You're listening to audio from Ascend Church. For more information about Ascend or to access more gospel-centered tools to grow as a disciple of Christ, visit AscendKC.org. Let's grab our Bibles and let's turn to Luke chapter 24. And if you don't have a Bible, I'm going to invite our ushers forward. They would love to put one in your hands, as we've been doing over the last few weeks. We're going to be jumping around Scripture. And I know some of you might say, this is not what we typically do here at Ascend Church, and that's right, but this is important. I was talking to some people after the first service about how these topics are so important for us to be educated on, to be recalibrated with, to make sure that as a church heading into a new chapter with our new location, we are all united and on the same page of what the church is and who we are. And so Luke chapter 24 is what we'll be in a few moments. But I just want to remind us of the foundation that was laid last week. We have been laying a foundation of who are we as a local church, not just who are we as a send, but who are we as a group of Christians who come together and assemble as a local church. And so we talked last week that we use this church analogy in a New Testament vocabulary by referring to it as a kingdom. Now last week we talked about how the kingdom that is the local church is simply the inauguration. So in other words, it is simply the beginning or the opening stanza of what will ultimately be the completed kingdom of God where Jesus will reign in the new heaven and the new earth. So this is kind of the down payment. This is the beginning or the opening act of what will one day be the ultimate kingdom. And so we talked about how that inauguration began with the new covenant. It began with the new covenant in Jesus shedding his blood. That's what he told his disciples in the upper room on that first Lord's Supper evening. And when he died on the cross, the veil of the Holy of Holies, the curtain that divided from the outside to the inside where God dwelt was torn into giving us access to the Holy of Holies whereby we as individuals and the local church would become the temple of the living God. That new covenant ushered in the kingdom and gave us opportunity as followers of Christ to be citizens of that kingdom. Now, citizenship in the United States is a process. If you're coming in from the outside, there's a process you have to follow in order to be a citizen. We discussed last week the same thing is true of the kingdom of God through Jesus Christ, that we acknowledge that God is holy, that we acknowledge that we are not, and justly God condemns the sinner to hell. But graciously, he provided his son Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life, died a death on the cross that would be the sacrifice for all who would believe, and rose from the dead, giving victory over sin, being now at the right hand of God. That is the victory in the gospel. that God offers sinners. And if we respond in faith to that offer, repenting of our sin and surrendering our lives to Jesus Christ, we become citizens of his kingdom, entering into the local church, which is more about we than it is about me. That was the foundation we laid last week. And in the aftermath of that and getting ready for this week, I was reminded of something that I believe is a topic that leads to a misunderstanding and error when it comes to the local church. And that is the topic of authority. When the Bible speaks of the local church in the New Testament, it speaks of authority, that the local church is given an authority in the life of a believer. And as such, I want to make sure that we clarify before we dive into the passage this morning and the text this morning, and that is to clarify what the authority is. I would encourage you to write this down if you have your notes out. Authority of the church is a hierarchical authority. I'm not going to try to say that word again. Meaning that there are stages of authority. The authority that the local church has in the life of a believer is extended to the church from the Word of God. So in other words, the local church only has authority that the Bible gives it. And only to the degree that the church is carrying out the principles and prescriptions of the Bible does it have authority. And what's fascinating is that this book that we're going to be talking about this morning has authority not because of the words that are contained in it, but because of the author who wrote it, which is God himself. And so that's the stages of authority of the local church. Local church has authority over the lives of the individual believers because of the authority of the word of God, because of the God who wrote that book. And so to the degree, beloved, that a Senn church carries out the principles and prescriptions of the authoritative Word of God, the local church has authority in the lives of the believers. And so by God's grace and for his glory, we will unpack that more when we dive into a passage that we'll be studying in the weeks ahead. But I just wanted to make sure that we clarify that this morning as we embark on the second stage of our foundation. So that stage is on which do we base our authority? Where do we anchor? Where is the bedrock that the church can anchor? There's so much changing opinions out there, aren't there? There are new books that are written all of the time. There are new pastors that pop up and seemingly begin to draw a large fellowship and a large following. How do we know the bedrock into which the local church of God should be anchored? In