so far we have looked at the Westminster catechism with these six or so indications they're sometimes called Indy Kia of traits of the Bible which are its own way of validating itself in the minds and hearts of people its majesty its purity and now we come to by the consent of all of its parts by the agreement in other words the the Bible as diverse and big as it is with all of its different authors is an amazingly coherent story there's nothing like this book written across all those thousands of years by all those different
authors that has a storyline so amazingly coherent as this book you won't find any book like this anywhere in the world composed like this by so many writers across so many years having one consistent redemptive historical storyline that comes to consummation in Jesus and then or in somebody and then works its way out into the world so let's look at the specifics this is what this is what they're trying to get at that when you take the Bible as a whole what's the impact that it makes on you that would either lead you to believe
or not to believe in it and it's saying it leads you to belief in it by the amazing consent or agreement of all of its parts next 10:43 to him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through his name now that way of talking is a testimony to the coherence and the unity of all that the prophets bear witness to and how it is all centering on the Messiah and how he is going to bring about the forgiveness of sins X 26 22 to this day I have
had the help that comes from God and so I stand here testifying both to small and great saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass the prophets and Moses saying what Paul is saying so you got one part of scripture Moses that's the Pentateuch another part of Scripture the prophets and another part of scripture Paul and Paul is saying they're all agree acts 20 26 therefore I testified to you this day that I'm not that I am innocent because I'm innocent of the blood of all of you for I did
not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God now the reason that phrase is important is because I think it implies that when Paul spent the two-and-a-half years I think it was in Ephesus he delivered to them in that two and a half years probably teaching five hours a day six days a week a package called the whole Council of God in other words there was a coherence to it there was a wholeness to it and it related to the counsel of God so his understanding is that as he unpacked the scriptures Moses
prophets writings and as he opened the way they're all fulfilled in Jesus in the way of salvation through Jesus he was thinking in terms of a whole counsel of God that's what these Westminster Divine's believe you see when you read the Bible from cover to cover with a right heart thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin he's right - the Romans have become obedient as in Romans 6:17 have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed that for a standard of teaching gets it
the same idea of whole counsel of God there's a there's a wholeness of coherence a standard of teaching that they were passing along as they read their Old Testaments and fleshed it out in the New Testament now this is the one that has been most significant to me this piece of the Westminster catechism argument for how the Bible brings us to confidence that it's true like a little note to myself there that I'll use and the scope of the whole the whole Bible which is to give all glory to God I thought a long time
about that 11 years ago or so when I first was preparing my seminar on this how does that work to help us be confident in the Bible the scope of the whole which is to give glory to God well before I try to show you how it works for me and my heart I just want to be a testifier here and not just an explainer let's look at a few texts to see what they're getting at Romans 3:19 now we know that what things soever the law saith it saith to them who are under the
law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty be for God the whole world now is guilty before God because of all the God dishonouring sins they've been listed there in chapters 3 verses 9 to 18 and so what's at stake here is that is the global glory of God and the indictment of the world by God for their failures to glorify Him 327 where is boasting it is excluded by what works nay by what law of works nay but by the law of faith in other words all human glory
all human exaltation is down in the Bible and all God exaltation is up in the Bible because faith is the way you magnify God and unbelief is the way you magnify yourself and your independence Jaypee means this text was not listed in the Catechism I added it because I'm trying to think through this for myself on this truck not trying to have parrot what they said I don't know how it works for me and so now you're gonna see what starts to work for me John 7 16 18 Jesus therefore answered them and said my
teaching is not mine now I want to know is that true this of God that's what he's claiming I'm claiming to be from God I'm not just making this up out of my own human mind jesus answered said my teaching is not mine but is his who sent me so he's claiming that his teaching is divine everything hangs on the truth of that claim how does he warrant it if any man is willing to do his will he'll know the teaching whether it is from God I remember seeing that my my junior year in college
when I was going through some really significant thing and it just blew me away really if my will is to do God's will I'll know if Jesus is true that became for me a pivotal way of thinking by his dad he goes on if any one man is willing to do his will anyone wills his will God's will he shall know of the teaching whether it is of God or whether I'm speaking for myself this is just this is one of the closest places Jesus comes simply answering the question how can you know if you're
