Many unbelievers, skeptics, etc. will come and they will point out various places in the Bible that seem to have discrepancies. And they'll say, well, this verse says this. Well, you turn three pages over and there's a verse that seems to say the opposite thing. Well, It's a lesson for another time. We're not so much dealing with how to deal with discrepancies and those kinds of things like that, other than to say that there simply are not discrepancies. There are things that seem on the surface, but the vast majority of them, it takes a very little effort to come to an understanding of how these things do actually fit together. Granted, and I will admit that there are some more difficult than others. But the fact of the matter is, when we consider the Bible, we come with the presupposition that the Bible is never wrong. The Bible is never wrong. Now, are there parts of the Bible that we don't understand? Yes. Are there parts of the Bible that the archaeologist has not discovered? And the answer to that is yes. So what is our answer as Christians? Is our answer to the archaeologist that says the Bible in Jeremiah 6 mentions this city, we have no record of it. Does that send us into a tailspin of unbelief? It's like, well, maybe the Bible's not true. No. What's our answer to the archaeologist? You can borrow my shovel. Just keep digging. You'll find it. It's there. How do I know it's there? Well, God said it's there, right? So the presupposition is the Bible is true. And we have to come from that presupposition. They are also coming from a presupposition. Their presupposition is the Bible is not true. Based on what authority? The authority that they have for arguing that the Bible is not true is their own logic and their own understanding. That's where their presupposition comes from. It comes from unbelief. Our presupposition comes from the fact that God is true. And so remember, we're looking at this from the context of our study of the attributes of God. God is truth. He has revealed truth. And so what are our options? Our options is either setting ourselves up as our own authority, And so I'm my authority, and you're your authority. And we can argue back and forth all day long as to whose authority is better. And we're just going to chase our tails. Or we agree there is a supreme authority that we all must submit to. And that is the scriptures. That is the authority of God. And so this is where we come. And so another thing that we have to just, I don't want to get down a rabbit hole here. This is a whole series of Sunday school lessons all by itself. But when we talk about inerrancy, we have to be careful not to back ourselves into a corner and start looking at specific translations of scripture as inerrant. When we talk about inerrancy, what we're really talking about is the original autographs. So the original sheepskin that Paul put his bird feather to. The original stone tablet that whoever chiseled on. That is the inerrant word of God. Now, to add to that, we also believe in preservation. we believe that God has preserved his inerrant word. And many, this is a whole nother topic, I don't wanna get lost in here. But many are very scared and they want and they demand an answer as to where. And many will say it's only in this translation and no other. Well, we don't have to be fearful that God has somehow lost his word, that God has somehow messed up in preserving his word. There are unfaithful translations of the scripture. Absolutely, there are unfaithful ones. There are translations that are done with a specific theological bias. The biggest example that any of us would be familiar with would be something like the New World Translation, that is a translation of the Jehovah's Witness. There is a specific theological agenda that is pushed in that. There are places where they specifically mistranslate passages. The most famous one, John 1.1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was a God. rather than the word was God. It's a mistranslation. There's no bones about it. We can get in the Greek another time, but it's a mistranslation. There's other passages in Colossians where they specifically translate a way to deny the deity of Christ. They add the English word other four times in the text. The word other is not in the Greek text, but by adding the word other in there, they are specifically pushing an agenda of denying the deity of Christ, and that's just an example, but it's a consistency through the whole, right? Some will jump up and down and argue against other translations like the NIV, the New American Standard, et cetera, where the word blood is left out, where the word Christ is left out, et cetera. Well, with those, we have a whole different argument. They're translating a different Greek text. And their faith, I'll be very careful in saying this, they are faithfully translating a different Greek text. but it is a faithful translation of a different text tradition. The King James is a faithful translation of a specific text tradition. And we can argue about that text tradition, and we've dealt with this in Sunday school before, but what I'm arguing is that God has faithfully preserved his word. As far as I know, every translation that you have in your lap Unless you're holding a New World Translation, or you have the Message Bible, or if you have the NIV Inclusion Bible, there's a Gender Neutral Bible, there's all these. These are not faithful translations, and I can be on board with you there. But God has preserved His Word. We have the truth of Scripture. And so what we're dealing with is the fact that the doctrinal theological integrity of what God originally communicated has been preserved by God faithfully for us in the English language and in many, many other