I am thankful for the opportunity. I have thoroughly enjoyed my study. I've done all kinds of reading. in the past six or eight weeks, bought a lot of new books, worked through those books. Some of them were great and very helpful. Others I wish I hadn't spent the money on because they didn't give me any help along the way, but such is what happens. The way I read books is I read one that I like, then I pay attention to the footnotes, and then I buy the books that are in the footnotes and read the books that are in the footnotes. And they're not always as useful as they might be, though sometimes they are. I hope over the course of the next couple of weeks I'll be able to present you with a couple of those books that I found especially helpful. My goal really is to honor the Lord, be faithful to the Scriptures. I've prayed that what I present will be faithful to the Word of God. That's my great desire above all things. Most of you know, or those of you who know me know, that I'm not a a guy who gets involved in fights and internet hassles and all the rest. I don't like to do that. And so I've approached this even in such a way that I don't want it to be a back and forth with anybody on the internet, anything like that. I just want to lay things out for you. Let me pray and then I'll get into my notes and we'll see how far we get today. Brent came up to me and said, do you think that you've prepared enough? Of course, he was speaking tongue in cheek because he knows me well enough to know that I've probably got two or three weeks material prepared for today. But anyways, let's pray. Oh Lord, thank you for the opportunity to study your holy word. We ask for your guidance, for your holy spirit. You've promised us that he will come to us and that he'll give us light as we study your word. So we beg for that today. We do not want to walk off the path. We want to walk on the path. Your word is a light to our path. We pray that you would help us to think through it very carefully and to honor you in the conclusions that we draw. So bless this time, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Some of you were at the Christmas party a couple of weeks ago. We had a great time. It was really enjoyable. Some of us wore really nice Christmas sweaters and looked great in them, especially Brent. I think he had the best Christmas sweater of them all. But one of the things that we did at the Christmas party was, my son Nathan found it on the internet, a quiz about the Christmas story. There were 27 questions, all of them asking us, how much do we know about what the Bible actually says about the Christmas story, and how much do we think that we know that we ought not to think that we know? And it was really fascinating. Those of you who are there will remember how much fun it was to go through this. Questions like this. What did the innkeeper say to Mary and Joseph when they arrived at the inn? Anybody want to give a try? Well, we don't know what he said because the Bible doesn't tell us. It doesn't even mention an innkeeper. And yet we've got songs that you've heard in the last couple of weeks, No Room at the Inn. How many Magi came to see Jesus? We... That's good, that's right. We three kings of Orient are, but we don't know that there were three kings. We know that there were three gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and so tradition has turned that into three kings, but probably in manger scenes and all the rest that you've seen, there have been three who came to stand before Jesus, right? Where did the Magi find Jesus? I just gave it away, didn't I, in a manger scene?" No, that's wrong, actually. He was in a house, Matthew tells us. And there are all kinds of questions like this, which when you hear the reality of it, you say, hold on a minute. What I thought was true isn't necessarily true. Now, is it possible that there was an innkeeper who said there's no room? Yes, but that's not a certainty. It's not found in the account in Luke's gospel. Was it possible that there were three kings who came to Jesus? Yes, it's possible, although doubtful, because if they were in fact these wise men, these kings, they probably would have had a retinue with them, a whole group that came along with them. So these things are possible, but they're not sure. Why do I tell this story or remind you of this? Because oftentimes, we think that we understand something, when all that we do is repeat ideas from others without understanding them ourselves. And the recent Christmas season was a really useful demonstration of that. Let me give you a couple of other illustrations that I want to begin with. Names are thrown around and placed on people, oftentimes in an attempt to make mud stick. All right? so that you are fundamentalists. Do you know that? Now, when I read that about myself, Larry, I was thinking about this today when you were talking about your Bible school background. When I see that word directed at me, I say, no, I'm not. Because what's a fundamentalist? Well, a fundamentalist often has a black and white view of the Christian life. This is right, this is wrong. You know the old saying, you don't drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls that do? Well, I have a lot of friends who drink, smoke, and chew. I don't know if the girls they go with do. But they don't meet that qualification. But you know what? You are a fundamentalist. You are called a fundamentalist, and you're dismissed as a fundamentalist. You know why? because fundamentalists believe that the Bible is inspired and inerrant and is authoritative. And for that reason, even though we might reject all of the other trappings of fundamentalism. There's a whole group of people in the world who call us fundamentalists for that reason, and