Good morning to folks who are coming in. Also to you. It wasn’t. What time is it? Good morning. How are you? Nice to meet you. Good question. Thank you. This clock says that we are a little late. Is that clock right? I don’t know. It’s a little bit fast, just a bit. Maybe. All right. Good morning. I’m going to open this morning with a reading from Chapter 3 of Genesis. If you’d like to turn there or not. Either way. As we continue our study in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Always beginning with the word of God. Genesis chapter three.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.
For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you’ll be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Thus far in the reading of God’s word. Amen.
Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we ask for help now as you have brought us together in Christ, as you have set this day aside as that which is holy, that which you’ve made holy. We ask that you’d help us to keep it holy. Help us as we seek to study your word now and use the Westminster Confession of Faith for that purpose. Guide our hearts, help us. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
All right, anybody remember what we’re studying? This is the easy question. We start with easy to build up confidence, right? The catechism, or the confession, yes. Westminster confession. So what was the question last time? Do we need the Bible? What was our conclusion? Yes. Yes, we need the Bible. Today, we’re going to continue our study in paragraphs two through four of chapter one. The question today is, can you trust the Bible? You said you concluded that we do need the Bible. Now the question is, can you trust the Bible? Well, as we review, we just went over Genesis chapter three. Remember from, oh, and this study was initially done with some folks that spoke Spanish. So sometimes you’ll see some Spanish. along with the English, but you should be able to get the English. Maybe the Spanish as well.
So last time we spoke about general revelation, that God reveals himself through his creation, his power, beauty, thoughtfulness, care, goodness, kindness, wisdom, all displayed in creation. So the question was, well, do we need anything else? And the answer was, yes, we need special revelation, because creation does not tell us who God is, who we are, and why we’re here. Our current condition is sinners. and the need for salvation and God’s plan for salvation. So we did conclude, yes, we need the Bible. So we looked at the first paragraph, which ends this way, which makes the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.
So, moving on into chapter three. 2, excuse me, still in chapter 1, but paragraph 2 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, it reads this way. Under the name of the Holy Scripture or the Word of God written are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these. Now, I haven’t listed them there. How many books are there in the Bible?
66. And so they list all 66 in the Westminster Confession of Faith. All which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life. It’s interesting that they wrote it this way. Under the name of Holy Scripture or the Word of God are now contained. What do you think they meant by that? Now contained. The Old and New Testament.
66 books. So two questions. As we consider that list of 66 books, what do we have and how do we get it? What do we have and how do we get it? So many of you are holding a Bible in your hands or in your laps right now. What do we have? What’s in your lap or in your hands right now? What is it? The Word of God, okay, that’s good. That’s true, it is, but what is it?
I mean, I’ve got the version at home that we’re gonna be using in heaven, it’s called the New American Standard. That’s a joke. Here’s the English Standard Version. Are there two different words of God? What do we have? Translations. Oh, translations, okay. So there’s a three-part sub-question to question one, what do we have? So we have copies of copies of copies. That’s what we have. What do we have? Do we have what Moses wrote? What did Moses write? First five books. And we call that sometimes the Pentateuch, yeah? Or Jesus refers to it as the? Yes, that would be the Hebrew word. It’s called, begins with an L, the law, right?
Do we have them? There are five of them. Do we have any of them? Yes, no? Meaning, do we have the original? That’s what I’m asking. What about the prophet Joel? Do we have his writing? No. No. OK. Where are Paul’s original letters that he sent to the saints in Rome, to the church at Thessalonica?
Hopefully we’ll study that a little bit more this morning. To Timothy, where are they? In a cave somewhere, not found yet. Could be. It could be. But we haven’t. If they do exist, we don’t have them, right? So that’s the issue, right? We don’t have any of the original writings.
What were they written in? What language? Hebrew and Greek, a little bit of Aramaic, right? So what did the divines mean when they wrote, under the name of Holy Scripture, the Word of God written are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these? What do they mean by that? What do we have?