true and he says if you want to do the will of God you'll know why how's that work verse 18 he who speaks from himself seeks his own glory but he who is seeking the glory of the one who sent him he's true and there is no unrighteousness in him that's his argument so what is it can you restate it if your desire your heart is to do God's will when I talk and teach and work you'll see in me that I am for God and my words are from God because written all over my
life is may God get glory from my suffer and evidently that is self-authenticating if you bump into a person that you can tell that his teaching is all about ego gratification and not about God's honor you don't need to pay attention to their words but if you bump into a person and everywhere you look in that person's life they are totally angled on God getting to glory and not themselves you've got to listen that's what he's saying and he is the perfect embodiment of that way of life let's read it again cuz you just this
is huge for me this was absolutely huge it remains huge in how I think about why I believe Jesus and when I think about my own ministry and the kind of person I want to be and why anybody should pay attention to me as a pastor if your will is to do his will you will know if the teaching is from God or he's speaking of his own self cut off from God just another crackpot teacher come along he who speaks from himself seeks his own glory in other words he doesn't have any respect to
God's glory he's just on an ego trip wants to be somebody don't don't stumble over this Jesus was God and so he had to at times say huge things about himself but he is speaking here as your model man now and why this god man should be believed but he who is seeking the glory of the one who sent him he is true and so he's simply saying am i watch me look at my life what do you see am i totally devoted to my father's glory when I go into Gethsemane and sweat drops of
blood what sustains me they're not my will yours get it done you are God when you see somebody like that you better listen because they are speaking not from themselves he's true he's true he is true and there is no unrighteousness in him so when I read that the Westminster folks saying one of the ways that the Bible vindicates its message is by the scope of the whole which is to give all glory to God this is the way I understand it for myself that when I see a book that like Jesus is saying God
gets the glory God gets the glory God gets the glory and man is sinful and man should be humbled and God alone should be exalted something about that book with that scope that rings true to me doesn't ring true to everybody and you just got to decide it ring true to you now I said unto myself a note on natural revelation here the scope of the whole which I've got here let me give you one other text before I unpack natural revelation and then we're gonna look at internal testimony in the Holy Spirit I'm continuing
now the teaching of John 7 16 to 18 from John 5 this was another huge one for me personally miss my own life I do not miss Jesus I do not receive glory from men but I know you you don't have the love of God in yourselves he's talking to Pharisees who who worshiped God every day you don't have the love of God in you I have come in my father's name this is Jesus putting himself under to lift up the glory of the father again in my father's name and you do not receive me
so when they analysed a God exalting man who puts humans down and indict s-- all of our sin and hypocrisy and lifts up the glory of God alone they did not like what they saw you don't receive me if another comes in his own name you will receive him why why what does he mean there you look at the Pharisees and he says I've come in my father's name I'm doing everything for the glory of the Father I am testifying to my unique authenticity by humbling myself to the point of obliteration at the cross in
order that my father will be magnified that's Who I am and you don't like that at all I'll tell you what you would like is if I came in my name then you'd like me why because he would fit their values they want to live for their own name so they obviously want to be around people like that because to get convicted otherwise they get indicted when they're around God glorifying people who just love the glory of God and don't want to take any credit for themselves and they live for the majesty of God and
here they are wanting to stand on the street corners with law long prayer so that people will say oh holy you are and they're looking at how different Jesus is and the only way to protect themselves is to kill him he explains how can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one and only God now that's a rhetorical question right and all the TBI guys here have learned in arking what to do with rhetorical questions questions that don't have any answers in the text
they assume an answer you restate them in a way that states the answer and when it says how can you the answer is you can't so let's state it that way you can't believe namely in me in the Bible in the truth when you are bent on self Cora fication and not keying off of all the glory that God is and shares with us who live for him faith in the Bible is impossible for people like that which shows you the kind of thing we're dealing with in apologetics we would like people it ourselves included
to believe what's true and not to push it away and say crucify him crucify him we really would like to embrace whatever is true and therefore Jesus says you better therefore have your heart so changed that you love the glory of God above everything if you see the glory of God as supremely valuable you will be able to recognize my truth because that's what I say about God that's the way he's arguing here now obviously in this way of arguing there's a missing premise something's missing like well where where does that come from how does
