All Scripture Is Inspired By God And Profitable #3

The Lord's kindness and the things we've been anticipating coming. There are a number of children born, you know, scheduled to be due in the next couple of months. And so our lives are changing as families and our life is changing as a church and for the better, I would say. So please do keep the Klug's in prayer as they welcome their new little one into the world. And thank you, Daniel, for leading us in worship. Two things I'll tell you about worship. I really like when we sing a cappella because I actually hear you sing. And you know who I particularly hear sing? No, not from where I stand. I hear the men. That's what I hear. Now, I have the privilege of sitting up front and having all of you behind me. So maybe you hear different things in different places. I do occasionally hear kids singing as well, and that's very sweet. But the thing that I think stands out at our church is that the men sing. And my encouragement to you, men especially,

is that when there's instrumentation, that you not hide behind it. We don't have it today. So if we're to raise up a noise to the Lord, it's going to come from our, you know. But when there's instrumentation, you don't get a pass. You sing out and give yourselves to it. And I was in membership class this morning. We started out the class. They asked me a question. They said, do you think that Reformed theology tends to attract certain types of people? Engineers was actually the question, wasn't it, Daniel? Was it engineers or math and science guys? Nerds, geeks, I think were the words that were being thrown around. And before they even asked the question, my answer was yes. And there are many things that are good about men who like to understand things and want to be thorough. One of the things that I think a weakness that attends them is that they're not expressive. Use your voice, use your bodies.

A general rule of thumb in our church, something I'd like to see us grow in, okay, when it comes to worship, two things, especially for you men, but also you women, is one, if the guy up front raises his hands when he's singing, it should just be a sign to you that you should do the same thing. I don't want to, you know what, you feel all weird, do it. You won't be ashamed of doing that when you get to heaven, I promise. And you'll do far more than that. You remember David dancing before the ark and his wife despising him. And he says, oh, you think that's bad? You just wait. He loved God, and he was a man's man. And he used his body in worship, so you do it. The other thing is, when someone says amen at the end of a prayer or the end of a song, the whole church should respond, amen. When I was reading the Lord's Prayer from right over here, I don't know which one of you, it was Isaiah, right? And to him be glory and power and dominion forever and ever, and amen. And I wondered if you guys are going to say amen, and Isaiah goes, amen. You know, because we're so used to,

not reading the Lord's Prayer in Scripture, but just having it stand alone. So I say amen, and he says amen, and he goes, oh, I wasn't supposed to say amen. You were supposed to say amen. Everyone else was supposed to say amen. You're the only one who passed the test, and you were afraid of it. So give your hearts to God in worship. Give your bodies to God in worship. It will be a great encouragement and comfort and strength to the women and to the children to see their dads and their uncles and their brothers giving themselves to the Lord. So that's not the sermon.

That's just what I was thinking about earlier today. So now we'll come to the sermon. We're going to be continuing our study in 2 Timothy chapter 3, and we're going to be focusing on just half of one verse. Just half of one verse. Just the first half of verse 16. We'll finish up that verse and the rest of our passage, verse 17, next week. The reason that we're going to be taking such a small portion this morning is because that portion is very, very important, and I think very misunderstood or passed over in our day. This passage deals with the inspiration of Scripture, which is a huge topic and a foundational one to the Christian life. We need to understand, we must understand what it means for the Scripture to be inspired by God if we're to have any chance of living a life of faith and serving God well. My hope is that we will grow in our love and our fear of God this morning as we see how he speaks about his own word.

He tells us about his word in this passage, and that's what makes it so foundational to us. Our text is 2 Timothy 3, verses 10 to 17. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Now you follow my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and suffering, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra. What persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So our whole text this morning, I know you've got it all up there, just the first part of verse 16, all scripture is inspired by God. That's all we're going to talk about today. Okay, and we're going to start with those first two words. All Scripture. These words from Paul put all Scripture on an equal plane. It doesn't elevate one passage or a certain type of passage over another. It says all Scripture. All Scripture is inspired by God. So there's not better and worse passages of Scripture. Jesus...

addresses this issue again earlier in Matthew 5 in his Sermon on the Mount. We read it last week for our scripture lesson. He says, And the reason he said that was because these crowds had a desire inside of them. And I think that desire is inside of us as well. And it's a desire to cast off parts of what God has said and say, That's not for us anymore. And so in their time, it may have been the law and the prophets. They would have seen those things as burdens to them. And he says, I didn't come to abolish. I didn't come to do away with all the things they said, but rather to fulfill. And then he tells us that not the smallest letter or stroke will pass away from the law until it's all been accomplished. And so I think Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 and Paul here in our passage is dealing with a temptation in our hearts.

