Let us turn to our Bibles, to 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17. I’ve covered these verses in the broader context as well, preaching through this book. And as you know, I’ll stop now and then and drill in.
I’m gonna go pretty deep into these verses, so I’ll have a number of sermons. Let us listen attentively to the word of God. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Let us pray. And in these, I pray God, encouraging words, words of truth, describing, Lord, that you have not left us to our own devices, that you have given us the word, your word, not verbally only, although that was often the case historically, but in written form, for our good, for our comfort, for our protection. Our God and Savior, we ask that this would be driven home and drive us, God, to you all the more, as we stand in awe of how you preserved your holy written scripture, all these hundreds of years, even a thousand, God, for your people, and to guiding us unto Christ Jesus, where we find and are given so much truth in life of the good news here in the word of God.
We ask, God, these things by the power of the spirit, amen. Since the word of God, that is the Bible in particular, is necessary for the saving of souls and the preservation of our spiritual lives, it is important, of course, to learn and teach these things, or perhaps to relearn, as is probably the case for most of us. In our religious history, it was important enough that our forefathers explain the doctrine of the Bible and its use early in the Shorter Catechism, for example, in the Larger Catechism, and chapter one of the Confession of Faith itself.
It has its own chapter with multiple paragraphs. For although all men know God exists, and even what is right or wrong, they can never obtain redemption from this knowledge, only judgment, for they are fallen. Therefore, for men to be delivered from Satan’s kingdom, they will need the revelation from on high, and that is found in the Bible.
I will be combining both the Catechism and the Confession in this short series on the Holy Scripture. My aim is to solidify your faith, brothers and sisters, and our God and our Savior as we find Him and all that we need for eternal life therein. The first point, the Bible is supernatural revelation.
The Bible Is Supernatural Revelation
So this is the broadest significant point and I’m going to place it in the idea and understanding of knowledge of how we know things as humans. First of all, there is a thing known as natural or general revelation. You’ve heard this a few times from me.
Often in systematic theology, it is called general revelation, to emphasize, of course, that it’s everywhere. Revelation just simply means the communication of truth, specifically God’s truth. Revelation here in this word doesn’t have to mean something supernatural.
Sometimes we think of, I had a revelation from an angel, perhaps, and someone talks that way in some circles. That’s not what this means. It simply means communicating the truth, how we know things of God in particular.
Just looking around, in other words, seeing the animals and the beauties of the trees and the intricacies of creation points to and what reveals a creator God. The name natural emphasizes, of course, that it’s the ordinary pathway of communication. It’s intrinsic into the condition of nature, is the idea.
They’re not naturalistic like evolution. That’s not what that means. Our word precedes evolution by hundreds of years, if not thousands.
The assumed background here, in fact, and it’s explicit in the confession, but assumed in the broader way of thinking and talking in our circles, chapter one, paragraph one, we read in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness and wisdom and power of God as to leave men inexcusable or inexcusable. It’s talking about, it’s writing about here general or natural revelation.
It uses the old phrase light of nature. We don’t use that often anymore. Maybe we should return to that language.
And specifies this as the works of creation and providence that that there is a creation. There must be the case because we are finite. Everything in creation is finite and depends upon the infinite God.
And of course, providence, how things work out in life, cause and effect, and everything else manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power, manifest, reveal. The general or natural revelation reveals that there is a God, not just a God in the vaguest sense, but he has goodness, wisdom, and power, enough to leave men and women inexcusable. Psalm 19 is one of the famous Old Testament passages about that.
Romans 1 and 2 as well. I’ll go to Romans 1. There’s a lot of details there. This is important for us to realize again.
I suppose this subsection of my sermon could be described. There are no atheists. It’s very much what we see in other matters in society where people pretend to be something they’re not, as in the case of men and women.
The vast majority of them are not crazy. We like to use the word, they’re not crazy. They’re just simply lying to you.
They’re playing games and everyone’s following along with it. And that’s kind of what’s going on with atheism. Except it predates this in many ways, of course.
Historically, atheists have been around for a long time, although they’ve been very much a super minority. Romans 1, 19 and following. Romans 1, 19 and following read, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful. When we talk to people about God, we’re not talking to people who know nothing about God, but rather people who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, as verse 18 tells us.
They’re hiding, they’re making up whole entire ways of thinking and doing and acting to hide from this reality, to hide from their sins, hide from the judgment of God. There are no atheists. Creation screams out that there is a God.
