All right, well, if you have the Three Forms of Unity book, turn there to page 54. We're going to be looking at Article 6 this morning. of the Belgian confession, the one I'm sure Fred was waiting for me to get to so we could talk about the non-canonical books or the apocryphal books. I kind of was trying to figure out how do we do a lesson on an article of a confession that really has no like bible passage to point to to say these are the canonical books and these these aren't so you have it there in your outline we're going to look we're going to ask the question what is the apocrypha then we're going to look at the history of the apocrypha and then we're going to ask another question why or why not so those are the the three points of the lesson this morning But again, just a brief recap from last time. We looked at Article 5, which spoke of the dignity and authority of the Holy Scriptures. We had three main conclusions that came out of that lesson. The first that Article 5 stresses is that the Scriptures are the or regulation of our faith. They are the foundation of our faith, and they are the confirmation of our faith. So the Scriptures provide that guide for what is our faith. It provides that foundation that our faith rests upon, and it provides the confirmation when we have doubt and despair, or where we might be tempted to kind of go off the reservation a little bit. The Scriptures tell us where is the green pastures of the truth of God's Word. We looked at the scriptures are authoritative. That's one of the main points that this article wants to get across. The scriptures are authoritative because the Holy Spirit witnesses to them. So the Holy Spirit is the prime motivator, the prime confirmer of the scriptures as the spirit bears witness in our hearts that the word is, that the scriptures are in fact the word of God. In a couple other articles ago, we looked at, you know, there's various things you can look at that confirm the authority of Scripture and the inspiration of Scripture, but ultimately it comes down to the Holy Spirit bearing witness in our hearts to them. And then thirdly, we looked at the Scriptures themselves are what we call self-attesting. they don't seek their authority or their dignity from a higher source. Because if it sought its dignity and authority from a higher source, then that source should be where we go to, right? But no, if the Scriptures are the highest source of authority, then they must attest to themselves. There's a fancy word, autopistus, they are self-attesting. They do not derive their authority from men. They do not derive their authority from the church. They do not derive their authority from church councils. So, as we go forward in Article 6, we're going to look at now The difference between what are called the canonical books, the books that form the 66 books of our Bible, and those that are called apocryphal books. That's going to be our focus in Article 6. So as I said, we're going to look at three things this morning. What is the apocrypha? We're going to look at the history of the apocrypha. And then we're going to ask the question, why or why not? Why should these books be excluded? or why not should these books be excluded. But let's look at Article 6 together. Let me read that for you. So the Article 6 of the Belgic Confession begins with these words. We distinguish those sacred books, the canonical books, from the apocryphal namely, and here's a list of the books, the third and fourth books of Esdras, the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Jesus Sarac, Baruch, the appendix to the book of Esther, the song of the three children in the furnace, the history of Susanna, of Bel and the dragon, the prayer of Manasseh, and the two books of the Maccabees. all of which the church may read and take instruction from, so far as they agree with the canonical books, but they are far from having such power and efficacy that we may, from their testimony, confirm any point of faith or of the Christian religion, much less may they be used to detract from the authority of the other, that is, the sacred books." I was reading through some of these titles, it's like some of these would be like cool books to, you know, just the names. It's like, you know, the three children in the furnace. That sounds like a nursery tale that you would tell your kids. Gather around, Joe, let me tell you about the three children. What do you think that story is about? Yeah, yeah, it's probably about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So there, that is Article 6. So as we come now to article six, it's gonna be looking at this question, what is the difference between these books that are considered canonical, that are the rule foundation and confirmation of our faith, and those which are apocryphal, those that we can derive, we could use profitably, and we can learn from them, but are not at the level of scripture. So as we look at our first point, well, what does the word apocrypha mean? What is the apocrypha? And what does the word apocrypha mean? Well, the word apocrypha comes from the Greek and it means hidden or concealed things. If you look at, if you have your Bibles, this is not a proof text for the apocrypha, it's just where the word is used. Look at Colossians chapter 2. Colossians 2, verse 3. And there Paul writes, in whom, that is in Jesus Christ, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That word hidden is the word apocryphos or apocrypha. So it just means hidden or concealed. The apocrypha are those books Well, they're considered hidden or concealed. That's what Apocrypha means in general. Now, let's consider what it means in relation to the Bible, to Scripture. So