All right, good morning.
Our children are dismissed to their classes.
! Let's open our Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 18.
! Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 9.
I'm thankful for the opportunity to preach this week and next week.
We're going to do a little two-week miniseries on the doctrine of Scripture, on its truth and authority.
This week, Deuteronomy 18. Next week, 1 Kings 13.
That'll be a strange story about a false prophet and a donkey and a lion and some crazy stuff that goes on.
So make sure you're back next week for that.
Let's open in prayer and ask for the Lord's help.
Father, as we open the book of Deuteronomy, we are aware that this is your holy word.
And we need your help to understand it.
And we pray that your Spirit would press upon us its truth, its relevance.
I pray that you would help me to be clear and for all of us to be attentive.
And we ask these things in your name. Amen.
Amen.
Everyone, Christian, non-Christian, past, present, future, wants to know things.
We want to know.
We want to know about the world around us.
And that's because knowledge is a kind of power.
It helps us make decisions.
It gives us perspective.
It can sometimes give us influence over other people and over outcomes.
It creates opportunities for us.
And we want our knowledge to be reliable and true.
And so we look to sources of knowledge that are accurate.
I grew up watching Dan Rather, the anchor of the CBS Evening News.
I know some of you are too young to know him.
Dan Rather spoke with authority.
He had gravitas.
He was one of the anchors of the big three networks.
And when he spoke, people listened.
But then, on September 8, 2004, in the midst of the U.S. presidential election,
Dan Rather reported on documents that had been discovered that called into question one of the candidates in the U.S. presidential election,
George W. Bush, that called into question his National Guard service.
And these documents said that he had disobeyed orders and that his record had been embellished.
But almost immediately after the broadcast was over, the authenticity of those documents was questioned.
The font and the spacing in the documents were not those of a typewriter of the 1970s.
And the source of the documents admitted that he had lied on how those documents had come into his possession.
And a few weeks later, after everything had been sorted out, Dan Rather came on the air and he apologized and stated that he should not have run the story.
But it was too late.
His reputation was ruined at that point.
He could not recover from this serious and significant blow to his credibility.
And a few months later, he stepped down as anchor of the CBS Evening News.
And the next year after that, he was fired altogether.
He had been an anchor, a serious anchor at CBS for 24 years.
So let's do some math.
There are 260 weekdays in a year times 24 years.
That means, and we'll be conservative here on our estimate, that means that Rather anchored the news about 6,000 times.
And if in a given newscast he anchored about 10 stories, that means that over the course of his career he had anchored 60,000 stories.
And yet, when he got one wrong, it destroyed his credibility.
Now, it was a big one.
It was a big one because it was tied up with the presidential election and questions about media bias and things like that.
But one faulty story out of 60,000, and people would not take him seriously any longer as a source of knowledge.
If we have high expectations for a 30-minute newscast on CBS, how much more do we require a reliable word from the Lord?
A word that teaches us about how and why God made us.
A word that teaches us what God values and what he hates and how we're supposed to treat each other and what we're supposed to prioritize in our lives.
A word that warns that we are actually born into a hostile relationship with God and what he has done in the gospel to solve that problem and what we must do to have that solution applied to us.
It's huge.
The stakes are high.
It is critical.
We have to be able to depend on the word of God.
In the Bible, God acknowledges that a word that is authoritative also must be reliable.
And he addresses this issue through Moses in our passage today, Deuteronomy 18.
If you, again, have your Bible, why don't you follow along with me.
In the context here, Moses is giving a series of instructions to the people of Israel as they're right on the edge of going into the promised land.
And Moses calls for obedience and he warns against the consequences of disobedience.
And he reminds them of the resources that God has given to them to remain faithful, God's presence and his power and his word.
And Moses has been an incredible prophet.
He has been God's spokesman who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
And he's the one that led Israel in the wilderness and performed incredible miracles.
He was the first one to function as a prophet of the Lord.
He received the word of the Lord and then turned and taught it to the people.
That's what a prophet does.
And he was, in fact, unique among all the prophets of the Old Testament because Exodus 33 tells us that God spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks with his friend.
But then that raises a question for the Israelites.
What are we going to do when Moses is gone?