To free ourselves from the constraints of the Word of God. We're trying to put aside parts of it that are less important. Now, it wouldn't be as plain as to say, well, this is more important than that. Sometimes you may get that bold. I'll tell you a couple of ways that it's done. Red letter Bibles. Now, that Bible I just read from, everything I read to you from Matthew is in red letters. But I want to ask you, Why red letters for Jesus' words? What's the thinking behind that? Jesus didn't say, put my words in red. If you have red letters in your red words, red sentences, red sections, those are the sections that Jesus spoke himself. And so they're in red, and they're set apart from the rest of Scripture, which is just in plain old black. My question to you is, why do we set apart Jesus' words?

Yeah, I think there's an implicit understanding that what Jesus said was superior to all the rest of Scripture. It's more important to us than the rest of Scripture. And I'll tell you, that's an attack on all of the rest of Scripture. It's aimed at cutting down what God actually has to say to just what Jesus said. No creed but Christ type of mentality that takes... our bibles and just chucks large portions of it away and says we don't need those aren't that's not the really we need to focus right here because these are the things that are more important most important to us but paul says all scripture is inspired by god and he doesn't give any preference to jesus words and we ought not to either now does that is that sound terrible we ought to you know take that sound bite out and put it on social media and people say i'm awful you shouldn't give any preference to jesus words not over the rest of Scripture, because he's the author of it all. If you want red letters in your Bible, then they should all be red. Another way that we'll do it, and I think it's common, depending on what theological strain you come from, is Old Testament versus New Testament. We love the New Testament. That Old Testament's not as, you know, it's there, and it might be helpful. It's got some stories in it that might be helpful. You know, you've got David and Goliath and things like that.

There might be some helpfulness in there. We've got the Ten Commandments there, and those are important. But we take the New Testament and we say, the only places that are important are the places that have come after Christ's birth. And we take the Old Testament and we say, it's not as important. That part of Scripture was for the Jews. That's not for us. We're Christians. We're New Testament Christians. We believe in the New Testament. And this is dangerous because am I opposed to people believing in the New Testament? Of course not. But not to the denigration of the old, though we do interpret the Old Testament through the New Testament. And so there's a preeminence of clarity in the New Testament that the Old Testament lacks. But it doesn't make the Old Testament somehow like, well, that was God's first draft, but now we've gotten the final version. Now we've got the important part.

Another way that we can jockey Scripture around is we can take certain passages or certain attributes of God or more palatable things, and we elevate those to the neglect of the rest of Scripture. How many churches have you heard of that have grace in the title? How many churches have you heard of that have wrath in the title? And would you go there? I mean, seriously, if a church was, stupid enough to put wrath in their title, what would happen? Can you even just thought experiment? Can you just think what would happen if a church did that? They'd be excoriated and called liars and blasphemers and all kinds. I mean, any mud that could be slung would get slung at them. Why? Is wrath not an attribute of God? Absolutely. Is grace?

more important to us, certainly more palatable to us. I was telling our membership class this morning, one of the questions, I don't remember the question now, but it had to do with, Martin, what was the question? You didn't bring your thing, did you? I don't remember what the question was. Daniel, do you have it out? Number 11. Yeah, the question was, how do we receive the grace of God? Thank you. And the first part of the question deals with, Us coming to a knowledge of our sin and feeling the wrath of God against us. That that's the first step in the process of us receiving the grace of God is that we would come under conviction and have to face up to the wrath of God. And that without that, the grace of God's been gutted of all of its glory. And so we live in a time where...

All scripture is not honored. In fact, the majority of scripture, I would say, is not honored. And the parts that are talked about have lost their context and as a result have lost much of their meaning. It's as though we are without a Bible, without a word from God to us, because so much of it's been hidden or taken away from us, or we've been taught, it's not as important to you. In your own personal devotions, if you think about it and you're honest, would you rather read a New Testament book or would you rather dig into Ezekiel? Of course. Why? That's hard. It's earthy and it's kind of nasty sometimes. That was the God of wrath and the God of judgment. But we serve a God of grace and a God of love, a New Testament understanding. And these are the things that happen in our brains without us even trying. We hang scripture up on our walls.

