The Authority of the New Testament Scriptures

Good morning. I greet you in Jesus' name. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Paul's second letter to Timothy, chapter 2. I'm going to start here, but actually I'm going to be traveling around quite a bit through the New Testament. The title of my message is "The Authority of the New Testament Scriptures."

The Authority of the New Testament Scriptures. I want to read verses 8 through 18 here, chapter 2 of 2 Timothy. "Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel, for which I suffered trouble as an evildoer even to the point of chains. But the word of God is not chained.

Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, and they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. This is a faithful saying, for if we die with him, we shall also live with him. If we endure, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. And if we are faithless, he remains faithful. He cannot deny himself.

Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words, to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourselves approved of God to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness, and their message will spread like cancer. Hymenias and philiates are of this sort who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past, and they overthrow the faith of some."

Now, again, my focus this morning is looking at the authority of the Scriptures, and I want just to point out here that the foundation of our faith is based on what Jesus did, on the finished work of Christ. And Paul is very clear here that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Okay? He was raised from the dead. And he is very concerned about the fact that there are people who are coming saying, "Well, the resurrection is already past. It's not happening. Maybe it's something other than the actual thing of being raised from the dead." But he's very emphatic here that it is the resurrection and what Jesus has done through that resurrection unleashing the power of God so that we could benefit from it. And he also talks about the importance of our participation in what Jesus has done, our participation in what Christ has done. And he says, "This is a faithful saying. It's something that we can trust." And that's what I want to talk about this morning, is that we can trust what the New Testament Scriptures say.

We can trust them. They are true, and they are right, and they are from God. And the reason why I'm talking about this this morning is because that is really called into question by many people, even some people who call themselves Christians, because what the New Testament teaches as a whole does not always fit with what people want or what they are advocating for or what they think is important. They find things in the New Testament that they object to, that somehow or another does not fit with the spirit of this age that we live in, which they have been so much impacted by.

And I think that the thing that we should strive to do is to take all the New Testament Scriptures, all the writings of the apostles. And that's the thing we have to keep in mind, is that Jesus never wrote a book. You think about that. Jesus never wrote a book. It was his disciples. It was his apostles who wrote the books.

Okay? And so what we know about what Jesus did on this earth, what he taught while he was here on this earth, all goes back to what the apostles communicated to us in their writings. And you think about that. What would have happened if they hadn't written it down? What if they hadn't written it down? Well, we know that oral communication can be a little bit flimsy at times. It can get twisted. It can get altered. It can get expanded on and so on. You can tell stories, okay? And those stories can get conflated, and they can get altered and so on, depending on what the person who was there remembers in hearing the story.

And so to have something written down, okay? Have something written down is very important. That's why, for example, historians have a tendency not to really believe things that are told 100 years after something has happened when it wasn't really there's no record that it ever happened or that story never happened, just like the Peter Mueller story with George Washington. Nobody told that story until the 1820s.

So I think one can say it was somewhat of a fabrication. It's just like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. Now, that really is a fabrication.

Okay?

Now, what happens is sometimes fabrications get written down, and people then believe that they're true. All right? But these writings are true. Now, I want you to notice verse 15. He says, "Be diligent to present yourselves approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." Now, I want to emphasize this idea of being diligent, okay?

Because it just doesn't happen. Okay? There has to be I mean, diligence has to do with effort. It has to do with application. It has to do with choices and proceeding ahead. It's an active kind of thing. And there is a diligence that's necessary in our Christian life for us to be approved by God.

Okay? We are recipients of God's grace and his goodness and his love and everything he's done for us, but it really will have no effect unless we are diligent with it, unless we apply it to our hearts, unless we work our salvation out with fear and trembling. And here he talks about rightly dividing. That means rightly understanding, rightly interpreting what the Scriptures say, what the word of truth says. Okay? Now, if you go on further in chapter 3, going down to verse 15, Paul says, "And that from childhood" speaking to Timothy here, "And that from childhood you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness." Okay? Now, when Paul's talking here to Timothy, he says, "You've known this from your youth." Well, Paul is writing here one of his last letters, probably around 67 AD. Okay? Timothy is a young man.