And here in Deuteronomy 18, Moses answers that question.
And as he looks forward to Israel's entrance into the promised land, he contrasts two fundamentally different sources of knowledge.
Two potentially fundamentally different sources of special knowledge.
Verses 9 through 14 describe the practice of the pagan nations around them.
And then verses 15 to 22 describe God's way of revealing knowledge to his people.
So let's look at each of these halves in turn.
How does this passage inform the way that we think about the truth of the Bible?
Is the Bible reliable and trustworthy in whatever it claims?
We call this the doctrine of inerrancy.
The doctrine of inerrancy.
The inerrancy means that whatever the Bible claims is true.
Whatever the Bible claims is without error.
So let's look at the first section in Deuteronomy 18, 9 to 14.
When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.
Verse 10.
There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering,
anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens,
or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a necromancer, or one who inquires of the dead.
For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.
And because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you.
You shall be blameless before the Lord your God.
For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune tellers and to diviners.
But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.
Moses begins by anticipating that the way the nations gain divine knowledge is different from that of Israel.
But notice in verse 9 that these aren't just alternate ways of gaining knowledge.
They are abominable practices.
They are incompatible with God's character, and they're deeply offensive to him.
These rituals provide opportunities for the gods to speak to the people through nature or through physical objects.
One example of this is that the priests of the nations would take a goat, or a lamb, or something like that,
and they would pray over it, and they would perform some kind of a special ritual over it.
And then they would slaughter it, and they would cut it open, and then they would look at its organs.
They would look at the liver, and they would look at the kidneys and the lungs,
and they would say, oh, what do we see here?
Are these normal, or is there any discoloration?
Anything abnormally enlarged or misshapen?
Because the expectation was that by looking at the organs of this animal,
this was the opportunity for the God to speak.
The God could communicate to them through these means.
He mentions in verse 10 and 11, divination, fortune-telling, omens, sorcery, mediums, necromancy.
And notice that Moses does not say here that these things don't work.
In 1 Samuel chapter 28, King Saul asked a medium to bring up Samuel from the dead, and then he came.
I mean, I don't know what to think about this.
My grandfather in Ohio was a farmer, and when he needed to find sources of water in the field,
he would take a stick, and he would walk around the field, and then the stick would all of a sudden dip.
And he'd say, oh, I'll dig here for water, and there was water there.
When my dad was a child, the cousins would gather around the farm table, and they would chant.
True story, absolutely true story.
They would chant, and the table, the heavy oak kitchen farm table would levitate.
One half of it weighs about an inch or two off the ground.
And then the kids would ask the table questions, and it would tap.
These things work.
They really do.
But what they all have in common is that they are attempts to extract information from the divine world.
They are at the initiative of the people.
The people decide what they want to know and when they want to know it.
They are in the driver's seat of this knowledge.
And they all assume many different sources of gods and voices.
There is no overarching authority here.
Instead, there's all this conflicting information that needs to be sorted out.
Because one person learns one thing in this ritual, and one person learns this thing,
and maybe they're coming from different gods, and it's all under human control.
And it's usually used to support human agendas and to strengthen those people who are already in power.
To strengthen the position of the king, or to strengthen the position of the priesthood, or something like that.
And these sources of knowledge are alive and well in other parts of the world.
In Africa, in Asia, South America.
When I teach at the seminary in Liberia, and we talk about these kinds of issues,
the people are like, well, yeah.
People do this kind of thing all the time.
This is the nature of religion.
Of religious practices, right?
We construct religion to control the situation, to try and figure out meaning for our lives,
to try and gain knowledge for ourselves.
And we want a divine word.
The temptation is to have a divine word that is under our control.
That doesn't demand too much of us,
but that hopefully we can use to benefit ourselves.
And God says in the first part of this chapter,
the people of Israel are not allowed to go to these sources of truth and knowledge.
Look at verse 14.
Moses says,
But as for you, the Lord has not allowed you to do this.
The people of God belong to the Lord.
His word is the only legitimate authority,
and he will speak when he wants,
for his own purposes,
and then he expects his people to obey.
Because he wants good for them.
But how is God going to speak?
