The Bible

You're probably all kind of wondering why we're talking about the Doctrinal Statement and why we're going to be teaching on it. Many, many months ago, the deacons requested the elders to review the Doctrinal Statement. And I think one of their purposes was if we could kind of shorten it to get it into a brochure. And so we reviewed it and we made it longer. And so we didn't fulfill their desires. But nevertheless, we felt that what was added needed to be added.

And then as we were discussing it, we said, you know, I wonder how many people that attends Holly Hills Bible Church have actually read the doctrinal statement. Can I just hear, how many have read the doctrinal statement? Well, quite a few. Okay. I figured that there would be, we thought that would be very few. Okay. But anyhow, this is what we're going to be looking at is our doctrinal statement this morning. And, okay, first question I want to ask is this, is it important to know biblical doctrine?

In taking a look at Colossians 2, 6, and 7, which says this, as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him." And we've gone through this several times in terms of we have received Christ how? By faith. And so we're to walk in him by faith.

Now look at the next few words. It says, rooted, built up, and established in the faith. All of these, by the way, the walk, you are to walk by faith, it's an active voice, you do it. All of the rest, the next three, are all passive voice, and this is what God is doing, or has done. Rooted, he's rooted you in Christ, it's already done. Being built up and established in him, he's doing that now. passive voice, you are the recipient of his action.

And you walk by faith, and he's establishing you, and notice where he's establishing you, in the faith. So as you have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Just taking a look at the words here, in terms of established, the word established means to make firm, to to secure, to fix something.

You dads who have sons and they want a basketball backboard. Where do you usually put a basketball backboard at your house? Up above the garage. And what happens? After so many poundings, it becomes loose. So what I decided to do is I went out and I bought a steel pole, that big, 15 foot, dug a 3 foot hole, buried it in concrete. That basketball backboard is fixed. It's secured. It won't move. And that's what God is doing with us. He's establishing us, fixing us, securing us. that it says, in the faith.

There's a definite article there, in the faith. As you go through scripture and you see the faith, it could be referring to one of two things. It could be referring to personal faith, like the faith of Peter, or the faith of Paul, or it could be referring to the whole body of truth. that we have in the Word of God. And in this case, in this particular passage, that's what it's referring to, the whole body of two, the teaching or the doctrine that is contained in Scripture. So is it important to know doctrine? Absolutely. So now what I'd like to do is, what does this look like? What does this look like in your life and in my life?

Well, here we have the scriptures, and in the scriptures is the faith, the objective truth of God, and its objective knowledge, its gnosis, or objective knowledge. And then what we do by observation, interpretation, correlation, as Vern has been going through this in many studies, Then we observe the scripture, we interpret it, and we come up with doctrine. What does the scripture teach? What are the teachings in scripture? And then we take some of those teachings and we form a doctrinal statement. And we have, of all of those hundreds and hundreds of teachings in scripture, we have 11 of those on the sheet that you have in your bulletin today.

OK. Here's the question. Is doctrine important? Is it important in your life and in my life? Answer, it's critical. It is critical. However, the knowledge of doctrine, critical as it is, gives no power in your life or no power in my life, just knowing doctrine.

For example, some of the teaching in scripture, and we talk about here all the time, is identification truths. And I might know all of the identification truths. I might know, as Berne taught even last week, that I was baptized, that I was immersed into the person of Christ, into his work, into his death and his burial and his resurrection, and I can know all of those wonderful truths. but the truth may not be implemented in my walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, until I own that truth, until I, by faith, believe and rest in that truth, then and only then is there going to be power in my life. So when the self-life and the sin nature and all of the desires of the sin nature come at me, then as I rest in the fact that I'm crucified, that I'm dead, I've been separated, I've been cut loose from the source of all that, I'm alive unto God, and as I rest in those truths, in those facts, then That truth becomes, in scripture, what is called full knowledge. And there's a wonderful word in scripture that's used, epignosis in the Greek. So there's gnosis and there's epignosis. And usually epignosis is talking about this full knowledge, believed on knowledge of the scripture.

So it becomes subjective in my life. It's no longer objective truth, but it's real. I own it. It's subjective in my life. As that process goes on, God or the Holy Spirit is forming the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in me, and then I have this intimacy with the Lord. Now, I want you to notice something, if you can see it, that Jesus Christ is the object. He's the object of the faith. of the whole body of truth that's in scripture, he's the object of that faith, and he's also the object of my personal faith, of your personal faith. So he's the object of those two.

