Our Only Rule

[0:00] Psalm 19, reading from the beginning, let us hear the word of God. To the chief musician, a psalm of David.

[0:12] The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.

[0:24] Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. In them he has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices like a strong man to run its race.

[0:40] Its rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end. And there is nothing hidden from its heat. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.

[0:50] The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

[1:02] The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold.

[1:14] Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is a great reward. Who can understand his errors?

[1:26] Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression.

[1:39] Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

[1:51] Amen. May the Lord bless that reading of his own holy word. Well, I just want to begin this evening by saying that it's a great privilege to be here with you this evening, and it's a great privilege to have been asked to speak at the Gideon's Rally this year.

[2:10] I have to be honest with you. Someone with such little experience and someone with such little knowledge, I feel completely inadequate to be here and somewhat out of my depths.

[2:24] But I want to thank the committee for asking me. It's great to be here and for the opportunity to address you this evening from, well, the book that we have all come to love, and the book that we now cherish in our hearts.

[2:40] Because despite our, you could say, our insufficiencies, we've all come to discover the all-sufficient grace that is found in Jesus Christ.

[2:51] And the promises which are extended to us and heralded before us in the word of God. A word which we have made to be our only rule of faith and life.

[3:05] And that's what I've chosen as my address this evening. A topic which is based upon the well-known words of our shorter catechism. A catechism which I'm sure that many of us grew up with.

[3:18] Some of us, like myself and Donald will know this from his own experience. I didn't appreciate it and I didn't embrace the catechism and its teaching until I embraced the Saviour.

[3:30] But the catechism, the second catechism, it teaches us that the word of God is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. And it is the only rule to direct us on how we may glorify and enjoy him forever.

[3:46] Which means that this Bible, which we have come to know and love, it is the very word of God. And that word is contained for us in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

[3:58] And as those who submit themselves to it and humble ourselves before it, it is for us the only rule to direct us on how we are able to achieve the chief end for which we were created.

[4:13] To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Because without this word in our lives to direct us, we wouldn't know how to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

[4:24] We couldn't possibly know it of ourselves. And that's because our natural inclination, it's towards sin. Our natural inclination is towards self.

[4:36] It's towards idolatry. We wouldn't seek to glorify God or enjoy him forever by our own initiative. But the wonder of God's grace is that he has revealed himself to us.

[4:50] He has made himself known to us. He has made known to us his revelation. And it's a self-revelation. And he has revealed to us in his word how to glorify him and how to enjoy him forever.

[5:07] And you know, that was the principle upon which the Westminster Catechism and our Westminster Confession of Faith, that's what it was based upon. They were based upon the Reformed principle of sola scriptura, scripture alone.

[5:24] And their Scottish predecessor, I don't know if you've ever read it, the Scots Confession. It's a brilliant little document. It was compiled in 1560 under the leadership of the Scottish reformer, John Knox.

[5:37] And it held to the same principle as the Catechism and the Confession, scripture alone. And you know, when the Scottish Parliament was first established in 1560, one of the initial steps they took was to commission this group of clergy to produce a statement of the Protestant Confession of Faith.

[6:01] And it was a direct attack upon the Roman Catholic Church and tradition and all the erroneous doctrines. And it was only in four days, in four days, the 6 Johns, after a lot of hard work and great skill, the birth of the Scots Confession came to be.

[6:21] And the Scots Confession had remained the doctrinal statement of the Church of Scotland until it was superseded by the Westminster Confession in 1647.

[6:34] But in the preface, if you get a hold of a Scots Confession, in the preface, the Scottish reformers inserted this plea to all those who would read their doctrinal statement, which they had written.

[6:47] And they said that if any chapter or any sentence within the Confession, if it was contrary to God's holy word, they were to let them know.

[6:58] And they promised that whatever doctrine was questioned or whatever sentence was said to be unscriptural, they would either take it out or show them from the Bible that the doctrine was scriptural after all.

[7:13] And the plea in the Scots Confession, it's a wonderful plea, and it was to emphasize that they didn't take their role lightly and that they had such a high view of the word of God and that everything in the Confession had to conform to Scripture.

[7:31] Because the Scottish reformers knew that Scripture was the basis for all doctrine and that everything had to be measured in the light of God's word. where all their theology, all their preaching, all their teaching, and even how they worshipped, it all had to have its foundation upon God's holy word.

