It is good to be here with you tonight, and certainly it's always good on Sunday evening to look out and see so many of you here. I'm thankful that as we come together tonight, we continue in our series just taking apart, or really not taking apart in a negative way, but looking into the Baptist faith and message and looking at the doctrines that are espoused there. And one of the things last week that we didn't really mention in the introduction is what a confession really is. When we talk about a confession, There are creeds. Creeds are a test of orthodoxy. We talk about the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed. Those are creeds. If you looked on the back of the catechism that we give out each year, on the back there, you'll see the Apostles' Creed. A lot of the catechisms, they use that creed as sort of a framework. to look through the different doctrines of orthodoxy. And so I say a lot of times when we talk about a creed, the creeds of the early church were creeds that sort of, in some ways, fenced the church. If you don't believe these things, You can't be part of the church. That's what a creed is. So a creed in some ways, it both defines what is orthodox teaching of the church, but it also helps in some ways to keep the unorthodox or the less than orthodox teachings out of the church. And so those early Christian creeds, like the Apostles Creed, that's what it did. A confession, and when we talk about the Baptist Faith and Message, it's a confessional document. And what I mean by that, if you go on the Southern Baptist Convention website, you can find there, it's got a link there to the Southern Baptist Faith and Message 2000. And when that was written, It was actually an update. But anyway, when the Southern Baptist Faith and Message came about in the 1920s, when the first one was written, as a group came together, they weren't trying to keep people out. It wasn't their intention to write this so that these people would stay out. What they wanted to do was they wanted to come up with a document All right, that they could they could agree upon and say, OK, these are the things that we hold in common. And therefore, this is going to be a standard for cooperation. Do you see the difference? OK, a creed means if you don't believe these things, you can't be a part of the church. All right. You're not really of the faith, alright, if you don't believe what's in the Apostles' Creed. Those that wrote those things, they were trying to fence the church to keep certain doctrines out. But a confessional document is written because it's different churches trying to come together, and for us as a Southern Baptist Convention, for us to cooperate for missions. Okay, and so these are the things that we hold in common And so we ought to at least hold these things in common if we are going to cooperate together. Does that make sense? That's that's clears mud, isn't it? Okay, but there is a big difference there is a big difference between a creed and a confession and That confession helps us direct the work of our mission agencies and those things. That confession, the Southern Baptist Faith and Message, helps us all kind of make sure that we're on the same track and we believe the same things. But if you don't believe one secondary doctrine in the Southern Baptist Faith and Message, we're not going to tell you that you're not a real church. Does that make sense? Or you're outside of the faith. We just might not be able to cooperate for missions and those kind of things. And so that's why that document exists. So I just want you to understand that. But it is for us, it's a good place to look. to look for what is Baptist doctrine, what are the things that are distinct to those who call themselves Baptists and we hope and pray would be the same things that would be distinct to those who call themselves Bible-believing Christians. And you see how I phrase that, Bible-believing Christians. And for us, we have to start with the Scripture. If we're going to start anywhere in terms of thinking about what we believe and what our beliefs are as not just Baptists, but what our beliefs are as Christians, we must start with the Word of God. We have to start with the Scripture. And Brother Shad last week, he helped us understand, brought forth a whole lot of things regarding the history and how we got to where we are. He talked about the canon, he talked about providence and those things. And it falls to me tonight to talk about inspiration. And I'm going to begin with reading the article, the first article, Article 1 from the Baptist Faith and Message, which speaks a whole lot more to inspiration than really anything else. Brother Shadd was really laying the ground, kind of the groundwork for this. But I want you to listen to this as I read. And this is, of course, the first article of the Baptist Faith and Message. The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter." Now that's just beautiful in and of itself. Alright, I'm just telling you, these are wordsmiths that wrote this. But there's so much truth there. All right. Listen closely. Therefore, all scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us and therefore is and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of center of Christian union and a supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is himself the focus of divine revelation. Now, that's a mouthful. We're going to kind of take that thing apart tonight and talk through each part