how does a human heart start to do that where do you would you get any clue that the scope of the Bible being the glory of God means the Bible is true that there's there's a premise that's got to be supplied there like God is really glorious and all things are for his glory where do where do you get that and that's why I wrote the little note to myself I know right there note on natural revelation huh I'm not a scholar of the Westminster Confession or catechism I don't know exactly whether they meant what
I'm taking them to mean but I'm finding what they said that I think they mean very helpful so let me take you to the missing premise and how I think it works okay this is a note on natural revelation natural revelation means the way God has communicated to us in nature not in the Bible nobody's going to get saved by natural revelation but oh how important it is so a little section here on this the immediate knowledge of God that comes with human consciousness in the world and here again I'm operating not just at the
exegetical level but at the testimonial level because I have tried my best to feel whether I'm just a peds from the Westminster catechism or experiencing what they're talking about I don't want to just be a second hander that reads a 400 year old document and say there's why I should leave the Bible go do it instead of wrestling am i experiencing what they're talking about do I see what they say should be seen or might just playing games here with words so this is part of my wrestling that you're watching here Romans 1 19 to
21 a little heading here that which is known about God is evident within them let's read the whole section here that which is known about God is evident within them for God made it evident to them so he's arguing that people everywhere in the world know him known about god he is evident within them for God made it evident to them for his his argument since the creation of the world his invisible attributes like his eternal power his divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through the things that have been made or what has
been made he's arguing his invisible attributes he's clearly seen in the universe molecules galaxies trees oceans insects spiders fish that spit insects out of tree branches and when they fall in the water and scoop them up spiders that come up get a little bubble of air go down to the bottom build a nest at the bottom of the lake and bring air from the top of the lake down and put it underneath so that he can live down there that's weird that's counter-revolutionary big time why would that happen those kinds of things I mean like
millions of them just get into astronomy get into biology get into chemistry get into physics and worship that's what this is talking about so that they are without excuse this knowledge is so clear that every unbeliever in the world has no excuse of the judgment they won't be judged for not believing in Jesus if they've never heard of Jesus they will just be judged for not owning up to and for repressing the knowledge available to them as it says we all do that we repress it for even though they knew God they did you'll never
work with anybody at your office who doesn't know God according to that right there your job is just to figure out how to get they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him now here's what I'm after in reading the Westminster catechism that one of the reasons that we are drawn to faith in the Bible believing the Bible in a warranted and justified way is that its scope as a whole is to glorify God and I'm gonna link that to this text and all of our experience in the world
of God before you even read the Bible that's what I'm doing I'm saying that there is something about the very world we live in and the hearts created in the image of God that if the cobwebs could just be taken out of the way which is what the Holy Spirit does the cobwebs just taken out of the way what we see in the Bible which so click with what you see in the world you say that's God's book that's where I'm going do you another little story here before I give you my testimony give you
professor goupil's testimony professor Leonard goupil's was my doctor father in Germany until he died while I was there six months before I finished in 1970 he died in December 73 he was a very godly man I believed that he didn't believe everything I believed I he didn't believe in the inerrancy of the Bible he believed in the truth of the gospel but he had a I think a very defective view of the of the Bible I remember sitting in one class on Acts in which he just came to a text in chapter 8 where it
said that I'm gonna get it right here Philip had only been baptized in the name of Jesus and hadn't received the spirit and he said justice would emerge that's not possible we must we must apply Jacques critique here that is criticized the Bible with the substance of the Bible and deny that what Luke wrote there is acceptable that's not accepted just blew me away I admire this man so much I'm sitting in class and he's just saying this part of Acts is just wrong so there came points where I really wanted to understand this man's
faith I could talk like that about parts of the Bible and I asked him one day we were I can remember standing in the hall of the bibliothèque and and I ventured a risky Here I am you know 20 26 year old American studying and he's my doctor father he could just jumped me any minute and I said professor couple volumes Eden Ubbe ha why do you believe in Jesus at all why do you believe the Christianity I think I said big sweetie why are you a Christian and his answer it was quick immediate and
I thought good he said they're people of of all of reality and I experience it to see it and know it nothing fits reality like the message that's the way he answered me big sweeping global kind of it what I see in the world my experience of the world I mean I'm unpacking now my sinfulness the world as I look at it and then the Bible as I see it as a whole when they come together they just fit I I think he was articulating something of what we're on to here that when they say
