Christianity is a words-based religion. The Word of God is foundational to the Christian faith and the right practice of it. Trusting that Word reflects our trust of God so that a denial of the sufficiency of the Word of God is ultimately a denial of the sufficiency of God himself. Christians must hold fast onto the Word of God in all aspect of life, because it is through the Word of God that we come to know God himself and hear him speaking to us today.

Okay, so we are talking about the sufficiency of Scripture. Here's what we need to recognize. The sufficiency of Scripture is the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. It's not a small matter. And I think that it's very clear that the war against the sufficiency of Scripture is a consistent theme in the Bible.

Every every skirmish in the Bible, you check it out, either involves adding or subtracting from the word of God, adding to or subtracting from the word of God. And what God has done is He's given us words. We are in a word-based religion. Words guide us. We have words of truth.

We have words of hope. We have words of life. And we are guided by words. And ungodly cultures always want us to use alternative language. They want us to use different words to describe everything.

And the temptation of every generation is to fall into that trap of letting the world define us. But the world defines us by words. Now, my greatest hope for our local church, really, is that when people come, they come because they want the words of God. That's what they want. We don't wanna build their affections for anything else.

I mean, as important as fellowship is, I don't want them to be coming to church just looking for fellowship. I want them looking for God. I want them only satisfied by God and the Word of God. If it's the fellowship, it's going to get disappointing. If it's God and His words, then it's never disappointing because it's boundless and bottomless in its scope.

And it's critical that our churches are focused on the words of God. And you know, people go to church for a lot of different reasons. But I want the people in our church to come because they want to hear the word of God. They want to hear the voice of God in the church. And if you offer them all kinds of things other than that, that's what they'll want.

And that's what will disappoint them if you don't give them those things. So it's very critical that we cleave to the words of God. Now this alternative language that we're being given in our culture today is not a new thing. You know I think we've probably most of us have recognized that in this realm of social justice, the language of psychologists, the language of psychiatrists, the language of liberation theologians, if you even want to use the word theology associated with that term. Marxist revolutionaries, pseudo theologians.

These are these are these are movements that press alternative language. And we see the same thing in the realm of sexuality. The language of the LGBTQ movement is full of alternative terms. How about the word gay? How about that word?

Or the word SSA or lesbian or bisexual or transgender. All these words are normalization words. And they actually deceive the conscience. And they lead the church in a wrong direction. And it's just so critical that we find ourselves cleaving to the words.

Now every period of apostasy and every period of revival has one single common denominator, and that is, what does it do with the words of God? And are the words sufficient? God was kind to the church, you know, 40 years ago to raise up an army of men who proclaimed that scripture was inerrant, without fault and without error. This was a very, very important movement that swept through the church. I was a young boy when it happened.

And then, you know, as time went on and as maturity was advancing, it seems like, you know, people begin to talk about the sufficiency of scripture. And, you know, in recent years, it seems to me that the battle lines have really shifted from inerrancy to sufficiency. It's one thing to accept that Scripture is inerrant, But to say that it's sufficient is an entirely different kettle of fish, because once you say that, it means that you have to change. It means that God wants to govern your life. It means that you have a Lord and it means that you are actually required to do something before God.

Well, that shouldn't have surprised us. The Great Commission says that we're supposed to teach people to what? To obey. We're supposed to teach them to obey. And obedience is always connected with the sufficiency of scripture.

And, you know, there are various skirmishes that take place along these battle lines. One of them I think arises out of the language of the reformers, the Regulative Principle of Worship. This is a tremendously controversial issue. And, you know, are we allowed to do whatever we want to do that's not commanded against? Or are we only allowed to do what God commands.

My perspective is that we should do what God commands. Once you open the door and say that you can do whatever you want unless it is forbidden, well there's a lot of things that aren't forbidden. Lots of things. And if you take that position, you've really thrown the church into being subject pretty much to the next creative guy. The most creative guy, the loudest voice is going to tell the church what to do.

If the church is not regulated by God, it's going to be regulated by somebody. And if we're going to say that the regulative principle is not valid, then we say the normative principle is, which means you can do whatever you want unless it's explicitly prohibited. Well, that's how you get a church that looks more like a circus than a church. And you can do anything you want. Well, there are lots of things that aren't forbidden in Scripture.