of it. But for us, so many of the issues that we see in big church, and I say big church, I'm talking about universal church, I'm talking about what we consider to be under the umbrella of the body of Christ. So many of the issues that we have in Christian life and so many of the liberal, progressive teachings that are in so many churches, so much of the immorality that we see being condoned by certain groups of people who call themselves the church, okay? What it comes down to is not whether or not they believe that homosexuality is wrong. It's not that it comes down to whether or not they believe that transgenderism is wrong. Or you can go down a list of all these different sins. Greed is wrong. Or that for some reason it's God's will that all Christians be rich and affluent and all those things. That's not really the foundational issue. It's not those singular sins that are not called sin. It's not those singular ways they're bending to the culture. What is it? It's how they view God's Word. Because for us, if we believe that God's Word is this revelation of Himself to us, and it is the sole document or it's the sole revelation that God has given us that should govern both how we come to God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ, but also how we live and how we conduct ourselves. and what practices and what morality actually glorifies God, if you don't believe that the Bible is inerrant, infallible, and authoritative, then we're going to have a real hard time agreeing on what's right and wrong. Does that make sense? And that's what it comes down to. And so, when I hear someone, when I hear a preacher, Okay, I use that loosely. When I hear a preacher who's preaching human tradition or human philosophy or some sort of nuance or cultural understanding of God's Word that would in some way lower the bar of what glorifies God in human relationships or in integrity and in those things, when I hear that, I know that for me to sit down and have a conversation with that person with the Bible open is probably not going to do a whole lot of good. Because the issue is not their beliefs and my beliefs about that issue. The issue is what they believe the Word of God to be. And whether or not it is the sole authority for doctrine and practice. And so how then are we to view God's Word? Well, certainly here in the Baptist Faith and Message, I think we have a good description here. But we want to go to the Word of God, and we want to think on God's Word. I'm going to ask you to go in your Bibles, if you would, with me, to the same passage, I think, if I remember correctly, Brother Shadd may have started there, in 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 through 17. Is that where you started, Brother Shadd? You quoted. All right, there you go. All right, well, go there. Go there with me. Second Timothy chapter three, verses 16 through 17. Now I'm going to read it to you, not in the CSB as I normally would. OK, I'm going to read it to you from the ESV. That's Brother Shad's favorite translation. All right. And the reason why I'm going to read it there is because of how it describes the inspiration of God. If you're in the CSB, it'd say all scripture is inspired by God. That's a proper, that's a good translation. But in the ESV, it says all scripture is breathed out by God. Your translation may say all scripture is God breathed. is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." And so as the Apostle Paul speaks to Timothy, his protege, his apprentice, and I want you to understand, we think of Timothy being an extremely young man, okay? But here in 2 Timothy, Timothy has already been on his own for quite some time. He was based there in Ephesus, and he was setting up churches. He was installing elders and deacons in these churches. I mean, he is a church planner, more like what we think of as a director of missions or something like that, kind of over a regional area. And he's helping these churches get started and have a firm foundation. And here Paul is now, this isn't 1 Timothy, it's 2 Timothy. Paul, as he sees his time winding down, as he comes close, he's coming close to this time when he is going to meet the Lord. And he knows there's very little that he can do for Timothy from this point forward, but what is one of his final admonitions to Timothy? Remember the proper place of Scripture, that it is God-breathed, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for how many good works? Wait, some of the good works? Is the Bible good for some of the good works? Is it going to equip us to do some things? Every good work. Yes. Some things plus. That's right. All good works. And so the centrality of the Word of God, as Paul speaks to Timothy, as he gives him those admonitions, now he's going to tell him to do the work of an evangelist, he's going to tell him to be content, he's going to instruct him in many things there in 2 Timothy. But what should be his rule for ministry and life? God's Word. God's Word. And so we go back to the Baptist faith and message and we read that first part, that first sentence. It says, The Holy Bible was written by men, divinely inspired, and is God's revelation of himself to man. And so in order for us to really kind of understand what makes the Bible authoritative, what makes these writings different than the writings of contemporaries other than the apostles and others that lived during the time maybe of the prophets, what makes these writings more authoritative? It