Well, let's look at the second half of our passage in verses 15 to 22.
Verse 15.
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you,
from your brothers.
It is to him you shall listen.
Just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly,
when you said,
Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God,
or see this great fire anymore, lest I die.
And the Lord said to me,
They are right in what they have spoken.
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers,
and I will put my words in his mouth,
and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name,
I myself will require it of him.
Verse 20.
But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name
that I have not commanded him to speak,
or who speaks in the name of other gods,
that same prophet shall die.
Verse 21.
And if you say in your heart,
How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?
When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord,
if the word does not come to pass or come true,
that is a word that the Lord has not spoken.
The prophet has spoken it presumptuously.
You need not be afraid of him.
In contrast to the nations,
with their various and frantic attempts
to extract knowledge from the divine word,
the Lord has a gracious gift for his people.
The institution of prophecy.
Moses says in verse 15,
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me.
Moses had access to the presence of God.
He had received God's word and delivered it to the people.
He mediated between God and his people,
and so he will serve as a pattern.
And the singular here,
God will raise up for you a prophet like me.
It's a generic singular.
It means many prophets, right?
Prophets like me.
God is going to use prophets like Moses
to reveal himself to the people.
He's not going to use magic.
He's not going to use divination.
And the word order at the end of verse 15
signals an important contrast.
Look what it says at the end of verse 15.
It is to him you shall listen.
Not to the magicians and diviners.
You will listen to the true source of God's revelation,
the prophet,
and the word that God has spoken.
God has provided only this one source
of divine knowledge.
In verse 16,
Moses refers back to Horeb,
which we also read in our Bibles
is called Mount Sinai.
He goes back to Mount Horeb,
the original gathering of God's people.
It says,
when you said,
verse 16,
let me not hear again
the voice of the Lord my God
or see this great fire lest I die.
See, at first,
it sounds like the people
don't want to hear from God.
But actually,
they did want to hear,
but they knew
that because he was holy
and they were sinful,
they could not speak with him directly.
They're like,
I don't want to hear the voice of the Lord
because I'll be killed.
He's holy.
They're sinful.
It's too dangerous
to be close to God.
And in verse 17,
God agrees with them.
He says in verse 17,
they are right in what they have spoken.
In God's holiness,
he cannot just have
a direct conversation
with the people.
He needs representatives.
He needs spokesmen.
So,
God says he will raise up
a prophet like Moses.
Look at the second half
of verse 18.
I will put my words
in his mouth
and he shall speak to them
all that I command him.
This is like a job description
for the Old Testament prophet.
Unlike the nations,
it is God
who will take the initiative.
He will decide
when to speak.
It's on his terms.
Unlike the nations
who control the rituals
and perform the rituals
in order to try and
get the God to do
what they want him to do,
the prophet obeys.
The prophet obeys
and serves God.
And unlike the nations
who have this
plurality of deities
all speaking different things,
there's the God of thunder
and there's the God of fertility
and there's the God of the sea.
No, no.
Instead,
there is one God.
There is one God
and his word
is unified
and coherent.
He says,
these are going to be
my words.
And because
they are the actual
spoken words
by the one true God,
they are authoritative
and binding
on the people.
They must
be obeyed.
God will hold
his people
accountable to that word
because it comes from him.
Look what he says
in verse 19.
Whoever will not
listen to my words
that he shall speak
in my name,
I myself
will require it of him.
So,
the stakes are high.
If it is a word
from the Lord,
it must be
believed
and obeyed
no matter what.
But because
the stakes are high,
because the word
from God
is absolutely
authoritative
and absolutely
binding,
the people
have to know
that it actually
came from God,
right?
They can't
get something
false
and then
find themselves
bound to that.
It has to be
known
that
this comes
from God
because it's
the source
of the word
that gives it
its authority.
And in verse 20,
Moses acknowledges
a potential problem.
There is going
to be a temptation
among people
in the community
to fabricate
the prophetic word
because if the word
has that much
authority
in its binding,
well,
let me make
something up
and then everyone's
going to do
what I say.
there's going
to be a temptation
in the community
to invent it
or to make it up
and then attribute
it to God
and say,
hey,
you'll never guess
what God told me.
