[0:00] My show, ye old, I give, It makes me wiser than my own, For it doth ready to get Thine Almighty.
[0:32] Your version of my home For the Meriah In every one who has and may not thirsty, they receive you.
[1:12] I am those of my interest. For I am never ready to keep all I call my name.
[1:42] My feet from which I live, I am in His heart.
[2:01] I know the mountains of the earth, For love has fallen in love.
[2:20] I am sweet and good, My days, O Lord, Are all my words of truth.
[2:39] Yea, I do find them sweet and good, The money through my heart.
[2:59] I through my peace and soul, And I do, To understand me yet, I will be there for every way I am as words, With all my heart.
[3:33] I am going to hear God's word as we have it in the second epistle of Paul to Timothy, Chapter 3.
[3:51] 2 Timothy, Chapter 3. We will read the whole chapter.
[4:03] This know also, That in the last days, Perilous times shall come, For men shall be lovers of their own selves, Covetous, Booster, Proud, Blasphemous, Disobedient to parents, Unthankful, Unholy, Without natural affection, True speakers, False accusers, Incontinent, Fierce, Despisers of those that are good, Traitors, Traitors, Heady, High-minded, Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, Having a forum of godliness, But denying the power thereof.
[4:49] From such turn away, For of this sort are they which creep into houses, And lead captive silly women laden with sins, Led away with diverse lusts.
[5:02] Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Janeth and Janbrace withstood Moses, So do these also resist the truth.
[5:15] Men of corrupt minds reprobate concerning the faith, But they shall proceed no further, For their folly shall be manifest unto all men, As theirs also was.
[5:29] But thou hast fully known my doctrine, Manner of life, Purpose, Faith, Long-suffering, Charity, Patience, Persecutions, Afflictions, Which came unto me at Antioch, At Iconium, At Lystra, What persecutions I endured!
[5:51] But out of them all the Lord delivered me! Yea, And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, Shall suffer persecution! But even men and seducers, Shall walk worse and worse, Deceiving and being deceived!
[6:08] But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, And hast been assured of, Knowing of whom thou hast learned them! And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, Which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, Through faith which is in Christ Jesus!
[6:26] All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, And is profitable for doctrine, For reproof, For correction, For instruction in righteousness, That the man of God may be perfect, Throughly furnished unto all good work.
[6:48] Turn to verse 12. Hear, Lord, my prayer, And to the voice of my request attend. In troublous times I'll call on thee, For thou wilt answer send.
[7:03] Lord, there is none among the gods That may with thee compare, And like the works which thou hast done, Not any work is there. All nations whom thou made shall come, And worship reverently, Before thy face and lay, O Lord, Thy name shall glorify.
[7:22] Because thou art exceeding great, And works by thee are done, Which are to be admired, And thou art God thyself alone. Teach me thy way, And in thy truth, O Lord, Then walk will I, Unite my heart that I thy name may fear continually.
[7:43] O Lord, my God, With all my heart to thee I will give praise, And I the glory will ascribe unto thy name always. These verses, Psalm 86, Hear, Lord, my prayer, And to the voice of my request attend.
[8:01] Hear, Lord, my prayer, And to the voice of my request again, In promise, I'll hold on thee, For the wind has sent.
[8:39] Lord, there is none among the Lord, That it with me hold me, And I love works which thou hast done, Not any word here.
[9:17] All nations who love each other, And worship are ready, In hope I will, In hope I will, For the Lord, And yet, I'll glorify, Because of our heads in here, our words by the Lord.
[10:11] When John, Julia, our love, our God, I shall alone.
[10:30] Teach me the way I am, I have good, O Lord, then walk with I.
[10:48] Yet I in my heart, now I like it, live here on him of peace.
[11:06] O Lord, my God, with all my heart, to thee I will give grace.
[11:26] I find the glory with the sky, unto thy name always.
[11:44] Amen. For a short time can we turn to the passage of Scripture that we read for the purpose of our service this evening.
[11:58] And we'll read again 2 Timothy chapter 3 at verse 15. Well, we can read from verse 14 to the end.
[12:10] But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and hast been assured of them, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
[12:30] All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
[12:50] But over the last few prayer meetings, other than the ones that we've had other speakers, we've been looking at the five solas of the Scripture, the five solas of the Reformation, as it is called, or the doctrine of, the biblical doctrine of redemption.
