Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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The Written & Incarnate Word

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening

Good morning, how are you? Good, good to see you this morning. Let’s open with the word of prayer. Father, we thank You for this opportunity to be here today in Your house. We ask that You would speak to us. We ask that You give us ears to hear what Your Spirit has to say to the church. We ask that as a result of the preaching of Your Word, we’d be better equipped to be witnesses for You. We ask that You would be honored and glorified in all we do. In Jesus’ name, all God’s people said, Amen.

Good to see you this morning. Open your Bibles, if you would, to 2 Timothy, chapter 3. Now this morning I wanted to talk to—well actually, I don’t often title my sermon, but the title of my sermon today is “The Written and Incarnate Word.” But I wanted to do one thing first. I just celebrated my 32nd anniversary. Pretty good. So I wanted to acknowledge my awesome wife. Will you stand up, Diane Vaughan? So she should be honored because she put up with me for 32 years. Actually longer than that. And also we have a special guest here today, someone that grew up at Liberty many years ago, then grew up and got married, and I was honored to do his wedding, and that’s Jesse Pfister. Okay, so, 2 Timothy.

Let’s begin in chapter 3. I’m reading from something kind of like a New King James, if not exactly. I kind of throw my own translations here and there just for fun. Just mix it up. We’re going to begin chapter 3, verse 13. Paul says to Timothy:

But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

(2 Timothy 3:13–4:4)

Let me read that again: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Now he says “man of God,” not because he’s against women, but because he’s writing to a man, Timothy, but really all Christians, that every Christian may be perfect, or mature is the right word, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. I charge you therefore, because the Word is inspired. Now the itching ears are not the teachers; it’s the hearers who have itching ears. They want to hear something new, something exciting, something different. They’re bored with boring old doctrine. So here Paul is exhorting Timothy, his protégé. This is right as Paul, as he says a few verses later, he’s run his course, he’s run the race, he’s fought the fight, he’s ready to go meet the Lord. He’s handing the baton to Timothy. And his last exhortation to Timothy is, preach the Word. And preach it because the Word is an inspired Word, amen.

The Church in Crisis

Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed—is that my water over there? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the church is in crisis. Have you noticed? I assume you noticed the whole culture is in crisis. A large part of the church itself is in crisis. And when we look at the church, we see that the church is divided over questions of the creation account in the Bible, the question of abortion, the question of feminism, the question of homosexuality, the question of critical race theory, the question of transgenderism, the question of justice, [audio unclear] could really be reduced to a more fundamental issue, and that is the issue of the Scripture. Because when you read history on the question of inspiration and what’s called higher criticism and things of that nature, you find that there are slight modifications to the doctrine of inspiration, and then slowly over time these produce all sorts of fruit.

If you said to a, what was called a modernist at the time of Machen, which is at the turn of the 20th century—when Machen was a great New Testament scholar, he was kicked out of Princeton, he was a professor, he was kicked out, he was defrocked, meaning they took away his credentials as a minister of the gospel, not because he was liberal, but because he was conservative. And then it was called modernism. Then over time, it got to be called liberalism. Then it got to be called postmodernism, and now I think we’re calling it progressivism. But all of these terms mean the same thing, and they all end up in the same place. But in the beginning, if you said to a modernist in Machen’s day, do you think that we should have abortion on demand, they would have said no. Do you think gays ought to get married? They would have been appalled at the very notion. Do you think there’s more than two genders? They would have laughed in your face. And yet the very things they espoused then have now led to these things.

And what has happened is that the leadership of the major denominations, the guys that sit in the offices and make decisions and do fundraising and all that sort of thing, the professors and many of the teachers in the seminaries and the colleges, they have gone liberal. And they did it a long time ago. But the people in the pews didn’t know until all of a sudden, they wake up one morning and they’re told, it’s OK if gays get married. Huh? By the way, there’s more than two genders. Huh? I thought we believed in the Bible. Well, and so they don’t advertise their defection from Scripture. But now it’s out of the box and now we can see it. And now we see the results of it. So the root issue is the Scripture. And the root issue is, are the Scriptures inspired, and are we obligated to submit to them? That’s really the issue, in my opinion. And I know that there will be some people say, well, that’s way too simplistic. So, will we as Christians, will we adhere to the plain teaching of the Bible or not? Will we submit to the Bible as our standard of faith and practice? Or will we adopt views which are contrary to the Scriptures? This is the great divide. It’s the great divide, not only between the Christian and the world, but the professing or the nominal Christian and the faithful Christian.