And Moses says
in verse 20,
but the prophet
who presumes
to speak a word
in my name
that I have not
commanded him
to speak,
why,
why is that
a temptation?
Why is that
a temptation
to fabricate
or invent
a divine word?
Well,
I mean,
from a purely
theological standpoint,
you might want
to make the God
say what you prefer.
You want a God
who acts like you
and thinks like you.
You want a God
who agrees with you.
You don't want a God
that has any rough edges
or says anything
that you find offensive
or demands
too much of you
in your life.
or you might invent
a word of the Lord
for influence
and power.
If you control it,
if you create
the divine word,
then you can shape
people's values
and control their actions.
They have to listen
to you, right,
because
the authoritative
word of God.
Or you might make up
a divine word
to excuse yourself
from wrongdoing,
to redefine
right and wrong.
To say,
well,
I know everyone
thought that was wrong,
but let me tell you,
God told me it's okay.
This is the question
in the Garden of Eden
in Genesis chapter 3
when the serpent says,
did God actually say
you shall not eat
of any tree?
There's always a temptation
to invent a word
from the Lord
that supports
our own behavior
and beliefs.
the stakes
are high.
And so God says,
if anyone does this,
if anyone invents
a word from the Lord
or fabricates
a word from the Lord
that I did not
actually speak,
that same prophet
shall die.
The prophet
who invents a word
and attributes it
to me
when I didn't
really speak it,
that prophet
shall die.
It cannot happen.
You cannot allow
people in the community
to invent something.
The people
in the community
of Israel
cannot be expected
to obey a word
that was just invented.
The source
of the divine word
is what gives it
its authority.
So the people
have to have confidence
that it really came
from the Lord.
But that
raises a question.
How do we know?
Someone can just
claim to be a prophet.
They can say,
guess what?
I received a word
from the Lord
and here's what
you all have to do.
It's that easy
to fake it.
It's super easy.
So how are the people
of Israel
supposed to know
if it's a genuine
word of the Lord
or not?
Well,
Moses answers
that question
in verse 22.
When a prophet
speaks in the name
of the Lord,
if the word
does not come
to pass
or come true,
that is a word
that the Lord
has not spoken.
If the prophet
speaks in the name
of God
on his behalf
and claims
that the divine word
came from God
and if that word
does not come true,
then God
did not speak it.
If it does not
come true,
it cannot be
from the Lord.
It must be
fabricated
and invented.
This is based
on an assumption,
right?
It's a pretty good
assumption that God
never gets things
wrong.
Humans get things
wrong.
Humans who invent
or fabricate
a supposedly
divine word
get things wrong
but not the Lord.
He bats
a thousand.
He has a perfect
record.
And notice here
that it does not
specify the nature
or the seriousness
of the error.
It does not say,
well,
if it's a really
important prophet
who spoke it.
Or if it's
a prophetic word
that concerns
a key doctrinal
issue,
then it matters.
It doesn't say that.
It says,
any time
the prophetic word
does not come true,
God didn't say that.
It doesn't rank
the prophetic word
into categories.
Well,
these are more
important aspects
of God's word.
These are less
important aspects
of God's word.
It's a test
that only falsifies.
It only falsifies.
It doesn't,
now,
unfortunately,
right,
if it comes true,
you don't know.
If it comes true,
it could be a coincidence.
It could be,
even a false prophet
can guess
and get things right
sometimes.
But if it ever
is shown to be false,
you know it's false
because God never
gets things wrong.
And if you discover
that the word
is not accurate
and therefore
it did not come
from God,
then it is not
authoritative.
He says,
just disregard it.
Don't worry about that.
He says at the end
of verse 22,
the prophet has spoken
it presumptuously.
You don't need
to be afraid of that.
So,
Moses has just
described for us
two potential sources
of a divine word here.
two sources
for a word
that comes
from the divine realm,
that comes from
outside of our
natural world
and outside of our
experience.
The first
is utterly human.
It might be obtained
by the practices
of the pagan nations.
It's characterized
by human initiative
and control
and manipulation.
Or,
it might be
attributed to the Lord,
but it is not authentic.
It is invented
or fabricated
to serve
the interests
of the false prophet.