As they listed the 66 books in letters, they were not referring to the original writings. We’ve already established that this morning, right? Everybody agrees with that. To our knowledge, this is your point, to our knowledge, none of the original writings exist. Not one. And if they do, we don’t have them. We can’t find them, right? So we don’t have the original. So what do we have?
You lost me a little bit. Are you presuming that we could potentially discover new manuscript? Are you saying that there is that potential? Well, I’m saying that we probably haven’t searched everywhere in every place, but here’s this written from the Berean Patriot, whoever that is.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise, we don’t have the original documents that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Paul unwrote. They were originally written on either papyrus or possibly parchment animal skins, which have long since degraded with time and use. I think that’s an accurate statement. Is it possible that God somehow preserved some of the original writings and we haven’t found them somewhere?
I suppose it’s possible. I suppose it’s possible. But what I am saying is that as of this date, to my knowledge, which is absolutely limited and very fallible, we don’t have any of the original writings. We just don’t have them. So it’s important, and I wanted to start this lesson this morning with an understanding of what we do have. What we do have.
We have copies. And so the originals did exist at some point in time, yes. Moses wrote them, and I would assume as the Israelites are entering into the promised land, they had all five books, original. And then they started to copy them, and copy them, and copy them, and copy them. And so we have copies. Copies of copies of copies of copies of copies.
Again, this is from the internet. We have fragments, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered, I don’t know, 40, 50, 19, 40, 19, 50 in that vicinity, I think, where these copies of copies of copies of copies of copies were preserved and unearthed. And so that’s what we have. In addition to some other things, fragments. Fragments of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies. And this is apparently from Lamentations, chapter one, one through 18, how lonely sits the city that was full of people.
Obviously an English translation of the Hebrew. But what they’re saying then is you’ve got these fragments and they piece them together. to come up with what we have today, these 66 books. We have a lot of copies. So can we rely upon what we have today, I’m jumping now, can we rely upon what we have today as being the word of God? Yes. Yes, okay. That’s the right answer. But the question is, why? Why can we rely upon this? Why can we trust in this as being the word of God? And there are several answers to that question.
But the one I’m going to get to right now is kind of very physical. Ancient manuscripts. Now, I don’t know all these. And in fact, if you were to ask me if I read any of these, I would have to say no. But these are ancient manuscripts. And so what the person who put this together is doing is comparing what we have as extant copies of copies of copies of copies of ancient manuscripts to what we have today for just the New Testament.
And so you see here, where is, what’s his name? Homer’s Iliad. Earliest manuscript, 415 BC. How many manuscripts, how many copies of that do we have? 1,900. And that’s pretty well known, right? Compare that to the copies that we have of the New Testament, or fragments, 195 AD, earliest manuscript, 5,856.
God has preserved his word in a supernatural way such that we can have confidence that what we have is really, really, really, really, really close to the original. Okay? So even though we don’t have Luke’s original writings, which books did he write? And? Yeah, too. We don’t have them. At least as far as I know, we don’t have the original.
But we do have copies of copies of copies of copies, lots of copies. And so this should give you confidence, at least physically, from a physical perspective, that what we have is really, really, really, really close to the original. New Testament was written In the first century AD, there are, this is from Creation, Institute for Creation, whatever. There’s some 25,000 early manuscripts in existence. Now, he’s not talking about those fragments. The 6,000 is what they’re talking about in terms of fragments. 25,000 would be including other things in addition to the fragments. Many being only recognizable fragments. That’s a thick 6,000.
Being Greek texts, and others being early translations of Greek New Testament. Earliest textual evidence we have was copied not long after the original. So again, men took the original, made a copy of it, and then others made copies of the copies. The letters that Paul wrote were to circulate. So how did they do that? They didn’t do it by email. They made copies of copies of copies of copies of copies. Lots of copies, lots of fragments.
God preserved His Word. There are many more writings of the church fathers quoting sections of Scripture. So we could reconstruct the entire New Testament from their writings alone. Church Fathers, Origen and Tullian, they wrote a lot. And they’re writing in their works quotations from the Word of God.
