So as I've prefaced a couple of you beforehand, we have a lot of material. And so we're gonna be flying at 5,000 feet, several hundred miles an hour. And we are going to be tackling chapter one, paragraphs two, three, and five. Now that's a lot. So let's take a look in your confession. If it's in the hymnal, I believe it's page 670. Whatever the first pages of the confession are on the hymnal. I think it's 670. So I will read them. Paragraphs 2, 3, and 5 of the first chapter. Paragraph 2. Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these. They are the books that you have in your Bibles. All of which are given them by the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life. Paragraph 3. The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority to the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of other than other human writings." Paragraph four, we talked about last Lord's Day, and that deals with the source of the authority of Scripture being from God himself. In paragraph 5, will you continue? We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church of God to a high and irreverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures, and the heaviness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies and entire perfections thereof, all these are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God. Yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts. It's gonna be a lot of material for us to cover. So in trying to knit these paragraphs together, you see they all come with a similar theme. Paragraph two, the books that are in the Bible. Paragraph three, the books that are not in the Bible. And paragraph five, certain marks and certain qualities of the books that are in and the relation of the church's testimony and the Holy Spirit's work. So in all of these, I am relying very heavily on a book that I would suggest each of you read if you can find it. This is Canon Revisited by Dr. Michael J. Kruger. If you're familiar with the Performed Theological Seminary Network, he's the Dean of Students of the one in Charlotte, North Carolina. And his work on the New Testament canon here, among some of his other books, is probably the most readable and one of the most detailed that you can find right now. That's canon revisited, C-A-N-O-N, not the one that goes boom. And canon revisited by Michael J. Kruger. And so the outline that, is it back there? Okay. The outline that y'all should have is primarily derived from his work compiling certain relevant portions for our study. And much of his book, it lays out through scripture and through history, and we're going to be able to cover the through scripture today, to arrive at the end at the confessional doctrine. So it has the same goal as our study, just in far more detail than I'm even competent to do. So I highly recommend that book. But for our study this morning, we want to resolve it under a single question so that we know what our plan of attack is. A single question that I want us to focus on is how can we know that we have the right books that form the biblical canon? And there's a couple bits of that I want us to focus on. It's how can we know? So we're not asking how to prove to a skeptic. This is not how do you prove the divine authority or divine source of a canon to a nonbeliever. We're asking how can we know? And that takes a particular emphasis because we are dealing with something that's rather unique. we're dealing with scripture as it is an ultimate authority. So there's lots of authorities that are around us. And these authorities each have something that gives them that authority. If we think of parents, we think of pastors, we think of governments, each of these have a principle that's higher than themselves that they derive from. Pastors are instilled by congregations and the ordination of Christ. Parents have this natural authority from the God-given order around them. We see that police have the authority of their commissioner behind them. Whatever it might be, there's a principle of higher authority. But with the Scripture, this is not the case. We're dealing with Scripture as its ultimate authority. So as we dealt with out of paragraph four, what is the authority of Scripture? It's the authority of God. So to what authority higher than that could that authority be derived from? There's nothing. There's no authority higher than God himself. If that is the very authority of the word, how then are we to know what it is and where its authority comes from? So we have to handle it differently. Ultimate authorities, unlike other authorities around us, have to contain within themselves the principles that authenticate themselves. Since they can't be appealed higher than they have to be analyzed internally and on account of that Our study this morning is not an external examination of principles that validate the scripture It's not a study of history that where history has by its progress determined what books are in, what books are out, and people making selections along the way. It's not a study of a particular community and what books they liked and what books they didn't like, but rather it's an examination of the scripture, what it testifies of itself, and how then its own testimony is borne out truly in space and time. Does that make sense? All of y'all are welcome to interrupt, to raise your hand, whatever, as I go along, because I will stumble, and this is a very difficult topic to get through, so don't hesitate to interrupt. So then, when we talk about ultimate authorities containing