Some of the New Testament has already been written, but when Timothy was a younger man, not very much of it was written. So when he's talking here about the holy Scriptures remember, Timothy's mother was Jewish. When he's talking about the holy Scriptures, he was talking about the Old Testament. Okay? He was talking about the Scriptures that the Jews had, the record of God's dealings with them, of his law and of his teaching. And Timothy was taught those. Okay? He was probably taken to synagogue where those Scriptures were read and where they were commented on and so on.

And notice what Paul says. "They were given by the inspiration of God." Now, there's a word in there that you can see. It's in inspiration. It's called spirit. And the idea here is that they were breathed by God. Okay? They came to the various persons at various times, as Hebrews says. Okay?

God spoke in sundry and diverse ways in the past to our fathers through the prophets. Okay? And if you go through the Old Testament, you remember right at the very beginning, it says, "And God said." And God said.

And God spoke. And what happened? The world came into be. Okay? And then at various points throughout the Old Testament, particularly when you get to the prophets, they have this saying, "And the word of the Lord came to me saying."

And so the prophet was given a message straight from God that he was to communicate to the people. And oftentimes, it was a message of warning, of caution, of rebuke, and so on. But then in the midst of it, promises, "Comfort ye. Comfort ye, my people," says the Lord, your God. Okay? And of course, there is the promise of the coming of Messiah. And that becomes more and more evident as God reveals himself in the Old Testament. And it's interesting that he starts there in the law and unveils himself more and more and more and more by the time of the prophets. The interesting thing to me about Judaism is their focus really is the law, the Torah, the five books of Moses.

Okay? They have, in a sense, a canon within the canon. Okay? The Torah is the most important part of it. The writings and the prophets are less important to them. It's not that they don't believe they're from God or anything like that, but really the Torah is the canon within the canon. All right? And I think that that is really somewhat reversed because I think that what we have actually is God revealing himself in the beginning, and then as time goes on and through the prophets, he progressively reveals more and more and more of himself. Why? Because he's getting us ready. He's getting mankind ready for the coming of the Messiah. He's getting the Jews ready for the coming of the Messiah.

And he reveals more and more of his purpose and of his will. That's what we sometimes refer to as progressive revelation. All right? And if you go to Hebrews, and let's go there, okay? Hebrews chapter 1, picking up on this, "God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."

Okay? And so what Paul is saying here in Hebrews is that, yes, God spoke in the past through the prophets. What they spoke was God breathed. They spoke it by the inspiration of God. It wasn't just their own words. It wasn't just their own thoughts. Now, it may have been put in the idiom that they were used to speaking. I mean, they did speak in Hebrew.

Okay? And so they were using the language that they had and everything like that. And that was okay. That was okay. That's an interesting way how God works. Okay? I think that's, again, one of the parts where God actually interacts with man.

And so, but he spoke to God in various ways. And you think about that in various ways. He spoke to Balaam through the mouth of a donkey, which is a very unusual way of speaking. Any of you ever hear a donkey speak? No.

Now, that just normally doesn't happen. Okay? And you remember that with Elijah, he was put out. He thought everybody was against him. He went off and sulked in a cave. And there was a great storm and loudness and so on, and God was not in the storm. And then it was all over. And then he heard this still small voice, and that's where God spoke to him.

I'd like to suggest to us that God still speaks to us in that still small voice, but you have to be quiet to listen to it. You have to be quiet to listen to it. One of the things I've been thinking about, and I was thinking about maybe I need to change some of my behaviors and so on, but I listen to a lot. I mean, I travel to work for an hour every day, four times a week. And I have a lot of time there. What I normally do is I listen to a book. I listen to some podcast. I'm doing something. I'm listening to this, and I'm listening to that, and I'm listening to this.

How many of you all do that? Raise your hands.

I wonder sometimes, are we listening to too much?

I think I am because if you're not quiet, I mean, and the things to listen to are good. I mean, they're stimulating. They have good instruction oftentimes. Sometimes they're just simply entertaining. Okay? But I think we do need to have quiet to hear God speak to us in that still small voice.

So maybe I'm not saying get rid of the podcast or get rid of the audiobooks and so on, but maybe we have to be intentional to make sure that we do still have that time where we listen. We listen.