And so what they’re saying here is, you could just take the early Church Fathers’ writings and reconstruct the New Testament from that. And so they had better fragments and copies than we have today. That’s the idea. So that’s what we have. These are the early church fathers, all their writings. And just from that, you could reconstruct the New Testament. So that’s what we have. So how do we get from these fragments, right? You saw just a picture of one portion of Lamentations from the Dead Sea Scrolls. How do we get from that to this? How do we get there?
It’s called textual criticism. So we’re going over this because I think it’s important for all of us to know what we actually have in our hands today. and that we’re actually standing on the shoulders of a lot of people who’ve done a lot of work, what’s called textual criticism, to get us to where we are today. We’re standing on the shoulders of so many who’ve done a lot of good work. Now there are some who did textual criticism in not a good way.
We’re not gonna talk about that this morning. We’re gonna talk about the good way. So we have fragments of copies and references from the early church fathers. So how do we get these 66 books and letters if we only have fragments of copies of copies of copies of copies?
That’s the question. Textual criticism is the study of the copies of a written document whose original, the autograph, that’s how you’d speak of the original, the autograph, is unknown or nonexistent. for the primary purpose of determining the exact wording of the original. That’s textual criticism. So those people who worked in and continue to work today in textual criticism are seeking to establish what the original wording was.
That’s how we have what we have today. Because as, you know, as we, I don’t know if you played the game, I forgot what the name of the game is called. It’s kind of the telephone game in elementary school, where you give one person a message, and they pass it on to the next person, and they pass it on to the next person, and you see what comes out at the end.
And it’s usually not the same, right? And so that same thing happened as people were making copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of And so the textual person, the person who is dealing with textual criticism is taking a looking and comparing those variants and coming to a conclusion from the variants and from what they know, and it’s a science, to determine what they believe the original actually was. Okay? That make sense? That’s how we get to what we have before us today.
The practice of textual criticism is not criticizing the Bible. Now actually, some actually used it that way. Some folks who are participating in this came to conclusions that Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch and all kinds of strange theories. That’s not what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about those who really did it the right way.
If not criticizing the Bible is trying to recover the Bible’s original text, a textual critic is not someone who criticizes the Bible, but someone who tries his best to reconstruct the original. That’s the idea. So the work of textual criticism. There were millions of man-hours spent in cross-checking the manuscripts.
There remains only 1% of all New Testament words about which questions still exist. Only 1%. No questionable passage contradicts any Bible teaching. So as we’ve gone through this, we, those whose shoulders we’re standing on, as we’ve gone through this process of textual criticism and identified the variants and tried to come to solutions, there’s not a single doctrine in scripture which is called into question. Not a single one.
And so what I’m hopefully trying to do today is just to encourage you, to build you up. And what we do have is reliable, is really, really, really, really close to the original, as best we can figure at this point in time. And there’s no dispute within the variance about a doctrine of God.
There’s more evidence for the Bible’s authenticity than for any literature of antiquity. Textual analysis begins with a historical investigation, beginning with the latest documents and working backwards. As evidence develops, the data is evaluated against other sources. The record is then checked for consistency of information, and the claims are analyzed as if it were a legal case looking for credible testimony with cross-examination. There’s an enormous amount of evidence for the authenticity of the biblical manuscripts.
So that’s what’s happened. As we come to worship every single morning, that’s what we’re relying upon. Well, we’re relying upon the strength of God who has preserved his word. And he’s preserved it through these means. textual criticism. Here’s an example of a variant, and we may read it this morning from 1 Thessalonians chapter 2.
But we prove to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. There’s a textual variant, apparently, for the word gentle. Most manuscripts read gentle. Some read little children. And one manuscript reads horses. Okay, somebody got something wrong. It’s easy to explain these variants when you see how the words are spelled in Greek. So here are the first three words of the verse in each textual variant. Gentle. This is the English spelling of the word gentle, which appears in one of the manuscripts. Here’s how you would spell in English, little children.