fact, let me just read to you some of the topics that we unpack in our doctrinal statement. We unpack the topics of scripture, of God, of Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit, of election, angels, gender, marriage, women in ministry, end time, signed gifts, and I'll stop right there. But all of these topics of doctrine are topics we as elders have positions on. Let me just stop right here and give a little advertisement. Do you realize how blessed we are as a church with the elders that we have? I mean, you just look at these men and they all come from different ministry experiences. They come from different theological backgrounds. But if you were to look at all of these men and look for common denominators, the common denominators are humility, their character, their commitment to the gospel, and a commitment to the essentials that we're going to be talking about. So this morning, to answer the question of what is the bedrock into which the local church must anchor, the answer is the essentials of the faith. Now, before I get into what the essentials of the faith are, I wanna say what we are not saying. What we are not saying is that these essentials must be fully understood before someone can be saved. In fact, would you write that down, please? I want you to write it down so that you make sure that you don't misunderstand what I'm saying. When it comes to these essentials that I'm going to unpack this morning and next week, I want to make sure that we understand that you do not have to understand these essentials completely before you are saved. But what we are saying about these essentials is this, that once you are saved and you come to know these doctrines as the Bible puts them forward, it is not okay to reject them or deny them. The word that I want to highlight is one that I would ask you to write down. It is orthodoxy. By orthodoxy, it is two Greek terms, ortho meaning right, and doxy meaning belief. ortho meaning right, and doxi meaning belief. In other words, these three essentials are necessary to make sure that your belief system is right. So if you are truly a follower of Jesus Christ, and you come to understand these doctrines, and then you deny or reject them, listen to me, you are on very, very thin eternal ice. So it's important for us, as we begin this study of what the local church is, to establish what the essentials are. And I would encourage you to write these down, three essentials that we hold to here as a church. Number one is the essentials of Scripture. Number two, the Trinity. And number three, salvation. The essentials of Scripture, the essentials of the Trinity, and the essentials of salvation. And over the next two weeks, we will unpack all three of these. This morning, we're gonna anchor in one. The first essential that I want us to be able to see is really building upon the big idea. You can see it in the notes. The essentials of the Christian faith serve as the bedrock into which we anchor for faith and practice. This allows us, in the ever-blowing wind of change, and the ever-blowing change of philosophies and convictions and perceptions and principles of the church, this allows us to be able to be anchored in bedrock. The first one is the Scriptures. The Scripture, I wanna highlight this by illustrating an event that I had in my past. Before I went to ministry and into seminary, I worked in a job that one of the roles was to be a new construction warranty administrator. Do not be jealous of that position. I can remember one of the first times, what we would do is we would offer homeowners a 60-day list and a one-year list. And so what we would have the opportunity is we would give the homeowner an opportunity to communicate with the builder. Maybe something wasn't done correctly. Maybe something wasn't operating correctly. And so they could give us a list at 60 days and at one year. I remember one of my first ones. I rolled up to this house. And you ever see those cartoons when we're getting ready for Christmas and like the kids pull out their list and it like drops and then rolls down the steps? That's what this imagery was when I listened to the list that this homeowner had. They had walls they wanted repainted. They had carpet they wanted to be repaired. They had selections that they said were promised to them that of course were upgrades that we never delivered. And I just remember sitting at my beautiful mahogany card table desk and my folding chair, thinking to myself, what just happened? And as I reflected on that, I came to the conclusion that what just happened is you had homeowners saying, we believe this list is fair. And then you had me as a representative of the builder saying, but I believe this is fair. And where those two came in contact, we just hugged each other and had a great time. Do you believe that? If you do, I have oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you. But I think you understand the point that I'm trying to make. And that is, when you have people who are coming to a standard saying, I believe this is fair, and somebody else saying, I believe this is fair, you have disaster on your hands. In fact, I would argue even more spiritually, that's what ends up being the culture that we have today. You see, what we have today, beloved, is we have a culture of people who come to moral issues and say, I believe this is fair. Others say, I believe this is fair. And there's no standard that is absolute that applies to every human being. And so the solution I had with my warranty rule was to create a manual. a warranty manual that we would give to homeowners and say, this