languages. Now, there's about 3,000 languages in the world that don't have a verse of Scripture translated into their language. And that's a catastrophe. That's horrible. And there are many translation societies and Bible societies that are working on that very issue to translate the Bible into those languages. But in 2024, there are thousands of languages in the world that don't have one verse of scripture. But we rejoice that we have the Bible. We have it preserved for us. And it is without error. And so again, this is a much longer topic than we have time for. But if you look at just some big topics here, A, what the Bible says about science is true. We have many who are very confused about where we came from and how we got here. Well, the Bible, it's not a science book. But what it says about science, is faithful and accurate. And so we start at the very beginning, and we find out how God made man. We were formed from the dust of the ground, and God put Adam into a deep sleep, and He formed woman out of Adam's rib. And He created all that we see, and it took Him six days to do it. And it's not unambiguous in how He's communicated where we came from, how long it took, the whole thing. He's explained it to us. We even have scientific truth recorded in Scripture that before scientists even understood what they were talking about. In Psalm 8, Psalm 73, there's four different places in the Psalms, it talks about the paths of the sea. Well, when David wrote that, he didn't understand ocean currents. That wasn't something he knew about. That wasn't something science knew about. But God knew about the currents of the ocean, the paths that are in the sea, et cetera, and many other examples. And so what it says about science is true. What it says about history is true. So you take an example. You read in the book of Joshua about the Battle of Jericho. Or for centuries, there were liberal Bible scholars who said that that story is completely made up because there's no such city as Jericho. They'd never found it. And then some archeologists in the early 1900s digging around, lo and behold, there's this city and they find inscriptions and it's called Jericho. And they start digging the walls and guess what? They had fallen down in a very, very unusual way. Not like any walls they'd ever found anywhere else before, but it seemed to match exactly what God had said happened in the book of Joshua. until they got to the north side of the wall, some German excavators, 1907, found on the north side of the walls of Jericho, entire little section of wall that was untouched, still standing. Well, that's where Rahab's house was. Her house wasn't destroyed when the walls came tumbling down. And when they got their shovels going, they found it to be exactly as the Bible had described. It was until 1993, so a lot of us were alive in 1993, Bible scholars denied the existence of King David. He was viewed by many Bible scholars the way that we would view the legendary story of King Arthur, right, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. You know, was King Arthur really, like, did he really exist? Is this folklore? What is this? And many people view David as such. I mean, a kid killing a giant, cutting his head off, are you serious? And all the whole story of David is like, this has to be made up. This is what the liberal Bible scholars would say. Because in the historical records outside of the Bible, they couldn't find anything about David. And then it was 1993, archaeologists uncovered tablets, stuff with writing on it that said, the house of David. And the time period that they found these writings were exactly the time that the Bible says David was alive, and since much more evidence has arisen. Now, as Bible believers, does it bother us that archaeologists don't have evidence that proves the Scriptures? No, I'm not bothered by that. It's okay that they haven't found the evidence. Like I said earlier, you can borrow my shovel. You'll find it. You just haven't looked in the right place. You just haven't dug deep, you know, whatever. I know it's true because the Bible tells me it's true. I don't have to have the evidence to be convinced of the truth of it. I have the scriptures that convince me of the truth of it. Remember what Peter said when he was talking about the Mount of Transfiguration. He was literally there. He was the one who opened his big mouth and said, let's build tabernacles. He was there. But when he talks about it, he says we have a more sure word of prophecy. And that more sure word of prophecy was that the gospel writers explained what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration. And Peter is in essence saying, I put more stock in that than I put in my own eyewitness account and memory. Because what the Bible says is true. It is a more sure word than what I remember. And that's important. So what it says about history is true. What it says about man is true. Psychologists and psychiatrists tell us that man is basically good, and it is your environment that has made you bad. It's a lack of education that's made you bad. It's your culture. It's whatever has made you bad. Well, the Bible paints a pretty different picture from that. The Bible tells us that all are born in sin, we are dead in trespasses and sins. The Bible says that there's none that doeth good, no, not one. The Bible's clear. You look at Romans 1, and it teaches us that man has suppressed the truth that he knows because he is unrighteous. He's created in the image of God. He has the law of God written on his heart, but yet he has squelched that truth. He has consciously put that truth out of his mind in an unrighteous way, trying to ignore the truth that he knows. And God, in judgment, has given them over to strong