SPEAKER_01: Would you turn in your Bible to Second Timothy chapter two?
SPEAKER_01: As we come to the conclusion of our series on the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you all for joining me in this.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you to Jesse for allowing me to preach this series, which has been a burden on my heart for a long time.
SPEAKER_01: I hope it's been useful and helpful, and that's my prayer for this evening as well as we close out the series.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Timothy chapter 2, 1 verse, verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: So reads the word of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: He was strangled and then burned and then blown up for the sake of the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: William Tyndale, one of the great reformers who was the first to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English, lost his life because he wanted other people to read the Bible and really believe that they could.
SPEAKER_01: He was asked in one interchange what he thought about the difference between the Pope's laws and the laws of God.
SPEAKER_01: And the person he was talking to said, I would rather be without God's law than without the Pope's.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Fie upon the Pope.
SPEAKER_01: If God spares my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scriptures than thou dost.
SPEAKER_01: He was speaking to a priest.
SPEAKER_01: He was utterly committed to everyone in the English language having a Bible to read for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: To the degree that he became a fugitive.
SPEAKER_01: He went on the run.
SPEAKER_01: He went to Germany so that he couldn't be captured.
SPEAKER_01: It was illegal, according to the Roman Catholic Church, to reproduce the scriptures in English.
SPEAKER_01: He would smuggle Bibles back into England in boxes of soap underneath hay.
SPEAKER_01: And when he would get caught, he'd jump onto a riverboat and rush down to another town and just start working again.
SPEAKER_01: One time all of his work was captured and burned, and he just started right at verse one all over again.
SPEAKER_01: And eventually he was betrayed.
SPEAKER_01: The Catholic Church sent uh a spy, essentially, to befriend him and then eventually lead him into a dark alley where he was jumped and he was put in prison for 500 days, very little food and water, and at the end of that he was martyred.
SPEAKER_01: He was brought into an open square, tied to a stake.
SPEAKER_01: They put chains and rope around his neck and gunpowder all over his body.
SPEAKER_01: And then they strangled him, killed him that way first, and then lit him on fire, and then his whole body exploded because of the gunpowder.
SPEAKER_01: All because he wanted people to read the Bible and thought they could.
SPEAKER_01: His last words were, Lord, open the King of England's eyes.
SPEAKER_01: And three months, sorry, three years after that, King Henry VIII actually made it a law in the land that every church would have to provide a copy of the scriptures, the one he translated, to their congregates.
SPEAKER_01: God answered that prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Satan knows that the Bible is clear, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_01: He knows that the Bible is powerful because it's clear.
SPEAKER_01: Which is why all throughout human history he has endeavored to keep it away from people by various insundry means.
SPEAKER_01: One method that Satan has used is simply to convince us that the Bible is too hard to read.
SPEAKER_01: You started in the garden.
SPEAKER_01: God isn't good, you can't trust him, who knows what it means.
SPEAKER_01: And he's continued to today.
SPEAKER_01: Probably the most sustained effort on Satan's part to keep the Bible away from people, to keep God's word confusing, is the Roman Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_01: Its doctrine has consistently denied the idea of private interpretation of Scripture, and has in fact asserted shortly after Tyndale's martyrdom in the Council of Trent, quote, in order to restrain petulant spirits, it decrees that no one relying on his own skill shall, resting the sacred scriptures to his own senses, presume to interpret the said scripture contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church, whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, hath held and doth hold.
SPEAKER_01: In case that's too confusing, only the Roman Catholic Church is allowed to interpret the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: You are not.
SPEAKER_01: And the justification that's been made over and over and over again by the Roman Catholic Church, to Satan's delight, has been to quote Scripture itself to prove that the Bible is too hard to actually be understood.
SPEAKER_01: Second Peter chapter 3, verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: Peter writes, as Paul does in all his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their destruction as they do the other scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: The irony is how much of this verse has been twisted to make the Bible seem inaccessible.
SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you a question.
SPEAKER_01: In that verse, does it say there are things in them that are impossible to understand?
SPEAKER_01: There are things in them that you could only understand if you were Holy Mother Church.
SPEAKER_01: There are things in them that you needed a degree from a qualified seminary in order to understand.
SPEAKER_01: Is that what it says?
SPEAKER_01: No, it just says hard.
SPEAKER_01: Of course there are.
SPEAKER_01: Of course there are parts of Scripture that are more and less difficult to interpret.
SPEAKER_01: Hard doesn't mean impossible, it just means it might take some work.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, Satan has endeavored to twist those parts of Scripture, including Paul, to his own ends, to keep the Bible away from people.
SPEAKER_01: But I think there's something about Satan's half-truth, half-lie that probably you feel in a tangible way.