And we had a conference a week ago on unity. And it’s wonderful to talk about unity, but the reality is we cannot have unity with those who deny the authority of the Bible. We can love them. We can serve them. We can pray for them. But we cannot have unity with them. It is not possible. Now, if an atheist wants to go to a pro-life event, and I’ll stand next to them, and yes, I’m pro-life, they’re pro-life, great, shake hands. But that’s not what the Bible means by unity. I labor next to people who don’t agree with me on many things, even on the Bible. On a variety of issues, we can work together. But that’s not what the Bible means by unity. He says there’s one Lord and there’s one faith. There’s one Lord and there’s one faith. And the faith there isn’t our subjective faith; it’s there’s one Lord and there’s one profession of faith. There’s one standard of faith. There’s one body of doctrine.

I was tempted this morning to open and talk about what is the foundation of our faith. Ask the question, what is the foundation of our faith? And you want to say Jesus, yay, Jesus. Some people might say God, or might say the atoning work of Jesus, or some people might say well the foundation is the resurrection or something like that, and that’s all true. But how do you know who Jesus is? You had a dream? You had a vision? How do you know who Jesus is? The Word of God tells you who Jesus is. I mean, remember in Paul’s day, he had to reprove the Corinthians because he said to them, if someone comes to you preaching another Jesus, you’ll tolerate it. Another Jesus that we didn’t preach. So, there’s more than one Jesus. We have the Communist Jesus, the Socialist Jesus, the Liberation Jesus, the Gay Jesus, the tree-hugging Jesus. We’ve got all kinds of Jesuses out there. Who’s the real Jesus? How do we know? We know from the Word of God. That’s how we know. We have no other rule. We have no other way to test all the voices we’re hearing other than Scripture. And if Scripture is riddled with errors, then we have a real problem. Because then we have no foundation. Because then when we read it, we don’t know what part’s true and what part’s false. Right?

The Written Word: Inspiration

So, I want to talk about the written Word and its inspiration briefly, but then I’m going to talk about the incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus Himself. Now, I think when we talk about the inspiration of the Bible, we have to understand that it’s not something that the church made up. The inspiration of the Bible is what the Bible teaches about itself. Let me say it again. The inspiration of the Bible is what the Bible teaches about itself. If the Bible said clearly that it was not inspired, then I would never say it’s inspired, because I don’t have the authority to say that, right? But if it says it’s inspired, then I believe it is. So does the Bible claim it? Well, we just look at the passage in Timothy, right? Paul says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” What does that word inspiration mean? Here’s one theologian: “The Holy Spirit so guided and superintended the writers of the sacred text that they wrote all that He, God, wanted them to write, without excess or error.” Another writes that inspiration is the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human person whereby he is infallibly moved and guided in all his statements while under this influence.

Look at 2 Peter chapter 1. 2 Peter is right after 1 Peter. 2 Peter 1 verse 19—I’m sorry, verse 19. “We also have a more sure word of prophecy, unto which you do well that you take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.” That word interpretation could be translated “is of no private explanation,” meaning that the individual who prophesied couldn’t explain to you, couldn’t explain what’s happening. In a lot of cases, they couldn’t even explain what the prophecies meant. They didn’t know. Verse 21: “For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man.” In other words, they couldn’t explain it because they didn’t originate it. It wasn’t from them, is what he’s saying. “But holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” The word moved there is the word used when the wind blows through a sail on a boat. They were pushed along, they were moved along, by the Spirit, to say what God wanted to say. It doesn’t mean the different writers didn’t have different personalities or different styles or different vocabularies, because God used their human personalities. And He created them in such a way that He could use them, but He superintended and guided what they said and wrote. So with Scripture, what inspiration therefore means is that the result of that process is that what they spoke and wrote are indeed the words of God. Not just the truths of God, but the words of God.