You know, Joshua says, for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. And we say, that's good and that's true and that's bold. What comes right before it that's never on the list? Choose this day who you will serve. Now, why isn't that on the plaque? I'll tell you why it's not on the plaque. Because it acknowledges that there's tension and there's a conflict and that there's a choice that has to be made. And all we extol is Joshua's choice. But he put that question to all of Israel. Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. It is very, very common to yank scripture out of its context. I'd say it's refreshing whenever I find somebody not doing that in a sermon or in a podcast or wherever they're talking about the Bible. If they're willing to interpret it in its context and tell you the whole story.

And what I'd say to you is you'll either have all scripture inspired by God or you'll have none of it. You cannot cherry pick and sort out what you like, what you believe, what you'll obey on your own terms. You'll either accept God's word in its entirety or you'll have started on the process of rejecting it bit by bit and piece by piece. This last week I was part of conversations. that I was thinking about relating to this. There was a book that I got probably six, eight months ago, maybe a year ago. It's by a PCA pastor called Gentle and Lowly, Christ's Heart for Sufferers. Dane Ortlund's the pastor. It's all the rage. Everybody loves this book. And I got the book because I thought gentleness and meekness with people who are suffering, That's not one of my gifts, naturally. That's not something I'm naturally good at. Some of you, yes. My wife, excellent. Me, no. You need to rub some dirt on it and get up. That's my natural inclination, but I recognize that that's a weakness and that you guys will suffer as a result, and my family will suffer as a result if I'm not aware of that weakness. And so I thought, well, maybe this book will be helpful. A man I respected and trust recommended that this book was helpful to me.

That particular man tends to be more melancholy and worries about whether he's saved. His sins weigh on him very heavily, and the book was helpful to him. So I got the book, and I thought, this will be helpful. My wife and I will read it together, and I will learn, and she'll be glad that I'm learning, and it's going to be good. And so I started reading it, and I felt gross. And I thought, man, I'm just, that's how... that's how twisted I am. I'm reading this book and I'm like, oh, that's just how messed up I am. Like the things he was saying in the book just felt, they literally felt gross or disgusting to me. How, whatever that word is, that emotive, that like beating heart, you know, and we read maybe a third of the book and it's just like, no, I'm done with this book. I just didn't like, I just thought this guy's not helping people. He's not helping people.

And so this book came up in discussion amongst a number of pastors that I talk to regularly online. And it came up and they're saying, no, no, this book's no good. And my response was, I'm glad somebody else thinks so. Because I thought it was a bad book. And the reason I thought it was a bad book, how does this all relate to our discussion? The reason is that this author, who's got a PhD and an MDiv, he's a smart dude. is perfectly tuned in to all of the oppression and all of the sorrow and all of the hurting, all of the difficulty that all of you, we, have endured in the church today. All the people putting us down and telling us that God's big and mean and scary. And so he's going to come and he's going to present to us a gentler, meeker Jesus who has nothing to say to you except, I understand and I love you.

Now that on the face of it, does Jesus come to us in our weakness and in our brokenness and in our sins and bear with us? Yes. But the book is, that's all it says. It doesn't give any context to Jesus saying, all you who are weary and heavy laden come to me and you'll find rest for I'm meek and lowly of heart. All the context of that passage is gone. What was the context of that passage? The context of that passage, I'm not preaching on that text, so I'm just going to give you the real quick rundown, synopsis of it. It was Jesus saying things that were so hard and so difficult that people were being driven away. His words were like a winnowing fork, and people were leaving. And those who were left, who had endured all of the humbling that had been coming through his words, it was to them that he says, Now you see your burdens and now you see the weight of your sins. You, you come to me. Now I ask you, is the church weighed down with her sins? Some people are. But as a whole, I don't think we carry around the conviction and the weight of our sins and the shame associated with it. I think we stand up tall and talk about our sins with pride as a church.