SPEAKER_01: That when you're reading the Bible for yourself in your devotional time in the morning, you do come across a text and you say, I don't know what this means, right?
SPEAKER_01: You are reading through Job and you're not certain, is this supposed to be true or false?
SPEAKER_01: This is like a good statement or a bad statement.
SPEAKER_01: You read about Moses and Zipporah and you're a bridegroom of blood.
SPEAKER_01: What am I supposed to do with that?
SPEAKER_01: There are texts in scripture, I'm sure, that's been your experience, it's certainly been mine, that when you read through it at first blush, you're not immediately fully understanding everything that's there, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so the Roman Catholic Church has said, well, because of that, the scriptures are too hard to understand.
SPEAKER_01: You can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: Let us do it for you.
SPEAKER_01: So often I think our response to this kind of attack is to retreat, essentially.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's postmodernism or the Roman Catholic Church or any other source of distortion, we get bullied into believing that we actually can't understand the Bible for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We really do need someone else to come down from on high and explain it to us.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I guess the Bible says that marriage is between one man and one woman, but maybe I could be wrong about that.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess that the Bible is clear about when life begins, and I guess the Bible says that Jesus is the only way to be with the Father, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: Good and godly people disagree.
SPEAKER_01: What am I supposed to do?
SPEAKER_01: G.K.
SPEAKER_01: Chesterton said, quote, what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place.
SPEAKER_01: A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth.
SPEAKER_01: This has been exactly reversed.
SPEAKER_01: We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication tables.
SPEAKER_01: I think we've actually arrived there.
SPEAKER_01: We're not on the road anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And so, for many Christians, their Bibles and their mouths stay shut.
SPEAKER_01: As some preachers have said before, the problem with Christianity today, the problem with preachers today is that nobody wants to kill us anymore.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing dangerous about what we're saying because it agrees with everyone.
SPEAKER_01: An unclear Bible is safe in an unclear world, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: A clear word from God is an atomic bomb.
SPEAKER_01: And here's my concern for us.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think anyone will die for a book that they cannot understand.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody will give their life to place a book that is as impenetrable as a diamond into the hands of others.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody would give their life for that.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, we've been called to do just that.
SPEAKER_01: As we've learned, the Bible is a clear book for a whole bunch of reasons.
SPEAKER_01: One is because God is good.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, because it's a book that requires obedience, and God gives us sight and hearts to obey through his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And we know that the Bible is clear even though we disagree, which is what we talked about last week.
SPEAKER_01: Disagreements don't hamper anything in the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It just means we disagree.
SPEAKER_01: We could still have convictions.
SPEAKER_01: But now you're faced with a hard text.
SPEAKER_01: I want to get as practical as I possibly can in this sermon, this last time together thinking about the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: You're faced with a hard text.
SPEAKER_01: Say you're there by yourself in the morning reading scripture, you're in a Bible study, and someone says, You're up to teach next.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the text, and it's that part where Peter says that Jesus descends into the depths and he's preaching to the spirits in prison and you're scratching your head.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to do with that.
SPEAKER_01: So what do you do when you're faced with a hard text in Scripture?
SPEAKER_01: Do you throw up your hands and say, Well, I guess, I guess it's just not for me to know.
SPEAKER_01: I guess I just need to be a specialist.
SPEAKER_01: I gotta get a degree if you're gonna understand that.
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_01: I think you just do what Paul says in 2 Timothy 2, verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: You do your best.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if anyone ever asks me, and they don't, but if anyone ever asks me, Dan, do you think that the scriptures are clear?
SPEAKER_01: I would just point them to this verse.
SPEAKER_01: This would be my one-verse answer to that question.
SPEAKER_01: The text says rightly handling, accurately handling is the meaning of it.
SPEAKER_01: Correctly handling, interpreting, and then using the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: Timothy is not some super apostle.
SPEAKER_01: He's a faithful pastor in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_01: He's got the Spirit like you and I do.
SPEAKER_01: He has no other special qualification, but Paul certainly seems to think that he has everything that he needs to rightly, correctly ascertain the truth of what's in this book.
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is also, in some way, a one-verse argument for how you do that.
SPEAKER_01: Paul shows us that clarity depends not only on the Spirit of God illumining our minds and giving us understanding, but also on means, on human, ordinary, basic, plain means that are accessible to everyone.
SPEAKER_01: The clarity of Scripture demands that we work at it.
SPEAKER_01: That has been the confession of the church for a long time, to include the Westminster Confession of Faith, which says the following: All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all.
SPEAKER_01: Yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and open in some place of Scripture or other that not only the learned, but the unlearned, and then listen to this phrase, in a due use of ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.