[7:52] It was to be the only rule to direct them, and it is to be the only rule to direct us on how we may glorify God and enjoy him forever.

[8:04] And so this evening I'd like us to remind ourselves of this great doctrine, this great teaching of God's revelation, that God has revealed himself to us, God has made himself known to us.

[8:19] And of course this is the principle upon which the Gideons exists, and it is so successful. But it is God who reveals himself. It is God who reveals himself to the individual on the pages of Scripture.

[8:34] It is God who makes himself known to someone who is in need, just as we heard, and he reveals himself to them as the word of God in their, as they hold the word of God in their hands.

[8:48] And so when we come to Psalm 19, we see that it is a psalm that was penned by David over a thousand years before any confession of faith was ever written. And yet we see in this psalm the doctrine of God's revelation clearly presented to us.

[9:06] And as someone once said, you can find all the theology of the Bible in the book of Psalms. And in Psalm 19, here is David's systematic theology on the subject of God's revelation.

[9:18] And David says that God has revealed himself in two distinct ways. Two distinct ways. What we often call God's general revelation and God's special revelation.

[9:33] Or if you will allow me, we could call God's general revelation the perfect sermon and God's special revelation the perfect Scripture.

[9:44] So the perfect sermon and the perfect Scripture. They're the two points for this evening. The perfect, so we look first of all at the perfect sermon.

[9:55] The perfect sermon. Look again with me at verse one. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day under speech and night unto night reveals knowledge.

[10:08] There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

[10:19] And so God's general revelation, it's the theological term, we often use to explain the revelation of God through nature. And that's where Psalm 19 begins.

[10:33] In which David, he's marvelling at God's creation and the beauty of what God has made. But you'll also remember in Psalm 8 where David speaks about the beauty and the wonder of God's created order and he marvels at the fact that God would love him and that God would look upon him at all.

[10:57] Because when David looks up into the night sky and he sees the wonder of what God has created and he looks at himself and he sees himself as so small and so insignificant in comparison to the greatness of the universe.

[11:12] And he says, When I look up into the heavens, which thine own fingers framed, and to the moon and to the stars, which were by thee ordained, then say I, what is man that he remembered is by thee, and what the son of man that thou so kind to him shouldst be.

[11:30] And so David in Psalm 8, he's looking at the greatness of God and the smallness of man. But when David wrote Psalm 19, it seems to me that David considered the vastness of God's creative work and he saw it as God's voice to the whole world.

[11:51] Where every morning with a new sunrise and every evening with another sunset and the moon and the stars to light up the night sky, David says, The heavens, they are declaring the glory of God and the skies, they are proclaiming his own handiwork.

[12:11] God is continually speaking through the creation and the created order through all the times and seasons. And David says that this is a sermon which is being proclaimed to the whole world in which the creation is the preacher.

[12:28] And God's power and God's glory is the theme of the sermon. And it's a sermon which is being preached to all of mankind. In fact, it's the longest sermon ever preached.

[12:43] It's the longest sermon ever preached because this sermon, it began right back at the very beginning of creation when God spoke into the darkness and said, Let there be light.

[12:57] And from that moment, the heavens began to declare and reveal the glory of God and the skies proclaimed his handiwork.

[13:08] And we are the audience of that sermon. The whole of mankind in every part of the world, in every age and in every generation, mankind has heard the glorious sermon of God's general revelation.

[13:25] And the content of this sermon is that everything we see around us, from the brightness of the sun to the shining of the moon to the vastness of the stars to the formation of all the hills to the flow of all the rivers to the power of the sea to the flashes of lightning in the sky and even all the different species of animals and mammals and birds and insects right down to the crying of a little baby in our arms.

[13:56] David says, Through it all, God is speaking to us. God is speaking to us and God is revealing himself to us. He's revealing his glory and his power to us.

[14:09] And that through his creation, God is proclaiming to this world that he has brought it all into being by his unaided power. Because this creation, it wasn't some random chance event of molecules and atoms colliding together and everything just falling into place and over millions and millions of years everything evolving into the vastness and the beauty of what we see today.

[14:40] No, just by looking at the creation that surrounds us here. Everyone has to admit that there is a great designer behind it all and that he has formed everything we can see by the word of his power.