There are always people within the church that need to hear Jesus' words, come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden. But I ask you, are you weary and heavy laden because you're carrying around the guilt of your sin? Maybe a better way to ask it is, how do you become weary and heavy laden? Through the teaching and the preaching that Jesus demonstrated just before that passage, which is to break us down and to show us our need of him. And so the reason I didn't like the book and the reason I'd tell you don't read it is because it sells to you a picture of Jesus that is not accurate. There's no hint or no discussion of Jesus, for instance, going into the temple twice with whips and cleaning the temple. There's none of that. And the book would put forward to you and say that Jesus' truest self, his deepest desire, The truest expression of his character is that he's gentle and lowly. Well, what's it do to all the rest of his perfections? Casts them to the side. It elevates one sort of one thing. And is it any surprise that the thing that's elevated is the thing that's most attractive to us, most palatable to us, the thing that we will pay $12.99 to hear? Again, if someone wrote a book about, you know, and said, Jesus' deepest heart is when he had a whip in his hand.

Flipping over tables. That would not sell because it's not what we want to hear. Because we have cultivated in ourselves and had cultivated in us a very narrow understanding of who Jesus is and what the scriptures have to teach. But Paul says, all scripture. And so all of this, everything I've set up to this point is simply to try to expose to you and make clear to you. if you're to be a Christian, you better believe the whole Bible. And what you'll find is that when you read the whole Bible, if you're honest, you will find parts you don't like. And you'll feel yucky saying, you'll be like, oh, I shouldn't, I can't say that. And your response will be then to not read it. Because you'll be like, well, I don't want to, that's, I mean, is there anything more gruesome than the conquest of Canaan and Joshua? The conquest of Canaan is when they've been out of the land forever.

You know, forever. For 40 years. And God finally, you know, all the old men that didn't have the faith to go in died. And then the young men grew up. And he says, go in. And when they go in, what are they supposed to do? They're not supposed to keep anything or anyone. They're supposed to kill everything. Men, women, children, animals, kill it all. That is a hard thing to swallow. Because if you're reading it, you're saying what these people are doing, commanded by God, is they're chasing down women and children who are running away to kill them. Abraham, take your son, your only son, up on the mountain. Take the wood and take the knife. Is it not hard for you to hear? And do you not have something welling up inside of you that says, I need some space between me and the God who said that. And so we find our ways. But we find our ways to our own harm.

Instead of reading those passages and trying to understand why God would say such a thing. Why is it so offensive to us? Why is it cut against our sensibilities? Why do we hate it? I think because we don't have any conception of his holiness and his righteousness. When we think of men and women and children, we think of those around us. But we don't think of their corruptions and their sins. And we certainly don't think of God being holy. and him having any claim over their lives, that they would serve him, that they would love him, and that if they don't, there are consequences. They will pay with their own lives for their rebellion. These are difficult things. And so our answer to these difficult things has been to shut them up in a box and to hide them away from us. But these are the words of God. And we could get more graphic. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable.

It's such a popular verse these days. Everyone reaches out and grabs it and claims it and says, look here. Look here what the Bible says. But when we grab hold of a different part and say, look here. Look what God in his perfections said. Look what God in his perfections did. All of scripture. You'll love it all. And when you come to places where you're offended, you'll either ask God to help you understand and give you a heart. that will submit to his perfections and his wisdoms and help you to love it. Or it's just another book that you read when you feel like it, that doesn't communicate to you who God is. Because there's something for us to learn about God when we read these passages that are difficult for us. And we need to know those things. So what does it mean for Scripture, all of Scripture, to be inspired by God? There's a word, a Greek word, it's sort of a con...

contraction. It's two words. Inspired by God means like literally it would mean something like God breathed or like out of his mouth literally. So all scripture is directly out of the mouth of God. That's what this word is getting at. There's a doctrine that describes this reality and it's called the plenary verbal inspiration. I was telling my kids about this, and I said, does anyone want to take a swing at what any one of those three words means? Plenary, verbal, inspiration. The word inspiration means God-breathed. But plenary, verbal. Have you ever gone to a conference? I'm going to explain these words to you so you understand what's being taught here. What does plenary mean? Well, I'd use the example of a conference. If you've ever gone to a conference, you will have plenary sessions, and you'll have breakout sessions.

So what is a plenary session? Who goes to the plenary sessions? Everybody, right? Everybody's included. No one's left out. If you went to a conference and they said, okay, it's $100 for you to come, and that buys you access. This is the base ticket, and it buys you access to just the plenary sessions. It means you get to go to the things that everybody does. And they say, well, if you want to go to these breakout sessions, those will cost you more. And what's the difference between a plenary session and a breakout session? Well, everybody goes to the plenary sessions, but only some people go to the breakout sessions. And so plenary, working definition, what's it mean? It means everything's included, nothing is left aside. Okay? Plenary. So when we're talking about the word of God, plenary means all of the Bible. From the very beginning to the very end, nothing excluded. Okay? Verbal. It means that God spoke it. Okay?