in themselves their own principles, that authenticate themselves, we're asking things like, what are the criteria that this authority claims? What does it testify of itself? How then are these criteria met in reality? How does it fulfill its own standard? And then how do we come to believe those certain things as true? Because nothing can be appealed to higher than this is what we're left with with ultimate authorities. What do they testify? How are they met? And how then do we come to believe it? So, what I want us to do today is to answer that question, how can we know, by building out the model of the biblical canon. We're going to answer each of those questions. What criteria does it lay out? How does it meet those? And we'll answer that as we go along with certain examples. And for the further detail, that's why I referenced this. This has much more detail than we're able to get into. And then lastly, how do we come to believe it? So, let's start beginning a canonical model, canon as is self-authenticated. First, because this is an ultimate authority, what is our main method? If we're examining it internally, this becomes not a practice of historical critical analytics, but a matter of actual biblical exegesis. And so you will see, if you start reading anything about this or start talking to anyone about what the Bible is, they want to apply all manner of other principles to it. They want to say, well, what about other people who disagreed? Or what about other belief systems? Why aren't theirs true? And we have to recognize that this is a matter of proper scriptural application. And so let's begin to do that. What are the criteria that scripture lays out for how it is authenticated? Turn back over to Romans 1 20 and we're going to continue what we did. Last Lord's Day, we're going to see that just as human books bear certain human qualities, so also does the scripture bear certain divine qualities. A human book might be seen by its finite knowledge. The author can only cover so many things because he doesn't know all things. A human book might be prone to certain sinful proclivities because the author's nature will show forth in the works that he produces. It might be prone to error because he lacks the power or the efficacy to actually communicate an idea into paper or via whatever his language may be. And so a human book bears certain human flaws, just as in Romans 121, Romans 120, we see laid out through creation. God's work here for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power, divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. So as we covered last Lord's Day, What it means is divine acts carry with them certain marks, certain divine qualities relative to God. God does not do something in a human way. He does them as he is God. And so we expect certain divine qualities to affect everything that God does. So in your confession, in paragraph five, these qualities are actually laid out for us helpfully. And then at the end said, There's many more. But we have, after that first semicolon, we have the heavenliness of the matter, efficacy of the doctrine, majesty of the style, consent of all the parts, scope of the whole, discovery of makes of salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies. Then notice this. And entire perfections thereof are arguments whereby it, that is the scripture, doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God." So the confession is laying out scripture, self-authenticates itself with these divine qualities. We see in scripture that it bears the marks of its divine creator. And so let's take those under three different headings of all those ones listed. Let's summarize them under three headings. First, the scripture bears out the beauty of its primary author. So this is, as the confession lays out, the majesty of the style, and it continues with incomparable excellencies, perfections, so we see that the scripture has the moral and spiritual relation to its author. This is both in the content that it says, in the attitudes that it seeks to form in its readers, and also in what it condemns. We see that scripture throughout bears justice. It puts forth God's qualities of love and righteousness, and it never is seen to promote licentiousness or things that we would expect to see in human books. So just as human books bear out whatever the author wants to bear, sinful or not, This book from God is not literarily beautiful, that's not what the Confession is talking about, but it comes out this moral and spiritual beauty that it never promotes that which is contrary to God's nature and always promotes that eternal goodness that he is. And, you know, you can run through, I mean, just Psalm 119, if you just open it up, and you can just run through every attribute that the psalmist there is laying out that he sees in the Scripture as he reads the books of the Old Testament. He sees the law of the Lord is perfect, the law of the Lord is sweet, it's a building to the soul, it's casting down of the wicked, and you can just run through. Psalm 119 is the divine qualities of the Scripture laid out. Second, not only in that relation to its single author, we have the efficacy of Scripture. And the Confession lays this out in the efficacy of the doctrine. And so in this, we understand that God, as the one who not only ordains all things, but gives all things its purpose, has a particular purpose for the Word. And in that, it is indeed carried out. Think of 1 Corinthians 2, verses 4 through 5, When Paul is talking about the gospel going