comes down to inspiration. It comes down to the fact that when we look at these, we see that they are God breathed. We hear the prophet say, thus saith the Lord. Moses literally met with the Lord on Mount Sinai. He literally heard the Lord speak to him from a burning bush. He went into a tent, remember? and actually talk with the Lord as one man talks with another, blessed the pre-incarnate Christ. He came out of there, remember? And his face glowed because he had been in the presence, he had been in the presence of the Lord. Alright? And so, so we see that. There's something different when the prophet says, thus saith the Lord. And not only does he say that because there are false prophets in God's Word. who are saying, thus saith the Lord, but the things that they're saying don't come to pass. And they're shown to be false. When we get to the New Testament, who is the final prophet, priest and king? Jesus Christ. And so when we move beyond the time when the apostles of Jesus Christ were ministering, when we move outside of the lifetime and the witness of those apostles who had walked with Jesus Christ, the canon is closed. Because he's the final prophet, priest, and king. And so the apostles are speaking that which they've been given by Christ. And even the Apostle Paul, you say, well, he didn't walk with Jesus for three and a half years. Well, there was something going on in Arabia. And in First Corinthians, chapter 11, I read this morning about the Lord's Supper. He said, I'm giving to you that which was given to me by the Lord. The Lord had spoken to him and shared with him those things. You say, well, how'd that happen? But it happened. And so, Scripture is inspired by God. It's God's written revelation of Himself to humankind. And we have in Genesis the worlds being spoken into existence. God said, let there be light and there was light. The worlds were framed and made by the Word of the Lord. The Word of the Lord accomplishes that which God has sent it to accomplish. The Word of the Lord cannot be thwarted. It cannot be denied. God's Word will come to pass. His Word is truth. And so, as we think about that tonight, let's talk about revelation. Revelation, you see the meaning of the Word in the Word itself. What's that root word? Reveal, right? Revelation. So what is the revelation of God? It is God's revealing of himself to us. Both who he is, his plans, and ultimately his plan of salvation. That's what's found in the Word of God. And there are two places. The Bible speaks of two different sorts of revelation. There is general revelation. General revelation is you walking out and saying, man, it's a beautiful day. Look what God did. Man, how awesome is God? I don't go that long usually without talking to somebody that tells me they don't need to come to church. That's a pretty regular conversation I have with folks. I don't need to come to church. I tell you what, when I'm out there on the lake, when I'm out there on the lake, I can just worship the Lord out there on the lake. It's out there in nature. I see the birds, man, it's beautiful. I can worship the Lord. Well, praise God, I'm glad you can. I can too. But I also need to gather with the saints. I need to gather with the saints. Why? Do I need to gather with the saints just because y'all are all so wonderful? No, not really. But yes, because you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, yes, okay. But every bit of the reasons why I know that I need to gather with the saints, they're all right here in the Word of God. I know that I need to gather with you because we're to build one another up, right? We're to help one another. We're to minister to one another. I know that I need to gather together with you so that we might serve together to build up the body of Christ, that we might bear witness to Christ in this world. I know that I need to gather together with the body of Christ Because in so doing, we glorify God through the unity and the love that we have here in the body of Christ. I know that I need to gather together with the body of Christ because I need to be held accountable so I don't go off the rails and start believing things that aren't consistent with this book. And I know you need to gather with me so that you'll do the same. Now, how do I know all that? Because I'm so smart? No! We know that because God's Word tells us that. Okay? The general revelation might give you warm fuzzies. But what we need is a specific revelation. What we need is a special revelation is what we call it. You see, the general revelation is God's making known his nature and purpose through nature and history. But special revelation is God making his name and purpose known through the written word and his son, Jesus Christ. The written word and the word made flesh. That's important. The written word and the word made flesh, who we encounter in the written word that we have here in the New Testament. And so the Bible speaks of God's revelation in two forms. That general revelation can be seen in God's word when we read Psalm 19, 1, the heavens declare the glory of God. And the sky proclaims the work of his hands. There you go. There's the lake. Right. We're seeing that we admire him. When I stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon, you know, and looked out over one of the highlights of my life in terms of just seeing stuff, you know, on the earth. And being able to look out over that great and just being in awe of how big that hole is. That's