And so there’s only one difference, an N added. And here’s how you’d spell horses. I’m having a little difficulty getting there, but you’d have to look at the Greek and see how close each of those are. And so you can understand how somebody would make a mistake in copying, copying, copying, copying, and how, as we translate into English now, we’re getting some strange stuff. I think the right English translation is probably gentle. So that’s just an example of the variants, and that’s the work of textual criticism.
All right, the canon. So all of this relates then to Westminster Confession Chapter 1, Paragraph 2, which lists The canon, what is the canon? One of the terms used in describing the books that belong in scripture is the word canon. That’s what we have in paragraph two of Westminster Confession chapter one. It’s a list of the canon.
This comes from the Greek word canon, meaning read or measurement. A canonical book is one that measures up to the standard of Holy Scripture. I’m not sure that helps me, but that’s what he wrote. Thus, the canon of Scripture refers to the books that are considered the authoritative Word of God. The canon, then, would be a list of books that have been recognized as the very Word of God.
The canon. The formation of the New Testament canon began in the early part of the second century A.D. The earliest list was drawn up in Rome in 140 A.D. by the heretic Marcion. Although his list was not authoritative, it did demonstrate the idea of a New Testament canon was accepted at that time. meaning a list of books that at least Marcion thought, this is the word of God. AD 140. So just want to make sure, as you understand, the New Testament, the Old Testament didn’t just come to us in one piece.
66 different books. I’m not sure how many different authors. that might be contested, 40-some, over about 1,400 years. So it didn’t come to us one lump sum. One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the church because they were formally included in a canonical list.
What is Mr. Bruce saying there? The scriptures are self-authenticating. And they’re already in common use. So what, yes, what Dr. Bruce is saying is that it’s not the church that authorizes this book as being the Word of God. It’s not that the Church puts its stamp of approval and says, OK, we will accept this as the Word of God. That’s not it. That’s what he said.
On the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa at Hippo. Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397. But what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities, but to codify what was already the general practice of these communities. Even that, being the general practice, does not constitute an authorization of these books as the Word of God. Now, why am I saying that? Chris already said it. You’re saying this because there’s this notion that the church, like you said, certifies. Yes. It signs off on it, which is not true. Right. That’s it.
God is the one who has authorized His Word. So we have to be careful. That’s all I’m saying. What are we relying upon? The biblical canon is a collection of scriptural books that God has given, God has given, his corporate people, which are distinguished by the divine qualities, reception by the collective body, and their apostolic connection, either by authorship or association. That’s Michael Kruger. Again, we do receive, but our reception of God’s word as God’s word is not an authoritative act.
Does that make sense? This is from Josephus. Who is he? I should have had the dates that he lived. I apologize for not having them. He lived a long time ago. And this is what he wrote, or somebody translated what he wrote, William Winston. We have but 22 books containing the history of all time. He’s referring to the Old Testament.
Books that are justly believed in, and of these, five are the books of Moses, which comprise the law and earliest traditions from the creation of mankind down to his death. From the death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, the successor of Xerxes, the prophets who succeeded Moses, Wrote the history of the events that occurred in their own time in 13 books. The remaining four documents comprise hymns to God and practical precepts to men. Josephus, we would not, I don’t think we’d think of Josephus as a believer. He was a history writer. And so he’s writing about the Old Testament.
Way back, and I wish I had the dates. I don’t know when he wrote. Oh, there you go. Thank you. So early on, Josephus is writing about the canon, Old Testament canon. So questions about what we have? Yes, sir? Yes, I I don’t know for sure. I think most of the textual criticism has been done I think probably there are some who are still doing it, but when we have translators they’re working off of particular text that have been established and And so it depends on what text they’re working off of for the New Testament. There are different philosophies.
So there’s the majority text for the New Testament. And what that sought to do was to say, OK, we have, let’s just say we have 10 copies of this particular passage. And the majority of those, meaning 8 out of 10, have it this way. And so we’re going to go with that. the majority text, and that’s also called the Byzantine text.