forth, he says it didn't come just in plausible words of human wisdom, but in the spirit and in power. That the scripture bears this mark of its creator. That it comes not only with the desire to accomplish certain things, but that it actually does. And that's kind of a plainly obvious thing, because why else would we be here? What are we doing here if the scripture hasn't formed this community around us and given us the boundaries by which we lead and worship or in that we receive the elements of the table? Scripture has formed this around us and that's by the same power and the same efficacy that its creator has and has endued it with. Scripture accomplishes its purpose. And lastly, and probably the most interesting study on your own time, is the unity of Scripture. And so if we understand inspiration and we understand that there is a single primary author of Scripture, how does Scripture bear that out? How do we see that Scripture has one author? Well, first we're going to consider the doctrine that Scripture lays out, that it is one continuous whole. Scripture lays out from beginning to end, no contrary statements about God himself or about his plan. It continually builds and builds and builds throughout thousands of years a single doctrinal whole. How else, even in the most disparate camps of what goes by Christendom nowadays, could sinful people also come around such a common hole when we write systematic theologies? You know, there's, from us to the most out there Pentecostals, whoever it might be, And in all of our sinful proclivities along the way, we still come to a very common understanding of what the doctrines of scripture are. And that's astounding given how sinful we are and how wrong we are most of the time. But that it shows through that there is this unity of doctrine that flows throughout the scripture. And let's give our first counter example. There's a couple along the way. The Apocrypha, as they're laid out in Chapter 3, are the books that are in between the Testaments. Typically the word Apocrypha is used to refer to those writings, not the later New Testament books like the Gnostic Gospels and things down there. But they're books that are in between, and they're written by people usually during the Jewish rebellion against the Greeks, and then the later Roman incursion and things like that. So in 2nd Maccabees, we see a very clear example where this doctrinal unity is shattered. And this is one of those examples where that should give us, as Christians, great pause before we accept the Maccabees as scripture. Because something that comes so far out of that doctrinal unity then begins to question that divine attribute that's laid out in scriptures. So 2nd Maccabees 12, verse 43. Talking about one of the Maccabean brothers, after a, there was a great battle, many of the soldiers were slain, and on many of his soldiers were found an amulet of a pagan god, and so he worries that they were all pagan when they died. So, talking about this Maccabean brother, he also took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of 2,000 drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this, he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. If he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made atonement for the dead, so that they might be delivered from their sin. pray for the dead, and he made atonement for the dead. So we come to a full stop. Understand, that is not only found nowhere else in scripture, but is immediately contrary to the doctrine even out of these animal sacrifices that he's talking about. This is so far out of line that any Christian has to come full stop. That is not only strange, but totally against scripture. And that when we talk about there's death and then judgment, It's the period up till death that is the day of salvation. After death, your fate is sealed. You face judgment immediately and are sorted into heaven or hell, blessing or punishment. And so the fact that the Maccabees then promote a doctrine contrary to this, which the Roman Catholics love this portion because then the prayers for the dead actually make sense. We have to come full stop and say this is contrary to everything else contained in the word. and it breaks the doctrinal unity that we would expect from a single divine author. And so we have to challenge the inspiration of 2 Maccabees because it is out of line with everything else. Continuing the unity that a single author provides, we have the redemptive historical unity. So God, throughout these thousands of years of actually acting in history and writing down this word, is still developing single themes that span the entire age. Think about alone how the doctrine of the Messiah is revealed all the way from Genesis to Revelation. One continuous whole, one continual promise being carried out typified along the way by various men, by various actions of God. Moses, there was going to be a greater prophet than Moses. David, there was going to be a greater king. Solomon's temple, there was going to be a greater temple. And it continues and it continues. And then you have Christ's work fulfilling these immediate types laid out in his work on the cross, fulfilling the promise of Genesis of crushing the serpent. And then it's laid out continually and you see Revelation starts to develop this theme of the serpent and his doom. All of that, thousands of years, multiple human authors testifying to a single divine author who has compiled and compiled and laid out these works to do his work and to show his unity. Lastly, there's