[14:56] And David says the creation is declaring and proclaiming to us, look at what God has done. Look at what God has done.

[15:07] And the proclamation is so loud that the spiritually deaf can actually hear it and it's so beautiful that the spiritually blind can actually see it.

[15:18] Everything is pouring forth the works of God and day after day God is speaking. Night after night God is revealing his knowledge and his wisdom from the rising of the sun to where it sets.

[15:35] And David goes on to describe this rising sun. He says it's like a bridegroom coming out of his bedroom on the day of his wedding. It's this beautiful image of a groom looking his best ready in his finest garments to go and reveal himself to his bride.

[15:57] And that's how the sun that's how he describes the sunrise where all of a sudden the sun comes out of its house. The bridegroom comes out of its house in all his finery.

[16:10] It rises out of the darkness and brings light and with it a new day. A new day is dawned. And David says the sun is also like a strong man running a race.

[16:23] The sun is at its starting point every day. Rising in the east and it runs and runs and runs and runs and it runs in full strength full power and it hastens to the finishing line.

[16:38] And throughout the whole day David is telling us that everything under the sun belongs to God. This is the longest sermon ever preached. It's preached day after day and night after night.

[16:51] From the first day of this world's creation until the last day it will be proclaimed until the sun is darkened and the moon will no longer give its light.

[17:01] And this sermon it's not only preached and proclaimed until the end of time it's preached and proclaimed all over the world. There is no speech nor language to where God's voice cannot be heard or understood.

[17:19] This creation speaks to every nation every tribe tongue and language no one is exempt from God's creation. And because no one is exempt from his creation no one is exempt from God's revelation.

[17:35] And this sermon is proclaimed everywhere. It goes to the ends of the world. God has been revealed to this world generally. He has made himself known to everyone.

[17:47] Whatever age size social status whatever nationality whatever race colour background we are all hearing the sermon of creation about the existence of God.

[17:58] and we cannot ignore it we cannot escape from it and because this world has heard the sermon of creation it is without excuse.

[18:10] There's no excuse for not worshipping God as our creator. There's no excuse for not acknowledging that there is a God who stands behind all this creative work and whose hands have formed everything that he has made.

[18:25] The creation is reminding us that our worship belongs to the one who made it all and he is worthy to be praised for all that he has made and we are to give him the glory because he is the one who declares his glory and he has revealed himself to us and everyone everywhere is without excuse.

[18:47] Is that not what Paul reminded the Romans in Romans chapter 1 verse 18? he said that the wrath of God it has been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness because what may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them and he says 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.

[19:25] So no one has any excuse on the day of judgment to say that they didn't know that there is a God because God has revealed himself from the beginning of time through his creation.

[19:37] His general revelation has been given to us to know that there is a God who created all things but God has also given to us his special revelation which is the Bible and he's given it to us in order for us to know how to have a relationship with him.

[20:00] And so we've considered God's general revelation the perfect sermon but now I'd like us to consider together God's special revelation the perfect scripture. And I believe that we can see four characteristics of the perfect scripture in verses 7 to 9.

[20:19] And the first characteristic of the perfect scripture is inspiration. The first characteristic of the perfect scripture is inspiration.

[20:30] Look at verse 7. It says the law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right rejoicing the heart.

[20:44] The commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous all together.

[20:57] And as you can see from these three verses in Psalm 19 the covenant name of God is repeated six times. The covenant title Lord in capital letters it's repeated six times in three verses.

[21:13] In verse 1 David used the title God to refer to God as the creator. And he did so in order to explain God's general revelation as the perfect sermon.

[21:25] But now David sets before us God's special revelation as the perfect scripture. And he uses a different title to reveal or to describe God.

[21:37] In which God is no longer described as the creator. he's now described as the redeemer. And this title Lord in capital letters it refers to a specific title relating to God in which he has revealed himself to his people by entering into a covenant with them.

[21:57] It's the covenant title of the covenant king. And it's interesting that when David speaks about God's special revelation he uses the covenantal name of God.

[22:09] And this is interesting because that's what the Bible is. It's God's revelation of his covenant. It's the perfect scripture.

[22:21] And although the Bible is separated into two testaments it is in fact one covenant of grace. It's one covenant. One message of redemption revealed in what we call two administrations.