Some people will fuss about the scriptures these days because they say, well, our translations have errors in it. KJV only people are probably the most notorious for making these kind of arguments. But they want to say, this right here is the very word of God. And the truth is, it's been translated and there are mistakes in it. And the reason I like the NASB is because they're the ones that work to be the most honest about what they think may be the mistakes. One of the places where, you know, we read in our scripture up here on the screen, it's all just in the same font and in the same, you know, there's nothing different. But if you read in your Bible, you'll find things that are in normal font, and then you'll find something that's in italics. Why is it in italics? Well, it's in italics because the translator said, we are adding words that are not in the original manuscripts, in the Greek or in the Hebrew, for understanding's sake. So we're adding English words to help you understand what they're saying.

There will be sections that are in brackets. And the reason they're in brackets is because those are included in some of manuscripts, but not in others. And so the translators are acknowledging the fact that, like the whole end of Mark where they're handling snakes, and that's a very strange passage. It's in some old manuscripts, but it's not in all of them. And so the translators come to us, and by putting it in brackets, they acknowledge, we're not positive, but we're putting it here, and we want you to know we're not positive. And so to believe in the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture is to believe that when God spoke, when those men, as Peter tells us, were moved by the Holy Spirit, when God spoke through them, those things they said were perfect. That those were God's words to us. Now we are, depending on what part of Scripture we're looking at, we're anywhere from 2,000 years to...

6,000 years past when it was said or written. And there are mistakes that have inevitably have been introduced. What I don't want you to do is to take that reality and let Satan use it to undercut your trust in the word of God. You say, well, how can't I? And I say, the reason you can't is because God is faithful and he will preserve his word sufficient for us to be saved. for us to know everything that we need to know. And Peter tells us as much in his epistle. And so the plenary verbal inspiration just means all of Scripture, as it was spoken originally, were the very words of God. They are without error. There is nothing wrong with it. It is a perfect iteration of what God meant to say exactly. And that's why...

We're committed to the words that God used. That's why we use an NASB. Some of you guys have ESVs or NIVs or I don't know what else. There is a range of translation, a philosophy of translation. And so if I was going to give you a big range, on one side you have what's called formal equivalence. That's what the NASB is. That's why it's hard to read. That's why it's clunky, especially in the Old Testament. It's because Hebrew sentence structure was so different than American sentence structure that you get these really long sentences with all these semicolons and the verbs and nouns are all out of whack for how we would normally read it or write it. It's a formal...

equivalence translation. Their goal, the translators who translate that way, are translating word for word. We are going to tell you what this word means. And we're even committed to keeping the words as they were originally given to us in the same order. That's why they're so confusing. Because we're getting English words basically in Hebrew order in the Old Testament or in Greek order in the New Testament. So this is formal equivalence. Word for word translation. On the other end, you're going to get what's called dynamic equivalence, okay? And that is not a word-for-word translation, but a thought-for-thought or idea-for-idea translation. Now, that may be confusing, but just think of this. If I was having a conversation with James and Andy, and I'm listening to them talk. They're looking at me, so I'm going to use them. I'm listening to them talk, and my job is to transcribe what they say. And if I do it literally, what's going to exist in the record?

well, interruptions. There's going to be all this like, because they're just having a conversation. Now, what if I said, well, that's really hard to read, hard to understand what they were talking about. Instead of translating their literal conversation, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that sentence that James said or that paragraph Andy said, and I'm going to tell you what I believe they said. What I think they intended to say. And I'm going to just clear out all of what I consider to be superfluous. Extra. You know, should go on the cutting room floor. That's a dynamic equivalence. Am I telling you literally what their conversation was? I mean, no. I'm not. Unless you trust me to have perfectly understood their conversation. But the difficulty is when translators do that, they introduce their biases.

into their translations. And that's what we have going on a lot today, okay? With things like the TNIV, which is an older Bible, an older one. The Message, if you can even consider that a translation of Scripture. The new NASB, right? The one I read and the one I suggest you get is the NASB 95, the translation from 95. There's one from 77. It's these and thous, and it can be a little hard to read. In 95, all they did was come through and they said, we're going to update the pronouns. The these and thous, we're going to have yous and theys. The NASB 2020, what have they done? They've come in, the translators have come in and felt the pressure to change God's words. At what points? Gender inclusivity, so he and she, he, she, pronouns. But not...