is the standard that we're going to measure your request by. And they would sign it. And so when I had my 60 day list and my one year list, we would go and they would say, I want this done. We would look at the manual and we'd say, okay, yes, we will do that. Or we would look at the manual and say, nope, this is not okay. And we would say, that's not going to happen. What's so important, beloved, in our lives, whether it be with home building, or whether it be with just the moral realities of our lives, is that we have a standard. And that's what I'm arguing the Bible is. And so as we look at this, let's just establish right off the bat that we must answer the question, what are the scriptures? What are the scriptures? If we're going to say the scriptures are one of the bedrocks that we must anchor our lives in as Christians and as a local church, we must define what is the scriptures? And this is going to be the answer to the test. So write this down. At a basic level, the scriptures are God's word. There you go. It's God's word. But we have to understand that God's word comes to man, not just in written form. And so I'm gonna read four categories that Wayne Gruden provides in his book, Systematic Theology. Just so we can understand how God communicates with man. The first one is God's decree. Would you write that down? God's decree. We find this in Genesis 1-3. And God said, let there be light, and the light thought about it. Is that what it said? The light took it to a vote. The light said, you know what, we think this is fair, but God says this is fair, let's just agree to disagree. No, when God has a degree that he gives to humanity or to creation, guess what? It happens. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. God communicates by decrees. Number two, God communicates by words of personal address. of personal address. This is what God said to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Let me just stop right here. How many times have you heard people say that God's commandments are constantly, don't do this, don't do that? Listen to God's, one of God's original commands to humanity. He says in Genesis 2.16, of the trees of the garden, you may eat all of them. Isn't that awesome? I mean, so many times they'll look at verse 17 and say, God said you can't eat one tree. He said you can't eat one tree, but you could eat all the other ones. That's the gracious God that we serve. But God's word to humans was do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There's a third method that God uses to communicate his word, and that's God's word as speech through human lips. God's word as speech through human lips. You can write down Deuteronomy chapter 18 verses 18 through 20. God says, I will put my words on the mouth or in the mouth of Moses. That means that when Moses spoke on behalf of God, they were the very words of God. Now we're getting close to the topic that we're studying this morning. which is the fourth method of God communicating with man, and that is God's Word in written form. God's Word in written form. Now, what's interesting is we see a couple of examples in God's Word that were pretty interesting of God writing on something His Word. Write down Daniel 5 in verse 5. Daniel 5.5, King Belshazzar was holding a massive party at the temple in Jerusalem. And it says that a hand appeared and started writing on the wall. Do you remember that story? God's word written down. Write down Exodus chapter 32 and verse 16. God wrote on tablets. In fact, listen to what God's word says about his word. He says, the tablets were the work of God. The writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. So we see these examples of the fact that God would communicate with mankind in written form, and as history unfolded, this would come to be known as, write this down, the canon of scripture. Now the canon does not mean a military device that would hurl balls through the air to explode. The canon was a Greek word that means straight, or rule. That means that the canon of scripture are a collection of books that are recognized as God's rule or authority or the authoritative books written by God. In fact, let's take a little journey here to show that the Bible itself attests to the canon. The canon is 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. And we're gonna see that scripture itself recognizes the canon of scripture. Would you turn to, actually, hopefully you're already there, Luke chapter 24. Luke chapter 24 is a passage of scripture. I wish I could be there. In fact, some people have said that someday we'll get to heaven and there will be a massive VHS showing on a screen. That was back when I was growing up. and then it progressed to DVD, and then it was Blu-ray, and now I just think it's gonna be digital streaming. But the point I'm trying to make here is that if I was able to pick out an event that I could watch how it actually played out, this would be in my top five. Luke chapter 24, Jesus had just risen from the grave and there are two disciples on a road that leads to the town of Emmaus. And Jesus comes upon them and they don't see and recognize who he is. And Jesus asks them, what are you talking about? Well, of course, they're talking about the most important news event that had happened in their lifetime. And that was that Jesus had died and that some said he had resurrected. And so he kind of plays with them. I love the dialogue that takes place leading up to verse 27. And then listen to what it says. And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Listen, this is the ultimate biblical theology