it always troubles me when I read that somewhere. The fundamentalist seminary, such and such, now IRBS is a flea on the wall and they don't even notice us, but that's often said about some of the more well-known evangelical schools. The fundamentalist school And the reason that they say that is because they're committed to the inerrancy, infallibility, authority of Scripture. So you're a fundamentalist. Here's another one. And this one usually is thrown at us by the fundamentalists, interesting enough. You're all hyper-Calvinists. And you're dismissed because you're a hyper-Calvinist. How many of you remember the name John R. Rice? A fundamentalist evangelist from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, traveled around in the 20th century, very popular in fundamentalist circles. He hated Calvinism. And anyone who held any view that argued that we're dead in our trespasses and sins, and regeneration of the Holy Spirit is necessary, and that the purpose of God in sending the Son was that the elect might be saved, anybody who holds those views is a hyper-Calvinist. Now, that's our doctrine. That's what we're committed to. And so in the eyes of people like John R. Rice, fundamentalist, you're a hyper-Calvinist. But you know what a hyper-Calvinist really is? There's an actual definition of the term. It's someone who denies the free offer of the gospel. It's someone who refuses to call sinners to faith in Christ. I think almost every Lord's Day, we hear from that pulpit a call to those who are not yet believers in Christ to come and believe the gospel, right? You know that, you hear that. Just by definition, that means we are not hyper-Calvinists. And yet there's a whole group of people who will use that language and dismiss us. because we do hold to the doctrines of grace. Now those are two illustrations that help me, and I hope they will help you to understand, that the use of words as we apply them to others is not always appropriate, nor does it accurately reflect what others believe. I am not a fundamentalist. I don't want to be called a fundamentalist. I reject the idea of being a fundamentalist. I'm not a hyper-Calvinist, I believe in the offer of the gospel, in preaching the gospel to the lost, and yet there are many who will dismiss me either as a fundamentalist or as a hyper-Calvinist. Now I think in the controversy that has taken place in the last, oh, I don't know, two or three years, some terms have been used like that. Thomist. Have you heard that one? We're going to talk about that later on in the month. But that's quickly thrown at certain people, and it's used to dismiss them. Well, I actually saw one person say, Thomas Aquinas was a Roman Catholic. Anyone who follows Thomas Aquinas must be on the road to Roman Catholicism. No, no, no, no, no. That's not true at all. I'm not a Thomist. I think there are places where Thomas Aquinas helps us. In fact, if you have a copy of my exposition of the Second London Confession of Faith, you'll find that Thomas Aquinas is occasionally mentioned in there, but I don't think he's ever mentioned by me. He's mentioned by Puritan writers who use him as someone who sheds light on a particular doctrine in the Scriptures. John Owen, the great John Owen, I think the greatest English-speaking theologian of all times, the great John Owen was not afraid to rely upon Thomas Aquinas at points. But to say that John Owen was a Thomist, there's no one who was more opposed to Rome than John Owen, and yet he was happy to use it. But you see, that language has been thrown around. IRBS is a Thomist school. or this professor or that professor is a Thomist. And I want to say, no, that's not true at all. It's easy to throw that at us and try to make it stick and dismiss us, but it simply isn't true. Just like we're not hyper-Calvinists and we're not fundamentalists, we're not Thomists. Now, Are there things about fundamentalism that can help us? I would say that there are. They're committed to the same doctrine of scripture that we are. Are there things about hyper-Calvinism that we agree with? Well, they believe in the basic doctrines of grace. They just go beyond what we would say. Are there things that Thomas Aquinas wrote that perhaps can be helpful? Well, it seems that the Puritans believed that that was the case. They were willing to use him along the way. And so I'm willing to use him when he speaks what is true. Later on, I'm going to get into a statement like this. All truth is God's truth. And it doesn't matter where it comes from. What matters is that it is consistent with the Word of God, that it fulfills what the Word of God says. Recently, my wife and I were watching a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle. He's the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The presenter said this. I was so helped by it that I paused and wrote it down. She said, the more you shout about things, the more it becomes fact. That's right. The more you say they're hypercalvinists, the more it becomes fact. The more that you say they're fundamentalists, the more it becomes fact. And I want to argue that that's not the case. And I'm afraid that this is what has happened over the last couple of years. Good men, my friends, have written things or spoken things on podcasts, and I want to call them my friends. I hope that they think of me as friends because when I've spoken with them and spent time with them, we've always been on a good, first-name, friendly basis. I can say that about everyone. They may have written things or they may have spoken things on podcasts, and these things that they say are received as facts when in reality they're misleading and sometimes even false. Now, I'm not accusing anybody of lying. But it's possible for someone to