But they're cutting out the male inclusive. So brethren, there's a Greek word, adelphoi. That's the Greek word, and it means brethren. And if you were to look at the word brethren and be like, who's that referring to? It would say, it is referring to men. It is a masculine word, and it's referring to men. Well, some women get offended at that because they say, well, what about the women? But that word is not meant to exclude women. It's what's called a male inclusive. Okay? The most common use of that in our day and age is when a mixed group or a group of women, someone leaves and they say, I'll see you guys later. Guys is a male inclusive. Women will say it to a group of women. And there's no man there. And they will say guys. And gals are not guys. They don't say, I'll see you gals later. If they did, we would think it was strange. Right? So how do you address a mixed group when you're leaving? We use the word guys.

That's male-inclusive. Adelphoi in Greek, it's a male-inclusive. Our translators, because of the pressure that they're receiving regarding sex, man and woman, are changing their words. And they're saying brothers and sisters. And you say, well, is there any harm in them saying brothers and sisters? And I say yes, because that's not what God said. There are words for sister in the Bible, and he didn't use one there. And we shouldn't add to it without telling people. because God breathed out his words. And when he used male-inclusive, I think that that little thing should be instructive to us. Okay? I was talking to someone recently this week. I don't remember who it was. It was you, Timothy. And we were talking about Bibles. And I said, what I'm afraid, we were talking about languages, Greek and Hebrew, because most pastors nowadays are not, they don't read Greek or Hebrew. And if they do, they don't do it well. Because it takes a lifetime to understand a language. You know? I mean, just,

If I can use Luis as an example, his English is not as good as everyone else's. Hey! Right? You understood that, didn't you? How long have you been here? How many years? Okay. His Luis's English, can you still tell Luis is not from America? You can. And I'll tell you, Luis is so much better now than he was when he came to us 12 years ago. So much better. Rescued from the streets of Noblesville. Lucky. Ali, do you still have to correct his English? Now, I'm only bringing him up as an example to say he's been immersed in English for 20 years, and he still doesn't understand our language well enough to speak. Do you still think in Spanish, or do you think in English now? Well, when you're speaking, so when you're talking to people in English. Okay. Okay. How long ago? Really? 17 years ago. So you're only here a few years. Yeah.

That's an excuse that a lot of us have, Luis. There's a problem between my mind and my mouth. Say many husbands and many, you know. Thanks, Luis. My point in bringing Luis up is to say he's been here for almost 20 years, and he would tell you right toward the beginning, he started thinking in English instead of Spanish. And if you've ever learned another language, the first thing you learn is you learn the vocabulary, you learn the words, the most basic. parts, but you still think in your native tongue. And then you translate into your head, okay, red, no. Rojo, no. It's a feminine, roja. Like, all that happens in your mind before the word comes out your mouth. And you just mess up things all over the place. Because there's more nuance. And Spanish is a much easier language to learn than English. Yeah, absolutely. You guys follow rules for the most part. But English is very different.

Anyway, so I'm talking to Timothy about languages, and I say, you know, we've got these translations that are just going astray, and they're misleading people. The ESV generally is closer to a formal equivalence, but they fail at the point of man and women, and they fail at the point of anti-Semitism. They truncate down. They never say Jews. It's always the Jewish leaders. They're making it a smaller group of Jews because there's this pressure in America to not hate the Jews. And so there's weaknesses at those points. through the whole thing. The NASB is not perfect. And I'm not here to talk to you about all the failures in this translation or not, but to say, I'm saying to Timothy, what are we going to do when all the translations that we have that are supposed to be the words of God, that are supposed to contain the way of salvation, when translators and editors have come in and have monkeyed with it and changed it and set themselves up as a better interpreter of God to us,

then he is himself. We will be in a bad day. It may be that the new King James would be better, but then you have to deal with text traditions, and I'm not here to talk about that right now. And what I ended up saying to Timothy was what I think will have to happen is that pastors will have to learn to know, they don't have to learn Greek and Hebrew. If they do, they're going to end up like Luis. 20 years into it, never speaking it, Luis has the benefit of like, if you want to get a job, you better speak English. You just, you want to graduate high school? You better learn English. Like there were pressures put on Luis because he was just, he's here. That any pastor is not going to feel when he's trying to learn Greek and Lord help him learning Hebrew. It's so difficult. Is that it? Hispanic mom, learn anything.