a really big hole. And you look out over there and you think, man, it's beautiful. God is good. You feel so small because it's so big. All those things. But not one person has come to know Jesus Christ by looking at the Grand Canyon. You might say, well, my cousin was there and it was there. He fell on his knee. Well, he heard the gospel. It wasn't because of the Grand Canyon. God might have used the Grand Canyon to bring conviction in his heart of the greatness of God and his smallness and all those things. But at the end of the day, somebody shared with him that he was a sinner and he needed to be saved. And that Jesus Christ was the way, the truth, and the life who lived and died for his sins. Somebody told him that. And that he rose from the dead and that he's at the right hand of the Father. And if you'll turn from your sin and turn and call on the name of Jesus, you will be saved. Right? Yes. Because it's the Gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ, the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, we need this special revelation, and God has given it to us in His Word. So we see general revelation in Psalm 19.1. We also see general revelation mentioned in Romans 1 and verse 20. And general revelation isn't enough to get you saved, but it's enough to send you to hell. I didn't make that up. Paul said it right there in Revelation, excuse me, Romans chapter 1 verse 20. He said, from the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what was made. As a result, people are without excuse. So you can't come to know the Lord by looking at the world, but you can come to know that there is a Lord, alright, who you've sinned against. And those who never hear the gospel will stand before God. And I pray, and I know in the justice of God, God, there are varying degrees we read about in His Word of punishment and all of those things, but those who don't hear the gospel and those who never turn to Christ according to the Word of God, they will still be held to an account. That doesn't please me in any way. Breaks my heart. And the Lord Jesus Christ cried over Jerusalem, didn't he? Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I would have loved to have gathered you like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you wouldn't listen. You wouldn't turn. It doesn't please God to do that, but yet God will be glorified through that. And so as we think about the two types of revelation, thank God for the special revelation we have here in the word of God that we have in Jesus Christ. And so we know in terms of special revelation, the Bible was written by men divinely inspired. Now, let's talk about inspiration for a minute. This is really important. Remember that first phrase there. The Bible was written by men divinely inspired. And so we need to understand what Does that mean that they saw the sunset and said, man, that's really cool. Makes me think about God. I need to write some stuff down. When we think about inspiration, that's kind of how we think about it, right? Man, I saw this this beautiful sunset and it just made me want to write a song. OK. That's what that's human inspiration, but this is divine inspiration. What's the difference? Well, divine inspiration or to be inspired, it means that the breathing of God's spirit on human speech and writing to produce the text of the Bible. So God breathed His Spirit upon man, and man wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Y'all get that? I don't really. Let me be honest with you. It's kind of mysterious. Most of these men did not have some sort of out-of-body experience. There were some who had visions, saw dreams, those types of things. Most of what you have in God's word, it seems, is that you have God moving in the heart and the mind of this prophet. revealing to them both the will of God or the nature of God, and then they are writing those things down or they're speaking those things orally. They're heard, they're received, and then someone writes them down. That's what we're seeing. We get to the New Testament and we see much the same. It's not as if the prophet always is having some kind of out-of-body experience or God comes upon them and possesses them in the way we think of some sort of, you know, Divinely driven robot, you know, just speaks these words. He speaks through the personality of the man. Which is even harder for me to understand. That God would use faulty folks like me and you. Man, the grace of God. He'd use folks like Moses. Who was a murderer, by the way? You remember that? And not only that, he was a pretty unwilling participant when God sent him back to the people. Gave God every excuse that could come to mind until God finally said, well, you know, who made the mouth? Who gives people the ability to speak? What do you mean you can't speak? Well, I tell you what, you knucklehead. Now, God didn't say that. All right, that's me. I'm adding to it. All right, your brother Aaron's coming. I knew you were going to act this way. All right. I knew it from all of eternity. So Aaron's on his way to meet you. And you're going to be like God to him. You're going to tell him what to say and he's going to say, I'm going to tell you, you're going to tell him, he's going to say it. And then when Moses gets there, what do we see? We see that God empowers him to do all that God desired to do through him. We can talk about somebody like Elijah. All right, well, we think of as the preeminent prophet of the Old