserted their personalities into this. Sure, and that's particularly helpful when trying to interpret, to realize that God didn't, as he said, they passed out and woke up in the morning and there was a book. But he used the means of men, that's true, and it was in real live context that it helps us understand what those contexts were, to understand what God means there, in that culture, at that time, for those people, and then from that, then we can say, how does this point to Christ? If we don't do that first step, then we get ourselves in a lot of trouble. We can take things out of their context. So, these things were written using human words, in human cultures, using particular human authors. That's a good counterbalance. But we're asserting both with an all-out press, 100%. This is Holy Spirit-inspired, using men. So it's both rooted in its context as well as universally applicable and a word from the Sovereign God to His creation. But this is our search. Let's look at a couple of others before I launch into the next point. Let's go to Ephesians 2. Both 2 Timothy 3 and 2 Peter 1, which scriptures are more directly in mind there? Which part of our current Bible is in mind in both 2 Timothy 3 and 2 Peter 1? This may surprise you, but if you think about it for a second, it's pretty straightforward. Which part of the Bible? Yeah. So it's all scripture. That's true. Right. But when Paul is writing this, or Peter is writing this, and Paul is writing this, which scriptures were they using? The Old Testament. The Old Testament. That's what's more directly applicable at that moment in time. At that time, they're writing scriptures, and I think it has more broad application to the New Testament as well. But I'm just saying, the Old Testament is more sharply in focus. That's all I'm asserting here. Particularly in Timothy's case, where he's talking about the scriptures that can save you that you heard from your youth. Well, what scriptures have you been hearing from his youth? That's true, but you don't want to have a hierarchy of I'm not aiming at that. Absolutely. I'm not aiming at that. All I'm saying is, what we want to assert here is both old and new, and in our day, it's the old that tends to catch the flack, and it's like, well, that's no longer relevant. So I'm just trying to mitigate against that. We are all, I think, sitting here in this room, offering an assumption that the New Testament is pretty solid on that. That's a revelation of Jesus Christ that's a little more relevant to us. Sometimes we miss the relevance of the Old Testament. So, I think in these passages, they're asserting not just people writing in Peter's day, like Peter himself and Paul, but he's asserting, even more clearly, he's asserting the scriptures of the Old Testament. In those passages, I just think those are in sharper focus. That's all. I mean, we may not know some of those things, or they may be somewhat available to us, but they certainly weren't to those folks. I mean, that's what they use in their churches. And I think of Christ and the Rose of Emmaus explaining everything about him and the Law and the Prophets to those people. That would have been interesting to have heard. So they were utilizing just the Old Testament at that point in time. Right, because that's all they had at that point. That's right. So, I mean, when we read the New Testament, or I think we're reading it and understanding that, at that time when these things were being written, they didn't have the New Testament. Right. So, then one might ask, well, where is the New Testament more sharply in focus? And let's turn to the next, Pat, one, Ephesians 2. Would somebody read verses 19-21? Now, this is a passage we land on for grace alone, which we need to land on for grace alone, because it's great, but it also talks about other things. Let's look at verse 19-21. Would somebody read that? So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the constant. in whom the whole structure is joined together, grows in a holy temple in the Lord." Alright, so there it is. What's the foundation? He's the key cornerstone, and what's the foundation in this passage? Apostles and prophets, right? Hung together by Jesus himself, in which the rest of the church is built. So, what is the Apostles and Prophets? I mean, from our perspective. This is the New Testament, right? This is the writings of the Apostles and Prophets. That's what we're standing on. We're standing on that, and we're all hanging together because we're hanging on that foundation that Jesus is the chief cornerstone, and the Apostles and Prophets give us a clear view, all we need to know, of Jesus. so that we can all stand on that same cornerstone rock. Absolutely, and I think where I'd like to go with this conversation, I think the same place where John lands in his article, John Piper, that when we come to a firm belief that this is really the Word of God, it does hang on Christ himself. We get to know Christ, that's exactly right, but we're jumping a little ahead, but that's an excellent point. One more verse, let's look to John 14. Okay, 25 through 26. Would somebody read that? These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you, but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." This is a reinforcing verse to what we just covered in Ephesians. The apostles and prophets that lived and walked with Jesus and knew him and heard his teaching What does Jesus say here, say to particularly the inner