There are others, the Textus Receptus, which was used to write the King James Version, and so that’s a different philosophy, that’s a different method of putting together the New Testament. Some will really adhere strongly to one or more of those philosophies to the extent that some will say, well, King James only, because of the philosophy, the way that the New Testament text that they used to come up with the English version. So today, I think maybe primarily people are selling books, but there are certainly new translations coming out all the time. of the Bible, but they’re not going back and doing textual criticism like putting fragments together. They’re relying upon somebody else who has already done that hard work, and they’re using some sort of Greek New Testament based upon some sort of philosophy coming up with their translation.
But changing things from time to time, yes. So any other questions on what we have? OK, now, how do we get it? How do we get the Word of God? Under the name of Holy Scripture, the Word of God written are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testament, which are these, again, the 66 books listed, all which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith in life. So now we want to focus on that one word, inspiration. What does it mean to be inspired in the biblical sense?
Okay, from God? Yeah. Am I inspired? Good. Good answer. No. No. No. Inspiration in the biblical way has a very particular meaning. An artist can be inspired to paint a picture. Somebody can be inspired to write a book about Cape Cod. That’s a different use of that same word. Right? In the biblical sense, it has a unique meaning. And you just referred to a second Timothy. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. I believe that word inspired here in the Greek is used one time.
I think that’s right. Correct me if I’m wrong. Webster’s 1828 version in the third definition of the word inspire writes this, to infuse or suggest ideas or munitions, I’m not sure what that word means, supernaturally. That’s the idea. It’s wonderful that Webster’s 1828 is wonderful because it really is biblically based many times.
To communicate divine instructions to the mind, that was what was happening in each one of the authors who wrote the Bible. God communicating instructions to the mind of the inspired men who wrote the Bible. In this manner, we suppose the prophets to have been inspired and the scriptures to have been composed under divine influence or direction. So men became pens in the hand of God. God didn’t negate their humanity. They didn’t become robots.
And so as we read Paul’s letters, Paul comes out in the letters. They’re kind of difficult to read. Peter recognizes that. Sometimes Paul is hard to read, right? And then there’s Paul coming out in the letters, but does that mean that they’re not inspired? No. Paul’s words that he wrote, he’s inscripturating the very words of God. But he wasn’t a robot either, right? And so Paul’s personality comes out just as Peter’s does.
Who wrote Hebrews? I don’t know. Whoever wrote it. His personality is, in a sense, coming out through that. He’s not a robot, but he is inspired of God. He’s inscripturating the very word of God. God is using him as an instrument in God’s hand to communicate to us, and to those to whom he was writing initially, whoever that was, the very word of God.
That’s inspiration. The Greek word represented, this is from B.B. Warfield. The Greek word represented by it, meaning inspired, the English translation, and standing in this passage is an epithet or predicate of scripture. Warfield is saying that you can take scripture, the word scripture, put an equal sign by it, and on the other side of the equal sign put inspired, the predicate.
That’s what he means by that. Though occurring here in the New Testament and found nowhere earlier in all Greek literature is nevertheless not hitherto seemed doubtful of doubtful interpretation.” Warfield is saying, there’s really no issue as to how to understand this word, even though it’s only written here. Everybody’s understood it up to this point in time.
And so he’s commenting on a fellow who wrote about this time when Warfield was writing, who takes a different track. And so Warfield is now writing against this one who is determined to figure inspiration differently than everyone else has up to this point in time. I guess I really like that slide. All Scripture inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction. Oh, I know what I’m doing. I’m going backwards. You all should help me. Second Peter. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
That’s a definition of inspiration. The word isn’t used, but this is a definition. Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. That’s inspiration. That’s what the writers of the Confession are communicating, that the 66 books are all inspired. That’s how we go from God speaking to us having the Word of God in our hands. This is from Beaky and Smalley’s Reform Systematic Theology.
I put my words in thy mouth, Jeremiah 1.9.
The same expression was used when God commanded Moses to tell Aaron what to say to the people, Exodus 4.15. And Job told the woman what to say to the king. The picture communicates the idea that God told the prophet exactly what to say, and he said exactly that. The prophet became the mouth of the Lord. I put my words in your mouth.