Testament. And what about Elijah? He was prone to depression, wasn't he? Kind of get the mully groves, wasn't he? Woe is me. I'm the only one. I'm the only one left. He was prone to fear. He had just called down fire from heaven. God had just brought fire down from heaven. It was about to start raining again. When he prayed, it didn't rain for three years. And he had prayed and it was about to rain again. And then he heard Bathsheba was after him and said she was going to kill him. And what did he do? He ran. He was filled with fear for his own life. And yet God spoke through that guy. You see, it's God, it's the breath, it's the breathing of God's spirit on human speech and writing to produce the text. In 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 20 through 21, we read this, that no prophecy of scripture comes from the prophet's own interpretation because no prophecy ever came by the will of man. Instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And so when we think about divine inspiration, when we read there that the Bible was written by men divinely inspired by God. Men spoke it and they wrote it, but God is the author. He's the author, it's his word. And so there's three views of inspiration, OK? Three views, three basic views of inspiration. The first is, and this is the Bible scholars, the way they think about how the Bible was inspired and all these things. Some people believe in dynamic, the dynamic theory. The dynamic theory says that God gave human authors basic ideas, but then they developed them on their own. Okay. That's that kind of inspiration. Like you have this basic idea, man, the sky is pretty, God's big. And then you write that down. Is that how God did it? No, no, these weren't general. This wasn't just some sort of feeling or some kind of idea. And then man elaborated on it. That's the dynamic theory. And then we have the dictation theory. The dictation theory of inspiration says this, that the authors were passive instruments who recorded divine dictation. All right. Now, that would be like, um, You know, Joseph Smith, you know, I talked about the Mormons this morning. All right, Joseph Smith, he went and dug up these tablets of stone, you know, these stone plates or whatever it was. And and then this angel came and helped him interpret them. And then he wrote those things down. He literally dictated, you know, what was there. OK. Is that the way God inspired his word? No. But there's this, but then also there's this verbal plenary theory. And this comes back to providence and the omniscience and the omnipotence of God. And the verbal plenary theory, which is what we hold to, is that every word of the Bible is fully inspired. God uses these men, but He is able to work through their personality. He's able to relay to them His Word. And what they write down is actually His Word. He doesn't take their personality away. He doesn't put them in a trance or anything like that. He doesn't give them a tablet for them to write off of, except, I guess, for Moses when he had the Ten Commandments on that tablet there. But he tore up the one that God had carved for him, and then he had to go back up the mountain and do another one, didn't he? Remember that? And so the verbal plenary theory just simply says every word of the Bible is fully inspired. We can trust it. It is God's Word. And then, of course, 1 Corinthians 14, 32 through 33 reminds us that the prophet's spirits are subject to the prophets, since God is not the God of disorder, but of peace. Now, that's in the midst of a teaching on why we shouldn't go crazy and are speaking in tongues and all those kind of things. But he talks about the fact that a prophet, if someone is a prophet, that God does not take their personality away or their control away. He doesn't cause them to be out of control. But God works through them. And he does the same for the prophets in his word. And so the result of divine inspiration is that we have the Bible God intends for us to have. We have the Bible God wants us to have. Nothing is missing. Nothing is included that should not be there. And for this reason, we affirm that the Bible is the very word of God and does not merely contain the word of God. It is the very Word of God. Hebrews chapter 4. Very familiar passage of Scripture. Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12. The Word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from Him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account. That passage of scripture. Remember, the Bible doesn't just contain God's word. It is God's word. When God speaks, things happen, don't they? Do you want to hear God speak today? Let me ask you that again. Do you want to hear God speak today? Well, you better be careful about that. Because when God speaks, things come to pass, don't they? OK, and so do you want to hear God speak today? Oh, I don't know, Brother Paul, do I? If you want to hear God speak, open his word. I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. We're not to be conformed to this world, we're to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. You see, as a Christian, we come to the Word of God and we let the Word of God change us. You say, well, that sounds kind of mystical, brother. What do you mean? You mean if I read the Word of God for 15 minutes a day for the rest of my life, I'm going to be changed by it? Not if you just believe that it contains God's Word, you won't be changed by it. If you just believe that