SPEAKER_01: A due use of ordinary means.
SPEAKER_01: So when I hear that, I'm thinking, how ordinary?
SPEAKER_01: When you say ordinary, what kind of ordinary do you mean?
SPEAKER_01: And I think Paul answers that for us in this text.
SPEAKER_01: What are the ordinary means by which we can know the truth of Scripture, by which we can rightly divide the word of truth?
SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you three.
SPEAKER_01: This will be our outline for this evening.
SPEAKER_01: The ordinary means to rightly read the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: And the first is this it's your mind.
SPEAKER_01: Your mind.
SPEAKER_01: What Paul is telling Timothy to do here is to use his brain, his God-given thinking muscle in an active way in order to rightly handle the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the verse.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Do your best.
SPEAKER_01: Do your best.
SPEAKER_01: Make great effort at take pains towards this end.
SPEAKER_01: Get up a mental sweat with this thing.
SPEAKER_01: To do what?
SPEAKER_01: To present yourself to God as one approved.
SPEAKER_01: As if God is testing you.
SPEAKER_01: God is looking to see if you are going to measure up to the standard that He has set for you as a pastor in a local church.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, work hard at that.
SPEAKER_01: What kind of work is it?
SPEAKER_01: Well, he says the object of the work is the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: So this isn't manual labor.
SPEAKER_01: This is mental labor.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, read and understand and explain rightly words and truth.
SPEAKER_01: That happens by our thinking.
SPEAKER_01: It's also implied by this word here, rightly handling, which so much is bound up in that little word.
SPEAKER_01: It's not used hardly anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01: It's used in Proverbs 3, chapter 3, verse 6, and a couple other places, but the basic meaning, the metaphor is of cutting a straight line.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's cutting a straight line in the land or on stone or whatever it is, the idea is it's cutting a straight line rather than a jagged or a crooked line.
SPEAKER_01: And metaphorically it became picked up to mean to cut a straight line, truth and error, to divide correctly between truth and error, which is probably why some of your translations say rightly dividing the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: That's the sense of it.
SPEAKER_01: It certainly includes for Timothy teaching the Bible, but it starts with the way that he reads it and understands it.
SPEAKER_01: He handles the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: And this is necessarily then a mental work.
SPEAKER_01: Rightly doing that involves thinking, thinking about it rightly.
SPEAKER_01: Mental sweat is required to rightly read the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Meaning, you should not expect that when you open up your Bible in the morning and you just read it at first blush, you will have all understanding.
SPEAKER_01: Should you?
SPEAKER_01: It might take some time.
SPEAKER_01: You might have to think about it.
SPEAKER_01: And this reality is argued for all over the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: Just up a couple verses in 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy 2, verse 7, Paul says, think.
SPEAKER_01: Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.
SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, when you do this very ordinary basic thing called thinking, God Himself supernaturally undergirds that very ordinary means to give you supernatural insight.
SPEAKER_01: That's incredible.
SPEAKER_01: But you can't just remove the thinking work from it.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't download spiritual truth into your mind absent any actual mental work.
SPEAKER_01: He requires that you think about it.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to show you this from a number of different texts.
SPEAKER_01: In 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 15, he tells him, speaking of the scriptures, practice these things and immerse yourself in them.
SPEAKER_01: Immerse yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Be in them, literally.
SPEAKER_01: Be inside of them.
SPEAKER_01: Let that be the world that you're living in, these truths.
SPEAKER_01: And if you go all the way back to the Old Testament, you'll see the same command put forward.
SPEAKER_01: Joshua chapter 1, verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that's written in it.
SPEAKER_01: Or meditate, to chew the cud, so to speak, of this idea in your mind.
SPEAKER_01: Let it roll around and steep in your thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Ezra is a model of this, Ezra 7.10.
SPEAKER_01: For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And we get this promise of blessing to the one who does that in Psalm chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night, all the time.
SPEAKER_01: He wakes up, he's thinking Bible.
SPEAKER_01: He goes to sleep, he's thinking Bible.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you get the truth out of it, is by thinking about it.
SPEAKER_01: And then just a handful of passages from Psalm 119 to underline this as well.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, verse 6, then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, 15, I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, 27, make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see the connection there?
SPEAKER_01: You want to understand it?
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to meditate on it.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to think about it.
SPEAKER_01: This is why one of the Puritans said, I would rather someone hear one sermon and meditate on it than hear 500 sermons and never think about it.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, verse 97.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, how I love your law.
SPEAKER_01: It is my meditation all the day.
SPEAKER_01: I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.
SPEAKER_01: You want to be smarter than the people who teach you?
SPEAKER_01: Think.
SPEAKER_01: Meditate.
SPEAKER_01: Put it in your mind and roll it around.