Liberals have tried to confuse people by talking about the difference between the words being inspired and the message being inspired. So they say, no, I believe the Bible is inspired because the message is inspired. Well, do you believe the words are inspired? No. Oh, sorry. I’m not used to this new pulpit here. Guess I need to preach more. But the truth is you can’t have, without the words, you can’t separate the two. The more you think about it, the more you realize that’s a facade, it doesn’t work that way. So when we say the words are inspired, we don’t just mean the truths are inspired, but we mean the words themselves are the words that God wanted spoken or written in order to convey that message. Every part of the Word is inspired, all of it, and all of it is inspired equally.

David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he said things like this. This is just from Psalm 119. He said, “I have chosen the way of truth. Thine ordinances have I laid before me. I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are right. All Thy commandments are faithful. Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven.” That’s one of my favorite verses. Love it. Settled in heaven. “I esteem all Thy precepts concerning all things to be right.” All things regarding all things are right, righteous. “Thou art upright in Thy judgments. Thy testimonies are righteous and faithful. Thy word is very pure. Thy law is the truth. All Thy commandments are truth. Concerning Thy testimonies, Thou hast founded them forever.” Any amen to this? “Thy word is true from the beginning, and every one of Thy righteous ordinances endures forever.” That’s just from one psalm. This recognition of the truthfulness of God’s Word permeates the Scripture of both the Old and the New Testament.

So to put the matter fairly simply, when we say that the Bible is inspired, we mean that it is true. And we mean it is truly true, which means that it is true regarding everything which it addresses. And another attempt by the progressives is to say, well, the Bible is true regarding matters of faith, and they might even say faith and practice, but they’re starting to drop the practice part. But it’s not true regarding things like history or chronology or cosmology or botany or anything like that. So they divide truth between religious truth over here, and what some people call secular truth over here. So it’s true regarding saving doctrine, but it’s not true regarding, for example, the creation of the world, or maybe that there’s only two genders, and by the way those two things go together, and other things of that nature. But the Scripture says that God’s judgments are true regarding all things. So we believe the Bible is true regarding all that it addresses, and it addresses everything. And thus it is without error regarding every subject that it touches. But we could spend literally hours and hours and hours looking at the scriptural teaching on Scripture. But what you find is that the concept of God’s inspiration of the Word is so interwoven throughout the entire Bible that if you take it out, you’ve really destroyed Scripture completely. It is so interwoven that a lot of times you don’t even notice it’s there. But how many times in the Old Testament does it say, “the word of the Lord came”? Or the prophet says, “Thus saith the Lord”? Or Moses wrote such by the Lord, over and over and over and over, and it is interwoven throughout Scripture, both Old and New Testament.

The Written Word: Authority

So for the Christian, I believe we must say that the Word of God is true, but we also say it’s authoritative. Not only because it’s true, but because of who the author of the Scripture is. In other words, if I said to you something was true, you could say, yeah, maybe, maybe not. Or maybe you’d say, yeah, it’s true, but I’m not going to do it. Who are you? Right? Who am I? I’m not going to do it. I’m nobody. But if God says something, if God says something is true, well that’s a totally different proposition, because God is our Creator. Right? And being God, being omniscient, and being all-wise, we know that when God speaks, error is simply not possible. I mean, God isn’t stupid. So when God speaks, that word that He speaks is a binding word on us. We’re duty-bound to believe it. That is because God is our Creator. And He’s given us commands, He’s given us promises, He’s given us warnings, He’s given us consolation in His Word. And all that He has spoken being true, we thus are duty-bound to respond in submission to that word. And that means fundamentally, it means we believe it. We believe it.