this contains God's Word, then you'll read it just like you will any other book, and you'll enrich your knowledge, but it won't change you. But if you come to the Word of God believing that it is the Word of God, And therefore, what it says, you must apply in your life and you submit yourself to the teachings of God where you come voluntarily to be changed because you want God to be glorified through your life. And you do that for 15 minutes a day, it won't ever be enough. You'll need more. And then you'll need more. And you'll need more, and what you'll find out is that you don't live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. You see, when you hear God speak, you will be changed. But it all depends on how you come to this book. If you come to it as something to make your life better, it's not going to help you a bit. But if you come to it because you want to look like Jesus, You want to honor the Lord? You want to glorify Him because you're a child of God? And you want to grow in the image of Jesus Christ? It will do its work in your life. Amen? Y'all act like y'all don't know, alright? But you do. I've seen it at work in your lives, and I've seen it at work in my own. So we know that God's Word is a lamp for our feet and a light to our path, as it says there in Psalm 119, 105. But we also know from reading here in the in the Baptist faith and message, but you know it already that the primary purpose of the word of God is to tell us how to be saved. That's the ultimate end of God's word. It is to reveal to us who God is. But if we only know who God is, all that's going to tell us is that we're lost. Ultimately, it is the revelation of God which reveals Himself. And the ultimate end is to reveal the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. To show us God's plan of redemption and how it has unfolded over time and where we find ourselves in it. And praise God, we're in the in-between time, aren't we? Christ has come. And praise God, he's coming again. And we're in this time of the Gentiles, and thank God for it, because that's who we are. And there's an open door for us. Jesus Christ has torn the veil. He's made a way for us to come to God through faith in him. So the primary purpose of the Word of God is to tell us how to be saved. In 1 John 5, verse 13, we read, I've written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. What a beautiful passage. And Jesus is the ultimate focus of every verse of Scripture. You know, for many of us, we we grew up learning Old Testament stories, but we didn't connect those Old Testament stories with the salvation that would come in Jesus Christ. But I want to tell you, you go back to the Old Testament, what are you going to see over and over again? What did we walk through the Old Testament last year? And what was one of the things we were looking for? We were looking for pictures of the salvation of God, foreshadows of the coming one who would deliver us from our sin. And you start in the garden and you see it right there that this one is going to come from the line or the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head. There is a redeemer who will come and he will deliver us. And ultimately, that's Christ. And also you find there, and this is the last thing we're going to talk about tonight, you find there in that Baptist Faith and Message, the Article One, you find there that That last sentence there, it says that it reveals the principles by which God judges us. And there is and will remain to the end of the world that it will remain the true center of Christian union union and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds and religious opinions should be tried. We've we've said that. And in the last sentence, all scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is himself the focus of divine revelation. It's trustworthy. And it is without it is truth without any mixture of error. How can we trust that the Bible is true? Well, we can trust the Bible is true because it's inspired by God. And God is almighty. You say, well, brother Paul, I can't trust that. I can't trust that the Bible is true. I hear all these people saying things about it and all these different translations and all those things. Well, until you learn to read Greek and Hebrew and a little bit of Aramaic, every Bible you read is going to be a translation. I'm sorry. That's just part of it. If you want to know what God's word says, somebody is going to have to translate it to you. And this guy may say it a little different than that guy over there. Read as many of them as you can and look at it. What you're going to find is they're all saying the same thing. Oh, there might be some little things that are different here, there, wherever it might be. But truth without any mixture of error means that it's authoritative, it's infallible, it's sufficient, and it's eternal. I'm going to walk through those four things quickly. First of all, that God's Word is authoritative. If God is the author of the Bible, every single verse bears God's own authority. And if there are things in God's Word which we don't feel like we have to abide by anymore, and certainly there are many things in God's Word. You go back to the Old Testament, Levitical laws and civil laws of the Old Testament. There are many things that Christ fulfilled and we no longer have to obey those ritual purity laws. Praise the Lord. But you better have a pretty good reason. You better have a reason why we don't