SPEAKER_01: How does this work?
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to think?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's self-explanatory, but in case it's not.
SPEAKER_01: Usually this takes the form of asking good questions and trying to answer them.
SPEAKER_01: So I'll give you an example.
SPEAKER_01: I came to 2 Timothy 2.15 this week and I see the phrase the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: The word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Is the word of truth just a reference to the gospel itself, or is it a reference to all of Scripture?
SPEAKER_01: Is it a reference to just apostolic doctrine or certain texts in Scripture?
SPEAKER_01: What is it?
SPEAKER_01: What's Paul getting at when he says the word of truth?
SPEAKER_01: And so I chased down different references, and there's some things that might make you think, okay, the word of truth is used in certain contexts where it just has to do with obedience.
SPEAKER_01: So maybe it has to do with the obedience of faith and having to do with the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
SPEAKER_01: But then if you turn to chapter 4 in the very same letter, you see Paul say, preach the word, and then verse 4, that people will turn away from listening to the truth.
SPEAKER_01: So he's equating here the truth and the word, and the word is the Bible, so I take this to be centered on the apostolic message, the gospel itself, but inclusive of all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Now, all I did was I just asked questions, right?
SPEAKER_01: Just asking questions and trying to answer it according to the Bible itself.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you think.
SPEAKER_01: And you want you want to know what's the best tool for thinking about Scripture?
SPEAKER_01: Memorizing scripture.
SPEAKER_01: The more you memorize it, the more it's just going to be on replay in your head.
SPEAKER_01: And then you just naturally think about it.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe even day and night.
SPEAKER_01: You meditate, you think.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of the students in here are like, no, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: I do enough thinking.
SPEAKER_01: My teachers are quizzing me all the time.
SPEAKER_01: I don't need to think anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Friend, this is the most important thing you could ever think about.
SPEAKER_01: This is what your mind was made to think about is the truth of God.
SPEAKER_01: This is why you have logic as a faculty.
SPEAKER_01: This is why you have reason.
SPEAKER_01: Is so that you can think about God.
SPEAKER_01: What a waste if all we ever thought about was school.
SPEAKER_01: What a waste if all we ever thought about was work, entertainment.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, we ought to do our best, work hard at thinking about the Bible so that we can rightly handle the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the very ordinary means that everyone, as it turns out, has in order to rightly understand the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Ordinary means to read the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: The second is this it's the church.
SPEAKER_01: You need your mind, but you also need the church.
SPEAKER_01: The clarity of Scripture as a doctrine does not mean that you by yourself should be the sole authority on everything in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody in church history, at least Protestants that I know of, has ever argued that the church is a bad idea.
SPEAKER_01: That you need only to open up the book and read it, and it's just you and Jesus, you'll be fine.
SPEAKER_01: God instituted the church for a reason.
SPEAKER_01: Teachers and pastors and fellow Christians, and you see this all over this letter.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 1, verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says, follow the pattern of the sound words that you heard from me.
SPEAKER_01: So, Timothy, the reason you have understanding to begin with about the scriptures is because I told it to you.
SPEAKER_01: As a fellow Christian, as an apostle.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 2, verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
SPEAKER_01: So find elders, appoint them, and then you teach them so that they can go teach other people.
SPEAKER_01: Like that's the design.
SPEAKER_01: There's supposed to be teaching going on in the church of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: That's not antithetical to the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It is a part of how we get to the truth of the clear scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: It is a glorious means that God has given.
SPEAKER_01: Or chapter 4, verse 2, he just says, preach the word.
SPEAKER_01: That's what a pastor is supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01: Preach the word because he wants to help people understand the text.
SPEAKER_01: Or chapter 3, verse 14, but as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from who you learned it.
SPEAKER_01: His grandmother and his mother, how they taught him the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: Parents have a powerful role to play in the lives of their children in teaching them about the truth.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mitigate against the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: This is just a means that God uses to reveal the truth that's really there.
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is all kind of bound up in this word worker.
SPEAKER_01: He says in the text, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed.
SPEAKER_01: Worker there could mean a number of different things.
SPEAKER_01: I think what he's going for is the idea of a craftsman, someone who makes wood or metal, and they're either approved by the person who they're working for, or they are ashamed of their work.
SPEAKER_01: And what's the work that Timothy is engaged in?
SPEAKER_01: Well, over and over and over again, Paul tells us in 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 11, command and teach these things until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and to teaching.
SPEAKER_01: Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.
SPEAKER_01: What is Timothy supposed to be doing?
SPEAKER_01: What's his work?
SPEAKER_01: He's a teacher.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul says, when you are working at figuring out what the text means so that you can teach it rightly, you might need some help.