[22:36] Two testaments. testaments. The old and the new. With the first administration given in the law of the Old Testament and the second in the gospel of the New Testament.

[22:49] And Christ as we know is the foundation of both. And you can't have one without the other. You can't have the law without the gospel. And I'm sure you've heard it being said that the new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed.

[23:07] The new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed. There are two testaments but one covenant of grace running through the whole of scripture.

[23:19] Genesis to Revelation and there's one covenant king. And he's the mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus.

[23:31] And this is his word to us. This is his special revelation because he is the word of God. And no matter where we look in the Bible it's the word of God.

[23:42] All of it is the revelation of God's covenantal dealings with mankind. This book presents to us the revelation of our covenant king.

[23:54] And it affirms to us that this book of Christ's word is inspired. It's inspired. And Paul tells us that in 2 Timothy 3 verse 16.

[24:07] He says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and it's profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousness. And we often speak of inspiration in the sense of gaining insight.

[24:25] We say that there are poets or hymn writers who are inspired. inspired. But according to the Bible the subject of inspiration is not the human author but the book itself.

[24:40] It's not the writer who wrote the chapter and verse who was inspired but it's the word of God that is inspired. And the meaning of the word inspired it literally means to breathe in.

[24:53] Breathe in. But the word that the Bible uses for inspiration doesn't mean that God breathed into the Bible. It means that God breathes out of the Bible.

[25:05] Which means that the word of God is literally the breath of God. It's the breath of God. And because God breathes out of it it's a living word.

[25:20] It's a living word. That's what the writer to the Hebrews said. The word of God is living and active. sharper than any two-edged sword. Piercing to the division of soul and spirit.

[25:34] The perfect scripture is inspired. And it's only the Holy Spirit who can convince anyone that it's the truth. We can't convince anyone that the word of God is the truth.

[25:47] Only the Holy Spirit can. That was why Spurgeon said that you don't need to defend the Bible. Just like you don't need to defend the lion. You just let the lion roar.

[25:59] The Bible doesn't need us to speak in its defense. It defends itself. It has done so for centuries and it will do so for centuries to come until the Lord comes.

[26:14] And that's why the work of the Gideons is such a wonderful work. Because it's a work of the Spirit. It's all a work of the Spirit in which God speaks through his word.

[26:25] He breathes out of his word. He breathes life. The breath out of his word into the reader. The reader who's reading God's word and they're in like Adam was when he was dead and being brought to life.

[26:42] God breathed into him. He inhaled God's breath and he became a living being. And that's how it works. God speaks out of his word and he breathes life.

[26:55] life into those who are dead. It's the perfect scripture. And so the first characteristic of the perfect scripture is inspiration. But the second characteristic is authority.

[27:09] Authority. If you read those verses again, he says, the law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

[27:22] The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

[27:35] So we've seen already that the covenant named Lord is repeated six times in these three verses. But David also gives to us in these verses six expressions which are used throughout the Bible to describe the scripture.

[27:51] And they are the words, law, testimony, statutes, commandment, fear, and judgments. And in each description of the scriptures, David uses a legal term.

[28:05] It's a legal language. It's the language of the courtroom. And with this, David is emphasizing to us that scripture is our standard. And everything else in our lives is to be subject to that standard.

[28:19] The Bible is our authority. And scripture alone sets the standard. Scripture alone has the authority. And everything we do as God's creation must be subject to God's word, to the authority of scripture.

[28:36] scripture. That's why we refer to the Bible as the canon of scripture. Because the word canon, it's the Greek word for a read.

[28:48] And the read was a measuring line. It was used to measure things. And this canon of scripture, it's to be used to measure everything. Everything we do is to be based upon the scripture.

[29:01] It is to be the only rule to direct us on how we may glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is the benchmark. This is the standard. This is the measuring line, the perfect scripture.

[29:15] Do you remember when Paul and Silas, they went to Berea? It's in Acts chapter 17. And when they went to Berea and Paul preached to the Bereans the word of God to them, the people of Berea says that they received the word of God with readiness of mind.

[29:36] And they searched the scriptures daily to see that if the things Paul had said were actually true. Everything the Bereans heard, they measured against the authority of scripture.

[29:50] It didn't matter that the message came from the lips of the apostle Paul. He wasn't the authority. Scripture alone was the authority. Unlike the Bereans, we are to search the scriptures daily and ensure that this book is the standard of all our authority.