core here? Although, I want you to know that even though there was an inner core of twelve, and of course one of them went wrong there, Judas, all according to God's plan. But this inner core apostles, there were always others around too, other disciples. I forget how many were in the upper room in Acts, but there were more than just the center eleven. Probably there's more here too. But at least we have the inner disciples here. And what does he say about the future ministry of the Holy Spirit? Give you a recall. Yes, he's going to help you remember what you heard from me and help you understand it. You know, this is the work of, again, Holy Spirit inspired work going on now in the New Testament. All right. God inspired carrying along men to help them understand what they've heard from Jesus himself, the cornerstone. It's interesting, many Bibles, mine included here, my copies of scriptures, the words of Christ are in red. I don't really like that, because it communicates, in essence, another echelon of importance. You're really supposed to pay attention to these words, but the words of the Apostle Paul, who was the latter day Apostles are less significant if you follow that line of thought. Right. Yeah, I agree. Even while it's kind of neat to note the ones that were recorded coming out of Jesus' mouth directly, we have passages like this that teach us that the whole New Testament is of that character, because they're not just launching off on their own authority. So, one might ask, though, if one were a skeptic here, and I don't expect that's you guys, but if one was a skeptic, one might ask, isn't this circular reasoning? We assert that this is the Word of God, and then we look up scripture in this book to say, this is the Word of God. So at the very least we can say, this book asserts that it's the Word of God, carries this Holy Spirit-inspired Word of God. It asserts it, but how do we know it's true? At least we could say, We can't come to this book as a wise compilation of sayings by men. The book itself doesn't permit it. It's sort of like the thing that C.S. Lewis said about Jesus, liar, lunatic, or Lord. And the same thing applies to the Word of God. Since it asserts this so bluntly, it's either lying, Or the people who were writing this were crazy, and either they're lying or they're crazy, or they really were carrying on with the Holy Spirit. So it at least places us there. But how do we know that this is what it says it is? Any thoughts before we dig into some of this art that I think was helpful? Yeah, sure. One thought would be, and I don't have a record right before me in my mind, but the Phil of Prophecy. hallmark of the scripture, that were foretold sometimes hundreds or thousands of years in advance. Of course, the coming of Christ, but particulars about Christ and the odds of those things happening in the context that they were given are considered to be extreme, and yet they're perfectly accurate. So it proves the authority of the scripture. Let me ask a slightly different question. That's true. That's a good point. But let's answer this question. Instead of going to, how do we make sure everybody else knows, how do you know that this is the Word of God? I think we're all agreed that this is. I'm feeling pretty confident about it. I'm not doubting it at all at the moment. I don't think you're sitting here wrestling with, I wonder if it is or not. So why are you so sure? How did you come to such a sure confidence in this being the Word of God? Any thoughts on that? Because of the Holy Spirit in our own hearts. Yeah, and how did that look for you? I mean, I'm just curious. It looked like a mirror. Interesting point. What do you mean by that? Well, it shows you who you are inside, deep down inside, in a number of different ways. Sometimes in ways you wouldn't want it to. It cuts you to the heart. Yeah, yeah. I think it's completely consistent, which is unlike any work of man that's been done over such a period of time, that it be so consistent and clear. The more you study it, the more you see the clarity. I agree. I'm in the same boat. The study we're doing right now is good case in point in Exodus. Everything is just hurling us at Christ in so many different varied ways. It's just amazing to behold. My confidence in the Word of God just continues to escalate. Yeah. Holy Spirit, God given faith. Exactly right. I think that's true. Consider a few points that I thought was very, very good along these lines. Look at page three of the article. I have a little outline of it here at the bottom of my notes. You know, is it true that the Holy Spirit offers scripture to John Piper? How many reasonable faith in scripture? I'm looking at that subset. And his three main points, we are guilty before God, Jesus wins our confidence, number two, and then three, we follow the teaching and spirit of Jesus. And look at his article on page three. Page three. So, his whole first part of the article is coming to the same conclusion that we're coming to, that according to the Word of God, this is the God-breathed document. This is the Holy Spirit-inspired Word of the Living God that we have in our hands. So, as he says on the paragraph under the Holy Spirit is the divine author of Scripture, he says, the doctrine that emerges is this, the Holy Spirit is the divine author of all Scripture. If this doctrine is true, then the implications are so profound and far-reaching that every part of our lives should be affected. Agree. Then