Inspiration. Again, from Beacon Smalley, God mysteriously governed their thinking and writing process. It is a mystery, isn’t it? How did that happen? It’s all God, I don’t know. without violating their humanity. The result was the word of God, exactly what the Holy Spirit intended them to say. Now, Beacon and Smalley take a little bit of exception here.
The verb inspiro means to breathe in, and we see that in Genesis 2.7, as God breathed into the nostrils of Adam, he breathed life into him, right? That’s the word. Which is a somewhat unfortunate rendering because Paul’s Theopneustos does not contain the idea of God breathing into an already existing Bible, much less into the prophets, but indicates that God breathed out the scriptures themselves. They’re saying this is God breathed.
They’re making a fine distinction here. producing them by his breath. We should speak of the Bible’s spiration, breathing out. But this is awkward in English. I thought that was a good point to make, but a nuanced point. 2 Samuel 23, the spirit of the Lord speaks by me. His word is on my tongue. Spirit of the Lord speaks by me. That’s inspiration.
In Acts chapter 1, brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David. Again, that idea of God directly speaking. He’s using men, he’s going through men, but he’s speaking through the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. Again, in Acts 3, but what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that His Christ would suffer, that He thus fulfilled.” The words of men will just never come to fulfillment. The words of God will always come to fulfillment.
Yes, sir? So, I mean, you do have to make the distinction that some of these prophets were, in some cases, Scripture is dictated to people, prophets. Are you saying that When these prophets speak the exact word, they are being dictated by God. And in other instances, they’re being inspired in or being carried along by the Spirit, using their own human personality to form their writings. Are you saying that?
Yeah, I think that’s what Beaky and Smalley are saying. I think that would be my understanding, that men are not robots. And yet, God is speaking through these particular men, but he’s not vacating their personality. I would say there’s no distinction amongst any of the books or any of the genres. There is some human addition to what he’s human personality. I wouldn’t say there’s addition. I wouldn’t use that word. I would say that the personality of the individual is coming out.
So Psalm 51, this is the word of God, right? The spirit speaking through David. And yet this is David’s experience. I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Those are God’s words coming through David, and yet it’s part of David’s experience. And so God is using David’s experience to proclaim his word. It’s impossible to separate David’s experience from the word of God, and God is using that to communicate to us himself and his son. And so David transgressed with Bathsheba. And as a result of that, God uses that, that sin, to work through David to communicate to the people of that time and to us God’s very word. But it includes David’s experience. And I think that would be the case with each and every writing.
You know, think of Isaiah in chapter six as he goes into the throne room. This is the word of God. This is God speaking. And yet it’s Isaiah’s experience. In that year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. Isaiah’s experience, his vision. is being recorded for us, and yet it’s being recorded for us as the Word of God. Above him stood the seraphim.
One called to another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Woe is me, for I am lost. I’m a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
Isaiah’s experience is now included in the very Word of God. God is using Isaiah’s experience to communicate to us the sinfulness of men that need to be cleansed. But Isaiah is the one who utters these words, woe is me, at the beckoning call of the Spirit. Woe is me. I’m lost. He couldn’t say that without the work of the Spirit.
So, it’s both, but it’s all the Word of God coming through fallible men, but inspired men. I’m sorry, ma’am, yes. Look, God knows intimately each and every one of us. Yes. He knows what we think, how we are, how we interpret things. Yes. So wouldn’t he give the words that would be appropriate for that prophet to say? Yes, he did. Because he knows that prophet. He knows the prophet.
He has molded and shaped them in the womb of their mothers. Jeremiah, in the womb of his mother, was ordained to be? Yes. Revelation chapter 1, the beginning of Revelation. Yes. It says really the same thing. Yes, please. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants the things that must take, soon takes place. He made it known by sending his angel to the servant, John. So his revelation comes through Job. Yes. Yeah. Even Balaam had to speak in the words of God, whether or not he wanted to. Yeah. I couldn’t do anything else. He wanted to. That’s why the donkey had to squish him a little bit.