the word Apocrypha means hidden or concealed, but what does it mean now in relation to when we talk about the Bible? It refers to a list of books which we just read from the confession. Depends on what source you look at will depend how many books they list. Some will list 12, 14, 15, 20, I guess it depends on how you break them up. I think the Belgic lists 14 there. That are either to be added to or they're extensions of canonical Old Testament books. Again, if you look at some of the names, right, of the books, the appendix to the Book of Esther, that sounds like an addition to the Book of Esther. The Three Children of the Furnace sounds like it might be an extension to the Book of Daniel. These others are just extra books that are added to the Old Testament canon or they're included in lists or extensions of canonical Old Testament books. Now, the contents of those books, they were composed during what is called the intertestamental period. So in your Bibles, right, when you go to the end of Malachi chapter four, you might have a blank white page there that might say the New Testament on it, and you turn, and then you're in Matthew chapter one. You turn the page, sorry. Isn't that really annoying? turn the page. If you know what that means, you know what that means. If you don't, ask me later. When you turn the page from Malachi 4 to Matthew 1, in turning that page you are moving 400 years from Old Testament history to New Testament history. It's in that 400 year period that these apocryphal books were written. So they were composed in that intertestamental period. Now, as I said, Article 6 gives us a list of the apocryphal books that contains 14 works. Among that list are included, as it says there, the two books of the Maccabees. Now, these are important historically because they tell of the Maccabean Revolution. which occurred, it's a historical event that occurred in the intertestamental period when the land of Israel, the Israelites had returned from exile and they had been under Persian rule for a number of years and then the Greek Empire comes in and takes over most of the known world and then Alexander the Great dies and then his kingdom is split into four regions and Palestine was sort of on the road to everywhere at that point. You had the northern part of the Greek kingdom in Syria and you had a southern part of the Greek kingdom in Egypt and they were constantly at war with one another. And oftentimes those wars would go through Palestine or through the land of Canaan where Israel was. And in those books, in the book of Maccabees, It gives the historical information of the Jewish people and their revolt against a Seleucid, that's a Syrian, ruler named Antiochus Epiphanes. Do you remember when we talked about him, when we looked at the book of Daniel? Now Daniel prophesies about this. You see this in Daniel chapter 11. You see about Antiochus Epiphanes. This would occur around the mid second century B.C., so like in the 100s, 150, 170, around there. And it talks about how this Antiochus Epiphanes, what he did was he desecrated the temple. He offered a pig on the altar and it desecrated the temple because what he wanted to do was to sort of Hellenize the world. He wanted to Greekify the Jews, and they needed to worship the Greek gods, they needed to speak Greek and all these things, and of course the Jews were like, you can't defile our temple, so they revolted, and that revolt was actually successful. It was Judas Maccabeus and his sons who successfully revolted against Antiochus Epiphanes. So these events, as I said, were foretold in the book of Daniel, And they tell of the institution of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. So when they celebrate Hanukkah, it's a celebration of the success of this Maccabean revolt. Now, this list of 14 apocryphal books are not the only apocryphal writings in existence. There are many, many volumes of apocryphal New Testament writings as well. There are apocryphal gospels. There are apocryphal acts, like Acts of Peter and so on and so forth. There are apocryphal letters or epistles. And this is going to be hard to say, apocryphal apocalypses. Books like the book of Revelation. For example, this is just a sample of some of the lists. You have a gospel of Philip. You remember who Philip was? Philip was one of the six people that the apostles laid hands on to help with the ministry of the early church. You see this in the book of Acts. Philip was the one who He's the one who encounters the Ethiopian eunuch. He's the one who converts, or through his ministry is converted. You have the Gospel of Thomas. That's if you are familiar with Dan Brown's work and the Da Vinci Code, the Gospel of Thomas is mentioned there. You have the Acts of Peter. You have the Apocalypse of Peter. These are just a few of these apocryphal New Testament writings. Most of these works are what is called pseudonymous, by that I mean like P-S-E-U pseudonym. Think of pseudonym. They are falsely named and they are often referred to when you collect them together as pseudopigrapha. That's a hard word to say. Pseudopigrapha, false writings is what it means. Because those apocryphal New Testament books were written in the 2nd and 3rd century A.D. So when it says the Gospel of Philip, it's like 2nd or 3rd century A.D. It's way after Philip lived. They're just slapping Philip's name on there, or they're slapping Peter's name on there, or Thomas' name on there. So they're false writings, and they're falsely attributed to these historical figures. What I'm trying to get at here is when we talk about the Apocrypha, it's not just these 14 works. There's all kinds of Apocryphal writings, but for our purposes here, when we