[30:08] Because we're to measure everything we hear and everything we read and everything we do, we are to measure it against God's word. This perfect scripture is to be the judge of all our opinions and all our experience and all our doctrine.

[30:25] Because all our opinions must conform conform to the perfect scripture. All our experience must conform to the perfect scripture. All our doctrine must conform to the perfect scripture.

[30:37] All the way we govern church is to conform to the perfect scripture. The way we worship is to conform to the perfect scripture. And even the way we live our lives, it is to conform to this perfect scripture.

[30:53] This is our standard. This is our final authority. the authority of the perfect scripture and so the perfect scripture is inspired it's authoritative but thirdly we see that the perfect scripture is inerrant it's inerrant and if you read those verses again the law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple the statutes of the Lord are right rejoicing the heart the commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes the fear of the Lord is clean enduring forever the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether so we've noted that the covenant name Lord is repeated six times in these verses there are also six expressions used to describe scripture law, testimony, statutes, commandments, fear and judgments but now we see that David uses six adjectives to describe the inerrancy of scripture he says that the scriptures are perfect they're sure, right, pure, clean and true and he's stressing to us that the word of God

[32:07] God is not only inspired and authoritative but it's also without error it's inerrant, there are no mistakes no lies, no fabrications, no deceptions this perfect scripture is 100% truth unfortunately many theologians even in our modern day they've argued that the Bible contains the word of God but it's not all the word of God because if the Bible was written by human hands and humans make mistakes therefore the Bible must have mistakes in it it can't all be God's word but it's the Bible that affirms to us that those who wrote the scriptures were moved by the Holy Spirit where holy men of God were carried along by the Holy Spirit and they wrote precisely what God intended them to reveal and it was kept from all blemish and all error so that we could have a standard for every area in our life doctrine and practice and what has been inspired by the Holy Spirit must be inerrant because to say that the Holy Spirit is erroneous is to deny the holiness and the perfection of God and if you go along that route you're only going to go in a a downward spiral of error but there's one thing that is clear about the inerrancy of scripture and that is that it's a reflection upon who God is and what God is like because we could use David's adjectives here to describe God and we can use them to describe his word we can say that

[33:49] God is perfect and the scripture is perfect God is sure and the scripture is sure God is right and the scripture is right God is pure and the scripture is pure God is clean and the scripture is clean God is true and the scriptures are true and because the Bible is God's inerrant word all the assertions within it about who God is and the work that Jesus has done on the cross they are as true today as if God was speaking these words directly to us from heaven that's why when we read the scriptures we should say let us hear the word of God it's God speaking to us God's voice speaking to us but as we mentioned there have been many throughout the centuries who have denied the inspiration and the authority and the inerrancy of scripture one of the most famous men who resisted the truth of the scripture was the third president of the United States

[34:55] Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson is reported to have said that Jesus didn't mean to call himself the son of God more than that he called the writers of the New Testament ignorant unlettered men who produced superstitions fanaticisms and fabrications and he even called the apostle Paul the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus so you can see that Jefferson thought that the Bible was full of error he didn't believe in the miracles or the virgin birth or the resurrection or the ascension or a literal heaven or a literal hell and like many enlightened people of his era he looked at Jesus as nothing more than a good man with a good philosophy for life so much so that Thomas Jefferson he took a razor to his Bible and he began to cut out the parts of scripture that he liked and glue them into a book and he left the rest he wanted to get rid of all the doctrines about Jesus but try and keep the philosophy of Jesus and Thomas Jefferson's work of a cut and paste Bible it was published and it's called the Jefferson Bible but you know the reality is that many of us can act like