lecture. Would you write down those two words, biblical theology? This is the emphasis that my school degree that I'm pursuing right now is focusing on. And biblical theology, in essence, is an understanding that God has an overarching story that began in the Garden of Eden that will come to completion in the New Jerusalem. And that every book, every story, every character, every genealogy, fits beautifully within that overarching story. And so our task is first to understand how it fits in the story, and then to appreciate the details that are contained in it. That is biblical theology. And that's what Jesus was doing here, is he was walking through what is described by Luke as all the scriptures, referring specifically to Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy, and all the prophets, the minor and the major prophets. Jesus walked through all of scripture, and he was pulling out all of these passages, pointing how they pointed the reader to Jesus. Man, I would have loved to have been there. I mean, what did he do with those stories in Leviticus? What did he do with Esther, where Jesus and God aren't even mentioned? But he unpacked for those disciples on the road to Emmaus, through all the scriptures, how they pointed to him. Amazing. Now, what am I pointing out? Look at the word scriptures. The word scriptures, by the time of Jesus and by Luke's testimony, are the books of the Old Testament. And we could go through all kinds of passages and show where specific sections and books of the Old Testament were acknowledged as scripture by the New Testament authors, but let me just highlight a couple. Write down 2 Timothy 3 in verse 15. 2 Timothy 3.15, Paul is referring to Timothy, saying that you were raised by the instruction of your mother and grandmother according to the sacred writings or the scriptures, referring to the Old Testament. Write down 1 Timothy 5.18, that verse refers to the scriptures as a passage in Deuteronomy, the books of Moses, and the teaching of Christ from Matthew 10.10. Also write down 2 Peter 3 16. This is where the apostle Peter refers to the writings of Paul as, same word, scriptures. So you can see, as the New Testament was unfolding, the authors, the audience, and the Jews of their day were already recognizing that there was a canon, a complete record of the rules of God, authoritative books. In fact, another quote from Wayne Grudem's book, Systematic Theology, listen to what he says. He says, Jesus and the New Testament authors quote various parts of the Old Testament as divinely authoritative over 295 times. So by the time you get to the end of the book of Revelation, the primary prerequisite for a New Testament book to be recognized as canon in scripture was it either had to be written by an apostle or an author who was closely associated with an apostle. That's where we have the books of 1 Peter, 1 John, Matthew, John. But what about the books like Mark and Luke who were not apostles? What about the books of James and Jude, who were written by brothers of Jesus? Again, they were closely related to apostles. There's one that is always a struggle for scholars, and that is the book of Hebrews. And I can tell you that Hebrews was immediately recognized as canon by the early church because they thought it was written by Paul. Raise your hand if you know definitively that Hebrews was written by Paul. Don't raise your hand. Because in the years since, and as we've uncovered manuscripts, we do not know whether or not Hebrews was written by Paul. But as the understanding of that book continued to be unpacked, Hebrews was recognized for the value of the content itself. It is extremely Christological. I can't wait to study this someday as a church. The content agrees with the rest of scripture, and so Hebrews was welcomed into the canon. Let me give you two dates, and then we'll move on. Two dates in early church history that were important for this topic of the canon. By 367, that was the letter of Athanasius, and by 397, that was one of the councils of the early church. The 66 books were recognized as the 66 books of the canon. Now, let me hasten to add that it was not the pronouncement of Athanasius or the church councils that made this the Bible. All they were doing is catching up with God. And they were acknowledging that, yes, this is God's word as he intended it. So this book that we hold in our hands is the authoritative word of God, all 66 books. Now, some would say, well, what about the Apocrypha? What about the Apocrypha, the books, the historical books that were written between the Old Testament's completion and the New Testament, and were ancient writings of the Jews? And I would say that that has been clearly explained and proved to be not Scripture. They are valuable in their historical context, but it is not Scripture. Why? Because it does not hold up with authorship, it does not hold up with consistency, and it does not hold up without error. So the 66 books, 39 of the Old Testament, 27 of the New Testament contain the very words of God as the authority in the life of the church and the individual believer. So we gotta ask the question, how is it written? How was this book written? There are plenty of ancient books that we have access to, plenty of books that would seem to be authoritative for their historical or their scientific or even spiritual value. How do we know that this book is the very book that contains the word of God? Well, let me answer this question very simply. This will be on the test too. God wrote it. God wrote it. What's important for us to further explain is that God wrote it through human authors. Two I's I want you to write down, and we'll unpack these biblically here in just a moment. The first I is inspiration, and the second one is inerrancy. Inspiration and inerrancy. Turn it over in your Bibles to 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 is a verse that when you hear somebody talking about scripture, most often those who grew up in the church would expect this verse to be written or read. Let me just read the beginning of it to explain what I'm referring to with inspiration. 