That's one source,
the human source.
The second source
is actually
the Lord,
the God of Israel.
He speaks
at his own initiative
and on his own terms
to a prophet
of his own choosing.
And that prophet
serves as a spokesman
repeating the word
of the Lord faithfully.
And these are the only
two options.
These are the only
two possible sources.
And not only are these
the only two possible
sources of the prophetic word,
but these are the only
two possible sources
of Holy Scripture
that we have
in our Bible.
The prophetic word
that is here
described for us
in Deuteronomy 18,
the prophetic word
of Moses
and David
and Jeremiah
and Amos
and Isaiah
and Daniel
and Luke
and Paul
and John
were written down
over time.
That prophetic word
was given by God
and written down
over time
and published
in the books
of our Bible.
And either
the words
that we have
in our Bible
are of a human origin
and the men
who wrote those words
are just simply
doing their best,
they're just trying
to write something
kind of inspiring
for us
and they're just
trying to articulate
a convincing faith
but they're writing
out of a very
limited perspective,
a very limited
historical context
and they're just
kind of doing
their best
to come up
with a plausible
religion
or
this is the word
of God
and it has
its source
and its origin
in God
and if it's
a human source
then those people
in history
that wrote the Bible
are going to get
some things right
and some things wrong
and in some cases
they're going to have
a perspective
that doesn't really
hold up very well
over time
but if it's
from a divine word
then it has
its source
and its origin
in God
and it's rooted
in his character.
Listen to what it says
in 2 Peter 1
in the New Testament.
No prophecy
of scripture
no prophecy
of scripture
comes
from someone's
own interpretation
for no prophecy
was ever produced
by the will of man
but men spoke
from God
as they were carried
along
by the Holy Spirit.
So whatever
Moses is teaching us
here in Deuteronomy 18
applies
to how we think
about our Bibles
and how we think
about scripture today.
Deuteronomy 18
gives us
three links
in a chain.
Three links.
the accuracy
of the word
indicates
its divine source
and the divine source
is what establishes
its authority.
Or let's flip it around
and make it negative
right?
The way that
Deuteronomy 18
puts it.
The text
is invalidated
when it errs.
And an errant word
must have
a merely human source
and a merely human source
has no authority
and must be disregarded.
Its accuracy
indicates its source
and its source
indicates its authority
or if we work backwards
if it errs
then it must be human
and if it's human
it has no authority.
Why should we
pay attention
to something like that?
Dan Rather
anchored
60,000
stories
but when we
learned that
one of them
was fabricated
we're like
okay
we're done
with you.
So what is
the main point
of Deuteronomy 18?
If we were just
going to say
let's just summarize
this in one main point
I think it's this
God's word
is authoritative
because it was
spoken by him
and we know
it was spoken
by him
because it does
not err.
It does not
make mistakes.
This is what
we mean
by the doctrines
of inspiration
and inerrancy.
God's word
is authoritative
because it is
spoken by him
and we know
it was spoken
by him
because it does
not err.
Now
does this mean
that the Bible
says everything
that it could say
on a given topic?
No.
But it means
that whatever
the Bible
does claim
is always
accurate.
It never
gets things
wrong.
Now let's
take a couple
of minutes
then and
reflect on
what we
lose
if we
compromise
this view
of Scripture.
What if
we were to
say well
I think
the Bible
does sometimes
make mistakes.
I don't think
it always
gets things
right.
I'm not
sure
it is
entirely
from God.
What do
we lose?
Well the
easy answer
if we
just get it
directly from
Deuteronomy 18
is we
lose the
authority of
Scripture.
If the
Bible is not
accurate
then it
doesn't come
from God
and if it
doesn't come
from God
then it
doesn't really
have any
authority over
us.
But I think
we can break
that down a
little bit
and so let's
talk about
three
might as well
do three
let's
just talk
about three
quick things
that we
lose if
we compromise
our doctrine
of Scripture.
Number one
without
inerrancy
and the
authority of
the text
we lose
authentic
revelation.
Sometimes
people say
that the
historical
details of
the Bible
are just
trivia.
It doesn't
really matter
if the
Nile
actually
turned to
blood
in the
book of
Exodus.