look at Belgic Confession, Article 6, our focus is only going to be on these 14 Old Testament Apocryphal writings that are mentioned in Belgic Confession, Article 6. So that is What is the Apocrypha? We're gonna have a very specific definition of the Apocrypha. It's these 14 writings that are Old Testament additions or extensions, and they occurred in that intertestamental period. So now let's look at the history of the Apocrypha. The history of the Apocrypha. This is our second point here. The reason for our focus on these 14 writings is because they are sometimes included in print copies of the Bible. So if you were to go to a Christian bookstore, you actually might find particularly like a King James version of the Bible that might include the Apocrypha. You can certainly find them on Amazon. If you were to look for on Amazon, search for Bible with Apocrypha, you will get a list of Bibles that include the Apocrypha, and they'll probably be included between the Old and the New Testaments. The Catholic Church, if you know of anybody who has a Catholic Bible, they will include the Apocrypha in them. And that's the reason why we're focusing on this, because given the context of the Belgic Confession, this is the debate, this forms part of the debate between the Reformation and Rome on Sola Scriptura. And they touched upon the questions of the Apocrypha. So what is the history of these books? What is the history behind the Apocrypha? For centuries the church, this is prior to the Reformation, for centuries the church used, their scriptures were the Latin Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate, that is a Latin translation of the scriptures. The Vulgate was created in the 4th century, 4th or early 5th century by the church father Jerome. He was a scholar in Hebrew and Greek, and he was commissioned by the church to create a new translation of the scriptures from the original writings into Latin. So this would be the official text of the Bible for the church. So from that time on, up until the time of the Reformation, the Vulgate was it. It was the Latin translation. And if you remember a couple of years ago when we did our Reformation Sunday on Sola Fide, it was the Latin translation of justification that kind of caused a stir because the Latin word for justification has kind of a different meaning the Greek word does and that was part of the debate. So the church for centuries used the Vulgate and the Vulgate was written or created by Jerome, It was a translation of the Bible into Latin from the original Hebrew and Greek, so Old Testament, New Testament. Prior to the creation of the Vulgate, there were other translations of the Bible. There's a translation called the Old Latin Translation, and of course you have the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And both of those translations, the Old Latin and the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, both of them contained those books which are the Apocrypha. Now when Jerome was creating the Vulgate, originally he did not want to include the Apocrypha because in his educated opinion, because he was a Hebrew scholar, Jerome was an expert in Hebrew, he was an expert in Jewish culture. Not a Jew himself, but he was very studied in these things. And he did not want to include the Apocrypha in his translation of the Vulgate because he did not believe they were part of the Hebrew canon. They were not part of what those books that the Jews themselves considered canonical. which was at that time the Masoretic Text. The Masoretic Text was the Bible, if you will, for the Jewish people. It was the original Hebrew translation of the Bible. Now, Jerome was persuaded against his better judgment to include the Apocrypha, but when he did, he added a little notation to indicate that these books should not be considered part of the Bible, even though they were included in the Vulgate. So he called them the Apocrypha. That's where this term comes from. He called them the Apocrypha in order to indicate their lesser status compared to the canonical Old Testament and New Testament. Now even though Jerome considered the Apocrypha as non-canonical, the Apocrypha was affirmed at several church councils. You had the Council of Carthage in 397 AD. It was affirmed that these were part of the canon. You had the Second Council of Trullo, T-R-U-L-L-O, in 692, so end of the seventh century. They affirmed the Apocrypha as part of the canon. And then something called the Council of Union in 1441. or at least they recognized the Apocrypha as part of the canon. It was the Council of Trent though, if you remember we talked about Trent last week a little bit, the Council of Trent in 1546 and it went on for a number of years after that, the Council of Trent was Rome's response to the Reformation because they didn't really have any official declarations on Reformation teaching. So the Council of Trent was formed to respond to all of the points of the Reformation. And it's in the Council of Trent that you have their, what they call their, anathema of justification by faith alone. So they basically say anybody who holds to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, that person is anathema. And to this date, Trent has not been recalled. It is still an official council document for the Roman Catholic Church. So you may have many Roman Catholic friends, and they may not know this, but according to their beliefs, if you are a Protestant, you are under an anathema, according to the Roman Catholic Church. but it was at the Council of Trent where they affirmed finally the canonicity of the apocrypha. In fact, they called it deuterocanonical or second canon. So it was the Council of Trent that