It's not forbidden in scripture to show movies, you know. It's not forbidden in scripture, you know, to ride motorcycles onto the platform, you know. I mean, there are lots of things that aren't forbidden in scripture. And unless you embrace the regular principle, You've thrown the church into a dog fight of who's going to have the loudest voice and who's going to be the most creative and the most powerful person in the room. So you have this conflict between the normative and the regular principle.

You have antinomianism on one side, which subtracts from the word of God, and is proud about it, and looks down on everybody else that doesn't. And then you have Pharisaism on the other side. Pharisaism adds to the word of God, and is proud to it, and looks down on everybody that doesn't, you know. So you have all these crisscross forces that are always at working in the Church of Jesus Christ. You know, Luther said it like this.

He said, don't send me visions, don't send me dreams, don't send me angels. He said, I'm content with one gift, the scriptures. They supply all that we need. And I really, you know, for you particularly who are young pastors, I just want to urgently appeal to you to embrace that principle, that scripture alone is sufficient. And that We hear the words of the prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 10, where he said, hear the word of the Lord, O house of Israel, do not learn the way of the Gentiles.

It's for the church to reject the ways of the Gentiles and to embrace the ways of God. This is the protective principle of the church and we really should embrace it. You know, the war against the sufficiency of scripture is always a war against the sufficiency of the holiness of God. And I just think we need to recognize where these battle lines are being fought. I want to talk about a 4, 000 year battle from Genesis 1-1 to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.

Every skirmish along this line involves either adding or subtracting from the Bible. Now the war really begins with Lucifer. You know, Lucifer rejected the sufficiency of God. He wanted his will before he wanted God's will. It's really very simple.

His proposition was, I will, not God's will. And Lucifer's rejection of God was really a rejection of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. He wasted no time in approaching our first parents, Adam and Eve, and they struggled with the sufficiency of God. And the serpent said, has God really said? That's really another way of saying, is scripture really sufficient?

Is God sufficient? Well, Eve did what every generation is tempted to do, to want something cooler than God, something better than, an upgrade, something wiser, something more interesting than God. The attack of the devil on Eve was nothing short of an attack on the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and His word. You know, wonderfully, you know, Noah trusted the sufficiency of the Word of God. He was a preacher of righteousness.

And Genesis 622 says that Noah did to all that God had commanded him. Noah was one of those men who trusted in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. And he led his whole family into an ark and the whole the whole world rejected him and mocked him for 100 years. And that's what happens to people who embrace that scripture is sufficient. They get mocked and they might get mocked their whole lifetime and we need to be ready for that.

Nimrod desired the sufficiency of man. This is Noah's great-grandson. He threw off the authority of God to become his own man. Well, You remember what they said at the Tower of Babel? We wanna make a name for ourselves.

We want a different word. We wanna make a name, but it's our name. It's not God's name. It's not the way that we have been ordained. And Nimrod desired the sufficiency of man.

And you know, ten generations after Nimrod in 2000 BC, you have Abraham and Sarah and they're struggling with the sufficiency of the promises of God. And, you know, Sarah and Abraham, they often honored the promises of God and they sometimes despised the sufficiency of Christ. And they basically said, we will do what everyone else is doing. And the disaster that ensued is well known. Lot preferred the culture of Sodom and defiled his whole family and all his future generations because he really rejected the sufficiency of God in his life.

And we have those remarkable words that appear in the Bible, remember Lot's wife. Lot's wife rejected the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. She wanted what Sodom offered and she turned around. But what happened with Lot's wife is no different than what we see in evangelicalism when you see an entire generation wanting to set aside the words of Jesus Christ and replace them with modern terminology from psychologists and Marxist revolutionaries and LGBTQ advocates. It's the exact same thing.

And it appears all throughout history, Moses esteemed Christ, but he faltered. We know that Moses faltered. But Moses came to the children of Israel and he said, do not add and do not subtract. He said to the children of Israel, oh that they had such a heart within them that they might fear me and always keep all my commandments that it might be well with them and with their children forever. And Moses in Deuteronomy 28, he says, if you begin to replace the sufficiency of God, you will grope in the dark, he says, and no one will save you.

And you know, this story continues on, the children of Israel enter the promised land. Achan rejected the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. He wanted something that was offered by the Canaanites. In the days of the judges, there was almost a complete rejection of the sufficiency of God. And when you read the words, everyone did what was right in his own eyes, you're really just talking about a commentary on a rejection of the sufficiency of Scripture.