The Formula of Concord, the Lutheran creed, says the Holy Scriptures alone remain the only judge, rule, and standard according to which all dogmas, meaning doctrines, shall be discerned and judged. The ultimate authority in the church is not a pope, not a pastor, not a denomination, but the Word of God itself. Because it is God’s Word, and it’s God’s church. So, what He has revealed, we are therefore duty-bound to believe. But we’re also required to practice its precepts. The Westminster Confession says all the books of the Old and New Testament are given by inspiration of God to be the rule or the standard of faith and practice. So we believe what it says, but then we live according to what it says. And those aren’t the same thing, by the way. Because believing, at least intellectually, is one thing. Living is an entirely different matter. As I say so very often, life is easy in theory. True. Not so easy in practice. So the Word is inspired, the Word is authoritative. And we should therefore believe it and embrace it because God is our Creator. Amen.

Jesus Is Lord

But there’s another reason for the Christian that we should believe and obey the Word of God. And that is because Jesus Christ is, according to our profession of faith, Jesus Christ is our Lord. If He’s your Lord, let me hear you say, Amen. He’s not just your Savior, He’s your Lord. Now, many of you aren’t old enough to remember the conflict back in the ’70s and early ’80s about the lordship of Jesus. A bunch of books were written. Do you have to make Jesus Lord in your life in order to be saved? Or do you just have Jesus as your Savior and not as Lord? And all these books were written, and there was a big evangelical debate. Personally, I felt like y’all missed the point. Because the truth is, you don’t make Jesus Lord of anything. Who are you? Who are you? Oh, you’re going to allow Jesus to have a crown? You are going to allow Jesus to sit on the throne? That’s up to you? No. Oh, okay. Well, I guess you are God then. I guess you are the center of the universe. That’s not how it works, folks. You don’t make Jesus Lord. Jesus is the Lord. The Scripture declares that Jesus Christ is not only the Lord, but He is the Lord of lords, meaning the Lord over all lords, the Lord over all powers, all rulers, all governments, all presidents, all parliaments. That is who He is. We don’t make Him that. We either acknowledge it and submit, or we don’t acknowledge it and we rebel.

Now let me put a wild idea into your brain. You ready? When you go to work tomorrow, and your boss is being a jerk, look at him and think to yourself, Jesus is his Lord. Jesus is his Lord, because Jesus is the Lord of everyone. Some of us have acknowledged it and some of us haven’t. We don’t make Him Lord, because if that’s our prerogative—He is the Lord. We know from Scripture that because of His passion, meaning His death, His burial, His resurrection, God set Jesus at the right hand of glory. And He gave the kingdom to the Son, so that the Son now would rule until He has put all enemies under His feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed will be death. And then He will offer the kingdom back up to the Father, Paul says, 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus is ruling now, folks. [audio unclear] He’s your Master. He’s your Boss. He’s your homeboy. What does Jesus say about the Scripture? That’s the question for the Christian. What does Jesus say about the Bible? Well, let’s look at the Bible and see what Jesus said.

What Jesus Says about Scripture

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, Matthew 4:1–11, there were three temptations, right? Say right. And Jesus answered each temptation the same way. When He was tempted, He looked at the devil and He said, “It is written.” And then He quoted the Scripture. That was His authority, the Bible, in response to the temptation. “It is written,” or it could be translated, “it stands written.” Chapter 5 of Matthew, Jesus said, “Think not, verse 17, that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I came not to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Let me ask you this, has the heaven or earth passed away yet? There you go.

Matthew 22. By the way, I’m skipping tons and tons of verses because we don’t have time. Jesus debated the Pharisees, the Sadducees here about the resurrection and about is there marriage in heaven. That’s really something we got to know, right? Here they are, off in their theological fantasies. Jesus says in verse 29, “You do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was”—listen—“that which was spoken unto you by” who? God. “Spoken unto you by” who? God. “Spoken unto you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’” And then Jesus said, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Jesus quotes the Old Testament that was written by Moses, but said, God spoke to them.

Mark chapter 7. This is where the Pharisees criticized Jesus and His disciples because they hadn’t washed their hands according to the traditions of the elders. And He says in verse 6, “Well did Isaiah the prophet prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men—as the washing of pots and cups, and many other such things you do.” And He said to them, “Full well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition.” This is exactly what’s happening today. The religious leaders, Big Eva, they are rejecting the commandments of God for their own traditions, their own interpretations, their own opinions. Notice this in verse 10, where He says, “For Moses said”—so twice already He first referred to the commandment of God, and then He quotes Moses. Well, guess what Jesus is doing? He’s endorsing the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible written by Moses, saying it’s the Word of God. And then at verse 13, He concludes that, because of their traditions, they’re making the Word of God of no effect through their traditions. It couldn’t be more clear where Jesus stood.