[13:25] These five are by faith alone, by grace alone, through Christ alone, by Scripture alone, and to the glory of God alone.
[13:44] Five solas of the Reformation. Tonight we're looking at the fourth of these, Scripture alone.
[13:56] Sola Scriptura. And most of us, I'm sure, are familiar with the shorter Catechism.
[14:08] You know the first Catechism, Man's Defend is to Glorify God, and to Enjoy Him Forever. That is followed with the second and third questions, which both have to do with the Scriptures.
[14:27] What rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him? The answer, the Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.
[14:47] What do the Scriptures principally teach? The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.
[14:59] The fact that such questions and such a topic comes so soon at the beginning of this book that is full of important doctrine and important lessons for the believer should tell us of the import that is placed upon the Word of God.
[15:31] And while we can say with the Apostle Paul that God speaks to us through creation, He speaks to us through providence, the primary means by which He communicates to us through His own Word.
[15:56] And I suppose we have to not only insist that He is able to speak to us through creation and providence, but we need His Word in order to be able to interpret what He is saying to us through His works of creation and providence.
[16:25] And theologians point out to us that God acts through His works of creation, He speaks to us through creation.
[16:41] He speaks to us through creation, and He speaks to us through providence, but His own Word is necessary for us to understand it.
[16:53] If you read, for example, Psalm 19, the Psalmist day recognizes the fact that God's handiwork speak.
[17:10] The sun, the moon, the stars often in the Psalms, we are brought face to face with the voice of God in creation or in providence.
[17:27] There is no speech nor tongue to which their voice does not extend. Their line is gone through all the earth, their words to the world's end.
[17:38] In them He set the sun, attend to a bridegown, forth like goes from his chamber, as a strong man does, to run his race to rejoice. And so on. God's law then is perfect.
[17:54] And He speaks to us through His Word, through His perfect law. And while all of these things are means by which we can identify the handprint of God, yet it is necessary for us to have His Word to bring light to bear on what God is actually doing.
[18:22] So I want us to begin with what this text before us plainly sets out. It's a text I'm sure you're familiar with, a passage that lays emphasis on the Word of God.
[18:36] And the first and most basic truth is that God Himself is the author of Scripture. There are many authors, but I suppose author would be the wrong word to use to describe God, because every apostle, every prophet through whom God has spoke, are strictly speaking, the author of the Scripture that they bring to our attention.
[19:15] But it is as they are directed by the Spirit of God that they are able to speak. There's a great mystery surrounding the medium of communication that God uses.
[19:34] They are many. They are varied. They are clearly diverse in background, in culture, and in the language that they use.
[19:50] And yet God communicates through them, and it is His Word that they bring. To Old MacLeod, when he lectured us in the college, he systematically worked his way through the Westminster Confession.
[20:09] This was one thing that he laid emphasis on, the diversity of the authors. Different in character, different in skill.
[20:24] Some were learned, some were schooled, some were authorities on what they knew of God's Word themselves.
[20:36] Others were less so, and yet the Word they spoke was God's Word, and God has seen foot to bring His mind to light through their Word.
[20:49] The Apostle Peter tells us, There was no prophecy of the Scriptures as of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
[21:09] Seems clear, unambiguous, that no matter who they were, no matter where they were, no matter what their circumstances, what God meant them to communicate to us, and I mean to us, not just to their own generation, or to their own people, but to us, because the Word of God contains the message that they needed to convey.
[21:41] The beginning of Hebrews 1, God who had said three times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the Father by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son.
[21:58] And that I readily acknowledge is something that is deeply mysterious. How the identity of the person can be preserved and all that makes the character of that person remain what it is, and yet at the same time God speaks to us, to them.
[22:28] It's a miracle of miracles. And we cannot, we cannot, we cannot, I suppose, unravel it other than remember, and we need to remember it, that Scripture itself is what interprets Scripture for us.
[22:56] It's what helps us understand what Scripture is all about. And when the Scripture tells us that God is speaking to us through these different men and at times women, then we must believe that to be so.
[23:15] And at the same time, we can also remember and remind ourselves that while alongside the manner in which God speaks to us, He speaks to us through providence, as we said, He speaks to us through His creation.