And I'll confess, that's something I'm going to have to work with. It didn't used to be that way. Okay? Technology creates all kinds of problems that one has to be somewhat intentional to deal with. Okay? All right. But what I want you to notice here is that in these last days right now, that's where we are, in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. He's spoken to us through Jesus.

And it says some very important things here, but what I want to focus on is where it says, "He is the express image." Okay? When we see Jesus, okay? When we see and hear what he has to say, we are seeing and hearing God's final revelation.

Okay? We're getting it. We're getting the final thing. There's nothing after that. The Muslims say that Muhammad is the last prophet of God. Now, they think Jesus one of the things interesting when you talk to Muslims, "Oh, yes, we believe in Jesus."

They'll say that to you. And it can be somewhat disarming at first. "Oh, you do? Yeah, yeah. We believe in Jesus. We believe he was born of a virgin." Okay? But they do not believe he was the Son of God.

They don't even believe that he actually died on the cross. They believe that that was a mirage, that God took him off of that thing and so on. So they don't believe in the resurrection. Okay? They not believe that Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords.

And so don't let them snooker you with that. Okay? Don't let them fool you with that. They do not believe in Jesus. They think that some other prophet came along who is more important than him, and that's why they exist.

All right. Now, one of the things that I okay, let's then go looking at the idea that Jesus is God's final revelation. Let's go to John chapter 1, looking at verses 1 through 5 and then verse 14. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." And then I'm going to go down to verse 14. "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth."

Now, I want you to notice a couple of things here. It says, first of all, the word. Okay? What is the word? The word is a means of communication. All right? It's a means by which we are told something. All right? It's a means by which we learn something. Okay?

I think sometimes people really want to downplay the importance of communication, the importance of words and so on. I remember there's this one saying that says, "Preach the gospel. If necessary, use words." And I thought, "It is always necessary to use words."

That is a false dichotomy. I am just amazed at how many false dichotomies people literally buy into. It sounds really clever. It sounds really almost sophisticated. It sounds really almost wise. But false dichotomies are just that. They're false.

And when you have two things that are being opposed to each other, they're not meant to be opposed to each other. That's a false dichotomy. All right? And I'll tell you one that is really very common, faith and works. That's a false when people oppose faith to works, that's a false dichotomy. Another one is spirit to letter. That's another dichotomy that people like to use.

God keeps them together, and we should too. All right? God communicated us through his word. And not only did he communicate through his word, but the living word, Jesus Christ, was God from the very beginning. All right? And the amazing thing is that he became flesh and dwelt among us. And then the important thing is that John says here, "And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father." And that is what the New Testament is about.

Okay? That's what the apostles are communicating. They beheld the glory of God, and they are communicating that glory to us. Okay? That's what the New Testament is all about. All right? Okay. Then let's go to then the question I have then is, how do we get from the living word, the word that became flesh and dwelt among us, okay? That word that spoke in the beginning, how do we get from that living word to the New Testament scriptures? Well, let's just go a little further on here in John to chapter 16, verses 13 to 15.

Jesus is speaking to his disciples here, and he says, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." Jesus says, "I have many." Now, time is short. This is just right before this is while they're celebrating the Passover. It's just right before Jesus' arrest, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Time is short. And Jesus says, "I have many things to tell you." Well, how is he going to tell them that? Well, he does some of it here, but notice then what he says in verse 13, "However, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will not speak on his own authority." He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak. "And he will tell you things to come, and he will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you, all things that the Father has are mine.

Therefore, I said that he will take of mine and declare it to you." Okay? So how is Jesus going to speak further? Well, he's going to speak through the Holy Spirit to the apostles. Okay? And Jesus told the apostles, "The Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth. He will tell you of things to come, and he will say nothing other than what the Father has said, just like I have said nothing other than what my Father has told me to say." All right? So the disciples, the apostles, have this promise that the information, the knowledge, and so on that they need further than what Jesus has communicated to them over the last three years that he spent with them in a rather intensive kind of way, that he has not left them, as it says later on in chapter 16, comfortless.

And one of the things he also says about the Holy Spirit is that he will bring to remembrance everything that I have taught you. Okay? Everything that I have taught to you. So this is the way in which we so what does Jesus do? He communicates what he he communicates God's teaching. He communicates who he is through to his disciples, and they receive it. And then he makes this promise to them that the Holy Spirit will further teach you what you need and what needs to be communicated. All right?