So with the mind, and we always talk about whether knowledge is in the mind or in the heart, and I think that's a good analogy. Because it's true that we can know all of the doctrine, all of the scripture. And I love Mike's illustration all the time. He talks about these theologians that come up into heaven with all their theological books under their arm, and they bump into the Lord Jesus Christ, and he says, oh, excuse me, and never even recognizes the Lord. But that's a wonderful illustration of just knowing objective truth versus having it in our heart and in our affections, and it being established, fixed, and secured in our hearts.

There's a passage in 2 Corinthians, and in our 2 Corinthians class that we've gone through, which is a wonderful passage of scripture, it says, now he who establishes us the ba-a-o, the same Greek word that's used in Colossians 2.7.

Now, He who establishes or fixes or secures us with you, and notice where the securing is and the fixing is. Where does God secure us? Where does He fix us? In Christ. So He fixes us in the truth, In the objective Word of God, He fixes us, He cures us in the person of Christ. Here's the question.

Why do we need to know and understand doctrine? First of all, it's God's revelation for grounding us in the truth, and it's necessary for our growth as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's take a look at God's revelation in terms of how God reveals himself through the Word. First, the foundation of all revelation is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the foundation. He's the subject of the Bible from Genesis. He's the executor of creation, as you get into Revelation, He's the Lamb, He's the Temple, and the Light of the Holy City, the Holy Jerusalem. So, He is the foundation for all teaching, for all Scripture.

Then, the next building block, if you will, is God's eternal purpose, and trying to understand what is God's eternal purpose, and we'll look at that a little bit later. The next one, in terms of understanding God's revelation, is the basic doctrines in scripture.

And I highlighted this to advertise the course that's being taught, Major Bible Themes. And Roger and Brian are teaching this. But there's 52 just major Bible themes that every believer should know and understand. And from there we can go on to things like our identification with Christ, the identification truths, and then who you are in Christ, and then positional and conditional truths, and Mike is teaching that right now.

So what's your understanding, your position in the Lord Jesus Christ? And remember, with respect to positional truth, Positional truth is an eternal truth about you and Christ. Not only is it eternal, but it's immutable. It will never, never, ever change. So that you are saved from the penalty of sin, right? It's a positional truth. It's eternal. It will never change. You are being saved from the power of sin. It's a conditional truth. It's conditioned, moment by moment, in your life. So, understanding what is positional truths and conditional truths. Then, growth truths. All of Paul's epistles talk about are growth truths. These are the building blocks, and the thing is this.

I don't think any of these can be bypassed. And so where do you start? You start at the foundation. You start there. And spiritual growth, to get, I'm pointing here and you can't see me, to get to spiritual growth, it can't be hurried, it's a process, the building blocks, It can't be bypassed.

It's like playing a musical instrument. You first learn the notes, you learn the scale, and then you learn how to play those notes on the particular instrument, right? So, when you do that, are you ready to play Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony? He wrote that, didn't he? Did I have it right there? You can tell my ignorance about music.

But now, you have to go through all of the building blocks to get there. The same thing is true with our growth. It's a process. And we have to know these truths sequentially. That's why we've developed classes here, study school classes, to do exactly this.

And so we would encourage you to start out. If you don't know, you may be a young believer, that is, young in the Lord. You may be old, like me, but you may be young in the Lord. If you're young in the Lord, you need to start here. So we encourage you to do that. Let's take a look at what our response should be to God's revelation. The learning process was sequential, building block upon building block upon building block, or precept upon precept. Our response to that is simultaneous.

So all of these steps that you're going to see are, if you will, simultaneous in your life and my life. is walking by faith. The thing that God desires us to do is to simply walk by faith. And we can't please God any other way unless we walk by faith. The next one is abiding in Christ.

He's divine. We're the branches. We're to abide in him. And I love the word abide because It's a word in the Greek which means being at home, that we're at home with him. Thank you, thank you. He read my mind. And so there's that moment by moment of abiding in him. And then we have the Word of God in terms of to study it. And the word there, studadzil, in the Greek means to be diligent, to be diligent in the Word of God.

And as we go through this, it's living not I, but Christ. Because 24-7, 24-7, the old man is coming at us, right? There's all the temptations in life. There's all of the trials that we're going through. And we attempt to, and oftentimes, that old man seems much more attractive than Christ. And I think the reason is, is because we know him better than we know Christ. But nevertheless, it's the not I, but Christ. Paul says, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, what? I live, yet not I, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And so it's the reckoning. It's counting ourselves dead indeed unto that self-life and alive unto God. And then beholding him through the word, scrutinizing him through the word.

And as we behold him, as we scrutinize him through the word, The Spirit of God grows us up, forms the very person of the Lord Jesus Christ in us. And as this process goes on, the more and more we become like Jesus Christ, or the more He is formed in us. And we grow. We grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the end result is, in God's eternal purpose, God wants us to glorify Him. And God is glorified by us walking by faith, and us being an epistle of Christ, and others seeing the very glory of our Lord Jesus Christ through us. That's our response. And the response This response now is simultaneous. It all comes together. It's not a building block that you do this one week and the next week. It's simultaneous. It's a process that happens simultaneously. Okay.