SPEAKER_01: You're a help to other people.
SPEAKER_01: But you might need help as well.
SPEAKER_01: You see this also all throughout the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, verse 2, and we sent Timothy, our brother, and God's co-worker in the gospel of Christ, to establish you and exhort you in the faith.
SPEAKER_01: Timothy is supposed to go and exhort people, establish them, because he's a worker.
SPEAKER_01: Same basic word.
SPEAKER_01: Or go all the way back to Deuteronomy chapter 4, where Moses begins preaching to the people.
SPEAKER_01: He declared to you his covenant, he says, which he commanded you to perform, that is the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone, and the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules.
SPEAKER_01: From the beginning of Israel's life as a nation, God appointed teachers for them.
SPEAKER_01: And then you see this in Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: In the church, he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So the church is supposed to have teaching in it.
SPEAKER_01: What we're doing right now is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: This is a good plan.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't saying the Bible isn't clear enough to be understood, so you need people who have some secret knowledge to come up and explain it to you.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: All teachers are doing is getting up and saying, I did some mental sweat.
SPEAKER_01: Let me show you what I've seen.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see it too?
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
SPEAKER_01: The scriptures are still clear.
SPEAKER_01: Teaching is just another means of helping us see what's really and truly there.
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, parents have a powerful role in this with their kids.
SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy 6.
SPEAKER_01: And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
SPEAKER_01: You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
SPEAKER_01: Or Ephesians 6:4.
SPEAKER_01: Fathers, don't provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You're supposed to teach them parents.
SPEAKER_01: One of the verses that's quite often used to try to undermine the idea of the clarity of Scripture is Acts chapter 8 with the Ethiopian eunuch.
SPEAKER_01: You remember he's riding in his chariot and he's reading Isaiah 53, and he says, Philip runs up next to him and he says, Do you understand what you're reading?
SPEAKER_01: And he said, How can I unless someone guides me?
SPEAKER_01: And so the Roman Catholic Church has said, Aha, you see.
SPEAKER_01: You need someone authoritative to interpret the scriptures for you.
SPEAKER_01: Is that what that means?
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever needed help understanding something in your life?
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever missed something that somebody else saw and they could point out to you?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, in this instance, we're just talking about a guy who didn't know about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He had heard this testimony from Isaiah 53, but he didn't know is this guy talking about himself or is he talking about the Messiah?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what's going on.
SPEAKER_01: And so Philip says, man, I don't know where you've been, but let me tell you what just happened.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 53 just happened.
SPEAKER_01: And his name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: There's not a problem with the clarity of scripture here.
SPEAKER_01: This is just God's good means of instruction.
SPEAKER_01: Or a couple chapters later, in Acts chapter 15, you get the very first church council.
SPEAKER_01: They've got a big issue with circumcision.
SPEAKER_01: Do you need to be circumcised in order to be saved?
SPEAKER_01: So what did they do?
SPEAKER_01: Acts chapter 15, verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.
SPEAKER_01: They got together and they talked about it.
SPEAKER_01: They worked through it.
SPEAKER_01: And as we'll find out in a minute, they went to the scriptures to figure it out.
SPEAKER_01: So, fellow Christians are supposed to be a help to you in understanding the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: We look last week at Acts chapter 17, where Apollos understands the scriptures really well.
SPEAKER_01: He's mighty in the scriptures, but he doesn't understand everything, and so Priscilla and Aquila come along and they explain to him more accurately the way.
SPEAKER_01: That's how it's supposed to work.
SPEAKER_01: The church is supposed to be a blessing to us to help us understand the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: And I think for this, for us, this means both living and dead people.
SPEAKER_01: We have a glorious chorus of voices from all of church history.
SPEAKER_01: It's like one massive commentary on the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you have to read it with a discerning ear and eye.
SPEAKER_01: But all of church history is a way of helping us, even now, understand more of what God has already said and what he said clearly.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, there's other ways to be helped.
SPEAKER_01: You can take classes, you can read books, you can get Bible software.
SPEAKER_01: All of the Bible studies that you guys go to here at church, is that just one big, massive testimony saying God didn't say anything clearly enough for me to get it?
SPEAKER_01: Or is it saying we all love this book and we want to learn from each other?
SPEAKER_01: God has ordained the means of the church, his people, to help us understand this clear word.
SPEAKER_01: And so doing your best to present yourself starts with you thinking critically, meditating on the scriptures, but you continue on and you branch out from there.
SPEAKER_01: You start reading books or commentaries or asking friends or pastors, people for help.
SPEAKER_01: I remember when we were in California, there was a family who was homeschooling their kids, and one of their kids was about 10 or 12 years old, and he started asking the big questions.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Mom, how do I know that I can actually believe that the Bible's true?