And so all of a sudden, we have these men, and they are what I'd like to refer to as the living repositories of the truth. Jesus has communicated to them what the truth is. They have received it. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, it's not just simply a raw memory. It's not just simply physical memory or natural memory, but the Holy Spirit is at work bringing to their remembrance the things that Jesus has taught them.

So again, the Holy Spirit here is involved in what is happening here. All right? Then let's go on to chapter 7. Just turn over to chapter 17 and notice here in verses 6 through 8, "I have manifested." Here he's praying to his Father. Sometimes this is called Jesus's high priestly prayer.

Actually, I think this we call the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer, because Jesus taught us, but this is really the Lord's Prayer. This is what he prays to his Father. Okay? "I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given me out of the world. They were yours. You gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

Now, they have known that all things which you have given me are from you, for I have given to them the words which you have given me, and they have received them, and they have known surely that I came forth from you, and they have believed that you sent me." Okay? Let's go on down to verse 11. "Now, I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you, Holy Father. Keep through your name those whom you have given to me, that they may be one as we are.

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me, I have kept, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and that the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

Sanctify them by your truth." I'm just going to use the King James here because I think it sounds so nice. "Thy word is truth."

Okay? "Thy word is truth." Okay? And so what do we see happening here? Okay? Jesus is telling his Father, "I have given them the words you told me to speak, and they have received them. And I'm asking you to give them a special unction, to give them a special power, that they will remember those words and that they will keep those words and that those words will sanctify them, will purify them so that what they say is not coming from them but is coming from you.

Thy word is truth." So the disciples, the apostles, are the living repositories of the truth.

Ephesians 2:19-20 says this, "Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone." As I said before, Jesus never wrote a book. The apostles wrote books and letters. Okay? They wrote them down. They were and that's simply what scripture scripture simply means something that's written. It's what we call the Holy Scriptures. Okay? They're holy writings. Okay? Notice it says, "On the foundation of the prophets." That's the Old Testament. Okay? That's the Old Testament. The foundation of the apostles. That's the New Testament. Okay? Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone of both what the prophets are saying and what the disciples or what the apostles are saying.

Okay? And that's how we get what we need when it comes to, as Paul says in Timothy, what is necessary for doctrine, for reproof, and for correction. Okay? So we can trust what the New Testament says because its source is God, and God has preserved in the communication of his word, the truth.

Okay? Now,

when after Judas, as it refers to here in John, after Judas had betrayed the Lord, and of course, he committed he hung himself and so on, in Acts, after Jesus ascended into heaven, the apostles came together, and they said, "We need to choose someone to replace Judas."

Now, I've heard people say, "While they sort of preempted this, it was actually Paul's Paul was actually Jesus's I mean, God's choice for the replace Judas and so on." There is nothing in scripture that indicates that. That is just simply speculation, and personally, I think it's somewhat idle speculation. But I've heard people say that. They can hold that opinion if they want to, but people are also wrong at times.

The apostles say in Acts chapter 2, "Therefore," when it comes to choosing this, this is the criteria when he's speaking to the rest of the disciples, "Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to the day when he was taken from us, one of these must be a witness with us of his resurrection." So notice the criteria here. Okay?

They were there listening, accompanying Jesus. They got his teaching. They saw what he did, and then they were also witnesses of his resurrection. They encountered they saw the risen Christ. Okay? And the apostles are witnesses of everything that Jesus did and said and then of his resurrection. Okay? That's what makes them special.

Okay? Now, we can talk about the idea of apostles being the term simply means messengers or those who are sent and so on, and there might be times in which that is a justifiable use in the New Testament and so on. But on the main, when they use the term when the New Testament uses the term apostles, it is referring to a very set group of men who were witnesses of what Jesus did and what he said and of his resurrection, and they bore testimony to that. That is, if you go to Luke chapter 1, Luke says, "Inasmuch as it's been taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first."

So I think that indicates the fact that maybe Luke was one of these people accompanying Jesus throughout his ministry. All right? "To write to you in an orally account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of the things which you were instructed." Okay? That is what that is Luke says this is the purpose of what he's doing. I think it's also the purpose of what the other gospel writers are doing. It's certainly the purpose of what Luke is doing in Acts when he writes Acts.