a structural or kind of a covenantal unity that these books show. And so consider the pattern in which these books were written. Throughout all the Old Testament and in the New Testament, a single pattern is followed. God acts. He does something. And so to follow that, he sends his messengers. And his messengers lay out what God was doing and why he did it or what purpose it came. And then those messengers and those around them then codify this revelation that they were given into Scripture. And we see this pattern throughout. So we see God acts and brings people out of Egypt. He sends Moses, his messenger, then to lay out what this redemption means and how the people are to be changed and formed on account of this. And then Moses writes the scriptures as the final revelation of this act of God. Later, we have God's acts with the kings, and so we see David continually not only ruling in God's stead over the people of Israel, but then codifying this in books as you go along. The works of the prophets to decry when God was warning that he would cast the people out. The prophets are there proclaiming God's word, and then writing it down, which is continually throughout the New Testament. God acts in the incarnation, and then in working through the life of Jesus, and then his work on the cross, then his messengers, the apostles go forth proclaiming this message of God. And then, towards the end, they're codifying this revelation in written books. This pattern is laid out again and again for how God's scripture comes about, and it shows that God acts in this single unifying way to bring about his scripture to his people. That they are the explanation of God's acts in history. And so, the first quality, or the first attribute, that scripture lays out about itself is that it bears these marks of its single and primary divine author. It bears his moral and spiritual characteristics, and what it promotes, and what it says, and how it does so. It bears out his power and efficacy in accomplishing what it came to do, and it shows the unity of the single author that it came from in its doctrine, in its themes, and how it was given to us covenantally. The second of these attributes, if those are the ones that are internal to the book itself, is the scripture says how then it is produced and how then it comes to us. And that is under its prophetic and apostolic origins. The scripture comes out of the work of the prophets and the apostles as we talked about in its covenantal giving. And so what I mean by that, and we have to be careful, is we're not saying every book of scripture came from a prophet specifically, or that every book of the New Testament came from an apostle specifically. But rather, out of the doctrinal unity and out of the tradition that they formed in each of their earthly works. Because we understand not every book of the Bible was written by a named prophet of God. Just as we consider the Gospel of Luke. Luke was not an apostle. But we see him through Acts. He's traveling with the Apostles. He's obviously in the Apostles' inner circle, and he's obviously well-versed in their doctrine, and he's obviously given that subsumed authority under the apostles to write. And so that's what I mean when we're talking about the scripture came out of the prophetic and apostolic traditions, out of those earthly ministries of God's messengers, the scripture came. And on account of that, we recognize that the authors of scriptures knew that this is where their authority came from to author scripture. For instance, We may look at 1 Corinthians 7, verse 10 and 12. Let's turn there. 1 Corinthians 7, verse 10, where Paul lays out in verse 10, to the married I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. And he lays out the wife should not separate from her husband. Then in verse 12, he says, to the rest I say, I, not the Lord. So we always have a quick pause. Not I, the Lord. I, not the Lord. Paul's not distinguishing what's from man and what's from God, but rather the source from which these sayings come. Jesus, in his earthly ministry, talked about the wife should not separate from her husband. And so Paul then is citing a known teaching of Jesus to his people and saying where that came from. That came from the spoken words of Jesus. And then in verse 12 of 1 Corinthians 7, to the rest I say, I, not the Lord. He's clarifying that this then teaching is coming out of his apostolic authority. It's by his authority as an apostle to give this revelation with the same authority and place it alongside the words of Jesus himself. Paul is not saying that if any brother has a wife who's an unbeliever, she consents to live, he can still divorce her, that's just me saying that, don't worry about that. No, he's placing the he should not divorce her, that's coming from his authority, alongside the wife should not separate from her husband that Jesus talked about in his ministry. And so it's by his authority as an apostle that he's putting his words next to Jesus' words and saying, this comes with the authority of God. So Paul is knowingly codifying the apostolic tradition and the words of Jesus and putting them side by side. Second, Jeremiah 36 verse 1. I am going to fly through these because I am running short on time. 36 verse 1, 1 and 2. Jeremiah 36 verse 2, take a scroll and write on it, this is God speaking to Jeremiah, write on it all the words I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today. So God here is commissioning the prophet Jeremiah to write, and he's writing the words he's already been