have to do those things or ought not do those things anymore. And it's clear in God's word that Christ died for those things. But it's authoritative. If God's the author, then every single verse bears God's own authority. It's infallible. That means it never fails. We can trust the word of God to accomplish God's purposes. I think Isaiah said something about that in Isaiah 55 verse 11. That God's word won't return what? It won't turn void. It will accomplish that which God has purposed for it. So it's infallible. It's also inerrant. The Bible is truth, all truth, and contains no error of any kind. The Holy Spirit fully inspired every word of the Bible in, hear this, in its original text. Let me say that again. All right. The Holy Spirit fully inspired every word of the Bible in its original text. Now, remember what I told you? You're not reading it in the original text. Don't let it rock your world, alright? When we get to the end of the book of Mark, when we get to Mark chapter 16, and we read there in Mark chapter 16, and in your Bible and mine, there's going to be a little line there, And if you go down to a little footnote at the bottom, it's going to say that these verses were not in the oldest text. Oh, no, we can't trust the Word of God anymore. I'm laughing, but I'm not. Because what happened? Well, when the King James Version of the Bible, when it was translated, all right, 1611, and really, King James wasn't nothing but a souped-up Tyndale version of the Bible. But anyway, that's a whole other line we could walk down. But anyway, when the King James Version of the Bible became basically the Bible of the English-speaking world, the text that they used, that they consulted, had those verses in it. Well, then later on, they found older texts through archaeology. They found older texts. And in that older text, it became apparent that there's a spot there where probably the original book of Mark stopped. And there were some scribes who wanted to kind of add. They weren't trying, I don't believe they were trying to add to Scripture. They were just putting a note there. Oh yeah, and he was also saw by the disciples. And he also appeared to many people. And he talked, where were they taking it from? They were taking it from the other Gospels. You understand what I mean? And you find, there's a few verses there. You'll find a few other places in the New Testament where you have a few little verses, little things like... That's not the end of the world, folks. None of it changes anything about the truth of God's Word, nor does it take away from the larger teachings of the New Testament related to the Gospel. It's more miraculous that when they went back and found texts that were sometimes as many as eight, nine hundred years older than the ones they had used to translate it. What's more miraculous is that's the only places where it was any different. That's amazing. And we see the divine hand of God in that because there weren't any printing presses. There was this. There were scribes who were writing down, they were copying those scrolls by hand. That's pretty amazing. It's inerrant. It was inerrant. Every word in its original text was without error. It was sufficient. It is sufficient. We're not to subtract from the Bible or to add to it. And that's why in the Baptist faith and message, it says the Bible is the true center of Christian union and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds and religious opinions should be tried. And then it's eternal. It's eternal. All flesh is like grass and all its glory like a flower of the grass, the grass withers and the flower drops, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Amen. Amen. I'm going to close a little story. You know, when you go to, when you go to seminary, I don't, I don't, I don't recommend it for everybody. All right. I'm just going to tell you. All right. There's a couple in here who's going to seminary. All right. And I went to seminary You know, I was as green as I could be. What I mean by, I mean, I had been to Sunday school. I mean, that was it. I mean, I've been to some of these guys, like Brother Shad, if he went to seminary today, he's already got a minor in religion, you know, he went to a Baptist college, you know, and all those things. I went to seminary, I had a degree in ag business, all right, from Louisiana Tech. And I show up at seminary. And I've been to Sunday school, so I think I already know some stuff, you know? I've read my Bible all the way through. Hey, man, I know it all, right? I mean, I've read it from cover to cover. So I know all this stuff. And I remember taking this class called hermeneutics. And I didn't know what hermeneutics meant. I had no clue. I knew it was about biblical interpretation. And I took it. And I took it in a workshop. And the way it works at seminary, if you take something in a workshop, back then they don't hardly do that anymore. Now they do online classes and stuff like that instead of workshops. But back then, because this was Before all that back then you would you would take a workshop during the summer and so you'd have to go to class for about two weeks But you would have to do a bunch of work ahead of time before the workshop And then they give you all these assignments then you did a bunch of work after the workshop So you had this two week intensive and this was a three hour. This is a big class This is one of the probably most work intensive classes that I took at seminary And so