finally solidified that. And there hasn't been any conciliar statement since then one way or the other. Council of Trent is sort of like the final statement for them. Now, given all that, The acceptance of the Apocrypha as canon was not universal in the church. I read you several councils, I read you the fact that it was in the Vulgate, but you may think then, it's like, well, it sounds like the church at the time was all settled on this, and it wasn't, that's the thing. If someone tries to explain to you, it's like the Roman Catholic Church, they've been solid and unified for 2,000 years. There could be nothing further from the truth of that. Acceptance of the Apocrypha canon was not universal in the church. Remember I even told you, Jerome did not consider them canon. even though he included them in the Vulgate. So here's a list of some historical persons and councils that rejected the canonicity of the Apocrypha. You have the church father Cyril of Jerusalem, who lived in the fourth century. He denied or rejected the canonicity of the Apocrypha. You had the Council of Laodicea, which was in 360 AD. The great church father, Athanasius, whose dates were 293 to 373, so he was late 3rd into the 4th century. Athanasius is an important figure because he was the one who sort of stood firm during the Arian heresy. The Council of Nicaea in 325, from which we get the Nicene Creed, well, a version of the Nicene Creed, it's not the final version. But it combated the error and the heresy of Arianism, and they issued an anathema against Arius and his teachings. it didn't solve the problem. So for another few decades after that, the Aryan movements actually gained some popularity. And Athanasius, I think, this poor guy, he was a bishop, I think he got removed from his position like six or seven times. He was kind of cast out and there's a famous line about Athanasius against the world. Well, he stood firm on Trinitarian doctrine. Athanasius rejected some of the Apocrypha. Gregory of Nazianzus, another church father, he denied the canonicity of the Apocrypha. John of Damascus denied the canonicity of the Apocrypha. John Wycliffe, so we're moving ahead a few centuries, but John Wycliffe was a 14th century English Churchman, he's responsible for at least attempting to translate the scriptures into Old English. If you were to read his actual translation in English, you would not understand it. I mean, you'd be like, this is English. But he also denied the canonicity of the Apocrypha. And then of course Martin Luther, good old Martin, Uncle Martin, the German monk from Erfurt, in his preface to the Apocrypha said that they are useful but not sacred. They are useful but not sacred. So given this history, what are we to say regarding the Apocrypha? You've got people and church councils that said, yes, it's part of the canon. You've got people and church councils that said, no, it's not part of the canon. Can we just go back and say, well, I'm a Protestant and we don't believe in the Apocrypha, so that settles it? No, I don't think we can kind of go that, you know, we can't be that simplistic. So let's look at our third point. This lesson really shouldn't take all this long at the rate I'm going. The third point, the Apocrypha, why or why not? So we looked at what does it mean? We looked at a little bit of its history, how it got included in the church at the time because of the Vulgate. We saw how it had a mixed reaction, a mixed reception in the church, but was eventually solidified as part of the canon at the Council of Trent. What should we think about this? Why should we either reject it or why should we not reject it? Well, again, look at how Belgic Confession Article 6 begins again. It says, we distinguish those sacred books, the canon, from the apocryphal books. And then it lists the names of the 14 writings. So when the Belgic Confession says that, it is saying that there is something that distinguishes scripture, the sacred writings, from the apocryphal writings. There is something that distinguishes these from one from the other. Okay, so anybody here watch Sesame Street or was that just a Chicago thing? Okay, I don't know. I mean, I just watched it on Chicago Public Television, so I don't know what was national and what wasn't. All right, well you remember on Sesame Street they used to sing the song, one of these things is not like the other. Okay, that's kind of what the idea here is. It's like you've got 66 books of the canon and then you've got this list of other 14 books that is trying to get in here, but What the Belgic Confession is saying, one of these things is not like the other, okay? What we have here in the Apocryphal Books is not like what we have here in the canonical scripture. So there's something that distinguishes the sacred canonical books of the Bible from the Apocrypha. I don't have any quotes for you today, but I do have some things that I did pull out of Francis Turretin. Again, Francis Turretin, he would be more of like a second or third generation guy the Reformation his dates are 1623 to 1687 so by that time you know I mean Luther's dead Calvin's dead a lot of the other first-generation reformers are dead so he's in that next maybe second or third wave and He is an Italian. His name is actually Turritini. Kind of maybe shortened it or Latinized it, Turritin. He wrote a three-volume work called The Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Elenctic just means sort of disputational theology. So his works are a lot of questions. He poses questions and then he'll say, we either affirm or deny, and then he'll give a whole bunch of reasons why we affirm or deny it. And he talks about this, about the apocryphal books. It's