giving to the people of Israel. And so the prophetic work, the prophetic labor that Jeremiah has been doing up to this point is the foundation of the scripture that came out of it. God's work through his messenger is here being codified into scripture and that is what is produced by it. So the prophetic ministry from God produced the prophetic scripture from God. Next in Deuteronomy 31 9. I'm trying to take some samples across the Bible. Deuteronomy 31 verse 9. We have the giving of the law. Deuteronomy 31.9, then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord and to all the elders of Israel. Here, Deuteronomy is testifying about itself. that it came from Moses to be given with authority to oversee the ministry of the Levites and the elders of Israel. Deuteronomy is saying that its authority is to regulate all the body of Israel and it comes from the work of Moses. And so we understand Moses writing, and then Joshua probably to finish up when we talk about Moses' death in Deuteronomy, that these books came out of that work. Just as Moses was God's messenger amongst his people, so then this law is the bringing together of all that prophetic teaching and bring it into scripture. And so then we look across Scripture that this is how the Scripture came about, and so this is a mark that Scripture bears that we cannot do without when we talk about what books are Scripture and what books are not. There are many other examples. We think about each of the beginnings of the letters of Paul, where he's claiming his apostolic authority to write. We think about, we can think of John, we can think of Peter, and how they were in the primary circle there in Jerusalem, and they were kind of the foundational core of the rest. And we can run through all of the prophets and their commissionings, but each of these set the standard, and they set the demand that we have to have of any book to be considered scripture or not. that it contains this apostolic or prophetic source. It has to come from the covenantal dealings of God with his people and be produced out of there. If it does not, immediately suspect. That really is a nail in the coffin of much of what goes by the New Testament pseudepigrapha. They're written under pseudonyms, so they're called pseudepigrapha. That's the kind of pseudonomic writings, the graphical part of it. where there's often go by the Gnostic Gospels or the things like that where they claim the name of someone apostolic, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and yet they so clearly come at such a late date, I think the earliest attestation of any of them is like the third century, so at the earliest in the 200s. Everyone's long dead. by that point, unless you're a Mormon, you believe that the Apostle John lasted to eternity, but that's another thing to go on. All of them are long dead at that point, and so the apostolic era has obviously ended. So anything that claims to come out of the apostolic era that can't be tied to it at all, it's immediately a suspect or immediately out. And so when you see people like Bart Ehrman or other modern-day atheists seeking to promote their wares, and they talk about the lost books of Christianity or other Christianities, plural, they appeal to books that have absolutely no root in the works of God and the works of his messengers that come out. That scripture throughout testifies this is how it is produced. And so they're ruled out de facto based on that. And it's silly to appeal to them when, I mean, we can get to the doctoral unity of them later and all their absurdities, but when they can't even stake any claim to an apostle or to a prophet legitimately, they're gone. Scripture lays out everywhere, and those books don't have it. Lastly, as we sprint to the finish line, the third criteria that scripture lays out about itself, we talked about its divine qualities and its apostolic and prophetic source, is its corporate reception. And I urge you to write down these scriptures because they're immediately interesting to look through. First, there was an immediate core that was received among the authors of scripture themselves. And so let's look at 1 Timothy 5.18. 1 Timothy 5.18. Paul writing to Timothy. For the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer deserves his wages. Who here has a fancy-dancy red-letter Bible? Y'all are too reformed. If you have a fancy-dancy red-letter Bible, you will see the second of those quotes is in red. While the first of those quotes, you shall not muzzle an ox, comes out of Deuteronomy 25, 4, the second of those quotes, the laborer deserves his wages, comes out of Luke 10, verse 7. Paul is citing the Gospel of Luke under the heading of Scripture. So full stop. Then we understand Paul writing to Timothy that's later in his writing life. So the Gospel of Luke has already obviously had some manner of circulation and Paul has already accepted it under the heading of Scripture. Similarly, he expects that Timothy has done so as well. There's no explanation of where this citation comes from, no caveats, no like, hey, I found this thing and I agree with it. But he's expecting that Timothy, likewise, has accepted the Gospel of Luke to a degree that they can cite it as scripture, no clarification. So Paul recognized the gospel of Luke very early. Similarly, as we talked about last Lord's Day, 2 Peter 3.15. And we hammered this one rather hard, but let's look at a different element of it. Peter writing to Jews that are throughout the known world. This is sometimes possibly