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, it says, all scripture is breathed out by God. It's breathed out by God. This is an interesting Greek word that by all accounts, Paul made up. It's a combination of two different Greek words, theos, which was God, and neustos, which is breathe. And so he put both of those words together to say that God breathed out this book. Now, as a kid, when I heard this for the first time, I'm probably like some of you, like, okay, wait a minute, what? Like, does that mean God? And just like the Sesame Street days, like all these letters that are in the cloud just land on a page, and that's God's word. Well, thankfully, Peter assists us. Turn over to 2 Peter 1. What does God-breathed mean? 2 Peter 1 in verse 20, Peter says, knowing this, first of all, or primarily, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. And what he means by this is that the authors of Scripture didn't just sit there and say, well, you know what? This kind of sounds good. Let's write that down. That's not how scripture came into being. Verse 21, 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. Listen, if you want a phrase that explains in a way that we can understand what Paul meant by God breathed, it's right there. That the Holy Spirit moved human beings along. Now it's fascinating, this very same verb is found in Acts to refer to a ship being carried along by its sails by the wind. That's the image that Peter is conveying is that these human beings did sit down or dictated to scribes words that they were to write down. That's the sail, as it were, of the ship, but the verbs and the words that were given were given by God himself. And so these human beings actually used, God used their personalities. God used their expertise. He used their education. It's fascinating to study the background of the authors of scripture. There was a man who was trained up in the palace of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Do you know who that was? There's Moses. There was a man who was trained by the highest level of scholars that Israel could provide in the time after Christ, and that was the Apostle Paul. There was also a prophet who was a shepherd, not formally educated. There were others who were not formally educated. And so all of these authors, humanly speaking, God used, using their styles, using their language, using their experience, using their education to write the very words of God. And in so doing, he used all of those resources without altering the message. Beloved, that's what we're referring to when we are referring to inspiration. Which leads us to the second I, and that's inerrancy. Inerrancy, and beloved, listen, this is a topic that for so many generations was a settled issue. I mean, what is wrong with us in the 20th and 21st century? That after thousands and thousands of years, somehow, oh, we've figured it out. But this inerrancy is under attack today, I believe, in an unparalleled level. So what is inerrancy? Listen to what Wayne Grudem says in Systematic Theology. He says, Scripture in its original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact. Let me read that again. Scripture in its original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact. Now, those who would be critical of Scripture would be like, oh, did you just hear what you read, Pastor? in the original manuscripts. How many think that this book that I'm holding up is the original manuscripts of the Apostle Paul and Peter? It's not. And so people would latch on to that and say, oh, Pastor, in the original manuscripts, let me just dispel any issues that we have with this not being the original manuscripts. Do you realize that the manuscript evidence of this book that we hold in our hands causes every other historical book and every other ancient document to pale in comparison? There are scholars who would argue that Homer's Odyssey and the Iliad are exactly what Homer said. And yet the evidence of manuscripts for this book compared to Homer's work is astronomically greater for the Bible. Consider the fulfillment of prophecies. If you were a mathematician and you were to calculate the probability of the prophecies of scripture coming to pass, guess what? It would cause your head to explode. And yet we see by not just the scriptures own attestation, but by history and archeology that the probability of these prophecies coming true while being astronomical are actually true. Consider the historical evidence. Consider the scientific evidence. Beloved, listen, this book is unparalleled in its accuracy. Now, some of you who are students of scripture would say, well, pastor, what about a passage like John 8 or Mark 16, where in this ESV there are notes that say most likely those sections were not part of the original. Does that ruin all of this argument about inerrancy? No, it does not. When you start to understand how the science of getting this book to where it is today in our language has taken place, you realize how integrous it is. And that even the fact that they give the footnotes saying that these passages were not