one of the reasons the Bible wins for itself a confidence is that it's big scope namely the glory of God fits with a illuminator that is a when we're not blinded by our sin that's what we see in the world so let me walk through you thought walk with you through several steps of my own experience in this in this regard so just practically Romans 1:19 invisible attributes translates our errata which means invisible things things about God that are invisible these are evident it says because God has made them evidence so that's just reiterating what
we've seen now here are the steps that I follow through on so the existence of the invisible God is is known and things about him are known verse 19 step3 the things that are known about God are things that make us accountable to honor him as God and give thanks there's 21 so this must include his existence his beneficence why else would you give thanks our indebtedness to him for life you wouldn't thank him and enough of his nature or excellence so that honor would be called for so I paused at that moment I think
that's implied in the text and I say is that is that the way I experience the world is I cannot I cannot I mean I've tried I've tried to be a skeptic I've I've tried this is risky don't don't do this very much but in order to have some integrity and honesty that you're not just kidding yourself because you grew up in a Baptist home and you believe all this stuff because your parents believed it and are you really real and have you ever come to a crisis where you had to deal with whether it's
true or not you look at the world and you say can I believe God doesn't exist I've tried I just can't I mean I'm just hung on what I see it seems to me that that the world is of such a kind of world and you could get you could lecture a thousand lectures on the specifics of what I'm saying right now but we don't experience reality that way we just walk through the day and we we see things are you like me you sometimes you brushing your teeth and it just hits you you're a
human being and it just blows you away that you have a consciousness you know yourself you think about yourself your love you feel you're different from a dog everything in you is testifying you are amazing and I don't I don't I mean qualities I mean the existence of the human soul did you come this is big that happens to me not often just periodically and I think those are those are moments where the clouds are just parting so as you can see what you really ought to see all the time and then the same thing
happens with flowers flower this about my wife five red roses for Valentine's and I bought my daughter one red rose for Valentine and then I wrote a poem as to why tell us they got one and Noelle got five but I won't tell you actually I don't mind she's twelve but Noel is sixty do the math but the point is these are really good red roses if you get him at all these they stink to high heaven and nobody wants to be near them I used to do that they only cost 295 or a whole
bunch and I thought that's cool you know that's good stewardship and she would put them away on the other side of the room whatever they do to preserve them it's just stinks to high heaven so I get them now at you know Chicago like florists and the little old lady in there takes all the prickly off the Rose and she puts a little white things with them and bundles them up and they last forever and they're really smelly roses and they're about this long and they feel romantic not mechanical like and I watch them it's
incredible this Rose just going going to about four days you cut it again so sliced and she said do that to last in another four days so that's two out of several million possibilities to think about I cannot not believe in the raw sheer existence of a I'm gonna use the contemporary jargon intelligent designer now there's a lot more to God than that right attributes giving him thanks you got an option here if there's a god he's either impersonal or he's personal impersonal would be like a gas created everything caused the order personal would mean
person thinks feels now you 50/50 50/50 there's nothing in eternity that would define ultimate reality this was really this discovery was really big for me ultimate reality has always existed can't come into be just it's there you can't go from nothingness to somethingness so there's ultimate reality forever in the past and the question is what nature did it have and and it's a wonderfully liberating discovery to say before it there was nothing to define it or determine it it just was which means what it was it's totally open it could have been anything there's no
pre supposition that could say it could not have been ex because there was nothing out there to say it couldn't have been ex it could be a gas it could be a person it could be whatever and as I feel my own existence and look at this world and look at you for me to say this right here is all just a combination of energy and time and matter is impossible I can't do it it doesn't feel like I've even taken a big risk to look at you and look at me and look at the
world that exists and look at history and say that's all gas sophisticated no that's the wrong word who's got the word wise in it elaborate developments of gas I can't so I'm being set up you see I'm being set up by my own my own looking around and whatever god is doing to get cobwebs out of the way to set me up to read the Bible in a certain in a certain way these known things about God come through what has been made our immediate consciousness of the world that is given to us by virtue
of our existence constitutes a knowledge of God or five the effect of sin is to make us resist honoring and thanking God this resistance is so damning that we cannot live with the consciousness of it the result is that we suppress the truth verse 18 and become futile in our thinking and darkened in our hearts that is there is either a denial of God or a distortion of God to make him tolerable my own experience of God as an immediate effect of my consciousness in the world as human beings what I've been talking about I