It's going to become the work of pastors to know where the translations they're using are compromised. And the reason that they should speak up about it and the reason that they should take time to point these things out to us is because all scripture is from the mouth of God. And we shouldn't take lightly when those words get ignored, omitted, or changed. And so this battle about translations and about God's words goes on. And there's this test. There's this question that gets asked. When somebody says something that's off the rails theologically, we'll want to know something about them. What do we want to know that they're committed to? Inerrancy. Connected to the plenary verbal inspiration is the doctrine of inerrancy or infallibility. Historically, those basically meant the same things. Nowadays, they've been divided. But what they want to know is, are you committed to the inerrancy of Scripture? Are you committed to the fact that God's words do not...

cannot contain error. That when he spoke, he said exactly what he meant to say. Do you believe in it? That's what it means to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy. And men will always say, yes. And then they'll continue to preach lies. But you can't touch them anymore because they've given assent to the inerrancy of scripture. I believe that God's word is God's word. And in our day and age, if someone says that, well, this is what's true, you can't ever say it, but you're lying. That's just not allowed. That's not nice. That's not Christian. But it is necessary. And I think it is Christian, especially when we're talking about God's words, to say that's not what it says. That's not what God told us. So much of what passes for biblical exegesis or explaining what the Bible says has become a question. Did God really say? Or when he said it, did he really mean it?

Does that apply to our culture in the same way that it used to apply to those more patriarchal cultures of times gone by? But you realize that the common thread through all of it is questions. Never commitments, never this is what it says. We just, well, I'm not sure. I mean, maybe there are other ways to look at that. And you get a little bit of a Greek just enough to be able to talk about semantic range. And you say, well, the word could mean this. And it's like, well, yes, it could mean this. But that's not the question of what it could mean. The question is, what does it mean? Tell me what it does mean. Give me firm lines, not blurry lines. What does it say? The words that we have in our Bibles, though I realize that we're not reading Greek parchments, you have to accept them as the words of God, not the words of men. And that makes you vulnerable to the men who've translated it for you. Okay?

And you say, well, then I'm supposed to learn a lot of people's, well, not a lot. Some people say, well, then my response is that I need to learn Greek and Hebrew. It's a fool's errand. It's a fool's errand. I mean, if you've demonstrated that you've learned half a dozen languages because you're really gifted at that, well, then, okay, maybe you've got a chance. But the amount of work and the decades that it takes, what you realize is at some point you have to trust somebody who's better at the job work than you are. That's it. And if they're wrong, then you're going to, you're going to.

you're going to duplicate their errors. But it's important that we not see the Bible given to us as the words of men. How do we know that it's not the words of men? After all, men wrote it. We know because the Bible tells us it's not the words of men, it's the words of God. Here, Paul says, all scripture is inspired by God. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul rejoices as he's talking to them in chapter 2, verse 13. He says, for this reason, we constantly thank God that when you receive the word, Peter also told us in his second epistle, chapter 1, he says, And so when God decided to give us his word, he did something that's that's never been done. He filled those who wrote and those who spoke with his Holy Spirit such that when they wrote or when they spoke, they spoke directly for him and there was no error in what they said. Now, many sermons you hear today, I often ask that God would help me not to teach you lies or error. There are sermons recorded in scripture that are perfect because when

Peter stood up to preach or Paul stood up to preach, the Holy Spirit came onto them in a way that they spoke with the perfect mind of God. We don't always have that these days. We don't ever have that these days. That's why the Bible is so important to us because it's the only record in all of creation that we have of the perfect mind of God where it doesn't have errors and failures and lies mixed in with it. I mentioned earlier the test of orthodoxy or the test of a man's commitments with regard to Scripture has often been the question, do you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture? But I tell you, that question is useless today. It's of no value. And you're like, well, why? Like, doesn't it matter if we believe in the inerrancy of Scripture? And it does. But there's something that's changed. When that question used to be asked, there were a certain set of assumptions that went along with it. The most...