likely included in the original and reading those passages and saying they don't say anything different than the rest of the Bible. It actually upholds the rest of the Bible. And most likely we know for sure that those were historical documents. It doesn't do anything to our confidence in scripture. How about the arguments that people will give, especially even in our day and age, including pastors in our area. that wait a minute, the accounts of the gospels don't match up. There's details of the resurrection that in one book are one way and another one seemed to contradict it. Let me give you a book that I would encourage you to read. It's a book by N.T. Wright, which I will just tell you that the later works of N.T. Wright stay away from, but his earlier works are incredible. And N.T. Wright wrote a book called The New Testament and the People of God. And what I love about what he says is it just helps us understand why there were different accounts. You know, I had friends that I went to the 2015 American League Championship Series. We were at game six. We saw Lorenzo Cain slide into home. We saw all of that, but guess what? My brother-in-law was watching Cain. I was watching the relay guys. We would give the same, we would experience the same account, but we would give different details, wouldn't we? And in fact, I would probably give you details of the account if I had an agenda or something that I wanted to share with you that would leave out some of the details but include others, wouldn't I? Now, does that mean that my brother-in-law and I were not at the same event because the details were different? No, it doesn't. It simply means we're emphasizing different things and we saw things from different perspectives. Beloved, I could go on and on and on, but the point I'm trying to make is that this book that we hold in our hands is, as long as it agrees with the original manuscripts, inerrant. Well, let me prove it with Scripture. Write down Psalm 119 and verse 160. You can turn there if you'd like. Psalm 119 and verse 160. The fact that there's verse 160 alerts you to the fact that this is the longest chapter in the Bible. which I have to tell you when I'm reading through the Bible in a year and I know that Psalm 119 is on my to read for the morning, I have to get up a little bit earlier. Psalm 119 has 176 verses. By my calculation, only five of them have verses that don't reference God's word. Isn't that amazing? 171 of the 176 have direct references to God's word. Listen, if you want to find a chapter that is exhaustive in proclaiming the majesties and the benefit and the value of God's word, just read through Psalm 119. Psalm 119 verse 160, listen to this, the sum of your words is truth. Every one of your righteous rules, another way to refer to God's word, endures forever. The psalmist was saying the very words that are contained in this book are absolutely true. There is no error in them. Would you like to hear the same thing from Jesus? Write down John chapter 10 and verse 35. John 10, verse 35, he says at the end of the verse, in Scripture, again, this is what we're talking about this morning, Scripture cannot be broken. Beloved, the Bible attests to inerrancy. Science, history, probability, manuscript evidence attest to inerrancy. And this, beloved, is a crucial bedrock essential. Let me illustrate it by giving a story that R.C. Sproul relayed. He talked about a roommate that he had in seminary who, years later, they met at a conference where R.C. was preaching. The friend came up to him and said, hey, let's grab some dinner. And the friend immediately, when they sat down for dinner, started in with this statement to his friend, R.C. He said, R.C., I just want you to know I no longer believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. Now, if it was me, I would be pulling out whatever hair follicles I have left. But R.C. handled it just like he always did, with great grace and discernment. And he asked his friend, so would you say you're still a Christian? And the friend said, absolutely, I believe that God was holy. I'm a sinner. Jesus lived a life. The sacrifice, I surrendered to him. I believe I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. And R.C. said, OK, I'll allow for that. But let me start asking you some questions. And he exposed the man's inconsistencies. Let me ask you three of the questions that R.C. asked. Number one, I would encourage you to write this down. If there are errors in scripture, who is the final arbitrator? Who is the final judge? If someone is to say there are errors in scripture, who is the final judge? Is it me because I'm a pastor? Is it a pastor of the largest Methodist church in America? Is it scholars? Who is, is it the Supreme Court? Who is the final authority and arbitrator if we allow for the fact that scripture has errors? Number two, if the Bible cannot be completely trusted, where is the final authority? So if we as Christians have said we are supposed to live by this book, where is the final authority? And listen, beloved, there is no answer to that question. Because laws change, opinions change, studies change. Where is the final authority if we are to conclude that the Bible has errors? Number three, and this is what R.C. was explaining to his friend, and it's this point that actually caused his friend to be shaken in his newly found position. R.C. said if Jesus himself taught inerrancy, And if there is error in Scripture, how can Jesus be the perfect sacrifice? If Jesus taught that the Bible is without errors, and yet we, as 21st century Americans, can say, oh, nope, there are