below that it says, coming to a reasonable faith in scripture. And he says most people come to trust God's word something like this. Point number one, we are guilty before God. Let me read that paragraph and let's discuss it. First, the testimony of our own conscience, the reality of God behind nature, and the message of scripture come together in our hearts to give us the inescapable conviction that we are guilty before our Creator. This is a reasonable conviction because the persuasion that there is a creator above this world and the persuasion that we are guilty for not honoring and thanking him as we ought are not irrational leaps in the dark. They are forced upon us by our experience and our honest thinking about the world. So that was his thought that most people start the journey towards a confidence in this book by a recognition of their own guilt before the creator. Holy Spirit brought upon understanding of their unreasonable conviction of this sin, that we don't honor God as we ought. What do you guys think of that first point? was a little bit what Steve was saying earlier, it's like a mirror. When you're reading this book and it starts convicting you in a way that you don't want, you know, help you look at things you don't want to look at. Of course, that's just part of it as well. Sometimes it's directly by reading this book, sometimes by hearing this book preached, or sometimes just that you're out there and you're getting general conviction because of the world you're living in. You just know you're guilty. We all have enough knowledge to know we're guilty. This part, you don't. You actually need special revelation to be guilty. I think that's a point that is worthy of some amplification, is that there are other modes of scripture that cancel that. There are other modes of revelation that are not called special revelations, but are general revelations. And in all of those things, it points to the truth, that God is God, and we are guilty before Him. In such that Romans' argument is that all men are guilty before God, and they know it. Right. Exactly right. That's right. And they know they're receiving the wrath of God, and they know they're defying their Creator, that much you don't need the scriptures for. And it's reasonable to all people. Everybody can get the guilt part. Everybody gets that part, on one level or another. There was a current professor at Robert Wesley College who, instead of taking a final exam, he gave the students a choice. They could either take the exam, or they could memorize the book alone. And this one girl, not saved. She was his wife studying for an exam. So she easily memorized the whole book, said it perfectly, and the whole knowledge. It was something that Nancy knows, and she was quite taken with it. And hopefully, it will allow you to use that to lead a better life. Right. Convict her of her sin, right. Indeed. So that's where he says, most Christians, this is their first logical step, they come to a guilt. And then, step two, Jesus wins our confidence. He writes, and do you have this article? Can somebody lend him an extra one? I'm out of extras up here. We're on page three of this John Piper article, and at the bottom of page three it says, Jesus wins our confidence. That's where we are, John. He writes, The second step on the way to a reasonable persuasion that the Bible is God's word is that Jesus Christ is shown to us. Someone reads or tells us the story of this incomparable man who talked and acted like so much more than a man. We see the authority he claimed to forgive sin and command demons and control nature. We see the purity of his moral teaching, his utter surrender to the will of God, his brilliant calm under cross-examination, his righteous fury against hypocrites, his tenderness toward little children, his patience with the humble seekers, his innocent submission to torture, and we hear from his lips the sweetest, most needed words ever spoken. I have come to give my life as a ransom for many. And so, by the self-authenticating force of his incomparable character and power, Jesus wins our confidence and our trust, and we take him as saviour from our sin, and Lord of our life. And this is not an irrational persuasion, it's the way all of you go about making reasonable decisions about whom you will trust in this life. Will you trust this babysitter with your children, or this lawyer to give you good counsel, or this friend to keep your secret? You look, you listen, and eventually you are persuaded, or not, that here in this person is the solid ground for your confidence. You become persuaded because you've met Jesus. At this point, generally, most people who have become new Christians haven't asked the question whether this is the authoritative word of God for all of life and practice. They've just met Jesus here, and his authority and his character win the day. The Jesus they meet here wins the day. What do you think of that? We're making general assumptions here. There are all sorts of different ways God comes to some of these similar convictions. I don't want to say every person goes through these three steps. I don't want to say that. But the general pattern comes to a knowledge of Christ, who Christ is. He says in his words, self-authenticating, that Jesus' life and ministry is self-authenticating. What do you think he means by that? Well, he proves, I think, as a new Christian, you become persuaded that then you have a lot of unbelief in your