[23:39] The Hebrew writer says that He speaks to us finally by way of His Son. Now, what do you make of that statement?
[23:50] Is it simply that what Christ had to say to us that it is restricted to that? I don't think it is.
[24:02] It is every bit as much as what He said, as much as what He did, or what He did, as much as what He said. Because God is speaking to us through the activity of the Son, through His miracles, and through His life, and through His conduct, and finally through His sacrifice.
[24:27] But alongside that, He spoke. Alongside that, He instructed and talked. Alongside that, He left us clear and lucid words of Scripture that we have to believe.
[24:47] When the disciples listened to the Lord, they listened to somebody that they believed spoke authoritatively.
[24:59] Even His enemies had to conclude that this man did not speak like the scribes or the Pharisees, but he spoke differently.
[25:13] He spoke with a clear authority that they recognized. But along with the words of the Old Testament Bible, which is all that the disciples had, when Christ spoke, they acknowledged Him as having the same authority as the Bible that they had.
[25:39] They gave Him the same place that the Word of God had because they recognized that He was different in that respect.
[25:51] He had authority over their lives and His Word had the same influence as the Scripture and they acknowledged it as such.
[26:05] We mentioned Dr. MacLeod in one of his most recent books. He talks there, summarizing the Word of God in this way.
[26:18] The Bible, he says, itself is one of God's mighty acts, a key moment in the great succession of redemptive events such as the Exodus, the incarnation and the resurrection.
[26:34] It is a visible, tactile miracle which, with gathering clarity and fullness, from Genesis to Revelation, tells of a God and of a love such as human imagination could never have conceived.
[26:59] It is an enduring divine footprint of the landscape of creation and it says, God was here. It gets a remarkable summary of how we are meant to understand what God's Word is and the place that it all to have in our thinking.
[27:23] But let's go back for a minute to the Reformers. We have the Word of God, we have the declaration that God's Word makes to us concerning itself, that it is a Word like no other, that it has authority like no other, it is God that gave it and it has the stamp of God upon it, the seal of approval of God and it is to be considered as the last word with regard to what we do.
[27:56] We will go back to the Reformers. Very often when you're discussing theology of any description, when you're thinking about the many doctrines that are contained, for example, in the various confessions of faith, what you discover is that these statements that are confessional are a reaction to the historical setting in which these theological declarations were composed.
[28:35] They are reacting to, they are describing to us the scriptural truth and where error has crept in and that truth is overlooked or that truth is in some way distorted.
[28:58] And if we think of these five solas, they are in that respect a reaction to a misunderstanding, deliberate or otherwise, of what the scripture actually says.
[29:18] And when it comes to the scripture, what you find was the Reformers were reacting to an attitude to God's word that saw God's word as incomplete and the need was for something to be put alongside God's word, something with God's word.
[29:49] And in the Roman Catholic tradition, what you found developing over centuries, I suppose, in many respects, was that alongside the scripture, yes, they gave credence to the scripture as authoritative, but what they taught was that alongside the scripture, the traditions of the church should be given equal credence.
[30:24] and there was a third element to the doctrine that they taught, not only that the church and its traditions, which were formulated over many centuries, should be given a place so that what the church decided should at times overlook or overtake what the scripture said.
[30:55] There was the magisterium, which is really simply this, that the papal succession which demanded that the pope had went all the way back to the apostles, the first pope being recognized as the apostle Peter.
[31:26] So with papal succession, the authority that they understood to have been given to Peter as the rock upon which the church was built was vested in every descendant of that first pope, as they called.
[31:47] And as the pope, they were able to, each one was able to speak ex cathedra with the authority of God.
[32:00] And whatever they declared, whenever they declared it, it had the same power or the same impetus as the word of God.
[32:12] Now the reformers saw this as iniquitous. they saw it was a complete departure from what God's word taught.
[32:24] And the traditions of the church, whatever they were, however they came about, some of them could have been good, most of them were not.
[32:35] But they had no place in determining what God was saying or what God was doing. And what we have to understand is this, that the scripture itself tells us that it is able to make us wise unto salvation.
[33:01] And it goes as far as to say that the scripture alone is what is able to make us wise unto salvation. nothing else, no human agent is able to make us wise unto salvation.