It doesn't
really matter
if food
fell from
the sky
in the
form of
manna.
It doesn't
really matter
if the
Israelites
conquered
the
promised
land.
That's
history.
The important
thing is
that the
Bible gets
theology
right.
That we
learn the
truth about
ourselves
and the
truth about
the gospel.
That's what
really counts.
In fact I
had a
professor in
grad school
that said
that.
He said
the Bible
isn't
factual
but it's
true.
Maybe the
way that
literature is
true.
It speaks
something true
about my
heart but it
gets a lot
of things
wrong.
But the
problem with
that view
is that the
Bible unlike
other ancient
and contemporary
religious texts
anchors what
it claims in
history.
If the
Bible's
historical
claims are
wrong then
it means that
human authors
are just kind
of doing their
best.
They get
some things
wrong here
and there.
And if
human authors
are making
theological
claims about
God and
what he's
like it
also means
that they're
just sort
of doing
their best.
They're kind
of guessing.
I wonder
what God
is like.
This is what
I think.
The stories
of the Bible
tell us that
God is
powerful because
he actually
allowed the
Israelites to
cross the
Jordan on
dry ground.
It tells
us that he's
holy because
he actually
killed a
man named
Uzzah for
touching the
Ark of the
Covenant when
it started to
fall onto the
ground.
It tells us
that God is
gracious because
he actually
showed mercy
to the people
of Nineveh
when Jonah
preached to
them.
So the
history is
the anchor
and the
foundation for
the theological
claims.
And another
reason that the
Bible's historical
claims are
important is
that predictive
prophecy in the
Old Testament
that has been
fulfilled in the
short term gives
us confidence
about long-range
prophecies.
In other
words, when
Isaiah gets a
prophecy right in
his own time
period or maybe
a hundred years
in the future,
then it builds
our confidence
that when he
talks about the
new heavens and
the new earth
and God's
ultimate justice
and the kinds
of things that
Pastor Mike was
praying about in
that prayer of
lament, it
means that God
can actually do
that, that he
actually will do
that because we've
already seen him
fulfill prophecy
in the past.
Second, without
inerrancy we
lose our objective
standard of
morality that is
anchored in God's
character.
Morality refers
to objective,
absolute standards
of right and
wrong that
never change.
And how do we
know the nature
and the contents
of God's
unchanging
character?
Well, we read
about it in our
Bibles.
Our Bibles tell
us about all
kinds of things.
The right
treatment of
women, the
death penalty,
the right
attitude toward
government
authorities,
right behaviors
of sexuality,
the right
treatment of
people who are
different than
you are, the
right attitude
toward the
poor, and
toward money, and
children, and
toward your spouse,
and toward issues
of justice.
The Bible talks
about all of
these things.
And in our
society there is
such a huge
variety of
perspectives on
all these matters,
right?
And some of
them are highly
contentious.
And unfortunately
some of these
values and
issues become
associated with
national political
parties, and
then we engage in
a kind of trench
warfare, wrangling
over them in a
power play.
And so these
values and
morality become
weapons that we
use to kind of
defeat the other
side.
Here's a
ridiculous example.
A number of
months ago, do
you remember
when we saw
this little
miniature culture
war arise over
Sidney Sweeney's
genes?
Do you remember
this?
Sidney Sweeney,
the actress, did
a marketing
campaign for
American Eagle
genes.
People on the
political left
complained that
American Eagle
was advancing
white supremacy
and eugenics
because they
said she had
good genes.
But then,
people on the
right saw an
opportunity to
do battle with
the left, and
so they defended
the ads.
And they said to
people on the
left, you're being
ridiculous.
And then people
on the left were
offended because of
the way that the
ads objectified.
And then, because
they had to do
battle with the
left, the people
on the right
praised the ads
for returning to
traditional standards
of beauty.
And they went
back and forth.
It was a ridiculous
situation.
It was not our
society's best
moment.
And here's what
happened.
What happened is
that because of
the demand to
just do battle
with the other
side, conservative
Christians, because
they were doing
battle with the
left, and they
were joining the
right, ended up
defending ads
that were sensual
and fairly
inappropriate.