Look at John chapter 5. Jesus says this starting in verse 39. He says, “Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. And you will not come to Me that you might have life. I receive not honor from men, but I know you, that you have not the love of God in you. I am come in My Father’s name, and you receive Me not. If another shall come in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe, who receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that comes from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed Me; for he wrote about Me.” [audio unclear]

The Jews answered Him, saying—He’s saying, well first He says, why are you guys getting ready to stone Me? He says such a funny question when you think about it. Hey guys, why are you picking up those rocks over there? Well, here’s why, Jesus. The Jews, verse 33: “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.” And by the way, nothing liberals will say—Jesus [audio unclear] So He plainly says that the word to Israel was the Word of God, and that the Scripture cannot be broken, meaning the Scripture is true.

John 17, Jesus praying to the Father in His high priestly prayer. And He’s praying for the apostles. And He says, they’re in verse 16, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through Your truth. Your word is truth.” Jesus says to the Father, “Thy word, Your word, God, is truth.” Could anything be more clear about where Jesus stood on the Bible?

But I just want to highlight a couple more things. I know I’m going long. Because Jesus specifically endorsed the Old Testament teaching that many evangelicals now deny. For example, Jesus endorsed the creation account. Look at Matthew 19. In Matthew 19, He was asked the question, so Jesus says this in verse 4: “And He answered and said to them, ‘Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh”? Therefore they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.’” So Jesus says, “Have you not read?” And what is He referring to? He’s referring to the first two chapters of Genesis. If there’s one text of Scripture that many evangelicals now deny, it’s the first two chapters of Genesis—actually the first three. Some even go farther. Yet Jesus explicitly bases His teaching on marriage on the original creation account and the first marriage of Adam and Eve. And by the way, many evangelicals now deny not only the creation account, they deny that Adam and Eve were historical people. I mean it’s bad. There are professors in conservative seminaries. We’re talking about Wheaton College. We’re talking about Fuller Seminary. We’re talking about all sorts of schools that conservatives are sending their children to, and they’re not conservative.

Jesus, in this passage alone, affirms the creation account in Genesis. He refutes the notion that there are many genders, right? How did God make them? Male and female. Male, female—that’s two. I’m not that dumb, that’s two. Binary. And that’s a bad word these days, in progressive circles. “I don’t believe in that binary stuff.” And of course, He endorses heterosexual marriage, not gay marriage. This is Jesus. So how then do the evangelicals say, “Jesus is my Lord. Let’s have that gay marriage tomorrow. Jesus is Lord, but there’s many genders”? How do they do that?

For a second time, I’ll pass over the other Scriptures, but Jesus endorses the account of Noah in Matthew 24. He actually, Jesus had the audacity, believe it or not, to refer to Jonah as a historical figure. Jonah, Matthew 12. Jonah! And if there’s one book that’s been ridiculed in the Bible, it’s Jonah and the fish. “Do you believe the Bible? Ho ho ho.” The people that say that have no idea what Jonah’s about. They’ve never read it, right? Have no idea that Jesus endorsed it. And Jesus even said that just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Jonah in that context was a type of Jesus, of His death, His burial, and His resurrection. They have no idea what Jonah’s about, but it’s funny, they like to mock it. So the question is, what then ought we to believe in light of Christ’s view of Scripture?

Submission, Not Selective Submission

I’m talking about you, you people that profess to be Christians. Some of you may not be Christians. Maybe you’re here today, you don’t know the Lord Jesus, and you’re just kind of wondering what’s going on in weird churches, and so you thought you’d come here. I’m not talking to you, because this is not a sermon to convince anybody about the inspiration of the Bible. That’d be a totally different sermon. I’m talking to those who already profess Christ, profess His lordship, and profess that they believe in the Bible in some sense. That’s who I’m talking to. So we Christians—and by definition, really, Christian really means you’ve acknowledged the lordship of Jesus—what then should we believe? In other words, can we separate Jesus’ teaching on Scripture from His lordship? That’s really the question. Sadly, many are doing it.