[33:15] Everything necessary for the salvation of a soul is contained within God's word. All the information that you need, all the truth that is necessary for a sinner to come to a knowledge of their sin and the means by which sin is to be dealt with, is contained within the scripture.
[33:37] And if scripture is necessary to make us wise and scripture alone is sufficient to make us wise, then there is no need for anything beyond that.
[33:52] And the attempts to put any human agent such as a pope in the place that God alone possesses is wrong.
[34:04] The canon of scripture, we are told, is closed. Genesis to Revelation, the entirety of God's word is contained within these pages.
[34:16] If you go back to the Old Testament, there is a solemn warning given in the book of Deuteronomy to anyone who dares to add to God's word.
[34:30] You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.
[34:44] And that is added to by the words of the divine John at the very end of the book of the Revelation. I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book.
[35:00] If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things which are written in this book.
[35:22] He which testifies these things says, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so come Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
[35:34] Amen. Now some people have suggested very weakly that the words that are spoken there are really applicable to the book of the Revelation.
[35:48] But God himself through the apostles and through the prophets has distinctly marked out his word and that there is a difference between what he says and what man says or what man says that he says when it is error and when it is contradictory.
[36:15] What we need to remember is this. Everything that we need to be saved is declared in God's word. everything that we need to glorify God is declared in his word.
[36:32] And the Bible while we can say that it does not contain everything that is true about God there is no book written that can do that.
[36:44] God is infinite. God is infinite. God is all that God is and there is nothing that is created that can contain the uncreated God not even his word.
[37:03] But it doesn't mean that it is in any way destabilizing that word or making it ineffectual because everything that God means us to understand about himself he has been pleased to reveal to us.
[37:25] If there are things about God that he has chosen not to reveal to us then the wisdom of God lies behind that hiding.
[37:36] If he has kept it hidden if he has not revealed it then that is his will and we should be content with that truth. Nor does the Bible tell us everything that Christ ever said or everything that Christ ever did.
[37:57] The word of God tells us plainly that there isn't a word written that could contain everything that he has done or said.
[38:07] It's as plainer as that. But it does contain all that is necessary for our salvation and that has to take precedence over what we feel or what we think or what we have experienced which is very often what you find people come up with and what they come up with is a contradiction more often than not of what God has been pleased to reveal in his word.
[38:43] Sometimes the disciples were confronted with inexplicable words from the mouth of Christ himself but just because they were inexplicable to them just because they couldn't understand what he was saying just because there were truths that he declared that they were not capable of understanding at that moment didn't make them any less a truth.
[39:12] But there was never nobody ever can say legitimately that God has kept hidden from them anything that would keep them from becoming a child of God that would keep them from being saved.
[39:38] Nobody can say that yet it is something that very often you might hear people excuse themselves with that there are things that they didn't know.
[39:50] It's not that they didn't know them but they did not seek them out. Search the scriptures for you think that they speak of me.
[40:02] We know that the scriptures think they speak about God and speak about his son and speak about the means of salvation and everything that is necessary for us to understand who he is how he is doing it will never be insufficient for for for our salvation and for us to be fully cognizant of everything that Christ wishes us to know on the path to everlasting life.
[40:43] Scripture alone you don't need anybody to tell you that there are things and it's always crept into the church remind yourself of that that there have been prophets who appeared on the scene of time and they profess to know things that only they know and they have this knowledge from God and nobody else has it and God has endowed them with that well they may think that our current current I don't know how you would describe it you read and it's always sensational people who have gone to heaven they've died and gone to heaven and come back they were on the surgeon surgeon's table and they had a disembodied experience and they explored the streets of heaven and they came back and what they had to tell well you might not find any of it in the scripture and if you don't find it in the scripture you have no warrant to believe it because
[42:09] God's word is alone what you need for the salvation of your soul and for the knowledge that is necessary of God and God has restricted himself to what he has contained within his word and he hasn't deprived us of anything that would leave us lacking that which is from the spirit and is contained within the word of truth hear our prayers and fill our hearts with such truth pardon sin
[43:46] Christ Jesus Amen h ZANG EN MUZIEK
[45:02] The End The End The End
[46:32] The End The End The End
[48:02] The Deacons Court will be meeting immediately after the service. May grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit rest and abide with you all, never and always. Amen.