They gave up
their traditional
values of sexual
morality in order
to win an
argument.
When we do this
kind of thing in
our culture, we
are just drifting.
We are just
reacting and
drifting and
engaging in a
kind of trench
warfare.
There is no
objective sense of
right or wrong.
There is just
winning.
There is just
power.
We stake out our
little claim and
we're going to
defend that spot,
even if it's
drifted from
what the Bible
teaches us.
And the
problem is that
ideas of right
and wrong shift
with cultures
over time.
There was a
time in
American history
when slavery
was accepted
and defended
by the majority
of the country.
And now it is
rightly condemned.
But now the
majority of our
country accepts
homosexual marriage,
a position that
was rejected by
both political
parties only about
30 years ago.
consensus,
social consensus
is not a
basis for
morality.
What we need
is an
authoritative
scripture that
does not
change teaching
God's enduring
will and values
that are in
effect no matter
what.
Scripture tells
us what is
right and wrong
in every
society,
in every time
period,
no matter
the circumstances.
But if we
do not hold
to the
doctrine of
inerrancy and
we say that
scripture just
kind of came
from people
who took
their best
guess,
then the
authors of
scripture are
merely adding
one more
perspective to
the chaos of
political battle.
I know what
this person
thinks,
and I know
what this
person thinks,
and here the
people in the
Bible, they
also have some
ideas too.
We'll see
what we like
the best.
No.
No, the
people in the
Bible have
written based
on God's
word, and
those values
are rooted in
the unchanging
character of
God.
Finally, number
three, without
inerrancy, we
lose our impulse
and basis for
evangelism and
missions.
There are
passages in the
Old and New
Testaments that
teach us that
we have a sin
nature that
separates us
from God and
prevents us from
being in a
relationship with
him.
Are those texts
reliable?
Or are they
only the opinions
of Isaiah and
Jeremiah and
Ezekiel and
Paul?
Jesus says in
John chapter
14, verse 6,
I am the way
and the truth
and the life.
No one comes
to the Father
except through
me.
Did Jesus
really say
that?
In Acts
chapter 4,
verse 12,
Peter teaches
that there is
salvation in
no one else,
for there is
no other name
under heaven
given among
men by which
we must be
saved.
Is that
true?
Is it true
that Jesus
is the only
way to solve
our problem
with sin?
If so,
then that will
radically affect
our relationship
to other
religions.
sins.
And it is
a powerful
motivation for
evangelism and
missions for
people who need
to know that
because there
is no other
way of salvation.
Jesus really
did command us
in Matthew
chapter 28 to
go and make
disciples of
all nations.
And in these
statements, the
authors of
Scripture are
not mistaken.
And therefore,
evangelism and
missions are not
only legitimate
things for the
church to do,
they are
absolutely
critical.
Because our
practice depends
on the
instructions and
we have to
know that the
instructions actually
came from God
and that they're
authoritative and
true.
So if we
compromise our
doctrine of
Scripture, if we
compromise on the
inerrancy of
Scripture, then we
not only lose
historical trivia,
you know, little
historical details or
geography or
science that may
or may not be
true, we lose
the divine source
of Scripture.
That would be a
word that the
Lord had not
spoken.
And then we
lose the
authority of
Scripture too.
We lose it all.
And we would be
left to sort
through the
statements from
news anchors and
political parties
and to drift with
the social consensus.
us.
And that is not
what God has
desired for his
church.
He has given us
his holy word as a
great gift to be
believed and obeyed
in all that it
teaches because it's
true and it comes
from him.
Let's pray.
Father, we pray as
we reflect on this
passage which is so
clear about the
source of your word,
about its accuracy,
we pray that this
would settle down
into our hearts and
give us an unshakable
confidence in the
authority and the
relevance of your
word for our lives.
It is so tempting
to focus on certain
parts of Scripture
that we like the
best, to ignore
parts of Scripture
that we aren't as
crazy about, to
reject parts of
Scripture that seem
offensive.
We need a settled
confidence that this
is our rock and our
anchor in all that we
do in our lives and
that your word is
true.
And we thank you for
telling us this this
morning.
In your name we pray.
Amen.