waiver. And I think God does. You come to the realization, I was trying to think of the Hib number. I am persuaded that he is able to keep that, which I didn't know to him until that day. And I think that those are the things, the sweet things that God puts in your inner being to help you believe those kinds of things. Yeah, I think it's a little bit what Al, you were saying about the whole of Scripture, is that when you meet Jesus in the pages of Scripture, nobody would have come up with that. Right? I mean, nobody would have just made that up. I mean, this transcends a human invention. You don't promote a hero that comes and dies dead, and then comes back from the dead, you know? You don't promote a hero that comes in weakness, in submission, in humility, and then gets put to death on a cross. Who would come up with that? One of the good things, at least in my own mind, I don't know about Steve Pure, but in the study of the cults, when you look at man-made religions, in the case of Mormonism or perhaps Islam, and you see the logical man-made religions, how opposite it is to Christianity, where you see Christ revealed in the reality of who he is. It's night and day. It strikes me, too, that unless you're in that type of setting where you're kind of in apologetics because they're saying, we have this book and you have that book, generally you're not leading with your book. Even though you're, depending on the book, and you're saying, this says the word of God, and you're assuming the book, when you talk to people, it's like, you want to get to know Jesus, this is what he said, and blah, blah, blah, and you assume it. And most people start there. Now, I would say that's right and good. Why bring up a whole other category of thing to use as smoke screen or excuse not to believe? But what's brought up, one has to be able to defend it with perhaps clarity as well. But most people don't start with an intellectual defense of the scriptures. Most people don't start there. Most people just start with meeting the Jesus in the book. And then the Jesus you meet in the book, you find it to be real. Then move on to point number three on page four. We follow the teaching and spirit of Jesus. Once the character and power of Jesus have captured our trust, then he becomes the guide and authority for all our future decisions and persuasions. So the third step on the way to a reasonable persuasion that the Bible is God's word is to let the teaching and the spirit of Jesus control how we assess the Bible. This happens in at least two ways. One is that we accept what Jesus teaches about the Old and New Testaments. When he says the scripture can't be broken, John 10, 35, and that not an iota or dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished, Matthew 5, 18, we agree with him and base our confidence in the Old Testament on his reliability. See, he's the cornerstone there, right? If he says it's reliable, then it's reliable, right? And when he chose the twelve apostles to found his church, It gives them his authority to teach and promises to send his spirit to guide them into truth. We agree with them and credit the writings of these men with the authority of Christ. So this is one way. So one way is, well, Jesus said so, and I trust Jesus. So he's our cornerstone there. The other is the next paragraph. The other way the teaching and spirit of Jesus control our assessment of the Bible is that we recognize in the teachings of the Bible the many colored rays of light refracted out from the prism of Christ, whom we have come to trust. That's a very poetic way of saying it, you can say it more explicitly here. And just as Christ enabled us to make sense out of our relation to God and bring harmony to it, so also the many rays of his truth in every part of the Bible enable us to make sense out of hundreds of our experiences in life and see the way to harmony. Our confidence in scripture grows as we realize that Jesus affirmed it and as we realize that its teachings are as incomparable as Jesus himself. That's what Brother Al was saying a few minutes ago. The teachings of themselves are incomparable. They're insightful in ways that nothing else is. When you start getting it, layer upon layer, you say, wow, it keeps going deeper. There's more. Oh, there's more. There it is. Time after time, he goes on to say, they help us make sense out of life's puzzles. failing marriages, rebellious children, drug addiction, warring nations, the return of leaves in spring, the insatiable longings of our hearts, the fear of death, the coming into being of children, the universality of praise and blame, the prevalence of pride, and the admiration of self-denial. The Bible confirms its divine origin again and again as it makes sense out of our experience in the real world and points the way to harmony. What do you think? Has this been your experience? Any of this striking forward with you? Yes. And yet there are times. There are times when you just say, you know, you don't know what is going on. You don't know what God is doing, why God is doing it, but you know God is working. And you have to just rely on the fact that God is God and He will be for the good of His people and for His glory. I think it takes you out of the judgment business. How so? Because if you see something happening, you figure, well, God will have to work it His way. And you realize that He's got His own way, and that He's the judge. We're to be judged, not to be judged. But I think