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Okay, well we'll stop what we're doing for the day, we'll talk about that instead.
SPEAKER_01: And so they talked about it.
SPEAKER_01: And obviously she said, You can believe that the Bible's true, and made her case.
SPEAKER_01: Later that day, they had a friend of theirs, an older lady, come to the house and he asked her the very same question.
SPEAKER_01: How do I know that the Bible's really true?
SPEAKER_01: And this wise older woman looked at him and said, Well, what did your mother say?
SPEAKER_01: She said the Bible's true.
SPEAKER_01: And her answer was, Well, can you trust your mom?
SPEAKER_01: God has put people in our lives for a reason.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that we're all infallible, it's that we all can be helped.
SPEAKER_01: God has given pastors and teachers and parents and Bible study leaders and table leaders and all the rest to help us rightly handle the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: And so we ought to do our best to avail ourselves of that glorious means in the church.
SPEAKER_01: So, ordinary means to rightly read the scriptures are mind, the church, and third, this one's astounding, the book.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible itself.
SPEAKER_01: God has given us the Bible itself to help us understand the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: One way that this has been said throughout church history is it's been called the analogy of faith.
SPEAKER_01: You might hear it said analogia scriptura.
SPEAKER_01: The idea is that scripture interprets scripture.
SPEAKER_01: The scripture is its best interpreter.
SPEAKER_01: That one text helps you understand another.
SPEAKER_01: I get this in this text from Paul's use of the phrase, the word of truth.
SPEAKER_01: He does not say the words of truth, though he could, and that would also be appropriate.
SPEAKER_01: He says the word.
SPEAKER_01: There is a unity to the Bible because it is all spoken out by God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he says in chapter 3, verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: All scripture is breathed out by God.
SPEAKER_01: And so if all of Scripture has one author with a divine mind, with no error or contradiction, then that would mean whatever he said in one place must be consistent with whatever he says in another place, right?
SPEAKER_01: That he can't talk out of two sides of his mouth.
SPEAKER_01: So when you want to understand a scripture, you go to the scripture.
SPEAKER_01: When you find a particular passage very difficult or hard to understand, you go to another passage that talks about the same thing to help you understand it.
SPEAKER_01: All of Scripture is breathed out.
SPEAKER_01: None of it is contradictory.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, all of it can help you understand the rest.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what we see in Acts chapter 15.
SPEAKER_01: Acts chapter 15, at the Jerusalem Council, the way that they resolve the debate after they talk about it for a while is that James shows up and says, Hey, let me just quote a bunch of scripture to you.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Acts chapter 15, verse 15, and with this the words of the prophets, plural, agree, just as is written, after this I will return, I will rebuild the tent of David that's fallen, and on and on.
SPEAKER_01: He quotes four or five different passages of scripture and jams them all together.
SPEAKER_01: And his point is listen, if you want to answer one theological question that you have about circumcision or about Jews and Gentiles or whatever it is, just go to the text.
SPEAKER_01: And if that text doesn't do it for you, then go to another one that also talks about that.
SPEAKER_01: And then get all of them together and make sense of it.
SPEAKER_01: We just call this theology.
SPEAKER_01: Just thinking based on the scriptures of what it all means as a whole.
SPEAKER_01: Acts chapter 17, verse 2, Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, plural, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: So he goes to multiple texts in the Bible when he shows up in a synagogue to prove one thing that the Christ has to suffer and rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Or Acts chapter 17, verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Now these Jews, those noble Bereans, were more noble than those in Thessalonica.
SPEAKER_01: They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
SPEAKER_01: So they hear an apostle preaching, and they say, I'll check it against the text.
SPEAKER_01: Do you do that?
SPEAKER_01: I hope you do.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you don't just say, well, thus saith the Jesse or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: I hope that you measure it against Scripture because Scripture interprets Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture helps us understand itself.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said it this way in John chapter 10, verse 35.
SPEAKER_01: If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and then this little parenthesis, and the scriptures cannot be broken.
SPEAKER_01: What does he mean by that?
SPEAKER_01: Meaning all of Scripture is a chain.
SPEAKER_01: And none of the links can ever come apart.
SPEAKER_01: If you break one of those links, the whole thing unravels.
SPEAKER_01: And he's saying, you know this, you believe this.
SPEAKER_01: That the scriptures cannot be torn apart and made to fight with each other.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: All of Scripture agrees with Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to take this a step further.
SPEAKER_01: Not only is it the case that one text unintentionally coheres with and agrees with the truth that's in another text.
SPEAKER_01: That is true, but that's not all that's true.