Okay? "That you may know the things that are most surely believe." But it's based on the eyewitnesses and experience and observation of the persons who were there. Okay?

Well, what about Paul? What do you do with Paul? Okay? Paul was not there at the beginning. In fact, he was an opponent of the first Christians. He persecuted them and so on. Well, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:3 let's just go there.

Okay? 1 Corinthians 15:3.

Paul says, "For I have delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures." What scriptures are he talking about? He's talking about the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. Okay? "And that he was seen by Sapphas and then by the Twelve, and that he was seen by over 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to present, but some have fallen asleep.

And then last of all, he was seen by me also as by one born out of time."

So what's that referring to? Well, do you remember on the Damascus Road that Paul saw this great light? It blinded him, and he fell down. Okay? And he cried out. And he heard Jesus speak to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

Saul encountered the risen, glorified Christ. Okay? He encountered the living, glorified Christ. He met the resurrected Christ. So he is a witness to the resurrection. Okay? The other thing that's interesting is let's go to he also says there that, "I'm the least of the apostles, but I am what I am by the grace of God, and I have labored more abundantly than any of the other apostles."

I think he's making up for lost time. Okay? But it's not only was he a witness of the resurrected Christ not only did Christ appear to him in his resurrected glory, but Christ also directly taught Paul. Let's go to Galatians chapter 1,

verse 16 15 and 16. Sorry, verse 16. "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer a reflection blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went to Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and remained with him 15 days, but I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother."

Okay? So what is Paul talking about here? Well, after his encounter with the resurrected Christ, okay, it says here, "He did not consult with flesh and blood. He did not go down to Jerusalem and get the stories, get the goods, get the teachings, and so on from the other apostles." He's very clear about that. So where did he go?

He went into Arabia. You know what Arabia is? It's a desert. It's a wilderness. Okay? Now, it's unclear how long Paul was out there in the desert, how long he was out there in the wilderness, in Arabia. But I think that this indicates the fact that Paul, while he was out there in the desert with no distractions, no podcast, okay, God spoke to him.

Christ revealed himself to him. Paul was directly taught by Christ there in the wilderness. Okay? He was directly taught. I mean, spending 15 days with Peter is not going to take care of it. Okay? How much time he spent out there in the wilderness, you know, that's uncertain. But I believe Paul indicates here that he received the teachings that Jesus taught, whatever information he needed about Jesus's life, and also whatever he needed to communicate the gospel in his ministry and so on. He received directly from Jesus Christ. That makes him an apostle.

Okay? Because he encountered the risen Christ and was taught directly by revelation through the risen Christ, through the action and function of the Holy Spirit. Okay? The Holy Spirit will teach you the things that are to come. He will guide you into all truth. And I think that's what Paul experienced.

All right?

And so Paul is also a living repository of what Jesus taught, what he said, what he did, and of his as a witness to his resurrection.

So we have these living repositories of the truth. Right? And they write things down. They write things down. They don't just write down through their own efforts and minds and abilities and so on, but they write by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Okay? Because that Holy Spirit is guiding them into all truth, is bringing to remembrance the things that they need to communicate on, and they write them down. And the New Testament consists of three basic genres. A genre is just simply a type of literature. Okay? There are histories. The Gospels and the Acts, they tell the story.

Okay? They tell the story. And the story is important. Okay? Luke says, "I want to write a narrative. I want to write a story about the things most surely seen and done." All right? And then there are letters. Okay? Letters by the apostle Paul. And the majority of letters in the New Testament are written by Paul, but there are also letters written by Peter. There are letters written by James. There's a letter written by John, and there's that one very interesting, curious, almost a letter written by Jude, which almost slides into the third genre, which is apocalyptic, which talks about things to come in the book of Revelation.

All right? Now, if we look at the time frame of when these things were written, the earliest writings that scholars date, James and Galatians, AD 48. Now, it's interesting to me it's interesting to me that the two probably the two earliest writings now, Mark may have been the Gospel of Mark may have been a little earlier, but there's a time span that's given for when it might be written down. A 20-year period as to when it might have been written down. But it's interesting to me that Galatians and James are two books that are the earliest writings.