We're going to talk about now just a foundation in terms of doctrine. We're going to take a look. at the doctrinal statement, and the first thing we're going to look at is what's on the doctrinal statement, as you see, is the Bible. So, here's two critical questions. What has God revealed?

Okay? And here's a question that I would ask. If God created you and he created the universe, does it seem plausible, or is it reasonable to assume, then, that he has communicated with us? If he's created us, is it a reasonable assumption that he's communicated with us?

The answer, I think, is yes, and that he has revealed himself. So the question is, what has he revealed, and how has he revealed it? Obviously, the Bible is his revelation to us. It's a divine revelation. And what has he revealed? Well, he's revealed the knowledge of himself and his eternal purpose. Those are two main things that he's revealed about himself. How has he revealed it? He's revealed it by, number one, general revelation.

General revelation is what's outside of the Bible in terms of what we can know by touch, feel, smell, senses, or just innate knowledge. So it's outside of scripture. And then there's special revelation. So what we're going to take a look at is when we talk about the knowledge of God, we'll take a look at how God has revealed himself, has revealed the knowledge of God by general revelation and by special revelation. And then we'll take a look at how he's revealed his eternal purpose by general revelation and special revelation. Here's a question.

Can unbelievers have the knowledge of God? How many believe that unbelievers could have the knowledge of God? How many believe that to some extent, unbelievers can know God's eternal purpose? Some of you are not sure. Some of you are chicken. But the answer is this, that to an extent, every unbeliever can have the knowledge of God and his eternal purpose.

We'll take a look at that. Let's take a look at the knowledge of God. Knowledge of God, number one, we'll look at it by just general revelation. First of all, he tells us in Romans chapter 1, that which may be known of God is manifest in them. The things that are knowable of God, God has manifest in every single person. Every single person knows there's a God.

Now, I have a family, a brother-in-law, who said he's an atheist. I said, no, you're not an atheist. Because in God's frame of reference, there are no atheists. I have friends who say they're agnostics. No, you are not an agnostic because you know there is a God.

Because God has made it known unto you. You were born with the knowledge of God. And the other aspect of general revelation is that God declares his glory through the things that are made. And so as we go through Psalm the heavens declare the glory of God. And you go over to Romans chapter 1, is that the unseen things about God, that is, his eternal power and his deity or Godhead, can be known just by observing creation. So man knows by his senses the knowledge of God. And with respect to special revelation, there is the written word. And what's neat, if you get a chance in terms of reading Psalms 1 through 6, it talks about the revelation of the knowledge of God through creation. And then as you read on through Psalm 19 verses 7 on, it talks about the revelation of the knowledge of God through the written word.

And then also there is the special revelation of the knowledge of God through the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when the Lord Jesus Christ was here on earth, what could the apostles say? In John 1.14, they saw the word that was made flesh, and he dwelt among us, and he beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten Son, full of grace and truth." So that was the next way in terms of special revelation.

Now let's take a look at God's eternal purpose, looking at it two ways, in terms of general revelation and special revelation. Vern has been teaching these last month in Ephesians, talking about God's eternal purpose in declaring and revealing and sharing his glory and to be glorified. And this theme is throughout scripture. If you remember some years back, we went through the entire book of Genesis just with that outline. God declaring, revealing, sharing his glory and and thus being glorified.

So, looking at it from the general revelation, we had just gone through Psalm 19.1, God declares his glory through creation, and we can only see, through creation, his power and his deity. So, through creation, we can't understand God's We can't understand God's grace. We can't understand God's compassion. We can't understand God's faithfulness. We can't understand a lot of those attributes of God. But we can know and understand his power and his deity. So looking at it from special revelation, in terms of God revealing his glory, three ways.

Number one, through the written word. Old Testament, New Testament. And as you go through the Old Testament and New Testament, you read about the righteousness of God. You read about the holiness of God. You read about His omnipotence and His omniscience. You read the fact that He's truth. All of the essence of God, all of His glory, you read through Old and New Testament.

Then the other is through the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as we just talked about. And then the third way of revelation, revealing his glory, is through believers, through you and through me. And as you go through 2 Corinthians chapter 3, it says that we are an epistle of Christ. being manifested in the whole world can see the Lord Jesus Christ through you and through me.

And as you get over to chapter 4 and verse 7, it says this about you and this about me, that we're vessels. We're earthen vessels. And an earthen vessel, a clay vessel. And a clay vessel is frail. breakable, and that's who we are. We're frail, we're breakable, but in verse 7 it says that we contain a treasure.