SPEAKER_01: Also, the authors of Scripture intentionally want you to see connections between texts of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: We talked about this a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible is an intertextual document, it is constantly referencing itself in order to be rightly understood.
SPEAKER_01: Quotations of the New Testament and the Old, and on and on and on.
SPEAKER_01: I'll put a slide up on the screen.
SPEAKER_01: This is a number of guys got together and tried to figure out how many cross-references within the Bible are there.
SPEAKER_01: So one text referencing another text, and they made a graphic out of it, and the answer was there are 63,779 links between Bible passages.
SPEAKER_01: According to these guys.
SPEAKER_01: The ESV reference Bible, the one I literally just gave away, says that there's over 80,000.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible, as Jordan Peterson, not that he's an expert on this, but as he as he has said, is the first hyperlinked document.
SPEAKER_01: It's a Bible, it's a text that works within itself, that references itself constantly.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in order then to understand it rightly, it would make sense that if you start, say, at the end of that, you probably need to know what's coming before it in order to understand it, right?
SPEAKER_01: So I just want to give you one example of this.
SPEAKER_01: You could do this all day over all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to show you one example.
SPEAKER_01: Turn with me to Revelation chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: The reason I chose Revelation is because when I started this series, I had folks saying, I do think the Bible's clear, but Revelation?
SPEAKER_01: And I understand that.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to show you a couple things in Revelation chapter 1 that may help.
SPEAKER_01: Revelation chapter 1, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: John writes, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must take place.
SPEAKER_01: And just stop there.
SPEAKER_01: What is God's purpose in this book?
SPEAKER_01: Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: The book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: It's to show his servants.
SPEAKER_01: It would not be a very effective message if his servants couldn't understand it, could they?
SPEAKER_01: The things that must soon take place.
SPEAKER_01: They have to be able to understand that in order for it to be an effective showing.
SPEAKER_01: And then this He made it known by sending his angels to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says this blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it.
SPEAKER_01: For the time is near.
SPEAKER_01: So John's assumption and God's assumption in the book of Revelation is that you'll understand it so much that you'll be able to do it.
SPEAKER_01: He does not talk like this is the most complex, arbitrary, difficult to understand, impossible barricade to your knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: No, he says, I expect them to understand it just by reading it out loud.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: I'm with you.
SPEAKER_01: How?
SPEAKER_01: You're telling me Revelation is understandable, it's clear.
SPEAKER_01: How?
SPEAKER_01: Scripture interprets Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It's not for nothing that Revelation is the last book.
SPEAKER_01: As Jesse said when he began his series on this wonderful book in the Bible, he said it's the most biblical book in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It has the most cross-references of any other book in the Bible because it's drawing on absolutely everything that came before it.
SPEAKER_01: And so a while ago, I decided, you know what, I'm going to try as best I can to map all of the cross-references in Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: I want to just, if I can do it, then anyone can do it.
SPEAKER_01: So let me see if I can just find all of the intertextual links in Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: And I got through chapter one and was exhausted.
SPEAKER_01: But let me let me put on the screen for you, this is just one afternoon's work of all the intertextual, and I mean the ESV actually has others that I didn't include in here.
SPEAKER_01: All the intertextual links in Revelation 1.
SPEAKER_01: The only verse that I couldn't find one in is verse 11, which is where he's listing all of the names of the churches.
SPEAKER_01: All the other verses have some kind of link, almost all of them to the Old Testament in some way.
SPEAKER_01: A lot to Daniel, Zechariah, Ezekiel, other places like that.
SPEAKER_01: So if John is intentionally drawing on all of those texts, when he's writing this text, don't you think it'd be helpful to know those texts to go into this one?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Which is a lot of work.
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like we have to do our best to present ourselves as one approved.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible is constantly referencing itself, and so the people who understand the Bible best are the people who read the Bible the most.
SPEAKER_01: The more Bible you know, the more Bible you're gonna understand.
SPEAKER_01: It's that simple.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to understand more of God's word, commentaries might help, that's not the most helpful thing.
SPEAKER_01: The most helpful thing is just to read more of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And what an incredible reality that is.
SPEAKER_01: That God wrote a book that becomes clearer the more you read it.
SPEAKER_01: He put the answer inside the book.
SPEAKER_01: He clarifies the book with the book.
SPEAKER_01: So I would argue that you don't have to have any special heightened status or knowledge or secret information in order to.
SPEAKER_01: To rightly understand the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It is clear and it can be understood by the due use of ordinary means.
SPEAKER_01: Your mind, the church, and the Bible itself.
SPEAKER_01: And if that's true, then I think our job is really just to let the Bible out, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: To let God do the talking.
SPEAKER_01: Brian Cole was a Satanist for decades and decades.