think that they're saying the truth when in fact what they're saying is a falsehood. And that's what I perceive from this. I want to talk about the topics that we will address today and in the next three weeks. Then I want to talk about my method. Today is really laying a foundation for everything else. What are our topics? We're going to start by talking about the inspiration of Scripture, then the sufficiency of Scripture, than the clarity or perspicuity. I chose to use the word clarity because clarity is more perspicuous than perspicuous is. But it means the same thing. The clarity of Scripture. Now, see, I believe that in this discussion we need to get these things down clearly in our mind. There's more. The certainty of Scripture. That's the old word in the Confession of Faith that we would use, inerrancy now. Then the infallibility of Scripture. I want to talk about the phrase, sola Scriptura, because that's thrown around an awful lot. And then, these three belong together. The light of nature, or natural revelation, or general revelation. All of those we'll spend time with. And then finally, natural law. And I put that last because, in my mind, that's the least important of them all, and I probably will run out of time and hardly be able to say anything about it. But it's last on the list. There are two words that are missing there. One is theology, and the other is philosophy. Those words aren't there. But they're going to penetrate through all that we do. So they don't get a separate section, although philosophy will a little bit. But those two things will penetrate into everything that we say and do. So that's where we're going, God willing, in these four weeks. Here's my method. Now my method is to give priority to the Bible. I could start with church history. I could easily provide many quotations from many of the best authors to make my point. But I decided, that can be dismissed, can't it? Well, he was wrong on that. No, he shouldn't have said that. But you can't say that about the Bible, can you? You have to look at the Bible and take the Bible seriously. And so I believe that it's best for us when dealing with matters like this, especially when there's been disagreement among brethren, to come to the Word of God and ask the question, what does the Word of God say? And, of course, the interpretations that I give may be disputed. I recognize that my interpretations are not infallible. Nevertheless, I want to work hard at coming to what the Bible says. And this is especially where I've been helped in the reading that I've done, because I've explored things in the Word of God that I haven't really spent time with before. And I found some things to be really helpful. I hope that when we get to work closely with certain passages, you'll be really encouraged by what you see in the Word of God. So that's my point. We give priority to the Bible. Just pick a verse, Psalm 119.97, Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. And I asked the question, why should it be our daily meditation in this matter? Well, I think I just answered that. It is because the Word of God has the answer, not John Owen, not John Flavel, not John Calvin, or any other Johns that happen to come to mind, but it is the Bible. And so we are committed to the Bible. We need to let the Bible be our guide. We're asking this question, what does the Word of God say about this subject. So I'm going to ask you to do a couple of things. Bring with you your Bible and have it ready to be open over the next few weeks, and bring with you a copy of the Confession of Faith, or you can do as Pastor Larry did this morning, turn us to the back of the Trinity Hymnal where it's found. But we'll be primarily talking about the Bible. We will make reference to other relevant material For example, our confession of faith, it has a lot to say about the light of nature. It uses the phrase, the law of nature. We'll see what it says to us there. We will occasionally draw on quotations from the past. I have one from Thomas Manton that'll be coming up here in a little while. I do rely to some degree on some of the best authors from the past, but that's not primarily where I want to go. And then some helpful contemporary books. And I mentioned to you that I've done a lot of reading, and I'll bring some of them with me. As the weeks passed, I wondered, I don't know if you would be interested in this, I wondered if I should put together a bibliography of all of my reading. Now, some of the books you're not going to want to bother to read. Paul and the Philosophers, you don't want to buy that. It's $25 that you don't need to spend. And some of the other ones that I've worked with are books that perhaps you don't want to buy. But if you think it's profitable, I'd be willing to put that together and give you a sense of all of the things that I have found helpful. Then I want to talk about our non-negotiable commitments. We cannot compromise on these. Psalm 19, beginning in verse 7. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than the honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned in keeping them there is great reward. Where does David turn us? He turns us to the Bible. He turns us to the Word of God. And that has to be our first commitment. Whatever we believe must be according to what the Word of God says. Psalm 119, 105, I already cited it this afternoon. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I believe that the Word of God is the light that will help us, it will shine upon our path as we work our way through this subject and help us to see. Isaiah 40, 7 and 8, the grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever. Now, some liberal theologian hearing this would say, see, I told you you're a fundamentalist, because I'm committed wholeheartedly to what I've just said. This is where we must begin and must always be our guide. This is what our confession says, and I've highlighted a couple of statements here. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. That was added by the Baptists. That's not in the Westminster Confession. That sentence that I just read to you is not in the Savoy Declaration of the Congregational Churches. It was added by our fathers. It strengthens the Confession. the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. But it's not the only means of revelation. Notice what it says next. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men unexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation." And I put some ellipsis marks there because paragraph one continues. But think about what we're taught here. The Bible is the only, only, sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of three things. Saving knowledge, saving faith, saving obedience. It's the only one. But there is another way that God reveals himself, and he reveals himself in what our confession calls the light of nature. That phrase occurs a couple of different times. We'll notice it especially in chapter 22 as we move forward, where there's a longer definition of what the light of nature is. Now, part of the problem that I think has arisen in the last couple of years is that men neglect the light of nature. They neglect to recognize that what God has given to us in this world is true, and we need to benefit from it as truth. So that, I think it's John Calvin, it is John Calvin, who has a lengthy section of all of the things that the light of nature teaches us. What it doesn't teach us is that God is Trinity, It doesn't teach us that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity, assumed a human nature, lived a life of obedience to the law of God, died upon the cross to suffer the wrath of God on our behalf, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. The light of nature won't teach you that. The light of nature can bring salvation to no one. Although there are some Christians who have believed that it can. They're called Arminians. or Socinians, or Pelagians. We can talk about those terms at another time. But our confession recognizes two kinds of revelation. And in many ways, the controversy has been over how we can benefit from the light of nature. That's really what it comes down to. So I want to spend some time going through several passages in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and not just Psalm 19. But I want to look at some passages in the Old Testament and in the New Testament that help us to think through the matter of the contribution that the light of nature, and I'm treating philosophy as one aspect of the light of nature, that it can give to us to help us to understand the world in which we live, and in fact to help us understand the theology of the Bible. I'm just telling you where we're going, all right? So we have a long way to go with this. Paragraph 3 of chapter 1. The book's commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of the scripture, and therefore of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings. Now, I skipped paragraph 2. which just names all the books of the Bible. That's what the scripture is, all the books of the Bible. The Roman church wants to argue that there are other books that should be received as scripture called the Apocrypha. And here our confession is saying, no, they're not scripture. But notice the end. They are useful in some ways. You see, our confession is recognizing the fact that though they are books authored by humans, not authored by the Holy Spirit of God leading men to write them, that doesn't make them useless. They can be useful to us. In fact, the books of the Apocrypha are oftentimes the only history that we have of the period between Malachi and the arrival of John the Baptist described to us at the beginning of the Gospels. All of them, in one way or another, begin with John the Baptist. Well, you've got a period between Malachi and John the Baptist of about 250-300 years. It's called the Intertestamental Period. And many of the books of the Apocrypha describe to us the history of Israel during that period of time. It's history, though not inspired history. Joshua or Judges or Ruth is inspired history. First and Second Maccabees are not inspired history, but they still tell us things that are useful about Israel during that period between Malachi and John the Baptist. And that's what this is saying. It doesn't say you can't use the books of the Apocrypha, and I'm extending this to other human writings, because that's how it ends, other human writings. It's just saying that they have to be placed in a different category to Scripture. They have to be subject to the Word of God, but we can benefit from them. If we can't, then I want you to go home and burn the copy of my exposition of the Confession that you bought and read. I want you to go home and get rid of all of the commentaries that you have on your shelves, or anything else. Those are human writings and you benefit from them, but you don't treat them as scripture, right? We're still talking about our commitments. A very good place to start, and all of a sudden, Julie Andrews is running through your head, right? Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start. Well, I'm just thinking, this is where we start. All scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." I want to comment on the three phrases that are not black. Each of those I want to make some comments on. So, all scripture. What I did here was I put together, I think that there's seven, maybe eight, different translations, just to give you an idea of how different people render this. Because actually, there isn't an exact word in English to bring over the meaning of what Paul wrote. That's one of the problems of translation, is that what's called the donor language, in this case it would be Greek, and the receptor language, which in this case would be English, don't have exact equivalents of every word. So B.B. Warfield, you've heard that name, right? Great Presbyterian from Princeton Seminary at the end of the 19th century. He said he would rather see the word translated as expiration. than inspiration. You'll see why in a moment. So this is the King James Version. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. The New King James, the same. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. The argument here is not that these are bad. It's just that it's difficult to render in English exactly what Paul says. Geneva Bible of 1599, for the whole scripture is given by inspiration of God. the New American Standard Bible. This is, I think, the 1995 version. All scripture is inspired by God. But then you have the ESV, which is a little different. And I think the ESV better captures the sense of what Paul is saying. All scripture is breathed out by God. Now you see, something that's inspired sounds like it existed and then God came to it and made it to be something extra special. If you use B.B. Warfield's word, which I don't know that there's any translations that do, all scripture is expired by God or God breathed. That's a literal translation of the Greek word. Paul puts together two words, makes them one. One is God and the other is breath. All Scripture is God-breathed. It points us to the source of all Scripture. So the ESV says that LSB is the legacy standard Bible. This is a new one that John MacArthur is promoting. It just came out from John MacArthur's ministry, and they're pushing it real hard. I have a copy of the New Testament. I haven't read it. I couldn't tell you if I think it's good or not, but it's interesting that that's how they chose to do that, and that's brand new. And then, surprisingly, The NIV. All Scripture is God-breathed. I think these three translations, and there are others, but you can see I chose these on purpose. These three translations really help us to understand something about the nature of what we call inspiration. That this book, the 66 books from Genesis through Revelation in this book, their ultimate author is God. And he is the one who has given them to us. So when we come to study the Word of God, it's helpful to know things about the human authors, but it's more important to recognize the fact that this comes to us because God and his purposes. And I heard a really good sermon recently about putting God into your prayers. Let's put God into your Bible reading as well. And think about this fact. Everything that you read from Genesis 1-1 through the end of the book of Revelation is where it is because God breathed it out to others. Two important questions. What is inspiration? And what is Scripture? All Scripture. So I want to talk about those two things. What is inspiration? It means that the ultimate author of the 66 books of the Bible is God's Holy Spirit. Now we know that there are human authors, right? We know that Paul wrote his epistles. He begins his epistles with a self-identifying word. Peter does as well. And some of the Old Testament prophets the word of the Lord that came to Habakkuk the prophet." Now, sometimes we don't know who the authors of scripture are. Trick question, who wrote the Gospel of Luke? I know what you're thinking, well Luke did. Well, probably, but we don't know that. It doesn't tell us that. It doesn't say the Gospel of Luke except in the heading. It just begins with some words that are spoken to Theophilus. And if time permits, we'll look at those words. And the same with the book of Acts. So if someone were to say, I'm not sure that Luke wrote the book of Acts, he's not unorthodox in saying that. That's sort of like, what did the innkeeper say to Mary and Joseph? Well, we don't know. Did Luke write the book of Acts or Luke? I think that the tradition is very strong, but it's not certain because it's not contained in Holy Scripture. So, to say that something is God-breathed means that the ultimate author of the 66 books of the Bible is God's Holy Spirit. And so, we're looking to the Spirit for words, not simply to the human author. Inspiration refers to Scripture, not to the authors of Scripture. We might say things like, the inspired prophet Isaiah, or the inspired apostle, but we must be careful when we do so, because we do not imply that everything that was written by Matthew or Luke should be received as God's Word. For example, let's say that archaeologists in Judea uncover a house And it is absolutely certain that the house is the home of Theophilus, who received the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. And what they uncover is a manuscript that carries on the story after Acts 28. You know, Acts has something of an abrupt ending. Paul's in Rome. He's in prison. People are coming to meet him. Bang, it's the end. Well, what about the rest of Paul's life? Well, imagine that these archaeologists find Volume 3. The Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles, the rest of the story in Paul. Paul Harvey might put it that way. The rest of the story. You know what? We don't accept that as inspired. Just because it was written by Luke, it doesn't mean that it's inspired. I was watching a podcast with Tom Askell and Graham Gundon sometime recently, and they were talking about this. And I think the way that Tom put it was, if we found Luke's grocery list, we wouldn't treat it as inspired. Well, that's right. The only thing that is inspired is all of the Word of God, and it's not because Paul wrote it, or John wrote it, or Isaiah wrote it. Rather, it's because God gave them the words, and those words that we have on the pages of Scripture are the things that are inspired. So we have to be careful about that. We assert inspiration about the Word of God, not about the authors of God. You know who does assert inspiration of the authors? It's the Roman Church. because that's one of the means by which they justify the Pope's infallibility. Well, if the Apostles were infallible at all times in all that they said and did, and the Popes are their successors, therefore, you draw the conclusion. And we say, uh-uh. No, that's not the case. The Bible always speaks about the Word of God as the recipient of inspiration. 