jumped the gun on that my existence in the world confronts me as soon as I am conscious with now I'll just summarize some of the things I've been saying a single originator of all that is that's just what I'm confronted with as soon as I am conscious because I can't conceive it won't work just immediately won't work to say there are two of these out there of equal power infinite can't have an equal and he's infinite we know he is we created the universe that is one who is totally self-sufficient with no dependence on anything
outside himself to be all that he is so here I am experiencing nature and humanity and my own soul and as I just try to to just let reality speak to me I said this God that made all this and accounts for all this is self-sufficient he's not dependent on anybody for anything can't be because he's out there before any of it therefore he can't be dependent on it he brought it into being he's not dependent on it that's just their immediate one without beginning or ending or progress from worse to better I just regard
process theology as experientially ludicrous that God is coming into being that God is reforming that God is being shaped that God is somehow progressive he's just there absolutely there that's what our conscience is testify as we behold this world and look at ourselves I am there for one or he is one on whom I am dependent moment by moment for all things none of which I deserve and who is therefore beneficent I just think that that follows I I say okay he exists he's self-sufficient he's eternal he accounts for all the order I see any
accounts for the personhood I see who am i what am i nothing in fact I have lived in so much of my life in utter oblivious miss to this person that if I am alive at all he must be good that just just follows I just feel that in my bones I don't feel like I'm creating any big chain of arguments it's just bang there's a God I'm not God I'm and I've been bad my conscience tells me that one who is personal and accounts for the transcendent personhood of human beings said that already one
accounts who accounts for the intelligent design manifest in the macro and the micro a universe I've said that already one who knows all cannot not know all he created all he guides all he sustains all it's just given with the reality of God one who deserves to be reverenced and admired and looked to for guidance and help and oh how little have I done him I think all that's written right on the universe that God should be reverenced that he should be admired and that we should look to him for guidance if perchance for reasons
we may not understand he might be willing to give it to us who have not loved him as we ought but mainly lead our lives in total obliviousness that he is there holding us in being and yet we're not smashed every day one who sees me as guilty for failure in not rendering him what he deserves and who thus gives ultimate explanation to universal bad conscience why why is there bad conscience why animals don't suffer from what we suffer with we got a law written on our hearts we got a personhood we we have standards
they may be totally wrong we just set them for ourselves then we don't keep them none of us choose your standard you failed choose God's standards you really failed whatever standards you say and you all set standards you all feel guilty every person in this room feels guilty why because you know you're accountable to a being and that being explains the moral dynamics of the world this is why incidentally the Holocaust or the gulag whether it's Solzhenitsyn or Christian survivors of the Holocaust have found God and believed in him because of evil not in spite
of evil doesn't happen this way for everybody it just has for Solzhenitsyn it has for others and here's the way it works you see in front of you something absolutely unspeakably horrible like Elie Wiesel book the night describing the hanging of a twelve-year-old boy who wasn't heavy enough to die and they made them watch him for half an hour now I would understand up to a point a person who sits which beazell said God died he died I'm done and others are so enraged at this wrong they have to come to terms with where did
this rage come from where did this concept of justice come from where did this high level in Dignan see about this immorality come from if we're just gases here it won't work that wrong is a problem for how God can be good I admit that we work on that this indictment of it with moral rage is only explicable if you're more than a gas I mean what would you feel if somebody walked up to you as you were expressing your moral indignation and they said to you oh that's just your idea oh that's just chemicals
in your brain you would be furious with somebody and that's what's being taught in our universities every day the moral outrage you feel at injustice is only explicable in terms of a moral consciousness of which you participate in the world and therefore he's one who might save me but we need to do it in a way that overcomes my evil impulse to resist him and would have to make a way for his honor to be sustained while not punishing me for treason and there is no answer in nation to how that can be done in
nature there's no answer in nature to how that can be done which leads us to the Bible and my point here and I'm gonna close with this we'll take a break my point here is when you see the Bible stretched out with its nope as the glory of God and a history of redemption that answers perfectly to where I've arrived in my natural revelation and see no answer in natural revelation I think I'm on to why the Westminster Divine's said that too is how the Bible comes to be vindicated in your heart we pray father
in this part of our thinking glorify your word purified on the ground seven times and get the cobwebs and the clouds and the fog out of the way of our hearts so that we can see what you're saying in the world and how it meshes so amazingly with what you say in your word that we might come to hallow your word you