SPEAKER_01: He hated the Bible and, in fact, burned several Bibles in his lifetime, and was in and out of prison for various charges, mostly having to do with his drug addiction.
SPEAKER_01: And eventually, I think he was in his 50s, he was back in prison another time and in and out of solitary confinement and kept being destroyed by the drugs that he was doing.
SPEAKER_01: Eventually he said, That's enough.
SPEAKER_01: I want to put the drugs away.
SPEAKER_01: So he checked into the drug rehab program they had in the prison.
SPEAKER_01: But they said, well, if you want to do the program, you have to do this homework, which requires that you have a Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And being tough, he was like, No, I'm not going to do it.
SPEAKER_01: But then secretly he went to the prison library and he found a little three by five Gideon Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And he hid it under his pillow.
SPEAKER_01: And when the guards turned the lights off at night, he would, by moonlight, read scripture in order to answer his homework so that he could stop being addicted to drugs.
SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, God saved him.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, God used his word, clear and powerful, to break the chains of his sin.
SPEAKER_01: And then he joined the Gideons, and now he travels around the country sharing Bibles with people, just giving away Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: That's the power of the Word of God, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Or as Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter 2, the word of God is not in chains.
SPEAKER_01: No matter how much Satan would like to bind the Word of God and say, this will not do its work, God says, you've got another thing coming.
SPEAKER_01: This word cannot be stopped.
SPEAKER_01: So, friend, what place does the Bible have in your life?
SPEAKER_01: If it's clear, if it's understandable, which I hope I've demonstrated to you, by means, of course, and by the illumination of the Spirit, and with an obedient heart, all of that, if all of that's true, what place does the Bible have in your life?
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a kind of zeal for Scripture and for lost souls like William Tyndale?
SPEAKER_01: Such that you would be willing to lay down your very life because this book is so true and so understandable?
SPEAKER_01: Or are you just embarrassed about what it says?
SPEAKER_01: And you try to hide, well, I think me, my interpretation, I guess.
SPEAKER_01: Brothers and sisters, I would submit to you that if the Bible is clear, then we must be courageous.
SPEAKER_01: If the Bible is clear, then we must have open mouths.
SPEAKER_01: If the Bible is clear, then we must not be silent, but we must speak and let the world know what God has said so that they might worship him too.
SPEAKER_01: That's the power of this word.
SPEAKER_01: But it has no power unless it is read or heard.
SPEAKER_01: How will they hear?
SPEAKER_01: Unless someone preaches?
SPEAKER_01: How will they preach?
SPEAKER_01: Unless he sent, because faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Friend, I want your whole life to be like that of William Tendales.
SPEAKER_01: For you to lay down everything for the sake of getting the truth of this book into the hands of those who need it most.
SPEAKER_01: Whether that's here at Emmanuel, whether that's at your workplace, at your school, wherever you go, friends, this book is powerful to do its work.
SPEAKER_01: Will you let the lion out of the cage?
SPEAKER_01: Will you let God speak?
SPEAKER_01: And will you listen as he speaks to you?
SPEAKER_01: And do your best so that you might be a worker approved.
SPEAKER_01: You know, Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, even with all of our best work, we still kind of see in a mirror dimly, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the end of the story.
SPEAKER_01: Because even though now we see in a mirror dimly, then, then Paul says, we will know fully, even as we have been known.
SPEAKER_01: When you see Jesus Christ face to face, and you're like him, finally free from sin, then everything that you have read in this book will only magnify in worth and resound for eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Glory and praise to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Is that what you want for your life?
SPEAKER_01: A life dedicated to the truth of God, for the people of God, and unto the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: The question you have to answer is, has God spoken clearly?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: God, I pray that you would raise up even among the young folks in this room missionaries who would be eager to leave behind home and family and everything else in order to translate your word and to put it into the hands of those who have never heard before.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that in this room you would embolden and strengthen mothers and fathers who may have a tough time with their kids, to, with gentleness and grace and boldness speak the words of life, to open their Bibles at the dinner table, maybe even tonight, and to let your word do its work.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I pray that you would in this room raise up pastors and teachers for this church and many others, that there would be those who hear the call and dedicate everything to the ministry of the Word.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I pray that you would use your church to build up your church so that we might know you even as we are fully known.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you and I praise you for the dear sweet saints here at Emmanuel and incredible encouragement they are to me.
SPEAKER_01: God, would you bless each one of them?
SPEAKER_01: Drive them deeper into your word every day.
SPEAKER_01: May we do our best to present ourselves to you as those who have no need to be ashamed.
SPEAKER_01: Because we have rightly handled your word.
SPEAKER_01: Give us the grace, we pray, of understanding and sanctify us by the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Your word is truth.
SPEAKER_01: Pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.