section 2, question 9, part 4. And he gives four reasons that distinguish the canonical books from the apocryphal books. The first reason he gives is that the Apocrypha were not considered canon by the Jewish people. They were not considered canon by the Jewish people. If you remember, that's one of the reasons why Jerome didn't want to include the Apocrypha in his translation of the Vulgate, because The Jewish people did not consider the Apocrypha as part of their sacred writings. Remember, the law, the prophets, the writings, those are the sacred writings, the Jewish canon. So they were not considered as canon by the Jews. In fact, there was a council where Jewish scholars finally confirmed this. Sort of like Trent did many, many years after, even though you had a lot of these councils that sort of affirmed the Apocrypha, they finally set it in stone at Trent in 1546. Same thing with some Jewish scholars. There was a council called the Council of Jamnia, J-A-M-N-I-A. Jamnia. It occurred in 90 A.D. and there they also said that effectively what amounts to the 39 books of our Old Testament, though they have a different numbering for their books because of the way they're structured. It says these are canon. They denied the canonicity of the Apocrypha. So that's reason one. They were not considered as canon by the Jews. Second reason, Neither Jesus nor the apostles ever quote from any place in the Apocrypha. So neither Jesus nor the apostles quote any of the 14 writings. Well, you could say, well, Jesus never quoted from Esther either, right? but you have, you know, where Esther is considered canon, right? You know, Belle and the dragon is not considered canon. So Jesus nor the apostles never ever quote from any place in the Apocrypha. When we get through this list of four, it's not that you can rest your case on any one of those reasons. You have to kind of, they together form a cohesive argument. The Christian church for at least the first 400 years never recognized them as canon. You remember, the first council was the Council of Carthage, which was in the late fourth century, that recognized them as part of the canon. So for at least 400 years, they were not recognized as canon. And then fourthly, the authors of the apocryphal books were not prophets, because they wrote after Malachi. Malachi is often considered the close of the Old Testament canon. He is the last voice. And they wrote in Greek, not Hebrew. If these are supposed to be part of the Old Testament canon, why aren't they written in Hebrew? They were written in Greek. Why? Again, consider the period in which they were written. They were written in the intertestamental period. By this time, the Greek empire had already kind of rolled through most of that region and began the process of Hellenization, which is, as I like to call it, the Greekifying of the world, right? You become saturated with Greek culture. You become saturated with Greek philosophy. You become saturated with Greek literature. and philosophy, I said philosophy already, so I'm kind of double emphasizing that, and Greek language as well. So these books were not written in Hebrew, they were written in Greek. Then he goes on, Turretin, to say that the style and matter of the books proclaim them to be human, not divine. In other words, they can be distinguished, as the Belgic Confession says, they can be distinguished from the sacred books by style and content. Terton again says, there are so many contradictions and absurdities contained in them. This would also distinguish them from the sacred books. You're like, well, what are some of these contradictions and absurdities? Well, I'll tell you. I've got a list of five, at least five things here. Some of the content of the apocrypha that would distinguish it from the canonical books of scripture. So in the book of Tobit, I have a friend of mine who, we were in the same church together when I was back in Illinois. We joked with him that he was like a scholar on the book of Tobit. He wasn't. It was just, I don't know how that joke started, but anyway. In the book of Tobit, we read of seven angels that stand before God and present prayers to the saints. Nowhere do we see any of that in scripture. The prayers of God's people ascend directly into the heavenly throne room. In 2nd Maccabees, we read of a departed prophet who is said to pray for God's people on earth, right? You know, the saints are praying for us in heaven, right? You don't get any of that in the canonical books of Scripture. In the books of Wisdom and in Serac, we see that the righteous are those who were given good souls at birth. That doesn't sound like anything you read in scripture, right? In fact, if anything, anyone born after Adam is born without a good soul, right? They're born corrupt. Again, in the book of Tobit, in the book of Sirach, we hear that our good deeds atone for our evil deeds. Does that sound like anything that scripture teaches? No. And then in 2nd Maccabees we see the teaching of prayers for the dead. So, that angels stand before God and present the prayers of the saints, that departed people, prophets, pray for the people on earth, that the righteous are those who are given good souls at birth, that our good deeds atone for our evil deeds, and praying for people who are dead. The Roman Catholic Church does have some doctrines that they do based on things that are in the Apocrypha, and they find their support for them, particularly this idea of good deeds atoning for evil deeds, right? What are works of penance? If not, you are doing good works to atone for the bad things that you've done. They also engage in prayers for the dead and so on and so forth. So here you have that