after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, where the Jews were forced out of Jerusalem, but could be before. There are still Jews across the world there. He says, and count the patience of our Lord to salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you, to you, that's interesting, according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures." So we talked about other scriptures there a lot last Sunday and how important it is of Peter's recognition of Paul's letters. But let's move up at the beginning of that verse. As he does in all his letters, Peter has a Pauline corpus of scripture already. Peter already has the letters of Paul, which of them we don't know by name, but he already has Paul's letters compiled in such a way that he can say, as he does in all his letters, Peter's read them, Peter's studying them, and he's able to determine certain themes that Paul writes about a lot, the patience of the Lord, and as he goes up, and talks about being found diligent by him back in verse 14. Peter's able to distill the doctrine of Paul and talk about it. He's very familiar with Paul's writings and he has them together already. And interestingly, so does Paul. Go into 2 Timothy 4.13. 2 Timothy 4.13. Peter, or sorry, Paul writing to Timothy once again, talking about when Timothy would visit him in the future. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all, the parchments. It's an interesting historical note that Christians are actually very likely to be credited with the invention of the book. Actually, because they were poor. Scrolls are very expensive to produce. You had the vellum, the lambskin, that had to be continually scraped by hand and kind of glued end to end to form long, continuous scrolls. They were not easily edited, such as, you know, mistakes happen in a single place. You can't just tear out the middle of the scroll and replace it very easily, things like this. And historically, Christians are often sided with the invention of the book because they couldn't afford the scrolls. And so much of all the fragments and manuscripts that we have come in the form of what is called a codex, out of the Latin word that supplies that. Here in the Greek, we have what the Greek equivalent of the word codex is in Latin, where Paul says, above all, the parchments. The parchments there being the membranas, membranes, animal skins coming together. Here, Paul to Timothy, remember to bring all the codices Paul has been compiling his own letters in his own works into books and wants them with him and so above all Timothy when you come bring the codices Bring the parchments They're all together. That's particularly fascinating because that is the exact form in which we find them being produced in history. We find them being produced as these parchments bound together. So Paul himself has been recognizing his own work and has been compiling them and keeping record of his work. Likely, as we said, Peter has the works of Paul together so that Paul can spread them. He recognized that his letters aren't just temporary things that were just shot out into the universe, but that they were for record-keeping, and for maintaining, and for bringing along in his ministry. So Timothy, bring the books, but above all, the codices. Bring those. So, we have this very early reception of the scriptures amongst the authors themselves. There's this canonical whole that's already talked about. There. So what about broader reception? Here, let's return back to the confession. Back in the confession in paragraph 5. At the end of paragraph five, we have, yet notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts. Why is this important? Why does this have to be where we begin talking about the corporate reception of the word? 1 Corinthians 2.14 lays out that a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. So think about the list the Confession lays out, those divine qualities of Scripture. What natural man accepts those? Are those plainly obvious to sinful man, that this work bears the divine and moral perfections of God, that it carries out his purpose, and can he discern the unity of Scripture from beginning to end? No. These things, as Paul lays out, are spiritually appraised, they're spiritually understood. Does the sinner in rebellion understand the voice of God and take his authority as from his maker and thereby live it out? No, the natural man does not receive the authority of God and live under that. So then we come back to our original question while we began at the beginning of we're talking about how can we know that we have the right books and we're not attempting to prove to a skeptic because that's trying to deny that these things are spiritually appraised. If we appeal to the natural man by natural principles, Good luck trying to prove spiritual truths. You are welcome to beat your head against that wall. Have fun. You'll come away a bit bloody. So then the question we have to ask them, how do we know? Because these things are spiritually appraised, it requires an inward work of the spirit by and with the word in our hearts for us to believe these things. And we have to resolve there because this is the nature of ultimate authorities that we talked about. They are self-authenticating from themselves. And if this particular ultimate authority in the Word is self-authenticating, and its matter, and its doctrine, and its mode of spreading, and its authority are all spiritual, then it must be resolved to a spiritual transformation for us to understand and to receive them. It's almost as if