They may claim it with their mouths, but their hearts say otherwise. Romans 1, 32, at the end of that long chapter there, he describes and goes into detail somewhat of the extent of the depravity of men and how far they wish to run away from that knowledge of God. He ends that paragraph there in verse 32, and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, so he emphasizes it again, they have it, they don’t want it, they wish to suppress it, hide it, skirt around it.
I often have in my mind the picture, the mental picture of the corner of your eye. We know something’s there, we don’t wanna look, the knowledge is there, we don’t wanna stare at it. It’s the corner of their eye sometimes.
So even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind. God says, fine, here you have it, go for it. To do those things which are not fitting, and he goes through a list of surprisingly specific sins, right, a surprisingly specific sins that they know without the Bible.
The Bible just makes it clearer, and therefore, what, more convicting. That’s why they’re not all trampling down the doors at church on Sunday. The Bible is even more clear than general revelation.
At the end of that section there, several verses later, who, that is, those who do not want to retain God in their knowledge, verse 32, who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. They’re covering for one another. We see this all the time, of course.
We struggle with it, of course, as well. Obviously, Christians sin. Thankfully, we go to Jesus with our sins.
They go nowhere but dig deeper into their sins, excusing one another, approving those with one another who practice them. Because of this rejection of general revelation about God’s existence, denying what their senses tell them, they did not like to retain the knowledge of God in them. God gives them over to further dominion of more sin, yet even bound in iniquity, they know right from wrong because they know the righteous judgment of God, they’re practicing such things as deserving of sin, and they’re still doing it.
So even those with a severed or seared conscience, as described elsewhere by Paul, perhaps what he’s being described here, he gives them over to their sin, they still know it’s wrong. They’re just gleefully doing it. They really, really want.
Romans 2, he picks up the same idea here, a little slightly different perspective. Romans 2.14 and following. For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts.
Their conscience is also bearing witness. There it is again, they know these things, bearing witness. And between themselves, their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.
Here, it describes that the law of God, not just the knowledge of the creator, the knowledge of the creator’s will, his law. The Gentiles, though, who do not have the law, he means the Mosaic law. It’s a Jewish context.
Paul’s writing to those who understand the Jewish background of the Old Testament. But they do it, nevertheless, because it’s written on their hearts, it tells us. Paul tells us.
The Holy Spirit tells us to depend on Paul. They know right and wrong. So since this knowledge of God is universal and clear, nations have historically eschewed atheism and ran off to other kinds of false religions, of course.
So it’s kind of interesting. Again, atheism is very much a super minority historically. Even in America today, those who are not Christian, they’ll call themselves spiritual.
We don’t want anything to do with atheism. You have to go to college to beat out that knowledge of you. It’s basically what’s happening.
Early America, of course, and for a long time, I say early America. I mean, in the 1800s, into the 1900s, what kind of oath did they have? Before God on the Bible. Because an atheist, in that way of thinking, is by definition already lying to you.
Why would you trust him further? Think about it. Do we or do we not believe what Romans 1 tells us? They know there is a God. But they’re denying it and playing around with this knowledge.
They’re playing hide the ball from you. And that’s pretty serious. I mean, it’s something so blatantly obvious and they want to lie about it.
The limits of natural revelation is what I want to get into here. This is the backdrop. This is the understanding.
From this knowledge of God and knowledge of his will, you cannot find salvation. You can’t find Christ in the stars, as one pastor supposedly said 30 years ago. It’s not happening.
You only find redemption in the supernatural word of God. Supernatural or special revelation. Not natural, but above and beyond nature, what’s intrinsic in our hearts and what we see in revelation around us pointing to the glories of God.
We have to get it from heaven. That’s the idea here. And it’s often called special revelation as opposed to general revelation.
It’s more specific. It’s from on high. We run across this, of course, early on in the Old Testament in the Garden of Eden.
God speaks to them. He seeks them out. He doesn’t let just nature speak of him and his will.
But he says, where are you? Where are you hiding? And of course, we know the story of their fall. And they make excuses. The time of Christ, our creator, there up to the time of Christ.
And our creator communicated in various and sundry ways to the prophets, through heaven, through angels. That’s all supernatural or special revelation. More broadly, of course, in the sense of, as we’ll see in the third point, we don’t have that today anymore.
We’re not looking for angels. But God covered it and went a lot of various ways. Visions, dreams, angels, voices from heaven, miracles, what do they all have in common? All those old ways.