I took it in a workshop because I didn't know any better And think about taking it in a workshop is you've got all these guys that take these classes in the extension centers that come to New Orleans, like me. And so a lot of these guys are like country preachers. You know, they're just kind of old fellows like me that had a Bible, they were preaching, and hey man, they're just doing the best they can, okay? And I remember being in there, and I'd been to, I'd had several semesters of seminary, all right, and I already knew that most of this stuff was going over my head, you know, so I was just, I was really focused on learning what I had to learn so I could pass the test and get my three hours credit. I wasn't being near as critical or really, but there was an old boy in this class that he was, he was a country preacher from somewhere in South Mississippi, and this was his first class he had ever taken at seminary. Now, I think he probably had a Bible college degree or something like that from a little Bible college there in South Mississippi somewhere. A lot of those up there in South Mississippi. So he had this degree and he's coming for this workshop. And for two weeks we talked about textual criticism. Now, textual criticism is where we're looking at all those places and we're looking at all those translations and we're arguing over which translate and we're not talking about big things. We're talking about tiny things. You understand what I mean? Like whether whether this is the right pronoun to be used right here, whether or not this this verb was parsed just right, you know, whether or not the Greek or the Hebrew, you know, what did this, you know, vowel marking, what should that do? I mean, it was terrible. I'm just going to tell you. It was terrible. But what was happening, you were in there, and so you're... It's called textual criticism. And so basically, they're critiquing all these different translations, and how these sentences were translated. And so you're doing that for about two weeks. And so, in a lot of ways, because we know the Bible's inerrant, right? But it's inerrant in its original text, or when it was originally written. There's a lot of things that we have to really... The whole goal is we want to get back as close as we can to exactly how it was delivered to the prophets and the apostles. And I remember this old boy, you know, he said what's in my mind and probably in the minds of most of those other guys in there. You know, there's a Hebrew professor who's teaching the class, Dr. Warren. I remember Dr. Warren. And so he's teaching that class. And this old boy raised his hand. He's got his King James Bible sitting there. You just tell him. He doesn't put up with this as long as he can put up with it, all right? He said, Dr. Warren, I've got to ask you something. He's just about halfway gritting his teeth, you know. Dr. Warren, I've got... How, after taking this class, can I go home and tell my people that this is the Word of God? He was so shaken up, you know, by this idea that every jot and tittle in the King James or the CSB or whatever it might be, that it might not be perfectly correct according to the manuscripts, the original text. And Dr. Warren said, Son, that's why we're taking this class. That's why we're studying the original text. That's why we're going back to the earliest manuscripts. We don't want to present anything that's not as close as we could get to what was delivered to the prophets and the apostles. And he said, After all we've talked about, after all the little nuances that we've looked at in language and all those things, after all of that, look how much confidence we have in these 66 books. Look how even with all of these little idiosyncrasies that we fuss about, we fuss about them because we're scholars and that's what we do. But at the end of the day, God has preserved these 66 books, and the little places of disagreement have absolutely no effect on the larger message of God's Word. What a wonderful gift. Amen? You can have confidence that God's Word is infallible, authoritative, inerrant, and that it is sufficient for life, salvation, and godliness. I'm going to ask you if you would, if you'd stand to your feet. We're not going to have a hymn of invitation. Sorry. It's just prayer. We're going to be dismissed. Um, I appreciate y'all so much. You know, I, there's a lot of things I, after our revival last week, I wrote down a lot of things and you know, just my takeaways and it wasn't because of the large crowds and those things. It was, I'm just thankful to be your pastor. And I'm thankful to be here at Emmanuel Baptist Church. And I'm thankful that you are willing to receive the Word of God as the Word of God. That's a blessing. Let's keep doing that. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your grace. Lord, I pray you bless each person in this place. Lord, I thank you, Lord, for the way you love us, the way you care for us. And I thank you, Lord, that so much of your grace is extended to us. in your word. Lord, that you have spoken, Lord, you've revealed all that we need to know, Lord, in order to serve you, to love you, to find the salvation, Lord, that's given freely in Jesus Christ. Lord, help us, Lord, to cling to your word. Help us believe your word and help us read it, Lord, not as a document that has your word in it, but help us to read it as your word, that it might change us. Lord, thank you, Lord, for your blessings. In Jesus' name I pray.