Now, if you're Luther, you have problems with that, and I'll talk about that here in a little bit. But then we have 1 and 2 Thessalonians about 51 AD, 1 and 2 Corinthians around 55 to 56 AD. And around that time, Luke may be beginning writing his gospel, and the course Acts goes up to about 62 AD, the events that are narrated goes up to about 62 AD. So that kind of so from about 55 to 62 AD is the period when Luke and Acts are written. And then we have Romans coming in between 57 to 59 AD, and then Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, all written after Paul gets to Rome. So around 63 AD afterwards.

And then, of course, some of the last writings of Paul are 1, 2 Timothy, Titus, and then around the same time, we have 1 and 2 Peter and Jude, roughly 67 AD. I think that church history says that the apostle Peter and Paul were executed around 69 AD. And then coming at the tail oh, and yeah, coming at the tail end oh, I forgot to mention that Matthew is written probably around AD 60. Okay? And then at the tail end, we have John writing his gospel, and then, of course, the book of Revelation. Okay?

One of the things that's really interesting is that, okay, Jesus is on the earth roughly around AD I think it's at 6 or 4 or something, up to about AD 30 or something like that and so on. The earliest writings are only about 18, 20 years later, and the apostles are all still living. As Paul writes in Corinth, which is in 55 which he writes in 55, 56 AD, there are still many of these persons who witnesses Jesus's resurrection still amongst us, still able to testify to the truth. Okay?

And, of course, John lives this very long, long, long life and at the end writes his writings, his gospel and the Revelation. All these persons so these are contemporary. These are written down during the lifetime by the apostles for the most part, or at least being as Luke was, being informed by the apostles, and as Mark was, probably being informed by Peter and so on. You know, in contrast, in contrast, what people say they know about the prophet Muhammad was not around until a couple hundred years afterwards.

And that was oral history. Some of that wasn't even written down until much later yet. And there's some question about the whole book, the Quran, that most scholars who aren't Muslims of course, they have Muslims have a, how should we say, a special interest in saying otherwise. But for the most part, they're saying, at the earliest, 100 years after the time of Muhammad.

All right?

So these writings are coming straight from the apostles. Now, this takes me then to

my next part, but I just want to emphasize the fact that they wrote it down, and they did it for us. Okay? "So that you may know the things most surely believed," as Luke says. All right? And we can trust that what they said because they were not just writing through their own human abilities and so on, but they were doing it through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, the next thing I want to look at is the problem of a canon within a canon. What do we mean by this term canon? A canon is just simply kind of a rule or kind of a measuring stick. And when they that's how it's used generically. But when we talk about the Bible, we talk about what books are to be considered part of the Bible. Okay? So you have the Old Testament canon, and you have the New Testament canon. Okay? And I've already gone through all these the various books that are included in the New referred to in the New Testament canon.

And they are fairly well accepted as being part of this is what is the New Testament. Now, in more recent years, some scholars have really made a lot of hay over the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas. These are later Gnostic writings that probably are 2nd and 3rd century at most, and they really get all hept up about them. But, you know, they're just simply they're very different too than the Gospels, if you've ever read them. Okay?

I wouldn't spend they're not hard to read. It doesn't take long to read them, but sometimes, you know, scholars are interesting because they always have to have something new. They always have to be making to legitimize your scholarship, you always have to come up with a new theory or a new idea that nobody else has thought of before that, you know, to sort of make your mark and so on. And I think that's what the more recent attention to these Gnostic Gospels is a result of, but also, I think, just simply a result of disunbelief.

Yeah, focusing on those. But what I am more concerned about is not that. I mean, there are people who deny the truthfulness and the validity of the New Testament, and that's been around for many, many years, for centuries and so on. But what I am concerned about is the idea that there is within the canon, just like among the Jews, okay, what is the canon within the canon? It's the Torah. Okay? Those are the most important books in the Old Testament. Okay? Really, what you want to focus on. Okay?

And so on. But there can also be when people look at the New Testament, they can develop their own ideas of sort of a canon within the canon, books that are more important, are more valuable than others in the New Testament. And oftentimes, this is theologically and ideologically grounded or derived.

For example, Luther. Okay? This is a quote from his preface to the New Testament. And this is what he says about the New Testament. He says, "John's Gospel and St. Paul's epistles, especially the to the Romans and St. Peter's first epistles, are the true kernel and marrow of all the books. They ought properly to be the foremost books." That's his canon within the canon.