I want to quote briefly from a book by John Stott. He wrote a book called The Authority of the Bible, which was a result of a presentation he gave at an InterVarsity convention all the way back in 1973. He says, for Him, meaning Jesus, what Scripture said, God said. Very straightforward. But he says this, and this brings it home to us: “A Christian is somebody who not only confesses with his lips that Jesus is Lord, but brings every aspect of his life under the sovereign lordship of Jesus.” Can I get an amen? His opinions, his beliefs, his standards, his values, his ambitions, everything. Can I get another amen? “To us then, submission to Scripture is part and parcel of this submission to the lordship of Jesus. We cannot accommodate ourselves to the idea of a selective submission. For example, agreeing with Jesus in His doctrine of God, but disagreeing with Him in His doctrine of Scripture. Selective submission is not true submission.” Historically, our view of Scripture depends on our loyalty to Christ. Amen, brother.

But then he asked the question, how is it then? How is it possible for those who claim Jesus to have a lower view of Scripture than Jesus did? How does that happen? And here’s the answer, and then we’ll close. He says there’s two possible ways this happens. There’s two escape routes, he calls them, from obligation. The first is to say that Jesus did not know what He was talking about. That the incarnation imprisoned Him in the limited mentality of a first-century Palestinian Jew. And that consequently He believed the Old Testament as they did, but that He, like them, was mistaken. That’s one proposal by the progressives. The second is that He did know what He was talking about, that He actually knew the Scripture was unreliable, [audio unclear] Now, I won’t do it, but what I want to do is I want to throw this piano over, to demonstrate what Jesus did in the temple. This man was not worried about upsetting people. He stood before the Pharisees and to their faces He said, “You are a whitewashed sepulcher. Your innards are full of dead men’s bones.” That’s not a man that’s, shall we say, seeker friendly. But these theories have been proposed by Christians to escape the obligation of believing. But as Stott points out, these theories portray Jesus as either deceived or deceiver. That’s the bottom line. If He was mistaken, then He was deceived. If He knew better but didn’t speak the truth, He was a deceiver. They discredit the incarnate Son of God. They’re incompatible both with His claims to speak what He knew, to bear witness of the truth, and to be the truth. And they are inconsistent with His known hatred of all hypocrisy and deceit. Amen?

So the question becomes, if Jesus believed in the inspiration of Scripture and He is our Lord, then are we not obligated to follow His teaching? Harold Lindsell, who wrote the book The Battle for the Bible and this book The Bible in the Balance—these are written in the 1970s. I know for some of you that’s like 1870, but no, it was 1970. I encourage you to read them both because it will give you a history lesson in what happened, because the problems we have today were set in motion years ago. The denial of inspiration has been going on in the church, not outside the church, in the church, has been going on for a long time. But finally now, now that the rot has eaten away the foundation, now we’re seeing the results in our churches, in our culture. But Lindsell says this: “Inerrancy does not stand by itself. It is inextricably linked to the person of Christ. To deny inerrancy is to deny what Jesus believed. It is a denial of the lordship of Christ.”

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, we call You Lord, but do we truly understand what we’re saying? I ask, Lord, that You would bring home to us not only the reality of the inspired Word, but Lord, the reality of who You are and what You have spoken. And I pray that You would call us to a place of faithful submission, not selective submission. And if the world ridicules us because we believe what You believe, then Lord, so be it. May we count it all joy to be mocked and rejected for Your sake, for Your sake, the One who died and suffered on the cross for us. I pray, God, for the church at large. I pray for those who are teaching false doctrine. I pray [audio unclear] to proclaim Your Word in its fullness and proclaim it with confidence and boldness through the power of Your Holy Spirit. And Lord, make us, Your people, a people of the Book. That we would read it, meditate upon it, study it, pray over it, and through it, through the written Word, Lord, we would come to know You in a deeper way, the incarnate Word. We ask this for Your glory. We pray in Your name, Amen.