delusion that they should believe a lie. That's what the Bible tells us has happened. Psychologists can tell us some other version of the story all that they want to, but they're not right because the Bible says something different. We come back to scripture. It is our authority. And also what the Bible says about the future is true, right? The Bible tells us that it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment. And so somebody can come along and talk about annihilation. Well, are they right? No, they're wrong, because the Bible tells us what's going to happen. You know, the Bible predicts global warming. Many Christians don't realize that, but the Bible predicts global warming. It's just not exactly what they think, right? It's not man-made CO2 that is global warming. Well, Peter tells us that at the end, the Earth is going to be destroyed by fire. The elements will melt with fervent heat. And so, is that gonna happen? Yes. I don't know what that's gonna look like. I don't know how that's gonna happen. Is it gonna be a massive volcano, like tons of volcanoes erupt all at one time? I don't know. Is it gonna be fire and brimstone from heaven, like what was on Sodom and Gomorrah? I don't know. I don't know what it's gonna look like. But what I do know, is that the elements are going to melt with fervent heat. That's what I do know. I don't know how, but I know it will happen just that way. We look at the first coming of Christ, and we look at some of the prophecies in the Old Testament, and imagine reading those prophecies in the Old Testament without the fulfillment in the New, and It's like, okay, this is what's going to happen, but Christ is going to be born of a virgin, etc. Okay, I know that, but what's that going to look like? I don't think Isaiah envisioned Caesar Augustus making a decree that all the world would be taxed, and Micah didn't foresee that it was that decree, all the world to be taxed, to get Mary Joseph to go to Bethlehem, the inn being empty, he was born with poor people. How is that all going to play out? How is that going to happen? Well, they didn't know, but it happened, and we see the prophecy fulfilled, and it's like, oh, wow, that was exactly the way God said it was gonna be. We have the same problem looking at the second coming of Christ. It's like, well, he's gonna return, there's gonna be a trumpet, there's gonna be all this stuff caught up together with the Lord in the air. It's what it says is gonna happen. What it's gonna look like, I don't know. But it's gonna be, when we're on the other side of it, we're gonna be able to look at the New Testament data and say, wow, it happened exactly the ways that it was gonna happen. My interpretation of what it might look like and your interpretation of what it might look like might be a little bit different. I might be all millennial, you might be pre-millennial, you might be post-millennial, and we might have a different nuance as to how it's all gonna play out. But it's all gonna play out. It's all gonna be exactly the way God says. And at the end, we're all gonna look at it and nobody's gonna be, I told you so, because we'll be in heaven and we'll be perfect and we're not gonna have that kind of attitude. But it'll be right, it'll all be right, right? Right now, one of us is wrong. But at the end, it's all going to be exactly the way God said it's going to happen. And every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess. I know that's going to happen. I don't know what it's going to look like, but I know it's going to happen because of the authority of Scripture. It is without error. And so then we come to profitability. So this is the last one. We've got about 10 minutes here. So the inspiration of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture, and then the profitability of Scripture is valuable. It is of benefit. It is our rule of faith and life. This is where the Westminster Confession of Faith uses this verse as the proof text for that phrase, that it is a rule for faith and life, our rule, our standard for that. And like I said, with our catechism, we were looking at that this morning. What is it that the scriptures principally teach? What we're to believe about God and what duty God requires of us. Well, that's in the Bible. And so when we consider the profitability, we see that it's profitable for doctrine. Everything that we believe about God must come from the scriptures. your theology must be in conformity to scripture. You guys know Maggie works at Gullions, right? Gullions is not exactly a bastion of Calvinism, let's be honest here. And we were joking about If somebody came in, like Maggie works there, and if they asked Maggie if they had a book explaining Calvinism, that she should just sell them a Bible, right? It's like, here, this will explain Calvinism to you. Here's a Bible. Because she was talking about a book they had that was defending Arminianism. Just a book of blank pages, just, there's nothing in there. But here's a book on Calvinism, right? Well, you know, all that tongue in cheek, obviously. But where is it that we get our doctrine of God? Where is it that we get our doctrine of man? Well, we get it from the Bible. You remember last week when we began, I was telling you about Martin Luther and this massive shift in the Protestant Reformation, that Luther had been hired to teach a course in biblical theology. And it was Brand new. They were for the first time in centuries gonna use the Bible as a textbook for biblical theology. That was not done in any of the universities. The textbook for biblical theology was the writings of the church fathers. And a lot of the writings of the church fathers were very accurate and faithful to what the Bible said. But there was a