when you naturally come into it, when you're in a church or whatever, you start judging. I think that's a natural thing. Well, they didn't do this, they didn't do that. But you realize that He is the judge, and we'll just wait for what His decision is. So, as we see the beauty of God's Word and the beauty of His plan, we can trust Him. Trust Him to rule these things and be in charge of these things. Fair enough. I think this last point of where a Christian goes, and as their confidence in Scripture grows, it provides us that rock when we look at the experience around us and say, it doesn't seem to make sense, but I have this rock to stand on. And I know it's true, so at least I know that. If somebody does challenge the Word of God, we can say, are you kidding me? This thing is more insightful than anything out there. This is definitely the Word of God. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Time and time again I can say, this tells me exactly what the problem is with my heart. Let me show you. This tells me exactly what God did about that problem with my heart. Let me show you. It's so right on. It's been on. And it's talking about it from cover to cover. It all conspires to take you to Jesus. And it's not just the ones that actually use his name Jesus. The whole book's doing it. And come to find out, all of creation is actually pointing at Jesus. You know, our marriages, pointing at Jesus. A seed goes to the ground and falls and dies so that new life comes up, pointing at Jesus. What do you know? And not by accident, it's not just like, oh what a handy illustration. But he's the creator. He made seeds, on purpose, to point at Jesus. And so too with his word. So you get passage after passage. Whatever you happen to be studying will be your point of illustration if somebody wants to ask you about the authority of scripture. Well let me show you about this passage that I'm studying right now. You don't have to have one proof text that you have to memorize. Because the whole Bible is pointing to Jesus. Isn't that clever how God did that? And we'll get another example of that, even from the pulpit today, in Jethro's life. Incident after incident, they all conspired to point us to Jesus, and the work of Jesus. And so, at the end of the day, That's sort of a general pattern of how we come to confidence in that, but that confidence always grows, and that growing confidence of experience with the Word of God and how the Word of God speaks insightfully into your heart, into your life, into your experiences out there, then all of those things can be brought to bear on anybody who happens to want to challenge you on the Bible. If they bring this up and they want to say, hey, how can you trust an old, dusty book? One, because it's not an old, dusty book. It's old, but it's not dusty. It's thrilling how it conspires to bring us to Christ. It's amazing, and it never ceases to amaze me. At least, I hope these short musings on this help us illustrate that we can stand on the word of God. I don't have time to go in detail on the rest of the notes here, but I have cited the latter part of our confession. All those assertions about its authority and its relevance and its sufficiency and all those things are all grounded on because it's the word of God. Once we come to that firm conviction that it's the Word of God, then of course it would be complete. It would be sufficient. It's the final authority. And even though we can't understand all of it, and we still have remaining sin, and we sometimes get things wrong, what we can understand, we can understand truly. And this too by God's Holy Spirit enlightening us. and equipping us, and so on. I think the statement itself is a helpful assertion of these things, a summary of these things that we assert to believe. But I want to make sure we know why we believe these things ourselves. So I hope those musings help. I'll conclude with some comments from this article, Implications for All of Life. Oh, that we had all day to work to talk about the wonderful implications of this doctrine. The Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture. Therefore, It is true and altogether reliable. He's referencing Bible verses here, too. It is powerful, working its purpose in our hearts and not returning empty to one who sent to the one who sent it. It is pure like silver, refined in a furnace seven times. It is sanctifying. It gives life. It makes wise. It gives joy and promises great reward. It gives strength to the weak and comfort to the distraught and guidance to the perplexed and salvation to the lost. The wisdom of God in Scripture is inexhaustible. How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I could count them, they are more than the sand. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for giving us this great gift of your word. And it is complete, and it is adequate, and it is sufficient, and it is wondrous, and it is joyful. It gives us glimpses of meeting you face to face. Lord, oh that we would continue to more and more learn the implications of what we have in this book. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's go.
3 Revelation
సిరీస్ NBC Confession of Faith
This week we will finish covering the second point in our proposed new confession of faith: Revelation
ప్రసంగం ID | 118101037116 |
వ్యవధి | 45:41 |
తేదీ | |
వర్గం | సండే స్కూల్ |
బైబిల్ టెక్స్ట్ | 2 పేతురు 1:20-21 |
భాష | ఇంగ్లీష్ |
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