[36:12] Thomas Jefferson without ever taking a razor to the pages of scripture because we can ignore parts of scripture that well we think are no longer relevant for the 21st century we can think that well that was true in the past but it's not true anymore we can think that we can pull things out and put things in and focus on parts that we like and ignore the bits that we don't like and don't want to be told about and people may say to us tell us about the love of God don't tell us about the wrath of God tell us about the goodness of God but don't tell us about the justice of God tell us that grace may abound but don't tell us that we have to live in a certain way tell us that we are good people but don't tell us that we are wicked and sinful people tell us that we are all going to heaven but don't dare tell us that we are going to hell but my friend the Bible this Bible it will only ever present to us the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth it's the perfect scripture it's the perfect scripture and this perfect scripture is inspired it's authoritative it's inerrant and lastly not every time but lastly the last characteristic is that it's sufficient it's sufficient if we read those verses again the law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple the statutes of the Lord are right rejoicing the heart the commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes the fear of the Lord is clean enduring forever the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous all together so we've noted in these verses the covenant name Lord is repeated six times six expressions are used to describe the authority of scripture law testimony statutes commandments fear and judgments there are six adjectives to describe the inerrancy of scripture scripture is perfect it's sure it's right it's pure it's clean it's true and now we're told that there are six phrases which emphasize the sufficiency of scripture because the perfect scriptures are sufficient this is what David says sufficient to convert the soul to make wise the simple to rejoice the heart to enlighten the eyes to endure forever and to be altogether righteous and the point that David is making is not that the Bible teaches all that we need to know about everything the Bible doesn't do that it doesn't explain to us the ins and outs of nuclear chemistry but the sufficiency of scripture means that scripture has revealed what is necessary for salvation it's not necessary to know nuclear physics in order to be saved but it's necessary to know the gospel as it is revealed to us in scripture in order to be saved and this is the point where there's the difference between general revelation of God's perfect or the perfect sermon and God's special revelation of the perfect scripture this is where it becomes clearer because God's general revelation of himself through the perfect sermon of creation it only goes so far as to show God's wisdom

[39:52] God's goodness God's power and to leave people without excuse therefore the perfect sermon of God's general revelation of the creation it's insufficient to give the knowledge of God and his will and how to be saved and what is necessary for salvation that's why we need God's special revelation the Bible because within this perfect scripture that God has revealed to us he has revealed who he is what he's done not only in creating this world but also in dealing with our sin and providing the solution to our problem through the person of Jesus Christ and because this perfect scripture is sufficient for our salvation the canon of scripture it's a closed canon it's a closed canon nothing is to be added to it either by a new revelation of the spirit or by the traditions of men or the church this perfect scripture from Genesis to Revelation is a closed book therefore no other book is sufficient for our salvation the Apocrypha is insufficient the book of Mormon is insufficient the Quran is insufficient the Bible that the Jehovah

[41:19] Witnesses use it's insufficient because it's only God's word as David says that can convert the soul it's only God's word that can make wise the simple it's only God's word that can enlighten the eyes it's only God's word that will endure forever and my friend this book is the only book in all the world as David says that is altogether righteous it's the perfect scripture and no other scripture will do apart from this scripture nothing else will do nothing else will change lives nothing else will convert sinners nothing else will point people to Christ nothing else will give hope to this lost world nothing else will bring comfort in the midst of sorrow nothing else will encourage us when we're at our lowest nothing else will remind us of God's promises of faithfulness towards us nothing else will show us that life is uncertain and death is sure that sin is the cause and Christ is the cure nothing else my friend will do our soul any good apart from this perfect scripture and you know after considering the perfection and purity of God's word it's no wonder

[42:47] David went on to say yea yea more than gold yea much fine gold to be desired are than honey honey from the comb that dropeth sweeter far we've considered the perfect sermon of God's general revelation in creation and the perfect scripture of God's special revelation in his word a word that is the only rule to direct us on how we may glorify God and enjoy him forever and so my friend may we leave this place this evening saying with David as he concluded Psalm 19 let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight O Lord my strength and my redeemer may the Lord bless these thoughts to us we'll just bow in a word of prayer

[43:54] O Lord our gracious God we marvel that thou art one who has revealed thyself to us we bless thee that thou art the God who does make thyself known and help us we pray thee to know thee more and more to love thee more and more in this world to see that thou art one who is so precious to us that we would hold thee close that we would walk with thee more faithfully that we would look to thee more often that we would find thee speaking to us more and more in thy word O bless us Lord we pray bless the work of the Gideons we thank thee for them that we are stirred up when we are always reminded that their work is a work of the spirit that it is the simple dealing of handing out thy word but we bless thee that that word is the power of God unto salvation to them that believe O bless us in our being together this evening we pray that all that is said and done would be to thy glory to the extension of thy kingdom and to lift up the name that is above every other name the name of Jesus go before us then we pray and do us good for Jesus sake

[45:07] Amen