The book’s commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration. What are the divines doing here? They’re writing against the Roman Church, right? In a sense, this is a polemic, writing against. Not being of divine inspiration are no part of the canon of Scripture. Sola Scriptura. This is coming out here in the Confession, Sola Scriptura. And therefore are no authority in the Church of God nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.
Yes, sir. So we read Jude this week, and so it has part of the Apocrypha in it, as I read it. The commentary I read on that, well, it’s still authoritative in terms of that sense. I mean, the writer moved in his personality by the Holy Spirit to include some of these terms from the Apocrypha, but that does not legitimize the Apocrypha. So in a sense, you know, the writer being inspired is taking some of that to make his argument, which he’s inspired to, in his personality, in his academics, or whatever, sign off at the Apocrypha.
Is that correct? I would take that position, yes. Yeah. Just like Paul refers to the poets in Greek, in Greece. It doesn’t mean that… There you go. It doesn’t mean that poetry now becomes inspired. He’s just trying to communicate with and to those who would have accepted that poetry as really something who never knows. That’s how he was, he was sharing the word of God with them using that.
This is subparagraph four. The authority of the holy scriptures for which it ought to be believed and obeyed depends not upon the testimony of any man. This is what we’re getting at originally. Is it the church that we rely upon to say that these are the 66 books? No, no, that was the point. No, and that’s the point they’re making here in subparagraph four. for which it ought to be believed, obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man or the church, but wholly upon God, the author thereof, and therefore is to be received because it’s the word of God.” And so that’s how you make a distinction between the Apocrypha and the 66 books. The Apocrypha is not authoritative. The Apocrypha is not the word of God. The 66 books are, but we’ve got to make that distinction. So how do you know? And this will actually be the subject of another class, but how do you know if a book or writing is inspired? How do you know what is the Word of God? Because the Bible tells me so. OK. Well, that’s right. It’s self-authenticating. Yes. But then you’d have to trust the Lord Jesus. That’s good. That’s a good point. John chapter 10. I think this is the key. This is my personal opinion. You can differ with me. That’s okay.
To him, the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he’s brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him. Why? For they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him. But they do not know the voice of strangers. I think that’s how you know.
I think that’s how you know these 66 books are the voice of Jesus Christ. And as you pick up the apocrypha, you can use it for historical purposes. And you read the apocrypha. If you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you think you’re going to come to the opinion This is not Jesus speaking to me. And so that’s a very simple answer, but I think it’s the biblical answer. How do you know? Is it the voice of Jesus or not? Do you know it or not?
This particular Paragraph two ends this way. It’s the rule of faith and life. The Bible, 66 books, all by the inspiration of God, is the rule for faith and life. What does that mean? I just have three passages here which kind of define that. Leviticus 18, you shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules. If a person does them, he shall live by them. I’m the Lord. Rule of faith and life.
Luke 16. This is the rich man and Lazarus. You might hear this later on this morning. And he said, I beg you, Father, to send him to my father’s house, meaning Lazarus, the one who had died and is now in the bosom of Abraham, he wants the rich man, who’s now in hell, wants Abraham to send Lazarus, who’s dead, to his brothers who are alive to warn them, hey, there is a hell, you know, don’t come here. He wants a dead man to rise from the dead and go speak to his brothers who are alive. So that’s what he’s asking. I beg you, Father, to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment. But Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them, the rule of faith and life. Moses and the prophets.
That’s what this passage is really all about. And then finally, 2 Timothy, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Rule of faith in life. I think that’s what it is. Can you trust the Bible? Yes. I would say time for questions, but according to this clock, I think there might be one minute. Is that correct? So you’ve got one minute for questions. Or one minute for prayer. Okay. Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. Oh, Lord, we thank you for convicting us that we can trust it. We can trust the word of Christ, that we can listen the voice of Christ throughout your word. And so we ask now, help us, lead us, guide us by it, that we might live in a way that is pleasing to you, not because we’re pleasing, but because Jesus is. Help us now prepare our hearts to come before you in worship. Work powerfully by your spirit, Lord. We ask all this in Jesus’s name. Amen.