And man, they’re amazing and attention grabbing. Think about it. Miracles, which are often attended.
Seeing an angel itself is almost miraculous. Seeing a vision, you’re awake. Or a dream, you’re asleep.
Hearing a voice from heaven, those are attention getting, aren’t they? Whoa. That’s beyond the ordinary. It’s beyond the natural.
It’s supernatural. That’s the special revelation God gave them. He told them of time to repent.
He told them of the Messiah to come. He told them of enemies who were going to take over the church and attack Israel and warn them. And all these things, as we read in the Old Testament especially, those are the special ways of God revealing his will to his people.
Truth given to them outside of natural or general revelation. And they are attention grabbing. I’m highlighting that because the Bible isn’t, is it? You read this, what it says is attention getting.
That’s more significant, the points of the Bible. But how we get it, that we’re reading it, in many ways, is very much mundane. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
And that should not distract us from the fact that nevertheless, it is supernatural revelation. It is special revelation. You cannot get by contemplating about God, looking at creation, or meditating upon your heart, as unbelievers can and do and have various degrees of knowledge of God and his will.
But they’ll never find a way to heaven. You can’t get it outside the Bible. So the written scriptures are a more particular special revelation.
And that’s what we have here. The Bible that we have, the Confession goes through and lists all 66 books of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. In contrast to the Roman Catholic Church, who has additional books, we use many ways to describe the Bible.
Holy writ, for example, the word holy, of course, to emphasize that the Bible is a special book of the spirit of God. This is not just ordinary. It may be made of ordinary paper and ordinary leather.
But the content therein is not ordinary. It is extraordinary and amazing and rooted in supernatural. It is the word of God, we describe it as as well, to emphasize his divine authority, that it comes from him and not men.
As we’ll see in a little bit, of course, he used men. But presidents use secretaries. And we don’t say, well, that’s the secretary’s words.
We say, that’s the president’s words. That’s the words of Congress. We’ve got to take it seriously.
It’s exactly the same thing here. So the Bible is supernatural or special revelation. It’s needful for us to get to heaven, to learn of Christ, and to follow our Lord and Savior.
The Bible Offers Supernatural Salvation
The second point, the Bible offers supernatural salvation, therefore. The two go hand in hand. It’s supernatural salvation, of course, because it comes from God.
God initiates our salvation and our redemption, as we’ll hear more in Hosea this afternoon. The Confession, chapter 1, verse 1, I’m reading the other half of verse 1. The first half was, the lot of nature tells you there’s a God. It leaves them without excuse.
They can’t plead in the judgment day. I had no idea you existed, God. Such a surprise.
No, 1,000 times no. It continues, for the better preserving and propagation of the truth and for more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world to commit the same wholly unto writing, to commit the same, the good news in particular, but everything else in the Bible, of course, God’s will for us to commit it into writing. So humanly speaking, we understand by experience that word of mouth or oral tradition, oral testimony, is, of course, useful.
We have it in the courts. We want them to talk to us. And if they can’t, they’ll write it down.
That’s sufficient. We’ll take written testimonies, for example. But what happens when the event was several years ago? And if it was never written down, you know what’s going to happen.
It’s going to start fading in someone’s mind, let alone decades, let alone generations, let alone hundreds of years and thousands of years. So ordinarily or typically in everyday practice, that’s the case. And so written words, therefore, are more reliable.
And the Bible, of course, is the most reliable of all reliable books. And God has given it to us in this written form for our comfort, for our good, to protect against the corruption of the flesh therein. This is why God has granted it to us.
And it is a more sure word of prophecy, as Peter tells us, than even miracles, as we’ll hear at the end. Now, he could have continued, therefore, of course, the divine revelation today. We could have prophets appear along with the pastor.
But he determined to maintain his word through ordinary means. We know the prophets said more, of course, and Christ said more. Yet the Spirit decided to write it all down through their pens to give us the Bible.
And it was good enough, sufficient enough for us, and is indeed a comfort for us. Because prophets can be kind of scary, miracles that come along with them and the like. But this, even the little child can pick it up and read parts of it and understand it.
God gave us the Bible, the written revelation of his will for us, for our comfort and our protection. As I said before, prophets could, at the end of the day, if you think about it, be quite terrifying. The guy probably reading my mind, well, God’s reading your mind.
But that’s how we are as humans, isn’t it? God is in the flesh. God is not in the flesh. That is, the Son of God is in heaven.