1 Peter 1, 20 and 21, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So what we have is the result of the Spirit coming upon Luke, or Mark, or Paul, or Peter, or John, or any of the authors of the Old Testament books, not because they were inspired men, but rather because they were chosen to be the instruments of the Holy Spirit to record for us the Word of God and give it to us. That's one of the reasons why each of the books of the Bible takes on its own I don't know if this is the right word to use, personality. Or let's say it reflects the personality of its author. They're very different, aren't they? It's even, when you study them in the original languages, you notice the differences. When Greek is taught to first-year Greek students, typically it would be 1 John or Mark that is used. And the reason for that is that those books are relatively simple to translate. The book of Hebrews is actually quite difficult to translate just because its vocabulary is extensive. It's not as simple as Mark or 1 John would be. So you see differences in the books of the Bible because the Spirit comes to an individual and causes him to write the Word, but that Word reflects his own personality, his own vocabulary, his own experiences. He uses his own illustrations, etc. That's what we find. So our doctrine of inspiration refers to the Scriptures, not to the men. Now this doesn't mean that every word was dictated by the Holy Spirit to every author of Scripture. We don't mean that. There are two forms that the process of inspiration has taken, and there is direct inspiration. Now, if you were to look with me, I was planning to turn to the first three chapters of Revelation. But you remember what we have there. We have letters to the seven churches. We have John's encounter on the Isle of Patmos with the ascended, risen, ascended Lord Jesus. And then Jesus says to him, write to the church of, and there are seven of them. Now that's dictation, isn't it? John's task there is simply to take the words spoken by the ascended Lord and record them for us. That's dictated scripture. You could argue that the Ten Commandments written on stone by the finger of God are likewise dictated scripture. And if you want the fancy language, That's called discursive inspiration, meaning inspiration that comes as a result of discourse. But more often, there's what I've called indirect inspiration. or concursive inspiration. And this refers to the process by which the writers of scripture were guided by the Spirit as they composed their books. And in fact, that's what Peter says, both in 1 Peter 1 and in 2 Peter 1. And a good illustration of this, I'm running out of time, so I'll ask you to look at this later on, is Luke 1.1-4. Go home and take a look at it. Did you ever notice that Luke tells us that he gathered information from sources in order to write his gospel? I just assumed that Luke was the author, didn't I? That's okay. I'm happy. I think the tradition is very strong. But Luke tells us that he spoke with people, and he gathered information, and he put it together so that we receive it. In fact, there are some who theorize that perhaps Luke even spoke to Mary, and he was able to record some of the events early on in Luke's gospel because he had first-person conversations with Mary. Now, John the Baptist is already dead, so he couldn't have spoken with John the Baptist. But nevertheless he could have spoken to Mary or he could have spoken to many of those who were present in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, 120 who were there. So Luke's gospel is a result of compiling information and bringing it together. Now we would argue that all of that compilation that he did is a result of the guidance of the Holy Spirit leading him to put it together in the way that it's put together. So we look at Luke's gospel and we say, well, we don't know what the sources were. He tells us that there were sources and we receive it as such. This is Keith Matheson. who teaches at Reformation Bible College, he said this, all Scripture is God-breathed. It is God's Word. God's Word is distinct from man's Word because the Creator is distinct from the creature. God has final and ultimate authority. We affirm the final authority of Scripture alone because we affirm the final authority of God alone. I hope you see why I want to start here. And there's more that I wanted to say. I want to talk about sufficiency. I want to talk about clarity. I want to talk about the word sola scriptura, the phrase sola scriptura, and see how all of those things relate. Then after that, my plan is to look at an important text in the Old Testament and a couple of different passages in the New Testament that help us to put together the idea of the light of nature. and the revelation of the Word of God. And we'll see that even in the Bible, the light of nature is used by the Lord himself and by the apostles in order to help us understand things. I think you'll be surprised with some of the things that we'll be looking at.