dispute then between the Protestant reformers and Rome. So in the end then, we confess along with the Belgic that the church may read and take instruction from the Apocrypha so far as they agree with the canonical books. So you can profit from these things, okay? Again, I think 2 Maccabees, the two books of Maccabees, I should say, are good in the sense that they do provide some of that historical context that is occurring in that white space between the Old and New Testaments. Things that you would not know because the scriptures don't talk about them. But again, things that were predicted by Daniel in his prophecy, and things that actually happened in history. We know a lot about that part in history because of some of these books in the Apocrypha. So as far as they do not contradict anything in scripture, you can learn and profit from them, just as you can profit from any book, right? You can profit from any human book as long as it is, so far as it agrees with scripture or doesn't disagree with scripture. But then the confession goes on and says, but they are far from having such power and efficacy that we may, from their testimony, confirm any point of faith or of the Christian religion. We cannot take our doctrine from the Apocrypha, is what it's saying there. And we cannot confirm any doctrine of scripture from the Apocrypha. If the Apocrypha says something that we would agree with, we have to find confirmation of it in the scriptures. If so, then fine. Again, you can profit from things that are not sacred. You just cannot use those writings as the rule or the foundation or the confirmation of our faith as it says in Article Five. So again, the bottom line here is we can treat the Apocrypha like any other work from a human author. We can learn and profit from them, but they do not bear the mark of the Holy Spirit. So we cannot affirm or detract from any point of doctrine by the Apocrypha alone. We cannot affirm or deny any point of Christian doctrine from the Apocrypha alone. Westminster Confession of Faith also has a statement on the Apocrypha, so I include it here. This is in Chapter 1. So Westminster Confession of Faith begins its look, its confession, by looking at Scripture. And in Chapter 1, Section 3, The Westminster Confession says, these books, commonly called apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings. Treat the apocrypha like you would treat any other human book. Same thing like we would say, you know, we can benefit greatly from the writings of Calvin. We would not elevate John Calvin's writings to the level of scripture. There will be things that John Calvin would say that we would disagree with. Martin Luther, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, R.C. Sproul, any of these guys, none of them are at the level of scripture. You can benefit from them, you can profit from them, but they are not to be elevated to the point of scripture. So you can make use of them, but the same thing with the apocrypha, you can profit from them, you can use them, but they are to be treated as any other human writing. That's the point. A couple of scripture passages before we close here. Romans chapter 3, Romans chapter 3 and verse 2. I'm going to start in verse 1. Paul here, you know, this is part of his argument about how we're all under the law condemned. And he had just said that at the end of chapter two, it's like, the true Jew is one who has been circumcised in the heart, not in the flesh. So then a question is asked, well, then what profit is there being a Jew? And Paul says, well, there's a lot of profit in being a Jew. And he says chiefly verse 2 because to them were committed the oracles of God Okay, the Hebrew scriptures were committed to the Hebrew people and remember the Hebrew scriptures did not include the Apocrypha And then, of course, in 2 Peter 1, verse 21, we looked at this a couple of weeks ago when we looked at inspiration. For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Remember, these works of the Apocrypha do not contain any mark of the Holy Spirit. They are the writings of men. They are not to be considered as scripture. So that's it as far as Article 6 goes. We've got one more article that touches upon the doctrine of Scripture. We're going to look at that, Lord willing, next week. Article 7, as we look at the sufficiency of the holy scriptures to be the only rule of faith so when we say that the scriptures are sufficient what we're saying is that it's all we need so you've got this you know maybe you learn this in school right necessary and sufficient Necessary is something you need. Sufficient is all that you need. And that's what we're saying here about the scriptures. The scriptures are, you need the scriptures and that they're all that you need because they are the only infallible rule of faith in the church. Again, we do have confessions. We do have, you know, just like the Apocrypha, the confessions are not at the level of scripture, but we do have these subordinate standards that do summarize the scriptures. So these can be a rule of faith, but they are not the infallible rule of faith. They are not the sufficient rule of faith. And that's what we're going to look at next week in Article 7. And this will be another article that engages again in that sort of debate between Rome and the reformers. because they're gonna deny the sola of sola scriptura, okay? They're gonna deny the sufficiency of Scripture. They're gonna affirm the necessity of Scripture, but they're gonna deny the sufficiency of it because they want to elevate unwritten tradition at the same level of the Scripture. So next week, Lord willing, again, we'll look at article seven on the sufficiency of Scripture.