obvious one that's changed is what is the authority of scripture. It was assumed that you understood the scriptures to be authoritative, meaning that they had the authority to tell you what to do. And that if you didn't like it or didn't understand it, that didn't matter. It was authoritative. That was assumed. And so when you ask someone, do you believe in the inerrancy of scripture? You were asking, do you believe that God has spoken authoritatively about this issue? Now, when we say we believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, that commitment to the authority of Scripture doesn't exist anymore. And that's why men will say they submit to the inerrancy of Scripture, but they don't honor its authority. And they spend their lives teaching people and leading them astray by asking questions that all amount to what Satan did to Eve in the garden. Did God really say? And so the question is...

in our day and age, is not do you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture? It's do you believe in the authority of Scripture? Do you believe that it's right to tell you things that you don't like or that you don't understand? Here's an example. Very applicable in our day. In days gone by, this was just a throwaway statement. Never really something that was considered in this way. Male and female, he created them. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. Okay. Well, historically, the fight over that would have been the image of God part, that man's made in the image of God, and what's that mean, and what are those implications? In our day, that's not where the fight is. Where's the fight? Does God have the authority to assign manhood or womanhood to you? That's the question. And some of you may be saying, well, that's not a question. Of course he did. And I say, okay, but you do realize in our society, that's very much the question. And Christians are falling all over themselves to say, it's not that simple.

It's not just man and woman. That gender is a different thing. Yes, male and female is a biological condition, but gender is this other thing that's fluid, that changes, that's this big spectrum, and that we choose that. So we don't choose our biology, but we do choose our genders. And so I may be biologically male, but I identify as something else. Is there anything for us to say as Christians? When the Bible says, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them, is there anything for us to say positively to this situation? Yes. Okay? And it's this. God has the authority to determine and dictate to us what we are. And if we don't like that, agree with that, then the problem is ours.

And that every step that we take to deny or to rebel against what God did and told us he did is rebellion, is sin. Now, that's a hard thing to say. That will lose you your job. Okay? I realize what I'm saying to you. There's a cost to believing this. We can all sit in these walls and say, yeah, yeah, uh-huh, yeah. But go to work and say it. I won't tell the story. I don't have time. There are more than one man in our church that deals with this, has dealt with this at their employment, where they have to figure out how to sort this out, how to be committed to what God has said. And of course, the pressure that you all would feel was to say, well, we won't push that hard. And the question I come back and ask you is, do you believe that it's important that God said it?

And if you believe that he said it and that it's true, is there any risk to you associated with believing it? Realizing that your flesh is going to want to answer that question by saying, no, I don't want there to be any risk associated with me believing it. But in reality, there is risks associated with believing what God said. And so we, the best of us, however good you think you are at this, when your livelihood comes on the line, You'll feel the same pressure that Dane Ortlund did when he wrote his book, that the dispensationalists did when they threw away the Old Testament, that the What Would Jesus People Do when they gave us red-letter Bibles. You'll feel the same pressure they feel, the translators who want to monkey around with God's words. None of us are above that temptation. Will we see it as a temptation when it comes? And will we stand for the truth when it's necessary, when it's costly?

Do you believe in the authority of Scripture? Do you believe that God has the authority to say every single thing he said in the Scripture and that our disposition toward the things that he said in Scripture should not be to wonder about it, to poke around the edges of it, but to get right into the center of it and figure out what exactly it means. To be committed to all of Scripture means that over the course of your life, you will be committed to figuring out positively what God has said without succumbing to the pressures of our society, to tell you you can't say that or believe that. You remember at the very beginning of my sermon, I said that this issue, and the reason we're taking so much time on it was because it's such a foundational issue. If you're soft at this point, if you fail at this point, you are as a house built on the sand, and you will fall when the storm comes. The only hope that you have, that I have, is to build our house on the rock, on Jesus Christ and on his words. All of them.

And to be committed to them in such a way that when there is a cost to us personally for being committed to them, we'll gladly pay the cost. And along with the apostles and so many who've gone before us, we'll consider it joy when we're counted worthy to suffer for his namesake. I'll leave you with this thought. Jesus warned us about being ashamed of his words. And what he said was, if you're ashamed of my words now, then I'll be ashamed of you when I come back. And I don't want it to be the case for you or me that when Jesus returns, he would be ashamed of us because we were ashamed of him. And so this is the cost of being a Christian. This is what it means to be a Christian, that you would be committed to all of the words that he says. Not that you would beat people over the head with them, that you would be a clanging gong or a resounding cymbal, but that you would have a conviction and a commitment to the things God has said.

And that you would exercise your faith and demonstrate your faith at those points. Let's pray.