we believe God still works today and has to regenerate hearts for the scripture to be received for what it is. This is God's work in regeneration and giving us a new mind and a new heart. He also, as Paul lays out, gives us the capacity and the capability to understand the things of God, these divine qualities, and to receive the authority of his messengers. We see what unregenerate Israel did all the time in rejecting the authority of the prophets. They had hard and stony hearts. On account of that, they did not hear the authority of the word that was being proclaimed to them and written for them. But, As members of the New Covenant, we enjoy the blessing that all who are in the covenant have the mark of God, that we are His, we have been transformed. And He gives the scripture as a whole to us, and He works by and with the word in our hearts to do as Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice. That is where we are left with understanding how we as a people come to the scripture. But then what would we see historically coming out of that? When y'all were saved, did y'all become immediately sinless? So would we demand of these people in history that the second they came across one of the letters of Paul, that's from God right there. No, we would not expect the immediate transformation or the immediate understanding of all these things. So we look to the body as a whole in its reception of this work. So in the beginning of paragraph five, the confession lays out a helpful note. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the holy scriptures. Why does the testimony of the church matter? It's because it's God's church, and because God is the one who works in his church, and that if God is working by and with the Word in our hearts to show his divine qualities, to bring about the efficacious purpose the scripture was given for sanctification, as John writes in John 17, in that your word is truth, sanctify them in your truth. If God has all these purposes for the word, it's his work that brings this about. It's his work for us to receive them as from him. And so what we see, what we expect to see based on the scriptural standard and what we do see in history is the word is propagated and on the whole received. There are disparate communities throughout history. You know, we have people today who reject the Old Testament. We also call them heretics. But there are people today who like to prune and pick up books who still try to own the name of Christian. But there are legitimate Christians who we know to be saved who at various times in history have doubted particular books. Luther was not a fan of the book of James. He was wrong. He was dead wrong. And he was going against hundreds and hundreds of years of the testimony of the church to say what he said. But We are creatures. We are fallible. And just as Luther sinned, so could he be wrong about a book of the Bible. Just as we sinned, so we could too. But we looked the church on a whole to understand that if this is God's church, if we understand what the church is and what it does, then this testimony is valuable to us. And it can lead us to a high and reverent esteem of the scriptures themselves. So, trying to tie a bow on this matter. We came with the question, how can we know what are the right books? And we laid out that scripture is very different than any other thing that we have to examine. It's an ultimate authority. It has to set out its own criteria, and it has to meet its own criteria. And those are rather steep. The criteria it lays out is divine qualities, showing its primary author and its relation to him. and that these books must have a prophetic or apostolic origin. They have to come out of the work of God and his immediate ministry on earth. And then lastly, they have to be corporately received. If a book did not receive the work of God, then we simply have to reject it. If God wrote a book and buried it in the ground for 3,000 years until, in the year 3,000, someone digs it up and it's like, hey, a scripture. Is God so foolish as to deprive his church of his word for thousands of years? Does God act so purposelessly No. He built his church on the back of the word that he gave. And so a book that is scripture must have been received by the church as such. And so those three criteria that the scripture lays out, we see time and time again how each of the books of the Bible meet each of those, as I've sought to give a few examples as we go along. Are there any questions? That's a lot of material, I know. Yes, it does. I'm afraid it does. Yes, ma'am. From 2nd Maccabees? That is 2nd Maccabees 1243-45. I really would encourage y'all to look at those references talking about the New Testament canon being received amongst the authors, the 2 Timothy 4.13 with the codices, or the 2 Peter 3 with Peter having Paul's letters compiled. Those are very interesting. Dig out those words that are laid in there. Are there any other questions? Y'all are free to attack me later. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the time that we have had to understand how your word testifies of itself to us and how we might know that it's truly from you. Would you help us to not let this study and hear, but continue in our own meditations of scripture and study of the world that you have made and how you have worked in the world to further understand these things and come to a greater knowledge of the truth. Would you bless our study this morning and the worship to follow. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.