Saul rejected the sufficiency of Jesus Christ, and he offered a sacrifice that God did not command him to make, did not command him to make, and that's really critical. David, though, you know, declared the law of the Lord is perfect. You know, the whole history of Israel and the kings of Israel is a history of a rejection or the acceptance of the sufficiency of the words of Jesus Christ. And you know, you had 10 bad kings during that season. They really, they really rejected the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

You know, the prophets did the same thing and they cried out, woe, woe to you when you go down to Egypt for advice." They said, do not learn the way of the Gentiles. And in Malachi chapter 2, he says, you cry when you come into the temple, you wail over the altar. But then he says in Malachi 2, 9, you have not kept my ways. He says, you have gone away from my ordinances and not kept them. Well, what are these ordinances?

Well, these ordinances are words. They are words of God. And what pastors must do is they must preserve the words and maintain the words in every generation. The words of God always correct the cultures of the world. There's not a culture in the world that the Word of God doesn't correct.

You know, many of us have preached all over the world, and the truth is the Word of God always disrupts culture. It disrupts every single culture you'll ever preach in because the words of God are true and they always find themselves in opposition to the words of that culture that describe everything. And so it's for us to do that. And this is why the Lord Jesus Christ said to the devil, it is written at his temptation. And you know, you find this entire subculture in Israel of the Pharisees who really rejected the sufficiency of scripture.

And they rejected it by adding. I mean, you can reject the sufficiency of scripture either by subtracting from it, like the antinomians do, or you can add to it like the Pharisees do. And the Pharisees added to the Word of God. And that's why Jesus said to them, have you never read what David said? Read what?

The words. It's the words that provide the limitations that are necessary in a corrupt society. And, you know, this trend line of the rejection of the sufficiency of Scripture is running today just as much as it did then. The apostle Paul ran into it in the Galatian region. The Galatian church was threatened by abandoning the sufficiency of scripture regarding to the gospel.

And Paul says, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in grace to a different gospel. He said, who has bewitched you? Well, you know, the bewitching had to do with words. It was a bewitching of words about the gospel. And so the Apostle Paul deals with this whole matter, and he says, you've become estranged to Christ.

You have fallen from grace, fallen from the words that describe the grace of God specifically. And he says, you ran well, who hindered you from obeying what? The truth. Well, the truth is expressed in words that must be preserved. And, you know, that's why you find this this running theme throughout the Bible.

Do not add to his words. Moses said it. Solomon said it in Proverbs 30. And finally, the Apostle John said it at the very end of the Word of God in the book of Revelation, do not add and do not subtract. And this whole message that runs from Genesis to Revelation is really do not learn the way of the Gentiles, don't adopt their terminology, woe to those who seek counsel but not of me.

That's what Isaiah said. And I think we will always need that counsel in every generation not to add and not to subtract from the Word of God. So we we live in a church environment where if you cleave to the words you find yourself wrapped in controversy that you didn't really expect. But this is the controversy that pastors must engage, and that is to keep the words, to preserve the words, to continue to proclaim the definitions of the words, and really to reject the propositional words of the culture and cleave to the Word of God. And that's really, I think, the whole matter that we are trying to consider here.

Here's Luther, and I'll close with this. I have observed this, that all heresies and errors have originated not from the simple words of Scripture as is so universally asserted, but from neglecting the simple words of Scripture. And brothers, that really is our responsibility in our churches, and that is to help all of our people to love the words, to embrace the words, to prefer the words of God above the words of this world. And we live in times as the church has always lived in where there are remarkable movements afoot to redefine matters of sexuality, matters of justice, and really everything else. And this is why we must, as pastors, have our hearts and minds filled with the word of God.

We must fill our homes with the word of God and we must fill our hearts with the word of God so that when we hear something we know whether it's right or whether it's wrong. Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord we thank you that you have given us words. We praise you that we're not left alone in this world, but that you have given us words of life, words of truth, words of hope, words that are true and eternal in the heavens that will not pass away. Lord thank you for being so kind to rescue us from the corrupt propositions of this world and to keep us in place in the place of all the happiness that we could ever know.

Eternal happiness coming from Your Word. In Jesus' name, Amen.