guy named Pelagius who came along who started writing things very different than what the Bible said. And there were some that kind of adjusted and tweaked his theology. And it became known as semi-Pelagianism. And that was the dominant view of the church. The semi-Pelagius is basically the doctrine of, it is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. It is also the doctrine of Arminianism. It's a doctrine that teaches man is sick. Well, Paul said man is dead, not sick. So my Pelagianism says there's a spark of goodness in there. And if I just preach to you right, and if I can just put together the right argument and kind of fan that flame, well, eventually it'll burst into fire. And if you can just realize, if I can just get you to realize and kind of wake you up Well, there's enough good in you that you can change. You can make this change. You can be what God wants you to be. Well, that sounds familiar. That's the preaching of a lot of pulpits. You can be what God wants you to be. Well, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says I can't do anything. There is no goodness in me. There's no goodness in you. So as to get God's attention. And for the Holy Spirit to say, wow, that one's doing a good job. I'm going to visit him. Wow, he has really turned over a new leaf. I'm going to save him. That's not what the Bible teaches. But yet, unfortunately, that's the doctrine of most of our Chick-fil-A eating, Hobby Lobby shopping evangelical friends. That's what they believe. But that's not what the Bible teaches. It teaches something very different. And so where do we get our theology? We don't get our theology from pop culture. We get our theology from the scriptures. It's profitable for doctrine. It's also profitable for rebuke. How do you rebuke a brother in Christ? I would recommend not rebuking a brother in Christ with a quote from a famous theologian. Right? You don't pull a Kevin DeYoung quote on your friend and say, man, you're out of line with what Kevin DeYoung says you should be. That's not the answer. You don't pull a John MacArthur quote out of the hat and say, you know, John MacArthur says you should live your life this way. John Piper says you should do this in your life. You know, Jonathan Edwards, you should be in conformity to Jonathan Edwards' resolutions. Well, Jonathan Edwards had great resolutions, but that's not my standard. Jonathan Edwards' resolution's not my conscience. The Bible is my conscience. The Bible dictates how I'm wrong and how I should be conformed. Man's opinion, my opinion, does not bind your conscience, and your opinion does not bind mine. That is the pathway to legalism. when we get conscience, my conscience and your conscience, confused with the holy standard of God. God's standard binds our conscience, not our opinion of God's standard. It's God's standard that binds the conscience. It's also for correction. Reproof without correction is simply bondage. The Bible doesn't reprove us without correcting us. Because you have, for example, Paul, who many places, he corrects. And he says, put off the old man. But there's not a period at the end of that sentence, and then he moves on to another topic. It's put off the old man and put on the new man. Here's the reproof. Here's the reproof. Put off the old man. Here's the correction. Put on the new man. And this is how you are to live. This is the wrong way. This is the right way. Here's the reproof. Here's the correction. And here is how our life is to be patterned. And then there is that instruction in righteousness. And this kind of fleshes out and comes back full circle with my silly illustration of the architect and the unwise builder. But the instruction in righteousness is from the scriptures. We don't want to be flippant and say, you know, the Bible is life's instruction manual. It is. That phrase can be tossed around in a way that really is just very, very flippant, right? I mean, this isn't a dishwasher handbook of how to use your dishwasher, right? That's not what the Bible is. But it is an instruction manual. It does teach us how we are to live. It is part of what the scriptures principally teach. It is the standard that we are to be conformed to. The authority of the scriptures. And that's what we have to come back to. God is true. What he has communicated is true. Our response has to be obedience to that truth. And there is an authority of Scripture that we have to submit to. It's not only that we have to submit to, everybody must submit to. Everybody is required to submit to Scripture. Whether you agree with Scripture or not, you're still required to submit to it. It is the Word of God. It is His standard by which every man will be judged, as I said earlier. The Bible is the revelation of that truth. We submit to it, submit to its authority in every area of life. Amen. We'll end there. We'll close there with that. Well, let's pray and prepare our hearts for the service here to follow. Let's pray. Thank you and rejoice for what you've given to us in your word, that you've been faithful. You've not left us to guess what you require, but you have, you've written to us in your word and you've told us what it is that we're to do. We're to walk humbly with you, we're to do justly, we're to love mercy. You've given us those instructions. But even those are summarized for us in those two great commandments, to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And we pray that today, as we are in church under the preaching of your word and fellowship together, you would teach us how to do both of those things in a better and more consistent way, more conformed to what you would have us do. Bless Pastor Kimbrough as he preaches, bless every aspect of our service we ask in Jesus' name, amen.