John's Gospel, Paul's epistles, especially Romans and 1 Peter, those are the real ones. If you really want to know what the New Testament's about, if you really want to know what the Gospel is, that's where your focus should be, on those books and the rest. "Oh, it's okay."

Or except, he says, "James, on the other hand, is a write-strawly epistle." He does not like James. In his preface to James, he says, "I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle. It is flat against St. Paul and the rest of the scriptures in ascribing justification to works. This James does not thus, James does not only this James does nothing more than drive to the law and its works." And so he saw basically the letter to James as the reiteration of law.

Why do you think he doesn't he prefers John's Gospel to Matthew's Gospel or Luke's Gospel? What's in Matthew? What are we studying right now? The Sermon on the Mount. Okay? That doesn't really fit in with Luther's theology, with his emphases and so on. And so Luther here was basically saying there's a canon, there are books in the New Testament that are more important than other books.

All right? All right? Now, C.I. Schofield, who created this study Bible called the Schofield Reference Bible, he was a dispensationalist, and he was looking forward to a future millennial kingdom where Israel would be the Jews would be restored as in the kingdom of God in this future thousand-year kingdom here on earth.

And he says in his reference Bible, in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, "The Sermon on the Mount is not for today, but for a future millennial kingdom." Okay? All right? So by his method of interpretation, okay, he has and again, he's actually theologically doing kind of the same thing Luther does as far as saying again, opposing grace and law.

The Sermon on the Mount is law. Okay? And it's opposed to grace. All right?

Now, more recently, I remember a number of years ago, I read a book by R.C. Sproul, who has since gone unto his reward, whatever that is. He was a Calvinist and a radio preacher and so on and wrote many books. And he wrote a book on how to interpret the Bible. And I read this back, oh, when I was living here in Delaware. So it was some years ago.

And in it, he says, "We do not go to the Gospels for doctrine, but we go to the letters, to the epistles." I remember when I read that, I said, "Who says? Who says?" Well, he had a canon within the canon.

Okay? His canon were Paul's epistles. His canon within the canon was Paul's epistles. Okay? So you don't go to the Gospels. All right? Somewhat similar to Schofield, though I'm not sure that he was dispensationalist. But more recently, we have another phenomenon, I would almost say somewhat of a backlash or a reaction to this understanding that people like Luther, like C.I. Schofield, and R.C. Sproul would be advocating called red-letter Christianity. Any of you how many of you have heard of red-letter Christianity? Raise your hands. Put them up high in the air. This is not a revival meeting. That's good. All right.

Okay. Yeah. Red-letter Christianity. Well, you know what it's referring to. How many of you have Bibles that have red letters? I hate those Bibles. I mean, the reason I hate them is because the red letters are hard for me to read. You know, I just like nice black letters. That's the easiest thing for me to read and so on. But the other thing to keep in mind is that the red letters is somebody's interpretation of what the sayings what Jesus is saying. And, you know, when you're in particularly when you're in the Gospel of John, sometimes it's a little hard to figure out exactly where you're segueing from what Jesus is saying and what John is saying about what Jesus is saying.

Okay? So but the idea here is that what we really need to pay attention to is what Jesus says. Now, that sounds good, doesn't it? That sounds really good. That sounds really pious and spiritual and elevated and so on.

Who could hardly argue with that? One does need to pay attention to what Jesus says. But remember what I said. How do we know what Jesus said? Because the apostles told us so. Okay? Whatever we know about what Jesus said is what the apostles told us.

Okay? Is what he said. All right? And then so there's actually a website called red-letter Christianity. And I looked it up. I remember first hearing I looked this thing up and so on. And I ran through it, and I thought, "You know, I wish they truly were red-letter Christians.

I wish they were. If they were red-letter Christians, they would be saying some things differently than what they're saying here." Okay? But what I noticed is that they took some of what Jesus said to fit a fairly progressive political agenda and so on, concern about social justice. And I think one should be concerned about social justice. One should be concerned about the plight of the poor and everything like that. I'm not sure their solutions are the ones that we want to resort to. But they weren't talking about what Jesus said about hell. You know, Jesus talks about hell. Paul does not.