errors in the Bible, then guess what? Jesus was wrong, and if he was wrong, then how could he possibly be the perfect sacrifice? Beloved, inerrancy is very, very important. And as R.C. stated, if we allow for the fact that somebody can be a Christian and not believe in inerrancy, they are on extremely, extremely thin ice. So what is the value of recognizing this orthodox position? Five values that I would encourage you to write down. I'll cover them quickly. First of all, this Bible that is inerrant and is inspired provides for us a blueprint for progress. It provides a blueprint for progress, John 17, 17. Now listen, so many times what we do as Christians is we evaluate our progress as compared to someone else, don't we? How about the time when a wife brings to a husband's attention that, hey, you're slacking in this area. Our tendency and temptation is to say, yeah, but what about Bob over here? Sorry, there is a Bob in our church. What about Hector over here? Beloved, the standard for progress is not each other, it is God's word and Christ himself. That's why Jesus said in John 17, 17, Father, sanctify them, help them progress in their walk with you by your truth. Your word is truth. The word of God is the blueprint for progress. That's how we can tell whether or not we're progressing in our salvation. Number two. It is the source of absolute truth despite change. The source of absolute truth despite change. Write down 2 Timothy 4, verses 2 through 4. The Apostle Paul said, Timothy, there will be a time coming when people will gather for themselves in their churches as their authors, as their favorite podcasts, those who will scratch their ears. What does he mean by that? They will gather for themselves people that are teaching what they want to hear. Doesn't sound anything like our culture today, does it? Beloved, there are so many changing opinions out there. There are so many changing churches. Every time a church pops up and the masses flock to it, it should cause us to wonder, are they being biblical? Because listen, a church that is being biblical, that is proclaiming the truth of God's word, the inerrancy of God's word, the inspiration of scripture, the salvation of God, the trinity, and not watering it down, that is not naturally attractive to humanity. So I'm not saying a church can't be big. I'm not saying a new church can't be big. What I'm saying is that is not natural for people to be attracted to this. Why? Because God's word says it's spiritually appraised. We'll get to more of that next week. What is the solution? Paul gives Timothy, 2 Timothy 4 and verse 2, preach the word. Be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort in all patience, fulfilling your role in ministry. Number three, we get a live-in spiritual doctor. I mean, you don't even need to have an iOS app for this. You have a live-in spiritual doctor. Something is not going right in your life. There's a shaking of the water bottle. You're struggling with something. Guess what? You have a live-in spiritual doctor. Yes, the Holy Spirit, but he's pointing us to the truth of his word. Write down 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 through 17. All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Why? So that the man of God can be thoroughly equipped for every good work. What a gift. Number four, we will be blessed. We will be blessed, Psalm 1, two through three, beginning in verse one. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree that is firmly planted by the streams, whose leaves will not wither, and will bear the fruit in its season. What a blessing. The Word of God. Number five, we are promised general success. Joshua 1.8, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouths, but on it you will meditate on it, on it you will obey so that it will go well with you in the land of promise, and then you will have good success. Now, why do I have to say general success? Because there's so much teaching out there that misappropriates and misapplies this concept. This does not mean you will have a massive bank account. It does not mean you will never experience cancer. But what it does mean is that if husbands are loving their wives, as Christ loved the church, and wives are submitting to their husbands, if children are honoring their parents and parents are shepherding their children, if employers are caring for their employees and employees are obeying their employers, and if this is the world in which we live, guess what? There will be success. There will be general success. Beloved, this is the book that we're talking about this morning. This is the bedrock in which we anchor as a local church. Will you bow your heads and close your eyes? I hope you've been able to see this morning the treasure that this resource is. Beloved, how are we supposed to respond to a treasure? How do you respond to a treasure that you have in your life? Maybe it's a great memory from your past or a great gift that you were given. Maybe it's an inheritance that you were given. If we have something in our lives that is treasured, we will respond to it and treat it appropriately, won't we? So my question to you this morning is, how are you responding to and treating God's great treasure of his word? Beloved, we are anchored in the bedrock of God's inspired, inerrant word. It is our authority. And so I pray that as we head into our new building and the new chapter of ministry in just a couple months, that we will all as a church family be unified and anchored in this bedrock so that we can honor Christ, progress toward being like him, and attract others to him.