There's this treasure in you and in me, and the treasure, as it reveals in that passage of scripture, is the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. If the world wants to know what Jesus Christ is like and who he is, he can see it through you and through me. Look at those three things in terms of God revealing his glory today. Through the written word. Now, can unbelievers see the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ through the written word?

Answer, you have to raise your hand. The answer is no, because they have to have discernment from the Spirit of God. And they don't have the Spirit of God involved in them, and so they can't understand the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through the Living Word, well, the Lord Jesus Christ is not here. He's seated at the right hand of the Father. And so the first two, are applicable to unbelievers, guess what's left? You and me. And like I've always said, you may be the only Bible that any unbeliever is going to read.

God's sharing his glory with mankind. The first way he shared his glory was through Adam. He created Adam in his image, in his likeness. He made Adam in the likeness of God, in terms that he created Adam as a person, just like God is a person, and gave him intellect, gave him emotions and feelings, and that was the old creation.

Then he's recreated you and me in Christ. And when he's recreated you and I in Christ, we became a new creation. And the old creation is history. We've become a new creation in Christ. Where old things have passed away, all the things about All of us who were in Adam are history, and we've become a new creation in Christ.

And I love it, in the Lord's Prayer, when he's praying to the Father, and he's praying about you and me in John 17, because he's talking about those who would believe the word of the apostles that he's going to send. And we have the very word of God.

And he says, Father, the glory that you have given me, what? I have given them. And it's a perfect tense. It's a completed action. The moment we believe, God has given us the very glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that's where he shares his glory as a result. God is glorified. God is glorified through His Son. God is glorified through you and I as we walk by faith. In taking a look at God's eternal purpose, I just want you to view it from this perspective. Number one, He declares His glory. He reveals it. He shares it. and he desires to be glorified.

When did all this happen? This all occurred in eternity past, between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and their counsel together, they made a decision, no I don't want to use that word, it was their desire, it was their desire to declare their glory, to reveal it and to share it. However, the focus of all of that was the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, in eternity past, they knew that when they created man, when they created Adam, that he would sin. So the question is, Was that causative? Because God knew that man would sin, did that cause Adam to sin? So Adam had to sin, right? That was his only... The answer is no. God's omniscience is never, never, ever causative. But God knew that man would sin.

Now, it's interesting. Vern has been going through a study on open theism. And open theism says that, well, yeah, God knows the past, and he knows the present, but he's not sure about the future. So what's interesting is this, that here in eternity past, so open theism would say this, that there was no cross, there was no death and burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ in eternity past.

Because when man sinned, then God said, oops, we have to do something about this. Oh, then comes the cross. Now God knew that, and he turned in the past. And then he created the time-mass universe and put in time. And so here we are today. And then he implemented the plan that he had for all eternity here on earth. And now that introduces the person and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, this is kind of an overview of his eternal purpose, and I want you to just think about this, that the Bible that you hold in your hand today is a love letter. It's a love letter from God to you and from God to me. And the interesting thing, the wonderful thing, is that he has preserved his word down through the ages. It's been preserved. It's written personally to you and to me. It's written to the believer, it's written to the unbeliever. And he's revealed to both his everlasting love for us.

He's answered the three basic questions and greatest questions that man has today. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Those are the three driving questions that man has today. And the only reason we're putting satellites and spacecrafts up on Saturn and Mars is to answer that question. Man has a desire to know, where did I come from? And he's looking to the planets for the answer. The interesting thing, though, as you go through those three questions, Who am I?

Where did I come from? Where am I going? The answers to those three questions are different for a believer versus an unbeliever. Right? Where did I come from? Unbeliever. Adam. Where did I come from? Believer. New creation in Christ. Who am I? I'm Adam and my father is who? Satan. Believer in Christ and my father is God. Where am I going? Unbeliever, going to hell. Believer, going to be with the Lord.

Our citizenship is in heaven. from where we come. So, the answer is different for all three. Next week, we're going to look in some detail in terms of the scriptures and how they originated, and what do we mean when the Bible says that it is the inspired word of God. What does that mean? We'll be looking at that next week.

Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer. Our Father, we are just so thankful, thankful for your everlasting love for us and your plan from eternity past, your eternal purpose. And Father, especially when we think of us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you have shared your glory with us. that Christ has shared his very glory with us. And I'm thanking you, Father, for your Word, that as we come to your Word and behold him through your Word, that you grow us up into the very position that we have. And we are thankful for that. We pray, Father, that the hearts here, that if there is an unbeliever here this morning, that they would consider the claims of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we ask it in his precious name. Amen.