But God, as God, the Godhead, doesn’t have a flesh. He’s omnipresent. He does read our hearts.
But we are human, and God knows our limitations. And having a prophet and people who had visions from heaven would be quite distracting. Ask the Christians in the city of Corinth.
First Corinthians describes the chaos there. And it describes early on in the opening chapters, hey, I was baptized by this guy. Hey, I was baptized by that guy.
How much more if you had prophets? Hey, my pastor’s a prophet. What about your pastor, huh? You could see all kinds of chaos we would have. They had in the Old Testament.
They still didn’t do much in some cases. They had the prophets. They still didn’t listen to them.
God said, this is a better way. This is sufficient for us. You don’t have to seek out the miracle pastor.
You simply have the Word of God, written testimony that we can return to day in and day out and replicate as we have. We have I don’t know how many Bibles. It’s the number one selling book in the world.
You couldn’t get enough prophets in the world, humanly speaking. Everyone would have to be a prophet to know about these things. But the Bible can be reproduced and sent forth everywhere.
God knew this. God designed it that way. And it’s for our good.
Proverbs 22, 19, so that your trust may be in the Lord. So that your trust may be in the Lord, he writes to the young man, but to us today as well. I have instructed you today, even you.
Have I not written to you excellent things of counseling knowledge, that I may make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you may answer words of truth to those who send you. Writing it down is significant. It makes a difference for the human.
Proverbs 22, 19, and following. Romans 15, 4, we read. For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we, through the patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope.
They are written for our learning. They are put down for our instruction. That is sufficient.
God has given us his will in written form in the Bible. We don’t have to seek out something extra and supernatural. It’s already supernatural in content here.
And that’s sufficient. As we read and hold letters dear to us from loved ones, even of long ago, how much more the written word of God for our comfort. And the Lord preserves it.
He preserves his extraordinary book through ordinary means of history and providence, as we have gathered the letters, our forefathers and the churches. And we’ve had the Bible with us for a very long time, even before we had councils who gathered together and said, oh, this is the word of God. And they did it, of course, because the heretics were coming along saying, well, that isn’t the word of God.
And over here, we have additional words of God. And it caused chaos amongst the people of the Lord and the church. So they gathered and said, well, let’s make it clear, we already knew beforehand that this is 66 books, which I mentioned in the last sermon.
You can find all those quotes and put them together and virtually have your own Bible from the forefathers. I say forefathers, our spiritual fathers of the early church, so much of their letters and their sermons quote the Bible, you can pretty much put it all together from their literature. That’s how old it is, how ancient, and how much God preserved it amongst his people.
It’s there for our comfort and our protection to sustain his truth among men. And of course, nevertheless, even though I say ordinary, that is ordinary means, the church, we print it out, that’s an ordinary means. And God used holy men.
That’s ordinary in the sense of they’re men. They weren’t necessarily prophets, all of them, who wrote a Bible passage before us and wrote things down. They weren’t all apostles who wrote things down.
But they were nevertheless moved by the Holy Spirit. That is extraordinary. That is supernatural.
And the content they have is supernatural. Let us not lose sight of that. First, Timothy 5.16 is one of the passages here that God has given us his will in a written form, not just prophets only.
And 1 Peter is the other one. I mentioned that before. 1 Peter 1.21. For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
So we have some details here expressing to us how this is done, that the Spirit of God worked and moved through the men, through the apostle Paul, for example, where he was born, who his parents were, what his education was, what his life trajectory. He had connections, of course, to the Pharisees. And the greatest of their leaders was going to become the next great leader himself in the Jewish circles.
All that was guided by providence, by the power of the Spirit, so that he learned the letters he needed to learn, his education and his training, so that he could write and did write what he wrote. If you take out the divine element there and just look at it as a human, you see all these things going together, and all you’re going to see is, well, he’s a human who wrote and used human words to write about human things. But that is not the case at all.
Clearly, 1 Peter tells us God moved them, that the Holy Spirit moved and guided them, such that what they wrote were the words of God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the divine trinity. God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.
He does not have a mouth. Jesus, his body, is not here. He’s not speaking to us right now in this room.
And God, as God, does not have a mouth, so he uses people, things, as we saw of old. And here he used men, such as the Apostle Paul, and guided and molded his life such that what he wrote down was the word of God, is the word of God that we have before us right now. So it’s written by humans in human language, but about divine and supernatural truth.
It’s a guide for us in our life as believers, and it is God-breathed, as we saw here last week, I mentioned here in verse 16. All scripture is given, what? By God’s breath, God-breathed. We say inspiration in English.
That shows, therefore, the divine nature of it, even down to the very letters of the original manuscripts are from the Holy Spirit and guided by him for our good. And so the Bible is a supernatural revelation with about a supernatural salvation in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Paul writes about him.
Peter writes about him. James writes about him. He’s everywhere in the Bible and nowhere out in natural or general revelation.
And that’s why it’s important for the Christian life. We wish to become more like Jesus. We need to read his Bible, learn his Bible, and teach others as we have our particular positions and influences in life.
The Bible Is the Only Supernatural Revelation
The third point, the Bible is the only supernatural revelation. Of course, I mean today. At the time of writing of the Apostle Paul, for example, when he wrote this, the apostles themselves had supernatural revelation.
After all, Paul was going down the road to Damascus, and he sees Jesus. He’s terrified. He was a prophet of sorts.
The apostles had that ability by the mystery of the Spirit. We don’t know how exactly these things function, of course. But we have in chapter 1 of the Confession, in paragraph 1 and elsewhere, a description that the supernatural revelation has been narrowed down to the Bible now.
We read, these are those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased. The diverse ways and manners I mentioned before are now ceased, our forefathers taught, and is based upon the word of God, not their own speculation. Dreams and visions are no more.
We don’t expect to have angels knocking on our door anymore to give us something interesting, a new truth, something supernatural. So again, many of the miracles are attached to, or another way of looking at it is, divine revelation, supernatural revelation, coming from the prophets, coming from God above, are often attended with what? Miracles, something miraculous, to wake people up, to get their attention, pay attention, this is good stuff. Listen to the good news of Jesus to come, for example, in the prophecies of the Old Testament.
All that’s done away with. Hebrews 1, 1 and 2 is one of the passages. Hebrews 1, 1 and 2, we read, God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets.
Right, various times and various ways, he spoke to the fathers by an audible voice, by a vision. Jacob had his dream. He has in these last days, verse two, spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom he has made the worlds.
And so the writer of Hebrews is telling us those former ways, various times, don’t worry about that. Now you have Jesus, he’s the greatest of all revelation. We need nothing else.
You may ask, well, Pastor, don’t we have apostles? Jesus didn’t write 2 Timothy. Paul did, that’s true, but who sent the apostles? King Jesus, he gave him the authority to do it. So they’re carrying on his message or his ministry.
So again, humanly, Jesus does many things that make sense. You appoint others to expand your influence across the world, because you’re one single person, you can’t do it all. Now Jesus, of course, is God, a man, as God he does and guides all things.
But as a man, he’s limited, he just speaks to who hears him in his audience, and that’s the apostles. And he sets them apart to be leaders in the foundation of the New Testament Church, Ephesians 2. So that’s contrasted, diverse ways, contrasted with the one way Jesus Christ in his preaching. He preached, and he taught, and he taught, and he preached.
That was his main and primary vehicle of bringing forth what? Supernatural truth. Miracles were there, again, to get people’s attention, to pay attention to his words. Deuteronomy 29.29, we read, in Deuteronomy 29.29, the secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
So the revealed will of God is sufficient for our Christian life as it was in the Old Testament. Yes, they had prophets in addition to that which was what? Primary. We tend to think, because what we have here is a collection of supernatural things often, that every day they ran across a prophet.
At least that was in my mind often. But as you read through the Bible, you realize you’re skipping large sections of time, and the prophets were very limited, they could literally be everywhere. It wasn’t every day.
It wasn’t every day experience, I believe. What was an every day experience was having access to the will of God in the Torah, that is the Old Testament law. Deuteronomy, God tells us what’s revealed to you is sufficient, and if God brings anything else, that’s fine, you’re still what? Supposed to compare it to what is sufficient, the word of God.
So we don’t need anything else, we don’t even need an angel from heaven to give us new revelation, God tells us, in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 29, 29, to the New Testament, Galatians 1.8, things have changed now. They may get an angel in the Old Testament.
They may get a prophet, they certainly had Moses for a while. This is changing in God’s progression of redemption in history. As the church matures, he has changed the instruments of the method by which he gives revelation now.
It was written, as we know, Moses wrote the first five books, but it was supplemented in the sense of other additional methods and tools, angels and miracles and prophets came along to supplement and explain these things. New Testament, you start getting narrowed down to Bible, Bible’s sufficient, you don’t need anything else, you’re grown up, we’re putting away childish attention, getting things, right? Galatians 4, we’re no longer children. Galatians 1.8, but though we, who’s we? Paul and others who are with him, sometimes Timothy and others, Paul’s an apostle, officially and formally sent by Jesus.
Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. Paul’s saying, I don’t care how much divine revelation you’re gonna get, what you have is sufficient here, and it’s never gonna change. Don’t go seeking other things, even an angel, which is clearly something supernatural, something extraordinary, don’t seek those things out.
What I have preached to you, and of course, what he’s preached to them has been written down, it’s written, the preaching comes from God, that is the source of the preaching, the content therein is for us today the written word, and back then it was the written. How often did the apostles quote the Old Testament? Often, very much, lots of times, and of course, alluded to it, assumed it. You can’t read large portions of the New Testament if you don’t understand the sacrificial system even exists.
It’s there everywhere, the written truth therein, and the quoting thereof, over and over again. So what we have in the Bible is enough, we don’t need miracles, Isaiah 820, again, he hammers this point home, even though they had prophets, but there are lots of what, false prophets as well. So just having a prophet, you’re like, I wish we had prophets today.
You’re gonna have prophets, you’re also gonna have what, false prophets. Can’t get away from it, you’re still gonna have a struggle. So all those extraneous things, in one sense, are put away, makes it a little easier for us.
It’s the word, or isn’t it? Isaiah 820, to the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. And the Bereans, as we know, Paul commends them in Acts, that they were more noble than others, because they what? Took my words and compared them to angels? To feelings that they have in their own minds? No, to the word of God, to the written word of God. And lastly, Christ’s temptation.
Jesus is the great prophet, a prophet is one who gives the will of God to his people. And what was his primary means of revealing God’s will? Going into a vision or eschacy of some sort, like the Old Testament prophets did? Now he did miracles, yes, but he didn’t have these visions or anything as such. He just simply opened his mouth and proclaimed the truth.
And in proclaiming the truth, you may say, well, pastor, well, what he said, of course, everything he said was divine. Yes, it’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? It’s divine by his dint of his own authority, though often he says what? I don’t come on my own authority, I come on the authority of my father. Isn’t that interesting, right? But he also does what? He quotes the Bible.
Where you and I are like, if I was, of course, an apostle, I’d be like, I’m just quoting myself, I’m quoting God, it’s sufficient. Quote the Bible, he quotes the Bible. Jesus in the temptation in Matthew 4. Now, when the tempter came to him and said, if you are the son of God, command that these stones be come bread.
But Jesus answered and said, it is written, men shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Jesus quotes the Old Testament as a sufficient answer to the lies of the devil. He doesn’t quote himself, I say, as the son of God, you’re wrong.
Isn’t that interesting? It’s not just interesting, it is instructive, brothers and sisters. If Jesus does it, how much more should we follow in his steps and what? Go to the Bible, compare things with the Bible, and shut the mouth of the accuser with the Bible. The devil took him up into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge over you.
And Jesus said to him, it is written again, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. And then lastly, he said to them, all these things I will give you, that is Satan, if you fall down and worship me. And Jesus said, away with you, Satan, for it is what? Written, it is written, it is written.
Three times in his temptation, he shuts the devil down with the written word of God. Does it act as a prophet in that case of saying, my mouth has spoken, the spirit has spoken, it’s sufficient, he quotes the word of God. It is sufficient for us, brothers and sisters.
You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. To the law, and to the testimony, to these words, it’s how we grow in sanctification, how we find Jesus Christ is this supernatural revelation, the written supernatural revelation in particular. We need the Bible, brothers and sisters, to discover and learn of the good news, to guide our lives for his glory, to flee sin and Satan, and to draw nigh to Christ every day.
Therefore, let us read and learn, and relearn the Lord’s will in the written word, the Holy Scripture. Let us rejoice in the privilege of having the Bible, and let us never take the Holy Word for granted, let us pray. Precious Spirit of life and truth, open our eyes to understand your word, for certainly the unbeliever can read the Bible, and even give a proper explanation of the words, but simply doesn’t trust them, and thinks it’s all fairy tales.
Lord God, may this not be so for any of us here. Help us, God, to take seriously your word, to find Jesus in the gospel, in the Bible, in these words, for the scriptures are here, as you read in the prior verse, the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation, for it is supernatural revelation, given to us in written form, and this for our good, our Lord and Savior, and we thank you and praise you for this, amen.